The Martha Wootton Memorial Hospital was the hobby of an angel alumnus
of Silliston. It was situated in Hovey's Lane, but from the window
of the white-enameled room in which she lay Janet could see the bare
branches of the Common elms quivering to the spring gusts, could watch,
day by day, the grass changing from yellow-brown to vivid green in the
white sunlight. In the morning, when the nurse opened the blinds, that
sunlight swept radiantly into the room, lavish with its caresses; always
spending, always giving, the symbol of a loving care that had been
poured out on her, unasked and unsought. It was sweet to rest, to sleep.
And instead of the stringent monster-cry of the siren, of the discordant
clamour of the mill bells, it was sweet yet strange to be awakened by
silvertoned chimes proclaiming peaceful hours. At first she surrendered
to the spell, and had no thought of the future. For a little while every
day, Mrs. Maturin read aloud, usually from books of poetry. And knowing
many of the verses by heart, she would watch Janet's face, framed in
the soft dark hair that fell in two long plaits over her shoulders. For
Janet little guessed the thought that went into the choosing of these
books, nor could she know of the hours spent by this lady pondering
over library shelves or consulting eagerly with Brooks Insall. Sometimes
Augusta Maturin thought of Janet as a wildflower--one of the rare, shy
ones, hiding under its leaves; sprung up in Hampton, of all places,
crushed by a heedless foot, yet miraculously not destroyed, and already
pushing forth new and eager tendrils. And she had transplanted it. To
find the proper nourishment, to give it a chance to grow in a native,
congenial soil, such was her breathless task. And so she had selected
“The Child's Garden of Verses.”
“I should like to rise and go
Where the golden apples grow”...
When she laid down her book it was to talk, perhaps, of Silliston.
Established here before the birth of the Republic, its roots were bedded
in the soil of a racial empire, to a larger vision of which Augusta
Maturin clung: an empire of Anglo-Saxon tradition which, despite
disagreements and conflicts--nay, through them--developed imperceptibly
toward a sublimer union, founded not on dominion, but on justice and
right. She spoke of the England she had visited on her wedding journey,
of the landmarks and literature that also through generations have
been American birthrights; and of that righteous self-assertion and
independence which, by protest and even by war, America had contributed
to the democracy of the future. Silliston, indifferent to cults and
cataclysms, undisturbed by the dark tides flung westward to gather in
deposits in other parts of the land, had held fast to the old tradition,
stood ready to do her share to transform it into something even nobler
when the time should come. Simplicity and worth and beauty--these
elements at least of the older Republic should not perish, but in the
end prevail.
She spoke simply of these things, connecting them with a Silliston whose
spirit appealed to all that was inherent and abiding in the girl. All
was not chaos: here at least, a beacon burned with a bright and steady
flame. And she spoke of Andrew Silliston, the sturdy colonial prototype
of the American culture, who had fought against his King, who had spent
his modest fortune to found this seat of learning, believing as he did
that education is the cornerstone of republics; divining that lasting
unity is possible alone by the transformation of the individual into the
citizen through voluntary bestowal of service and the fruits of labour.
Samuel Wootton, the Boston merchant who had given the hospital, was
Andrew's true descendant, imbued with the same half-conscious intuition
that builds even better that it reeks. And Andrew, could he have
returns to earth in his laced coat and long silk waistcoat, would still
recognize his own soul in Silliston Academy, the soul of his creed and
race.
“Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore.”...
Janet drew in a great breath, involuntarily. These were moments when
it seemed that she could scarcely contain what she felt of beauty
and significance, when the ecstasy and pain were not to be borne. And
sometimes, as she listened to Mrs. Maturin's voice, she wept in silence.
Again a strange peace descended on her, the peace of an exile come home;
if not to remain, at least to know her own land and people before faring
forth. She would not think of that faring yet awhile, but strive to live
and taste the present--and yet as life flowed back into her veins that
past arose to haunt her, she yearned to pour it out to her new friend,
to confess all that had happened to her. Why couldn't she? But she was
grateful because Mrs. Maturin betrayed no curiosity. Janet often lay
watching her, puzzled, under the spell of a frankness, an ingenuousness,
a simplicity she had least expected to find in one who belonged to
such a learned place as that of Silliston. But even learning, she
was discovering, could be amazingly simple. Freely and naturally Mrs.
