Complete Works

silence. Then the dogs would get up, one after another, never all together, and direct their footsteps to the door in an impressive and ominous manner. The first arrival waited considerately for the others before trying to attract attention by means of scratching on the bottom panel. Then, never before, Crane would raise his head, go meekly to the door — and the procession would file out at the slowest possible pace. The recurrent sedateness of the proceedings, the utter unconsciousness
    of the dogs, dear. Stephen’s absurd gravity while playing his part in those ceremonies, without ever a muscle of his face moving, were irresistibly, exasperatingly funny. I tried to preserve my gravity (or at least to keep calm), with fair success. Only one afternoon on the fifth or sixth repetition I could not help bursting into a loud interminable laugh, and then the dear fellow asked me in all innocence what was the matter. I managed to conceal my nervous irritation from him, and he never learned the secret of that laugh in which there was a beginning of hysteria.
    If the definition that man is a laughing animal be true, then
    Crane was neither one nor the other; indeed he was but a hurried
    visitor on this earth on which he had so little reason to be joyous.
    I might say that I never heard him laugh, except in connection with
    the baby. He loved children; but has friendship with our child was
    of the kind that put our mutual sentiment, by comparison, somewhere
    within the arctic region. The two could not be compared; at least I
    have never detected Crane stretched full length and sustained on
    his elbows on a grass plot, in order to gaze at me; on the other hand,
    this was his usual attitude of communion with the small child — with
    f
    him who was called the Boy and whose destiny it was to see more war before he came of age than the author of ‘The Red Badge” had time to see in ail the allotted days of his life. In the gravity of its disposition the baby came quite up to Crane; yet those two would sometimes fined something to laugh at in each other. Then there would be silence, and glancing out of the low window of my room I would see them, very still, staring at each other with a solemn understanding that needed no words, or perhaps was beyond words altogether. I could not object on any ground to their profound intimacy, but I do no see why Crane should have developed such an unreasonable suspicion as to my paternal efficiency. He seemed to be everlastingly taking the boy’s part. I could not see that the baby was being oppressed, hectored over, or in any way deprived of its rights, or ever wounded in its feeling by me; but Crane seemed always to nurse some vague unexpressed grievance as to my conduct. I was inconsiderate. For instance — why could I not get a dog for the boy? One day he made quite a scene about it. He
    seemed to imply I should drop everything and go look for a dog. I sat under the storm and said nothing. At last an appeal to first principles, but for an answer I pointed at the windows and said: “Behold the boy.” ... He was sitting on a rug spread on the grass, with his little red stocking-cap very much over one eye (a fact of which he seemed unaware), and propped round with many pillows on account of his propensity to roll over on his side helplessly. My answer was irresistible. This is one of the few occasions on which I heard Stephen Crane laugh outright. He dropped his preaching on the dog theme and went out to the boy while I went on with my work. But he was strangely incorrigible. When he came back after an hour or so, his first words were. “Joseph, I will teach your boy to ride.” I closed the offer at once — but it was not to be. He was not given the time.
    The happiest mental picture my wife and I preserve of Crane is on the occasion of our first visit to Brede Place when he rode to meet us at the Park gate. He looked at his best on horseback. On that day he must have been feeling well. As usual, he was happy in the saddle. As he went on trotting by the side of the open trap I said to him: “If you give the boy your seat I will be perfectly satisfied.” I knew this would please him; and indeed this face remained wreathed in smiles all the way to the front door. He looked about him at that bit of the world, down the green slopes and up the brown fields, with an appreciative serenity and the confident bearing of a man who is feeling very sure of the present and of the future. All