"Yes."
"I've been going about ... studying the city...."
"Yes."
"Now I want you to understand, mother.... I want to tell you of ...
It's--well, I want to do something with my money, my life...." And his
voice broke, in spite of himself.
His mother felt as if she were smothering. But she waited, and he went
on:
"For those dead girls, mother...." and sharply came a dry sob. "And for
all the toilers. Oh, but can you understand?"
There was a silence. Then she looked at him from her youthful, brilliant
eyes, and saw only an overgrown, rather ignorant boy. This gave her
strength, and, though it was painful, she began speaking:
"_Understand_? Do you mean the books you are reading?"
"Yes," he murmured.
"Well," she smiled weakly, "I've been reading them, too."
"_You_!" He was shocked. He looked at her as if she had revealed a new
woman to him.
"Yes," she said, quickly. "I found them in your room."
He was amazedly silent. He felt then that he had never really known his
mother.
"Joe," she said, tremulously, "I want to tell you a little about the
war.... There are things I haven't told you."
And while he sat, stupefied and dumfounded, she told him--not all, but
many things. She was back in the Boston of the sixties, when she was a
young girl, when that town was the literary center of America, when high
literature was in the air, when the poets had great fame and every one,
even the business man, was a poet. She had seen or met some of the great
men. Once Whittier was pointed out to her, at a time when his lines on
slavery were burning in her brain. She had seen the clear-eyed Lowell
walking under the elms of Cambridge, and she justly felt that she was
one of those
"Who dare to be
In the right with two or three."
Once, even, a relative of hers, a writer then well known and now
forgotten, had taken her out to see "the white Mr. Longfellow." It was
one of the dream-days of her life--the large, spacious, square Colonial
house where once Washington had lived; the poet's square room with its
round table and its high standing desk in which he sometimes wrote; the
sloping lawn; the great trees; and, better than anything, the simple,
white-haired, white-bearded poet who took her hand so warmly and spoke
so winningly and simply. He even gave her a scrap of paper on which were
written some of his anti-slavery lines.
Those were great days--days when America, the world's experiment in
democracy, was thrown into those fires that consume or purify. The great
test was on, whether such a nation could live, and Boston was athrob
with love of country and eagerness to sacrifice. The young, beautiful,
clear-eyed girl did not hesitate a moment to urge Henry Blaine to give
up all and go to the front. It was like tearing her own heart in two,
and, possibly at a word, Blaine would have remained in Boston and helped
in some other way. But she fought it out with him one night on Boston
Commons, and she wished then that she was a man and could go herself. On
that clear, mild night, the blue luminous tinge of whose moon she
remembered so vividly, they walked up and down, they passionately
embraced, they felt the end of life and the mystery of death, and then
at last when the young man said: "I'll go! It's little enough to do in
this crisis!" she clung to him with pride and sacred joy and knew that
life was very great and that it had endless possibilities.
And so Henry Blaine went with his regiment, and the black and terrible
years set in--years in which so often she saw what Walt Whitman had
seen:
"I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced with missiles I saw
them,
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),
And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them.
I saw the débris and débris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought.
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not,
The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,
And the armies that remain'd suffer'd."
Terrible years, years of bulletins, years of want, hard times, years
when all the future was at stake, until finally that day in New York
when she saw the remnant returning, marching up Broadway between the
black crowds and the bunting, the drums beating, the fifes playing,
"Returning, with thinned ranks, young, yet very old,
worn, marching, noticing nothing."
Henry Blaine was one of these and he came to her a cripple, an emaciated
and sick man. Then had followed, as Joe knew, the marriage, the hard
pioneer life in the shanty on the stony hill, the death, and the long
widowhood....
Had she not a right to speak to him?
"Understand?" she ended. "I think, Joe, I ought to understand.... I sent
your father into the war...."
Depth beneath depth he was discovering her. He was amazed and awed. He
asked himself where he had been all these years, and how he had been so
blind. He felt very young then. It was she who actually knew what the
word social and the word patriotism meant.
He looked down on the floor, and spoke in a whisper:
"And ... would you send me off, too? The new war?"
She could scarcely speak.
"Whereto?"
"I ... oh, I'll have to go down in a tenement somewhere--the slums...."
"Well, then," she said, quietly, "I'll go with you."
"But you--" he exclaimed, almost adding, "an old woman"--"it's
impossible, mother."
She answered him with the same quietness.
"You forget the shanty."
And then it was clear to him. Like an electric bolt it shot him,
thrilling, stirring his heart and soul. She _would_ go with him; more
than that, she _should_. It was her right, won by years of actual want
and struggle and service. More, it was her escape from a flat, stale,
meaningless boarding-house existence. Suddenly he felt that she was
really his mother, knit to him by ties unbreakable, a terrible thing in
its miraculousness.
But he only said, in a strained voice,
"All right, mother!"
And she laughed, and mused, and murmured:
"How does the world manage to keep so new and young?"
V
MYRA AND JOE
Myra Craig used to dream at night that the fifty-seven members of her
class arose from their desks with wild shrieks and danced a war-dance
about her. This paralyzed her throat, her hands, and her feet, and she
could only stand, flooded with horror, awaiting the arrival of the
school principal and disgrace. Out of this teacher's dream she always
awoke disgusted with school-work.
Myra came from Fall River--her parents still lived there--came when she
was ten years younger, to seek her fortune in the great city. New York
had drawn her as it draws all the youth of the land, for youth lusts for
life and rushes eagerly to the spot where life is most intense and most
exciting. The romance of crowds, of wealth, of art, of concentrated
pleasure and concentrated vice, of immense money-power, the very
architecture of the world-city, the maelstrom of people, drew the young
Fall River woman irresistibly. She did not want the even and smooth
future of a little town; she wanted to plunge into the hazardous
interweaving of the destinies of millions of people. She wanted to
grasp at some of the magic opportunities of the city. She wanted a
career.
And so she came. Early that June morning she left her cabin on the Sound
steamboat and went out on deck, and then she had unfolded to her the
most thrilling scene of the earth. Gazing, almost panting with
excitement, it seemed to her that the nature she had known--the hills
and fields of New England--shrank to littleness. First there was all
about her the sway of the East River, golden--flecked with the morning
sun, which glowed through a thin haze. From either shore a city climbed,
topped with steeples and mill chimneys--floods of tenements and homes.
Then the boat swept under the enormous steel bridges which seemed upheld
by some invisible power and throbbed with life above them. And then,
finally, came the Vision of the City. The wide expanse of rolling,
slapping water was busy with innumerable harbor craft, crowded ferries,
puffing tugs, each wafting its plume of smoke and white steam; but from
those waters rose tier after tier of square-set skyscrapers climbing in
an irregular hill to the thin peak of the highest tower. In the golden
haze, shot with sun, the whole block of towers loomed distant, gigantic,
shadowy, unreal--a magic city floating on the waters of the morning.
