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Title: The Public Square
Author: Comfort, Will Levington
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Public Square" ***
THE
PUBLIC SQUARE
THE
PUBLIC SQUARE
BY
WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT
AUTHOR OF “ROUTLEDGE RIDES ALONE,” ETC.
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: :: MCMXXIII
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
DOROTHY MOSHER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. 54 HARROW STREET 1
II. THE COLORED MAN 10
III. A FISH OMELET 17
IV. LAMBILL KNOCKS 23
V. LUNCHEON AT SHARPE’S 31
VI. ENTER, FANNY GALLUP 36
VII. “THE FREEDOM OF IGNORANCE” 47
VIII. SOMEBODY’S SHOULDER 52
IX. “YOU BOTH HAVE KEYS” 61
X. APRIL BREATHES AGAIN 69
XI. THE BABY CARRIAGE 75
XII. UNDER THE SAME LAMP 81
XIII. “MOTHER” 87
XIV. ISOLATION 93
XV. THE COBDEN INTERIOR 99
XVI. DICKY FEELS A SLUMP 109
XVII. NEW LODGERS FOR HARROW STREET 113
XVIII. AN OUTER CHANGE 118
XIX. FANNY DRIES HER TEARS 120
XX. THEY WALK IN CIRCLES 124
XXI. THE DINNER COAT 129
XXII. A LETTER FROM PIDGE 136
XXIII. THE RED ROOM 143
XXIV. MISS CLAES SPEAKS 149
XXV. “BE IT EVER SO HUMBLE” 154
XXVI. THE HANGING SOCK 161
XXVII. THE MAHATMA AND THE MIRACLE 167
XXVIII. THE RACK OF SEX 175
XXIX. RUFUS’ PLAY DAY 180
XXX. THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE 190
XXXI. TWO LETTERS FROM INDIA 194
XXXII. FRANCE, 1918. THE YANK 197
XXXIII. PARIS, 1918--HADDON AND AMES 202
XXXIV. THE HOUSE OF DUCIER 207
XXXV. FANNY HEARS THE DRUM 214
XXXVI. RUFE HURRIES HOME 218
XXXVII. JOHN HIGGINS’ CODE 219
XXXVIII. AN OFFICE OF THE WORLD 225
XXXIX. SEVEN FLAWLESS DAYS 229
XL. THE YANK DEVELOPED 239
XLI. UNDER THE MANGOES OF CAWNPORE 246
XLII. LALA RELU RAM 249
XLIII. HATHIS LAMENTS 257
XLIV. THE SLATE AND THE SPONGE 263
XLV. AMRITSAR, APRIL 13, 1919 268
XLVI. THE HOOKED MAN 277
XLVII. IN THE WARM DARK 281
XLVIII. “INDIA’S MESSENGER” 288
XLIX. PIDGE TRIES GRAMERCY PARK 292
L. DICKY’S IDEA WORKS 298
LI. “WE LOOK UPON WOMEN AS SACRED” 302
LII. THE OLD FACE 309
LIII. THE WHITE LIGHT AGAIN 315
THE PUBLIC SQUARE
I
54 HARROW STREET
A GIRL of nineteen had just arrived in New York, with one fat bag.
She turned into the curving silence of Harrow Street, which is only
three minutes’ walk from Washington Square, but some trick to find.
Several times she changed her bag from one hand to the other, sometimes
putting it down and stepping around it, until she came to a door with a
room-to-rent sign. This house was painted fresh green, the only thing
that distinguished it from all the other houses of the block, except
the number, which was Fifty-four.
“Here goes me!” she said, starting up the stone steps.
She rang. The door before her didn’t open, but the basement door below
did. A woman’s voice called, “Yes?” in rising inflection.
The girl trailed her bag down to the walk and around the railing to
the lower entrance where a dark-faced woman stood, regarding her with
almost concerned attention--dark eyes that saw too much, the girl
decided. The face was un-American, but its foreign suggestion was
vague. It might even have been East Indian. If her skin was natively
white, it had certainly known the darkening of much sunlight. As the
girl drew near she sensed a curious freshness from the woman; something
hard to name, having to do with the garments as well as the shadowy
olive skin.
“I want to rent a room--a small back room. I saw your sign on the door.”
“I have a room, but it hasn’t much air,” the woman said.
“I don’t need much air----”
“Come and we’ll look. It is on the upper floor, but it is not quite
back. Leave your bag here in the hall.”
It was eleven in the morning, but the smell of coffee was in the dark
basement corridor, and laughing voices were heard behind the shut door
to the right. A man’s voice said in a stimulated tone:
“Believe me, and I’ve been around, Miss Claes is the deepest-dyed sport
I’ve ever met. You could drag her the length of Harrow Street and she’d
come up fresh from the laundry----”
“That reminds me, I’m going to start a laundry,” a woman’s voice
announced.
“I’m going to start something myself----” came another voice.
The girl, following through the corridor, heard a little breathless
sort of chuckle from the woman ahead of her on the dark stairs. The
place smelled like a shut room when it rains--a cigaretty admixture.
They climbed. The next hall was spooky with gaslight; the next was
gay with frying sausages. They climbed. The next was the one, and
it smelled of paint--the same green paint as on the outside of the
house--on one of the doors and doorframes, but the wood was plainly
charred under the paint.
“We had a fire, but we put it out with wash water before the engines
got here, soapy water.”
The girl had a picture of threshing soap about in pails of water before
applying it to the flames.
“This is the one,” the woman said, unlocking the next to last room from
the back on the left. “All the rest are filled just now. Most of my
lodgers never leave, only as they strike it rich----”
“Do they often strike it rich?”
“Oh, yes, dear. New York is quite the most magic place in
America--something for every one who comes, if he only stays on.”
They had crowded into the little room.
“This is fine,” the girl said. “This is what I want. It’s just as I saw
it.”
“You get your water in the hall below,” the woman explained. “There
is no gas plate, so you will have to bring your coffeepot down to my
stove in the basement. The walls are ugly, but I’ll see that the cot is
clean for you. If the wall of the next house across the area were only
painted white, you would get more light.”
The wall spoken of was less than three feet from the window sill.
“What is the price?” the girl asked, with a cough before and after.
“Twelve dollars a month.”
“I will pay for a month now,” she said, with a small part of a big
out-breath.
“When did you come to New York?” the woman asked.
“This morning.”
“First time?”
“Yes. From Los Angeles.”
“And you have had four nights on the train?”
“Six. It was a slow tourist train. I sat up from Chicago----”
“Have you lived in Los Angeles long?”
“Always--in and around.”
“We don’t dare to think of Los Angeles much. To a lot of us here in
New York, it’s a kind of heaven. Southern California--the sea and the
mountains and the ten months of sunlight and the cool morning fogs and
the ripe figs----”
“I’ve wanted New York like that,” the girl said. “I’ve wanted New York
so badly that I was afraid on the train that it wouldn’t stay until I
got here----”
“That’s the way to come,” the landlady said. “New York would wait for
you. Oh, yes, New York waits for your kind. What are you going to do
here?”
“Write.”
“Really?”
The woman sat down on the edge of the cot. Her interest did not seem
an affectation. Her figure was thin but lithe. One wouldn’t know in
these shadows if she were nearer twenty-five or thirty-five. She seemed
altogether without haste, smiling easily, but slow to laugh aloud. Her
eyes looked startlingly knowing as she lit a cigarette--not natural
somehow. At the same time in the matchlight her face had looked tired
and weathered. Her way of speaking was like an English person, or one
educated in England.
“Do you mean stories?” she asked.
“Yes, a book, a long story--set in eighteenth-century France.”
“But you seem so young.”
“I have written for a long time--always written.”
“How old are you, please?”
“Nineteen--but I have lived in a writing house always.”
“Where is your house? I have been to Los Angeles.”
“Back in a canyon near Santa Monica and my father is there now--in his
slippers. He teaches every one how to write----” There was something
baleful in the girl’s blue eyes, or perhaps it was exhaustion, as she
smiled.
“Does he write stories?”
“No, metaphysics, but he knows everything----”
“What is your name?”
“Musser--Pidge Musser. Not Pidge, really. Pandora is my name, but
every one calls me Pidge. My father started it.”
“Is his name Adolph Musser?”
In the dimness, the girl’s face looked like a blur of white; a little
stretched, too, it appeared just now.
“Yes, that’s his name,” she said in a hopeless tone. “So you know him,
too?”
“I heard him lecture once.”
“I suppose you ‘fell for’ him? They all do.”
The woman’s black eyes twinkled. “The lecture was on cosmic
consciousness,” she said. “I remember distinctly that Mr. Musser
outlined four paths of approach.”
“Yes, the mystical, the occult, the mathematical, and the artistic. Did
he talk in bare feet?”
“Yes, and an Eastern robe.”
“That was a camel driver’s robe,” said the girl. “Oh, I didn’t think
I’d hear of him here.”
“You won’t. May I call you Pidge?”
“Yes, what you like. My father names everything.”
“It sounds better than Pandora--at least, to me.... I must go down now.
A little breakfast party is waiting there. Take off your things. I’ll
come back soon. I am Miss Claes and I want to come back already.”
Pidge Musser sat almost in the center of her room, but not quite. At
least, she sat in the center of the stiff little cot. She could touch
two of the walls. The third was across the narrow aisle from the cot.
The fourth was the windowed one, which looked as if it were about to
be bricked up entirely. That was quite a distance.
Her room. She was alone. She looked at the door, arose, brought in the
key and turned it from the inside. Alone, and this was New York. She
could live a month anyway, and write and write on _The Lance of the
Rivernais_. She could be herself and not be told how to live and love
and write and bathe and breathe, and change her polarity and promote
her spirit and govern her temper and appetites, by a man who was
governed by anything but himself.
New York. She had hardly dared to look at it on the way from the train
to Washington Square, where the street car had put her down. She had
come to Washington Square because one of the boys who studied with her
father had said it was the best place to live in all the big town--the
cheapest and friendliest and quietest.... It appeared all true, but
Miss Claes wasn’t like a rooming-house landlady; quite different, in
fact, and astonishing.
“I could hear her talk about New York, forever,” Pidge said half aloud,
and this was a remark of considerable force from one who had known the
maiming of many words.
Presently she would go out and look at New York again; walk about a
bit, keeping a mental string tied to this green house. Besides she had
to rent a typewriter, but there was no rush. It was delicious sitting
here alone in the gloom of midday, making the place her own, locked
in--a chance at last to take a look at herself and see what she was
made of and think of what she was here for.
There was a mirror. It wasn’t cracked, according to tradition, but its
surface had frozen over in a high wind. Everything waved, eternally
waved. It gave the sense of air in the room, and made one look mended.
Pidge hoped she would never shed tears in that mirror. Once she had
caught herself weeping, and she looked so abysmal that she was almost
frightened out of the habit. With these waves added---- Pidge took off
her hat and flipped it over on the cot. Her head didn’t look natural,
but that wasn’t all the mirror’s fault. One of the things she had
wanted to do for months was to make her hair a shade redder than it
was. Of course, she hadn’t dared at home, and she couldn’t manage it on
the train, but there had been six hours to wait in Chicago and a small
hotel room that frightened her yet. She had emerged from that room a
different shade, so Chicago meant henna and rain and a frightful hotel.
It would always be so. She had been against landing in New York one
color and then changing. She had wanted to start life new in New York
and keep it straight, an absolutely new page, a new book.
Her reddened hair waved. It made her face look whiter, and brought out
a red tint to her wool dress that had been brown as apple-butter before.
Everything about her was tired. If she took off her new shoes she
was afraid she would never get them on again to-day, and she had to
think of renting that typewriter. A little later, she sat up straight,
because through the wall from the next room back came the buzz of a
machine. She listened with a thrill. It stopped and went on--unequal
stops and buzzes of rapid typing for several minutes; then a long
sustained buzz, until a sheet was changed. No commercial typewriting.
That was “creative” stuff, as her father would say--a word she had
vowed never to use. At least, some one in there was doing a letter.
All this was before noon on an October day in the good year of 1913,
before anything ever happened to anybody.
II
THE COLORED MAN
Once there was an old sculptor who had apprentices. Townsfolk were
invited on a certain day to look at the work of the young men. One
of the apprentices was greatly worried by the faulty light of the
shop in which his exhibit was placed. He complained about it to his
master, who is said to have answered in these terms: “Never mind,
son, about the light here. It is the light of the public square that
tells the story.”
RICHARD COBDEN was twenty-one in 1910, and fresh from his university,
when he took his first job as reader in the editorial office of _The
Public Square_, a weekly magazine of opinion and protest and qualified
patriotism. This was the publication of old John Higgins, at one time
one of the highest-priced editorial writers in New York; but Higgins’
views had become more and more strenuous, instead of mollifying with
the years, the end of which is to publish for one’s self or subside.
Even in _The Public Square_ he found himself under a pull. He wanted
a living out of his magazine, but did not expect to make money. He
occasionally drank himself ill for a day or two. One of his aspirations
was to publish a distinguished short story in each issue, the shorter
the better.
“But there aren’t fifty a year,” he frequently said. “There aren’t
ten, but we get two or three of them.”
Richard Cobden came of a well-established New York family of merchants
and manufacturers. There was no traceable connection, so far as the
family knew, with the English Cobdens, of whom there had been a brave
Richard of free trade and free speech. Dicky’s great-grandfather was
the Richard Cobden who first made the Cobden trowel, hand-forged in a
little shop up Yonkers way, and made it so well that stone masons used
to drive from far in back country to his shop. The Cobdens had made and
dealt in hardware ever since, but the trowel was the Cobden _cachet_.
Dicky was now twenty-four. His eyes were strong and so were his
enthusiasms. These strengths stood him in good stead against the vast
masses of evil typing and the revelations of human frailty contained
in a myriad manuscript attempts. There was a mere screen between his
desk and the desk of John Higgins. One winter afternoon, Dicky was
interrupted by talk between the chief and the office boy:
“That colored guy in the reception room won’t go ’way,” the boy said.
“What guy is that?” Higgins asked.
“The one I told you about two hours ago when you came back from lunch.”
“What does he want?”
“He’s got a story. He says he’ll wait for you.”
“What’s his name?”
“It ain’t a natcherl name. He says the name doesn’t matter--that you
don’t know him, anyway.”
“Tell him to leave his manuscript.”
“He won’t. Every little while he pulls up his sock.”
“Let him sit a bit longer. It’s a regular park bench out there,
anyway----”
It was the dragging sock that attracted Dicky Cobden--a bit of mindless
art on the part of the office boy that somehow aroused the young man
by the dreary manuscript pile. Dicky’s world was now full of people
who thought they had the story of the age; people who wanted to see
the publisher himself; people afraid to trust their manuscripts to the
mails; a world of such, coming up through great tribulation, but only
here and there a dragging sock. He took a chance now and volunteered
to Higgins to clear that bit of seat space in the reception room, if
possible.
A dark-faced young man arose to meet him outside. Tired--that was
the word that bored into Cobden’s mind with new meaning. There was
something potent in the weariness of the black eyes, a deadly sort of
patience that rarely goes with brilliance. Dicky was slightly above
medium height. The other’s eyes were level with his own. The hanging
sock was not in evidence, but Dicky felt that the stranger didn’t dare
to move fast, for fear his clothes would break.
“Yet he feels clean,” he thought, “yet he feels clean.” This was
important enough to repeat.
“I have a story----”
“Your name?”
“It is Naidu--but not known.”
“Are you from India?”
“Yes.”
“Why not let us have your story to read?”
“It must be read now.”
“This sort of thing isn’t done while one waits, you know.”
“I’m afraid this one will have to be done so.”
“Why, even if it’s promising,” Dicky declared severely, “it would have
to be read several times.”
“I’ll wait.”
“But we have hundreds----”
“I know--may I not see the chief editor?”
Mr. Naidu turned slowly back to the bench, as if to resume his seat.
“You win,” Dicky slowly said. “I’ll take the story and read it now,
though I’m only a deck hand. If it looks good enough, I’ll try to get
Mr. Higgins to look----”
Five minutes after that, Dicky was deep in South Africa. Six thousand
words in neat but faded typing, called _The Little Man_, about a
diminutive Hindu person who appeared to have no other business in life
but to stand up for the under dog. This person would fight anything,
but the British Government was about the size of a foe he liked best--a
cheerful story of most shocking suffering, which the Little Man took
upon himself for the natives of Natal--no, not the natives, but for
the Hindu laborers who had come to Africa to settle. A clear, burning
patience through the pages; everything was carried in solution--all one
breath, sustained. It wasn’t writing. It was living. It slid on with a
soft inevitable rhythm, and it took Dicky along.
More than this, he saw in the story--or in the great stillness which
the story brought him--something of the sort of thing he meant to write
some day. Nothing exactly like this, of course, but the achievement
of this unfettered ease. It made him want to start out at once to
find the Little Man. It made him hear from Africa something like a
personal call. He let himself dream for a moment. Wouldn’t it be
great, his mind-made picture ran, when he had done a real story of
his own--wouldn’t it be great to deliver it like this (or perhaps
sockless) and make it sell itself? Halfway through, he arose and
dumped the sheets he had read before Higgins’ spectacles, saying with
slow-measured calm:
“She breathes. She’s a leaping trout!”
“Get out,” said Higgins softly.
“That’s only half,” said Cobden.
“Where’s the rest?”
“I’ve got it in there--not read yet.”
“And you bring this to me?”
“He’s waiting. This story will finish itself. I know it will march
straight.”
While he read the second half, Dicky heard Higgins thresh and mutter,
and finally call for the rest--old sore-eyed Higgins, who knew a story
when he saw one, who had read his eyes out on poor stories looking for
the Story of the Age....
Dicky went back to the reception room.
“I’ve read it. Mr. Higgins is reading it now. I think he’ll want
it, Mr. Naidu. If you leave your address, we’ll mail you an offer
to-morrow----”
“I will take two hundred dollars for the story, but I must have the
money to-day.”
Dicky laughed quietly. “I’m afraid the countingroom won’t appreciate
that. Countingroom’s not adaptable. It’s intricate, in fact; checks
signed and countersigned.... Besides your price is severe for
us--unknown name and all that. Oh, it’s not too much, only for us, you
know.”
All the time he talked, Dicky knew Mr. Naidu would get his money,
and get it to-day. A man with a story like this could get anything.
He could write it on wood chips and bring the manuscript in a gunny
sack....
“I’ll give him my personal check,” he told Higgins, a moment later.
“The office can reimburse me.”
“I always forget you have a piece of change in your own name,” Higgins
remarked indulgently. “Don’t ever let it interfere with your work,
Dicky.”
“My work to-day is to get that manuscript in our vault. Later,” he
added to himself, “my work is to write a story as good as that.”
“He might take less than two hundred----” John Higgins suggested in
uncertain tone.
“I can’t bring that up--again,” Dicky said.
“I couldn’t either,” said the editor. “Maybe we are both crazy with the
heat--steam heat. But I’ll stand by and see that you get your money.
You’ll have to go out with him to get cash on your personal check.”
Dicky and Mr. Naidu were in the street. It was too late for the bank,
but the son of the trowel makers found a friend of the family with
currency. A rainy dusk in Twenty-third Street near the Avenue, when he
took Mr. Naidu’s hand, having turned over the money.
“I have your address, I may hunt you up. You won’t forget _The Public
Square_, when you have another story as good as this?”
“Oh, no,” said the Hindu, “nor you, Mr. Cobden. Good-by.”
Dicky turned to look after him. He reflected that he hadn’t even
learned if Mr. Naidu were hungry. He wished he had given him his
umbrella. He felt a curious desire to follow; a sense vague, as yet,
that his way, the way of his Big Story, lay after the Oriental, and not
back toward the office.
III
A FISH OMELET
SNOW had drifted into the outer basement stairway of the green house,
and there was a thin frosty bar inside the door of the basement hall.
Miss Claes opened the door and looked out through the iron railings
to the street. Snow was six inches deep and still falling. She took
a deep breath appreciatively, as if she found some faint exquisite
scent in the cold air. Presently she began sweeping at the doorway,
and continued up the stone steps to the walk. Her arms and throat were
bare, and the dark gray dress that she wore was of wool but the fabric
very thin. Apparently Miss Claes chose to enjoy the chill of the winter
morning. When she returned to her living room, the fire in the grate
had been started and a small cup of black coffee was on the table. She
sipped thoughtfully and then lit a cigarette, which she half finished,
standing by the fireplace.
The kindling had ignited the soft coal, but not without having shot out
a spray of cinders over the cement hearth. Miss Claes swept the hearth
unhurriedly. A cabinet of dishes across the room from the fireplace
was full of color now from the light of the coals--vivid greens and
bronzes, pomegranate reds. At length, she opened the door to the
kitchen, where an Oriental stood by the big range.
“May I serve your breakfast?” he asked.
“Put it on a tray with something for Pidge. I’ll take it upstairs and
perhaps she’ll join me. The child starves.”
“Not in this house----”
“She’s troublesome to do anything for, Nagar. She rebels against
accepting any favor. I think she must have been forced to accept many
favors from people outside, when she lived with her father. Was there a
bit of boiled halibut left from last night?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll make a little omelet with a few flakes of fish in it. I’m sure
she isn’t getting any money from her father, but she has kept up her
rent in advance. Did she work all night?”
“Her room was quiet after two, until I came down. Then I heard her
typewriter as I swept the upper hall.”
“It seems to be a race, Nagar, between the child and her book--which
will finish the other? I love her spirit, but she isn’t taking care
of herself.... Yes, we’ll put in these asparagus tips.... I think Mr.
Musser believes that the world owes him a living, but finds it hard to
collect, sometimes, with only metaphysics to offer. And now Pidge has
flung herself to the opposite extreme; talks of earning her living in a
factory, when her book is done. She’s a living protest against talking
and not doing. We must be very good to her, Nagar.”
Miss Claes brought a little creamy porcelain urn, and held it for him
to fill with coffee from the larger pot. Nagar held the door open for
her into the basement hall. A moment later on the top floor, she tapped
at the second last door on the left. Pidge sat at her machine under the
gaslight beyond the head of the cot.
“I can’t make their swords play!” she moaned. “All my swords are stiff
as shinny sticks. The trouble is, I don’t know men, Miss Claes--not red
animal men like they should be in this story. I know pussy men. I know
pious men, salvey and wormy men, monks and mummies and monsters, but I
don’t know honest-to-God _men_! Here they are taunting each other as
they stab, and their talk sounds--like Shakespeare! Oh, dear, you’ve
brought me more coffee and eats!”
“I won’t touch your papers, Pidge, but if you take them off the cot,
I’ll put the tray between us. I haven’t had breakfast.”
Pidge turned the roller of her typemill down so that the most recent
literary revelation might not appear to a roving eye. Then she
crisscrossed different packages of manuscript, placed the mass face
down before the waving glass, and moved the oil stove aside so she
could pass to her place on the cot.
“You always forget to bring your coffeepot down to the range, Pidge----”
The girl turned back to her typemachine. “He’s a jealous old devil when
I leave the room,” she said. “I think the person who rented him before
I did addressed envelopes all day--kept cranking him back and forth
against time. Now I ride a little ways--then let him stop and browse.
We ramble----”
Pidge stopped. Her eyes looked dry and smarting, as if tears were on
the verge.
“Oh, Miss Claes,” she went on, “I’m just as crazy as that--I mean my
figures of speech! Cranking him back and forth, and in the same breath
letting him stop and browse. I wish you wouldn’t bring me this stuff
any more. The coffee’s so good that it hurts--and the eggs. I always
cry when I’m hurt.”
“But, Pidge, think what a privilege it is for me to climb from the
heart of New York to eighteenth-century France, and not leave the
house----”
“But you find a twisted cubist sort of France--part Dumas, part Mexican
Plaza, Los Angeles, and the rest _me_!”
“At least, you’re not carried away with the idea that it’s perfect.”
Pidge regarded the other’s face closely. She could see with uncanny
clearness in this little dark room where she had struggled night and
day for nearly three months; but what she saw now, or was looking for,
she hardly knew herself. Her own face was spooky from sleepless strain.
“I’m eating shamelessly,” she said.
A moment later, she pointed to the rear wall, and whispered the
question:
“Has Nagar stopped writing? I haven’t raced typewriters with him
lately.”
“He hasn’t spoken of changing his work. Did you hear that New York has
touched him with her magic?” Miss Claes asked.
“What do you mean?”
“He has sold a story--a short story for two hundred dollars to _The
Public Square_.”
“Nagar--your servant?”
“He isn’t my servant, Pidge. He just lives here and works with me.”
There was a clicking dryness to the girl’s tongue, as she asked:
“And now is he going away? You said they always do when they strike it
rich.”
“Oh, no. Nagar wouldn’t leave for a little story success. But nobody
quite knows Nagar--nobody.”
* * * * *
Pidge was alone. _The Lance of the Rivernais_ was pricking at her to
get back to work, but she resisted for a few minutes, thinking of Miss
Claes.
“... She may be crazy, but she’s good to look at,” she muttered. “I
believe she can look into me, too.... I wonder what she is?... She
may be crazy, but she’s kind! And, oh, I’m so tired,” she yawned a
moment later. “I’d like--I’d like to be a leaf in the park under the
snow--still snowing, and sleep till spring. Only I’d like some roast
turkey first.”
The recent breakfast had an extraordinary flavor, but it was all
too dainty for one who had eaten little or nothing since yesterday
morning. Her mind trailed off to buns she had seen in bakery windows;
and delicatessen stores with opened sausages, big as one’s head and
colored like tapestries, and little brown birds and deviled eggs, and
sliced filets of fish of amazing tint.
All meats had been anathema in the house of Mr. Adolph Musser. Pidge
had lived in no other house in all her years, before coming to New
York, but since then, she had shocked her young self through various
experiments among the fleshpots of Greenwich. Not so various, for the
narrowness of her purse was ever a limp fact, but these few flavory
adventures were exciting and memorable. There was a tap of a finger
nail upon the panel.
“A letter, Miss Musser,” Nagar said.
She looked at the Hindu with different eyes from ever before. He had
sold a story. She wanted to speak of it, wanted to sit before him and
listen--this anomaly, whose typewriter she had sometimes heard through
the partition, and rarely a low deep hum. She was prejudiced against
Hindus, because her father had affected such a knowledge of them, but
somehow she had been less lonely in New York because of this one. He
was embodied Detachment and Impersonality.... He had turned away.
“Thanks, Nagar,” she called.
The letter was a typewriter bill.
IV
LAMBILL KNOCKS
INSIDE the moonlit castle gardens, across the moat into the
pictured halls, up the marble staircase, driving straight and true,
Lambill Courtenay, a man of the people--artist, swordsman, lover
virgin-hearted, rode--no, ran, for once on his sprightly feet, straight
to a sequestered wing of the ancient and noble castle of the Rivernais,
and with his ungloved hand touched the knocker of its inner sanctuary.
“Who is there?” came the cry like the thin note of violins.
“I----” swelled the deep orchestral answer of Lambill Courtenay,
Frenchiest of the French.
Then the great oaken door from the forests of Savoie opened. Lambill
crossed the threshold. The white arms of Madelaine Rivernais opened and
the heavens opened also--for the great maze of life had been untangled
for these two--and Pidge Musser’s book was done.
Just a book--one of the myriads that you see lying around, like
sloughed snake skins on first or secondhand bookshelves--but it had
been properly wept on and starved for and toiled over, as only youth in
its abandonment can toil for its own ends. It had almost been prayed
for, but not quite. Prayer wasn’t easy for Pidge Musser’s defiant soul.
It was two in the morning. The oil stove smelled as if it were dying.
Of late the wick had hiked up out of the oil a little earlier each
night like a waxing moon, and Pidge had been forced to shake the oil
around to keep the flame. Miss Claes and Nagar did so much for her, she
was ashamed; and you could get a red apple for the price of a wick.
Pidge coughed. It was the most astonishing and cavernous bark. The
silence afterward was painful. She fancied she was keeping _him_
awake--the silent, dark and courteous Nagar, who did prodigies of work
every day and was always willing to do more, and who had come into
Pidge’s direct limelight since his sale of a story to _The Public
Square_. Pidge hadn’t known a cold for years. It actually amazed her,
how unclean it made her feel, and ashamed to have anybody come near.
“I’m going to watch over you very closely, Pidge--you’ll have to
let me, now that the book is done,” Miss Claes said in the morning,
“because it’s really a shock to stop work after the way you have
carried on. The drive--suddenly stopping, you know.”
“I wonder how she knows?” Pidge thought to herself for the thousandth
time in regard to the subtle capacities of Miss Claes.
“I’m tough,” she said aloud.
“That is a true saying, Pidge. On that, everything hinges. Am I to hear
the story?”
“It would--it must be read aloud. It’s terrible to ask, but will you?”
“I’ve wanted to hear it from the beginning. Now tell me, would you like
Nagar to listen, too?”
“Oh, no!”
“Just as you like. Only you’re offering it to the world later----”
“But Nagar _knows_.”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, but----”
“He won’t say a word. Nagar rarely talks, except to answer questions.
But, of course, don’t think of it, if you’d rather not.”
“What is Nagar?” Pidge asked suddenly.
“Just a watcher and listener in America, learning to see things
impersonally.”
Pidge contemplated the idea for a few seconds; then her eyes hardened.
“I’ve heard lots of talk about the impersonal--oh, talk to the skies
about the impersonal life in Los Angeles--by people who haven’t yet got
a personality!”
Miss Claes bent in low laughter.
“They start in killing out personality before they get a live one,”
Pidge added sullenly.
“They do, my dear, but have you heard any words about the impersonal
life from Nagar?”
“No. That’s the best thing about him--that he doesn’t explain himself.
But I hate mysteries about Hindus--hate people moving about saying,
‘Shh-sh’--finger on their lips, trying to astonish you with something
they can’t tell. I’m so tired of all that!”
“Still you asked me about Nagar, though really there is nothing to say,
except that he is good to have in the house.”
“I think I’ll let him come and hear the reading, if he’s willing.”
“Good,” said Miss Claes. “We will listen in this room, where the story
came to be.”
* * * * *
... Nagar sat in a straight chair, in the aisle between the cot and the
wall. Pidge sat by the window before her machine. Miss Claes lay on the
cot with her head under the light that Pidge read by, and away they
went. There was an hour or more in the early afternoon when both Miss
Claes and her helper could escape from below, and two hours, at least,
after nine in the evening--this for three days.
Pidge was fagged and ill and frightfully scared. She would begin
hoarsely, and for pages in each reading her cold in the head was
an obstruction hard to pass; besides, she felt she was boring them
horribly and that all the massed effects of her pages dithered away
into nothing or worse. But a moment came in each of the six sessions,
when the last monster of the mind’s outer darkness was passed. And
then, for Pidge, at least, knighthood rose resplendent; days became
stately, indeed, and chivalry bloomed again. At such times the dark
gleaming hair of Miss Claes--which Pidge could have touched with her
hand, became the tresses of Madelaine Rivernais herself, and a little
back to the right in the deep shadows, the face of the Easterner there
took on the magic and glamour of Lambill’s own. The vineyards of old
France stretched beyond from their balcony; the rivers of France flowed
below. The lance of the Rivernais was won back heroically and human
hearts opened to the drama of love and life.
But on the last night of the reading, after the self-consciousness was
passed and all was going well, Pidge, glancing down to Miss Claes’
head under the light, saw gray for the first time, in the depths of
her hair. It hadn’t been combed with any purpose of hiding. The outer
strands were coal black, the strands beneath had turned. This discovery
had the peculiar effect of changing everything around in Pidge’s mind
in the moments that followed.
She couldn’t get into the story as before; and in the very last pages
of her reading, a face persistently crowded in between her mind’s
eye and the rapid flow of the story at its end--a long, humorless
complacent face--the high-browed, self-willed and self-thrilled face
of her father. It was as if he were reading and not herself; reading
with rising expectation, drinking in the silent praise, as if he had
done the writing himself and loved it well. So effectually was Pidge
mastered by this apparition of her own mind, that the last pages of the
manuscript were spoiled entirely. The light had gone out of her and she
said hastily, as the final page was turned down:
“I know how kind you are, but please don’t try to tell me anything
to-night. Not a word, please!”
There was something in Nagar’s smile as he turned and went out that she
knew she would remember again.
“I quite understand,” said Miss Claes, when they were alone. “But say,
Pidge, I do want to say this. To-morrow afternoon, Mr. Richard Cobden,
an editor of _The Public Square_, is coming here to see Nagar. He is
the one who put through Nagar’s story. We’re to have tea at four.
You’ll come down, won’t you?”
“Why, yes, of course.”
“It might be arranged for Mr. Cobden to look at your book. Would you
like that?”
“Ye-es.”
“Do you mind if I suggest something?”
“Please,” said Pidge.
“Don’t let Mr. Cobden know, just yet, that you are the one who has
written the story. Write a new title-page without the name of the
author.”
“All right, but----”
“It’s because you look like such a child, Pidge. No one would be able
to see all that’s in your story--if they saw what a child you are!”
“I’ll do as you say. Thank you, but, Miss Claes----”
“Yes?”
“To-night under the light, I saw your hair--underneath!”
“Yes?”
“It made me see everything differently for a minute. You know I hate
cults and everything that apes India and talks about saving the world;
everybody talking about their souls, but doing the same old secret
selfish things--oh, I’ve almost died of talk about all that--but for a
minute, to-night under the lamp, it seemed that you knew, but had come
down to brass tacks--your feet on the ground--living like the rest of
us, but not ‘falling for’ love or money or fame, as we are. Are you
really through talking about service--just doing it?”
Miss Claes laughed. “Such a lot of words, Pidge--about some gray hair.”
Pidge was intensely serious. “Are you English?” she began again.
“Yes.”
“I know you’ve been in India. Miss Claes--are you really farther along
than I thought? Are you trying for that impersonal thing--trying to
belong to everybody--to enter the stream of humanity, as they call it?”
“Of course, I’m trying, Pidge.”
“You and Nagar working together?”
“Yes, but you and I are working together, too.”
Pidge was not to be turned aside by generalities.
“You--down here in lower New York--keeping a rooming house?”
“Why not?”
“Nothing--only it’s so big, so unexpected. I’ve always believed ’way
down deep that a real person wouldn’t be long-haired or barefooted or
pious, but lost in the crowd something like that--quietly efficient,
moving here and there among people unannounced, only a few ever
dreaming! Oh, it’s too, too big!”
“Don’t try to believe anything, Pidge.”
“I’ve been spoiled for believing anything, by so much talk!”
“Don’t try to settle things ahead of time,” Miss Claes repeated
laughingly. “Let the days--each day tell its story. I’m just living out
life as you are.... And now undress and get into bed. I know you’re
too tired to sleep, but I’m going to fix you in and open your window
and put out your light, and sit with you for a minute, perhaps in the
dark. You’re just to rest--a tired little girl--and not even hear me go
away.”
V
LUNCHEON AT SHARPE’S
RICHARD COBDEN and John Higgins were lunching at Sharpe’s Chop House.
It was one-thirty, and at the height of the day’s business. The tables
were packed close.
“You were telling me about that Asiatic landlady down in the Village,”
Higgins said, lifting his spectacles to wipe his red-rimmed eyes.
“I wasn’t telling you much,” said Dicky. “She’s too deep for me--looks
to thrive on coffee and cigarettes--eyes that have seen too much, a
lot of laughter in them, but no hope.... And what would you think of
a basement room, with flowers in winter and a fireplace with hickory
embers, a Byzantine jar in the corner and a cabinet of porcelain which
I haven’t seen the like of on this side?”
“Go on--don’t mind me,” said John Higgins.
“... Little old Harrow Street,” Dicky mused. “Harrow Street curves,
you know. There is quite a mass of rooming houses on each side, and
number Fifty-four, with a green front, is Miss Claes’ house. And our
Mr. Naidu works there with his hands; only they call him Nagar in that
house--spelled with an ‘a’ but pronounced ‘nog.’... By the way, he
told me twice, yesterday, that it isn’t a fiction story we’ve bought,
but a handling of things that actually happened in Africa--Little Man
an actual human being named Gandhi or something of the sort.”
“Can’t be done. Fiction and life are different,” said John Higgins.
Dicky resumed: “Some of Miss Claes’ lodgers happened in for the tea
party. No one barred apparently. I must have seen most of the houseful:
couple of girl-pals; one works in a restaurant to support the other
who is to become a prima donna; a couple of decayed vaudeville artists
looking for a legacy--a regular houseful, but I don’t believe all of
them pay, as they would have to in other houses.”
“Landlady supports those who can’t?”
“That’s the way I see it. The green front in Harrow Street took hold
of me. I must have stayed over two hours. Our Mr. Naidu made some
coffee to go with that cabinet of porcelain. Also there was a little
girl--from Los Angeles, I think they said--red head, brown wool dress
and eyes of a blue you see on illumined vellum out of Italy----”
“Some cerulean,” said John Higgins.
“They weren’t large, particularly,” Dicky went on at his literary
best, “but that extraordinary blue like the ocean. Ruffled on top, but
calm and still in the depth! Never saw such eyes. They come back to me
now----”
“They do to me, Dicky.”
“You’re not getting all I mean, John. Uptown here, we think we’re
the center of the world, the heart of New York yanking up toward the
Park--but down there those old rooming houses are filling up with the
boys and girls from all the States west, and the second growths from
the families of European immigrants--filling up because they are cheap,
with the boys and girls who will do the surgery ten years from now, and
the painting and writing and acting----”
“I’ve heard about all that,” said John Higgins. “You’ll do a big story
yourself one day.”
“I’m not so sure of it, since yesterday. I couldn’t take their chances.
I couldn’t sit down and do a novel and not know how I was going to
eat my way through. I couldn’t scrub tenement-house floors for the
privilege of writing a book.... Oh, I love books all right. I rise up
and yell when a big short story comes in the office, or breaks out
anywhere. I think I know a real one, but a man’s got to do a whole
lot of appreciating before he gets to doing. I’m not bred somehow as
those people are. I’m the first of the Cobdens to break out of trade.
They call _me_ a dreamer, my people do--yet compared to those boys and
girls in Harrow Street, I’m a basket of fish with only a wiggle at the
bottom----”
“Get out,” said John Higgins. “The first thing you know, you’ll be
going down there again.”
“I will,” said Dicky. “I’m going down there to live.”
“Eh?”
The younger man nodded seriously. “They’re crazy, perhaps, but I’m
convinced from yesterday of one thing: One can’t be sane as I am, and
ever find the Big Story, much less write it.”
“Therefore the first thing to do is to go insane.”
“It isn’t like that,” Dicky said gently. “I’ve been brought up to think
I know New York, belong and breathe in New York. You see, my family
has lived here a hundred years. But yesterday I saw New York for the
first time. She isn’t an old Dutch frump, as we thought, John. She’s a
damsel! She’s a new moon----”
“Blue eyes?” said John Higgins.
“No, that’s the little girl from Los Angeles. It’s the landlady, of
course, who’s the spirit of the place. I figured out afterward that it
was because she was there that I liked everybody and had a good time.
Wouldn’t be surprised to hear she was a priestess of some sort. I asked
if she were Hindu, and she said ‘Yes,’ but she talks as if she were out
of an English convent. Of course, most of her lodgers don’t get her.
One old actor, out of a job, leaned across the table to me yesterday
when Miss Claes left the room. He tapped his forehead, whispering,
‘Lovely, eh, but got the Ophelias.’”
“Is she young?” John Higgins asked presently.
“Moreover,” Dicky added, lost in thought, “I believe Miss Claes knows
that they think her cracked and doesn’t mind.... Young? Say, I don’t
know, John. You don’t think of her with years, somehow--rather as one
who has reached the top of herself and decided to stay there.”
John Higgins leaned back, drained his coffee cup and stared with eyes
that smarted at the steaming ceiling. “Is Naidu going to do us another
story?”
“We didn’t get to that, but they gave me a novel manuscript to read.”
“His?”
“No, I didn’t get it straight whose it was. Miss Claes handed it over,
suggesting I look at it for a serial. Some one in the house had written
it or left it there.”
“We’d better be going back to the office. Have you read into the novel?”
“Started, but didn’t get really going. It’s back-age France stuff, and
I was a little lost last night on the subject of 54 Harrow Street.”
“You’re a little lost yet, Dicky, I should say--for a Cobden.... So
you’re going to lead a double life? Rich young New Yorker, quarters in
Fiftieth Street under the eaves of St. Patrick’s, vanishing into life
down in Greenwich.”
Dicky’s eyes were keen with memory.
VI
ENTER, FANNY GALLUP
_THE Lance of the Rivernais_ had been in the editorial rooms of _The
Public Square_ for almost a month, but there had been no report;
not the slightest mention, in fact, though author and editor were
frequently together. Richard Cobden had come to 54 Harrow Street to
live for the larger part of each week. Pidge had gone to work in a
tin-can factory up Lenox way, pasting labels. She was half sick from
fatigue from the new work and from keeping the secret about her book.
In the days that followed the finishing of the _Lance_, it was as if
her whole body and brain had been a scaffold or matrix for the story,
and it had been taken from her, leaving a galvanism useless as an
eggshell, a sort of afterbirth that persisted in staying alive.
... There was Fanny Gallup, who sat at her right, elbow to elbow at the
pasting bench--Fanny of the intermittent pungencies of scent and the
dreary muck of talk about boys and boys and boys. Fanny was a child
and woman all in one, about Pidge’s age and size, one whom you could
fancy had been a stringy street-kid a year or two ago. But just now,
Fanny was in her brief bloom, red in her lips, a lift to her scant
breast, the earth driving into her and overflowing with such color and
fertility as it could.
For eight hours a day, Pidge dwelt in Fanny’s frequently tropical
aura--hateful, yet marveling. The thing that amazed her was that Fanny
loved life so, loved the feel of her own hands when she rubbed them
together, loved the taste of sweets and the memory of last night’s
kisses--loved fearlessly and without reserve, not a pang of dread for
what was to come, nor a shudder of regret for what had happened to her
mother or sisters or the other girls of Foley Street. Never a thought
in Fanny’s head that she was being hoaxed by Nature; that her body was
being livened and rounded, her face edged and tinted, for an inexorable
purpose; not a suspicion that she was being played for, and must
presently produce.
Fanny lived her brief hour to the full, and Pidge Musser suffered and
revolted for two. Pidge took the dreary monotone of talk into her soul,
as she had taken her father’s, knowing that one day she would be full.
“Oh, you Musser,” Fanny would say. “Why don’t you come over to Foley
Street?... You’re dryin’ up, Redhead. What do you do nights? What do
you do all the time, thinkin’ and listnin’?... Where’s your fulluh,
Redhead? Ain’t got one--wot? Little liar. You’re bad, you are, because
you’re so still.... Come on over to Foley Street to-night. I’ll let you
have a peep at Albert, m’li’l barber--just one peep, Redhead--not too
close. I ain’t sure of him yet, but I’ll let you have one look--aw come
on!”
So it was through the hours, pasting apricot labels, lobster,
asparagus, pimento, peach, and codfish labels. More and more Fanny’s
boys and men folded into one, whose name was Albert.
“I’m gettin’ him goin’--goin’, goin’. Psst! an’ he comes!” Fanny would
say. “But I wouldn’t trust him to you, Musser--not longer than a
hairpin, dam’ little party, you.”
* * * * *
Miss Claes was observing with some concern the result of her suggestion
to Pidge, not to let the young editor know the _Lance_ was hers.
“If it hadn’t been for my tampering, she would have heard about her
book before this,” she said to Nagar. “Pidge looked so young, I felt
it would prejudice Mr. Cobden against her work. He’s fascinated with
Harrow Street, but seems to have no time or thought for a romance of
eighteenth-century France! Yet he would have put through her book in
a week, if he knew, seeing the story with the same eyes he sees the
author.”
“And she doesn’t tell him?”
