_Marie's Attempt_
While Marie was trying to find some trace of Terry, the latter was
wandering about the country.
"I have been tramping about the country," he wrote me, "living most of
the time in the parks. This life, where you 'travel by hand,' crowds out
consecutive meditation, but I like it because I can go away at the first
shadow of uneasiness betrayed on either side. My existence now is so
responsive and irresponsible that it comes very close to my heart. I am
living a life of contrasts: one week I spent with a rare friend who has
many good books and admires me for the thing for which all others
condemn me. Strange, is it not, that the one thing which redeems me in
his far-seeing eyes is what places me beyond redemption in the minds of
others. I have spent some sleepless nights in his fine home, kept awake
by the seductions of social life tugging at my heart-strings. So one
night I stole away from this seduction and slept with some drunken
hoboes in the tall soft grass, where I could have no doubt about being
welcome. I might as well doubt the grass as those pals, who without
question hailed me as an equal. I, having the only swell 'front,'
tackled a mansion, and the Irish servant-girl, to whom I told the truth,
gave me a whole hand-out in a basket, enough for all of us. My brother
hoboes swore I should be the travelling agent of the gang. But a copper
gave me the 'hot foot,' while I was 'pounding my ear' in the woods with
the other 'boes, so I straightened and hiked to the stock yards, where I
feel more at home with the Hibernians.
"Never have I seen Life more triumphant and rampant, more brimming over
with hope and defiant of all conditions, hygienic and otherwise. I am
rooming with an Irish family whose floor space is limited, so we all
have shake-downs, and in the morning can clear the decks for action with
no bedsteads in the way. I am very 'crummy,' badly flea-bitten, overrun
with bed bugs, somewhat fly-blown, but, redemption of it all, I am free
and always drunk. Still, I am really getting tired of playing the
knock-about comedian and shall soon 'hit the road.'
"I am willing to do anything for Marie I can, except to love her as I
once did, but never shall again. Even spirits die, and the spirit of the
salon is so dead that it is beyond resurrection."
Marie, however, would not believe that the spirit of the salon, or at
any rate, as much of that spirit as depended on the relation between her
and Terry, was dead; she was more conscious than Terry of the ups and
downs of the human nerves and heart and the ever-present possibility of
change, and she went to work in a wilful attempt to get back her lover.
Her next letter was a triumphant one:
"I am a very happy girl to-day, and I must write to tell you so before
the mood vanishes, for I have learned that good moods are very
fleeting.... The cause of my happiness is, of course, that I have at
last met Terry and we have had a long, delightful talk together, and I
hope our misunderstanding is all cleared up. Only, now I am afraid I
shall begin to pine and fret because we cannot be together always,
though reason and philosophy and logic all tell me that the new relation
between us two is the very best, noblest, most ideal--or at least they
try to tell me so. It very nearly approaches the anarchistic standard,
too.
"There is something fascinating in this new state of affairs. It is just
like falling in love all over again: the clandestine meetings, with the
one little tremulous caress at parting--which is all we are bold enough
to exchange--thrill me; it is the mysterious charm of the first
love-affair! It makes my blood sing and dance. I lie awake the whole
night thinking of our meetings and trying to bring them vividly back to
me.
"And, do you know, what makes me supremely glad is the feeling that
Terry is going to love me again, that I am going to win him back. He
thinks that love is an enslaving thing and harmful to the soul, but my
dear lovely idealist and dreamer has loved me once and he must love me
again. I am so in love with love and almost as fanatical about it as the
ecstatic artist is about art: love for love's sake, art for art's sake.
I never did--and hope I never shall--get over that feeling of awe at the
mystery and beauty and elusiveness of that great force in life--love.
And I have always felt so sorry for people, sincere people, who told me
honestly that they have felt that wonder-in-spring sensation only once
in all their lives. It made me think that I had at least one thing to be
very thankful for, that I was different from them, that I could
experience the divine flame, and experience it continually. If you knew
how often I have fallen in love with Terry!
