but his heart held on serenely.... What did this little world-warrior
with the battered mouth know about love and living with a woman? What
did he know about lusts that he spoke so freely of? Did he ever give
three years of his life to the one battle--not to hate the woman he
loved most under heaven? Or was that particular battle so far back in
his experience that he merely spoke of it as one skirmish in the great
campaign of fifty years, called Life?
Alone at dinner at the _Entresden_, Dicky conned every word the Little
Man had spoken about the young married people who worked together in
the _Ashrama_, of the celibacy they vowed themselves to, of their
becoming through marriage “friends in a special sense--for this and all
lives.” Yes, Gandhi talked as if it were a foregone conclusion that
there were other lives....
He wasn’t tasting his dinner.... He came up from the deeps of
reflection to realize a waiter was coming toward him, as if in answer
to a signal. He also discovered that he had been sitting over his
filled plate with one hand lifted--the thumb and fingers brushing
together, as if he were close to _her_, and it was a bit of her dress
or a wisp of her hair between his fingers. His mind could scoff all
it pleased, for his heart held serenely to the miracle, and this was
the miracle: that Pidge Musser, married or not married, was back alive
in his heart; and such a melting pity for her plight had come to him
as he sat before the Little Man, that he, the hardheaded, had to rise
abruptly from the interview and rush away, lest he fall to weeping and
explaining all.
XXVIII
THE RACK OF SEX
DICKY and Nagar sat under the _punkahs_ in the room at the
_Entresden_--that stillest, hottest night. A fierce stimulus
was driving the American. Moment by moment he realized it more
clearly--that his love had come back to him, or some strange new fire
from it, as he had talked with Mahatma-ji. It compelled him, mind and
emotion now, and his questions were insatiable, but he was slow and
roundabout in getting to the core of matters that fascinated.
“For instance, what makes him starve himself?” Dicky asked.
“He has no illusions about fasting,” Nagar answered. “Mahatma-ji
objects to the distractions of the body. He keeps down this drum of the
senses by severity of handling, an old well-tried way of the East. Ask
an expert horseman what to do with a spirited saddle horse that has
a tendency now and then to take the bit and run away. ‘Cut down his
grain, and he will be easier to handle,’ you will be told.”
Dicky was groping feverishly within himself as the other talked. “But
what has celibacy to do----” he halted and finished, “with politics and
all that?”
“Mahatma-ji has made himself free from the rack of sex and the drum of
the senses--enough to realize his great work for others, for India. We
who follow him wish to do the same. We understand that we have not the
great gift for India, until we are free; that is, only a man who has
freed himself from his own desires can help greatly to free others, or
his country. We are not free agents so long as we are on the rack of
sex. We cannot hate ourselves off that rack; in fact, we must learn to
love more, not less, to escape.”
“Tunnel,” Dicky said. “No man educated on the Hudson can get that sort
of thing. Have a heart, Nagar.”
“It is my poor telling----”
Dicky smiled and smoked: “I can’t see how he’d have anything left to
give the world,” he added--“a man who got on top of himself that way.”
* * * * *
The thing that Dicky had found in the same room with the Little Man
wasn’t happiness, but it was better than the deadness he had known;
good to feel the tissues of his heart alive again, not a leaden lump.
Again the next day, he went to sit with Mahatma-ji, but nothing
happened, though he remained two hours. On one side he had come to
doubt the whole business; on the other he had been naïve enough half to
believe that all he had to do was to enter the presence of the Indian
leader to get this living thing back in his heart, this pain that had
the breath of life in it. Two days afterward, however, while he was
deeply involved with Gandhi’s explanation of _Satyagraha_, taking notes
so that he could put down the other’s words almost exactly, the sense
of Pidge Musser’s presence and plight was suddenly with him again,
renewed within him, the pity of it almost more than he could endure.
There were hours also when Dicky could believe almost anything at the
_Ashrama_, where he was permitted to sit with the native students
(Gandhi often halting his speech in Hindi or Guzerati, to talk English
for the American’s benefit). And occasionally during long evening talks
with Nagar, on the banks of the Sabarmati or under the muffle-winged
_punkahs_ in the _Entresden_ room, Dicky’s mind had sudden extensions
of range. Still he had a vague foreboding that he would not be able to
hold all this hopeful stuff when he was away from India, for slowly and
surely he was being pressed to depart.
