TOWARDS THE CANAAN OF HER DESIRE
In Phil Tremont's office desk, in an inner drawer reserved for private
papers, lay a package of letters fastened together by a broad rubber
band. "From the Little Vicar," it was labelled, and Mary's astonishment
would have been great, could she have known that every letter she had
ever written him was thus preserved. He had kept the first ones, written
in a childish, painstaking hand, because they chronicled the doings of
the family at Ware's Wigwam in such an amusing and characteristic way.
The letters after that time had been few and far between until her final
return to Lone-Rock, but each one had been kept for some different
reason. It had contained a particularly laughable description of some of
her Warwick Hall escapades, or some original view of life and the world
in general which made it worth preserving.
Then when Mrs. Ware's letters ceased, and at Phil's urgent request Mary
took up her mother's custom of writing regularly to him, he kept them
because they revealed so much of herself. So brave, so womanly, so
strong she had grown, bearing her great sorrow as the Jester did his
hidden sword, to prove that "undaunted courage was the jewel of her
soul." All during the lonely summer after her mother's death he expected
to go to see her in the fall, but the work which held him in Mexico was
not finished, and too much depended upon its successful completion for
him to ask for leave of absence.
Then, just as he was about to start back to the States, his chief was
taken ill, and asked him to stay and fill his place in another
engineering enterprise which he had made a contract for. It was an
opportunity too big for Phil to thrust aside, even if his sense of
obligation had not been so great to the man who had helped make him what
he was. So he consented to stay on another year. The place to which he
was sent, where the great new dam was to be constructed, was further in
the interior. His papers, brought over on mule back, were a week old
when they reached him, and Mary's letters attained an importance they
might not have had otherwise, had he been in a less lonely region.
It was with great satisfaction that he heard of Jack's marriage. He
felt that Mary would be more satisfied to stay on in Lone-Rock
indefinitely now that she had Betty's companionship. Her letters were
enthusiastic about the new sister, whom she had long loved, first with
the admiration of a little girl for an older one, then with that of a
pupil for an adored teacher. Now they seemed of the same age, and of the
same mind about essential things, especially the pedestal on which they
both placed Jack.
Betty fitted into the family as beautifully as if she had always been a
part of it, Mary wrote soon after her arrival. She loved Lone-Rock the
moment she laid eyes on it, and made friends with everybody right away.
She thought it an ideal place in which to write, and already was at work
on the series which the publishers had asked for. Norman was "simply
crazy" about her, and Jack was so happy and proud that it did one's
heart good to see him.
As for Mary herself, it was easy for Phil to see the vast difference
that Betty's coming had made in her life. He laid these letters aside
with the others as they came, thankful for the happy spirit that
breathed through them, for now he was convinced that she "really felt
the gladness she had only feigned before." She was all aglow once more
with her old hopes and ambitions. Despite her efforts to hide it he had
discerned how dreary the days had been for her hitherto, and now he was
glad he could think of her with the background she pictured for him.
Betty's coming had brightened it wonderfully. But just as he was
beginning to be sure she was satisfied and settled, a little note came
to disturb his comfort in that belief. It was evidently scrawled in
haste and began abruptly without address or date.
"'_And it came to pass . . . when the cloud was
taken up . . . they journeyed!_' Oh, Phil, the
signal to move on has come at last! I have no
idea what it will lead to. It may be to the
wells of some Elim, it may be to that part of
the wilderness 'where there is no water to
drink.' But wherever it may be I'm convinced
that Providence is pointing the way, for the
call came without my lifting so much as a
little finger. It came through Madam Chartley.
I'm to be secretary for a friend of hers, a
Mrs. Dudley Blythe of Riverville, at a big
salary--at least it seems big to me--and I'm
leaving in the morning. That's all I know now,
but I'll write you full particulars as soon as
I'm settled.
"Manuella, the clever little Mexican maid who
has tided us over various emergencies, is
coming to help Betty with the work, so that the
writing may not be interfered with. Yours, once
more on the march towards the Canaan of her
desire,
"M. W."
The next was a note scribbled at some junction near the end of her
journey.
