There is a place called an Inn above a city in the mountains--it
was built only a few years ago by a man with a Brobdingnagian
imagination--a huge pile of bowlders, tunneled and dragged down from
the mountain sides and put together as if the ages had soldered them
into a great castle. The walls within are rough and covered with
strange scripts, fragments of great lines from great poets, sentences
from philosophers and saints. It is not a place for tourists, but for
people weary with the strife of living, made obedient to peace and
silence by exhaustion.
I have seen this place. It is marvelous, and strangely effective
morally. Bad people get a somnambulant look there, because they are
sleepwalking in their virtues. They get a look of naïve innocence; or,
if the system of moral compensation in them is broken, they take a
horrified look around and escape on the next train.
One morning, so early that the day was still a gray cavern between
earth and sky with the wild March winds whirling in it, a slender
woman descended from a taxicab at the gateway to the drive which
led down the mountain slope to this Inn. She wore a blue coat with a
fur collar drawn close about her fair face, a small fur hat with an
exceeding vivid rose tucked into the band of thicker fur around the
crown and fitted so snugly that a mere line of her bright hair showed
beneath. She had eyes the color of blue flowers, paler than violets,
the kind that always look up at you meaningly from the cold ground in
March--but you do not know what they mean--exactly as this woman’s eyes
looked upward and abroad now beneath the narrow sweeping line of her
swallow-winged brows.
She was not young; she was touched with the same sadness of those pale
blue flowers above the winter earth. But she appeared young in this
half light of the early dawn. Any man at the sight of her, swinging
gracefully down the winding road between the naked trees, beneath the
pearling skies of daybreak, might have conceived the idea of courting
her. But he would have dismissed it instantly after a nearer reading
look. He would have perceived that she was already “taken,” that
she belonged either to a man or to his children. She was not in the
possessive case.
She loitered along the way, as one familiar with this place, looking
for remembered things, ferns between the rocks, puffs of green moss
above these rocks, flashes of wild azalea deeply bowered among the
laurel bushes, tall stalks of shooting star blossoms white against
the gray bluff, and a path leading from the roadway up the side of
the bluff. I suppose there is not even one little high place on this
earth which has not somewhere upon it a path that goes to the top. And
frequently the idlest people in the world make them. It is due to the
futile persistence of the altar instinct in them.
She had come down into the paved plaza in front of the Inn before
the porter carrying her bags overtook her. She followed him through
the door and paused at the breath-taking majesty of this huge room.
Filled with guests, its dignity was diminished; but bare and solemn
and silent in this early morning hour, it was tremendous. She cast
a glance upward at the rough walls, scrolled over with those mighty
texts taken from the Scriptures that men have made for themselves, but
not one from Moses or the Prophets--the idea being, I suppose, not to
open the bleeding wounds of conscience in many guests by reminders too
authoritatively worded about their sins and trespasses.
She caught sight of one at last from Marcus Aurelius as if she had been
looking for it. The wisdom of it did not apply to her case, but it
soothed her for that reason, because she remembered it as an exit she
used to take from her unhappy thoughts during those first months of her
unnatural widowhood. When you are bedridden within by a secret grief,
these old negative philosophers are very good drug doctors for your
complaints. This is why so many miserable women take to the narcotics
of theosophy and other forms of recumbent mysticisms. They are mental
opiates.
“Good morning, Mrs. Cutter! Glad to see you back here,” the night clerk
said, smiling sleepy-eyed at her as she approached the desk. He swung
the register around and offered her a pen.
“You received my wire?” she asked, when she had written her name.
“Yes, and fortunately we were able to reserve the same room for you,”
he answered, evidently referring to a request which she had wired.
“Shall you want a car, as usual, Mrs. Cutter?” he called after her as
she was about to enter the elevator.
“Not until this afternoon. How are the roads?”
“Very good, at least your favorite one is,” he assured her.
She had come to this Inn immediately after Cutter left her the previous
year. She had recovered her health of mind and strength of body in this
quiet place; she had profited by the patterns of peace and imagination
it afforded; and she had spent much time visiting fine old houses,
studying the manners, ways and clothes of the people who came and went.
