Down Among Men by Will Levington Comfort - HTML preview

 

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.... [Pg 272]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.