"Poor Terry, I feel so sorry for him, too; he has no place to stay,
though he could stay indefinitely at three or four houses that I know
of, where his friends would feel only too glad to have him. But he says
he does not want again to attach himself to any person, place, or cause,
because the time would come when he should have to break away, and then
he should have to experience death again. So he intends to move about
whenever and wherever the whim suits. But I am sure this life will not
satisfy Terry for long, for there is really very much of the hermit in
him....
"I am going to see him again in a few days, so I have the pleasantest
things to dream of. If I am to win Terry back, I must be extremely
careful: one false move would be likely to queer the whole thing. Oh, I
am tremendously happy, for I am sure I shall win my dear Terry back
again!"
The next letter, written about a month later, has a note of
discouragement, and also a slight suggestion of an effort to steel
herself against possible developments in the future:
"When I go among the comrades and friends, I must keep such careful
watch over myself. I don't want to show them how I feel about our
separation. The movement had the strongest conviction that I was so
wrapped up in Terry--I was always so frantically jealous of him, you
know--that I would surely die, or go crazy, if I were ever separated
from him. So they are all guessing at present, and don't know just what
to think of me. Apparently I am just the same, in fact some better, for
I laugh and talk more, much more than I ever did.
"Terry and I have met several times since I wrote you, and I am almost
discouraged, and think at times it would be better for me not to see him
at all. I have to be so careful, and it is awfully hard to control my
impulses to tell him what I feel! But I dare not do that or he would
never see me again, and I hardly think I could stand that. He is so
very cold and friendly; of course, he does kiss me when we meet and at
parting, but in such an indifferent way, and if I allow my lips to
linger or cling to his for just the least part of a second, you ought to
see how abruptly, almost roughly, he turns away. And I must not even
notice it, and it hurts terribly. I don't understand how anyone can be
so dreadfully cold. It makes me thrill all over when I see him bend his
head toward me for the customary kiss, and I close my eyes so that I may
enjoy more intensely that blissful eternity which I expect, and alas!
only one short, perfunctory little peck, and it is all over--before my
eyes are hardly closed.
"However, hope has not entirely left me. After being so intimate with
Terry for seven years I ought surely to know something of his moods and
disposition; and I do hope and expect that he will in time grow weary of
roaming about and living the way he does now and that he will begin to
yearn for feminine influences and caprices and tyrannies, and I hope,
for mine in particular!...
"I should be much happier if I did not care for him so much, and I hope
that in time I may have only a strong friendly interest in him. At
times I envy him: he is so care-free, without the slightest
responsibility toward anything or anybody; he can break from old
associations and habits so easily and light-heartedly. I never could
have done that....
"I am awfully absent-minded these days; you would laugh at some of the
funny things I do. I ride on the cars miles past my street, and wander
about and forget where I am going. Sometimes I think of things and then
forget I was thinking."
In another six weeks' time came still more gloomy news:
"Our meetings are as uncertain, unpremeditated, and unarranged as his
wanderings about the city are. It happened that I was all alone for the
whole of last week, eight precious days of freedom, especially from
Katie and her woes. I love her, as you know, but she does get on my
nerves, at times. So I wrote Terry, asking him to come and visit with me
for several days. It must have been my Jonah day, for the letter reached
him, and he came and stayed here with me for the whole seven days.
During this time we talked a great deal of our life together and of our
life since we have not been together, and with his most calm and
philosophical air he spoke of our circumstances, past and present. It
seemed so pleasant and homelike, so much like the old days, to have dear
Terry here with me, and I felt such lazy content to see and hear him,
that at times I awoke with a start, for I could not keep myself from the
idea that our separation was only a horrid dream.
"So, when he said things that ought to have hurt me dreadfully, I
positively couldn't feel hurt. Somehow, the sound of his voice was so
pleasing that I missed the sting of some of his pessimistic reflections
about our love; it seemed to me that he spoke of others, surely not of
our two selves! But now, since he has gone, and I have been forced to
think of the things he said, many of the easily accepted but only half
understood reflections on our love have come back to me with all their
sting. And I must now believe that I have passed out from Terry's life
utterly, and that there is no return, nor hope of return. The most I
could possibly hope for is an indifferent friendship, for so he has
willed it, or perhaps fate, rather, has so willed it. 'Dead love can
never return,' he said. And I am now only one of the people he knows! It
is so terrible that I must avoid the blow, must seek an independence of
my own.