“No. That’s our Pidge, Nagar. I even suggested that I would speak to
him--let the truth slip out. She caught me in her hands, those hard
little hands, strong as a peasant’s, ‘Not for worlds, Miss Claes!’ she
breathed, and there was a patch of white intensity across her upper
lip, ‘Not for worlds!’”
“... Of course, I mean to write,” Pidge had granted to Dicky in the
very beginning. “I’ve always meant to write, since the day I learned
that print wasn’t done above the clouds somehow, like Moses’ tablets,
and had to be written all out first by human beings. But I’m not ready
to begin----” and she silently added the word “again” for her own
composure.
“But they tell me on my floor when you first came, you hammered a
typemill day and night. Was it commercial work?” Dicky asked.
“It was _not_,” said Pidge, with such emphasis that she felt her secret
endangered again and hastened to add, “That was before I started to
work in the factory. Likely they heard Nagar’s machine part of the
time.”
“But you seem to know yarns--like one who works with them--tries to do
them, I mean,” he remarked.
Her face was flushed. Evasion irritated and diminished her. She coldly
explained her father’s professional interest in the short story.
“He isn’t an artist, but he teaches how, you know,” she finished.
Dicky pondered long on how much Pidge meant by this. He had been
brought up to revere his parents. Surely, he thought, she must know
that one can’t be taught except by life itself to do a real story.
One rainy Sunday forenoon in February, they were sitting together in
his “parlor,” the front of his two rooms on the second floor. This room
opened through a single door to the main hall, and through folding
doors to his sleeping quarters. Dicky had brought some few additional
furnishings from his mother’s house in East Fiftieth Street. The place
made Pidge feel uncomfortable, but Miss Claes’ basement front was often
in use and subject to constant interruption.
“I want to read you something I’ve brought from the office,” Dicky
said. “I’m not saying a word--until afterward.”
It was a little story called _Dr. Filter_, by an unknown young
man, named Rufus Melton. It had come to _The Public Square_ among
the unsolicited manuscripts. Pidge listened with extraordinary
restlessness. She seemed to know so much about this story, its
processes and the thing it told, that her mind was unpleasantly
crowded. It wasn’t a matter of like or dislike. _Dr. Filter_ was here
in the world, a live thing. It had to be met and dealt with.
“Not more than once a year, one comes in as live as this,” Dicky said.
“Yet it’s like something from a different world from Nagar’s Little Man
story.”
“It isn’t whether you like _Dr. Filter_, or not, but you can’t get away
from it--like a relative who comes to live in your house,” said Pidge.
“That’s a center shot,” Dicky thoughtfully remarked.
She found herself asking about Rufus Melton. Dicky didn’t know much,
but was intensely pleased over her reaction to his latest artistic
find.... Pidge never lacked opinions, even verdicts, nor the energy
to express them when Dicky was around. They forgot Rufus Melton, and
out-generaled time in discussing Miss Claes.
“Every little while as she talks, I feel as if I were going through a
tunnel,” he said. “Of course, I admire her, and all that, but sometimes
I can’t help asking myself, like the others, if she is really right----”
“The more ignorant one is, the more crazy he thinks Miss Claes,” Pidge
observed.
“Another bull’s-eye. Wait till I set up the target again, Pidge. But is
it because she’s Hindu--that she’s so different?”
“She isn’t Hindu. She’s English.”
“I asked her.”
“So did I.”
“She’ll have to referee this herself,” Dicky hastily put in.
Then they were silent awhile, until Pidge said:
“Maybe I heard her wrong. I’m sure she’s had a lot of Hindu training.
But that’s not what draws me to her. It’s because she’s not taking
it out in talk. She knows about plumbing and cooking and streets and
common things. Best of all, she pays her bills!”
But Dicky, who had never known other than financial ease and financial
integrity, was more interested in the other side of their landlady.
“Can one get books--on her sort of thing?” he asked.
“You’re always getting me into this lately,” Pidge complained. “I don’t
like to talk about it. I floated up through zones of Hindu stuff from a
child. Better leave it alone, Dicky. Stay in your head--stay down.”
“What do you mean, ‘Stay in your head,’ please?”
“Any one who amounts to anything stays in his head. He’s not
complicated by _souls_. All the comfortable, solid world calls you
absurd for what you say and the way you look, when this Eastern stuff
starts you going. You get so absorbed that you lose all touch with
things down here, the things you are really here to do. You stop making
money and go around saying the Lord will provide. You don’t really let
Him, you let other people support you and call it God’s work. You call
yourself the Elect, and yet you can’t do the things that average people
do. Mainly, you talk. You stop work to talk. You settle heaven and God
and the soul with talk!... Oh, Dicky, that’s why I hate it all so;
that’s why I’d rather be a factory girl; that’s why I’m all lame and
tired about ‘ideals’ and ‘supermen’ and ‘abstractions’--because I’ve
heard so much talk.... It’s the first thing I remember. Lying in the
crib--I began to hear my father’s voice.”
“But you’ve got all this stuff, Pidge. That’s what makes you--makes
you----”
“It is what makes me nothing! It is what keeps me from being an
honest-to-God mill girl. It is what keeps me from everything that means
something to other mill girls. It is what keeps me from taking life
as I find it. It’s what spoils me from really knowing Miss Claes or
Nagar--or what they are about--because so many words have been dinned
into my ears before coming to New York.”
The hardest thing on Dicky these days was that Pidge had to work in
a factory. This thought was never far from the central arena of his
mind. It chafed and irked. There was very little of the philanderer in
his breed. Mostly, the Cobdens had chosen their women carefully, after
long, cool, studious courtship. Having decided, courted and married,
nothing short of death could break in. Doubtless Dicky’s fidelity
was as stable as that of his relatives, even though his heart had
not turned so cautiously to his light of day. Pidge had risen in his
heavens and possessed them like the rising sun. There were not two suns
in his system.
He had meant to live lean down in Harrow Street, but his idea of that
wasn’t native to the locality. His ramifications for keeping clean were
considerable and very disturbing to Pidge Musser, who had been brought
up in Southern California to wear a few white garments which she could
wash herself. Washing was impossible in her room, and wasn’t at all
easy in the hall below where Miss Claes had told her to get her water.
Dicky Cobden was the first _gentleman_ Pidge had ever known. She had
met several boys with a streak of genius showing; boys who had come
to her father to learn how to write and had taken away something, if
not that. Practically all those boys had been “on a shoe string,”
and trained to get along without many things that Cobden would have
considered actual necessities, including an established routine of
order and cleanliness in one’s person and quarters. Pidge had also
met many of the “queer” ones of Hollywood and vicinity--men and women
who ate this way and that, bathed this way and that, in running waters
and still, in sea waters and rain waters, in mud and sunlight, using
unctions and ointments, but they were bathing their souls.
Dicky Cobden bathed frequently, carefully, believing beyond cavil that
New York and the processes of life grimed him on the outside, that life
itself was a constant war against grime, requiring an ever accessible
tub, much soap, hot water, changes of clothing, laundry bags, rugs,
brushes. Not that Dicky gave any thought to this. It was as if he
supposed everybody did the same. Since everybody didn’t and couldn’t;
and since everybody didn’t have as much money to spend for bread and
meat and tea, as Mr. Cobden did for laundry alone--Pidge was miserably
rebellious.
Always as she sat in the presence of Dicky’s altogether thoughtless
freshness; sat in her apple-butter colored wool dress which had
contained the emotional hurl and thresh of the romantic _Lance_--always
Miss Musser had a hard time to forget herself and was frequently on the
verge of becoming defiant and bad-tempered for reasons he didn’t dream.
She suffered, because every evening almost, Dicky invited her out to
dine, and not once in four times could she pass the frowning negatives
of her own soul. He chose to regard her as superbly honest and
unaffected. She really needed those dinners, too. All the future novels
and heart throbs needed them. Occasionally she met him after dinner
for a walk or a picture, and once she had been lured to an uptown
theater. Just once--never again in the brown wool dress!
She felt, as she entered the theater lights that night, that she had
been betrayed. She felt also like something Mr. Cobden had found in
the street, or that she was helping him make good on a first of April
bet. Pidge hadn’t been to more than three “talking shows” in all her
nineteen years; to her a show house was a place of darkness, except the
screen.
Alone in her room afterward that night, she made a great vow: that when
the torrent of American dollars turned loose on her (as it was bound to
some time) she would buy outright chests full of lingerie, cabinets of
hats, shelves of shoes, and a book of orders for frocks to be delivered
at future dates. She would keep clean then if a Santa Ana sandstorm
settled on New York and lasted a year.
One raw and cold week-night, Pidge was about done up when she reached
Harrow Street. She tried to slip softly past his hall door, but Dicky
was there.
“Hard day?” he called.
“Yes,” she said, pushing on. “Everybody’s tired and cross the whole
length of New York, like a sore spine.”
“You haven’t had dinner?”
“No, but I don’t think I’ll go out----”
“I’ve been waiting, Pidge. There’s a little place near, where I used to
come from uptown, thinking it an excursion--just a neighbor of ours
now, _The Hob and Hook_, where they make a stew like Dickens tells of
in the old English inns--smoking in the pot for twenty-four hours; and
there’s tea for tired folks, and no end of scones and honey----”
“Oh, please----” said Pidge. Then she added stubbornly, “No, I’m not
going out again to-night.”
“It is a trifle wintry,” Dicky observed. “We’ll have supper here. I’ll
go out and get an armful, and Nagar will make us a pot of tea. Oh, I
say, Pidge, have a little thought of somebody else.”
She weakened. Alone upstairs a minute afterward, she lit the gas and
stood before the mirror that waved.
“If I turned loose just once and ate all I wanted, he’d never speak to
me again!”
VII
“THE FREEDOM OF IGNORANCE”
PIDGE was gone from Harrow Street from seven in the morning to seven
at night. She had been absolutely blurred with fatigue at the end
of the first days, but her hands were hardening, her back adjusting
to the monotonous work at the big pasting table. She was actually
learning like the other girls the trick of sinking into a sort of coma
for an hour or more at a time. Sometimes (as one under the influence
of a prying drug, which opens scenes, as from a past life) she would
remember the palisades of Santa Monica, the ocean pressing its white
fringes up against the gray sand; tirelessly pressing again and again,
but never leaving its white lines of foam, unless the water was sick
from the big sewer of El Segundo. Rarely a sail on that great sunny
bay, but many wings--pelicans, sandpipers, gulls in hundreds, feeding
out beyond the surf lines, or gathered in conference on the beaten
sand--three strange and ancient bird types, gathered together in one
vast audience facing the sea.
This was but one of her pictures. Other times she roamed the canyons,
Santa Monica and Topango, and the cheerful and solitary mesas.... “Yes,
that same creature--Pan Musser,” she once said, half aloud.... Then
she would think of New York and Miss Claes and Richard Cobden; of the
book she had actually written, and pretty nearly died for, the book
around which there was a conspiracy of silence. In spite of the coma
at the pasting table, and the moments of memory drift, the stimulated
laughter in the washroom, or in the half hour for lunch as they heated
their tea pails over the radiators at noon; in spite of the clatter of
tins passing from left to right around the big table, and the tireless
goading of Fanny Gallup’s cheerful boy-talk--the brown wool dress
contained plentiful hells of the human heart.... And to-morrow would be
Thursday, the next day Friday, the next day Saturday, and then sleep,
and this was also New York.
The first Sunday afternoon of March was the afternoon of the new frock,
a cheap little one-piece dress, bought on Seventh Avenue, neither
wool nor brown. It had a tissuey and boxy smell. It was rapturously,
adventurously new. Pidge had an omen as she put it on, that this was
a sort of hour of all her life, that never another frock would mean
quite the same. She was alone with Miss Claes when Dicky Cobden came
for her at six, according to a plan made early in the week. They were
to cross to Staten Island and find an old Georgian mammy, whom he knew,
somewhere back of Stapleton on the wet roads, a mammy who could cook
chicken and beaten biscuit.
Dicky seemed only to see her face. A great wonderment came up in
Pidge’s heart, not disappointment exactly, but a sort of soul-deep
wonder, that Dicky didn’t appear to see the new frock. Could it be
possible that a man who managed the details of his own attire with
such practiced art had never known what she suffered in the brown wool
dress, in all that tragedy of shabbiness and dirt? Had he really not
felt ashamed of her that night under the lights in the uptown theater?
He turned to her now:
“You won’t mind, Pidge, just a moment or two, if I speak of a little
matter to Miss Claes. Oh, I don’t mean for you to leave; in fact, I’d
rather not. It is just a report about a long story that should have
been made before.”
Then out of the inmost heart of innocence, Pidge was jerked with a
crush. Before his next words she realized what she must face; she,
sitting aside from them in the new frock.
“... About that book manuscript,” Dicky went on. “I have ordered
it sent back to you, Miss Claes--doubtless it will be in the post
to-morrow. I have read it, and John Higgins has read it. We’re both
agreed on this particular manuscript--that it isn’t for _The Public
Square_.”
Pidge stared at him like a child being whipped for the first time. All
that was left of the meaning of the book in her own body and mind, and
all hope concerning it, had suddenly been put to death. But the rest
of her remained alive in a stupor of suffering; her eyes stared. She
saw Richard Cobden as never before, saw him as a workman; as they saw
him in the office. This was a bit of week-day that he was showing now,
sincerely speaking to Miss Claes, having at length done the best he
could in regard to the task which she had imposed.
“The thing is _young_, Miss Claes,” he went on. “There is fling and
fire to it, but its freedom is the freedom of ignorance. This love and
this sort of man-stuff would only do for the great unsophisticated. I’m
not saying that some publisher couldn’t take hold of it and make a go.
In fact, I’ve seen stuff like it in covers mount up to big sales, but
the human male isn’t handled in it, Miss Claes. This is sort of a young
girl’s dream of what men are. They drink and fight and love and die and
all that, but----”
“There, there, Mr. Cobden. Don’t try so hard,” Miss Claes said
laughingly. “I’m sure you’ve given the book its chance.”
But Dicky meant to finish his report.
“That’s just the point,” he said; “its chance with _The Public Square_
is all I’m talking about. This is a shopgirl’s book, and there are
myriads of shopgirls. _The Public Square_ would like to have their
patronage; yet one pays a price for that. John Higgins--this is the
best thing that can be said about one of the best men I’ve known--John
Higgins has never yet consented to pay that price.”
Pidge Musser found her head turning from side to side as one who tries
to find in which neck muscle a troubling lameness lies. She stopped
that. She glanced up at Cobden, who was pressing on his left glove
with his bare right hand. Before she turned, she realized that Miss
Claes’ eyes were waiting for hers. It wasn’t pity she saw in them,
nor friendship, nor loyalty, nor laughter; it was something of each of
these, yet something more. Only one word in English even suggests the
thing that was pouring upon her through Miss Claes’ eyes--and that word
is _compassion_.
Its power could not find her heart with its healing, but it seemed to
gather around like a cloak, waiting for entrance. Pidge wanted to be
alone with Miss Claes now. The ache was so deep that she felt it would
be worth a life if she could go into Miss Claes’ arms and break. That
was it, an utter break was the only thing that could ease this pain.
Then she became aware of Cobden standing at her side. In a moment he
would speak. She did not wait for the moment, but arose.
“Shall we start down toward the ferry?” she asked.
“Yes, all ready, Pidge.”
In the silence that followed, Dicky did not seem to notice anything
wrong. At the door Miss Claes’ hand raised and hovered above Pidge’s
shoulder, but did not touch. Pidge was grateful for that.
VIII
SOMEBODY’S SHOULDER
IT was early April, a dark and rainy afternoon. Pidge had been in the
tin factory three months. For four weeks the manuscript of the _Lance_
had lain in the bureau drawer of the little upper room in Harrow
Street, not being given a second submittal. The secret was still kept.
Richard Cobden had not spoken of the story since his report that Sunday
afternoon to Miss Claes. There seemed an astonishing cruelty in the
fact that he could forget. He had spoken of everything else....
Pidge had just left the factory and was running in her rubbers through
the blur of rain toward a downtown subway entrance. A sort of mocking
laughter was in her ears, “and this is New York,” the burden of it.
In the dim light of the passage down into the tube she saw the gray
gleaming patches of wear on the steel steps, slippery now from the
rain. There was a shudder and gasp from a girl beside her; a parting of
the hurrying ones ahead to avoid clotted pools of blood on two or three
steps below.
Farther down in the area, a man lay propped in the arms of a stranger.
His face was very white. A few minutes before he had been hurrying down
those steel steps that the rain had made slippery--hurrying perhaps in
the same confusion of fatigue and hunger that she had known.... A pause
had come to him from all that hurry. His white face was more peaceful
than any of the bystanders. A hospital ambulance clanged above, as
she lingered. Attendants came down with the stretcher. The body of
the unconscious man was swept up by one of the swift city brooms.
The stream of ticket buyers filed on as before, the downtown express
crashed in.
Pidge sat in her cane seat. The main crowd of the city was coming
uptown at this hour. At least, she was spared that packing. She
breathed the dense tired air, and recalled that on a night or two
before she had slipped on the steel stairs, but had not fallen. It was
borne upon her that in some way this man had fallen for her, fallen for
every one who saw him or the puddles of blood he left. Every one had
walked more carefully afterward, reaching for the rails. And he had
lost the sense of hurry--that unmitigated madness which drove them all
from dawn to dark.
Her old wonder of New York came back, as she thought that she was being
flashed fifty miles an hour from the junction at Ninety-sixth Street
down to Forty-second Street, under the busiest streets and corners of
America. Mere men could manage much. Then the old agony stole in--“the
freedom of ignorance.” Surely no one had ever been punished for doing
a book as she had been punished: that it was so poor, as to prove a
temptation for John Higgins to publish it, because of its chance of
falling exactly into the fancy of these--the myriad of shopgirls in
the uptown locals and expresses, crashing by in thick ropes of white
light. As for the public taste, Dicky Cobden had told her that John
Higgins had confessed, speaking wearily and with a smile that had lost
its sting of reproach, that for thirty years he had been choosing
stories for people to read, and every year he had been forced to lower
his estimate as to what the public taste was. Even so, John Higgins
had said he was far from the level; that only a trade mind could get
stories banal enough. But hers might interest that public.
She was so tired.... For somebody’s shoulder to lean against! Pidge
knew what Fanny Gallup felt, what the other factory girls felt, when
they pushed out so brazenly toward men--in very clumsiness from hard
pressure, spoiling their chances of being treated on the square. Yes,
she was really learning what the girls felt, as they hunted their
own in the masses of men they passed--how tired, hungry, blurred,
unsatisfied their hearts--anything to escape the withering grind of
the mills and the counters and the shops. She knew the secret bloom
they felt, the terrible brief drive of it--childhood, girlhood and
youth, all passing like the uptown trains--a home, a man, a child of
their own, the one chance for a breath of life. Of course, they talked
of nothing else, in the closets and dressing rooms, in the cars and
streets; and read nothing else. Certainly their dreams had to come
true in books and plays, even if they didn’t in life. Life would break
the dream soon enough. The best life could do didn’t compare with the
lowliest dream; for the dream of a girl has glamour, and the life of a
woman is stripped. But that was no reason why books and plays should
tear off the glamour ahead of time.
It wasn’t that Pidge loved shopgirls and mill girls. She didn’t love
herself for sharing their lot. She wasn’t sentimental at all. She
recognized bad management somewhere that forced her to this work. She
had to have bread, and outer and under clothing. She paid the price,
but there was nothing good nor virtuous about it. She didn’t hate Dicky
Cobden when he spoke of “shopgirl literature”; she knew how rotten
it was, but there was something in her that belonged to it, or she
wouldn’t have been in the factory; moreover, that something had helped
to write the _Lance_.
... Somebody’s shoulder. Three months of tin cans was teaching that
very well.... And there was a shoulder, straight and steady--a kind
of mockery about it, because it was so fine. None of the girls at the
big table where she worked would have asked more. It meant books and
pictures and all the dining tables of New York; plays and dresses,
cleanliness, and all the little coaxing cushions and covers of this
arrogant modern hour. It meant all the old solid established joys of
place and plenty; all the writing she liked; a leisurely winning of her
way through magazines and publishing houses; nothing of Grub Street and
the conspiracy against an unknown outsider....
And this life of the factory--hadn’t she earned release? What more
could come of the grinding monotony of the days but a more passionate
agony to escape, through the under world, or the upper world, through
any route at all, even death itself? Was there a further lesson than
this?... Somebody’s shoulder. He had the native kindness of clean
breeding; also that consideration for others of one who is brought up
in a large house. He had an ardent interest in books and life. He was
warmly established in the hearts of other men--first and last, a man’s
man, which it behooves a woman to inquire into.
There was a tired smile on Pidge’s lips as the car halted at
Thirty-second street.... The only blunders he had ever made were in her
presence, because he cared so much. He seemed continually in awe and
wonder before the thing he fancied she was, as if he had never really
looked at a woman before. Of course, another man might act that way,
but it was different the way Dicky did it. He had been at school late,
and for nearly four years in the office of _The Public Square_ he had
bored steadily, craftily toward the center of the life of letters.
Work had been his passion up to that day in which he had called to see
Nagar, and fell under the spell of Miss Claes and Harrow Street....
There was enough of the artist and dreamer in him to keep life from
being tame, yet not enough to make life a maze and a madness. He had
health. Money was to him like an old custom, so established as to be
forgotten....
Fourteenth Street. Pidge didn’t hear the first call and hopped off
with a rush at the second, pulling a growl from the gateman as she sped
out.... Dicky was standing at the head of the stairs on the second
floor of the Harrow Street house.
“Hello, Pidge,” he said.
“Hello,” she answered, pushing past, but he caught her arm.
“Let me go, please! I haven’t washed yet----”
But he drew her by the hand toward the open door to his front room. The
brighter light from there streamed out into the dim hall.
“My hands are sticky from the paste. I’ll come back. I’d rather come
back.”
“It’s about that--about your hands, Pidge. I’ve waited as long as I
can.”
... Somebody’s shoulder. She wasn’t safe to be trusted right now, yet
she couldn’t pull away. If she ever got upstairs--even for a minute
in her own little place, before the mirror that waved, she would see
it all clearly, but here and now she didn’t want to see clearly. She
wanted to give up and rest. She wanted what he wanted--wanted to give
him what he wanted, which was the tiredest, most hopeless girl in
New York to-night. She was dying of all its strains and failures and
rigidities and fightings, and he wanted to take the load.
They were standing under the hanging lamp in his room. The light was
white; his face was white. It was leaner than ever before, more of a
man in it, more of a boy in it. His will was working furiously to make
him speak.
He held her right hand up between them.
“It’s about your hands, Pidge, about the factory. Listen, you make
me feel like a tout or a sot--as if you were out killing yourself to
support me. I’ve been home two hours and you just coming in.”
“There’s half a million girls in New York--just coming in.”
“I know. We’ll get to them later, but now there’s only one--only one
Pidge. I want her home to stay. I want to make a home for her. Why,
Pidge, I’ll let you alone, if you just let me do that----”
“I believe you would.”
She was looking up at him hard. She didn’t fully understand, but the
boyish cleanliness of him struck her fully that moment. The power of
his will which she felt was mainly the fierceness of his decision to
speak. It wasn’t the burn of terrible hunger for her. He was young as a
playmate: that’s what shook her now. He wanted to fix her place, to let
her hands soften again, wanted to let her rest and breathe--not what
the other girls laughed about.
“Why, Pidge, I’ve got to take care of you. I’ve got to straighten you
out--if it’s only to marry you and go away.”
Something in her heart cracked like a mirror, and a sob broke out of
her. It was as if a car that had been running along by itself suddenly
left the road and went into a cliff--a warm, kind cliff. Somebody’s
shoulder, and she was sobbing:
“I told you I was so tired! I told you I wasn’t safe----”
“Ah, little Pidge----” he was patting her arm and pressing her close.
It had come. This was it. It _was_ rest. The other girls knew. The
awful cold ache was broken--warmth of life pouring out of her--heavenly
ease in the flood of tears, and something of the dearness of dreams was
in his passion, not for her--but to do something for her.
The first whip stroke fell, when Pidge remembered how she looked when
she cried. But if she could keep her face covered! She didn’t stir....
Was this the fullness of days? All the consummate essences of ease, he
brought--no hunger, no dirt--and really she had fought long and hard.
“... Everything you want, Pidge,” he was whispering. “I’ll take you to
my mother. She’s a regular sport, Pidge----”
“She’d have to be,” came from the incorrigible heart in his arms, but
not aloud.
The second whip stroke--_The Lance of the Rivernais_. She had failed,
and the failure wasn’t the book, but herself, the thing in his arms.
She didn’t stir, but there was coldness of calculation to her thinking
now--that he meant ease and rest and expediency, not the ripping,
rioting, invincible man force that was to come one day and carry her
off her feet.
This was the third whip stroke: that he meant propinquity--the nearest,
the easiest way.
She started up and pushed him from her.
“I’m not washed,” she said. “I don’t mean from the mills. I’m not
washed, or I couldn’t have--couldn’t have----! I’m just like the
rest--dying for a shoulder to cry on. You’re all right, Dicky, so right
and fine that I’m ashamed. I’ll always care for you. I’ll always be
warm at the thought of you. I’ll always remember how I went to you--how
dear you are--but you can’t give me freedom. You can’t give me peace.
My soul would rot in ease and peace and plenty. I’ve got to earn my
own.”
She looked up into his face and her own took a fright from it.
“I know I’ll suffer hells for hurting you--but I can’t help it. I had
to know. If I have to spend a life in misery--I had to know that there
isn’t anything you can give that will satisfy----”
His mouth was partly open, his head twisted peculiarly, and lowered, as
if his shoulder and neck were deformed. He was shockingly white under
the lamp.
“Oh, I’m such a beast and I’m so sorry. I really wanted terribly to
stay.... But, Dicky Cobden--it wasn’t for you. It wasn’t for you that I
wanted to stay--it was for what you have--more.”
IX
“YOU BOTH HAVE KEYS”
DICKY kept his quarters in Harrow Street, but for days at a time did
not appear. Pidge Musser at first fancied this was easier. There was a
faint cackle of derision from somewhere in her depths, as this idea of
it being easier repeated itself in her mind; in fact, there were many
conflicting mysteries in Pidge’s deep places. “I laid my head on his
shoulder,” she once said to herself, “but thought better of it. Now we
are to be strangers.”
At unexpected moments when she was busy at the pasting bench; or
nights and mornings, passing in and out of sleep, the faint note of
mockery would sound. When she passed Dicky in the halls, or met him
at one of Miss Claes’ little tea parties, and he would bow distantly
or indulge in formal commonplaces, the mockery would stir itself in
Pidge’s profundities, indicating that something somewhere was decidedly
idiotic. He looked positively diminished as he kept up his formalities,
and she liked and respected him too much to feel pleasant about this.
She heard that he was interested in Africa. It was to be observed that
he sought Nagar; in fact, several times she heard these two together
through the partition.
Finally Pidge heard that Dicky was going to South Africa, possibly to
hunt up Nagar’s Little Man, whose name was Gandhi, and who had been
Nagar’s friend and teacher both in India and Natal. Also Dicky was to
do some letters for _The Public Square_.
On the night before he was to sail for the Mediterranean, he was
invited with Pidge by Miss Claes for dinner at Tara Subramini’s Punjabi
Fireplace down on Sixth Avenue near Fourth Street. This was also the
night Pidge smelled Spring in New York for the first time.
Mid-April; there had been rain. Pidge hadn’t caught the Spring magic
coming home from the factory, but now as they walked down Sixth Avenue
under the momentary crashes of the Elevated--it stole up out of the
pavements as if she were in a meadow--that untellable sweetness
which seems the breath of Mother Nature herself, a breath made of
all the perfumes of all the flowers, without accentuating one, and a
sublimation of all the passions of the human heart as well. Her left
hand burrowed under the hanging sleeve of Miss Claes’ wrap. The bare
elbow there closed upon it. They both laughed, and Mr. Richard, walking
sedately, was altogether out of the question.
Tara Subramini served her Punjabi dinners on great individual plates
which were none too hot. She discussed modern dancing with Miss Claes
at easy length, when Pidge was served and Richard Cobden was not. The
rice cooled, the lamb cooled, even if the peppery curry held its fire.
The vast plate had curious little crevices on the side for conserves
and glutinous vegetables and various watery leaves. Pidge became
prejudiced at once against the Punjab. The great leisure of Asia, which
she had heard about from a child and which had tempted her alluringly
in the more intense pressures of her own life, lost something of its
charm as Tara Subramini conversed with all concerned and the contents
of the troughs congealed.
Food is food, but talk is merely talk. Besides, Pidge was hungry.
Subramini had things to say, but also an oriental delight in the use of
English. Mr. Cobden was unreservedly courteous. Pidge always wondered
if he really knew what hunger was. She could get so hungry that her
hands trembled, and New York had shown her deeper mysteries of the
hunger lesson that she would be slow to forget.
“It must be great to be a gentleman,” she thought.
She positively yearned for Dicky to wake up. If this were poise, this
moveless calm of his, this unvarying quiet and courtesy, this inability
to be stretched even in laughter--Pidge felt she was ready to drop the
hunt; also she was tempted to test out Dicky’s poise to see how much
it could really stand.... India bored her, as well as America. Miss
Claes could eat and talk at the same time, and drop neither words nor
food.... A lone Hindu arose to depart from another table. Subramini
helped him with his coat and followed him to the door. Pidge thought
once that Subramini was about to spread herself on the doorstep and let
him walk over her. Punjab didn’t rise in her regard. Pidge suddenly
burst out into a kind of merriment that had nothing to do with anybody
present.
“It is because we’re such idiots!” she said brokenly. “Oh, I don’t mean
you, Miss Claes. I mean myself and--_Mr._ Cobden. It is the way things
are done in the world--so utterly silly. Why should we be strange and
embarrassed, avoiding each other for days and weeks--when we should be
more than ever friends, and----”
Richard Cobden bent forward attentively. Pidge was turned from him.
“You don’t mean, Pidge, that you fail to see a reason for this
strangeness?” Miss Claes asked. “You----”
Pidge stared at her a second in surprise.
“There can’t be any sense to it, can there?” she said slowly.
The other regarded her with a calm that irritated Pidge just now.
Everything irritated her, Dicky sitting by, Miss Claes’ familiarity
with Subramini, and the look of knowing and not speaking, back of the
smile on Miss Claes’ lips. But most of all, peculiarly at this moment,
arose in Pidge’s mind the two conflicting stories of nationality.
“Did I hear you wrongly that you said you were English, Miss Claes?”
she asked abruptly.
“No, dear.”
“But Dicky said you told him you were Hindu----”
“I did. I am both. I am half-caste, supposed to unite in myself the
worst of English and Indian.”
Pidge burned with contrition, less at her questioning than at the bad
temper that prompted it. The two women were ready to go, but Dicky
wasn’t.
“You seemed to have something to say, Miss Claes, to set us--to set me
straight on all this,” he began.
“You see, Richard, one cannot speak without being drawn in. I hesitated
on that account.”
“But I’d like to hear.”
Pidge flushed a little as she watched him. Tara Subramini, still afar
off, was engaged in words.
“... My house in Harrow Street is just a symbol,” Miss Claes was
saying. “To come into one’s house really should mean to come into
one’s heart. You both have keys.... What was in my mind to say was
that people in your trouble act as strangers for good reasons. If they
cannot have each other--they sometimes rush to the other extreme to
save themselves the pain of watching another come between.”
Dicky Cobden essayed to light a cigarette. The match broke in his
fingers. He did not try again. Miss Claes amplified without apparent
feeling:
“Sometimes one who cannot have what he wants--gives way to hatred for
a time to ease his wound.... Pidge, what have you to give for the
friendship and association of one who wants more?”
“I don’t know that I have anything. I see how selfish I was. It came to
me that we, of all people, should be friends, but I didn’t look at the
other side.”
“You can be friends, if you are brave enough. You can be, if you dare
to come and go and set each other free utterly, but that means long and
bitter work.”
The harrowing thing to Pidge was that Miss Claes talked as if Dicky and
herself were one in condition and purpose and dilemma, when in reality
all the hard part seemed to go to him. She wished Miss Claes would
stop, but the words continued with a smooth predestined force:
“The best the world knows, even in books and art, is the kingdom of
two; but love doesn’t end in that--at least, not for those who are
brave enough and strong enough to sunder their tight little kingdom of
each other and let the earth rush in between....”
Tara Subramini’s slippered feet crept in. She stood behind Miss Claes’
shoulders and began to speak of a book of poetic obituaries. The paying
of the bill seemed an interminable process.
Cobden looked dazed.
“If Pidge thinks it’s silly to act as strangers--and I can see that it
is--I’m for trying the other way,” he repeated, when they reached the
street.
The whole talk had been subject to most stubborn and perverse
distractions. On Sixth Avenue the racket of traffic had become
incessant. Apparently Miss Claes had decided to say no more. Callers
waited for her in the basement room at Harrow Street, so Pidge followed
Dicky to his “parlor,” which she had not entered since the night of
Somebody’s Shoulder.
He seemed possessed to talk of what he had heard, as a youth fascinated
by a new course to take. He spoke of a man being big enough to stand
by and set a woman free; of a man big enough to wait and watch and be
a friend, a comrade. And Pidge, who had brought it all about, listened
in a sort of terror which only a woman could understand. This thing
which she had aroused in him, this answer of his deep, but still vague
powers, to her thoughtless challenge, frightened her now that it had
come.
“Don’t, oh, don’t let’s talk any more!” she said at last. “It’s talk,
Dicky, just talk. The doing is different, the doing is harder! What
do we know of what life will fix for us to do day by day through the
years? This thing is so hard that Miss Claes herself hated to let it
out. It belongs to you differently than it belongs to me. I haven’t
anything to give for your friendship and association. I mean you’ll
always want more than I can give.”
He looked at her steadily for an instant.
“I don’t want to be strangers again, Pidge. I want to stand by and
wait.”
“You won’t know better than to build pictures while you wait. No one
would. You will wait--while you’re away in Africa, making pictures
about me, pictures of what I am _not_! I don’t know why I’m chosen to
hurt you. If I hadn’t been so utterly lost in myself, I never could
have brought this on. I feel that I’ve started a new set of conditions
to bring you to another moment--another gash--like in this room the
last time we were here. And oh, Dicky Cobden, I don’t want to! To be
strangers! To be common and hateful and avoid each other is so much
more simple and easy.”
“I’ll stop talking, Pidge,” he said quietly. “It may be easier to be
strangers, but it doesn’t look rosy to me. Don’t you worry about it. It
is my job and I’ll take a chance.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying!”
“Perhaps not. We won’t talk about that any more.... Now, Pidge, I’m
keeping these rooms while I’m away. Wouldn’t you--wouldn’t you for
me--look after them--look in on them and keep them alive while I’m
gone?... It would make me feel like--great, you know.”
X
APRIL BREATHES AGAIN
THREE nights later, when she reached Harrow Street from the factory,
Pidge found two letters. One was from John Higgins of _The Public
Square_. This she opened first.
... At the suggestion of Mr. Cobden, just before he left for
South Africa, I am offering you a position here as reader of the
unsolicited manuscripts. Mr. Cobden hints that you know enough about
_The Public Square_ to realize we cannot be lavish in salaries, but
think we can at least pay you what you are getting now, to begin
with--and the work will be different.
“Oh, Dicky Cobden,” she whispered, alone in the upper room.
She sat in the center of her cot as of old, breathing the sweetness of
the release from the factory.... Friendliness like this art of Dicky’s
was good.... It made her eyes smart now--the new work. It was easier to
take it from him--away. It was a soft cloak that she could nestle in,
because he wouldn’t see.... Miss Claes knocked. Pidge read in her eyes
that she already knew.
“No one can ever tell you anything.”
“I’m so glad you want it, Pidge. I couldn’t tell him for sure that
you’d take it.”
“They really need somebody, don’t they?”
“Mr. Cobden said you wouldn’t be in doubt about that after you got
there.”
“I’m going to take it,” Pidge said soberly. “I know it means something
more than it looks--but I’m going to take it. I’m so sick of myself
which fights everything. Also, I’m going down after supper--and sit
there--in his ‘parlor.’ I haven’t entered since----”
Miss Claes was called from below. Pidge felt the second letter in her
hand. It was from Los Angeles, her father’s writing. A check dropped
out on the cot. By powerful effort of will, Pidge left it there, until
she had read the note:
... At this time it seems well for me to send you money. Hard as it
has been for me to refrain, I felt before this that it was best for
you to face New York alone, unaided. As there is a New Generation, my
child, there is a New Fatherhood which dares--dares even to allow the
heart’s darling to struggle alone; dares to say “hands off” to all
the untransmuted emotions which rush forth to shield the fledgling
from the world----
Fifty dollars. Pidge sank back and softly batted her pillow with
one loose arm. She laughed in a smothery uncertain way that was not
of joy.... It was as if she heard his voice in the room--the new
parenthood, the new generation, the adjustment of motive to moment!
The sort of thing in this letter always shook and tortured Pidge. It
was a part of her. She was bred of it. She had been half as old as now
when she first realized it. Then in every thought and act, she had
rushed to the other extreme. It was true that her father had taught
her the deepest things in books. In his study, she had caught hints of
the inner meanings of inaccessible literatures, before she had learned
to spell simple words of English. Because his eyes hurt, she had read
aloud for hours, day after day, tomes out of Asia which she had no
care nor thought to understand, but from which, volatile fairylike
impressions came to rest in the depths of her heart. She had loved the
few central springs of books in a house of books, until she realized
that her father read, but lived them not; that he expounded, exhorted
upon the doctrines--but his life was his own twisted rag. That was when
Pidge’s heavens cracked--and she had set out to be honest and erect, if
only as tall as a gnome.
The thought that came at this moment had come before. It was the
passion to be what her father was not that had made her rush forth to
be straight in her own head--to refuse to lie to herself--to go to the
other extreme of fierceness and bleakness and ill-temper, rather than
lie to herself--to be plain and true, if she had to be a man-hater and
poison face. Yet Pidge sat up straight with a bitter thought. Like it
or not, she saw right now that it was her father who had prepared her
to accept and make good, possibly, in this position with _The Public
Square_....
“But where did he get the money?” she muttered at last.
She crossed to the open window. April breathed up to her from the stone
floor of the area to-night; magic April, breathing up through the
trampled earth and the degraded pavements. Suddenly a soft love stole
over her. It was love of the April dark.
She heard the sounds of the city over the buildings, over into the
stillness of Harrow Street, like the far tread and clatter of a
pageant. Mother Nature was actually perceptible in this soft air, and
something that Pidge answered to as never before in New York. Her hands
stretched out to touch the casings of the window; the old wood gave
her an additional warmth. It belonged to this house of Miss Claes,
this house of the mystery of kindness. She was free at this moment of
the fear of accepting too much, having come up to breathe, at least,
out of the ruck of fighting everything and everybody. She had been
utterly graceless and narrow in her acceptances, fighting against
favors, when she knew all the time that to receive is the other part
of giving. A shiver passed over her, nevertheless, as she remembered
the subtle mendicancy that she had known in her father’s house, the
calm acceptance of gifts and favors from others in the belief that one
was evolved enough to give the ineffable in exchange for materials. No
wonder she had run from that.
This of Miss Claes’ was a house with a heart. This was her house. She
could breathe in it now, at least, for a little. The numbness and
dumbness of the factory had fallen away. The softness stole over her
toward Fanny Gallup and the other girls who must still stay at the
bench. She would never forget. She had earned an understanding of them,
and had been released; _released_ was the word. But something would
carry her back to them one day, something born in that slow madness of
monotony.
She crossed the room and opened the door into the hall. Supper smells
came up to her, the murmur of voices behind the shut doors. The prima
donna person was singing, not practicing this time, but singing....
“One comes up through great tribulation to learn to sing,” Miss Claes
had once said, “and others share it.”
The warmth stole into her from the halls. Everybody was hungry
to-night, the spring hunger, and everybody celebrated, as a festival.
April seemed breathing in the halls, too. April was breathing in
herself; that was why she was awake to this outer delight. If she
could only keep it. It would always be in externals, if she could only
keep this springtime alive within. She laughed a little bitterly. Of
course, she was elated because the factor had dropped away, because
the new position had opened, because the check had come (though she
felt something queer about that), because Richard Cobden and Miss Claes
were fashioned of unswerving kindnesses, which she suddenly realized as
never before.
“It’s money and place, and I’m ‘falling for’ it, venturing to be
pleased with myself----” She laughed again. “But, oh, it is so
cheerful, so restful to feel New York like this, just for to-night!”
XI
THE BABY CARRIAGE
PIDGE read manuscripts in the office of _The Public Square_. She saw
them first. The large part of them were seen by no one else. It was
like being a telephone girl in a way, dipping into the secrets of a
thousand houses. But it was much more subtle than that; the secrets
more soulful and revelatory. She saw the hopelessness of life. She saw
love, hopelessly uninviting love--puppy love, and much of the “kidding”
clever love that is made in America, and proud of itself for that.
But over all, there seemed an anguish on the part of male and female,
old and young, _to express_. Before her were secrets of those dying
for expression; in her hands, the progeny. She loathed the desire
everywhere, because she had the same desire herself.
Every one who wrote and submitted stories and manuscripts had a
“front.” In the personal letters, accompanying their stories and
articles and poems, they told matters about themselves which their
manuscripts did not. They knew this one and that; they had influential
friends who had said this and that about their writing. Parlorfuls
of friends “had been quite carried away by the inclosed.”... Others
hadn’t wanted to write. They had rebelled long; even as Saul, they had
kicked against the pricks; but for the good of others, for the message
it would carry to the world, they had given in at last and written
their story which was inclosed.... “This is a true story,” one personal
letter accompanying said.... “This story may be finished differently,”
another wrote. “I have thought out a happy ending, if the public is not
ready to stand this human one.”... Here was a sales manager who wrote
his personal letter with a jovial laugh: “I have just tossed these few
experiences into a story which my friends insist belongs to you....
I wouldn’t think of it, but I can’t help seeing what a rotten lot of
stuff the magazines publish!”... This one had decided to write stories
because she was a widow and had no other means of support, and had
heard that writing was “the pleasantest of professions.”... And here
was one who had sent in story after story to rejection for six years.
“Some time I will win,” came the thin tired cry.
Pidge had fatigued her body in the mill. She tired her heart in the
office of _The Public Square_, reaching Harrow Street with something in
her breast all sore and shamed. This was the queer strenuous part--the
shame of it all. She, too, had fallen into expressing herself, and they
had been kind. Miss Claes had been kind and she knew. But Dicky Cobden
and John Higgins had been kind, though they hadn’t known the author of
the _Lance_. (They would never know.) They had said that the writer
had the fine freedom of youth--“the freedom of ignorance.”
Pidge knew even better now what that meant. She saw the freedom of
ignorance in the rape of many type machines.... The worst of it was,
she herself wasn’t through. She knew the time would come when a new
story would form within her, and begin its knocking for life.... And
this was New York, the market place; and John Higgins sat near, and
always he held his face nearer the manuscripts toward the end of the
days, his eyes more tired and dim in the late hours....
“Miss Musser,” he called one afternoon at the end of the first month.
“I wish you would go out and see what this Rufus Melton really has to
say. We took a story of his some months ago. We had great hopes for
him, but now he’s sent in a raft of junk. Kid stuff, this must be, he’s
trying to work off. I don’t feel like seeing him right now.”
In the reception room, a young man arose to meet her, as she spoke the
name, “Mr. Melton.” It was a face you would expect to see on one of the
cars of Hollywood Boulevard, among the movie plants. There was a catch
in Pidge’s throat as she said:
“Mr. Higgins asked me to tell you he was occupied, Mr. Melton. His
report will go to you in a day or two.”
