(From _The Pictorial Review_)
Laura stood across the street waiting for the people to come out from
the picture-show. She couldn't have said just why she was waiting,
unless it was that she was waiting because she could not go away. She
was not wearing her black; she had a reason for not wearing it when she
came on these trips, and the simple lines of her dark-blue suit and the
smart little hat Howie had always liked on her, somehow suggested young
and happy things. Two soldiers came by; one of them said, "Hello, there,
kiddo," and the other, noting the anxiety with which she waited, assured
her, "_You_ should worry." She looked at them, and when he saw her face
the one who had said, "You should worry," said, in sheepish fashion,
"Well, _I_ should worry," as if to get out of the apology he didn't know
how to make. She was glad they had gone by. It hurt so to be near the
soldiers.
The man behind her kept saying, "Pop-_corn_! _Pop_-corn right _here_."
It seemed she must buy pop-corn if she stood there. She bought some. She
tried to do the thing she was expected to do--so she wouldn't be
noticed.
Then the people came pushing out from the theater. They did it just as
they did it in the other towns. A new town was only the same town in a
different place; and all of it was a world she was as out of as if it
were passing before her in a picture. All of it except that one thing
that was all she had left! She had come so far to have it tonight. She
_wouldn't_ be cheated. She crossed the street, and as the last people
were coming out of the theater she went in.
A man, yawning, was doing something to a light. He must belong to the
place. His back was to her, and she stood there trying to get brave
enough to speak. It had never been easy for her to open conversations
with strangers. For so many years it was Howie who had seemed to connect
her with the world. And suddenly she thought of how sorry Howie would be
to see her waiting around in this dismal place after every one else had
gone, trying to speak to a strange man about a thing that man wouldn't
at all understand. How well Howie would understand it! He would say, "Go
on home, Laura." "Don't do this, sweetheart." Almost as if he had said
it, she turned away. But she turned back. This was her wedding
anniversary.
She went up to the man. "You didn't give all of the picture tonight, did
you?" Her voice was sharp; it mustn't tremble.
He looked round at her in astonishment. He kept looking her up and down
as if to make her out. Her trembling hands clutched the bag of pop-corn
and some of it spilled. She let it all fall and put one hand to her
mouth.
A man came down from upstairs. "Lady here says you didn't give the whole
show tonight," said the first man.
The young man on the stairs paused in astonishment. He, too, looked
Laura up and down. She took a step backward.
"What was left out wasn't of any importance, lady," said the man,
looking at her, not unkindly, but puzzled.
"I think it was!" she contended in a high, sharp voice. They both stared
at her. As she realized that this could happen, saw how slight was her
hold on the one thing she had, she went on, desperately, "You haven't
any right to do this! It's--it's _cheating_."
They looked then, not at her, but at each other--as the sane counsel
together in the presence of what is outside their world. Oh, she knew
that look! She had seen her brother and his wife doing it when first she
knew about Howie.
"Now I'll tell you, lady," said the man to whom she had first spoken,
in the voice that deals with what has to be dealt with carefully, "you
just let me give you your money back, then you won't have the feeling
that you've been cheated." He put his hand in his pocket.
"I don't want my money back!" cried Laura. "I--want to see what you left
out!"
"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do," proposed the young man, taking his
cue from the older one. "I'll tell you just exactly what happened in the
part that was left out."
"I know exactly what happened," cut in Laura. "I--I want to _see_--what
happened."
It was a cry from so deep that they didn't know what to do.
"Won't you do it for me?" she begged of the young man, going up to him.
"What you left out--won't you show it for me--_now_?"
He just stood there staring at her.
"It means--! It--" But how could she tell them what it meant? She looked
from one to the other, as if to see what chance there was of their doing
it without knowing what it meant. When she couldn't keep sobs back, she
turned away.
Even in her room at the hotel she had to try to keep from crying. She
could hear the man moving around in the next room--so he, of course,
could hear her, too. It was all as it was in the pictures--people
crowded together, and all of it something that seemed life and really
wasn't. Even _that_--the one thing, the one moment--really wasn't life.
