BOOK III.

THE BARE-HEADED MAN

1

THE red head of the little telephone-miss bowed over the

switch-board when Morning entered Markheim’s. She colored, smiled; all

metropolitan outrages of service forgotten. Charley waved furtively

from afar; the door to the inner office opened.

“Well?” said the manager.

“Well, Mr. Markheim?”

“You have come too soon.”

“I said--five days.”

“We read no play in five days.”

“It was left here on that basis.”

“Nonsense.”

“You can give it to me now.”

“It is being read now. Your title is rotten. The old one was better.”

“That title will grow on you,” said Morning, who began to like the

interview. “I shall come to take the play to-morrow--unless you decide

to keep it and bring it out this Fall----”

“Why did you come to Markheim again? Have you tried all the rest?”

“There was something unfinished about our former brush--I didn’t like

the feel of it.... My play is done over better. Neither copy has been

submitted--except to Markheim.”

“Your play may be as bad as before.”

“Yes. It looks better to me, however.”

“You’ve got a war play again----”

“That first and second act.”

“You can’t write war. This is not war----”

Morning did not realize the change that had come over him until he

recalled the shame and rebellion that had risen in his mind when

Markheim had said this before.... Something had come to him from Duke

Fallows, or from Betty Berry, or from the hill silences. He was a new

creature.... Must one be detached somewhat from the world in order to

use it? This was his sense at the moment: that he could compel the mind

before him, reinforced as it was by distaste for everything decent,

and manifesting the opinions of other men, including Reever Kennard’s.

There was no irritation whatsoever; no pride in being a war-writer,

good or bad. Markheim’s denial had no significance in the world above

or water beneath. He saw, however, that he must change Markheim’s idea,

and that he must do it by beating Markheim in his own particular zone

of activity.

There was a certain fun in this. He arose and stood by the other’s

chair. The eye-balls showed wider and rolled heavily. The pistol or

bomb was never far from his mind. Morning looked down at him, saying

quietly:

“You said something like that before, and it wasn’t your opinion--it

was Reever Kennard’s. I don’t object to it exactly, but I want to show

you something. You know Reever Kennard’s paper?”

Markheim nodded.

“You know the _World-News_ sent him out to the Russo-Japanese

war--big expense account, helpers, dress-suits, and all that?”

“I know he was there.”

“The same managing editor who sent Reever Kennard out is still on the

desk. He should be in the office now. The number is----”

Morning found it for him hastily, and added: “You call him now.”

“I don’t want to call him up----”

“But you’d better. Twice you said something that someone told you--and

it’s troublesome. The short way out is to call him now----”

Morning was tapping the desk lightly. Markheim reached for the

extension ’phone. Luckily, the thing was managed--luckily, and through

the name of Markheim.

“Ask him who did the story of the battle of Liaoyang for the

_World-News_?” Morning ordered.

The question was asked and the answer came back.

“Ask him if it was a good story--and how long.”

It was asked and answered.

“Ask him if it was conceded to be the best story of the war published

in America.”

The talk was extended this time, Markheim explaining why he asked.

“What did he say?” Morning asked.

“He said it was all right,” Markheim granted pertly. “Only that there

was a very good story from another man on Port Arthur--afterward.”

“That is true. There was a heady little chap got into Port Arthur--and

came out strong.... Now, look here----”

Morning went to the case where a particularly recent encyclopædia

was drawn forth. He referred to the war, but especially to the final

paragraph of the article, captioned “Bibliography.”... His own name and

the name of his book was cited as the principal American reference....

It was all laughable. No one knew better than Morning that such action

would be silly among real people.

“You don’t see Reever Kennard referred to, do you--as authority

of war-stuff?... The point is that you play people get so much

counterfeit color and office-setting--that you naturally can’t look

authoritatively on the real thing.... However, the fact that I know

more about the battle of Liaoyang than any other man in America would

never make a good play. There’s a lot beside in this play--a lot more

than at first----”

“They have your play out now--reading it,” Markheim observed.

Morning added: “It’s clear to you, isn’t it, why Mr. Reever Kennard

didn’t care for the John Morning play----?”

Markheim’s eyes gleamed. This was pure business. “You had the goods and

delivered it in his own office----”

“Exactly----”

“You bother me too much about this play. The title is rotten----”

“You’ll like that, when you see Markheim with it. There’s a

peculiar thing about the word--it doesn’t die. It never rests. It’s

human--divine, too. There’s a cry in it--to some happiness, to some

sorrow--to the many, hope.... It sings. I would rather have it than

glory.... Listen, ‘_Markheim Offers Compassion_’--why, that’s a

God’s business--offering compassion----”

“You feel like a song-bird this afternoon, Mr. Morning----”

“I’ll be back to-morrow----”

“Too soon----”

“Can’t help it. It’s ready. It will be the big word this Winter. You

can read it in an hour. I’m off to-morrow--from Markheim. The Winter

will clear my slate in this office, whether you take it or not----”

“Come back at noon----”

Charley’s sister looked up from her pad. Her swift change of expression

to a certain shyness and pleasure, too, in a sort of mutual secret,

added to Morning’s merriment as he left the building.... He wondered

continually that afternoon what had come over him. He had not been

able to do this sort of thing before. The astonishing thing was his

detachment from any tensity of interest. It was all right either way,

according to his condition of mind. The question was important: Must a

man be aloof from the fogging ruck of accepted activities in order to

see them, and to manage best among things as they are?

There was the new book, too. Betty Berry had given him the new task.

A splendor had come to life--even with the unspeakable sadness of the

ending of that day. The beauty of that day would never die. Every phase

of her sacrifice revealed a subtle, almost superhuman, faith in him.

Was it this--her faith in him--that made him so new and so strong;

that made him know in his heart that if the Play were right--it would

go in spite of Markheim, in spite of all New York? And if it were not

right, certainly he did not want it to go.... Markheim and New York--he

regarded them that night from his doorstep; then turned his back to the

city, and faced the west and the woman.

It broke upon him. She was mothering him. She was bringing to his

action all that was real and powerful--fighting for it, against every

desire and passion of her own. Her wish for his good was superior to

her own wish for happiness. She gave him his work and his dreams. He

knew not what mystery of prayer and concentration she poured upon

him.... This place in which she had never been was filled with her. The

little frail creature was playing upon him, as upon her instrument.

Moments were his in which she seemed a mighty artist.

And then he saw men everywhere--just instruments--but played upon by

forces of discord and illusion.... He saw these men clearly, because

he had been of them. Such forces had played upon him.... He had been

buffeted and whipped along the rough ways. He had looked up to the

slaughterers of the wars as unto men of greatness. He had been played

upon by the thirsts and the sufferings, by greed and ambition. He had

hated men. He had fumed at bay before imagined wrongs; and yet no one

had nor could wrong him, but himself.

One by one he had been forced to fight it out with his own devils--to

the last ditch. There they had quit--vanished like puffs of nasty

smoke. He had stood beneath Reever Kennard, almost poisoning himself

to death with hatred. Pure acknowledgment this, that his life moved

in the same scope of evil.... He had accepted the power of Markheim,

feared it, and suffered over the display of it. Now he found it puny

and laughable. He had worked for himself, and it had brought him only

madness and shattering of force. He had been brought to death, had

accepted it in its most hideous form--and risen over it.... His hill

was calm and sweet in the dusk. Though his heart was lonely--and though

all this clear-seeing seemed not so wonderful as it would be to have

the woman with him in the cabin--yet it was all very good. He felt

strong, his fighting force not abated.

He had his work. She had shown him that. He would write every line to

her. His work would lift him up, as the days of the Play had lifted

him--out of the senses and the usual needs of man. He would be with

her, in that finer communion of instrument and artist.... The world

was very old and dear. Men’s hearts were troubled, but men’s evils

were very trifling, when all was understood. He would never forget his

lessons. He would tell everyone what miracles are performed in the

ministry of pain.... He looked into the dark of the west and loved her.

* * * * *

“Well, you are on time,” said Markheim the following noon.

“Yes,” Morning said with calmness and cheer.

“We will take the play. I have had it read.... We can do no more than

bust.”

“This Fall--the production?”

“I will give it the _Markheim_ in November.”

He seemed to be surprised that Morning did not emotionalize in some

way. He had expected at least to be informed that “bust” was out of the

question, and missed this mannerism of the playwright, now that the

thing was his and not the other’s.... Moreover, Markheim was pleased

with the way he had reached the decision. He wanted Morning to know.

“There was that difference of opinion.... Do you know what I did?”

Morning couldn’t imagine.

“Well,” said Markheim, sitting back, hands patting his girth, “those

who have nothing but opinions--read your play. They like it; they

like it not. It will pay. It will not pay. It is ‘revolutionary,’

‘artistic,’ ‘well-knit,’ ‘good second act’--much rot it is, and is not.

Who do you think settled the question?”

“Yourself?”

“Not me--I have no opinion.”

