Georgia and Mason did not overpass the outward signs and boundaries of
platonism, learning to avoid not merely evil, but the appearance of
evil. When they met in the hundred-eyed office they were casual.
During the autumn they took long walks together every Sunday. There
had been a dry spell that year, lasting with hardly a break from the
fore part of June, which baked the land and sucked out the wells and
put the Northern woods in danger of their lives. The broad corn leaves
withered yellow and the husbandmen of the great valley protested that
the ears were but "lil' nubbins with three inches of nuthin' at the
tips, taperin' down to a point, and where'll we get our seed next
spring?"
When the huge downpour came at last and by its miracle saved the crop
which had been given up for lost a fortnight since, Mason cursed the
day, for it fell on the first day of the week and cost him, item, one
walk and talk with Georgia Connor. She stood so near his eyes as to
hide from his sight a billion bushels parching in the valley--though he
was country bred.
To her their Sundays together brought not a joy as definite as his, but
rather a sense of contentment, of relief from the precision of the
other days of her week. It pleased her to wander to the big aviary and
look at the condors and cockatoos and wonder about South America where
they came from, then to stroll slowly over to the animals and have a
vague difference of opinion with him about whether a lion could whip a
tiger.
She thought so because the lion was the king of beasts, but Mason
didn't, because he'd read of a fight where it had been tried. Once he
even grew a trifle heated because she wouldn't listen to reason and
fact and stuck to the lion because he'd been called the king of beasts,
whereas all naturalists knew the elephant and the gorilla and the
rhinoc---- There she interrupted him with a laugh and called him a boy
and too literal.
Every Sunday they had this same dispute until finally they both learned
to laugh about it and made it a joke between them, and she told him he
was doing much better. They walked by the inside lake and wondered if
the wild ducks and geese on the wooded isle liked to have to stay
there, and they took lunch when they got good and ready, perhaps not
until two or three or even four o'clock in the afternoon.
She always went home for supper, but often she came out again
afterwards, and took the car down town to a Sunday Evening Ethical
Society which foregathered in an old-fashioned theatre building.
There was almost always some well-known speaker whose name was often in
the papers, perhaps a professor or a radical Ohio Mayor or a labor
lawyer, to address them on up-to-date topics like Municipal Ownership
in Europe or the Russian Revolution or the Androcentric World, which
showed women had as much right to vote as men, or non-resistance, a
kind of Christianity that wasn't practical. Stevens didn't like that
lecture much.
Jane Addams spoke once about the children that lived in her
neighborhood. He thought her talk the best of all; so did Georgia. He
said to her that Jane Addams was as much of a saint as any of those
old-timers that were burnt and pulled to pieces and fed to lions, and a
useful kind of a saint as well, because she helped children instead of
just believing in something or other. Georgia didn't answer his remark
at the time, but nearly half an hour later as she was bidding him good
night she had him repeat it to her, and the next day she told him that
what he had said about Miss Addams was very interesting.
They had organ music at these meetings and a collection, so that he
felt it was the next thing to going to church. But Georgia in arguing
out the matter with herself concluded that there was so little religion
in the services that in attending them she violated the Church's law
against worshiping with heretics hardly more than if she went to a
political meeting. She would never go to a regular Protestant service
with Mason, even if he asked her. She made up her mind firmly on that
point. So perhaps it was as well he didn't ask her.
Her waking memories of Jim were now much fainter and dimmer. She tried
not to think of him at all. She refused to let her mother or Al speak
his name or make allusion to him. At the beginning, just after his
departure, mama had harped on the subject until she thought it would
drive her crazy.
Over and over and over again she traversed the same ground--about his
being her husband, and Christian charity, and one more trial, and the
disgrace of it, and that it was the first time such a thing ever
happened in the family.