Maturin dwelt on her own past, on the little girl of six taken from
her the year after her husband died, on her husband himself, once a
professor here, and who, just before his last illness, had published a
brilliant book on Russian literature which resulted in his being called
to Harvard. They had gone to Switzerland instead, and Augusta Maturin
had come back to Silliston. She told Janet of the loon-haunted lake,
hemmed in by the Laurentian hills, besieged by forests, where she had
spent her girlhood summers with her father, Professor Wishart, of the
University of Toronto. There, in search of health, Gifford Maturin had
come at her father's suggestion to camp.
Janet, of course, could not know all of that romance, though she tried
to picture it from what her friend told her. Augusta Wishart, at six and
twenty, had been one of those magnificent Canadian women who are most
at home in the open; she could have carried Gifford Maturinout of the
wilderness on her back. She was five feet seven, modelled in proportion,
endowed by some Celtic ancestor with that dark chestnut hair which,
because of its abundance, she wore braided and caught up in a heavy
knot behind her head. Tanned by the northern sun, kneeling upright in a
canoe, she might at a little distance have been mistaken for one of the
race to which the forests and waters had once belonged. The instinct of
mothering was strong in her, and from the beginning she had taken the
shy and delicate student under her wing, recognizing in him one of the
physically helpless dedicated to a supreme function. He was forever
catching colds, his food disagreed with him, and on her own initiative
she discharged his habitant cook and supplied him with one of her own
choosing. When overtaken by one of his indispositions she paddled him
about the lake with lusty strokes, first placing a blanket over his
knees, and he submitted: he had no pride of that sort, he was utterly
indifferent to the figure he cut beside his Amazon. His gentleness
of disposition, his brilliant conversations with those whom, like her
father, he knew and trusted, captivated Augusta. At this period of her
life she was awakening to the glories of literature and taking a
special course in that branch. He talked to her of Gogol, Turgenief, and
Dostoievsky, and seated on the log piazza read in excellent French “Dead
Souls,” “Peres et Enfants,” and “The Brothers Karamazoff.” At the end of
August he went homeward almost gaily, quite ignorant of the arrow in
his heart, until he began to miss Augusta Wishart's ministrations--and
Augusta Wishart herself.... Then had followed that too brief period of
intensive happiness....
The idea of remarriage had never occurred to her. At eight and thirty,
though tragedy had left its mark, it had been powerless to destroy the
sweetness of a nature of such vitality as hers. The innate necessity
of loving remained, and as time went on had grown more wistful and
insistent. Insall and her Silliston neighbours were wont, indeed, gently
to rally her on her enthusiasms, while understanding and sympathizing
with this need in her. A creature of intuition, Janet had appealed
to her from the beginning, arousing first her curiosity, and then the
maternal instinct that craved a mind to mould, a soul to respond to her
touch....
Mrs. Maturin often talked to Janet of Insall, who had, in a way,
long been connected with Silliston. In his early wandering days, when
tramping over New England, he used unexpectedly to turn up at Dr.
Ledyard's, the principal's, remain for several weeks and disappear
again. Even then he, had been a sort of institution, a professor
emeritus in botany, bird lore, and woodcraft, taking the boys on long
walks through the neighbouring hills; and suddenly he had surprised
everybody by fancying the tumble-down farmhouse in Judith's Lane, which
he had restored with his own hands into the quaintest of old world
dwellings. Behind it he had made a dam in the brook, and put in a water
wheel that ran his workshop. In play hours the place was usually overrun
by boys.... But sometimes the old craving for tramping would overtake
him, one day his friends would find the house shut up, and he would be
absent for a fortnight, perhaps for a month--one never knew when he was
going, or when he would return. He went, like his hero, Silas Simpkins,
through the byways of New England, stopping at night at the farm-houses,
or often sleeping out under the stars. And then, perhaps, he would write
another book. He wrote only when he felt like writing.
It was this book of Insall's, “The Travels of Silas Simpkins”, rather
than his “Epworth Green” or “The Hermit of Blue Mountain,” that Mrs.
