"Well, he doesn't learn, and nobody ever teaches him. He just sits
round in the barber shop, brushing hats and hanging up overcoats, and
wishing to the Lord he _was_ a barber, and all of a sudden he _is_ one.
He's watched the shaves and hair-clips, hardly knowing he's been doing
it, but wishing like blazes all the while, and at last it comes to him
like song to a young bird. Now you've got to sit round. Sit tight and
sit round. Wish and watch, and watch and wish, and the divine urge that
turns a youngster into a barber, because that's what he's got his heart
on, will steer you into the right way. This isn't going to be anything
you can learn, as you'd learn to drive a motor or dissect a dead body.
It won't be a profession, it'll be a _life_, that'll show you the trick.
Don't try to hurry things, Jasper; and don't expect that three weeks or
three months or three years are going to make this mum old world fork
you out its secrets. Just stick, and if you don't do the thing you're
aiming at you'll do another just as useful. Why, the doctor was going
to chuck all his experiments on the influenza bug when I persuaded him
to keep at it; and so he discovered the thing that scientists have been
after since Dockendorff thought he'd tracked it down as long ago as
1893. All _sticking_!"
*CHAPTER III*
I confess that I was comforted by these hearty words, and braced in a
determination that was beginning to splutter out. Drinkwater's divine
urge was not unlike my own thread of flame and Denis's Holy Mother, who
was a light even to the feet of Protestants. It was the same
principle--that of a guide, an impulse, an illumination, which our own
powers could generate when lifted up to, and associated with, the
universal beneficence. I decided to take to formula, "Wish and watch,
and watch and wish," as the device of my knight-errantry. As a matter
of fact, by the sheer process of wishing I secured a secondary position
for myself in the textile department of the Metropolitan Museum, while
by that of watching I found that one of Bridget's boys and two of the
Finn's had aptitudes highly worth developing right along this line. It
wasn't much; but it was a beginning in the way in which I hoped to go,
and might lead to something more.
In all this time, as you can imagine, Vio was my ruling thought, and
guessing her intentions my daily occupation. Since she presumably
wanted a divorce, there were doubtless grounds on which she could secure
one by going the right way to work; but as to whether she was doing this
or not nothing had yet been said to me. Nothing was said to me of any
kind. I had not written to her, nor had she to me; and my other
communication with Boston was only through my bankers. Even that was
growing more irregular since I had changed my business address to
Meeting-House Green.
What I was chiefly seeking was forgetfulness. Lydia had reproached me
with being a "poor boob" in giving up the struggle for Vio's love; but
Lydia hadn't known the wound Vio had inflicted. The more I thought of
that the more I felt it due to the dignity of love to attempt neither
explanation nor defense. On mere circumstantial evidence Vio had
believed me guilty of the crime she would probably have rated as the
blackest in the calendar. I couldn't forgive that. I had no intention
of forgiving it. The more I loved her the less I could forget that she
had returned my love in this way. The most chivalrous thing I could do,
the most merciful toward her, and the most tender was what I was doing.
I could leave her without a contradiction, so justifying tacitly
whatever she may have thought, and putting no restraint on her future
liberty of action.
I said so to Mildred Averill when we talked it over about the middle of
March. I had not intended to renew this connection unless a sign was
made from the other side; but it was given in the form of a line from
Miss Averill begging me to come and see her in the apartment she had
taken for herself in Park Avenue, where at last she had a little home.
Knowing that my duties kept me at the Museum on week-days she had fixed
the time for a Sunday afternoon.
It will be remembered that we had met in the previous December, so that
I found little change in her now. As I had noticed then, she had grown
more spiritual, with an expression of restfulness and peace.
"That's because I don't struggle so much," she explained, in answer to
my remark on this change; "I don't fight so much. I'm not nearly the
rebel I used to be."
"Does that mean that you've made up your mind to let things go?"
"No; to let things come. That's what I wouldn't do before. I wanted to
hurry them, to force them, to drag them along. I begin to see that life
has its own current upward, and that we succeed best by getting into it
and letting it carry us onward."
