The new life in her heart gave her new courage that night to look out at
life. She faced what before that she had evaded consciously facing.
Perhaps they would not find Ann at all. Perhaps Ann had given up--as they
were giving up. Perhaps Ann was not there to be found.
It was her fight against that fear had kept her so much in the crowds.
Ann was there. She had only to find her. Leaving the crowds seemed to be
admitting that Ann was not in them; for if she really felt she was in
them, surely she would not consent to leaving them.
That idea of Ann's not being there was as a shadow which had from time to
time crept beside her. In the crowds she lost it. There were so many in
the crowds. Ann, too, was in the crowds. She had only to stay in them and
she must find her.
Now she was leaving them; and it was he who understood the crowds was
telling her to leave them. Did _he_ think she was not there? Why had she
not had the courage to press it? There was so much they should have been
talking of in those last blocks--and they had talked of nothing.
But the new warmth flooded Katie's heart at thought of having talked of
nothing. What was there to talk about so important as talking of
nothing? In a new way it drew her back to the crowds; the crowds that
talked so loudly of many unlovely things in order to still in their
hearts that call for the loveliness of talking of nothing.
It gave her new understanding of Ann. Ann was one who must rest in the
wonder of talking of nothing. It was for that she had gone down. The
world had destroyed her for the very thing for which life loved
her--Katie joining with the world.
She would not have done that to-night. To-night, in the face of all the
world, she must have joined with life.
She wondered if all along it was not the thing for which she had most
loved Ann. This shy new thing in her own heart seemed revealing Ann. It
was kin to her, and to Katie's feeling for her.
Many times she had wondered why she cared so terribly, would ask herself,
as she could hear her friends asking if they knew: "But does it matter so
much as all this?"
She had never been able to make clear to herself why it mattered so
much--mattered more than anything else mattered. None of the reasons
presenting themselves on the surface were commensurate to the depth of
the feeling. To-night she wondered if deep below all else might not lie
that thing of Ann's representing life, her failure with Ann meaning
infidelity to life.
It turned her to Ann's letter;--she had not had the courage to read it
for a number of days.
"Katie," Ann had written, "I'm writing to try and show you that you were
not all wrong. That there was something there. And I'm not doing it for
myself, Katie. I'm doing it for you.
"If I can just forget I'm writing about myself, feel instead that I'm
writing about somebody you've cared for, believed in, somebody who has
disappointed and hurt you, trying to show you--for _your_ sake--if I
don't mind being either egotistical or terrible for the sake of
showing you--
"It's not _me_ that matters, Katie--it's what you thought of me. That's
why I'm writing.
"I never could talk to you right. For a long time I couldn't talk at all,
and then that night I talked most of the night I didn't tell the real
things, after all. And at the last I told you something I knew would hurt
you without telling you the things that might keep it from hurting,
without saving for you the things you had thought you saw. I don't know
why I did that--desperate, I suppose, because it was all spoiled, frantic
because I was helpless to keep it from being spoiled. And then I said
things to _you_--that must show--And yet, Katie, as long as I'm trying to
be honest I've got to say again, though all differently, that I was
surprised--shocked, I suppose, at something in the way you looked. It's
just a part of your world that I don't understand. It's as I told
you--we've lived in different worlds. Things--some things--that seem all
right in yours--well, it's just surprising that you should think them all
right. In your world the way you do things seems to matter so much more
than what you do.
"I've gone, Katie, and as far as I'm concerned it's what has to be. You
see you couldn't fit me in. The only thing I can do for you now is
to--stay gone. You'll feel badly--oh, I know that--but in the end it
won't be as bad as trying to fit me in, trying to keep it up. And I can't
have you doing things for me in another way--as you'd want
to--because--it's hard to explain just what I mean, but after I've been
Ann I couldn't be just somebody you were helping. It meant too much to me
to be Ann to become just a girl you're good to.
"What I'd rather do--want this letter to do--is keep for you that idea of
Ann--memory of her.
"So that's why I want to tell you about some things that really were Ann.
I haven't any more right to you, but I want you to know you have some
right to her.
"I told you that I was standing on the corner, and that he asked me to
get in the automobile, and that I did, and that that--began it. It was
true. It was one way to put it. I'll try and put it another way.
"It isn't even fair to him, putting it that way. You know, of course,
that he's not in the habit of asking girls on corners to go with him. I
think--there at the first--he was sorry for me. I think it was what you
would call an impulse and that being sorry for me had more to do with it
than anything else.
"And I know I wasn't fair to myself when I put it that way; and you
weren't fair to me when you called it common and low. That's what I want
to try and show you--that it wasn't that.
