In the vast eighteen-story, thousand-room New York hotel where Isabelle
Lane stayed for the night on her way west, there was the usual constant
bustle of arriving and departing people. The heat, the crowd, the luxury of
this cliff-city with its throngs of much-dressed men and women overwhelmed
Isabelle with a sense of startling unreality. It was not simply that she
had been removed from the noise of city life for a number of months,
secluded in the quiet of open spaces, and that the latest novelty in New
York hotels contrasted sharply with primitive Grosvenor. But she found
herself examining the scene, from the moment she entered the crowded foyer
with its stucco-marble columns and bronze railings, its heavy hangings and
warm atmosphere, with eyes that seemed to observe what was there before her
for the first time. She looked at the thick rugs, the uniformed servants,
the line of pale, sleek young men in the office enclosure, the swarming
"guests" (according to the euphemistic slang of American hotels!),--all
these women in evening gowns, much jewelled, on their way to dinner, with
their attendant males; and she asked herself if it were the same world that
she had always known.
The little bronze doors in the bank of elevators opened and shut, taking in
and disgorging men and women, to shoot upwards to the tiers of partitioned
privacy above or to hurry forth on their errands. Waiting for the hotel
maid to fetch her key, Isabelle felt like a soul resurrected from a grave,
come back to experience what had once been its theatre of activity and joy.
She felt the tense hum of life in the activity of the clerks behind the
desk, the servants hurrying on their errands, the coming and going of the
horde of people, among whom watchful house detectives moved about silently.
She knew that across the narrow street was another even larger cliff-city,
where the same picture of life was repeating itself, and around the corner
there were four or five more, and farther away dozens almost exactly like
this one,--all crowded, humming with people, with the same heavy atmosphere
of human beings hived together in hot air, men and women dressed like
these, feeding like these in great halls, spending lavishly for comfort,
pleasure, and repose! ...
This mammoth caravansary was a symbol of the broad, riotously rich
country,--a spiritual and material symbol, representing its thoughts, its
ideals, its art, its beauty, its joy. Into these metropolitan cliff-cities
flowed the stream of dominant, successful lives of the nation, seeking to
find satisfaction for their efforts, their rightful triumph. Once Isabelle
had had the child's pleasure in the hotel pageant. Later it had been an
accepted convenience. Now she sat there looking on as from a great
distance, and she said over and over wonderingly: "Can this be life? No,
this is not life,--'tis not real!"
At the news-stand near by a group of men and women were loitering, the men
buying theatre tickets, the women turning over the leaves of magazines,
scanning lazily the titles of novels. The magazines were stacked in rows,
each with a gaudy cover,--"artistic" or designed merely to capture the eye
by a blaze of color. One of the women turned the leaves of several novels,
idly, with a kind of fat ennui, as if loath to be tempted even by mental
dissipation. Then noting a title that had somehow lodged itself with
favorable associations in her brain, she said to the girl behind the
counter, "You may send this up to my room."
So the work of imagination, the picture of life, the soul of the poet
creator, was slipped from the pile to be sent upwards along with the other
purchases of the day,--clothes and jewellery and candy,--what the woman had
desired that day. This group moved on and another took its place. The books
and the magazines disappeared like the theatre tickets and the cigars and
cigarettes at the neighboring stand,--feeding the maw of the multitude,
which sought to tickle different groups of brain cells. Gay little books,
saucy little books, cheap little books, pleasant little books,--all making
their bid to certain cells in the gray matter of these sated human beings!
A literature composed chiefly by women for women,--tons of wood pulp, miles
of linen covers, rivers of ink,--all to feed the prevailing taste, like the
ribbons, the jewels, the candy, the theatre tickets! A great age, as Mr.
Gossom, swelling with pride, would have said, and a great people, that has
standardized its pleasures and has them marketed in convenient packages for
all tastes! An age of women's ideals, a literature by women for women! ...
Isabelle bought a copy of Mr. Gossom's patriotic magazine for the People,
and turned its fresh pages with a curiosity to see what it was like, and
who was writing now. The sentimental novel by the popular English novelist
that she had looked at when it first appeared came to its conclusion in
this number. And it not having met with the expected popular approval, for
all its sentiment, Mr. Gossom had abandoned the idyllic in favor of a
startling series of articles on "Our National Crimes," plentifully and
personally illustrated. Mr. Gossom would have preferred to prolong the
sentimental note,--"pleasant reading," as he called it; personally he did
not approve of hanging up the nation's wash in the front yard, for he
himself was an investor in corporations. But what could he do? It was his
business to give the People what the People wanted. And just now they
wanted to be shocked and outraged by revelations of business perfidy.
Another six months, perhaps, when the public was tired of contemplating
rascality, the editor would find something sweet, full of country charm and
suburban peace, to feed them.... On the title-page there were the old names
and some new ones, but the same grist,--a "homely" story of "real life"
among the tenements, a "humorous" story of the new school, an article on a
marvellous invention to set the public on the gape, etc.... Fosdick had an
article of a serious nature, on Trades Unions and Socialism. 'So Dickie,
having ceased to roll about the world,' thought Isabelle, 'has begun to
write about it.' She turned down the page at his article and looked into
the advertising section. That was where the _People's_ excelled,--in its
thick advertising section. Between the automobiles and the pianolas were
inserted some pages of personal puff, photographs of the coming
contributors, and an account of their deeds,--the menus prepared for the
coming months. Isabelle looked at the faces of the contributors, among whom
was Dick's face, very smooth and serious. As a whole the photographs might
be those of any Modern Order of Redmen, consciously posed before the camera
of Fame. But they gave that personal touch so necessary to please the
democratic taste. Thus from Aeschylus to Mr. Gossom's "literature." ... It
seemed no more real, no more a part of what life is in its essence, than
the hotel and the sleek people thronging it.
