|CAMILLA went up Bank Street, and took a car at the corner of Franklin
Street. It carried her past the Court House Square, and so on to the
little three-cornered park, where stood the Seton Avenue Assembly Hall,
and opposite the Hall the block of grey houses with bay windows, of
which the third from the corner was Mrs. Tillotson's.
That lady saw Camilla through the window and met her at the door.
“My dear! My dear! There is no one here! Positively! And my little
drawing-room usually thronged! _Now_, we can have such a talk, such
an _earnest_ talk! We women must unite. The Assembly must take a
_position_.”
She sat by Camilla on the sofa and clasped her hand.
“I--I don't quite understand,” said Camilla.
“_Surely_, my dear, the two most important questions before the Assembly
are these: First, shall we, or shall we not, support Mr. Hennion?
second, shall we, or shall we not, adopt a fixed form of service, more
ornate and beautiful? Mr. Berry takes the affirmative of both, Mr.
Ralbeck the negative. I am at present in the position of a reconciler.
I have in particular devoted myself to the latter question. I have
examined thoroughly the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church. I have
offered Mr. Aidee _all_ my knowledge, _all_ my literary experience. But
he does not as yet take a _position!_”
Camilla promised a number of things, and asked for Aidee. Mrs. Tillotson
thought he was at the Hall. He had not been to lunch. She was of the
opinion that Mr. Aidee was distinctly avoiding her, knowing that she
would insist on his taking a position, knowing her to be right in
insisting.
Camilla escaped, and crossed the Avenue to the little side door that led
into a hallway, out of which opened a room used by Aidee for a study.
The door on the street was ajar. She had never entered that door before.
She knew the windows of the study from without.
She entered the dusky hallway and knocked at the door of the study, but
no one answered. She hesitated, and drew back, and then tried the knob.
The door yielded and opened, but the room was empty.
In the growing dusk the corners of it were quite dark. It seemed bare,
half-furnished--some books in a case, a matting, a flat littered table,
a few chairs. She grasped at the sides of the open door, for the room
seemed to darken and lighten alternately, and be so full of meaning as
to be ghostly, seeing that no one sat at the littered table, or was
even hiding, crouching in the darkened corners. The large square windows
seemed to look inward rather than outward, as if the centre of interest
were within, and everything outside were meaningless. Yet the room was
empty.
She gave a little moan of disappointment and helplessness. He must be
hiding and suffering somewhere. She must protect him from the cruel,
clattering noises and tongues outside! the dull, selfish, heartless
people outside, to whom the prophet and martyr was forever coming
and forever rejected, wounded by blind accidents, by people blind as
accidents! So pitiful! so intolerable! So strange that the room should
be empty of Aidee, and yet full of him! She could fancy him there,
pacing the yellow matting, staring at the window, thinking, thinking.
She turned back from the half-lit room to the darkened hallway, and saw
that another door opened out of it at the end furthest from the door on
the street. Wherever it led, he might be there.
She opened it bravely, and saw only a little corridor, crooking suddenly
to the left and even darker than the outer hallway. She felt her way
along the plastered wall to the corner, and beyond that in the darkness
felt the panels of a final door. She opened it, half expecting a closet
or cellar stair, and almost cried out, for the great, dim, glowing,
glimmering space of the Assembly Hall was before her, with its windows
now turning grey from the outer twilight; but its vaulted roof, its
pillars and curved galleries of brown oak could be distinguished, its
ranged tiers of seats, its wide, curved, carpeted platform, its high
bulk of gilded organ pipes. She had seen it before only when the
tiers of seats had been packed with people, when Aidee had filled the
remaining space with his presence, his purposes, and his torrent of
speech; when the organ had played before and after, ushering in and
following the Preacher with its rolling music; when great thoughts and
sounds, and multitudes of staring and listening people had been there,
where now it was so empty, so lonely and still. Silvery dim bars of
light slanted from the windows downward to the centre of the hall, and
the varnished backs of the seats shone in long concentric curves. Lines
of darkness lay between them; deep darkness was under the galleries;
shadows clustered in the vault overhead, shadows on the platform below
the organ, where stood the Preacher's high-backed seat. Aidee had given
the Hall what living meaning it had. Empty, it was still haunted by his
voice, haunted by his phrases.
Camilla held her breath and stared from the little dark door, across the
Hall, and saw Aidee standing by one of the gallery pillars. She started
forward. Aidee came slowly from under the gallery to meet her.
“Camilla!”
“Oh! Why didn't you come?”
“Come?”
“To me. I thought you would!”
He stood silently before her, and seemed absorbed and constrained.
“When did you know?” she asked, and he answered mechanically, “This
morning. I went down and saw the crowd under the window. I heard them
talking. A newspaper reporter told me. Then I went to the bridge, but
there was another crowd there, looking down at the water. So I came
back.”
They sat down in one of the seats. Camilla felt both excited and
constrained. She was afraid to go on. During the dumb hour she had spent
in the store-room, she had felt that life was plainly a ruinous affair,
and that she was somehow touched by a horrible wickedness and stained
forever. She imagined, shrinking, some disclosure and disgrace. She
pictured Henry Champney's amazement and grief. And then it all had been
swept from her mind by the thought of Aidee, suffering somewhere alone.