“Who then?”

“The friend of no man.” It was said with grandeur.

Morning waited.

Markheim leaned forward, beaming not unkindly, and whispered:

“The little one at the switch-board outside the door. She said it was

‘lovely.’... Oh, she’s a sharp little spider.”

2

HERE is an extra bit of the fabric, that goes along with the garment

for mending.... Mid-May, and never a sign of the old wound’s reopening.

Something of Morning’s former robustness had spent itself, but he had

all the strength a man needs, and that light unconsciousness of the

flesh which is delightful to those who produce much from within. The

balance of his forces of development had turned from restoring his body

to a higher replenishment.

The mystery of work broke upon him more and more, and the thrall of

it; its relation to man at his best; the cleansing of a man’s daily

life for the improvement of his particular expression in the world’s

service; the ordering of his daily life in pure-mindedness, the power

of the will habitually turned to the achieving of this pure-mindedness.

He saw that man is only true and at peace when played upon from

the spiritual source of life; therefore, all that perfects a man’s

instrumentation is vital, and all that does not is destructive. Most

important of all, he perceived that a real worker has nothing whatever

to do beyond the daily need, with the result of his work in a worldly

way; that any deep relation to worldly results of a man’s work is

contamination.

He lost the habit and inclination to think what he wanted to say. He

listened. He became sceptical of all work that came from brain, in

the sense of having its origin in something he had actually learned.

He remembered how Fallows had spoken of this long ago; (he had not

listened truly enough to understand then); how a man’s brain is at his

best when used purely to receive--as a little finer instrument than the

typewriter.

Except for certain moments on the borderland of sleep, Betty Berry

was closest to him during his work. His every page was for her eye--a

beloved revelation of his flesh and mind and spirit. And the thing had

to be plain, plain, plain. That was the law.

How Fallows had fought for that. “Don’t forget the deepest down man,

John!”... Betty Berry and Fallows and Nevin were his angels--his cabin,

a place of continual outpouring to them. Few evils were powerful

enough to stem such a current, and penetrate the gladness of giving.

He slept lightly, and was on the verge again and again, almost nightly,

in fact, of surprising his own greater activity that does not sleep.

He often brought back just the murmur of these larger doings; and on

the borderlands he sometimes felt himself in the throb of that larger

consciousness which moves about its meditations and voyagings, saying

to the body, “Sleep on.” It was this larger consciousness that used

him as he used the typewriter, when he was writing at his best and his

listening was pure.... He had been held so long to the ruck that he

would never forget the parlance of the people--and not fall to writing

for visionaries.

... One night he dreamed he went to Betty Berry.... He was ascending

the stairs to her. She seemed smaller, frailer. Though he was a step

or two down, his eyes met hers equally. She was lovelier than anything

he had ever known or conceived in woman. Her smile was so wistful

and sweet and compassionate--that the hush and fervor of it seemed

everywhere in the world. There was a shyness in her lips and in the

turn of her head. Some soft single garment was about her--as if she had

come from a fountain in the evening.... And suddenly there was a great

tumult within him. He was lost in the battle of two selves--the man who

loved and destroyed, and the man who loved and sustained.

The greater love only asked her there--loved her there, exquisite,

apart, found in her a theme for infinite contemplation, as she stood

smiling.... The other was the love of David, when he looked across

the house-tops at Bathsheba, bathing, and made her a widow to mother

Solomon. This human love was strong in the dream, for he caught her in

his arms, and kissed, and would not let her go, until her voice at last

reached his understanding.

“_Oh, why did you spoil it all? Oh, why--when I thought it was safe

to come?_”

He had no words, but her message was not quite ended:

“_I should have come to you as before--and not this way--but you

seemed so strong and so pure.... It is my fault--all my fault._”

She was Betty Berry--but lovelier than all the earth--the spirit of

all his ideals in woman. The marvelous thing about it was that he knew

after the dream that this was the Betty Berry that would live in spite

of anything that could happen to the Betty Berry in the world. He knew

that she waited for him--for the greater lover, John Morning, whose

love did not destroy, but sustained.... She who regarded him in “the

hush of expectancy” from the distance of a night’s journey, and he

who labored here stoutly in the work of the world, were but names and

symbols of the real creatures above the illusion of time.... So he came

to love death--not with eagerness, but as an ideal consummation. Such

a result were impossible had he not faced death as an empty darkness

first, and overcome the fear of it.

These many preparations for real life on earth in the flesh he was to

put in his book--not his adventures, but the fruits of them--how he had

reached to-day, and its decent polarity in service. He had been hurled

like a top into the midst of men. After the seething of wild energy

and the wobblings, he had risen to a certain singing and aspiring

rhythm--the whir of harmony. He told the story in order, day by day.

Though it was done with the I’s, there was no self-exploitation.

John Morning was merely the test-tube, containing from time to time

different compounds of experience. And he did it plainly, plainly,

plainly, as is the writer’s business.

As he watched for Jethro, one morning early in June, he perceived

a second figure in the old rig. At the box, the stranger got out

and followed Jethro’s arm, directed up the hill toward the cabin,

disappeared for a moment in the swail-thicket by the fence, and

presently began the ascent, bringing Morning’s papers and letters....

The stranger was tall and tanned, wore a wide hat and approached with a

slim ease of movement. Morning knew he had seen him before, but could

not remember until the voice called:

“Hullo--that you, John Morning?”

It was Archibald Calvert, last met during the night-halt in Rosario,

Luzon, the correspondent who had ridden with Reever Kennard, and who

had lost _Mio Amigo_. He had always thought rather pleasantly of

Archibald Calvert when he thought at all.

“Say--what are you getting set for out here?”

“It’s better and cheaper than a hall-bedroom,” Morning answered.

“That sounds good.... Well, I spent all day yesterday looking for

you--first clue, Boabdil--second at Markheim’s from a little red-haired

girl.... The rural man picked me up----”

“I’ve got some cold buttermilk----”

“Pure asceticism--also a pearl of an idea----”

They sat down together.

“So you made ten thousand dollars out of Liaoyang after you came

back.... I looked up the story. It was--say, it was a bride, Morning!”

“Thanks. Duke Fallows did a better one in one-tenth the space. The

pay-end didn’t mean much. I’m not a good bed for money culture. Tell me

where you’ve been, Mr. Calvert.”

“Oh, I’ve been around. Didn’t get up to the Russ-Jap stuff. I was down

among the Pacific Islands. You know I’m a better tramp than writer.

It’s five years since I hit New York.... They say old Reever Kennard is

doing politics. He’ll be back from Washington to-night----”

“Politics, and an occasional dramatic criticism,” said Morning.

“You know that never sat easy--that day in Rosario----”

“Didn’t it?”

“I was down to Batangas three days later--unpacking saddle-bags, and

found _Mio Amigo_ No. 1. Deeper down I found its mate.... They’re

common in Luzon as old Barlow knives when we were kids.... I made a

scene about that knife--with my own deep down in my own duffel.... I

suppose you’ve forgotten.”

“No--I haven’t.”

“You were pretty decent about it. It was a nasty thing--even to

speak about it as I did. You see, the inscription rather appealed to

kid-intelligence in my case, and I thought it was unique, instead of

the popular idea of a cheap Filipino knife.”

“Kennard took it seriously, didn’t he?” said Morning.

“You mean at the time?... Yes, I couldn’t understand that exactly.”

Morning decided not to speak of that day’s relation to Tokyo five years

later.

“Well,” said Calvert, after a pause, “I hunted you up to say I was an

ass, and to give you back your knife. The pair have been smelling up my

things around the world for a long time.”

Morning grasped it eagerly.

Some time afterward, when Calvert arose to go, Morning ventured this

much:

“And so you’re going to see Reever Kennard?”

“Yes, to-night.... I suppose you two and the others game together from

time to time?”

“The fact is, New York isn’t very good anchorage for that sort of

thing,” Morning said.

“... I was glad when they told me you had put over that big Liaoyang

stuff, Morning----”

Morning smiled and took the quick brown hand of the other. Calvert

appealed to him, but it couldn’t be shown in any way. Calvert was like

a good horse, gladly giving evidence of fine feeling, but embarrassed

when made much of.... He went away blithely--off, for God knows

where--but fearlessly on his way.

Morning held the little knife in his hand.

He thought of that hard Philippine service which had seemed so big

at the time; of that day when he watched the fat shoulders of Reever

Kennard in the forward sets of horse, Kennard seeming all that

greatness can be. He thought of the halt in Rosario, of the lame woman.

He looked at the little knife again.... He had not really wanted it

then, and yet it had cut the strings of his Fates, turning them loose

upon him. It had knocked him out of the second Japanese column five

years afterward, and given him instead Duke Fallows and Liaoyang. It

had given him that great battle, Lowenkampf, the Ploughman, Eve, the

sorrel mare--the journey to Koupangtse--the blanket at Tongu--the

deck-passage--the _Sickles_, Ferry--and Nevin--even Noyes and

Field.