But it was all she had! If she let herself think of how little that all
was--it was an emptiness she was afraid of.
The people who had tried to comfort her used to talk of how much she had
had. She would wonder sometimes why they were talking on her side
instead of their own. For if you have had much--does that make it easy
to get along with nothing? Why couldn't they _see_ it? That because of
what Howie had been to her--and for ten years!--she just didn't know any
way of going on living without Howie!
Tonight made fresh all her wedding anniversaries--brought happiness to
life again. It almost took her in. And because she had been so near the
dear, warm things in which she had lived, when morning came she couldn't
get on the train that would take her back to that house to which Howie
would never come again. Once more it all seemed slipping from her. There
must be _something_. As a frightened child runs for home, she turned to
that place where--for at least a moment--it was as if Howie were there.
She went to the telegraph office and wired the company that sent out
"The Cross of Diamonds," asking where that film could be seen. She had
learned that this was the way to do it. She had known nothing about such
things at first; it had been hard to find out the ways of doing. It was
a world she didn't know the ways of.
When she got her answer, and found that the place where "The Cross of
Diamonds" would be shown that night was more than a hundred miles
away--that it meant going that much farther away from home--she told
herself this was a thing she couldn't do. She told herself this must
stop--that her brother was right in the things he said against it. It
wouldn't do. He hadn't said it was crazy, but that was what he meant--or
feared. She had told him she would try to stop. Now was the time to do
it--now when she would have to go so much farther away. But--_it_ was
going farther away--this glimpse of Howie--all that was left of Howie
was moving away from her! And after the disappointment of the night
before--She must see him once more! Then--yes, then she would stop.
She was excited when she had decided to do this. It lifted her out of
the nothingness. From this meager thing her great need could in a way
create the feeling that she was going to meet Howie. Once more she would
see him do that thing which was so like him as to bring him back into
life. _Why_ should she turn from it? What were all the other things
compared with this thing? This was one little flash of life in a world
that had ceased to be alive.
So again that night, in the clothes he had most liked, she went for that
poor little meeting with her husband--so pitifully little, and yet so
tremendous because it was all she would ever have. Again she sat in a
big, noisy place with many jostling, laughing people--and waited to see
Howie. She forgot that the place had ugly red walls and sickly green
lights; she could somehow separate herself from harsh voices and
smells--for she was here to meet Howie!
She knew just the part of the house to sit in. Once she had sat where
she couldn't see him as he passed from sight! After that she had always
come very early. So she had to sit there while other people were coming
in. But she didn't much mind that; it was like sitting in a crowded
railway station when the person you love is coming soon.
But suddenly something reached over that gulf between other people and
her. A word. A terrible word. Behind her some one said "munitions." She
put her hand to her eyes and pressed tight. Not to _see_. That was why
she had to keep coming for this look at Howie. She had to see
_him_--that she might shut out _that_--the picture of Howie--_blown into
pieces_.
She _hated_ people. They were always doing something like this to her.
She hated all these people in the theater. It seemed they were all,
somehow, against her. And Howie had been so good to them! He was so good
to people like the people in this theater. It was because he was so good
and kind to them that he was--that he was not Howie now. He was always
thinking of people's comfort--the comfort of people who had to work
hard. From the time he went into his father's factory he had always been
thinking up ways of making people more comfortable in their work. To see
girls working in uncomfortable chairs, or standing hour after hour at
tables too low or too high for them--he couldn't pass those things by as
others passed them by. He had a certain inventive faculty, and his
kindness was always making use of that. His father used to tell him he
would break them all up in business if his mind went on working in that
direction. He would tell him if he was going to be an inventor he had
better think up some money-making inventions. Howie would laugh and
reply that he'd make it all up some day. And at last one of the things
he had thought out to make it better for people was really going to make
it better for Howie. It was a certain kind of shade for the eyes. It
had been a relief to the girls in their little factory, and it was being
tried out elsewhere. It was even being used a little in one of the big
munition plants. Howie was there seeing about it. And while he was
there--He went in there Howie. There wasn't even anything to carry out.
