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diff --git a/38592-8.txt b/38592-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f26ece1..0000000 --- a/38592-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,12630 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of Genius, by Mary Austin - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: A Woman of Genius - -Author: Mary Austin - -Release Date: January 17, 2012 [EBook #38592] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN OF GENIUS *** - - - - -Produced by David Garcia, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This -book was produced from scanned images of public domain -material from the Google Print project.) - - - - - - - - - - A Woman of Genius - - BY MARY AUSTIN - -_Author of "The Land of Little Rain," "The Arrowmaker," "Isidro," -"Christ in Italy," etc., etc._ - - GARDEN CITY NEW YORK - DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY - 1912 - - _Copyright, 1912, by_ - DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. - - _All rights reserved, including that of - translation into foreign languages, - including the Scandinavian_ - - - TO - LOU HENRY HOOVER - AND SOME PLEASANT MEMORIES - OF - THE RED HOUSE IN HORNTON - STREET - - - - - -BOOK I - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -It is strange that I can never think of writing any account of my life -without thinking of Pauline Mills and wondering what she will say of it. -Pauline is rather given to reading the autobiographies of distinguished -people--unless she has left off since I disappointed her--and finding in -them new persuasions of the fundamental lightness of her scheme of -things. I recall very well, how, when I was having the bad time of my -life there in Chicago, she would abound in consoling instances from one -then appearing in the monthly magazines; skidding over the obvious -derivation of the biographist's son from the Lord Knows Who, except that -it wasn't from the man to whom she was legally married, to fix on the -foolish detail of the child's tempers and woolly lambs as the -advertisement of that true womanliness which Pauline loves to pluck from -every feminine bush. - -There was also a great deal in that story about a certain other -celebrity, for her relations to whom the writer was blackballed in a -club of which I afterward became a member, and I think it was the things -Pauline said about one of the rewards of genius being the privilege of -association with such transcendent personalities on a footing which -permitted one to call them by their first names in one's reminiscences, -that gave me the notion of writing this book. It has struck me as -humorous to a degree, that, in this sort of writing, the really -important things are usually left out. - -I thought then of writing the life of an accomplished woman, not so much -of the accomplishment as of the woman; and I have never been able to -make a start at it without thinking of Pauline Mills and that curious -social warp which obligates us most to impeach the validity of a woman's -opinion at the points where it is most supported by experience. From the -earliest I have been rendered highly suspicious of the social estimate -of women, by the general social conspiracy against her telling the truth -about herself. But, in fact, I do not think Mrs. Mills will read my -book. Henry will read it first at his office and tell her that he'd -rather she shouldn't, for Henry has been so successfully Paulined that -it is quite sufficient for any statement of life to lie outside his -wife's accepted bias, to stamp it with insidious impropriety. There is -at times something almost heroic in the resolution with which women like -Pauline Mills defend themselves from whatever might shift the centres of -their complacency. - -But even without Pauline, it interests me greatly to undertake this -book, of which I have said in the title as much as a phrase may of the -scope of the undertaking, for if I know anything of genius it is wholly -extraneous, derived, impersonal, flowing through and by. I cannot tell -you what it is, but I hope to show you a little of how I was seized of -it, shaped; what resistances opposed to it; what surrenders. I mean to -put as plainly as possible how I felt it fumbling at my earlier life -like the sea at the foot of a tidal wall, and by what rifts in the -structure of living, its inundation rose upon me; by what practices and -passions I was enlarged to it, and by what well meaning of my friends I -was cramped and hardened. But of its ultimate operation once it had -worked up through my stiff clay, of triumphs, profits, all the -intricacies of technique, gossip of rehearsals, you shall hear next to -nothing. This is the story of the struggle between a Genius for Tragic -Acting and the daughter of a County Clerk, with the social ideal of -Taylorville, Ohianna, for the villain. It is a drama in which none of -the characters played the parts they were cast for, and invariably spoke -from the wrong cues, which nevertheless proceeded to a successful -dénouement. But if you are looking for anything ordinarily called plot, -you will be disappointed. Plot is distinctly the province of fiction, -though I've a notion there is a sort of order in my story, if one could -look at it from the vantage of the gods, but I have never rightly made -it out. What I mean to go about is the exploitation of the personal -phases of genius, of which when it refers to myself you must not -understand me to speak as of a peculiar merit, like the faculty for -presiding at a woman's club or baking sixteen pies of a morning, which -distinguished one Taylorvillian from another; rather as a seizure, a -possession which overtook me unaware, like one of those insidious -Oriental disorders which you may never die of, but can never be cured. -You shall hear how I did successfully stave it off in my youth for the -sake of a Working Taylor and Men's Outfitter, and was nearly intimidated -out of it by the wife of a Chicago attorney who had something to do with -stocks; how I was often very tired of it, and many times, especially in -the earlier periods when I was trying to effect a compromise between it -and the afore-mentioned Taylorvillian predilections, I should have been -happiest to have been quit of it altogether. - -I shall try to have you understand that I have not undertaken to restate -those phases of autobiography which are commonly suppressed, because of -an exception to what the public has finally and at large concurred in, -that it does not particularly matter what happens to the vessel of -personality, so long as the essential fluid gets through; but from -having gone so much farther to discover that it matters not a little to -Genius to be so scamped and retarded. I have arrived at seeing the -uncritical acceptance of poverty and heartbreak as essential -accompaniments of Gift, very much of a piece with the proneness of -Christians to regard the early martyrdoms as concomitants of faith, when -every thinking person knows they arose in the cruelty and stupidity of -the bystanders. Hardly any one seems to have recalled in this -connection, that the initial Christian experience is a baptism of Joy, -and it was only in the business of communicating it that it became -bloody and tormenting. If you will go a little farther with me, you -shall be made to see the miseries of genius, perhaps also the bulk of -wretchedness everywhere, not so much the rod of inexplicable -chastisement, as the reaction of a purblind social complacency. - -I shall take you at the sincerest in admitting the function of Art to be -its re-kneading of the bread of life until it nourishes us toward -greater achievement, as a basis for proving that much that you may be -thinking about its processes is wrong, and most that you may have done -for its support is beside the mark. If I have had any compunction about -writing this book, it has been the fear that in the relation of -incidents difficult and sordid, you might still miss the point of your -being largely to blame for them. And even if you escape the banality of -believing that my having lived for a week in Chicago on 85 cents was in -any way important to my artistic development, and go so far as to -apprehend it as it actually was, a foolish and unnecessary interference -with my business of serving you anew with entertainment, you must go a -little farther honestly to accept it, even when it came--this -revitalizing fluid of which I was for the moment the vase, the cup--in -circumstances which in the rule you live by, appear, when not actually -reprehensible, at least ridiculous. - -Looking back over a series of struggles that have left me in a frame -when no man under forty interests me very much, still within the -possibility of personal romance, and at an age when most women have the -affectional value of a keepsake only, the arbiter and leader of my -world, I seem to see my life not much else but a breach in the social -fabric, sedulously bricked up from within and battered from without, -through which at last pours light and the fluid soul of Life. Something -of all this I shall try to make plain to you, and incidentally how in -the process I have perceived dimly this huge coil of social adjustment -as a struggle _against_ the invasive forces of blessedness, the smother -of sheep in the lanes stupidly to escape the fair pastures toward which -a large Friendliness herds them. If you go as far as this with me, you -shall avoid, who knows, what indirection, and that not altogether -without entertainment. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -Of Taylorville, where I grew up and was married, the most distinguishing -thing was that there was nothing to distinguish it from a hundred towns -in Ohianna. To begin with, it was laid out about a square, and had two -streets at right angles known as Main and Broad. Broad Street, I -remember, ran east and west between the high school and the railway -station, and Main Street had the Catholic cemetery on the south, and the -tool and hoe works on the north to mark--there was no other visible -distinction--the points at which it became country road. There were -numerous cross streets, east and west, called after the Governors, or -perhaps it was the Presidents, and north and south, set forth on -official maps as avenues, taking their names from the trees with which -they were falsely declared to be planted, though I do not recall that -they were ever spoken of by these names except by the leading county -paper which had its office in one corner of the square over the -Coöperative store, was Republican in politics, and stood for Progress. - -The square was planted with maples; a hitching rack ran quite around it -and was, in the number and character of the vehicles attached to it, a -sort of public calendar for the days of the week and the seasons. On -court days and elections, I remember, they quite filled the rack and -overflowed to the tie-posts in front of the courthouse, which stood on -its own ground a little off from the square, balanced on the opposite -side by the Methodist Church. It was a perfect index to the country -neighbourhoods that spread east and north to the flat, black corn lands, -west to the marl and clay of the river district, and south to the -tall-weeded, oozy Bottoms. Teams from the Bottoms, I believe, always had -cockleburs in their tails; and spanking dapple grays drove in with -shining top-buggies from the stock farms whose flacking windmills on the -straight horizons of the north, struck on my childish fancy as some sort -of mechanical scarecrow to frighten away the homey charms of the wooded -hills. I recall this sort of detail as the only thing in my native town -that affected my imagination. When I saw the flakes of black loam -dropping from the tires, or the yellow clay of the river district caked -solidly about the racked hubs, I was stirred by the allurement of travel -and adventure, the movement of human enterprise on the fourwent ways of -the world. - -From my always seeming to see them so bemired with their recent -passages, I gather that my observations must have been made chiefly in -winter on my way to school. From other memories of Taylorville arched in -by the full-leaved elms and maples, smelling of dust and syringas, and -never quite separable from a suspicion of boredom, I judge my summer -acquaintance with its streets to have been chiefly by way of going to -church, for, until the winter I was eleven years old, Taylorville, the -world in fact, meant Hadley's pasture. - -It lay back of that part of the town where our house was, contiguous to -a common of abandoned orchard and cow lot, and if it lacked anything of -adventurous occasion and delight, we, Forrie and Effie and I, the McGee -children, and the little Allinghams, did not know it. There was a sort -of convention of childhood that we should never go straight to it by the -proper path, but it must always be taken by assault or stealth: over the -woodhouse and then along the top of the orchard fence as far as you -could manage without falling off, and then tagging the orchard trees; I -remember there were times when we felt obliged to climb up every tree in -our way and down on the other side, and so to the stump lot where the -earliest violets were to be found--how blue it would be with them in -April about the fairy ring of some decaying trunk!--and beyond the stump -lot, the alder brook and the Stone-pit pond where we caught a pike once, -come up from the river to spawn. Up from the brook ranged a wood over -the shallow hills, farther and darker than we dared, and along its banks -was every variety of pleasantness. There was always something to be done -there, springs to be scooped out, rills to be dammed; always something -to eat, sassafras root, minnows taken by hand and half cooked on -surreptitious fires, red haws and hazelnuts; always some place to be -visited with freshness and discovery, dark umbrageous corners to provide -that dreaded and delighted panic of the wild. - -But perhaps the best service the pasture did us was as a theatre for the -dramatization of the bourgeoning social instinct. We played at church -and school in it, at scalping and Robinson Crusoe and the Three Bears. -We went farther and played at High Priests and Oracles and -Sacrifice--and what were we at Taylorville to know of such things? - -If this were to be as full an account of my Art as it is of myself, I -should have to stop here and try to have you understand how at this time -I was all awash in the fluid stuff of it, buoyed and possessed by -unknowledgable splendours, heroisms, tendernesses, a shifty glittering -flood. I am always checked in my attempt to render this submerged -childhood of mine by the recollection of my mother in the midst of the -annoyance which any reference to it always caused her, trying judicially -to account for it on the basis of my having read too much, with the -lurking conviction at the bottom of all comment that a few more -spankings might have effectually counteracted it. But though I read more -than the other children, there was never very much to read in -Taylorville at any time, and no amount of reading could have put into -my mind what I found there--the sustaining fairy wonder of the world. - -I was not, I think, different in kind from the other children, except as -being more consistently immersed in it and never quite dispossessed. I -have lost and rediscovered the way to it some several times; have -indeed, had to defend its approaches with violence and skill: this whole -business of the biography has no other point, in fact, than to show you -how far my human behaviour has been timed to keep what I believe most -people part with no more distressfully than with their milk teeth. -Effie, I know, has no recollection of this period other than that there -was a time when the earth was hung with vestiges of splendour, and if my -brother has kept anything of his original inheritance, he would sooner -admit to a left over appetite for jujubes and liquorice; for Forester is -fully of the common opinion that the fevers, flights and drops of -temperament are the mere infirmity of Gift. There was a time, before I -left off talking to Forester at all about my work, when he visibly -permitted his pity to assuage his disgust at the persistence of so -patent a silliness in me, and still earlier, before I owned three motor -cars, an estate in Florida and a house on the Hudson, there were not -wanting intimations of its voluntary assumption as a pose; pose in -Forester's vocabulary standing for any frame of behaviour to which he is -not naturally addicted. But there it was, the flux of experience rising -to the surface of our plays, the reservoir from which later, without -having personally contemplated such an act, I drew the authority for how -Lady Macbeth must have felt, about to do a murder, from which if I had -had a taste for it, I might have drawn with like assurance the necessity -of the square of the hypotenuse to equal the squares of the other two -sides. - -It is curious that, though I cannot remember how my father looked nor -who taught me long division, I recall perfectly how the reddening -blackberry leaves lay under the hoar frost in Hadley's pasture, and the -dew between the pale gold wires of the grass on summer mornings, and the -very words and rites by which we paid observance to Snockerty. I am not -sure whether Ellen McGee or I invented him, but first and last he got us -into as much trouble as though we had not always distinctly recognized -him for an invention. The McGees lived quite around the corner of the -pasture from us, and, as far as my memory serves, the whole seven of -them had nothing to do but lie in wait for any appearance of ours in the -stump lot; though in respect to their father being a section boss, and -the family Catholic, we were not supposed, when we put on our good -clothes and went out of the front gate, to meet them socially. I think -there must have been also some parental restriction on our intercourse -of play, for they never came to our house nor we to theirs; the little -Allinghams, in fact, never would play with them. They came to play with -us and only included the McGees on the implication of their being our -guests. If at any time we three Lattimores were called away, Pauline, -who was the eldest, would forthwith marshal her young tribe in exactly -the same manner in which she afterward held Henry Mills in the paths of -rectitude, and march them straight out of the big gate to their home. I -remember how I used perfectly to hate the expression of the little -Allinghams on these occasions and sympathize with the not always -successfully repressed jeers of the McGees. Mrs. Allingham was the sort -of woman who makes a point of having the full confidence of her -children--detestable practice--and I have always suspected, in spite of -the friendliness of the families, that the little Allinghams used to -make a sort of moral instance of us whenever they fell into discredit -with their parents. At any rate the report of our doings in Hadley's -pasture as they worked around through her to our mother, would lead to -episodes of marked coolness, in which we held ourselves each loftily -aloof from the other, until incontinently the spirit of play swirled us -together again in a joyous democracy. - -At the time when the Snockerty obsession overtook us, Ellen McGee was -the only real rival I had for the leadership of the pasture; if she had -not had, along with all her Irish quickness, a touch of Irish -sycophancy, I should have lost all my ascendency after the advent of -Snockerty. I feel sure now that Ellen must have invented him; she was -most enviably furnished in all the signs of lucky and unlucky and what -it meant if you put your stocking on wrong side out in the morning, with -charms to say for warts, and scraps of Old World song that had all the -force of incantations. Her fairy tales too had a more convincing sound, -for she got them from her father, who had always known somebody who knew -the human participators. It was commonly insisted by Mrs. Allingham that -the McGee children would never come to anything, and I believe, in fact, -they never did, but they supplied an element of healthful vulgarity in -our lives that, remembering Alfred Allingham's adolescent priggishness, -I am inclined to think was very good for us. - -If I have said nothing of my parents until now, it is because the part -they played in our lives for the first ten years was, from our point of -view, negligible. Parents were a sort of natural appendage of children, -against whose solidarity our performance had room and opportunity. They -kept the house together; they staved off fear--no one, for instance, -would think of sleeping in a place where there were no parents--they -bulked large between us and the unknown. There was a general notion of -our elders toward rubbing it into us that we ought to be excessively -grateful to them for not having turned us adrift, _sans_ food and -housing, but I do not think we took it seriously. - -Parents existed for the purpose of rendering the world livable for -children, and on the whole their disposition was friendly, except in -cases like Mrs. Allingham, who contrived always to give you a guilty -sense of having forgot to wipe your feet or tramped on the flower -borders. I do not think we had a more active belief in our parents' -profession of absorption in our interests than in my father's pretence -to be desperately wounded by Forester's popgun, or scared out of his -wits when Effie jumped at him from behind the syringa bush. It was -admittedly nice of them and it kept the game going, but there were also -times when they did not manage it so successfully as we could have -wished. I think that we never questioned their right to punish us for -disobedience, perhaps because there is, after all, something -intrinsically sound about the right of might, though we sometimes -questioned the occasion, as when we had been told we might play in the -pasture for an hour, of the passage of which we knew as much as wild -pigeons. There was always, to me at least, an inexplicableness about -such reprisals that mitigated against their moral issue. There was one -point, however, upon which we all three opposed an unalterable front; we -would not kiss and make up after our private squabbles. We fought, or -combined against neighbouring tribes, or divided our benefits with an -even handedness that obtains nowhere as among children, but we would -not be tricked into a status which it might be inconvenient to maintain. -I am sure, though, that Mrs. Allingham used rather to put it over my -mother for her inability to make little prigs of us. - -"Mothers," she would say on the rare occasions when she came to call in -the beaded dolman and black kid gloves which other Taylorvillians wore -only on Sunday, "MOTHERS," with the effect of making it all capitals, -"have an inestimable privilege in shaping their children's characters." -This was when we had had our faces surreptitiously washed and been -brought in for ceremonial inspection; and a little later she would add, -with the air of having tactfully conveyed advice under the guise of -information, "I always insist"--here Forester would kick me -furtively--"_insist_ on having the full confidence of mine," at which -point my mother would make excuses to get me out of the room before I, -who never could learn that people are not always of the mind they think -they are, made embarrassing disclosures. - -Up to this time my mother figures chiefly as a woman who tied up our -hurts and overruled my father when he tried to beg us off from going to -church. I suppose it was the baby always in arms or expected that kept -us from romping all over her as we did with my father; and much of her -profession of interest in us, which came usually at the end of -admonitory occasions, had the cold futility of the family prayers that -my mother tried to make appear part of the habitual order when Cousin -Judd came to stay with us. - -I do not know whether he suspected the hollowness of our morning -worship, but I am sure I was never in the least imposed upon by the high -moral attitude from which my mother attempted to deal with my -misbehaviours. She used to conduct these interviews on the prescription -of certain books by the reading of which I was afterward corrupted, on a -basis of shocked solemnity that, as she was not without a sense of -humour, often broke down under my raw disbelief. Forester, always -amenable to suggestion, was sometimes reduced to writhing contrition by -these inquisitorial attempts, but I came away from them oftenest not a -little embarrassed by her inability to bring anything to pass by them. - -I do not think our detachment was greater than is common with young -children in families where they are pushed out of their privilege of -cuddling as fast as they were in ours. There was thirteen months between -Forester and me, another brother, early dead, before Effie, and two that -came after. The children who died were always sickly; I think it -probable in the country phrase, so appalling in its easy acceptance, my -mother had "never seen a well day"; and what was meant to be the joy of -loving was utterly swamped for her in its accompanying dread. I seem to -have been born into the knowledge that the breast, the lap, and the -brooding tenderness were the sole prerogative of babies; it was -imperative to your larger estate not to exhibit the weakness of wanting -them. There comes back to me in this connection an evening with us -three, Forester, Effie and I, squeezed on to the lowest step of the -stairs for company, my mother in the dusk, rocking and singing one of -those wildly sweet and tragic melodies that the men brought back out of -the South as seeds are carried in a sheep's coat. To this day I cannot -hear it without a certain swelling to let in the smell of the summer -dusk and the flitter of the bats outside and the quaver of my mother's -voice. I could see the baby's white gown hanging over her arm--it was -the next one after Effie, and already she must have been expecting the -next--and the soft screech of the rocker on the deal floor, and all at -once I knew, with what certainty it hurts me still to remember, how it -felt to be held so close ... _close_ ... and safe ... and the swell of -the breast under the song, and the swing of the rocker ... knew it as if -I had been but that moment dispossessed ... and the need ... as I know -now I have always needed to be so enfolded. - -I do not remember just what happened; I seem to have come to from a fit -of passionate crying, climbed up out of it by a hand that gripped me by -the shoulder and shook me occasionally by way of hastening my -composure. I was struggling desperately to get away from it ... away -from the mother, who held me so to the mother I had just remembered ... -and there was Jule, the maid, holding up the lamp, ordering me to bed in -the dark for having spoiled our quiet evening. Then after what seemed a -long time, Effie snuggled up to me under the covers, terrified by my -sudden accession of sobs but too loyal to call down the household upon -us. - -It came back ... the need of mothering. There was a time when I had lain -abed some days with the measles or whatever. I was small enough, I -remember, to lie in the crib bed that was kept downstairs for the -prevalent baby ... and my mouth was dry with fever. I recall my mother -standing over me and my being taken dreadfully with the need of that -sustaining bosom, and her stooping to my stretched arms divinely ... and -then ... I asked her to put me down again. I have had drops and -sinkings, but nothing to compare with this, for there was nothing there -you understand ... the release, the comforting ... it wasn't there ... -_it was never there at all_! - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -But I began to tell you how Ellen McGee and I invented Snockerty and -arrived at our first contact with organized society, at least Forrie and -Effie and I did, for it led to our being interdicted the society of the -McGee children for so long that we forgot to inquire what inconvenience, -if any, they suffered on account of it. - -You will see for yourself that Ellen must have invented him--where, -indeed, should a saint-abhorring, Sunday-schooled Taylorville child get -the stuff for it? God we knew, and were greatly bored by His inordinate -partiality for the Jews as against all ancient peoples, and by the -inquisitorial eye and ear forever at the keyhole of our lives, as Cousin -Judd never spared to remind us; and personally I was convinced of a -large friendliness brooding over Hadley's pasture, to the sense of which -I woke every morning afresh, was called by it, and to it; walking apart -from the others, I vaguely prayed. But Snockerty was of the stripe of -trolls, leprechauns, pucks, and hobgoblins. - -We began, I remember, by thinking of him as resident in an old hollow -apple tree, down which, if small trifles were dropped, they fell out of -reach and sound. There was the inviting hole, arm high in the apple -trunk, into which you popped bright pebbles, bits of glass--and I -suppose He might have sprung very naturally from the need of justifying -your having parted with something you valued and couldn't get back -again, at the prompting of an impulse you did not understand. Very -presently the practice grew into the acknowledgment of a personality -amenable to our desires. - -We took to dropping small belongings in the tree for an omen of the day: -whether the spring was full or not, or if we should find any pawpaws in -the wood, and drew the augury from anything that happened immediately -afterward: say, if the wind ruffled the leaves or if a rabbit ran out of -the grass. - -It was Ellen who showed the most wit in interpreting the signs and -afterward reconciling their inconsistencies, but it was I conceived the -notion of propitiating Snockerty, who by this time had come to exercise -a marked influence on all our plays, by a species of dramatic -entertainment made up of scraps of school exercises, Sunday hymns, -recitations, and particularly of improvisations in which Ellen and I -vied. There were times when, even in the midst of these ritualistic -observances, we would go off at a tangent of normal play, quite -oblivious of Snockerty; other times we were so worked upon by our own -performance as to make sacrifices of really valuable possessions and -variously to afflict ourselves. - -It was I, I remember, who scared one of the little Allinghams almost -into fits by my rendering in the name of Snockerty of an anathema which -I had picked up somewhere, but it was Ellen who contrived to extend His -influence over the whole of our territory by finding in every decaying -stump and hollow trunk, a means of communication, and deriving therefrom -authority for any wild prank that happened to come into her head. It is -curious that in all the escapades which were imposed on us in the name -of our deity, for which we were duly punished, not one word of the real -cause of our outbreaks ever leaked through to our parents. It was the -only thing, I believe, the little Allinghams never told their mother, -not even when the second youngest in a perfect frenzy of propitiation, -made a sacrifice of a handful of his careful curls which I personally -hacked off for him with Forester's pocket knife. He lied like a little -gentleman and said he had cut them off himself because he was tired of -looking like a girl baby. - -I think it must have been about the end of Snockerty's second summer -that Ellen's wild humour got us all into serious trouble which resulted -in my first real contact with authority. - -Along the west side of Hadley's pasture, between it and the county road, -lay the tilled fields of the Ross property, corn and pumpkins and -turnips, against which a solemn trespass board advised us. It was that -board, no doubt, which led to our always referring to the owner of it as -old man Ross, for except as he was a tall, stooping, white-bearded, -childless man, I do not know how he had deserved our disrespect. I have -suspected since that the trespass sign did not originate wholly in the -alleged cantankerousness of farmer Ross, and that the McGees knew more -of the taste of his young turnips and roasting ears than they admitted -at the time when Snockerty announced to Ellen through the hollow of a -dark, gnarly oak at the foot of Hadley's hill, that he would be -acceptably served by a feast of green corn and turnips out of Ross's -field. This was the first time the idea of such a depredation had -occurred to us, I believe, for we were really good children in the main, -but I do not think we had any notion of disobeying. Personally I rather -delighted in the idea of being compelled to desperate enterprises. I -recall the wild freebooting dash, the scramble over the fence, the -rustle of the corn full of delicious intimations of ambush and surprise, -the real fear of coming suddenly on old man Ross among the rows, where I -suspect we did a great deal of damage in the search for ears suitable to -roast, and the derisive epithets which we did not spare to fling over -our shoulders as we escaped into the brush with our booty. There was a -perfect little carnival of wickedness in the safe hollow where we -stripped the ears for roasting--fires too were forbidden us--where we -dared old man Ross to come on, gave dramatic rehearsals of what we -should do to him in that event, and revelled in forbidden manners and -interdicted words. I remember the delightful shock of hearing Alfred -Allingham declare that he meant to get his belly full of green corn -anyway, for belly was a word that no well brought up Taylorville child -was expected to use on any occasion; and finally how we all took hands -in a wild dance around the fire and over it, crying, - - "Snockerty, Snockerty, Snockerty!" - -in a sort of savage singsong. - -Following on the heels of that, a sort of film came over the -performance, an intimation of our disgust in each other at the -connivance of wrongdoing. I remember, as we came up through the orchard -rather late, this feeling grew upon us: the sense of taint, of -cheapness, which swelled into a most abominable conviction of guilt as -we discovered old man Ross on the front porch talking to our father. And -then with what a heaviness of raw turnips and culpability we huddled in -about our mother, going with brisk movements to and fro getting supper, -and how she cuffed us out of her way, not knowing in the least what old -man Ross had come about. Finally the overwhelming consciousness of -publicity swooped down upon us at my father's coming in through the -door, very white and angry, wanting to know if this were true that he -had heard--and it was the utmost limit of opprobriousness that our -father should get to know of our misdeeds at all. Times before, when we -downrightly transgressed by eating wild crabs, or taking off our -stockings to wade in the brook too early in the season, we bore our -mother's strictures according to our several dispositions. Forester, I -remember, was troubled with sensibility and used fairly to give us over -to wrath by the advertisement of guilty behaviour. He had a vocation for -confession, wept copiously under whippings which did him a world of -good, and went about for days with a chastened manner which irritated me -excessively. I believe now that he was quite sincere in it, but there -was a feeling among the rest of us that he carried the admission of -culpability too far. Myself, since I never entered on disobedience -without having settled with myself that the fun of it would be worth the -pains, scorned repentance, and endured correction with a philosophy -which got me the reputation of being a hardened and froward child. That -we did not, on this basis, get into more serious scrapes was due to -Effie, who could never bear any sort of unpleasantness. Parents, if you -crossed them, had a way of making things so very unpleasant. - -It was Effie who, if we went to the neighbours for a stated visit, kept -her eye upon the clock, and if she found us yielding to temptation, was -fertile in the invention of counter exploits just as exciting and quite -within the parental pale, and when we did fall, had a genius for -extrication as great as Forester's for propitiatory behaviour. So it -fell out that our piratical descent on Ross's field was our first -encounter with an order of things that transcended my mother's personal -jurisdiction. - -Up to this time contact with our parents' world had got no farther than -vainglorious imaginings of our proper entry into it, and now suddenly we -found that we were in it, haled there by our own acts in the unhappy -quality of offenders. I think this was the first time in my life that I -had been glad it was Forester who was the boy and not I who was made to -go with my father and Mr. Allingham to Ross's field to point out the -damage, for which they paid. - -It was this which sealed the enormity of our offence, money was paid for -it, and came near to losing its moral point with Forrie, who felt -himself immeasurably raised in the estimate of the other boys as a -public character. It served, along with my father's anger, which was so -new to us, to raise the occasion to a solemn note against which mere -switchings were inconsiderable. No doubt my brother has forgotten it by -now, along with Effie, who got off with nothing worse than the -complicity of having been one of us, but to me the incident takes rank -as the beginning of a new kind of Snockertism which was to array itself -indefinitely against the forces inappreciably sucking at the bottom of -my life. - -It was as if, on the very first occasion of my swimming to the surface -of my lustrous seas, I was taken with a line at the end of which I was -to be played into shoals and shallows, to foul with my flounderings some -clear pools and scatter the peace of many smaller fry--I mean the -obligation of repute, the necessity of being loyal to what I found in -the world because it had been founded in sincerity with pains. For what -my father made clear to us as the very crux of our transgression, was -that we had discredited our bringing up. Old man Ross could be paid for -his vegetables, but there was nothing, I was given to understand, could -satisfy our arrears to our parents' honour, which, it transpired, had -been appallingly blackened in the event. - -Nothing in my whole life has so surprised me as the capacity of this -single adventure for involving us in successive coils of turpitude and -disaster; though it was not until we followed my father into the best -room the next morning after he had seen Mr. Allingham, still rather -sick, for the turnips had not agreed with us, that we realized the -worst, rounding on us through a stream of dreadful, biting things that, -as my father uttered them, seemed to float us clear beyond the pale of -sympathy and hope. I remember my father walking up and down with his -hands under his coat behind, a short man in my recollection, with a kind -of swing in his walk which curiously nobody but myself seems to have -noticed, and a sort of electrical flash in his manner which might have -come, as in this instance, from our never being brought up before him -except when we had done something thoroughly exasperating: I am not sure -that I did not tell Ellen McGee, in an attempt to render the magnitude -of our going over, that he rated us in full uniform, waving his sword, -which at that moment hung with his regimentals over the mantelpiece. - -"Good heavens," he said, "you might have been arrested for it--my -children--_mine_--and I thought I could have trusted you. Good heavens!" - -Suddenly he reached out as it were over my brother's shoulder, to whom -in his capacity as the eldest son most of this tirade was addressed, -with a word for me that was to go tearing its way sorely to the seat of -memory and consciousness, and, lodging there, become the one point of -attachment to support the memory of him beyond his death. - -"As for you, Olivia," I started at this, for I had been staying my -misery for the moment on a red and black table cover which my mother -valued, and I was amazed to find myself still able to hate--"as for you, -Olivia May"--he would never allow my name to be shortened in the -least--"I _am_ surprised at you." - -He had expected better of me then; he had reached beyond my surfaces and -divined what I was inarticulately sure of, that I was different--no, not -better--but somehow intrinsically different. He was surprised at me; he -did not say so much of Forester, and he _did_ say that it was exactly -what he had expected of the McGees, but he had had a better opinion of -me. I recall a throb of exasperation at his never having told me. I -might have lived up to it. But with all the soreness of having dropped -short of a possible estimate, that phrase, which might have gone no -deeper than his momentary disappointment, is all I have on which to hang -the faith that perhaps ... perhaps some vision had shaped on his horizon -of what I might become. I was never anything to my mother, I know, but a -cuckoo's egg dropped in her creditable nest. "But," said my father, "I -_am_ surprised at _you_." - -He was, I believe, one of those men who make a speciality of integrity -and of great dependability in public service, which is often brought to -answer for the want of private success; an early republican type fast -being relegated to small towns and country neighbourhoods. He had a -brilliant war record which was partly responsible for his office, and a -string of debts pendent from some earlier mercantile enterprise, which, -in the occasion they afforded of paying up under circumstances of great -stringency, appeared somehow an additional burnish to his name. He was a -man everybody liked; that he was extremely gentle and gay in his manner -with us on most occasions, I remember very well, and I think he must -have had a vein of romance, though I do not know upon what grounds -except that among the few books that he left, many were of that -character, and from the names of his children, Forester, Olivia May, and -Ephemia, called Effie for short, which were certainly not Taylorvillian. -Forester grew out of a heroic incident of his soldiering, of which I -have forgotten all the particulars except that the other man's name was -Forester, and my father's idea of giving it to his son who was born -about that time, was that when he should grow up, and be distinguished, -the double name of Forester Lattimore should serve at once as a reminder -and a certificate of appreciation. I recall that we children, or perhaps -it was only I, used to abound in dramatic imaginings of what would -happen when this belated recognition took place, though in fact nothing -ever came of it, which might have been largely owing to my brother's -turning out the least distinguished of men. - -Whether if my father had lived he would have remained always as much in -the dark as to the private sources of my behaviour, I try not to guess, -but this incident picked him out for me among the ruck of fathers as a -man distinguished for propriety, produced, in the very moment of -pronouncing me unworthy of it, the ideal of a personal standard. If he -hadn't up to this time affected greatly my gratitude or affections, he -began to shine for me now with some of the precious quality which -inheres in dreams. And before the shine had gone off I lost him. