All night long in the corridors of the cliff-city the elevator doors had
clicked, as they were opened and shut on the ceaseless trips to pack away
the people in the eighteen stories. In the morning they became even
livelier in their effort to take down the hungry guests for breakfast and
the day's business. The corridors and the lobbies and the foyer were
thronged with the same people, freshly dressed for the day, fat or lean,
heavy eyed or alert, pale, nervous, with quick tones and jerky movements.
And there was a line of new arrivals before a fresh row of pale clerks. The
prominent people of the city, especially the women, had already left town
for the Springs or Florida or Paris or the Mediterranean, anywhere but
here! Their flitting, however, had made no impression on the hotels or the
honey-hives along the avenue. What they abandoned--the city in March with
its theatres, opera, restaurants, and shops--the provincials came hungrily
to suck. For the cast-off, the spurned, is always Somebody's desired.
It was the same on the other side of the ferry in the railroad terminal,
hurrying throngs pressing through the little wickets that bore the legend
of the destination of each train,--"The Florida East Coast Limited," "New
Orleans, Texas, and the South," "Washington and Virginia," etc. From this
centre the strands of travel ran outwards to many beguiling points. And
there were two perpetual motions,--the crowd flowing out to some joy beyond
the horizon, and the crowd flowing back irresistibly to the sucking
whirlpool. Always movement, change, endless going, going with these
people,--the spirit of the race in their restless feet! There was always
the Desirable beyond at the other end of the line. All the world that could
move was in unstable flux, scurrying hither and thither in hot search for
the phantom Better--change, variety--to be had for the price of a ticket.
It was a relief to be on the Pullman, seated for a time in a small fixed
space, free from the revolving whirlpool of restless humanity, though that
fixity itself was being whirled across the land. With a sigh Isabelle
leaned back and looked at the passing country outside. The snow had long
disappeared, leaving the brown earth naked and forlorn. It was the same
landscape, under similar conditions, that Isabelle had gazed at the spring
afternoon when she was hurrying back to meet Cairy, his violets on her
breast. It seemed to her then that she was happy, with a wonderful
happiness. Now she was content.... As the train rushed through the
Alleghanies, the first faint touches of spring appeared in the swelling
stems of the underbrush, in the full streams of yellow water, and the few
spears of green grass beside the sheltering fence posts, and the soft misty
atmosphere full of brooding changes over the level fields.
Isabelle became eager to get on to her journey's end, to see her husband.
Once out there with him, whatever accident befell them, she was equal to
it, would see its real meaning, would find in it Peace. She had brought
with her the copy of the _People's_ and a number of other magazines and
books, and as the day waned she tried to interest herself in some of their
"pleasant" stories. But her eyes wandered back to the landscape through
which they were speeding, to the many small towns past which they
darted,--ugly little places with ugly frame or brick buildings, stores and
houses and factories, dirty and drab, unlike the homely whiteness of the
Grosvenor village street. But they were strangely attracting to her
eye,--these little glimpses of other lives, seen as the train sped by, at
the back porches, the windows, the streets; the lives of the many fixed and
set by circumstance, revolving between home and workshop, the lives of the
multitude not yet evolved into ease and aspiration. But they counted, these
lives of the multitude,--that was what she felt this day; they counted
quite as much as here or any. She had travelled back and forth over this
main artery of the Atlantic and Pacific many times from her childhood up.
But hitherto the scene had meant nothing to her; she had never looked at it
before. She had whirled through the panorama of states, thinking only of
herself, what was to happen to her at the end of the journey. But to-day it
was _her_ country, _her_ people, _her_ civilization that she looked out on.
The millions that were making their lives in all these ugly little houses,
these mills and shops, men and women together, loving, marrying, breeding,
and above all living! "All of life is good!" Each one of these millions had
its own drama, each to itself, as hers had been to her, with that tragic
importance of being lived but once from the germ to the ultimate dust. Each
one was its own epic, its own experience, and its own fulfilment. As
Renault once said, "Any of the possibilities may lie in a human soul." And
in that was the hope and the faith for Democracy,--the infinite variety of
these possibilities!
So the literature of "movements" and causes, the effort by organization to
right the human fabric, seemed futile, for the most part. If man were right
with himself, square with his own soul, each one of the millions, there
would be no wrongs to right by machinery, by laws, by discussion, by
agitation, by theories or beliefs. Each must start with self, and right
that.... Yes, the world needed a Religion, not movements nor reforms!
* * * * *
... Sometime during the night Isabelle was roused by the stopping of the
train, and pulling aside the curtain of the window she looked out. The
train was standing in the yards of a large station with many switch lights
feebly winking along the tracks. At first she did not recognize the place;
it might be any one of the division headquarters where the through trains
stopped to change engines. But as she looked at the maze of tracks, at the
dingy red brick building beyond the yards, she finally realized that it was
Torso, the spot where her married life had begun. It gave her an odd
sensation to lie there and look out on the familiar office building where
she used to go for John--so long ago! Torso, she had felt at that time, was
cramping, full of commonplace, ordinary people that one did not care to
know. She had been very anxious to escape to something larger,--to St.
Louis and then to New York. She wondered what she would think of it now if
she should go back,--of Mrs. Fraser and the Griscoms. Then she remembered
the Falkners, and how badly it had gone since with Bessie. It was sad to
think back over the years and see how it might have been different, and for
the moment she forgot that if it had been different in any large sense, the
result would have been different. She would not be here now, the person she
was. Regret is the most useless of human states of mind.... The railroad
operatives were busy with lanterns about the train, tapping wheels, filling
the ice-boxes and gas-tanks, and switching cars. She could see the faces of
the men as they passed her section in the light of their lanterns. With
deliberate, unconscious motions they performed their tasks. Like the face
of that lad on the engine at White River, these were the faces of ordinary
men, privates of the industrial world, and yet each had something about it
distinctive, of its own. What kept these privates at their work, each in
his place? Hunger, custom, faith? Surely something beyond themselves that
made life seem to each one of them reasonable, desirable. Something not
very different from the spirit which lay in her own soul, like a calming
potion, which she could almost touch when she needed its strength. "For
life is good--all of it!" ... and "Peace is the rightful heritage of every
soul."
The train rolled on towards its destination, and she fell asleep again,
reassured.