Windows flashed, spirals of white smoke spun thin from the far roofs.
Myra thought of those skyscrapers as the big brothers of the island
gazing out over the Atlantic.
The boat rounded the tip of the island, furrowing the broad surface of
the bay, which seemed as the floor of a stage before that lifting huge
sky-lost amphitheater. Every advance changed the many-faceted beauty of
New York, and Myra, gazing, had one glimpse across little green Battery
Park up the deep twilit cañon of Broadway, the city's spine. The young
woman was moved to tears. She seemed to slough off at that moment the
church of her youth, averring that New York was too big for a creed. It
was the great human outworking; the organism of the mighty many. It
seemed a miracle that all this splendor and wonder had been wrought by
human hands. Surely human nature was great--greater than she had
dreamed. If creatures like herself had wrought this, then she was more
than she had dared to imagine, "deeper than ever plummet had sounded."
She felt new courage, new faith. She wanted to leave the boat and merge
with those buildings and those swarming streets. She was proud of the
great captains who had engineered this masswork, proud of the powers
that ruled this immensity.
But beyond all she felt the city's _livingness_. The air seemed charged
with human activity, with toil-pulsations. She was all crowded about
with human beings, and felt the mystery of what might be termed
_crowd-touch_. Here, surely, was life--life thick, happy, busy, daring,
ideal. Here was pioneering--a reaching forth to a throbbing future. So,
as the boat landed, she mentally identified herself with this city,
labeled herself New-Yorker, and became one of its millions.
Her rapture lasted throughout her first stay. She tasted romance
glancing in shop windows or moving in a crowd or riding in an elevated
train. A letter of introduction to a friend of her mother's secured her
a companion, who "showed her the sights" and helped her choose her
boarding-house in East Eightieth Street. And then came the examinations
for public-school teaching; and after these she went home for the
summer, returning to New York in the fall.
Then her new life began, the rapture ceased, and Myra Craig, like so
many others, found that her existence in the city was just as narrow as
it had been in the town. In some ways, more narrow. She was quite
without friends, quite without neighborhood. Her day consisted in
teaching from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M., correcting papers and planning lessons
and making reports until well into the evening, sometimes until late in
the night, and meeting at meals unfriendly people that she disliked. Her
class was composed of rather stupid, rather dirty children. They
_smelled_--a thing she never forgave them. And what could one woman do
with fifty or sixty children? The class was at least three times too big
for real teaching, and so almost inevitably a large part of the work
became routine--a grind that spoiled her temper and embittered her
heart. Her fellow-teachers were an ignorant lot; the principal himself
she thought the biggest lump of stupidity she had ever met--a man
demanding letter-perfection and caring not one rap for the growth of
children. Her week-ends were her only relief, and she used these partly
for resting and partly in going to theater and concert.
Such for ten years--with summers spent at home--was Myra's life. It was
bounded by a few familiar streets; it was largely routine; it was hard
and bitter; and it had no future. It was anything but what she had
dreamed. New York was anything but what she had dreamed. She never saw
again that Vision of the City; never felt again that throb of life, that
sense of pioneering and of human power. And yet in those years Myra had
developed. She was thrown back on books for friendship, and through
these and through hard work and through very routine she developed
personality--grew sensitive, mentally quick, metropolitan. She had, as
it were, her own personal _flavor_--one felt in her presence a
difference, a uniqueness quite precious and exquisite.
And then one day she had gone to the printery and met a man, who was
homely, rough, simple, and, in spite of her revulsion from these
qualities, was immensely drawn to him. Something deeper than the veneer
of her culture overpowered her. She had almost forgotten sex in the
aridity of those ten years; she had almost become a dried old maid; but
now by the new color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes, the fresh
rapidity of her blood, and through the wonder of the world having become
more _light_, as if there were two suns in the sky instead of one--yes,
through the fact that she lived now at ten human-power instead of
one--her heart told her exultingly, "You are a _woman_."
Girlhood had come again, but girlhood made all woman by immense
tenderness, by the up-rush of a wild love, and by the awakening of all
her instincts of home and mating and child-bearing. And then had come
that mad, wind-blown twilight at the riverside when the spirit of life
had drenched her and she had become grave, tender, and wrought of all
lovely power. Joe was just a boy then to her, and her great woman-heart
drew him in and sheltered him in the sacred warmth of her being. In that
moment she had reached the highest point of her womanhood, a new
unfolding, a new release. And then had come horror, and he had been
swept away from her--one glimpse of his numb, ghastly face, and he was
gone.
It was Fannie Lemick that took her home. She only knew that she was
being led away, while crashing through her mind went flames, smoke, the
throbbing of the engines, and the words: "I may never see you again ...
dead girls...." All that night she tossed about in a horror, and in the
morning she feverishly read the terrible news until she thought she must
swoon away. She became sick; the landlady had to come up and help her;
the doctor had to be sent for, and he had told her that this nervous
breakdown had been long overdue; she had been working under too great a
strain; it only needed some shock to break her.
But while she lay in a sick fever her heart went out to Joe. If she only
could be at his side, nerve him to the fight, protect him and soothe
him. She knew that his whole old life had been consumed in that fire,
and lay in ruins, and she felt subtly that he had been taken from her.
By one blow, at the very moment of the miracle of their love, they had
been torn from each other. She did not want to live; she hoped that she
had some serious disease that would kill her.
But she did live; she became better, and then in a mood of passionate
tenderness she wrote her first little love-letter to Joe. She went
about, doing her school-work and bearing the weight of intolerable
lonely days, and he had written twice, just a word to her, a word of
delay. What kept him? What was he doing? She read of his testimony at
the inquest and became indignant because he blamed himself. Who was to
blame for such an accident? It was not his cigarette that had started
the blaze. In her overwrought condition she passed from a terrible love
to a sharp hate, and back and forth. Was he a fool or was he more noble
than she could fathom? He should have seen her sooner, he should not
have left her a prey to her morbid thoughts. Time and again she became
convinced that he had ceased to love her, that he was more concerned
over his burnt printery. She twisted his letters against him. She would
sit in her room trying to work at her school papers, and suddenly she
would clench her fists, turn pale, and stare despairingly at the blank
wall.
Day after day she waited, starting up every time she heard the postman's
whistle and the ringing of the bell. And then at last one night, as she
paced up and down the narrow white little room, she heard the landlady
climbing the stairs, advancing along the hall, and there was a sharp
rap. She felt faint and dizzy, flung open the door, took the letter, and
sank down on the bed, hardly daring to open it.