He was looking down at her, the young man who had written the little
twisted fury of a tale called _Dr. Filter_, which Dicky had brought
to Harrow Street for her to read. She sensed that he regarded her as
an office girl, not as a reader. He couldn’t have been more than
twenty-three or four. He knew that her words portended an evil fate for
his present offerings. It was not hurt alone in his eyes, but rage, too.
Now Pidge’s mind whirled back to a pair of eyes in a baby carriage at
Santa Monica; eyes of a male infant, said to be the handsomest of that
locality where the hills and mesas break off abruptly for a sea wall.
Large, still, steady blue-black eyes of an actor that had become calm
because they were used to seeing faces wilt before them; long, curving
coal-black lashes. Pidge hadn’t liked them in the infant; at least,
they roused her unpleasantly somehow; and she didn’t like them now. The
resemblance was deeper and more essential than that of family, but what
held Pidge really was something she recognized, or fancied she did,
something that had to do with being broke and threatened with hunger
in New York. His clothing was fine, but had been long used. She had a
positive divination for poverty.
Now his gaze was lost in her hair, as if he found hope there. Story
failures and New York, fear, and its tough core of hunger, these
amounted to one thing--but red hair was another. The astonishing part
was the constant changing of expressions in his eye. They reflected
every mood and whim of him, for one who could read; that is, when he
forgot to veil them for purposes of his own. Just now he seemed to be
wondering if he had better go any further with this red hair--if he had
time to play. He didn’t seem to consider whether Pidge wanted to play
or not, only whether the game were worth the while of one whose law was
not to let any real chance slip. Pidge had forgotten the hurt of her
message from John Higgins. She had a pronounced feeling that she wanted
to hurt Melton some way herself....
“So I can’t see Mr. Higgins?”
“He’s been unusually rushed to-day.”
He laughed a little bitterly as if he understood all that. “Are
you--are you his secretary?”
“No, an under reader.”
“I see. Have you been through any of my stuff?”
Pidge glanced at him resentfully; she felt he wouldn’t have asked such
a question of a man.
“This is a sort of show-down with me,” he went on. “I’m leaving New
York. I really hoped to see Mr. Higgins.”
His dilemma seemed real. It pulled her out from herself.
“I’m sorry----”
“Perhaps you--I’d have to know before to-morrow,” he said jerkily.
“Perhaps you’d look at another story just finished? If you would read
it--there is just a chance you might want to get it to Mr. Higgins
before I go.”
“Have you the story with you?”
“No. I was hoping for good word from one of the others first. This new
one is my last wallop. Might I bring it to you, anywhere you say, this
evening?”
“You may leave it with Miss Claes at 54 Harrow Street.”
“Are you Miss Claes?”
“No, but she will give it to me.”
“Could I call later in the evening also, for your answer? It is only
four or five thousand words.”
“You know, my reading is merely--I mean Mr. Higgins would have to
decide.”
“But it would help--if the story pleased you--help to pass the night!”
“You may leave it with Miss Claes at the basement entrance and call a
little later.”
Pidge found herself walking on tiptoe back to her desk, the catch still
in her throat.
XII
UNDER THE SAME LAMP
THE manuscript was delivered while Pidge was out to supper. She took
it upstairs to Cobden’s “parlor” and read with a nervous interest, and
an uncomfortable feeling that Rufus Melton was looking down at her
all the time. She didn’t lose herself in the story, but the feeling
persisted that she might have done so, another time--especially if the
manuscript had come to her in the usual way at the office. Certainly it
was different and distinctive, compared to the run of the unsolicited.
It was artful, if not art.... She heard Nagar’s quiet steady step as he
passed up to his room. She had an impulse to ask him to read, but he
wouldn’t say anything. Anyway, he was gone now.
This was a story of the Tunisian sands, written, she decided, by one
who hadn’t been there; one who saw the desert as the average American
reader would expect, but with additional flatfooted bits of color
tramped down with audacity. Moonlight was different in Tunisia, and
morals were different--freer than here. There was the glitter of the
snake’s eye through the pages, for Pidge Musser. It made her think of a
sick man in a gorgeous robe.
She had inferred from Melton’s talk that this story was new; in
fact, that it was still hot from his machine. Yet the manuscript
didn’t feel new; the front and back pages showed wear. Could she
have misunderstood?... It had freedom; not the freedom of ignorance,
but the freedom of a drifting ship. Its anchor dragged, its compass
was uncentered. It cried out, “My God, I am free!” and it was, as a
derelict is free.
At a quarter of ten, she heard the bell in the basement hall; heard
Miss Claes directing Melton to the next floor. Pidge would not have
had it this way, but people of the house were in the basement. He came
up out of the dim stairway, walking wide, his soft cap crumpled in his
hand, elbows out. He must have learned her name from Miss Claes.
“You mustn’t think, Miss Musser, that I don’t know how much I am
asking--this favor of yours to-night.”
There was a sort of lift and draw to the way he took her hand; at the
same time his shoulders and head bent down upon her. This thing that
he was playing to-night was college boy--clumsy subtlety of a big boy
coming home and greeting his sister--seeing in her, at the moment of
greeting, something of the charm other boys might see. He walked around
her under the light, laughing, apologizing, making a humorous picture
of his own tension at _The Public Square_ that afternoon.
“I went there like an anarchist,” he laughed. “I was prepared to get my
answer or blow up the place. I had to laugh afterwards the way I seized
upon you.”
“I read the Tunis story,” she said. “Of course, you know it’s really
unimportant what I think. I liked it well enough, but wasn’t carried
away. I felt the color; in fact, color is the main asset of the story,
but it seemed a bit thick----”
He laughed aloud. He was bending to her again, and most benignly,
college big brother still in his manner and voice.
“I could tone that down, of course. The trouble is to get a thing like
that straight, when you know that part of Africa as I do. I ought to
have kept off Tunis, that’s the truth of it.”
“You have really been there?”
“That’s the worst of it, Miss Musser,” he laughed. “I went through hell
for that story. Too much feeling to write with, you understand.”
Pidge was awed at her own error. She had been so convinced that the
color was faked that she had judged the whole story on that basis.
“I’ve already asked too much of you. I’m sorry,” he added ingenuously.
“One can’t force his things through this way. Why, I’d have given the
whole six stories to _The Public Square_ for a hundred dollars, and
taken the cheapening that comes to an author from a trick like that.
That’s how I needed an answer.”
He had glanced up at the light as he spoke, a white, haggard smile,
that bloodless look around the mouth. Pity caught and controlled her.
She had done him an injustice already.
“You spoke of leaving New York for the west,” she said.
He laughed and shrugged, palms held upward.
“How far? I mean where is your home?”
He pointed to his cap lying on the arm of a chair, as if to say that
were his home.
“I’ve got an aunt in Cleveland who wants me,” he added. “A little quiet
house away out on one of the cross streets off Euclid, where there’s a
room and eats and a place to write. I’ll start to walk, I guess.”
“Where are you staying in New York?”
He was laughing at her. “A little den up in Union Square--just a
skylight. It’s a cell, Miss Musser, and even there, I have to stay out
until midnight to sneak in without meeting the landlady.... Did you
ever sleep in a room that had no window?”
“Mine has a window,” Pidge said.
“Then this isn’t yours?” He pointed to the closed folding doors of the
inner room.
“Oh, no. Mine’s up higher, but it has a window. This is just a sitting
room we sometimes use--Miss Claes and I--the lodger being away.”
“Oh,” he said queerly; then added with his haggard smile: “So the color
was put on too thick--that’s too bad.”
“Does Mr. Higgins know that you have been over there in Tunis?” Pidge
asked.
“I figured he would, but maybe he will decide, as you did, that I sat
here in New York and stabbed at that setting.”
“I’ll place the story before him to-morrow. I could say to him that
you’ve been to the desert----”
“Oh, I wouldn’t. Don’t tell him that. I was hoping, though, that you
could tell him you liked it.”
Pidge now looked up into a smile almost childlike in its eager purpose.
“Couldn’t you tell him that? Couldn’t you tell him that--just for what
others may find in the story?”
The catch was in her throat again. His hand rested lightly upon her
shoulder; his smile was altogether disarming in its wistfulness. She
thought he couldn’t mean what he said. She thought of the face in the
baby carriage in Santa Monica; of this tortured child of whims and
imaginations, in a room with no window, and the pallor around his
mouth. She didn’t like any of it, but did not feel exactly separate
from it. She thought of a little box upstairs in her own room, of the
check her father had sent, which she had so far refused to cash. She
was in a blur, her sense of belonging to Melton’s dilemma over all.
“You can’t mean for me to tell Mr. Higgins what I don’t believe,” she
said. “I’ll ask him to read the story to-morrow. If he’s against it, I
could--I might help you to pay for the room in Union Square, or--enough
to get to Cleveland.”
Then the thing happened which she would have apprehended, except for
her pity and personal involvement in his trouble. She was drawn in
between the open flaps of his coat, and held there against the soft
shirt which he wore. And all through her were his whispers--soft
delighted laughter from lips that pressed into her hair and cheeks,
searching for hers.
She had finally pushed him from her, and they stood apart under the
lamp. For a moment, they stared. Then it seemed as if he studied her,
as one who suddenly revalues, doubles the value of an object. It was
the queerest, intensest scrutiny, his head cocked to one side, the
light and laughter returning to his eyes and lips.
“I knew I wasn’t safe to come here,” he said. “I knew if you did
like the story, I wasn’t safe to hear the verdict. It was the idea
of getting enough money to escape from that room, to get back into
Cleveland and find myself----”
Still she stared at him.
“I don’t suppose you can ever forgive me, but it broke me wide open,
Miss Musser--to find what a ripping sport you are!”
“That’s about enough words,” she said.
He looked down.
“To-morrow,” she went on in a dreary tone, “you may come here--I mean
to the basement entrance, at seven in the evening, and I’ll tell you
Mr. Higgins’ decision. If it’s against the story, I’ll do as I said
about your room rent and the fare to Cleveland.”
His hands went out to her.
“After what I did--you still want to do that?”
“Yes, and now please go.”
Pidge was up in her own room minutes afterward, before she realized
that it had happened under that white lamp of Cobden’s “parlor.”
XIII
“MOTHER”
“A MAN’S a fool before he learns technic,” John Higgins said, as he
leaned back from a manuscript the next afternoon. “He’s a cripple while
he’s learning it. When he’s learned it and forgotten he’s learned
it--he begins to be a workman. That’s the freedom of knowledge.... As
for this Tunis story of young Melton’s--it’s a subtle sort of botch.”
Rufus Melton came to the basement entrance at seven. Even if Miss Claes
had not gone out to dinner, Pidge would not have taken him upstairs. He
looked older, his back had a curious droop. He glanced at her ruefully,
and around the room. Pidge stood beside the table.
“Mr. Higgins didn’t care for your story,” she said. “It has happened
unluckily all around.”
His head had bowed before she began to speak. His eyes came up to her
now, full of contrition and pain.
“I think the hardest thing I ever did was to come here to-night. Only
one thing made it possible. I’d have started west, only New York is a
curious old dump.”
“How is that?” she asked warily.
“You have to go north to go west. I mean the only way out is north, for
a pedestrian.”
“You haven’t enough for the ferry or tube?”
Their eyes met.
“What I said last night holds good, you know,” she said with effort.
He turned slowly to the door as if in indecision, and Pidge watched.
She knew she could make him take the money, but she wanted him to be
ready to die first.
“There was nothing in the other stories, either--from Higgins’ point of
view?” he asked.
Pidge was white. She felt like an executioner. “The package was mailed
back to you to-day.”
For just an instant his head was bowed again, half turned to the door.
Then he veered around and his hand came out to hers.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night. But you--that quiet room in Cleveland----”
He shook his head with a slow, dawning smile.
“It’s great to know you. I’ve heard about such people being here in the
Village, but it’s--‘It’s fourteen miles from Schenectady to Troy.’”
“It’s a long way to Albany before that,” she said.
“It’s a long way to One-Hundred-and-Tenth Street, Miss Musser, but it
is easier than taking money from a girl.”
She breathed relief. “I came to fight it out here in New York on the
same terms you did,” she said. “You can pay me back.”
Now his back was toward her, his face uplifted. She saw his hand grope
for the knob of the door, and his shoulders rock weakly. She caught his
arm and pulled him back to a chair.
“You see, you really couldn’t get away.”
He had suffered her to lead him to a dining-room chair, and sat very
still, his head tilted back, eyes closed. She took the little package
of bills from her dress and tucked it into his hand. There were voices
in the hall; a vague frown crossed his white temples.
“What is it?” he said queerly.
“You are faint. I’ll go with you to a near place for something to eat.
That’s all you need. Come--if you can walk a little way.”
He stood in a sort of confusion, holding the folded bills in his hand
as one would hold a card.
“Put that in your pocket,” she said, but he did not seem to comprehend.
They were in the street, her hand steadying him. They found a dim
restaurant with a counter and a few tables. He did not speak until
the waiter came; then asked for coffee. Pidge had taken the money and
thrust it into his coat pocket. Now she was tormented with the fear
that he would lose the small roll, not knowing that he had it. She had
not brought her own purse. He would be forced to pay; then he would
have to see what he had.
He drank the coffee first, then ate sparingly.
“I learned that in the desert,” he said at last.
“Learned what, please?”
“Not to go mad over the taste of food when one has been without.”
The girl who waited on the table looked devotedly into Melton’s profile
as she served. Twice as he started to speak, the Sixth Avenue elevated
crashed by outside and he seemed to forget what he meant to say. It
seemed more true here in the restaurant than it had been in the house
in Harrow Street, that he was wonderfully good to look upon. The
realization held a small tumult for Pidge. She was altogether different
with him than with any one else. They had finished, and still he
lingered.
“I’m sorry. I hadn’t intended to come out. I left my bag upstairs. Will
you please pay?”
To his illness, a look of embarrassment was now added.
“It’s in your pocket. Right there----”
She pointed to his coat, and he drew out the bills wonderingly.
“Oh, I remember,” he said dully.
While the waitress was away bringing the change, he shoved the rest of
the money across the table to Pidge, but she pushed it back, saying
quietly:
“I want you to fix up the room rent and get a night train west. We’ll
say no more.”
His lips whitened under a curious tightening.
“Let’s get out in the dark,” he said roughly.
They walked back to Eighth Street and over to the Avenue, entering the
Square that way. The sooty grass was soft and damp; the faintest trace
of fog among the trees.
“You’ve got something on me,” he was saying strangely. “You’re not like
a girl, but like a woman and a pal, too. You had something on me last
night, or I wouldn’t have fallen for you that way.”
“When you get back to that Cleveland room--perhaps a real story will
come of all this.”
“A real story,” he repeated.
His eyes were bright and the pallor of his face intense enough to be
visible. She was conscious of his inimitable charm as his head inclined
to her and she heard his words in the lowest possible tone:
“Meeting you--that is the real story.”
She pushed away his hand that had lifted to hers.
“You’re all right now. I’m going back. Good night and good luck.”
He made no attempt to detain her.
That night Pidge lay for a long time without sleep. She was forlorn
and troubled and restless, but underneath it all there was a queer
little throb of happiness, like the recent night of the two letters. It
would not be stifled. Every time she could get still enough, she was
conscious of it, like the song of a bird that kept on and on, but was
only audible in the lulls of almost unbroken traffic. She awoke in the
night with the thought of him speeding westward on his train.
The next night when she came home there was another letter from
Los Angeles, another check dropped out, and a clipping, which she
read first--the wedding announcement of “Adolph Musser, the noted
metaphysician, and Mrs. Hastings, wealthy widow of the late Rab Gaunt
Hastings, firearms manufacturer of New England, at the Byzantine,” etc.
Pidge didn’t have her guard up. The choke and the shame were too swift
for her self-control. For the first time in many days the tears broke,
the extra scaldy sort. If she had only been permitted to keep that
first check uncashed for a few days longer!...
The next was a day of dullness and misery, a May day of rain. Crossing
Broadway, as she hurried to luncheon, she passed Rufus Melton in the
crowd. Her lips parted to call, but she checked in time. He hadn’t seen
her. She found herself standing loosely in the traffic, her hand to her
mouth, until a taxi driver roared at her, and she swung into the stream
of people again and reached the curb.
XIV
ISOLATION
PIDGE was leveled with personal shame. Try as she would, she was as
lacking in the ability to detach herself from Melton, as from the
influence of her father. She had felt the boy’s power over her, and
knew innately that she would feel it again; that this sort of thing
wasn’t a mere touch and go; that meetings like this, which appear
sporadic on the surface, have twined roots beneath. She had been taught
from a child that nothing merely happens. The incentive that made her
lend him the fifty dollars, which she had held uncashed for nearly
a month, did not mean to her now a mere impulsive mistake. It was a
symbol of a giving to this boy--of a blind but eager something out of
the depths of her heart.
Late in June a letter came to her from Dicky Cobden, who was at
Coquihatville on the Equator, where as he said, “the sun’s rays fall as
straight as a tile from a roof.”
... Oh, yes, you and Miss Claes knew a lot more than I did that
night at Tara Subramini’s. I shot off a lot of words afterwards.
Never again. But I’m going to stay with it, Pidge.... I’ve just had
ten days here in the jungles, back on one of the tributaries of the
Kong. If I stayed long here, I would see it all as these exiled white
men do; that God is a rubber man with ivory legs; that the natives
are vermin, not only to be walked over, but to be stamped into the
ground. They whimper so. It’s too hot here to be whimpered at.... I
think so much about you. Of course, this isn’t news to you, but I
say it, because it is so different from what I thought it would be.
Something snapped when I got to the Kong.... All fat and decoration
are sweated off down here. I reach out to you just the same. Only
in New York I thought that we were both wrapt in the same sort of
film, a tinted filmy sort of glamour that stretched out as we went
different ways. That film was stretched too hard. When I reached the
River it snapped. I think I’ll never get over feeling this awful
isolation of being a separate creature from everybody, worst of all
from you....
... Next morning in the office John Higgins called her in to his desk.
“Dicky has sent in some stuff. We begin to publish in August.”
He took off his spectacles and wiped them on the flap of his necktie.
His eyes looked watery, as if the light had run out in tears.
“I’ve always heard that the Cobdens were honest,” he went on, “three
generations of honest men. They’ve built something, Miss Musser. Not a
business, that’s well enough, but they’ve built a man. Listen----”
He opened the pages at random and began to read. It was like the stuff
in her letter.
“It’s so for pages and pages,” he continued. “Every word standing out,
if you get the hang of it. No tint, no art; just words, pain-born,
separate like boulders in a field. He has no hopes, yet he writes what
he sees.... Something seems to have happened to our Dicky, besides
Africa.... He watches the string of natives coming in with their tusks;
he watches the crocodiles coming up to the blinding surface water; he
watches the big monkeys that live in twos, and the little monkeys that
live in troops. I don’t know what the world’ll get out of this, but I
know what I get out of it----”
She saw that John Higgins was merely thinking out loud. A few moments
later he finished:
“This stuff amounts to the most subtle and incredible rearraignment of
imperialistic cruelty, but Dicky doesn’t mean it that way. He keeps
repeating with devilish calm that it isn’t so bad as it was. It’s no
particular nation, but all whites. He writes from the standpoint of
a white man who remembers Cortez in Mexico, Pizarro in Peru, Warren
Hastings in India, Cecil Rhodes in Africa and our own dear religious
settlers bringing Yankee wits and rum and disease to the red Indians.
He turns over the pages of all patriotic histories with a long stick
as you would poke the leaves from the face of a corpse you had made
yourself. His face tries to turn away; his stomach retches, but he
knows each man and each nation must bury his own dead.”
“‘Something seems to have happened to our Dicky, besides Africa,’”
Pidge repeated, when she was alone.
Summer days in New York, sleepy stewy days. The low clouds made the
nights hot. Pidge was used to the “high sky” of Southern California
where every inch of shadow meant coolness, where cool night fell
quickly no matter how hot it had been in the sun, where there were no
afterglows, nor afterheats, and you wanted a wrap the instant the sun
went down. The meaning of summer in New York became a cruel meaning, in
the little room off the area. It gave her an astonishing grasp of what
people suffered in the tenements.
Two weeks after the copy arrived from Africa, the galleys came up on
the Cobden articles, and Pidge asked permission to take a set home to
show two friends of Dicky’s in Harrow Street. John Higgins acquiesced.
Pidge delivered these to Miss Claes and forgot all about it, until the
next night when she returned to the house after dinner, and Miss Claes
called her from the door of Cobden’s “parlor.”
“Come in, Pidge, and we’ll shut everything out.”
Nagar was within and the galleys were stretched out under the
light. Pidge had never seen Miss Claes and Nagar quite like this.
They appeared happy over something they had found in Dicky Cobden’s
isolation and melancholy--happy as in the news of a legacy.
“Why, don’t you see?” said Miss Claes strangely. “He’s pondering on
Life! He thinks he’s reporting--when really he is giving himself
to Life. The world stretches out before his eyes without glamour,
stripped. He offers himself to it, but his writing contains a
confession with the weariness of the ages on it, that he has nothing
to give--that he is a sham like all the rest. There’s not a self-pose
in all his pages.”
Nagar had slipped out. Miss Claes came close and added softly:
“Richard is finer than we knew, Pidge. What happened here in this house
has prepared him--always the wrecker before the builder.”
“You mean, I’m the wrecker?”
“You couldn’t have done differently.... Too bad he isn’t to see
Mohandas Gandhi. Nagar has received word that the Little Man is
returning to India. Richard didn’t go to Natal first.”
“He’ll be so sorry,” Pidge said. “It was Nagar’s story that drew him to
Africa----”
Their eyes met; no need to amplify.
“Dicky’s so deadly in earnest,” Pidge went on. “He sees what he sees
the same at ten in the morning and at ten at night. His coming to
Harrow Street didn’t mean a whim. His part that night of our Punjabi
dinner didn’t mean a whim. Oh, but I’m so glad he hasn’t started out to
save the world!”
“He’s preparing to work better than that.”
“I feel so ungrateful for not missing him more,” Pidge added
unsteadily, “for not being more interested in this that pleases you.
I can appreciate, but oh, Miss Claes, I don’t belong to your way of
seeing things. I’ll always be Dicky Cobden’s hangman, always hurting
myself more!”
They were standing close together.
“Nothing matters to me but myself!” Pidge moaned. “I’m hopelessly lost
in myself--that’s what’s the matter! What room have I for Africa or the
world? There’s more to me in the struggle of John Higgins not to get
drunk--in the body hunger and body love of Fanny Gallup--in the lies of
Rufus Melton! I can understand this world-service thing--oh, I can see
the nations like chessmen on the table!--but I can’t fix Fanny Gallup
or John Higgins, I can’t fix Rufus Melton. I can’t fix myself!”
XV
THE COBDEN INTERIOR
PIDGE heard about the assassinations in Bosnia as wearily as of a
murder in little Sicily. She heard rumors of war in Europe with
ennui--how could there be energy enough left in the human race to make
war? She met Nagar in the lower hall at Harrow Street on the evening
that war became a fact. He looked like a dead man walking in the
twilight. She didn’t see Miss Claes at all that night. The next day in
the office war began to show its personal aspects to Pidge Musser of
Los Angeles. John Higgins was hours late in returning from lunch. She
saw that he wouldn’t be down at all to-morrow. He looked old. He had
on a black frock coat, as if dressed for pallbearing, though his face
looked as if he were about to be borne himself. The little office was
fumy, sweetish.
“Our blessed Savior moves in mysterious ways,” he remarked.
Pidge lingered at the door to get any significance that this might have
for her.
“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away,” he added, sitting back
straight in his chair.
He removed his spectacles and reached for the flare of his tie to
polish them off, but no tie dangled to-day. It was a little black
store-made bow, fastened with a clip over the collar button. Pidge
still lingered, her hand on the knob.
“Blessed be the name of the Lord,” said John Higgins, “but it’s hell on
us.”
She started out, but was called back.
“I need an audience, Miss Musser. I need a female ear. I need ladylike
sympathy. It isn’t sweet of you to run off.”
“What’s the matter?”
The editor looked at her, squinted, put on his spectacles and looked
again.
“Do you mean to say you don’t know what’s the matter?”
“Everything is the matter,” said Pidge. “But what’s new?”
His hand nearest her lifted and rested upon a pile of page proof on his
desk.
“Dicky Cobden hasn’t written a line from the Kong that we can publish.
We’ve cabled him to come in, though he’s probably started. You’ll
recall that Belgium lies between France and Germany. She’s holding the
Germans off from Paris, giving France and England a chance to get set.
Belgium’s the world’s public square right now, the one vortexical spot
on the face of the earth. Doesn’t it occur to you that even a new angle
on her sins in the heart of Africa is about as much in time and place
right now, as Paul Revere’s ride?”
... Three weeks later, she heard that Richard Cobden was in town; that
John Higgins had seen him the night before. All that day at the office
she kept listening for his step and voice, but he didn’t come. His car
was in front of the Harrow Street house, however, when she reached
there, and a light showed between the doors from his “parlor.” She lost
some of the sense of suffocation when she saw that, a curious gladness
for a moment. She tapped the door with her finger tip, pulled the
curtain aside ever so little and said:
“Hello.”
A quick step in the inner room; then he was before her in the doorway,
drawing her in under the light.
“Pidge--Pidge,” he repeated.
The boyish look was gone from him. He might have been taken for ten
years older. The thing had happened that takes place abruptly in many
Americans, more among business men than artists: Youth had been put
away, its trace of divine humor exchanged for adult seriousness.
“Why didn’t you come to the office to-day, Dicky?” she asked.
“I wanted to see you here--like this.”
They were standing under the light.
“Why, you’re different,” she said.
“John Higgins said that. They told me so at home, uptown. I feel
different, but it isn’t an improvement. And you, Pidge, you’re taller.
And John Higgins says you’re doing so well.”
“I’m thanking you every day for that----”
She kept thinking about the change in him. If this were selflessness,
she liked him better before. He had been quite unselfish enough, she
thought. She didn’t see the fight in him, because it was so subtly
identified with herself. She only knew that he seemed without fight.
“Keep on your things, Pidge. We’ll go out somewhere----”
* * * * *
That was the beginning of strange days and evenings. They played at
the old game of _Comrades_. Often they lunched together, occasionally
with John Higgins for a third. At such times it seemed that they took
_The Public Square_ with them, subscribers, advertisers, contributors,
policies. It was that curious time in America when the personal and
national meaning of the European war was breaking through with all its
paralyzing ramifications; when all who were sensitive at all reflected
division and strife in themselves, as a deep leveling sickness.
Pidge was taken to the Cobden home, a new and terrifically complicated
modern apartment in East Fiftieth Street, but the furnishings, the
household ceremonials, the people themselves, suggested prints of New
York interiors in 1870--respectable, established, grim. The gradual
speeding up of the world for a half century to the explosive point of
1914 ended with the click of the key in this hall door, and you were
in the world of another day, with a spinster aunt, a widowed mother,
an unmarried sister, a slowly disintegrating grandfather, and Dicky
himself, not in a different guise at all--the same courteous, sincere
Dicky, but now to Pidge Musser’s western eyes, utterly, revealingly
comprehensible. This was the place that had made him. This was his
reason for being.
Here life was life. Here was the family unit, the family a globe,
all human society moving outside like the water around a bubble;
a closed globe reflecting all else in curious unreality. Here
three-score-and-ten was life, and a very long time. Life wasn’t a
spiritual experiment, in matter; not an extension in matter of souls
that had made innumerable such experiments, but straight work-a-day
three-score-and-ten with oblivion at the birth end, and heaven or hell
at the other. Here was All Time, in which it behooved man and woman
to gather worldly goods and religious goods and love one another and
hang together--for the rest was with God. Here senility was dear. The
heavy-bodied, dim-minded grandfather was still grandfather, not the
vanishing spirit of him. They would weep when the body passed. They
would look to his place in the cemetery and say, “Here he lies.”
Pidge Musser wanted to scream, not at the limitations, but at the
kindness which was showered upon her. They were ready to perform the
great transaction of taking her in, opening their hearts and house
to a maiden, who would bring respectable additions to the Cobden
line--sharing wealth, well-being, gentleness, the Cobden name which had
been kept clean and useable and virile, and the Cobden God, who stood
on the other side of death with angelic associates and rewards in His
hands.
Pidge continually felt that her next word would ruin everything; yet
they unswervingly regarded her as becoming one with themselves; the
process of assimilation already begun. They were patient, knowing of
old that a new maiden would have incrustations of the world to check
off, inequalities to be planed down. They set about not adjusting to
her, but as she fancied, assimilating her, as the changeless Chinese
assimilate a weaker race, breaking down the foreigner in themselves.
She would become theirs to them with the years.
“Oh, Dicky,” Pidge said, when they were in his car again. “I see. I
understand. How did you dare to open those doors to me!”
“I spoke of you at home, Pidge. They wouldn’t have understood if I
hadn’t brought you soon. They were prepared to open their arms to you.
They have their laws----”
“But they are your laws. Dicky--how did you dare? Is it because you
don’t know me, don’t see me at all? Do you see something which you want
to see, that has nothing to do with me?”
“What is it that troubles you so?”
“Myself--always and forever myself! Oh, don’t you see I have nothing
to do with them? Why, you’re comfortable, Dicky--your people are
comfortable! _This_ is life to you--this, here and now! It isn’t to me.
Life’s an exile to me, a banishment and coldness and pain. In all New
York there are not two such opposites. My God is far away. Yours is
here--a Person.”
He answered hopelessly: “I can see how it would strike you, but I
couldn’t cover up on account of that. I belong to them. I’m of them.
Any front I might put on wouldn’t wear. You had to see us, Pidge----”
Another time she might have seen the fine thing back of those words,
but she took such finenesses of Richard Cobden for granted, while he
rarely could understand that she saw anything but his faults.
“It’s queer,” he said, in the same dull hopeless way. “I stand to
you as the most staid and changeless person, but to my family I am
dangerous, a fulminant. They love and trust me, but watch me with
fierce concern. Already I’ve broken more Cobden convictions in
twenty-five years than all my relatives in all their years.”
His face glanced wearily toward her from the lights of the street, as
he drove.
“You’ve let me understand too much for one Sunday afternoon,” she said
in an awed voice, “and it feels colder and lonelier than ever before.
I even see something of the coming years, Dicky. I see that it means
Fate, when you say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I see that you turn to a girl to
stay. I see you don’t cheat. I see that I’m volatile compared; that my
honesty is a fierce effort, a deadly self-conscious effort, and yours
is an established habit. I’m clumsy at my honesty. I love it terribly,
but it is still on the outside of me--something to attain.”
She sank back, laughing. “I wonder if it will stay as deadly clear as
this?”
“You are not making it quite clear to me,” he said.
“I must. Oh, I must. Dicky, please open your soul and listen to
me--hard, hard! While it’s clear, I must talk. You’ve chosen to be my
friend. You’ve chosen not to take the easier course of hating me. I
understand all that better now than the night of the Punjabi dinner.”
“I do, too,” said Cobden, and bitterness of the African rivers was in
his words.
“Do I have to begin by saying how dear you are--how kind, how utterly
good it is to know you; what it means to have faith and trust in one
man?”
“Please not, Pidge.”
“But never forget it, Dicky. It’s the pedestal upon which everything’s
builded. Always remember that I know you underneath; that I turn to you
in trouble--not like a brother or father or lover, but what our word
_comrade_ means--what it will sometime mean to many people! That’s you.
But, Dicky, because I know you--I can look away! Don’t you see--you’re
like something done! Having found you, I can turn to other things.”
“I’ll try to see that, but most people find each other differently, to
stay----”
“It’s because they don’t find what I’ve found. I don’t know what I
want, only I know there are terrible undone things in me, that other
people stir to life. I’m lost in persons. Miss Claes and Nagar lose
themselves in nations. You’re getting to be like them, but I see it
all in the personal!... Listen, Dicky, if you were to get a woman to
take to your house--one ready to go in and be a Cobden and a mother of
Cobdens--I could love her! I could hold to you just as close, though
secretly. I would expect you to be my _comrade_ just the same--I mean
just between us--never on the outside, perhaps. What I mean is, it
wouldn’t hurt me--not the thing we have together.”
His car had come to a stand in the stillness of Harrow Street, but
still they sat.
“What you mean is--you haven’t any place for me as a lover or a
husband.”
“That’s like you, but that’s it.... Dicky, you mean to me something
done, something found. I don’t dare to turn to you and rest. The savage
undone things in me _won’t_ rest! They demand experiences, life--and no
one knows better, that they mean pain ... and oh--under your lamp--it’s
horrible to tell it, but you’ll forgive me later, when you see that it
had to be told----”
“What are you talking about, Pidge?”
“Under your lamp--in there! He came about a manuscript. He was broke
and needed help--all his stories refused. He asked to see me that
night. Miss Claes’ basement was occupied. She sent him up. We talked.
He wanted something, money, everything. Under your light--he took me
to him, his coat open----”
Cobden startled her, as he cleared his throat. The silence between them
had been so deep.
“It meant nothing to him! He was used to it. It was only his way to
get something--money most, he wanted. It was just as he might take a
waitress or hall maid--used to having girls ‘fall for’ him. This is
what I mean--though I understand him, a theatrical mind, a liar--life
meant something to me that instant, that it never meant before.
Something I must do, something calling--pain, but something I haven’t
done!”
“You mean--you mean--it isn’t over?”
“Just that, Dicky, and oh, forgive me! I may not see _him_ ever again,
but _something in me_ isn’t ‘over.’ I had to tell you--to be honest, to
learn to be honest. You’ll be glad some day!”
XVI
DICKY FEELS A SLUMP
IT was nearly a week afterward when Pidge heard sounds, not of meeting
only, but of mauling, from over the partitions of Richard Cobden’s
office at _The Public Square_. Her desk was now in John Higgins’ room.
The racket was “young”--something of the sort you expect in a college
fraternity house, rather than in the editorial rooms of a magazine of
dignified social protest and short story ideals. John Higgins winced
and glared. Now the stranger’s voice was upraised:
“You’re not seedy, Dick--you’re decayed! If Africa treats a man like
that, I’m off the Sahara for life.”
Pidge heard this with something of the sense of personal arraignment.
The ugly part was that it was true, and it hadn’t been the truth a week
before. Dicky had been changed when he arrived, but the change since
their ride home from his mother’s apartment in Fiftieth Street was
more definitely disturbing. She found John Higgins’ eyes upon her and
started guiltily. He leaned forward to whisper:
“It’s a fact. Something’s eating our Dicky. He’s losing his bounce.”
For once, Pidge did not altogether blame herself. There had been no
two ways about telling him what had happened under the light. She had
been challenged to speak on their first evening together after his
return, challenged every hour of the week afterward; and yet it was not
until after the words were out, spoken in her particularly ruthless and
unequivocal way, that she actually saw the power of their hurt.
In Africa Dicky had stripped himself of hope, in the most complete
way he knew. Africa is said to have a way of helping a man in this.
Doubtless he had winnowed this hope down to a semi-impersonal concept,
that straight, clean devotion would win its reward. But Africa alone
was one thing, and New York with Pidge was another. He had been
entirely innocent of the possibilities of pain his heart was capable of.
Still they went out together. They tried, furiously tried, but the star
toward which they had held their eyes, the star named _Camaraderie_,
was for the present out of their sky. She tried to give herself in
interest to his particular studies of world politics. His views had
nothing to do with intuition or prophecy. Dicky gripped affairs on an
academic basis of economics, and the only light he had to work with
in relation to the turmoil in Europe was from the same friction that
had furnished his sparks in Africa--the pain of his own heart. He told
her of the delicate and dangerous adjustments between the nations, as
he saw them; the organic play, the push and pull on every national
boundary; the draw of Russia upon India, for instance; the grim hold of
the British bulldog; the interatomic play of India, Ireland and Egypt;
the poison vats of the Balkans, the frowning menaces of the Levant. One
night he spoke of Italy’s inner and outer stresses, and of her age-old
hatred for Austria.
“And Pidge,” he said quietly, “you won’t mind my saying it, will you?
I see it all so clearly when I talk to you. I know you’ll tell me that
you don’t know anything about these things. You always tell me that,
but you certainly make me know them better.”
And another time when they were going out together in the evening and
she had come down from the upper floor with her wrap which he took for
a moment:
“I’m sure you won’t mind, Pidge,” he said, “if I tell you that the
little things you wear quite take me over. They actually hurt, and I
never saw you look quite like to-night.”
This was the quality--more like the words of an older man; a touch of
sentimentality upon them, as if he were diminished in her presence,
something in him so whipped it did not dare appear on the surface.
This was unpleasant to Pidge. The changeless want in his heart
suffocated her at times; then her affection changed to revolt. She
became irritable and uncentered, her temper hard to govern. She wanted
freedom--freedom for something utterly undelineated, but freedom to
Life (in Miss Claes’ meaning of that word of words) and she saw him in
such times as one who stood in her way.
One night in the little upper room, in her own particular time of
self-revelation, as Pidge lay on the borderland between sleep and
waking, she saw herself like an ogre, and Dicky Cobden like a terrified
child in a great house, and she was driving him from one room to
another, from one floor to another, to an inevitable cornering in the
farthest wing.
Finally an early October evening, and again his car had halted before
54 Harrow Street. Pidge sat beside him, but Dicky had not opened the
door.
“Pidge,” he said suddenly, “I’ve got to the end of my rope. I’m not
making good. I’m all blurred on what we’re trying to do. It’s--it’s too
much for me here.... I don’t want France or Flanders. I’m going into
the Near East for _The Public Square_ and a newspaper syndicate.”
“I knew it. I felt it coming, at least,” she said. “And I’ve failed,
too, all the time. But, Dicky, back of everything, I know there must
be somebody laughing at our seriousness and stupidity. We’ll see the
puzzle straight some time. You’ll see.”
They both were sitting straight up.
“Nobody’s--nobody’s shoulder?” he asked with terrible effort.
“No, Dicky. It would only fog us up--all the more.”
XVII
NEW LODGERS FOR HARROW STREET
PIDGE MUSSER was ending her second year in the editorial rooms of
_The Public Square_, when a short story came in from Rufus Melton.
Meanwhile, his work had begun to appear in magazines of large popular
appeal. This manuscript, called _The Boarded Door_, had doubtless not
fitted into any of them. The chief thing about the story to Pidge was
that her cheeks burned as she read.
This made her angry. Another thing, the story was so familiar to her.
She seemed to be in and out of Melton’s mind, hearing his typewriter,
understanding even his corrections. But also she saw what the author
could not--his fluctuations of fancy, which uncentered the tale.
“He’s beginning to be read,” said John Higgins. “It’s not a bad story.
We’d better take it.”
“It is not his best work. There’s a cavity in it,” said Pidge. “If it
were by a new name altogether, we’d write the author suggesting that he
work over the weak part.”
“Do it,” said John Higgins.
Pidge laughed nervously. “He won’t like it,” she said.
“Don’t mind that. Rufus Melton can write. He’ll have his hour, but go
ahead and scuttle the ship, young woman. We don’t care about pleasing
our passengers.”
Back at her own desk, Pidge was smitten with the idea that she wasn’t
being fair. In the course of reading Melton’s story, she had not once
forgotten that he had failed to pay back that fifty dollars. Not only
that, Rufus Melton hadn’t mentioned it; and he was said to be making
money right now. She had to write the letter to Melton three times.
Films of ice formed on the sentences and had to be skimmed off, in
spite of her most rigid effort. She carried the sheet, signed by “The
Editors,” to John Higgins, with a restless feeling that damage was done.
“That’s just like what Dicky Cobden would say,” he remarked, handing it
back. “Send it along with the manuscript.”
Pidge wasn’t allowed to forget Dicky Cobden, though Richard, himself,
was across the world and remained across, apparently groping to find
the exact antipodes from Washington Square, New York. Between Miss
Claes’ affection for him and John Higgins’ and Nagar’s; considering her
occasional use of his “parlor” in Harrow Street and her daily use of
his old desk in the office, to say nothing of the position she occupied
through his kindness and care--no, she wasn’t being allowed to forget.
About the same time that Rufus Melton’s story came in to the office, a
dingy bit of white paper came to Harrow Street for Pidge. It was like
a paper you would see in the street around a public school building.
Pidge was awed at the unfailing magic of the post-office authorities,
that the letter had ever been delivered. It was from Fanny Gallup, who
had married Albert and left the pasting table shortly after Pidge’s
change of fortune. Pidge had seen Fanny but once in the meantime, but
had asked her to write or telephone in case of need.
Pidge found the hall designated in the third floor of a condemned
building in Foley Street, and was directed to a door through which came
the sounds of a crying child. Her knock was answered, and the caller
gradually realized through the shadows that she was being grinned at.
She smiled back, wondering if the shoeless creature were Fanny’s sister
or mother. She wore no outer waist and a heavy plaid skirt that was
splashed with wash water. An infant shrank into the hollow curve of her
body, and another child sat wailing on the wet floor behind.
“I thought you’d come, Musser.”
It was Fanny herself. Pidge had crossed the threshold to look into
eyes in which hate and hunger moved in a narrow orbit; narrow like the
wet spot on the floor, in which the first-born played. Tired back,
draggled hair, merely a stretched and faded vestige of a girl was Fanny
Gallup now. Laugh and street talk were gone for the time, at least;
gone as Albert, the barber, as much a myth as ever, so far as Pidge was
concerned, though the place hypothecated a male parent. These three
remaining seemed purposeless bits of life which a perverted scheme
permitted to live on.
Pidge hated herself for becoming involved in the complication. For the
moment, she hated New York that could not keep itself clean. No rent,
no food, somebody else’s washing in the tubs, and the rags of Fanny and
her children unwashed.
“... No, it ain’t no good to think of staying, Musser, because they’re
tearing the buildin’ down.”
“How much rent do you owe?”
“Five weeks. But it ain’t no good to pay that, because I got to get out
anyway. Gawd, Redhead, you look like a doll in a window!”
“Is there any place around here where you can go?”
“It’s hard to get in with the two, and you’d have to pay a month in
advance,” Fanny said.
“How soon do you have to leave here?”
“Four days. That’s why I sent the letter.”
“Have you got any--anything to eat?”
“That’s why I sent the letter. That’s why they keep squalling all the
time.”
“I’ll be back before dark,” Pidge said, turning into the hall.
“You’ll--sure--come--back?”
“Sure,” called Pidge.
She returned with her arms full of groceries, and went home promising
to come back the next afternoon.
* * * * *
“... Bring them here. There is no other way,” Miss Claes said.
“But they’re not clean!” Pidge moaned. “They are too sick to keep
clean.”
“We can freshen them up a little,” said Miss Claes.
“But there’s nothing Fanny can do, unless the two children are taken
from her. I mean she’s held to the room with them now, and they’ve been
crying so long that they can’t stop. They both cry at once, and she
doesn’t hear them; they look and listen for a second and then go on
crying. If one stops, he hears the other. The place smelled like a sty,
and the packages of food I brought got wet and spoiled before they were
opened.”
“Forget about them until to-morrow, Pidge, and then get a taxicab and
bring them here. I’ve got a second-floor room toward the back.”
XVIII
AN OUTER CHANGE
MISS CLAES standing by the table in her own room heard a step upon
an upper stairway; not on the immediate basement stairs, but of
one descending from the second to the first landing. The tread was
deliberate. She heard it now in the hall directly above. Miss Claes
moved to the door, her hand against her cheek; then back to stand by
the table again. Now the step was on the basement stairs. A fire was
burning in her grate, and that was the main light of the room, for the
winter morning was very gray. The table was prepared for one--plate
and cup of ruddy gold, a cutting of white hyacinth in a purple vase.
The footsteps approached in the basement hall; a heavy bag was placed
down outside Miss Claes’ door; then Nagar appeared, a dark hat and an
overcoat upon his arm. He came forward, and the two stood together for
a moment.
“At least this once, I can serve you,” Miss Claes said.