"And I had such high hopes, such dreams of pillowing his dear head on my
bosom, and, alas! he would consider that intolerable. And, upon
reflection, his head would, in fact, rest very uneasily on my scrawny
breast!
"So I am trying to resign myself and to readjust what is left of my
life. It seems pitiful, though, that my life has been so commonplace all
through. Not one single exception, not one thing that ever happened to
me, or that I ever did, has been different from the experiences of all
the world. My life with Terry, which I surely expected would be
different, would be an exception to the commonplace love affairs of all
people, has now ended the same way as everyone else's.
"Well, I have had seven years of life, that is perhaps a little more
than some people have, and I ought to be satisfied with that. The
biggest chapter of my life is over and done and closed for ever and I
will try not to look back or think of it too much. And I shall tell you
the same as if I were making some solemn vow, that I will not try any
more to regain the love I have lost."
This resolution of Marie's seemed to have helped her considerably, for
her later letters are not quite so exclusively concerned with the
unhappy aspect of her relations with Terry. The strong vitality of mind
and temperament which enabled this factory girl and prostitute to adjust
herself to a relatively intellectual and distinguished existence still
stood her in good stead, and enabled her to meet the present deeply
tragic situation step by step and not go under: her youth and vitality
and her love of life triumphed, as we shall see, over even this terrible
rupture; the consolatory philosophy of anarchism, which had educated
her, largely fell away, with the love of the man who had created it for
her. But the work of the social propagandist has been done on Marie: the
woman is a thoroughly self-conscious individual, as capable of leading
her life as only are very few really distinguished personalities. Her
next letter shows again a more general interest, though still largely
concerned with Terry:
"The other night Terry spoke for the Social Science League on 'The
Lesson of the Haymarket'--referring, as you know, to the hanging of the
anarchists in 1886. _The Saturday Evening Post_ had quite a lengthy
notice about it the day before the lecture, and nearly all the morning
papers spoke of it the day after. The lecture hall was well filled with
people who do not usually attend the S. S. League. And I think these
people, who were not radical, were much shocked and disappointed, for
Terry was not a bit gentle and well-mannered, nor as philosophical as he
nearly always is. I thought his lecture good, though there was something
forced about it. Perhaps because he no longer has so much faith was the
cause of his greater violence. It was as if he was trying to remember
what he had once felt; and that made the expression rougher than if it
had been more spontaneous. I really do not believe that he is, at
bottom, at all violent. But he tried to be so in this lecture. He
advocated assassination and regicide and other most violent and
blood-curdling things. His voice and manner, however, in saying these
terrible things were not at all convincing. When replying to the
critics, he was most violent, and was hissed and shamed, over half of
the audience leaving the hall, very angry and indignant. I thought, for
a while, that a regular free fist-fight would follow, and it very nearly
did, but Terry had a few friends with him, among them a German
hen-pecked anarchist I must write you about, and your friend Jimmy, both
of whom were ready to stand by Terry.
"Needless to say, Terry was gloriously drunk, and utterly reckless, and
after the meeting was over quite a bunch of us became as drunk as he,
though not quite so gloriously. He was quite helpless toward the small
hours, when our party broke up, and I took Terry home with me, as Katie
was not there, and on the way I had the pleasure of acting as a referee
when he and a stranger, who Terry fancied had insulted him, did really
have a fist-fight; I gathered up their hats and neck-ties and kept out
of the way, ready to call assistance if need be, which fortunately was
not necessary, for they only rolled around in the dirt a little, and
Terry only had his chin smashed slightly by the fall.
"Drunk as he was, he did not strike the other man, though being stronger
he could have pounded the life out of him; he only tripped him up and
rolled him on the ground. Terry is certainly instinctively and
naturally gentle and chivalrous, and I loved him as much as ever as I
took him home and put him to bed.