It had given him the Armory, and Betty Berry.

He held it fast.

It had given him money, fame, and New York for a day--the opinion

from Kennard that killed the first writing of _Compassion_--the

mood to see Charley and his sister at the switch-board, which brought

him to Betty Berry again.... Out of these had come all that was real

and true of this hour. It had given him the slums and the leper

conflict--Nevin’s cure and the fasting--the real Ploughman--the better

_Compassion_--the cabin in which he sat, his place of Initiation.

It had given him the triumph over death--the illumination of love and

labor--the listening life of the soul, and the vision of its superb

immortality.

He held it fast and looked hard at the little friend. The brass handle

sent up a smell of verdi-gris from his hot hand.

3

THIS was John Morning’s splendid summer. He was up often at

two or three in the morning. Thoughts and sentences of yesterday,

now cleared and improved, thronged his mind, as he made coffee. He

learned that a man may write the first half of a book, but be used as

a mere slave of the last half. And yet, to be the instrument of a rush

of life and ideas, the latter becoming every hour more coherent and

effective, was a privilege to make a man sing. And to increase, at the

same time, in the realization of the courage and tenderness and faith

of a woman who waited; to feel the power of her in the work; to work

for her; to put his love for her in the work, all the strength of her

attraction--this was living the life of depth and fullness.

Times when he looked out of the doorway, and the elms were shaping

against the flowery purple of daybreak, and the robin beginning

thirstily--his eyes smarted with tears at the beauty of it all, the

privilege of work, and the absolute rightness of the whole creation,

in which a man can’t possibly lose, after he has heard his real self

speak. He loved life and death in such moments, and knew there was a

Betty Berry in the waiting studio, and another over the Crossing. (Had

he not glimpsed her in his dream at the top of the stairway?)

So his book prospered, enfolding the common man. It had something

for every man who had not come so far as he. He was _of_ them,

in every understanding among them, different only in that it was his

business to write by the way. His old failures furnished the studies of

distintegrating forces. Personally, he was detached from them, as his

writing showed, except for an intellectual familiarity--as detached as

from the worn clothing he had left here and there around the world. One

by one, the constructive and destructive principles of the average man

were shown divided against each other in the arena of mind--and how the

friends and loves had come to the balance. Nevin was in the fabric, the

little Englishman at Tongu, Fallows and the Woman--not in name, (there

was no name but John Morning’s), but they were all there, lifting and

laughing and drawing, as friends and loves do in the life of a man.

Again and again he cried out that the peace and sweet reason of things

he had found was of their bringing--that without them he would have

been lost again and again by the way.

... The Summer days passed magically. Markheim was beginning to talk

rehearsals. He had found the right man to play the Ploughman....

Late-September. The letters from Betty Berry were rarer, thinner.

They troubled him.... One morning he watched Jethro’s rig approach--a

golden morning, and the cattle were feeding down in the meadow. He had

seen the picture a thousand times--the cattle on the slope--yet it was

never so real to him, nor had he hungered for the face of Betty Berry

as now.... Jethro stopped at his box, and he hurried down. There was a

letter from her--and one from Russia, too. The first did not free his

mind from sorrow--though the effort was plain to do this very thing....

The letter from Fallows filled the day:

“... I knew, John, if I sat down to write, it would set free all my

longing to go back to you. So I have put it off from week to week....

From the _Western States_ I followed our old trail to Tokyo, then

via Peking, to Shanhaikwan, Koupangtse, Liaoyang.... I stopped there,

and went around by the coal-fields, where the millet had been planted

all over again. I talked over the battle with the Japanese. They are

just as interested as ever in what the other man knows. Though the

big battle seemed like another life to me, it was their immediate

yesterday. They would do it all over again. The Ploughman seemed to

walk with me; the rest was boyish babble.... I found Lowenkampf--white

and quiet--but the woman loves him, if Russia does not. The little boy

is a man-soul. That’s the story--except that he sent his love to you.

The three are off to South America, and all is well.... Up in the Bosk

hills, I followed the Summer. The old man is gone. He had his sausages

at the last....

“I was needed, but the little farm was all right. The neighbor had

done his part. There was enough for all.... How simple, one little

vanity of a man such as I am, and this family has enough and to spare;

food and firelight, good-will, their hope of heaven brought down to

comprehension again--all for so little, John. If men only knew the joy

of it--how it lasts and augments, how it sustains the man who does

it--to weave a mesh of happiness for the poor. The fact is, he has to

watch very carefully, or he’ll get caught in the mesh himself.

“The little boy came running to meet me. I think he ran to meet me

somewhere before. He is different from all the others--except for that

touch of the old mother which he has, and that something about the

Ploughman. He was white and all eyes when I picked him up. They said

he wasn’t well, but in three days he was sound again--color breaking

through. To think that my coming could do that for any living soul--I.

“The old Mother.... She was just waiting for me--lingering until I

came--watching down the road in the sunlight. We talked a little. She

spoke softly of her soldier-son. It was only a few days.... It all

came from her, John--the battle of Liaoyang so far as its meaning to

me. She was the light on the Ploughman’s brow that made a different

man of me. He never dreamed of messages to the world of men, nor the

passion to serve men--but he had his mother’s faith and something of

her vision. That made him different from other Russian soldiers, so

that I could see. The little boy Jan will bring it to life again. Your

play goes straight back to her. There’s everlasting quality in being a

mother like that. I think it was the fourth morning--that I suddenly

began to listen attentively to what she was saying. It was about us

all--intimately about her soldier-son.... The younger mother came

in--her sad, weary face different.... She went out, and returned with

her shoes on.... Suddenly I knew that the old sweet flower was passing.

Why, she was gone before I knew it--smiling up at the saints from my

arms.... I heard the little boy coming quickly--knew his step as I

would know yours, John. I seemed to wait for his hand upon the door.

I saw him, and he saw us--came forward on tip-toe, and we were all

together----”

Morning didn’t read the rest just then. It seemed one of the finest

things he had ever known--Duke Fallows preserving the old mother and

the others in their conviction that he was just a peasant like the

Ploughman.

4

FROM that April night after Morning left, when Helen Quiston

found her wandering in the halls, and asking in a childish way to be

taken to the ’cello (saying that her father had hidden it from her in

a strange place), until now in mid-September, Betty Berry had not left

the studio-apartment. The real break-down had begun a month before

the high day in which Morning came; perhaps on the very night his

Guardian had called. She had scarcely played or practiced since then;

she read nothing, talked to no one except Helen. Morning had noted her

anxiously early on the day of his call at the studio, but such power

had come in the flashes of those hours, and so high was she enthroned

and illumined in his own mind at the end, (in which she had kept to the

darkness), that he had not realized the blight that had touched her

life.

Helen Quiston had long loved the woman. She knew much that the Doctor

did not. It was she who read the letters which in certain moments of

the day Betty hastily penned. It was as if for a moment in a long

gray day, a ray of watery sunlight broke through the cloud-banks. In

the momentary shining of her mind, Betty would write to Morning. Many

of the letters were impossible. Certain of these letters would have

brought the lover by the first train. Even Betty had a sense of this

and relied upon the music-teacher. Here and there among the notes, too,

was a wisp of the old sweet spirit. It was a wonderful conception to

Helen Quiston: that all but these had gone to replenish the creative

fire of a lover who knew well what his lady had given, but not what it

meant to her. Just as surely as the Hindoo woman offers herself upon

the funeral pyre with the body of her mate, Betty Berry had given her

spirit to the living. A hundred times the singing teacher had heard

these words from white lips that smiled:

“_We are one--a deathless, world-loving one!_”

And often she heard this queer verse from the Persian:

“_Four eyes met. There were changes in two souls.

And now I cannot remember whether he is a man and I a woman,

Or he a woman and I a man. All I know is,

There were two: Love came, and there is one...._”

“Don’t forget to remind me that I must tell him I am happy,” Betty

would say.... When a letter was finally finished and sealed, she

would lean back, shutting her eyes with a sigh, saying: “Now read me

his that came to-day and yesterday.”... And afterward: “Isn’t it

wonderful, Helen, dear? Isn’t it quite wonderful? You are so dear to

understand.”

“Self-destruction is the first danger,” the Doctor had said in

the early days. “That’s why she should be in a sanatorium under

professional vigilance. Each case is individual. She might take a

sudden dislike to the saintliest of nurses--even to you. The fever

will not last, but it is a long battle. Shock, overwork, a terrible

disappointment--such are the causes. Singular sweetness of disposition,

as in this case, is very rare. The thing that goes with this usually is

‘the frozen stare’--hours motionless, looking at the wall----”

* * * * *

Morning’s letters were like white-hot fragments from his forge--roughly

fashioned, but still seething with force. Helen Quiston felt that

there was a splendid singing in that forge; that a man’s voice attuned

with God and the world was raised in the morning; that silence drew on

as the concentration of the task deepened; that there was singing in

the evening again. Aliment for the soul of the music teacher, these

letters. She would have fought to obey Betty Berry against the will of

the Doctor and nurse had it been necessary.