“America needs your loyalty now,” Nagar said. “We will send for you
to come when the curtain rises here. The drama of India is not being
played now, but the Play is written. This that you have heard, so far,
is only a rehearsal of minor parts.”
In June, a letter came from _The Public Square_, pressing its
correspondent to return to France, or at least to some of the points
where the American troops were gathering.
... As for magazine conditions, Dicky [John Higgins wrote], they
couldn’t be worse. Our little old _Public Square_ has fallen into
sorry ways.... If you’ve had a German neighbor for thirty years and
learned cautiously to respect the beast, you’re supposed now to
know him no more, in trade or whist or home or club, nor his woman
nor children. Old England’s bloomed out more seductive than ever,
and this country’s infatuated. You couldn’t believe it. We’re more
English than Canada right now. She’s borrowed everything in sight
and is so tickled over herself that she’s beginning to laugh at us
already. It’s a fact, her big business men can’t keep the joke any
longer.... But I only meant to tell you that _The Public Square_
has nothing to say, nothing to do. We tried a critical study of the
architecture of a federal building in Des Moines, and we’re being
looked into for unpatriotic motives. A lot of American business
men, who once gloried in their breadth and toleration, have taken
positions in what they call the Department of Justice, and their
business is to probe into speeches and writings like ours. They are
looking for heresies of citizenship. If we’re not suspended for
making a croak, we’ll likely be forced to suspend for not having the
breath. Otherwise, we’re quite well, and the trade world--you ought
to be able to hear American business boom, even in India--if you’re
not too far inland.
For the first time John Higgins’ views looked diminished to Dicky
Cobden’s eyes. This personal treason he laid to India. He made an
arrangement, however, to help _The Public Square_ to keep alive....
Gandhi was called to Lucknow, and Dicky saw him into his third-class
coach, with a catch in his throat and a sadness of heart. A day or
two later he left Nagar at the station where he found him--and the
day looked dull and gloomy from the windows of the Bombay _Inter
Provincial_, as the American started south alone.
XXIX
RUFUS’ PLAY DAY
RUFUS MELTON was having his coffee at Miss Claes’ table. It was noon
and July, 1917. The package of mail left at 54 Harrow Street had not
forgotten Rufus this morning. Another story had gone through, and he
felt that the day was all right. It looked to him like a very good day
to play and to shop. Miss Claes came in from the kitchen in a fresh
white dress and canvas shoes, nor did she come empty handed. A crystal
and silver marmalade jar was in one hand, and a plate of cold ham in
the other. These she placed on the cloth before him; and noting that
the loaf of rye bread lay uncut upon the board, she went to a drawer
for the knife.
Rufus dropped a cube of sugar into his coffee cup and contemplated
Miss Claes’ ankle. His mind became industrious. He was thinking how he
would describe the ankle if he were using it in a story. He thought
of several narrow white things. There was a white greyhound, but you
couldn’t say a woman’s ankle was like that. There was a white pleasure
yacht on the river, with narrow lines and clipper bow that bore a
psychological likeness, but it would take a paragraph to put that over.
The boneheads would think of boiler plate. Then there was a birch tree
and a polar bear and a snowy church spire ... anyway the ankle was
fetching.
“You look great this morning, Miss Claes, and see here----”
He spread out his letter from a most rich and inaccessible editorial
room.
“How interesting, Rufus. You are doing so well with your stories.”
“Pidge thinks they’re rotten,” he chuckled.
No comment from Miss Claes.
“She’d have me sit in a cave and growl over a story--bringing one out
every three months for editors to muss their hair over and finally turn
down. That’s the life----”
Miss Claes had turned to the cabinet of dishes, the double doors of
which were open. One might have thought that Rufus was now entirely
involved in the subject of Pidge’s idea of stories, but in reality he
was studying Miss Claes’ waist and throat and profile. Her particular
freshness from boots up this morning fascinated his eye. She took his
coffee cup to the kitchen to be refilled, and when she came back close
to his chair, Rufus’ arm moved engagingly around her hips, his face
turning up with a questioning boyish smile.
“What is it, Rufus?” she asked, making no movement to be free from his
arm.
“You’re mighty charming this morning----”
“It’s a charming morning.”
His arm tightened a little, yet she stood perfectly still. Rufus was
now in a quandary. This sitting posture had its diminishing aspect:
yet to arise and disentangle his feet from under the table, he must
loosen his arm or show an uncouth line to the camera, so to speak.