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -My father's death, which occurred the March following, came suddenly, -wholly fortuitous to the outward eye, and I have heard my mother say, in -its inconsequence, its failure to line up with any conceivable moral -occasion, did much to shake her faith in a controlling Providence; but -affects me still as then, as the most incontrovertible of evidences of -Powers moving at large among men, occupied with other affairs than ours. -A little while ago, as I sat writing here on my veranda, looking -riverward, an ant ran across my paper, which I blew out with my breath -into space, and I did not look to see what disaster. It reminded me -suddenly of the way I felt about my father's taking off. He was, he must -have been, in the way of some god that March morning; that is one of the -evidences by which you know that there are gods at all. You play happily -about their knees, sometimes they play with you, then you stumble -against a foot thrust out, or the clamour of your iniquity disturbs -their proper meditations, and suddenly you are silenced. My mother was -doubtless right; it would have been better if he had stayed with her and -the children, certainly happier, but he got in the way of the Powers. - -It is curious that until I began just now to reconstruct the -circumstances in which the news of his death came to me, I never -realized that I might have been looking on, but high above it, at the -very instant and occasion, for, from the window of my room in the second -story of the Taylorville grammar school I could see the unfinished walls -of the Zimmern block aglimmer with the light which the wind heaped up -and shattered against their raw pink surfaces, and a loose board of the -scaffolding allowed to remain up all winter, flacking like a torn leaf -in the mighty current in which the school building, all the buildings, -shook with the steady tremor of reeds in a freshet. Between them the -tops of the maples, level like a shorn hedge, kept up an immensity of -tormented motion that invaded even the schoolroom with a sense of its -insupportable fatigues. I remember there were few at their desks that -day, and all the discipline relaxed by the confusion of the wind. At the -morning recess there had been some debate about dismissing the session, -and one of the young teachers on the third floor had grown hysterical -and been reprimanded by the principal. - -It must have been about eleven of the clock, while I was watching the -little puffs of dust that rose between the planks of the flooring -whenever the building shuddered and ground its teeth, divided between an -affectation of timorousness which seemed to grow in favour as a suitable -frame of behaviour, and the rapid rise of every tingling sense to the -spacious movement of the weather and my private dramatization of the -demolition of the building, from which only such occupants as I favoured -should be rescued by my signal behaviour. Already several children had -been abstracted by anxious parents, so that I failed to be even startled -by another knocking until my attention was attracted by the teacher -opening the door, and opening it wide upon my Uncle Alva. - -I saw him step back with a motion of his head sidewise, to draw her -after him, but it took all the suggestive nods and winks that, as she -drew it shut behind her, were focussed on my desk, to pull me up to the -realization that his visit must have something to do with me. It was -not, in fact, until I was halfway down the aisle after Miss Jessel -called me, that I recovered my surprise sufficiently to assume the -mysteriously important air that was proper to the fifth grade on being -privileged to answer the door. - -There was not, I am sure, in the brief information that I was wanted at -home, one betraying syllable; nothing sufficiently unusual in the way -Miss Jessel tied me into my hood, nor in finding Effie tied into hers on -the first floor, nor in the way her teacher kissed her--everybody kissed -Effie who was allowed--nothing in Forester's having already cleared out -without waiting for us. We got into the town in the wake of Uncle Alva -and between the business blocks where the tall buildings abated the -wind. There was no traffic in the streets that day. Here and there a -foot passenger with his hat held down by both hands and his coat tails -between his legs, staggered into doorways which were snapped to behind -him, and from the glass of which faces looked out featureless in the -blur of the wind. As we passed the side door of a men's clothing -establishment one of these pale human orbs approached to the pane, -exhibited a peering movement, rapped on the glass and beckoned. I know -now this must have been the working of an instinct to which Taylorville -was so habituated that it seemed natural to Uncle Alva--he was only my -mother's half brother, not my father's--to send us on with a word about -overtaking us, while he crossed the street at the instance of that -beckoning finger to be chaffered with in the matter of my father's grave -clothes. All this time there was not a word spoken that could convey to -us children the import of our unexpected release. We drifted down the -street, Effie and I, sidling against the blasts that drove furiously in -the crossways, and finally as we caught our breath under a long red -sandstone building, I recall being taken violently, as it were, by -knowledge, and crying out that my father was dead, that he was dead and -I should never see him again. I do not know how I knew, but I knew, and -Effie accepted it; she came cuddling up to me in the smother of the -wind, trying to comfort me as if, as I think did not occur to her, he -had been my father only and not hers at all. I do not recall very well -how we got across the town between the shut houses, high shouldered with -the cold, except that Uncle Alva did not come up with us, and the vast -lapping of the wind that swirled us together at intervals in a community -of breathlessness, seemed somehow to have grown out of the occasion and -be naturally commensurate with its desolating quality. I do not think it -occurred to us as strange that we should have been left so to come to -the knowledge that grew until, as we came in sight of our home, we were -fairly taken aback to find it so little altered from what it had been -when we left it three hours before. It had never been an attractive -house: yellow painted, with chocolate trimmings and unshuttered windows -against which the wind contrived. It cowered in a wide yard full of -unpruned maples that now held up their limbs protestingly, that shook -off from their stretched boughs, disclaimers of responsibility; the very -smoke wrenched itself from the chimney and escaped, hurryingly upon the -wind; the shrubbery wrung itself; whole flights of fallen leaves that -had settled soddenly beside the borders all the winter, having at last -got a plain sight of it, whirled up aghast and fled along the road. The -blinds were down at the front windows, and no one came in or out. - -I remember our hanging there on the opposite side of the street for an -appreciable interval before trusting ourselves to a usualness which -every moment began to appear more frightening, and being snatched back -from the brink of panic by the rattle of wheels in the road behind us as -a light buggy, all aglitter from point to point of its natty -furnishings, drew up at our gate and discharged from the seat beside the -driver a youngish man, all of a piece with the turnout, in the trim and -shining blackness of his exterior, who, with a kind of subdued tripping, -ran up the walk and entered at the door without a knock. I am not sure -that Effie identified him as the man who had taken away the babies, -indeed, the two who came after Effie were so close together and went so -soon, that I have heard her say that she has no recollection of anything -except a house enlivened by continuous baby; but she had the knowledge -common to every Taylorville child of the undertaker as the only man who -was let softly in at unknocked doors, with his frock coat buttoned tight -and the rim of his black hat held against his freshly shaven chin. We -snatched the knowledge from one another as we caught hands together and -fairly dove into the side entrance that opened on the living room. - -The first thing I was aware of was the sound of Forester blubbering, and -then of the place being full of neighbours and my mother sitting by the -fire in a chair out of the best room, crying heartily. We flung -ourselves upon her, crying too, and were gathered up in a violence of -grief and rocking, through which I could hear a great many voices in a -kind of frightened and extenuating remonstrance, "Come now, Mrs. -Lattimore. Now Sally--there, there----" at every word of which my -mother's sobbing broke out afresh. I remember getting done with my -crying first and being very hot and uncomfortable and thinking of -nothing but how I should wriggle out of her embrace and get away, -anywhere to escape from the burden of having to seem to care; and then, -but whether it was immediately after I am not sure, going rather heavily -upstairs and being overtaken in the middle of it by the dramatic -suggestion of myself as an orphan child toiling through the world--I -dare say I had read something like that recently--and carrying out the -suggestion with an immense effect on Uncle Alva, who happened to be -coming down at that moment. And then the insidious spread through all my -soul of cold disaster, out of which I found myself unable to rise even -to the appearance of how much I cared. - -Of all that time my father lay dead in the best room, for by the usual -Taylorville procedure the funeral could not take place until the -afternoon of the second day, I have only snatches of remembrance: of my -being taken in to look at him as he lay in the coffin in a very nice -coat which I had never seen him wear, and the sudden conviction I had of -its somehow being connected with that mysterious summons which had taken -Uncle Alva away from us that morning in the street; of the "sitting -up," which was done both nights by groups of neighbours, mostly young; -and the festive air it had with the table spread with the best cloth and -notable delicacies; and mine and Forester's reprisals against one -another as to the impropriety of squabbling over the remains of a layer -cake. And particularly of Cousin Judd. - -He came about dusk from the farm--he had been sent for--looking shocked, -and yet with a kind of enjoyable solemnity, I thought; and the first -thing he wished to do was to pray with my poor mother. - -"We must submit ourselves to the will of God, Sally," he urged. - -"O God! _God!_" said my mother, walking up and down. "I'm not so sure -God had anything to do with it." - -"It's a wrong spirit, Sally, a wrong spirit--a spirit of rebellion." My -mother began to cry. - -"Why couldn't God have left him alone? What had he done that he should -be taken away? What have _I_ done----" - -"You mustn't take it like this, Sally. Think of your duty to your -children. 'The Lord giveth'----" - -"Go tell Him to give me back my husband, then----" - -Effie and I cowered in our corner between the base burner and the sewing -machine; it was terrible to hear them so, quarrelling about God. My -mother had her hands to her head as she walked; her figure touched by -the firelight, not quite spoiled by childbearing, looked young to me. - -"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she cried with every step. - -"You mustn't, Sally; you'll be punished for it----" - -Cousin Judd shook with excitement; he was bullying her about her -Christian submission. I went up to him suddenly and struck him on the -arm with my fist. - -"You let her alone!" I cried. "Let her alone!" - -Somebody spoke out sharply, I think; a hand plucked me from behind--to -my amazement my mother's. - -"Olivia, Olivia May! I _am_ surprised ... and your father not out of the -house yet. Go up to your room and see if you can't learn to control -yourself!" - -After all there was some excuse for Cousin Judd. There was, in the -general estimate, something more than fortuitous circumstance that went -to my father's taking off. Early in the winter, when work had been -stopped on the Zimmern building, there had been a good deal of talk -about some local regulations as to the removal of scaffolding and the -security of foot passengers. That the contractors had not been brought -to book about it was thought to be due to official connivance; my father -had written to the paper about it. But the scaffolding had remained -until that morning of the high wind, when it came down all together and -a bit of the wall with it. That my father should have been passing on -his way to the courthouse at the moment, was a leaping together of -circumstances that seemed somehow to have raised it to the plane of a -moral instance. It provided just that element of the dramatic in human -affairs, which somehow wakens the conviction of having always expected -it; though it hardly appeared why my father, rather than the contractor -or the convincing city official, should have been the victim. If it -wasn't an act of Providence, it was so like one that it contributed to -bring out to the funeral more people than might otherwise have ventured -themselves in such weather. - -It was also thought that if anything of that nature could have made up -to her, my mother should have found much to console her in the funeral. -The Masons took part in it, as also the G. A. R. and the Republican -Club, though they might have made a more imposing show of numbers if all -the societies had not been so largely composed of the same members. In -addition to all this, my mother's crape came quite to the hem of her -dress and Effie and I had new hats. I remember those hats very well; -they had very tall crowns and narrow brims and velvet trimmings, and we -tried them on for Pauline Allingham after we had gone up to bed the -night before the funeral. Mrs. Allingham had called and Pauline had been -allowed to come up to us. I remember her asking how we felt, and Effie's -being as much impressed by the way in which I carried off the situation -as if she had not been in the least concerned in it. And then we sat up -in bed in our nightgowns and tried on the hats while Pauline walked -about to get the effect from both sides, and refrained, in respect to -the occasion, from offering any criticism. - - * * * * * - -It was the evening after the funeral and everybody had gone away but one -good neighbour. The room had been set in order while we were away at the -cemetery; the lamp was lit and there was a red glow on everything from -the deep heart of the base burner. The woman went about softly to set a -meal for us, and under the lamp there was a great bowl of quince -marmalade which she had brought over neighbourly from her own stores; -the colour of it played through the clear glass like a stain upon the -white cloth. It happened to have been a favourite dish of my father's. - -For the last year it had been a family use, he being delicate in his -appetite, to make a point of saving for him anything which he might -possibly eat, and taking the greatest satisfaction in his enjoyment. -Therefore it came quite natural for me to get a small dish from the -cupboard and begin to serve out a portion of Mrs. Mason's preserves for -my father. All at once it came over me ... the meaning of bereavement; -that there was nobody to be done for tenderly; the loss of it ... the -need of the heart for all its offices of loving ... and the unavailing -pain. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -It followed soon on my father's death that we gave up the yellow house -with the chocolate trimmings and took another near the high school, and -that very summer my mother lengthened my skirts halfway to my shoe tops -and began to find fault with my behaviour "for a girl of your age." We -saw no more of the McGees after that except as Ellen managed to keep on -in the same class at school with me; and Pauline and I found ourselves -with a bosom friendship on our hands. - -I went on missing my father terribly, but in a child's inarticulate -fashion, and it is only lately that I have realized how much of my life -went at loose ends for the loss out of it of a man's point of view and -the appreciable standards which grow out of his relation to the -community. Ever since the Snockerty episode there had been glimmers on -my horizon of the sort of rightness owing from a daughter of Henry -Lattimore, but now that I had no longer the use of the personal -instance, I lost all notion of what those things might be; for though I -have often heard my mother spoken of as one of the best women in the -world, she was the last to have provided me with a definite pattern of -behaviour. - -Pauline had struck out a sort of social balance for herself grounded on -the fear of what was "common." Her mother had a day at home, from which -seemed to flow an orderly perspective of social observances, for which -my mother, never having arrived at the pitch of visiting cards, afforded -me no criterion whatever. - -She had been a farmer's daughter in another part of the state, and had -done something for herself in the way of school teaching before she -married my father. My grandparents I never saw, but I seem to recall at -such public occasions as county fairs and soldiers' reunions, certain -tall, farmer-looking men and their badly dressed wives, who called her -cousin and were answered by their Christian names, whom I understand to -be my mother's relatives without accepting them as mine. They were all -soldiers though, the men of our family; you saw it at once in the odd -stiffness sitting on their farmer carriage like the firm strokes of a -master on a pupil's smudged drawing. I think I got my first notion of -the quality of experience in the way they exalted themselves in the -memories of marches and battles. There had been a station of the -underground railway not ten miles from Taylorville, and there had gone -out from the town at the first call, a volunteer company with so many -Judds and Wilsons and Lattimores on the roster that it read like the -record of a family Bible. They had gone out from, they had come back to, -a life as little relieved by adventure as the flat horizon of their -corn lands, but in the interim they had stretched themselves, endured, -conquered. I have heard political economists of the cross roads account -variously for the prosperity of Ohianna in the decade following the -civil outbreak, but I have never heard it laid to the revitalizing of -our common stock by the shock of its moral strenuosities. - -To this day I question whether Cousin Judd got more out of his religion -than out of this most unchristian experience, from which he had come -back silver tipped as it were, from that emperym into which men pass -when they are by great emotions a little removed from themselves, to -kindle in my young mind a realization of the preciousness of passion -over all human assets. It came to me, however, in the years between -twelve and fifteen that my mother's relations did things with their -knives and neglected others with their forks that were not done in -circles that by virtue of just such observances, got themselves called -Good Society. I was aware of a sort of gracelessness in their vital -processes, in much the same way that I knew that the striped and -flowered carpet in my mother's best room did not harmonize with the wall -paper, and that the curtains went badly with them both. I have to go -back to this, and to the fact that my clothes were chosen for wearing -qualities rather than becomingness, to account for a behaviour that, as -I began to emerge from the illumined mists of play, my mother -complained of under the head of my "not taking an interest." - -How else was I to protect myself from the thousand inharmonies that -chafed against the budding instinct of beauty: the plum-coloured ribbons -I was expected to wear with my brown dress, the mottled Japanese pattern -upon the gilt ground of the wall paper, against which I had pushed out a -kind of shell, hung within with the glittering stuff of dreams. - -For just about the time I should have been absorbed in Cousin Lydia's -beaded dolman and the turning of my mother's one silk, I was regularly -victimized by the fits and starts of temperament, instinctive efforts -toward the rehearsal of greater passions than had appeared above my -horizon, flashes of red and blue and gold thrown up on the plain -Taylorville surface of my behaviour, with the result of putting me at -odds with the Taylorvillians. - -It was as if, being required to produce a character, I found myself with -samples of a great many sorts on my hands which I kept offering, hopeful -that they might be found to match with the acceptable article, which, I -may say here, they never did. They were good samples too, considering -how young I was, of the Magdas, Ophelias, Antigones I was yet to become, -of the great lady, good comrade and lover, but the most I got by it was -the suspicion of insincerity and affectation. I sensitively suffered the -more from it as I was conscious of the veering of this inward -direction, without being able to prove what I was sure of, its relevance -to the Shining Destiny toward which I moved. If you ask how this -assurance differed from the general human hope of a superior happiness, -I can only say that the event has proved it, and as early as I was aware -of it, moved me childishly to acts of propitiation. I wanted gratefully -to be good, with a goodness acceptable to the Powers from which such -assurance flowed, but it was a long time before I could separate my -notion of this from my earliest ideal of what would have been suitable -behaviour to my father, so that all the upward reach of adolescence was -tinged by my sense of loss in him. - -It was when I was about thirteen and had not yet forgotten how my father -looked, that I made an important discovery; on the opposite side of the -church, and close to the Amen corner, sat a man with something in the -cut of his beard, in the swing of his shoulders, at which some dying -nerve started suddenly athrob. I must have seen him there a great many -times without noticing, and perhaps the likeness was not so much as I -had thought, and I had had to wait until my recollection faded to its -note of faint suggestion, but from that day I took to going out of my -way to school to pass by Mr. Gower's place of business for the sake of -the start of memory that for the moment brought my father near again. I -even went so far as to mention to my mother that I liked sitting in -church where I could look at Mr. Gower because he reminded me of -somebody. We were on our way home on Sunday night--we were always taken -to church twice on Sunday--Forester was on ahead with Effie, and just as -we came along under the shadow of the spool factory, I had reached up to -tuck my hand under my mother's arm and make my timid suggestion. - -"Well, somebody who?" said my mother. - -"Of my father----" - -"Oh," said my mother, "that's just your fancy." But she did not shake -off my hand from her arm as was her habit toward proffers of affection, -and the moment passed for one of confidence between us. I was convinced -that she must have taken notice of the likeness for herself. That was in -the spring, and all that summer vacation I spent a great deal of time -playing with Nettie Gower for the sake of seeing her father come at the -gate about five in the afternoon the way mine had done. - -Nettie was not an attractive child, and of an age better suited to -Effie, who couldn't bear her; the relation, it seemed, wanted an -explanation, but it never occurred to me that so long as I withheld my -own, another would be found for it. Nettie's brother found it about the -time that my friendship with his sister was at its most flourishing. He -was no nicer than you would expect a brother of Nettie's to be, though -he was good-looking in a red-cheeked way, with a flattened curl in the -middle of his forehead, and of late he had taken to hanging about -Nettie and me, looking at me with a curious sort of smirk that I was not -quite arrived at knowing for the beginning gallantry. He knew perfectly -well that I did not come to see Nettie because I was fond of her, but it -was yet for me to discover that he thought it was because I was fond of -him. I remember I was making a bower in the asparagus bed; I was too old -to play in the asparagus bed, but I was making a point of being good -enough to do it on Nettie's account, and I had asked Charlie for his -knife to cut the stems. - -"Come and get it." He was holding it out to me hollowed in his palm; and -he would not let go my hand. - -"You don't want no knife," he leered sickeningly. "I know what you -want." Suddenly I caught sight of Nettie's face with its straight thick -plaits of hair and near-sighted eyes narrowed at me behind her glasses, -and it struck me all at once that she had never taken my interest in her -seriously either. - -"Well, what?" I began defensively. - -"This!" He thrust out his face toward mine, but I was too quick for him. -That was my first sex encounter, and it didn't somehow make it any the -less exasperating to realize that what lay behind my sudden interest in -Nettie couldn't now be brought forward in extenuation, but I am always -glad that I slapped Charlie Gower before the paralyzing sense of being -trapped by my own behaviour overtook me. I hadn't found the words yet -for the unimagined disgust of the boy's impertinence when, as I was -helping to wipe the dishes that evening after supper, I tried to put it -to my mother on a new basis which the incident seemed to have created, -of our being somehow ranged together against such offences. It was the -time for us to have emerged a little from the family relation to the -freemasonry of sex, but my mother missed knowing it. - -"I am not going to Nettie Gower's any more," I began. - -"No?" said my mother; and of course I could not conceive that she had -forgotten the confidence in which the connection with Nettie began. - -"That Charlie ... I just hate him. You know, he thought I was coming to -see Nettie because of him." - -"Well," said my mother, turning out the dishwater, "perhaps you were." - -And that, I think it safe to say, is as near as my family ever came to -understanding the processes at work behind the incidents of my growing -up. Yet I think my mother very often did know that the key to my -behaviour did not lie in the obvious explanation of it; and a sort of -aversion toward what was strange, which I have come to think of as -growing out of her unsophistication, kept her from admitting it. It was -less disconcerting to have my springs of action accounted for on the -basis of what Mrs. Allingham would have called "common," than to have -it arraigned by her own standard as "queer." There was always in -Taylorville a certain caddishness toward innovations of conduct, which -we youngsters railed at as countrified, which I now perceive to have -been no worse than the instinctive movement to lessen by despising it, -the terror, the deep, far-rooted terror of the unknown. The incident -served, however, to supersede with resentment the sense of personal -definite loss in which it had begun. - -Before the year was out I had so far forgotten my father that I saw no -resemblance to him in Mr. Gower and would not have recognized it had I -met it anywhere, though the want of fathering had its share no doubt in -landing me, as I cast about for an appreciable rule to live by, in what -I have already described as a superior sort of Snockertism. The -immediate step to it was my getting converted. That very winter all -Taylorville and the six townships were caught up in one of those acute -emotional crises called a Revival. It had begun in the Methodist, and -gradually involved the whole number of Protestant churches, and had -overflowed into the Congregational building as affording the greatest -seating room; by the middle of February it was possible to feel through -the whole community the ground swell of its disturbances. Night after -night the people poured in to it to be flayed in spirit, striped, -agonized, exalted at the hands of a practised evangelist, which they -_liked_; as it had the cachet of being supernaturally good for them, -they liked it with a deeper, more soul-stretching enjoyment than the -operas, theatres, social adventure of cities, supposing they had been at -hand. - -It hardly seems possible with all she had to do, and yet I think my -mother could not have missed one of those meetings, going regularly with -Cousin Judd, who drove in from the farm more times than you would have -thought the farm could have spared him, or with Forester, who had been -converted the winter before, though I think he must have regretted the -smaller occasion. Left at home with Effie who was thought too young to -be benefited by the preaching and too old to be laid by in an overcoat -on the Sunday-school benches with dozens of others, heavy with sleep and -the vitiated air, late, when I had finished my arithmetic and was afraid -to go to bed in the empty house, I would open the window a crack toward -the blur on the night from the tall, shutterless windows of the church, -and catch the faint swell of the hymns and at times the hysteric shout -of some sinner "coming through," and I was as drawn to it as any savage -to the roll of the medicine drums. - -The backwash of this excitement penetrated even to the schoolroom, as -from time to time some awed whisper ran of this and that one of our -classmates being converted, and walking apart from us with the other -saved in a chastened mystery. And finally Pauline Allingham and I talked -it over and decided to get converted too. Pauline, I remember, had not -been allowed to attend the meetings and considered her spiritual welfare -jeopardized in the prohibition. We knew by this time perfectly well what -we had to do, and had arranged to get excused from our respective -rooms--Pauline was a grade behind me on account of diphtheria the -previous winter--and to meet in the abandoned coal-hole between the -boys' and girls' basement. Pauline, who had always an aptitude for -proselyting, brought another girl from the sixth grade, who was also -under conviction--we had the terms very pat--a thin, hatchet-faced girl -who joined the Baptist Church and afterward married a minister, so that -she might very easily have reckoned the incident at something like its -supposititious value in her life. I remember that we knelt down in the -dusty coal-hole where the little children used to play I-spy, and prayed -by turns for light, aloud at first, and then, as we felt the approach of -the compelling mood, silently, as we waited for the moment after which -we might rather put it over our classmates on the strength of our -salvation. - -It came, oh, it came! the sweep up and out, the dizzying lightness--not -very different, in fact, from the breathless rush with which on a first -night of _Magda_ or _Cleopatra_ I have felt my part meet me as I cross -between the wings--the lift, the tremor of passion. - -"Oh," I said, "I'm saved! I'm saved! I know it." - -"So am I," said Flora Haines. "I was a long time ago, but I didn't like -to say anything." And if I hadn't just been converted I should have -thought it rather mean of her. In the dusk of the coal-hole we heard -Pauline sniffling. - -"I suppose it's because I'm so much worse a sinner," she admitted, "but -I just can't feel it." - -"You must give yourself into the Lord's hands, Pauline dear." Flora -Haines had heard the evangelist. I began to offer myself passionately in -prayer as a vicarious atonement for Pauline's shortcomings. - -"Don't you feel anything?" Flora urged, "not the least thing?" - -"Well ... sort of ... something," Pauline confessed. - -"Well, of course, that's it." - -"Yes, that's it," I insisted. - -"Well, I suppose it is," Pauline gave in, mopping her eyes with her -handkerchief, "but it isn't the least like what I expected." - -We heard the school clock strike the quarter hour, and got up, brushing -our knees rather guiltily. Flora Haines and I were kept in all that -afternoon recess for exceeding our excuse, but Pauline saved herself by -bursting into tears as soon as she reached her room, and being sent home -with a headache. - -That was on Thursday, and Saturday afternoon we were all to meet at our -house and go together to a great children's meeting, where we were -expected to announce that we were saved. Pauline was a little late. I -was explaining to Flora Haines that I was to join our church on -probation on Sunday, but Flora, being a Baptist, had been put off by her -minister until the Revival should be over and he could attend to all the -baptisms at once. We naturally expected something similar from Pauline. - -"I hardly think," she said, stroking her muff and looking very ladylike, -"that I shall take such an important step in life until I am older." - -"But," I objected, "how can anything be more important?" - -"It's your _soul_, Pauline!" Flora Haines was slightly scandalized. - -"That's just the reason; it's so important my mother thinks I ought not -to take any steps until I can give it my most mature judgment." - -Flora Haines and I looked at one another silently; we might have known -Pauline's mother wouldn't let her do anything so common as get -converted. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -I was duly taken into the church on the following Sabbath, to the great -relief of my family, having for once exhibited the normal reaction of a -young person in my circumstances, and though I have laid much to the -door of that institution of the retarding of my development and the -dimming of the delicate surface of happiness, I think now it was not -wholly bad for me. If I hadn't up to this time found any way of being -good by myself, I was now provided with a criterion of conduct toward -which even those who hadn't been able to manage it for themselves, moved -a public approbation. I have heard my mother say that even Mr. Farley, -the banker, who read books on evolution and was a Freethinker -(opprobrious term), had been known to pronounce the church an excellent -thing for women. - -The church left you in no doubt about things. You attended morning and -evening service; as soon as you were old enough for it, which was before -you were fit, you taught in Sunday school; you waited on table at oyster -suppers designed for the raising of the minister's salary, and if you -had any talent for it you sang in the choir or recited things at the -church sociables. And when you were married and consequently -middle-aged, you joined the W. F. M. S. and the Sewing Society. - -It was after the incident of the coal-hole that I began to experience -this easy irreproachability, and to build out of its ready-to-hand -materials a sort of extra self, from which afterward to burst was the -bitter wound of life. For my particular church went farther and provided -a chart for all the by-lanes of behaviour. "You were never," said the -evangelist, whose relish of the situation on the day that a score or so -of us had renounced the devil and all his works, gave me a vague -sensation of having made a meal and licked his lips over us, "you should -never go anywhere that you could not take your Saviour with you," and -when I saw Cousin Judd wag at my mother and she smile and pat her hymn -book, I was apprised that we had come to the root of the whole matter. - -I have wondered since to how many young converts in Ohianna that phrase -has been handed out and with what blighting consequences. - -For a Saviour as I knew Him at thirteen and a half, was a solemn -presence that ran in your mind with the bleakness of plain, whitewashed -walls and hard benches and a general hush, a vague sensation of your -chest being too tight for you, and a little of the feeling you had when -you had gone to call at the Allinghams and had forgotten to wipe your -feet; and it was manifest if you took that incubus everywhere you went -you wouldn't have any fun. - -It was fortunate at that time that it was not the desire for -entertainment that moved me so much as the need of my youth to serve; -the unparented hunger for authority. But with the pressure of that -environment, if there had been anybody with the wit to see where my Gift -lay, what anybody could have done about it it is difficult to say. When -all that Taylorville afforded of the proper food of Gift, brightness, -music, and the dance, was of so forlorn a quality, it has been a -question if I do not owe the church some thanks for cutting out the -possible cheapening of taste and the satisfaction of ill-regulated -applause--that is, if Gift can be hurt at all by what happens to the -possessor. It can be cramped and enfeebled in expression, rendered -tormenting in its passage and futile to the recipient, but to whom it -comes its supernal quality rises forever beyond all attainder. - -What happened to the actress during all the time I was undertaken by the -church to be made into the sort of woman serviceable to Taylorville, was -inconsiderable; what grew out of it for Olivia was no small matter, and -much of it I lay without bitterness to Cousin Judd, who, from having got -himself named adviser in my father's will, was in a position to affect -my life to the worse. - -And yet, in so far as I am not an unprecedented sport on the family -tree, I had more in common with this shrewd-dealing, loud-praying, -twice-removed soldier cousin than with any of my kin, though I should -hardly say as much to him, for he has never been in a theatre, and if he -still considers me a hopeful subject for prayer it is because his -Christian duty rises superior to his conviction. - -He is pricked out in my earlier recollections by the difficulty he seems -to have had in effecting a compromise between the traditional -distrustfulness of the Ohianna farmer toward the Powers in general, and -particularly of the weather, and his obligation of Christian Joy, and -for a curious effect of not belonging to his wife, a large, -uninteresting woman with a sense of her own merit which she never -succeeded in imposing on anybody but Cousin Judd. She had a keen -appreciation of worldly values which led her always to select the best -material for her clothes, and another feeling of their expensiveness -which resulted in her being always a little belated in the styles. She -approved of religion, though not active in it, and in twenty years she -and Cousin Judd had arrived at a series of compromises and excuses which -enabled her to appear at church one Sunday in five and still keep up the -interest of the clergyman and congregation as to why she didn't come the -other four. - -Whenever the days were short or the roads too heavy, Cousin Judd would -put up over night at our house, and I remember how my mother would -always be able to say, looking about the empty democrat wagon as though -she expected her in ambush somewhere: - -"And you didn't bring Lydia?" and Cousin Judd being able to reply to it -as if it were something he had expected up till the last moment, and -been keenly disappointed: - -"Well, no, Liddy ain't feeling quite up to it," which my mother received -without skepticism. After this they were free to talk of other things. - -What there was between Cousin Judd and me, with due allowance for the -years, was the spark, the touch-and-go of vitality that rose in me to a -hundred beckonings of running flood and waving boughs--music and -movement; and only the moral enthusiasms of war and religion raised -through his heavy farmer stuff. We should have loved one another had we -known how; as it was, all our intercourse was marked on his part by the -gracelessness