Nagar smiled as he sat down to the table. Miss Claes went into the
kitchen and presently brought a pot of tea in a Chinese basket and a
covered dish. She filled a goblet from the water bottle, and stood
behind his chair while Nagar ate. The house was strangely silent.
Nagar arose. They stood together again for a moment by the mantel. He
spoke in Hindi, and she listened, like one already weary, hearing of
more things to do. Not until she smiled, did he turn away. She did not
follow to the door, nor look toward the window, as he passed up the
steps to the street. After a long time, she stepped to the cabinet for
a cigarette and lit it standing by the fireplace.
XIX
FANNY DRIES HER TEARS
FANNY GALLUP was taking life easy. She had not been separated from her
children, but relieved for the present from the hunger drive to support
them. Pidge helped to pay Fanny’s room and board, but didn’t miss the
fact that the main expense fell upon Miss Claes.
“There is a little fund back of me for just such cases, Pidge,” Miss
Claes said. “I rarely divulge the fact, but there is no reason in the
world why you should be inconvenienced.”
“Except that I brought her here----”
“I asked you to.”
“Except that she called on _me_ in her trouble, and I worked elbow to
elbow with her for four months, and she pulls out the very devil from
me every time I see her.”
“Your feeling of responsibility is what makes you what you are--I never
miss that, Pidge. If you weren’t so hard and straight on all the tricky
little matters of dollars and cents, you can be very sure I’d never
tell you my secret of secrets, about the fund.”
“I’ll have to pay what I can, if only because I hate to so. But I can
never pay for bringing her to your house.”
Miss Claes laughed. “That is only the way you see it. Fanny isn’t heavy
on us here. Not at all. It’s the dear, possessive Pidge that is hurt.
Do you suppose I am torn by what goes on in the rooms and halls? Not
torn beyond repair from day to day, at least. Fanny’s only a little
more simple than most, a little less secretive.”
“She’s unmoral,” Pidge declared solemnly. “The awful thing is, she
doesn’t learn. Life passes through her like a sieve, leaves its muck on
her, and she doesn’t learn.”
Philosophy seldom helped Pidge; she had heard too much of it, and money
was invariably a serious affair. In the California life there had
never been enough money for all needs. Adolph Musser was unable to do
without what he wanted, even though the immediate tradespeople of the
neighborhood were frequently forced to. The metaphysician relied upon
the Law of Providence to take care of them; and this had hacked and
hewed into Pidge’s disposition; this had meant red war to her soul up
to the last hour in her father’s house.
Here in New York the fight had been different. Even with Miss Claes
mysteriously back of her from the beginning, she had faced, in her
first few months in New York, the ugly candor of starvation. There was
established in Pidge both from Los Angeles and New York experiences,
a determination to fix herself unrockingly on her own feet in a
financial way; and now, just as she might have gotten a bit ahead, was
the expense of Albert’s children, and the claims of their mother, which
were getting to look as interminable to Pidge as a ninety-nine years’
lease.
Another trouble was that Fanny was beginning to show fresh traces of
her sense of the “fun of the thing.” Her spine was stiffening a little
with good food and rest, and curious little suggestions of starch
showed in lips and hair and breast that had been utterly draggled. She
was often seen hanging over the banisters; sure indication of renewal
of life and hope. She didn’t weep over the departed Albert; in fact,
Pidge Musser observed, as an added revelation of the hatefulness
of life, that Fanny was back on the scene looking for a man--not
earnestly, not passionately, but without compunction and entirely
unwhipped. Fanny granted that she was nobody, that she never had been;
but that was no sign why she should pass up anything that was going by.
Pain and hunger were forgotten like a sickness.
One night as she was coming in, Pidge heard Fanny’s low laugh on the
floor above, as she ran upstairs in time to shoo a lodger from Fanny’s
arms in the doorway. Then she followed into the littered room and a
light was made. The two women faced. The laugh remained unwithered on
Fanny’s cheerful face.
“Oh, Musser, you look so cross,” she panted.
“Don’t you remember--?” Pidge began.
“Remember wot?”
“What you were in that beast’s nest in Foley Street?”
“That’s what you always want, Musser, always want me to keep
rememberin’, just as I’m getting straightened out.”
The fashion of Fanny’s straightening out settled upon Pidge, as she
looked around the room. Its awfulness was beyond tears to her, even
beyond laughter.
“Fanny Gallup, if you bring another baby here, I’ll--I’ll----”
“There ain’t going to be no other baby here, Musser. I ain’t nobody’s
chicken like that.”
XX
THEY WALK IN CIRCLES
ONE day just as Pidge was finishing luncheon with John Higgins, she
was startled to hear Melton’s voice. He moved around their table with
a fling of his coat tails and held out both his hands. It actually
sounded, though she never was sure, as if he said something like, “I’ve
been looking everywhere for you.”
Pidge fancied a sort of rueful wonder on the old editor’s face, as he
announced his haste to get back to the office, and bolted out.... She
was recalling the baby carriage in Santa Monica. Melton’s face was
slightly broader, she thought, and the poise of young success was upon
it. One thing she had never known before was how remarkably well his
curly head was placed upon its shoulders. The neck was not merely a
nexus, but a thing of worth in itself, with arch and movement which
made him look taller and intimated something light and fleet, touching
memories which Pidge could not quite grip.
They were together in the street. Melton had asked her to walk with him
to his bank. He seemed on both sides of her at once, his hand drawing
her deftly this way and that through the crowd, his chat and laughter
in her ears, and an old indescribable weariness and helplessness in
herself.
“... Sure, I could have hunted you up. In fact, I would have done it
eventually, but I haven’t been in New York all the time; running back
west to get my stuff up, now and then.”
“I thought you lived in New York,” Pidge said.
“I keep an apartment in East Twenty-fourth Street,” he granted.
A lull for just an instant before he went on:
“You see, it’s handy to my publishers, and my bank is only a square or
two away.”
Pidge wished she could accept him for just what he seemed--the upstart
American in literature. She wished to forget everything else, save the
youth who said, in effect, “This is my bank, this is my solicitor,
this is my publisher.” But she could not smile her scorn and pass on.
She felt like the parent of a child showing off. Back of the tinkle
and flush of these big days of his, which he seemed to be drinking
in so breathlessly, she felt more than ever that thing about him
which was imprisoned. A thing it was that called to her, kept calling
beseechingly.
“I’ll never forget,” he said, speaking of the fifty dollars--“I’ll
never forget that night, when I left you--and the fog in the Square.
Everything was different, after that.”
“You didn’t go to Cleveland that night, as you said,” she declared,
watching the curve of his black lashes.
The eyes darted her way.
“Lucky, I didn’t,” he said. “God! How I wanted to! New York had me
bluffed that night, before you came to the rescue.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I was up close to Grand Central with my bag, when the idea struck
me--the idea that has since come out in the story series that has
caught on. I could hardly realize that I had your money. I kept it in
my hand--the hand in my pocket. That was a turning point in a life. New
York had frightened me pretty nearly to death--the hunger thing, you
know. All I wanted on earth was to crawl into that train for Cleveland,
but it was as if you were calling on me to stay.”
She turned in pain and amazement. He was looking straight ahead and
talking softly. She saw every twist and drive of his mind as he
dramatized the situation unfolding to him. He was deeply absorbed in
the pictures which his fertile brain uncovered one by one. It hurt her
like the uncovering of something perverted in herself.
“Don’t go on like that,” she said. “You’re not working now. You are
just walking in the street. You mustn’t make stories when you talk.”
He glanced at her sorrowfully, as one realizing in himself a truth so
big that he is willing to wait for it to be believed.
“It is God’s truth,” he said. “That was the turning point in my
career--that night--the night I turned back from the train. It was as
if you were calling me, and it was as if the idea came from you. I knew
I had to stay on and do the work here, close to the markets.”
She looked into his face and laughed.
“And you could forget me--forget the fifty dollars for nearly a year!”
“I don’t blame you for talking that way. I expect to be
misunderstood--not me, but the thing I stand for.”
She was hushed. Could he mean that he suffered in conscious conflict?
Could it be that he was aware at all of that imprisoned thing she saw
back of his eyes? He had halted, and now she turned again for him to go
on.
“I hoped that you, you of all, might understand,” he said. “Why, it was
from you that the whole thing started.”
He seemed actually to be making himself believe it. She felt herself
trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Do you know you’re changed?” he said, in sudden exultation. “Do you
know you’re five times as charming? What’s happened?”
“Nothing has happened,” said Pidge.
“It was the strangest shock, in the restaurant when I saw you. I knew
it was you, and yet you’ve put on something--out of the ordinary.”
“Oh, don’t.... I must go back to the office now.”
“The bank is just half a block. We’ve been walking in circles. I hadn’t
a check in my pocket.... I wanted to walk with you anyway. Do you
really have to get back to the office?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Couldn’t you--couldn’t we go down on the river or to a show somewhere?
I know what you’re thinking: that if this meant so much to me, how
could I let it go for nearly a year. But you’ll understand. You’ll see
what I mean and what I’m up against. The thing was too big for me to
rush in. I had to wait. But now that you’ve come, I can’t let you go.”
“I must go back.”
“To-night then. Couldn’t I meet you at _The Public Square_ at five and
have supper?”
“Oh no. I must go home--first.”
“May I call for you at Harrow Street, say at seven, or before that?
Say, couldn’t we go to that old restaurant where we went that night?”
This idea had come to Pidge before he spoke; exactly, perhaps, as it
caught his fancy.
“Yes, I could----” Pidge cleared her voice, and spoke again above the
roar of the street. “Yes, I could.”
Then because she had lifted her voice, she seemed to hear her own tones
unforgetably, as if her soul echoed back the words.
“But I must hurry back now,” she added.
“Let’s get this bank thing finished.”
But when they reached the door of the bank they found it closed for the
rest of the day.
XXI
THE DINNER COAT
JOHN HIGGINS came up through the newspapers and magazine editorial
rooms in those brave days when a typewriter did not always go with a
man’s desk, but a cuspidor nearly always. Even yet, the editor of _The
Public Square_ tucked a piece of fine-cut between his cheek and lower
jaw after breakfast in the morning, and forgot about it just so long
as it was there. The fact that he smoked from time to time caused no
inconvenience to the wad of shredded leaf. He complained of indigestion
and gave himself wholeheartedly to various forms of diet.
He kept Pidge Musser close at hand during these trying war days. His
former stenographer languished. John Higgins found a singular peace in
working with Pidge and was innocent enough to discuss it. He was an
old integer so far as women were concerned, never getting beyond the
rare confession (when a few drinks ripened his mind) that he had had
a mother once. He didn’t hate women; nothing like that. He had just
merely walked around them as you walk around the shore of an ocean. He
wasn’t born with a bathing suit and the idea of taking off his shoes
and stockings made him hoarse with fright. Pidge, however, had crept
in through the business door, and John Higgins awoke to find her at his
side.
Pidge found him like a somber relative of the elder generation, when
she returned from her hectic walk with Melton that afternoon, but for
once she could forget John Higgins easily. Twenty times in her mind, at
least, Pidge went over the talk and walk with Melton, her face often
turned away to the window with a sad but scornful smile. She thought
it out with hard sophistication, all that he had said of receiving
inspiration from her, but underneath she wanted it to be so; and deep
among the secrets of herself, she felt that what he said was possibly
truer than he knew.
Had he known that the bank would be closed? She would soon learn about
that, for he had promised to bring the check to-night. Even if he
didn’t, she could never forget that _calling_ to her, back of his actor
eyes--calling like a child of her own. New York whirled by below; the
manuscripts were piled high in front and side. A Mecca letter came in
from Richard Cobden, intimating that he might go to India. Even that
did not arouse John Higgins, nor startle Pidge Musser from the painful
web she was in.
Melton was at the basement entrance at seven. As Pidge went down to
meet him, Fanny Gallup was coming up. They met in the second hall.
Fanny stood in the gaslight, her arms open wide, her dress open at the
breast, her eyes laughing.
“I saw him, Redhead. He’s a God-awful, that boy. Don’t you bring no
little baby to this house! I won’t stand for it.”
* * * * *
Melton wore a black cape coat, a dinner coat beneath. Pidge felt as
if she had left all her light in the second hall. She was exasperated
with herself for pushing past Fanny and not taking the joke gracefully,
exasperated with Melton for togging up to come to Harrow Street, to
take her to that old eating house. Couldn’t he resist showing off for
just one hour?
Some awe seemed to have fallen upon him, or rather between them. In
silence they rounded the almost empty curve of Harrow Street, and
presently entered the crowds and lights and crashes of trestled Sixth
Avenue. On the corner, as they crossed Eighth Street, Pidge heard a
newsboy behind say, “There goes a movie actor.” Pidge deeply knew what
that grimed child-face had seen.... It troubled Melton to find the
restaurant, and she didn’t help, though she had located it a score of
times since that other night. At the table, while they waited, he took
a fifty-dollar check from his pocket and handed it over, saying that
the real part of the favor he would try to pay bit by bit through the
years.
“Because I’ll never get very far from you again,” he added queerly.
“Find it very funny, don’t you? Sit there chuckling, don’t you? You can
laugh, but it’s true.”
Now Melton began to ask for things which weren’t on the bill-of-fare.
He told the waitress how things should be prepared and served--this in
a side-street eating house, that specialized in beans and encouraged
counter trade. There were hard lines around the mouth of the waitress
which Melton commented upon, as she turned her back. Pidge had a
warning to hold her temper, and yet she would have died first.
“I’ve never worked in a restaurant,” she said, “but I’ve worked in a
factory, and I know what those lines come from. They come from dealing
with people like you, people who forget where they are, forget what
they come for.”
“How do I forget where I am?” he asked.
“Because you don’t know that this is a place where they serve ‘eats.’
‘Eats’ are cooked all one way. ‘Eats’ are served fast in business
hours, and the waiters sit around and gasp the other times, trying to
catch up with themselves. And you don’t know where you are, because you
try to show these people and me that you’ve seen how it was done in
uptown hotels.”
A trace of sullenness showed in his eyes, and then a warmth of almost
incredible delight.
“It’s great! I never was scolded in my life!”
“It wasn’t for supper alone--that wasn’t why I fell into the idea of
coming here,” she said. “You forget it entirely. You dare to come in a
dress suit--here--here!”
“Listen,” he begged, “don’t run away with that idea. I thought we might
go to a theater afterward. I didn’t think so much about where we were
going as I did that I was coming to you. I didn’t have anything better
than this to put on, and so I came this way.”
A moment before it had seemed the most righteous and perfect thing
under heaven to vent a few scathing remarks, but now she felt twisted
and diminished. Long and religiously she had tried to keep her rages to
herself. Neither spoke while the plates were being served, and then he
said:
“I was horribly out of true, in telling these people how to do it, but
I wanted it good for you,” he added simply.
She looked at him hard, but the intensity of her trying that instant
kept her from reading what was really back of his eyes.
“It’s plenty good enough for me,” she said. “I came here once when I
had only twenty cents to live on that day--I remember the stool, that
fifth stool, I sat on. I spent my twenty cents all at once,” she added,
“and the grub was so good that I could have wept in the arms of the
woman on the other side of the counter.”
“Was that when you were working in the factory?” he asked.
“No,” said Pidge, “it was before I got the job. I ate regularly after
that.”
“Where was the factory?”
“Oh, way up in the other end of town. I labeled tins, salmon tins,
baking powder tins, cocoa tins.”
“To get local color?” he asked.
“To get food. I sat at a big table with a lot of girls, and in the
hours and hours, in the monotony of the days, I found out how easy it
is to get hard lines around the mouth. I learned to understand just
enough to learn that I know nothing, and that’s a lot.”
She was thinking of what a tension she had been in to escape from Fanny
Gallup.
“I worked on a ranch in Wyoming,” Melton observed, “cattle ranch.”
“What were you doing on the Tunisian sands?”
“Just ramming around the world. I got in bad with an Arab sheik. It was
while running away from him that I got lost in the desert.”
She saw his eyes kindle in the prospect of narration, his faculties
forming a fresh tale, which she could not bear to hear that moment. She
forestalled his fruitfulness.
They were in the streets.
“No, I don’t want to go uptown,” said Pidge. “I don’t feel like the
theater to-night----”
“Wouldn’t you like a ride on the harbor? The ferries are empty this
time of night.”
“No, we’ll cross over to Harrow Street.”
“May I come in? There’s so much to say. It’s just--finding you
again--Pan.”
“Not to-night. I want to be alone.”
He didn’t answer. She felt a little better after that. She had thought
it might be harder to have her way. There seemed always something he
could not say behind his words. It wasn’t _all_ lies. It became clear
for a moment that he would follow after her--so long as she could run
ahead; that he would only turn away and forget when she paused to
breathe or play.
“I feel strange,” he said in the silence of Harrow Street. “It is
strange to-night. It’s like finding the house one has been looking
for so long--the house, even the door, but not the key. Pan,” he said
suddenly, “give it to me. Give me the key. It’s you--it’s yours----”
His strength was without strain, the strength that is effortless,
the strength of laughter. He had taken her to him suddenly, and she
dwelt in it, though resisting; something ecstatic, even in holding
out.... She heard voices in herself and faces flashed through her
mind--Cobden’s, Fanny Gallup’s--but her arms and shoulders and breast
knew a terrible sweetness from his strength. It wasn’t hateful. It was
like her own boy, not a stranger. His laughing face was nearer. It was
coming to hers. In the dark she could see it, eyes and eyelids, curving
nostrils and laughing lips. She knew something would die in her when it
touched ... that she was dying now of the slowness of its coming. She
ceased to struggle, and all that she had known and been arose within
her to meet his lips.
* * * * *
She was on the second flight of stairs. She almost prayed that Fanny’s
door would not open. She wanted to be in her own little room, the
smaller the better to-night--no touch or voice upon her. The key turned
in her trembling hand. She was safe, the door locked again. She stood
in the dark. Her lips moved audibly:
“Am I--is it because I am my father’s child?”
XXII
A LETTER FROM PIDGE
RICHARD COBDEN moved up and down the Near East for a long time, looking
for the men they had told him about in school and college--the men who
make history, and are said to contain in themselves the greatness of
their race. He sailed with sailors, talked with the diploma-ed talkers,
rode with soldiers. He found men who would do for their countries what
they wouldn’t do for themselves, but the energy of their fidelity to
their countries was balanced by their enmity toward other countries.
They gave themselves to the heresy of fighting one part of the human
family for the alleged enhancement of another. It took Dicky a long
time to change the brain tracks made in school and college, that the
names of history might _not_ be the names of men who walked with God,
whose intellects pained from sheer power. Nor was he spared from the
suspicion in all his discoveries, that he was the one who was wrong,
that he had become softly insane in the midst of new ideas.
* * * * *
When he essayed the thing Miss Claes spoke of at the Punjabi dinner--he
started something which he meant to live up to. The fact that it was
harder than he dreamed; an effort, in fact, involving dreary years,
hadn’t broken his resolution so far. One of the terms of the Punjabi
dinner covenant, for such it had become to him, was not to lose himself
in the easy way of hatred, nor to help himself to forgetfulness by
casting Pidge Musser’s image out. He knew that the “one” she had spoken
of was Rufus Melton. Through months, covering two years, the figure of
this young story-writer rose higher and higher in his consciousness,
as the person of the Enemy, himself. It was Melton, all unknowing, who
vanquished Dicky in his weaknesses, and at best was only kept at bay
in his strength. Not to cast her out, not to hate; to know the slow,
steady burning of the heart that is focalized upon a woman, and to
realize that this woman may be turning to another!
There were really extraordinary days of service in Arabia with young
Tom Lawrence, whose fame Dicky Cobden helped to make; desert days of
camel back and Turk fighting; desert nights of smoke and tea in such
starry stillnesses, that one almost expected the Christ to appear;
then, after many weeks, mail at Mecca, and one letter from John
Higgins, which was read several times:
... You have done several good things for _The Public Square_; but
you never did a better thing than wishing Miss Pidge Musser on our
editorial rooms. She’s brand new every morning. She’s honest, and a
worker. She has brains and a whole lot of psychic viscera, sometimes
designated as Soul.... Also she’s a stenographer. Never whispered
it until one morning when Maneatin’ Dollie was ill with the flu.
My letters were piled up. “Give them to me,” she said. I did that
thing, and I’ve been dictating my editorials ever since. It’s like
talking to an intelligent audience. When I get opinionated and lose
my balance, not seeing the other side of a question, this child sits
up and looks disturbed.... I’m sending you separately our Brooklyn
Bridge contemporary with a story called _The Salt Pit_. If it isn’t a
little man of a story--I don’t know one. Hers.... Of course, you know
why she didn’t give it to us. She thought I’d take it on her account
and not for the story.... And still we stay out of the War. They’re
sending over one big imperialist after another from London, trying to
get us in, and all that’s flunkey in Washington, rocks--but so far,
we’re only sinning commercially.... Give us more of the inky desert
nights, Dicky, and young Lawrence.
Dicky reached Bombay from Aden in the spring of 1917. He was now on his
way home, the long way around. He had told no one, but it had grown
upon him of late that he could relish a bit of New York after more than
two years. He coldly ignored in himself the tendency to thrill at the
thought of seeing Pidge Musser again. He had made a bit of a name for
himself as a reporter, but was known more as a first-class fact-getter
than a feature writer among newspaper men. Facts were sometimes so
bleak in his work that one had to possess real understanding and real
love for honest materials to find the inherent beauty and order. His
knowledge of international politics was now granted by all classes of
newspaper men, but he was known especially from his articles in _The
Public Square_ as one who exerted a steady pressure against America
entering the war.
To be cool was said to be Cobden’s religion. The stuff that he wrote
was cool and the words that he said. “I am a reporter, only,” he
occasionally explained. “I write what I see, not my own reactions nor
opinions.” He had come far in this doctrine, far enough to be trusted
by white men of place in Turkey and the Holy Land, in spite of his
curious scorn for war. He was somewhat slower now to get enthused over
human actions than he was when he left New York; his boyish humor had
become grim. He had seen the worst things men do, and written a few
of them. Though he had been through as much hard riding in two years
as any empire-building Englishman, he seemed to retain no personal
relation to his adventures.
Other men talked about him, however. There was something about the
American that made it easy for others to “sketch at him.” Tales of his
far chances with Tom Lawrence in El Hejas, for instance, had followed
him up into Turkey, but no one knew his tendency to nausea in a pinch.
Dicky had written a lot of big newspaper stories, but they were
stories of the day. He had packed the films of tense and frightening
and humorous moments away somewhere deep in his brain, to the end of
massing them all into one--one day doing the Big Story, that had to
do with finding a Man. That dream had held since the day he first saw
Nagar. But in his heart of hearts everything was a side issue--world
politics, world wars, newspaper stories, magazine stories, even the Big
Story of all--compared to the war in himself over a girl named Pidge.
He still had night sweats over the name of Rufus Melton.... A quiet
voice, a tired smile, a face darkened and dusty looking from exposure,
even after a clean shave--out of this face, usually shadowed by a big
cake-basket helmet of cork, shone a pair of steady eyes in a fine mesh
of dusty brown wrinkles--Dicky at twenty-eight.
He had scarcely stepped ashore at Bombay when he heard that the States
had entered the war. He touched the sleeve of an Englishman who was
looking up at the promenade deck of the ship with eyes and mouth wide
open.
“Tell me, I hadn’t heard,” Dicky said hoarsely.
“She’s in, but I must say, sir, she took a long time about it.”
“But that cannot be!” Dicky answered.
Now the Englishman stared, this being the peerless rebuke. Moreover,
he observed that the American had a sudden withered look, and presumed
that he was a mere upstart person. Accordingly, the Englishman refixed
his triple focus on the ship’s promenade deck, and Cobden tunneled into
the bus for the _King George_. There he verified the news. He went to
his room a bit whipped, quite a little bit whipped. He wanted to be
alone. For two years he had written and felt for America as only an
exile can. He had believed in her luck and native horse sense in the
midst of the mess other countries were making of their national lives.
Something snapped when he had been alone in his room for a while. It
was Dicky’s romantic allegiance to the country of his school histories.
For the present he was a man without national gravity, and a sick man
since some hot, hard-held part of himself had been ripped out.
He had missed his mail in Aden and left word for it to be forwarded to
Bombay on the next steamer. A cablegram from his newspaper connection,
rewired from Aden, not only counseled him to make haste to double back
to France (to be on the spot to greet the first American military
arrivals), but accepted it as settled that there was nothing else for a
man of his equipment now to do. The message was actually elate with the
“doings” ahead, but Dicky Cobden didn’t see it that way. The fact is,
he was sore, personally sore, at what had happened and didn’t care who
knew it. The following ship brought his mail, including a letter from
Pidge Musser, which he opened with an old and ugly fear, and in this
letter the worst that he had ever feared fell upon him:
... Oh, Dicky, there is no other way. I’ve tried to dodge it, but it
has to be told now, that I have taken Rufus Melton. Why did I do it?
I don’t know, unless it is that I am evil and unfinished and answer
to the evil and unfinished in him. He draws me terribly, but at the
same time, I am not deluded. There is never a moment with him that is
not unmixed with pain.... I wonder if you can believe that I did not
do this thing for happiness; that the happiest moments I have ever
known have come from my work with John Higgins and my friendship with
you? And can you ever believe that I am no farther from you now, in
that mysterious comrade way?... Oh, Life is not like books, Dicky,
not at all like what we are taught it is. I have a relation to him.
I answer some terrible drawing need--like a child crying for me.
But I have a relation to you, too, only different. You mean rest,
something done. He means the unfinished. He brings a mirror to me,
and says, “Look!” I want to scream, because the mirror brings out
all my defects. That’s what his presence means.... This is one true
thing, Dicky. The one who can rouse the most hell in your breast is
the one to whom you belong for the time. At least, that is true to
me.... Have I not been grateful for your stability? And have I not
been proud for your moving so quietly up and down the East, keeping
your surfaces clean for the world events to be pictured there without
twist or falsehood?... A strange door was opened in my being when I
was a child. In and out that door, whether I will or not, you often
come and go. “He is my friend,” I whisper, “my friend”----and repeat
it a thousand times.
XXIII
THE RED ROOM
LINE by line the thing was killing him. He got up and crossed the heavy
red carpet to the hall door and turned the key in the lock. He was
afraid some one would come in and find him. He had the strange power
of partly seeing himself, as the sullen horrors of hatred and revolt
boiled up in his breast. Vaguely, but quite well enough, he could watch
the man called Richard Cobden in the dim hotel room, the shoulders
hunched, the mouth stretched and crooked; unable to sit still, the face
wet with poisonous sweat.
The love had gone out of him, and with it, all the light he had. He
thought he had known pain and loneliness since leaving New York, but
all he had known was humming content compared to now, because there
had been a laughing idolatry for all her ways and words, a reliance
upon her that he had dared to call absolute. “Understand, understand!”
she had cried all through the letter.... Oh yes, he could understand.
She wasn’t what he had made her out to be--that was clear enough. He
had built upon something which wasn’t there. He had believed her to
be--built into himself the conviction--that she was the honestest thing
alive, and here she was----
His thought shot back to the night of the Punjabi dinner. That little
basement room was devastated before his mind, the table overturned,
the face of Miss Claes a mockery, the face of Pidge Musser--that of an
American girl found out. Into the center of his consciousness was now
flung his old promise not to hate.... He heard his own laughter. He saw
his own stretched and twisted mouth from which it came. Like a couple
of sly schoolgirls, they looked at him now--Pidge and Miss Claes--slyly
pulling together and duping a fat boy....
He saw his room key upon the table. Number Five, it was, the fifth
floor. He looked around the dim papered wall--whitish-red like the
pulp of raspberries--the deep upholstered chairs, the seats slightly
crushed, the full-length mirror, the ash tray, the silver flask on the
writing table, his own things here and there orderly enough--all but
himself, a sort of maniacal Mr. Hyde. Number Five. He would remember
this room where he had fought it out, too, about America entering
the war. He poured brandy into a whisky glass. The stuff eased him a
little. It made the pain all the more poignant, like a stove getting
hotter, but also it seemed to give him the power to move back a little
from the stove.... He stood up in the dark and shook himself.
“Oh, you ass!” he muttered. “You awful ass!”
In the light of a match, as he lit a cigarette long afterward, he saw
the rest of his mail on the table, one letter from Miss Claes. He
couldn’t get head nor tail out of that at first. She seemed to be
talking about something he had said about finding a Man. Oh, yes. He
had written from Mecca, mentioning Tom Lawrence and his search for a
Man. He snickered now at himself through the fogs of his own past and
present. Then a line seemed to stand up before his eyes. “... If you go
to India, go to Ahmedabad. Nagar is there. You are in danger of finding
your Man.” Later that night, still in the dark, his back straightened.
He laughed and said aloud, failing altogether for the moment to see the
absurdity of himself.
“Number Five--queer little old musty room, I wonder who died here?...
Good night, Pidge; good night, dear America--grand pair to tie to!”
The next day he cabled to his newspaper connection that he was not
returning to France for the opening campaign, at least; and wrote
to John Higgins that he didn’t expect to send in much stuff for the
present. “I may stay awhile in India--just looking around. She smells
like a typhoid ward, and needs orderlies.... I’ll, of course, let you
know what comes of my _spectating_.”
Still he did not start at once for Ahmedabad. He locked himself in
Number Five through the days and walked the streets of Bombay at night,
walked like a man in a strait-jacket. He wasn’t conscious of this at
first, until he began to feel an ache from the tension of his neck
and shoulder muscles and tightened elbows. When he forced himself to
relax, however, the torture of his thoughts was accentuated. He had
been holding himself rigidly to help fend off the destroying rush
of mental images. He walked himself into one sweat after another for
the nights were hot and humid. The point of all his fighting was to
keep Pidge Musser out of mind. Of course, he could not succeed. She
came in by every door. She came in softly, she came in scornfully, she
came in singing, scolding. Mostly she came in saying, “Why, don’t you
see, Dicky, I am nearer and clearer than ever?” Then it was as if an
isolated bit of shrapnel would explode in his brain.
His whole fabric of world politics was demolished. It looked to him
like a tapestry that has been hooked up out of a sewer--all that
careful weaving and balanced pigmentation! Before the day of the letter
he had prided himself that his building in the past two years was good
and strong. Now he faced the pitiful discovery that every block of his
building had been placed upon this platform: That even if he couldn’t
have her, no one else could. This smelled to him now. Forever after, it
smelled to him like the sewage lanes of old Bombay.
Dicky had a good body. After two weeks his physical vitality began to
steal back. The love was gone, but out of the debris of Subramini’s
Punjabi Fireplace, the face of Miss Claes came up faintly smiling
again. Another letter came from her, which he read in dismal irony
several times on the day before he took the train for Ahmedabad--the
last day in Number Five, with its wall paper of raspberry crush. He
couldn’t make sense out of the letter. She seemed to love Pidge, even
to respect her. Miss Claes wrote, “It gives me quiet joy to know
that Nagar is near you. It will be good for him and good for you. A
great dearness for you both goes from this house, as you sit and walk
together.” Miss Claes also repeated in her letter that “love never
faileth”----
All very pretty and possible, no doubt; it sounded good, but it was
no longer his sort of a project. This wasn’t for the product of three
generations of hardware merchants and manufacturers. Funny, he thought,
how he had ever accepted visionary stuff like this. He would write Miss
Claes some time how he had failed, but not now. On the night train, he
felt India closing about him really for the first time. Once when the
train stopped, he smelled the altogether indescribable earthiness of
hills that had been sun baked all day, now letting it be known through
the moistness of the night. It was vaguely like home to him; not home
in America, but home on earth again, the faintest symptom of his
reallegiance to life here, only known to one coming up out of sickness.
In the early morning he lay for a while after awakening in a sort of
bodily peace. It was as if he had really rested a little, as if he had
left behind some utterly miserable part of himself in the red room at
Bombay.
“A bit questionable,” he muttered whimsically, with the trace of a
smile, “a bit shabby and questionable to leave a bundle, a black bundle
like that, in Number Five--for some one else to stumble over.”
He fell asleep again and reawoke with a curious sentence on his lips;
something that he had forgotten a long time, something that Miss Claes
used to say: “Nobody knows Nagar--nobody.”
“Nobody ever will,” he added, “if he doesn’t talk any more than he used
to.”
Again at breakfast the faintest little quiver of organic ease stole
into him. The earth was very bright outside and the pot of tea that had
been brought tasted actually sane. He had the feeling of being on the
way somewhere, of having escaped something, as he watched India slip
by from the window of his compartment.... Then Ahmedabad, the station,
a Hindu in white garments, almost taking him in his arms--laughing,
talking like an American--Nagar talking!
XXIV
MISS CLAES SPEAKS
ONE Sunday morning about three weeks after the luncheon with John
Higgins, during which Rufus Melton came to the Chop House, Pidge found
Miss Claes alone in the basement front.
“We’d like to come here to live. Is there any chance?” she asked.
“Yes, it can be managed, I think.”
Pidge regarded her with a kind of cold fixity and added: “We were
married night before last. Rufe seems willing enough to come here. I
hate to leave this house, but I didn’t think you had the rooms.”
“I’ll make a place for you; a little place, at least. But, Pidge----”
“Yes?”
“Why haven’t you come to me all this time?”
“I know how fond you are of Dicky Cobden. I haven’t hoped any one could
understand.”
“Being fond of Richard Cobden doesn’t make me less fond of you.”
“How could I expect you to understand me, when I can’t understand
myself?” Pidge demanded. “I am two people, and they are at war.... No
use lying about it. I fell for him, knowing him all the time. Not for
a minute did I lose track of what he is. But I wanted him. Something in
me answered--that’s all.”
“I’ve always loved that honest Pidge,” said Miss Claes.
“Think, if you like, that it’s part of the evil in me that talks this
way about him, but I am talking about myself, too.”
“You could never see all this clearly--without ‘falling for’ him,
Pidge.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it would remain a hopeless, unfinished puzzle--if you had run
away from Rufus Melton.”
“I couldn’t run away. I wanted him,” Pidge repeated. “But there’s
another side. There’s something in him that I seem to have known from
the beginning--something like a little child that I left somewhere ages
ago. It keeps calling to me from his eyes, and I leave everything to go
to it--everything that Dicky means and the world, even writing--I leave
all that. And yet when I go, when I go to his arms, I lose the purpose.
It’s as if the child that I run to--the irresistible thing that calls
to me from his eyes--stops crying and stops needing me! Then I suddenly
know that it must need me and not be gratified, ever to be helped. Oh,
no one on earth could understand that. It’s insane.”
“But, Pidge, I do understand.”
“How can you?”
“Because I have loved like that, because I have had experience. I loved
an English boy in the same way--oh, long ago. I love him still, but I
could not stay with him, because he--why, Pidge, it is just the same.
He needs to cry for some one, for something, otherwise he remains
asleep in life.”
“You’re saying this to help me.”
“What I’ve lived through _should_ help you. It was the hardest thing
I’ve ever known--that I couldn’t forget everything and have him, just
two alone in the world. But when I went to him, he was satisfied and
looked elsewhere. I almost died of revolt.”
Pidge’s eyes were very wide. “And when you didn’t go to him?” she said
in slow tones. “What happened then?”
“It was then that he remembered and reminded me that I was half-caste.
Also he looked elsewhere, just the same.”
“And you still love him?”
“Deep underneath--that is not changed.”
“But what is Nagar?”
“Nagar means the other world, Pidge--a new heaven and a new earth. He
means the not-wanting love, the willing-to-wait love----”
“I’m not like that,” Pidge said with old bitterness. “I want love in a
room! I want to shut the world out. I don’t want the love of the world,
but love that’s all mine. And I can’t--I can’t have it!”
She was breathing deeply, staring at the fire.
Miss Claes glanced at her wistfully a moment, her lips faintly smiling.
The girl’s face had never been so lovely to her. It was like land
that has had its rains after long waiting--soft blooms starting, an
earthy sweetness rising in the washed sunlight. The beginnings of both
laughter and tears were in Pidge’s wide eyes; her red-brown hair, from
which the henna was long forgotten, had an easy restful gleam in its
coils.
“Why, Pidge,” Miss Claes said at last, “you’re like one who has been
born again. It’s wonderful. I had almost forgotten what that love does
to a woman, at first--for a little, little time.”
“And you knew that kind of love--with the English boy?”
“Yes.”
“And Nagar knows.”
“Yes.”
Pidge shivered.
“... Rufe brings the fight to me, makes every undone thing rise
and live! He brings the most terrible disappointments, the crudest
disorder, yet that which would pay for it all, if I were just a simple
peasant woman, is denied. Why can’t we shut the door and just live? Why
can’t there be a kingdom for two?”
The form was soft and gliding in Miss Claes’ arms. The
square-shouldered little figure of the mill and office girl had
become almost eloquent with its emotional power. After a moment Pidge
straightened, her face staring into Miss Claes’.
“Why don’t you answer?”
“I can only say, Pidge, you are called to learn the next step, the next
lesson in what love means. You want the love that has two ends, but the
Triangle is ready for you. Oh, many are learning the mystery of the
Triangle. It hurts so at first, but it lets the world in--the bigger
meanings of life.”
Pidge shivered again. “Is it blasphemy,” she asked, “that I feel just
as close to Dicky Cobden--as ever?”
“No more than the finding of bread would spoil your taste for water.”
* * * * *
Pidge said at last:
“Oh, I don’t want to leave this house, Miss Claes. He says he’ll come
here, too.”
“I’ve been thinking of putting a bathroom on the third floor. There’s a
tiny empty room like yours across the hall. The bath shall be installed
there. You know I’ve kept Nagar’s room empty. It is pleasant and larger
than yours. I’ll have a door cut through the partition, and with a bath
across the hall you will do well enough for a time.”
“You would give us Nagar’s room?”
“Nagar has the key to the whole house,” said Miss Claes.
* * * * *
Moments afterward, Pidge’s strong fingers closed over the hands of the
other.
“No one can know how it hurts me--to think of Dicky----”
“He is with Nagar now.”
“Do you think--can it be possible that Nagar will help him--as you help
me?”
“Nagar and the Little Man,” said Miss Claes.
XXV
“BE IT EVER SO HUMBLE”
THEY were ensconced in the two upper rooms. Pidge kept up her work
at _The Public Square_, and did not come home for luncheon. She had
told John Higgins of her marriage but the subject was not mentioned
afterward. The old chief vanished for three days following the news,
and when he came back there was a new dignity on his part for Pidge
to cope with. She found her position a trifle uncentered. His old
stenographer took his letters, and he wrote his editorials on his own
machine as aforetime. John Higgins said little, but found flaws in her
judgments that had not appeared before. He no longer risked availing
himself of her entire equipment; this change being apparently on the
basis that he dare not get used to it all over again. He seemed to hold
the idea that it was only a question of days at most before a married
woman would forget place and town entirely and rush off to pick up
pieces of wool and thread for a nest.
Pidge had built so much of herself into her work that there was
emphatic pain in the new conditions. She needed the work more than
ever now, but _The Public Square_ was falling into sorry days and
ways. There was nothing to say but War, and if you didn’t like War,
didn’t see the divine uses of War and say so, you had better say
nothing. There was no field in the world at this time for a magazine of
dignified or any other kind of protest, and in the steady loss of money
week after week, the struggle became one of great simplicity--to stay
alive.
“Higgins is a rotten old knocker anyway,” said Rufus Melton. “This is a
time for Americans to stand together and not criticize the government.
He never did pay any real money for his stuff, but was always ready to
tell you where you fell down. They’re telling him a word or two now.”
So Pidge didn’t speak much of _The Public Square_ at home.
Rufus vibrated between a depression when his stuff wouldn’t come
through and an exaltation when it did. He was quite sincere in his
industry, but slept late in the morning. Pidge was up and away four
mornings out of five without waking him. Sometimes Rufe decided to eat
his “big meal of the day” in the middle of the afternoon, in which
case Pidge supped alone. He was slow to get his work started, so that
it was often evening before he got “all of himself working at once.”
Then he was apt to stay with it for several hours, in which case Pidge
could sleep if she got a chance. Occasionally he found that he could
dictate a bit of first draft and Pidge undertook at first to help him
in this way, but when she perceived that it didn’t occur to him, in the
flush of his evening powers, that she had worked all day and must work
to-morrow, she decided to stay off his night work.
“I can’t, Rufe,” she said one night on the way to bed. “It’s so
fascinating to practice napping in the hushes and rushes of your
machine.”
“You won’t take this stuff?”
“No.”
“You won’t?”
“It will interfere with your work session if you lose your temper. Of
course, we’ve got the whole upper floor to start something in, but we
must think of your story.”
“Whose work counts in this outfit?” he demanded.
“Yours, Rufe, by all means. A fine patriotic short story at any price.
But I have a job to look after, and I can’t give them a red-headed
somnambulist to-morrow. No, I’m going to sleep, but I do hope you get
the American flags waving all right in your story.”
“I’ll get you, Pan--for acting like this.”
“You’ve got me, dear, and don’t forget to have the hero come through
with, ‘My country right or wrong.’ No girl can resist that--or editor.
Good night.”
Rufe was rarely rough. He didn’t overtire or over-stimulate himself, so
that his temper could easily break corral; and at its worst this temper
wasn’t a man-eater. Rufe’s nervous system was cushioned in a fine layer
of healthy fat, and therefore didn’t flog itself to madness against
bare bone and sinew. He was merely involved in himself entirely, which
makes any man naïve.
Pidge wasn’t missing any of the petty dramas of her present
experience. When she came home the first time to find that he had
already had dinner, something flew out of her into space in a frantic
search for God. When she realized that he saw nothing but undisturbed
equity in the idea of using her for his own work purposes half
the night, when she was contracted to _The Public Square_ for the
days--another output of herself was loose in the solar system. When she
came to understand that the tens he was earning were mysteriously his
own, and that her ones were theirs--another day, at least, was spoiled
for her in the editorial rooms.
Rufe thought her extremely selfish. So had her father. “Two to one,”
she said. “They’ve got it on me. They’ve got it on all of us. This
is their world.”... She thought of all this bitterness and bickering
taking place in Nagar’s room, which Miss Claes had saved for weeks
for a sort of sanctuary of her own. Mostly she was hurt by the deadly
parallel of this life, with her life in Los Angeles and vicinity. To
cope with this American story-man, she was forced to draw out and
readjust and refurbish the old hateful mechanism that had formed within
her during the nineteen years with her father. She knew how. The
mechanism worked all right, but the sense of the hateful thing resuming
activity within her was far harder to bear than the racket of Rufe’s
typewriter when she was trying to sleep.
The fact that Rufe Melton was entirely cut off from the play of her
real powers; that he thought her ridiculous, and said so, when she gave
any notice of holding other than the standard American points of view
on politics and religion and social ethics; this was not so serious a
breach between them, as it would have been to a woman who had not come
into so startling a reaction as Pidge had, against the whole system of
knowing and not doing. All the knowledge that really mattered to Pidge
was that working doctrine which doesn’t announce or explain, but shows
itself in living the life. She was very sad, and continually sad, that
she had to work upon Rufe the iron of irony, the stab so subtle that it
astonishes before it hurts, and the self-control which disarms.
Sometimes Sundays or in unexpected periods of leisure they had moments
of actual delight together. This occasionally happened when food just
pleased him, or when an acceptance from a magazine arrived at a price
which he considered adequate. (Rufus never neglected the price of his
things, as an indication of his getting on.) He uncovered a real levity
at such times, and their talk didn’t walk merely, then; it danced.
“We’ll go up to Harlem,” he said one Sunday morning. “I used to live up
there in the colored settlement----”
Figuratively speaking, Pidge waved her hand before her own eyes to
shut out the critical negatives which always arose when Rufe told of
living somewhere. They went and stayed gay. When he turned from her
innocently to consult a policeman in Harlem, she checked the first and
last, “I told you so.” They found yams that day--yams freshly arrived
from Georgia, and coffee said to be parched and dripped according to
an ideal of New Orleans first families. These satisfied Rufus, and
still they stayed gay. Even his, “I could take you around to a lot of
queer dumps in this man’s town,” didn’t upset anything. Altogether that
day was memorable.... Once in desperate fatigue, when there were moving
dark spots before her eyes in every ray of daylight, Pidge cried to
Miss Claes:
“But he is lost to everything, entirely oblivious to everything but
himself and his work--his stories, his fame, his winning his way!”