But now that she had found him, she found him reserved and quiet, and
she seemed to stop on the edge of a gulf or crater, to peer over, to
expect some red, rending explosion, but it was all still and dim there;
and it stared up at her coldly and quietly.
“I came, because I thought I could help,” she said. “I thought it would
help us both.”
“Are you troubled? You'd better let it go. It's the end of that story.
I've fought it out now. I'm free of it.”
“What do you mean?”
They stared closely in the dusk into each other's eyes. Then she dropped
her head, and wept with her face in her hands.
“It's not your story,” said Aidee.
“Yes, it is! It's mine!”
Then she raised her head, and he saw her wet eyes glisten in the
dimness, and she said: “Teach me what it means.” And a dull shock went
through him threaded by a sharp pain, a sensation so penetrating as to
resemble pain, and desirable enough to be called happiness, and yet not
like any pain or happiness in the remembered stretch of his concentrated
and brooding life. That life, as he looked back on it, he saw starting
from the old farmhouse on the plain, with its fallen fences and dry
fields, the tired face of his mother in the house door, the small impish
face of “Lolly” by his side. Next followed the big brick schoolhouse in
the village, the schoolroom that he disliked, the books that he loved,
the smoky chimney of his lamp, the pine table and the room where he
studied; from which he would have to go presently down into the street
and drag Lolly out of some raging battle with other boys, struggling
and cursing, up to their room, where Lolly would turn on him in a moment
with queer, twisted, affectionate smile, and clinging arms--“I ain't
mad now, Al.” Then he saw the press-room in St. Louis, he saw Lolly
imprisoned and then suddenly gone. He saw the mines and the crumbling
mountain slopes in Nevada, the sheds, the dump cart, the spot where he
had poured out first his long pent-up dreams to a rugged, astonished
audience, and where that new passion of speech had come to him, that had
seemed to fill the craving void in his heart; the spot where he had met
the circuit-riding bishop and T. M. Secor. Then came his early success
in Port Argent and the organisation of the Assembly; then the attack on
Wood, and the growing sense of futility, in that while many listened and
praised, little happened and little came of their listening or approval.
“They take me for an actor, and the Assembly for a comedy,” he had
thought bitterly, and he had written “The Inner Republic,” and the
book that had brought to him Camilla Champney, eager and pureeyed, and
asking, “What does it mean? It is my story too!”
What did it mean? Lolly lay dead in the ooze of the Muscadine and Port
Argent was come to be a horror. He seemed so plainly to have failed, so
drearily was Lolly dead, and all the fire in his own soul dead too, gone
out in cinders, and his theory of life cracked like a hollow nutshell.
He would go back to the mines, or to the slums and shops, and live again
with the sweating hordes, among whom the grim secret of life lay, if
anywhere; and when next he preached, he would preach the bitterest fact
loudest. No, rather, if life is hopeless let us dig in the earth and say
nothing. But Camilla! What of Camilla? And what did she mean? Her story
too! He began to speak slowly, but presently grew rapid and eager.
“How can I explain? I never knew my fellow men, nor cared for them. They
were no brothers of mine. I had but one. I never loved another human
being, not these twenty years, but I had the kin instinct like hunger.
Allen and I were rooted together. I thought I was a prophet, who was no
more than a savage. Men are brothers by blood or interest, but for the
rest they fight the old war that began before the earth had a decent
crust to cover its chaos. Brotherhood of wildcats!”
“Oh, no! no!” she cried.
“For your sake, no, Camilla! Oh, through you I could hope again! You
will save me, I will cut the past out and bury it, I will begin again.
I will count this place with the dead and leave it forever. I need you.
Come with me, my wife and hope and guide. Camilla, help me!”
“No, no!”
His sharp, strained voice frightened her. His eyes glittered and his
face was white below his black hair. His intensity frightened her.
The future he pointed to threatened her like an overhanging cloud, the
struggle in her own heart frightened her.
“You said the story was yours. Camilla, tell me so again! We'll blot it
out. I will forget! I need you! Come away from this ghastly city!”
Now she saw her father in his library, his white head bent. He was
waiting and listening for her footsteps; and Dick seemed to be standing
over him, listening for her to come; and Aunt Eunice, near by, was
listening.
“I can't!” she cried. “I can't!”
“You must! Camilla! We will go away. It would be possible with you.
I'll find a truth yet that doesn't lead to hell. I'll be a leader yet.
Camilla, look at me!” She lifted her face and turned slowly toward
him, and a voice spoke out in the distant, dark doorway, saying,
“Milly!”--and then hesitated, and Hennion came out.
“I heard you crying,” he said quietly. “I didn't seem to be able to
stand that.”
“Dick! Take care of me!” she cried, and ran to him, and put her face
against his arm. The two men looked at each other for a moment.
Aidee said, “I'm answered.”