It was brief and cold:
Dear Myra,--I know you are up early, so I am
coming around at seven to-morrow morning--I'll be
out in the street and wait for you. We can go to the
Park. I have some serious problems to lay before
you.
Joe.
"Serious problems!" She understood. He was paving the way for renouncing
her. Perhaps it was a money matter--he thought he ought not marry on a
reduced income. Or perhaps he found he didn't love her. For hours she
sat there with the letter crumpled in her hand, frozen, inert, until she
was incapable of feeling or thinking. So he was coming at seven. He took
it for granted that she would be ready to see him--would be eager to
walk in the Park with him. Well, what if she didn't go? A fine letter
that, after that half-hour at the riverside. A love-letter! She laughed
bitterly. And then her heart seemed to break within her. Life was too
hard. Why had she ever left the peace and quiet of Fall River? Why had
she come down to the cruel, careless, vicious city to be ground up in a
wholesale school system and then to break her heart for an uncouth,
half-educated printer? It was all too hard, too cruel. Why had she been
born to suffer so? Why must she tingle now with pain, when in a few
years she would be unfeeling dust again? Among all the millions of the
people of the earth, among all the life of earth and the circling
million scattered worlds, she felt utterly isolated, defrauded,
betrayed. Life was a terrible gift, and she did not want it. This whirl
of emotion rose and rose in her, went insanely through her brain, and,
becoming intolerable, suddenly ceased and left her careless, numb, and
hard.
She arose mechanically and looked in the glass at herself. Her face was
haggard.
"I'm getting homely," she thought, and quietly went to bed.
But in the night she awoke to a swift frenzy of joy. He was coming.
After all, he was coming. She would see him. She would be near him
again. Yes, how she loved him! loved with all her nature. It was the
intensity of her love that made her hate. And she lay throbbing with
joy, her whole being quivering with desire for him. He was hers, after
all. It was the woman's part to forgive and forget.
But when the morning broke, and she arose in her nightgown and sat on
the chair at the window, smoothing out and rereading the letter, her
doubts returned. He was coming to renounce her. He would make all sorts
of plausible excuses, he would be remorseful and penitent, but it all
came to the same end. Why should she go and meet him to be humiliated in
this way? She would not go.
Yet she rose and dressed with unusual care and tried to smile back the
radiance of her face, and fixed her hair this way and that in a pitiful
attempt to take away the sharpness of her expression, and when her
little clock showed seven she put on hat and coat with trembling hands
and went swiftly down and out at the front door. She was shaking with
terrible emotions, fire filled and raged in her breast, and she had to
bite her lip to keep it still.
The city flashed before her in all the sparkle of October, the air
tingled, and in the early morning light the houses, the street, looked
as bright and fresh as young school-children washed, combed,
bright-eyed, new with sleep, and up from roofs went magic veilings of
flimsy smoke. Down the avenues clanged cars black with mechanics,
clerks, and shop-girls on the way to work; people streamed hurrying to
their day's toil. The city was awake, shaking in every part of her with
glad breakfast and the rush to activity. What colossal forces swinging
in, swinging out of the metropolis in long pulsations of freight and
ship and electricity! Wall Street would roar, the skyscrapers swarm, the
schools drone and murmur and sing, the mills grind and rattle, and the
six continents and the seven seas would pulse their blood into the city
and be flushed by her radiating tides. Into this hidden activity Myra
stepped, deaf and blind to all but the clamor of her heart and a single
man walking like a black pawn aureoled in the low early sunlight.
She came down slowly, as he came up. She glanced at his face. She was
shocked by its suffering, its gray age. He looked quite shabby in his
long frayed coat, his unpolished shoes, his gray slouch hat--shabby and
homely, and ill-proportioned, stooping a little, his rough shock of hair
framing the furrowed face and sunken melancholy eyes. And it was for
this man that she had been breaking her heart! Yet, at the moment there
swept over her an awful surge of passion, so strong that she could have
seized him in her arms and died in his embrace.
He, in turn, saw how white and set her face was, how condemnatory. He
had come to her almost ready to throw his plans overboard and cleave to
her--for a day and a night that side of his nature had dominated,
expunging all else, driving him to her, demanding that he grasp her
magic presence, her womanly splendor. This alone was real, and all the
rest fantastic. And he had walked up and down the street with all the
October morning singing in his blood; the world was glorious again and
he was young; he would take her, he would forget all else, and they
would go off somewhere in the wilderness and really live. He had never
lived yet. He thirsted for life, he thirsted for all this woman could
give him. And now the condemnation in her face choked him off, made her
a stranger, separated them, made it hard to speak to her.
He cried in a low voice:
"Myra!"
The word was charged with genuine passion, and she became more pale, and
stood unable to find her tongue, her lips quivering painfully.
Then suddenly there was a nervous overflow.
"You wanted to walk in the Park," she blurted in a cold, uneven voice.
"We'd better be going then. I won't have much time. I've got to be at
school early."
She started off, and he strode beside her. They walked in a strange slow
silence, each charged with inexpressible, conflicting emotions, and
each waiting for the other. This strain was impossible, and finally Joe
began speaking in low tones.
"I know it seems queer that I haven't been to see you ... but you'll
understand, I couldn't. There was so much to do...."
He stopped, and then again came the cold, uneven voice:
"You could have found a moment."
They went on in silence, and entered the Park, following the walk where
it swept its curve alongside the tree-arched roadway, past low green
hills to the right and the sinking lawns to the left, crossed the
roadway, and climbed the steep path that gave on to the Ramble--that
twisty little wilderness in the heart of the city, that remote, wild,
magic tangle.
A little pond lay in the very center of it, all deep with the blue sky,
and golden October gloried all about it--swaying in wild-tinted
treetops, blowing in dry leaves, sparkling on every spot of wet, and all
suffused and splashed and strangely fresh with the low, red, radiant
sunlight. There was splendor in the place, and the air dripped with
glorious life, and through it all went the lovers, silent, estranged,
pitiable.
"We can sit here," said Joe.
It was a bench under a tree, facing the pond. They sat down, each gazing
on the ground, and the leaves dropped on them, and squirrels ran up to
them, tufted their tails and begged for peanuts with lustrous beady
eyes, and now and then some early walker or some girl or man on the way
to work swung lustily past and disappeared in foliage and far low vistas
of tree trunks.
The suspense became intolerable again. Joe turned a little to her.
"Myra!"
She was trembling; a moment more she would be in his arms, sobbing,
forgiving him. But she hurried on in an unnatural way.
"You wanted to speak to me--I'm waiting. _Why_ don't you speak?"