"It was in the warm weather. It had been a hot, hard day. Oh they were
all hot, hard days. I didn't feel well. I made mistakes. I was scolded
for it. I quarreled with one of the girls about washing my hands! She
said she was there before I was and that I took the bowl. We said hateful
things to each other, grew furious about it. We were both so tired--the
day had been so hot--
"Out on the street I was so ashamed. It seemed _that_ was what life
had come to.
"That afternoon I got something that was going over the wire. You get so
tired you don't care what's going over the wire--you aren't alive enough
to care--but I just happened to be let in to this--a man's voice talking
to the girl he loved. I don't remember what he was saying, but his voice
told that there were such things in the world--and girls they were for.
One glimpse of a beautiful country--to one in a desert. I don't know,
perhaps that's why I talked that way to the other poor girl who was
tired--perhaps that's why I went in the automobile.
"I had to ride a long way on the street car to get where I boarded. I had
to stand up--packed in among a lot of people who were hot and tired
too--the smell so awful--everything so _ugly_.
"I had to transfer. That's where I was when I first saw him--standing on
the corner waiting for the other car.
"Something was the matter--it was a long time coming. I was so
tired, Katie, as I stood there waiting. Tired of having it all going
over the wire.
"He was doing something to his automobile. I didn't pay any attention at
first--then I realized he was just fooling with the automobile--and was
looking at me.
"And then he took my breath away by stepping up to me and raising his
hat. I had never had a man raise his hat to me in that way--
"And then he said--and his voice was low--and like the voices in your
world are--I hadn't heard them before, except on the wire--'I beg
pardon--I trust I'm not offensive. But you seem so tired. You're waiting
for a car? It doesn't appear to be coming. Why not ride with me instead?
I'll take you where you want to go. Though I wish'--it was like the voice
on the wire--and for _me_--'that you'd let me take you for a ride.'
"Katie, _you_ called him charming. You told about the women in your world
being in love with him. If he's charming to them--to you--what do you
suppose he seemed to me as he stood there smiling at me--looking so sorry
for me--?
"He went on talking. He drew a beautiful picture of what we would do. We
would ride up along the lake. There would be a breeze from the lake, he
said. And way up there he knew a place where we could sit out of doors
under trees and eat our dinner and listen to beautiful music. Didn't I
think that might be nice?
"Didn't I think it might be--_nice?_ Oh Katie--you'd have to know what
that day had been--what so many days--all days--had been.
"I looked down the street. The car was coming at last--packed--men
hanging on outside--everybody looking so hot--so dreadful. 'Oh you
mustn't get in that car,' he said.
"Beautiful things were beckoning to me--things I was to be taken to in an
automobile--I had never been in an automobile. It seemed I was being
rescued, carried away to a land of beautiful things, far away from
crowded street cars, from the heat and the work that make you do things
you hate yourself for doing.
"_Was_ it so common, Katie? So low? What I felt wasn't--what I dreamed as
we went along that beautiful drive beside the lake.
"For I dreamed that the city of dreadful things was being left behind.
The fairy prince had come for me. He was taking me to the things of
dreams, things which lately had seemed to slip out beyond even dreams.
"It was just as he had said--A little table under a tree--a breeze from
the lake--music--the lovely things to eat and the beautiful happy people.
Of course I wasn't dressed as much as they were, so we sat at a little
table half hidden in one corner--Oh I thought it was so wonderful!
"And he saw I thought it wonderful and that interested him, pleased him.
Maybe it was new to him. I think he likes things that are new to him.
Anyhow, he was very gentle and lovely to me that night. He told me I was
beautiful--that nothing in the world had ever been so beautiful as my
eyes. You know how he would say it, the different ways he would have of
saying it beautifully. And I want to say again--if it seems beautiful to
you--Why, Katie, I had never had anything.
"Going home he kissed me--
"When I went home that night the world was all different. The world was
too wonderful for even thoughts. Too beautiful to believe it could be
the world.
"I was in the arms of the wonderful new beauty of the world. Something in
my heart which had been crouching down afraid and cold and sad grew warm
and live and glad. Life grew so lovely; and as the days went on I think I
grew lovely too. He said so; said love was making me radiant--that I was
wonderful--that I was a child of love.
"Those days when I was in the dream, folded in the dream, days before any
of it fell away, they were golden days, singing days--days there are no
words for.
"We saw each other often. He said business kept him away from Chicago
much of the time. I didn't know he was in the army; I suppose now he
belonged in some place near there. And I think you told me he was not
married. He said he was--but was going to be divorced some day. But I
didn't seem to care--didn't think much about it. Nothing really mattered
except the love.
"Then there came a time when I knew I was trying to keep a door
shut--keep the happiness in and the thoughts out. It wasn't that I came
to think it was wrong. But the awful fear that wanted to get into my
heart was that it was _not_ beautiful.