Maturin chose to read to Janet. Unlike the sage of Walden, than whom
he was more gregarious, instead of a log house for his castle Silas
Simpkins chose a cart, which he drove in a most leisurely manner from
the sea to the mountains, penetrating even to hamlets beside the silent
lakes on the Canadian border, and then went back to the sea again. Two
chunky grey horses with wide foreheads and sagacious eyes propelled
him at the rate of three miles an hour; for these, as their master, had
learned the lesson that if life is to be fully savoured it is not to be
bolted. Silas cooked and ate, and sometimes read under the maples
beside the stone walls: usually he slept in the cart in the midst of
the assortment of goods that proclaimed him, to the astute, an expert
in applied psychology. At first you might have thought Silos merely
a peddler, but if you knew your Thoreau you would presently begin to
perceive that peddling was the paltry price he paid for liberty. Silos
was in a way a sage--but such a human sage! He never intruded with
theories, he never even hinted at the folly of the mortals who bought
or despised his goods, or with whom he chatted by the wayside, though he
may have had his ideas on the subject: it is certain that presently one
began to have one's own: nor did he exclaim with George Sand, “Il n'y
a rien de plus betement mechant que l'habitant des petites villes!”
Somehow the meannesses and jealousies were accounted for, if not
excused. To understand is to pardon.
It was so like Insall, this book, in its whimsicality, in its feeling of
space and freedom, in its hidden wisdom that gradually revealed itself
as one thought it over before falling off to sleep! New England in the
early summer! Here, beside the tender greens of the Ipswich downs was
the sparkling cobalt of the sea, and she could almost smell its cool
salt breath mingling with the warm odours of hay and the pungent scents
of roadside flowers. Weathered grey cottages were scattered over the
landscape, and dark copses of cedars, while oceanward the eye was caught
by the gleam of a lighthouse or a lonely sail.
Even in that sandy plain, covered with sickly, stunted pines and burned
patches, stretching westward from the Merrimac, Silas saw beauty
and colour, life in the once prosperous houses not yet abandoned....
Presently, the hills, all hyacinth blue, rise up against the sunset,
and the horses' feet are on the “Boston Road”--or rud, according to the
authorized pronunciation of that land. Hardly, indeed, in many places,
a “rud” to-day, reverting picturesquely into the forest trail over which
the early inland settlers rode their horses or drove their oxen with
upcountry produce to the sea. They were not a people who sought the
easiest way, and the Boston Road reflects their characters: few valleys
are deep enough to turn it aside; few mountains can appal it: railroads
have given it a wide berth. Here and there the forest opens out to
reveal, on a knoll or “flat,” a forgotten village or tavern-stand. Over
the high shelf of Washington Town it runs where the air is keen and the
lakes are blue, where long-stemmed wild flowers nod on its sunny banks,
to reach at length the rounded, classic hills and sentinel mountain that
mark the sheep country of the Connecticut....
It was before Janet's convalescence began that Mrs. Maturin had
consulted Insall concerning her proposed experiment in literature.
Afterwards he had left Silliston for a lumber camp on a remote river in
northern Maine, abruptly to reappear, on a mild afternoon late in April,
in Augusta Maturin's garden. The crocuses and tulips were in bloom,
and his friend, in a gardening apron, was on her knees, trowel in hand,
assisting a hired man to set out marigolds and snapdragons.
“Well, it's time you were home again,” she exclaimed, as she rose to
greet him and led him to a chair on the little flagged terrace beside
the windows of her library. “I've got so much to tell you about our
invalid.”
“Our invalid!” Insall retorted.
“Of course. I look to you to divide the responsibility with me, and
you've shirked by running off to Maine. You found her, you know--and
she's really remarkable.”
“Now see here, Augusta, you can't expect me to share the guardianship of
an attractive and--well, a dynamic young woman. If she affects you this
way, what will she do to me? I'm much too susceptible.”
“Susceptible” she scoffed. “But you can't get out of it. I need you.
I've never been so interested and so perplexed in my life.”
“How is she?” Insall asked.