* * * * *
When Isabelle entered the dining room, the head waiter placed her in a
sheltered nook behind one of the stucco pillars, not far from the stringed
instruments concealed in a little Gothic choir loft over the entrance.
There were flowers on the tables and multitudinous electric candles in pink
silk shades. The open-timbered ceiling had been decorated by an artist of
some fame, who had sought in vain to give to this rich feeding place of the
herd the grace of an Italian palace. Two long mural paintings adorned the
end walls, and six highly colored tapestries were hung at equal spaces
laterally. In spite of the large proportions of the room, it was
insufferably hot and heavy with the odors of wilting flowers and perspiring
humanity, somewhat perfumed, and of foods and wines. The early diners were
leaving for the theatres and opera, the women trailing their rich gowns
over the rugged floor as they stared about them. (They were mostly
strangers from inland cities who had been attracted by the fame of this
newest hotel.) Their places were quickly taken by others in couples and in
parties, and the hum of talk was feebly punctuated by occasional bursts of
teasing sound from the stringed instruments. Isabelle felt curiously alone,
sitting here in the crowded dining room,--alone as she had not felt on the
most solitary hillside of Grosvenor. She closed her eyes and saw the
village in its cup among the mountains glittering white in the March sun.
The thin, pure air of the forests filled her nostrils. She was homesick--for
the first time in her life! With a little shake she roused herself and
turned to Fosdick's article that she had brought with her to the table. It
was all about the progress of the socialist parties abroad, their aims and
accomplishments, showing first-hand observation and knowledge; also a
vivaciously critical spirit,--in short what Gossom would call "a smart
article." ... There was another "serious" article on the problem of housing
the poor, amply illustrated. In the newspapers that she had glanced through
on her long journey, there had been likewise much about "movements,"
political and social, speeches and societies organized to promote this
interest or that, and endless references to the eternal conflict of capital
and labor, in the struggle for their respective shares of the human cake.
It was the same with all the more serious magazines at the news-stand; they
were filled with discussion of "movements" for the betterment of humanity,
of talk about this means or that to make the world run a little more
smoothly. It was proof, according to the editors, of the sound spirit of
democracy, fighting for ideals, making progress along right lines. In other
days Isabelle would have considered Fosdick's article brilliant, if not
profound. She would have felt that here was something very important for
serious people to know, and believed she was thinking.... To-night
Fosdick's phrases seemed dead, like this hotel life, this hotel reading
matter. Even the impassioned editorial she had seen on child-labor laws,
and the article on factory inspection, and the bill to regulate the hours
of labor on railroads--all the "uplift" movements--seemed dead,
wooden,--part of the futile machinery with which earnest people deluded
themselves that they were doing something. Would all of them, even if
successful, right the wrong of life in any deep sense? ...
Isabelle laid down the magazine and looked over the room again. Her eyes
fell on a party of four at one of the tables in front of her, beneath the
mural painting. While the food she had ordered was being slowly put before
her, she watched them. There seemed something familiar about the black back
of the man at the nearer side of the table, about the way he leaned
forward, gesticulating from his wrists, and also about the large woman at
his right with her head turned away. After a time this head came around and
looked down the room. It was Conny! Conny splendidly blond and large, in
half-mourning, with a fresh touch of color on her pale face, her beautiful
shoulders quite bare. And that full mouth and competent chin,--no one but
Conny! Isabelle hastily looked down at her plate. She had not recognized
the others at the table. Conny was seated just beneath the pink and white
painting representing spring,--a mixture of Botticelli brought to date and
Puvis. And Conny carried on the allegory of Flora into full-blown summer.
She was drinking her wine meditatively, and her firm chin--the Senator had
said it was moulded for an empress--was slightly tilted, revealing the
thick, muscular neck.
So long ago it was when Isabelle had been thrilled by her luncheon at the
Woodyards'. She hurried her dinner now to escape the necessity of talking
to Conny when her party passed out. But as she prepared to rise, she saw
that they were coming towards her and sat down again, opening the magazine.
From it she could see them, Conny in the lead sweeping forward in that
consciously unconscious manner with which she took her world. The man
behind her had some trouble in keeping up with her pace; he limped, and
almost tripped on Conny's train. Isabelle saw him out of her lowered
eyelids. It was Tom Cairy. They almost brushed her table as they passed,
Conny and after her Tom. Conny was drawling in her treble note, "She made a
great sensation in Herndon's piece over in London." ... And Isabelle was
conscious that she was sitting alone at the hotel table, staring into
vacancy, with a waiter impatiently eying the coin in her hand....
She had looked at him for half an hour, not knowing him! And suddenly she
saw how dead it all was: not merely her feeling for Cairy, but her whole
past, the petty things clone or felt by that petty other self, ending with
the tragic fact of Vickers's sacrifice. She had passed through into another
world.... This man who had sat there near her all the evening she had once
believed that she loved more than life itself,--his mere voice had made her
tremble,--this God she had created to worship! And she had not recognized
him.
High up in her corner of the brick and stone cliff above the twinkling
city, Isabelle knelt by the open window, looking out into the foggy night.
Unconscious of the city sounds rising in one roar from the pavement,--the
voice of the giant metropolis,--she knelt there thinking of that dead past,
that dead self, and of Vickers, a solemn unearthly music like the march of
life in her ears. She knelt there, wide-eyed, able to see it all calmly,
something like prayer struggling upwards in her heart for expression.