of rusticity, and by the impertinence of adolescence on -mine. I used regularly to receive his pious admonitions with what, for a -Taylorville child, was flippancy; nevertheless there were occasions when -we had set off of summer Sunday mornings together to early class, when -the church was cool and dim and the smell of the honey locusts came in -through the window, that I caught the thrill that ran from the pounding -of his fist where he prayed at the other end of the long bench; and -there was a kind of blessedness shed from him as with closed eyes and -lifted chin he swung from peak to peak of the splendid measure of "How -Firm a Foundation," that I garnered up and hugged to myself in place of -Art and the Joy of Living. All of which was very good for me and might -have answered if it had not come into Cousin Judd's head that he ought -to overlook my reading. - -By this time I had worked through all my father's books and was ready to -satisfy the itch of imagination even with the vicious inaccuracies of -what was called Christian literature. The trouble all came of course of -my not understanding the nature of a lie. Not that I couldn't tell a -downright fib if I had to, or haven't on occasion, but a lie is to me -just as silly a performance when it is about marriage or work as about -the law of gravitation, and when it is presented to me in the form of -human behaviour it makes me sick, like the smell of tuberoses in a close -room; and I failed utterly to realize then that there are a great many -people capable of living sincerely and at the same time blandly -misrepresenting the facts of life in the interests of what is called -morality. I do not think it probable that Cousin Judd accepted for -himself the rule of behaviour prescribed by the books he recommended--I -shall not tell you what they were, but if there are any Sunday-school -libraries in Ohianna you will find them on the shelves--but I know that -he and my mother esteemed them excellent for the young. - -So far as they thought of it at all, they believed that in surrounding -me with intimations of a life in which there was nothing more important -than settling with Deity the minor details of living, and especially how -much you would pay to His establishment, they had done their utmost to -provide me with a life in which nothing more important could happen. If -you were careful about reading the Bible and doing good to people--that -is, persuading them to go to church and to leave off swearing--all the -more serious details such as making a living, marrying and having -children would take care of themselves; and the trouble was, as I have -said, that I believed it. And that was how I found myself farthest from -Art and Life at the time when I found myself a young lady. - -I had to make this discovery for myself, for there were no social -occasions in Taylorville to give a term to your advent into the grown-up -world, though there was a definite privilege which marked your -achievement of it. There was a period prior to this in which you bumped -against things you were too old for, and carromed to the things for -which you were quite too young, and about the end of your high-school -term you had done with hair ribbons and begun to have company on your -own account, and the sort of things began to happen which marked the -point beyond which if you fell upon disaster it was your own fault. They -happened to me. - -By dint of my doing her compositions and of her doing my arithmetic, -Pauline Allingham and I had managed to keep together all through the -high school, and it was in our last year, when we used to put in the -long end of the afternoons at Pauline's, playing croquet, that I first -took notice of Tommy Bettersworth. The Bettersworth yard abutted on the -Allingham's for the space of one woodshed and a horse-chestnut tree, and -it was along in October that I began to be aware that it was not -altogether the view of the garden that kept Tommy on the woodshed or in -the chestnut tree the greater part of the afternoon. It may be that the -adventure with Charlie Gower had sharpened my perception, at any rate it -had aroused my discretion; I was carefully oblivious to the proximity of -Tommy Bettersworth. But there came a day when Pauline was not, when she -wanted to tell me something about Flora Haines which she was afraid he -might overhear. - -"Come around to the summer-house," she said, "Tommy's always hanging -about; I can't think what makes him." - -"Always?" I suggested. - -"Why, you know yourself he was there last Saturday, and Thursday when -we ..." - -"Is he there when you and Flora are there, or only ..." - -"Oh," Pauline gave a gasp, "No----Oh, I never thought ... Olive ... I do -believe ... that's it!" - -"Well, what?" - -"It's _you_, Olive," solemnly. "It must be that ... he really is...." -Pauline's reading included more romance than mine. - -"Well, he can't say I gave him any encouragement." - -"Oh, _of course_ not, darling," Pauline was sympathetic. "You -couldn't ... it is _so_ interesting. What would the girls say?" - -"Pauline, if you ever ..." - -"Truly, I never will.... But just _think_!" - -But we reckoned without Alfred Allingham. Alfred was not a nice boy at -that age; he had come the way of curled darlings to be a sly, -tale-bearing, offensive little cad, and the next Saturday, when Pauline -turned him off the croquet ground for ribaldry, he went as far as the -rose border and jeered back at us. - -"I know why you don't want me," he mocked; "so's I can't see Olive and -Tommy Bettersworth makin' eyes." He executed a jig to the tune of - - "Olive's mad and I am glad. - And I know what'll please her----" - -At this juncture the wrist and hand of Tommy Bettersworth appeared over -the partition fence armed with horse-chestnuts which thudded with -precision on the offensive person of Alfred Allingham. Pauline and I -escaped to the summer-house. I thought I was going to cry until I found -I was giggling, at which I was so mortified that I did cry. - -"He'll tell everybody in school," I protested. - -"What do you care?" soothed Pauline, "besides, you have to be teased -about somebody, you know, and have somebody to choose you when they play -clap in and clap out. You just _have_ to. Look at me." Pauline had been -carrying on the discreetest of flirtations with Henry Glave for some -months. "Tommy Bettersworth is a nice boy, and besides, dear, we'll have -so much more in common." - -Pauline was right. Unless you had somebody to be teased about you were -really not in things. I was furiously embarrassed by it, but I was -resigned. Tommy sent me two notes that winter and a silk handkerchief -for Christmas which I pretended was from Pauline. I am not going to be -blamed for this. It was at least a month earlier that I had observed -Tommy Bettersworth's inability to get away from Nile's corner on his way -home from school until I had passed there on mine. It struck me as a -very interesting trait of masculine character; I would have liked to -talk it over with my mother on the plane of human interest; it seemed -possible she might have noted similar eccentricities. I remember I -worked around to it Saturday morning when I was helping her to darn the -tablecloths. My mother was not unprepared; she did her duty by me as it -was conceived in Taylorville, and did it promptly. - -"You are too young to be thinking about the boys," she said. "I don't -want to hear you talking about such things until the time comes." - -This was so much in line with what was expected of parents, that I -blinked the obvious retort that the time for talking about such things -was when they began to happen, and went on with the tablecloths. But I -couldn't tell her about the handkerchief after that. It would have been -positively unmaidenly. And after he had sent me a magnificent paper lace -valentine, I distinctly encouraged Tommy Bettersworth. - -This being the case, I do not know just how it began to be conveyed to -me, as in the lengthening evenings of spring, Tommy took to -church-going, that his hands were coarse and his ears too prominent, and -as I confided solemnly to Pauline, though I had the greatest respect for -his character, I simply couldn't bear to have him about. This was the -more singular since the church-going was the visible sign of the good -influence that, according to the books, I was exercising; and though -Tommy was as nearly inarticulate as was natural, I was in no doubt on -whose account this new start proceeded. If I had not disliked Tommy very -much at this period, why should I have taken to tucking myself between -Forester and Effie on the way home, embarrassedly aware of Tommy, whose -way did not lie in our direction, scuffling along with the Lawrences on -the other side of the street? I seem to remember some rather heroic -attempts on Tommy's part to account for his presence there on the ground -of wanting to speak privately to Forester, certain shouts and sallies -toward which my brother displayed a derisive consciousness of their not -being pertinent to the occasion. - -I have often wondered how much of these tentative ventures toward an -altered relation were observed by our elders; not much, I should think. -At any rate no mollifying word drifted down from their heights of -experience to our shallows of self-consciousness. - -My mother adhered to her notion of my not being at an age for "such -things," borne out, I believe, by the consensus of paternal opinion that -she might too easily "put notions" in my head; not inquiring what -notions might by the natural process of living be already there. Perhaps -they were not altogether wrong in this, so delicate is the process of -sex development that nature herself obscures the processes. To this day -I do not know how much my taking suddenly to going home with Belle -Endsleigh by a short cut was embarrassment, and how much a discreet -feminine awareness that in my absence Tommy would better manage to make -the family take his walking with them as a matter of course, but I -remember that I cried when my mother, who did not approve of Belle -Endsleigh, scolded me. And then quite suddenly came the click and the -loosened tension of the readjustment. - -Along about Easter Alfred Allingham told Pauline that Tommy had thrashed -Charlie Gower, and though it was supposed to be the strictest secret, it -was because Charlie had teased him about me. Pauline was rather -scandalized by my insistence that Charlie wouldn't have done it if Tommy -hadn't rather conspicuously brought it on himself. - -"I call it truly noble of him ... like a knight." Pauline could always -throw the glamour of her reading around the immediate circumstance. "At -any rate, after this you can't do anything less than treat him -politely," she urged. - -Whether it would have made any difference in my attitude or not, it did -in Tommy's. I saw that when he came out of the church with us next -Sunday. There was a certain aggressive maleness in the way he strode -beside me, that there was no mistaking. I looked about rather feebly for -Belle. - -"I don't see her anywhere," Tommy assured me, "besides, we don't want -her." As I could see Tommy in the light that streamed from the church -windows, it occurred to me that if he was not good-looking he certainly -looked good, and he had a moustache coming. - -Forester, who was going through a phase himself, had gone home with Amy -Lawrence; Effie lagged behind with mother, talking to Mrs. Endsleigh -about the prospects of the Sewing Society raising the money for -repainting the parsonage. Looking back to see what had become of them I -tripped on the boardwalk. - -"If you would take my arm" ... suggested Tommy. I was aware of the -sleeve of his coat under my fingers. - -The next turn took us out of sound of the voices; the street lamps -flared far apart in the long, quiet avenue. The shed pods of the maples -slipped and popped under us with the sweet smell of the sap. - -"How did you like the sermon?" Tommy wished to know. What I had to say -of it was probably not very much to the point. No one overtook us as we -walked. There was a sense of tremendous occasions in the air, of things -accomplished. I had established the privilege. I was walking home from -church with a young man. I was a young lady. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -As often as I think of Olivia Lattimore growing up, I have wondered if -there was really no evidence of dramatic talent about, or simply no one -able to observe it. There was no theatre at Taylorville, and when from -time to time third-rate stock companies performed indifferent plays at -the Town Hall, Forrie and Effie and I heard nothing of them except that -they were presumably wicked. - -Occasionally there were amateur performances in which, when I had won a -grudging consent to take part, I failed to distinguish myself. Effie had -a very amusing trick of mimicry, and if you had heard her recite "Curfew -Shall Not Ring To-night," you would have thought that the Gift on its -way from whatever high and unknowable source, in passing her had lighted -haphazard on the most unlikely instrument. I was not even clever at my -books except by starts and flashes. - -I graduated at the high school with Pauline, and afterward we had two -years together at Montecito. This was the next town to Taylorville, and -its bitter rival. Montecito had a Young Ladies' Seminary, a Business -College, and the State Institution for the Blind, for which Taylorville -so little forgave it that the new railroad was persuaded to leave -Montecito four miles to the right and make its junction with the L. and -C. at Taylorville. This carried the farmer shipping away from Montecito, -but the victory was not altogether scathless; young ladies were still -obliged to go to the seminary, and it enabled Montecito to put on the -air of having retired from the vulgar competition of trade and become -the Athens of the West. - -Pauline and I went over to school on Mondays and home on Fridays. The -course of study was for three years, but because there was Effie to -think of and my mother's means were limited, I had only two, and was -never able to catch up with Pauline by the length of that extra year. -She was always holding it out against me in extenuation and excuse; when -she tried to account for my marriage having turned out so badly on the -ground of my not having had Advantages, I knew she was thinking of -Montecito. She thinks of it still, I imagine, to condone as she does, I -am sure, with an adorable womanliness, what in my conduct she no longer -feels able to countenance. And yet I hardly know what I might have drawn -from that third year more than I took away from the other two, which -was, besides the regular course of study, an acquaintance with a style -of furnishings not all gilt wall paper and plush brocade, and a renewed -taste for good reading. They made such a point of good reading at the -seminary that I have always thought it a pity they could not go a -little farther and make a practice of it. - -The difficulty with most of our reading was that it had no relativity to -the processes of life in Ohianna; we had things as far removed from it -as Dante and Euripides, things no nearer than "The Scarlet Letter" and -"David Copperfield," from which to draw for the exigencies of -Taylorville was to cause my mother to wonder, with tears in her eyes, -why in the world I couldn't be like other people. I read; I gorged, in -fact, on the best books, but I found it more convenient to go on living -by the shallow priggishness of Cousin Judd's selection. All that -splendid stream poured in upon me and sank and lost itself in the shifty -undercurrent that made still, by times, distracting eddies on the -surface of adolescence. - -But whatever was missed or misunderstood of its evidences, the Gift -worked at the bottom, throve like a sea anemone under the shallows of -girlishness, and, nourished by unsuspected means, was the source no -doubt of the live resistance I opposed to all that grew out of -Forester's making a vocation of being a good son. I do not know yet how -to deal with sufficient tenderness and without exasperation with the -disposition of widowed women, bred to dependence, to build out of their -sons the shape of a man proper to be leaned upon. It is so justified in -sentiment, so pretty to see in its immediate phases, that though my -mother was young and attractive enough to have married again, it was -difficult not to concur in her making a virtue, a glorification of -living entirely in her boy. I seem to remember a time before Forrie was -intrigued by the general appreciation, when it required some coercion to -present him always in the character of the most dutiful son. He hadn't, -for instance, invariably fancied himself setting out for prayer meeting -with my mother's hymn book and umbrella, but the second summer after my -father died, when he had worked on Cousin Judd's farm and brought home -his wages, found him completely implicated. We were really not so poor -there was any occasion for this, but mother was so delighted with the -idea of a provider, and Forester was so pleased with the picture of -himself in that capacity, that it was all, no doubt, very good for him. - -He always did bring home his wages after that, which led to his being -consulted about meals, and the new curtains for the dining-room, and to -being met in the evening as though all the house had been primed for his -return, and merely gone on in that expectation while he was away. Effie, -I know, had no difficulty in accepting him as the excuse for any amount -of household ritual, making a fuss about his birthdays and trying on her -new clothes for his approval, but Effie was five years younger than -Forester and I was only twenty-two months. It was more, I think, than -our community in the gaucheries and hesitancies of youth that -disinclined me to take seriously my brother's opinions on window -curtains and to sniff at my mother's affectionate pretence of his being -the head of the family. At times when I felt this going on in our house, -there rose up like a wisp of fog between me and the glittering promise -of the future, a kind of horror of the destiny of women; to defer and -adjust, to maintain the attitude of acquiescence toward opinions and -capabilities that had nothing more to recommend them than merely that -they were a man's! I could be abased, I should be delighted to be -imposed upon, but if I paid out self-immolation I wanted something for -my money, and I didn't consider I was getting it with my brother for -whom I smuggled notes and copied compositions. - -It never occurred to my mother, until it came to the concrete question -of spending-money, that there was anything more than a kind of natural -perverseness in my attitude, which only served to throw into relief the -satisfactoriness of her relations to her son. Forester, it appeared, was -to have an allowance, and I wanted one too. - -"But what," said my mother, tolerantly, for she had not yet thought of -granting it, "would you do with an allowance?" - -"Whatever Forester does." - -"But Forester," my mother explained, waving the stocking she had -stretched upon her hand, "is a boy." I expostulated. - -"What has that got to do with it?" - -"Olivia!" The ridiculousness of having such a question addressed to her -brought a smile to my mother's lips, which hung fixed there as I saw her -mind back away suddenly in fear that I was really going to insist on -knowing what that had to do with it. - -"I give you twenty-five cents a week for church money," she parried -weakly. - -"That's what you think I ought to give. I want an allowance, and then I -can deny myself and give what I like." - -"Forester earns his," said my mother; she hadn't of course meant the -discussion to get on to a basis of reasonableness. - -"Well," I threatened, "I'll earn mine." - -That was really what did the business in the end. All the boys in -Taylorville worked as soon as they were old enough, but it was the last -resort of poverty that girls should be put to wages. Before that -possibility my mother retreated into amused indulgence. She paid me my -allowance, appreciably less than my brother's, on the first of the -month, with the air of concurring in a joke, which I think now must have -covered some vague hurt at my want of sympathy with the beautiful -fiction of Forester's growing up to take my father's place with her. -They had achieved by the time Forester was twenty, what passed for -perfect confidence between them, though it was at the cost of -Forester's living shallowly or not at all in the courts of boyhood which -my mother was unable to reënter, and her voluntary withdrawal from -varieties of experience from which his youth prevented him. My mother -always thought it was made up to her in affection; what came out of it -for Forester is still on the knees of the gods. - -I began to say how it was that the Gift took care of itself while -Forester was engrossing the family attention. He had had a year at the -business college in Montecito, which was considered quite sufficient, -and rather more, in fact, than his accepted vocation as the support of -his mother seemed to call for. Any question that might naturally come up -of a profession for him, seemed to have been quashed beforehand by the -general notion of an immediate salary as the means to that end. I do not -recall a voice lifted on behalf of a life of his own. He had worked up -from driving the delivery wagon in vacations to being dry goods clerk at -the Coöperative, where his affability and easy familiarity with the -requirements of women, made him immensely popular. Everybody liked to -trade with Forester because he took such pains in matching things, and -he was such a good boy to his mother. He paid the largest portion of his -salary for his board, and took Effie, who adored him, about with him. I -don't mean to say that he was not also good friends with Olivia, or that -there was anything which prevented my doing my best with the three -chocolate layer cakes and the angel's food I made for his party on his -twenty-first birthday. - -The real unpleasantness on that occasion came of my mother's notion of -distinguishing it among all other birthdays by paying over to Forester a -third of the not very considerable sum left by my father, derived -chiefly from his back pay as an officer, which she had always held as -particularly set aside for us children. It was owing perhaps to a form -of secretiveness that in unprotected woman does duty for caution, that -Effie and I had scarcely heard of this sum until it was flourished -before us on the day before the birthday, much as if it had been my -father's sword, supposing the occasion to have required it being girded -on his son. - -Forester was to have a third of that money in the form of a check under -his plate on the morning of his birthday. Effie and I did full justice -to the magnificence of the proposal. I was beating the whites of -thirteen eggs by Pauline's recipe for angel food--mine called for only -eleven--and Effie was rubbing up Mrs. Endsleigh's spoons, which had been -borrowed for the party. - -I was always happier in the kitchen than in any room of the house, with -its plain tinted walls, the plain painted woodwork (the parlour was -hideously "grained"), and the red of Effie's geraniums at the window -ledge. The stir of domesticity, all this talk of my father, intrigued -me for the moment into the sense of being a valued and intrinsic part of -the family. - -"His father would have wanted Forester to have that money," said my -mother, "now that he's of age." - -"And when," I questioned, raised by the mention of thirds to the joyous -inclusion, "are Effie and I to have ours?" - -"Oh," my mother's interest waned, "when you are married, perhaps." - -It had grown in my mind as I spoke, that I had been of age now more than -a year and nothing had come of it. The suggestion that my father could -have taken a less active interest in the event on my behalf, pressed -upon a dying sensibility; I resented his being so committed to this -posthumous slight and meant to defend him from it. - -"He'd have wanted me to have mine on my birthday, the same as Forester," -I insisted. - -"Oh, Olivia!" My mother's tone intimated annoyance at my claim to being -supported by my father in my absurdities, but her good humour was proof -against it. "Girls have theirs when they are married," she soothed. - -I held up the platter and whisked the stiff froth with the air of doing -these things very dexterously; I wasn't going to admit by taking it -seriously, that my brother's coming of age was any more important than -mine, but I spare you the flippancies by which I covered the hurt of -realizing that to everybody except myself, it was. - -"It is so like you, Olivia," said my mother, with tears in her eyes, "to -want to spoil everything." What I had really spoiled was the free -exercise of partiality by which she was enabled to distinguish Forester -over her other children, according to her sense of his deserts; and, -besides, what in the world would the child do with all that money? - -"The same thing that Forester does," I maintained, and then quickly to -forestall another objection which I saw rising in her face. "If you were -old enough to be married at nineteen, I guess I am old enough to be -trusted with a few hundred dollars." - -But there I had struck again on the structure of tradition that kept -Taylorville from direct contact with the issues of life; anybody was old -enough to be married at eighteen, but money was a serious matter. -Whenever I said things like that I could see my mother waver between a -shocked wonder at having produced such unnaturalness, and the fear that -somebody might overhear us. And I didn't know myself what I wanted with -that money, except that I craved the sense of being important that went -with the possession of it. And of course now that I had been refused it -on the ground of sex, it was part of the general resistance that I -opposed to things as they were, to have it on principle. Just when I -had mother almost convinced that she ought to give it to me, she made it -nearly impossible for me to accept, by asking Forester what she ought to -do about it. When I had demanded it as the evidence of my taking rank -with my brother as a personage, it was insufferable that it should come -to me as a concession of his amiability. - -What I really wanted of course was to have it put under my plate with an -affectionate speech about its being the legacy of a soldier and the -witness of his integrity, coupled with the hope that I would spend it in -a manner to give pleasure to my dear father, who was no doubt looking on -at this happy incident. - -There was nothing in me then--there is nothing now--which advised me of -being inappropriately the object of such an address, or my replying to -it as gallantly as the junior clerk of the Coöperative. To do Forester -justice, he came out squarely on the question of my being entitled to -the money if he was, but he contrived backhandedly to convey his sense -of my obtuseness in not deferring sentimentally to a male ascendancy -that I did not intrinsically feel; and I can go back now to these -disquieting episodes as the beginning of that maladjustment of my -earlier years, in not having a man about toward whom I could actually -experience the deference I was expected to exhibit. - -Well, I had my check for the same amount and on the same occasion as my -brother's, but the feeling in the air of its being merely a concession -to my forwardness, prevented me from making any return for it that -interfered with Forester's carrying off the situation of coming into his -father's legacy on coming of age, quite to my mother's satisfaction. -What it might have made for graciousness for once in my life to have -been the centre of that dramatic affectionateness, I can only guess. -Firm in the determination that since no sentiment went to its bestowal -none should go to its acknowledgment, I carried my check upstairs and -shook all of the rugs out of the window to account for my eyes being red -at ten o'clock in the morning. And that was the way the Powers took to -provide against the complete submergence of the actress in the young -lady, for though it turned out that I did spend the greater part of the -money on my wedding clothes, a portion of it went for the only technical -training I ever had. - -The real business of a young lady in Taylorville was getting married, -but to avoid an obviousness in the interim, she played the piano or -painted on satin or became interested in missions. If my money had -fallen in eight months earlier I should undoubtedly have spent it on the -third year at Montecito; as it was I decided to study elocution. It -appeared a wholly fortuitous choice. I was not supposed to have any -talent for it, but I burned to spend some of my money sensibly, and it -was admittedly sensible for a young lady to take lessons in something. -Effie was having music, Flora Haines painted plaques; when Olivia joined -Professor Winter's elocution classes at Temperance Hall mother said it -looked like throwing money away, but of course I could teach in case -anything happened, which meant in case of my not being married or being -left a widow with young children. - -Professor Winter was the kind of man who would have collected patch -boxes and painted miniatures on ladies' fans; not that he could have -done anything of the sort on his income, but it would have suited the -kind of man he was. He had small neat ways and nice little tricks of -discrimination, and microscopic enthusiasms that hovered and fluttered, -enough of them when it came to the rendering of a favourite passage, to -produce a kind of haze of appreciation like a swarm of midges. Not being -able to afford patch boxes or Louis XV enamels, he collected accents -instead. The man's memory for phonic variations was extraordinary; all -our accustomed speech was a wild garden over which he took little -flights and drops and humming poises, extracting, as it were by sips, -your private history, things you would have probably told for the -asking, but objected to having wrested from your betraying tongue. He -would come teetering forward on his neat little boots, upon the toes of -which he appeared to elevate himself by pressing the tips of his -fingers very firmly together, and when you committed yourself no farther -than to remark on the state of the weather or the election outlook, he -would want to know if you hadn't spent some time of your youth in the -South, or if it was your maternal or paternal grandfather who was -Norwegian. Either of which would be true and annoying, particularly as -you weren't aware of speaking other than the rest of the world, for if -there was anything quite and completely abhorrent to the Taylorville -mind it was the implication of being different from other -Taylorvillians. - -Somewhere the Professor had picked up an adequate theory and practice of -voice production, though I never knew anything of his training except -that he had been an instructor in a normal school and was aggrieved at -his dismissal. After he had advertised himself as open for private -instruction and tri-weekly classes at Temperance Hall, there was -something almost like a concerted effort at keeping him in the town, -because of the credit he afforded us against Montecito. With the -exception of a much-whiskered personage who came over from the business -college in the winter to conduct evening classes in penmanship, he was -the only man addressed habitually as Professor, and the only one who -wore evening dress at public functions. - -His dress coat imparted a particular touch of elegance to occasions when -he gave readings from "Evangeline" and "The Lady of the Lake" -(Taylorville choice), and thoroughly discredited a disgruntled -Montecitan who, on the basis of having been to Chicago on his wedding -trip, insisted that such were only worn by waiters in hotels. - -It would be interesting to record that Professor Winter lent himself -with alacrity to the unfolding of my Gift, but, in fact, his imagination -hardly strayed so far. He taught phonics and voice production and taught -them very well; probably he had no more practical acquaintance with the -stage than I had. Certainly he never suggested it for me, and for my -part I could hardly have explained why with so little encouragement I -was so devoted to the rather tedious drill. Pauline was still at the -seminary, and the regular hours of practice made a bulwark against an -insidious proprietary air which Tommy Bettersworth began to wear. -Besides the voice training, I had a system of physical culture, -artificial and unsound as I have since learned, but serving to restrain -my too exuberant gesture, and much memorizing of poems and plays for -practice work. I hardly know if the Professor had any dramatic talent or -not; probably not, as he made nothing, I remember, of stopping me in the -middle of a great passion for the sake of a dropped consonant, and -deprecated original readings on my part. - -It was his relish for musical cadence as much as its intellectual -appreciation that led him to select the Elizabethan drama, in the great -scenes of which I was letter perfect by the time I had come to the end -of the Professor's instruction, and at the end too, it seemed, of my -devices for dodging the destiny of women. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -I have tried to sketch to you how in Taylorville we were allowed to -stumble on the grown-up consciousness of sex, but I can give you no idea -of the extent to which we were prevented from the grown-up judgment. - -Somewhere between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, one was loosed on a -free and lively social intercourse from which one was expected to emerge -later, triumphantly mated. This was obligatory; otherwise your family -sighed and said that somehow Olivia didn't seem to know how to catch a -husband, and then painstakingly refrained from the subject in your -presence; or your mother, if she was particularly loyal, said she had -always thought there was no call for a girl to marry if she didn't feel -to want to. But anything resembling maternal interference in your behalf -was looked upon as worldly minded, or at the least unnecessary. The -custom of chaperonage was unheard of; girls were supposed to be trusted. - -I do not recall now that I ever had any particular instruction as to how -to conduct myself toward young men except that they were never on any -account to take liberties. Whatever else went to the difficult business -of mating you were supposed to pick up. That I did not pass through -this period in entire obliviousness was due to Pauline, who had the -keenest appreciation of her effect on the opposite sex. She was the sort -of girl who is described as having always had a great deal of attention; -she had a nice Procrustean notion of the sort of young man to be engaged -to--our maiden imagination hardly went farther than that--and her young -ladyhood appeared to be a process of trying it on the greatest possible -number of eligible Taylorvillians. When she came home from Montecito she -had already met Henry Mills at the house of a roommate where she had -spent the Easter vacation, and he had sent her flowers at commencement -and verses of his own composition. - -It was Pauline who explained to me that unless I had some young man like -Tommy Bettersworth who could be counted on, I could hardly hope to be -"in" things--when they made up a party to go sleighing, for instance, or -a picnic to Willesden Lake. I liked being in things and did not -altogether dislike Tommy Bettersworth. He was a thoroughly creditable -beau and required very little handling, for even as early as that I had -an inkling of what I have long since concluded, that a man who requires -overmuch to be played and baited, held off and on, is rather poor game -after you have got him. It worried Pauline not a little that I forgave -Tommy so lightly for small offences; she was afraid it might appear that -I liked him too much, when in truth it was only that I liked him too -little. And for complacence, if I had had any disposition toward it, I -was saved by the shocking example of Forester, all of whose relations -were tinged by his vocation of model son. He had acquired by this time a -manner, by the intimacy, greater than is common in boys, with which he -lived into the feminine life of the household, and by his daily -performance of measuring off petticoats and matching hose, which -admitted him to families where we visited, on a footing that enabled him -to flirt with the daughters under the very apron-strings of their -mothers. You couldn't somehow maintain a strict virginal severity with a -young man who had just taken an informed and personal interest in your -mother's flannelette wrappers, the credit of whose dutifulness was a -warrant for his not meaning anything in particular. In short, Forrie -spooned. - -I think now there was some excuse for him; he had been wrenched very -early by his affections from the normal outbreaks of adolescence; he had -never to my knowledge been "out with the boys." Unless he got it in the -business of junior clerk at the Coöperative, he could hardly be said to -have a male life at all; he was being shaped to a man's performance at -the expense of his mannishness. But against his philandering rose up, -not only the fastidiousness of girlhood, but some latent sense of -rightness, as keen in me as the violinist's for the variation of tone; -something that questioned the justice of pronouncing thoroughly moral a -young man who, if he never went over the brink, was willing to spend a -considerable portion of his time on the edge of it. I should have -admired Forester more at this juncture if he had been a little wild--and -I knew perfectly that my mother would have interdicted any social life -for me whatever if I had permitted a tithe of the familiarities allowed -to my brother. - -Among the other things which a girl was expected to "pick up," along -with the art of attracting a husband, was the vital information with -which she was expected to meet the occasion of marrying one. It was all -a part of the general assumption of the truth as something not suitable -for the young to know, that nobody told us any of these things if they -could help it. I do not mean to say that there was not a certain amount -of half information whispered about among the girls, who by the avidity -for such whisperings established themselves as not quite nice. But -Pauline Allingham and I were nice girls. What this meant was that -nothing that pertained to the mystery of marriage reached us through all -the suppression and evasions of the social conspiracy, except the -obviousness of maternity. I remember how intimations of it as part of -our legitimate experience, began to grow upon us with a profound and -tender curiosity toward very young children, and, particularly on -Pauline's part, a great shyness of being seen in their company. But we -were not expected to possess ourselves of accurate information until we -were already involved in it. - -We had reached the age when matrons no longer avoided references to its -most conspicuous phases in our presence, before we found words for -mentioning it to one another. There was a young aunt of Pauline's lent -something to that. - -She was a sister of Mr. Allingham, come to stay with them while her -husband was absent somewhere in the West. Pauline told me about it one -of the week-ends she spent at home from Montecito; this was Saturday -afternoon, and she had found the aunt in the house on her return the -evening before. - -"Do you know," she said, "it is very queer the way I feel about Aunt -Alice--the way she is, you know. Mamma hadn't told me, and when I came -into the sitting room and saw her, I thought I was going to cry; and it -wasn't that I was sorry either ... I'm awfully fond of her. I just felt -it." - -"Yes, I know," I admitted. - -"Aunt Alice is so sensible," Pauline explained a few weeks later, "she -talks to me a great deal; she's only a few years older than I am. She -has shown me all her things for the baby. Mamma didn't think she -ought ... you know how mothers are. They're in the bureau drawer in the -best room. I'll show them to you some time; Alice won't mind." - -Alice didn't mind, it appeared, so it must have been shyness that led -us to select the afternoon when the married women were away, and though -I cannot forgive the conditions which led us so surreptitiously to touch -the fringe of the great experience, I own still to some tenderness for -the two girls with their heads together that bright hot afternoon, over -the bureau drawer in Mrs. Allingham's best room. Pauline showed me a -little sacque which she had crocheted. - -"Mother thought I was too young, but Alice said I might." - -"You must have liked to, awfully," I envied. - -"That's one of the nice things about having children, I should -think"--Pauline fingered a hemstitched slip--"you can make things for -them." - -"Which would you rather have, girls or boys?" I hazarded. - -"Oh, girls; you can always dress them so prettily." - -"But boys ... they can do so many things when they grow up." I felt -rather strongly on that point. - -"Alice says"--Pauline folded the little frock--"that she's so glad to -have it she doesn't care which it is." Something, perhaps an echo of my -mother's experience, pricked in me. - -"They aren't always as glad as that." - -"I suppose not. Alice is having this one because she wants it." - -We looked at one another. We would have liked to have spoken further, to -have defined ourselves, despoiled ourselves of tenderness, nobilities, -but around the whole subject lay the blank expanse of our ignorance. We -locked the drawer again and went out and played croquet. And that was -how we stood toward our normal destiny that summer when Pauline was -wondering if Henry Mills meant to propose to her, and I was wondering -how much longer I could keep Tommy Bettersworth from proposing to me. - -I managed to stave it off until the end of September. On the -twenty-second of that month there was a picnic at Willesden Lake. There -were ten couples of us, and Flora Haines, who was wanted to count even -with a young man who was to join us at the lake, a stranger to most of -us, nephew to one of the wealthiest farmers in the township. We had -always wished there might have been young people at the Garrett farm, -and there was some talk of this nephew, who was to come on a visit, -being adopted. - -Some of our brothers had made his acquaintance, and Pauline, who had met -him at Montecito, had warranted him as "interesting." I believe Flora -Haines was invited to pair with him because every girl felt that Flora -would be eminently safe to trust her own young man to in the event of -Helmeth Garrett proving more worth while. - -Henry Mills, who was reading law at the county seat of the adjoining -county, had come over for the picnic and was expected to bring matters -to a crisis with Pauline, and Forester had a day off to take Belle -Endsleigh, who was at the point of pitying him because, though he had -such an affectionate disposition, so long as his mother depended on him -he couldn't think of marrying. We had no chaperone of course; several of -the couples were engaged, and there were brothers; we wouldn't have to -put up with the implication that we were not able to manage by -ourselves. - -It was the sort of day ... soft Indian summer, painted woodlands, -gossamer glinting high in the windless air ... on which Forester found -it necessary to hope brotherly that I should be able to get through it -without being silly. By that he meant that the submerged Olivia, however -interestingly she might read in a book, was highly incomprehensible and -nearly always ridiculous to her contemporaries. - -Willesden Lake was properly a drainage pond of four or five acres in -extent, drawn like a bow about the contour of two hills; water-lilies -grew at the head where a stream came in, and muskrats built at the lower -end. The picnic ground was in the hollow between the two hills, by a -spring, where the grass grew smooth like a lawn to the roots of oaks -burning blood red from leaf to leaf. As it turned out, though we put off -lunch for him for an hour, young Mr. Garrett did not come, and as the -party sat about on the mossy hummocks in the quiet of repletion, I -thought nothing could be so much worth while as to leave Tommy in care -of Flora Haines and get away into the woods by myself. The soul of the -weather had got into my soul and I felt I should discredit myself with -Forester if I stayed. There was a little footpath that led down by a -rill to the lake, and as I took it, there was scarcely a sound louder -than the soft down-rustle of the painted leaves. There were two or three -old boats, half water-logged, tied at the head of the lake, and one of -these I found and paddled across to the opposite bank. I had not known -there was a path there opening from the dewberry bushes that dipped -along the border, but the spirit in my feet answered to its invitation. -I followed it up the hill through the leaf drift that heaped whispering -in the smoky wood. I spread out my arms as I went and began to move to -the rhythm of chanted verse. Where the red and gold and russet banners -brushed me I was touched delicately as with flame. I had on a very -pretty dress that day, I remember, a thin organdy with a leaf pattern, -made up over yellow sateen, and the consciousness of suitability worked -happily on my mind. At the top of the hill I struck into an old wood -road where it passed through a grove of young hickory, blazing yellow -like a host. Here I went slowly and dropped the chanting to the measure -of classic English verse; it was the only means of expression -Taylorville had provided me. Scene after scene I went through happy and -oblivious. I had been at it half an hour perhaps, moving forward with -the natural impetus of the play, in the faint old wagon tracks, and had -got as far as - - --Flowers that affrighted she let fall - From Dis's wagon!