SYMPATHY
I
Snow began covering Siberia east of Baikal. It seemed as though winter
arrived in a night. Still there were many mornings when the high, cold
sunshine glinted in a trillion jewels across thin snows of early
November and the nipping air was like wine, piercing a world suddenly
frozen hard as wood. It was such a morning when the great white train
finally moved in off the eastern steppes and began that all-day crawl
around the southern and western shores of Baikal, up toward Irkutsk.
Sunshine, sunshine! Cobalt blue and sunshine! If Nathan remembered Japan
as a land of laughter, he remembered Siberia as a land of Sunlight
Glorious. The night in black fog was only a dream, a nightmare, which
had slipped in between some flaming sunset and a singing sunrise. And
the sunshine glinted now on the far-rolling whitecaps of Baikal as
though the water reached up and scooped nets of it from the air and
rolled it over into liquid sacks of shimmering green until that
imprisoned sunshine burst and made evanescent foam and swashing water
laughter, icy cold.
The train was headed for far Western Siberia, in toward the Ural
Mountains—Ufa, Samara and the Volga—where a thin line of valiant, ragged
Czechs were stemming the Bolshevik tide eastward. Yet it dropped
hospital and medical supplies and occasionally a surgeon, as it went
along. It would stay a week in Irkutsk. The only patients it contained
to date were unfortunates who had been picked up en route, like Nathan,
pro-Ally _soldat_ who had escaped from Bolshevik camps or with eyes
blinded and tongues pulled out had been turned loose in great Siberia to
perish in agony for daring to question the political acumen and
sociological sagacity of an ex-anarchist and a Bronx dish-washer.
Crowds gathered quickly at stations where the train stopped,—stolid,
smoothly boarded, wooden stations resembling American freight houses in
towns of ten thousand inhabitants, stations with queer, Tartar filigree
and scroll work decorating the side gables, and all painted a militant
mustard yellow. Madelaine beheld what Nathan had been familiar with for
over a year. Flat-faced, gray-whiskered peasants in lambskin hats, green
blouses, knee-length boots, who might have stepped from the pages of
Tolstoi; tall, burly, chinless young men with long sandy mustaches,
childlike blue eyes, massive hands, in dark green military caps, ragged
civilian coats, calves protected from winter cold by spirals of coarse
juting; big-bellied, deep-chested officials who seemed all the same
age—around fifty years—in drum-major hats of black lambskin dented at
rakish angles, dressed in great overcoats that forever required
brushing, and possessing hands that always needed warming; youths with
big legs and small ears, wearing cadet caps, blouses buttoned at the
left shoulder, belts with big front buckles resembling closed nickel
cigarette cases, long trousers like cotton overalls that bagged at the
knees and flopped about each ankle like a sailor’s; women with
dough-like faces, no breasts, prominent abdomens and raw hands, who wore
mannish coats and swathed their heads in brilliant shawls until their
features could hardly be discerned; Khirgese desert folk in suits made
from undressed skins; shivering Chinese in black cambric, old felt hats
and pigtails who tried to eke out a living selling corky cabbages piled
in baskets swung at opposite ends of a five-foot pole; ponderous
Mongolian Tartars in mountainous ulsters of goatskin and no hats, with
their cues wound atop their heads and most of them forever accompanied
by a long cattle whip; little children in over-size hats and caps,
braving the killing wind in cotton clothing,—strange indeed was the
aggregation which gathered miraculously when news of the great
“_Americanski_” train permeated each railroad settlement. And all around
and about were dogs, hundreds of dogs—half-starved, ravenous, snapping,
snarling, wolfish, with wild, greenish eyes—who watched for scraps of
garbage and fought over them, the stronger driving off the weaker and
leaving them animated creatures of mere skin and bone, to perish of slow
starvation.
They reached Irkutsk in the night. Next morning Nathan went off to find
the Consul and Hartshorn and report his abortive attempt to get through
to Harbin. He was absent all day. It began to snow about four o’clock.
Hartshorn entered the office car with a scowl.
“They’re holding a dance over-town to-night because of the arrival of
all the Red Cross girls,” he announced; “a last bust before they go
in-country.”
