“Well, hello you, Mr. Webster. This is a fine place for you to be
day-dreaming. I’ve been standing here and looking at you for several
minutes and you haven’t even seen me.”
John Webster jumped to his feet. The afternoon was passing and already
there was a kind of grayness falling over the trees and the grass in
the little park. The late afternoon sun was shining on the figure of
the man who stood before him and, although the man was short of stature
and slight, his shadow on the stone walk was grotesquely long. The man
was evidently amused at the thought of the prosperous manufacturer
day-dreaming there in the park and laughed softly, his body swaying a
little back and forth. The shadow also swayed. It was like a thing hung
on a pendulum, swinging back and forth, and even as John Webster sprang
to his feet a sentence went through his mind. “He takes life with a
long slow easy swing. How does that happen? He takes life with a long
slow easy swing,” his mind said. It seemed like a fragment of a thought
snatched out of nowhere, a fragmentary dancing little thought.
The man who stood before him owned a small second-hand book store on
a side street along which John Webster was in the habit of walking as
he went back and forth to his factory. On summer evenings the man sat
in a chair before his shop and made comments on the weather and on
passing events to the people going up and down the sidewalk. Once when
John Webster was with his banker, a gray dignified looking man, he had
been somewhat embarrassed because the bookseller called out his name.
He had never done it until that day and never did it afterward. The
manufacturer had become self-conscious and had explained the matter to
the banker. “I really don’t know the man. I was never in his shop,” he
said.
In the park John Webster stood before the little man deeply
embarrassed. He told a harmless lie. “I’ve had a headache all day and
sat down here for a moment,” he said sheepishly. It was annoying that
he felt like apologizing. The little man smiled knowingly. “You ought
to take something for that. It might get a man like you into a hell of
a mess,” he said and walked away, his long shadow dancing behind him.
With a shrug of his shoulders John Webster went rapidly through a
crowded business street. He was quite sure now that he knew what he
wanted to do. He did not loiter and give way to vague thoughts, but
walked briskly along the street. “I’ll keep my mind occupied,” he
decided. “I’ll think about my business and how to develop it.” During
the week before, an advertising man from Chicago had come into his
office and had talked to him about advertising his washing machine in
the big national magazines. It would cost a good deal of money, but
the advertising man had said that he could raise his selling price
and sell many more machines. That sounded possible. It would make
the business a big one, an institution of national prominence, and
himself a big figure in the industrial world. Other men had got into a
position like that through the power of advertising. Why shouldn’t he
do something of the sort?
He tried to think about the matter, but his mind didn’t work very
well. It was a blank. What happened was that he walked along with his
shoulders thrown back and felt childishly important about nothing. He
had to be careful or he would begin laughing at himself. There was
within him a lurking fear that in a few minutes he would begin laughing
at the figure of John Webster as a man of national importance in the
industrial world and the fear made him hurry faster than ever. When he
got to the railroad tracks that ran down to his factory he was almost
running. It was amazing. The advertising man from Chicago could use big
words, apparently without being in any danger of suddenly beginning
to laugh. When John Webster was a young fellow and had just come out
of college, that was when he read a great many books and sometimes
thought he would like to become a writer of books, at that time he had
often thought he wasn’t cut out to be a business man at all. Perhaps
he was right. A man who hadn’t any more sense than to laugh at himself
had better not try to become a figure of national importance in the
industrial world, that was sure. It wanted serious fellows to carry off
such positions successfully.
Well now he had begun to be a little sorry for himself, that he was not
cut out to be a big figure in the industrial world. What a childish
fellow he was. He began to scold himself, “Won’t I ever grow up?”
As he hurried along the railroad tracks, trying to think, trying not to
think, he kept his eyes turned to the ground and something attracted
his attention. To the west, over the tops of distant trees and across
the shallow river beside which his factory stood, the sun was just
going down and its rays were suddenly caught by something that looked
like a piece of glass lying among the stones on the railroad roadbed.
He stopped his rush along the tracks and leaned over to pick it up.
It was something, perhaps a jewel of some sort, perhaps just a cheap
little plaything some child had lost. The stone was about the size and
shape of a small bean and was dark green. When the rays of the sun fell
on it, as he held it in his hand, the color changed. After all it might
be a valuable thing. “Perhaps some woman, riding on a train through the
town, has lost it out of her ring or out of a brooch she wears at her
throat,” he thought and had a momentary picture floating in his mind.
In the picture there was a tall strong fair woman, standing, not on a
train but on a hill above a river. The river was wide and as it was
winter was covered with ice. The woman had one hand raised and was
pointing. A ring was on her finger and the small green stone was set in
the ring. He could see everything very minutely. The woman stood on the
hill and the sun shone on her and the stone in the ring was now pale,
now dark like the waters of a sea, and beside the woman stood a man,
a rather heavy-looking man with gray hair, with whom the woman was in
love. The woman was saying something to the man about the stone set in
the ring and John Webster could hear the words very distinctly. What
strange words she was saying. “My father gave it to me and told me to
wear it for all my loves. He called it, ‘the jewel of life,’” she said.