Rufus rarely broke his rhythms in these little performances; certainly
not when the going was as delicate as this. Miss Claes had become
especially desirable, because of an exciting uncertainty about her, and
an affectation, at least, of allegiance to Pidge. If he had only had
sense enough to turn his chair around, before taking her in. Presently
Rufus reached the conclusion that it was better to draw her down to
him, than take a chance of getting his arm around her again.
She came--no resistance, no rigidity. His lips found her shadowy
cheek, and an indescribable and most disturbing fragrance from her
neck and hair. Or was it the extraordinary coolness of everything that
disturbed, or the words gently whispered in his ear:
“You’re such a lonely boy. You don’t understand at all what you are
really dying for.”
Rufe was disappointed. So hers was the mothering game. Besides his
position was uncomfortable, knees under the table, and his coffee was
getting cold. So he let her go after all, in order to reach a standing
posture, but by the time he was free of the chair and the table, Miss
Claes had vanished without haste into the kitchen. Rufus now stood
dangling inconveniently between his breakfast and her return.
She came; he went to her. Her dark eyes were utterly calm, no traceable
deepening of the color in her face. She halted, but lightly held in
the two hands before her was a gold-edged dish, with a little golden
globe of butter in the center.
Rufus dropped back in his chair and lifted his coffee cup. What on
earth could a man do with a woman holding a butter dish? “It’s hell to
be fastidious,” he thought, in regard to his own inhibitions.
Something delectable had gone out of the July day. Miss Claes was no
nearer his understanding than before. Pidge would have the laugh on
him, because these women could never keep anything to themselves. He
didn’t mind anything about Pidge so much as her laugh. Altogether, this
little brush at breakfast left him unsatisfied--and this was a play day.
“Thanks,” he said at the door.
She gave him a pink, an old-fashioned white one. “The
butter-and-egg-man brought in some from his dooryard garden in
Yonkers,” she said.
Rufe started upstairs.
There were voices from one of the rooms on the main floor, but the
second was entirely empty and silent until a rear door opened and Fanny
Gallup looked out.
“Hello,” she said in a far-reaching whisper.
Fanny’s “hello” was one of the best of her little ways. She said it, as
one would cast a silken noose.
Rufe looked back and down. On certain mornings he would have growled an
answer and tramped on, but there was something white and calling about
the face in the dim shadows this morning, and for a wonder the kids
weren’t squalling.
“Oh, come in. Come on in!” was in his ears. Her bare arm was raised
and he saw the little muffler of dark in the pit of it. The lacing was
gone from the smock, moreover, and there was a pull for the moment
to Fanny’s sad little breast. The fact that the smock had once been
Pidge’s, Rufe thrust back into his mind for future reference. He
halted, looking around and listening again. Then he tiptoed in and the
door was shut. Not a great while afterward the door was opened, the
crying of children was heard. Fanny was moaning, “Don’t go ’way--oh,
don’t go ’way!”
But Rufus breasted past her muttering within himself, “Never again!”
* * * * *
... Pidge and Rufe Melton went over to Bank Street for supper that
evening. Rufus wasn’t hungry. He had bought a golf suit that looked
very well on him, he said, but evidently now he was troubled how to use
it. He hadn’t done any work so far to-day and felt less like it than
ever. Pidge thoughtlessly mentioned that an Indian letter had come in
to the office from Richard Cobden that day.
“You folks are dippy about this Cobden,” Rufe said. “Every time an
article of his comes out in the _Passé Square_, you gather together to
read it as if it had come from the Messiah. What’s he to you, Pan--a
little bit tender on your Dicky?”
“A little bit tender,” she said.
Rufus felt abused. He glared at her. This sort of thing had happened
before. Rufe had come to look at Pidge as his picket pin. He had a
long rope and everything was all right, so long as the pin held. But
her manner now would uncenter any man.
“I’d like to get out of Harrow Street,” he growled. “Every time I put
my address on the top of a manuscript, I feel it’s a knock rather than
a boost. I’ve been tempted to get an agent, for no other reason than to
have his address for the magazines to work through. I was talking with
Redge Walters who bought this story to-day, and he said, ‘Rufe, you
sure fall for the little bobbed heads down in the Village, don’t you?
Why don’t you come uptown and live in New York?’”
“I like Harrow Street,” said Pidge.
“You don’t make a secret of it, either,” he went on. “Of course, Miss
Claes is kind and all that, but we pay for what we get, and there’s
no question in my mind about the pictures in her gallery being hung
crooked.”