It was a blow in the face; his own voice hardened then.
"You're making it very hard for me."
She said nothing, and he had to go on.
"After the fire--" his voice snapped, and it was a space before he went
on, "I felt I was guilty.... I went to a mass-meeting and one of the
speakers accused the ... class I belong to ... of failing in their
duty.... She said ..."
Myra spoke sharply:
"Who said?"
"Miss Heffer."
"Oh!"
Joe felt suddenly silenced. Something unpleasant was creeping in between
them. He did not know enough of women, either, to divine how Myra was
suffering, to know that she had reached a nervous pitch where she was
hardly responsible for what she thought and said. He went on
blunderingly:
"I felt that I was accused... I felt that I had to make reparation to
the toilers, ... had to spend my life making conditions better.... You
see this country has reached a crisis ..."
It was all gibberish to her.
"Exactly what do you mean?" she asked, sharply.
"I mean"--he fumbled for words--"I must go and live among the poor and
arouse them and teach them of the great change that is taking place...."
She laughed strangely.
"Oh--an uplifter, settlement work, charity work--"
He was stupefied.
"Myra, can't you see--"
"Yes, I see," she said, raising her voice a little; "you're going to
live in the slums and you want me to release you. I do. Anything else?"
She was making something sordid of his beautiful dream, and she was
startlingly direct. He was cut to the heart.
"You're making it impossible," he began.
She laughed a little, stroking down her muff.
"So you're going to live among the poor ... and you didn't dare come and
tell me...."
"I had no right to involve you until I was sure...."
"And now you're sure...."
"No," he cried.
She raised her voice a little again:
"And I wrote asking if I couldn't help you. Women are fools...."
He sat searching about for something to say. His heart was like cold
lead in his breast; his head ached. He felt her side of the case very
vividly, and how could she ever understand?
Then, as she sat there her head seemed to explode, and she spoke
hurriedly, incoherently:
"It's time to get to school. I want to go alone. Good-by."
She rose and went off rapidly.
"Myra!" he cried, leaping up, but she only accelerated her pace....
Instead of going to school she went straight home, flung herself
full-length on the bed, buried her face in the pillow, and shook for a
long time with terrible tearless sobs. Her life was ruined within her.
VI
MARTY BRIGGS
Joe went home in a distraught condition. He was angry, amazed, and
passion-shaken. He had had a look into that strange mixture which is
woman--and he was repelled, and yet attracted as he had never been
before. He felt that all was over between them, that somehow she had
convicted him of being brutal, selfish, and unmanly, and in the light of
her condemnation he saw in his delay to meet her only cowardice and
harsh indifference. And yet all along he had acted on the conclusion
that he had no right to ask a woman to go into the danger of his work
with him.
Pacing up and down his narrow room, he began lashing himself again,
excusing, forgiving Myra everything. He had never really understood her
nature; he should have gone to her in the beginning and trusted to her
love and her insight; he should have let her share the aftermath of the
fire; that fierce experience would have taught her that he was forever
mortgaged to a life of noble reparation, and even the terror of it all
would have been better than shutting her out, to brood morbidly alone.
Yet, what could he do? He must be strong, be wise, keep his head. He had
pledged himself, sworn himself into the service of the working class
movement. There was no escape. He tried to bury himself in his books,
regain for a moment his splendid dream of the future state, feel again
those strange throes of world-building, of social service.
And out of it all grew a letter, a letter to Myra. He wrote it in a
strange haste, the sentences coming too rapidly for his pen. It ran:
DEAR MYRA,--I must _make_ you understand! I hurt
you when I wanted to help you; I wronged you when
I wanted only to do right by you. Why didn't you
listen to me this morning?
It was at the fire there, at that moment you tugged
at my sleeve and I spoke to you, that I saw clearly that
my life was no longer my own, that I could not even
give it to you, whom I loved, whom I love now with
every bit of my existence. I told you I belonged to
those dead girls. Have you forgotten? _Sixty of them_--and
three of my men. It was as if I had killed them
myself. I am a guilty man, and I must expiate this
guilt. There is no use fooling myself with pleasant
phrases, no use thinking others to blame. It was I
who was responsible.
And through the death of those girls I learned of the
misery of the world, of the millions in want, the women
wrenched from their homes to toil in the mills, the
little children--fresh, sweet bodies, bubbling hearts,
and tender, whimsical minds--slaving in factories,
tiny boys and girls laboring like men and women in
cotton and knitting mills, in glass factory and coal-mine,
and on the streets of cities, upon whose frail little
spirits is thrust the responsibility, the wage burden, the
money, and family trouble, the care and drudgery and
mortal burden we grown people ourselves not seldom
find too hard. I have learned of a world gone wrong;
I have learned of a new slavery on earth; and I as a
member of the master class share the general guilt for
the suffering of the poor...I must help to free
them from the very conditions that killed the sixty
girls...
And when I think of those girls and their families
(some of them were the sole support of their mothers
and sisters and brothers) the least I can do is to render
up my life for the, lives that were lost--the least I can
do is to fill myself with the spirit of the dead and
go forth, not to avenge them, but to help build a
world where the living will not be sacrificed as they
were.
This country is facing a great crisis; civilization is
facing a great crisis. Shall we go forward or be drawn
backward? There is a call to arms and every man must
offer his life in the great fight--that fight for democracy,
that fight for lifting up the millions to new levels of
life, that fight for a better earth and a superber race
of human beings; and in that fight I am with the
pioneers, heart and soul; I am ringing with the joy
and struggle of it; I am for it, with all my strength and
all my power. It demands everything; its old cry,
"Arise, arise, and follow me;" means giving up possessions,
giving away all, making every sacrifice. Before
this issue our little lives shrink into nothingness,
and we must sink our happiness into the future of the
world.
How can I ask you to go into the peril, the dirt, and
disease of this struggle? And how can I refrain from
going in myself? Let me see you once more. Do not
deny me that. And understand that through life my
love will follow you ... a love greatened, I trust, by
what little I do in the great cause....
Ever yours, JOE
He waited for an answer and none came, and he felt during those days
that the life was being dragged out of him. Feverishly then he buried
himself in his tasks and his books, he went on cramming himself with
theories until he reached the bursting-point and wanted to go out on
fire with mission, almost a fanatic, an Isaiah to shake the city with
invective and prophesy change. What could he do to spread the tidings,
the news? The time had come to find an outlet for the overbearing flood
within him. And then one evening in the Park like a flash came the plan.
He must go among the poor, he must get to know them--not in this
neighborhood, "a prophet is not without honor, etc."--but in some new
place where he was unknown. He thought of Greenwich Village. Did not
Fannie Lemick tell him that Sally Heffer lived in Greenwich Village?