"Five hours late, so we've missed connection
and are side-tracked here, waiting for the fast
express to pass us. Nothing at all has happened
as there usually does on my travels, and I've
met no interesting people. But I've had a
really thrilling time just guessing what my
future is to be like. I've imagined Mrs. Dudley
Blythe to be every kind of a woman that would
be likely to employ a secretary, from a
stern-eyed suffragette to a modern Mrs. Jellyby
interested in the heathen. All I've had to
build on was Madam Chartley's night letter and
Mrs. Blythe's telegram in answer to mine, and
naturally that was slim material.
"What I'm hoping is, that Mrs. Blythe is a
grand society dame, who needs a secretary to
attend to her invitations and list of
engagements. I'd like for her to be that, or
else a successful writer who wanted me to type
her manuscript. It would be so lovely to be
behind the scenes at the making of a book, and
maybe to meet a lot of literary lions at close
range. I've blocked out enough scenes from
those two situations to fill a two-volume
Duchess novel. But, in order to keep from being
too greatly disappointed, I tell myself that
it's not at all probable that Mrs. Blythe will
be either of those things. Most likely she's in
a big mail-order business of some kind that
requires a large correspondence, and I'll be
tamely quoting prices on hats, hair-goods or
imported trimmings for the next dozen years. I
am 'minded that:
"'There are two moments in a diver's life.
One when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge,
One when, a prince, he rises with his pearl.
_Festus, I plunge!_'
"More anon. MARY."
* * * * *
"June 15, RIVERVILLE.
"Here I am, bobbing up serenely with
_something_, but still unable to say whether it
be pearl or pebble. Mrs. Blythe is not the
grand personage I pictured her to be, for there
was no liveried footman to meet me at the
station, no carriage in waiting. Nor is she an
author. Mrs. Crum, the landlady of this
caravansary, told me that. I rattled up in a
'bus to the number of the house given in Mrs.
Blythe's telegram, and found it to be a
comfortable looking boarding-house on a quiet
side street, shaded by scraggly old sycamores.
Mrs. Blythe had engaged a room for me here, and
left a note telling me where and how to find
her in the morning.
"It was so near supper-time that Mrs. Crum had
to go right down-stairs before I could ask any
more questions, and I followed in a very few
moments. I am disappointed in one thing. I had
hoped to be in an interesting private family. I
had hoped that Mrs. Blythe would want me to
stay in her house, but I think I shall like it
here.
"My room is big and airy and simply furnished,
the supper was good, and as far as I can see
I'm lots better off than Jo was in 'Little
Women,' when she left home to be a governess.
For one thing, there is no old bearded
professor in the background to work on one's
sympathies and get interested in, in lieu of
some one better. Of course Professor Baher was
dear in lots of ways, but I never could forgive
Jo for marrying that bewhiskered old Teuton.
"So far as I have discovered, the boarders are
all widows and orphans, though the oldest
orphan is old enough to vote, and is a
reporter on the Riverville _Herald_. He sat
next to me at the table, at supper, and I found
out from him that my first guess was partly
correct, even if there was no liveried footman
to meet me at the station. Mrs. Blythe _is_ one
of the social leaders of Riverville and has a
lovely home. But this city isn't large enough
to justify any one's keeping a social
secretary. He said so. It's just a big,
commonplace, hustling manufacturing town like a
hundred others in the middle West. I didn't
like to ask any personal questions about Mrs.
Blythe of _Orphant Annie_. (That's the name I
couldn't help giving the young reporter in my
own mind. He was introduced as Mr. Sandford
Berry.) He looks the character to perfection;
sort of old for his years, spry and capable, as
if he'd spent his youth in doing the chores and
shooing the hens away. Besides, he gave me a
lot of wise advice, as if he were a
full-fledged man of the world and I a little
hayseed from the West who didn't know enough to
get out of the way of a go-cart. He has pale
blue pop eyes, and an alert little blond
mustache, and his whole air seems to say, 'The
gobelins'll git you, if you don't watch out.'
"He took it for granted that I knew all about
my future employer, and, of course, I didn't
tell him any better. I just tried in a
roundabout way to lead him on to talk of her.
He is very enthusiastic about her work, though
I gathered only a vague idea of what it is,
despite my clever manoeuvring to find out. He
called her a grand little woman. As he has
interviewed her several times he knows her
personally. What he said was certainly
encouraging, but he finished his supper so soon
after he began to talk about her that I came
up-stairs still knowing very little more than
when I went down.