She acquired for the first time in her life some feeling and sense of
elegance, lines and colors. And it was here that she met the architect
who drew the plans for remodeling her house at Shannon.
She resumed her old diversions now. She mingled little with the other
guests, but spent her time driving about the country. She was still
oppressed by the rude awakening she had, that last day in Shannon, to
the fact that she loved and longed for her husband. She was disturbed
and humiliated by this revelation, as one is by the awakening of some
weakness we believe we have outgrown.
The issue constantly in her mind was whether, after all, it would not
be wiser to give up her house in Shannon and live this idle, pleasant
existence. There were no associations here to remind her of the
past. And in spite of her huge expense in the effort to destroy these
memories, it was after she came back to Shannon that the old pain and
unhappiness had returned to overwhelm her. Then this issue was settled
for her with a horrible, irrevocable decision, and she was flung
violently back upon the one refuge, her house in Shannon, and the one
plan she had for substituting love with affection, which she had been
on the point of abandoning.
One evening she came down late for dinner, passed through the swinging
doors and sat down at the table reserved for her, which was near these
doors. The room was filled with week-end guests. She had an excellent
view of this brilliant company. There were handsomely gowned women,
rouged and sparkling with jewels; there were more men than were usually
to be seen at leisure during this man-grasping war period; and quite a
sprinkling of military officers, evidently on leave from Washington.
Helen had given her order and sat idly scanning the scene before her,
listening to snatches of conversation from the nearer tables.
She was barely enough like these other women in her ivory-white,
embroidered Canton crêpe not to attract attention. She was pale, as
they were painted. Her hair lay in a soft golden coil on her head,
where their hair ruffled in a thousand glistening convolutions. Her
lips were parted, showing the lapped edge of the two white teeth. The
dark lashes of her eyes were more apparent, because of the blueness of
these eyes and of the whiteness of her skin.
Once she caught the steady, dark gaze of a woman seated directly
opposite her, but at a distant table. She lifted her own glance and
hurried by this overhead route back to the bunch of violets in the vase
on her own table. She could not have told why she did this, probably
for the same reason one flinches and draws back from the sudden flash
of a brilliant flame. She sat staring at the violets, wondering about
this woman, not intelligently, with a sort of amazement which was not
pleasant. Never before had she seen such a fury of commanding beauty.
She thought she must be tall. She was very dark--olive skin, flushed
like a velvet rose; black hair, daringly coiffured and heightened by a
Spanish comb; a straight, imperious nose; a fine-lipped mouth, red and
cruelly turned to mirth. But the fury of her beauty lay in the smoking
black eyes. And the maroon velvet gown she wore seemed somehow to
enhance the heat of terrible, searing beauty, as if the body of this
woman had been forged, slim and strong, in a furnace and still glowed
dangerously and dully.
Helen wondered why she had not seen her when she entered the dining
room, for now she could almost hear her crackle. Yet she did not look
up again in that direction. There was a man at the table with this
woman, she knew; but she had been so startled by the native malice of
those dark eyes that she had only a blurred impression of his back.
Suddenly there was a sound in this place where the confused murmur of
many voices made a thousand sounds. It was the rich, rollicking laugh
of a man, one high note quickly suppressed.
Helen stiffened, her hand flew to her breast as if she had received a
mortal wound. This trumpeting note of mirth was as much a part of her
experience as her husband’s kisses had been. Her lips tightened, her
eyes wide with horror flew this way and that, scanning every face. Then
they fell again upon the dark woman whom she had forgotten in this
sudden anguish. Instantly she felt the red lash of this woman’s smile,
as if she had reached across the space between them to strike a blow.
There was contempt and recognition in the smoldering black eyes--no
defiance, but triumph.
The man facing her at this table with his back to Helen caught it,
flirted his head around to find the object of it--and looked straight
into the eyes of his wife!