"I am beginning to think I am a genius in taking care of drunken men,
for I have managed in some way to take home and care for quite a number
of them, for instance, Harris, who is the most unmanageable and perverse
creature when drunk. I had an experience taking him home which I would
not dare write you; and I can hardly realise to this day how I even
succeeded in half carrying and half dragging him to our home from away
down town. He certainly was the limit.
"On Monday the papers were all shrieking for Terry's head--wanted him
deported or persecuted or prosecuted. But Terry has a good many friends
and too much of a reputation as a philosopher; and his friends and his
reputation prevented his becoming a martyr. Two friends, both newspaper
men, managed to eliminate the most objectionable parts of Terry's
terroristic utterances from their respective papers, and Terry's sister,
the lawyer, one sergeant of police, and the ferocious but humane Tim
Quinn did the rest. For the present, therefore, Terry's desire to be
acquainted with the inside of a prison, or otherwise to suffer for the
cause which he still half-heartedly believes in, is frustrated.
"To me the most important aspect of the lecture was that he prepared it
in our home. So, for another week, we enjoyed one another's company; and
after the lecture he not only went home with me, as I have said, but he
has remained ever since. I am trying not to build up any more hopes on
this, because I know that Terry has been in a particularly reckless
mood, and does not care much where he is. I am sorry that he could not
find a better outlet for his mood than lecturing for the Social Science
League, but that perhaps is a better and more harmless way than getting
in with the criminals, as he has wanted to do so often of late. You may
be sure, however, that his talk on the platform will not be forgotten,
and should anything happen, in any way like the McKinley affair, for
instance, I am sure things would be made very unpleasant for him. So I
hope nothing will happen.
"Terry is really harmless. He expends all of his energy in desiring and
thinking and talking, and has nothing left over for action. Whenever he
had any scheme in mind I did not like, I used to encourage him to talk
about it, knowing that he thus would be satisfied, without acting. He
lives almost altogether in the head and in the imagination, and is
really a teacher, in his own peculiar way, rather than an actor or
practical man. That is why he takes offence at what seems to me such
little things: they are not little to him, in his scheme of things,
which is not the scheme of the world, and, alas! not even mine, I fear.
He is so terribly alone, and growing more so, and I feel so awfully
sorry for him.
"Especially since our rupture I have been compelled to be so careful not
to hurt his feelings or trespass on his ideas of right and wrong; for he
imagines he can feel what I am thinking and feeling, even if no words
are said. He says words only conceal thought and do not express it. At
times I feel so oppressed and depressed that I should experience the
keenest ecstasy if I could hurt him in some physical way, use my muscles
on him until I were exhausted. In imagination I sometimes know the
fierce delight and exaltation of my flesh and spirit in hurting this
man whom I love, in hurting him morally and physically--and I feel the
lightness of my heart as the accumulated burden of my repression rolls
away in the wildest, freest sensations.
"Of course, I have only felt this way at times; and at those times I
know I was very passionate and unreasonable. I had regular fits of
jealousy and anger, but at other times I had a boundless pity for him,
there was something so pathetic about his gestures and his voice when he
told me he knows just how I feel about him, that I could have cried out
with the ache of my heart. It was so terrible to see how he suffered in
his heroic attempt to suffice unto himself, to defy the world. He tries
to think and feel deeper and higher than anyone else, but this is a
terrible, terrible strain. It is all fearfully sad, and sometimes I wish
I had never known him."
About his speech, Terry wrote:
"I am one of the by-products that do not pay just now, until some
process comes along and sets the seal of its approval on me. Just now I
am deemed worse than useless, and since my speech on 'The Lesson of the
Haymarket Riot' the authorities are looking for a law that will deport
me. This will suit me, as I will swear that I am a citizen of no man's
land. What I really need is not deportation, but solitary confinement,
for the sake of my meditations. For even with my scant companionship I
feel as if I were a circus animal. I still clutch convulsively to the
idea that thought is the only reality and all expression of it merely a
grading down of what was most high. If I am shut up I must cease talking
and may think about real things, that is, ideal things. That would help
me to put up with the world, which cannot put up with me unless I am in
cold storage. There is a mental peace which passeth all understanding,
and perhaps I might find that peace in prison. I have been insidiously
poisoning my own mind for some time, and unless I can stop this I had
better cease from talking, which does not seem to purge me of my
unconscious pose, and retire to solitude behind the prison bars. There,
undisturbed, I can meditate and often remember peacefully the beautiful
things I have known in literature and nature. Beauty is like rain to the
desert, it is rare, but it vanishes only from the surface of things, and
deep down who knows what secret springs it feeds? As my sands run out,
the remembrance of the brief beauty I have known will break over me like
the pleasant noise of far-off Niagara waters on the stony desert of my
life.
