Not in its aspect of Juggernaut did the great city receive me that hot
September night at half-past eight, but as a veritable refuge where I
could lose myself among its millions.
I welcomed the roar of its thoroughfares, the noises of its traffic;
they deafened my soul. Jamie's voice saying: "We shall see you in
Crieff next summer--you and Ewart," grew faint and far away. Cale's
voice pleading, Cale's voice warning me: "You are doing him a bitterer
wrong than your mother before you," became less distinct.
The flashing electric signs were welcome and the white glaring lights
of Broadway. They dazzled me; they helped to blind my inner sight to
that vision of Mr. Ewart, standing on the shore of the little cove, far
away in that northern wilderness, and looking into my eyes with a look
that promised life in full.
I rode down the Bowery oblivious of myself; I was lost in wonder at the
multitudes. I knew those multitudes were composed of individuals; that
those individuals were distinct the one from the other. Each had his
experience, as I was having mine. Life was interpreting itself to each
in different terms: to some through drink; to others through
prostitution; to a few--thank God, only a few!--through threatened
starvation; to a host through the blessing of daily work; to hundreds
of unemployed through the misery of suspense. And love, hate,
faithfulness, treachery--all were there, hidden in the hearts of those
multitudes.
Some lines of William Watson's kept saying themselves over and over to
me in thought, as I watched those throngs; as I listened to the glare
of street bands, the grinding of hurdy-gurdies, and heard the flow of
street life, which is _the_ life, of the foreign East Side;
"Momentous to himself, as I to me,
Hath each man been that ever woman bore;
Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy,
I _felt_ this truth, an instant, and no more."
"Momentous to himself." Oh yes--not a soul among those thousands who
was not "momentous to himself", no matter how low soever fallen!
"Momentous to himself"--I watched the throngs, and _understood_.
I made my way into V--- Court, unafraid and unmolested. Delia Beaseley
opened the door. At sight of her all the pent-up emotion of weeks
threatened to find vent.
"Delia, it is I, Marcia Farrell--"
"Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried, as she drew me into the hall under
the dim light. "It is good to see you again! But what is it?" she
asked anxiously, lifting my hat from my face. "Are you sick?"
I could not answer her. She led me into the back room I remembered so
well. There, as once before, she pushed me gently into the
rocking-chair. She removed my hat and brought a fan.
"What is it, my dear? Can't you tell me?"
Oh, how many times, during her life of helpfulness, she must have asked
that question of homeless girls and despairing women!
"Delia," I began; then I hesitated. Should I tell her, or carry in
silence my trouble about with me? Before I could speak again, she had
her arms--those motherly arms I had felt before--around me; my head was
on her shoulder; my arms about her neck. I sobbed out my story, and
she comforted me as only a woman, who has suffered, can comfort.
"Let me stay a little while with you, Delia, till I get work again."
"Stay with me! Bless your heart, I couldn't let you go if you wanted
to. Here 's my Jane--she 's out now--ready to drop with the work and
the heat; we 've had a long spell of it, and I not knowing where to
turn for help just now, for I want her to go away on a vacation; she
needs it. Just you stay right here with me, and I 'll pack Jane off
to-morrow."
"Have you--is any body with you?" I asked.
"Yes." She nodded significantly. "There 's two of 'em on my hands
now. One's got through, and the other is expecting soon. Both of 'em
can't see the use of living, and Jane 's about worn out."
"You will let me help? I can do something, if it's only the housework."
"I can tend to that." She spoke decidedly. "What I want is to have
you round 'em, comforting 'em, cheerin' 'em--"
"_I_ comforting, _I_ cheering, Delia?"
She nodded emphatically. "Yes, my dear, just that. Your work is cut
out for you right here, for a few weeks anyway. You come upstairs with
me now and set with one of 'em, and give her a bowl of gruel--I was
just going to come up with one from the kitchen when you rung,--while I
get Jane's things together; she 'll be in by ten. She 's over to one
of the Settlement Houses helping out to-night."