The picture had begun. She had to wait until almost half of it had
passed before her moment came. The story was a tawdry, meaningless thing
about the adventures of two men who had stolen a diamond cross--a
strange world into which to come to find Howie. Chance had caught him
into it--he was one of the people passing along a street which was being
taken for the picture. His moment was prolonged by his stopping to do
the kind of thing Howie would do, and now it was as if that one moment
was the only thing saved out of Howie's life. They who made the picture
had apparently seen that the moment was worth keeping--they left it as a
part of the stream of life that was going by while the detective of
their story waited for the men for whom he had laid a trap. The story
itself had little relation to real things--yet chance made it this
vehicle for keeping something of the reality that had been Howie--a
disclosing moment captured unawares.
She was thinking of the strangeness of all this when again the people
seated back of her said a thing that came right to her. They were saying
"scrap-heap." She knew--before she knew why--that this had something to
do with her. Then she found that they were talking about this film. It
was ready for the scrap-heap. It was on its last legs. They laughed and
said perhaps they were seeing its "last appearance."
She tried to understand what it meant. Then even this would cease to be
in the world. She had known she ought to stop following the picture
around, she had even told herself this would be the last time she would
come to see it--but to feel it wouldn't any longer be there to be
seen--that even this glimpse of Howie would go out--go out as life goes
out--scrap-heap! She sat up straight and cleared her throat. She would
have to leave. She must get air. But she looked to see where they were.
Not far now. She might miss Howie! With both hands she took hold of the
sides of the seat. She was _not_ going to fall forward! _Not_
suffocating. Not until after she had seen him.
_Now._ The detective has left the hotel--he is walking along the street.
He comes to the cigar-store door, and there steps in to watch. And there
comes the dog! Then it was not going to be cut out tonight! Along comes
the little dog--pawing at his muzzle. He stops in distress in front of
the cigar-store. People pass and pay no attention to the dog--there on
the sidewalk. And then--in the darkened theater her hands go out, for
the door has opened--and she sees her husband! _Howie._ _There._ Moving
as he always moved! She fights back the tears that would blur him. That
dear familiar way he moves! It is almost as if she could step up and
meet him, and they could walk away together.
He starts to go the other way. Then he sees the dog. He goes up to him;
he is speaking to him, wanting to know what is the matter. She can
fairly hear the warmth and kindness of his voice as he speaks to the
little dog. He feels of the muzzle--finds it too tight; he lets it out a
notch. _Dear_ Howie. Of _course_ he would do that. No one else had
cared, but he would care. Then he speaks to the dog--pats him--tells him
he is all right now. Then Howie turns away.
But the dog thinks he will go with this nice person! Howie laughs and
tells him he can't come. A little girl has come across the street. Howie
tells her to keep the dog from following him. Then again he turns to go.
But just before he passes from sight the child calls something to him,
and he looks back over his shoulder and smiles. She sees again the smile
that has been the heart of her life. Then he passes from sight.
And he always leaves friends behind him--just as he always did leave
friends behind him. There will be little murmurs of approval; sometimes
there is applause. Tonight a woman near Laura said, "Say, I bet that's
an awful nice fellow."
She never left her seat at once, as if moving would break a spell. For a
little while after she had seen it, his smile would stay with her. Then
it would fade, as things fade in the motion pictures. Somehow she didn't
really _have_ it. That was why she had to keep coming--constantly
reaching out for something that was not hers to keep.
When her moment had gone, she rose and walked down the aisle. It was
very hard to go away tonight. There had been all the time the fear that
what happened the night before would happen again--that she would not
see Howie, after all. That made her so tense that she was exhausted now.
And then "munitions"--and "scrap-heap." Perhaps it was because of all
this that tonight her moment had been so brief. Only for an instant
Howie's smile had brought her into life. It was gone now. It had passed.
