Wander

WE were beyond the region of the mansions of wealth and lawns of perfection; beyond sign-posts that point to all sorts of dangers which lie in the motorist’s path; we were out on the winding road beyond Filston Township where high-speed conveyances dare not follow. The curving, sandy strip in front of us, narrowed by invading shrubbery and wild flowers, turns sharply two miles from Filston Court House and rises to a steep knoll. The horses came to a walk as they pulled the wheels over the sand and halted, panting, at its top for a minute’s rest.

The knoll had hidden the peaceful vale which now opened before us, an ever-new bit of an old world. Immediately below us were its houses in all stages of dignified old age; each with its poorer but ever loyal brother — the ample, rambling, ageing barn, patched and propped up for a little comfort in its last days. And in and out among them ran that tiny stream which each year seemed to grow slower in motion and quieter in song. Perhaps its waters now go to make some great river greater in the spirit of this age of mighty combinations; who knows!

As we looked down on the little valley, the sense of late autumn was all about us; nature had lost the vibrancy of early October, the high-strung chord was relaxed and hummed only deep notes. A sense of foreknowledge of change and shadows was in every ripened, withering thing, in every flower with its faded tints of purple and yellow and seared red, in every bird that at this time gathers with its flock, stripped of gay colors and all notes hushed, ready for the southward journey.

In this bit of a corner of the great world lived men and women who only on special occasions could either hire a horse or get a ‘lift’ from a kindly neighbor to go to the nearest village. Yet by breaking the speed regulations of sundry towns, one could easily motor out from the great metropolis to this very knoll in less than two hours. Here dwelt some of our brothers, not necessarily better than their kin in the cities, but certainly less covetous of earthly goods and fame; not necessarily finer-grained, but dwellers in old houses of noble lines, with the freedom of great spruces and maples above them and mysterious silences about them.

We had come to see Wander — Josef Wander — of whom I had heard conflicting reports, depending, no doubt, on the point of view from which local observers studied this alien in their midst. No one, however, could explain why a Bohemian should have chosen this particular and rather aloof spot to live in, especially a Bohemian who, it was reported, could make many of those very things which captains of industry wax rich in producing by the million for the millions. Not even the village doctor could tell, though probably he knew more about silent Wander than any other man in the county.

It was admitted that he raised the best strawberries within five miles, although he grew them in what had been, for his Anglo-Saxon predecessor-in-ownership, a pasture lot; it was also universally conceded that he had rehabilitated an apple orchard which any Yankee farmer would have declared beyond redemption. But the strange thing about him, besides and above the fact that he was an alien, was that, being a farmer in summer, he turned into a skilled artisan in winter. His neighbors did not call him that; if they had been compelled to describe his winter labors by a single word they would probably have called him an artist, for he drew designs on rather strange paper marked with little squares, and colored his ‘pictures’ with various hues. Still, the neighbors had two distinct reasons for not classifying him strictly as an artist: the first being that he was such a good farmer, and the second, that in his art he did not stop at drawing and painting but went beyond these, transferring his ‘pictures’ to rugs and carpets. This, in the opinion of his neighbors, reduced him to the rank of a practical factory-hand. But even there, according to the general opinion, he did not fit very well, for you could not consider a man practical who spent two months making a bit of carpet which lacked the spirited action of the ‘stag hunt’ on the rugs at the general store. Really, you could not commiserate a man because he could not sell goods which he offered at one hundred times the market price of similar things. True, once in a while a stranger from the city had bought one of them, and the doctor had reported that he had seen a framed photograph of a forty-by-fifty rug which Wander had made for the house of a celebrated financier of the West.

The little community, in short, while it did not dislike him, could not possibly make him a fellow member. But they respected him, which perhaps was a good deal from these natives toward an outsider who to them was strange rather than superior. Their respect, however, was not due to his urbanity and courtesy of manner, a characteristic which stamped him, according to their standards, most distinctly as a foreigner, — or to his love of beautiful things entirely beyond their vision, but to the way in which two years before he had faced an obviously great trial.

There had been a boy, a young man rather, who, if you had seen him hoeing in the garden at springtime, would have struck you as no different from other farm-hands except that he worked harder. He was handy with tools, and many a neighbor’s gate had been embellished by a bit of carving which he seemed to like to make and give away. Often he was absent, sometimes for long stretches, and then the neighbors in the warm evenings would sit hopefully on their porches awaiting the return of the young man with the fiddle. For when at home he played often, indeed every day. The music was considered to be very unorthodox, except some occasional slow movements which probably, so they reasoned, were the foreign and rather degenerate forms of our devotional hymns; a good deal was faster than any church organ could possibly keep up with, and some of it was out-and-out devilish the way it seemed to jump and rave and cry. There was no other way to describe it; but somehow it was pleasant; it sort of shook you, and then — what did Jim Black say of it? — it ‘ laid you down to sleep.’