-- - -when I was startled by the clapping of hands, and looked up to see a -young man sitting on the top of a rail fence that ran straight across -the way, as though he might have stopped there to rest in the act of -climbing over. - -"I knew you would see me the next minute," he said, "and I wanted to be -discovered in the act of appreciation." He sprang down from the fence -and came toward me, taking off his hat. "I suppose you are from the -picnic; I expected to find you somewhere about. I am Helmeth Garrett." - -"They're at the spring--we waited lunch for you. I am Miss Lattimore; -Olivia May," I supplemented. I was a little doubtful about that point, -for at Taylorville we called one another by our first names. I was -pleased with the swiftness with which he struck upon a permissible -compromise. - -"I owe you all sorts of apologies, Miss Olivia, but the mare I was to -ride went lame and uncle couldn't spare me another, so I had an early -lunch at the house and walked over." As he stood looking down at me I -saw that he had a crop of unruly dark hair and what there was in his -face that Pauline had found interesting. He wore a soft red tie, -knotted loosely at the collar of a white flannel shirt, and for the rest -of him was dressed very much as other young men. All at once a spark of -irrepressible friendliness flashed up in smiles between us. - -It seemed the merest chance then that I had come across the wood to meet -him. In the light of what has happened since, I see that the guardian of -my submerged self was doing what it could for me; but against the -embattled social forces of Taylorville what could even the gods do! - -"If you will take me to the others," he suggested, "I can make my -excuses, and then we can talk." It was remarkable, I thought, that he -should have discovered so early that we would wish to talk. We began to -move in the direction of the lake. - -"Were you doing a play?" he asked. I nodded. - -"How long were you watching me?" - -"Since you passed the plum brush yonder; it was bully! Are you going on -the stage?" I explained about Professor Winter and the elocution -lessons. - -"They don't approve of the stage in Taylorville," I finished, touched by -the vanishing trace of a realization that up to this moment the -objection would have been stated personally. - -"And with all your talent! Oh, I know what I'm saying. I lived in -Chicago four years and saw a lot of the theatre." - -He began to talk to me of the stage, probably much of it neither -informed nor profitable, but I had never heard it talked of before in -unembarrassed relevancy to living, and he had that trick of speech that -goes with the achieving propensity, of accelerating his own energy as he -talked, so that its backwater fairly floated us into the ease of -intimacy. There was no doubt we were tremendously pleased with one -another. I was throbbing still with the measure of verse and moved half -trippingly to the rhythm of my blood. - -"Do you dance too?" What went with that implied something personal and -complimentary. - -"Oh, no--a few steps I've picked up at school. That's another of the -things we don't approve at Taylorville." - -"I say, what a lot of old mossbacks there must be about here anyway. -Take my uncle, now...." He went on to tell me how he had tried to induce -his uncle, who could afford it, to advance the money for technical -training in engineering. Uncle Garrett was of the opinion that Helmeth -would do better to get a job with some good man and "pick up things ... -always managed to get along by rule of thumb himself," said the nephew, -"and thinks all the rest of us ought to. I said, 'How would it be with a -doctor, now, just to scramble up his medicine?' but you can't get -through to my uncle. He thinks a man who can run a thrashing machine is -an engineer." - -I remember that we found it necessary to sit down on the slope of the -hill toward the pond while he sketched for me his notion of what an -engineer's career might be. "But you've got to have technical -training ... got to! Talk about rule of thumb ... it's like going at it -with no thumbs at all." In the midst of this we remembered that we ought -to be looking for the rest of the picnickers. Once in the boat, however, -there was a muskrat's nest which, as something new to him, had to be -poked into, and we stopped to gather lilies, which I could not have done -by myself without wetting my dress. When we came at last to the spring, -we found the lunch baskets huddled under the oak and nobody about. - -I think we must have been very far gone by this time in the young -rapture of intimacy. The wood was smokily still, and we scuffed great -heaps of the leaves together as we walked about pretending to look for -the others. I remember it seemed a singular flame-touched circumstance -that the leaves flew up from under our feet and fell lightly on our -faces and our hair. - -"I suppose we can't help finding them; the wonder is they haven't been -spoiling our good talk before now." - -"Oh," I protested, "if you hadn't been coming to look for them you -wouldn't have met me." - -"And now that we have met, we are going to keep on. I'm coming to see -you. May I?" - -"If you care so much...." A little spiral of wind rising fountain-wise -out of the breathlessness whirled up a smother of brightening leaves; it -caught my skirts and whipped them against his knees. It seemed to have -blown our hands together too, though I am at a loss to know how that -was. - -"Care!" he said. "If I care? Oh, you beauty, you wonder!" All at once he -had kissed me. - -The electrical moment hung in the air, poised, took flight upward in -dizzying splendour. Suddenly from within the wood came a little snigger -of laughter. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -I do not know how long it took for the certainty that I had been kissed -by an utter stranger in the presence of the entire picnic, to work -through the singing flames in which that kiss had wrapped me. We must -have walked on almost immediately in the direction of the snigger; I -remember a kind of clutch of my spirit toward the mere mechanical act of -walking, to hold me fast to the time and place from which there was an -inward rush to escape. We walked on. They were all sitting together -under a bank of hazel and the girls' laps were filled with the brown -clusters. Out of my whirling dimness I heard Helmeth Garrett explaining, -as I introduced him, how he had come across me in the wood, looking for -them. - -"And of course," suggested Charlie Gower, "in such good company you -weren't in a hurry about looking for the rest of us." I remembered the -asparagus bed and was glad I had slapped him. - -"No," my companion looked him over very coolly, "now that I've seen some -of the rest of you I'm glad I didn't hurry." Plainly it wasn't going to -do to try to take it out of Helmeth Garrett. - -As we began by common consent to move back to the spring, Forester drew -me by the arm behind the hazel. He was divided between a brotherly -disgust at my lapse, and delight to have caught the prim Olivia -tripping. - -"Well," he exclaimed, "you _have_ done it!" Considering what I knew of -Forester's affairs this was unbearable. - -"Oh! it isn't for _you_ to talk----" - -"What I want to know is, whether I am to thrash him or not?" - -"Thrash him?" I wondered. - -"For getting you talked about ... off there in the woods all afternoon!" - -"We weren't----" I began, but suddenly I saw the white bolls of the -sycamores redden with the westering sun; we must have been three hours -covering what was at most a half hour's walk. "Don't be vulgar, -Forester," I went on, with my chin in the air. - -"Oh, well," was my brother's parting shot, "I don't know as I ought to -make any objection, seeing you didn't." - -That, I felt, was the weakness of my position; I not only hadn't made -any objection, I hadn't felt any shame; the annoyance, the hurt of -outraged maidenliness, whatever was the traditional attitude, hadn't -come. Inwardly I burned with the woods afire, the red west, the white -star like a torch that came out above it. On the way home Helmeth -Garrett rode with us as far as the main road and was particularly -attentive to Pauline and Flora Haines. I remember it came to me dimly -that there was something designedly protective in this; there was more -or less veiled innuendo flying about which failed to get through to me. -Pauline put it quite plainly for me when she came to talk things over -the day after the picnic. She was sympathetic. - -"Oh, my dear, it must be dreadful for you," she cooed; "a perfect -stranger, and getting you talked about that way!" - -"So I am talked about?" - -"My _dear_, what could you expect? And in plain sight of us. If you had -only pushed him away, or something." - -"I couldn't," I said, "I was so ... astonished." In the night I had -found myself explaining to Pauline how this affair of Helmeth Garrett -had differed importantly from all similar instances; now I saw its -shining surfaces dimmed with comment like unwiped glass. - -"That's just what I _said_!" Pauline was pleased with herself. "I told -Belle Endsleigh you weren't used to that sort of thing ... you were -_completely_ overcome. But of course he wasn't really a gentleman or he -wouldn't have done it." I do not know why at this moment it occurred to -me that probably Henry Mills hadn't proposed to Pauline after all, but -before I could frame a discreet question she was off in another -direction. - -"What will Tommy Bettersworth say?" - -"Why, what has he got to do with it?" - -"O-_liv_-ia! After the way you've encouraged him...." - -"You mean because I went to the picnic with him? Well, what can he do -about it?" Pauline gave me up with a gesture. - -"Tommy is the soul of chivalry," she said, "and anybody can see he is -crazy about you, simply crazy." What I really wanted was that she should -go on talking about Helmeth Garrett. I wanted ground for putting to her -that since all we had been sedulously taught about kissing and all "that -sort of thing"--that it was horrid, cheapening, insufferable--had failed -to establish itself, had in fact come as a sword, divining mystery, it -couldn't be dealt with on the accepted Taylorville basis. I felt the -quality of achievement in Helmeth Garrett's right to kiss me, a right -which I was sure he lacked only the occasion to establish. But when the -occasion came it went all awry. - -It was the next Sunday morning, and all down Polk Street the -frost-bitten flower borders were a little made up for by the passage -between the shoals of maple leaves that lined the walks, of whole flocks -of bright winged, new fall hats on their way to church. Mother and Effie -were in front and two of my Sunday-school scholars had scurried up like -rabbits out of the fallen leafage and tucked themselves on either side -of my carefully held skirts. Suddenly there was a rattle of buggy wheels -on the winter roughed road; it turned in by Niles's corner and drove -directly toward us; the top was down and I made out by the quick -pricking of my blood, the Garrett bays and Helmeth with his hat off, his -hair tousled, and a bright soft tie swinging free of his vest. You saw -heads turning all along the block in discreet censure of his -unsabbatical behaviour. He recognized me almost immediately and turned -the team with intention to our side of the street. He was going to speak -to me ... he was speaking. My mother's back stiffened, she didn't know -of course. Forrie wouldn't have had the face to tell her, but how many -eyes on us up and down the street did know? A Sunday-school teacher in -the midst of her scholars ... and he had kissed me on Thursday! - -"Olivia," said my mother, "do you know that young man? Such manners ... -Sunday morning, too. Well, I am glad that you had the sense to ignore -him;" and I did not know until that moment that I had. - -It was because of my habit of living inwardly, I suppose, that it never -occurred to me that the incident could have any other bearing on our -relations than the secret one of confirming me in my impression of our -intimacy being on a superior, excluding footing. He had come, as I was -perfectly aware, to renew it at the point of breaking off, and this -security quite blinded me to the effect my cold reception might have -upon him. That he would fail to understand how I was hemmed and pinned -in by Taylorville, hadn't occurred to me, not even when he passed us -again on the way home from church, driving recklessly. His hat was on -this time, determinedly to one side, and he was smoking, smoking a -cigar. I thought at first he had not seen me, but he turned suddenly -when he was quite past and swept me a flourish with it held between two -fingers of the hand that touched his hat. - -At that time in Taylorville no really nice young man smoked, at least -not when he would get found out. This offensiveness in the face of the -returning church-goers was too flagrant to admit even the appearance of -noticing it, but that it would be noticed, taken stock of in the general -summing up of our relation, I was sickeningly aware. - -Tommy Bettersworth put one version of it for me comfortingly when he -came in the evening to take me to church. - -"I saw you turn down that Garrett fellow this morning. Served him -right ... that and the way you behaved Thursday ... just as if you did -not find him worth rowing about. A lot of girls make a fuss, and it's -only to draw a fellow on; and now you're going to church with me the -same as usual; that'll show 'em what _I_ think of it." Now, I had clean -forgotten that Tommy might come that evening. I was whelmed with the -certainty that Helmeth Garrett had gone back to the farm after all -without seeing me; and the moment Tommy came through the gate I had one -of those rifts of lucidity in which I saw him whole and limited, pasted -flat against the background of Taylorville without any perspective of -imagination, and was taken mightily with the wish to explain to him -where he stood, once for all, outside and disconnected with anything -that was vital and important to me. But quite unexpectedly, before I -could frame a beginning, he had presented himself to me in a new light. -He was cover, something to get behind in order to exercise myself more -freely in the things he couldn't understand. - -Something more was bound to come out of my relation to Helmeth Garrett; -the incident couldn't go on hanging in the air that way; and in the -meantime here was an opportunity to put it out of public attention by -going out with Tommy. It did hang in the air, however, for three days, -during which I pulsed and sickened with expectancy; by Thursday it had -reached a point where I knew that if Helmeth Garrett didn't come and -kiss me again I shouldn't be able to bear it. It was soon after sundown -that I felt him coming. - -I took a great many turns in the garden, which, carrying me occasionally -out of reach of the click of the gate latch, afforded me the relief of -thinking that he might have arrived in the interval when I was out of -hearing. His approaching tread was within me. When it was just seven my -mother came out and called: - -"Olivia, I promised Mrs. Endsleigh a starter of yeast; I have just -remembered. Could you take it to her?" - -The Endsleigh backyard was separated from ours by a vacant lot, the -houses fronting on parallel streets; there was no sound at the gate and -mother had the bowl in a white napkin held out to me, with a long -message about where the sewing circle was to meet next Thursday. - -"If any body comes,"--for the life of me I couldn't have kept that -back,--"you can tell them I'll be back in a minute," I cautioned her. - -"Are you expecting anybody?" - -"Only Tommy," I prevaricated, instantly and unaccountably. I saw my -mother look at me rather oddly over the tops of the glasses she had -lately assumed. On the Endsleigh's back porch I found Belle in evening -dress gathering ivy berries for her hair. - -"Oh," she said, to my plain appearance, "aren't you going?" - -"Going where?" - -"Oh, if you don't know ... to Flora's." Belle was embarrassed. - -"I hadn't heard of it." - -"It's just a few friends," Belle wavered between sympathy and -superiority. "Flora is so particular...." - -"I couldn't have gone anyway," I interpolated, "I have an engagement." I -had to find Mrs. Endsleigh after that and deliver my errand. - -When I reached home mother was sitting placidly just outside the circle -of the lamp, knitting. She only looked up as I entered and I had to drag -it out of her at last. - -"Has anybody been here?" - -"Nobody that you would care to see." - -"But who?" - -"That fast-looking young man who tried to speak to you on Sunday. I'm -glad you have a proper feeling about such things. Mr. Garrett's nephew, -didn't you say? I told him you were engaged." - -"Oh, mother!" I was out in panting haste. At the gate I ran square into -Tommy Bettersworth. - -"Did you see anybody?" - -"Nobody. I came through by Davis's. I was coming in," he suggested, as I -stood peering into the dark. - -"I thought you'd be going to Flora's." A wild hope flashed in me that -maybe he was going and I should be rid of him. - -"Oh, I don't care much for that crowd. I told her I had an engagement -with you." So he had known I was not to be invited. I resented the -liberty of his defence. "Let's go down to Niles's and have some ice -cream," Tommy propitiated. - -"It's too cold for ice cream." I led the way back to the house. I was -satisfied there was no one in the street. When we stepped into the fan -of light from the lit window, Tommy saw my face. - -"Oh, I say, Ollie, you mustn't take it like that. Beastly cats girls -are! Flora's just jealous because she thought she was invited to the -picnic for that Garrett chap, and you got him; she wants to have a -chance at him herself to-night." There was a green-painted garden seat -on the porch between the front windows. I sat down in it. - -"It's not Flora I'm crying about ... it is being so misunderstood." I -was thinking that Helmeth Garrett would suppose I had stayed away from -Flora's on his account; she would never dare to say she had not invited -me. Tommy's arm came comfortingly along the back of the bench. - -"It's just because they do understand that they are mad; they know a -fellow would give his eyes to kiss you. Infernal cad! to snatch it like -that; and I've never even asked you for one." His voice was very close -to my ear. "I tell you, Olivia, I've thought of something. If you were -to be engaged to me ... you know I've always wanted ... then nobody -would have a right to say anything. They'd see that you just left it to -me." - -"Oh," I blurted, "it's not so bad as that!" - -"You think about it," he urged. "I don't want to bother you, but if you -need it, why here I am." It was because I was thinking of him so little -that I hadn't noticed where Tommy's arm had got by this time. That -unfulfilled kiss had seemed somehow to leave me unimaginably exposed, -assailed. I was needing desperately then to be kissed again, to find -myself revalued. - -"It's awfully good of you, Tommy...." - -I do not know how it was that neither of us heard Forester come up from -the gate; all at once there was his foot on the step; as he came into -the porch a soft sound drew him, he stared blankly on us for a moment -and then laughed shortly. - -"Oh! it's you this time, Bettersworth. I thought it might be that -Garrett chap." - -That was unkind of Forester, but there were extenuations. I found -afterward that Belle had teased Flora to ask him and he had refused, -thinking it unbrotherly when I was not to be invited, and he and Belle -had quarrelled. - -"I don't know as it matters to you"--Tommy was valiant--"whom she -kisses, if I don't mind it." - -"You? What have you got to do with it?" - -"Well, a lot. I'm engaged to her." - - - - -BOOK II - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -The first notion of an obligation I had in writing this part of my -story, was that if it is to be serviceable, no lingering sentiment -should render it less than literal, and none of that egotism turned -inside out which makes a kind sanctity of the personal experience, -prevent me from offering it whole. And the next was that the only way in -which it could be made to appear in its complete pitiableness, would be -to write it from the point of view of Tommy Bettersworth. For after all, -I have emerged--retarded, crippled in my affectional capacities, bodily -the worse, but still with wings to spread and some disposition toward -flying. And when I think of the dreams Tommy had, how he must have -figured in them to himself, large between me and all misadventure, -adored, dependable; and then how he blundered and lost himself in the -mazes of unsuitability, I find bitterness augmenting in me not on my -account but his. The amazing pity of it was that it might all have -turned out very well if I had been what I seemed to him and to my family -at the time when I let him engage himself to me to save me from immanent -embarrassment. - -My mother, though she took on for the occasion an appropriate -solemnity, was frankly relieved to have me so well disposed. Tommy had -been brought up in the church, had no bad habits, and was earning a -reasonable salary with Burton Brothers, Tailors and Outfitters. - -There was nobody whose business it was to tell me that I did not love -Tommy enough to marry him. I have often wondered, supposing a medium of -communication had been established between my mother and me, if I had -told her how much more that other kiss had meant to me than Tommy's mild -osculation, she would have understood or made a fight for me? I am -afraid she would only have seen in it evidence of an infatuation for an -undesirable young man, one who smoked and drove rakishly about town in -red neckties on Sunday morning. But in fact I liked Tommy immensely. The -mating instinct was awake; all our world clapped us forward to the -adventure. - -If you ask what the inward monitor was about on this occasion, I will -say that it is always and singularly inept at human estimates. If, often -in search of companionship, its eye is removed from the Mark, to fix -upon the personal environment, it is still unfurnished to divine behind -which plain exterior lives another like itself! I took Tommy's community -of interest for granted on the evidence of his loving me, though, -indeed, after all these years I am not quite clear why he, why Forester -and Pauline couldn't have walked in the way with me toward the Shining -Destiny. I was not conscious of any private advantage; certainly so far -as our beginnings were concerned, none showed, and I should have been -glad of their company ... and here at the end I am walking in it alone. - -About a month after my engagement, Henry Mills proposed to Pauline, and -she began preparations to be married the following June. Tommy's salary -not being thought to justify it so soon, the idea of my own marriage had -not come very close to me until I began to help Pauline work initials on -table linen. - -The chief difference between Pauline and me had been that she had lived -all her life, so to speak, at home; nothing exigent to her social order -had ever found her "out"; but Olivia seemed always to be at the top of -the house or somewhere in the back garden, to whom the normal occasions -presented themselves as a succession of cards under the door. I do not -mean to say that I actually missed any of these appointed visitors, but -all my early life comes back to me as a series of importunate callers -whose names I was not sure of, and who distracted me frightfully from -something vastly more pleasant and important that I wanted very much to -do, without knowing very well what it was. But it was in the long -afternoons when Pauline and I sat upstairs together sewing on our white -things that I began to take notice of the relation of what happened to -me to the things that went on inside, and to be intrigued away from the -Vision by the possibility of turning it into facts of line and colour -and suitability. It was the beginning of my realizing what came -afterward to be such a bitter and engrossing need with me, the need of -money. - -Much that had struck inharmoniously on me in the furnishings of -Taylorville, had identified itself so with the point of view there, that -I had come to think of the one as being the natural and inevitable -expression of the other; now, with the growing appreciation of a home of -my own as a medium of self-realization, I accepted its possibility of -limitation by the figure of my husband's income without being entirely -daunted thereby. For I was still of the young opinion that getting rich -involved no more serious matter than setting about it. As I saw it then, -Men's Tailoring and Outfitting did not appear an unlikely beginning; if -Tommy had achieved the magnificence I planned for him, it wouldn't have -been on the whole more remarkable than what has happened. What I had to -reckon with later was the astonishing fact that Tommy liked plush -furniture, and liked it red for choice. - -I do not know why it should have taken me by surprise to find him in -harmony with his bringing up; there was no reason for the case being -otherwise except as I seemed to find one in his being fond of me. His -mother's house was not unlike other Taylorvillian homes, more austerely -kept; the blinds were always pulled down in the best room, and they -never opened the piano except when there was company, or for the little -girls to practise their music lessons. Mrs. Bettersworth was a large, -fair woman with pale, prominent eyes, and pale hair pulled back from a -corrugated forehead, and his sisters, who were all younger than Tommy, -were exactly like her, their eyes if possible more protruded, which you -felt to be owing to their hair being braided very tightly in two braids -as far apart as possible at the corners of their heads. - -They treated me always with the greatest respect. If there had been -anybody who could have thrown any light on the situation it would have -been Mr. Bettersworth. He was a dry man, with what passed in Taylorville -for an eccentric turn of mind. He had, for instance, been known to -justify himself for putting Tommy to the Men's Outfitters rather than to -his own business of building and contracting, on the ground that Tommy -wanted the imagination for it. Just as if an imagination could be of use -to anybody! - -"So you are going to undertake to make Tommy happy?" he said to me on -the occasion of my taking supper with the family as a formal -acknowledgment of my engagement. - -"Don't you think I can do it?" He was looking at me rather quizzically, -and I really wished to know. - -"Oh! I was wondering," he said, "what you would do with what you had -left over." But it was years before I understood what he meant by that. - -About the time I was bridesmaid for Pauline, Tommy had an advantageous -offer that put our marriage almost immediately within reach. Burton -Brothers was a branch house, one of a score with the Head at Chicago, to -whom Tommy had so commended himself under the stimulus of being engaged, -that on the establishment of a new store in Higgleston they offered him -the sales department. There was also to be a working tailor and a -superintendent visiting it regularly from Chicago, which its nearness to -the metropolis allowed. - -All that we knew of Higgleston was that it was a long settled farming -community, which, having discovered itself at the junction of two -railway lines that approached Chicago from the southeast, conceived -itself to have arrived there by some native superiority, and awoke to -the expectation of importance. - -It lay, as respects Taylorville, no great distance beyond the flat -horizon of the north, where the prairie broke into wooded land again, -far enough north not to have been fanned by the hot blast of the war and -the spiritual struggle that preceded it, and so to have missed the -revitalizing processes that crowded the few succeeding years. Whatever -difference there was between it and Taylorville besides population, was -just the difference between a community that has fought whole-heartedly -and one that stood looking on at the fight. - -It was not far enough from Taylorville to have struck out anything new -for itself in manners or furniture, but the necessity of going south two -or three hours to change cars, and north again several hours more, set -up an illusion of change which led to a disappointment in its want of -variety. Tommy went out in July, and in a month wrote me that he would -be able to come for me as soon as I was ready, and hoping it would not -be long. If I had looked, as in the last hesitancies of girlhood I -believe I did, for my mother to have raised an objection to my going so -far from home, I found myself, instead, almost with the feeling of being -pushed out of the nest. It seemed as if in hastening me out of the -family she would be the sooner free to give herself without reproach to -a new and extraordinary scheme of Forester's. What I guess now to have -been in part the motive, was that she already had been touched by the -warning of that disorder which finally carried her off, which, with the -curious futility of timid women, she hoped, by not mentioning, to -postpone. - -For a long time now Forester had found himself in the situation of -having grown beyond his virtues. That assumption of mannishness which -sat so prettily on his nonage was rendered inconspicuous by his -majority. People who had forgotten that he had never had any boyhood, -found nothing especially commendable in the mild soberness of -twenty-three. I have a notion, too, that the happy circumstance of my -marriage lit up for him some personal phases which he could hardly have -regarded with complacence, for by this time he had passed, in his -character of philanderer, from being hopefully regarded as reclaimable -to constancy, to a sort of public understudy in the practice of the -affections. However it had come about, the young ladies who still took -on Forester at intervals, no longer looked on him so much as privileged -but as eminently safe; and the number of girls in a given community who -can be counted on for such a performance, is limited. That summer before -I was married, after Belle Endsleigh had run away from home with a -commercial traveller who disappointed the moral instance by making her a -very good husband afterward, my brother found himself, as regards the -young people's world, in a situation of uneasy detachment. And there was -no doubt that the Coöperative, where he had been seven years, bored him -excessively. It was then he conceived the idea of reinstating himself in -the atmosphere of importance by setting himself up in business. - -Adjacent to Niles's Ice Cream Parlours, there was a small stationery and -news agency which might be bought and enlarged to creditable -proportions. There was, I believe, actually nothing to be urged against -this as a matter of business; the difficulty was that to accomplish it -my mother would be obliged to hypothecate the whole of her small -capital. What my mother really thought about her property was that she -held it in trust for the family interest, and that, with the secret -intimation of her end which I surmise must have reached her by this -time, she believed to be served by Forester's plan. It was so much the -general view that by marrying I took myself out of the family -altogether, that I felt convinced that she meant, so soon as that was -accomplished, to undertake what, in the face of my protesting attitude, -she had not the courage to begin. I remember how shocked she was at my -telling her that this tying up of the two ends of life in a monetary -obligation, would put her and Forester very much in the situation of a -young man married to a middle-aged woman. I mention this here because -the implication that grew out of it, of my marriage being looked forward -to as a relief, had much to do with the failure out of my life at this -juncture, of informing intimacy. - -A great deal of necessary information had come my way through Pauline's -marriage, through the comment set free by Belle Endsleigh's affair, -through the natural awakening of my mind toward the intimations of -books. Marriage I began to perceive as an engulfing personal experience. -Until now I hadn't been able to think of it except as a means of -providing pleasant companionship on the way toward that large and -shining world for which I felt myself forever and unassailably fit. It -began to exhibit now, through vistas that allured, the aspect of a vast -inhuman grin. Somewhere out of this prospect of sympathy and -understanding, arose upon you the tremendous inundation of Life. Dimly -beyond the point of Tommy's joyous possession of me, I was aware of an -incalculable force by which the whole province of my being was assailed, -very different from the girlish prevision of motherhood which had -floated with the fragrance of orris root from Aunt Alice's bureau drawer -in the Allingham's spare room. - -I don't say this is the way all girls feel about the approach of -maternity, but I saw it then like the wolf in the fairy tale, which as -soon as its head was admitted, thrust in a shoulder and so came bodily -into the room and devoured the protestant. Long afterward, when I was in -a position to know something of the private experience of trapeze -performers, I learned that they came to a point sometimes in mid-spring -when the body apprised them of inadequacy, a warning sure to be followed -in no long time by disaster. I have thought sometimes that what reached -me then was the advice of a body instinctively aware of being unequal to -the demands about to be imposed upon it. - -I hardly know now by what road I arrived at the certainty that some -women, Pauline for instance, were able to face this looming terror of -childbearing by making terms with it. Life, it appeared, waited at -their doors with respect, modified the edge of its inevitableness to -their convenience. If Pauline had been accessible--but she was living in -Chicago with Henry Mills, going out a great deal, and writing me -infrequent letters of bright complacency. It was only in the last -frightened gasp I fixed upon my mother. You must imagine for yourself -from what you know of nice girls thirty years ago, how inarticulate the -whole business was; the most I can do is to have you understand my -desperate need to know, to interpose between marriage and maternity -never so slight an interval in which to collect myself and leave off -shrinking. - -About a week before my wedding we were sitting together at the close of -the afternoon; my mother had taken up her knitting, as her habit was -when the light failed. Something in the work we had been doing, putting -the last touches to my wedding dress, led her to speak of her own, and -of my father as a young man. The mention pricked me to notice what I -recall now as characteristic of Taylorville women, that, with all she -had been through, the war, her eight children, so many graves, there was -still in her attitude, toward all these, a kind of untutored virginity. -It made, my noticing it then and being touched by it, a sort of bridge -by which it seemed for the moment she might be drawn over to my side. On -the impulse I spoke. - -"Mother," I said, "I want to know?..." - -It seemed a natural sort of knowledge to which any woman had a right. -Almost before the question was out I saw the expression of offended -shock come over my mother's reminiscent softness, the nearly animal rage -of terror with which the unknown, the unaccustomed, assailed her. - -"Olivia! Olivia!" She stood up, her knitting rigid in her hands, the -ball of it speeding away in the dusk of the floor on some private terror -of its own. "Olivia, I'll not hear of such things! You are not to speak -of them, do you understand! I'll have nothing to do with them!" - -"I wanted to know," I said. "I thought you could tell me...." - -I went over and stood by the window; a little dry snow was blowing--it -was the first week in November--beginning to collect on the edges of the -walks and along the fences; the landscape showed sketched in white on a -background of neutral gray. I heard a movement in the room behind me; my -mother came presently and stood looking out with me. She was very pale, -scared but commiserating. Somehow my question had glanced in striking -the dying nerve of long since encountered dreads and pains. We faced -them together there in the cold twilight. - -"I'm sorry, daughter"--she hesitated--"I can't help you. I don't -know ... I never knew myself." - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -It is no doubt owing to the habit of life in Higgleston being so little -differentiated from Taylorville that I was never able to get any other -impression of it than as a place one put up at on the way to some other; -always it bore to my mind the air of a traveller's room in one of those -stops where it is necessary to open the trunks but not worth while to -unpack them. Nor do I think it was altogether owing to what I left there -that my recollection of it centres paganly about the cemetery. In -Taylorville, love and birth, though