ROSE DARRAGH
Rose Darragh's short speech, at once caustic and passionate, ended--the
meeting ended. Hagar waited below the platform.
Rose Darragh, at last shaking off the crowd, came toward her. "I've
been looking at you. I seem, somehow, to know you--"
"And I you. And not--which is strange to me--not through another."
"Is your name Hagar Ashendyne?"
Hagar nodded. "We can't talk well here--"
"I'm in New York for two weeks. Denny's in Chicago and I join him
there. Let me see--where can we meet? Will you come to my flat?"
"Yes; and in a few days I shall have my own rooms. I want to see you
there, too, Rose Darragh."
"I'll come. This is my address. Will you come to-morrow at four?"
Hagar went. Denny had written that the two lived "handy to their work,"
and it was apparent that they did. The flat had the dignity of Spartan
simplicity. In it Rose Darragh moved with the fire of the ruby.
"Denny had to go about the paper. Oh, it's doing well, the paper! It's
Denny's idol. He serves in the temple day and night, and when the idol
asks it, he'll give his heart's blood.... You liked Denny very much,
didn't you?--in Nassau, three years ago?"
"Yes, I did." They were sitting in the plain, bare room, attractive,
for it was so clean, the late autumn sunlight streaming in at the
curtainless windows. "Yes, I did. I liked him so well that ... I had
somewhat of a fight with myself.... I am telling you that," said Hagar,
"because I want your friendship. It is over now, nor do I think it will
come again."
Rose Darragh gave her a swift look from heel to head. "That's strength.
I like strength.... All right! I'm not afraid."
They sat in silence for a moment; then, "I wish you'd tell me," said
Hagar, "about your work."
A very few days after this she took possession of the apartment, and
at once made it a home. There was a housewarming with Rachel and Betty
and Charley and Elizabeth and Marie and the Josslyns, and two pleasant
gentlemen, her publishers, and a fellow-writer or two whom she was
by way of knowing and liking, and an artist, and an old scholar and
philosopher whom she had known abroad and loved and honoured. And there
was Thomasine, a little worn and faded, but with happiness stealing
over her, and Mary Magazine busy with the cakes and ale. There couldn't
have been a better housewarming.
Thomasine--Thomasine began to bloom afresh. Factory and department
store and business school and office lay behind her--each a stage upon
a somewhat dull and dusty and ambuscade-beset road of life. Business
school and office, training for mind and fingers alike, a resulting
"place" with a fair-dealing firm--all that was Hagar's helping, a
matter of the last six or seven years. And now Hagar had come back
and had made Thomasine an offer, and Thomasine closed with it very
simply and gladly. She had from the beginning worked hard and as best
she could and had given good value for her pay; and now she was going
still to do all that, but to do it with a singing heart and her hunger
for beauty and fitness fed. The colour came back into her cheeks; she
began to take on a sprite-like beauty. She brought seriously into
conversation one day the fact that she had always been good at finding
four-leafed clovers.... Jim and Marietta were doing fairly, still over
in New Jersey. "Fairly" meant a poor house which Marietta did her best
to keep clean, and two of the children working, and the city for summer
and winter, and Jim's pay envelope neither larger nor heavier, but the
cost of living both. But Jim had his "job," and Marietta was not so
ailing as she used to be, and the two children brought in a little,
and Thomasine helped each month; so they might be said to be doing
much better than many others. There was even talk of being able one
day to get--the whole family being fond of music--one of the cheaper
phonographs.
Hagar and Thomasine worked through the mornings, Hagar thinking,
remembering, creating; Thomasine taking from her the labour of record;
caring also for her letters and the keeping of accounts and all small,
recurring business. And Thomasine loved to do any shopping that arose
to be done,--which was well, for Hagar hated shopping,--and loved
to keep the apartment "just so." The two lived in quiet, harmonious
intercourse, together in working hours, but when working hours were
over, each going freely her individual way. Thomasine, too, had
friends. She wrote to Jim and Marietta and to Maggie at home, taking
care of the mother with the spine, that she hadn't been so happy since
they used to go to grandmother's at Gilead Balm....