"I once thought that I could help the mob to organise its own freedom.
But now I see that we are all the mob, that all human beings are alike,
and that all I or anyone can do is to save his own soul, to win his own
freedom, and perhaps to teach others to do the same, not so much through
social propaganda as by digging down to a deeper personal culture.
Though I sometimes think that just now the prison would help me, yet I
also long at times to talk to the crowd. I wish to tell the smug ones
that we waste our lives in holding on to things that in our hearts we
hold contemptible. I wish to tell the mob just why there are thirty
thousand steady men out of work in this city: to do this I may take to
the curbstone."
After his speech Terry returned to the home of Katie and Marie, as has
been described by Marie, but on no basis of permanence. He thus speaks
of it:
"You may think that I, too, have 'cashed in' my ideals; for I am back at
the Salon--for how long nobody knows--by special proxy request of
Katie. I will spare myself and you any moralising on my relapse."
Katie, explaining Terry's return, said: "When he went away, Marie was
sad all the time. She could not eat nor sleep and was looking for her
lover every day. After weeks had passed I said to her: 'When you see
Terry at the Social Science League, bring him home.' 'Do you mean it,
Katie?' asked Marie, her eyes sparkling. She did so, and Terry went
quietly into his room, and the next morning I made coffee as usual and
Terry came out, and it was all right; it might have been all right for
good, if this damned Nietzsche business had not come up." But that is
anticipating.
It was after Terry's return that the famous miner Haywood, just after
his acquittal from the charge of murder in connection with the Idaho
labour troubles, visited Chicago, and spent most of his time at the
Salon with Terry and Marie and several of their friends. The Salon was
temporarily revived, like the flash in the pan, under Haywood's
stimulating influence. Terry wrote of him:
"Haywood has the stern pioneer pride of the West. There is a mighty
simplicity about him. He is Walt Whitman's works bound in flesh and
blood. He is a man of few words, and of instinctive psychic force, and
is the big blond beast of Nietzsche. He knows just what he is doing and
why, and has a great influence on the crowd: the mob went wild at his
mere presence, and after his brief speech he came absolutely to be one
of them. The swaying mass becomes, at his touch, in close contact with
their instinctive leader. He is too much in touch with the people to
agree with narrow trades-union policies. At a secret meeting in this
city with Mitchell and Gompers he hinted that the Western Federation of
Miners would amalgamate with the American Federation of Labour on the
ground of no trade agreements and the open shop, and warned them that no
man and no organisation was strong enough to stand in the way of this
development. The Socialist party made him a big offer, but he replied
that the Labour movement was big enough for him."
Of Haywood, Marie wrote: "He is a giant in size, but as gentle as the
most delicate woman. He has only one eye, but that a very good one which
does not miss things. He has been made into a regular hero by the
people here, but he is the most modest man I have ever met. He is
sincere and unassuming, so calm, with no heroic bluster about him. His
voice is quiet and gentle. We had a blow-out for him, and all those
present were very discreet. We all forgot our years and our troubles and
we showed him a good time. I hardly think that even you, with all your
democracy, could have stood for all the things that happened. Haywood is
a big, good-natured boy, but quite sentimental, too. I think he liked me
pretty well. I am sure he could have won many much more attractive girls
than I, but somehow he took to me right from the start. I was introduced
to him along with a whole bunch of girls, all good-lookers, too, but I
sat back quietly and was the only one who did not say nice things to the
hero."