"But doesn't that theory tend to take away one's own initiative?"
"I don't know that initiative is any good if it's directed the wrong
way. Did you ever watch a leaf being carried down-stream? As long as
it's in the current it goes swiftly and safely. Then something catches
it and throws it into some little side-pool or backwater, where it goes
fretting and swirling and tearing itself to pieces and never getting
anywhere. Well, it's something like that. I was in a side-pool, lashing
round and round and churning my spirit, such as it is, into nervous
irritations of every kind, making myself the more furious because my
efforts were to no purpose."
"And how did you get out into the current again?"
"By wishing, in the first place. It began to seem to me such a foolish
thing that, being given all the advantages in the world, I could do
nothing but frustrate them. I was like a person with a pack of cards in
his hand, not knowing how to play any game. I longed to learn one, even
the simplest; and I think it was the idea of the simplest that saved
me."
"I'm not sure that I get that, the simplest."
"Oh, it's nothing abstruse or original. I suppose it's no more than the
accepted principle of doing the duty that's nearest. Hitherto, I'd felt
that nothing was a real duty but what was far away. Then I began to see
that right under our own roof-- You see, Boyd and Lulu weren't very
happy, and I'd been leaving them to shift for themselves while I tried
to do things for people like Lydia Blair and Harry Drinkwater, and a lot
of others who were perfectly well able to take care of themselves. So I
began to wonder if I couldn't ... and to wish.... And it's so curious!
The minute I did that the things I could do were right there just as if
they'd been staring me in the face for years, and I hadn't had the eyes
to see them."
"What sort of things?"
"Oh, hardly worth naming when it comes to words. Not big things, little
things. If Lulu wanted something she couldn't find in New York, a
particular sort of scarf or piece of music, no matter what, I'd tell
Boyd and he'd send for it; and, of course, you see! Or if Lulu said
anything nice about Boyd, which she did now and then, I'd make it a
point of telling him. That's the sort of thing, nothing when you come
to talk about it, and yet in practice-- That's what I mean by the
simplest, the easiest, and most natural; and so I formed a kind of
principle."
"Do you mind telling me what it is?"
"Only that, whoever you are, your work is given you; you don't have to
go into the highways and hedges to look for it. That queer boy, Harry
Drinkwater, gave me the secret of it first. I asked him one day how it
was that, in spite of all his handicaps, he managed to get on so well.
He said he had only one recipe for success, which was wishing and
watching, and watching and wishing. He said there was no door that
wouldn't open to you of its own accord if you stood before it long
enough with that Sesame in your heart. I remember his saying, too, that
in the matter of work, desire--desire that's not wrong, of course--was
our first point of contact with the divine, since the thing that we
urgently wish to do is the thing by which we re-express the God who has
first expressed Himself in us. The most important duty, then, is to
find out what we really want, and then to wish and watch. Most of us
don't know what we want, or, if we do, we're not clear enough about it,
and so we get lost in confusion, like travelers in a swamp. Of course
he said it all much more quaintly than I'm doing it; but that was the
gist, and it helped to put me into the line of thought in which
I've--I've found content."
"That is, you analyzed first what it was you really wanted to do."
"Exactly; and I discovered two things: first, that I didn't want
anything half so much as to help--I've told you that before--unless it
was the happiness of the people to whom I was nearest. I found, too,
that if I began at the beginning and followed the line of least
resistance I'd get farther in the end. Up to that time I'd begun in the
middle, and so could get neither backward nor forward, as I used to
complain to you."
Having thought this over, I said:
"You're fortunate in having the people to whom you're nearest close
enough to you for--for daily intercourse and influence."
There was distinct significance in her response.
"Perhaps I'm fortunate in never having turned my back on them as long as
they were in need of me. Do you remember how I used to want a home of
my own? Well, something kept me at least from _that_. Whenever I came
face to face with doing what I've felt free to do at last, there was
always a second thought that held me back. If Boyd and Lulu had had
children it would have been different. But Lulu didn't want any
till--till lately, and so I felt that something was needed to ease the
grinding of the wheels between them. I did recognize that. But now that
they've got the little boy--"
"Got a little boy?" I said, in astonishment.