Somehow, on hearing this account of Jane's activity--tired Jane who
could help and rescue at home, and then go out to the Settlement House
to give of her best till ten at night--my own life dwindled into
insignificance. The true spirit of the great city entered into me. I
felt the power of it for good. I felt its altruism; I realized its
deepest significance; and I saw wherein lay my own salvation from
selfish brooding, from forbidden craving, from morbid thinking.
"Let me have Jane's work," I said.
We talked no more that night of matters that were personal. I gave my
whole time and strength to help "bring her through", as Delia defined
the state of things in regard to a girl, five years younger than I,
"who had missed her footing".
It was an anxious week. There was delirium, despair, suicidal intent;
but we "brought her through".
While watching by that girl's bedside, I relived that experience of my
mother, the result of which was that I, Marcia Farrell, was there to
help. In those night watches I had time for many thoughts. Cale's
voice grew insistent, for the roar of the city was subdued at one and
two in the morning:
"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."
Over and over again I heard those words. The undertone of metropolitan
life, when at its lowest vitality, went on and on.--Two o'clock, three.
The girl on the bed grew quiet; delirium ceased. Four--I heard the
rattle of the milk-carts and the truck gardeners' wagons coming up from
the ferries.
"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Over
and over again I heard it.
Cale's voice was louder now, more and more insistent. All that day I
heard it above the push-cart vendors' cries and the hurdy-gurdy's dance
music, above the roar of the Second Avenue Elevated and the polyglot
street clamor.
Yes, I had to acknowledge it: my mother had wronged him. I visualized
that act in her life. I saw her promising to marry him, although she
was unwilling. I saw her giving herself in marriage to him in the
presence of the minister and her sick father. I saw her young husband
creeping out in the night to watch for her shadow on the curtain. I
saw him lying down to sleep a little after his vigil--but I could not
see my mother when she left the house. Not until she made sunshine in
the old manor, where I was conceived, not until she made sunshine in
the forest for old Andre, could I see her again in her youth and
beauty, in the enjoyment of her stolen bliss.
But I could see him whom she deserted. I saw him in the pasture among
the colts. I saw him raving at being made her dupe; I saw him even
raising his hand against Cale. I saw him in his fruitless search,
east, west, north, south. I saw him leaving the very house in which I
was watching. I saw him broken, changed, "cutting loose" from his old
life, determined to relive in other conditions, in other lands. I saw
him returning from that far Australian country to that house where my
mother's steps had resounded on the old flagging in the passageway at
Lamoral,--unknowing of her former presence there, unknowing that her
daughter was there awaiting him,--to that place which I, also
unknowing, had made home for him. I saw him living again in his love
for me who was her daughter!--and he knew this! Knew I was her
daughter.
How had he dared? And he her husband--my mother's husband! The
thought was staggering.
I looked at the girl on the bed. She was asleep, but her respiration
was rapid; she was breathing for two. "What if--"
I dared scarcely formulate my thought. Was he her husband? Did merely
the spoken word make Gordon Ewart and my mother, man and wife? What
was it Cale said: she had pleaded so with his mother not to be with her
husband that first night of her marriage. And there was no second.
I began to see differently, as Cale predicted. Horror, shame,
humiliation, despair, jealousy of my own mother--all this that
obstructed vision, deflected, distorted it, was being cleared away.
Had Mr. Ewart come to look at this matter in the same light, that he
had never been my mother's husband? That words, alone, could never
make him that?
"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."
Perhaps Cale was right.
"Why was he silent?" I asked myself, and found the answer: he could not
have gained my love, had I known. And he wanted my love--wanted me,
and me alone of all the world for his mate. But how could he, knowing?
I lost myself in conjecture, but I began to see clearly, differently.
My own act, my desertion of him, after what he had mutely promised, was
becoming a base thing in my eyes.