It was only on the occasion when the village doctor had to be called in,— and in the anxious hours of waiting and hoping, — that Wander told of his son’s training: where and for whom he played, and how Kubelik himself had honored his boy with his friendship and counsel. No one in the neighborhood would ever have known that a virtuoso was among them if the reticent Wander had not talked in an hour of great emotion to the man who he hoped would save the precious life now stricken.

But the little valley was never again to hear the young musician’s glorious tones, for on a terrible winter day the anxious faces pressed against the cold window-panes, watching for news, saw the doctor driving away without the usual greeting at the door — and they knew.

Days after, the only one who appeared not to know of a great change and of a greater silence, had been Wander. No one spoke to him; no one could. He went on with his usual work in the usual way; only on close watching would you have noticed how tense was the laborer at his loom.

Here we were at his house, speckless and snug and serviceable despite its years; for it was old, as you could see by the slope of the roof and that appearance of having settled down cosily into the land, which is characteristic of old, well-built houses. But there was a touch of the new, here and there, like the concrete path from the gate to the house; and the curtains at the windows were such as were never dreamed of by Colonial dames.

Wander himself opened the door and ushered us in with a simple greeting and a formal bow. He was a fine-looking man past the forties, erect and thin, but not gaunt as are some of our farmers. A good carriage and a fine head gave him a distinction which his American overalls and collarless shirt could not disguise. Conversation was not very easy, as he spoke little English, although the words he used were correct. But the card of the village doctor helped to relieve his embarrassment and to set free his little store of our language. He soon understood that he was not being interviewed, and that idle curiosity was not the moving force behind our visit; the way my wife spoke of weaving, the interest in her eyes and in her hands as she took up this sample and that, stirred the friendly chord of his artisanship. I perceived now that Wander was not reticent by nature; he had become so by the lack, not of language but of fellow feeling. Soon it was all being painted before us, or, rather, before her, sketchily, choppily even, but vividly enough, — the battle of his life; not as a story for our admiration, not even as the recital of a struggle, but the plain tale of one whose hands were finely trained, told to one who he felt knew what wonders manual artisanship could achieve.

He had come to America twenty years ago, with a little money, a young wife, and a capital of three trades—or rather four — accumulated both traditionally and by a decade of hard training. He called them trades, but some at least deserved a better name. He was born on a farm and had lived a farmer boy’s life; he had learned the practice of dyeing, from an interest in the things of nature, and had improved his natural lore by a study of chemical dyeing. He knew music in its theory and technique, knew its masters and its powers. And he could make carpets and rugs. All he knew and all he could do, except for some little modernizing in chemical lore, his father had known and done before him; and his grandfather. Beyond that he could not remember; but he was clear that whatever they had done had been done better than by himself whom they had taught.

He first invested his material and manual capital in the West. Farming, he reasoned, was the new country’s life blood. The new environment was lonesome, but his wife was a brave woman and capable; ‘she could do all the things possible,’ as he put it; and a fine light blazed from his eyes at this mention of his dead wife. But the hands that had the traditional cunning of the Continental peasant found themselves at a distinct disadvantage in the management of farm-machinery. And oh, how much it cost and how easily it broke! It was judgment not loss of nerve, as I gauged it, that made him sell his farm for a disadvantageous price.

Then a great city of the West tried to utilize his knowledge in a huge establishment. The same principle is at work in dyeing a bit of wool in a kettle over a stone fireplace, as in coloring miles of cloth in the fathomless vats of some great dye-works; the same colors are produced from roots and leaves gathered in bosky shades that are precipitated from chemical compounds in industrial laboratories, though some very discriminating persons make a vast distinction between the two. Wander could put his hand to either method, was as expert in the one as in the other. But the old way was an occupation as well as a trade, the new way a poisoning as well as a means of earning a living. You must consider, however, that a little baby was growing into boyhood, and fathers cannot always choose. His good sense and his good wife made him quit eventually, after an object-lesson of a month in bed. He moved East and looked for a farm, a different one from that of his earlier struggles.

As he stopped a moment to collect his thoughts, I interrupted him to ask why he had not put his musical training to use. A smile just flickered and passed into the darkness of hidden thoughts as he said, ‘I did — I taught my boy to play.’ But of course music, like other arts in the blood of some peoples, — that native power to create loveliness, disciplined if not taught to them by those who are not teachers but fellow craftsmen and fellow lovers, — is pleasure, is joy, is refuge, and nothing else. Men like Wander would seldom think of such a gift as a means of making money, first because so many of his kith and kin possess it and it comes so easily as to seem to have no market value; and then because such craftsmen have the clear sight which makes them perceive the dividing line between themselves and the great masters. Able as they are, they know that their fingering can be done infinitely better; they feel themselves homely fiddlers unworthy of a wage, even though they know that wondrous bows draw melodies for which thousands of dollars are paid.

