Hour after hour, day after day, the train raced on, away from the
smoke-wrapped slums of great cities, from great stretches of the earth
torn open for men's greed, from the mills where little children slaved
to accumulate the wealth of those whom they would never see. On and
on, over the sun-soaked earth, across black, fat land; clean and empty
desert; past lonely farms; little towns, isolated from the inimical
immensity about them by their fenced gardens, their paved streets and
electric lights. Above the prairie flatness, the gilded domes of their
courthouses boomed pompously of law and order, and the tapering spires
of churches pricked the blue sky to attract the attention of God.
Long after the rest of the car was asleep, Roger sat on the observation
watching the distant lights break through the thick blackness, come
near, recede, disappear. Something was so desperately wrong. There was
so much land, so few owners. So much wealth, so many poor. Myriads
lived and died, that a few might enjoy. That a few might own the earth,
millions upon millions tore it apart, herded in unclean cities, built
uncanny machines to speed the process of accumulation.
When at last the train dropped over the snowy crest of the Sierras and
plunged down, down past clear mountain lakes, forest fringed, down,
down into the richest land of all, Roger felt as if something had
hardened and shaped to new purpose within him. Nothing in all the world
mattered but to help; to slave too, and die trying to even the chances
a little. When the ferry docked and the hills of the city rose misty in
the salt fog creeping across their tops, Roger felt older and full of a
stronger faith than he had ever had.
And he wanted Anne and Rogie. They were so small and helpless and the
world was so cruel. He had been impatient lately with Anne, but he did
not feel now that he would ever be impatient again. He wanted them and
the quiet little house on the hill.
Half an hour later he rang the Mitchell bell and Anne peered from the
dim light above.
"It's me," he called gayly and went up the stairs three at a time. But
before he could take Anne in his arms or kiss her, a warning gesture
motioned him to quiet.
"Papa's only just gotten to sleep and if he wakes now he'll get all
fussed up and nervous. It's been a bad day."
She tiptoed past the partly open door of the sick room and Roger felt
the darkness within reach through and chill his eagerness. He had not
telegraphed purposely to take Anne unawares. He had pictured holding
her in his arms and kissing away the memory of their last meeting
in a new effort at nearness and understanding. Anne led the way to
the kitchen and closed the door noiselessly. The gas was not lit and
through the open back door the fog was stealing swiftly from the hills.
A silent tidal wave, it was sweeping directly upon himself and Anne
standing together in the dim dusk. In a moment it would break over the
thick, black silence of the house and engulf them in its chill.
"Why didn't you let me know, Roger? I hadn't the least idea."
What would have been her greeting if he had? Perhaps a wire to tell him
to be sure and come up the back stairs.
"I wasn't positive I could make it. Such a lot of delays turned up. I
expected once to be here last week. How's Rogie? I suppose he's asleep."
"For hours. Shall I wake him?"
"N-o--no, of course not."
Roger moved to the back door and closed it. The fog was so stealthy, so
uncannily conscious, an inimical spirit released to stifle himself and
Anne in its silence. As he turned again Anne struck a match to light
the gas-taper but he stopped her. He could conceal his disappointment
better in the dark.
"Don't light the light, unless you want it. I like it--dark--after the
last weeks. It was so noisy and glaring and dirty most of the time."
Anne put the taper back on its hook. "I like it this way, too," she
said in a detached tone that drew Roger's attention sharply. It was the
voice of some one, not at all concerned with present reality, scarcely
conscious of its surroundings. It was as lonely and detached as a wisp
of the fog. He went nearer to her.
"How is your father? Better?"
"Yes. He's better on the whole, in some ways at least. But----" Anne
shivered. "It's terrible, watching some one die; that's what it
really is. He may live for years like this, good days and then a bad
day--but--all the time--he is really dying--dying every day--a little
bit--dropping apart--until--he drops away altogether over the Edge."
She was turned to him, but her eyes strained past to the chasm beyond
the Edge, and her hands were clenched as if she would hold the old man
from it.