Rose Darragh--Rose Darragh had not been at Hagar's housewarming.
She was speaking that night in Newark. But some days afterwards she
came--came late one afternoon with the statement that she had the
evening free. She and Thomasine and Hagar dined in the café together,
but Thomasine hurried through her dinner, for she was going to the
theatre with a fellow-stenographer with whom she had worked for
two years downtown, and who was "such a nice girl," and with the
stenographer's brother, who looked like a nice brother. Hagar and Rose
Darragh, left at the table, sipped their coffee.
A quality of Rose Darragh's came out. She observed and deduced, to the
amusement of herself and of others, with the swiftness and accuracy
of M. Dupin or of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. They had a small corner table
commanding the long, bright room. "Twenty tables," she said. "Men and
women and a fair number of children. Not proportionately so large a
number as once there would have been, and that is well, the bawlers of
race-suicide to the contrary!--I'm interested in the women just now.
Man's had the centre of the stage for so long!--and, of course, we know
that this is the Century of the Child--see cotton-mills, glass-works,
and canneries. But Woman--Woman's just coming out of the wings....
There's rather an interesting collection here to-night. Do you know any
of them?"
"I have spoken casually to several. I have been here, you know, only
the shortest time."
"There's a woman over there who has a wonderful face--brooding and
wise.... A teacher isn't she? I should say she was not married."
"Yes; she is a teacher, and single."
"There's a woman who is a nurse."
"Yes. There's a sick child in that family. But she is not in uniform
to-night."
"I know her all the same. She's a good nurse. There are those who are
and those who aren't. But she's got strength and poise and knows what
she is about and is kind.--Those two women over there--"
"Yes. What do you make of them?"
"There's such a glitter of diamonds you can't see the women. Poor
things!--to be beings of a single element--to live in a world of pure
carbon--to be the hardest thing there is, and yet be so brittle too!...
The woman next them is good ordinary: nothing remarkable, and yet
pleasant enough. The worst that can be said of her is that she doesn't
discriminate. If the broth lacks salt, she never knows it."
"And the two over there with the stout man?"
Rose Darragh gazed a moment with eyes slightly narrowed. "Oh, those!"
she said. "Those are our adapted women--perilously near adapted, at
any rate. That's a sucking wife and daughter. Take your premise that
in the divine order of things the male opens the folds of his being,
surrounds, encloses, 'shelters' and 'protects' and 'provides for' your
female in season and out of season, when there is need, and when there
is certainly none, and your further premise that the female is willing
and ruthlessly logical--and behold the supremely natural conclusion!...
Daughters of the horse leech--and perfectly respectable members of
society as constituted! Faugh!--with their mouths glued to that fat
man's pocket. He looks haggard, and at the moment he's probably
grinding the faces of no end of men and women,--not because he's got a
bad heart and really wants to,--but because he's got to 'provide' for
those two perfectly strong and healthy persons in jewelry and orchids!
He's cowed by tradition into accepting the monstrous position, and he's
weak enough to let them define what is 'provision.' He's got to keep
filling and filling the pocket because they suck so fast."
"Do you think they can change?"
"They can be forced to change. They don't want to change, any more than
the copepod wants to change. And logically, while he persists in his
present attitude, the man can't ask them to change. He can't keep his
cake and eat it too." She drank her coffee. "That very stout gentleman
who is being driven to bankruptcy, or to ways that are queer, is just
the kind to strike the table with his fist and violently to assure
you that God meant Woman, lovely Woman! to be dependent upon Man, and
that it is with deep regret that he sees woman crowding into industry
and beating at the doors of the professions--Woman, Wife and Mother,
God bless her! Do you notice how they always put Wife first? If the
Association Opposed to the Extension of the Franchise to Women asked
him to-night for a contribution, they'd probably get it."