“I think you gave me a close call,” said Hennion, and drew Camilla past
him into the passage, and followed her a few steps. Then he turned back,
thinking:
“A fanatic is a term that mostly defines the definer, instead of the
person meant to be defined. Sometimes it defines the man who uses it, as
dense.”
At any rate Aidee was a force and had a direction, and force ought not
to be wasted that way, for the credit of dynamics. So Hennion justified
himself, and then confused his motive by thinking, “It's hardly a square
game besides.” He stepped from the door into the dim Hall again, and
said slowly:
“By the way, I saw Hicks last one night, some two weeks ago, and he told
me who he was. He intended, I believe, to leave a message for you. Maybe
he mentioned it to you. I think he told no one else who he was.”
Hennion paused. Aidee made no motion nor sound, but stood stiffly
resistant.
“Well, you see, this morning, Jimmy Shays, the shoemaker, brought me
that chisel. It seems Hicks used it last on Coglan, and then left it
behind him, which was rather careless. Well, I knew the tool. The fact
is, it was mine. Strikes me you might as well have gone somewhere else
for your hardware.”
Still no sound.
“However, being mine, I took the liberty of pitching it into the river,
where it really belonged, and swore Jimmy into a state of collapsed
secrecy. Consequently, I'm in collusion. Consequently, I'm mentioning
this to you in order to clean up the ground between us. It makes no
great difference. That's all right. I only wanted to point out that
you're clear of the mess. Now, there's a job for you in Port Argent.
I think you can fill the place rather better--better than anyone else.
Will you stay?”
“No.”
“Oh! But I've heard it said, political power was safe in the hands of
those who had to make a sacrifice in order to accept it.”
“I won't make it.”
“It turns out a hypocritical sacrifice for me, you know. I'm on the
highroad to corruption. You might stay in Port Argent and keep me
honest. Will you?”
“No.”
“All right. Good-night.”
The little side streets between Seton Avenue and Maple Street were
shaded by young maples, the street lamps frequent, and now being lit.
Hennion and Camilla walked slowly. She shivered once or twice, and half
sobbed, and clung to him. They talked very little at first.
“Milly,” he said at last, “of course, you know, I'm backing you, anyway.
You shall do as you like.”
“I know, Dick. You're good. You're very good to me.”
“Well--maybe I'm wrong--I've been that before--but it looks to me in
this way, that, after all, most impossible things are possible somehow,
or somehow else, and it's better to go straight at the steep places. It
stirs your blood to see how steep they are. I don't know altogether--I
don't ask--but if you see anything that looks steep ahead, why, perhaps
it is, perhaps it is--but then, what of it? And that's the moral I've
been hedging around to, Milly.”
After a silence she asked, “How did you know I was there?”
“I thought it likely.”
He told her of his talk with Hicks in the cell, and how Shays, the
shoemaker, had come to him that morning, but he omitted the fact that
the chisel had been “used on Coglan.” Passing that point, he went on,
comfortably comforting.
“You know, people don't own all the miscellaneous consequences of what
they do. For instance, I knew Coglan. He was a blackguard and loafer,
and generally drunk, and his death was rather a judicious selection.
Hicks was a curious man. Maybe he wasn't quite sane. He jumped into the
river on his own notion, to the happy relief of the public, which might
have had scruples about hanging him. Still, you must see that as you
didn't arrange all these social benefits, they'll have to be credited
to your good luck, if they're credited at all. Aidee helped him to break
jail, which was natural enough. It's a debatable moral maybe, if
anyone wants to debate it, but who wants to? I'm no casuist, anyway. He
shouldn't have come to you. But since he did, why, of course you'd do
something of the kind, same as the wind blows. I know you, Milly. Is it
your part in it that troubles you? You'd better take my judgment on it.”
“What is it?” she said, half audibly.
“My judgment? Only that I want you for myself.”
He went on quietly after a pause: “There are objections to interfering
with the law, if your conscience means that. Those who try it, I think,
don't often know what they're doing. If they do it theoretically,
they're staking a small experience against a big one. The chances of
being right are mainly against them. Aren't they? It looks so. Your
getting mixed with that kind of thing or people, is--would be, of
course, rather hard on us, on Mr. Champney and me. But your nerve was
good. Is that what you want my judgment on?”
They turned up the path to the Champney house.
“You knew all about it!” she said hurriedly. “But you don't understand.
It was because I thought him so great and noble, and I do! I do! Oh, he
is! But I'm not brave at all. No, you don't know! He asked me to help,
and it was so dark and painful, what he meant to do before he came
again. It frightened me. He asked me to marry him, and break off
everything here, and I was afraid! I'm a coward! I wouldn't do it
because I was afraid. I'm a coward.”
“Did, did he?” said Hennion comfortably. “That was good nerve, too.”
“You don't understand,” she said with a small sob, and then another.
“Maybe not. But I think you had other reasons.”
They looked in through the tall library window, and saw Henry Champney
sitting alone by his table, the gas jet flaring over him, and his white
head dropped over on his hand. Hennion went on: “There's some of this
business that it doesn't suit me to argue about or admit. But it occurs
to me that”--pointing toward the window--“that may have been a reason.”
“You do understand that,” she said, and they went in together.