Well, he would look into the matter. He was a printer; why not then
print a little weekly newspaper directly for the toilers, for his
neighbors? He could tell all that way, pour out his enlightenment, stir
them, stand by them, take part in their activities, their troubles and
their strikes and lead them forth to a new life. He was sure they were
ripe for the facts, powder awaiting the spark; he would go down among
them and make his paper the center of their disorganized life.
The more he thought of the plan the more it thrilled him. What was
greater than the power of the press? What more direct? He was done with
palliatives, finding men jobs, giving Christmas turkeys, paying for
coal. What the people needed was education so that they could get
justice--all else would follow.
But even at that perfervid period of his life Joe was saved from being a
John Brown by his sense of humor. This was the imp in him that always
poked a little doubt into his heart and laughed at his ignorance and
innocence. By next morning Joe was smiling at himself. Nevertheless, he
was driven ahead.
He called for Marty Briggs and they went to lunch together. Third Avenue
lay naked to the rain, which swept forward in silvery gusts, dripping,
dripping from the elevated structure, and the pattering liquid sound had
a fresh mellow music. Here and there a man or woman, mush-roomed by an
umbrella, dashed quickly for a car, and the trolleys, gray and crowded,
seemed to duck hurriedly under the downpour. The faces of Joe and Marty
were fresh-washed and spattering drops; they laughed together as they
walked.
"I've some business to talk over with you," explained Joe, and they
finally went into a little restaurant on Third Avenue. The stuffy little
place, warm and damp with the excluded rain, and odorous with sizzling
lard and steaming coffee and boiling cabbage, was crowded with people,
but Joe and Marty took a little table to themselves in the darkest
corner. They sat against the dirty rear wall, whose white paint was
finger-marked, fly-specked, and food-spotted, and in which a
shelf-aperture furnished the connection with the kitchen. To this hole
in the wall hurried the three waitresses, shrieking their orders above
the din of many voices and the clatter and clash of plates and utensils.
"One ham--and!"
A monstrous greasy cook peered forth, shoving out a plate of fried eggs
and echoing huskily:
"Ham--and!"
"Corn-beef-an'-cabbage!" "One harf-an'-harf!" "Make a sunstroke on the
hash!" and other pleasing chants of the noon.
"What'll yer have?"
A thin and nervous young woman swooped between them and mopped off the
sloppy, crumby table with her apron.
"What's good?" asked Joe.
The waitress regarded Joe with half-shut eyes.
"_You_ want veal cutlets."
And she wafted the information to the cook.
"Well, Joe," said the practical Briggs, unable to hold in his excitement
any longer, "let's get down to business."
Joe leaned forward.
"I'm thinking of starting up the printery, Marty."
Marty flushed, choked, and could hardly speak.
"I _knew_ you would, Joe."
"Yes," Joe went on, "but I'm not going to go on with it."
Marty spoke sharply:
"Why not?"
"I'll tell you later, Marty."
"Not--lost your nerve? The fire?"
Joe laughed softly.
"Other reasons--Marty."
"Retire?" Marty's appetite was spoiled. He pushed the veal cutlet from
him. He was greatly agitated. "Retire--_you_? I can see you doing
nothing, blamed if I can't. Gettin' sporty, Joe, in your old age, aren't
you? You'll be wearing one of these dress-suits next and a flasher in
yer chest. Huh!" he snorted, "you'd make a good one on the shelf!"
Joe laughed with joy.
"With my flunkies and my handmaids. No, Marty, I'm going into another
business."
"What business?"
"Editing a magazine."
"And what do you know about editing a magazine?"
"What do most of the editors know?" queried Joe. "You don't have to know
anything. Everybody's editing magazines nowadays."
"A magazine!" Marty was disgusted. "You're falling pretty low, Joe. Why
don't you stick to an honest business? Gosh! you'd make a queer fist
editing a magazine!"
Joe was delighted.
"Well, there are reasons, Marty."
"What reasons?"
So Joe in a shaking voice unfolded his philosophy, and as he did so
Marty became dazed and aghast, gazing at his boss as if Joe had turned
into some unthinkable zoological oddity. Into Marty's prim-set life,
with its definite boundaries and unmysterious exactness, was poured a
vapor of lunacy. Finally Joe wound up with:
"So you see I've got to do what little I can to help straighten things.
You see, Marty? Now, what do you think of it? Give me your honest
opinion."
Marty spoke sharply:
"You want to know what I really think?"
"Every word of it!"
"Now see here, Joe," Marty burst out, "you and I grew up in the business
together, and we know each other well enough to speak out, even if you
are my boss, don't we?"
"We do, Marty!"
Marty leaned over.
"Joe, I think you're a blamed idiot!"
Joe laughed.
"Well, Marty, if it weren't for the blamed idiots--like Columbus and Tom
Watts and the prophets and Abe Lincoln--this world would be in a pretty
mess."
But Marty refused to be convinced, even averring that the world _is_ in
a pretty mess, and that probably the aforementioned "idiots" had caused
it to be so. Then finally he spoke caressingly:
"Ah, Joe, tell me it's a joke."
"No," said Joe, earnestly, "it's what I've got to face, Marty, and I
need your backing."
Marty mused miserably.
"So the game's up, and you've changed, and we men can go to the dogs.
Why, we can't run that printery without you. We'd go plumb to hell!"
Joe changed his voice--it became more commanding.
"Never mind now, Marty. I want your help to figure things out."
So Marty got out his little pad and the two drew close together.
"I want to figure on a weekly newspaper--I'm figuring big on the
future--just want to see what it will come to. Say an edition of twenty
thousand copies, an eight-page paper, eight by twelve, no
illustrations."
Marty spoke humbly:
"As you say, Joe. Cheap paper?"
"Yes."
"Do your own printing?"
"Yes."
"Well, you'll need a good cylinder press for a starter."
"How much help?"
"Make-up man--pressman--feeder--that's on the press. Will you set up the
paper yourself?"
"No, I'll have it set up outside."
"Who'll bind it, fold, and address?"
"The bindery--give that out, too."
"And who'll distribute?"
"Outside, too."
"The news company?"
"No, I won't deal with any news company. I want to go direct to the
people. Say I get a hundred newsmen to distribute in their
neighborhood?"
"But who'll get the paper to the newsmen?"
"Hire a truck company--so much a week."
"And how much will you charge for the paper?"
"Cent a copy."
"Can't do it," said Marty.
"Why not?"
Marty did some figuring, so they raised the price to two cents. And then
they put in twenty minutes and worked out the scheme. It summed up as
follows:
Paper sells at 2 cts., 20,000 $400
Expenses 340
----
Profit $ 60
Joe was exultant.