“Well,” demanded Nathan, “what of it?”
“I’d like to go and I can’t. Somebody’s got to look after these cars and
be here in case the Czechs want anything.”
About six o’clock Madelaine accidentally encountered Nathan up the
platform of the great marble station.
“I’m not going to-night,” he said, in response to her question. “I’m
looking after the office car so Hartshorn can go. The poor fellows here
haven’t had a holiday for months, and my life lately has been pretty
much all holidays, especially—the past week.”
“I should very much like to see the Red Triangle outfit,” said
Madelaine.
“And I’d like you to meet some of the Czechs. They’re the finest chaps
on earth! They call us Y. men the ‘Little Uncles from America.’”
“It wouldn’t require much persuasion to make me forget they were giving
us a dance to-night,” said Madelaine softly.
II
The Y. cars serving the Czechs had been permanently shunted off on a
western spur, a mile south of the big main station. They were great
Manchurian freight cars, sheathed inside and made habitable with doors,
windows and stove-pipe chimneys. All of the service and recreational
paraphernalia supplied to Red Triangle huts in France was also supplied
to these club cars. There could be no huts in Siberia. There was no
trench fighting. Armies maneuvered too swiftly, principally by rail.
Every Czech in every car arose as Madelaine passed through. An American
Red Cross nurse! They held their caps in their hands. They were
gentlemen, every man of them,—college-bred—lawyers, professors, doctors,
artists, high-caste tradesmen. In one car Madelaine halted in
astonishment before a painting in oils done upon the boards of the
inside wall from materials which came from God-knew-where. It was “The
Burning of John Huss,” the great Bohemian patriot, executed with a craft
fitting to hang in any art gallery. The graceful young officer in charge
spoke English. He laughed deprecatingly.
“Ah, it eese nothing. One man, he paint eet because he have much time
and nothing other to do.”
Madelaine and Nathan came finally to the caboose car, Hartshorn’s
combination office and living quarters. In addition to the sheet-iron
stove and shelf-table were a desk, an oil lamp, a few wooden chairs.
Nathan lighted the oil lamp and poked the fire, throwing in several new
billets of wood. It was then about half-past eight.
“Let’s sit here and rest and—talk,” begged Madelaine. “The crowd won’t
return until midnight or after; there’s no necessity for hurrying back.”
Nathan placed a chair for her so she could dry her damp footwear and
skirts. He threw off his coat, for it was bungling and uncomfortable.
Madelaine insisted upon it. She insisted, too, that he smoke; she saw
the stem of his briar protruding from the breast pocket of his shirt.
“I know you want to smoke,” she laughed. “A man looks so gloriously
comfortable and relaxed when he’s ruminating over his pipe.”
“I can’t fill it,” returned Nathan lamely. “Not with one hand. It’s of
no consequence.”
“I’ll fill it for you,” declared the girl. It was not an offer. It was a
simple statement.
Nathan surrendered pipe and tobacco tin and she filled his briar. She
had no nonsense about it. She did not affect to be coy or awkward, or
act as if men who smoked pipes were some type of monster who
occasionally devoured women and little girls. She simply filled it and
tamped the tobacco down hard and that was the beginning and end of the
whole matter. Neither did she act as though either pipe or tobacco
should be handled with tongs. She might have been filling men’s pipes
for a livelihood since her school days. And when she handed it across,
and the pipe was drawing evenly, she made him pull the low box on which
he sat over close to the comfortable stove near her feet. Then as Sigurd
might have sat at the feet of Brünhilde “with the flames all around
them, while she sang him the sacred runes, of war, of pity, of safety,
of thought—wise words, sweet words, speech of great game,” so Nathan sat
before Madelaine for the first time that night and once more in his life
the clocks of time went unwound.
Outside, the snow was now falling heavily, smothering the city, burying
them in. It hushed all the sounds of the world. No wind stirred. The
flakes were great polls of wool that piled quickly. So it would snow for
a week, two weeks, and create the winter-bound Siberia of old-time story
and conception. They were alone, these two, in the heart of great Asia.