"And it wasn't beautiful because to him it wasn't beautiful. It was
only--what shall I say--would there be such a thing as usurping beauty?
That was the thought--the fear--I tried and tried to push away. I see I
can't tell it; no matter how much we may want to tell everything--no
matter how willing we are--there are things can't be told, so I'll just
have to say that things happened that forced the door open, and I had to
know that what to me was--oh what shall I say, Katie?--was like the
prayer at the heart of a dream--didn't, to him, have anything to do with
dreams, or prayers, or beautiful, far-away things that speak to you from
the stars.
"And having nothing to do with them, he seemed to be pushing them away,
crowding them out, hurting them.
"I haven't told it at all. I can't. But, Katie, you're in the army, you
must admire courage and I want you to take my word for it when I tell you
I did what it took courage to do. I think you'd let me live on in your
heart as Ann if you knew what I gave up--and just for something all dim
and distant I had no assurance I'd ever come near to. For oh, Katie--when
you love love--need it--it's not so easy to let go what's the closest
you've come to it. Not so easy to turn from the most beautiful thing
you've known--just because something _very far away_ whispers to you that
you're hurting beauty.
"I didn't go back. One night my Something Somewhere called me away--and
I left the only real thing I had--and I didn't go back. I don't
know--maybe I'm overestimating myself--perhaps I'm just measuring it by
the suffering--but it seems to me, Katie, that you needn't despise
yourself when loneliness can't take you back to the substitutes offered
for your Something Somewhere. Something in you had been brave; something
in you has been faithful--and what you've actually _done_ doesn't matter
much in comparison with that.
"I've been writing most of the day. It's evening now, and I'm tired. I
was going to tell more. Tell you of things that happened afterward--tell
you why you found me where you did find me. But now I don't believe I
want to tell those things. They're too awful. They'd hurt you--haunt you.
And that's not what I want to do. What I want is to make you understand,
and if the part I've told hasn't done that--
"'I think it was to save Ann you were going to give up Verna,' you said.
Oh Katie--how did you know? How _do_ you know?
"And then you called to me. You weren't sick at all--were you, Katie? Oh
I soon guessed that it was the wonderful goodness of your heart--not the
disease of it--caused that 'attack.'
"Then those beautiful days began. I wanted to talk about what those days
meant--what you meant--what our play--our dream meant. Things I thought
that I never said--how proud I was you should want to make up those
stories about me--how I wanted to _be_ the things you said I was--and oh,
Katie dear, the trouble you got me into by loving to tell those
stories--telling one to one man and another to another! I'd never known
any one full of _play_ like you--yet play that is so much more than just
play. Sometimes a picture of Centralia would come to me when I'd hear you
telling about my having lived in Florence. Sometimes when I was listening
to stories of things you and I had done in Italy I'd see that old place
where I used to put suspenders in boxes--! Katie, how strange it all was.
How did it happen that things you made up were things I had dreamed about
without really knowing what I was dreaming? How wonderful you were,
Katie--how good--to put me in the things of my dreams rather than the
things of my life. The world doesn't do that for us.
"It seems a ridiculous thing to be mentioning, when I owe you so many
things too wonderful to mention--but you know I do owe you some money. I
took what was in my purse. I hope I can pay it back. I'm so tired just
now it doesn't seem to me I ever can--but if I don't, don't associate it
with my not paying back the missionary money!
"Katie, do you know how I'd like to pay you back? I'd like to give you
the most beautiful things I've ever dreamed. And I hope that some of
them, at least, are waiting somewhere--and not very far off--for you. How
I used to love to hear you laugh--watch you play your tricks on
people--so funny and so dear--
"Now that's over. Katie, I don't believe it's all my fault, and I know
it's not yours. It's our two worlds. You see you _couldn't_ fit me in.
"I used to be afraid it must end like that. Yet most of the time I felt
so secure--that was the wonder of you--that you could make me so
beautifully secure. And your brother, Katie, have you told him? I don't
care if you do, only if you tell him anything, won't you try and make him
understand everything? I couldn't bear it to think he might think me--oh
those things I don't believe you really think me.
"If you don't see me any more, you won't think those things. It's easier
to understand when things are all over. It's easier to forgive people who
are not around. After what's happened I couldn't be Ann if I were with
you. That's spoiled. But if _I_ go--I think maybe Ann can stay. For both
our sakes, that's what I want.
"'Twas a lovely dream, Katie. The house by the river--the big trees--the
big flag that waved over us--the pretty dresses--the lovely way of
living--the dogs--the men who were always so nice to us--Last night I
dreamed you and Worth and I were going to a wedding. That is, it started
out to be a wedding--then it seemed it was a funeral. But you were
saying such funny things about the funeral, Katie. Then I woke up--"
The letter broke off there.