“I know, Pidge, but the world is on top of him yet. He is fighting his
way up and out. Romance can’t be entirely satisfying, you know, when it
has ambition for a rival. You’ve told me something about the thrall of
a book in yourself--how engrossing it is.”
“That all goes out of me when I’m with him,” Pidge said suddenly. “I
never thought of it before, but all that old agony to produce another
book that I used to feel is gone. I seem to let him carry all that.”
“That helps for the present, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, and it isn’t all sordid--don’t think I mean that, Miss Claes.
Sometimes when he’s satisfied with his story, so that he can forget it,
we have such good times. He’s such a playboy, such a playmate. Some old
terrible longing comes over me when we are close like that, just to be
like one of the Mediterranean women, who know nothing but to replenish
the earth. But it doesn’t do to dwell on that,” Pidge finished with an
impressive quietness of tone. “One thing I learned rather well, before
it was too late.”
“What’s that, Pidge?”
“That this isn’t the time or place for us to bring a little baby into
the world.”
XXVI
THE HANGING SOCK
NAGAR was changed. On the day that Richard Cobden reached Ahmedabad,
he encountered one of the surprises of his life. It was like meeting
a man out in the freedom of the world, whom one had only known before
in prison. Two years in the East had sharpened Dicky’s eyes to note
something in Nagar’s face that he had been unable to detect before.
Dicky called it cleanliness and calm, but this brought up the old
difficulty which he never missed in his work of writing--that at best,
words only suggest, only intimate.
In America Nagar had looked dark; here he looked fair. There he had
moved in and out as one of the colored men; here he was one of the
elect. There he had lived in the midst of silences and mysterious
inhibitions, diminished by the garments of Western civilization; here
he was white-robed in the sunlight, like young Gautama in his father’s
garden. Of course, Dicky knew that the change was more substantial than
that of garb or place. He could only repeat that Nagar seemed free in
his own mind.
In the first few moments at the station in Ahmedabad, Dicky had himself
felt unwashed and unwholesome, as no man ever made him feel before.
His hand went up to his chin. Yes, he had shaved that morning, but
realizing it did not help much. It wasn’t the grime of travel that hurt
him, but the smear of his recent mental and emotional overturning, the
ugliness of all those days in the red room at Bombay, and the sense
of failure and loss he lived with constantly since the coming of the
letter from Pidge.
“... And the Little Man is actually here in Ahmedabad, and not a myth?”
Dicky had asked, as they drew out of the crowd at the station.
“Not only that, but you are to go to the _Ashrama_ now, if you will. He
is eager to have you come.”
“His house first?” Dicky asked.
“It is also the house in which I live,” said Nagar.
“You mean you wish to put me up in your quarters?”
“If you would not mind our great simplicity.”
“Thanks, I should like that,” said Dicky, “but I think it would be
better for me to follow the usual course of a foreigner and find hotel
quarters.”
The _Entresden_ was not crowded and Dicky obtained comfortable quarters
in a northeast room where the upholstering was covered in clean tan
linen, and the _punkahs_ showed signs of life immediately upon their
entrance. Nagar prepared to leave as soon as Dicky sat down in the air
crossing between two shaded windows.
“I will come for you this afternoon if you wish to go to the _Ashrama_
to-day,” he said. “It is some distance from the center of the city.”
“Sit down, Nagar; don’t hurry off.”
“I thought you would prefer to rest until after _tiffin_.”
“Stay and we’ll have it here. You’ll pour the tea like the old days in
Miss Claes’ room.”
Nagar’s face was in the shadows, but there was a soft shining as of
polished silver in or around his eyes. At times, shutting his eyes as
Nagar spoke, Dicky could almost believe he was back in the basement
at Harrow Street. The way Nagar said to him, “my friend,” was almost
Miss Claes herself. That was the poignant part of finding the Oriental
again; that he brought back Harrow Street--even moments under the white
light. The day would have been joyous but for the aching emptiness of
heart. Dicky asked tirelessly about Gandhi, especially since it gave
him such a chance to study the new Nagar.
“Mahatma-ji has burned away all waste,” Nagar said at length. “He
has narrowed himself down, body and mind, to an almost perfect
obedience--self-control. He measures action to all his words. The best
he knows, step by step, he performs.”
“Where did you hear of him first?”
“Here in India--of his work in South Africa. I went there to know him
better--followed the gleam, as you might say. I stayed four years. It
was he who encouraged me to go to America to study more of the spirit
of the West.”
“What’s Gandhi’s message to these people?”
“He believes that politics cannot be successfully divorced from
religion,” Nagar said. “His message always is toward the spiritualizing
of India’s political life and her institutions. The spiritual
predominance of India, which he idealizes as being the real destiny of
India, can only be effected by her rebecoming herself, by the return of
the Motherland into herself, by her ceasing to imitate all the ways of
western civilization.”
“But if she returns into herself, making her own goods, cutting herself
off from all institutions of the present government--England will be
done for here.”
Nagar bowed without the trace of a smile.
“I’ve heard that every turn of a spinning-wheel in India takes part of
a turn from a power loom in Manchester,” Dicky added.
Nagar further acquiesced.
“And that isn’t politics?... I think I’ll go in for religion, myself.”
* * * * *
“It is very good to have you here,” Nagar said later. “Mahatma-ji will
also be glad. He has asked much about you and believes that you may be
a means of making many in America understand. It is a saying with us
here that ‘to understand is to love.’”
“But I didn’t come here with any set idea, you know.”
“The work you will do for us in America will be the better for that.
The more reason and rationale you bring----”
“Evidently it’s easy for one to go off his head where Gandhi is,” Dicky
said.
“His effect on some is subtle and strong.”
“I’ll keep a stiff bridle arm. Say, Nagar, have you stopped to think
how I happen to be here to-day?”
“Tell me, please.”
“One hanging sock.”
“I do not understand.”
“One hanging sock. It was that which made me go out into the reception
room in the first place, that day you brought the story to _The Public
Square_. I heard the office boy say to J. H., ‘He keeps pulling up his
sock.’ I went out to see. So that’s what made me go to Harrow Street,
and meet Miss Claes and the rest and go to Africa, and come here. I
believe that’s what started the World War.”
Nagar laughed. “I always had such trouble in the early days with
American clothing. I would get one part working and another would give
way----”
“But, Nagar, what made it so imperative for you to have the two hundred
that day?”
“A ship was leaving within twenty-four hours for the Mediterranean to
connect with South African ports. Mahatma-ji was greatly in need of
funds to carry on his work.”
“I thought you were ill--possibly starving.”
“I was ill from strain--self-consciousness. It was one of the hardest
things I ever had to do--to stand up against America in the office of
_The Public Square_.”
“You certainly put it over. But what made you so silent in New York?
It’s an actual shock to find you chatty and human, like this.”
“Certain of us in India are trained differently from American ways. You
perhaps have read that in the Pythagorean schools, a period of silence
was enjoined among the young men. It was so in my training. We seek to
silence all opinions, all half-truths, all thinking, in fact, in order
to _Know_. We postulate, of course, a center of Spontaneous Knowledge,
or Genius, above the mind. To learn obedience to this, one takes a vow
of silence----”
“Ah, I remember! Pidge--Miss Musser--I mean Mrs. Melton, told me
something of the kind!”
XXVII
THE MAHATMA AND THE MIRACLE
COBDEN heard the voice before he saw the man. Standing in a darkened
hall of the bungalow, spoken of as the _Ashrama_, the voice of one
speaking English in easy cultured tones reached his ears. When the door
opened, he saw several native young men sitting upon the floor and a
wasted Hindu figure in the center--a little man in a thin turban more
like a skullcap; a homespun loincloth, his bare feet beneath him upon
a mat of coarse cloth, a rough pillow at his back. The young men about
him had risen, but the central figure merely lifted and extended the
hand.
“Mr. Cobden from America,” Gandhi said. “Nagarjuna has made us eager to
welcome you.”
Even Nagar withdrew, but one of the boys returned bringing a chair.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll try sitting on the floor, too,” Dicky told the
latter. “I’d feel perched with Mr. Gandhi sitting below.”
The Mahatma smiled. “I quite appreciate,” he said. “I hope you will
find in India the same kindness that you gave Nagarjuna in New York.”
Dicky had expected power; he found composure. His idea of power was
perhaps in part a hang-over from a boyish ideal of a certain American
financial executive. Nothing of that in this room; rather he was
conscious of Gandhi’s frailness and smallness. This presence called
forth impulses to be tender, to lower one’s voice, to hurry to bring
anything wanted. He was shocked a little at the twisted, battered
look of the features. The lips looked pulpy in parts and did not rest
together evenly. The smile was curiously slow--tentative, like one in
whom understanding dawns. Back of the iron-rimmed spectacles and tired
eyes, so inured to pain, was the essence of fearlessness. This was the
first commanding characteristic to the American.
* * * * *
“... Fear,” Gandhi was saying, “fear of death makes us devoid both of
valor and religion. There is no place for fear in the _Satyagrahi’s_
heart.”
“What is a _Satyagrahi_?” Cobden asked.
“One who is devoted and pledged to truth, to _Satyagraha_. I coined the
word, to express our purpose in South Africa. _Satyagraha_ is the use
of Love-force or Soul-force.”
Curiously, Dicky felt the cleanness of the house, the peace of it, the
humming of a _charka_ in the next room, a symbol of that peace. He felt
Gandhi’s face growing upon him out of the shadow, a face that had been
dried cleanly by many suns, the features fashioned by a life of direct,
unpredatory thinking--the face of a man incapable, even in thought,
of hitting below the belt. And now, there was to go with the hum of
the _charka_, the faint fragrance of dried fruit in the air, or that
sweetness one breathes in the altitudes where the sun is shining upon
the great conifers.
“The world has talked much of the omnipotence of God,” Mahatma-ji went
on. “India, at last, is preparing to put her faith to test. Passive
resistance has been called the weapon of the weak; if this is so,
the Soul is weaker than the flesh. Passive resistance calls upon its
devotees to endure great suffering, even martyrdom and death. Those who
believe it is too difficult to carry out do not trust the Soul. They
are not moved by true courage.”
There was no pose nor show, no straining for force, rarely an adjective
or simile, no shadings of sense--a direct approach, inevitably direct.
Dicky felt suddenly hopeless of ever understanding such directness. For
the first time in his life, he realized that all his training to live
and to write was less than straight. He had been taught half-tones,
shadows to accentuate lights. Here was directness.
Gandhi resumed: “It is the sacred principle of love which moves
mountains. To us is the responsibility of living out this sacred law;
we are not concerned with results.”
“No such thing then as righteous anger?” Dicky asked.
“There is not for us. Anger is the misuse of force. Anger in thought is
an enemy to clear thinking, to understanding. To understand is to love.
Anger in action tends to become violence, and violence is the negation
of spiritual force. In fact, only those who eschew violence can avail
themselves of their real powers. Only those who realize that there is
something in man which is superior to the brute nature in him, and that
the latter always yields to it, can effectively apply this force, which
is to violence, and therefore to all tyranny, all injustice, what light
is to darkness. For the exercise of the purest Soul-force, prolonged
training of the individual Soul is an absolute necessity.”
Just now Dicky was contending with the feeling that he was in the
presence of an evangelist or healer. He had difficulty for the moment
in recalling that Gandhi was world-trained; a lawyer of London’s
careful making; an opponent of governments in South Africa; a man
found powerful enough in his own person to be reckoned with by the
established laws of men of high place.
“We have many things to ask of England,” Gandhi said, “and she has
promised us her attention, as soon as her present difficulties give her
freedom of heart and hand to attend our wants here. To press our wants
now, or to force our desires upon England in her crisis in Europe,
would be taking an unfair advantage. So this is a time for us in India
to cleanse and prepare ourselves for future action, sacrifice if
necessary----”
At one moment Gandhi’s face was dull and unattractive as a camel
driver’s; again it shone with a high clear calm, like the ideal most
of us have of a saint or a priest. Now the instant came, as the words
stopped, that Dicky seemed to be looking into the Indian face actually
for the first time, and Gandhi was looking _into_ him. The American was
uncentered for a second or two, as he had once felt in the quick sag of
an airplane in a bit of rough going.
It began to become clear to the caller that there were only a few
constantly vibrating themes in this man’s talk: the necessity for
nonviolence; the control of self, essential before the control of
others can be contemplated; the establishment of altruism as a basis
for all political activity; the return of India into her own destiny of
a handicraft civilization, which involved the making and using of her
own goods and the turning of her back upon the “monster of a mechanical
civilization”; freedom of speech, devotion to truth, fearlessness,
always that.
Dicky now actually contemplated the look of unearthly calm in the
eyes of the man before him. Was it fanaticism--this fearlessness
which Gandhi put into practice? Was there a soul-calm back of the
human nervous system, a central calm that a man could reach and abide
in, that made anything negligible that men might do to the body? Was
there something really that Miss Claes and Nagar and this man talked
about--something that went on and on, that loved one’s enemies, that
loved one’s love, no matter what this life effected to keep them apart?
Was it worth going after, since every ordinary viewpoint seemed changed
in those who had touched it?... Surely India was getting him going--he,
Dicky Cobden, of the family of trowel makers! In amazement, he realized
that he was responding to some stimulus like the finest wine--that if
he didn’t get out of here soon, he would fall to telling his troubles
like a man who has had too many drinks.
Gandhi was speaking of his workers and devotees here in Ahmedabad; the
manner of their life together:
“So in our _Ashrama_,” he explained, “every child is taught to
understand political institutions and to know how his country is
vibrating with new emotions, with new aspirations, with new life.... As
for men and women living and working together in the _Ashrama_, they
must live the celibate life whether married or unmarried. Marriage
brings a woman close together with a man, and they become friends in
a special sense, never to be parted in this life or in the lives to
come; but I do not think that into that place of life, our lusts should
necessarily enter.”
Dicky had scrambled to his feet from the floor.
“I won’t take your time any more just now,” he mumbled haltingly.
Mahatma-ji watched him with a look of gentlest understanding.
Dicky backed out. He was in the street alone.... The young men had
not restrained him in the slightest. They had seemed to understand
that he must be alone. Even Nagar had only walked at his side a
moment in the hall, to say that he would come to the _Entresden_
after dinner.... He was alone in the outskirts of the city with the
miracle. Somewhere among Gandhi’s sentences about men and women, it had
happened--somewhere in there, when he had spoken about--yes, that was
it, “about friends in a special sense!...”
A pariah dog yelped, running out of a doorway, almost banging into his
knees. He was in a narrow street, and had to step upon a doorsill,
while two men passed dragging at a cart. He saw their bare ribs and
salt-whitened loin cloths. The sun was still high; the stillness and
heat almost fetid in the byways. He passed a native market place by the
river, and out of all the moving multicolored crowd, he remembered only
one parasol of jade green, though he did not see the face beneath.
His American-trained mind scoffed against the thing that had happened,
but his heart held on serenely.... What did this little world-warrior
with the battered mouth know about love and living with a woman? What
did he know about lusts that he spoke so freely of? Did he ever give
three years of his life to the one battle--not to hate the woman he
loved most under heaven? Or was that particular battle so far back in
his experience that he merely spoke of it as one skirmish in the great
campaign of fifty years, called Life?
Alone at dinner at the _Entresden_, Dicky conned every word the Little
Man had spoken about the young married people who worked together in
the _Ashrama_, of the celibacy they vowed themselves to, of their
becoming through marriage “friends in a special sense--for this and all
lives.” Yes, Gandhi talked as if it were a foregone conclusion that
there were other lives....
He wasn’t tasting his dinner.... He came up from the deeps of
reflection to realize a waiter was coming toward him, as if in answer
to a signal. He also discovered that he had been sitting over his
filled plate with one hand lifted--the thumb and fingers brushing
together, as if he were close to _her_, and it was a bit of her dress
or a wisp of her hair between his fingers. His mind could scoff all
it pleased, for his heart held serenely to the miracle, and this was
the miracle: that Pidge Musser, married or not married, was back alive
in his heart; and such a melting pity for her plight had come to him
as he sat before the Little Man, that he, the hardheaded, had to rise
abruptly from the interview and rush away, lest he fall to weeping and
explaining all.
XXVIII
THE RACK OF SEX
DICKY and Nagar sat under the _punkahs_ in the room at the
_Entresden_--that stillest, hottest night. A fierce stimulus
was driving the American. Moment by moment he realized it more
clearly--that his love had come back to him, or some strange new fire
from it, as he had talked with Mahatma-ji. It compelled him, mind and
emotion now, and his questions were insatiable, but he was slow and
roundabout in getting to the core of matters that fascinated.
“For instance, what makes him starve himself?” Dicky asked.
“He has no illusions about fasting,” Nagar answered. “Mahatma-ji
objects to the distractions of the body. He keeps down this drum of the
senses by severity of handling, an old well-tried way of the East. Ask
an expert horseman what to do with a spirited saddle horse that has
a tendency now and then to take the bit and run away. ‘Cut down his
grain, and he will be easier to handle,’ you will be told.”
Dicky was groping feverishly within himself as the other talked. “But
what has celibacy to do----” he halted and finished, “with politics and
all that?”
“Mahatma-ji has made himself free from the rack of sex and the drum of
the senses--enough to realize his great work for others, for India. We
who follow him wish to do the same. We understand that we have not the
great gift for India, until we are free; that is, only a man who has
freed himself from his own desires can help greatly to free others, or
his country. We are not free agents so long as we are on the rack of
sex. We cannot hate ourselves off that rack; in fact, we must learn to
love more, not less, to escape.”
“Tunnel,” Dicky said. “No man educated on the Hudson can get that sort
of thing. Have a heart, Nagar.”
“It is my poor telling----”
Dicky smiled and smoked: “I can’t see how he’d have anything left to
give the world,” he added--“a man who got on top of himself that way.”
* * * * *
The thing that Dicky had found in the same room with the Little Man
wasn’t happiness, but it was better than the deadness he had known;
good to feel the tissues of his heart alive again, not a leaden lump.
Again the next day, he went to sit with Mahatma-ji, but nothing
happened, though he remained two hours. On one side he had come to
doubt the whole business; on the other he had been naïve enough half to
believe that all he had to do was to enter the presence of the Indian
leader to get this living thing back in his heart, this pain that had
the breath of life in it. Two days afterward, however, while he was
deeply involved with Gandhi’s explanation of _Satyagraha_, taking notes
so that he could put down the other’s words almost exactly, the sense
of Pidge Musser’s presence and plight was suddenly with him again,
renewed within him, the pity of it almost more than he could endure.
There were hours also when Dicky could believe almost anything at the
_Ashrama_, where he was permitted to sit with the native students
(Gandhi often halting his speech in Hindi or Guzerati, to talk English
for the American’s benefit). And occasionally during long evening talks
with Nagar, on the banks of the Sabarmati or under the muffle-winged
_punkahs_ in the _Entresden_ room, Dicky’s mind had sudden extensions
of range. Still he had a vague foreboding that he would not be able to
hold all this hopeful stuff when he was away from India, for slowly and
surely he was being pressed to depart.
“America needs your loyalty now,” Nagar said. “We will send for you
to come when the curtain rises here. The drama of India is not being
played now, but the Play is written. This that you have heard, so far,
is only a rehearsal of minor parts.”
In June, a letter came from _The Public Square_, pressing its
correspondent to return to France, or at least to some of the points
where the American troops were gathering.
... As for magazine conditions, Dicky [John Higgins wrote], they
couldn’t be worse. Our little old _Public Square_ has fallen into
sorry ways.... If you’ve had a German neighbor for thirty years and
learned cautiously to respect the beast, you’re supposed now to
know him no more, in trade or whist or home or club, nor his woman
nor children. Old England’s bloomed out more seductive than ever,
and this country’s infatuated. You couldn’t believe it. We’re more
English than Canada right now. She’s borrowed everything in sight
and is so tickled over herself that she’s beginning to laugh at us
already. It’s a fact, her big business men can’t keep the joke any
longer.... But I only meant to tell you that _The Public Square_
has nothing to say, nothing to do. We tried a critical study of the
architecture of a federal building in Des Moines, and we’re being
looked into for unpatriotic motives. A lot of American business
men, who once gloried in their breadth and toleration, have taken
positions in what they call the Department of Justice, and their
business is to probe into speeches and writings like ours. They are
looking for heresies of citizenship. If we’re not suspended for
making a croak, we’ll likely be forced to suspend for not having the
breath. Otherwise, we’re quite well, and the trade world--you ought
to be able to hear American business boom, even in India--if you’re
not too far inland.
For the first time John Higgins’ views looked diminished to Dicky
Cobden’s eyes. This personal treason he laid to India. He made an
arrangement, however, to help _The Public Square_ to keep alive....
Gandhi was called to Lucknow, and Dicky saw him into his third-class
coach, with a catch in his throat and a sadness of heart. A day or
two later he left Nagar at the station where he found him--and the
day looked dull and gloomy from the windows of the Bombay _Inter
Provincial_, as the American started south alone.
XXIX
RUFUS’ PLAY DAY
RUFUS MELTON was having his coffee at Miss Claes’ table. It was noon
and July, 1917. The package of mail left at 54 Harrow Street had not
forgotten Rufus this morning. Another story had gone through, and he
felt that the day was all right. It looked to him like a very good day
to play and to shop. Miss Claes came in from the kitchen in a fresh
white dress and canvas shoes, nor did she come empty handed. A crystal
and silver marmalade jar was in one hand, and a plate of cold ham in
the other. These she placed on the cloth before him; and noting that
the loaf of rye bread lay uncut upon the board, she went to a drawer
for the knife.
Rufus dropped a cube of sugar into his coffee cup and contemplated
Miss Claes’ ankle. His mind became industrious. He was thinking how he
would describe the ankle if he were using it in a story. He thought
of several narrow white things. There was a white greyhound, but you
couldn’t say a woman’s ankle was like that. There was a white pleasure
yacht on the river, with narrow lines and clipper bow that bore a
psychological likeness, but it would take a paragraph to put that over.
The boneheads would think of boiler plate. Then there was a birch tree
and a polar bear and a snowy church spire ... anyway the ankle was
fetching.
“You look great this morning, Miss Claes, and see here----”
He spread out his letter from a most rich and inaccessible editorial
room.
“How interesting, Rufus. You are doing so well with your stories.”
“Pidge thinks they’re rotten,” he chuckled.
No comment from Miss Claes.
“She’d have me sit in a cave and growl over a story--bringing one out
every three months for editors to muss their hair over and finally turn
down. That’s the life----”
Miss Claes had turned to the cabinet of dishes, the double doors of
which were open. One might have thought that Rufus was now entirely
involved in the subject of Pidge’s idea of stories, but in reality he
was studying Miss Claes’ waist and throat and profile. Her particular
freshness from boots up this morning fascinated his eye. She took his
coffee cup to the kitchen to be refilled, and when she came back close
to his chair, Rufus’ arm moved engagingly around her hips, his face
turning up with a questioning boyish smile.
“What is it, Rufus?” she asked, making no movement to be free from his
arm.
“You’re mighty charming this morning----”
“It’s a charming morning.”
His arm tightened a little, yet she stood perfectly still. Rufus was
now in a quandary. This sitting posture had its diminishing aspect:
yet to arise and disentangle his feet from under the table, he must
loosen his arm or show an uncouth line to the camera, so to speak.
Rufus rarely broke his rhythms in these little performances; certainly
not when the going was as delicate as this. Miss Claes had become
especially desirable, because of an exciting uncertainty about her, and
an affectation, at least, of allegiance to Pidge. If he had only had
sense enough to turn his chair around, before taking her in. Presently
Rufus reached the conclusion that it was better to draw her down to
him, than take a chance of getting his arm around her again.
She came--no resistance, no rigidity. His lips found her shadowy
cheek, and an indescribable and most disturbing fragrance from her
neck and hair. Or was it the extraordinary coolness of everything that
disturbed, or the words gently whispered in his ear:
“You’re such a lonely boy. You don’t understand at all what you are
really dying for.”
Rufe was disappointed. So hers was the mothering game. Besides his
position was uncomfortable, knees under the table, and his coffee was
getting cold. So he let her go after all, in order to reach a standing
posture, but by the time he was free of the chair and the table, Miss
Claes had vanished without haste into the kitchen. Rufus now stood
dangling inconveniently between his breakfast and her return.
She came; he went to her. Her dark eyes were utterly calm, no traceable
deepening of the color in her face. She halted, but lightly held in
the two hands before her was a gold-edged dish, with a little golden
globe of butter in the center.
Rufus dropped back in his chair and lifted his coffee cup. What on
earth could a man do with a woman holding a butter dish? “It’s hell to
be fastidious,” he thought, in regard to his own inhibitions.
Something delectable had gone out of the July day. Miss Claes was no
nearer his understanding than before. Pidge would have the laugh on
him, because these women could never keep anything to themselves. He
didn’t mind anything about Pidge so much as her laugh. Altogether, this
little brush at breakfast left him unsatisfied--and this was a play day.
“Thanks,” he said at the door.
She gave him a pink, an old-fashioned white one. “The
butter-and-egg-man brought in some from his dooryard garden in
Yonkers,” she said.
Rufe started upstairs.
There were voices from one of the rooms on the main floor, but the
second was entirely empty and silent until a rear door opened and Fanny
Gallup looked out.
“Hello,” she said in a far-reaching whisper.
Fanny’s “hello” was one of the best of her little ways. She said it, as
one would cast a silken noose.
Rufe looked back and down. On certain mornings he would have growled an
answer and tramped on, but there was something white and calling about
the face in the dim shadows this morning, and for a wonder the kids
weren’t squalling.
“Oh, come in. Come on in!” was in his ears. Her bare arm was raised
and he saw the little muffler of dark in the pit of it. The lacing was
gone from the smock, moreover, and there was a pull for the moment
to Fanny’s sad little breast. The fact that the smock had once been
Pidge’s, Rufe thrust back into his mind for future reference. He
halted, looking around and listening again. Then he tiptoed in and the
door was shut. Not a great while afterward the door was opened, the
crying of children was heard. Fanny was moaning, “Don’t go ’way--oh,
don’t go ’way!”
But Rufus breasted past her muttering within himself, “Never again!”
* * * * *
... Pidge and Rufe Melton went over to Bank Street for supper that
evening. Rufus wasn’t hungry. He had bought a golf suit that looked
very well on him, he said, but evidently now he was troubled how to use
it. He hadn’t done any work so far to-day and felt less like it than
ever. Pidge thoughtlessly mentioned that an Indian letter had come in
to the office from Richard Cobden that day.
“You folks are dippy about this Cobden,” Rufe said. “Every time an
article of his comes out in the _Passé Square_, you gather together to
read it as if it had come from the Messiah. What’s he to you, Pan--a
little bit tender on your Dicky?”
“A little bit tender,” she said.
Rufus felt abused. He glared at her. This sort of thing had happened
before. Rufe had come to look at Pidge as his picket pin. He had a
long rope and everything was all right, so long as the pin held. But
her manner now would uncenter any man.
“I’d like to get out of Harrow Street,” he growled. “Every time I put
my address on the top of a manuscript, I feel it’s a knock rather than
a boost. I’ve been tempted to get an agent, for no other reason than to
have his address for the magazines to work through. I was talking with
Redge Walters who bought this story to-day, and he said, ‘Rufe, you
sure fall for the little bobbed heads down in the Village, don’t you?
Why don’t you come uptown and live in New York?’”
“I like Harrow Street,” said Pidge.
“You don’t make a secret of it, either,” he went on. “Of course, Miss
Claes is kind and all that, but we pay for what we get, and there’s
no question in my mind about the pictures in her gallery being hung
crooked.”
“If you’ve finished your supper, let’s go,” said Pidge.
“She breathes! The Arctic princess!” Rufe shivered.
Pidge didn’t answer.
“And that second floor needs policing up,” Rufe resumed. “I haven’t
taken it to heart so much about living in the Village, but that second
floor’s a tenement patch. Every time I go up and down----”
“Fanny’s my fault and Miss Claes accepts it with never a murmur,” Pidge
said, wide-eyed. “I’d look well running off uptown and leaving Fanny
there. Oh, Rufe, don’t you ever see any fault except on the outside?”
Right then Rufe said something.
“What’s the use of me looking after my own faults when you’ve got them
all in hand like Shetland ponies?”
Pidge arose. Black waters were welling up in her breast. It was so
true. His faults were with her day and night, and the greatest of them
was his entire irresponsibility. Also it touched her in the sorest
quick to have him point out that Fanny lowered the values, not only of
the second floor, but of the whole Harrow Street house.
Pidge never passed Fanny’s door but she was pressed by something within
to enter; yet her whole personal nature rebelled. Often for hours at
her work, there was a gloomy semiconscious activity within her that
kept urging its notice up to her mind. When she stopped to think, she
would realize that she hadn’t gone into Fanny’s room that day, or that
she must drop in to-night. It was so now, only more than ever, because
Rufe had located her private horror and brought it to speech. On the
second floor, returning from supper, she told Rufe to go on up, that
she meant to see Fanny for a few minutes.
“What to--come on, Pan, let’s go to a show somewhere!” he said suddenly.
She shook her head.
“There isn’t a clot of work stirring in my brain pan,” he went on.
“I don’t want to go out. I’ve got to see Fanny----”
He caught her sleeve. “It’s too hot to go up. Let’s go somewhere. Let’s
get on a bus and go uptown----”
She was too occupied in the thing she hated to do, to notice his
concern. He spoke again:
“I’m not going up there alone. You’re colder than a frog to live with
anyway----”
“Go out somewhere, Rufe, if you want to. Don’t mind me.”
She didn’t hear his words, but she heard the crying of Fanny’s
children. The door opened. Fanny stood there, but looked past her, over
Pidge’s shoulder, and queerly enough Pidge thought of the words, “And
Jove nods to Jove.” The hall door was then shut.
“Wot you coming in here for--to scold me some more, Redhead?”
“No, Fanny, to see you and the----”
“I know why you come, all right. To find fault--that’s why, and you
needn’t kill yourself, because I’m gettin’ along, so-so. Little old
Fanny’s holdin’ her own--and that’s more’n you’re doin’.”
Pidge looked into the crib. A core of fetid vapor hung above it, and
Fanny’s words seemed to blend with it.
“Think you can hold your job and hold a man, too, don’t you? Oh, yes,
Redhead knows how. Redhead’s got it all worked out. Redhead can tell us
all how to do it, oh, yes----”
“What’s the matter, Fanny? Are you scolding, so I won’t start? I didn’t
come to start something. Just came to see you. Wouldn’t you like to go
out for an hour and have me stay with the--with the----”
Pidge always halted this way.
“Worried--eh? Worried about somethin’?” Fanny piped up. “Well, I’m not
tellin’ anything--except you ain’t got your little mastiff tied to no
corset string----”
“What are you talking about, Fanny?”
“Like to know. Wouldn’t you?”
Pidge felt cold. She cared to know what the other meant. She didn’t say
so, however. She knew a better way--an effective way that seemed to
come out of depths within her that knew vast pasts and many lands, all
strategies of men and maids, all secrets of tent and purdah, lattice
and veil.
“Don’t trouble, Fanny. I just came in to see how you were getting on.
I’m so sorry, you know----”
“Sorry----” Fanny laughed.
“So sorry, dear--that you’re penned in this way--and Albert missing!”
“Sorry!” Fanny screamed her mirth.
“Don’t you want me to be sorry for you, dear?” Pidge trailed. “Why, I
haven’t been nearly so good as I meant to be----”
“Well, you dam’ little itch-face--talking to me about being sorry.
Who’n heller-you to tell me about being sorry? Who’n heller-you to
talk to me about me gettin’ penned in an’ Albert missin’, when you
can’t keep your own man--when you don’t carry your own babies? Who’n
heller-you anyway?”
Then Fanny got down to business and spoke of life in the here and now.
“Never mind, dear,” said Pidge. “We can’t attend to everything. I’m
going out to get you some ice cream. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She was in the street. She brought back a paper pail without haste.
Fanny had begun to cry.
“Don’t feel badly,” Pidge said, washing a saucer and spoon.
Fanny cried on. Pidge served her a large dish, and a smaller one for
the older child. Then from the paper, she spooned tiny mouthfuls into
the face in the crib--spooned until there was sleep from the novel
coolness of the sweet. Then Pidge patted Fanny’s shoulder, as she
passed out, promising to come back some time to-morrow.
Upstairs she found Rufe, shirt open at the throat, standing by the back
window. The light in the room was heavily shaded. He looked to her
covertly, half expectantly.
“Want to read something?” he said in a pleasant tone.
“No. I’m going to bed,” said Pidge.
XXX
THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE
EARLY the next morning in the shadowy back room, Pidge moved softly
about as she dressed. She saw the new golf suit, and her lips twisted
into a smile. Another toy; another bit of acting. That was all of the
game he cared for--the clothes that went with it. She thought of the
night on the corner when the newsboy had pointed out Rufe as a movie
actor. She saw his desk by the window. It looked like a troubled face.
Here she was, as usual, furiously busy with his faults--so occupied
that he didn’t have to bother at all, sleeping serenely on. But he
didn’t understand, never could understand, that her agony was because
she saw them as part of herself; that in her own heart she couldn’t
free herself from responsibility; knowing deeply the _dis_-ease that
comes from that soul-deep question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
And there he was lying on his back, innocent as a child. The pain
darted into her heart ... the baby carriage at Santa Monica. His
complexion was almost as fresh, his black hair brushed back. It was as
if he had fallen asleep with a tear in his eyes, for a little penciling
of salt was on the thin blue-veined skin under the eyelid. His breast
was uncovered and that spoiled the picture, spoiled the pathos; for
Rufe, though the least athletic of men, was hairy and glad of it.
She hadn’t slept. This, since coming home last night, was a show-down
time, as she expressed it. She had met the same several times with
her father, when the days became so black and evil that something had
to happen. Deep, under words and surface thoughts, lay the affair of
Fanny’s room. The dreary consciousness of that never left her, but
actual thinking of details was another affair. She couldn’t give way
to them, and keep the outer quiet she had determined upon. She had
been too honest to hide from herself, even in the beginning, that Rufe
habitually took life as it came. She never could forget his first
appraisal of herself in the reception room of _The Public Square_.
So this hadn’t come in the nature of shock; rather it was a pitiless
uncovering of ugliness that had been vaguely subconscious before. What
hurt her most keenly, so that she was close to crying out, as she lay
beside him in the night, was the inevitable tramp of Fate, audible
through it all--their meeting in Dicky’s room; Dicky’s opening of _The
Public Square_ to him in the first place; her own bringing of Fanny
Gallup to this house; the weaving back and forth into one, of the
different lives--even her father’s.
Rufe wasn’t at home when she returned that night. He hadn’t rung her at
the office, but she found word with Miss Claes that he had gone down
to Washington. She felt something was going to happen, but through the
day she had gathered her strength together to decide that she wouldn’t
be the one to bring it about. Underneath all was the old sense of her
responsibility.
Pidge was half tempted to seek Miss Claes this night. She even went
so far as to learn that her friend was at home. It always happened
so, when she needed help: Miss Claes might be out any or at all other
times. A light was in the basement room, and no voices, but Pidge crept
back upstairs without speaking.... She had failed. She had run away
from her father, failing there; failing here. She must see this through
alone a little longer.... The next afternoon Rufe called for her at
_The Public Square_. His eyes held a glint of triumph.
“I’m going to France,” he said, when they were in the street. “I’ve
arranged to do a big feature for Redge Walters and a Sunday newspaper
syndicate set.”
“But how about the draft?”
“Went down to Washington to start things going to fix that. Redge gave
me letters. Looks as if there won’t be much trouble. You see, the
Government needs the writers--public sentiment, you know.”
It wasn’t that Pidge didn’t think of things to say on this point of
making public sentiment, but a great gray ennui was over her. She had
said enough about his faults.
“You know, I’ve been smothering in Harrow Street--had to get away,” he
added.
“Yes, I know, Rufe.” After a time, she said, “I think it’s a good
thing.”
“That’s the way to look at it, Pan,” he said in a relieved voice, and
confided: “I need the experience, too, you know, because I’ve never
been to Europe----”
It was out before she thought: “But how did you get to the Tunisian
sands?”
“I mean I’ve never stayed long enough to look around. Of course, I’ve
passed through.”
He grouched for the rest of the evening, but she felt worse about this
than he did. She had thought she was through nailing him like that.
It had done no good, merely an additional breaking out of her abysmal
temper.... On the night before he left, Rufe was at his best--the
playboy she loved so much; and, of course, she was pressed harder and
harder into the realms of the Arctic Princess, which was by no means
her natural habitat. At last, he had her crying, which was something,
because it hadn’t happened often.
“Going to miss your Rufie,” he whispered, “sorry he’s going away?”
“Oh, it isn’t that!”
“What is it, Pan?” he demanded in the tone of the head of a household.
“Get it off your mind--don’t keep anything from me.”
That started her to laughing. “It’s noth-nothing, Rufe. I’m all right
now,” she said brokenly. “I’m only hurt because I haven’t done it
better----”
“What?”
“Us.”
“Forget it,” he said. “I never hold a grudge.”
XXXI
TWO LETTERS FROM INDIA
LATER in July, Miss Claes received letters from Dicky Cobden and Nagar.
Each, it appeared, had been mainly interested in writing about the
other. She read Dicky’s first:
... I think I’ve seen the Man you wrote of, but I’m more interested
in our own Nagar--altogether different in his native dress. I never
knew how civilized clothes could slow up a man’s looks. If a white
man in New York were as good-looking as Nagar is here, the movie
folk would kidnap him, if necessary, for the screen.... Things look
differently over here. Sitting in this plain house of the one they
call Mahatma-ji, I seem to understand things that would appear absurd
in New York.... Nagar has opened up. He talks freely and laughs. He
is human, and his American years show in fine light. Try to think how
startling all this was to one coming up from Bombay, expecting the
old sphinx of your basement and halls.... I find myself frequently
at the _Ashrama_--a houseful of saints--young men and women devoted
to the Mahatma-ji, like Nagar, and who apparently have taken vows
covering self-sacrifices unlimited. Gandhi is a bit of old brass with
a mustache; terribly battered, only fifty they say, but he shows the
wear of greater years. I seemed to feel that he had been frozen,
that he had been whipped, that he had been burned. Some of his teeth
are gone.... He tells us that you can’t fight back and expect to get
anywhere. He says to answer a hurt with a hurt is to prepare for hurt
again. He says you never can understand your enemy by hating him. He
says that India can only triumph by returning into herself. Imagine
such unearthly affairs from a barrister educated in Middle Temple,
London! And Nagar appears to understand all this.... I haven’t the
organs to believe much. My training hasn’t prepared me easily to
accept miracles--more later, when I cool down. But Nagar is great to
me in himself. I think I find him more interesting, even than Gandhi.
Sometimes he seems to contain Gandhi. But it would smash everything I
have to work with, if I gave either one of them my entire belief. Yet
I dread the thought of going away....
The letter from Nagar was then read slowly twice, and the smile on the
face of Miss Claes gradually lost itself in a blur of white, as if
twilight had crept into the basement room.
... The American whom we know never speaks directly of the one he
loves; it does not seem to occur to him that we have sympathy that
enfolds his secrets. He asks questions--asks questions. He shakes his
head. His college-trained intellect does not reach up, does not hold
up its cup to receive the synthesis. It moves wearily from one to
another of its separate analyses, with only rarely a connective flash
of intuition. But his heart keeps burning, yearning all the time,
and as he learns, he acts. So he seems very safe.... I have wished so
often that he were going to you, instead of to his work in Europe,
but that, of course, is selfish. He has his work there. We must hold
him between us. He knows already that he will not be able to see and
feel in France, as he does here. It is his ordeal. I have told him
many times; every day, in fact, that what he sees and feels here, he
must remember there, and hold to, until it is made working knowledge
within him.... Our work is merely preparing. The Little Man, as
Richard calls him affectionately from that old story, realizes that
the hour is not yet. We work in the midst of many shades of darkness
and obliquity and inhibition. We are marking time, marking time....
Our American will return to India in time to see the Day break. I
have promised to keep him informed. As Paul Richard says, “We must
prepare in ourselves that magnificent day.”
Miss Claes sat in silence. Then she seemed to become aware that voices
above vaguely distracted. She went to the door, and listened. Fanny
Gallup was crying, with little care who heard.
XXXII
FRANCE, 1918. THE YANK
DICKY hadn’t had his clothes off for several days. He was in the
“Oregon” Forest with Colonel Boulding who was no sort of man to tie
to for one who felt that a clean washrag was one of the necessities
of life. Dicky hadn’t cared for strenuous field work but it had
come to him in France; not the actions of the big fields so much as
the extraordinary little back-line dramas that break the laws of
perspective by rising more clearly, as days drew on. Four days before,
on his way in to Paris, he had met Boulding, who was taking out several
fresh battalions to relieve a hard-pressed front at St. Aignan.
“I’ve got an extra horse,” said Boulding, “good old Yorick, steady as a
tram-car, and we’ll be back in three days.”
Dicky stood in the twilight, half rain, half snow--one of the
interminable waits for order, Boulding back in the ranks somewhere. The
firing had died down and Dicky dropped his bridle rein to bang his arms
about to get some blood stirring in them. One of the problems of life
just now was why wet snow soaked through leather quicker than straight
rain water; another was why letters from home always dragged around
the wrong fronts before being delivered; another was how long was IT
going to last; another was hot coffee.
His mount had turned gently away in the thickening dusk, turned on
his toe corks through the slush to follow a wind-blown leaf. Plop--a
water-soaked trench-siding gave way, and Yorick disappeared into an
unused pit. Dicky stared down into the inky dark. The beast snorted.
A flashlamp was procured from one of Boulding’s lieutenants and Dicky
found his way down into the trench.
It became clear why Yorick couldn’t rise, even if unhurt. The trench
bottom was a six-inch paste of water and clay. Holding the flashlight
in front of him, Dicky approached the sprawled beast. Yorick looked
like a monster in the process of being born out of the mud. There was
something both humorous and hopeless about the gaunt lifted head that
came up into the ray. And now Dicky discovered that Yorick’s left
foreleg below the knee veered off suddenly to the left, at a decided
angle from the way it should lie. Dicky felt alone in a harrowing
under world. The leaf that had caused it all, or possibly one like it,
protruded from the snaffle ring. Yorick had come up to his leaf all
right, and then forgotten what he had gone after.
“Pretty lucky old boy, you are,” Dicky said. “Work done, war over for
you, nice warm ditch to lie up in at the last, and I’ve got to take all
the responsibility.”
He drew the pistol from his belt and placed it on the little twist of
hair halfway between the eyes.
“I ought to take the saddle off first, but I’m not going to. So long,
old kid, and best luck.”
The pistol banged in the dugout like a cannon cracker under a flower
pot, and the voice of an American sentry above was heard to say:
“Some fool’s blowed his head off, down there. Why in hell can’t a man
be patient!”
Dicky climbed up on the level ground, no sicker than before, but a
trifle more tired.... He was chafed. Yorick had done some of it in the
last four days, but not all. He was chafed in and out and over, chafed
from his boots and belt and helmet, but especially from his key ring.
This last had ground into him all day. He took it out now, as he waited
for coffee. Meanwhile he edged as near as possible (without murdering
anybody) to the trench stove Boulding’s cook had got going.
