Walking home from the meeting of the Social Science Club, you are more
quiet than usual. It is strange that you should be quiet at all; you
aren’t that type. Both of you love to talk; your intimacy has grown up
in spite of, rather than because of this tendency. You became acquainted
two or three months before, across the crowded room of the Communist
Club when you both leaped to your feet to refute some heretical
statement by the speaker of the evening, who had expressed an unsound
and intolerant view concerning Union rule. You had cried out together in
protest, turned and looked at each other, faltered, and sat down. Then
you both had risen again, even more precipitately, looked at each other
again in a less amiable manner, and started to speak again. The crowd
laughed. At last she had bowed to you jerkily and sat down again,
leaving the field to you.
But when she heard what you had to say she did not dislike you so much.
You expressed her views exactly. To be sure, you did not say all there
was to be said, and when you finished she had to make several additions.
But after the meeting you waited for each other and took up the thread
of the argument again. You walked five miles that night and didn’t
notice. Ever since then you have been seeing a good deal of each other,
at little Russian restaurants where each pays his own check, at concerts
where you each firmly buy your own tickets, and even at her home, where
her family gazes upon you with disfavor and tries to persuade her to
wear a hat when she goes out with you.
Tonight there is a tension in the air between you, and you do not know
what to do about it. She has been quarreling with her family and you
have discussed it backwards and forwards and all around; there was no
more to say.
“I don’t understand you at all,” repeat for the twentieth time. “You’re
so intelligent about everything but your own affairs. Can’t you see that
you must attack your own problem with an impersonal sort of attitude?
It’s the only sensible way to do anything.”
“Yes, I know,” she answers, gloomily, “but you don’t understand,
exactly. I have to battle against all the fifteen years that I was under
their influence, besides fighting _them_. There’s an element within
myself that I can’t manage. All sorts of feelings——”
“I know,” sympathetically, “anachronistic ideas of duty, and filial
fondness, and so forth. They work on all that. Thank God my mother
deserted me when I was a baby. Father’s different.”
“You’re lucky,” she says. “It makes me furious. After all, I’m of age,
and a lot more intelligent than they’ll ever be.... Well, we’ve said all
that. I’ll just have to let it work itself out.”
“It won’t,” you assure her. “The only way to settle a thing of this sort
is to cut it all off. Why don’t you go away?”
“How can I?” she says. “I haven’t the moral courage to hold out against
them. I could go down and live with Marya for a week or so, but you know
what would happen. First Ellen would walk in and talk to me, pretending
to admire me but holding her skirts away from the furniture all the
time. She’d tell me that Mother hasn’t been well lately, and then they’d
invite me to the house for dinner and they’d act simply angelic and
rather pitiful, and then I’d come back. I always do; it’s happened
before. I know I’m weak, but it’s stronger than my intelligence.”
“Of course that’s one thing I’ll never be able to understand. How anyone
could stand that house for two hours passes my comprehension, and you’ve
been living there all your life. How do you do any work?”
“I don’t,” she says, simply. “I haven’t really done anything definite
since the last election. You can’t work any conviction into your
speeches if there are a lot of materialists around all the time. Oh, I
ought to starve! How can I go on pretending like this?”
“Never mind. You’re getting there. There’s nothing wrong with a person
that could get away from her environment as completely as you have. But
I can see that it’s a struggle.”
“Thank you,” she says, gratefully. You walk on in silence.
“Martha,” you say at last, “I know one way out.”
“What is it?”
“Come with me.”
“With you? But where?”
“Come on home with me. I’ll tell Father that you’re going to stay there,
and that’ll be all there is to it. He won’t object; he knows better.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she says, hastily.
“Why not? It would settle things with your family. I know that type.
They’d never bother you again; they would cut you off completely.”
She is staggered, and obviously does not know how to answer.
“You’re a real friend,” she says, at last. “It’s good of you to offer.
But....”
“Not so generous, after all. Certainly I don’t have to tell you that I
love you and all that, do I? We know better than to waste our time with
such sentimental stuff. But you know that I’d be only too glad....”
“I don’t know,” she says, thoughtfully. “Honestly, I never thought about
it. It’s part of my training, I suppose, but it’s hard to decide to do a
thing like that, right away.”
“Think of it in a sensible way,” you urge. “Try to throw away those
inhibitions. You know well enough that in the course of time we would be
lovers. Isn’t this better than slinking and being furtive about it, and
fooling your family? I’d hate it. As a matter of fact, I _have_ been
worrying about it. This would be such a fine, brave thing for you to do.
Come on, Martha, be independent. Prove to yourself that you’re something
more than an average female who wants nothing but security.”
“But it’s so difficult,” she says. “You don’t understand. It would kill
Mother.”
“You know it wouldn’t. She might think that she’s going to die, but she
won’t. People don’t die over such things. And if she did,” you add,
superbly, “she wouldn’t have any right to. No one has any right to die
because someone else lives up to her convictions.”
“That doesn’t help it, somehow,” she says.
“Martha, admit to yourself that it’s the only thing to do. You can’t go
on like this. If you do, they’ll sell you to some capitalist for a
marriage license and a promise that he’ll leave you money when he dies.
You’ll be part of the same vicious circle. You can’t play at both of the
games, Martha. If you don’t take your freedom when you have the chance
I’ll have to decide that you’re insincere.”
She looks very undecided and unhappy. “I don’t know what’s the matter,”
she confesses, “but I can’t.”
Stop and take her arm. She turns around and faces you in the dark
street. It is very late and quiet.
“Listen, Martha,” you say gravely, “it’s up to you. I don’t want to
persuade you to do anything that you don’t really feel you want to do.
But I think that I understand you. You have a beautiful nature, Martha.
You have a splendid mind that your family weren’t able to spoil. As soon
as you are strong enough to cast off all the deadly conventions that
they’ve tied you with, you’ll be able to do real things for the world.
And yet that isn’t what I want to say to you now. I respect and admire
you, Martha, and I want you. You want me. What else is there to this
business? Come with me, Martha, and we’ll work together. Throw away that
background of yours. Step out into the light.”
“Oh, Michael!” she cries. Your face relaxes, and you smile.
Say, “There now, let’s do it all, right now. Go home and get your
things. I’ll go with you, if you like. Then they can do what they want
to; I know you won’t back out.”
Arm in arm, you walk down the street.