One of these September-morning letters was particularly joyous with

enthusiasm for Betty Berry’s gift to him. He told again how it wove

into, beautified and energized his work.

“Literally I thank the stars for you,” Helen Quiston read. “Sometimes

it comes to me--as if straight from you--strength that I feel with my

limbs, strength that means health. It surges through my veins like

magic--so that my eyes smart with tears. I speak your name again and

again in thankfulness for love fresh every day, and for the pity for

men in my heart----”

Betty was not following. It was frequently so in the first reading.

“Free,” she repeated softly, from a thought of yesterday’s letter. “He

said I was free. He said I never explained----”

“Yes, dear, he was writing of that night he came to the theatre. I’ll

get the letter for you to-night. He said that you belonged to the risen

world, the woman’s world--that you trusted your vision--did not seek

to explain, but rejoiced. He said you had no guile, that you asked

nothing, and were unafraid. He means to give the world a portrait of

the risen woman--a portrait of you.”

Betty Berry did not answer. Mention of that night at the theatre

invariably affected her to silence.

“I must hurry away for a little while, but I will finish this,” Helen

added, reading on:

“In the evenings, the greater power of you comes over my life like a

spiritual rain. I remember the art of your hands, the sweet mystery of

your lips; the tenderness of your eyes and words; but over it all--the

inner power of you, strong as truth, pure as truth, wise as the East,

and sweet as the South. It is the spirit of you that has come to

me--your singing, winging, feminine spirit. It has made me whole....

Do you know, I used to think the world would be made better by force,

by arraignment, by revelation of evil. You have shown me the better

way of making the world better by loving it. That’s woman’s way, the

Christ’s way.... And when I think that you have given me this blessed

thing, this finest fruit of earth--your love, created out of trial and

loneliness, your love, so pure and true and valorous--when I think

that it is mine, and how you fought through the long day to give me

this, _and only this_--when I think of the splendor of that day’s

work of yours, I kneel to you, and to the spirit of the world--in the

wood, in the hut, before the door, under my elms, under the stars,--I

kneel to you and the Source of you. The peace that comes, and the

power--this, is my passionate wish for you! I would restore it to you

magnified.”

Helen Quiston read all this a second time that September morning,

although her pupils were waiting.... It was to her like the song from a

strong man’s house.

“You are rich and elect, Betty!” she cried. “You have been a woman and

_wanted_ love. You have finished your work at night, alone, and

realized that there was no one--your arms tired, your throat tired,

your brain and soul tired and heart-lonely--and there was no one. How

rich you are now! I think a woman is rich who can say: ‘In London or

Tokyo or New South Wales there is one who loves me--who may be thinking

at this moment about me--who wishes I were there, or he were here;

whose heart’s warmth stretches across the distance and makes the world

a home, because he is in the world.... It would seem to me that I

should be exultant to-day--if there was such a one for me. It seems--if

I could see him in a year, even if I could not see him at all, _and

he were somewhere_--I should be all new and radiant, born again....

But you, Betty dear--oh, think what you have--what you are giving!”

Betty’s eyes were shut. There was a gray line around the faint color of

the lips, and she was pale as a candle-flame in the morning sun.

“I wish you could stay with me, dearest,” she whispered. “It is too

much for me--when I am alone. But when you are here, what you say and

what you see--makes me believe.... And you must tell me what to write

in answer to this--to satisfy him. I shall hold it in my hand, and

rest----”

“I’ll come back this afternoon. We’ll have supper, and the letter will

be mailed. You’ll know what to say then----”

She hurried away, lest her heart break. The tired, emotionless

voice trailed after her. And all day she heard Betty’s voice among

the unfinished voices, and saw the spiritless clay of her heart’s

friend sitting in deathly labor below, tormented by the phantom of a

will--like a once glorious empire become desolate, a foolish scion upon

the throne.

5

HELEN QUISTON was the brain of the studio, the eyes and fingers--even,

in part, the spirit of the place that John Morning loved. It was a

letter of hers that John Morning answered with this paragraph:

“I shut my eyes after the first reading--and it seemed to me I went

sailing. There were many voyagers and many islands--but I found _my

Island_. It called to me and I knew it was for me. The voyagers

sailed on past the curving inlets and the arrowed points--but I sailed

home. I found the fountains, the crags, the echoes, the virgin springs,

the mysterious meeting places of the land and sea, the enchanted forest

where the fairies are--and the sun was rising. It was thus I answered

the calling mystery of your spirit....”

She was glad that his mind turned to the actual memory picture of Betty

Berry, as he finished:

“I do love the woman that moves about the world, the woman others

see--the lips that tremble, the eyes that fill with tears so swiftly

over some loveliness, and so rarely over her own sorrow; the

instant-enfolding mind, the listening and the vitality--but it seems

that I love in a greater way the heart that called to its lover without

words--who fared forth to meet her lover and gave her soul.”

More and more Helen Quiston perceived that John Morning was becoming

sufficient unto himself--the larger lover, loving the world through

his lady, and needing less, even in thought, her hands and kisses and

emotions. She saw steadily that which Duke Fallows had made Betty

Berry see for a night. She did not see it as clearly as Betty Berry saw

it that night, but she beheld an enduring radiance from it, because

her body was not in the wreck of sacrifice. She had a woman’s sense of

the large relation of things, and a woman’s faith. The misery of life

as she had met it, the disorder, monotony, and gray sorrow of it all,

was her profound assurance of another and brilliant side to the shield.

She wanted nothing for herself in these particular instances. For Betty

Berry she saw a swift transfer to a certain indefinite perfection, no

less attractive because it was unlimned in her mind. Her own happiness,

her great privilege, was to be third in this miracle of a man and woman

passing beyond in a truly royal way. There was a mystic quality that

suited her mind in the coming of the Guardian to Betty Berry’s room,

and in the fact that John Morning would never know of this. It was

like the coming of some Michael or Gabriel. From what she knew of John

Morning’s work, she could believe in the planetary promise that the

Guardian seemed to see; indeed, she could have believed in it with less

evidence, because the Guardian said so.... Her particular dream was for

the man to appear who would make women see what it was in their hands

and hearts to do for the coming race. She dreamed of a man to come with

words to women that would be reflected upon the brows of children to

be, that would help to fashion the latent dreams into great children.

She believed it was the agony of being childless that put this dream

into her own mind, and she believed that the world-ignition could only

come from a man who knew the same agony.... So she listened raptly to

the singing from the forge; and more and more, with almost unspeakable

excitement, she realized that the voice of John Morning was slowly and

surely taking to itself the authority and harmony which his Guardian

had promised.

He wrote often now of the rehearsals of _Compassion_, of his

large fears and small satisfactions in them. He was always glad to

get back to the cabin and the Book.... That book--some of her own

inner life would be in it. She had given in the letters everything she

dared. Her tears were all shed; there was dry burning in her eyes,

for what Betty Berry had given to that Book.... Now in mid-September

it was done, all but a month’s chiseling and polishing. It would

be given to the publisher two weeks before the first appearance of

_Compassion_ at the _Markheim_ the first week in November....

She dared not think what would happen when the Book was done, and the

destiny of the play established.... A letter from Morning at this time

contained for Helen Quiston one winged, triumphant sentence. She was

reading aloud to Betty Berry:

“It was straight, clean going, right to the end of the book.... It

is hard-held. It is kind. It laughs. It goes after the deepest-down

man.... You have to reach almost self-effacement to associate with fine

ideas and to get to the front in service.... How hard it was to make me

see that the real world is not over there among writers and publishers

and drama-producers, but everywhere among the hearts of the poor!

“And, oh, Betty Berry, it isn’t the book--it’s the life that counts.

You have made me live. You earned your strength alone--suffering alone

through the years. That’s the highest honor that can come to man or

woman in this world--to be chosen for such years as you have known. It

comes only to the strong--the strength to stand alone. The world bows

sooner or later before such character. Men feel it, though their eyes

be shut.

“There is a certain excellence in the honor of standing alone. Alone,

man or woman is either ahead or behind the crowd. In the latter case,

he is imbecile or defective, and God is with him.... God is in the

forward solitudes, too. What a splendor about standing in the full

light! The crowd cannot get it. The crowd keeps the light from itself.

There the maiming is, the suffering, the cruelty; there the light is

divided, and the warmth is the low heat of men, not the grand primal

vitality of the Sun. There in the crowd, Apparition and Appearance take

the place of the Real.... Now and then, in the torturing passage of the

crowd, the landmark of some pioneer is reached, and the cry goes up,

‘We are on the right road, for that man passed here!’ The name of the

pioneer becomes part of the crowd’s impedimenta. Perhaps he smiles from

the Other Side, not because the crowd has found _his_ trail--he

may have wanted that once, though not long--but looking back upon his

greater birth, he smiles--the place where he emerged and stood alone on

the grand frontier.... You have made me strong enough to believe that

you and I may go away up into the coolness beyond the senses--even in

this life----”

Helen Quiston stopped. That last was the final sanction. The Guardian

knew, when he chose John Morning. It was the one thought she had hardly

dared formulate for him, and which she had awaited ardently during the

late weeks.