There was the key to his mother’s house in Fiftieth Street--a thick
brass stubby affair that belonged to the door of a house where hardware
was well understood. This key couldn’t be thrown away. Though it was
practically unthinkable--a man might some time get home. It had been
done. There was a key to 54 Harrow Street. The woman who ran the place
had told him to keep it with him, because it was a symbol of something
which he had professed at the time to understand. Then there was a
long, old-fashioned inside door key, black and a little bent--the
meanest of all to dig into a man’s hip--this to the hall door of
certain rooms in the same Harrow Street house. Its duplicate was in
the hands of a girl he used to know. She had said she would look in
on the apartment while he was gone, but she was married now. No use
keeping it any longer.
He took it off the ring, but put it back again.
Certain things were good, but hard to get. Brandy was good. Coffee was
good, especially hot. Saddle-horse stew was good. Porkpie, pork and
beans, pork sausage and pancakes were reasonable and of good report,
but keys on key rings that gored a man while he rode or slept, and
stretched back into meanings of the Utterly Absurd that a man couldn’t
get straight in Paris, much less in this slaughterhouse of the Western
Front--keys on key rings were sheer perversities, especially when a man
wasn’t game to toss them into any one of these open sewers....
They were saying at home that his stuff was blurred and unconvincing.
Even John Higgins had been singularly silent of late. Chris Heidt, the
managing editor of his newspaper connection, had recently written:
“We miss that fine patriotic ring that we have come to expect from
our correspondent. Your stuff shows subtleties and innuendoes and the
dissatisfaction of the boys--the little things back of the lines that
make for disorganization, rather than the big doings at the front.”
It was dawning on Dicky that there were two kinds of American patriots,
soldier and civilian; and that for keenness and fire-eating zest, the
man in the zone of advance was not to be compared to the paper-fed
folk at home. In fact, there were only two ways for a writer to
please the firesides of America, as the hot flames of Hun-hatred and
world-correcting benefactions went up the chimney. One was to stay at
home and write the war as you supposed it to be, and the other was to
remember how you felt, how the war seemed to you, before you reached
France, and write it from that angle.
Blurred, all right, and chafed. One thing he was getting to understand
a little, and to have an affection for. That was the American
soldier--not officer, so much, but the ruffian in the ranks, _dogus
bogus Americanus_--the fellow fused of Irish, Scotch and Jew, of
German, English, Russian and French; something of each in the solution,
something of all. In the first place, this Yank was the funniest thing
ever turned loose on the planet. His officers were occasionally funny
in a different way.
Dicky vaguely perceived that an abyss was slowly but surely forming
between this Yank and the patriots at home--an abyss only to be bridged
by silence. Quite as slowly but surely Dicky’s heart opened to this
enlisted man. One has to love something. Once or twice, things he saw
this laughing maniac from America do made him very much ashamed of his
own mental antics in a certain red room of Bombay.
XXXIII
PARIS, 1918--HADDON AND AMES
SO far as Dicky was concerned, the things of great moment in his
experience in France all happened in the fall of 1918. He was in Paris
at the end of that shocking summer, and found a letter from Nagar
which reiterated that the curtain could not rise on the Drama of India
until Great Britain was through fighting in France and the land of the
Euphrates.... He was stopping at the _Garonne_. There was a knock at
his room door one afternoon and voices outside. It was Haddon and Ames,
correspondents out of New York, and they wanted money. Haddon talked
first:
“... He’s off his head and in a mess. He mentioned your name. He says
he sniffed some gas out in the vineyards somewhere in April, and can’t
get over it. Either that, or the family he’s fouled up with is feeding
him ground glass.”
“Who’s this you’re talking about?” Cobden asked, though he had heard
the name.
“Melton--done some magazine stories,” said Haddon.
“You say he mentioned my name?”
“His French father-in-law picked on me first,” Ames put in. “Just
happened. I’m at the _Charente_, where a lot of Americans are putting
up. Told me a long story of wrongs to his only child--a female child
now married to Author Melton. Mentioned your name----”
“He was gassed?” Dicky repeated.
“He says he was,” said Haddon. “It’s an operation case, all right.
Melton will have to be cut out of that French house.”
“I don’t know whether it’s gas in my case or not,” Dicky said, “but the
fact is I am not rightly aboard this conversation.”
“The idea is to get aboard with some American currency,” said Ames.
“American in trouble--fellows all willing to help a little. Up to
somebody to get the fool out. Father picked on me----”
“Let me get this straight,” Dicky heard himself saying, though all he
wanted under heaven at this moment was to be alone.
Ames was one of the best Washington correspondents in the American
press, a fact-getter extraordinary, who had a semi-inspired way now and
then of putting down his stuff. He was fifty, a friend of John Higgins
and weathered to a fuzzy gray like a fence board. Just now he bluffed
out his embarrassment by speaking of one of Melton’s stories which
Dicky was professionally familiar with:
“A short story in one of the weeklies--called _Dr. Filter_--hell of a
good story.... It’s nothing to me,” Ames finished. “Only the kid’s an
American, and he’s tight up against one of Paris’ prettiest ways.”
Haddon took up the tale:
“The Frenchman’s name is Ducier. Melton’s been living at his
house--mixed with the daughter--forced to marry. Now Parent Ducier says
the least he can do is to get a living for himself out of it--hard
times.”
“Actually married?” Dicky asked.
“Showed me the passport,” said Ames. “I couldn’t get a word alone with
Melton. He can’t leave his bed. One of the family always in the room.”
Dicky was straining so hard that he resisted easy comprehension. It was
an intense moment. There was more talk.
“Of course, whatever you want from me----” Dicky broke in.
“What you can spare,” Haddon said. “The parents ask twenty thousand
francs, but they’ll take half that easy. Just now the boy’s too sick to
escape.”
“Count on me for at least half of whatever it costs,” Dicky said.
Haddon’s eyes widened. Ames looked astonished.
“I’ve heard Cobden is rich, Ames,” Haddon explained.
The gray one came closer and examined Dicky’s face. “I heard it, too,”
he said. “You really mean this?”
“I would give you the amount now, but I understand that you aren’t sure
what it will be. I know Melton. I’m glad to help, of course.”
“I’ve heard you were rich, too,” Ames repeated slowly. “But I didn’t
believe it.”
“Why not?”
“You’re too good a newspaper man,” said Ames. “I didn’t think a man
could have real money and be as good a newspaper man as you.”
Dicky hardly heard the tribute. The two men were leaving. That was the
important thing.... He was alone. An intermittent geyser was at work
within him. Every few minutes a surge of hot hope boiled up in his
breast. It threatened to deluge him. Out of all the year’s work was
netted at this time one bit of working knowledge, as Nagar might have
called it, that he must _not_ be deluded by this hope! He tried to
cork it up; failing in that he stood as still as he could in the midst
of the surges. Gradually, he got the thing in hand, but it was bitter
work, this refusing to take the first real breath of life he had known
for years.
He found himself in twilight. The day had slipped off, while he
struggled alone. His forehead was clammy with the effort going on. To
go back into that dreary hopelessness, and not be able to think out
the reason why! The force that he had to work with now came from the
painful mistake he had made in working for reward before; from the
shock of that realization in the red room, that underneath everything,
he had counted on his virtue being crowned with Pidge somehow coming
across.
Now the fight changed. Persistently in the depths of him grew an
awareness that he had not done the full task called of him merely in
offering Ames money. This point became so ugly and evident--that he had
to laugh. More and more, as moments sped on, it faced him squarely. He
had no sentimentalism to tide him over; his emotions stayed ice cold.
“But it’s like a fool Sunday-school story!” he muttered.
Then again the words broke from him: “But living God, suppose she
doesn’t want the bundle back! Suppose she’s been trying to lose it,
and here I am running after her, saying, ‘You’ve dropped something,
Madame----’”
But he couldn’t budge.
Full dark was in the room when he rung Ames at the _Charente_:
“I’ve been thinking over this thing, Mr. Ames, and I’m asking a
favor----”
“Yes,” came coldly across the town. Ames believed he was trying to
wriggle out of his promise to pay half.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that this thing is up to me--the whole
business, and I’ll thank you very much for Mr. Melton’s present
address.”
“No. 16, Rue de Belville, Villancourt.” The tones had warmed.
“Thanks. I’ll report to you presently,” Cobden said.
“Sure you don’t want me--or one of us to go along with you?” Ames
persisted.
“I’ll see what I can do alone first, if you don’t mind.”
XXXIV
THE HOUSE OF DUCIER
QUEER drama, from eight to twelve that night in the little house of
Ducier. Four hours--as long as an uncut opera! The sick man moaned, and
interrupted everything, calling to Dicky Cobden:
“For the love of God, don’t go ’way and leave me here! I’m done for, if
you leave me alone again.... Oh, Cobden, Cobden----”
The daughter wept. It was her entire part. She had a brown mole upon
her ruddy rounded cheek, and very white small teeth in gums of a red
that Dicky had never seen before except in dental advertisements. She
was made of little curves, and all of them were required in the art of
her weeping.
“What’s the matter?” Dicky asked her, during a halt in the proceedings.
“You are taking him away!”
“I don’t seem to be very successful about it.”
“Oh, but you will--you are taking him away!”
Dicky was glad to hear that he was going to get what he came for, but
the obstacles still looked serious.
“Isn’t that what you want--to be rid and paid?”
“My father--yes--but me--no, no! He is my lover--oh, such an adored!”
It was new to Cobden’s experience just how obdurate an outraged
European can be. M. Ducier reiterated grimly that weeks ago in this
house, he had suddenly discovered a condition which destroyed all his
past and future. He had forced marriage, but that did not suffice.
Dicky turned to the bed at this point.
“How did you happen to stand for marriage, Melton?”
“Nothing to do with it--I was gassed!”
Here the daughter’s cries arose, the hands of the mother were uplifted
to heaven, and the face of the father became more grim. It was against
Dicky’s training and heredity to stand for being bilked, yet he
hesitated to call for help. To start the police at work would mean
the American Legation before he was finished, and incredible delay.
Momentarily Melton made it harder.
“If you go away and leave me after all they have said,” he moaned,
“there won’t be any need for you to come back! I am telling you,
Cobden, they keep me here--just as if my legs were tied.”
Rufe spoke in English, which the mother and father did not understand,
but of which the daughter had plenty to catch the drift. Dicky did
not miss the fact that in the midst of her weeping there were subtle
affairs to confide to her father.... It cost him eighteen hundred
dollars to get Melton clear that night; but, at least, Melton was
thoroughly clear, the marriage certificate and receipt for heartbalm
in full, in his pocket. He watched curiously now to see if the tears
of Daughter Ducier were dried--but no, though Melton spurned her last
proffer of a kiss--at least with her, money was not all.
In the days that followed, Dicky wasn’t able to get any rest from a
sense that he had done well. With every ounce of his returning strength
Rufe Melton yearned to get out of Paris. He had been abused; he was
frightened to depths hitherto unplumbed. He lived in a mortal dread day
and night that the Duciers would come for him again.
“I can’t get a passage for you at a moment’s notice,” Dicky would say.
“Besides, you’re not fit to travel for a few days yet. I don’t want to
send you back to New York looking like a hounded Apache. Let me do this
thing right, Melton, while I’m in on it.”
“But don’t go away and leave me here!” Rufe moaned. “Let me go out with
you when you go.”
“You needn’t have the slightest fear from the Duciers.”
The hands came up and waved hopelessly.
“You don’t know them! You don’t know her!” Rufe moaned. “I want to get
out of here. I want to get on the ship. I don’t want to be left alone.”
And this was what he was getting ready to send back to Pidge! Once,
when Dicky was really hard driven, a sudden chill of rage came over him
and he proceeded this far with a sentence:
“Why, Melton, I really ought to put you----”
The other words--“to death,” he somehow managed to keep from speech.
Dicky suffered especially from the feeling that he was playing the
boob. To be sincerely in wrong was his pet aversion--dating from the
night of the Punjabi dinner. Besides, he was tortured with the thought
that Pidge Musser wouldn’t thank him. Surely, for her sake, his mind
repeated, it would have been better even to put old Ames straight, and
let one American meet Paris unaided. But Rufe had called for him in his
trouble, had mentioned the name of Cobden to the others.
One of the strangest things to Dicky now was that Pidge’s husband could
accept all this--somehow as if it were his due. Like a family affair.
Rufe seldom spoke of Pidge. Apparently getting back to New York meant
her; apparently they weren’t separated. Rufe had the most extraordinary
sense of taking her for granted. If he had any money or resources in
Paris, he didn’t let the fact be known. It was Dicky who purchased
his passage for New York. Again Dicky’s capacity for astonishment
was stretched, because Rufe seemed able to comfort himself with the
fact that he had it all coming. He had never been sick before. His
present infirmity was entirely engrossing. “I was gassed,” covered all
discrepancies of word and deed.
Back in his room, after packing Rufe aboard the steamer, Dicky found
himself nervous, tired and irritable. A servant came and took out the
extra bed Rufe had occupied. The place was stiller than ever, after
that--no moaning, no fears, no complaints; but it wasn’t all relief
as Dicky had fancied it would be. He missed something--the world was
so crazy anyway--something that had taken him out of himself for two
weeks; something at least, that had played upon a different set of
faculties. Suddenly it dawned upon him, though he couldn’t tell why,
that Pidge would be glad after all. If you play orderly and guardian
and benefactor to a child--of course you miss the wretch. And Pidge was
a woman, and she had said--what had she said, about there not being two
ways? Now Dicky felt better. There had not been two ways for him. The
chapter was ended at any rate....
Another event of this fall of 1918, so far as Dicky Cobden was
concerned, was the Armistice. You can tell how inactive hope had become
within him at this time, and within the breasts of tens of thousands
of others, when he hadn’t believed that any other than a state of war
could exist.
And finally, in December, six weeks after the Armistice, at the time
of the greatest rush in history for trans-Atlantic steamers, when
Dicky had about concluded that the quickest way home to New York would
be around by Asia, a _sepoy_ on leave crossed the city of Paris from
the cantonments in Lourdenvoie, and asked to see the American at the
_Garonne_.
“You are Richard Cobden?” the young Hindu said, when the room door was
closed.
Dicky nodded, a certain gladness in him that he did not understand.
At the same time he was intent in a scrutiny of the caller’s face--a
youth, but very worn. Something about the eyes made the American think
of a camel.
“You have been to Ahmedabad, Mr. Cobden?”
“Yes.”
“Might I ask the name of the river there?”
“The Sabarmati.”
“Are you expecting a message from an American in Ahmedabad?”
“No.”
“From any one there?”
“Yes.” Now Dicky knew that it was the patience in the young Hindu’s
eyes that made him think of a camel.
“Is the name Juna?”
“Nagarjuna.”
The soldier bowed. “It is well. I was told to be assured, before giving
you the message. It is this: _That the curtain has risen, the play
begun, and that a seat is reserved for you._”
“Is there need of haste?”
“_No haste, but no delay!_”
“My plan now is to go to New York----”
“That need not be changed, since it was added for me to say--that it
will be well for you to travel westward rather than to the East.”
“To Ahmedabad at once?”
“You will do well to go first to Bombay.”
“Thank you. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Only say to Nagarjuna--that I, too, hope to come for the end of that
play.”
“Your name?”
“He knows his messenger. Here I am not a name, hardly a number----”
“A cigarette--a drink?”
“I will not tarry since it is far to the cantonments.”
The _sepoy_ bowed and departed.
XXXV
FANNY HEARS THE DRUM
PIDGE MUSSER had moved around in an indescribable “deadness” for
several days following Rufe’s departure, before it landed on her, theme
and all, that she could do a book. Almost four years had elapsed since
she wrote the _Lance_. One Sunday morning after the new work was begun,
Pidge took out the old story from the drawer under the wavy glass, and
glanced over the pages, a puckered smile on her lips. Then she took the
manuscript down to the kitchen range, and there was a hot fire for a
while.
The new writing was not so simple and flowing. In the first place,
there were only Sundays and an hour or two in the evening; but more
than that was the fact that she had learned so well what stories long
and short are not! She was now in the toil of technic, which is a
long passage. First the freedom of ignorance--“A man’s a fool before
he learns technic,” John Higgins had said. “He’s a cripple while he’s
learning it. When he’s learned it, and forgotten he’s learned it--he
begins to be a workman. That’s the freedom of knowledge.”
The old editor didn’t know he had “said it all” for Pidge Musser that
day as he looked up from Rufe Melton’s story. She wouldn’t forget. Edit
and rewrite--some evenings with nothing but a torturing inhibition
to go to bed with. There was no other way. She was tough and broad
shouldered. She could toil. She had an instinctive awareness also, that
the deadliest danger in the whole scheme of things for her, at least,
was to brood inactively. Piled up energy to Pidge meant inevitable
disruption.
_The Public Square_ was staying alive under the energy amassed by
the family of trowel makers, but John Higgins wasn’t standing the
punishment of the days. Pidge saw him falling into the fear of small
things. Among other institutions he hated was the U. S. Department of
Justice, but this department was hot after him and he was bluffed at
last. The climax had come upon the arrest of a famous pacifist, when
John Higgins was cornered with the necessity of silence. Since there
was no outlet in protest, his venom turned in on himself. His periods
of “illness” were frequent, and Pidge had a great deal to do. His old
reaction against her marriage was apparently forgotten, though his
temper was unreliable. He was using her now as never before. Once in
a while, he would look at her long and queerly, and often he said, “I
wish Dicky were here.”
* * * * *
In April, 1918, about the same time, a book and a boy were born in 54
Harrow Street. Pidge was present at both deliveries. The enactment of
the boy’s coming required a full night; and during the next day, her
activities at _The Public Square_ were remote to Pidge, who had shrunk
so deeply into herself from nausea and a new kind of fright, that the
meaning of outer events was distorted and ungrippable. John Higgins
didn’t miss the fact. In the drag of the afternoon, she was called to
the telephone--Miss Claes on the wire:
“You’d better come, Pidge!”
An hour later, between five and six in the afternoon, she was in the
Harrow Street house, looking down into Fanny’s face which squirmed from
side to side. The eyes moved around the room and finally fixed on Pidge.
“That you, Redhead?”
“Yes----”
“You was a hell of a long time comin’.”
“I know----”
“That dirty animal hurt me----” Evidently this referred to the doctor.
“I’m sorry. He didn’t mean to----”
“Know all about it, don’t yer? Know all about everythin’, don’t yer?”
Pidge didn’t answer.
Fanny lay a moment in pallid anger. Then her eyes slowly opened wider,
stretched, filled with astonishment, part rapture, part fear.
“Why, Musser,” Fanny said in an awed tone, as one listening to a far
sound, “Holy Christ, I’m dying!”
She was the last one in the room to know it--except the baby.
A queer little dud with his black hair that stayed combed. No telling
what he knew any of the time. He didn’t open his eyes so that anybody
could catch him at it for several days, but the nurse never would have
done raving over his black lashes. Finally Pidge heard the news--that
the eyes weren’t black after all, as the hair and lashes would
indicate, but a dense blue.
“He’s going to be a soldier--such a soldier!” the nurse exclaimed. “I
know I’ll die when I have to leave him.”
Pidge’s lips worked without sound, and then a funny little twisted
smile stayed there--that made Miss Claes love her as never before.
XXXVI
RUFE HURRIES HOME
RUFE MELTON came home to find life not the same. Matters had evolved
while he was away about his country’s business, matters that didn’t
please him now. He had rushed to Pidge. As the steamer approached
New York, a novel and unforeseen eagerness awoke within to get to
her, but she hadn’t put off her Arctics. Besides, off duty from her
editorial job, there was an infant in her arms for the most part--a
seven-months-old male infant with combed hair, that had looked into his
face and begun to yell. Rufe took this as a personal affront. He had
supposed it hers at first.
“Sometimes, I forget that it isn’t,” she had said.
Harrow Street furnished the statement and proof, however, that it was
Fanny Gallup’s, who was dead.
“But why don’t you adopt the other two?” he asked.
“Miss Claes has found homes for Albert’s children,” Pidge said.
Rufe stood it for two days. “This can’t go on, Pan. I’ve got to get to
work--no nerves to work in this racket, since I was gassed----”
“Of course not.”
Under his surface anger, she saw the old look of hurt wonder that
harrowed her so.
“Come back--any time, Rufe--come whenever you can. Always a place here,
you know.”
XXXVII
JOHN HIGGINS’ CODE
WHEN Dicky Cobden reached New York, he found that Pidge had been
called to Los Angeles, because her father was ill. It was an evening
in mid-January, 1919, and he went at once to his mother’s house in
Fiftieth Street. The strain of waiting for his home-coming had been
almost too much there. Grandfather had flickered out; his bed and
chairs gaped and would not be comforted. Dicky went into the living
arms, however, and found rest and gave it. His mother and aunt and
sister livened up like plants, newly-watered. He was queerly astonished
to learn that Pidge recently had called upon his people--“just a social
call,” his mother said.
Outwardly things looked as hopeless as possible at _The Public Square_.
From his latest retirement to his rooms for a change of luck, John
Higgins had been taken to the hospital, instead of returning to his
desk. It was a gray-faced old man that Dicky found in the early morning
of his first full day at home, in a room that smelled of drugs. The
face didn’t look at him squarely. The light hurt John Higgins’ eyes
and made the features writhe. Dicky wanted to move around to the other
side of the bed, so the face would be shaded, but his old friend was
gripping him with both hands.
“We have been looking for you a long time, Dicky,” he kept saying.
It wasn’t the unshaven white stubble that changed the face so much as
the quiver of the upper lip, when John Higgins spoke.
“What’s the matter, John?”
“Indigestion--all kinds of indigestion. Damn ’em, Dicky, they’ve made
me eat my own words----”
“Who?”
“The most pestiferous public nuisance ever organized--Department of
Justice.”
Dicky did not need to be warned against the _bête noir_. Its shadow was
upon John Higgins’ face.
“I rather liked yesterday’s issue,” he said, “and they tell me that the
next two numbers are practically made up.”
“You’ve been to the office then?”
“No. I called up from home at breakfast. That’s how I heard you were
here. Just off ship last night----”
“Bert Ames got in three weeks ago. You were a long time coming----”
“My turn didn’t come--everybody dying to get home since the racket
stopped.”
“Your paper’s alive, Dicky--that’s the best that can be said.”
“My paper----”
“I’m looking for you to buy the rest. My equity is on the market. _The
Public Square_ is alive, but it’s not my fault.”
“Whose?”
“Didn’t they tell you that ‘The Weekly’ was away?”
Dicky looked bewildered. A glint of the old humor had come back to John
Higgins’ eyes, as he added:
“The woman thou gavest me.”
“You mean about Pidge Musser being called to Los Angeles?”
“Suddenly discovered she had a father who couldn’t be denied. Ripped
out of here on the fifth and left a hole in every department.... They
say I’m done with the desk for a time. I knew it without them telling
me. I’d have had to wire her to-day or to-morrow to come back, if you
hadn’t turned up.”
Dicky’s thoughts now became busy adjusting to the fact that John
Higgins wasn’t returning to the desk at once.
“I know when I’m done,” the old man repeated. “It’s taken nearly sixty
years, but I know. You’ve heard about the serpent that stings itself to
death in captivity?”
“It’s just the chafing of the muzzle, John. You’re not stinging
yourself to death----”
“We all have our little code, Dicky, and I haven’t been true to mine.
Your paper’s alive, in spite of what I would have done. My code pulled
me the other way--against you--but that little thing stood by your
interests. You’ve got her to thank, not me.”
“Tell me----”
“They were doing things in this country that I knew about----” the old
man shut his eyes, as if in nausea--“but she kept me still. Then they
arrested an old friend of mine--man I’ve known for thirty years--man
who loves his country _all the time_--as I do not--and they arrested
him. One Sunday morning I wrote my little say about it all, and as I
wrote, I heard them singing ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ in a church down
the block from my rooms. That’s what I called the article. I was sober.
I wrote for all days, and every year I had lived went into it--all I
was. I was willing to throw you--a little matter of money which you
could afford. I was throwing myself, but I was pleased enough with the
story to show it to her Monday morning, instead of sending it down to
the composing room.”
The narrative halted for several seconds. Dicky moved around the bed to
rest the old man’s eyes.
“That little tumult had me bluffed from the beginning. She barred
the way to the printer, that’s all. I thought she was done for when
she married Melton, but she came back stronger than ever.... Barred
the way, Dicky--put her arms across the door. ‘You can’t do it, John
Higgins, you can’t send that down. It’s just wanton destruction. It
won’t do what you hope. It won’t help your friend, but make life harder
for him and for all the C. O.’s. This isn’t your property to waste. My
heart’s in it and Dicky’s money’s in it----’ Well, she had her way--and
the thing turned in on me--my own words. My organs of assimilation
weren’t strong enough to get away with it.”
Dicky gripped John Higgins’ shoulder. The old man added impressively,
“Dicky, I’ve sat at the desk for hours and studied how I could ever
tell you this one truth! I haven’t written a decent line since that
article! My old side-wheeler doesn’t work--that’s the size of it.”
He was pressing his hand to the top of his head, as he went on:
“I’ve studied how I could tell you. It doesn’t seem quite so hard this
morning at the show-down--but she’s written all the decent stuff that’s
supposed to come from the Desk.... I mean what I said. I’m for sale.
I’ve put it to you straight--the worst. But the paper’s alive and the
books are for you to look at. Times are getting freer. The next two
issues will get out themselves. It’s all I’ve got----”
“But you can take a leave of absence, and keep your income----”
“No. That would be a drain. That’s morals possibly, but not business.
I want to sell, Dicky, and what I ask won’t break you. I thought for
a while I was done for, and I made out my part to her. That would be
simple--but the old hulk still floats--so I have to have some money.”
Now Dicky dwelt reverently upon the old man’s secret. Only one thing
could have prevented John Higgins from getting his masterpiece into
print; also John Higgins had made out his single possession in the
world to Pidge--when he thought he was done for. This thought now
electrified Richard Cobden. He wanted events to turn out this way with
such one-pointed fury that he forgot for an instant that it entailed
the death of his friend. But some time Pidge must have this gift--some
way--John Higgins’ life work! Dicky arose. The fact that he could do
nothing right now required extraordinary self-control.
“I’ll look the whole property over to-day and tell you to-morrow
morning, John. Be sure it will be all right for you. We’re----”
Dicky didn’t know what he had started to say. The old man beckoned him
back.
“... Bert Ames can help you for a few days until she comes back. No
better Washington man, anywhere, but Bert knows the desk work, too....
Wait. I’ve got to tell you before you go how he dropped in to see me,
day or two after he came back from France. I asked him if he’d seen
you. He rather allowed he had--and launched into the story of your
saving young Melton from the clutches of the French family. Couldn’t
stop him in time. He hadn’t the slightest notion that the woman at the
desk yonder was Mrs. Melton.”
Dicky was pale.
“It didn’t knock her out. That’s the queer part,” John Higgins added.
“... Get Bert Ames. There’s one man who isn’t doing any damage to you
as he loafs around New York.”
“I’ll be back to-morrow morning,” Dicky said. “Where’s Melton now--Los
Angeles?”
“No, here in New York. I’ve heard he’s stopping at the Vici Club.”
XXXVIII
AN OFFICE OF THE WORLD
DICKY was in the street and it was still only ten in the morning. The
first thing he did then was to telegraph Pidge of his arrival; that all
was well, and for her not to hurry. He spent the day at _The Public
Square_ offices studying the books, reading up in the files. He fancied
that he found an aggressive sort of integrity here and there through
the systems, that was familiar. The publishing property had weathered
the war; it was a building base. Dicky found much that he liked, but
fought enthusiasm--fought back a rush of possessive impulses, until he
was tired.
At six, when he reached Harrow Street, for the first time, he was not
permitted to use the key to the street door that he had carried so
long, for Miss Claes met him at the basement entrance. He had heard
her voice over the telephone in the morning, but had not remotely
anticipated the stir of feeling that the sight of her awakened. No
emotionless reporter about Mr. Cobden at this moment. He followed her
to the open fire; the door was shut. They stood together in silence,
and he had never seen her look so well.
“Why, Miss Claes, you are just the same!” he was saying. “I mean, all
day I have been seeing the ravages of the war years in the people at
home, in John Higgins, in everybody. But you----”
“Your coming makes me happy.”
Firelight and a fragrant room, and the stillness of Harrow Street. Miss
Claes was speaking of Nagar--of Pidge--of Pidge and the child--of Rufus
Melton--of Fanny Gallup--of himself--as if they were all one, all blent
in destiny.... Pidge had taken the child to Los Angeles.
A ring at the street door! Dicky watched Miss Claes’ face as she left
the room, purse in hand. She returned in a moment with a telegram for
him.
Welcome home. So glad to hear, so relieved. Needed here a little
longer.
PIDGE.
The door shut again.... Miss Claes had heard of everything--even of his
experience with Rufe Melton in Paris, and from Pidge what Ames had told
John Higgins.
“I should have put Ames wise about that,” Dicky told her. “It was
pretty hard to have Pidge hurt that way.”
“She brought home the news exultingly,” Miss Claes said. “Hurt, of
course--her old sorrow for Rufus Melton, but a compensating gladness,
too. You would have to be a woman, to feel exactly what it meant to
her. Pidge learned that day that you were close enough in sympathy to
share her work. That was light to her out of the depths.”
Dicky studied the shadowy face.
“Pidge accepts no revelations from the sacred writings,” Miss Claes
added. “Only messages of action count with her. Your action in Paris
freshened up her life--that you had been brave enough to help her with
her task. And how richly Pidge will pay!”
“It wasn’t hard to do, but hard to know that it was the thing to do.”
“All that matters now is that it is done. One crosses a goal, or one
does not. The rest is forgotten.”
He told her of John Higgins and _The Public Square_; of his talk in the
morning and the day with the files. She inquired regarding details,
mechanical and commercial--her same old rational grasp upon materials.
Of course, he did not speak of John Higgins’ secret, nor of his own
possible purchase. It was a matter of mercantile tradition in the
Cobden house not to discuss an incompleted transaction; but he told her
of Pidge’s part at the time of the arrest of the editor’s old friend.
“John Higgins calls her ‘The Weekly,’” he added. “He says it was Pidge
who kept the paper going.”
Miss Claes turned to the fire to smile. Dicky didn’t notice. He was
lost in the problem of how John Higgins could give half-interest to
Pidge, and sell it to himself at the same time.... They were speaking
of India.
“Of course, I’ve arranged to go,” he said. “Nagar promises the story of
the age----”
“Nagar sent his message here for you, in case you did not receive word
from the _sepoy_ in Paris--‘No haste, but no delay.’”
He started. This house of Harrow Street seemed like an office of all
the world to him to-night.
* * * * *
“... The hardest part is with my people--for me to go away again,”
he was saying, a little later at the door. “Of course, they can’t
understand--my mother and aunt and sister. Everything looks all right,
except that--leaving them so soon again.”
“Perhaps I can help a little. I’ll go to them often--while you are
away.”
“That’s quite too good for me to think of,” he said, and told her of
Pidge’s call. “Why, Miss Claes, I haven’t known what it meant to be
rested and straightened out like this--since Ahmedabad,” he said at
last.
Her hand was raised before him:
“Don’t think about it. Don’t analyze. Just--go to them--and come back
when you can. This also is your home always.”
XXXIX
SEVEN FLAWLESS DAYS
DICKY was riding westward through the citrus groves of the last fifty
miles into Los Angeles. Eight days in New York; there had been no
public announcement of a change in ownership of _The Public Square_,
although John Higgins had retired and new energies were actively in
operation. The old editor’s faith was gone in himself, but anchored all
the tighter to the son of the trowel makers.
The great Range was crossed. All the forenoon the air had been clear
and cold, but at noon the Limited had slipped down into San Bernardino,
into summer and fruit fragrance. Now it was two in the afternoon
and Dicky looked out upon one little town after another, the like
of which he had never seen before. Sun-drenched and flowery towns;
breathing-spaces between the houses and vine-clad trellises; and
everywhere the great orchards, sometimes palm-bordered and often with
rose-covered fences of stone.
“Sit tight, sit tight,” he said to himself.
A hundred times he had repeated this to-day. There was loose in him
a power of feeling which made the days of his straight unemotional
reporting look like a feeble affectation. Coming into the harbor of
New York less than two weeks before, he had learned to accept the
emptiness of life. But since then, curiously enough, a new order of
content had filled him. Was it necessary to be emptied of the old
entirely in order to be filled with the new?
Pasadena was behind; the Limited was running down grade into Los
Angeles; then momentary halts with Mexican faces turned to the car
windows--Chinese faces, a tangle of freights--finally a slow down, and
on one side, groups of up-turned faces, expectant, some strained to an
intense kind of pain to catch the eyes of their own.... The bags had
to be put out. There were people in front of him; he was shut off from
windows.
“Sit tight, Dicky----”
A white limp-brimmed straw hat pulled down over her ears like a
bonnet! A taller Pidge--no, she was standing on her toes to look over
the shoulders of the crowd. Now she saw him; her eyes blinked, her
shoulders lifting quickly. He moved slowly, positively not crushing
anybody. Her hands were raised--one higher than the other, the fingers
apart. They stayed so, until he pressed against them. She was taller.
Their faces were so close--both shaded for an instant under the wide
brim of her hat. He had been looking into her eyes; then they were too
close to look into. It seemed neither had anything to do about it. He
hardly dared remember.
Some one near by knew a happiness that shrieked. They walked away from
the many voices. Then he realized that he was carrying his two hand
bags.
“Where’s the parcel room?” he asked.
“I’ll show you the way. The station is very old and dingy.”
He checked them. They walked to the other end of the yards where the
big palms called.
“How’s your father?”
“I think--he’s better. You heard about the baby--Fanny Gallup’s baby?”
“Yes.”
“I brought him west with me. He’s in Santa Monica now, so I’ll have to
hurry back. You’ll come?”
“To Santa Monica?”
“Yes.”
“Shall we get a motor car?”
“No. The interurban. I’ll show you.”
“Is there a place to stop down there?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll show you.”
“My steamer trunk can wait here for a day or two. I’d better get my
small bags----”
“Yes.”
He unchecked them.... In the city car to the interurban station, she
said: “Oh, Dicky, it’s so good.” Then after a pause, she added: “We
don’t need to talk about ourselves.”
“I understand.”
“It’s days before your ship?”
“Yes.”
“I can show you around. It’s hard for me not to be troubled about _The
Public Square_----”
“Everything’s all right there. I’ll tell you everything when we get on
the other car. You’ll like it all.”
“And must you really go to India?”
“I arranged with Nagar, before I left. It’s the story of the age, he
says. After that----”
“Yes?”
“After that--New York.”
They were in the Santa Monica car, on the way down to the ocean. She
had shown him Hollywood, pointing out some of the moving-picture
plants.... If he could only keep calm now--and not rush out to seize
the incredible little attractions of the moment! It seemed so important
to keep calm right now--as if this were a sort of trial trip. He must
be able to move right into this light without flinching--must endure
all delight in stillness. It wasn’t like repression--this that was
called of him now, but faith. The wonder of it all was her perfect
fearlessness with him. Their old word came back to him--_comrade_. He
almost spoke it, but stopped in time. He must live it. But why all this
holding back--after years of holding back?
“... So he won’t be coming back, I’m afraid,” he was saying of John
Higgins. “He understands that his desk is there for him as long as he
wants it, but he doesn’t encourage any one to believe he’ll use it
again. I told him he could do Washington, and leave Bert Ames on the
desk for the present, but he only shook his head.”
“I saw it coming,” said Pidge. “Oh, I’ve seen it for a long time. There
was never anything I could do to help him. I never can really help when
I want to.”
He felt she was thinking of Melton. She was, but she was thinking of
Fanny Gallup, too.
“He has no relatives,” Dicky went on, “but it’s arranged for his income
to keep up; anything he wants to do for the magazine----”
He saw her look of sadness.
“John Higgins is so helpless,” she said softly.
“We’ve taken on young Bothwell for the advertising, and given him a
little fund to work with,” Dicky reported. “Bothwell isn’t a plunger,
steady sort of genius in his game. The idea isn’t to plunge in any
department--just to work softly and slowly and steadily, giving
everybody his money’s worth. Also, if a story or article just suits, we
mustn’t let the price stand in the way any longer.”
She nodded wonderingly.
“Bert Ames has two or three good ideas to work out at the desk before
he leaves for Washington.”
“But who after that?”
“_Sit tight, Dicky._”
... He coughed. “It isn’t like the desk in the old sense. We have
talked about that. Pidge, I’m wabbling a bit, but the desk is yours.”
They were sitting in the windy front seats. She appeared to be looking
into the back of the motor-man’s neck.
“When you get back,” he added.
Her eyes did not move.
“This isn’t reward, this is your place; no other can hold down the
job. You’ve done it for months. There wouldn’t have been any _Public
Square_, if you hadn’t. I know all about the ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’
story, and the editorial paragraphs and how you have kept up the
reviews, and somehow got stories without money and without price. John
Higgins told me everything. It isn’t giving you reward. It is only
going on as you were, with some money to work with, and two or three
good men to help, and a salary for yourself that will make up in a
small way for the pittance you’ve been living on for years.”
“There mustn’t be any desk, Dicky,” she said queerly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’d be the laughing stock of New York, if I perched on a desk,
calling myself the Editor.”
She halted, thinking of what Miss Claes had advised about her
authorship of _The Lance of the Rivernais_.
“You’ll take it, Pidge?” he said with deadly calm.
“I’ll do what I can until you come back. It must be managed very
silently. No announcements. I’ll be there as I was. I’ve been thinking
a lot. _The Public Square_--I know how dear it is to you, Dicky. It is
to me, too. It will be wonderful to have some money to work with. I
know about Bothwell. He’s the right man for the advertising.”
“I left it open--for you to choose the one to help you when Bert Ames
goes over to Washington.”
Her eyes turned to him directly now, searchingly. There seemed to be
something intelligible for him in them, but he did not divine the
meaning.
“That’ll all work out,” she said presently. “We mustn’t try to plan it
all now.”
Her eyes filled with laughter.
“Oh, Dicky,” she said, “if I’d ever get self-conscious about feeling
all the responsibilities of _The Public Square_ resting upon my
shoulders--I’d muddle the whole business in a day!”
“They have rested on your shoulders, Pidge.”
“Yes, but I didn’t stop to think.... In another minute you’ll be able
to see the ocean!”
They were silent. Then she pointed over the motor-man’s shoulder, and
he saw a vast stretch of leveled azure, like sky ironed out smooth.
“And--you’re--going--across!” she said suddenly--“still after the Big
Story that you’ve always been looking for. And oh, Dicky, I’ll go to
see them when you’re gone--your mother and aunt and sister.”
“It did a lot for me to learn that you had called.”
“Dicky,” she said solemnly, “when they told me what you’d done in
Paris----”
“Let’s not--Pidge.”
“And when I remembered that Sunday afternoon you took me to your
house--and what a beast I was--oh, how that hurt! I’ve been so sorry
and so grateful.”
* * * * *
He had seen Pidge with the baby in her arms. He had held the baby
himself, in fact, while she got breakfast one morning, and their
laughter had disturbed Mr. Adolph Musser, who felt that the world was
no place for such laughter with his nerves in the condition they were.
“His back feels so funny,” Dicky had reported concerning the infant.
Pidge gave him a look, and went on timing the eggs. Mr. Musser’s egg
had to lie three and one-half minutes in water that had ceased to boil.
“And his hair stays combed,” Dicky added.
He had held converse with Mr. Musser, which was an experience. Mrs. Rab
Gaunt Hastings had gone her way after a series of such experiences,
her fortune undivided. It had been said that the undivided nature of
her departure was in a measure responsible for Mr. Musser’s nervous
breakdown, though he explained it metaphysically. Since he could not be
left in his weak state, it was arranged for him to return with Pidge to
New York.
“I have known for many months that the field of my labors was to be
amplified,” said Mr. Musser, with one of his sudden hopeful flashes.
“My illness is but a cleansing in preparation. Always the wrecker
before the builder. My throat, for instance----”
Pidge called at this point from the fig tree back of the bungalow. It
was their last day.... For seven days they had walked the sunny silent
mesas, traced the interminable canyons, and miles and miles of curving
shore of the sea. To-night for him, the Valley train to San Francisco;
to-morrow afternoon, the Pacific Mail steamer.... She had spoken of
Rufus Melton for the first time.
“You think he was really married in France?” she asked.
“They frightened him into it,” Dicky said. “It seemed to me as if Rufe
looked upon it as a way out--then found that they didn’t mean to let
him escape, even then.”
There was no suffocating emotion about this talk. It was only in
moments like this that he understood that he had earned something
through the years. They had to go back to the bungalow for lunch with
the elder and the child, who objected to each other. There was only
a little while alone in the afternoon, because he had to be in Los
Angeles for his train at six.
“I started things going among the agents in New York, for a serial,” he
said at the last, “but you’ll have to decide. We want a corking long
story, Pidge--one that has brain and brawn----”
Her face was turned away.
“Just the right one should be lying around somewhere,” he added.
“I’ll look,” she said.
She would have gone into the city with him, but he objected: “You would
have to come back alone!”
Their real parting was on the Palisades, and there were few words about
it.
“It’s work, now,” he said. “We go opposite ways for the same job--the
Story of the Age.”
“And after that--New York,” she answered.
They stood in the superb sunlight at the edge of the escarpment.
Hundreds of feet below was the old abandoned bathhouse, and the three
white lines of surf pressing into the land, like tireless fingers of a
modeler upon the clay. To the left was the portal of the Canyon, to the
right the fallow lands with feathery brushes of eucalyptus against the
sky.
“We’re all meshed yet, Dicky--meshed in wantings and struggles, all
tracked up with recent experiences. We can’t see each other clearly
yet----”
He was looking into her face in half profile. Quietly it had dawned
upon him that he couldn’t have spared a single one of the hard days
of the past five years, not a single one of the black patches, even.
They were the dark rooms in which this present striking film had been
developed.
“We can’t--what?” he said strangely.
She was speaking, but still he didn’t hear, for that moment in the
superb sunlight, he saw Pidge Musser as he had never seen her before.
XL
THE YANK DEVELOPED
DICKY reached Calcutta toward the end of March, 1919, and had no
difficulty in learning that the Little Man would be in Bombay within
a week. Where Gandhi was at any given time in the Indian Empire these
days was the most public of all facts. It was as if one entered a house
and asked the children where their mother was. Both the native and
English press were full of his sayings and doings, though he was seen
and heard, of course, from different angles. The Rowlatt Bills had just
been passed, and Dicky painstakingly looked into the nature of these.
He heard that Gandhi was ill; that he scarcely could stand, in fact;
but that he was speaking to great throngs every day. A few days ago
he had talked to thousands on the Beach at Madras. Since then he had
traveled to Trichinopoly, to Tuticorin, to Negapatam where he had
addressed a monster gathering in the Nazir gardens, pledging the people
to _Satyagraha_ by thousands, and warning them with terrible warnings
before they pledged, that the step they took meant self-suffering; that
they must not use violence against the Government in thought or deed.
Dicky crossed to Bombay immediately, hoping to find Nagar there. On
the train a young officer of the military who had come from Singapore
on the same ship with him, met an elderly friend of the civil service.
They talked in Dicky’s presence.
“But why don’t they arrest the fanatic?” the soldier asked.
The elderly departmental officer smiled. “That’s what they all ask at
first,” he said.
“But, if he’s preaching sedition----”
“He is also preaching nonviolence. British Government hasn’t a better
friend in India at the present hour than this same little barrister.
The people are upset over the Rowlatt Bills, and Gandhi is calming them
down. Arrest him, I think not!... We have much to thank Gandhi for. He
helped along enlistments, and now he preaches nonviolence. It’s all
religion with him. He’s a political saint. The thousands follow him
like a Messiah. Pretty safe sort of thing, to have a Messiah around
advising the multitudes to turn their other cheek. Not that we’ve
slapped one, you know.”