“If you’ve finished your supper, let’s go,” said Pidge.
“She breathes! The Arctic princess!” Rufe shivered.
Pidge didn’t answer.
“And that second floor needs policing up,” Rufe resumed. “I haven’t
taken it to heart so much about living in the Village, but that second
floor’s a tenement patch. Every time I go up and down----”
“Fanny’s my fault and Miss Claes accepts it with never a murmur,” Pidge
said, wide-eyed. “I’d look well running off uptown and leaving Fanny
there. Oh, Rufe, don’t you ever see any fault except on the outside?”
Right then Rufe said something.
“What’s the use of me looking after my own faults when you’ve got them
all in hand like Shetland ponies?”
Pidge arose. Black waters were welling up in her breast. It was so
true. His faults were with her day and night, and the greatest of them
was his entire irresponsibility. Also it touched her in the sorest
quick to have him point out that Fanny lowered the values, not only of
the second floor, but of the whole Harrow Street house.
Pidge never passed Fanny’s door but she was pressed by something within
to enter; yet her whole personal nature rebelled. Often for hours at
her work, there was a gloomy semiconscious activity within her that
kept urging its notice up to her mind. When she stopped to think, she
would realize that she hadn’t gone into Fanny’s room that day, or that
she must drop in to-night. It was so now, only more than ever, because
Rufe had located her private horror and brought it to speech. On the
second floor, returning from supper, she told Rufe to go on up, that
she meant to see Fanny for a few minutes.
“What to--come on, Pan, let’s go to a show somewhere!” he said suddenly.
She shook her head.
“There isn’t a clot of work stirring in my brain pan,” he went on.
“I don’t want to go out. I’ve got to see Fanny----”
He caught her sleeve. “It’s too hot to go up. Let’s go somewhere. Let’s
get on a bus and go uptown----”
She was too occupied in the thing she hated to do, to notice his
concern. He spoke again:
“I’m not going up there alone. You’re colder than a frog to live with
anyway----”
“Go out somewhere, Rufe, if you want to. Don’t mind me.”
She didn’t hear his words, but she heard the crying of Fanny’s
children. The door opened. Fanny stood there, but looked past her, over
Pidge’s shoulder, and queerly enough Pidge thought of the words, “And
Jove nods to Jove.” The hall door was then shut.
“Wot you coming in here for--to scold me some more, Redhead?”
“No, Fanny, to see you and the----”
“I know why you come, all right. To find fault--that’s why, and you
needn’t kill yourself, because I’m gettin’ along, so-so. Little old
Fanny’s holdin’ her own--and that’s more’n you’re doin’.”
Pidge looked into the crib. A core of fetid vapor hung above it, and
Fanny’s words seemed to blend with it.
“Think you can hold your job and hold a man, too, don’t you? Oh, yes,
Redhead knows how. Redhead’s got it all worked out. Redhead can tell us
all how to do it, oh, yes----”
“What’s the matter, Fanny? Are you scolding, so I won’t start? I didn’t
come to start something. Just came to see you. Wouldn’t you like to go
out for an hour and have me stay with the--with the----”
Pidge always halted this way.
“Worried--eh? Worried about somethin’?” Fanny piped up. “Well, I’m not
tellin’ anything--except you ain’t got your little mastiff tied to no
corset string----”
“What are you talking about, Fanny?”
“Like to know. Wouldn’t you?”
Pidge felt cold. She cared to know what the other meant. She didn’t say
so, however. She knew a better way--an effective way that seemed to
come out of depths within her that knew vast pasts and many lands, all
strategies of men and maids, all secrets of tent and purdah, lattice
and veil.
“Don’t trouble, Fanny. I just came in to see how you were getting on.
I’m so sorry, you know----”
“Sorry----” Fanny laughed.
“So sorry, dear--that you’re penned in this way--and Albert missing!”
“Sorry!” Fanny screamed her mirth.
“Don’t you want me to be sorry for you, dear?” Pidge trailed. “Why, I
haven’t been nearly so good as I meant to be----”
“Well, you dam’ little itch-face--talking to me about being sorry.
Who’n heller-you to tell me about being sorry? Who’n heller-you to
talk to me about me gettin’ penned in an’ Albert missin’, when you
can’t keep your own man--when you don’t carry your own babies? Who’n
heller-you anyway?”