"Why, yes. Didn't any one tell you? Two weeks old to-day, and such a
darling! One day he looks like Lulu, and the next like Boyd, and
they're both as happy as two children. That's why I've felt free to be
my own mistress, to this extent, at least. Things do work out, you
know, if you'll only give them half a chance, and stop fretting. That's
another thing," she smiled; "it came to me one day in church when they
were reading the Psalms, though I'd often heard the words before without
paying them attention. '_Fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to
do evil_.' I suppose people worried three thousand years ago just as we
do to-day; and had to be told not to. Well, I've tried not to _fret
myself_, and I've got on, oh, so much better."
She was so serene that as I passed my cup for more tea I ventured on
something from which otherwise I should have shrunk:
"I'm a little surprised that in your analysis of the things you really
wanted you've forgotten the one most people crave for first."
She took this with her customary simple directness.
"Oh no, I haven't. It's only that something seems to have been left out
of me that--that I don't demand it as much as many other women; and
then--it's hard to put into words--the conviction has come to me
that--that whenever I'm ready for it I shall get it. I'm not ready for
it, yet." Her amber eyes rested on me with the utmost truthfulness.
"It's odd; but I'm not. The very fact that I don't demand it yet, some
women, you know, are like that, and I suppose some men, but that very
fact shows that it's wiser not to congest one's life by tackling too
many things at a time. The one thing I'm growing certain of is that it
all depends on oneself as to whether or not the windows of heaven are
open to pour us out blessings, and that whatever I want, within reason,
I shall get in the long run."
It was partly this theory of life, and partly a sense of assurance and
relief, that led me on to talk of my personal situation. As Drinkwater
had done, she dismissed my mental misfortunes as incidental, interesting
pathologically, but not morally decisive. As to my return to New York
after having actually found my way home I felt obliged to give her some
explanation. It was while I was doing this that she asked, as if
casually:
"Do you like Colonel Stroud?"
"No," I said, bluntly. "Do you?"
"I can see that he has a sort of fascination ... for other women." She
nodded, more thoughtfully, "I don't trust him."
"Neither do I."
"I thought not. That's what makes me wonder--"
She hesitated so long that I was compelled to say:
"Wonder, what?"
"Perhaps I had better not go on."
"Please do."
"I only will on condition that you authorize me."
"I authorize you to say anything you choose."
"Well, then, since you _don't_ trust him, I wonder how you could expose
any woman to--to his influence."
"Oh, but I don't. The--the events all took place while I was away, and
I've no control over them."
"No control, perhaps; but there are other things in life besides
control."
"I know that; but what things, for instance, do you mean?"
"Oh, lots of things." She looked about the room as if not attaching
much importance to her words. "Love, for one."
"But in this case love has to be counted out."
"Can you ever count out love? I thought that was the one permanent
factor in existence, though the skies were to fall."
"It may be a permanent factor, and yet have to remain in abeyance."
She laughed.
"Nonsense! Who ever heard of love remaining in abeyance? You might as
well talk of fire remaining in abeyance when it's raging, or water when
it's bursting a dam, or any other element in active operation. If I
loved any one, no matter how little, I should want to save them from a
man like Colonel Stroud."
"In spite of the fact that you'd been considered guilty of--"
"Oh, what does it matter what any one thinks of so poor a thing as
oneself? I mean that oneself _to_ oneself is so very unimportant."
"Oh, do you think so?"
"Of course I know that there are other points of view, and that from
some of them oneself _to_ oneself is the most vital of all
considerations. But in the detail of what other people think of one--"
"Even when the other people are those of whom you think most in all the
world?"
"Let us think most of them then. Don't let us think most about
ourselves."
"Do you suppose I'm thinking most about myself now? I assure you I'm
not."