Roger put his arm about her, but Anne stood stiffly within his hold,
seeing only the terrible, slow progress of her father to the grave.
But to Roger, it was not terrible that one old man, criminal in his
narrowness and stupidity, was slowly dying in the same dull way he
had lived. There was a magnificent poetic justice in it--the little
gray mole, creeping blindly through life, now creeping blindly,
selfishly toward death. Men in their prime poured their strength into
the fiery pits of the steel mills; the slums of great cities battened
on the babyhood of thousands; here, in the comfort of his home, one
uninteresting, unimportant human unit was dying. He had contributed
nothing to life. He would leave no unfillable space behind him. Even
his own wife would not sincerely mourn him, nor would the faintest ray
of beauty be dimmed in any life by his going. Impatience touched Roger,
although he still held Anne and quietly stroked her hair.
"You mustn't think about it like that. Your father isn't old, but he
isn't young, either. He has had the average length of life. We all have
to die."
"Why?" Anne whispered fiercely.
Before the mills debouching their hundreds at set hours, the miles upon
miles of sordid streets, Roger's eyes saddened.
"I don't know--unless it is to make more room."
"Then why not go now--every one, quickly and cleanly--instead of
rotting into it?"
"Suicide? No. Not until you're sure anyhow that you can't do anything
to make it better. It can't be the purpose of life, this horrible
chaos, like the panic at a fire, with the stronger treading down the
weak."
Anne shivered. "The strong--as you call them--have been treading on
the weak since the beginning of time and will go on to the end. If it
would all stop--just for a day, an hour--not a human being on the face
of the earth--not a sound--just silence. Perhaps we could hear then--if
there's anything to hear."
"Anne! You're getting morbid. What do you do here all day? How many
times a week do you get out?"
"Whenever I want to. I'm not tied here."
"You might as well be, if you take no more advantage of your freedom
than you look to have done. You're thinner, Anne, a lot thinner. And I
don't like it."
The old man in the other room was thinner, too, so thin that Anne could
feel his shoulder blades when she put her arm round to help him.
"I don't think so. I feel all right anyhow."
"You couldn't possibly--and look the way you do. Haven't you heard from
Belle yet?"
"Yes. She cabled a hundred dollars. We bought papa a wheel-chair."
Across the wheel-chair, Anne felt the thought leap to Roger's brain.
They should have hired some one to help with James. She should have
rested and taken walks and kept herself in condition for his coming.
Like a valuable animal for his master's pleasure. She moved from
Roger's hold, understanding of his resentment in her eyes.
"He can get out on the back porch now when it's sunny."
"That's nice," Roger said indifferently. "When is Belle coming back?"
"In a few weeks. She cabled from Genoa."
"Are you going to stay until she comes?"
"No--I don't think so--not unless you're going away again."
"I'm not going away that I know of."
"Then I'll be home to-morrow. I can't very well to-night because I made
mamma go to Pinafore with Mrs. Welles. She won't be back till twelve
and I can't leave papa and Rogie."
"No, of course not." There was a short self-conscious pause and then
Roger said:
"Does His Highness get that 'daddy' any better than he did? I don't
suppose so, just because I feel I've been away a year."
"Oh, yes, he does. He says it quite distinctly. And he makes a weird
noise that papa insists is 'grandpa'."
They both smiled. For an instant they had met in Rogie. Once more Roger
tried to reach to Anne.
"I often wished that you could have come with me. It was a wonderful
experience."
"It must have been. Did you have a good trip?"
"Yes. We swung the convention. But the rest of it--Anne, it's terrible.
They're so thwarted and driven! Millions of human beings with never a
real rest, never all they need to eat, and worse than all--no hope, not
even understanding, so many of them. Down in the social mud they're
crawling, thousands upon thousands, like lower forms of life, not
undeveloped, but being pushed back, down the scale of humanity. Human
beings--going backward!"