Then Fanny got down to business and spoke of life in the here and now.
“Never mind, dear,” said Pidge. “We can’t attend to everything. I’m
going out to get you some ice cream. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She was in the street. She brought back a paper pail without haste.
Fanny had begun to cry.
“Don’t feel badly,” Pidge said, washing a saucer and spoon.
Fanny cried on. Pidge served her a large dish, and a smaller one for
the older child. Then from the paper, she spooned tiny mouthfuls into
the face in the crib--spooned until there was sleep from the novel
coolness of the sweet. Then Pidge patted Fanny’s shoulder, as she
passed out, promising to come back some time to-morrow.
Upstairs she found Rufe, shirt open at the throat, standing by the back
window. The light in the room was heavily shaded. He looked to her
covertly, half expectantly.
“Want to read something?” he said in a pleasant tone.
“No. I’m going to bed,” said Pidge.
XXX
THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE
EARLY the next morning in the shadowy back room, Pidge moved softly
about as she dressed. She saw the new golf suit, and her lips twisted
into a smile. Another toy; another bit of acting. That was all of the
game he cared for--the clothes that went with it. She thought of the
night on the corner when the newsboy had pointed out Rufe as a movie
actor. She saw his desk by the window. It looked like a troubled face.
Here she was, as usual, furiously busy with his faults--so occupied
that he didn’t have to bother at all, sleeping serenely on. But he
didn’t understand, never could understand, that her agony was because
she saw them as part of herself; that in her own heart she couldn’t
free herself from responsibility; knowing deeply the _dis_-ease that
comes from that soul-deep question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
And there he was lying on his back, innocent as a child. The pain
darted into her heart ... the baby carriage at Santa Monica. His
complexion was almost as fresh, his black hair brushed back. It was as
if he had fallen asleep with a tear in his eyes, for a little penciling
of salt was on the thin blue-veined skin under the eyelid. His breast
was uncovered and that spoiled the picture, spoiled the pathos; for
Rufe, though the least athletic of men, was hairy and glad of it.
She hadn’t slept. This, since coming home last night, was a show-down
time, as she expressed it. She had met the same several times with
her father, when the days became so black and evil that something had
to happen. Deep, under words and surface thoughts, lay the affair of
Fanny’s room. The dreary consciousness of that never left her, but
actual thinking of details was another affair. She couldn’t give way
to them, and keep the outer quiet she had determined upon. She had
been too honest to hide from herself, even in the beginning, that Rufe
habitually took life as it came. She never could forget his first
appraisal of herself in the reception room of _The Public Square_.
So this hadn’t come in the nature of shock; rather it was a pitiless
uncovering of ugliness that had been vaguely subconscious before. What
hurt her most keenly, so that she was close to crying out, as she lay
beside him in the night, was the inevitable tramp of Fate, audible
through it all--their meeting in Dicky’s room; Dicky’s opening of _The
Public Square_ to him in the first place; her own bringing of Fanny
Gallup to this house; the weaving back and forth into one, of the
different lives--even her father’s.
Rufe wasn’t at home when she returned that night. He hadn’t rung her at
the office, but she found word with Miss Claes that he had gone down
to Washington. She felt something was going to happen, but through the
day she had gathered her strength together to decide that she wouldn’t
be the one to bring it about. Underneath all was the old sense of her
responsibility.
Pidge was half tempted to seek Miss Claes this night. She even went
so far as to learn that her friend was at home. It always happened
so, when she needed help: Miss Claes might be out any or at all other
times. A light was in the basement room, and no voices, but Pidge crept
back upstairs without speaking.... She had failed. She had run away
from her father, failing there; failing here. She must see this through
alone a little longer.... The next afternoon Rufe called for her at
_The Public Square_. His eyes held a glint of triumph.
“I’m going to France,” he said, when they were in the street. “I’ve
arranged to do a big feature for Redge Walters and a Sunday newspaper
syndicate set.”
“But how about the draft?”
“Went down to Washington to start things going to fix that. Redge gave
me letters. Looks as if there won’t be much trouble. You see, the
Government needs the writers--public sentiment, you know.”
It wasn’t that Pidge didn’t think of things to say on this point of
making public sentiment, but a great gray ennui was over her. She had
said enough about his faults.
“You know, I’ve been smothering in Harrow Street--had to get away,” he
added.
“Yes, I know, Rufe.” After a time, she said, “I think it’s a good
thing.”