but scantily removed from the savour -of impropriety, were still the salient facts of existence, but in -Higgleston a funeral was your real human occasion. It was as if the -rural fear of innovation had thrown them back for a pivotal centre upon -the point of continuity with their past. - -It was a generous rolling space set aside for the dead, abutting on two -sides on the boardwalks of the town, stretching back by dips and hollows -to the wooded pastures. Near the gates which opened from the walk, it -was divided off in single plots and family allotments, scattering more -and more to the farthest neglected mounds that crept obscurely under the -hazel thickets and the sapling oaks, happiest when named the least, -assimilated quickliest to their native earth. It was this that rendered -the pagan touch, for though nearly all Higgleston was church-going and -looked forward to a hymn-book heaven, they seemed to me never quite -dissevered from the untutored pastures to which their whole living and -dying was a process of being reabsorbed. - -Higgleston, until this junction of railroads occurred, had been a close -settled farming community, and a vague notion of civic improvement had -ripped through the centre of its wide old yards and comfortable, country -looking dwellings, a shadeless, unpaved street lined with what were -known as business blocks, with a tendency to run mostly to front and a -general placarded state of being to let, or about to be opened on these -premises. - -Beyond the railway station there was a dingy region devoted to car shops -and cheap lodgings, known locally as Track Town, whose inhabitants were -forever at odds with the older rural population, withdrawing itself into -a kind of aristocracy of priority and propriety; and between these an -intermediary group, self styled, "the leading business men of the town," -forever and trivially busy to reconcile the two factions in the -interests of trade. That Tommy was by reason of his position as managing -salesman of Burton Brothers, generically of this class, might have had -something to do with my never having formed any vital or lasting -relations with either community; and it might have been for quite other -reasons. For in the very beginning of my stay there, Life had seized me; -that bubbling, frothing Force, working forever to breach the film of -existence. I was used by it, I was abused by it. For what does Life care -what it does to the tender bodies of women? - -My baby was born within ten months of my marriage and most of that time -I was wretchedly, depressingly ill. All my memories of my early married -life are of Olivia, in the mornings still with frost, cowering away from -the kitchen sights and smells, or gasping up out of engulfing nausea to -sit out the duty calls of the leading ladies of Higgleston in the cold, -disordered house; of Tommy gulping unsuitable meals of underdone and -overdone things, and washing the day's accumulation of dishes after -business hours, patient and portentously cheerful, with Olivia in a -wrapper, half hysterical with weakness--all the young wife's dreams gone -awry! And Tommy too, he must have had visions of himself coming home to -a well-kept house, of delicious little dinners and long hours in which -he should appear in his proper character as the adored, achieving male. -Not long ago I read a book of a man's life written by a man, in which he -justified himself of unfaithfulness because his wife appeared before him -habitually in curl papers--and there were days when I couldn't even do -my hair! - -In the beginning we had taken, in respect to Tommy's position among -those same live business men, a house rather too large for us, and we -hadn't counted on the wages of a servant. Now with the necessity upon us -of laying by money for the Great Expense, we felt less justified in it -than ever. This pinch of necessity was of the quality of corrosion on -what must have been meant for the consummate experience. I have to dwell -on it here because in this practical confusion of my illness, was laid -the foundation of our later failure to come together on any working -basis. We hadn't, in fact, time to find it; no time to understand, none -whatever in which to explore the use of passion and react into that -superunion of which the bodily relation is the overt sign--young things -we were, who had not fairly known each other as man and woman before we -were compelled to trace in one another the lineaments of parents, all -attention drawn away from the imperative business of framing a common -ideal, to centre on the child. - -What this precipitance accomplished was, that, instead of being drawn -insensibly to find in the exigencies of marriage the natural unfolding -of that inward vitality, always much stronger in me than any exterior -phase, I was by the shock of too early maternity driven apart from the -usual, and I still believe the happier, destiny of women. - -With all this we were spared the bitterness of the unwelcoming thought. -Little homely memories swim up beyond the pains and depressions to -mark, like twigs and leafage on a freshet, the swelling of the new -affection: Effie at Montecito, overruling all my mother's shocked -suggestions as to her supposed obliviousness of my condition, sitting up -nights to sew for me ... the dress I tried to make myself ... the bureau -drawer from which I used to take the little things every night to look -at them ... the smell of orris. - -"See, Tommy; I've done so much to-day. Isn't it pretty?" - -"My dear, you've shown that to me at least forty times and I've always -said so." - -"Yes, but isn't it?... the little sleeves ... did you think anything -_could_ be so small? Tommy, don't you wish it would _come_?" - -We had to make what we could of these moments of thrilled expectancy, of -tender brooding curiosity. - -I scarcely recall now all the reasons why it was thought best for me to -go back to my mother in August, and to the family physician, but I find -it all pertinent to my subject. Whatever was done there was mostly -wrong, though I was years finding it out. I mean that whatever chance I -had of growing up into the competent mother of a family was probably -lost to me through the inexactitudes of country practice. We hadn't then -arrived at the realization that the well or ill going of maternity is a -matter of sceptics rather than sentiment. Taylorville was a town of ten -thousand inhabitants, but at that time no one had heard of such a thing -as a trained nurse; the business of midwifery was given over in general -to a widow so little attractive that she was thought not to have a -chance of marrying again, and by the circumstance of having had two or -three children of her own, believed to be eminently fit. To Olivia's -first encounter with the rending powers of Life, there went any amount -of affectionate consideration and much old wives' lore of an -extraordinary character. It seems hardly credible now, but in the -beginning of things going wrong, there were symptoms concealed from the -doctor on the ground of delicacy. - -My baby, too, poor little man, was feeble from birth, a bottle baby; the -best that could have been done would hardly have been a chance for him. -Lying there in the hot, close room, all the air shut out with the light, -in the midst of pains, I made a fight for him, tried to interpose such -scraps of better knowledge as had come to me through reading, but they -made no headway against my mother's confidential, "Well, I ought to -know, I've buried five," and against Forester, who by the added -importance of having invested all her fortune, had gained such way with -my mother that she listened respectfully to his explication of what -should be done for the baby. It was Forester who overbore with ridicule -my suggestion that he should be fed at regular hours, for which I never -forgave him. But I had enough to do to fortify my racked body against -the time when I should be obliged to get up and go on again, as it -seemed privately I never should be able. - -And they were all so fond and proud of my little Thomas Henry--he was -named so for his father and mine--Effie simply adored him; the wonder of -his smallness, the way in which he moved his limbs and opened and shut -his eyes; quite as if there had never been one born before. The way they -hung over him, and the wrong things they did! Even Cousin Lydia drove -into church the first Sunday after, for the purpose of holding him for a -quarter of an hour in her large, silk poplin arms, at the end of which -time she had softened almost to the point of confidence. - -"I thought I was going to have one once," she admitted, "but somehow I -couldn't seem to manage it." She looked over to where Cousin Judd sat -with my mother. "He was always fond of young ones...." It occurred to me -then that Cousin Lydia was probably a much misunderstood woman. - -Of the next six months at Higgleston after I returned to it with a three -months' old baby I have scarcely any recollection that is not mixed up -with bodily torment for myself and anxiety for the child. I think it -probable that most of that time my husband found the house badly kept, -the meals irregular and his wife hysterical. I hadn't anything to spare -with which to consider what figure I might have cut in the eyes of the -onlooker. Tommy shines out for me in that period by reason of the -unwearying patience and cheerfulness with which he successfully ignored -the general unsatisfactoriness of his home, and at times for a certain -exasperation I had with him, as if by being somehow less quiescent he -might have opposed a better front to the encroachments of distress. We -did try help in the kitchen after our finances had a little recovered -from the strain of my confinement, a Higgleston girl of no very great -competence and a sort of back-door visiting acquaintance with two thirds -of the community. Her chief accomplishments while she stayed with us, -were concocted out of the scraps and fag ends of our private -conversations. I could always tell that Ida had overheard something by -the alacrity with which she banged the pots about in the kitchen in -order that she might get through with her work and go out and tell -somebody. In the end Tommy said that when it came to a choice between -getting his own meals and losing his best customers he preferred the -former. - -All this time I did not know how ill I was because of the consuming -anxiety for the baby. I remember times in the night--the dreadful -momentary revolt of my body rousing to this new demand upon it, before -the mind waked to the selfless consideration; and the failure of -composure which was as much weakness as fear; the long watching, the -walking to and fro, and the debates as to whether we ought or ought not -to venture on the expense of the doctor. And for long years afterward -what is the bitterest of bitterness, finding out that we had done the -wrong thing. To this day I cannot come across any notices of the more -competent methods for the care of delicate children, without a -remembering pang. - -All the time this was going on I was aware by a secondary detached sort -of self, that there was a point somewhere beyond this perplexity of -pain, at which the joyful possession of my son should begin. I was -anxious to get at him, to have speech with him, to realize his -identity--any woman will understand--and along about the time the blue -flags and the live-for-evers and the white bridal wreaths were at their -best in the cemetery, it came upon me terrifyingly that I might, after -all, have to let him go without it. We were walking there that day, the -first we had thought it safe to take the baby out, for it was customary -to walk in the cemetery on Sunday and almost obligatory to your social -standing. The oaks were budding, and the wind in the irises and the -shadow of them on the tombstones, and the people all in their Sunday -best, walking in the warm light, gave an effect of more aliveness than -the sombre yards of the town could afford. - -Tommy had taken the baby from me, for, though I could somehow never get -enough of the feel of him, his head in the hollow of my shoulder, his -weight against my arm, I was so little strong myself that I was glad to -pretend that it was because he was really getting heavy, and just then -we passed a little mound, so low, where a new headboard had been set up -with the superscription, "Only son of ---- and ---- aged eight months," -and it was the age, and the little mound was just the length of my boy. -I think there was a rush of tears to cover that, the realization by a -kind of prevision that it was just to that he was to come, tears checked -in mid-course by the swift up-rush of the certainty, of the reality, of -the absoluteness of human experience. For by whatever mystery or magic -he had come to identity through me, he was my son as I knew, and not -even death could so unmake him. - -I dwell upon this and one other incident which I shall relate in its -proper place, as all that was offered to me of the traditional -compensation for what women are supposed to be. If a sedulous social -ideal has kept them from the world touch through knowledge and -achievement, it has been because, sincerely enough, they have not been -supposed to be prevented from world processes so much as directed to -find them in a happier way. This would be reasonable if they found them. -What society fails to understand, or dishonestly fails to admit, is that -marriage as an act is not invariably the stroke that ushers in the -experience of being married. - -Whatever proportions the change in my life had assumed to the outward -eye, it was only by the imagined pain of loss that I began to perceive -that I could never be quite in the same relation to things again, and to -identify my experience with the world adventure. I had become, by the -way of giving life and losing it, a link in the chain that leads from -dark to dark; I had touched for the moment a reality from which the -process of self-realization could be measured. It was the most and the -best I was to know of the incident called maternity, that whether it -were most bitter or most sweet it was irrevocable. - -I suppose, though he was always so inarticulate, that Tommy must have -caught something of my mood from me. He didn't seem to see anything -ridiculous in my holding on to a fold of the baby's skirt all the way -home; and when we had come into the house and the boy was laid in his -crib again, so wan and so little, I sat on my young husband's knee and -cried with my face against his, and he did not ask me what it was about. - -I think, though, that we had not yet appreciated how near we were to -losing him until my mother came to visit us along in the middle of the -summer. She was quite excited, as she walked up from the station with -Tommy, and for her, almost gay with the novelty of spending a month with -a married daughter, and then as soon as she had sight of the child, I -saw her checked and startled inquiry travel from me to Tommy and back -to the child's meagre little features, and a new and amazing tenderness -in all her manner to me. That night after I was in bed she came in her -night-dress and kissed me without saying anything, and I was too -surprised to make any motion of response. That was the first time I -remember my mother having kissed me on anything less than an official -occasion ... but she had buried five herself. - -Notwithstanding, my mother's coming and the care she took of the baby, -seemed to make me, if anything, less prepared for the end. There were -new remedies of my mother's to be tried which appeared hopeful. I -recovered composure, thought of him as improving, when in fact it was -only I who was stronger for a few nights' uninterrupted sleep. Then -there was a day on which he was very quiet and she scarcely put him down -from her lap at all. I do not know what I thought of that, nor of the -doctor coming twice that day, unsummoned. I suppose my sensibilities -must have been blunted by the strain, for I recall thinking when Tommy -came home in the middle of the afternoon, how good it was we could all -have this quiet time together. It was the end of June. I remember the -blinds half drawn against the sun and the smell of lawns newly cut and -the damask rose by the window; I was going about putting fresh flowers -in the vases, a thing I had of late little time to do ... suddenly I -noticed Tommy crying. He sat close to my mother trying to make the -boy's poor little claws curl round his finger, and at the failure tears -ran down unwiped. I had never seen Tommy cry. I put down my roses -uncertain if I ought to go to him ... and all at once my mother called -me. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -Very closely on the loss of my baby, of which I have spared you as much -as possible, came crowding the opening movement of my artistic career. -Within a month I was in a hospital in Chicago, recovering from the -disastrous termination of another expectancy that had come, scarcely -regarded in the obsession of anxiety and overwork during the last weeks -of my boy's life, and had failed to sustain itself under the shock of -his death. And after the hospital there was a month of convalescence at -Pauline's. It was the first time I had seen her since her marriage. - -I found her living in one of those curious, compressed city houses, one -room wide and three deep, which, after the rambling, scattered homes of -Higgleston, induced a feeling of cramp, until I discovered a kind of -spaciousness in the life within. It was really very little else than -relief from the accustomed inharmonies of rurality, a sort of scenic air -and light that answered perfectly so long as you believed it real. -Pauline's wall papers were soft, unpatterned, with wide borders; her -windows were hung with plain scrim and the furniture coverings were in -tone with the carpets. When ladies called in the afternoon, Pauline -gave them tea which she made in a brass kettle over a spirit lamp. You -can scarcely understand what that kettle stood for in my new estimate of -the graciousness of living: a kind of sacred flame, round which gathered -unimagined possibilities for the dramatization of that eager inward life -which, now that the strictures of bodily pain were loosed, began to -press toward expression. It rose insistently against the depressing -figure my draggled and defeated condition must have cut in the face of -Pauline's bright competency and the quality of assurance in her choice -of the things among which she moved. Whatever her standards of behaviour -or furniture, they were always present to the eye, not sunk below the -plane of consciousness like mine, and she could always name you the -people who practised them or the places where they could be bought and -at what price. My expressed interest in the teakettle, led at once to -the particular department store where I saw rows of them shining in the -ticketed inaccessibility of seven dollars and ninety-eight cents. From -point to point of such eminent practicability I was pricked to think of -preëmpting some of these new phases of suitability for myself, finding -myself debarred by the flatness of my purse. The effect of it was to -throw me back into the benumbing sense of personal neglect with which -the city had burst upon me. From the first, as I began to go about still -in my half-invalided condition, I had been tremendously struck with the -plentitude of beauty. Here was every article of human use made fair and -fit so that nobody need have lacked a portion of it, save for an -inexplicable error in the means of distribution. I, for instance, who -had within me the witness of heirship, had none of it. - -That I should have felt it so, was no doubt a part of that Taylorvillian -fallacy in which I had been reared, that all that was precious and -desirable was shed as the natural flower and fruit of goodness. Here -confronted with the concrete preciousness of the shop windows, I -realized that if there had been anything originally sound in that -proposition, I had at least missed the particular kind of goodness to -which it was chargeable. I wanted, I absurdly wanted just then to -collect my arrears of privilege and consideration in terms of hardwood -furniture and afternoon teakettles, in graceful, feminine leisure, all -the traditional sanctity and enthronement of women, for which I had paid -with my body, with maternal anxieties and wifely submission. What -glimmered on my horizon was the realization that it was not in such -appreciable coin the debt was paid, the beginning of knowledge that -seldom, except by accident, is it paid at all. What I learned from -Pauline was that most of it came by way of the bargain counter. Not even -the Shining Destiny was due to arrive merely by reason of your own -private conviction of being fit, but demanded something to be laid down -for it; though if you had named the whole price to me at that juncture, -I should have refused to pay. - -Besides all this, the most memorable thing that came of my visit to -Pauline was that I went to the theatre. It was Henry's suggestion; he -thought I wanted cheering. Pauline was not going out much that season -and her reluctance to claim my attention, in the face of my bereavement, -to her own approaching Event, threw at times a shadow of constraint on -our quiet evenings. Henry had fallen into a way of taking me out for -timid and Higglestonian glimpses of the night sights of the city, but I -am not sure it was the obligation of hospitality which led him to -propose the theatre. I recall that he displayed a particular knowingness -about what he styled "the attractions." What surprised me most was that -I discovered no qualms in myself over a proceeding so at variance with -my bringing up; and the piece, a broad comedy of Henry's selection, made -no particular impression on me other than the singular one of having -known a great deal about it before. My criticism of the acting brought -Pauline around with a swing from the City Cousin attitude in which she -had initiated the experience for me, to one æsthetically sympathetic. - -"The things men choose, my dear--and to anybody who has been saturated -in Shakespeare as you have! You really must see Modjeska; it will be an -inspiration to you. Henry, you must take her to see Modjeska." - -I had not yet made up my mind as to whether I liked Henry Mills, but I -was willing to go and see Modjeska with him; we had orchestra seats and -Pauline insisted on my wearing her black silk wrap. On the way, Henry -told me a great deal about Madam Modjeska with that same air of -knowingness which fitted so oddly with his assumption of the model -husband. I had accustomed myself to think of Henry as an attorney, which -in Taylorville meant a man who could be trusted with the administration -of widows' property and Fourth of July orations. Henry, it transpired, -was a sort of junior partner in one of those city firms whose concern is -not with people who have broken the law, but with those who are desirous -to sail as close to the wind as possible without breaking it. They had a -great deal to do with stock companies, in connection with which Henry -had found some personal advantage. He always referred to it as "our -office" so that I am in doubt still as to the exact nature of his -connection with it; its only relation to his private life was to lead to -his habitually appearing in what is known as a business suit, and an air -of shrewd reliability. If in the beginning he had any notions of his own -as to what a husband ought to be, he had discarded them in favour of -Pauline's, and if as early as that he had devised any system of paying -himself off for his complicity in her ideals, I didn't discover it. - -I saw Modjeska with Henry, in "Romeo and Juliet," and afterward stole -away to a matinée by myself and saw her as Rosalind. I do not know now -if she was the great artist she seemed, it is so long since I have seen -her, but she sufficed. I had no words in which to express my -extraordinary sense of possession in her, the profound, excluding -intimacy of her art. Long after Henry Mills had gone to his connubial -pillow I remained walking up and down in my room in a state of intense, -inarticulate excitement. I did not think concretely of the stage nor of -acting; what I had news of, was a country of large impulses and -satisfying movement. I felt myself strong, had I but known the way, to -set out for it. When I found sleep at last, it was to dream, not of the -theatre, but of Helmeth Garrett. I was made aware of him first by a -sense of fulness about my heart, and then I came upon him looking as he -had looked last in the Willesden woods, writing at a table, a pale blur -about him of the causeless light of dreams. I recognized the carpet -underfoot as a favourite Taylorvillian selection, but overhead, red -boughs of sycamore and oak depended through the dream-fogged atmosphere. -I stood and read over his shoulder what he wrote, and though the words -escaped me, the meaning of them put all straight between us. He turned -as he wrote and looked at me with a look that set us back in the wrapt -intimacy of the flaming forest ... somehow we had got there and found it -softly dark! In the interval between my dream and morning, that kiss -which had been the source of so much secret blame and secret exultation -was somehow accounted for: it was a waif out of the country of Rosalind -and Juliet. The sense of a vital readjustment remained with me all that -day; there had been after all, in the common phrase, "something between -us." But I explained the recrudescence of memory on the basis that it -was from Helmeth Garrett that I had first heard of Chicago and Modjeska. - -I came back to Higgleston reasonably well, with some fine points of -achievement twinkling ahead of me, to have my new-found sense of -direction put all at fault by the trivial circumstance of Tommy's having -papered the living room. The walls when we took the house, had been -finished hard and white, much in need of renewing, from the expense of -which our immediate plunge into the cares of a family had prevented us. -Casting about for any way of ridding it against my return, of the -sadness of association, Tommy had hit upon the idea of papering the room -himself in the evenings after closing hours, and by way of keeping it a -pleasant surprise, had chosen the paper to his own taste. Any one who -kept house in the early 80's will recall a type of paper then in vogue, -of large unintelligent arabesques of a liverish bronzy hue, parting at -regular intervals upon Neapolitan landscapes of pronounced pinks and -blues. Tommy's landscapes achieved the added atrocity of having Japanese -ladies walking about in them, and though the room wanted lighting, the -paper was very dark. It must have cost him something too! From the -amount of his salary which he had remitted for my hospital expenses he -could hardly have left himself money to pay for his meals at -Higgleston's one doubtful restaurant. The appearance of the kitchen, -indeed, suggested that he had made most of them on crackers and tinned -ham. - -I was glad to have discovered this before I said to him how much better -it would have been for him to send me the money and let me select the -paper in Chicago. What leaped upon me as he waved the lamp about to show -me how cleverly he had matched the borders, was the surprising, the -confounding certainty that after all our shared sorrow and anxiety we -hadn't in the least come together. I had lived in the house with him for -two years, had borne him a child and lost it, and he had chosen this -moment of heartrending return, to give me to understand that he couldn't -even know what I might like in the way of wall papers. - -I suppose all this time when the surface of my attention was taken up -with the baby, I had been making unconscious estimates of my husband, -but that night just as we had come from the station, the moment of -calculating that on a basis of necessary economy, I should have to live -at least three years with the evidence of his ineptitude, was the first -of my regarding him critically as the instrument of my destiny. And I -hadn't primarily selected him for that purpose. I do not know now -exactly why I married Tommy, except that marriage seemed a natural sort -of experience and I had taken to it as readily as though it had been -something to eat, something to nourish and sustain. I hadn't at any rate -thought of it as entangling. I did not then; but certainly it occurred -to me that for the enlarged standard of living I had brought home with -me, a man of Tommy's taste was likely to prove an unsuitable tool. - -Slight as the incident of the wall paper was, it served to check my -dawning interest in domesticity, and set my hungering mind looking -elsewhere for sustenance. We were still a little in arrears on account -of the funeral expenses and my illness, and no more improvements were to -be thought of; Tommy and I were of one mind in that we had the common -Taylorvillian horror of debt. There were other things which seemed to -put off my conquest of the harmonious environment, things every woman -who has lost a child will understand ... starting awake at night to the -remembered cry ... the blessed weight upon the arm that failed and -receded before returning consciousness. I recall going into the bedroom -once where a shawl had been dropped on the pillow, like ... so like ... -and the memories of infinitesimal neglects that began to show now -preposterously blamable. - -In my first year at Higgleston I had been rather driven apart from the -community by the absorption of my condition and the intimation that -instead of being the crown of life it merely saved itself by not being -mentioned. Now, in my desperate need of the social function, I began to -imagine, for want of any other likeness between us, a community of lack. -I thought of Higgleston as aching for life as I ached, and began to -wonder if we mightn't help one another. - -As the colder weather shut me more into the haunted rooms, Tommy thought -it might be a good thing if I took an interest in the entertainment -which the I. O. O. F., of which he was a Fellow, was undertaking for the -benefit of their new hall. As the sort of service counted on from the -wives of prominent members, it might also be beneficial to trade. On -this understanding I did take an interest, with the result that the -entertainment was an immense success. It led naturally to my being put -in charge of the annual Public School Library theatricals and a little -later to my being connected with what was the acute dramatic crisis of -the Middle West. - -There should be a great many people still who remember a large, loose -melodrama called "The Union Spy," or "The Confederate Spy," accordingly -as it was performed north or south of Mason and Dixon's line, -participated in by the country at large; a sort of localized Passion -play lifted by its tremendous personal interest free of all theatrical -taint. There was a Captain McWhirter who went about with the scenery and -accessories, casting the parts and conducting rehearsals, sharing the -profits with the local G. A. R. The battle scenes were invariably -executed by the veterans of the order, with horrid realism. Effie wrote -me that there had been three performances in Taylorville and Cousin Judd -had been to every one of them. - -With the reputation I had acquired in Higgleston, it came naturally when -the town, by its slighter hold on the event, achieved a single -performance, for me to be cast for the principal part, unhindered by any -convention on behalf of my recent mourning. Rather, so close did the -subject lie to the community feeling, there was an instinctive sense of -dramatic propriety in my sorrow in connection with the anguish of -war-bereaved women. One can imagine such a sentiment operating in the -choice of players at Oberammergau. In addition to my acting, I began -very soon to take a large share of the responsibility of rehearsals. - -I do not know where I got the things I put into that business. Where, in -fact, does Gift come from, and what is the nature of it? I found myself -falling back on my studies with Professor Winter, on slight amateurish -incidents of Taylorville, on my brief Chicago contact even, to account -to Higgleston for insights, certainties, that they would not have -accepted without some such obvious backing. Nevertheless the thing was -there, the aptitude to seize and carry to its touching, its fruitful -expression, the awkward eagerness of the community to relive its most -moving actualities. Never in America have we been so near the democratic -drama. - -In the final performance I surprised Tommy and myself with my success, -most of all I surprised Captain McWhirter. He was arranging a production -of "The Spy" at the twin towns of Newton and Canfield, about two hours -south of us, and asked me to go down there for him and attend to -alternate rehearsals. Tommy was immensely flattered, pleased to have me -forget my melancholy, and the money was a consideration. I saw the -captain through with two performances in each town, and three at -Waterbury. All this time I had not thought of the stage professionally. -I returned to Tommy and the wall paper after the final performance with -a vague sense of flatness, to try to pull together out of Higgleston's -unwilling materials the stuff of a satisfying existence. - -Suddenly in April came a telegram and a letter from Captain McWhirter at -Kincade, to say that on the eve of production, his leading lady had run -away to be married, and could I, would I, come down and see him through. -The letter contained an enclosure for travelling expenses, and a -substantial offer for my time. No reasonable objection presenting -itself, I went down to him by Monday's train. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -On the morning between the second and third performance of "The Spy," -for McWhirter never let the people off with less than three if he could -help it, as I was sitting in the dining room of the Hotel Metropole at -Kincade, enjoying the sense of leisure a late breakfast afforded, I saw -the captain making his way toward me through an archipelago of whitish -island upon which the remains of innumerable breakfasts appeared to be -cast away without hope of rescue from the languid waiters, steering as -straight a course as was compatible with a conversation kept up over his -shoulder with a man, who for a certain close-cropped, clean-shaven, -ever-ready look, might have been bred for the priesthood and given it up -for the newspaper business. It was a type and manner I was to know very -well as the actor-manager, but as the first I had seen of that species, -I failed to identify it. What I did remark was the odd mixture of -condescension and importance which the captain managed to put into the -fact of being caught in his company. He introduced him to me as Mr. -O'Farrell, Mr. Shamus O'Farrell, as though there could be but one of him -and that one fully accredited and explained. He defined him -further--after some remarks on the performance of the evening before in -a key which seemed to sustain the evidence of Mr. O'Farrell's name in -favour of his nationality--as manager of the Shamrock Players Company, -billed for the first of the week in Kincade. - -It turned out in the course of these remarks, which the captain -delivered with a kind of proprietary air in us, that Mr. O'Farrell--he -called himself The O'Farrell in his posters--had a proposition to make -to me. He put it with an admirable mixture of compliment and -depreciation, as though either was a sort of stopcock to meet a too -reluctant modesty on my part or a too exorbitant demand for payment. I -was afterward to know many variations of this singular blend, and to -acquaint myself definitely how far it is safe to trust it in either -direction before the stop was turned, but for the moment I was under the -impression, as no doubt O'Farrell meant I should be, that a thing so -perfectly asked for should not be refused. - -What he asked was that I should come over to the opera house where the -rest of the company awaited us, to assist at a rehearsal in the part -left open by the illness of the star. I do not now recall if the manager -actually made me an offer in this first encounter, but it was in the air -that if I suited the part and the part suited me, I was to regard myself -as temporarily engaged in Miss Dean's place. - -So naturally had the occasion come about, that I cannot remember that I -found any particular difficulty in reconciling myself to a possible -connection with the professional stage. There had been no church of my -denomination at Higgleston, and I had affiliated with one made up of the -remnants of two or three other houseless sects, under the caption of the -United Congregations, and there was nothing in its somewhat loosened -discipline that positively forbade the theatre. In my work with -McWhirter, the play had come to mean so much the intimate expression of -life, so wove itself with all that had been profound and heroic in the -experience of the people, that it seemed to come quite as a matter of -course for me to be walking out between the captain and the manager -toward the opera house. O'Farrell, too, must have beguiled me with that -extraordinary Celtic faculty for the sympathetic note, for I am sure I -received the impression as we went, that his play, "The Shamrock," meant -quite as much to the Irish temperament, as "The Spy" could mean to -Ohianna. The manager and McWhirter had crossed one another's trails on -more than one occasion, which seemed to give the whole affair the colour -of neighbourliness. - -It transpired in the course of our walk that Laurine Dean, America's -greatest emotional actress--it was O'Farrell called her that--had been -taken down at Waterbury with bronchitis, and the cast having been -already disarranged by an earlier defection, he had been obliged to -cancel several one-night stands and put in at Kincade to wait until a -substitute could be procured from St. Louis or Chicago, which difficulty -was happily obviated by the discovery of Mrs. Olivia Bettersworth. - -All this, as I was to learn later, was not so near the truth as it might -be, but it served. I could never make out, so insistent was each to -claim the credit of it, whether it was O'Farrell or McWhirter first -thought of offering the part to me, but there it was for me to take it -or leave it as I was so inclined. Our own performance was in Armory Hall -and this was my first entrance of the back premises of a proper stage. I -recall as we came in through the stage door having no feeling about it -all but an odd one of being entirely habituated to such entrances. - -They were all there waiting for us, the Shamrocks, grouped around the -prompter's table in a dimly lit, dusty space, with a half conscious -staginess even in their informal groupings, men and women regarding me -with a queer mixture of coldness and ingratiation. I had time to take -that in, and an impression of shoppy smartness, before Manager O'Farrell -with a movement like the shuffling of cards drew us all together in a -kind of general introduction and commanded the rehearsal to begin. Well, -I went on with it as I suppose it was foregone I should as soon as I had -smelled the dust of action, which was the stale and musty cloud that -rolled up on our skirts from the floor and shook down upon our -shoulders from the wings, too unsophisticated even to guess at the -situation which the manager's air of genial hurry was so admirably -planned to cover. I read from the prompter's book--O'Farrell had -sketched the plot to me on the way over--and did my utmost to keep up -with his hasty interpolations of the business. I was feeling horribly -amateurish and awkward in the presence of these second-rate folk, whom I -took always far too seriously, and suddenly swamped in confusion at -hearing the manager call out to me from the orchestra what was meant for -instruction, in an utterly unintelligible professional jargon. McWhirter -through some notion, I suppose, of keeping his work innocuously -amateurish, had used no sort of staginess, and the phrase froze me into -mortification. With the strain of attention I was already under I could -not even make an intelligent guess at his meaning, as O'Farrell, -mistaking my hesitation, repeated it with growing peremptoriness. I -could see the rest of the cast who were on the stage with me, aware of -my embarrassment, and letting the situation fall with a kind of sulky -detachment, which struck me then, and still, as vulgar rather than -cruel. Suddenly from behind me a voice smooth and full, translated the -clipped jargon into ordinary speech. I had not time, as I moved to obey -it, for so much as a grateful glance over my shoulder, but I knew very -well that the voice had come from a young woman of about my own age, -who, as I entered at the beginning of the rehearsal, had been sitting in -the wings, taking in my introduction with the gaze of a tethered cow, -quiet, incurious, oblivious of the tether. As soon as I was free from -the first act, I got around to her. - -"Thank you so much," I began. "You see I am not used----" - -"Why do you care?" she wondered. "It is only a kind of slang. They all -had to learn it once." - -I could see that she sprang from my own class. Taylorville, the high -school, the village dressmaker, might have turned her out that moment; -and by degrees I was aware that she was beautiful; pale, tanned -complexion, thick untaught masses of brown hair, and pale brown eyes of -a profound and unfathomed rurality. As she moved across the