She laughed again, not lightly, but rather pitifully.
"I must leave you to judge of that."
*CHAPTER IV*
I did judge of it, all through that spring, coming more and more to the
conclusion that I was right. It was not the only occasion on which
Mildred Averill and I talked the matter over; but it became at last a
subject on which agreeing to differ seemed our only course. The time
came when I remembered with an inward blush that I had once feared that
this clear-eyed, well-poised girl, who had really found herself, might
be in love with me. What her exact sentiment toward me was I have never
been able to name further than to put it under the head of a "deep
interest." Had circumstances been in our favor that interest might at
one time have ripened into something more; but from that she was saved
by the instinct which told her that, in spite of my assertions, as to
which she nevertheless didn't charge me with untruth, I was a married
man.
One more detail I must add concerning her.
On a Saturday afternoon in early May I had gone to her to talk over the
great news of the day, that the peace terms had been handed to the enemy
at Versailles. It must be remembered that she was the one person,
outside my colleagues in the Museum, with whom I could discuss the
topics nearest to my heart. With Pelly, Bridget, the Finn, and even
with Miss Smith, I had friendly arguments as to the League of Nations
and similar matters of public concern; but they rarely went beyond the
catchwords of the newspapers.
"My dear father," Miss Smith would say, gently, "who was an eminent
oculist in his time, Doctor Smith, you may have heard of him, used to
say that his policy was to keep this country out of entangling
alliances. That was his expression, entangling alliances. I always
think of it when I see foreigners."
"From awl I hear," Bridget informed me, "this here League o' Nations
they make so much talk about is on'y to help the English to oppress
Ireland."
"Will it bring down prices?" the Finn demanded, if ever I spoke of it
with him, and when I confessed that I couldn't be sure that it would, he
dismissed the theme with, "Then that's all I want to know."
"Punk, I call it," was Pelly's verdict, "unless Lloyd George is for it;
and whatever he says goes with me."
This being the scope of my conversations on the subject it became a
special pleasure to air my opinions with one who, while not always
agreeing with me, took in such matters the same kind of interest as
myself.
We were, therefore, in what is called the thick of it when a shuffling
and laughing were heard from the hall. Suspending our remarks to look
up in curiosity we saw Lydia come in leading Drinkwater. From the
festive note in their costumes Miss Averill leaped to a conclusion.
"_No!_" she cried, as the two stood giggling sheepishly before her
tea-table. "You _haven't_?"
"We _have_."
The statement was his.
"I talked him into it," Lydia declared, laughingly. "He didn't want to,
but I was afraid that if I didn't tie him by the leg he'd fly the coop."
"But," I asked, "what about your great career?"
"Oh, well, I've put that off a bit. I can always take it up again.
Anyhow, you never heard of an adventuress who wasn't married. She
doesn't have to stay married; but a single woman who's an adventuress
gets nowhere. The Russian countess in 'The Scarlet Sin' had been
married twice, first to a professor--that 'd be Harry--and then to a
count. I can begin looking forward to the count right now, because
Harry is what you may call a thing of the past."
When they giggled themselves out again, to go and give the news to some
one else, Miss Averill said, whole-heartedly:
"Well, I'm glad!"
Thinking of Vio and Stroud I asked why.
"Because Lydia is safe for a while anyhow."
"Didn't you think she was safe already?"
"Not wholly. There was _some one_."
"Some one she liked?"
"No, some one she didn't like. That was the funny part of it. But
about four or five months ago she came to me with so incoherent a tale
that I couldn't make anything out of it. There was a man, a gentleman
she said he was, who wanted her to go off with him; and to save some one
else she began to think she ought to do it. I really can't tell you
what it was, because I couldn't get it straight; only there was a wild,
foolish, lovely idea of self-sacrifice in it, and now it's over. _He_
won't get her; and if ever any one deserved an exquisite thing like her
it's Harry Drinkwater. He can't see how pretty she is, of course; but he
gets the essence of beauty that is more than physical."