Now he was spreading out before us the latest labor of his loom — a great, heavy, almost massive rug, of close, even, solid workmanship, but discouraging to the eye that sought beauty. I could see him search in my wife’s face for some praise — that in truth could not honestly be forthcoming. The workmanship was excellent, the taste was poor, both in color and in design. I wondered how much of this bad taste, so strangely in contrast with his fine appreciations along other lines, was native and how much acquired. There was undoubtedly the ’parlorcar’ decorative influence apparent in his design; but the color-scheme was utterly alien even to the most advanced exponent of the ‘Pullman’ school, not merely in its strong colors but in a fundamental lack of any idea of blending and tones. It seemed a striking example of what may happen to skill when unaided and undisciplined by frequent reference to and companionship with finely suggestive artistic precedents and examples. It was almost tragic — certainly very sad — to see so much skill creating such base product. Who knows but that even so little as an occasional friendly call or a little interest from people who knew, might have been just the leaven to raise his native expertness into a noble artistry!

We travel madly over seas and across mountains to see the charming or quaint labor of Continental peasants; we storm little shops in strange, distant towns where deft artisans still dwell as in the days of the ancient and honored guilds; we actually can make ourselves stand still — thousands of miles from home — to listen to a Sicilian peasant playing his pipes. Yet there are artisans and craftsmen, yes, even flute-players and poets, in our very midst or at our very thresholds, full-handed yet hungry,—worse, infinitely worse than that, — ashamed of their very skill, hiding their ennobling craftsmanship in a country which, having waxed fabulously rich in utilizing the great forces of machinery, has glorified those forces and in them sought only the world’s mastery.

Ah, Wander, has the throb of our great engines snapped the finer chords upon which the viol plays to the soul? Have the factory-whistle and the danger-horn deafened the ear that sought low, sweet melodies? Are we safe and strong and powerful because of our steel battlements, our skyward towers, our coal-mountains and coffers of gold? Tell me, after our machines shall have given every boy in the land a perfectly cast whistle, will there not be boys seeking joy in whittling an indifferent one? After our electric looms shall have patterned a perfect, machined Valenciennes lace for every girl’s dress, shall no feminine hand seek its own expression with the needle? Will the sample-book of the factory compensate for the loss of the home sampler; will the telephone-list suffice as a friends’ list for the old album wherein a Whittier and a Longfellow did not disdain to pen a thought?

I looked at Wander, — an alien in a strange land, — physically and spiritually battle-scarred, an artisan in his own country, a failure as a jack-of-alltrades in ours. Here he was more isolated than the loss of his wife and son could possibly make him, because all that his being craved and could achieve had been hammered and beaten back into his soul, isolating him in a crowd that cared so little only because it did not understand what it all meant to him. Here he was on a farm which he had redeemed but which the price of unskilled labor rendered useless as a means of material profit. His predecessor, finding it unprofitable, had sold it as best he could, though it had been his home and his father’s home. But this unpractical Bohemian held to it even when the growing of luscious berries had to be abandoned because nowadays boys charge too much to pick them. True, it gave him enough to live on in a frugal way, enough to live on — and something more.

Something more! We saw that as we walked to a knoll a little way from the house, which had taken our eye as we had come in and which we now asked permission to see. He led us, a gracious host, to that Something More. The knoll had been made into a little garden, with steps cut into the green sod; it was bright, fragrant, quiet; it told us something even before he spoke. ‘My wife is here.’ He stood straight, he spoke with dignity — he was presenting one great lady to another.

Wander, all that your hands strove to do — perhaps chiefly what they tried and failed at — has not been useless. Out of each plan and design that you rejoiced over in the making, as out of each broken bit of failed achievement, was built for you the endless peace and enduring hope of that Something More.

And what of your loom and your fiddle — what of your hoe and your dye-pot? yours and those of a hundred other men of your kind — shall they be of no use to us? Shall they be but the theme for an elegy, the adieu to a fine thing doomed? Have we worked so hard, so hard — for we have done that like men — that now as we sit at noontide for a little rest and a little stillness we can only sleep, not dream? Or is it that our striving so unceasingly to perfect this motor or that drill, to make a wheel do a hundred more things than it ever did, has been in order to secure more time for creative leisure for our hands and our souls? leisure to see and feel and understand, leisure to hold out our hands and snatch from the eternal ether some other forces than those which turn great engines and blast huge mountains?

Can it be that we have already turned our faces to the sun? Does it mean nothing, Wander, when a people, a busy, money-making, comfort-seeking people, enlist to fight for the preservation of great trees? when they halt and turn back the railroads that built up their country, that a landscape may be preserved for their children? when dynamos are slackened rather than the radiance of a tumbling waterfall be lost? And what of men who solemnly decree a bill of rights to birds, that they may live and sing and flash their bright color against the sun?

I looked at Wander as these thoughts surged in my mind and heart. Was he a prophet or a sacrifice? My wife was holding out her hand to him, over which he bowed. ‘ May I send you some seeds from my garden ?’ she asked with fine, practical sympathy. ‘Yes, lady,’ he answered; and with unaffected pleasure he added with a smile, ‘Next spring they will bloom into flower !’