"Sixty profit! Well, I'm hanged."
"Not so fast, Joe," said Marty, drily. "They say no one ever started a
magazine without getting stuck, and anyway, you just reckon there'll be
expenses that will run you into debt right along. But of course there'll
be the ads."
"I don't know about the ads," said Joe. "But the figures please me just
the same."
Marty squirmed in his chair.
"Joe," he burst out, "how the devil is the printery going to run without
you?"
Their eyes met, and Joe laughed.
"Will it be worth twenty-five thousand dollars when it's rebuilt and
business booming again?" he asked, shrewdly.
"More than that!" said Marty Briggs.
"Then," said Joe, "I want _you_ to take it."
"_Me_?" Marty was stunned.
"You can do it easily. I'll take a mortgage and you pay it off two
thousand a year and five per cent. interest. That will still leave you a
tidy profit."
"_Me_?" Then Marty laughed loud. "Listen, my ears! Did you hear that?"
"Think it over!" snapped Joe. "Now come along."
VII
LAST OF JOE BLAINE AND HIS MEN
So the printery was rehabilitated, and one gray morning Joe, with a
queer tremor at his heart, went down the street and met many of his men
in the doorway. They greeted him with strange, ashamed emotion.
"Morning, Mr. Joe.... It's been a long spell.... Good to see the old
place again.... Bad weather we're having.... How've you been?"
The loft seemed strangely the same, strangely different--fresh painted,
polished, smelling new and with changed details. For a few moments Joe
felt the sharp shock of the fire again, especially when he heard the
trembling of the hat factory overhead ... and that noon the bright faces
and laughter in the hallway! It seemed unreal; like ghosts revisiting;
and he learned later that the first morning the hat factory had set to
work, some of the girls had become hysterical.
But as he stood in his private office, looking out into the gray loft,
and feeling how weird and swift are life's changes, the men turned on
the electrics, and the floors and walls began their old trembling and
the presses clanked and thundered. He could have wept. To Joe this
moment of starting up had always been precious: it had seemed to bring
him something he had missed; something that fitted like an old shoe and
was friendly and familiar. All at once he felt as if he could not leave
this business, could not leave these men.
And yet he had only three days with them to wind up the business and
install Marty Briggs. And then there was a last supper of Joe Blaine and
his men. Those days followed one another with ever-deepening gloom, in
which the trembling printery and all the human beings that were part of
it seemed steeped in a growing twilight. Do what Joe would and could in
the matter of good-fellowship, loud laughter, and high jocularity, the
darkness thickened staggeringly. Hardly had Joe settled the transfer of
the printery to Marty, when the rumor of the transaction swept the
business. At noon men gathered in groups and whispered together as if
some one had died, and one after another approached Joe with a:
"Mr. Joe, is it true what the fellows say?"
"Yes, Tom."
"Going to leave us, Mr. Joe?"
"Going, Tom."
"_Got_ to go?"
"I'm afraid I have to."
"I'll hate to go home and tell my wife, Mr. Joe. She'll cry her head
off."
"Oh, come! come!"
"Say--we men, Mr. Joe--"
But Tom would say no more, and go off miserably; only to be replaced by
Eddie or Mack or John, and then some such dialogue would be repeated.
Under the simple and inadequate words lurked that sharp tragedy of life,
the separation of comrades, that one event which above all others
darkens the days and gives the sense of old age. And the men seemed all
the closer to Joe because of the tragedy of the fire. All these
conversations told on Joe. He went defiantly about the shop, but
invariably his spoken orders were given in a humble, almost affectionate
tone, as (with one arm loosely about the man):
"Say, Sam, _don't_ you think you'd better use a little benzine on that?"
And Sam would answer solemnly:
"I've always done as you've said, Mr. Joe--since the very first."
His men succeeded in this way in making Joe almost as miserable as when
he had parted from Myra; and indeed a man's work is blood of his blood,
heart of his heart.
Possibly one thing that hurt Joe as much as anything else was a curious
change in Marty Briggs. That big fellow, from the moment that Joe had
handed over the business, began to unfold hitherto unguessed bits of
personality. He ceased to lament Joe's going; he went about the shop
with a certain jaunty air of proprietorship; and the men, for some
unknown reason, began to call him Mr. Briggs. He even grew a bit cool
toward Joe. Joe watched him with a sad sort of mirth, and finally called
him into the office one morning. He put his hands on the big man's
shoulders and looked in his face.
"Marty," he said, "I hope you're not going to make an ass of yourself."
"What do you mean?" murmured Marty.
Joe brought his face a little nearer.
"I want to know something."
"What?"
Joe spoke slowly:
"_Are you Marty Briggs now or are you Martin Briggs_?"
Marty tried to laugh; tried to look away.
"What's the difference?" he muttered.
"Difference?" Joe's voice sank. "Marty, I thought you were a bigger man.
It's only the little peanut fellows who want to be bossy and
holier-than-thou. _Don't make any mistake_!"
"I guess," muttered Marty, "I can steer things O.K."
"You'd better!" Joe spoke a little sharply. "Our men here are as big as
you and I, every one of them. My God! you'll have to pay the price of
being a high muck-a-muck, Marty! So, don't forget it!"
Marty tried to laugh again.
"You're getting different lately," he suggested.
"I?" Joe laughed harshly. "What if it's you? But don't let's quarrel.
We've been together too long. Only, let's both remember. That's all,
Marty!"
All of which didn't mend matters. It was that strangest of all the
twists of human nature--the man rising from the ranks turning against
his fellows.
On Friday night Joe climbed the three flights of the stuffy Eightieth
Street tenement and had supper with the Ranns. That family of five
circled him with such warmth of love that the occasion burst finally
into good cheer. The two girls, seated opposite him, sent him smiling
and wordless messages of love. Not a word was said of the fire, but John
kept serving him with large portions of the vegetables and the excellent
and expensive steak which had been bought in his honor; and John's wife
kept spurring him on.
"I'm sure Mr. Joe could stand just a weeny sliver more."
"Mrs. Rann"--Joe put down knife and fork--"do you want me to _burst_?"
"A big man like you? Give him the sliver, John."
"John, spare me!"
"Mr. Joe"--John waved his hand with an air of finality--"in the shop
what you says goes, but in this here home I take my orders from the old
lady. See?"
"Nellie--Agnes--" he appealed, despairingly, to his little loves, "_you_
save me! Don't you love me any more?"
This set Nellie and Agnes giggling with delight.
"Give him a pound, a whole pound!" cried Agnes, who was the elder.