Hearing the rumble of a train, far away somewhere in the distance,
John Webster got off the tracks. There was at just that place a high
embankment beside the river along which he could walk. “I don’t intend
to come near being killed by a train as I was this morning when that
young negro saved me,” he thought. He looked away to the west and to
the evening sun and then down at the bed of the river. Now the river
was low and only a narrow channel of water ran through wide banks of
caked mud. He put the little green stone in his vest pocket.
“I know what I am going to do,” he told himself resolutely. Quickly a
plan formed itself in his mind. He would go to his office and hurry
through any letters that had come in. Then, without looking at Natalie
Swartz, he would get up and go away. There was a train for Chicago at
eight o’clock and he would tell his wife he had business in the city
and would take the train. What a man had to do in life was to face
facts and then act. He would go to Chicago and find himself a woman.
When it came right down to the truth he would go on a regular bat. He
would find himself a woman and he would get drunk and if he felt like
doing it would stay drunk for several days.
There were times when it was perhaps necessary to be a down-right
rotter. He would do that too. While he was in Chicago and with the
woman he had found he would write a letter to his bookkeeper at the
factory and tell him to discharge Natalie Swartz. Then he would write
Natalie a letter and send her a large check. He would send her six
months’ pay. The whole thing might cost him a pretty sum, but anything
was better than this going on as he was, a regular crazy kind of man.
As for the woman in Chicago, he would find her all right. One got bold
after a few drinks and when one had the money to spend women were
always to be had.
It was too bad that it was so but the truth was that the need of women
was a part of a man’s makeup and the fact might as well be faced. “When
you come down to that, I am a business man and it is a business man’s
place in the scheme of things to face facts,” he decided and suddenly
he felt very resolute and strong.
As for Natalie, to tell the truth, there was in her perhaps something
that it was a little hard for him to resist. “If there were only my
wife it would be different but there is my daughter Jane. She is a
pure young innocent thing and must be protected. I can’t let her in for
a mess,” he told himself as he walked boldly along the little spur of
the tracks that led to the door of his factory.
V
When he had opened the door that led into the little room where he had
been sitting and working beside Natalie for three years, he quickly
closed it behind him and stood with his back to the door and with his
hand on the door-knob, as though for support. Natalie’s desk was beside
a window at a corner of the room and beyond his own desk and through
the window one could see into an empty space beside the spur of tracks
that belonged to the railroad company, but in which he had been given
the privilege of piling a reserve supply of lumber. The lumber was so
piled that, in the soft evening light, the yellow boards made a kind of
background for Natalie’s figure.
The sun was shining on the lumber pile, the last soft rays of the
evening sun. Above the lumber pile there was a space of clear light and
into this Natalie’s head was thrust.
An amazing and lovely thing had happened. When the fact of it came
into his consciousness something within John Webster was torn open.
What a simple thing Natalie had done and yet how significant. He stood
with the door-knob grasped in his hand, clinging to the door-knob, and
within himself the thing happened he had been trying to avoid. Tears
came into his eyes. In all his after life he never lost the sense of
that moment. In one instant all within himself was muddy and dirty with
the thoughts he had been having about the proposed trip to Chicago and
then the mud and dirt was all, as by a quick miracle, swept away.
“At any other time what Natalie had done might have passed unnoticed,”
he told himself later, but that fact did not in any way destroy its
significance. All of the women who worked in his office as well as the
bookkeeper and the men in the factory were in the habit of carrying
their lunches and Natalie had brought her lunch on that morning as
always. He remembered having seen her come in with it wrapped in a
paper package.
Her home was a long distance away, at the edge of the town. None of the
other of his employees came from so great a distance.
And on that noon she had not eaten her lunch. There it was done up in
its package and lying on a shelf back of her head.
What had happened was this--at the noon time she had hurried out of the
office and had run all the way home to her mother’s house. There was
no bathtub there, but she had drawn water from a well and put it in a
common washtub in a shed back of the house. Then she had plunged into
the water and washed her body from head to foot.
After she had done that she had gone upstairs and arrayed herself in
a special dress, the best one she owned, the one she had always kept
for Sunday afternoons and for special occasions. As she dressed, her
old mother, who had been following her about, swearing at her and
demanding an explanation, stood at the foot of the stairway leading to
her room and called her vile names. “You little whore, you are planning
to go out with some man to-night so you are fixing yourself up as
though you were about to be married. A swell chance either of my two
daughters have got to ever get themselves husbands. If you’ve got any
money in your pocket you give it to me. I wouldn’t care so much about
your traipsing around if you ever got any money,” she declared in a
loud voice. On the evening before she had got money from one of the
daughters and during the morning had provided herself with a bottle of
whiskey. Now she was enjoying herself.