For one instant they held this silent interview with each other in that
crowded room. Then the woman struck her hands together with a sharp,
little smack, and let out a gale of laughter, too keen, too high in
this decent place. Every head was turned toward her, every eye fell
upon her in polite amazement. Still she laughed. And still George
Cutter’s eyes followed his wife. For Helen had risen at the first note
of that stinging laugh and had made her way blindly from the room.
“What happened?” asked a fat man, rolling a pop-eyed look across the
table at his wife.
“I didn’t see anything,” she replied, taking her soup with the
absorption of an innocent person.
“Who was the pale lady? Didn’t you see her going out?”
“A lot of people are coming in and going out,” his wife returned,
skinning the bottom of her soup plate with her spoon.
“And there’s the one that did the laugh,” he said, nodding at the woman.
“She looks like a jade; probably is one,” his wife announced, with one
appraising look.
“Fellow with her is all in then--head down, knees sprung, tail
drooping. He’s come a cropper and knows it. Look at him, Lily.”
The old Lily looked at the man before the “jade” indifferently, then
passed the look on to the service door from whence cometh, or should
come, the next course of this very good dinner. “Henry, you are a born
scandalmonger,” she said reproachfully.
“No, it’s an acquired taste, but I have it; and if ever I saw a fine
scene in a matrimonial melodrama, I’ve just witnessed one. Pale lady’s
the wife, t’other one’s the gallant gal bandit, and the man’s the
victim,” he snickered.
Before these guests had finished dining, Helen Cutter had left the Inn.
A week later Charlotte received a wire from her mistress, instructing
her to send Buck with the car to Atlanta in time to meet a certain
train at the Terminal Station on a certain day. This message was sent
from Baltimore, which had not been Mrs. Cutter’s destination when she
left home, Charlotte observed with a sniff. She did not like Mrs.
Cutter’s ways, referring to this tendency she had of flying about the
world alone when she had a perfectly good maid, who had expected to
accompany her. And she did not like the company she kept, referring to
Shippen who was the only visitor she had received. And what was more to
the point, she had no idea of being buried alive in this little speck
of a town. Therefore she meant to go back to Atlanta in the car, and
stay there--strong emphasis on the last two words.
It was known in Shannon that “Helen Cutter had gone again.” But as late
as the third week in April, no one knew that she had returned. There
was a rumor current that probably she would not come back, since she
must have realized that everybody knew what had happened.
Then Mrs. Flitch, who was out selling Liberty Bonds one afternoon,
passed the Cutter place and beheld a baby carriage on the lawn! Not
only that, but the carriage was obviously occupied, because Maria,
togged out in a nurse’s cap and apron, was rolling it back and forth
along the driveway. Mrs. Flitch said later that you could have “knocked
her down with a feather,” but she decided no matter what kind of woman
Helen Cutter was, it was no more than right that she should be called
upon to buy these bonds. Therefore she turned in and walked briskly up
the drive, meeting Maria directly front of the house.
“Is Mrs. Cutter at home?” she asked, ignoring the old woman’s
occupation.
“No’m, she ain’t here; she’s gone to git a goat,” Maria answered.
“A goat!”
“Yes’m, a milk goat for the baby,” rolling her eyes.
Mrs. Flitch stood perfectly still, the incarnation of malignant
virtue, allowing her eyes to pass back and forth between Maria and the
carriage. The wicker hood concealed the contents from her avid gaze.
When she could endure her curiosity no longer, she moved slowly around
to the front, but maintaining a decent distance, and stared.
The baby recognized her at once, grinned, showing several teeth, and
waved a highly ornamental teething ring.
“Maria, whose child is this?” Mrs. Flitch demanded sternly, as if it
was her duty to know.
“Miss Helen says it’s her’n,” was the noncommittal reply.
Followed a series of questions as to the age and possible complexion of
this child. One confidence led to another question until Maria let go
and told all that she knew, which only increased the cloud hanging over
the origin of this baby.
She said that she had gone in to clear the table that night in August
of last year when Mr. Cutter left his wife. She had heard him tell her
that he was going to leave her.
“What did Mrs. Cutter say to that?”
“Not a word. From first to last I did not hear her open her mouth, Mrs.