“Frankly, I'm worried,” said Mrs. Maturin. “At first she seemed to be
getting along beautifully. I read to her, a little every day, and it was
wonderful how she responded to it. I'll tell you about that I've got so
much to tell you! Young Dr. Trent is puzzled, too, it seems there are
symptoms in the case for which he cannot account. Some three weeks ago
he asked me what I made out of her, and I can't make anything--that's
the trouble, except that she seems pathetically grateful, and that
I've grown absurdly fond of her. But she isn't improving as fast as she
should, and Dr. Trent doesn't know whether or not to suspect functional
complications. Her constitution seems excellent, her vitality unusual.
Trent's impressed by her, he inclines to the theory that she has
something on her mind, and if this is so she should get rid of it, tell
it to somebody--in short, tell it to me. I know she's fond of me, but
she's so maddeningly self-contained, and at moments when I look at her
she baffles me, she makes me feel like an atom. Twenty times at least
I've almost screwed up my courage to ask her, but when it comes to the
point, I simply can't do it.”
“You ought to be able to get at it, if any one can,” said Insall.
“I've a notion it may be connected with the strike,” Augusta Maturin
continued. “I never could account for her being mixed up in that,
plunging into Syndicalism. It seemed so foreign to her nature. I wish
I'd waited a little longer before telling her about the strike, but one
day she asked me how it had come out--and she seemed to be getting along
so nicely I didn't see any reason for not telling her. I said that the
strike was over, that the millowners had accepted the I.W.W. terms, but
that Antonelli and Jastro had been sent to jail and were awaiting trial
because they had been accused of instigating the murder of a woman who
was shot by a striker aiming at a policeman. It seems that she had seen
that! She told me so quite casually. But she was interested, and I went
on to mention how greatly the strikers were stirred by the arrests,
how they paraded in front of the jail, singing, and how the feeling
was mostly directed against Mr. Ditmar, because he was accused of
instigating the placing of dynamite in the tenements.”
“And you spoke of Mr. Ditmar's death?” Insall inquired.
“Why yes, I told her how he had been shot in Dover Street by a demented
Italian, and if it hadn't been proved that the Italian was insane and
not a mill worker, the result of the strike might have been different.”
“How did she take it?”
“Well, she was shocked, of course. She sat up in bed, staring at me, and
then leaned back on the pillows again. I pretended not to notice it--but
I was sorry I'd said anything about it.”
“She didn't say anything?”
“Not a word.”
“Didn't you know that, before the strike, she was Ditmar's private
stenographer?”
“No!” Augusta Maturin exclaimed. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“It never occurred to me to tell you,” Insall replied.
“That must have something to do with it!” said Mrs. Maturin.
Insall got up and walked to the end of the terrace, gazing at a bluebird
on the edge of the lawn.
“Well, not necessarily,” he said, after a while. “Did you ever find out
anything about her family?”
“Oh, yes, I met the father once, he's been out two or three times, on
Sunday, and came over here to thank me for what I'd done. The mother
doesn't come--she has some trouble, I don't know exactly what. Brooks, I
wish you could see the father, he's so typically unique--if one may use
the expression. A gatekeeper at the Chippering Mills!”
“A gatekeeper?”
“Yes, and I'm quite sure he doesn't understand to this day how he became
one, or why. He's delightfully naive on the subject of genealogy, and
I had the Bumpus family by heart before he left. That's the form his
remnant of the intellectual curiosity of his ancestors takes. He was
born in Dolton, which was settled by the original Bumpus, back in the
Plymouth Colony days, and if he were rich he'd have a library stuffed
with gritty, yellow-backed books and be a leading light in the
Historical Society. He speaks with that nicety of pronunciation of the
old New Englander, never slurring his syllables, and he has a really
fine face, the kind of face one doesn't often see nowadays. I kept
looking at it, wondering what was the matter with it, and at last
I realized what it lacked--will, desire, ambition,--it was what a
second-rate sculptor might have made of Bradford, for instance. But
there is a remnant of fire in him. Once, when he spoke of the strike, of
the foreigners, he grew quite indignant.”
“He didn't tell you why his daughter had joined the strikers?” Insall
asked.