We dropped the terms of peace and the League of Nations and frankly
discussed love. I had already told her that for me, notwithstanding all
the conditions, there was no woman in the world but Vio.
"And for me," she laughed, "there's--there's Lohengrin." My expression
must have betrayed my curiosity, because she went on: "Haven't I told
you that it's all a matter for ourselves whether the blessings of
existence are ours or not; and what blessing is greater than a good
husband when one wants one? When Elsa was in need of a defender she
went down on her knees, a method of expressing her point of view, and he
came right out of the clouds. There's always a Lohengrin for every
woman born, and there's always an Elsa for every man, and whether or not
they find each other largely rests on their understanding of the source
from which Elsas and Lohengrins come."
"And you're sure of your own Lohengrin?"
She answered with a laughing air of challenge:
"Perfectly. Whenever I give the right call I know he'll be on the way."
But this optimism didn't weigh with me. Knowing all I did of love and
life, the simple performance of simple tasks began to seem to me the
most satisfying food for men. From nearly all of those whom I have
quoted I made the synthetic gleaning of bees in a garden of flowers,
building my own little cell for my soul and storing it.
I needed such a cell. As May passed and June came in there was much in
the trend of public life to make those, who had yearned and hoped and
looked forward, cynical. The splendid spiritual freedom for which
people had given their efforts and their sons was plainly not to be
achieved. If the human race had moved higher it was not directly
apparent at Versailles or anywhere else in the world; while in America,
the home of the ideal, the land in which so many of the heart-stirring
watchwords had been coined, passion, selfishness, distortion, extortion,
and contortion were the chief signs of the new times. North of us
Canada, hitherto so tranquilly industrious, was threatened with internal
convulsion; south of us Mexico, which some of us had hoped was pacified,
was prey to new distress. For me, to keep my sanity amid all this
conflict of forces, a little secret temple of my own became a necessity,
and to it I retired.
It wasn't much. Having built my shrine with what I had harvested from
Drinkwater, Lydia, Mildred Averill, and the rest, I hid myself there
with some half-dozen disciples. They were Bridget's boy, the Finn's two
sons, and three or four of their chums whom they had brought in. Not
only did their young affection give me something I sorely needed in my
inner life, but I had the hope that, building on them, I was doing
something for the future. Grown men and women were beyond my endeavors.
These fresh souls, with their nearness to God, understood my faltering
speech, which fell so far short of the ideas I was trying to interpret.
They were simple ideas, connected with practical beauty. That is, with
the Museum as what we called our clubhouse, all man's treasures of
material creative art were ours. These we were taking in their order,
beginning with my own specialty of all things woven, from the crudest
specimens of ancient linens up to the splendors of the tapestries, and
going on to kindred and allied crafts. Not only art was involved in
this, but history, biography, travel, romance, and everything else that
adds drama to human accomplishment. To me, with the big void in my
life, it was the most nearly satisfying thing I knew to reveal to these
eager little minds something of the wonders with which the world was
full; to them, with their ugly homes, cramped outlooks, and misshapen
hopes, it was, I fancy, much what the marvels of the next world will be
to those accustomed to the dwarfed conceptions of this.
Saturday afternoons were the days of our reunions, and we came to the
last in June. It was a fatal day, the 28th, marking the fifth
anniversary of the tragedy through which the new world began to
dissociate itself forever from the old. As contemporary history was a
large part of our interest, with the development of man's efforts stage
by stage, the occasion naturally came in for comment.
On that particular day we were in the great room, which, as far as I
know, has no rival in any other museum in the world, where the whole
history of ceramic art is visually unfolded in order from the crude,
strong products of the Han, Tang, and Sung dynasties in China, up
through the manifold efflorescence of European art to such American
works as that of Bennington, Cincinnati, and Dedham, which may be the
forerunner of a new departure.