stage at the -prompter's call, with her skirts bunched up on her hip with a safety -pin, out of the dust, as if she had just come from scrubbing the dairy, -I fairly started with the shock of her bodily perfection and her -extraordinary manner of going about with it as though it were something -picked up in passing for the convenience of covering. It provoked me to -the same sort of involuntary exclamation as though one should see a -child playing with a rare porcelain. By contrast she seemed to bring out -in the others, streaks and flashes of cheapness, of the stain and wear -of unprofitable use. - -She came to me again at the end of her scene. "Where do you live?" she -wished to know. "I can come around with you and coach you with your -part." - -"I'm not sure," I hesitated: "I don't know if I shall go on with it." -She took me again with her slow, incurious gaze. - -"Why, what else are you here for?" - -That in fact appeared to be Mr. O'Farrell's view of it, and though I -went through the form of taking the day to think it over and telegraph -to Tommy, I did finally engage myself to the Shamrock Company for the -term of Miss Dean's illness. My husband made no objection except that he -preferred I should not use my own name, as indeed, O'Farrell had no -notion of my doing, as the posters and programmes stood in Miss Dean's -name already. - -We had from Thursday to Monday to get up my part. With all my quickness -I could not have managed it, except for the alacrity with which, after -the first day, all the company played up to my business, prompted me in -my lines, and assisted in my make-up. There was, if I had but known it, -a reason for this extra helpfulness, which, remembering the way the -ladies of the United Congregations had pulled and hauled about the -Easter entertainment, went far with me toward raising the estimate of -professional acting among the blessed privileges. Several members of the -cast had felt themselves entitled to Miss Dean's place, for the manager -had refused to pay an understudy, and found it easier to concede it to -me, a brilliant society woman as I had been figured to them--I suspected -McWhirter there--a talented amateur who would return to privacy and -trouble the profession no more, rather than to one who might be expected -to develop tendencies to keep what she had got. Moreover, they had -played to small houses of late, most of the salaries were in arrears, -and from the first of my taking hold of it, it began to be certain that -the piece would go. For I not only played the part of the gay, -melodramatic Irish Eileen, but I played with it. There was all my youth -in it, the youth I hadn't had, there was wild Ellen McGee and the wet -pastures and the woods aflame. With Tommy and a home to fall back upon, -with no professional standing to keep, with no bitterness and rancours, -I adventured with the part, tossed it up and made sport of it, played it -as a stupendous lark. The rest of the company took it from me that it -was a lark, and were as solicitous to see it through for me as though I -had been an only child among a lot of maiden aunts. And I did not know -of course that this charm of good fellowship was based more directly on -the box-office returns than on the community of art. - -Incidentally a great deal that went on in my behalf threw light on the -character and disposition of the star. - -"I 'most wore my fingers off, hookin' 'er up," confided the dresser who -took in her gowns for me, "but she won't let out an inch, not she. Well, -this spell 'll pull 'er down a bit, that's one comfort." - -Cecelia Brune made me up. She was the youngest member of the company and -that she was distractingly and unnecessarily pretty didn't obviate the -certainty that in Milwaukee where she was born she had been known as -Cissy Brown. - -"You don't really need anything but a little colour and black around the -eyes," she insisted. "Dean is a sight when she's made up; got so much to -cover. I'll bet she is no sicker than me, she's just taken the slack -time to get her wrinkles massaged. Gee, if I had a face like hers I'd -take it off and have it ironed!" - -Cecelia, I may remark, lived for her prettiness; she lived by it. She -had a speaking part of half a dozen lines and a dance in the Village -Green act, and her mere appearance on the street of any town where we -were billed, was good for two solid rows clear across the house. In -Cecelia's opinion this was the quintessence of art, to attract males and -keep them dangling, and to eke out her personal adornment by gifts which -she managed to extract from her admirers without having yet paid the -inestimable price for them. Married woman as I was, I was too -countrified to understand that inevitably she must finally pay it. She -had all the dewy, large-eyed softness of look that one reluctantly -disassociates from innocence, and a degree of cold, grubby calculation -which she mistook, flaunted about in fact, for chastity. It was she who -told me as much as I got to know for a great many years of Sarah -Croyden, who had already taken me with the fascination of her Gift, the -inordinate curiosity to know, to touch and to prove, which makes me -still the victim of its least elusive promise and the dupe of any poor -pretender to it. I wanted something to account for, except when she was -under the obsession of a part, her marked inadequacy to her perfect -exterior, for the rich full voice that, caught in the wind of her -genius, gripped and threatened, but ran through her ordinary -conversation as flaccid as a velvet ribbon. - -She was, by Cecelia's account, the daughter of a Baptist elder in a -small New York town, strictly brought up--I could measure the weals of -the strictness upon my own heart--and had run away with an actor named -Lawrence, after one wild, brief encounter when O'Farrell had been -playing in the town. That was before Cecelia's time and she had no -report of the said Lawrence except that he was as handsome as they make -them and a regular rotter. - -"She'd ought to have known," opined Cecelia--though where in her -nineteen years she could have acquired the groundwork of such knowledge -was more than I could guess--"She'd ought to have known what she was up -against by his bein' so willing to marry her. He wouldn't have put his -head in a noose like that without he had hold of the loose end of it -himself." - -That he had so held it, transpired in less than a year, in the -reappearance of a former wife who turned up at his lodging one night to -wait his return from the theatre, where, no one knew by what diabolical -agency, Lawrence had word of her, and made what Cecelia called a "get -away." What passed between the two women on that occasion must have been -noteworthy, but it was sunk forever under Sarah's unfathomable rurality. -O'Farrell, who of his class was a very decent sort, had been so little -able to bear the sight of beauty in distress that he offered the poor -girl an unimportant part as an alternative to starvation, and Sarah had -very quickly settled what was to become of her by developing -extraordinary talent. - -I think no one of us at that time quite realized how good she was; -Cecelia Brune, I know, did not even think her beautiful. - -"No style," she said, settling her corset at the hips and fluffing up -her pompadour with my comb, "and no figgur." But myself, I seemed to see -her the mere embodiment of a gift which had snatched at this chance -encounter with an actor, to swing into opportunity, regardless of its -host. Whenever I watched her acting, some living impulse deep within me -reared its head. - -I have set all this down here because with the exception of Manager -O'Farrell and Jimmy Vantine, the comedian, who was thirty-five, -objectionable, and in love with Cecelia, these two women were all I ever -saw again of the Shamrock players. Miss Dean I did not meet on this -occasion, for though at the end of three weeks, before I had time to -tire of travel and new towns and nightly triumphs, she wrote she would -return to her work, it fell out that she did not actually return until I -was well on my way home. - -"I thought she would have a quick recovery when she found out what a -sweep you'd been makin'," remarked Cecelia. That was all the comment -that passed on the occasion. If Mr. O'Farrell made no motion toward -making me a permanent member of his company, there were reasons for it -that I understood better later. I had to own to a little disappointment -that nobody came to the station to see me off except Cecelia and Sarah -Croyden. It is true Jimmy Vantine was there, but he left us in no doubt -that he only came because Cecelia had promised to spend the interval -between their train and my own in his company. He fussed about with my -luggage in order to get me off as quickly as possible. - -The very bread-and-buttery relation of the Shamrocks to what was for me -the community of Art, had never struck so sourly upon me as at the -casual quality of their good-byes. I remembered noticing that morning -how very little hair there was on the top of Jimmy Vantine's head, and -that he did not seem to me quite clean. I found myself so let down after -the three weeks' excitement that I thought it necessary at Springfield, -where I changed, to interpose two days' shopping between me and -Higgleston. Among other things I bought there was a spirit lamp and a -brass teakettle. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -Understand that up to this time I had not yet thought of the stage as a -career for myself. I hadn't yet needed it. I had not then realized that -the insight and passion which have singled me out among women of my -profession couldn't be turned to render the mere business of living -beautiful and fit. I hardly understand it now. Why should people pay -night after night to see me loving, achieving, suffering, in a way they -wouldn't think of undertaking for themselves? Life as I saw it was -sufficiently dramatic: charged, wonderful. I at least felt at home in -the great moments of kings, the tender hours of poets, and I hadn't -thought of my participation in these things rendering me in any way -superior to Higgleston or even different. If I had, I shouldn't have -settled there in the first place. If I had glimpsed even at Tommy's -exclusion from all that mattered passionately to me, I shouldn't have -married him. It was because I had not yet begun to be markedly -dissatisfied with either of them that I presently got myself the -reputation of having trampled both Tommy and Higgleston underfoot. I -must ask your patience for a little until I show you how wholly I -offered myself to them both and how completely they wouldn't have me. - -The point of departure was of course that I didn't accept the -Higglestonian reading of married obligations to mean that my whole time -was to be taken up with just living with Tommy. It was as natural, and -in view of the scope it afforded for individual development, a more -convenient arrangement than living with my mother, but not a whit more -absorbing. I couldn't, anyway, think of just living as an end, and -accordingly I looked about for a more spacious occupation; I thought I -had found it in the directing of that submerged spiritual passion which -I had felt in the sustaining drama of the war. I had a notion there -might be a vent for it in the shape of a permanent dramatic society by -means of which all Higgleston, and I with them, could escape temporarily -from its commonness into the heroic movement. It was all very clear in -my own mind but it failed utterly in communication. - -I began wrongly in the first place by asking the Higgleston ladies to -tea. Afternoon tea was unheard of in Higgleston, and I had forgotten, or -perhaps I had never learned, that in Higgleston you couldn't do anything -different without implying dissatisfaction with things as they were. You -were likely on such occasions to be visited by the inquiry as to whether -the place wasn't good enough for you. As a matter of fact afternoon tea -was almost as unfamiliar to me as to the rest of them, but I had read -English novels and I knew how it ought to be done. I knew for instance, -that people came and went with a delightful informality and had tea made -fresh for them, and were witty or portentous as the occasion demanded. -My invitations read from four to five, and the Higgleston ladies came -solidly within the minute and departed in phalanxes upon the stroke of -five. They all wore their best things, which, from the number of black -silks included, and black kid gloves not quite pulled on at the finger -tips, gave the affair almost a funereal atmosphere. They had most of -them had their tea with their midday meal, and Mrs. Dinkelspiel said -openly that she didn't approve of eating between meals. They sat about -the room against the wall and fairly hypnotized me into getting up and -passing things, which I knew was not the way tea should be served. In -Higgleston, the only occasion when things were handed about, were Church -sociables and the like, when the number of guests precluded the -possibility of having them all at your table; and by the time I got once -around, the tea was cold and I realized how thin my thin bread and -butter and chocolate wafers looked in respect to the huge, soft slabs of -layer cake, stiffened by frosting and filling, which, in Higgleston went -by the name of light refreshments. The only saving incident was the -natural way in which Mrs. Ross, our attorney's wife who visited East -every summer and knew how things were done, asked for "two lumps, -please," and came back a second time for bread and butter. I think they -were all tremendously pleased to be asked, though they didn't intend to -commit themselves to the innovation by appearing to have a good time. -And that was the occasion I chose for broaching my great subject, -without, I am afraid, in the least grasping their incapacity to share in -my joyous discovery of the world of Art which I so generously held out -to them. - -It hadn't been possible to keep my professional adventure from the -townspeople, nor had I attempted it. What I really felt was that we were -to be congratulated as a community in having one among us privileged to -experience it, and I honestly think I should have felt so of any one to -whom the adventure had befallen. But I suspect I must have given the -impression of rather flaunting it in their faces. - -I put my new project on the ground that though we were dissevered by our -situation, there was no occasion for our being out of touch with the -world of emotion, not, at least, so long as we had admission to it -through the drama; and it wasn't in me to imagine that the world I -prefigured to them under those terms was one by their standards never to -be kept sufficiently at a distance. - -Mrs. Miller put the case for most of them with the suggestion thrown out -guardedly that she didn't "know as she held with plays for church -members"; she was a large, tasteless woman, whose husband kept the -lumber yard and derived from it an extensive air of being in touch with -the world's occupations. "And I don't know," she went on relentlessly, -"that I ever see any good come of play acting to them that practise it." - -Mrs. Ross, determined to live up to her two lumps, came forward -gallantly with: - -"Oh, but, Mrs. Miller, when our dear Mrs. Bettersworth----" - -"That's what I was thinking of," Mrs. Miller put it over her. - -"Well for my part," declared Mrs. Dinkelspiel, with the air of not -caring who knew it, "I don't want my girls to sell tickets or anything; -it makes 'em too forward." Mrs. Harvey, whose husband was in hardware, -began to tell discursively about a perfectly lovely entertainment they -had had in Newton Centre for the missionary society, which Mrs. Miller -took exception to on the ground of its frivolity. - -"I don't know," she maintained, "if the Lord's work ain't hindered by -them sort of comicalities as much as it's helped." - -I am not sure where this discussion mightn't have landed us if the -general attention had not been distracted just then by my husband, an -hour before his time, coming through the front gate and up the walk. He -had evidently forgotten my tea party, for he came straight to me, and -backed away precipitately through the portières as soon as he saw the -assembled ladies sitting about the wall. It was not that which disturbed -us; any Higgleston male would have done the same, but it was plain in -the brief glimpse we had of him that he looked white and stricken. A -little later we heard him in the back of the house making ambiguous -noises such as not one of my guests could fail to understand as the -precursor of a domestic crisis. I could see the little flutter of -uneasiness which passed over them, between their sense of its demanding -my immediate attention and the fear of leaving before the expressed -time. Fortunately the stroke of five released them. The door was hardly -shut on the last silk skirt when I ran out and found him staring out of -the kitchen window. - -"Well?" I questioned. - -"I thought they would never go," he protested. "Come in here." He led -the way to the living room as if somehow he found it more appropriate to -the gravity of what he had to impart, and yet failed to make a beginning -with his news. He shut the door and leaned against it with his hands -behind him for support. - -"Has anything happened?" - -"Happened? Oh, I don't know. I've lost my job." - -"Lost? Burton Brothers?" I was all at sea. - -He nodded. "They're closing out; the manager's in town to-day. He told -us...." By degrees I got it out of him. Burton Brothers thought they saw -hard times ahead, they were closing out a number of their smaller -establishments, centering everything on their Chicago house. Suddenly my -thought leaped up. - -"But couldn't they give you something there ... in Chicago?" I was dizzy -for a moment with the wild hope of it. Never to live in Higgleston any -more--but Tommy cut me short. - -"They've men who have been with them longer than I have to provide -for.... I asked." - -"Oh, well, no matter. The world is full of jobs." Looking for one -appealed to me in the light of an adventure, but because I saw how pale -he was I went to him and began to kiss him softly. By the way he yielded -himself to me I grasped a little of his lost and rudderless condition, -once he found himself outside the limits of a salaried employment. I -began to question him again as the best way of getting the extent of our -disaster before us. - -"What does Mr. Rathbone say?" Rathbone was our working tailor, a thin, -elderly, peering man of a sort you could scarcely think of as having any -existence apart from his shop. He used to come sidling down the street -to it and settle himself among his implements with the air of a brooding -hen taking to her nest; the sound of his machine was a contented -clucking. - -"He was struck all of a heap. They're better fixed than we are." Tommy -added this as an afterthought as likely to affect the tailor's attitude -when he came to himself. "They" were old Rathbone and his daughter, one -of those conspicuously blond and full-breasted women who seem to take to -the dressmaking and millinery trades by instinct. As she got herself up -on Sunday in her smart tailoring, with a hat "from the city," and her -hair amazingly pompadoured, she was to some of the men who came to our -church, very much what the brass teakettle was to me, a touch of the -unattainable but not unappreciated elegancies of life. Tommy admired her -immensely and was disappointed that I did not have her at the house -oftener. - -"They've got her business to fall back on," Tommy suggested now with an -approach to envy. He had never seen Miss Rathbone as I had, -professionally, going about with her protuberant bosom stuck full of -pins, a tape line draped about her collarless neck, and her skirt and -belt never quite together in the back, so he thought of her -establishment as a kind of stay in affliction. - -"And I have the stage," I flourished. It was the first time I had -thought of it as an expedient, but I glanced away from the thought in -passing, for to say the truth I didn't in the least know how to go about -getting a living by it. I creamed some chipped beef for Tommy's supper, -a dish he was particularly fond of, and opened a jar of quince -marmalade, and all the time I wasn't stirring something or setting the -table, I had my arms around him, trying to prop him against what I did -not feel so much terrifying as exciting. We talked a little about his -getting his old place back in Taylorville, and just as we were clearing -away the supper things we saw Miss Rathbone, with her father tucked -under her arm, pass the square of light raying out into the spring dusk -from our window, and a moment later they knocked at our door. It was one -of the things that I felt bound to like Miss Rathbone for, that she took -such care of her father; she did everything for him, it was said, even -to making up his mind for him, and this evening by the flare of the lamp -Tommy held up to welcome them, it was clear she had made it up to some -purpose. It must have been what he saw in her face that made my husband -put the lamp back on the table from which the white cloth had not yet -been removed, as if the clearing up was too small a matter to consort -with the occasion. - -I was relieved to have my husband take charge of the visit, especially -as he made no motion to invite them into the front room where the -remains of the bread and butter and the chairs against the wall would -have apprised Miss Rathbone of my having entertained company on an -occasion to which she had not been invited. It was part of Tommy's sense -of social obligation that we ought never to neglect Mr. Rathbone, whom, -though his connection with the business was as slight as my husband's, -he insisted on regarding as in some sort a partner. So we sat down -rather stiffly about the table still shrouded in its white cloth, as -though upon it were about to be laid out the dead enterprise of Burton -Brothers, and looked, all of us, I think, a little pleased to find -ourselves in so grave a situation. - -Miss Rathbone, who had always a great many accessories to her toilet, -bags and handkerchiefs and scarves and things, laid them on the table as -though they were a kind of insignia of office, and made a poor pretence -to keep up with me the proper feminine detachment from the business -which had brought them there. We neither of us, Miss Rathbone and I, had -the least idea what the other might be thinking about or presumably -interested in, though I think she made the more gallant effort to -pretend that she did. On this evening I could see that she was full of -the project for which she had primed her father, and was nervously -anxious lest he shouldn't go off at the right moment or with the proper -pyrotechnic. - -I remember the talk that went on at first, because it was so much in the -way of doing business in Higgleston, and impressed me even then with its -factitious shrewdness, based very simply on the supposition that -Capitalists--it was under that caption that Burton Brothers -figured--never meant what they said. Capitalists were always talking of -hard times; it was part of their deep laid perspicacity. Burton Brothers -wished to sell out the business; was it reasonable to suppose they would -think it good enough to sell and not good enough to go on with? - -"Father thinks," said Miss Rathbone, and I am sure he had done so -dutifully at her instigation, "that they couldn't ask no great price -after talking about hard times the way they have." - -It was not in keeping with what was thought to be woman's place, that -she should go on to the completed suggestion. In fact, so far as I -remember it never was completed, but was talked around and about, as if -by indirection we could lessen the temerity of the proposal that old -Rathbone and Tommy should buy out the shop on such favorable terms as -Burton Brothers, in view of their own statement of its depreciation, -couldn't fail to make. - -"You could live over the store," Miss Rathbone let fall into the -widening rings of silence that followed her first suggestion; "your rent -would be cheaper, and it would come into the business." - -I felt that she made it too plain that the chief objection that my -husband could have was the lack of money for the initial adventure; but -because I realized that much of my instinctive resistance to a plan that -tied him to Higgleston as to a stake, was due to her having originated -it, I kept it to myself. I had a hundred inarticulate objections, chief -of which was that I couldn't see how any plan that was acceptable to the -Rathbones, could get me on toward the Shining Destiny, but when you -remember that I hadn't yet been able to put that concretely to myself, -you will see how impossible it was that I should have put it to my -husband. In the end Tommy was talked over. I believe the consideration -of going on in the same place and under the same circumstances without -the terrifying dislocation of looking for a job, had more to do with it -than Miss Rathbone's calculation of the profits. We wrote home for the -money; Effie wrote back that everything of mother's was involved in the -stationery business, which was still on the doubtful side of prosperity, -but Tommy's father let us have three hundred dollars. - -The necessity of readjusting our way of life to Tommy's new status of -proprietor, and moving in over the store, kept my plans for the dramatic -exploitation of Higgleston in abeyance. It seemed however by as much as -I was now bound up with the interest of the community, to put me on a -better footing for beginning it, and on Decoration Day, walking in the -cemetery under the bright boughs, between the flowery mounds, the Gift -stirred in me, played upon by this touching dramatization of common -human pain and loss. I recalled that it was just such solemn festivals -of the people that I had had in mind to lay hold on and make the medium -of a profounder appreciation. And the next one about to present itself -as an occasion was the Fourth of July. - -I detached myself from Tommy long enough to make my way around to two or -three of the ladies who usually served on the committee. - -"We ought to have a meeting soon now," I suggested; "it will take all of -a month to get the children ready." - -"That's what we thought," agreed Mrs. Miller heavily. "They was to our -house Thursday----" She went on to tell me who was to read the -Declaration and who deliver the oration. - -"But," I protested, "that's exactly what they've had every Fourth these -twenty years!" - -"Well, I guess," said Mrs. Harvey, "if Higgleston people want that kind -of a celebration, they've a right to have it." - -"I guess they have," Mrs. Miller agreed with her. - -They had always rather held it out against me at Higgleston that I had -never taken the village squabbles seriously, that I was reconciled too -quickly for a proper sense of their proportions, and they must have -reckoned without this quality in me now, for I was so far from realizing -the deliberateness of the slight, that I thought I would go around on -the way home and see our minister; perhaps he could do something. It -appeared simply ridiculous that Higgleston shouldn't have the newest of -this sort of thing when it was there for the asking. - -I found him raking the garden in his third best suit and the impossible -sort of hat affected by professional men in their more human occasions. -The moment I flashed out at him with my question about the committee, he -fell at once into a manner of ministerial equivocation--the air of being -man enough to know he was doing a mean thing without being man enough to -avoid doing it. Er ... yes, he believed there had been a meeting ... he -hadn't realized that I was expecting to be notified. I wasn't a regular -member, was I? - -"No," I admitted, "but last year----" The intention of the slight began -to dawn on me. - -"You see, the programme is usually made up from the children of the -united Sunday schools...." - -"I know, of course, but what has that?..." He did know how mean it was; -I could see by the dexterity with which he delivered the blow. - -"A good many of the mothers thought they'd rather not have them exposed -to ... er ... professional methods." As an afterthought he tried to give -it the cast of a priestly remonstrance which he must have seen didn't in -the least impose on me. - -I suppose it was the fear of how I might put it to one of his best -paying parishioners that led him to go around to the store the next -morning and make matters worse by explaining to Tommy that though the -children weren't to be contaminated by my professionalism, it could -probably be arranged for me to "recite something." To do Tommy justice, -he was as mad as a hatter. Being so much nearer to village-mindedness -himself, I suppose my husband could better understand the mean envy of -my larger opportunity, but his obduracy in maintaining that I had been -offended led to the only real initiative he ever showed in all the time -I was married to him. - -"I'd just like to _show_ them!" he kept sputtering. All at once he -cheered up with a snort. "_I'll_ show them!" He was very busy all the -evening with letters which he went out on purpose to post, with the -result that when a few days later he made his contribution to the -fireworks fund, he made it a little larger, as became a live business -man, on the ground that he wouldn't be able to participate as his wife -had "accepted an invitation to take charge of the programme at Newton -Centre." Newton Centre was ten miles away, and though I couldn't do much -on account of the difficulty of rehearsals, I managed to make the -announcement of it in the county paper convey to them that what they had -missed wasn't quite to be sicklied over with Mrs. Miller's asseveration -of a notable want of moral particularity at Newton Centre. The very -first time I went out to a Sunday-school social thereafter it was made -plain to me that if I wanted to take up the annual Library -entertainment, it was open to me. - -"And I always will say," Mrs. Miller conceded, "that there's nobody can -make your children seem such a credit to you as Mrs. Bettersworth." - -"It's a regular talent you have," Mrs. Harvey backed her up, "like a -person in the Bible." This scriptural reference came in so aptly that I -could see several ladies nodding complacently. Mrs. Ross sailed quite -over them and landed on the topmost peak of approbation. - -"I've always believed," she asserted, "that a Christian woman on the -stage would have an uplifting influence." - -But by this time my ambition had slacked under the summer heat and the -steady cluck of old Rathbone's machine and the mixed smell of damp -woollen under the iron, and creosote shingle stains. There had been no -loss of social standing in our living over the store; such readjustments -in Higgleston went by the name of bettering yourself, and were -commendable. But somehow I could never ask ladies to tea when the only -entrance was by way of a men's furnishing store. The four rooms, opening -into one another so that there was no way of getting from the kitchen to -the parlour except through the bedroom, I found quite hopeless as a -means of expressing my relation to all that appealed to me as inspiring, -dazzling. Because I could not go out without making a street toilet, I -went out too little, and suffered from want of tone. And suddenly along -in September came a letter from O'Farrell offering me a place in his -company, and a note from Sarah begging me to accept it. If up to that -time I had not thought of the stage as a career, now at the suggestion -the desire of it ravened in me like a flame. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -"And you never seem to think I might not _want_ my wife to go on the -stage?" - -I do not know what unhappy imp prompted Tommy to take that tone with me; -but whenever I try to fix upon the point of reprehensibleness which led -on from my writing to O'Farrell that I would join him in ten days in -Chicago, to the tragic termination of my marriage, I found myself -whirled about this attitude of his in the deep-seated passionate Why of -my life. Why should love be tied to particular ways of doing things? -What was this horror of human obligation that made it necessary, since -Tommy and I were so innocently fond of one another, that one of us -should be made unhappy by it? Why should it be so accepted on all sides -that it should be I? For my husband's feeling was but a single item in -the total of social prejudice by which, once my purpose had gone abroad -by way of the Rathbones, I found myself driven apart from the community -interest as by a hostile tide, across which Higgleston gazed at me with -strange, begrudging eyes. I recall how the men looked at me the first -time I went out afterward, a little aslant, as though some ineradicable -taint of impropriety attached in their minds to any association with -the stage. - -Whatever attitude Tommy finally achieved in the necessity of sustaining -the situation he had created for himself by his backing of my first -professional venture, was no doubt influenced by the need of covering -his hurt at realizing, through my own wild rush to embrace the present -opportunity, how far I was from accepting life gracefully at his hands, -the docile creature of his dreams. Little things come back to me ... -words, looks ... sticks and straws of his traditions made wreckage by -the wind of my desire, which my resentment at his implication in the -general attitude, prevented me from fully estimating. My mother too, to -whom I wrote my decision as soon as I had arrived at it, in a long -letter designed to convince me that a wife's chief duty and becomingness -lay in seeing that nothing of her lapped over the bounds prescribed by -her husband's capacity, contributed to the exasperated sense I had of -having every step toward the fulfilment of my natural gift dragged at by -loving hands. Poor mother, I am afraid I never quite realized what a -duckling I turned out to her, nor with what magnanimity she faced it. - -"But I suppose you think you are doing right," she wrote at the end, and -then in a postscript, "I read in the papers there is a church in New -York that gives communion to actors, but I don't expect you will get as -far as that." - -It was finally Miss Rathbone who relieved the situation by pulling Tommy -over to a consenting frame of mind in consideration of the neat little -plumlet she extracted from it for herself by making me a travelling -dress in three days. She brought it down to the house for me to try on, -and it was pathetic to see the way my husband hung upon the effect she -made for him of turning me out in a way that was a credit to them both. - -"You'll see," she seemed to be saying to him by nothing more explicit -than an exclamation full of pins and a clever way of squinting at the -hang of my skirt, "that when we two take a hand at the affairs of the -great world we can come up to the best of them." And all the time I -could hear the Higgleston ladies drumming up trade for her out of Newton -Centre with their "Stylish? Oh, very. She makes all her clothes for Mrs. -Bettersworth--Olivia Lattimore, the actress, you know." - -Just at the end though, when we were lying in bed the last morning, -afraid to go to sleep again lest we shouldn't get up early enough to -catch the train, I believe if Tommy had risen superior to his -traditional objection to a married woman having interests outside her -home, and claimed me by some strong personal need of his own, I should -have answered it gladly. The trouble with my husband's need of me was -that it left too much over. - -"But of course," he reminded me at the station, "you can give it up any -minute if you want to." I think quite to the last he hoped I would rise -to some such generous pretence and come back to him, but we neither of -us had much notion of the nature of a player's contract. - -I had arranged to stay with Pauline until I could look about me, and -from the little that I had been able to tell her of my affairs I could -see she was in a flutter what to think of me. During the five days I was -in her house I watched her swing through a whole arc of possible -attitudes, to settle with truly remarkable instinct on the one which her -own future permitted her most consistently to maintain. - -"You dear, ridiculous child," she hovered over the point with indulgent -patronage, "what will you think of next?" - -Pauline herself was going through a phase at the time. They had moved -out to a detached house at Evanston on account of its being better for -the baby, and there was a visible diminution of her earlier effect of -housewifely efficiency, in view of Henry's growing prosperity. You could -see all Pauline's surfaces like a tulip bed in February, budding toward -a new estimate of her preciousness in terms of her husband's income. -When she took me by the shoulders, holding me off from her to give play -to the pose of amused, affectionate bewilderment, I could see just where -the consciousness of a more acceptable femininity as evinced by her -being provided with a cook and a housemaid, prompted her to this -gracious glozing of my not being in quite so fortunate a case. I was to -be the Wonder, the sport on the feminine bush, dear and extenuated, made -adorably not to feel my excluding variation; an attitude not uncommon in -wives of well-to-do husbands toward women who work. It was an attitude -successfully kept up by Pauline Mills for as long as I provided her the -occasion. Just at first I suspect I rather contributed to it by my own -feeling of its being such a tremendous adventure for me, Olivia -Lattimore, with Taylorville, Hadley's pasture and the McGee children -behind me, to be going on the stage. How I exulted in it all, the hall -bedroom where I finally settled across from Sarah Croyden, the worry of -rehearsals, the baked smell of the streets bored through by the raw lake -winds, the beckoning night lights--the vestibule of doors opening on the -solemn splendour of the world. - -At the rehearsals I met Cecelia Brune, if anything prettier than before, -and quite perceptibly harder, and Jimmy Vantine, still in love with her, -still with his bald crown not quite clean and the same objectionable -habit of sidling about, fingering one's dress, laying hands on one as he -talked. I met Manager O'Farrell, not a whit altered, and Miss Laurine -Dean. I liked and I didn't like her. She drew by a certain warm charm of -personality that repelled in closer quarters by its odours of -sickliness. There was a quality in her beauty as of a flower kept too -long in its glass, not so much withered as ready to fall apart. She had -small appealing hands, such as moved one to take them up and handle -them, and served somehow to mitigate a subtle impression of impropriety -conveyed by her slight sidewise smile. She was probably good-natured by -temperament and peevish through excessive use of cigarettes. She made a -point of always speaking well of everybody, but it was a long time -before I learned that no sort of blame was so deadly as her -commendation. "Such a beautiful woman Miss Croyden is," she would say, -"isn't it a pity about her nose," and though I had never thought of -Sarah's nose as mitigating against her perfection, I found myself after -that thinking of it. You could see that magnanimity, which was her -chosen attitude, was often a strain to her. I do not think she had any -gift at all, but she had a perception of it that had enabled her to -produce a very tolerable imitation of acting and kept her, in a covert -way, inordinately jealous of the gift in others. She was jealous of -mine. - -It was not all at once I discovered it. In the beginning, because I -never detected her in any of the obvious snatchings of lines and -positions that went on at rehearsals, but even making a stand for me -against incursions into my part which I was too unaccustomed to -forestall, I thought of her as being of rather better strain than most -of the company. I was probably the only member of it unaware of her -deliberate measures not to permit me such a footing as might lead to my -supplanting her with Manager O'Farrell, toward whom I began to find -myself in what, for me, was an interesting and charming relation. It was -a relation I should have been glad to maintain with any member of the -company, but it was only O'Farrell who found himself equal to it. I was -full and effervescing with the joy of creation; night by night as I felt -the working of the living organism we should have been, transmitting -supernal energies of emotion to the audience, who by the very -communicating act became a part of us, I felt myself also warming toward -my fellow players. I was so charged I should have struck a spark from -any one of them when we met, but for the fact that by degrees I -discovered that they presented to me the negative pole. - -I was aware of such communicating fluid between particular pairs of -them. I saw it spark from eye to eye, heard it break in voices; it -flashed like sheet lightning about our horizons on occasions of great -triumph; but I was distinctly alive to the fact that the medium by which -it was accomplished was turned from me. At times I was brushed by the -wing of a suspicion that among the men, there was something almost -predetermined in their denial of what was for me, the sympathetic, -creative impulse. I was a little ashamed for them of the gaucherie of -withholding what seemed so important to our common success, and yet I -seemed always to be surprising