“He was just as much at sea about that as you and I are. Of course I
didn't ask him--he asked me if I knew. It's only another proof of
her amazing reticence. And I can imagine an utter absence of sympathy
between them. He accounts for her, of course; he's probably the
unconscious transmitter of qualities the Puritans possessed and tried
to smother. Certainly the fires are alight in her, and yet it's almost
incredible that he should have conveyed them. Of course I haven't seen
the mother.”
“It's curious he didn't mention her having been Ditmar's stenographer,”
Insall put in. “Was that reticence?”
“I hardly think so,” Augusta Maturin replied. “It may have been, but
the impression I got was of an incapacity to feel the present. All his
emotions are in the past, most of his conversation was about Bumpuses
who are dead and buried, and his pride in Janet--for he has a
pride--seems to exist because she is their representative. It's
extraordinary, but he sees her present situation, her future, with
extraordinary optimism; he apparently regards her coming to Silliston,
even in the condition in which we found her, as a piece of deserved
fortune for which she has to thank some virtue inherited from her
ancestors! Well, perhaps he's right. If she were not unique, I shouldn't
want to keep her here. It's pure selfishness. I told Mr. Bumpus I
expected to find work for her.”
Mrs. Maturin returned Insall's smile. “I suppose you're too polite to
say that I'm carried away by my enthusiasms. But you will at least do
me the justice to admit that they are rare and--discriminating, as a
connoisseur's should be. I think even you will approve of her.”
“Oh, I have approved of her--that's the trouble.”
Mrs. Maturin regarded him for a moment in silence.
“I wish you could have seen her when I began to read those verses of
Stevenson's. It was an inspirations your thinking of them.”
“Did I think of them?”
“You know you did. You can't escape your responsibility. Well, I felt
like--like a gambler, as though I were staking everything on a throw.
And, after I began, as if I were playing on some rare instrument. She
lay there, listening, without uttering a word, but somehow she seemed to
be interpreting them for me, giving them a meaning and a beauty I hadn't
imagined. Another time I told her about Silliston, and how this little
community for over a century and a half had tried to keep its standard
flying, to carry on the work begun by old Andrew, and I thought of those
lines,
“Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore.”
That particular application just suddenly, occurred to me, but she
inspired it.”
“You're a born schoolma'am,” Insall laughed.
“I'm much too radical for a schoolmam,” she declared. “No board of
trustees would put up with me--not even Silliston's! We've kept
the faith, but we do move slowly, Brooks. Even tradition grows, and
sometimes our blindness here to changes, to modern, scientific facts,
fairly maddens me. I read her that poem of Moody's--you know it:--
'Here, where the moors stretch free
In the high blue afternoon,
Are the marching sun and the talking sea.'
and those last lines:--
'But thou, vast outbound ship of souls,
What harbour town for thee?
What shapes, when thy arriving tolls,
Shall crowd the banks to see?
Shall all the happy shipmates then
Stand singing brotherly?
Or shall a haggard, ruthless few
Warp her over and bring her to,
While the many broken souls of me
Fester down in the slaver's pen,
And nothing to say or do?'”
“I was sorry afterwards, I could see that she was tremendously excited.
And she made me feel as if I, too, had been battened down in that hold
and bruised and almost strangled. I often wonder whether she has got out
of it into the light--whether we can rescue her.” Mrs. Maturin paused.
“What do you mean?” Insall asked.
“Well, it's difficult to describe, what I feel--she's such a perplexing
mixture of old New England and modernity, of a fatalism, and an
aliveness that fairly vibrates. At first, when she began to recover, I
was conscious only of the vitality--but lately I feel the other quality.
It isn't exactly the old Puritan fatalism, or even the Greek, it's oddly
modern, too, almost agnostic, I should say,--a calm acceptance of
the hazards of life, of nature, of sun and rain and storm alike--very
different from the cheap optimism one finds everywhere now. She isn't
exactly resigned--I don't say that--I know she can be rebellious. And
she's grateful for the sun, yet she seems to have a conviction that the
clouds will gather again.... The doctor says she may leave the hospital
on Monday, and I'm going to bring her over here for awhile. Then,” she
added insinuatingly, “we can collaborate.”
“I think I'll go back to Maine,” Insall exclaimed.