A nice sliver was waved dripping on Joe's plate, which Joe proceeded to
eat desperately, all in one mouthful. Whereupon the Ranns were convulsed
with joy, and John kept "ha-ha-ing" as he thumped the table, and went to
such excesses that he seemed to put his life in peril and Mrs. Rann and
the girls had to rise and pound him until their hands hurt.
"Serves you right, John," said Joe, grimly. "Try it again, and you'll
get a stroke."
"Ain't he the limit?" queried John, gasping.
Then Mrs. Rann went mysteriously to the cupboard, and the girls began to
whisper together and giggle. And then Mrs. Rann brought something
covered with a napkin, and then the napkin was removed. It was pie.
Joe pretended that he didn't know the secret, and leaned far over and
gazed at it.
"It's--well, what is it?"
Mrs. Rann's voice rang with exultation.
"Your favorite, Mr. Joe."
"Not--_raisin pie_?"
A shout went up from all. Then real moisture came stealthily to Joe's
eyes, and he looked about on those friendly faces, and murmured:
"Thoughtful, mightily thoughtful!"
There was a special bottle of wine--rather cheap, it is true, but then
it was served with raisin pie and with human love, which made it very
palatable. Mrs. Rann fixed John with a sharp glance through her glasses
and cleared her throat several times, and finally Agnes gave him a poke
in the ribs, whispering:
"Hurry up, dad!"
John blushed and rose to his feet.
"Mr. Joe, I ain't a talker, anyway on my feet. But, Mr. Joe, you've been
my boss six years. And, Mr. Joe--" He paused, stuck, and gazed
appealingly at Joe.
Joe rose to the occasion.
"So it's, here's to good friends, isn't it, John?"
John beamed.
"That's it--you took the words out of my mouth! Toast!"
So they drank.
Then Joe rose, and spoke musingly, tenderly:
"There's a trifle I want to say to you to-night--to every one of you. I
can't do without you. Now it happens that I'm going to put a press in my
new business and I'm looking for a first-class crackerjack of a
pressman. Do you happen to know any one in this neighborhood who could
take the job?"
He sat down. There was profound silence. And then Mrs. Rann took off
her spectacles and sobbed. John reached over and took Joe's hand, and
his voice was husky with tears.
"Mr. Joe! Mr. Joe! Ah, say, you make me feel foolish!"
Joe stayed with them late that night, and when he left, the kisses of
the two girls moist on his cheeks, he had no doubt of his life-work. But
next day, Saturday--the last day--was downright black. Things went
wrong, and the men steered clear of Joe.
"Don't bother _him_," they said, meaning to spare him, and thereby
increasing his pain. Men spoke in hushed tones, as soldiers might on the
eve of a fatal battle, and even Marty Briggs dropped his new mannerisms
and was subdued and simple.
Then Joe went off into a state of mind which might be described as the
"hazes"--a thing he did now and then. At such times the word went round:
"The old man's got 'em again!"
And he was left well alone, for the good reason that he was
unapproachable. He seemed not to listen to spoken words, nor to pay any
attention to the world about him. The men, however, appreciated these
spells, for, as a rule, something came of them--they bore good practical
fruit, the sure test of all sanity.
The day finally wore away, to every one's relief. Joe took a last look
around at all the familiar scene, shut his desk, handed over the keys
to Marty (who could not speak because he was half-choked), sang out,
"See you later, boys!" heard for the last time the sharp ring of the
door-bell and the slam of the door, and hurried away. Then at last night
came, and with night the last supper (as already announced) of Joe
Blaine and His Men.
By Monday there would be painted an addition on that door, namely:
MARTIN BRIGGS
SUCCESSOR TO
The supper was held in the large hall, upstairs, of Pfaff's, on East
Eighty-sixth Street. The large table was a dream of green and white, of
silver and glass, and the men hung about awkwardly silent in their
Sunday best. Then Joe cried:
"Start the presses!"
There came a good laugh then to break the icy air, and they sat down and
were served by flying waiters, who in this instance had the odd
distinction of appearing to be the "upper classes" serving the
"lower"--a distinction, up to date, not over-eagerly coveted by society.
For the waiters wore the conventional dress of "gentlemen" and the
diners were in plain and common clothes.
At first the diners were in a bit of a funk, but Pfaff's excellent
meats and cool, sparkling wines soon set free in each a scintillant
human spirit, and the banquet took on almost an air of gaiety.
Finally there came the coffee and the ice-cream in forms, and Martin
Briggs rose. There was a stamping of feet, a clanking of knives on
glasses, a cry of "Hear! Hear!"
Martin Briggs knew it by heart and launched it with the aid of two
swallows of water. His voice boomed big.
"Fellow-workers, friends, and the Old Man!"
This produced tumults of applause.
"We are met to-night on a solemn occasion. Ties are to be severed,
friends parted. Such is life. Mr. Blaine--" (Cries from the far end of
the table, "Say, Joe! say, Joe!") "Mr. Joe has been our friend, through
all these long years. He has been our friend, our boss, our co-worker.
Never did he spare himself; often he spared us. He had created an
important business, a profitable business, a business which has brought
a good living to every one of us. It is not for us to talk of the
catastrophe--this is not the occasion for that. Enough to say that
to-night Mr. Joe leaves that business. Others must carry it on. My
sentiment is that these others must continue in the same spirit of Mr.
Joe. That's my sentiment." (Roars of applause, stamping of feet, but one
voice heard in talk with a neighbor, "Say, I guess his wife wrote that,
Bill.") "So I propose a toast. To Mr. Joe, now and forever!"
They rose, they clanked glasses, they drank. Then they sat down and felt
that something was wrong. Marty surely had missed fire.
Whereupon John Rann, blushing, rose to his feet, and began to stammer:
"Say, fellers, do you mind if I put in a word?" (Cries: "Not a bit!"
"Soak it him, Johnny.") "Well, I want to say," his voice rose, "Joe
Blaine is _it_." (Applause, laughter, stamping.) "He's jest one of us."
(Cries: "You bet!" "You've hit it, Johnny!" "Give us more!") "He's a
friend." (Cries: "That's the dope!") "He never did a mean thing in his
life." (One loud cry: "Couldn't if he wanted to!") "Say," (Cries: "Go
ahead!" "Nobody 'll stop yer!" "Give him hell!" Laughter.) "We fellers
never appreciated this here Joe Blaine, did we?" (Cries: "Gosh no!")
"But we do _now_!" (Uproarious and prolonged applause.) "Say, fellers,
he's been like a regular father to us kids." (A strange silence.) "He's
been--Oh, hell!" (Speaker wipes his eyes with a red handkerchief.
Strange silence prolonged. Then one voice: "Tell him to his face, John.