Alone together! Little else mattered! With one big talon hand wrapped
about the briar, a strong forefinger pressing into its bowl from time to
time, Nathan leaned forward, half toward Madelaine, half toward the
little stove.
They sat in silence for several minutes, a silence so great that Nathan
could hear the woman’s wrist watch ticking distinctly. Finally Madelaine
said:
“You and I have an acquaintance in common, I believe. Bernice Gridley.
Isn’t that so?”
“You know—Bernie—Gridley?” Nathan forgot to smoke, so great was his
surprise.
“We attended the same preparatory school at Mount Hadley, Massachusetts,
for a time.”
“Then you—you—must be—the ‘Springfield friend’ with whom she went
abroad. That is—I mean—was supposed to go abroad.”
It was Madelaine’s turn to be startled.
“You know—about Bernice?”
“Her father, Caleb Gridley, is one of the best friends I’ve ever had. If
it hadn’t been for old Caleb—God bless him!—I’m afraid I wouldn’t have
done much with my rhymes—or anything. He’s been the only real father
I’ve ever known.”
“But how did you know—about Bernice?”
“Her father told me one night. I forget what started it. He was feeling
pretty blue over it, although he wouldn’t say much. Bernie and I were
rather good friends—once.”
“What do you mean about Mr. Gridley being the only real father you’ve
ever known? Isn’t your own father living?”
Nathan swallowed with difficulty.
“It’s a long story—rather sordid—too long for me to hope to explain.”
Madelaine noted the choke in his voice. She studied his well-shaped head
and muscular, capable shoulders. Some live cinders had dropped into the
stove’s open ashpan. They still burned. Those ruddy flames lighted his
copper countenance. What a specimen of a man he was!
She loved him. Already she loved him. Deeply.
“Perhaps I understand better than you think,” she replied calmly. “I
happened to be in Paris, Vermont, one night. I met a queer old
philosopher who ran the livery stable—I’ve forgotten his name. He told
me about you—much!”
“You’ve been in Paris!”
“I remembered—a little poem of yours I had saved—had first appeared in a
Paris paper. I stopped off there—to look up the poet. Naturally, I was
interested to see what he might be like.—It was a rather unfortunate
time. You had recently suffered a serious business setback. I decided to
postpone my good wishes until a more appropriate occasion.”
“What night was it? Tell me frankly. Was it while they had me—locked
up?”
He was so candid that his question demanded an answer equally candid.
“Yes,” she replied. Then after a time she leaned forward. “My dear boy,”
she said softly, seriously, “you’ve kept things inside yourself,
repressed and unvoiced so long, you’ve done yourself an injury. Why not
tell me all about them? Won’t you believe I’d like to be your friend?”
“It’s a long story,” he repeated. “It’s the story of almost my entire
life. And nobody wants to hear that!”
“I want to hear ‘that.’ And there is much time—before midnight.”
Then, as New England would express it, “one word led to another”, and
before many minutes had passed Madelaine Theddon was adroitly drawing
from Nathan all the hot, hard story of his sordid, perverted, mediocre
past. He scarcely realized the girl was thus intriguing him. A great,
relieving freedom lifted him, gave him one long, wide-open opportunity
to unburden his tired heart. At times his voice broke with the stress of
it.
He began where all good stories should begin, at the beginning. He did
not boast and he did not depreciate. He took no undue credit for himself
and he made no maudlin, insipid bid for compassion. He did not spare
himself and he did not spare others. He hewed a straight, simple, naked
narrative of fact and experience—and let the chips of blame or censure
clutter where and whom they would.
The green billets burned lazily in the little stove. The smoke from
Nathan’s briar curled upward and after shaping into sweeter pictures of
the future than it could ever make of the past, it wafted out a slightly
lowered window at the back.
And Madelaine listened. She was one of those big women whose ability to
listen is part of her birthright—her maternal heritage. When Nathan
spoke frankly and fearlessly of his experience with Carol, and why the
Gardner girl had returned to Ohio, she interrupted for the first time.
“But couldn’t she see it was because of your great, clean love for her
that you couldn’t soil that love with anything sordid? Wasn’t she big
enough to realize you didn’t want your idol to have feet of clay of your
own modeling?”