“If you desert me, I shall never speak to you again,” said Mrs. Maturin.
“Janet,” said Mrs. Maturin the next day, as she laid down the book from
which she was reading, “do you remember that I spoke to you once in
Hampton of coming here to Silliston? Well, now we've got you here, we
don't want to lose you. I've been making inquiries; quite a number of
the professors have typewriting to be done, and they will be glad to
give their manuscripts to you instead of sending them to Boston. And
there's Brooks Insall too--if he ever takes it into his head to write
another book. You wouldn't have any trouble reading his manuscript,
it's like script. Of course it has to be copied. You can board with Mrs.
Case--I've arranged that, too. But on Monday I'm going to take you to my
house, and keep you until you're strong enough to walk.”
Janet's eyes were suddenly bright with tears.
“You'll stay?”
“I can't,” answered Janet. “I couldn't.”
“But why not? Have you any other plans?”
“No, I haven't any plans, but--I haven't the right to stay here.”
Presently she raised her face to her friend. “Oh Mrs. Maturin, I'm so
sorry! I didn't want to bring any sadness here--it's all so bright and
beautiful! And now I've made you sad!”
It was a moment before Augusta Maturin could answer her.
“What are friends for, Janet,” she asked, “if not to share sorrow with?
And do you suppose there's any place, however bright, where sorrow has
not come? Do you think I've not known it, too? And Janet, I haven't sat
here all these days with you without guessing that something worries
you. I've been waiting, all this time, for you to tell me, in order that
I might help you.”
“I wanted to,” said Janet, “every day I wanted to, but I couldn't. I
couldn't bear to trouble you with it, I didn't mean ever to tell you.
And then--it's so terrible, I don't know what you'll think.”
“I think I know you, Janet,” answered Mrs. Maturin. “Nothing human,
nothing natural is terrible, in the sense you mean. At least I'm one of
those who believe so.”
Presently Janet said, “I'm going to have a child.”
Mrs. Maturin sat very still. Something closed in her throat, preventing
her immediate reply.
“I, too, had a child, my dear,” she answered. “I lost her.” She felt the
girl's clasp tighten on her fingers.
“But you--you had a right to it--you were married. Children are sacred
things,” said Augusta Maturin.
“Sacred! Could it be that a woman like Mrs. Maturity thought that this
child which was coming to her was sacred, too?
“However they come?” asked Janet. “Oh, I tried to believe that, too! At
first--at first I didn't want it, and when I knew it was coming I was
driven almost crazy. And then, all at once, when I was walking in
the rain, I knew I wanted it to have--to keep all to myself. You
understand?”
Augusta Maturity inclined her head.
“But the father?” she managed to ask, after a moment. “I don't wish to
pry, my dear, but does he--does he realize? Can't he help you?”
“It was Mr. Ditmar.”
“Perhaps it will help you to tell me about it, Janet.”
“I'd--I'd like to. I've been so unhappy since you told me he was
dead--and I felt like a cheat. You see, he promised to marry me, and
I know now that he loved me, that he really wanted to marry me, but
something happened to make me believe he wasn't going to, I saw--another
girl who'd got into trouble, and then I thought he'd only been playing
with me, and I couldn't stand it. I joined the strikers--I just had to
do something.”
Augusta Maturity nodded, and waited.
“I was only a stenographer, and we were very poor, and he was rich and
lived in a big house, the most important man in Hampton. It seemed
too good to be true--I suppose I never really thought it could happen.
Please don't think I'm putting all the blame on him, Mrs. Maturity--it
was my fault just as much as his. I ought to have gone away from
Hampton, but I didn't have the strength. And I shouldn't have--” Janet
stopped.
“But--you loved him?”
“Yes, I did. For a long time, after I left him, I thought I didn't, I
thought I hated him, and when I found out what had happened to me--that
night I came to you--I got my father's pistol and went to the mill to
shoot him. I was going to shoot myself, too.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Maturity gasped. She gave a quick glance of sheer amazement
at Janet, who did not seem to notice it; who was speaking objectively,
apparently with no sense of the drama in her announcement.
