It took me a few minutes to work the numbness out of my legs. How they
ached! I stepped out of the tent-door like a drunken man ... fell on my
face in some bushes and bled from several scratches. The blare of what
was full daylight hurt my eyes. I had been writing on, entranced, by
unneeded lamp, when unheeded day burned about me.
Stepping inside again, I saw by my Ingersoll that it was twelve o'clock.
I fell into a deep sleep, still dressed ... I was so exhausted. Usually
I slept absolutely naked.
* * * * *
These were the things that happened while Penton was in jail because he
played tennis on Sunday.
* * * * *
Now I was part and parcel of the household, no longer a stranger-friend
on a visit. Though Penton's jail-experience did not thrill me, the
continued thronging of reporters did, as did Baxter's raging desire to
do good for the poor ordinary prisoners in jail. He had got at several
of them who had received a raw deal in the courts, and was moving heaven
and earth to bring redress to them. He gave interviews, dictated
articles ... the State officials were furious. "What's the matter with
the fellow? What's he bother about the other fellows for, he ought to be
glad he's not in their shoes!"...
In agitations for the public good, in humanitarian projects, Baxter was
indeed a great man ... I loomed like a pigmy beside him.
* * * * *
Darrie and I in dialogue:
She met me on the path, as I was proceeding toward the big house. She
carried Carpenter's _Love's Coming of Age_ in her hand. She was dressed
daintily. Her brown eyes smiled at me, and a rich dimple broke in her
cheek.
But Darrie was taller than Hildreth, and I like small women best;
perhaps because I am myself so big.
"Don't go up to the house, Johnnie."
"I want a book from the library."
"Hildreth and Penton are there. Hildreth is having a soul-state."
"A what?" I laughed.
"Oh, she thinks something is the matter with her soul, and, for the
three hundredth time since I've known them, Penton and she are
discussing their lives together."
"I don't see anything to jest about in that."
"I'm tiring of it ... if Hildreth has a tooth-ache, or anything that the
rest of us women accept as a matter of course, she runs to Mubby, as she
calls him ... and, as if it were some abstruse, philosophical problem,
they talk on, hour after hour ... like German metaphysics, there's no
end to it. They've been at it since ten and they'll go on till four, if
they follow precedents ... Penton takes Hildreth too seriously."
"You talk as if you, you were jealous of Hildreth and in love with
Penton."
"It's neither the one nor the other. I love them both, and I want to see
them happy together."
"You see, Darrie, neither you nor I are married, and neither of us knows
anything about sex, except in the theory of the books we've read--how
can _we judge_ the troubles of a man and woman who are married?"
"There's a lot in what you say."
"I believe it would be better if we both cleared out and left them to
fight this out alone."
"Perhaps it would."
* * * * *
"Darrie, Oh, Darrie!--want to come for a walk with Hildreth and me?"
So the three set off together, leaving me and Ruth alone.
* * * * *
Ruth and I had just settled down to a discussion of the writing of
narrative poetry, how it was done, and the reason why it was no longer
customary with the poets to write longer stories out of real life, like
Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_,--when we heard a rustling as of some wild
thing in the bushes beside the house, and here came Hildreth breaking
through, her eyes blazing, her hair down, her light walking skirt that
she had slipped on over her bloomers torn by catching on thorns.
She staggered into the open, swept us with a blazing glance as if we had
done something to her, and hurried on down the path toward the little
house where Penton had written in quiet till she had strangely routed
him out and taken its occupancy for herself.
"Hildreth!" I leaped to my feet, starting after her, "Hildreth what's
the matter?"