"A street light glimmered in the front windows,
so that I did not turn on the gas at first, but
sat looking down at the people strolling along
the pavement below. The house stands very close
to the street, so that I could hear everything
any one said in passing, and it seemed to bring
me right into the thick of things, as I so
often wished to be, back there in the desert.
The warm, wet smell of the freshly sprinkled
streets, the whiff of an occasional cigar, the
sound of a street piano in the next block, all
seemed so strange yet so friendly and sociable.
It made me feel for a little while--oh, I can
hardly explain it--as if the old Mary Ware that
I used to be was a million miles away, and as
if the Mary Ware sitting here in Riverville was
an entirely different person. I couldn't make
it seem possible that the 'me' who was sitting
there in the hot June dusk, looking down on the
lively streets, was the same person who only a
few days before had no other excitement in life
than making Jack's coffee or ironing Norman's
shirts back in the hills of Arizona.
"I wasn't homesick or lonesome in the least,
but I had such a queer, untied, set-adrift
sensation, like the man must have had who wrote
that hymn, 'Lo, on a narrow neck of land,
'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand.' The
yesterdays are one sea, and the to-morrows
another, and me, waiting between them, just a
scrap of humanity--a stranger in a strange
city--wondering and wondering and wondering
what the next day would bring.
"Then I began to be almost afraid of what I'd
undertaken, and all of a sudden grew so cold
and depressed that I wished I was back in my
own little room in Lone-Rock. The shutters of
the back window had been closed all this time,
and when I got up to light the gas and write to
Jack of my safe arrival, I opened them to see
what kind of an outlook I was to have from that
window. You can imagine my surprise when I
found that it gave me a glimpse of the river.
Such a wide, full, sweeping river, with just
enough of a young moon over it to define its
banks, and remind me of the beautiful silvery
Potomac that I used to watch from my window at
Warwick Hall.
"A big steamboat came gliding around the bend,
with a deep musical whistle that sent the same
kind of an echo booming along the water, and
there were lights twinkling from every deck and
from the wharves along shore to which it was
headed. Somehow it made me think of a song that
we used to sing at the Wigwam, and that Holland
always sang wrong, for some unaccountable
reason insisting on saying 'shining' instead of
'margin.'
"'At the _shining_ of the river, lay we every burden down.'
"The wide silvery tracks that the crescent moon
and the wharf lights made reassured me, and I
stopped worrying about the future, and laid my
burden of apprehension and depression right
down, and just sat and enjoyed the sight.
Presently I saw a little launch put out from
the wharf and go chugging merrily over towards
the far side, and suddenly I realized that that
other shore was Kentucky. I was in sight of my
Promised Land, although my particular portion
of it was several hundred miles away. I had
been so occupied with other things that I had
forgotten what part of the map I was on.
"I stood right up, so excited that I could
hardly keep from squealing and whirling around
on my toes, as I used to do. My first impulse
was to run and tell somebody of my discovery.
Then I remembered with a sort of shock that
there wasn't anybody I could tell. Not a soul
in the whole city who _cared_. For a moment
that thought made me utterly and wretchedly
homesick. But it all passed away the moment I
began my letter to Jack and Betty. I think the
reason that this epistle to you has grown
longer and more garrulous than usual, is
because you have assured me so often of your
interest in all my comings and goings, and it
seems so good to pour out everything to
somebody who cares to hear. So, I am sure, you
will rejoice with me in the discovery that my
back window looks away to the dim shores of my
Promised Land, and that that view will help me
'to hold out faithful to the end,' as old
Brother Petree used to say in prayer meeting."
* * * * *
"June 22.
"I didn't intend to write so soon again, but
your letter has just come with all those kodak
pictures of your bachelor quarters, and the
big dam, and the different views of your
mountain background. I am so glad to have them,
especially the ones that have _you_ in them,
and most especially that one of you in the camp
chair with the hat on the back of your head.
You look exactly as if you were about to speak,
and I have stood that one on my table, and am
looking at it now as I write. I am glad you
sent it, for really I am becoming so engrossed
with my new work, that I need some reminder of
my past life to keep me from forgetting what
manner of person I used to be. I have had such
an absorbing week.
"To begin with, I found that Mrs. Blythe, who
is comparatively a young woman, although she
has two sons away at school, is one of the old
Warwick Hall girls. She wears the alumni pin,
with Edryn's crest on it and the motto 'I keep
tryste.' And she adores Madam Chartley and
everything connected with the school. After I
discovered that I knew everything would be all
right no matter what she set me to doing.