We had come to that section of the room where were displayed the first
representative pieces brought back from the East by merchants and
ambassadors, and so voyages of discovery were in order. Marco Polo,
Vasco da Gama and the Dutch, English, and Portuguese explorers had been
discussed, and I was in the act of giving to my boys the story of the
origin of delftware as an attempt to reproduce in abundance what the
Oriental traders brought over only in small quantities. The specimens
of delft being on shelves but little above the floor, I was crouched in
a half-sitting position, with the lads hanging over my shoulders. Not
till I had finished this part of my exposition did I rise, to find on
turning that a lady was looking on.
Recognition on my part lagged behind amazement. Tall, slender,
distinguished, dressed in black, and somewhat thickly veiled for a day
in June, it was the sort of apparition to make a man doubt the accuracy
of his senses. Before my lips could frame a word she held out something
toward me, saying simply:
"Billy, I came to bring you this."
The boys fell back, knowing by instinct that the moment was one of
dramatic significance to me and looking on overawed.
What I had in my hand I saw at once to be nothing but a copy of one of
the New York papers that appear in the afternoon. That it contained
some announcement affecting me went without saying, and a half-dozen
terrors crowded into my mind at once. Without my knowing it she might
have got a divorce; she might have got a divorce and remarried; she
might have lost her money; I might have lost mine; some one near to us
might be dead.
I held the paper stupidly, staring at her through the veil, and opening
the journal without seeing it. When my eyes fell on the first page it
was entirely a white blankness, except for a single word in enormous
letters:
*PEACE!*
My eyes lifted themselves to hers; fell to that one word again; lifted
themselves to hers once more. She stood impassive, motionless, waiting.
"So--so they've signed it," was all I could find to stammer out.
"Yes; they've signed it. I--I thought you might like to know."
"Of course." Further than this superficial fact, I was too dazed to go;
but I knew I must get rid of the boys. Turning to Patsy Bridget, I
said, "Patsy, could you take the other boys home and see them safely to
their doors?"
"Sure!" Patsy answered, with the confidence of fifteen.
"Aw, we don't want no one to take us home," the elder of the Finn's boys
protested. "Me and me kid bruvver go all over N'York. Don't we,
Broncho?"
Another lad spoke up.
"I come from me aunt's house in Harlem right down to East Thirty-fourth
Street all by meself and me little sister."
It was Vio who arranged the matter to every one's satisfaction. With
her right hand on one boy's shoulder and her left on another's she said,
in a tone of quiet authority:
"You see, this is the way it is: The war is over at last. They've just
signed the peace treaty, and I've come to tell Mr. Harrowby. But now
that we've got peace we've got to go on fighting, only fighting in a
better way and for better things. Now, you're a little army, with Mr.
Harrowby as your commander-in-chief, like Marshal Foch. But under him
you're all officers, according to your ages. Patsy is the general, and
you're the colonel," she continued to the elder Finn boy.
"Aw, no, he's not, miss," one of the other lads declared, tearfully.
"I'm older'n him. He's only twelve goin' on thirteen, and I'm thirteen
goin' on fourteen."
This, too, was adjusted, and with a dollar from Vio for ice-cream sodas,
the general traped out, followed by colonel, major, captain, and
lieutenants, each keeping to his rank by marching in Indian file. I had
never before seen Vio in this light, and something new and human that
had not entered into our previous relations suddenly was there.
Left alone with her, I was in too great a tumult of excitement to find
words for the opportunity.
"How did you know where to find me?" was the question I asked, stupidly.
"Miss Averill told me. She said you'd be here with your boys, and she
thought you'd told her you'd be doing this particular subject. I went
through some of the other rooms first."
"I didn't know you knew her."
"I didn't till--till lately. I was interested in making her
acquaintance because of things Alice Mountney said, and you said."
"What did I say?"
"Oh, nothing of much importance, except for showing me that--that--she
was the one."
"What one?"
"The one you spoke of ... the ... the last evening. That's ... that's
what made me come to New York, Billy, to see if I could do anything ...
to ... to help out."
"To help out how?"
"Oh, Billy, don't make yourself dull. You know that nothing can be done
unless I, or you, or one of us, should take the first step."