all of them at it, except Jimmy Vantine -and the manager. I couldn't of course, on account of his propensity for -laying hands on one, take it from Jimmy, but between Mr. O'Farrell and -me it ran with a pleasant, profitable warmth. I was conscious always of -acting better the scenes I had with him. The thrill of them was never -quite broken in off-the-stage hours. I felt myself sustained by it. For -one thing the man had genuine talent, and I think besides Sarah Croyden -and Jimmy Vantine, no one else in the company had very much. Jimmy had a -gift, besmeared and discredited by his own cheapness, but O'Farrell had -a real flowing genius and a degree of personal vitality that sketched -him out as by fire from the flat Taylorville types I had known. We used -to talk together about my own possibilities and I had many helpful hints -from him, but in spite of this friendliness I never made any way with -him against Miss Dean. Not that I tried, but by degrees I found that -suggestions made and favours asked, were granted or accepted on the -basis of their non-interference with our leading lady. I was not without -intimations, which I usually disregarded because I found their -conclusions impossible to maintain, that she even triumphed over me in -little matters too inconsiderable to have been taken into account except -on the understanding that we were pitted in a deliberate rivalry. I was -hurt and amazed at times to discover that we presented this aspect to -the rest of the company. I felt that I was being judged by my conduct of -a business in which I was not engaged. - -The situation, however, had not developed to such a pitch by the time we -played in Kincade, that it could affect my pleasure in the visit Tommy -paid me there; I was overjoyed to have the arms of my own man about me -again; I was proud of his pride in my success as _Polly Eccles_, and -pleased to have him and Sarah pleased with one another. I thought then -that if I could only have Tommy and my work I should ask no more of -destiny; I do not now see why I couldn't, but I like best to think of -him as he seemed to me then, wholesome and good, raised by his joy of -our reunion almost to my excited plane, generous in his sharing of my -triumphs. It seemed for the moment to put my feet quite on solid ground. -I knew at last where I was. - -It was about a month after this that I began to find myself pitted -against Miss Dean in a struggle for some dimly grasped advantage, with -the dice cogged against me. I saw myself in the general estimate, -convinced of handling my game badly, and could form no guess even at the -expected moves. I smarted under a sense that Manager O'Farrell was not -backing up the friendliness of our relations, and I remember saying to -Sarah Croyden once that I suspected Miss Dean was using her sex -attraction against me, but I missed the point of Sarah's slow, -commiserating smile. At the time we were all more or less swamped by the -discomforts of our wintry flights from town to town, execrable hotels, -irregular and unsatisfying meals. One and another of us went down with -colds, and finally toward the end of February, I was taken with a severe -neuralgia. It reached its acutest stage the first night we played at -Louisville. - -I had hurried home from the theatre the moment I was released from my -part, to find relief from it in rest, but an hour or two later, still -suffering and discovering that I had taken all my powders, I decided to -go down to Sarah's room on the lower floor to ask for some that I knew -she had. I slipped on my shoes and a thick gray dressing gown, and -taking the precaution of wrapping my head in a shawl against the -draughty halls, I went down to her. I was returning with the box of -powders in my hand when I was startled by the sound of a door lifting -carefully on the latch. The hotel was built in the shape of a capital T, -with the stair halfway of the stem. I was almost at the foot of it -facing the cross hall that gave me a view of the door of Miss Dean's -room, and I saw now that it was slightly ajar. I shrank instinctively -into the shadow of the recess where the stair began, for I was unwilling -that anybody should see the witch I looked in my dressing gown and -shawl. In the interval before the door widened I heard the tick of a -tin-faced clock just across from me. Part of the enamel was fallen away -from the face of it so that it looked as if eaten upon by discreditable -sores; a chandelier holding two smoky kerosene lamps hung slightly awry -at the crossing of the T, and cast a tipsy shadow. The door swung back -slightly, it opened into the room, and a man came out of it and crossed -directly in front of me, probably to his room in the other arm of the T. - -Once out of the door it snapped softly to behind him, and the man fell -instantly into a manner that disconnected him with it to a degree that -could only have been possible to an accomplished actor. If I had not -seen him come out of it, I should have supposed him abroad upon such a -casual errand as my own. - -But there was no mistaking that it was Manager O'Farrell. By the -tin-faced clock it was a quarter past one. And he would have been home -from the theatre more than an hour! - -I got up to my room somehow; I think my neuralgia must have left me with -the shock; I can't remember feeling it any more after that. You have to -remember that this was my first actual contact with sin of any sort. -Generations of the stock of Methodism revolted in me. I had liked the -man, I had thought of our relation as something precious, to be kept -intact because it nourished the quality of our art, and I had all the -conventional woman's horror of being brought in touch with looseness. It -was part of the admitted business of the men of my class to keep their -women from such contacts, and Manager O'Farrell had allowed me to enter -into a sort of rivalry with a shameless woman--with his mistress. - -I have always been what the country people in Ohianna call a -knowledgable woman, I have not much faculty of getting news of a -situation through the facts as they present themselves, but I have -instincts which under the stimulus of emotion work with extraordinary -celerity and thoroughness. Now suddenly the half-apprehended suggestion -of the last few months took fire from the excitement of my mind, and -exploded into certainties. I sensed all at once intolerable things, the -withholden eyes, the covert attention fixed on my relations with the -manager and Miss Dean. I lay on the bed and shuddered with dry sobs; -other times I lay still, awake and blazing. About daylight Sarah came up -to inquire how my neuralgia did. She found me with the unopened box -clutched tightly in my hand. She turned up the smoky gas and noted the -dark circles under my eyes. - -"What has happened? Something, I know," she insisted gently. I blurted -it out. - -"Mr. O'Farrell ... I saw him come out of Miss Dean's room ... at a -quarter of one. He was ... oh, Sarah ... he was!..." I relapsed again -into the horror of it. - -"Oh!" she said. She turned out the light and came and forced me gently -under the covers and got into bed beside me. - -"Didn't you know?" she questioned. - -"Did you?" - -"No one really knows these things. I didn't want to be the first to -suggest it to you." - -"Do the others know?" - -"As much as we do. It has been going on a long time." - -"And you put up with it--you go about with them?" I was astonished at -the welling up of disgust in me. Sarah felt for my hand and held it. - -"My dear, in our business you have to learn to take no notice. It is not -that these things are so much worse with actors, but it is more -difficult to keep them covered up. You must know that a great many -people do such things." - -"I know--_wicked_ people. I never thought of its being done by anybody -you liked." - -"Oh, yes;" she was perfectly simple. "You can like them, you can like -them greatly." I remembered that I oughtn't to have said that to Sarah -Croyden. - -"You mustn't think Mr. O'Farrell such a bad man. He is probably fond of -her. In some respects he is a very good man. When I was--left, without a -penny, he might have made terms with me. Some managers would. But he -gave me a living salary and left me to myself. He has been very kind to -me." - -"But she----" I choked back my sick resentment to get at what had been -tearing its way through my consciousness for the last three hours. "She -must have thought that _that_ was what I wanted of him...." - -"Well, it is natural she should be anxious, with other women about. She -is in love with him." - -"Did you think so? About me, I mean?" - -"No," said Sarah. "No, I didn't think so." - -It was light enough now to show the outline of the drifts along the -sills and the fine gritty powder which the wind dashed intermittently -against the panes; the filter of day under the scant blinds brought out -in the affair streaks of vulgarity as evident as the pattern of the -paper on the wall. It seemed to borrow cheapness from the broken castor -of the bureau, as from my recollection of the eaten face of the clock -and the leaning chandelier. I sat up in the bed and laid hold of Sarah -in my eagerness to get clear of what by my mere knowledge of it, seemed -an unbearable complicity. - -"I had a feeling for him," I admitted. "I could act better with him; but -it was different from that--you know it was different." - -"Yes," said Sarah, "I know. I know because I am that way myself; it is -_like_ that, but it isn't that." I was still, holding my breath while -she considered; we were very close upon the twined roots of sex and -art. - -"There's a feeling that goes with acting, with other sorts of things, -painting and music, maybe, a feeling of your wanting to get _through_ to -something and lay hold of it, and your not being able to leaves you ... -aching somehow, and you think if there's a particular person ... I think -O'Farrell would understand ... it is being able to act makes you know -the difference I suppose. He really can act you know, and you can, but -Dean wouldn't understand, nor the others. My--Mr. Lawrence didn't -understand!" It was the first time she had ever mentioned him to me. -"Sometimes I think they might have felt the difference just at first, -but nobody told them and they got used to thinking it is ... the other -thing." She drew me down into the bed again and covered me. "You mustn't -take it to hard ... we all go through it once ... and you are safe so -long as you know." - -"But I can't go on with it." I was positive on that point. "Sarah, -Sarah, don't say I have to go on with it." - -"I know you can't. But you just have to." - -"I should never be able to face either of them again without showing -that I know." - -"And then the others will know and they will think ..." - -I threw out my arms, seeing how I was trapped. I wanted to cry out on -them; to despise the woman openly. "And they will think that I am -jealous ... that I wanted it myself...." - -I rolled in the bed and bit my hands with shame and anger. Sarah caught -me in her arms and held me until the paroxysm passed. I was quieted at -last from exhaustion. - -"You can stay in your room to-day," she suggested. "I can bring your -meals up to you; this neuralgia will give you an excuse, and you needn't -see any one until you go to the theatre. That will give you one day. -Maybe by to-morrow ..." - -But I had no confidence that to-morrow would bring me any sensible -relief. The moral shock was tremendous. All my pride was engaged on the -side of never letting anybody know; to have been misunderstood in the -quality of my disgust would have been the intolerable last thing. Sarah -brought up my breakfast before she had her own; she reported nobody -about yet except Jimmy Vantine who had inquired for me. About half an -hour later she came softly in again with a yellow envelope open in her -hand. I saw by her face that it was for me and that the news it -contained put the present situation out of question. - -"Is it from my husband?" I demanded. I hardly knew what I hoped or -expected, a possibility of release flashed up in me. - -"It has been forwarded." She sat down on the bed beside me. "My poor -Olivia ... you must try to think of it as anything but a way out. Mr. -O'Farrell will let you go for this...." If it had to happen it couldn't -have happened better. - -"Give it to me----" - -"Remember it is a way out." - -I read it hastily: - - Mother had a stroke. Come at once. - - Signed: FORESTER. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -It was a common practice in Taylorville never to send for the doctor -until you knew what was the matter with you. So long as the symptoms -failed to align themselves with any known disorder, they were supposed -to be amenable to neighbourly advice, to the common stock of medical -misinformation, to the almanac or some such repository of science; and -though this practice led on too many occasions to the disease getting -past the curable stages before the physician was called, I never -remember to have heard it questioned. - -"You see," people remarked to one another at the funeral, "they didn't -know what was the matter with her until it was too late," and it passed -for all extenuation. It was natural then that my mother should have kept -any premonitory symptoms of her indisposition even from Forester; close -as they were in their affections she would have thought it indelicate to -have spoken to him of her health. The first determinate stroke of it -came upon her sitting quietly in her usual place at prayer meeting on a -Wednesday evening. - -It had been Forester's habit to close the shop a little early on that -evening, going around to the church to walk home with her, getting in -before the last hymn to save his face with the minister by a show of -regular attendance. But on this evening customers detained him beyond -his usual hour, so that by the time he reached the corner opposite the -church, he saw the people dribbling out by twos and threes, across the -lighted doorway, and noted that my mother was not with them. He thought -she might have slipped out earlier and gone around to the shop for him -as occasionally happened, but seeing the lights did not go out at once -in the church, he looked in to make sure, and saw her still sitting in -her accustomed place. The sexton and the organist, who were fussing -together about a broken pedal, appeared not to have observed her there, -and one of them was reaching up to put out the light when Forester -touched her on the shoulder. She started and seemed to come awake with -an effort, and on the way home she stumbled once or twice in a manner -that led him, totally unaccustomed as he was to think of my mother as -ill in any sort, to get a little entertainment out of it by gentle -rallying, which was dropped when he discovered that it caused her -genuine, pained embarrassment. The following Tuesday he came home to the -midday meal to find her lying on the floor, inarticulate and hardly -conscious. There must have been two strokes in close succession, for she -had managed after falling, to get a cushion from the worn sitting-room -lounge under her head and to pull a shawl partly over her. Effie, who -was at Montecito, was summoned home, and that evening, by the doctor's -advice, the telegram was sent which separated me so opportunely from the -Shamrocks. By the time I reached her, speech had returned in a measure, -and by the end of a fortnight she was able to be lifted into the chair -which she never afterward left. - -I remember as if it were yesterday, the noble outline of her face and of -her head against the pillows, the smooth hair parted Madonna-wise and -brought low across her ears, the blue of her eyes looking out of the -dark, swollen circles, for all her fifty-two years, with the unawakened -clarity of a girl's. Stricken as I was from my first realizing contact -with sin, and my identification with it through the assumed passions of -the stage, it grew upon me during the days of my mother's illness that -there was a kind of intrinsic worth in her which I, with all my powers, -must forever and inalienably miss. With it there came a kind of -exasperation, never quite to leave me, of the certainty of not choosing -my own values, but of being driven with them aside and apart. - -It was responsible in part for a feeling I had of being somehow less -related to my mother's house than many of her distant kin who were -continually arriving out of all quarters, in wagons and top buggies, to -express a continuity of interest and kind which had the effect of -constituting me definitely outside the bond. - -The situation was furthered no doubt, by the whisper of my connection -with the stage which got about and set up in them an attitude of -circumspection, out of which I caught them at times regarding me with a -curiosity unmixed with any human sympathy. Yet I recall how keen an -appetite I had for what this illness of my mother's had thrown into -relief, the web of passionate human interactions, bone and body of the -spirituality that went clothed as gracelessly in the routine of their -daily lives as the figures of the men under the unyielding ugliness of -store clothing. It came out in the talk of the women sitting about the -base burner at night with their skirts folded back carefully across -their knees, in the watches we found it necessary to keep for the first -fortnight or so. I remember one of these occasions as the particular -instance by which my mother emerged for me from her condition of -parenthood, to the common plane of humanity, by way of an old romance of -her's with Cousin Judd. Cousin Lydia sat up with her that night and -Almira Jewett, a brisk, country clad woman of the Skaldic temperament -who from long handling of the histories of her clan had acquired an -absolute art of it. She was own sister to the woman who married my -mother's half-brother, and the Saga of the Judds and the Wilsons and the -Jewetts and the Lattimores ran off the points of her bright needles as -she sat with her feet on the fender, with a click and a spark. Cousin -Lydia never knitted; she sat with her hands folded in her large lap and -time seemed to rest with her. - -"It will be hard on Judd," Almira offered to the unspoken reference -forever in the air, as to the possible fatal termination of my mother's -illness. - -"Yes, it'll be hard on him." A faint, so faint nuance of assent in -Cousin Lydia's voice seemed to admit the succeeding comment, shorn of -impertinence. I guessed that the several members of the tribe were -relieved rather than constrained to drop their intimate concerns into -Almira Jewett's impartial histories. - -"I never," Almira invited, "did get the straight of that. Sally was -engaged to him, warn't she?" - -"Not to say engaged," Cousin Lydia paused for just the right shade of -relation, "but so as to want to be. Judd set store by her; he'd have had -it that way anyway, but Sally couldn't make up her mind to it on account -of their being own cousins." - -"I reckon she had the right of it; the Lord don't seem no way pleased -with kin marrying." - -"I don't know, I don't know;" Cousin Lydia dropped the speculation into -the pit of her own experience. "It looks like He wouldn't have made 'em -to care about it then. But being as she saw it that way, they couldn't -have done different. Not that Judd didn't see it in the light of his -duty, too." There was evidently nothing in the annals of the Judds and -the Lattimores which allowed a violation of the inward monitor. - -"Well, I must say, he has turned it into grace, if ever a man has. Not -to say but what you've helped him to it." It was in the manner of -Almira's concession of not in the matter, that Cousin Judd had chosen -Lydia chiefly for her capacity not to offer any distraction to his -profounder passion, and nothing in Cousin Lydia's comment to deny it. -From the room beyond we could hear the inarticulate, half-conscious -notice of my mother's pain. Cousin Lydia moved to attend her. - -"All those years," I whispered to Almira, "she has loved him and he has -loved my mother!" I was pierced through with the pure sword of the -spirit which had divided them. But Almira was more practical. - -"She was better off," Almira insisted. "Lydia hadn't no knack with men -folk ever. She knew Judd wouldn't have loved her, but so long as he -loved your mother she was safe. They got a good deal out of it, her -knowing and sympathizing. She could sympathize, you see, for she knew -how it was herself, loving Judd that way. It was no more than right they -should get what they could out of it. It was the only thing they had -between them." - -"All those years!" I said again. I felt myself immeasurably lifted out -of the mists and mires of the Shamrocks into clear and aching -atmospheres. - -"I will say this for Lydia," extenuated the Skald, "that though she -hadn't no gift to draw a man to her, she knew how to hold her hand off -and let him go his own thought. It was religion kept your mother and -Judd apart, and yet it was in religion they comforted one another. Lydia -never put herself forward like she might, claiming it was her religion -too. And she was one that appreciated church privileges." - -But I wondered where my father came in. It had been, I knew, a -passionate attachment. - -"Like a new house," said Almira, "built up where the old one has been, -but the cellars of it don't change. Real loving is never really got -over." I felt the phrase sounding in some subterranean crypt of my own. - -With this new light on it, it came out for me wonderfully in my mother's -face, as I watched her through the anxious days, how much her life had -been stayed in renunciations. I suppose my new appreciation must have -shone out for her as well, for I could see rising out of her disorder, -like a drowned person out of the sea, a bond of our common experience. -We were two women, together at last, my mother and I, and could have -speech with one another. - -Something no doubt contributed to this new understanding by an affair of -Forester's which, as I began to be acquainted with the incidents -preceding it, I believed to be partly responsible for my mother's -stroke. I have already sketched to you how Forester had grown up in the -need of finding himself always at the centre of feminine interest -without the opportunity of satisfying it normally by marriage, and how -the too early stimulation of sentiment and affection had led to his -being handed about from girl to girl in the attempt to gratify his need -without transgressing any of the lines marked out by his profession as -an eminently nice young man. It came naturally out of the mere -circumstance of there being a limited number of girls at hand whom he -might conceivably court without the intention of marrying, for him to -fall into the society of others whom he might not court but who might -nevertheless find it much to their advantage to marry him. - -I do not know how and when it came to my mother's ears that he was -calling frequently at the Jastrows; very likely they brought it to her -notice themselves. They were a poor, pushing sort, forever exposing -themselves to the slights arising from their own undesirability, which -they forever tearfully attributed to an undeserved and paraded poverty. -They paraded it now as the insuperable bar to all that they might have -done for my mother, all that they actually had it in their hearts to do -on their assumption of a right of being interested, an assumption which, -even in her weakness, before she could trust herself to talk very much, -I felt her dumbly imploring me to deny. The girl--Lily they called -her--was not without a certain appeal to the senses; and knowing rather -more of my brother's methods, I did not find Mrs. Jastrow's pretension -to a community of interest in what might be expected to come of his -attention, altogether unjustified. But in view of mother's condition and -what Effie told me of the way business was going--rather was not going -at all--any kind of marriage would have been out of the question. It was -the way I put the finality of that into my dealings with Mrs. Jastrow, -that drew mother over into the only relation of normal human -interdependence I was ever to have with her. Whenever Mrs. Jastrow would -come to call with that air she had, in her dress and manner, of being -pulled together and made the best of, I could see my mother's fears -signalling to me from the region of tremors and faintness in which she -had sunk, and I would set my wits up as a defence against what, -considering all there was against her, was a really gallant effort on -Mrs. Jastrow's part to make out of Forester's philanderings a basis for -a family intimacy. It was plain that neither my mother nor Mrs. Jastrow -dared put the question to Forester, but rested their case on such mutual -admissions of it as they could wring from one another. - -I could never make out on my mother's part, whether she was really -afraid of the issue, or if in the preoccupation of their affection both -she and Forester had overlooked his young man's right to a woman and a -life of his own. Through all her dumb struggle against it, never but -once did my mother openly face the ultimate possibility of his marriage -with Lily Jastrow. - -It was about the third week of her illness, and Mrs. Jastrow, making one -of her interminable calls, had been brought so nearly to the point of -tears by my imperiousness, that Effie had been obliged to draw her off -into the kitchen to have her opinion about a recipe for a mince meat -such as she knew the Jastrows couldn't afford to be instructed in, and -so had gotten her out of the side door and started down the walk before -the situation could come to a head. My mother watched her go. - -"Do you think," she hazarded suddenly, "that Forester really is engaged -to her?" - -"To Lily? Oh, no; Forester doesn't get engaged to girls, he -just--dangles." It was characteristic of my mother's partiality that -even damaging insinuations such as this, slid off from it as too far -from the possibility to be even entertained. Perhaps a trace of my old -exasperation with the whole situation, and the glimpse I had of Mrs. -Jastrow letting herself out of our gate with her assumption of being as -good as anybody still to the fore but a little awry, prompted me to add: - -"And it is only natural for her mother to make the most of it. She's -looking out for her own, just as you are." - -"A mother has a right to do that;" she protested, "to keep them from -making themselves miserable. It is no more than her duty." - -"Yes," I said; the remark had the effect of a challenge. - -"Young people don't know how to choose for themselves; they make -mistakes." She revolved something in her mind. "You, now ... you're -unhappy, aren't you, Olivia?" - -"Yes; oh, yes." I had not thought of myself as being so particularly, -but I did not see my way to deny it. - -"I've been afraid ... sometimes ... since you wrote me about going on -the stage, maybe you weren't exactly ... satisfied. But it isn't that, -is it?" - -"No, mother, it isn't that." - -"There! You see!" She shook off her weakness with the conviction. "And -you mightn't have been if I hadn't looked out for you a little." - -"Why, mother, what could you possibly----" She triumphed. - -"You remember that Garrett boy that was visiting at his uncle's? He -called that night; the night you were engaged to Tommy." - -"Yes, I remember. You sent him away?" - -"He wasn't suitable at all ... smoking, and driving about on Sunday that -way...." Her tone was defensive. "He left a letter that night----" - -"Mother! You didn't tell me!" - -"I was thinking it over ... I had a right ... you were too young!" - -"Mother ... did you read it?" - -"I ... looked at it. You hadn't met him but once and I had a right to -know; and that night you were engaged. I took it for a sign." - -"And the letter?" It seemed all at once an immeasurable and irreparable -loss. - -"I sent it back ... and, anyway, it turned out all right." I was -possessed for the moment with the conviction that it was all dreadfully, -despairingly wrong. - -"I couldn't have borne for you to marry anybody but a Christian, -Olivia!" I thought of Tommy's exceedingly slender claim to that -distinction and I laughed. - -"Tommy smokes," I said; "he says he has to do it with the customers." - -"Oh, but not as a habit, Olivia." I overrode that. - -"Tell me what became of him--of Mr. Garrett. Did you ever hear?" - -"He went West," she recollected; "I asked his aunt. He quarrelled with -them because his uncle wouldn't send him to school. At his age they -thought it wasn't suitable. I wouldn't have wanted you to go West, -Olivia." - -I took her worn hands in mine. "It's all right, mother. I'm not going -West. And I'm not going on the stage any more. I'm done with it." I felt -so, passionately, at the time. We sat quietly for a time in that -assurance and listened to Effie singing in the kitchen. - -"Olivia," she began timidly at last, "aren't you ever going to have any -more children?" - -"Oh, I hope so, mother. I haven't been strong, you know, since the first -one. We didn't think it advisable." - -"Well, if you can manage it that way ..." There was a trace in her tone -of the woman who hadn't been able to manage. I wished to reassure her. - -"When I was in the hospital the doctor told me ..." I could see the deep -flush rising over her face and neck; there were some things which her -generation had never faced. I let them fall with her hands and sat -gazing at the red core of the base burner, waiting until she should take -up her thought again. - -"I used to think those things weren't right, Olivia, but I don't know. -Sometimes I think it isn't right, either, to bring them into the world -when there is no welcome for them." She struggled with the admission. -"You and I, Olivia, we never got on together." - -"But that's all past now, mother." She clung to me for a while for -reassurance. - -"I hope so, I hope so; but still there are things I've always wanted to -tell you. When you wrote me about going on the stage ... there are wild -things in you, Olivia, things I never looked for in a daughter of mine, -things I can't understand nor account for unless--unless it was I turned -you against life ... my kind of life ... before you were born. Many's -the time I've seen you hating it and I've been harsh with you; but I -wanted you should know I was being harsh with myself ..." - -"Mother, dear, is it good for you to talk so?" - -"Yes, yes, I've wanted to. You see it was after your father came home -from the war and we were all broken up. Forester was sickly, and there -was the one that died. So when I knew you were coming, I--hated you, -Olivia. I wanted things different. I hated you ... until I heard you -cry. You cried all the time when you were little, Olivia, and it was I -that was crying in you. I've expected some punishment would come of it." - -"Oh, hush, hush mother! I shouldn't have liked it either in your place. -Besides, they say--the scientists--that it isn't so that things before -you are born can affect you as much as that." She moved her head feebly -on the pillows in deep-rooted denial. - -"They can say that, but we've never got on. There's things in you that -aren't natural for any daughter of mine. They can say that, Olivia, but -we--we know." - -"Yes, mother, we know." - -I took her hands again and nursed them against my cheek; after a time -tears began to drip down her flaccid cheeks and I wiped them away for -her. - -"Don't, mother, don't! We get along now, anyway! And as for the things -in me which are different, do you know, mother, I'm getting to know that -they are the best things in me." - -I honestly thought so; and after all these years I think so now. - -I wheeled her into the bedroom presently, where she fell into the light -slumber of the feeble, and seemed afterward hardly to remember, but I -was glad then to have talked it all out with her, for though she lived -nearly two years after, before I saw her again another stroke had -deprived her of articulateness. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -I went home to my husband after it began to seem certain that my -mother's condition would not change for some time, but I knew in the -going that neither Tommy nor Higgleston could ever present themselves to -me again in the aspect of an absolute destiny. By the incidents of the -past few weeks I had been pulled free from the obsession of -inevitableness with which my life had clothed itself until now; I stood -outside of it and questioned it in the light of what it might have been, -what it might yet become. Suppose I had received Helmeth Garrett's -letter; suppose my interest in Mr. O'Farrell had wavered a hair's -breadth out of the community of work into that more personal and -particular passion----? - -I quaked in the cold blasts which blew on me out of unsuspected doors -opening on my life. - -And still I went back to Higgleston. There seemed nothing else to do. I -think I deceived myself with the notion that there was something in -Tommy's resistance to a more acceptable destiny, that could be resolved -and dissipated by the proper stimulus. But I knew, in fact, that he and -Higgleston suited one another admirably. To my husband, that he should -keep a clothing store in a town of five thousand inhabitants was part -of the great natural causation. The single change to which our condition -was liable was that the business might take a turn which would enable us -to move out of the store into a house of our own. It had not occurred to -Tommy to take a turn himself. The Men's Tailors and Outfitters lay like -most business in Higgleston, in the back water, rocking at times in the -wake of the world traffic, but never moving with it. There was a vague -notion of progress abroad which resulted in our going through the -motions of the main current. The Live Business Men organized a Board of -Trade and rented a room to hold meetings in, but I do not remember that -when they had met, anything came of it. The great tides of trade went -about the world and our little fleet rocked up and down. If I had ever -had any hope that Tommy and I might out of our common stock, somehow -hoist sail and make a way out of it, in that spring and summer I -completely lost it. - -I believe Tommy thought we were perfectly happy. Considering how things -turned out, I am glad to have it so; but the fact is, there was not -between us so much as a common taste in furniture. In the five years of -married life, our home had filled up with articles which by colour and -line and unfitness jarred on every sense. Tommy had what he was pleased -to call an ear for music, and if the warring discords of our furnishings -could have been translated into sound he would have gone distracted -with it; being as it was he bought me a fire screen for my birthday. -Miss Rathbone hand-painted it for the Baptist bazaar, and Tommy had -bought it at three times what we could have afforded for a suitable -ornament. It was his notion of our relations that we and the Rathbones -should do things like that by one another. I suppose you can find the -like of that fire screen at some county fair still in Ohianna, but you -will find nothing more atrocious. Tommy liked to have it sitting well -out in the room where he could admire it. He would remark upon it -sometimes with complacency, evenings after the store was shut up, before -he sat down in his old coat and slippers to read the paper. Occasionally -I read to him out of a magazine or a play I had picked up, in the -intervals of which I used to catch him furtively keeping up with his -newspaper out of the tail of his eye. - -Now and then we went out to a sociable or to the Rathbones for supper. -Less frequently we had them to a meal with us. It was characteristic of -business partnerships in Higgleston that they involved you in -obligations of chicken salad and banana cake and the best tablecloth. -Tommy enjoyed these occasions, and if he had allowed himself to -criticise me at all, it would have been for my ineptitude at the happy -social usage. Things went on so with us month after month. - -And if you ask me why I didn't take the chance life offers to women to -justify themselves to the race, I will say that though the hope of a -child presents itself sentimentally as opportunity, it figures primarily -in the calculation of the majority, as a question of expense. The hard -times foreseen by Burton Brothers hung black-winged in the air. We had -not, in fact, been able to do more than keep up the interest on what was -still due on the stock and fixtures. Nor had I even quite recovered the -bodily equilibrium disturbed by my first encounter with the rending -powers of life. There was a time when the spring came on in a fulness, -when the procreant impulse stirred awake. I saw myself adequately -employed shaping men for it ... maybe ... but the immediate deterring -fact was the payment to be made in August. - -I went on living in Higgleston where human intercourse was organized on -the basis that whatever a woman has of intelligence and worth, over and -above the sum of such capacity in man, is to be excised as a superfluous -growth, a monstrosity. Does anybody remember what the woman's world was -like in small towns before the days of woman's clubs? There was a world -of cooking and making over; there was a world of church-going and -missionary societies and ministerial coöperation, half grudged and half -assumed as a virtue which, since it was the only thing that lay outside -themselves, was not without extenuation. And there was another world -which underlay all this, coloured and occasioned it, sicklied over with -futility; it was a world all of the care and expectancy of children -overshadowed by the recurrent monthly dread, crept about by whispers, -heretical but persistent, of methods of circumventing it, of a secret -practice of things openly condemned. It was a world that went half the -time in faint-hearted or unwilling or rebellious anticipation, and half -on the broken springs of what as the subject of the endless, -objectionable discussions, went by the name of "female complaints." - -In all this there was no room for Olivia. Somehow the ordering of our -four rooms over the store didn't appeal to me as a justification of -existence, and I didn't care to undertake again matching the adventures -of my neighbours in the field of domestic economy with mine in the -department of self-expression. Let any one who disbelieves it try if he -can assure the acceptance of his art on its merit as work, free of the -implication of egotism. You may talk about a new frosting for cake, or -an aeroplane you have invented, but you must not speak of a new verse -form or a plastic effect. - -All this time, in spite of my recent revulsion from it, I was consumed -with the desire of acting. My new-found faculty ached for use. It woke -me in the night and wasted me; I had wild thoughts such as men have in -the grip of an unjustifiable passion. All my imaginings at that time -were of events, untoward, fantastic, which should somehow throw me back -upon the stage without the necessity on my part, of a moral conclusion. -Sarah Croyden, to whom I wrote voluminously, could not understand why I -resisted it; there was after all no actual opposition except what lay -inherent in my traditions. Sarah had such a way of accepting life; she -used it and her gift. Mine used me. I saw that it might even abuse me. -She went, by nature, undefended and unharmed from the two-edged sword -that keeps the gates of Creative Art, but me it pierced even to the -dividing of soul and spirit. My husband stood always curiously outside -the consideration. I think he was scarcely aware of what went on in me; -if any news of my tormented state reached him, he would have seen, -except as it was mollified by affection, what all Higgleston saw in it, -the restlessness of vanity, a craving for excitement, for praise, and a -vague taint of irregularity. He was sympathetic to the point of -admitting that Higgleston was dull; he thought we might join the -Chatauqua Society. - -"Or you might get up a class," he suggested hopefully; "it would give -you something to think about." - -"Teach," I cried; "TEACH! when I'm just aching to learn!" - -"Well, then," he achieved a triumph of reasonableness, "if you don't -know enough to teach in Higgleston, how are you going to succeed on the -stage?" - -It was not Tommy, however, but a much worse man who made up my mind for -me. He had been brought out from Chicago during my absence, to set up in -Higgleston's one department store, that factitious air of things being -done, which passed for the evidence of modernity. He had, in the set of -his clothes, the way he made the most of his hair and the least of the -puffiness about his eyes, the effect of having done something -successfully for himself, which I believe was the utmost recommendation -he had for the place. He preferred himself to my favour on the strength -of having seen more than a little of the theatre. Very soon after my -return, he took to dropping into my husband's store which, in view of -its being patronized by men who were chiefly otherwise occupied during -the day, was kept open rather late in the evenings. From sheer -loneliness I had fallen into the habit of going down after supper to -wait on a stray customer while Tommy made up the books. Mr. Montague, -who went familiarly about town by the name of Monty, would come in then -and loll across the counter chatting to me, while Tommy sat at his desk -with a green shade over his eyes, and Mr. Rathbone, who never came more -than a step or two out of his character as