“He means that a woman can go, too!” she cried, trembling, forgetful

even of Betty Berry; “he is on the path--higher, higher--and yet, he

says that women, too, can go that way alone----”

Betty Berry frowned. “What does he mean by going alone--about a man and

a woman going alone?” She was suffering to understand, angry that the

other understood.

“He says that the woman may also go alone to that Eminence! No man--no

human man--has ever said that before. Men think of _men passing_

upward. People caught in their desires have forever lied to themselves,

trying to believe that man and woman can go _together_.... He says

here----” her eye darted on to read:

“‘Men and women gain their strength to reach that Eminence by being

alone--by loving alone!’ You taught him that.... Don’t you see,

dearest, it is the beginning of his real message? You gave it to

him--and what a message it is for you and for--even for me----”

“But woman is the serpent,” Betty Berry muttered.

Helen arose to turn on a wall light. Her hand fumbled. Her eyes could

not be brought down from that lofty plateau. A strange peace had come

into the loneliness of her life. She wanted to tell it everywhere--to

Nuns of the World.... It had been a man’s world so long--that this

thought had never come. Always in the world’s thought and art--the

flesh of woman had kept her down in the dusks and valleys. Sons

climbed; lovers left their maids to climb ... but only the Gods knew

all the time _that daughters could go_.

Betty was silent. It had become the habit of her life not to speak when

the mists thickened.... The picture of Dante and Beatrice was in the

light. Helen pointed to it:

“Who would think of saying that Beatrice, who was the Way--did not

share the vision and the consciousness?” she asked softly.

Betty shut her eyes. The other returned with eager love and sat down

at her knees. “And now I will read the last. Just think how clearly he

sees:

“‘The world is so dear to me because of you. I am so freshly conscious

of its roundness, of the profile of its coasts as seen from above; of

its light and darkness, the sharpness of sun in the retreating gray,

of its skies and its peaks, the last to darken and the first to answer

the morn.... I put the candle away just now, and in the darkness I saw

the Earth from above--not from afar, but from some space nearer than

the moon. I saw it all at once. The moon shining upon one side, the

sun shining upon the other--a golden side, a silver side.... And I saw

you afterward--not as you are in the studio, but as a shadowed, quiet

figure among moonlit ruins. You were calm, and moved silently here and

there. Ruins were about you, yet you seemed to know the things to do.’

What does it mean?”

“What does it mean, Helen?” Betty repeated.

The other’s eyes filled with tears. The question might have come from a

little old lady of eighty, whose house of life was locked, all but the

sitting-room.

“It’s just a dream, dear,” she whispered.

“There are no ruins about me--when you are here,” Betty said.

“Ruins, dearest?... No, gardens and living temples----”

Betty arose, and moved slowly up and down the studio, then stood by

her chair. The impulse even to lift her hand was unusual. She moved

now with difficulty, but was not conscious of it. The room was dark,

except for the one wall-light. Helen went to her side, helped her at

last to the chair. Betty’s face was deathly, but there was a mournful

reasonableness in her eyes, a faint grasp of actuality, that the other

had not seen for weeks. The old enemies, memory and hope, were in

feeble conflict.

“Do you think he means that I am not well?”

“He was only expressing a dream-picture.... I’m sure he hasn’t

interpreted it----”

“But he will. That comes afterward----”

* * * * *

Betty was either better or worse.... The Doctor came. As he was

leaving, Helen walked to the stairs with him.

“Yes, there is a change,” he said.

“You think it is good?”

“Yes.... It’s been nearly six months. Yes, I think it is good. She

would have been dead without you, Miss Quiston. I don’t know what you

do--but you keep her from the engrossing mania.”

“She has some strength, Doctor?”

“It is all a matter of will at this stage. All along we have battled to

keep her somehow nourished.”

Helen went back to the studio. Betty was on her feet again. The nurse

was at hand, but she had never been able to involve herself in the

patient’s understanding. She left the room now, anticipating the

inevitable request.

“Do you think, Helen--that as he finishes his work--more and more--the

ruins will come back to mind?”

6

THE Summer was done; the book had been ten days out of Morning’s

hand; the final rehearsals were engrossing and painful, and the

letters from the hill-cabin, though buoyant, were not so frequent....

Service for men--service for men! The words seemed integrated into

the life of the man. There was something herculean in his striving.

The long Summer had ripened the harvest. Conceptions which had been

vague and dreamy in the first letters were ready at his hand now,

daily expressions of his work. Helen Quiston, so long dream-fed,

trembled at the thought that she had something to do with a giant’s

making.

It never occurred to her that the things so real in her mind were at

least an age distant from the interests of the world. She did not stop

to think that the drama so vital and amazing to her would be out of

the comprehension even of the decent doctor who came to the studio day

after day. Not once did it enter her mind that the world would regard

her as heartless and fanatic for her strength in so ruthlessly holding

her closest friend to the sacrifice. Her problem now was what to do

with John Morning after the first night of the play, and the report

upon his book was in. She was afraid he would come. He would see Betty

Berry--see what her giving had done. He would learn that it was she,

Helen Quiston, who had given him the peace in which to find the larger

consciousness; her letters, in Betty Berry’s hand, that had filled the

distances with peace for him.

She had no thought for John Morning except as an instrument. It was

something the way Duke Fallows had thought of him at the last. Either

one would have sacrificed themselves, but they were not called. Only

Betty Berry loved him for himself, and to her was the altar. They loved

him for the future, and guarded him as the worker-bees guard the queen

because she is potentially the coming race.

And this was the miracle: John Morning at his work had passed the need

of the kiss of woman. He had been tided over the grand crossing by the

love of Betty Berry. Receiving it now, he did not hold it for himself,

but gave it forth in service to men.... There was something cosmic

about this to Helen Quiston.

* * * * *

Breathless expectancy in the studio on the early November evening

of _Compassion’s_ first performance at the _Markheim_. Though nothing

of the sort had been arranged, Helen Quiston expected a telegram

after the Play. It was not yet cold, but an east wind had been rising

since dark, and there was tension in the sounds and shaking everywhere.

Betty had, for her, a very keen sense of the importance of the night

to the man in New York.

“I feel as if I had lived, Betty,” her friend whispered. “Oh, what must

it be to you?”

“I feel that I have died,” the other murmured.

Though she rested better and accepted food with less reluctance, (the

doctor declaring himself satisfied with the progress of the past six

weeks), it had been the hardest period for Helen Quiston. Something

was in Betty’s mind that was not confided. Often in the evening she

showed a preference for being alone. Helen feared for a time that the

other might write a letter without her supervision, but as there was

no change in the tenor of Morning’s replies, the outpouring of his

thankfulness in no way diminished, the only conclusion was that Betty

at least had not mailed such a one. She had taken sudden dislikes to

several different nurses in turn. When she wanted anything there was a

terrible concentration about it. Helen and the doctor and all concerned

were drawn into the vortex.

“It’s the way she used to practice,” her friend said.

“Miss Quiston----” began the doctor.

“Yes.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I was just thinking--are you so real to all

your friends?”

“I have no friend like Betty.”

“That eases my mind.”

“Why?”

“A few friends like that and there wouldn’t be any singing teacher.”

Helen Quiston realized fully for the first time that the doctor was

exactly a human being, having the various features of the species.

* * * * *

They were startled by a crash in the inner room. The nurse entered

quickly to announce that a flower-pot containing a fuchsia had fallen

from the window-sill.

“The plant is in ruins,” she said.

Betty rose immediately. _Ruins_--the word was a fiery stimulant

to her. In a few moments she ceased her pacing, saying that she was

utterly weary. Helen, though leaving for the room she occupied, a

flight above, could but remark upon the gleaming intensity of Betty’s

eyes, and the restless leaping of her hands....

The nurse came to her. Betty went with her into the inner room. In the

next fifteen minutes, the patient was more or less alone, while the

studio couch, upon which the nurse was accustomed to rest, was being

prepared. Unwatched, her movements quickened, a queer, furtive smile

played upon her lips, and certain actions altogether uncommon occupied

her concentrated attention. The key was quietly removed from the door

between the studio and the living-room; a large bundle was carried

from a closet-shelf to the rear window and tossed out. From behind

the books in a small case near the reading-lamp a purse was produced;

and finally, when the nurse was at the farthest end of the studio,

Betty drew a large, sharp knife from the same hiding-place, and with

astonishing quiet and force severed the telephone wires just beneath

the bell-box, fastened to the wall close to the floor. The knife was

returned to its hiding-place. The nurse joined her, and Betty, at the

studio door, suddenly sank into a chair with a cry of exhaustion. The

other ran to her.