Finally in self-defense and to save herself from being upset every
night when she was tired and worn out anyway, she told her mother that
the next time she mentioned Jim's name she would leave the room. And
she only had actually to do this three times before poor mama
succumbed, as she always did when she was met firmly. However, she
still managed to say a volume in Jim's favor with her deep sighs and
her "Oh, Georgia's," but Georgia always pretended she didn't know the
meaning of such signs and manifestations. Of course, especially at the
beginning, her husband's face often came unbidden between her and her
page, but she gathered up her will each time to banish it again, and
it's surprising what a woman can do if she only makes up her mind and
_sticks to it_.
But her dreams were the trouble. Jim would enter them. She didn't
know how to keep him out. And he always came, sometimes two or three
nights in succession, to bring her pain.
She usually appointed her Sunday rendezvous for an hour before noon at
Shakespeare's statue in the Park, and sailed off cheerily in her best
bib and tucker to meet Mason, leaving behind her a fine trail of
excuses, a complete new set each week, to explain to mama why she
couldn't go to mass. On this particular morning she said she had a
date with a girl-friend from the office.
With the best intention in the world she was never on time and always
kept him waiting. She was so unalterably punctual for six days a week
that the seventh day it was simply impossible.
Stevens usually became slightly irritated during these few
minutes--what business man wouldn't?--and referred to his watch at
hundred-second intervals, determined to ask her once and for all why
she wasted so much time in tardiness. But when finally he
distinguished her slim little figure in the Sunday throng that was
streaming toward him, his impatience left not a wrack behind.
They started gayly northward, bantering each other in urban repartee.
As they passed gray Columbus Hospital their mood swerved suddenly and
they talked of sickness and death and immortality.
Her belief was orthodox, but it did not hold her as vividly as it held
the old folk in the old days. Had she lived nearer to the miracles of
the sun going down in darkness and coming up in light; or thunderstorms
and young oats springing green out of black, with wild mustard
interspersed among them like deeds of sin; of the frost coming out of
the ground; and the leaves dying and the trees sleeping; she would
perhaps have lived nearer to the miracles of bread and wine, of Christ
sleeping that the world may wake.
But she lived in a place of obvious cause and effect. When the sun
went down, the footlights came up for you if you had a ticket, and
man's miracle banished God's even though you might be in the flying
balcony and the tenor almost a block away. Thunderstorms meant that it
was reckless to telephone; oats, wheat and corn, something they
controlled on the board of trade; the melting of the snows showed the
city hall was weak on the sewer side--what else could you expect of
politicians?--the dying leaves presaged the end of the Riverview season
and young Al's excitement over the world's series.
Living in the country puts a God in one's thoughts, for man did not
make the country and its changes, yet they are there. Farmers pray for
rain or its cessation according to their needs. To live in the city is
to diminish God and the seeming daily want of Him, for man built his
own city of steel and steam and stone, unhelped, did he not?
God may have made the pansies, but He did not make "the loop." His
majesty is hidden from its people by their self-sufficing skill, and
they turn their faces from Him. West-siders do not pray for universal
transfers.
Never had Georgia questioned her faith. Its extent remained as great
as ever. She had consciously yielded no part of her creed. But its
living quality was infected by the daily realism of her life, as spring
ice is honeycombed throughout with tiny fissures before its final
sudden disappearance.
So she talked to Stevens of her convictions, but in a calm
dispassionate way, without emotional fervor.
Stevens' great-grandparents whenever they referred to the Romanist
Church, which was often, spoke of "the scarlet woman" or "the whore of
Babylon." His grandparents, products of a softer, weaker generation,
stopped at adjectives, "papist," "Jesuitical," "idolatrous."
His parents receded still further from the traditions of the Pilgrims.
Indeed his father, being a popular horse doctor, kept his mouth shut
altogether on the subject, and his mother seldom went beyond remarking
that there was considerable superstition in the Catholic service and
too much form to suit her.
As for the son himself, he could as soon have quarreled about the
rights and wrongs of the Mexican war as he would about religion. He
wasn't especially interested in either. He thought there was a lot of
flim-flam for women in all religion, especially in Catholicism. But it
was an amiable weakness of the sex, like corsets. So he let Georgia
run on, explaining her faith, without interruption.