She was so worn that when, at the door, her brother Tom stepped up to
her she was not much surprised or even angry. Tom had no business to be
following her about. She had told him that she would have to manage it
her own way--that he would have to let her alone. Now here he was
again--to trouble her, to talk to her about being brave and sane--when
he didn't _know_--when he didn't have any idea what he was talking
about! But it didn't matter--not tonight. Let him do things--get the
tickets--and all that. Even let him talk to her. That didn't matter
either.
But he talked very little. He seemed to think there was something wrong
with her. He looked at her and said, "O, Laura!" reproachfully, but
distressed.
"I thought you weren't going to do this any more, Laura," he said
gently, after they had walked a little way.
"How did you know I was here?" she asked listlessly.
"They sent me word you had left home. I traced you."
"I don't see why you should trace me," she said, but not as if it
mattered.
"O, Laura!" he said again. "Well, I must say I don't think Mrs. Edmunds
was much of a friend!"
It was Mrs. Edmunds who had told Laura that there was this glimpse of
her husband in "The Cross of Diamonds." She had hesitated about telling
her, but had finally said it was so characteristic and beautiful a
moment she felt Laura should see it.
From the first Tom had opposed her seeing it, saying it would be nothing
but torture to her. Torture it was, but it was as if that torture were
all there was left of life.
Tonight everything was as a world of shadows. She knew that her brother
was taking her to his home instead of back to her own. He had wanted to
do this before, but she had refused. There was nothing in her now that
could refuse. She went with him as if she were merely moving in a
picture and had no power of her own to get out of it.
And that was the way it was through the next few weeks. Tom and his wife
would talk to her about trying to interest herself in life. She made no
resistance, she had no argument against this; but she had no power to do
it. They didn't know--they didn't know how it had been with her and
Howie.
She herself had never been outgoing. It was perhaps a habit of reserve
built out of timidity, but she had been a girl whose life did not have a
real contact with other lives. Perhaps there were many people like
that--perhaps not; she did not know. She only knew that before Howie
came the life in her was more as a thing unto itself than a part of the
life of the world.
Then Howie came! Howie, who could get on with any one, who found
something to like in every one; and in the warmth and strength of his
feeling for people he drew her into that main body of life where she had
not been before. It had been like coming into the sunshine!
Now he was gone; and they asked her to be alone what she had been
through him. It was like telling one to go into the sunshine when the
sun is not shining.
And the more these others tried to reach her, the more alone she felt,
for it only made her know they could not reach her. When you have lived
in the sunshine, days of cold mist may become more than you can bear.
After a long struggle not to do so, she again went to the long-distance
telephone to find out where that picture was being shown--that picture
into which was caught one moment of Howie's life as he moved through the
world.
Worn by the struggle not to do what she was doing, and tormented by the
fear that she had waited too long, that this one thing which was left to
her might no longer _be_, she had to put every bit of her strength into
establishing this connection with the people who could tell her what she
must know. Establishing the connection with living was like this. She
was far off and connected only by a tenuous thing which might any moment
go into confusion and stop.
At the other end some one was making fun of her. They doubted if "The
Cross of Diamonds" could be seen anywhere at all. "The Cross of
Diamonds" had been double-crossed. Wasn't it too much of a cross,
anyway, to see "The Cross of Diamonds"?
Finally another man came to the phone. "The Cross of Diamonds" could be
seen at a certain town in Indiana. But she'd better hurry! And she'd
better look her last look. Why did she want to see it--might he ask? But
Laura hung up the receiver. She must hurry!
All the rest of it was a blur and a hurry. Through the unreal confusion
drove the one idea--she must get there in time! And that whole life of
the world seemed pitted against her--it was as if the whole of that main
body of life was thrown in between her and Howie. The train was late. It
was almost the hour for pictures to begin when she got down at that
lonely, far-away station. And the town, it seemed, was a mile from the
station! There was a bus she must take. Every nerve of her being was
hurrying that bus on--until that very anxiety made it seem it was Howie
himself she would see if only she could get there in time.
And being late, the downstairs at the theater was full. "Balcony only,"
said a man as she came in. "Oh, _won't_ you find me a good seat?" Laura
besought him. "Like to know how I'll find you a seat when there ain't no
seat," was the answer--the whole big life of the world in between her
and Howie!