“It is nothing! Bring some water----”

The nurse had not reached the medicine-case in the bath, when the

patient sprang up and locked the intervening door of the apartment,

leaving the woman inside with a “dead” telephone.

For the first time in half a year, Betty left the studio, carefully

closing the main door. Out the back way, she found her parcel, and in

the windy darkness put on the rain-coat, traveling hat, veil, gloves

and shoes it had contained, departing breathlessly through the alley

gate.

For a long time the hammering upon floors and walls could not

be located in the studio-building. The outer floor of Betty’s

apartment was tried, but found locked; and since there was no

response to the bell, nothing came of the offerings of the earlier

Samaritans. Much time was occupied by the nurse in trying to call the

telephone-exchange. A stranger in the street was finally persuaded,

from the upper window, to find the janitor of the building and send him

to the Quiston studio. Master keys set the nurse free.

Helen Quiston first notified the Doctor, who came hastily. The story

of the nurse was explicit as a hospital report.

“Is your car here, Doctor?” Miss Quiston asked presently.

“Yes.”

“Will you take me down-town? I’ll be ready in a moment.”

“Gladly.”

The Doctor was informed in a tense but controlled voice that the

patient was doubtless at this moment upon a certain east-bound train.

“Betty left here a few minutes after nine,” Helen added. “The train I’m

thinking of left at ten-five. It is now eleven.... Oh, I wonder what

she had on? She was dressed when I left her--shirt-waist, black skirt,

house-slippers----”

Five minutes’ search and thinking on the part of Miss Quiston uncovered

the fact that Betty’s rain-coat and a certain small traveling hat were

missing.... Nothing was positively established at the station.

“I must send a telegram, Doctor,” Helen said.

It was to Morning at his rural-delivery address. Her heart sank with

fear lest the message fail to reach him, until it was finally handled

by the post-office.

“There’s nothing further to do,” she said hopelessly.

Night brought no news, nor the early morning. At nine-thirty o’clock,

Helen Quiston was leaving the studio for the morning’s work, when

she heard a light, swift step on the stairs--someone coming up at

least three steps at a time. The hall-door was half-swung. Helen

stood waiting.... Now a stranger was at the doorway, hesitating, yet

expectant. His brow was tanned, as if he had walked bare-headed in the

sun. His gray eyes were remarkably clear and very kind. For a second or

two they stood face to face, forgetting to speak.

“Where is Betty Berry?” It was a demand, yet gently spoken.

“Are you--are you John Morning?” “Yes.... Where is she?”

“I think she has gone to you--I do not know, but I think she has gone

to the hill-cabin----”

“Are you her friend?”

“Yes--I am Miss Quiston.”

“When did she go?”

“Last night. I telegraphed you----”

He came close to her. His hand upon her shoulder drew her to a chair,

and he brought another near. “I will not stop to ask questions,” he

said heavily. “You tell me all----”

“What of the play?”

“I don’t know--I left before it was done to come here.... She is

ill--go on----”

The story faltered at first, but the gray eyes steadied her. Toward the

end she talked swiftly, coherently. She winged over the one certain

cause of Betty’s illness.... When she stopped, it seemed to her that

some mighty machinery was whirring below, its vibrations in the floor

and walls.

He arose, stood beside her--all the light and reason gone from his

face. For several seconds he stood there, his left hand swiftly tapping

her shoulder. The powers of the man were afar--miles away upon his

hill. This was just a tapping blind man in the room....

“I must go. I have no words now.... She is there. It must be nearly ten

now. I must hurry to her.”

The engines in the house flagged and were silent.

The woman stood where he had left her, smiling.

7

BETTY held her purse tightly in her hand, and certain thoughts

were held as tightly in her brain, as she pressed against the wind....

It was something like going to a distant concert engagement in the

night.... Her limbs were uncertain, and there was a constant winging

in her breast, as though it were the cage of a frantic bird. She did

not mind. She could forget it--if only her eyes remained true. For the

first time in months she was on her own strength, her own will. There

was a sharp distress in the responsibility, but also an awakening of

force.

The wind whipped her breath away, yet she liked the wild freedom of

it--if only she could continue to see and remember what to say. The

studio was a hideous blackness that drove her from behind. This was a

new and consuming hatred. The two squares to the large uptown hotel

where a cab was readily obtainable were long as a winter night; and

the tension to remember seemed destroying her by the time she found a

driver. She told him the station and the train.

“Plenty of time, Ma’am,” he said.

Her eyes filled with tears. It was true, then, that there was such a

station, such a train, that there was time, and nothing had betrayed

her. “I must not speak; I must not speak,” kept warning in her mind;

“but he is so good to me!”

Now she felt the cold, as she rested a moment before the new ordeal at

the station--destination, tickets, the Pullman, not to fall, not to

speak any but the exact words.... The driver helped her out. Everything

was familiar, but miraculously large.... She gave the man extra money,

and the faintest, humblest “Thank you!” escaped her. He whistled a

porter for her.

“The ticket window,” she said. And now she need only follow. It was

warmer. It would be warm in the Pullman.... She took the young colored

man’s arm. He turned with good nature.

“I have been ill,” she said. It was frightened from her lips.

“There is plenty of time, Miss. I’ll see you through to the berth--the

ten-five--yes’m.”

The quick tears started again, and an aching lump in her throat. She

wanted to cry out her thankfulness. She wanted to be told again and

again--that all this was not a dream, from which she would awaken

in that place of death. The value of her veil awed her; and it was

_she_ who had thought of it. Could it really be true that she had

forgotten nothing? Would she actually arrive at her journey’s end?

The porter procured berth and tickets, and now he assured her that her

train was ready. She followed him through interminable distances, down

countless stairs; she watched and listened critically, as he delivered

both tickets to the Pullman conductor. All she had to do was to follow,

to say nothing and to pay. With what thankfulness did she pay; and with

what warming courtesy were her gifts received. Surely the world was

changed. It had become so dear and good.... She had a far-off vision of

a peremptory Betty Berry of another world, striding to and fro among

men and trains and cities, giving her commands, expecting obedience,

conferring gratuities according to rigid principle.

The car-porter was more wonderful than any--an old Southern darkey,

with little patches of gray beard, absurdly distributed. A homing

gentleness was in his voice, and his smile was from a better world....

There had been another porter like him somewhere.

“She goes clear through,” the station porter said, “and she’s been

sick.”

“Ah’ll see the young Miss clar’ through,” the old man drawled. “Just

depen’ on me, Miss. Sit right down here--berth’ll be ready right smaht.”

She did not sleep, but she was warm and not uncomfortable. She dared

think a little of the end of the journey, but there was so much to do

in the morning, so much to keep in mind. She held fast to her purse.

In her dependence, the magic of it was like a strange discovery. In

the early morning, the porter brought her coffee with some hot milk and

toast. The wind had long since been left behind, but a cold rain was

falling. She would be cold. The terminal was reached. The old man bore

her forth. There was something merciful and restoring in his gentle

gratitude. A station porter led her to the Hackensack car.

She thought of breakfast on the way, but forgot it again upon reaching

Hackensack, where she was directed to the post-office.

She wrote the address of John Morning and asked shiveringly at the

stamp window if there was any way in which she could be delivered there.

The clerk could not see if she were laughing under the veil.

“The rural carrier knows the way,” she added. “I’d be willing to pay

well--”

The clerk craned his head back through the office, and called:

“Jethro!”

A large, dusty man came forward with the air of having just

breakfasted. He took the slip containing the address from her hand.

“The lady wants to go with you, Jethro----”

The rural carrier tilted his spectacles benignly to regard her.

“Bless me--ever been there?”

“No--but letters go safely----”

“I rather think they do--since I take ’em. Is this your writing?”

The place was darkening, suffocating to her. “Yes ... if you would only

take me. Five, ten dollars--oh, I should be so glad to pay anything I

have----”

The carrier penetrated the veil.

“Just sit down by the heater, Lady,” he said in a lowered tone. “We’ll

get there, and it won’t cost you five or ten dollars, neither. I know

where you want to go, and I know who you are, if I’m not mistaken.

Lizzie and I will get you there----”

She turned quickly, for the tears were coming.... Could it really be

that she had remembered everything? Was she really going to him, and

this the last stage of the journey? The heart of the large, dusty man

had radiated so suddenly upon her. She was not afraid of him, but she

must not faint nor speak until she was away from the others. Very still

she sat by the heater, praying for strength, praying that it was not

all a dream....

“Miss Betty Berry!”

There was an instant in which the call had but a vague meaning; then

shot home to her the hideous fear of being taken back. She was close to

screaming, yet it was only the rural-carrier coming.

“Yes?” she said, clearing her throat.