Then most wretched luck befell them. Georgia looked up from the tips
of her toes, being vaguely engaged, as she talked, in stepping on each
large pebble in the gravel path and her eyes rested squarely upon her
mother. Mrs. Talbot mottled; Georgia blushed.
All progress was temporarily arrested; then the older woman puffed out
her chest and waddled away with all the dignity at her summons. But
she could not resist the Parthian shot--what Celt can!--and she turned
to throw back over her shoulder, "Who's your girl-friend, Georgia?"
Her teeth clicked and she continued her departure.
Stevens realized that there had been a contretemps of some sort and
that it was his place, as a man of the world, to laugh it off.
"Who's the old pouter pigeon?" he inquired.
"Mama."
"Oh!"
Feeling that candor was now thrust upon her, Georgia proceeded to
explain to Stevens that she had never explained about him to her
mother, for mama couldn't possibly understand, being old-fashioned and
prejudiced in some regards.
"So you've made me fib for you," she finished. "Aren't you ashamed!"
"Yes," said he, in truth much gratified by her clandestineness.
"But what I don't see is----," he began, then broke off.
"Is what?"
"Is why you should be so disturbed about your _mother's_ knowing."
"I've told you--for the sake of peace and a quiet life."
"But what about your husband?" He blurted it out suddenly, the word
which had crucified him since his one and only visit to her home; the
word which he had kept dumb between them until now. "What about him?
Doesn't he mind?"
"He left me six months ago. You never supposed I would take a man's
bread and--fool him, did you, Mason?" She called him by his name for
the first time.
"I didn't know," he muttered, "I've been to hell and back thinking of
it."
"How did you suppose it would come out?" she asked, fascinated
objectively by the drama of her life.
"I felt we were playing bean-bag with dynamite--and we ought to
quit--made up my mind--while I was waiting for you this morning to tell
you this must be the last time, because we were drifting straight
into----" He paused.
"Into what?" There was a touch of gentlest irony in her tone.
"Into trouble, lots of it." There was a touch of apology in his.
"And you didn't want trouble, lots of it?" Her irony was not less.
"At least not on my account?"
"I was thinking of what would be best for all of us. I was trying to
do the square thing--the greatest happiness for the greatest number."
There was a pause, unsympathetic. "Wasn't that right?" he ended with
no great confidence.
"Why, of course, perfectly right," she assented heartily. "It shows
consideration. You considered the case systematically from all sides.
Yours, and mine, and my husband's, and the rest of the family's, and
the rest of yours, too, I suppose, didn't you?" She looked extremely
efficient and spoke in her business voice with a little snap to her
words.
She was quite unfair in taking this tack with unhappy Stevens, who,
however often he thought of his duty in these twisted premises, would
surely not have done it if she beckoned him away. For she owned the
only two hands in the world which he wanted to hold.
A woman, however, prefers to be the custodian of her own morals and it
gratifies her at most no more than slightly to find that her lover has
been plotting with himself to preserve her virtue. It is for the man
to ask and for her to deny, sadly but sweetly--and she doesn't care to
be anticipated. Especially when she is self-perceptibly interested.
"But since you are already separated from----"
"Yes, that makes it pleasanter all around, doesn't it?" she led him on
most treacherously.
"Why, of course--that's what I was saying," he blundered. "Now I can
ask you to----"
"Mason, I've a frightful headache, the sun perhaps--and I think I will
go home and lie down, if you don't mind."
He looked up in some amazement at the lord of day half hidden by the
haze in his November station, and it suddenly occurred to him that
woman is a various and mutable proposition always.
"What's the matter with you, anyway?"
"Nothing," she responded with deliberate unconvincingness, "nothing in
the world, but a headache." She held out her hand. "Don't bother to
come with me. We might be seen. Good-bye." And she was off.
It was a winding gravel path and she was lost behind a curving hedge
before he started in pursuit. She quickened her pace when she heard
his step behind and it was almost a walking race before he overtook her.