“But I couldn't,” she went on. “At the time I didn't know why I
couldn't, but when I went out I understood it was because I wanted the
child, because it was his child. And though he was almost out of his
head, he seemed so glad because I'd come back to him, and said he'd
marry me right away.”
“And you refused!” exclaimed Mrs. Maturity.
“Well, you see, I was out of my head, too, I still thought I hated
him--but I'd loved him all the time. It was funny! He had lots of
faults, and he didn't seem to understand or care much about how poor
people feel, though he was kind to them in the mills. He might have come
to understand--I don't know--it wasn't because he didn't want to, but
because he was so separated from them, I guess, and he was so interested
in what he was doing. He had ambition, he thought everything of that
mill, he'd made it. I don't know why I loved him, it wasn't because he
was fine, like Mr. Insall, but he was strong and brave, and he needed me
and just took me.”
“One never knows!” Augusta Maturity murmured.
“I went back that night to tell him I'd marry him--and he'd gone. Then
I came to you, to the soup kitchen. I didn't mean to bother you, I've
never quite understood how I got there. I don't care so much what
happens to me, now that I've told you,” Janet added. “It was mean, not
to tell you, but I'd never had anything like this--what you were giving
me--and I wanted all I could get.”
“I'm thankful you did come to us!” Augusta Maturin managed to reply.
“You mean--?” Janet exclaimed.
“I mean, that we who have been more--fortunate don't look at these
things quite as we used to, that the world is less censorious, is
growing to understand situations it formerly condemned. And--I don't
know what kind of a monster you supposed me to be, Janet.”
“Oh, Mrs. Maturin!”
“I mean that I'm a woman, too, my dear, although my life has been
sheltered. Otherwise, what has happened to you might have happened
to me. And besides, I am what is called unconventional, I have little
theories of my own about life, and now that you have told me everything
I understand you and love you even more than I did before.”
Save that her breath came fast, Janet lay still against the cushions of
the armchair. She was striving to grasp the momentous and unlooked-for
fact of her friend's unchanged attitude. Then she asked:--“Mrs. Maturin,
do you believe in God?”
Augusta Maturin was startled by the question. “I like to think of Him
as light, Janet, and that we are plants seeking to grow toward Him--no
matter from what dark crevice we may spring. Even in our mistakes and
sins we are seeking Him, for these are ignorances, and as the world
learns more, we shall know Him better and better. It is natural to long
for happiness, and happiness is self-realization, and self-realization
is knowledge and light.”
“That is beautiful,” said Janet at length.
“It is all we can know about God,” said Mrs. Maturin, “but it is
enough.” She had been thinking rapidly. “And now,” she went on, “we
shall have to consider what is to be done. I don't pretend that the
future will be easy, but it will not be nearly as hard for you as it
might have been, since I am your friend, and I do not intend to desert
you. I'm sure you will not let it crush you. In the first place, you
will have something to go on with--mental resources, I mean, for which
you have a natural craving, books and art and nature, the best thoughts
and the best interpretations. We can give you these. And you will have
your child, and work to do, for I'm sure you're industrious. And of
course I'll keep your secret, my dear.”
“But--how?” Janet exclaimed.
“I've arranged it all. You'll stay here this spring, you'll come to my
house on Monday, just as we planned, and later on you may go to Mrs.
Case's, if it will make you feel more independent, and do typewriting
until the spring term is over. I've told you about my little camp away
up in Canada, in the heart of the wilderness, where I go in summer.
We'll stay there until the autumn, until your baby comes, and, after
that, I know it won't be difficult to get you a position in the west,
where you can gain your living and have your child. I have a good friend
in California who I'm sure will help you. And even if your secret should
eventually be discovered--which is not probable--you will have earned
respect, and society is not as stern as it used to be. And you will
always have me for a friend. There, that's the bright side of it. Of
course it isn't a bed of roses, but I've lived long enough to observe
that the people who lie on roses don't always have the happiest lives.
Whenever you want help and advice, I shall always be here, and from time
to time I'll be seeing you. Isn't that sensible?”
“Oh, Mrs. Maturin--if you really want me--still?”
“I do want you, Janet, even more than I did--before, because you need
me more,” Mrs. Maturin replied, with a sincerity that could not fail to
bring conviction....