But no thrill of anger gripped Anne. What did it matter whether one
went forward or backward, since, in the end all dropped in death. Roger
and Black Tom spoke as if this life were the purpose of creation; the
personal comfort of the individual the apex of creation's effort;
while all the time, behind this violence of adjustment, Death stood
indifferent to their misunderstanding. Across the confusion of living,
Death's shadow lay, penetrating to consciousness in moments of illness;
in the stillness of dawn; in moments of physical exhaustion, when the
weary body for an interval ceased its demands and something within
yearned toward its own without; in rare moments like the massed silence
that had swept Anne into peace. Death was the Great Silence, the
everlasting Peace.
"I know," she said absently.
"You don't know," Roger broke out passionately. "We have no conception
of it out here. The land itself is too rich, the mountains and the sun
and sea are too emotional. We're all drugged with the beauty of the
land. We have no slums, no poverty as they have it in New York and
Chicago and Philadelphia. We have graft, oppression, rotten politics,
indifference, all the symptoms of the disease, but the ghastly, running
sore itself we do not see. Broiling heat in summer, freezing cold in
winter, twice every year adjusting the mere physical machinery of
life to climate--a scramble for coal in the winter; for ice and air
in summer; thousands of people herded in a single block, hundreds of
families, packed like sardines in a can; layer on layer of life in
one rotting building! Two men for every job. Millions of bewildered
insects crawling over each other to find a little morsel to pick from
the carcass."
His voice had risen and Anne motioned him hastily to lower it.
"It's terrible, dear, but please don't wake papa. He has to have all
the sleep he can and if he wakes now he'll have a hard time getting to
sleep again."
The old man in the next room must not be wakened! He was indeed the
great, safe, sane, middle-class incarnate. James Mitchell and his
daughter Anne! With her "It's terrible, dear."
"Don't you think you'd better go straight home, you're tired out," Anne
suggested after a short silence.
Roger shrugged. "I'm not tired, not bodily tired. I couldn't sleep if I
went home."
Remembering the tomb-like stillness of which Roger had complained, Anne
laid her hand on his arm.
"I'll come the first thing in the morning, Roger. Now papa has the
chair, it helps such a lot. I'll come up two or three afternoons a
week, but I don't really need to be here steadily."
"Don't come unless you feel you want to," Roger said dully and moved
to the door. He opened it cautiously, no need to warn him now. They
tiptoed to the stair-head, kissed perfunctorily, and Anne watched him
to the door which he closed noiselessly. The next moment the chug of a
starting motor drew Anne's attention and she hurried to a front window.
A taxi was just leaving, the driver's head bent to catch Roger's
instructions.
He had come in a taxi, kept it waiting, and now was going back in it!
"And he thinks he's consistent," Anne whispered with quiet bitterness.
"Dollars wasted and--'thousands never have enough to eat.'"
She watched the taxi out of sight and went slowly back to the kitchen.
She was still sitting there in the dark when Hilda came. At her
mother's step, Anne jumped up and lit the light, otherwise she would
have to explain or invent an excuse for sitting in the dark. No one
understood without words. The smallest act had to be dragged out, cut
up into speech and put together like an intricate puzzle. And then it
was not really understood.
Radiantly gay, her curls damp and tight with the fog, Hilda bustled in.
"You just lit the light, didn't you? I thought I saw it go up."
"Did you? How was the show?"
"Anne, it was too funny for words. I haven't enjoyed a thing so for
years. You must see it. There's a matinée to-morrow. I'll feel selfish
if you don't."
"Maybe I will, sometime before it goes. It'll be here a week. But I
can't to-morrow. Roger's home."
Hilda's gayety vanished. "Oh," she said forlornly, "I suppose you'll be
going, then."
"Yes. To-morrow, I think."
Hilda took off her things and they had some hot cocoa. In its warmth,
her cheerfulness returned. To-morrow her freedom would be gone. But
to-morrow was to-morrow.
"Really, Anne, I never laughed so much in my life. That's the funniest
thing that ever was written."