"Georgia," he exclaimed, somewhat ruffled by her unreasonableness. She
neither turned her head nor answered.
"Georgia!" he repeated more loudly. Then he took her wrist and
forcibly arrested her.
"Please let me go," she requested with supreme dignity, "you are
hurting me."
"Not until you hear what I have to say. Will you marry me?"
"Marry you?" She dropped her eyes before his frowning ones. The
shoulders which had been thrown so squarely back seemed to yield like
her will and drooped forward into softer lines.
"Yes," he tightened his hold on her wrist, "will you?"
"I am a Catholic."
"But isn't there some way around that?" Your man of business believes
there is some way around everything.
"No. Divorce and remarriage aren't permitted to us."
"Don't they ever annul a marriage?"
"Not if it has been marriage." A look of misery came over his face.
She perceived it and went steadily on. "I had a child once--that died."
He dropped her hand, unconsciously to himself, but she felt it as a
clear signal between them.
"You see how little you have known me," she said softly. "Poor old
fellow, I'm sorry. Too bad it had to end like this." Her eyes were
now swimming in tears which she did not try to conceal. "Don't you
see, dear, that is why I kept putting off telling you things about my
affairs, and why I had tried to keep it--friendship, because I knew
when we came as far as this we would have to stop."
"It will never stop," he said tensely, "never."
Response seemed to sweep through her suddenly, bewildering her by its
unexpected strength.
"Perhaps not," she assented slowly, "if--if we--dare."
"Georgia," he pleaded, "you know that I----"
"Yes," in a whisper, "I know."
"And do you care, too?"
She looked up, and her answer was plain for him to read.
"More than you will ever know, Mason," she said.
"Georgia, are you a devout Catholic? Does it mean all of life to you
here and hereafter?"
"No, not very devout. Nothing like mother, for instance. I have grown
very careless about some things."
"Would you always be governed by the teaching of the Church in this
matter--always--never decide for yourself?"
"When it came to such a big thing," she said slowly, "I don't think I'd
dare disobey."
"What are you afraid of--future punishment?"
"Why, yes, partly that," she smiled; "it isn't a very jolly prospect,
you know."
He was truly astonished. He supposed that everybody nowadays, even
Catholics, had tacitly agreed to give up hell. Hell was too
ridiculously unreasonable to be believed in any more.
"Georgia," he asked, "have you ever looked much at the stars?"
"Why, yes; once in awhile. Last Sunday evening at Bismarck Garden Al
and I found the dipper--it was just as plain--is that what you mean?
Of course I don't pretend to be much of an astronomer."
"Some nights," he said, "when it's clear I go up on the roof and lie on
my back, and, well, it's a great course in personal modesty. Some of
those stars, those little points of light, are as much bigger than our
whole world as an elephant is bigger than a mosquito, and live as much
longer."
"Of course," she answered, "we know that everything is bigger than
people used to think, but still couldn't God have made it all, just the
same?"
"Do you honestly believe," he rejoined, speaking very earnestly, intent
on shaking her faith, if that were possible, "that Whoever or Whatever
was big enough to put the stars in the sky is small enough to take
revenge forever on a tiny little molecule like you--or me? Do you
honestly suppose that after you are dead, perhaps a long time dead,
this mighty God will hunt for you through all the heavens, and when he
has found you, you poor little atom of a dead dot, that he will torment
and pester you forever and ever because you had once for a space no
longer than the wink of an eye acted according to the nature he gave
you? If that is your God, he has put nothing in his universe as cruel
as Himself."
She frowned in a puzzled way for a few seconds, looking at him with an
odd little wide-eyed stare, then shook her head slowly.
"Yes," said he in answer. "Some day you will take your life in your
own hands and use it. You're not the stuff they make nuns out of.
There's too much vitality in you.
"How old are you?" he asked suddenly.
"Twenty-six."
"Twenty-six and ready to quit? I don't believe it."