“I thought I couldn’t be wrong,” he said. “I’ve brought a good many

letters addressed to you back to town from the place you’re going, and

carried a good many out yonder in this writing of yours.... Lizzie and

me are ready, Miss.”

As they stepped out the rear door, he touched her arm reflectively,

and re-entered to bring a hairy black robe. The vehicle, of a vanished

type, was gray even in the rain, and cocked to one side from the

sagging of years, where the carrier sat. Betty’s weight did not

visibly impress the high side. He tucked the hairy robe about her, the

mail-bags at her feet, picked up the lines, and lo! they moved.

“Lizzie ain’t very showy on knee action, Miss Berry,” he said, “but

along about half-past eleven, when we get there, you’ll remark she’s

stiddy.”

It was only ten now.... Mud and miles and mail-boxes; dragging moments,

and miles and cold rain.... She had to talk a little. The journey of

the night was nearest, and she told how good the train-men had been to

her.

“You haven’t traveled much, Miss, I take it?” he said softly.

“Oh, no.” Then distantly again she remembered a Betty Berry of concert

seasons--on the wing from city to city. It was all too remote for

speech. At one house a woman came forth with tea and sandwiches. Betty

was grateful for the warm drink and wanted to pay, but the carrier

pushed back her hand and tucked her in again.

“Guess this is going to be a surprise for the bare-headed man?” he

asked.

“Yes.”

“He’s your young man, then?”

“Yes.”

He seemed relieved. “He won’t be staying out here much longer--not

likely--though we do have a spell of good weather in November mostly.”

Often she lost every sense of distance and identity. The lapses grew

longer toward the end, and when she did not answer, Jethro thought she

had fallen asleep.... A long stretch at last, barren of mail-boxes....

When he finally drew up, she followed his eyes to her lover’s name upon

the tin by the roadside. Then he pointed beyond the low near trees and

hollows. It was all desolate; the Fall tints subdued in the pervading

gray. She saw a clump of greater trees in the upper middle distance.

“’Bout a thousand feet straight in. Miss--and up--under them big trees.

You’ll see his shanty before you’re half-way. Just keep your eye on

them elms. He’d be down here if it was any kind of weather. Guess

you’re glad. D’ruther go alone and find him there, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.... And now I want to give you this, please.”

He shook his head.

She could not leave him so. “For Lizzie--she’s so steady. I’m rich ...

and I’ll be much happier--going to the bare-headed man. Please--for

me----”

“Don’t you take that robe off!” he said suddenly. “I don’t want

it--jumpin’ in and out. I never take it out of the office till snow

flies. He’ll bring it down to the box, when I’m passin’ to-morrow. Why,

you’d get all soaked, Miss--a-goin’ up to him.... Well, I’ll take the

money for Lizzie--if you’re rich--but it’s ridiculous much, and I’d

have fetched you for nothin’.”

She pressed his hand in both of hers and turned away through the break

in the fence.... It seemed darker; and when the grinding of the tires

on the wet gravel died away, the dripping silence came home to her,

alien and fearful.... She had seen the name; soon she would see his

house--but this was no man’s land, an after-death land; this was ‘the

hollows and the vagueness of light,’ of which he had written....

She saw the house and faltered on. She had not the strength to call....

On the slope to the great trees the burden of the heavy robe would

have borne her to the ground, had she not let it fall from her.... She

could not believe the padlock on the door, felt it with her hands, the

weight and the brass of it. It was hard for her to understand the cruel

cold of it--as for a child that has never been hurt intentionally. She

sank to her knees and prayed that it was not there.... But it was. The

reality entered her brain, the thick icy metal of it.

* * * * *

“Betty Berry--Betty Berry, I am coming!”

She lifted her head in the rain. His call was like a thought of her

own, but sharper, truer. This was his door. He was coming. It was still

light. She wanted to sleep again, but the death-like cold warned her.

She would die before he came....

She raised herself against the door. The black heap of the fur-robe on

the slope held her eyes.... On the way to it she fainted again; again

the cold rain roused her.... Always on the borders of the rousing, she

heard it:

“Betty Berry--Betty Berry, I am coming!”

She knelt in the wet leaves beside the robe ... her thoughts turned

back to the night--the goodness of the men, their tender voices....

There was a calling up in the dusk among the trees. Yes, she must lie

at his door. Men were good; the lock alone had hurt her. His Guardian

had put it there.... Upward she crawled, dragging the robe.

“Yes, you are coming!” she answered. Always when the cold rain roused

her, she would answer, and crawl a little farther with the robe. At the

door at last, she lay down beneath it....

Still again his calling roused her. It was darker--but not yet night....

“Betty Berry--Betty Berry, I am coming!”

It was nearer.

“I knew you would let me in,” she tried to say, and then--voices.... It

seemed as if the porter of the Old South had come.... His voice lulled

her, and his smile was the glow of the home-hearth.

8

SHE was lying upon the single narrow bed.... Something long

ago had been premonitive of this. Morning’s mind, too, caught up the

remembrance of Moto-san and the Japanese Inn.... He watched. Sometimes

he said with all his will that she must not die. She could not die,

when his will was dominant, but he was exhausted; his will-power

flagged frequently.

All day yesterday in the train he had held her in his mind--sent

his calls to her across the miles. From different stations he had

telegraphed to Jake at Hackensack, to Jethro at the post-office, and to

his neighbor, the dairyman, who had a telephone. Jethro had been the

first to reach the cabin, but it was nearly dusk then. The others were

quick to appear. Jethro found her at the door, partly covered in the

furry robe. That robe crowned him in Morning’s mind. They had broken in

the door, and lit the fire. Morning reached the cabin at nine. Jethro

spoke of a doctor.

“I’m the doctor,” Morning said. The three had left him.

It was now after midnight. She had not aroused. Old scenes quivered

across the surface of her consciousness, starting a faintly mumbled

sentence now and then: The Armory, the first kiss, the road to

Baltimore, letters, hurried journeys, the Guardian; and much about the

latest journey--from cab to station, from porter to Pullman, from car

to clerk to carrier. He saw how the night and the day had used her

final strength. Always the Guardian intervened to break her will, and

Morning did not understand. There were other enemies; the studio, the

nurse, the padlock, and the rain. After brief hushes, she would speak

of his coming, or answer his calling.

It was the one theme of his life even now--the great thing Betty Berry

had done. It awed and chilled him to realize how coarse-fibered he

had been, so utterly impervious, not to sense the nature of the force

that had upheld him, nor the quality of the bestowals.... There was a

rending about it, and yet it was all so quiet now. It seemed to him

that a man’s life is husk after husk of illusion, that the illusions

are endless. He had torn them away, one after another, thinking each

time that he had come to the grain.... And what was the sum of his

finding so far? That good is eternal; that man loves God best by

serving men; that greatness is in the working, not in the result; that

a man who has found his work has found the soul’s sunlight, and that

service for men is its rain. Surely, these are not husks.... It had

been a hard, weary way. He was like a tired child now, and here was the

little mother--wearied with him unto death.... He had been so perverse

and headstrong. She had given him her love and guidance until her last

strength was spent. He must be the man now.... He wondered if his heart

would break, when he realized fully his own evil and her unfathomable

sweetness?... Must a woman always fall spent and near to death--before

a man can be finished? Or is it because her work is done that she falls?

He knelt beside her. Sometimes, in the lamplight, she looked as he had

seen her at the Armory; again, as if she were playing; now, it was as

she had been to him in the dark of the Pullman seat.... Who was the

Guardian?

... And this was what had come to her from teaching him the miracle

of listening alone.... It was true. He belonged to that life, as Duke

Fallows had always said. She had made him see it by going from him. He

would never be the same, after having tasted the greater love, in which

man and woman are one in the spirit of service, having renounced the

emblem of it. And with all her vision and leading--the glory of it had

not come to her as to him. It had all but killed her. She had come to

him--a forgotten purpose, a broken vessel.

He would love her back to life. That was his work now. Everything

must stop for that--even truth.... He halted. If he loved her back to

full and perfect health again, would she not be the same as she had

been? Would she not take up her Cross again?... No, he would not let

her. He would destroy the results of his work if necessary. He would

force himself to forget, even in the spirit--this taste of the mystic

oneness that had come to him. He would show his need for her every

hour. That would make her happy--his leaning upon her word and thought

and action. He would show her his need of her presence in the long,

excellent forenoons, in the very processes of his task--and in the

evenings, her hands, her kisses, her step, her voice; he would make her

see that these were his perfect essentials.

“I’ve talked and written a lot about how a man should live--in the past

six months,” he said grimly. “I’ve got to do a bit of real living in

the world now. God knows I love her--as I used to. That seemed enough

then!”

He looked up from her face. The ghost of day had come softly to the

South. He arose, took the lamp across the room and blew it out. Then he

opened the door. The mingled night and dawn came in, a cool dimness,

but the rain had ceased. He replenished the fire, left the door open,

and returned to her. She had become quiet since the lamp had been taken

away.... A sense of the man and woman together, and of her strength

returning crept upon him. He welcomed it, though the deeps cried out.