"She had a dressmaker there fitting a gown for
her, when I was ushered into her room, and
there wasn't a thing in it to suggest her need
of a secretary except a frivolous looking
little desk in one corner. She talked to me
about Warwick Hall all the time she was being
fitted until a neighbor dropped in to ask her
to pour tea for her at an informal reception
next day. I 'sized her up,' as the boys say, as
a pretty little woman fond of dainty clothes
and good times, one who would always shine at a
social function and be popular because she is
such a winsome, sweet little thing, but not
much more than that.
"When the dressmaker left, Mrs. Blythe crossed
over to the desk and opened it, and it was so
chuck full of papers and letters and
business-like looking legal documents, that
they began to pour out all over the floor.
"She said in a laughing way that that was the
reason she needed another pair of hands, and
then turned and gave me a searching look with
those dark eyes of her, as if she were taking
_my_ measure, and said:
"'I hope that Madam Chartley was not mistaken
and that you will prove equal to the task, for
it is a big undertaking I've called you to help
me with--_The awakening of a State!_'
"I was as astonished as if a fluffy little
kitten had opened its mouth, and instead of
gently mewing, had roared out, 'Cry havoc and
let slip the dogs of war!' Luckily she was so
busy sorting the papers and stuffing them back
into pigeon-holes that she didn't see my face,
or she couldn't have gone on in such a matter
of course way to explain what she wanted me to
do. She said I must become so thoroughly
familiar with the situation that I could answer
most of the letters that come to her, without
her dictation, and in order to do that she'd
have to take me over the ground that she had
been over, and let me see for myself just what
had aroused her to undertake the work she was
engaged in. That just as soon as she could give
the cook her daily orders we'd start right out.
"While she put on her hat and little face veil,
she explained that she had become interested in
the first place while taking flowers to a
crippled child in the tenement district. Seeing
how absorbed she seemed in getting her hat and
veil on 'just so,' I couldn't help thinking
that she must have taken up her charities as so
many society women do, who are impulsive and
kind-hearted, just as a fad to help occupy
their leisure hours. But it wasn't long before
I found how mistaken I was in my judgment of
her.
"We took a street-car, and on the way she
explained that she was going to show me what
might be seen in almost any town of its size
in the United States, and in many of its
villages. We stopped on a shady street corner
and passed a row of houses on a respectable
looking street. She told me that she had grown
up in Riverville and had walked up and down
that street nearly every day of her life, and
that she never knew till last year that those
respectable fronts of houses opened on to
interiors and into back yards that were a
disgrace to any civilization. The other
property owners on that block were perfectly
horrified when she published a description of
it, with photographs of the worst spots. It
stirred up a great deal of talk and
indignation, but nobody did anything to make it
better, and soon the interest died out and
people forgot.
"I wish you could have seen her face when she
told me that and when she said, '_But I made up
my mind that I would change conditions if I had
to fight a lifetime and fight single-handed,
and I'll fight to the death!_'
"When I saw the determination in her face, not
only did I wonder how I could have been so
mistaken in my first estimate of her, but I
felt a queer responsive thrill at her
enthusiasm, that made me sure she can succeed
in anything she attempts.
"Well, I've read of slums and have always
taken it as a matter of course that it was one
of the evils to be expected in a large city,
but I never thought to see with my own eyes
what I saw that day, in an ordinary town like
Riverville. Maybe living so long as I have done
on the clean, fresh desert and in the pure air
of the hills, made it seem worse to me, but
anybody would have been horrified at what she
showed me. When I exclaimed over the filth and
foul odors, as we picked our way over the
ash-piles and garbage and slimy pools in one
back yard, and said that people might at least
keep themselves clean, even if they were poor,
she turned on me, her eyes fairly blazing.
"'That's what everybody says!' she exclaimed.
'That's why I brought you here, to prove to you
that these tenants are not to blame. Look! This
house was originally built for two families,
but _ten_ families are crowded into it now,
with only one cistern to provide water for the
whole lot. And every drop of it has to be
carried to the different stories in buckets. No
wonder they have to be "sparin' of water," as
little Elsie Whayne complained, when I found
her crying over her line full of yellow-gray,
half-clean clothes. She had come from the
country, where she had had an unlimited supply,
and couldn't get used to hoarding every drop.