Nathan sighed and shrugged his shoulders. He made no comment.
Then he told of his life with Milly, the cheapness, the shallowness, the
depression and handicap of it. He told of the petty bickerings and the
reasons for them; the hideous, mediocre, unsatisfying slovenliness of
her home while he hungered bitterly for beautiful things without knowing
how to satisfy that hunger. He told the incident of the repainted
Victrola as an illustration of six discouraging years. He could afford
to laugh at it now. He did laugh. But Madelaine did not laugh. She was
very close to tears.
When he came to the incident where old Caleb had brought the pink
rosebuds to the child’s funeral and then read Nathan the Twenty-third
Psalm in the hotel afterward, Madelaine laughed, strange as the
statement may sound. But it was not in mirth. It was to counteract the
tears which had brimmed over. She smeared them away with her naked
fingers, not bothering to draw out her handkerchief.
Nathan told of his business struggle with his father; the neurotic
extravagances of his mother; the death of Milly after her liaison with
Plumb. Then he came to that night in Chicago when he had visited Bernie
and had acid poured on his quivering flesh because of his infirmities.
Madelaine paled a moment. Then righteous anger flooded her face.
“And Bernie said any such thing? Acted in any such way? Twitted you for
things you could not help? I’d like to pull her ears!”
No woman had ever declared before that she would like to pull any one’s
ears in Nathan’s behalf. It was a new experience for the lonely man and
it overwhelmed him. Especially when Madelaine went on:
“I don’t think your hands are homely. I’ve watched your hands ever since
we met. I think they’re the strongest, most virile hands I’ve ever seen
upon a man. If I were in deep trouble, unable to protect myself, I
should very much like to have hands like yours clenched into pile-driver
fists, striking blows in my behalf! That for Bernie! She’s absolutely
heartless and a little vulgarian herself, beside. I think she’s horrid.
Oh, you poor boy! You haven’t mentioned a single girl or woman who’s
come into your life or gone out of it who’s been anything but a
heartache and a handicap. Hasn’t there been one, Nathan—not one?” It was
the first time she had called him Nathan. But it was spoken too
naturally to be crude or forward.
“I’ve told you the whole story,” said the man simply, thickly.
He put out his hand in a gesture, that old, old habitual groping motion,
as though feeling for some one or something by his side. But now, for
the first time in his life, that hand did not grope fruitlessly. It
grasped a woman’s hand, soft, strong, human, electric in that contact!
“I beg your pardon,” he cried, startled.
“There’s no need for begging my pardon, dear boy. Somehow I feel you and
I are going to be rather good friends. Some other night I’ll return your
confidence by telling you my story. But to-night belongs to you.” She
waited a moment and asked:
“And you never did any more with your talent for writing after your
father stopped you?”
“I couldn’t. I never had the heart. Mr. Hod, editor of the local paper,
hurt my feelings one night by telling me he couldn’t print any more of
my rhymes until I’d stopped a certain wail and—and—well—he said I ought
to sing! But I couldn’t sing. There was no song in my heart. I gave up
the poetry nonsense for good.”
“No! Not for good. You will write again, finer things. You will learn to
sing. I feel certain of it; you will learn to sing!”
Nathan laid his pipe aside and sat with his big talon claws at his right
temple to hide the emotions playing over his face. As he seemed disposed
to silence, Madelaine continued:
“It’s almost too much to understand, dear boy—how you’ve stood out true
to yourself and your ideals against such a background. Most boys would
have succumbed. But you kept the faith with yourself. That was glorious.
Such a constancy makes me want to sing. There are so few who keep the
faith and go on, plow on—fight on!—through everything!”
“I haven’t done anything yet,” was Nathan’s answer, “not anything that
really counts. I’ve felt as though I were waiting to get my fundamentals
straight, my feet on firm ground. Then I’d really go on. Then I’d really
plow ahead. Then I’d fight in earnest! When I’ve won, maybe I’ll sing
again. Yes—perhaps!”