“When you are yourself, you will want to go away again--the long,

blinding ways of the sun,” he whispered. “But I will say, ‘I cannot

spare you, Betty Berry. This is the place for two to be. We will begin

again----’”

His thought of what she would answer brought back to mind the play,

_Compassion_, and the Book of John Morning.... He smiled. He had

almost forgotten. Night before last, at the beginning of the third

act, he had left the _Markheim_. He had given way suddenly to

the thought that had pulled at him all day--to take the train to

Betty Berry that night.... The play had seemed good. Even to him

there had been moments of thrilling joy. It had been surprisingly

different, sitting in front with the audience, from the rehearsals. Of

yesterday’s notices he had not seen a single one. It was a far thought

to him even now of the play’s failure, but if it did fail, how easy

to say to Betty Berry, “You see, how mad I was alone--how mad in my

exaltation--how terribly out of tune? I needed you here. I need you

now----”

Then he thought of the bigger thing--the Book. There wasn’t a chance

for that to fail. It would find its own. What would he say about

that?... He would say, “I love you, Betty Berry. It was loving you that

made the book. And when it was done--how I longed for you!”

That was true--true now.... He kissed her shut eyelids. There was

blessedness in her being here--even shattered and so close to

death--blessedness and a dreadful fear. That fear was ever winging

around, but did not come home to him and fold its wings. He was not

himself.... “My God!” he cried out, “what folds upon folds and phases

upon phases of experience a man must pass to learn to live----”

For an instant it all came back--that taste of the open road and larger

dimension of man--the listening, the labor, the sharpened senses, scant

diet, tireless service, ‘the great companions’--love of the world and

unfailing compassion.... It was as they had said. He had belonged

everywhere but in a woman’s arms....

It came clear as a vision, and he put it from him as an evil thing--and

all the voices. The red dawn was staring into his eyes, and afar off a

horse nickered. He held his hands against the light, as if to destroy

it.

“I have said it in the Book, ‘We have all eternity to play in,’ and if

that is not a lie--this Call will come to me again!”

And this was his renunciation.

* * * * *

Her stillness troubled him.

“I am your lover,” he whispered. “I will not let you go, Betty Berry.

Don’t you hear--I love you?”

He lifted her, walked to and fro between the fire and the cot. She

was so very little.... The day came up with a mystic shining, and the

warmth returned. These were the first hours of that fleeting Indian

summer, the year’s illumination--the serene and conscious death of

Summer.... The door was wide open to the light.... Morning put down his

burden, but could not be still. He brought water and scrubbed the floor

and door-step. The wood shone white as it dried--white as the square

table which was an attraction of daylight. He tossed the water away

down the hollow, drew more and washed as the countrymen do, lifting

handfuls to his head. Then he brought basin, soap, and towels--bathed

her face and hands, afterward carrying her forth to the sunlight. The

thin shade of the elms was far down the meadow, for the day was not

high.

“I love you, Betty Berry,” he continued to repeat, as he turned again

and again to the cot. There was an hypnotic effect in the words; and

there was a certain numbed surface in his brain that refused to cope

with the immediate stresses in the room.

Jethro came early, and was not content to leave the mail at the box.

He brought letters, a paper, and a large package. Jethro looked at the

face on the cot and at the bare-headed man. Words failed him to whom

words were so easy. He ventured to mention the name of a doctor, and

was answered furiously:

“I am the doctor.”

Jethro lingered. Morning turned suddenly to look at the cot, and

it seemed to the carrier that his eyes would have frightened away

death.... Morning caught him by the shoulders:

“You’re a good man, Jethro,” he said hastily. “When I think of that fur

robe--it seems as if I’ve got to do something for you with my hands.”

The carrier went his way.

* * * * *

This he found in the newspaper--a “follow” paragraph apparently to the

dramatic notice of the day before:

“The second performance of _Compassion_ last night to a

fairly filled house is interesting in its relation to the fear

frankly expressed in this column yesterday, to the effect that

_Compassion_ is too good a play to get on well. The fear was well

founded upon experience; and yet we may have before us an exception--a

quality of excellence that will not be subdued. It is too much to hope

for, that at any other time this season we will be equally glad to

find our fear for a play’s future ill-founded.”

Morning had not known of the doubt; and this was the rise of the

tide again from the doubt.... He glanced at the package. There was

a spreading cold in his vitals. It was from the publisher he had

chosen--the Book of John Morning returned.

He was hostile for an instant--an old vindictive self resenting

this touch upon his gift of self-revelation. The protecting thought

followed quickly that the book was in no way changed by this accident

of encountering the wrong publisher. The really important part of the

incident followed these insignificant thoughts: Above all things, this

letter would help to prove to Betty Berry his need for her. He would

not send it out again at once. This refusal would weigh more than

anything he could say, to prove that loneliness had been too much, too

strong for him--that it had thrown his work out of reality, instead of

into it.... He was bending over her. A step at the door, and he turned

to find Helen Quiston there.

9

SHE entered and went to the cot, without words, but pressed

his hand as she passed....

“You were there--and you let her get so low as this.”

Helen turned to search his face. “Yes,” she said.

“Who is this--Guardian?”

“Some angel that came to her, I think.”

“He seems very real to her----”

“Angels are real.”

“Angels do not make saints suffer----”

“On the contrary, that appears to be the life-business of saints----”

“She will never go back to that!” he said with low vehemence.

Helen regarded her old comrade for a moment, kissed her reverently, and

then turned to the man.

“You poor boy,” she said.

There was something cold and rock-like about this slave of the future,

looking over and beyond the imminent tragedy. He was helpless,

maddened....

“She always said you loved her--that you were the one woman absolutely

true. How could you let her destroy herself?”

“I knew her before you came, and loved her. I gave her my house. I

waited upon her night and morning. I love Betty Berry. You are torn and

tortured, but you will see----”

“She will not be away from me again!... Bah! what is work--to this?”

Helen smiled. “Do you think she would have come if she had been the

real Betty Berry?”

“Do you think I would have been duped--had I been the real John

Morning?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean a man is mad when he is doing a book. He may call it happiness,

but it is a kind of devil’s madness. He is open for anything to rush

in.... I am a common man. I do not belong to that visionary thing----”

“You are caught in your emotions. I know your work----”

He drew her to the door, saying excitedly:

“_Compassion_ threatens to fail. My book has come back,” he said

triumphantly. “Look at this----”

He gave her the publisher’s letter.

“Your play has not failed,” she said.... “And this--why, this is just

a bit of the world. John Morning at thirty-three--talks of failure.

Let us talk over this day, when you are fifty-three.... What an empty

victory for her--if you failed now----”

She was looking back at the cot. Morning whispered his reiteration:

“I love her. I shall have her here. I shall make her see that I love

her. _That_ is my service. You are all mad conspirators against

us. We are man and woman. Our world is each other. She shall see and

believe this--if I write drivel----”

Helen did not seem quite to hear him. She drew away from him as if

called in a trance to the bedside.

“My little dearest--oh, Betty Berry--you have done so well. You have

paid the price for a World-Man----”

Morning followed her.... Betty’s eyes were opened--fixed upon Helen

Quiston.

“What did you say?” she questioned wonderingly.

“God love you, Betty. I said you had paid the price for a World-Man----”

She raised on her elbow alone, her eyes now looking beyond the woman to

Morning.

“He is there,” she whispered. “He is there. He has come.”

Her hand stretched toward him, and sank slowly to his brow as he knelt.

“My love,” she said.... “It is all right. I see it all once more. It is

so good and right--just as your Guardian told me.... It was only the

birth-pangs I suffered. They were hard.... Birth is hard, but death is

easy. Don’t you see, Helen, he was my little baby?... Oh, you came so

hard, John Morning--and, oh, I love you so!”

He saw the fact of her passing, but the deeper realization was slow. It

was much to him, for the instant, that she spoke and looked into his

eyes.

“I love you, Betty Berry,” he said, his voice lifting. “I love you as a

saint, as a mother--as a child!”

“But not as a woman,” she whispered.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

--On page 9, oustide has been changed to outside.

--On page 28, redouts has been changed to redoubts.

--On page 43, foxtails has been changed to fox-tails.

--On page 60, Koupangtze has been changed to Koupangtse.

--On page 91, Nagaski has been changed to Nagasaki.

--On page 110, story--idea has been changed to story-idea.

--On page 126, “the the” has eliminated the second word.

--On page 191, altar has been changed to alter.

--On page 206, sorows has been changed to sorrows.

--On page 245, settle has been changed to settled.

--On page 246, wordly has been changed to worldly.

--On page 274, even has been changed to ever.

--On page 276, elums has been changed to elms.

--On page 279, cousciousness has been changed to consciousness.

--All other hyphenation and spelling has been retained.