Natalie had paid no attention to her. When she was fully dressed she
hurried down the stairs, brushing the old woman aside, and half ran
back to the factory. The other women employed there had laughed when
they saw her coming. “What’s Natalie up to?” they had asked each other.
John Webster stood looking at her and thinking. He knew all about what
she had done and why she had done it although he had seen nothing. Now
she did not look at him, but, turning her head slightly, looked out
over the lumber piles.
Well then she had known all day what had been going on within himself.
She had understood his sudden desire to come within herself so she
had run home to bathe and array herself. “It was like washing the
door sills of her house and hanging newly laundered curtains at the
windows,” he thought whimsically.
“You have changed your dress, Natalie,” he said aloud. It was the first
time he had ever called her by that name. Tears were in his eyes and
his knees suddenly felt weak. He walked, a little unsteadily, across
the room, and knelt beside her. Then he put his head in her lap and
felt her broad strong hand in his hair and on his cheek.
For a long time he knelt thus breathing deeply. The thoughts of the
morning came back. After all though he wasn’t thinking. The things
going on within him were not so definite as thoughts. If his body were
a house it was now the cleansing time for that house. A thousand little
creatures were running through the house, going swiftly up and down
stairs, opening windows, laughing, crying to each other. The rooms
of his house echoed with new sounds, with joyous sounds. His body
trembled. Now, after this had happened, a new life would begin for him.
His body would be more alive. He would see things, smell things, taste
things, as never before.
He looked up into Natalie’s face. How much did she know of all this?
Well, she would no doubt be unable to say it in words but there was a
way in which she did understand. She had run home to bathe and array
herself. That was the reason he knew she knew. “How long have you been
ready for this to happen?” he asked.
“For a year,” she said. She had grown a little pale. In the room it
was beginning to grow dark.
She got up and putting him gently aside went to the door leading into
the outer office and slipped a bolt that would prevent the door being
opened.
Now she was standing with her back to the door and with her hand on the
knob as he had been standing some time before. He got up and went to
his own desk, near a window that faced the spur of the railroad track,
and sat in his office chair. Leaning forward he buried his face in his
two arms. The trembling, shaking thing continued to go on within him.
Still the little joyous voices called. The cleansing within was going
on and on.
Natalie spoke of the affairs of the office. “There were some letters,
but I answered them and even dared to sign your name. I did not want
you to be bothered to-day.”
She came to where he sat, leaning forward on the desk, trembling, and
knelt beside him. After a time he put an arm about her shoulder.
The outside noises of the office went steadily on. In the outer office
someone was running a typewriting machine. It was quite dark in the
inner office now, but above the railroad track, some two or three
hundred yards away, there was a lamp suspended in the air and when it
was lighted a faint light came into the dark room and fell upon the two
crouched figures. Presently a whistle blew and the workers from the
factory went off up the spur of track. In the outer office the four
people were getting ready to go home.
In a few minutes they came out, closing a door behind them, and walked
also along the spur of track. Unlike the workers from the factory they
knew the two people were still in the inner office and were curious.
One of the three women came boldly up to the window and looked in.
She went back to the others and they stood for a few minutes, making a
small intense group in the half darkness. Then they went slowly away.
When the group broke up, on the embankment above the river, the
bookkeeper, a man of thirty-five, and the oldest of the three women
went to the right along the tracks while the other two went to the
left. The bookkeeper and the woman he walked with did not speak of
what had been seen. They walked for several hundred yards together and
then parted, turning from the tracks into separate streets. When the
bookkeeper was alone he began to worry about the future. “You’ll see.
Within a few months I’ll have to be looking for a new place. When that
sort of thing begins business goes to pieces.” He was worried about the
fact that, as he had a wife and two children and did not get a very
large salary, he had no money saved. “Damn that Natalie Swartz. I’ll
bet she’s a whore, that’s what I’ll bet,” he muttered as he went along.
As for the two remaining women, one of them wanted to speak of the two
people kneeling together in the dark office while the other did not.
There were several ineffectual attempts at talk of the matter on the
part of the older of the two and then they also parted. The youngest of
the three, the one who had smiled at John Webster that morning when he
had just come out of Natalie’s presence and when he had for the first
time realized that the doors of her being were open to him, went along
the street past the door of the bookseller’s shop and up a climbing
street into the lighted business section of the town. She kept smiling
as she went along and it was because of something she herself did not
understand.
It was because she was herself one in whom the little voices talked and
now they were going busily. Some phrase, picked up somewhere, from the
Bible perhaps when she was a young girl and went to Sunday school, or
from some book, kept saying itself over and over in her mind. What a
charming combination of plain words in everyday use among people. She
kept saying them in her mind and after a time, when she came to a place
in the street where there was no one near, she said them aloud. “And as
it turned out there was a marriage in our house,” were the words she
said.