"You don't understand, Mason," she answered, "you can't. You're not a
Catholic. Catholicism is different from all other creeds. It is not
just something you think and argue about, but it has you--you belong to
it; it is as much a part of you as your blood and bones." There was a
finality in her voice, a resignation of self, which bespoke the vast
accumulated will of the Church operating upon and through her.
Stevens knew suddenly that she was not an individualized woman in the
same sense that he was an individualized man, with the private
possibility of doing what he pleased so long as he did not interfere
with the private possibilities of others; he realized that in certain
important intimate matters such as the one which had arisen between
them she was without power of decision, the decision having been made
for her many centuries ago; and he felt the awe which comes to every
man when first he is confronted by the Roman Catholic Church.
"You mean there is no way out of it--but death?--your husband's death?"
His self-confidence seemed to have departed as if he, too, had met fate
in the road.
"Yes," she answered gently, "that is the only way." And then she
smiled with some little effort, but still she smiled, for she detested
gloom on her day off. "Oh, Mason," said she, "why wasn't grandpa a
Swede?"
He looked at her with amazement and not without a trace of
disapprobation, for her eyes were dancing. Was she actually making
jokes about his misery--to say nothing of hers--if indeed she felt any?
He was learning more about women every minute.
Now she was practically giggling. He frowned deeper and sighed.
Perhaps, perhaps everything was for the best, after all. He might as
well tell her so, too. No reason to make himself wretched for
something she seemed to think hilariously humorous.
"Well, Georgia, I must say," he began portentously--'twas the voice of
the husband--almost. She could hear him complain. Whereat she simply
threw back her head and laughed again.
He noticed, as he had often noticed, that her strong little teeth were
white and regular, that her positive little nose was straight and
slender, and the laughter creases about her eyes reminded him of the
time she thought it such fun to be caught in Ravinia Park in the rain
without an umbrella.
So presently he tempered his frown, then put it away altogether, and
his eyes twinkled and he turned the corners of his mouth up instead of
down.
"Oh, dear me," he mocked, half in fun and half not, "as the fellow
says, 'we can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em.'"
But she, who had been reading him like a book in plain print, asked,
"Come, tell aunty your idea of a jolly Sunday in the park with your
best girl. To sit her on a bench and make her listen while you mourn
for the universe?"
"But what are we going to do about it?" he asked solemnly, "that's what
I want to know."
"Do?" she responded with a certain gay definiteness, "do nothing."
"You mean not see each other any more at all?" he asked desperately.
"I absolutely refuse."
"No, silly, of course I don't mean that. We'll go on just as before,
friends, comrades, pals."
"When we love each other--when we've told each other we love each
other?"
"Certainly. What's that got to do with it?"
"It would be the merest pretense," he declared solemnly.
"Then let's begin the pretense now, and go up and throw a peanut at the
elephant. Come along." She hooked her arm into his. Her levity of
behavior undoubtedly got past him at times.
"Georgia"--he was once more on the verge of remonstrance--"if you cared
as you say you do, if you _loved_ me as I l----"
She unhooked her arm and now she was serious enough.
"Don't you understand," she said, "what I mean? We can't talk about
that any more."
"You mean not at all?"
"Precisely."
"But what if I can't conceal the most important thing in my whole life?
What if I can't smirk and smile about it? What if I am not as good an
actor as you? What if I can't pretend? What then?" He was very, very
fierce with her.
"Then I suppose I'll have to go home." They stood irresolute, facing
each other, neither wishing to carry it too far.
"Not that that would be much fun---- Oh, come, don't be silly--let's
go attack the elephant. What must be, must be, you know."
She paused to allow him time to yield with grieved dignity, then she
headed for the animal house; he trailed in silence about half a step
behind her during the first hundred yards, but finally sighed and
surrendered and then fell into step and pretended during the rest of
the afternoon with quite decent success.
So his education began. And though he was by no means pliable
material, she managed, being vastly the more expert, to keep him
pretending with hardly a lapse throughout the winter.
She found it more difficult, however, to keep herself pretending.
X