The landlord won't provide city water, and
there is no law to make him do it.'
"As she spoke the nasty, greasy contents of a
dishpan came splashing over the railing of the
porch above us, into the court where we were
standing, and we barely escaped being drenched
with it. A few drops did reach me, and when I
expressed my disgust most forcibly, Mrs. Blythe
said apologetically, 'Don't blame the poor
woman. She has no other place to throw it. The
landlord won't provide drains and there is no
law to make him do it. And up-stairs, I am
going to show you three rooms _without
windows_, where people live and eat and sleep
by lamplight, without a ray of sunshine or a
breath of fresh air. All that they get of
either air or light must filter through other
stale, overcrowded rooms. And if you wonder, as
I did, why the landlords do not cut windows in
these dark rooms, and mend the leaky roofs and
the dangerous stairways, you'll find the answer
is the same. There is no law to make them do
it. The houses bring good rents as they stand,
and the public is not awake to the fact that
these places in their midst are responsible for
the greater part of infection and disease that
menace the whole town. That is the cause I am
giving myself to, and the cause that I want to
make yours also. We must wake up the State. We
must make them pass a law that will wipe out
these plague spots already existing and prevent
the growth of any more. A law that will allow
no renter to make money off a house that is not
decent to shelter human beings.'
"That is a sample of the places she showed me,
places where the plaster was off the walls in
great patches, and the paper hung in greasy
tatters, and where we encountered so many
nauseating sights and smells that by the time
we were back at her house I didn't have any
appetite for lunch. She told me that it
affected her that way too, at first, and it got
so that a procession of white-faced, wailing
babies began to appear to her in the dead of
night and cry for her to help them; to give
them a chance to breathe in the stifling
midnight, a chance to claim their birthright of
clean water and air and sun. And she added,
'When you get to seeing things at night you're
ready for work.'
"Already she has written hundreds of letters on
the subject, to individuals and to clubs who
have influence, and I am to help her with
hundreds more. We are to send one to each
member of the Legislature. I think it is great
fun to be mixed up with 'affairs of State,' and
I shall feel so grand having a hand in writing
to senators and representatives. I'm going with
her to some of the near-by towns to take
photographs of the worst places. We're to have
a collection representing every town and city
in the State, and mount them on large posters
for the public to see. That part of the work
will be intensely interesting. I don't mind
pounding away at the typewriter from daylight
till dark, but I must confess to you what I'll
not tell any one at home. The other part of the
work, the contact with the suffering and misery
and dirt that we see daily simply makes me
sick.
"I asked _Orphant Annie_ how he supposed a
dainty little woman like Mrs. Blythe stands it,
and he said she had answered that question
herself in a poem that she had written by
request for the Riverville _Herald_. I was so
surprised to know that she is a poet too, that
he said he'd look up the verses for me. He did,
and brought me a copy of them when he came that
night at dinner. He doesn't seem as pop-eyed
now that I know him better, and he says some
very bright things occasionally. This is the
poem. I am sending it so that you'll see how
mistaken I was at first in assuming that Mrs.
Blythe was just a kind-hearted little social
butterfly, who had taken up housing betterment
as a fad. Some of the divine fire that
inspired the great reformers of all the ages
must burn in her soul, or she couldn't have
written this poem that she calls _The Torch_.
"'Make me to be a torch for feet that grope
Down Truth's dim trail; to bear for wistful eyes
Comfort of light; to bid great beacons blaze,
And kindle altar fires of sacrifice!
"'Let me set souls aflame with quenchless zeal
For great endeavors, causes true and high.
So would I live to quicken and inspire,
So would I, thus consumed, burn out and die.'
"Mr. Berry says that is just what Mrs. Blythe
is, a torch to set others aflame. He has heard
her talk to clubs and societies about her work,
and he says that she is so convincing that
before the summer is over she'll have me
blazing like a house afire, the biggest beacon
in the bunch. But I don't think much of
_Orphant Annie_ as a prophet. It is just one of
his ways of always saying the gobelins'll git
you. I know they'll never get me to the extent
of making me 'speak in meetin'.' Now you know
just what it is I have gone into, and can
picture the daily life quite accurately of
Yours as ever, Mary Ware, late of Lone-Rock,
now Reformer of Riverville."