In the sweltering core of the native city, Dicky found the house which
Gandhi used as headquarters while in Bombay. Here a letter awaited
him from Nagar, written at Lahore, advising him to look to Mahatma-ji
for counsel; and hoping that they would soon be together. In his room
Dicky sent out for an armful of recent newspapers and publications,
determined to get the situation further in hand.
... No question about India being a bit stunned over the passage of
the Rowlatt Bills two weeks before. These measures provided that
the ordinary criminal laws should be supplemented, and certain
emergency powers added by the Government to deal with anarchical and
revolutionary movements. The shock to native India lay in the fact
that she had been led to expect that the measures adopted during the
War would be mitigated, rather than intensified at this time. And
Mahatma-ji was on the war path of the Soul.
Gandhi reached Bombay on April third. He was followed by a great
crowd from the railroad station to the house of his host. Dicky, who
had watched from a distance the emerging of the Indian idol from his
third-class coach, wondered if he were ever again to get the Little Man
alone in a room as in Ahmedabad. He hadn’t been in the hotel an hour,
however, before he received a message to accompany bearer to Gandhi’s
headquarters.
The native led him through the crowd without difficulty, and to an
inner room where Mahatma-ji sat alone, both hands extended. Dicky sat
down on the empty cushion before him.
“It is good to see you again, Mr. Cobden.... I regret that I was not in
Bombay when you arrived; especially since it happened that Nagarjuna
was needed in the north at this time, but we cannot think first of our
own affairs. I am expected in Lahore on the tenth, but doubtless you
will start for there or for Amritsar, which is very near, before that.
Nagarjuna is now in Amritsar.”
“I will wait and travel with you, if you permit,” Dicky began.
The other smiled.
“My way of travel is not yours, I am afraid. It might be interesting
enough for just one journey, but I question the judgment of it. To be
seen too much with me is to become persona non grata to the English.
This would prove a detriment to the work you are to do. Remember that
you are an American, and that basically the American spirit is above
partisanship.”
Gandhi was slightly changed. The wasted body was even lower on its
cushions. The look of intense weariness was still apparent, but the
look of fearlessness was enhanced. Dicky heard the humming of the
_charka_ in the next room as before. The fragrance returned to his
nostrils. The old feeling stole over him of eagerness to do something
for the physical welfare of the man before him, something to make the
mere enduring of life easier.
“Physicians tell me that I should be very quiet,” Gandhi explained with
a smile. “It is true that I was unable to keep all my appointments to
speak on the other side of India, but in the main I am very active.
The human body may be made to do what is required of it, after a
fashion.... Yes, there are many changes. Our position is rapidly
becoming one of direct opposition to Government. We were slow to
realize these things.... Our movement depends for its success entirely
upon perfect self-possession, self-restraint, absolute adherence to
truth and unlimited capacity for self-suffering. In this manner only
may we dare to oppose the Rowlatt legislation, and resist the spirit
of terrorism which lies behind it, and of which it is the most glaring
symptom.”
Dicky’s reaction was queer. He understood the point about the
Government daring to leave this man at large, but didn’t Government
see deeper than this placid mask? Of all keepers of the peace, Gandhi
was apparently master; but in the fearlessness of the eyes that gazed
on him now, Dicky fancied for a moment, at least, that he saw what
British Government did not. The Little Man suddenly appeared to him as
the living embodiment of the Enemy to all existing Governments, utterly
terrible in stillness and poise. At the same time, Dicky didn’t lose
for a moment his feeling of pity for the wasted figure before him, that
tenderness which he could not even have explained to an American.
“... I see you have been faithfully at work, Mr. Cobden,” the Little
Man was saying now. “Some time I would have you tell me of your days on
the French fields--what you found there after India--whatever you care
to speak of experiences which evidently have brought you forward in
kindness and understanding and peace----”
“I am glad you find----” Dicky began in an embarrassed tone.
“It is well for me to tell you, but that is sufficient,” Gandhi added.
“These are our affairs, not yours----”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand that.”
“We have a saying that one who is coming forward in attainment must not
delay his progress by pausing to contemplate or analyze himself. One’s
attainment rightly is the joy and affair of every other being but that
one.”
Dicky now felt that there was something to report to America in the
story of Gandhi and his following of millions. For three days he
was with the Little Man, morning and afternoon. Very sternly he had
impressed upon himself the fatuousness of expecting anything like the
old “miracle.” There was no need for that miracle now, Dicky informed
himself gravely and repeatedly, for something of Pidge Musser ceased
to be alive in his heart at no time, though much pain of yearning was
connected with it and pity and human questionings. He had learned well
by now that all really important experiences are spontaneous and can
only steal into a mind that is emptied of anticipation and its own
inferior pictures.
But on the third day something came to him--as fruits from his dreary
months of France. He had been speaking to Gandhi of the hideous
directionless campaign days there. Suddenly, as he himself talked, the
American Soldier in composite was unveiled before him--the game and
grinning Yank, who had held fast in faith to but one thing under smoke
and sun, against shock and night itself--his sense of Humor, the fun of
the thing.
Dicky _saw_ the Yank, now. That was all there was to it. In the dark
room of France the picture had developed and the presence of Mohandas
Gandhi now brought it out to the light. It was Dicky’s for all time,
and his eyes closed with pain that his old friend John Higgins had
missed it--the one thing that one needed to know, to keep one’s faith
in America, and to gamble even to life itself that the new order of
nobleman should one day arise with laughter.
... He walked the streets of Bombay afterward, and then wrote to
Pidge late at night, though he was leaving for the north early in the
morning. It seemed he could not wait to tell her. All the meanings
of New York that he had caught as a New Yorker, in his own home and
in the house of Miss Claes, as an exile in Asia and correspondent in
France--fused into a sort of splendid synthesis at last.
He saw ships coming from all Europe to New York Harbor--coming in
through The Narrows bearing the emigrants of all Europe--passing under
the Statue of Liberty--tiny seeds diffusing into the vast crucible of
The States, running out from the meeting point of Manhattan on all the
red lines of railroad, into all the green rivers, planting themselves
in all parts, for the emerging of the New Race at last--the Laughing
Men, the dense physical model of which he had seen in France.
XLI
UNDER THE MANGOES OF CAWNPORE
“NO haste, but no delay.” Gandhi had used the very words in suggesting
that it would be well for Dicky to join Nagar in the north. The
American telegraphed that he would reach Amritsar on the evening of the
ninth, and made his way northward leisurely, stopping over in Cawnpore,
for a full day. It was in Cawnpore, toward midday, after a two hours’
ramble in white dust and the killing colorless heat, that Dicky halted
in the shade of a little grove of mangoes. He took off his helmet and
mopped his brow with a piece of silk already damp. In the shade, at a
slight distance (his left foot twisted into the ground), sat an ascetic
who kept on with his muttering, not turning the way of the American.
The look of an iron statue suggested itself. There were ashes, and
worse, in the holy man’s hair, and in one empty eye socket. The hands
were held out in space--twisted, seared hands, but so moveless that
Dicky thought of the iron statue again. The wrists were thick and
very strong. Cobden squinted his eyes back toward the pitiless Indian
street, and then he perceived the Hindu’s face turned to him. A single
vivid eye held him, as by the scruff of the neck. The voice was deep
and resonant as from one who had learned to breathe, a rare art. The
words in English were quietly spoken:
“It is written, my son, that you are to come to the end of your search
within six days.”
Dicky edged closer, and asked courteously: “Do you really get it that
way?”
“So it reads in the crystals. To one who truly reads, the tale is
one--whether read in the crystals or the stars.”
The holy man lifted from between his thighs a handful of stained and
rusty stones.
“You will go to a wall,” he added studiously. “You will enter through
the gate of the wall----”
“What wall, father?”
“Who knows? I see the wall. The end comes within six days, and there is
tumult.”
“The end of my life?”
“There seems no surety of that, but it is possible.”
The deep voice of the _hathayogin_ went on: “The crystals foretell, but
the wisdom and daring of man forestall. Had you not come to this tree,
there would be no hope. As it is, you may come again to-morrow at this
time.”
“I’m afraid not, father. Whatever wall it is, I shall be one day nearer
it, to-morrow.”
Few would have noted the faint film of pallor under Dicky Cobden’s tan.
As white men go, he knew something about the Indian holy men. The more
he learned, the more he respected certain rare types. There is a saying
in India that the real mystic never begs. Dicky determined to learn
the quality of the man before him, for he arose now to depart without
offering a present in money.
“Perhaps, father, from this meeting, I shall be wiser to face the fate
that awaits me at the wall.”
“You should be wise enough to take one day from your journey.”
“I cannot take what is not altogether my own,” the American laughed. “I
am saying good-by now.”
He walked slowly out of the shade of the trees. With each step, his
blood chilled a little, in spite of noon heat. He thought of _The
Public Square_, of Pidge Musser at the desk there, of Harrow Street.
Death had to come some time, but life wasn’t boring him just now. The
sunlight of the open stretch stung his eyes with great weariness. The
deep voice called from behind:
“Stay, my pupil!”
Dicky halted and returned, looking down into the apparently guileless
and desireless eye. “Alms for the temple in Cawnpore,” the lips intone.
“By all means, father,” the other said, no visible change upon his
face, as he placed in the palm of the beggar several bits of silver
from his purse. In the burning day again, he lifted a tired smile to
the sun. No true mystic, perhaps, but what had this man seen in the
crystals?
XLII
LALA RELU RAM
NAGAR took him by the hand at the railway station in Amritsar on the
evening of the ninth of April, 1919. The need for many words seemed
past; there was quiet gladness. Dicky took up his quarters in the
_Golden Temple Inn_. Under the lights at the entrance, as he passed
in with Nagar, groups of Mohammedans and Hindus stood together, with
self-conscious but eager shows of mutual friendship, and the American
rubbed his eyes.
If there was one thing in India that could be counted upon like
Government itself, it was the mutual hatred of these two great
divisions of native life. Dicky had heard in recent days much of
the swift breaking down of these barriers, under the influence of
Mahatma-ji, but he had seen no example of it working out like this
under the lights of the Inn.
“But what do the English think when they see the Hindu and Moslem
_kowtowing_ to each other--as at the door below when we came in?” Dicky
inquired.
“The Deputy Commissioner, the highest English civilian of Amritsar,
looked upon a similar spectacle to-day,” Nagar said. “I did not hear
him, but he is reported to have remarked, ‘There’s going to be a row
here,’ and drank much cold soda water.”
“What is your work here, Nagar?”
“I have been working among the students at the college of Lahore, and
now here in Amritsar, working with the young men and women.”
“Preaching Gandhi’s sort of peace?”
“Yes,” said Nagar.
“I still wonder that the English don’t ‘get’ the Little Man, Nagar.”
“The Government regards him as harmless because he speaks of
Soul-force. It deals with precedents; Mahatma-ji with ideals----”
“You think the Government will arrest him sooner or later?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Won’t that stop or hurt the work?”
“I remember,” said Nagar, “hearing the school children in New York
sing, ‘John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, but his Soul
goes marching on.’ A spiritual beginning never stops. Mahatma-ji has
already brought his few spiritual principles into matter, into action.”
“Tunnel,” said Dicky.
“Night and day Mahatma-ji has been preparing his entire people to stand
quiet and hateless; no matter what happens to him,” Nagar went on with
a smile. “He tells them that in the event of his imprisonment, or even
of his martyrdom, they would only wound his spirit, by answering the
shedding of blood with blood----”
They talked late. For fully an hour after Nagar left, Dicky sat by the
open window, smoking to keep the insects away. Tobacco did not entirely
quench the stale tired smell of the town. Even after he put out the
light, sleepless hours passed, so it was late in the forenoon when he
awoke, hearing cries in the street below. He crossed to the window.
“_Hindu Mussultmanki jai!_” a voice cried. This he took to mean a
native impulse to promote Hindu and Moslem unity, or something of the
sort. Also he heard the cry repeatedly, “_Mahatma Gandhiki jai!_” Also
Gandhi’s name associated with the names of “Kitchlew and Satyapal,”
native leaders in Amritsar, of whom Nagar had spoken last night.
Presently there was a knock at his door. A serious but friendly young
Hindu in student’s garb bowed, entered and walked to the center of the
room, saying in careful English:
“From Nagarjuna I have come to be at the service of Cobden Sahib for
the full day.”
“Thank you. Is Nagar busy?”
The student bowed again and proceeded: “My name is Lala Relu Ram and
I am glad to come and make you acquainted with the disposition of the
city.”
The shouts were raised again outside.
“What’s in the air?” Dicky asked.
This was too much for Lala Relu Ram.
“I mean the shouts below--is this another holiday?”
“My people are gravely disturbed. Doctors Kitchlew and Satyapal have
been sent for by the Deputy Commissioner Sahib. It is feared for them
by my people.”
“What have they been doing?”
“In the terms of public speech they have cried out--also against
the Rowlatt Bills, and for the amity of all peoples in Amritsar,
Dr. Kitchlew being a Mohammedan and Dr. Satyapal a Hindu, which is
anomalous.”
Dicky was still unshaven, and there were some notes he wished to put
down.
“I’ll be ready to go out with you in an hour or less,” he said. “Would
you not like to go down and get a line on what is going on?”
The student confessed that he would, but plainly the American idiom
“get a line on” fascinated him. He paused to inquire, and Dicky
explained.
“That is very good,” the student observed. “We are taught that the
language of the future is to be made of most flexible symbols. I will
get a line upon what is in the air and return.”
He was back within a half hour saying that the worst had happened.
Doctors Kitchlew and Satyapal had been arrested under the Defense of
India Act, ordered to write farewell letters to their families, and
been driven out of town, their destination unknown.
“My people are gathering to go to the bungalow of the Deputy
Commissioner with a _faryad_ (petition) that will remonstrate very
firmly,” the Hindu boy said.
“We had better be there, don’t you think, when the doings begin?” Dicky
inquired.
“Doings?”
“When the performance is pulled off.”
“Ah, _tamasha_!”
“I think so,” said Dicky.
They heard the slamming of boarded shop windows in all the native
streets. The word for suspension of trade had gone abroad. The two
pressed through gathering groups all making their way in one direction.
They had passed through a stretch of bazaars and before them now was
a carriage bridge over the railroad right of way. On the bridge, they
were packed tightly in the throng by the railings on either side. In
a moment, the crowd in front halted and surged back. Lala Relu Ram
gripped his arm queerly. Now they heard voices far ahead--angry voices
in English--demanding the people to disperse. The van of the crowd
had been confronted by a police and military piquet, but the pressing
forward did not cease.
“My people are refusing to be stopped. They claim the right to make
their plea,” the student whispered.
Dicky was sinking himself into the purpose of the populace. As ever
from his training, he sought to clear his mind of preconception and
self-interest--so that the events might write upon a clean surface.
Just now a shot was heard; a bullet sang overhead--then a volley. It
was not until that moment that he remembered the dusty twisted ascetic
in the mango grove at Cawnpore. But that was only two days ago, and
where was the wall?
* * * * *
He found himself in the very quick of the Indian people--under the
cuticle of India herself. India the timid, the terrible; India talking
of Soul-force; India running with its _faryad_ to the ranking English
representative of Amritsar; explaining her griefs and her hurts to
herself and to the English, seeing neither the humor of her plight on
one side, nor its grimness on the other; India led about on a string
which she might have broken with the flick of a finger.
That was what India had always seemed most like to Dicky
Cobden--_hathis_, the elephant, gentlest and strongest of creatures.
For many generations she had been banged about by the shouts and blows
of the white _mahout_, who was not in the cult of elephant lore, never
a native of her habitat. He had made her stand around according to
his own ideas--India, the great female elephant, full of tremors and
flutterings; of vast strange delicacies and uncomputable powers.... Now
she was leaving her white _mahout_ to follow about a little black man
with an invisible string.
“_Mahatma Gandhiki jai! Gandhi Maharajiki rai!_”
Dicky heard the voice raised now in the lull that followed the first
volley.... A little black man with an invisible string, called
Soul-force.
One with the crowd, he felt its galvanic jerk of ugliness pass through
himself. The murmur of protest that now arose from the open mouths
was like something from himself--as if his mouth, too, were open with
sound. A bearded native in soiled white garments turned suddenly and
pressed him back. This man had felt a stone under his bare foot and
he was making room to reach down to pick it up. Dicky saw his fingers
stretch toward the muck. He understood. Here was one of the primal
impulses of the human body in a stress of fear and hate. Far ahead,
the English officers roared commands for the natives to go back. The
voices of native leaders standing with the English, also implored the
people to disperse. But the people had their _faryad_. They wanted
talk. Also there were dead and wounded on the earth before the eyes of
the front ranks. Another volley sounded.
Instead of being driven back by the second pelting of shots, the
native crowd crushed its way across the bridge. In the opening on the
other side, it halted, now in the Civil Lines, no longer jammed by the
narrow rails of the bridge. The throng had not yet become insensate; no
individual had seized the office of leadership. This was the instant
of all to Dicky Cobden, the turning point. The native gathering might
still have been reasoned with, as it stood leaderless, looking upon
its own dead; but instead of reason, came the third volley from the
soldiers and police, the prod of the ankus that turned the elephant
_musth_.
The shuddering of revolt that the people felt passed through Richard
Cobden as well--whipped up in his own breast. Then he was carried
forward with the mob. Nothing gentle or yielding about the bodies now,
a rough, bruising, muscular mass pushed from behind by incredible power.
Dicky glanced about to look for Lala Relu Ram, and that instant was
whacked to the ground, a slug from the pistol of one of the troopers,
gouging his left shoulder. He arose to one knee, still turned back, a
laugh on his lips, looking for the student.
And now a most extraordinary shock was meted out to the son of the
trowel makers. A running native with gray, patchy face, completely
carried away by mob impulse, halted, stood above the kneeling white
man, struck him in the face with both hands, emptying his mouth
at the same time. Some of the natives immediately behind, without
questioning but that Dicky was one of the English, now tramped over
his body as they ran. Though fallen, he still preserved a final waver
of consciousness--face down, head covered in his arms. Finally he was
caught by the arm and jerked to the side.
It was Lala Relu Ram who had pulled him out of the crowd and looked
down into a face covered with blood and mud, and a welt or two. The
only white about that face now was the lips which smiled and repeated
a word which the Hindu student had never heard in all his linguistic
studies of the East and West.
XLIII
_HATHIS_ LAMENTS
DICKY really came to back in an apothecary shop on the way to the
Golden Temple, where Lala Relu Ram had carried him. The filth of
that face that had opened upon him as he looked up from his knee--a
shudder about that, something he would never be able to tell. It had
been uglier to take than the blows. As moments dragged on, he fell to
wishing Nagar would come. A curious wonder played incessantly in his
mind about the twisted ascetic under the mango trees in Cawnpore, but
where was the wall? The crystal gazer had repeated that the thing which
was to befall would be within a wall.
“... The bullet didn’t think enough of you to stay, Mr. Cobden,” the
young English surgeon said after examination. “It merely bit out a
chunk of muscle and went its way. Since there is no cavity for it to
drain into, it means nothing but a stitch or two, and a clean bandage.
But you’ve been considerably mashed about the face. There’s going to
be a strain on your drainage system for a few days to carry off dead
tissue.”
He was taken to his room at the Inn, much bandaged, and Lala Relu Ram
sat by his bedside, his face often turned to the open window that
looked out over the street.
“I’m all right--don’t stay,” Dicky urged, as he began to understand the
sacrifice of the student in remaining with him instead of following the
mob.
“Nagarjuna did not say for one hour, or for half of one day, but for
the full day,” Lala Relu Ram declared, “and who knows but that I too
might have disobeyed the orders of Mahatma-ji and become violent?”
Dicky hadn’t much of a grin left, but such as it was, he was free to
let it work under the folds of gauze. He sent the student below on
one pretext after another, knowing that the young man was exhausting
himself from strain to hear all that had happened.
“It is more terrible than we supposed,” the student reported, as the
long day ended. “Enraged by their dead and wounded, and being prevented
from carrying their request to the Deputy Commissioner, my people have
burned buildings, bank buildings--the National, the Chartered, the
Alliance banks----”
“That’s hitting them where they live,” said Mr. Cobden, impelled to
Americanisms as never before.
“Sir?” said Lala Relu Ram, bending forward on the scent of the idiom.
“A Government bank is an English nerve center, Lala Ram,” Dicky said.
The student was thoughtful, and then resumed: “It is with sorrow that I
have to confess that my people have forgotten themselves in the case of
Mr. Stewart and Mr. Scott of the National Bank and Mr. Thomason of the
Alliance Bank----”
“Hurt?” said Dicky.
“Dead,” said the student, with a dramatic pause. “And that is not all.
Miss Sherwood was most brutally assaulted, and outside the city a
railway guard named Robinson, and a havildar in charge of the Electric,
named Rowlands, were beaten to death where they live, and the station
goods yard burnt----”
Dicky’s eyes squinted under the cloths. “And what of your own people?”
he managed to ask.
“Oh, many have been killed!”
This was an item that did not require the enumeration of details.
_Hathis_ had gone _musth_, but not for long. _Hathis_ was horrified
at the awfulness of the thing she had done. _Hathis_ was back in her
pickets again, not realizing her own hurts, anticipating a clubbing on
the toes, and in the immortal way of _hathis_, half suspecting that a
clubbing was deserved.
“I’d like to doze a little,” said Dicky.
The student rose, but lingered.
“Would Cobden Sahib permit me to ask one question?”
“Why, of course, shoot--I mean--ask it.”
“It is about that moment when you fell,” said Lala Relu Ram. “Rather,
it was when I reached you, and had driven off my people who thought you
were one of the English----”
“Yes.”
“You were partly out of the body--unconscious. Yet your eyes were open
and you were speaking some word that I have never heard--several times,
as you would speak the Holy Name in devotion, with breathing.”
“What was that name?” Dicky inquired, pulling the bandage down farther
over his eyes.
“It is not one which I have ever heard in my speech or yours--that is
why I ask. It was like this, ‘Pid-gee--Pid-gee.’”
Dicky laughed.
“That is--the fact is, that’s right curious,” he said. “I must have
been ‘out of the body,’ as you say. That--that is a little expression
we use in childhood!”
* * * * *
As Nagar stood under the light that evening, Dicky saw that his eyes,
too, were burning with strange sorrow. Lala Relu Ram bowed himself out,
walking backward. When they were alone, Nagar came to the bedside,
drawing a chair, and his hand found the American’s.
“We have not done well in Amritsar to-day.”
“I don’t think you understand it quite,” Dicky said. “I was there this
noon, at the place they call the Hallgate Bridge----”
“There was violence,” said Nagar.
“There were three volleys----”
The Oriental smiled. “It is not the provocation that we deal with, but
the losing of oneself in anger. Nothing remains to us but the fact that
Amritsar lost its self-control.”
“You think the Little Man will be unhappy about what has happened, when
he comes?”
“Mahatma-ji was arrested this morning at Kosi, served with an order not
to enter Punjab, nor the district of Delhi, but to confine himself to
the Bombay Presidency.”
Dicky studied his friend. He couldn’t help feeling if Nagar had been at
the Hallgate Bridge---- Finally he spoke:
“I’m just a reporter, Nagar. I’m not granting that Gandhi knows it all
or that the natives to-day are all right, and the English all wrong.
Still, I can’t help wondering at what you ask of your people--as a
reporter would ask, you understand. They turned the other cheek! They
took the first volley and the second. I was there. No man has three
cheeks. I saw it all in that minute between the second and third
firing.”
Nagar’s hand pressed his and Dicky lowered his voice, though his tone
had not been loud.
“Anything might have happened that instant had there been a bit of
leadership,” he added. “The people wanted to talk to their father--the
Deputy. You would have wept for their forbearance, or stupidity, as you
like. Their dead were at their feet, the cries of the wounded in their
ears, and still they weren’t maddened. They only wanted to show their
_faryad_. If there had been the right Englishman on the spot--why, the
crowd would have been allowed to go forward with its document. I’ve
an idea that it was something dangerously like funk that caused that
third volley, and that nobody will ever be so sorry for what happened
to-day, as England herself. I call it human the way your people lost
their heads.”
“Mahatma-ji’s ideal isn’t human, Richard. It is of the Soul. We shall
suffer and India shall suffer--for to-day.”
“I’ve got a lot to learn about this man’s India. I can see that,” the
American said queerly.
XLIV
THE SLATE AND THE SPONGE
PIDGE was choosing a serial for _The Public Square_. The choice lay
now between two manuscripts on the desk before her eyes. One was by a
maker of the “new” American literature, named Carver, who had dared to
perform the work in one sustained, slow movement, bound to ward off
excessive popularity, a thing of drabs and tans and grays, but earnest,
even in its hopelessness. It consistently portrayed a cross section
of life, a fine piece of human observation, but altogether unlit with
intuition.
The other book was a novel of New York, by a woman whose name was
entirely unheard of. This manuscript had been refused several times
as a serial in the past year, and several times as a book prospect.
The letters of refusal from the different editors were also on Pidge
Musser’s desk. One said, “This book is too much of a gamble for an
unknown name.” The united opinion of all professional readers was that
this story was unquestionably an augur for the future of the novelist,
rather than a compelling announcement of her arrival.
In her own heart, Pidge believed that the woman’s story would interest
more readers than Carver’s. Also, _The Public Square_ would be saved
considerable money in taking the woman’s story, for Carver stood out
for rather a high price for his first American serial rights.
“It isn’t the freedom of ignorance,” she said at last, about the
lower-priced book, “but it isn’t the freedom of knowledge, either. ‘A
man is crippled while he’s learning technic.’... No, I can’t take the
chance!”
So the novel by the unknown woman went back to Harrow Street with its
refusals, and found a resting place in the drawer under the mirror that
waved; and only Miss Claes and the author, herself, knew who was hurt.
* * * * *
Mr. Adolph Musser, in New York with his daughter, began to have
callers. The two small upper rooms in Harrow Street were not adapted
for callers, even in the adaptable Village. Especially this was so
because an adopted male child of one year was rooted and ramifying in
the place. One of the ramifications was a female lodger and one-time
nurse who looked after the child while Pidge was away at the office.
Mr. Musser, during his first week in New York, before he found an
apartment in the Sixties, had pronounced this woman too heavy-footed to
live with.
Though Pidge had received an important increase of salary, dating
from the first of this year of 1919, she did not find herself in a
greatly improved condition when the additional expenses of nurse and
her father’s separate maintenance were considered. However, something
happened which she had not foreseen. Mr. Adolph Musser became rapidly
self-supporting. According to his predictions, New York proved to be
suffering from a “biological hunger and thirst” for his very sort of
metaphysic. Los Angeles had been sated. One had merely to move from
temple to temple in Los Angeles. Cultists of all colors were there;
light-bringers from all lands. Mr. Musser, according to predictions,
found New York a virgin oil field and he was not long in getting his
derricks up.
Late in May there was a letter from Richard Cobden, mailed at Bombay
in early April. Though it was written to Pidge personally she saw in
it Dicky’s first real work, his first actual grasp and retention of
essentials, to her idea. It opened to her, also, the lineaments of the
Big Story they had talked so much about. She read the letter through
twice on the day it arrived, and that night took it home to read to
Miss Claes, who came to the upper room in the latter part of the
evening, as she had come to hear _The Lance of the Rivernais_, over
five years ago. Their faces were close together, and Pidge read low and
rapidly:
I have been with Gandhi several times in the past three days, and
early to-morrow I start north for Amritsar to join Nagar. I hadn’t
thought of writing this until just now, on my way to bed, and the
subject of the Little Man suddenly filled me. I feel an unadulterated
American to-night, and there may be an advantage, at least an angle,
in a study of Gandhi from that point.... He is very ill, can scarcely
stand, but more than ever full of his kind of light and power. In
the last three days with him, I have come to understand _you_ as
never before--and America and the American soldier. I have found
out, Pidge, what you mean by stating and living the fact, that it
isn’t how much one knows that counts, but how much one does. Gandhi
is a doer. I used to hear in church something about the Spirit being
made flesh, and now I’ve got an inkling of what that means. Gandhi’s
genius doesn’t dream. _It does._ The sun shines on all India, but
Gandhi has become a lens. The rays focalize through him. The ground
burns under his feet.... He is called a bigot, a fanatic, a living
Blue Law, and it is all true, Pidge. He is drawn in black and white.
He has no half-tones, no twilights, no afterglows. He is devoid of
atmosphere as the moon. His lines of light and shadow are never blent
or diffused. He is vivid noon where his light strikes, densest night
where light ends.... It is not that he loathes the West, but that he
knows the East. He has become a specialist, as Nagar says repeatedly.
He has withdrawn his attention from the world to India, Herself. He
has brought in his eyes from the future, to the Now. He sees the next
step which India must take, and leaves to the dreamers of the world
to point out the glories and the penalties. He stands in the road in
front of India to-day, like a man before a runaway horse----
Dicky had ended the letter suddenly, saying he was sleepy, but had more
to say later. The two women talked low, because of _another_ in the
room. This other was not to be disturbed. They stood over him now. He
would not have approved at all of their gayety and know-it-all manner,
had he been awake. His lids were down, however; the black curving
lashes reposed in their hollows; the world, which was the big horse he
must some time ride, was away minding its own business.
“I’m glad to hear this much before I go----” Miss Claes stopped and
took both of Pidge’s hands.
“Before you go--where?”
“This little slate of Harrow Street is all written over. It is to be
rubbed out now, Pidge. My part is finished here--I don’t know how well,
but it’s finished. I am leaving New York.”
“Why, that--that seems--insupportable!... Why, I thought anything could
happen but that--to my New York!”
“Only you are to know, dear,” Miss Claes said moments afterward. “Yes,
it is India----”
“To Nagar--you are to be with him--the Hills!”
“Don’t, Pidge. It isn’t for words----”
“Forgive me----”
“These are terrible days for India. It means work--work--tests for
every one’s courage. Little Harrow Street is still and steady,
compared.... But this is dear to me--the thought that I go ahead to
make ready for you another place to come----”
“My upper room,” said Pidge softly. “My upper room.”
XLV
AMRITSAR, APRIL 13, 1919
TOWARD the end of the afternoon of Sunday, the 13th, Richard Cobden
ordered a carriage. He was still bandaged about the head, his left arm
in a sling. This was his first descent from the room since his hurts
on the 10th, and meanwhile General Fyatt had taken control of the
city, bringing in troops from nearby stations. Dicky had met Fyatt in
France, and was on his way now to pay his respects to the General at
his Headquarters in the Ram Bagh. He was getting it very clearly just
now that if it were observed that he had any sort of affiliation with
the natives, he would promptly be placed out of reach of all Punjabi
events, even as a spectator.
The American was personally and intensely interested in Nagar and
Gandhi, but still he did not feel that he had taken sides in the least.
He looked upon Gandhi’s work as visionary, and the work of the British
in India as substantial, and the more likely to endure. He had seen
Nagar but a moment or two each day since the 10th, and had kept in
touch with developments through the English sources.
The air was still furiously hot, though it was after four in the
afternoon. The streets were crowded, this being the day of the
_Baisaki_ fair, and thousands were in from the country. Dicky heard
the roar of a ’plane over the city, and craned out of the window of
his half-closed carriage for a glance at its flight. The pilot was
making circles over a point at a little distance ahead--a low peculiar
hovering.
Dicky inquired of his driver the meaning, and was told that the
’plane appeared to be hanging over the great crowd assembled in the
Jallianwalla Bagh--that thousands of the visitors attending the fair
were there, listening to the speakers, as well as many townsfolk.
“But didn’t the General give orders for no public assemblies?”
The driver had not heard. Dicky reflected that the ’plane didn’t appear
to be there for the amusement of a crowd--no circus ’plane, but an
effective bit of government property, rather, with an air of business.
It rose now and vanished over the city.
The carriage continued on the way to the Ram Bagh, until it was halted
for the passage of troops in the street. A half-hundred Gurkhas and
Baluchees, two motor cars with English officers and civilians, the
whole outfit trailed by a pair of armored cars, and moving in the
direction where the government ’plane had hovered.
“Where are they going?” Dicky asked of his driver.
The man was not sure, but suggested the Jallianwalla Bagh.
“What is that place?”
“It is a _maidan_,” the man said, “a big open square, a public place.”
“Public square,” Dicky muttered. “Turn in short after the armored
cars,” he commanded the driver. “Follow close.”
“Ram Bagh is not so.”
It is a difficult proceeding, requiring formalities, to alter one’s
orders in Asia.
“Listen. I am changing my purpose. Not Ram Bagh, but Jallianwalla. Turn
in after the soldiers--now!”
The driver obeyed, but was hurt and murmuring.
To Dicky, that afternoon, Amritsar was a place of heated and offensive
stenches. As they passed through hot and narrow streets, certain of
these odors startled his comprehension, because they were so subtly
vindictive. The thought occurred to him, as he watched the naked
children playing in the wet shadows, of what a correspondent had
remarked in Cawnpore: that it was hard to tell whether the streets
soiled the children, or the children soiled the streets. The movement
forward was very slow, and Dicky bent to inquire at length if they were
still moving toward Jallianwalla Bagh.
“Yes, it is very near,” said the driver, churning at the lines with
both hands.
The American did not let himself think further. He fell into his old
queer absorption; the reporter of his makeup taking him over. He shut
out Amritsar from mind; the Native Idea, the English Idea, and his own
that hovered between. He was just a stranger in a half-closed carriage
looking out from under a bandaged brow. He heard the flies in the air.
He did not seem to have any mental guard to shut out that distracting
buzz--flies winging across the vapors of filth. They came to a narrow
lane, a _kucha_, the driver called it. The armored cars ahead were
having difficulty in this constricted place. Finally they halted and
Dicky heard a British soldier on the nearest turret call out that the
cars could proceed no further.
His own carriage was of course blocked. The _kucha_ appeared less than
eight feet wide. He was still lame, and had not intended to do much
walking about in the furious heat, but beyond the armored cars he had
glimpsed the Gurkhas filing forward and the officers stepping out of
their machines. He let himself to the ground, ordered the driver to
wait, and followed the soldiers through the wet trampled lane.
A minute later he was in the broken ranks of the Gurkhas--little
muttering men with big sprawly hands holding fast to their rifles,
fingers running loosely over breech and stock and barrel. The halt had
come because there was a sudden rise to the ground--a mound of earth
closing the lane, and running at angles to each side. The soldiers were
ordered up and deployed along the mound; equally divided to the right
and left.
Now Richard Cobden, in the midst of the officers and civilians who
had occupied the two motor cars, also gained the eminence with some
pains; and at this point he saw the man he had started out to find
that afternoon--General Fyatt, a significant picture, indeed, here in
Amritsar, who had been but a small obscure exhibit in the broad gallery
of France.
Fyatt didn’t see him, and the American looked over the vast assembly
of natives in the burning light. On a raised frame toward the center, a
Sikh speaker stood. Dicky could hear his words, but did not understand.
He saw, however, that the coming of the soldiers had interrupted the
tenor of the speech and that many of the people were frightened and
drawing away. An English officer beside him, after listening a moment,
spoke with an ironical laugh:
“_We have nothing to fear. Sarkar is our father and our mother.
Government would not injure its children_----”
Dicky realized that the young officer had quoted a translation of words
the Sikh speaker had just spoken to the people--from twelve to fifteen
thousand in the _maidan_, he reckoned. All faces were now turned to the
soldiers--waves of faces. It was as if the color of a tree had changed
by a steady pressure of wind that showed the under side of all the
leaves. A nervous laugh from the young Englishman who had interpreted;
then from General Fyatt, the low single sentence:
“You may give the order.”
“Fire!” the young officer called to his Gurkhas.
To Richard Cobden it was quite incredible, but another officer on the
far side of the lane repeated the command, and the line of leveled
rifles spurted on either side. Dicky winced at the crashes. He had been
in the firing pits many times, but one can never remember how these
concussions close by hurt one’s head and spine.... Of course, they were
firing blanks. This was Martial Law. The people had been ordered not
to assemble and they had disobeyed--twelve thousand of them, or more.
General Fyatt had undertaken to impress upon them that his word was
Law, Martial Law. Of course, this was also the English answer to April
10th, at the Hallgate Bridge. A bit uncouth to stampede a big crowd
like this.
Surely Fyatt couldn’t have realized what this firing of blanks would
mean.
They were trampling themselves to death already. This wasn’t English
humor. It was more like the fool who yells, “Fire!” in a packed theater.
The great open place was walled. There were no broad exits. The several
narrow vents had locked of themselves by the pressing of bodies against
them. “Why,” Dicky thought, with a wrench and shiver at the sight of
the monster throng in the process of constricting itself, “why, this is
a womb of death!”
Cries were sustained at the end of this April holiday--cries of battle
and accident and pestilence, the cries from a great ship going down.
Dicky thought of a pot beginning to boil. He thought of a yard of
leaves suddenly caught in a swirling wind. He thought of all the old
stale similes used and over-used since bloodshed began, and his mind
sank back in the hollow of hopelessness. It couldn’t be told, but his
faculties tried again and again, even though his heart sobbed with the
people.
A great square of colored cloths in the sunlight--from twelve to
fifteen thousand human beings listening to a man who cried out
against violence, who cried out that _Sarkar_ couldn’t hurt his
children--suddenly being ground in the great crush of Fear, being
sprayed with rifle fire--blanks, of course--but to a result almost as
deadly, for the people were destroying each other. They didn’t mean to,
but they were trampling each other to death. Thus his mind viewed and
reviewed--all this in a matter of seconds.
Now Mr. Cobden saw something he didn’t understand. Down in the _maidan_
on the ground, not fifty feet away--a giant Sikh in white turban,
running forward with raised hands, like a messenger--a close-up
possibly for Dicky’s eyes alone--suddenly halted, spun and slapped
limply to the ground with a curving fling. A glorious fall, if it had
been a bit of acting--the fall a man makes when a bullet hits him.
But Dicky was quite possessed with the idea that the soldiers were
firing blanks.
At this point, an English officer roared at his Gurkhas, who apparently
had been firing high. His words were in vernacular, but the American
saw the little dark men shorten their range.
Thus it dawned upon him slowly, as if he were a very stupid man, that
Fyatt was punishing Amritsar indeed--in fact, that the General was
making a day of it. Also at the same time it dawned upon him that the
public square was walled. He had seen the wall before, partly formed
of buildings, but it hadn’t properly registered in connection with the
words of the twisted ascetic of Cawnpore.
Now he knew also that the several narrow throats of the walled square,
none so wide as the _kucha_ through which he had entered, had become
points of intensified death, because the great throng had divided to
crush itself against these impossible apertures. The English officers
appeared to be directing the fire of the soldiers toward these points
where the maddened masses were most dense.
Almost directly across the square the wall was low, less than six feet.
Hundreds were jammed against it, but their bodies were so locked by the
pressure from behind that no one could climb or be pushed over into
safety.
The Gurkhas looked like monkey men. They stamped queerly as they
pumped. They were being told what to do and were in a great
concentration to obey exactly. They emptied their magazines, each man
taking his own time, and halted to fill them again, carefully avoiding
with their fingers the burning metal of the barrels, as they refilled
and fired.
An English civilian, an elderly man, face livid, bumped Cobden’s
wounded shoulder, as he lurched past, muttering:
“My God! I can’t watch this.”
Another Englishman followed him, venting an hysterical laughter--both
faces Dicky had seen in one of the motor cars. For an instant it seemed
the only sane action left in the world--to rush out into the lane the
way he had come, as these Englishmen were doing, to cover face and
ears, to rush forth, to continue to the ends of India and the uttermost
parts of the earth.
Dicky started to follow, but turned back.... No, he wouldn’t rush off
to be sick. This was the wall that he was to come to. It was something
else.... What was it? Oh, yes, it was the Big Story that he had been
pacing up and down the world to find.... Of course, it would be like
this. He would find himself in the midst of it, without knowing at
first.
He ducked forward under the rifles of three _sepoys_ to reach the
staff. He couldn’t go away without paying his respects to the General.
Was not this what he had started out for to-day? He stumbled over a
soldier on his knees--a Baluchee, vomiting with all his might. He saw
Fyatt a few paces forward--Fyatt, grizzled, square-shouldered, behind
a field glass. A mocking laugh rose in Richard Cobden’s heart. A man
didn’t need a field glass to cover the _maidan_. One could see the
faces; one could see the fallen; one could see the writhing cords of
human bodies. Oh, no, one didn’t need a field glass. One could see
the thousands on the _maidan_ now--as one up-turned face, the face of
a child betrayed, but unable to believe. Fyatt merely chose this way
to cover his own face. His back looked stiff and blocky as he swung
slowly around behind the glasses. His shoulders and neck didn’t move.
He turned from the hips, Dicky perceived, as he touched the General’s
sleeve.
XLVI
THE HOOKED MAN
A NOTE of unison had come to the great cry from the people at this
moment--one note that tugged at the white man’s soul--the deadly hurt
of a child.... General Fyatt was not tall for a soldier, with square
lines of figure; square of chin and temple and shoulder and elbow,
pivoting on his hips. But there were two remarkable curves in the
ensemble, the sidewise curve of the hooked nose and the bow of his
booted legs. Now as the American stood by, a new key presented itself
to the man--that hooked smile. It opened other hooks--hook of the
eye-corner, as well as the corner of the mouth and the bent nose, hook
of the fingers on the field glass. The face turned to him--a white welt
from the glasses on the bridge of the nose.
Dicky felt the horrible slowness over everything--that somehow there
was not in this man’s volition the power to order the firing to cease.
No recognition showed in Fyatt’s eyes. He stared. It was like the
man who had stared at him on the docks in Bombay, when he heard that
America had entered the War.
“Well, sir!”
Dicky felt rebuked. Then came to his ears again the terrible drowning
cry of the children, and he saw Fyatt differently--not as England; at
least, not all of England--a black crooked finger operating merely--the
face of England turned away.
“I only wanted to ask----” Dicky stopped and raised his voice above the
tumult of shots and voices. “Cobden of New York--saw you in France!”
It was utterly ridiculous to yell one’s identity. He had forgotten that
his face might look different under a bandage. The field glass that had
been partly raised again was whipped down. The hooks tightened.
“Ah, Cobden. Heard you were in town. Busy, you know!”
“I see!” the American yelled back. He felt like a maniac. “I see! I
merely wanted to ask, General, if you had gone mad--or have I?”
* * * * *
A young officer ran between them reporting that the ammunition was
running out.
“Sixteen hundred and fifty rounds, sir. Mainly used up. Some of the men
finished----”
“Ease them off back to the armored cars. Let the others finish
firing--fire low.”
“Not much wasted--only at first, sir!”
Fyatt turned to Cobden, shouting staccato sentences: “Didn’t catch what
you said. Teaching Amritsar a lesson! Plover says we ought to take a
thousand for one! Teach them to assault women----”
“Isn’t the lesson taught?” This time Dicky didn’t yell.
“They haven’t dispersed yet.”
“Dead men can’t disperse, General. The rest can’t get out----”
Dicky walked away. He had looked again at the _maidan_. Everything was
overturned. The thousands were prone or kneeling.... If one steel rifle
bullet plows through sixteen inches of oak--how many human bodies will
it plow through? How many will 1650 steel bullets?... No shots wasted
since the first minute or two. They couldn’t be all down--wounded or
done for. Suddenly Dicky realized that many of the people were now
praying. He was back at the head of the lane, moving in circles like a
man who has been beaten on the head.... A black-coated Englishman with
a clergy’s vest, grasped him by the arm, peering into his face--eyes
gone utterly daft. He shook Dicky’s arm and pushed it from him; then
ran to a soldier near by and peered again.
“Tell it to the General,” Dicky called absurdly, but his words weren’t
heard.
Now he saw one of the elder civilians who had escaped a few moments
before, coming back. This person scrambled upon the mound from the lane
side and inquired of the earth and sky:
“I say--can’t he stop?”
“He’s dispersing the people,” Dicky answered.