Upstairs, too, it was hard to find a place. And all those people seated
there--for them it meant only a few hours' silly entertainment!
But after a moment a man directed her to a seat. There was another place
beside it, and just as Laura was being seated a woman came along with
two children. "We can't all sit together," she was saying, "so you just
sit in here, Mamie. You sit right in here--beside the nice lady."
The mother looked at Laura, as if expecting her to welcome her child.
Laura did nothing. She must be alone. She was there to be with Howie.
She was not as late as she had feared. There would be time for getting
ready--getting ready for Howie! She knew this would be the last time she
would see Howie as he had moved through the world. For the last time she
would see his face light to a smile. If she did not reach him tonight,
she would never reach him. She had a feeling that she could reach him,
if only something in her--if only something in her--
She could not finish that; it brought her to a place into which she
could not reach, but as never before she had a feeling that he could be
reached. And so when the little girl beside her twisted in her seat and
she knew that the child was looking up at her she tried not to know this
little girl was there--tried not to know that any of those people were
there. If only she could get them all out of the _way_--she could reach
into the shadow and feel Howie near!
But there was one thing she kept knowing--try her best not to know it!
The little girl beside her, too young to be there, was going to sleep.
When it came right up to the moment for her to see Howie, she was
knowing that that little girl had fallen asleep in an uncomfortable
position. Her head had been resting on the side of the seat--the side
next Laura--and as she fell asleep it slipped from its support in a way
that--Could _she_ help it if this child was not comfortable? Angry, she
tried to brush this from her consciousness as we brush dust from our
eyes. This was her moment with _Howie_--her _chance_.
But when her moment came, a cruel thing happened. Something was wrong
with the machine that was showing the picture. At just _that_ moment--of
all the moments!--the worn-out film seemed to be going to pieces before
her eyes. After the little dog came along, and just as Howie should come
out from the cigar-store, there was a flash--a blur--a jumble of
movements. It was like an earthquake--it looked like life ceasing to be
life. "_No!_" she gasped under her breath. "_No!_" The people around her
were saying things of a different sort. "Cut it!" "What you givin' us?"
"Whoa, boy!" They laughed. _They_ didn't care. It got a little better;
she could make out Howie bending down to fix the dog's muzzle--but it
was all dancing crazily--and people were laughing. And then--then the
miracle! It was on Howie's smile the picture steadied--that smile back
over his shoulder after he had turned to go. And, as if to bring to
rights what had been wrong, the smile was held, and it was as if Howie
lingered, as if in leaving life he looked back over his shoulder and
waited--waited for his smile to reach Laura. Out of the jumble and
blur--out of the wrong and meaningless--Howie's beautiful steady smile
_making it all right_.
She could not have told how it happened. As Howie passed, she turned to
the little girl beside her whose head was without support and, not
waking her, supported the child's head against her own arm. And after
she had done this--it was after she had done it that she began to know,
as if doing it let down bars.
Now she was knowing. She had wanted to push people aside and reach into
the shadows for Howie. She began to see that it was not so she would
reach him. It was in being as he had been--kind, caring--that she could
have a sense of him near. Here was her chance--among the people she had
thought stood between her and her chance. Howie had always cared for
these people. On his way through the world with them he had always
stopped to do the kind thing--as he stopped to make it right for the
badly muzzled dog. Then there _was_ something for her to do in the
world. She could do the kind things Howie would be doing if he were
there! It would somehow--keep him. It would--fulfill him. Yes, fulfill
him. Howie had made her more alive--warmer and kinder. If she became as
she had been before--Howie would have failed. She moved so that the
little girl who rested against her could rest the better. And as she did
this--it was as if Howie had smiled. The one thing the picture had never
given her--the sense that it was hers to keep--that stole through her
now as the things come which we know we can never lose. For the first
moment since she lost him, she had him. And all the people in that
theater, and all the people in the world--_here_ was the truth! It
cleared and righted as Howie's smile had righted the picture. In so far
as she could come close to others she would come closer to him.