"How numerous do you think are those women?"
"The copepods? Numerous enough, pity 'tis! But not so numerous as,
given the System, you might fairly expect: numerous positively, but not
relatively. And a lot of them have simply succumbed to environmental
pressure. Given a generation or two of rational training and a nobler
ideal of what befits a human being, and the copepod will yet succour
herself.... Denny and I see more of the other kind. The drudges
outnumber the copepods, and neither need be.... There's a girl over
there I like--the one with the braided hair. Many of the young girls of
to-day are rather wonderful. It's going to be interesting to see what
they'll do when they're older, and what their daughters will do. She's
got a fine head--mathematics, I should think."
They went down together.
In the large and comfortable half study, half drawing-room with the
shaded lights, with the sea-like sound of the city without the windows,
with the books and pictures, they walked a little to and fro together,
and at last paused before a window and looked forth--the firmament
studded with lights above and the city studded with lights below.
"There's a noble word called Work," said Rose Darragh, "and we have
degraded it into Toil, on the one hand, and it has a strong enemy
called False Ideals, on the other. What I ask of Life is that I may be
one of the helpers to save Work from Toil and False Ideals."
They watched the lights in silence, then turned back to the soft
glowing room. When each had taken a deep chair on either side of the
great library table, they still kept silent. Rose Darragh sat erect,
lithe, strong, embrowned, a wine red in her cheeks. As in the picture
that Hagar remembered, her strong throat rose clear from a blouse of
the simplest make, only a soft dark silk instead of wool in honour
of the evening. Her skirt was of dark cheviot. She wore no stays,
it was evident, and needed none. Her hair, of a warm chestnut, wavy
and bright, was cut to about the length worn by Byron and Keats and
Shelley.... To a marked extent she was interest-provoking; there was
felt a powerful nature, rich and indomitable.
Presently she spoke. "Denny will be home next week. Don't you want me
to take you one day to see the shrine where he keeps his idol and watch
him providing acceptable sacrifice? It's rich--the editorial room of
'Onward!'"
"Yes, I should like it very much."
"Then we'll go down some morning soon. There's a place near the temple
where they give you a decent omelette and cheese. We'll all three go
there for luncheon.... Denny's fine."
"I'm very sure of that."
"Yes, warp and woof, he's sincere--and that's what I worship,
sincerity! And he's able. He strikes more narrowly than I do, but he
strikes deep. We've lived and worked together now eight years. We've
seen hard times together. We've nearly starved together. We've made a
name and come out together. And, bigger than our own fates, we've seen
our Cause bludgeoned and seen it lift its bleeding head. We've known
together impersonal sorrow and joy, humbling and pride, fear and faith,
despair and hope. Denny and I are the best friends. We've been lovers
in the flesh, but there's something better than that between us." She
turned square to the light and Hagar. "That's the truest truth, and yet
I want to tell you that I think you've always been to him a kind of
unearthly and spiritual romance. He's kept you lifted, moving above him
in the clouds, beckoning, with a light about you. And I want to tell
you that I have not grudged that--"
"I spoke to you as I did the other day," said Hagar, "because, somehow,
I had that impulse. It was not necessary that I should do so; that of
which I spoke had long passed." She rose and walked slowly back and
forth in the room. "When I bethought myself, that month in Nassau,
of where I--not he--was drifting ... I was able then to leave that
current, and leave it not to reënter. That was three years ago. I beg
you to believe that that temptation, if it was a temptation, is far
behind me. My soul will not return that way, cannot return that way....
And now I simply want to be friends."
"I'll meet you there. I like you too much not to want to. You seem to
me one of those rare ones who find their lamp and refuge in themselves."
"And I like you, extraordinarily. I should like to work with you."
"There is nothing," said Rose Darragh, "any easier to arrange than
that."