Flitch. But he talked a right smart. I disremember what he said, but
it wa’n’t praisin’. Then he goes out and banged the door after him. He
ain’t been here since.”
“And she does not hear from him?”
“Not as I knows of. Miss Helen left ’reckly after he did, and she was
gone five months. But she wa’n’t wid him. We used to git letters from
her from a place in Ca’lina.”
“Which, North or South Carolina?”
“I don’t know, ’m. Buck read the letters.”
“This is a strange baby,” Mrs. Flitch announced grimly.
Maria wiped her eyes. She was working herself up to an emotional pitch
by some act of memory. Mrs. Flitch waited for the revelation she knew
must be coming.
“I’m goin’ to tell you all I know about how come dis baby. Not as it
kin explain somethings, like her having black hair and being dark
complected, but it’s all I know,” she began.
“Go on.”
“After Mr. Cutter was gone, Miss Helen laid in bed three days. She jest
laid there, white as a corpse, with her eyes open. She didn’t shed no
tears and she didn’t say anything, mor’n for me to hand her a glass of
water or somethin’ like that. Then one mornin’ she hops out of bed,
dresses herself an’ goes downtown to the bank. While she was dressin’
I comes to the door to fetch her slippers, which I’d been polishin’ in
the kitchen.” Maria left off and rolled her eyes lugubriously, as if
such a tongue as she had could not reveal the rest.
“Go on; what happened?”
“Mrs. Flitch,” lowering her voice to a tragic whisper, “she was talkin’
to herself! ‘Now,’ she says, ‘I kin have children.’ She said them words
over and over, ’s if she was glad of the chance.”
“But what did she mean?”
“I d’no, ’m. I been in this world a long time, an’ I ain’t never heerd
no ’oman, white or black, say sech things and her husband jest that
minute ’sertin’ her. But she’s done it--what she said she’d do. Here’s
the child,” she concluded, standing like a black exclamation point
beside the baby carriage.
Mrs. Flitch counted her fingers surreptitiously and regarded the infant
once more with a sort of expert scientific stare.
“Where is the maid? I understood Mrs. Cutter had a maid?” she asked
suddenly, as if she was on the point of subpoenaing a more competent
witness.
“She’s gone. Said she didn’t like the looks of it.”
“Of what?”
“I d’no, ’m.”
“Maria,” Mrs. Flitch said after a staccato silence, “you need not tell
Mrs. Cutter that I called.”
“La! Mrs. Flitch, hit don’t make no difference. This baby ain’t no
secret, whatever else it is. Miss Helen don’t keer who knows she’s got
it,” Maria called after her.
All these months this servant had known what Helen believed no one knew
in Shannon, the minutest details of that last scene with her husband.
There are no secrets. We may give alms so privately that the twin right
hand of our left hand remains blissfully ignorant of what we spent
on these alms. Nothing is easier than to conceal a good deed, if you
really wish to do so, because it is not our nature to suspect each
other of secret goodness. It is hard enough to obtain credit when we
stand on the street corner and proclaim our charity in a loud voice, or
get the whole beautiful thing exploited in the public press. This is
what we usually do, being in some mortal doubt whether, after all, the
reward promised by our Heavenly Father will be conferred openly enough
or soon enough to pay for the unnatural expense of secrecy. This is a
mistake, of course, because, while we are duly credited, the smiling,
cynical interpretation placed upon our motive takes the shine off the
deed and the alms.
But let one of the best of us become involved in a doubtful deed,
however innocently, and it is known. Witnesses spring from the very
ground to swear to your guilt, even if you have gone into your closet
to taste a pleasant fault. Even if, as in Helen’s case, the evidence
is flimsy and circumstantial, there is always an eye that sees, an
ear that hears, a tongue to tell what happened or what apparently
happened. The deeper truth--the innocence of the wicked, the guilt of
the saints--remains hidden save from the omniscience of the Almighty.
This is why it seems to me highly probable that there really may
be a super-record kept in a Book of Life far removed from the laws
and judgments of this present world. We shall be graded accordingly,
exalted or demoted, not so furiously condemned as our own heinous
imaginations demand.