The heart-cry beneath his brave optimism and blind faith in the Ultimate
Good was not lost on the girl. Lost on her? It surcharged her,
overpowered her, surfeited through her and under her and about her till
her calm eyes glowed starry again. It was like him. He would say it. She
knew it years before—expected it.
And Bernie had made her believe that this man was a provincial, a
“hick,” impossible! Poor Bernie! She had wanted a man who could wear a
monocle without looking silly or lead a cotillion. And he was so big
that little tinsel-worshiping Bernie couldn’t see him. So she struck
him, scarred him, wounded him without knowing, discounting all
Gentlewomen by her narrowness.
What this man needed was simple, pitifully simple. He needed some one in
his life with the capacity to love greatly. All else would follow as a
matter of normal dénouement.
“Dear boy,” she said huskily, “relax! Don’t worry any longer. Let all
the past and pressure ease away. Let’s even forget that you’re a man and
I’m a woman. Let’s see if we can’t just be good friends for a time—and
help each other. You have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide,
nothing to worry over, nothing to hold you or handicap you any more. You
have courage. You have strength. You have inherent ability. You have
hunger for beauty and divine discontent which the world needs more of.
You have that great, indefinable, invaluable thing which the world calls
Personality—your greatest asset! All life lies ahead of you. It’s
flooded with color and sunshine. And you’re ‘leaping as a strong man to
run a race.’ Wonderful! Start that race! Start for the Higher Hill Top.
You can do it. All you need is some one to believe in you. Well, maybe
there are far more people believing in you than you’ve ever dreamed.
Keep the faith with them, even as you’ve kept it so far with yourself.
Be true to your high calling wherewith you were called. Everything which
has gone before has been Education. You have reached Commencement now.
Ahead lies the world—the Battlefield! Go in with your Strongheart
singing. Oh, dear boy, you deserve it so! I know you deserve it—the
spoil—and the Hill Top!”
“God!” cried Nathan. He spoke the holy word in a way that kept it holy.
A woman telling him this!
There was a pain like a knife-thrust in the back of his throat. He sat
like a man turned to stone, scarcely daring to move. But he did move. He
turned his face and looked up into—calm eyes. Calm eyes? But starry eyes
too. They could be both. Verily they could be both.
With the self-assurance of the wise nurse—the woman of medicine perhaps
at the moment—who knew what her patient needed more than all else for
swift recovery—Madelaine gently drew Nathan toward her. She opened her
lap.
Nathan’s face went down into that lap. That strong face was awash with
hot, hard, terrible man-tears, though all the girl saw was a slight,
intermittent, noiseless contraction of his broad shoulders.
But his one good talon hand stole out—halfway around her waist. A grip
of iron!
It was the end of the trek for Nathan. In that simple privilege, that
soft lap, those cool, gentle hands that stroked his hair, the soothing
touch on his bowed back, the whispered words of comfort and incentive,
the lad came to know at last the great, indefinable, unfathomable solace
of a loving woman’s ministering tenderness. He did not want a mate—not
then. He wanted only a mother. And he got a mother. He got a
mother-spirit glorious. Richly it was his, for the taking; how richly he
never dreamed at the time. There was no less respect nor mate-love for
Nathan on the girl’s part in that moment, because he wanted the mother
in her. If he had not wanted it, she would have been disappointed. Other
things would come afterward—perhaps—after he had found himself, satiated
his starved, emaciated soul with her gentle sympathy and wisdom of his
need.
It was a strange scene to occur far in the empire of the ill-fated
Romanoffs. New England was twelve thousand miles removed at that moment.
And yet at the ends of the earth these two who needed each other so
greatly had found Arcadie. And all was well!
Heavier and thicker fell the snow outside. All sounds were muffled. The
world was shut out. The odorous oil lamp sputtered fussily—a perturbed
chaperone. Pleasant crackling of flame leaped now and then in the little
stove. Yet the war had been fought for this moment. Years before, this
tiny car had left the Moscow shops for this moment. It had been drawn to
Irkutsk and left precisely here for this moment. All things on earth had
moved forward and existed down to and for this moment. And Nathan felt
that whatever happened now, life from this moment would never be the
same again—not quite the same.
In his life there was now a _Woman_!
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