The firing was desultory now. He heard orders for it to cease entirely.
“We might need a cartridge or two in the streets going back----” a
voice behind him said.
“We’ve got the armored cars----” another answered.
Then Richard Cobden happened to look at the west and found the sun
still high in the sky. This struck him as altogether peculiar.
XLVII
IN THE WARM DARK
COBDEN found himself in the lane, turned away from the _maidan_, his
hands lifted and clenched. From behind still came the sounds of a ship
going down--all but down, the firing ceased. In front of him, the
_sepoys_ were running low as if to escape. It made him think of ball
players leaving the field in the summer dusk after a game, running
through the crowd to the clubhouse. The armored cars were backing out
before him.
“... Of course,” he kept telling himself, “it had to come this way--end
of the old story, the beginning of the story of the age. This isn’t an
English-Indian story. It’s a story of all the world.”
Only natives were about him--ashen-lipped, muttering, frightened,
dazed. He continued through the _kucha_, following the armored cars.
He must get to the hotel. He had something to write, copy to file. But
this delusion did not carry him far, before its absurdity struck home.
The outer world would never hear of this story, until it leaked through
by letter or word of mouth. The cables had been tight before. They
would be drum-tight now.
Vaguely and dully he realized that all things were changed for him
for all time. The reporter in his makeup that had blithely set out
for Jallianwalla Bagh was done for, all aloofness of the spectator
gone--the little poise of ego which had carried him so well and so
long, so far as associations with men went, up and down the world until
this hour--that ego poise was leveled and smeared. Amritsar’s public
square--the massacre in the _maidan_ had cloven him, and into the
opening all India had rushed. The face of the hooked man came back to
him--hard unto silliness, the English stare against the sinking city.
He had overtaken the nearest of the armored cars. He looked upon them
strangely, their sleek integration. They had not been needed; India had
died and been born again without them. Something similar had happened
in himself. No casual reporter now--one living emotion, rather--one
fire, one fury, a burning of unqualified pity in every cell that held
his life.
The driver of his carriage hailed him. Cobden lifted his hand in
return, but halted. Suddenly he realized that he didn’t want to go back
to the _Golden Temple Inn_. The thing alive in him now was bigger than
a story to be written, bigger than the finding of a free cable, which
was not in India. He paid the driver and stemmed his way back against
the people that thronged the lane. He knew now that he must keep his
mouth shut in an altogether different way; that a new life, terrible in
its potency, had seized upon him, was somehow being born in his flesh
and brain. He must hold still--hold still.
“Sixteen hundred rounds in ten minutes,” an English voice reiterated.
Dicky’s head bowed under his helmet. He was slow to believe that the
firing had lasted only ten minutes. It amazed him now that this was
still a world of hot daylight. He looked back upon his coming through
this lane as one does upon the last memory before a great sickness. He
had to memorize and register again and again upon his faculties that
he had alighted from his vehicle only fifteen minutes ago, and this
was all one day, all one afternoon, all one quarter of an hour. In the
interval there had been death and birth for India and for himself--a
mysterious conception, at least.
“God forgive me for losing my head,” he muttered, for there was
something in him that still counted losing one’s head as the first
moral offense. He was thinking of the moment standing before Fyatt.
He would move very quietly now. As he reclimbed the mound where the
_sepoy_ firing line had stood, it came to him that a man might lose his
head for a moment, at least, to find his heart.
He let himself down from the mound to the bloody ground. There he found
presently a man wedged under the bodies of two already dead. He dragged
this man loose, only to find that he was apparently bleeding to death
from a shattered knee. He unwound a turban from one of the dead men
and wrapped the wound, knotting it tightly above the flow of blood.
His own left hand was impeded by the sling. Presently, he freed it
entirely, his personal scratches appearing ridiculous in this broad
field of bloody men. Thus began his work. It was as if he had entered
single-handed upon a task to alter the sewerage system of a city.
There were no English about, no police or native soldiers. Martial Law
had done its part and gone to supper. The people flocking into the
_maidan_ with moanings and horror-stricken cries now were those looking
for their own. From the farthest parts of Amritsar they were drawn,
from many houses to which one or more did not report for the evening
meal. Living men and women--hurrying, bending--hands reaching down,
hands pressed to faces--the quick and the dead.
A while afterward he looked up to find that the sun had gone down. His
knees were wet with blood. He felt the wet spreading heat upon his left
shoulder. His wound had opened from exertion--a smile at that.
He had worked a little on battlefields before, but they weren’t like
this. A persistent thought held him that this was the field of his own
dead! He didn’t understand how his brain could deal with such weird
stuff. He concluded that he was in a half-dream where thoughts appeared
veritable that wouldn’t hold water when he fully waked.
Now he had extricated from the mass near the Hasali Gate the body of
a trampled girl child. She was warm, possibly not dead. She smelled
of the earth and tears.... His heart thumped, and pity like a warm
breath surged through him--pity, which some one said was the pain of
love--oh, yes, that was Miss Claes’ expression. He touched the girl’s
long coarse black hair in the thick twilight.
His lips formed with explanations and thoughts as he worked--the things
he would tell Pidge, the way he would tell these things to Pidge. He
placed the unconscious one down at the feet of a native doctor who was
binding wounds, but often raising his eyes to heaven in prayer that the
soldiers might not come back.
Dicky stood up in the warm dark, lifted his helmet and mopped his
forehead with his grimy right hand. He could actually smell what horses
smelled (as he remembered in France and Arabia) when they snorted
and ran aside.... The dead would never end--hundreds of dead--public
square covered with dead. And what was pulling at his brain--something
trying to gain admittance? He had it now. Pidge Musser was close again;
close as she had come in the _Ashrama_--not weeping, horrified, not
in the least dismayed or hopeless by all these lifeless ones on the
ground, but the spirit of swift-handed helpfulness, utterly in accord
with him in thought and purpose, no words being necessary. So this
was why he had been standing in the dark with uncovered head, rubbing
his hand over his brow--that her closeness might come through to him!
Not so weird, after all, that he should know this, standing upon the
soaked turf of the _maidan_. Things of this kind had often happened to
soldiers on the battlefields of France.
Was this what it was all about then--the separation, the struggling--at
last to become connected to her this way, though across the world? He
mustn’t study it too closely. He had a warning that he would spoil it,
unless he kept on heartily with the work. So he continued separating
the wounded, but every little while when his hands were free he would
stop and uncover his head to the moist warmth of the evening. Would she
come nearer and nearer through the years?... And these were her dead
and her dying, and she had blessed the little Hindu girl with coarse
black hair. He smiled at the absurdity of his thoughts.
Now it was full dark and the cries of the living women across the
_maidan_ were raised in agony because they must leave the Bagh before
the curfew sounded. Hundreds were still searching. They had not found
their own, but it was close to eight o’clock and this--the dead on the
field--was what had come of breaking Martial Law to-day. It did not
matter that lives might still be saved if the wounded could be taken
out from the dead. _Sarkar_ had fired upon them to-day. _Sarkar_ would
come with more death, if they disobeyed. Husbands dragged away the
women whose faces turned back.
Richard Cobden stayed on. He had the sense of not being alone.
Moreover, there was much to do. There were voices to answer. He heard
cries and callings from the windows of the houses that overlooked the
_maidan_. No English came that night--but the pariah dogs from all the
city and outskirts. They moved like ghouls in the shadows. There were
mysteries everywhere--white vapors from the ground. He saw and felt the
unutterable; became rich for future years in that one night with the
fruits of sadness.
XLVIII
“INDIA’S MESSENGER”
COBDEN walked back from the _maidan_ through the streets of Amritsar
in the dawn. He did not feel like a foreigner. That which had happened
during the night had furnished him with what rarely comes to a white
man--the Indian point of view. He was in the Indian fabric for the
moment, at least; no longer a spectator from the West. He did not
hate England, not even the crooked finger that had mismanaged for
England. He knew something right now that he might not be able even to
remember--more sorrow than anger.
As he approached the Golden Temple, near which was the Inn, Nagar
appeared in the street, and they walked together in silence. As he
tottered a little, Nagar’s arm swung around him and Dicky said:
“Don’t. I’m very dirty.”
Now that the light was coming on, they saw people hurrying to the
Jallianwalla Bagh.
In the room, Dicky said:
“Make a lot of tea, Nagar. Sorry you won’t join me in a little drink
from the flask.”
A moment later, he said:
“I think after all, you’ll have to help me get off this shirt. I’m a
rubbed-in mess of blood and dirt.”
Nagar perceived that the body of the American trembled full-length;
also that his clothing was soaked with blood from the wounded shoulder,
as well as from stains received from handling others.
“... Some of them crawled about in the dark!” Dicky was saying. “A
woman sat there moaning through the whole night. The pariahs came--I
heard them lapping, lapping. From the windows of the houses around the
Bagh came the cries of the women who dared not disobey the curfew....
Why, that ten minutes of firing was longer than whole years I lived as
a schoolboy, but the ten hours since dark--that passed, Nagar, like
a man walking by a house, not a lame man.... I saw your India, oh,
yes. The gentlest-tempered crowd I ever moved through, but something
dangerous and deadly in its pain and grief. God help us--when you wake
up----”
Nagar helped him. Dicky bathed his neck and face and hair copiously
with one hand, and then washed the left arm. With Nagar’s help the
wound was packed with clean lint. Dicky drank hot tea, filling his
goblet several times and shivering, though the heat of the night was
still in the room. Finally he sat down in his bathrobe by the open
window and lit a cigarette. The sunlight had found the gold of the
Temple dome.
“... I actually forgot myself,” Dicky repeated. “When an American
forgets himself, Nagar, you can be sure a big show is being pulled
off.... I’ve smoked too much, talked too much. I am going to lie down
for a little--until breakfast.... Bed! Think of having a bed, in
Amritsar. A bed with sheets.... Out there so many were lying on the
ground. Oh, I say, Nagar, where will they put them all?”
The Hindu’s cool, slim fingers reached over and touched his hand. He
didn’t speak, just kept his hand still, and Dicky found it easier to
stop talking, because of that hand; easier to endure the furious forces
of activity in his brain. Finally Nagar spoke:
“I had to stay with the students. They wanted to go to the _maidan_.
That would not have been well, but it was well for you to be there--to
forget yourself there through the hours. It will come forth from you
for years--not as the voice of an American, but as a citizen of the
world. You have prepared long; last night India found you prepared, and
dared to show you something of herself. Miss Claes would be very glad
to be here with us this morning.”
Dicky’s mind fumbled with the idea that he had not only come closer
into the Indian heart, but into Nagar’s as well.
“You might sleep a little until breakfast. I shall not leave you
until after that. You are very tired and spent, but you will not be
injured from last night. When a man forgets himself, as you say, he is
strangely replenished.”
But Dicky did not sleep. They breakfasted early and Nagar arose, saying:
“... In the days that you remain in Amritsar finishing your work (for
last night will mean more and more to you as the days go on) you and I
shall not be much together. What you see in Amritsar--you must watch
without feeling or partisanship. One cannot tell--you may see strange
things. Remember, always remember, that you are American; that as an
American you have no enemies, and belong to the world. In the fusion of
all Europe, which America is, to form a new type of nobility, remember
that no country has furnished a nobler ingredient--than England. And
forgive my many words, Richard, if I ask you to remember this also:
that anything which might happen to me here in Amritsar in the days you
remain, must never make you forget that you have a message to carry to
America.”
“I don’t understand, Nagar.”
“It is difficult to say. I can only repeat: Anything which might happen
to me in this city must not arouse in you a personal or partisan
effort to help me. We must be strangers--unless I come to you alone.
The English are beside themselves; they know not what they do. You
must have no feelings about me--to betray you. Go further into the
English. Forget me--except as a part of your own source of kindness and
strength.”
Nagar was gone. As Dicky conned all this, he began to wonder if he
would see his friend again. All the days before this in Amritsar, he
had been waiting for things to get quiet so that he and Nagar might
really begin to get together.... “India’s messenger,” he muttered, as
he fell asleep.
XLIX
PIDGE TRIES GRAMERCY PARK
THE second part of Dicky Cobden’s letter about Gandhi written after his
three interviews in Bombay, reached Pidge fully a fortnight after the
first. Of course, it interested her, as it could no one else.
... From several angles I placed before Mahatma-ji, the concept of
dreamers of all countries--the dream of the mating of the East and
West, that the New Race is to be born of this mating; that globe
means globe, and a world citizen must belong to all; that as Goethe
says, “above the nations is Humanity.” This thing, you understand,
has attracted me merely as a concept, not with the dreamer’s fire at
all. Short work Gandhi made of the mating of the East and West. The
damsel, New India, is not ready for marriage. She is not clean. She
has not found herself, therefore has not herself to give. (These are
not his words, but the idea.) She must become free, before she has
anything to bestow. She is just a perfumed body, which the West has
already desecrated and begun to despise--merely an offering now, not
a wife. What Gandhi arrays himself against to-day is the fact that
India has already fallen under the lure of the West. She has felt the
fascination of his big toys, the glamour of his mighty works. The
Little Man has made me see that a woman who “falls for” a man, can
never become the man-maker which a wife must be, maker of her husband
as well as child. Queer, how it came to me that way first, before
I saw the man’s side of it--the great thing you have done, pushing
me back, forever pushing me back into myself, until that day when I
shall be able to _stand_, not “fall for” you. I am learning--learning
so slowly what I bargained for that night at the Punjabi Fireplace.
“... Go back into your house!” Gandhi cries to India. (Not his words,
you know; merely my picture of him.) “Fast and pray. That is safe.
Fast and pray and spin! Pray to the hum of the _charka_. Forget your
lover. Find yourself. You are the East, the inner. Already you have
been lured by his brutal boyish games. You have flattered him, but
already he despises you. What does he bring now, but a bloody carcass
to your hearth, saying, ‘Arise. Gut and skin.’”... Mahatma-ji is on
the ground. Now, To-day, seeing but one step--the next step--crying,
“Go Back!” This is the most extraordinary part to me, that his very
limitations appear to be in use!
In early July, Pidge made her first move since coming to New York. The
spirit had gone out of the house in Harrow Street for her, with Miss
Claes’ departure. She sent the boy-baby up into the country and took a
room at the _Sennacherib_ in Gramercy Park, a step of which Rufe Melton
strongly approved:
“You were getting stale down there, Pan,” he said, one night when he
came to dine. “The Village is all right for a novelty, but real New
York hasn’t time for that sort of thing. I see you’re running Carver’s
novel in the _P. S._ What did you get in on that for? Did he give it to
you?”
“Rather not. It cost real money.”
“A hang-over from John Higgins’ desk?”
“No, we took it after--after----”
“Carver could never have slipped that over on you, Pan,” he broke in,
“if you had lived uptown. But no, you never would listen to me, that a
thing isn’t great because it’s nasty----”
“You think it isn’t a successful serial?”
“Not a chance----”
There was truth in what he said. The new novel was rapidly unreeling in
generous installments, without much gratifying noise from the readers.
Rufe confided that he was doing a long story, and that Redge Walters
was very much interested in it as a serial prospect.
“What’s it on?” she asked.
“Business,” said Rufe. “Shipping--grain--iron--packing-houses.
Everybody’s panting for business since the War.”
“Sounds American.”
“Epic of the Great Lakes, Pan. Never knew what I was about, till
now----”
She was thinking of Amritsar--of the first Amritsar mail recently in
from Richard Cobden, posted at Pondicherry, French India--of _hathis_
and her new _mahout_--of British bulletins, native documents, and
Dicky’s own straight story of April 10th and 13th. It had been
difficult for Pidge not to become too excited by all this. For the
first time Dicky’s work had carried her off her feet. That had been
days ago, and she had not altogether trusted her fiercely fresh
enthusiasm, but it didn’t subside, and at the present minute, the epic
of the Great Lakes sounded to her like a forlorn side show. Moreover,
Dicky’s Amritsar story, about to be printed in _The Public Square_,
took away most of the disappointment in that Carver’s novel hadn’t
proved a powerful stimulus to circulation.
“Its capital is Chicago,” Rufe further divulged about his book. “Funny
how you have to get away from there to see that big town. All the years
I lived in Chi--never got next to her, as I have since I came to New
York.... Yes, it’s booming along. Haven’t been really right until just
now, since I was gassed.”
“I’m glad, Rufe.”
“It’s got a _mahatma_ in it,” Rufe chuckled.
“A what?”
“What’s the matter with you, Pan?”
“That word--from you!”
“You look as if you’d seen the Dweller----”
“The what, Rufe?”
He chuckled again. “Didn’t know I’ve been going in for the occult, did
you? Say Pan, there’s one fine thing about you. I never feel as if you
could be disappointed in your Rufie.”
“Why is that?” She was entirely off his trend.
“You haven’t started to expect anything of me.... Oh, yes, had to have
a _mahatma_ in the story. It’s the new thing. Everybody’s got one
since the War. Not enough to go round.... This _mahatma_ of mine in Chi
is wise to the stock exchange. It’s his tip, you know, that the whole
tale turns on. Reader never thinks of it--until it’s pulled.”
“Where did you get your model?”
He laughed again. “Right in the family, Pan. Been going to hear
Adolphus. Say, you never did appreciate your father. Bad habit of
yours, Pan, honest to God--to lose respect for a man just because you
live with him.”
Pidge was in a whirl. Her hands dropped down to the seat of her chair
on either side and gripped hard. The world looked about as big to her
as Delaware; Amritsar and New York signaling to each other.
“Heard him this afternoon--in the ballroom of the _Pershing_--swell
crowd out,” Rufe pursued. “Talked on Lytton’s _Zanoni_. I’m going
to read that book. And didn’t Adolph put it over to the damsels and
dowagers! Just what I need for my white _mahatma_. Where does the old
man get all that? It’s a wonder you haven’t gotten in on your father’s
stuff, Pan.”
She wanted Miss Claes as never before. This was too much for one small
person to hold. When she really listened again, Rufe was asking to go
upstairs with her to see her room.
“It’s just a common room. What’s the use?”
“Little afraid to see me alone, eh, Pan?”
“Not afraid--only what’s the use?”
“You might see it different----”
“I might have once, Rufe----”
“Say, Pan----”
“Yes?”
“Does Mrs. Melton want to be free?”
Her hands dropped to the seat of her chair again. She saw the new want
in his eyes and something else--the old captive thing.
There were two possible answers to his question, and it took every
minute of her twenty-five years, and all that had gone before, to
choose. This is what she said:
“Mrs. Melton will never be free!”
“What--what do you mean?”
“Ask your _mahatma_, Rufe.”
L
DICKY’S IDEA WORKS
PIDGE felt the hugeness of life around her at last. Doors were being
opened as never before. She saw as clearly as if Rufe Melton had
confessed to her, that it was he who wanted to be free. She could
grant this well enough; having been forced to it, in effect, from the
beginning. He would doubtless come again soon, making it plain that he
wanted her to agree to divorce. The point was that certain barriers and
limitations in her own life were suddenly lifted. It was as if she had
emerged from a city, to the shore of the sea, and before her eyes was
an unbroken horizon line.
The abrupt extension frightened her. The story of Amritsar now
unfolding for her from the Indian mail--in its hatelessness, in its
devotion to truth and unsentimental love for the people--unveiled for
her eyes a _man_--not Gandhi, not Nagar, but Richard Cobden, himself.
The few sentences he had inserted in his letter about Gandhi, “--the
great thing you have done, pushing me back, forever pushing me back
into myself, until the day when I shall be able to _stand_, not fall
for you!”--in these words there was for Pidge an invincible call.
She had searched the language for another expression to convey
what that little slangy verb “to fall for” meant. It was one of her
treasures. When one “fell for” a person or thing--one couldn’t stand
for the same. One was captive, not co-worker. Here was the difference
between infatuation and romance. Dicky had found it out. There was
expressed in his letter more than she had dreamed as possible; and this
time words thrilled her furiously, because she believed they had become
working knowledge, before it had occurred to him to express the idea.
She saw this knowledge working out in his studies of Gandhi. He did
not “fall for” the Little Man. He did not rush into eulogy; he sought
to understand. In a word, he stood for Gandhi. But now that Dicky was
ready to stand for her, she was ready to fall, and all her horizons
were being pushed back to give her room.
... She was very weary. She had not known it before. _The Public
Square_ thrived. It was strong pulsed with new life. For the first time
in her experience she sensed from the magazine’s field, following the
issue of the first Amritsar story--silence, the perfect tribute, the
instantaneous readjustment of all other journals; then crowded mails,
the answer from people everywhere. Something about Gandhi touched
hundreds of people to the point of saying so, in a letter to _The
Public Square_.
Yes, she was weary. She had held grimly to the post. She wanted to turn
it over to Dicky Cobden now.... It had been like this once before--on
the night of Somebody’s Shoulder. She had wanted to give him what he
wanted that night--the tiredest and most hopeless girl in New York.
Only that night it had been--for what he had. Now it was for what he
was.
John Higgins lost his bearings in the city traffic. A copy of the issue
containing the first section of the Amritsar story was in the old
editor’s hand when he fell in the street. She was with him for several
hours, until the end. He looked at her long and strangely--eyes more
“run-out” than ever. He did not seem to hear her words, but if she
remained in silence too long, a little frown gathered on his forehead,
and his hand would pull at hers. He had waited for the big story. Once
he said:
“I wish Dicky would come,” and that brought Pidge’s slow tears.
* * * * *
The next day a solicitor called at the office and Pidge still felt
squally. She couldn’t grasp what he was saying. She thought it had
something to do with a secret society that was going to attend an
absurd matter, known as “obsequies.” She was deluged in words.
“... Be perfectly calm, Mrs. Melton,” the solicitor said at last. “This
isn’t exactly bad news, but I’ve known lasting injury from the one, as
well as the other----”
“Please--what are you talking about?”
“Your legacy----”
“My--I don’t----”
“From the late John Higgins----”
“But it was only last night!”
“The late John Higgins, nevertheless. The demise----”
“And what about it?”
“That he has left you--this paper in my hand being the memorandum--his
interest in _The Public Square_----”
“Me----”
“A half-interest in the ownership, to be exact----”
Pidge glanced around the room. The man was sitting. The first and
terrible obstacle of life was to remove him, or escape from him.
“What have I to do?”
“Just sign----”
But he was still sitting, after she had signed. He wanted to be
sociable.... She was on the car going home. She hopped off at Eighth
Street, and was turned into Harrow, before she realized that she didn’t
live there any more but in Gramercy Park.... Curving Harrow Street
was quiet and calling. She went in to the curve and stood before the
old green front. A sign on the door announced “Rooms, Permanent and
Transient.”... “What kind of rooms are transient rooms?” she thought.
The curb and doorstep thronged with memories. “Oh, Dicky, it’s too
much,” she whispered at last. “Come soon, and prop me up!”
LI
“WE LOOK UPON WOMEN AS SACRED”
“_DO you people want peace or war? If you wish for war the Government
is prepared for it, and if you want peace, then obey my orders and
open all your shops; else, I will shoot. For me the battlefield of
France or Amritsar is the same. I am a military man and I will go
straight. Neither shall I move to the right, nor to the left. Speak
up, if you want war. In case there is to be peace, my order is to open
all shops at once. Obey orders. I do not wish to have anything else.
I have served in the military for over thirty years. I understand the
Indian sepoy and the Sikh people very well. You must inform me of the
budmashes. I will shoot them. Obey my orders and open shops. Speak up
if you want war._”
General Fyatt was talking to a large company of Amritsar’s native
representatives, lawyers, merchants, doctors, in the _kotwali_, the day
after the massacre.
The Deputy Commissioner added: “You have committed a bad act in killing
the English. The revenge will be taken upon you and upon your children.”
The large company of natives listened. Not one spoke of the
Jallianwalla Bagh, or of the dead which still lay there. Richard Cobden
reasoned with himself; neither did he speak. Out of all the burn of
feelings and the great waste of ineffectual thoughts, it was dawning
upon him that in their own good time, the dead of Amritsar’s public
square would speak for themselves.
In the days that followed Dicky worked quietly, worked from the
standpoint of the English almost entirely. He “exposed” himself like
a film to the aftermath of the tragedy. He went after facts and
statements. It was never to be ascertained, the number of killed and
injured. The English granted about three hundred dead; the natives
claimed five times that, even more. He was much at Headquarters; and
confined himself altogether to the Civil Lines. Through Lala Relu Ram,
he received certain secret reports from the native point of view, and
guarded these little tissues assiduously. A cigarette case contained
them all.
He went each day to the Crawling Lane, as one doing a city beat for a
newspaper would call at city hall or recorders’ court. This was the
place where Miss Sherwood was assaulted by the natives, on the 10th. It
was narrow and thickly populated, with double-story buildings on either
side, and numerous blind alleys shooting out of the lane.
The crawling order remained in force for eight days. Although General
Fyatt called it “going on all fours,” and it had been called the “hand
and knee order” by the press, the process consisted in the persons
lying flat on their bellies and crawling like reptiles. Any lifting of
the knees or bending thereof brought the rifle butts of the soldiers
and police on the native backs.
“But, General,” Dicky said cheerfully, “people are forced to crawl
through there or go without food and medicine--people who have never
seen Miss Sherwood, much less taken part in the assault.”
“She was beaten,” General Fyatt declared. “We look upon women as
sacred.”
“Ah,” said the American.
In the Crawling Lane and elsewhere were erected _tikitis_ for flogging.
These were triangles of wood, upon which the hands could be suspended
and tied. A general order was issued for all the native population
of Amritsar, a city of one hundred and sixty thousand, to _salam_ to
English in the streets. Those who did not _salam_ were arrested, often
flogged. Many of the people were so terrified, that they dared not sit
down anywhere outside of their own houses, lest one of the English
appear suddenly and not find them standing and in position to _salam_.
During the late days of April, Richard Cobden did not see Nagar, though
occasional brief messages reached him from his friend through the
students. One of these was a suggestion, which Dicky followed, to send
off whatever mail he had ready, in care of one of the young men who was
leaving for Pondicherry, French India. Finally there was the episode of
the tennis court, in the Civil Lines. Dicky drew up to the crowd.
A set of doubles or singles was not in progress. This was a game of
triangle--a _tikiti_ in the center of the court; a naked native strung
up and being whipped. Dicky had seen about enough of this, and was
ready to turn back, when something of the carriage of the native’s head
arrested his eye, and started a peculiar sinking in his heart.
The bare back was toward him, but the face turned sidewise revealed
the profile of Nagar. His hands were strapped high toward the top of
the great frame formed in the shape of the letter A. Nagar had been
stripped to the loincloth, his head bare, his white robes and turban
cloth flung upon the turf. The stripes were being put on by one of the
native police. The whip was a rigid canelike affair, but longer than
a walking-stick. A detachment of native soldiers was drawn up on one
side, police on the other. Two young officers of the military, one of
whom Dicky knew, were in charge of the affair.
Dicky had halted, hand to mouth. Each stroke blinded his eyes; his body
became, for an instant after it, like a house in flames with every
curtain tightly drawn. Then he would see the sunlight before the next
stroke, and the naked man with bleeding back. He had direct need to
turn his back upon this thing--the old nausea. It never occurred to
him that this was his own great test, greater than Nagar’s, for such
tests of the human heart do not come announced; but out of all past
experience, one thing stood in the midst of a rocking universe--that if
he did anything in this red blindness, he would do worse than nothing.
He walked away, his elbows jerking up as another stroke fell. The thing
that saved him was already accomplished. The turning of his back was
all that was required, apparently, since in this instant he got a
life and death grip on the word _Messenger_. Was he Nagar’s friend or
India’s messenger?
Then he knew just one furious smearing doubt. What of human loyalty--to
stand by and allow this thing to go on? He was answered in his mind
from Nagar’s own words, “Mahatma-ji’s ideal isn’t human, Richard. It is
of the Soul.” Action of a foreigner in behalf of a native would only
intensify the English fears and the native’s plight. To rush in was
John Higgins’ code. Evidently there was another.
He walked around to meet Nagar face to face. Ten feet away, he stood
until Nagar’s eyes came up to his. Had Nagar’s hand been free to lift
and command _Silence_, his lips free to speak, the word could not have
been more fiercely impressed. Indeed, the word _Silence_ seemed to have
been shot into the American’s consciousness.
A blow fell. Nagar’s eyes closed; his lips stretched out as if struck
by an invisible hand. Then under the trailing eyelids, Dicky saw a look
of inexpressible gratitude and relief--the barest beginning of a smile.
Nagar had found him fit to trust. It was another moment of real life,
that moment of the look, another instant of essential recognition.
* * * * *
“Oh, I say, Cobden--have you seen a ghost?”
It was Langoyer, one of the young English officers, who spoke. He was
leaning upon his cane, to flick a cigarette stub off the court with
his boot. Langoyer paid no attention to the flogging. The men attended
to that, you know. One had to stand by--as one would wait for his horse
to drink.
Dicky was now being lashed to the quick himself. He had seen
clearly--but a sort of hideous night had settled upon him again. He had
to watch his temper.
“How many does this man get, Langoyer?” he managed to ask.
“Thirty.”
“What for?”
“He knows more of the sedition of Kitchlew and Satyapal than he’ll
tell.”
The figure had gone limp on the triangle.
“Fainted,” gasped Richard Cobden.
The whipping stopped. A tin bucket of water was brought and dashed
upon Nagar’s face and shoulders. A moan came from him because he was
not quite conscious. Then the knees drew up and his feet felt for the
ground.
The lieutenant stepped forward taking Nagar’s ear in his right hand and
calling aloud:
“Will you tell the truth now of Kitchlew’s plot against Government?”
Nagar looked at him without hatred. He tried to speak twice before the
words came:
“I have already told the truth----”
“How many stripes have been given?” Langoyer asked.
“Twenty-six.”
“Finish the thirty, then take him to _kotwali_. A few days more will
make him tell all right.”
The American remained. One--two--three--four.
The hands were unstrapped. The robe was cast about the shoulders. Nagar
could stand. Dicky left the officers and followed his friend and the
native policemen to the station, feeling like a pariah’s whelp.
LII
THE OLD FACE
DICKY reflected that there were two ways of looking at a person or a
thing, a fact proven several times in his experience. There had been
a moment in the presence of Gandhi, after many minutes of talk, when
the face, that had been dull and unattractive as a camel driver’s, had
suddenly appeared to him with memorable, essential significance. It had
been so with Miss Claes: also the moment when he had really seen Pidge,
as they stood together on the Palisades of Santa Monica. Recently he
had caught an immortal something in the look from Nagar on the rack.
He did not see Nagar again in Amritsar, but up to mid-May the students
reported that his friend was still imprisoned. The sound of those
falling strokes was slow to die out of the corridors of Dicky’s memory.
They awoke him in the night. It was far easier, however, to recall
the splendor of gameness in the way Nagar had taken his beating.
This satisfied every American instinct; and even above this, was the
mystery of compassion for the English, in Nagar’s face. Here was a man
on a tennis court in a remote Punjabi town, hardly heard-of in this
war-racked world, plainly putting over the thing he had marveled at, as
a small boy in Sunday school: “Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do.”
Apparently the same majestic composure. Life held many things; yet
Richard Cobden couldn’t be sure altogether, that he had not outraged
the spirit of friendship in failing to register his protest of word and
deed. Of course, the consequences might have been disastrous, but, at
least, a certain man-to-man loyalty would have been satisfied.
If further tortures were inflicted upon Nagar, Dicky was not informed.
The Amritsar story was no longer on the outside; it was in Richard
Cobden’s brain and heart. He wrote some of it and his letters were
forwarded, but still he conned and brooded. Having held still through
the whipping of Nagar, he found it easier to stand in the midst of
current events without losing his head, or letting emotion or opinion
have right of way.
Late in May, a student brought word that Nagar was free and had
gone south. This was all that Dicky had been waiting for. Crawling,
salaming, flogging, imprisonment and forced testimony had long since
become to him a full and bitter cup. At the station, as he waited for
his train, a student, edging near, managed to whisper two words:
“_Ashrama_, Ahmedabad.”
The American’s head bowed slightly. He had meant to go to Ahmedabad
anyway.
He was not met at the station there, but a servant at the _Entresden_
told him to go at once to the _Ashrama_. He obeyed, and found himself
listening for the voice of Mahatma-ji, as he entered, but his eyes
searched the shadows of the hall for Nagar, a kind of breathless pain
about it all.
As the door of an inner room opened, at last, and the native who
conducted him drew back, Dicky saw a woman standing in the dimness. Her
face, turned toward him, was a mere blur of darkness, but there was a
leap toward her in Richard Cobden’s breast. Then he stood before her,
in a daze of joy, one hand in hers, one upon her shoulder.
“It happened very quickly in New York,” she told him. “A letter saying
that I was coming could hardly have reached you before the steamer that
brought me----”
“But, Miss Claes--New York! What are we to do--no Harrow Street?”
“You will know what to do,” she said. “And about the things that were
in your rooms. I had them carefully boxed and sent to your mother, who
was well when I left. Also your aunt and sister.”
He took from his pocket the old dark key to the “parlor” door. She bent
and touched it.
“Keep it, Richard,” she said, “until I send you another.”
* * * * *
“And Nagar----” he began at length.
“He is here.”
“And well? I could get so little word.”
“Nagar has been hurt, but is healing. Look----”
Dicky turned to find his friend standing behind them at the door.
He had felt a presence there, but thought it was the native who had
brought him. Nagar’s eyes looked very large in the wasted face.
“Oh, yes, all is well with me,” he said. “I have been sorry to leave
you so much alone in the north.... Yes,” he added, “it was harder
for you than for me--the test that day on the tennis court. You were
brave, my friend. I knew all was well--when the instant passed and you
remained silent.”
“How do you mean--all was well?”
“I knew that the message of India would get to America--since you did
not spoil it by defending me.”
Nagar turned to Miss Claes, adding:
“I saw the fury and fright rise in his eyes, and all the impulses
of ethics of the West--then silence over all. It was as if we were
cemented----”
Dicky remembered that last word afterward.
As he moved about and talked, he was vaguely conscious of watching the
other two together. It was as if Pidge would want to hear of every
gesture and detail. Miss Claes was less Indian here than in Harrow
Street. There he had thought of her as belonging to the East; here she
seemed of the West. Something of the composure he had noted on the
tennis court had come to stay in Nagar’s eyes. As moments passed, Dicky
knew that they contained deep vitalities of meaning that would appear
in coming days.
It was as if his limitations were being stretched, but by consummate
hands. There was repeatedly brought to him, from them, something that
he refused to hear or dwell with: that he had done well, that he was
deeply approved of in their sight; that there was much more to take
place between them as a group, even though they were to stay in Asia,
and he was leaving for The States.... Then all faces turned, and in the
doorway stood the Little Man.
No one spoke, but to Richard Cobden it was one moment of his life
that he thought of as religious. Mahatma-ji came in between them, and
Dicky felt the old urge somehow to help with his hands; the sense,
too, of all India thronging, whispering around them. For a moment the
four had been standing in silence, when they heard the _sweep_ of bare
slow feet in the hall, and now an old dark face was in the doorway, a
smile serene as nothing else on earth but the Hills themselves--a dark
wrinkled old face, and she came forward and stood very low and little
in the midst of them--Gandhi’s comrade.
* * * * *
In San Francisco, waiting for the departure of his train east, a card
was sent up to Cobden’s hotel room. It was from Chris Heidt, the
managing editor of his former newspaper connection.
“Hello, Cobden. Just noticed you were off ship. What did you bring
back?”
Dicky reflected. “The story of Amritsar,” he said finally.
“Amritsar, what’s that?”
“The first big story I ever ran across. I feel like one of Job’s
servants, who said he alone remained to make a report.”
Mr. Heidt had been much on trains during the past few days, and had
missed the fact, so far, that _The Public Square_ had begun to publish
the story.
“Not going to bury it in a weekly, are you?”
“I have much more than _The Public Square_ could use in months. It
really should get out into the broad market. The end of one world
and the birth of another took place that Sunday in Amritsar--all in
miniature, you understand----”
He spoke of Gandhi, whose name had scarcely been heard at this time in
America, and touched upon the story of _maidan_.
“Sure,” said Mr. Heidt. “Sure, it’s a big yarn, but months ago. No way
to substantiate it. You’re a little out of perspective, Cobden, seeing
it all first hand that way.”
“I can substantiate it,” Dicky said queerly.
“I know, but the whole story’s a trouble-maker. Far as I can make out,
this Gandhi is a sort of sanctimonious Lenine, and we’re not promoting
any kind of Lenines just now. Red roughhouses all over the world, but
we’re not advertising the fact. The best newspaper interests here
and in England are letting that sort of thing die down. Everybody’s
healthily intent on getting back to business right now. Make a corking
fiction setting--your Amritsar--series of short stories that would do
no harm.”
Thus Richard had his American perspective restored.
LIII
THE WHITE LIGHT AGAIN
DICKY was considerably subdued. India had permitted his ideas to
romp at large. He had forgotten that, home again, these ideas must
be brought down to an orderly trudge. America, as a whole, seemed
one-pointedly trying to get back to work after the War, calling all
protestors untimely and in bad taste. Dicky thought out the situation
minutely and severely during the three full travel days to Chicago. At
the end of each day he was somewhat exhausted from the big bonfires
that had taken place within him--piles of rubbish, glamour and the like.
In Chicago he procured two numbers of _The Public Square_ preceding
the current issue, and before his eyes was the manner in which Pidge
had “sprung” the Amritsar story. He felt the magic of her working with
him in an altogether new way. The latest number confessed, not without
grace, that the story of Gandhi and Amritsar had aroused the more
open-minded element of the American public, as nothing else since the
War; but thanks to Chris Heidt, the returning correspondent watched the
rising tide of public interest in his work, as a spectator unexpectant,
instead of a performer who fancies he has the world by the tail. It
dawned on him, however, that Chris Heidt hadn’t known quite all that
was going on in America under the homely thunders of trade.
He reached New York in the early evening and went to Fiftieth Street at
once. There he had dinner, and an hour of talk, before he rang up Mrs.
Melton at the _Sennacherib_.
“Is this Mr. Cobden?” a voice asked presently.
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Melton left word for you to go to 54 Harrow Street--to the parlor
on the second floor, the card says.”
Mr. Cobden didn’t take out his own car that night. Perhaps he didn’t
feel as if he could keep his mind on getting himself downtown. He sat
back in the cushions of his mother’s limousine; and Conrad, whose
career as Cobden coachman had changed to Cobden chauffeur nearly twenty
years ago, handled the big box like a hearse.
“Sit tight, Dicky,” he breathed, and never once urged Conrad forward.
In fact, Dicky didn’t speak, until it became necessary to show the way
a little, for Harrow Street is tricky to find from Washington Square.
“Don’t wait--yes, you’d better wait, Conrad,” he called, crossing the
walk to the door.
The outer door was unlatched. He hurried up one flight. The same
curtain, the white light.
“Pidge----”
She came forth from the inner room. She halted a few feet from him, and
he saw her searching, imploring look. His shoulders straightened, his
hands dropped to his side. The finer elements of his understanding
sensed the great need of a woman, which his brain did not actually
register. To answer her need in action, however, was instantly more
dominant within him than his thirst for herself.
She came a step nearer. Light was filling her eyes--the shining of an
almost incredible hope.
“Oh, Dicky, you can! I believe you can!”
“Yes?”
She was nearer.
“And I can come and rest--a little?”
“Yes, Pidge----”
“I want to rest so badly, you know.”
She had come to him under the light.
“... And, oh, since I knew you were coming, everything has been
different. I haven’t been _me_ at all! I’ve never played--and now
everything--all work--is silly, unimportant. Dicky, everything seems to
be done!”
“I’m on the job, Pidge; you can play----”
“Until I find myself--you--you will stand for two?”
“Of course, Pidge.”
“All my things, your things, Dicky--so I can rush away and breathe?”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“Rufe Melton and my father and the desk--all yours?”
“And the baby, too, Pidge.”
“Dicky--Dicky--don’t dare to look! I’m going to cry!”
“... Since your telegram from San Francisco--it seemed I could hardly
stay alive! Oh, it’s so good to rest!”
“Not a hurry in the world!”
“Everything seemed done--and no place for me!... Rufe and a rich girl
uptown--oh, they’re in full blossom and he wants to be free! My father
caught on in New York--no need now for me. _The Public Square_ on the
high road at last; your Amritsar story capturing the whole field;
nothing to do but to feed the presses more and more; Miss Claes gone,
and the Legacy--oh, Dicky, I saw your hand back of that! I couldn’t
miss it. It touched me--touched me----”
“It was his idea first, Pidge. All I had to do was to help him carry it
out.”
“All happened at once--all the strains lifted--no one depending--no
one needing me!... I’ve been dying to be a woman just once. I’ve never
dared--never had time. It’s so terrible to feel like a woman and not be
able----”
“Why not now, Pidge?”
“Don’t think, Dicky! I’m just resting a little. We must work together a
lot. We must clear our heads with stacks of work--and then maybe we’ll
know if we can play.... Fanny Gallup did that for me, and Rufe Melton
is as much a baby as his infant. Other girl, or not--Rufe will always
need--us!”
“Pidge, listen! I couldn’t stand any more than that now. To have you
say that--_us_! To have the work with you--to have earned that--to have
your faith; that you dare come this close--to have years to make the
big moments we have known apart, come true together--I couldn’t stand
more, right now; that’s the fact of it--quite!”
She stepped back from him looking strangely into his face again.
“Dicky!”
“Yes?”
“The boy has come back to your face--that you lost in Africa--but the
new and lasting Boy!”
He laughed and looked around the room. It was furnished, but barely,
the “parlor” having reverted to a sleeping room.
“But how did it happen--that we should come here, Pidge?”
“I couldn’t let you come to Gramercy Park. I remembered that you waited
to see me here after Africa, not at the office. I came down this
way--the afternoon of the Legacy and saw the sign, ‘Rooms, Permanent
and Transient.’... I’m better now. It’s been hours, hasn’t it?”
He thought of Conrad, whom he had told to wait.
“... This room’s all paid for,” she whispered. “I mean we don’t have to
stop to speak to anybody--only walk out.”
Their eyes held.
“Dicky!”
“Yes----”
“Let’s go--now.”
“I’m--I’m ready.”
“Dear Dicky, the years have done so much for you! The blur, the maze
has gone out from between us. It’s so much more wonderful, isn’t it,
than that other night here, when I almost, almost----?”
He waited for her to reach the hall curtains, before he turned off the
light. In the dimness of the hall, he heard her low, slow tone:
“Fanny’s room was back--at the far end on this floor----”
“... I remember once, Pidge, I went up the next flight and knocked at
the door of your little back room----”
“That’s gone now,” she answered.
“Gone?”
“My two books that were written there--and all the rest! I can tell you
everything now--and of the book that is still to be written--our story,
Dicky.”
“A continued story,” he said.
They went down into the street, into the car.
THE END
NOVELS OF SUPREME LITERARY ART
=THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON=
By EDITH WHARTON
“I can think of no American novel, written within the last few years,
and dealing with contemporary life, to compare with it. And not only
does Mrs. Wharton write better than anyone else, but she knows how to
unfold a more exciting tale.”--Katherine Fullerton Gerould in the _New
York Times_.
=THE MIRACLE=
By E. TEMPLE THURSTON
A keen, human story of the west coast of Ireland, with peculiar
fascination in the rich background of Irish folk lore.
=THE VAN ROON=
By J. C. SNAITH
An unusual and totally absorbing plot, delightfully told, and a
remarkable set of characters, unmatched since Dickens.
=THE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL TEACHER=
By MELVILLE DAVISSON POST
How would Christ act if He appeared in the world today? Through Mr.
Post’s story of the Kentucky mountains runs an impressive allegory.
=ABBÉ PIERRE=
By JAY WILLIAM HUDSON
This charming novel of life in quaint Gascony has proved that a novel
that is a work of true literary art may be a best seller of the widest
popularity.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
New York London
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
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