'Bout time he knew.") "Joe Blaine" (speaker faces Mr. Blaine, and tries
not to choke), "if any one tries to say that you had anything to do with
the fire--he's a _damned liar_!"
A thrill charged the men; they became pale; they gazed on Joe, who
looked as white as linen; and suddenly they burst forth in a wildness,
a shouting, a stamping, a cry of: "Mr. Joe! Mr. Joe! Mr. Joe!"
Joe arose; he leaned a little forward; he trembled visibly, his rising
hand shaking so that he dropped it. Then at last he spoke:
"Yes--John is my friend. And you--are my friends. Yes. But--you're
wrong. I _was_ to blame." He paused. "I _was_ to blame. Here, to-night,
I want to say this: Those girls, those comrades of ours--all that went
to waste with them--well," his voice broke, "I'm going to try to make
good for them...."
For a moment he stood there, his face working strangely as if he were
going to break down, and the men looked away from him. Then he went on
in a voice warmly human and tender:
"You and I, boys, we grew up together. I know your wives and children.
You've given me happy hours. I've made you stand for a lot--your old man
was considerable boy--had his bad habits, his queer notions. Once in
awhile went crazy. But we managed along, quarreling just enough to hit
it off together. Remember how I fired Tommy three times in one week?
Couldn't get rid of him. Oh, Tommy, what 'pi' you made of things! Great
times we've had, great times. It hurts me raw." He paused, looking round
at them. They were glancing at him furtively with shining eyes. "Hurts
me raw to think those times are over--for me. But the dead have called
me. I go out into another world. I go out into a great fight. I may
fail--quite likely I will. But I shall be backed. Your love goes with
me, and I've got a big job ahead." Again he paused, overcome. Then he
tried to smile, tried to smooth out the tragic with a forced jocularity.
"Now, boys, behave. Mind you don't work too much. And don't all forget
the old man. And--but that's enough, I guess."
The silence was terrible. Some of those big men were crying softly like
stricken children. It was the last requiem over the dead, the last
flare-up of the tragic fire. They crowded round Joe. He was blind
himself with tears, though he felt a strange quiet in his heart.
And then he was out in the starry autumn night, walking home, murmuring:
"It's all over. That's out of my life."
And he felt as if something had died within him.
VIII
THE WIND IN THE OAKS
Early Monday evening there came a note from Myra:
I wanted you to know that I am leaving for the
country--to-morrow--to get a rest.
MYRA.
Joe at once put on his hat and coat and went out. The last meeting with
his men had given him a new strength, a heightened manhood. Like a man
doomed to death, he felt beyond despair now. He only knew he must go to
Myra and set straight their relationship as a final step before he
plunged into the great battle. No more weakness! No more quarreling! But
clear words and definite understanding!
He went up the stoop and rang the bell. A servant opened the door,
showed him into the dimly lighted parlor, and went up the stairs with
his name. He heard her footsteps, light, hesitant. She appeared before
him, pale and sick and desperate.
"What do you want?" she asked in a tortured voice.
He arose and came close to her. He spoke authoritatively:
"Myra, get on your things. We must take a walk."
Her shifting eyes glanced up, gave him their full luminous gray and all
the trouble of her heart.
"Myra," his voice deepened, and struck through her, "you must go with me
to-night. It's our last chance."
She turned and was gone. He heard her light footsteps ascending; he
waited, wondering, hoping; and then she came down again, showing her
head at the door. She had on the little rounded felt hat, and she
carried her muff.
They went out together, saying nothing, stepping near one another under
the lamps and over the avenues, and into the Park. It was a strange,
windy night, touched with the first bleakness of winter, tinged with the
moaning melancholy of the tossing oak-trees, and with streaks of faint
reflected city lights in the far heavens.
It was their last night together. Both knew it. There was no help for
it. The great issues of life were sweeping them away into black gulfs of
the future, where there might never be meeting again, never hand-touch
nor sound of each other's voice. And strangely life deepened in their
hearts, and they were swept by the mystery of being alive ... alive in
the star-streaked darkness of space, alive with so many other brief
creatures that brightened for a moment in the gloom and then sank away
into the stormy heart of nature. And Love contended with Death, and the
little labors of man helped Death to crush Love; and so that moment of
existence, that brief span, became a mere brute struggle, a clash, a
fight, a thing sordid and worse than death.
Out of the mystery, each, from some unimaginable distance, had come
forth and met here on the earth, met for a wild moment, a moment that
gave them lightning-lit glimpses of that mystery, only to part from each
other now, each to return into the darkness.
They felt in unison more than they could ever say. And it was the last
night together.
They sat down on a bench, under those mournful boughs, under the
lamentations of the oaks.
"Myra," said Joe.
She murmured, "Yes."
His voice was charged with some of the strangeness of the night, some
significance of the mystery of life and death.
"You read my letter ..."
"Yes."
"And you understand ... at last?"
"I don't know ... I can't tell."
He paused; he leaned nearer.
"Why are you going away?"
"I've been sick," she whispered. "The doctor told me to go."
"For long?"
"For a rest."
"And you go to-morrow?"
"I go to-morrow."
"_Without forgiving me_?" He leaned very near.
There was a palpitating silence, a silence that searched their souls,
and sharply then Myra cried out:
"Oh, Joe! Joe! This is killing me!"
"Myra!" he cried.
He drew her close, very close, stroking her cheek, and the tears ran
over his fingers.
"Oh, don't you see," he went on, brokenly, "I can't ask you to come with
me? And yet I must go?"
"I don't know," she sobbed. "I must go away and rest ... and think ...
and try to understand...."
"And may I write to you?..."
"Yes," she murmured.
"And I am forgiven?"
"Forgive me!" she sobbed.
They could say no more, but sat in the wild darkness, clasping each
other as if they could not let one another go.... How could they send
each other forth to go in loneliness and homelessness to the ends of the
earth? The hours passed as they talked brokenly together, words of
remorse, of love, of forgiveness.
And then finally they arose--it was very late--and Myra whispered,
clinging to him:
"We must say good-by here!"
"Good-by!" he cried ... and they kissed.
"Joe," she exclaimed, "take care of yourself! Do just that for me!"
"I will," he said huskily, "but you must do the same for me. Promise."
"I promise!"
"Oh, Joe!" she cried out, "what is life doing with us?"
And they went back, confused and strange, through the lighted streets.
They stood before her house.
"Till you come back!" he whispered.
She flashed about then, a look of a new wonder in her eyes.
"If only I thought you were right in your work!" she cried.
"You will! You will, Myra! And in that hope, we will go on!"
She was gone; the door shut him out of her life. And all alone, strong,
bitter, staring ahead, Joe stepped off to begin the new life ... to
plunge into the battle.
* * * * *