working tailor, clattered -about with his irons in the back, half screened by the racks of custom -made "Nobby suits, $9.98," which made up most of our stock in trade. - -I had already, without paying much attention to it, become accustomed -to the shifting of men's interest in me the moment my connection with -the stage became known: a certain speculation in the eye, a freshening -of the wind in the neighbourhood of adventure; but by degrees it began -to work through my preoccupations that Mr. Montague's attention had the -quality of settled expectation, the suggestion of a relation apart from -the casual social contact, which it wanted but an opportunity to -fulfill. It took the form very early, when Tommy would look up from his -entries and adding up to make his cheerful contribution to the -conversation, of an attempt to include me in a covert irritation at the -interruption. If by any chance he found me alone, his response to the -potential impropriety of the occasion, awoke in me the plain vulgar -desire to box his ears. But no experience so far served to reveal the -whole offensiveness of the man's assurance. - -The week that Tommy went up to Chicago to do his summer buying, we made -a practice of closing rather early in the long, enervating evenings, -since hardly any customer could have been inveigled into the store on -any account. I found it particularly irritating then, to have Mr. -Montague leaning across the counter to me with a manner that would have -caused the dogs in the street to suspect him of intrigue. The second or -third time this happened I made a point of slipping around to Mr. -Rathbone with the suggestion that if he would shut up and go home I -would take the books upstairs with me and attend them. - -I was indifferent whether or not Mr. Montague should hear me, but I -judged he had not, for far from accepting it as a hint that I wished to -get rid of him, that air he had of covert understanding appeared to have -increased in him like a fever. He made no attempt to resume the -conversation, but stood tapping his boot with a small cane he affected, -a flush high up under the puffy eyes, the corners of his mouth loosened, -every aspect of the man fairly bristling with an objectionable maleness. -I made believe to be busy putting stock in order, and in a minute more I -could hear old Rathbone come puttering out of his corner to draw the -dust cloths over the racks of ready-made suits and, after what seemed an -interminable interval, fumbling at the knobs of the safe. - -"Oh," I snatched at the opportunity, "I changed the combination; let me -show you." I was around beside him in a twinkling. - -"Good-night," I called to Montague over my shoulder. - -"Good-night," he said; the tone was charged. The fumbling of the locks -covered the sound of his departure. I got Mr. Rathbone out at the door -at last, and locked it behind him. I turned back to lower the flame of -the acetylene lamp and in the receding flare of it between the shrouded -racks I came face to face with Mr. Montague. He stood at the outer ring -of the light and in the shock of amazement I gave the last turn of the -button which left us in a sudden blinding dark. I felt him come toward -me by the sharp irradiation of offensiveness. - -"Oh, you clever little joker, you!" The tone was fatuous. - -I dodged by instinct and felt for the button again to throw on the flood -of light; it caught him standing square in the middle of the aisle in -plain sight from the street; almost unconsciously he altered his -attitude to one less betraying, but the response of his mind to mine was -not so rapid. - -"I'm going to shut up the store," I was very quiet about it. "You'll -oblige me by going----" - -"Oh, come now; what's the use? I thought you were a woman of the world." - -I got behind the counter, past him toward the door. - -"You an actress ... you don't mean to say! By Jove, I'm not going to be -made a fool of after such an encouragement! I'm not going without----" - -"Mr. Montague," I said, "Tillie Hemingway is coming to stay with me -nights; she will be here in a few minutes; you'd better not let her find -you here." I unbarred the door and threw it wide open. - -"Oh, come now----" He struggled for some footing other than defeat. "Of -course, if you can't meet me like a woman of the world----you're a nice -actress, you are!" I looked at him; the steps and voices of passersby -sounded on the pavement; he went out with his tail between his legs. I -locked the door after him and double locked it. - -I climbed up to my room and locked myself in that. The boiling of my -blood made such a noise in my ears that I could not hear Tillie -Hemingway when she came knocking, and the poor girl went away in tears. -After a long time I got to bed and sat there with my arms about my -knees. I did not feel safe there; I knew I should never be safe again -except in that little square of the world upon which the footlights -shone, from which the tightening of the reins of the audience in my -hands, should justify my life to me. I was sick with longing for it, -aching like a woman abandoned for the arms of her beloved. I fled toward -it with all my thought from illicit solicitation, but it was not the -husband of my body I thought of in that connection, but the choice of my -soul. - -People wonder why sensitive, self-respecting women are not driven away -from the stage by the offences that hedge it; they are driven deeper and -farther into its enfoldment. There is nothing to whiten the burning of -its shames but the high whiteness of its ultimate perfection. It is so -with all art, not back in the press of life, but forward on some -over-topping headland, one loses behind the yelping pack and eases the -sting of resentment. I did not agree in the beginning to make you -understand this. I only tell you that it is so. All that night I sat -with my head upon my knees and considered how I might win back to it. - -I tried, when my husband came home, to put the incident to him in a way -that would stand for my new-found determination. I did not get so far -with it. I saw him shrink from the mere recital with a man's -timorousness. - -"Oh, come--he couldn't have meant so bad as that." His male dread of a -"situation" plead with me not to insist upon it. "And he went just as -soon as you told him to. Of course if he had tried to force you ... but -you say yourself he went quietly." - -He was seeing and shrinking from what Higgleston would get out of the -incident in the way of vulgar entertainment if I insisted on his taking -it up; by the code there, I shouldn't have been subject to such if I -hadn't invited it. - -"Of course," he enforced himself, "you did right to turn him down, but I -don't believe he'll try it again." - -"He won't have a chance. I'm going back on the stage so soon;" the -implication of my tone must have got through even Tommy's -unimaginativeness; he said the only bitter thing that I ever heard from -him. - -"Well, if you hadn't gone on the stage in the first place it probably -wouldn't have happened." - -He came round to the situation in another frame when he learned that I -had written to Sarah putting matters in train for an engagement. - -"You will probably be away all winter," he said. "It seems to me, -Olivia, that you don't take any account of the fact that I am fond of -you." We were sitting on a little shelf of a back balcony we had, for -the sake of coolness, and I went and sat on his knee. - -"I'm fond of you, Tommy, ever so. But I can't stand the life here; it -smothers me. And we don't do anything; we don't get anywhere." - -"I don't know what you mean, Olivia; we're building up quite a business; -we'll be able to make a payment this year, and as the town improves----" - -"Oh, Tommy, come away; come away into the world with me. Let us go out -and do things; let us be part of things." - -"Higgleston's good enough for me. We're building up trade, and everybody -says the town is sure to go ahead----" - -"Oh, Tommy, Tommy, what do I care about a business here if we lose the -whole world--and we'll be old and gray before we get the business paid -for. Oh, it isn't because I don't care about you, Tommy, because I am -not satisfied with you; it is the glory of the world I want, and the -wonder of Art, and great deeds going up and down in it! I want us to -have that, Tommy; to have it together ... you and I, and not another. -It's all there in the world, Tommy, all the colour and the splendour ... -great love and great work ... let us go out and take it; let us go...." -I had slipped down from his knees to my own as I talked, pleading with -him, and I saw, by the light of the lamp from within, his face, charged -with pained bewilderment, settle into lines of habitual resistance to -the unknown, the unknowable. My voice trailed out into sobbing. - -"Of course, Olivia, I don't want to keep you if you are not happy here, -but I have to stay myself." His voice was broken but determined, with -the determination of a little man not seeing far ahead of him. "I have -to keep the business together." - -I went, as it was foredoomed I should, about the middle of September. -Sarah and I had been so fortunate as to get engagements together. My -going, upheaving as it had been in respect to my own adjustments, made -hardly a ripple in the life around me. Even Miss Rathbone failed to rise -to her former heights, but was obliged to piece out her interest with -her customary dressmaker's manner of having temporarily overlaid her -absorption in your affair with an unwilling distraction. - -The rest of Higgleston received the announcement with the air of not -supposing it to be any of their business, but that in any case they -couldn't approve of it. Mrs. Harvey put a common feminine view of it -very aptly. - -"I shouldn't think," she said, "your husband would let you." It was not -a view that was likely to have a deterrent effect upon me. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -We had the good fortune that year, Sarah and I, to be with a manager who -redeemed many O'Farrells. The Hardings--for his wife, under her stage -name of Estelle Manning, played with him and was the better half of all -his counsels--were of the sort of actor-managers to whom, if the -American stage ever arrives at anything commensurate with its -opportunity, it will owe much. They were not either of them of the -stripe of genius, but up to the limit of their endowment, sound, sincere -and able to interpret life to the people through the virtue of being so -humanly of the people themselves. It was very good for me to be with -them, not only for the stage craft they taught me, but for the healing -of my mind against the contagion of irresponsibility. The Hardings -taught me my way about the professional world, the management of my -gift, its market value, but I am not sure I do not owe much more to the -fact that they loved one another quite simply and devotedly, and to the -certainty which they seemed to make for us all that loyalty, truth, and -forbearance were part of the natural order of things. - -I was aware, when I was with the Shamrocks, of a subconscious current -against which any mention of my husband appeared a kind of gaucherie; -it was wholesome for me then, to find it expected of me by the Hardings -that I should act better after I had received a long, affectionate -letter from Tommy, and to be able to refer to it quite unaffectedly. -Everybody in the company took the greatest interest in his coming on at -Christmas to spend four days with me. - -We had a carefully chosen company, and clean, straightforward plays -which met with gratifying success. At the end of February, when traffic -was tied up during the great ice storm, I was near enough to get home to -Taylorville and spend a week there. - -Tommy came to meet me and we were all happy together, mother sitting -nearly inarticulate in her chair, pleased as a child to see me doing all -the parts in our repertory, and Effie reading my press notices to -whoever could be got to listen to them. I seemed to have found the -groove in which the wheels of my life went round smoothly; I was -justified of much that in my girlhood I had been made to feel so sorely, -set me reprehensibly apart. I remember Forester telling how he had heard -Charlie Gowers retailing the incident of my having slapped him when he -tried to kiss me, getting a kind of reflected glory out of the incident -being so much to my credit. - -I went back to Higgleston in May and was happier than I had been in the -six years of my married life. I had my work and my husband; all that I -wanted now was to bring the two into closer relation; it seemed not -unlikely of accomplishment. With what I had saved of my salary, Tommy -was able to make quite a payment on the business, and with the release -of that pressure the whole grip of Higgleston seemed to be loosed from -him. When I suggested that I might get permanent engagements in Chicago -or St. Louis, where he could establish himself, he was disposed to view -it as not unthinkable in connection with what might be expected from a -live business man. - -I had to leave home early in the autumn for rehearsals, and to leave -Tommy, by some chance of the weather a trifle under it. I felt I -shouldn't have been able to do so if my husband and Miss Rathbone hadn't -been eminently on those terms that fulfilled Tommy's ideal in respect to -the womenfolk of his partner. Very likely, as she maintained, it was a -feeling of caste that rendered her professional affectionateness -offensive to me. One had to admit that when she applied it to her -shuffling, peering old father, with red-lidded eyes and a nose that -occasionally wanted wiping, it was every way commendable. At any rate I -was glad on this occasion to take what she did for old Rathbone as an -assurance that if Tommy fell ill, or anything untoward, he wouldn't lack -for anything a woman might do for him. - -That winter Mr. Harding starred me, and what a wonderful winter it was! -Sarah says, taking account of the cold and the condition of the roads, -it was rather a hard one, but I was floated clear of all such -considerations on the crest of success. Nothing whatever seemed to have -gone wrong with it except that Tommy failed me at Christmas. He was to -have spent a week, but wired me at the last moment that he could not -leave before Wednesday, and then when he came stayed only until -Saturday. He had something to say about the pressure of the holiday -trade in neckties and cuff links such as the ladies of Higgleston -habitually invested in, on behalf of their masculine members, and all -the time he was with me, wore that efflorescence of appreciation which I -have long since learned to recognize as the overt sign of male -delinquency. - -If I thought of it at all in that connection, it was clean swept out of -my mind by meeting early in January with Mr. Eversley and hearing him -first apply to myself that phrase which I have chosen for the title to -this writing. Mark Eversley, the greatest modern actor! So we all -believed. He had been an old friend of Mr. Harding's; they had had their -young struggles together; we crowded around our manager to hear him tell -of them; struggles which, in so far as they identified themselves with -our own, seemed to bring us by implication within reach of his present -fame. Eversley played in St. Louis while we were there, and having an -evening to spare, in spite of all the eager social appeal, chose to -spend it with the Hardings. They had had dinner together, and as Mr. -Harding did not come on until the second act, the great tragedian sat -with him in his dressing room, visiting together between the cues like -two boys in a dormitory. That was how Eversley happened to be standing -in the wings in my great third act, and as I came out between gusts of -applause after it, he was very kind to me. - -"You will go far, little lady," said he, his lean face alive with -kindliness, "you will go farther and have to come back and pick up some -dropped stitches, but in the end you will get where you are bound." It -was not for me to tell him how the mere consciousness of his presence -had carried me that night to the utmost pitch of my capacity; I stood -and blushed with confusion while he fumbled for his card. - -"I will hear of you again," he said; "I am bound to hear of you; in the -meantime here is my permanent address. It may be that I can be of use to -you when you come to the bad places." - -"Oh," said Mrs. Harding, whose failure to win any conspicuous -distinction for herself had not embittered her, "she seems to have -cleared most of the hard places at a bound." - -"My dear young lady," Eversley appealed to me with a charming -whimsicality, "whatever you do, don't let them put that into your head; -you will indeed need me if you get to thinking that. You are, I suspect, -a woman of genius, and in that case there will always be bad places -ahead of you--you are doomed, you are driven; they will never let up on -you." - -Well, he should know; he was a man of genius. I hope it might be true -about me, but I was afraid. For to be a genius is no such vanity as you -imagine. It is to know great desires and to have no will of your own -toward fulfilment; it is to feed others, yourself unfed; it is to be -broken and plied as the Powers determine; it is to serve, and to serve, -and to get nothing out of it beyond the joy of serving. And to know if -you have done that acceptably you have to depend on the plaudits of the -crowd; the Powers give no sign; many have died not knowing. - -There is no more vanity in calling yourself a woman of genius if you -know what genius means, than might be premised of one of the guinea pigs -set aside for experimentation in a laboratory; but the guinea pigs who -run free in the garden impute it to us. I wrote my mother and Tommy what -Eversley had said, but I knew they would see nothing more in it than -that he had paid me a compliment which it would not be modest to make -much of in public. - -The successes of that year prolonged the season by a month, and by the -time I got home to Higgleston the leaves were all out on the maples and -the wide old yards smelled of syringa. I came back to it full of the -love of the world, alive in every fibre of my being, and the first thing -I noticed was that it caused my husband some embarrassment. There was a -shyness in his resumption of our relations more than could be accounted -for by the native Taylorvillian gaucheries of emotion. - -"My dear," I protested, "you don't seem a bit glad to see me." - -"You are away so much," he excused. "You're getting to seem almost a -stranger." - -"Getting? I should say I am. This morning it seemed to me almost as if I -waked up in another woman's house." I meant no more than to suggest how -little the walls of it, the furniture, the draperies, expressed my new -mood of creative power, but suddenly I saw my husband colour a deep, -embarrassed red. - -"You never did take any interest in our life here ... in the -business ... in me." He seemed to be making out a case against me. - -"Don't say in you, Tommy; but the life here, yes; there is so little to -it. Another year and Mr. Harding says I could hope to stay in Chicago." -My husband pushed away his plate; we were at breakfast the second -morning. - -"Higgleston's good enough for me," he protested. He got up and stood at -the window with his back to me, looking out at the side street and the -tardy traffic of the town beginning to stir in it. "When you hate it -so," he said, "I wonder you come back to it." But my mood was proof -against even this. - -"Oh, Thomas, Thomas!" I got my hands about his arm and snuggled my head -against it. "And you can't even guess why I come back?" He looked at me, -vaguely troubled by the caress, but not responding to it. - -"Do you care so much?" - -"Ever and ever so." I thought he was in need of reassurance. - -I hardly know when I began to get an inkling of what was wrong with him; -it trickled coldly to me from dropped words, inflections, sidelong -glances. Whenever I went out I was aware of all Higgleston watching, -watching like a cat at a mouse-hole for something to come out. What? -Reports of my success had reached them through the papers. Were they -looking for some endemic impropriety to break out on me as a witness to -what a popular actress must inevitably become? By degrees it worked -through to me that all Higgleston knew things about my situation that -were held from me. What they expected to see come out in my behaviour -was the stripe of chastisement. - -When I had been at home four or five days it occurred to me Miss -Rathbone had not yet run in to see me with that quasi-familiarity which -had grown out of the business association of our men. Old Rathbone had -said that she had the trousseau of one of the Harvey girls in hand, but -I knew that if the courtesy had been due from me, I couldn't have -neglected it without the risk of being thought what Miss Rathbone -herself would have called uppish. So the very next afternoon, having -fallen in with some Higgleston ladies strolling the long street that led -through the town from countryside to countryside, passing her gate, it -struck me that here was an excellent opportunity to run in and exchange -a greeting with her. I said as much to Mrs. Ross and Mrs. Harvey, as I -swung the picket gate out across the board walk; there was something in -their way of standing back from it that gave them the air of sheering -off from any implication in the incident. They looked at the sidewalk -and their lips were a little drawn; I should have known that look very -well by that time. I threw out against it just that degree of impalpable -resistance that was demanded by my official relation to the women of my -husband's business partner, and clinched it with the click of the gate -swinging to behind me, but as I went up the peony-bordered walk I -wondered what Miss Rathbone would possibly have done to get herself -talked about. - -I was let into the workroom by Tillie Hemingway, in the character of a -baster, with her mouth full of threads; Miss Rathbone came hurrying from -a fitting, and in the brief moment of crossing my half of the room to -meet her I was aware that she had turned a sickly hue of fear. She must -have seen me coming up the street with the other women, I surmised, and -guessed that I knew. I felt a kind of compulsion on me to assure her by -an extra graciousness that I did not know, and that it wouldn't make any -difference if I did. She was not changed at all except perhaps as to a -trifle more abundance of bosom and a greater insensibility to the pins -with which she bristled. There was the same effect of modishness in the -blond coiffure with the rats showing, and the well cut, half-hooked -gown, but she seemed to know so little what to do with my visit that I -was glad to cut it short and get away into the wide, overflowing day. I -went on under the maples in leafage full and tender, following the faint -scent of the first cutting of the meadows, quite to the end of the -village and a mile or two into the country road, feeling the working of -the Creative Powers in me, much as it seemed the sentiment earth must -feel the summer, a warm, benignant process. I was at one with the soul -of things and knew myself fruitful. At last when the dust of the roadway -disturbed by the homing teams, collected in layers of the cooler air, -and the bats were beginning, I tore myself away from the fair day as -from a lover and went back to Tommy waiting patiently for his supper. -While I was getting it on the table I recalled Miss Rathbone. - -"What," I said, "has she been doing to get herself talked about?" -Suddenly there whipped out on his face the counterpart of the flinching -which I had noted in the dressmaker. - -"Who said she had been talked about? What have they been telling you? A -pack of lying old cats!" - -"So she _has_ been talked about?" I put down a pile of plates the better -to account to myself for his excitement. - -"I might have known somebody would get at you. Why can't they come to -me." - -"Tommy! Has Miss Rathbone been talked about with _you_? Oh, my dear!" I -meant it for commiseration. Tommy went sullen all at once. - -"I don't want to talk about it. I won't talk about it!" - -"You needn't. And as for what the others say, you don't suppose I am -going to believe it?" He turned visibly sick at the assurance. - -"I'll tell you about it after supper," he protested. "I meant to tell -you." I kept my mind turned deliberately away from the subject until it -was night and I heard the last tardy customer depart, then the shutters -go up, and after a considerable interval my husband's foot upon the -stairs. - -I hope I have made you understand how good he was, with what simple sort -of goodness, not meant to stand the strain of the complexity in which he -found himself. He wanted desperately to get out of it, to get in touch -again with straight and simple lines of living. As he stood before me -then his face was streaked red and white with the stress of the -situation, like a man after a great bodily exertion. I was moved -suddenly to spare him--after all what was the village dressmaker to us? -Tommy flared out at me. - -"She is as good as you are ... she's as pure ... as kind-hearted. It's -as much your fault as anybody's. You were away; you were always away." -His voice trailed out into extenuation. There fell a long pause in which -several things became clear to me. - -"Tell me," I said at last. - -Tommy sat down on the red plush couch. He had taken off his coat -downstairs, for the evening was warm. There was pink in his necktie and -the freckles stood out across his nose. I was taken with a wild sense of -the ridiculous. Miss Rathbone, I knew, was six years my husband's -senior. - -"I went there a good deal last winter," he began. "I never meant any -harm ... my business partner ... it was lonesome here. Of course I ought -to have known people would talk. Nobody told me. She was brave, she bore -it a long time, and then I saw that something was the matter. I didn't -know until she told me, how fond of her I was----" - -"Tommy, Tommy!" Strangely, it was I crying out. "Fond of her? Fond of -_her_?" - -"I was fond of her," he insisted dully. "She suffered a lot on account -of me." The words dropped to me through immeasurable cold space. I -believe there were more explanations, excusings. I was aware of being -wounded in some far, unreachable place. I sat stunned and watched the -widening rings of pain and amazement spread toward me. By and by tears -came; I cried long and quietly. I got down on the floor at my husband's -knees and put my arms about his body, crying. After a time I remember -his helping me to undress and we got into bed. We had but the one. I -know it now for the sign that I never loved my husband as wives should -love, that I felt no offence in this; sex jealousy was not awake in me. -We lay in bed with our arms around one another and cried for the pain -and bewilderment of what had happened to us. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -As if the attraction Miss Rathbone had for my husband had been a spell, -the mere naming of which dissipated it, we spent the ensuing three or -four days in the glow of renewal. It was Miss Rathbone herself who drew -us out of that excluding intimacy; set us apart where we could feel the -cold stiffness of our hurts and the injury we had inflicted each on the -other. - -Whatever there had been between them, and I never knew very clearly -what, they had failed to reckon on the recrudescence of the interest I -had always had for my husband, and the tie of association. At any rate -Miss Rathbone failed. I must suppose that she loved Tommy, that she was -hungering for the sight of him, needing desperately to feel again the -pressure of whatever bond had been between them. She came into the store -on the fourth evening after my husband's admission of it, on one of the -excuses she could so easily make out of her father's being there. I was -sitting upstairs with some sewing when she came and neither saw nor -heard her, but the unslumbering instinct, before I was half aware of it, -had drawn me to the head of the stair. - -As I came down it, still in the shadow of the upper landing, I saw her -leaning across the counter with that factious air of modishness which -was so large a part of her stock in trade with Higgleston. She had on -all her newest things, and I think she was rouged a little. Even with -the width of the counter between them she had the effect of enveloping -my husband with that manner of hers as with a net; to set up in him the -illusion of all that I was in fact; mystery, passion, the air of the -great world. I was pierced through with the realization that with men it -is not so much being that counts, as seeming. There was a touch of the -fatuous in the way Tommy submitted to the implication of her attitude as -she took a flower from her breast and pinned it in his coat. The foot of -the stair came almost to the end of the counter where they stood, and a -trick of the light falling from the hanging lamp threw the upper half of -it in shadow. I stood just within it with my hand upon the rail. -Something in the avidity of yielding in my husband's manner was like a -call in me; I moved involuntarily a step downward. - -They heard and then they saw me; they stopped frozen in their places and -the thing that froze them was the consciousness of guilt. They stood -confessed of a disloyalty. I turned full in their sight and walked back -up the stair. It was very late that night when Tommy came up to me. - -"If that is going on in the house," I notified him, "you can't expect me -to stay." - -"I dare say you'd be glad of a chance to leave." - -"Is that why you are offering it to me?" - -It was by such degrees we covered the distance between our situation and -the open question of divorce. But there were lapses of tenderness and -turning back upon the trail. - -"I don't want anybody but you, Olivia," Tommy would protest. "If you -would only stay with me!" - -"Oh, Tommy, if you would only come away with me!" - -If either of these things had been possible for us, I think Tommy would -have recovered from his infatuation and been the happier for it. Or even -if Miss Rathbone had kept away from him. But that is what she couldn't -or wouldn't do. She might have thought that by being seen coming in and -out of the store, she could stave off criticism by the appearance of -being on good terms with us. At any rate she came. I think her coming -caused my husband some embarrassment, and, manlike, he made her pay for -it. As I think of it now, I realize that I really did not know what went -on in her; whether she had set a trap for my husband or yielded to an -unconquerable passion. In any case she had imagination enough to see -that unless she could maintain the tragic status, she cut rather a -ridiculous figure. Sometimes I think people are drawn into these -affairs not so much by the hope of happiness as the need, the -deep-seated, desperate need of emotion, any kind of emotion. I think if -we had taken her note, had had it out on the world-without-end basis, -she would have been almost as well satisfied by a recognized romantic -loss as by success. But I never knew exactly. She was equally in the -dark about me. Now and then I had a glimpse of the figure I was in her -eyes, in some stricture of my husband's on my behaviour--some criticism -which bore the stamp of her suggestion; it was as if he was being -dragged from me by an invisible creature of which I knew nothing but an -occasional scraping of its claws. I try to do her the justice in my -mind, of thinking that the situation which she had built up out of -Tommy's loneliness was as real for her as it was for him. Nobody in -Higgleston had ever taken my natural alienation from the people there as -anything but deliberate and despising. To her, my husband was the victim -of a cold, neglectful wife, and to him she contrived to be a figure of -romance. - -"I owe her a lot," Tommy insisted; "she has suffered on account of me." -He went back to that phrase again, "I owe her a lot." - -"What do you owe her that you can't pay?" - -"Well, I couldn't marry as long as you----" - -"You want to marry her?" I cried. "You want to marry _her_?" - -"I couldn't expect you to appreciate her," Tommy was sullen again; -"you're so full of yourself." I held on to a graver matter. - -"You want us to be divorced?" I can hear that sounding hollowly in a -great space out of which all other interests in life seemed suddenly to -shrink and shrivel. I had learned to talk of divorce in the great world, -but to me my marriage was one of the incontrovertible things. - -"We might as well be," I heard my husband say; "you are never at home -any more." Then the reaction set in. "Stay with me, Olivia. I don't want -anybody but you; just stay with me!" - -"You want me to give up the stage and live here in Higgleston -_forever_?" The unfairness of this overcame me. - -"Well, why not, if you're married to me?" - -I believe he would have done it. He would have wasted me like that and -thought little of it. I was married, and not altogether to Tommy, but to -Higgleston and the clothing business. The condition he demanded of me -was not of loving and being faithful, but of living over the store. -Until now, though I knew I did not love my husband as life had taught me -men could be loved, I had never given up expecting to. Somewhere, -somehow, but I was certain it was not in Higgleston, the transmuting -touch should find him which would turn my husband into the Lord of Life. -Now I discovered myself pulled over into another point of view. He had -become a man capable of being interested in the village dressmaker. The -farther she drew him from me the more the stripe of Higgleston came out -in him. - -I had planned to go up to Chicago for a week in August; to consult with -Mr. Harding about the plays he was to produce the next season. I had not -signed with him yet, but I knew that I should, that I could no more -dissever myself from that connection than I could voluntarily surrender -my own breath; I might try, but after the few respirations withheld, -nature would have her way with me. It was not that I came to a decision -about it; the whole matter appeared to lie in that region of finality -that made the assumption of a decision ridiculous. I do not know if I -expected to divorce my husband or if he or Miss Rathbone expected it. I -think we were all a little scared by the situation we had evoked, as -children might be at a dog they let loose. We felt the shames of -publicity yelping at our heels. - -The day before I left, I went to see Miss Rathbone; I had to have a -skirt shortened. It was absurd, of course, but there was really no one -else to go to. If there had been I shouldn't have dared; all Higgleston -would have known of it and drawn its own conclusion. As it was, -Higgleston was extremely dissatisfied with the affair. It did not know -whom properly to blame, me for neglecting my husband or Miss Rathbone -for snapping him up; they felt balked of the moral conclusion. - -I hardly know what Miss Rathbone thought of my coming to her. I think -she had braved herself for some sort of emotional struggle sharp enough -to drown the whisper of reprobation. My quiet acceptance of the -situation left her somehow toppling over her own defences. Sometimes I -think the emotionalism which the attitude of that time demanded to be -worked up over a divorce, drew people to it with that impulse which -leads them to rush toward a fire or hurl themselves from precipices. -Miss Rathbone must have been aching to fling out at me, to justify her -own position by abuse of mine, and here she was down on the floor with -her mouth full of pins squinting at the line of my skirt. It was then -that I told her what I was going to Chicago for. "You'll be away from -home all winter, then?" The question was a challenge. - -"I don't know, I haven't signed yet." For the life of me I couldn't have -foreborne that; it was exactly the kind of an advantage she would have -taken of me. If I chose not to sign for the next winter, where was she? -She stood up blindly at last. "I guess I can do the rest without you," -she said. Some latent instinct of fairness flashed up in me. - -"But I think I shall sign," I admitted. "I couldn't stand a winter in -Higgleston." I was glad afterward that I had said that; it gave her -leave for the brief time that was left to them, to think of him as being -given into her hands. - -I was greatly relieved to get away, even for a week, from the cold -curiosity of Higgleston which, without saying so, had made me perfectly -aware that I showed I had been crying a great deal lately. But no sooner -was I freed from the pull of affection than I began to feel a deep -resentment against Tommy. His attempt to charge his lapse of loyalty, on -my art, on that thing in me which, as I read it, constituted my sole -claim upon consideration, appeared a deeper indignity than his interest -in the dressmaker. It was all a part of that revelation which sears the -path of the gifted woman as with a flame, that no matter what her value -to society, no man will spare her anything except as she pleases him. At -the first summer heat of it I felt my soul curl at the edges. His -repudiation of me as an actress began to appear a slight upon all that -world of fineness which Art upholds, a thing not to be tolerated by any -citizen of it. In its last analysis it seemed that my husband had -deserted me in favour of Higgleston quite as much as I had deserted him, -and it was for me to say whether I should consent to it. In that mood I -met Mr. Harding and signed with him for the ensuing season, and then -quite unaccountably, ten days before I was expected, I found myself -pulled back to Higgleston. I had wired Tommy, and was surprised to have -Mr. Ross meet me at the station. - -"Mr. Bettersworth is not very well," he explained, as he put me into -Higgleston's one omnibus. "It came on him rather suddenly. Some kind of -a seizure," he admitted, though I did not gather from his manner that it -was particularly serious until the 'bus, instead of stopping at our -store, drove straight on up the one wide street. - -"I thought you'd want to see him immediately," the attorney interposed -to my arresting gesture. "You see he was taken at his partner's house." -He seemed to avoid some unpleasant implication by not mentioning -Rathbone's name. - -I scarcely remember what other particulars he gave me at the time; my -next sharp impression was of my husband lying white and breathing -heavily in the bed in the Rathbone's front room, the drapery of which -had been torn hastily down to make room for him, regardless of the -finished pieces of Miss Harvey's trousseau still crowding the chairs -upon which they had been hastily thrust. Empty sleeves hung down and -vaguely seemed to reach for what they could not clasp; strangely I was -aware in them of an aching lack and loss which must have sprung in my -bosom. I took my husband's hand and it dropped back from my clasp, -waxlike and nerveless. I think I had been kneeling by the bed for some -time, talk had been going on whisperingly around me; finally the light -faded and I discovered that the doctor had gone. The beribboned bridal -garments hung limply still on the chairs and mocked me with their empty -arms. Presently I was aware that Miss Rathbone had come in with a lamp. -She stood there on the other side of the bed and we looked at him and at -one another. - -"How long?" I asked her. - -"Two or three days maybe, the doctor says." - -"Will he know me again." - -"The doctor says not." - -"Oh, Tommy, Tommy!" I began to shake with suppressed sobbing. Miss -Rathbone looked at me with cold resentment. - -"You can cry as much as you like, it won't disturb him," she said. - -She seemed to have taken the fact that she wasn't to cry herself, as -final. In a few minutes old Rathbone shuffled in from the shop and stood -peering at Tommy with his little red-lidded eyes, wiping them furtively. -I believe the old man was fond of his partner and it was not strange to -him that Tommy should be lying ill at his home. Miss Rathbone came and -took him by the shoulders as one does to a grieving child and turned his -face to her bosom. She was a head taller than he, and as she looked -across him to me there was compulsion in her look and pleading. - -"He is never to know," the look said, and I looked back, "Never." - -It was then that I realized how genuine her affection was for the -feeble, snuffling old man; she would suffer at being lessened in his -eyes. - -Some one came and took me away for a while, and by degrees I got to know -the story. It had been the night before, just about the time I was taken -with that strange impulse to return, that Tommy had shut up the store -and gone over to the half-furnished room belonging to the Board of -Trade, which had become a sort of club for the soberer men of the -community. A great deal of talk went on there which gave them the -agreeable impression of something being done, though there must have -been much of it of the character of that which was going on in a group -around Montague when Tommy came in at the door. He came in very quietly, -blinded by the light, and they had their backs to him, shaking with the -loose laughter which punctuates a ribald description. Then Montague's -voice took it up again. - -"Rathbone'll get him," he said. "She's got the goods. The other one has -probably got somebody on the side; these actresses are all alike." - -There was a word or two more to that before Tommy's fist in his jaw -stopped him. Montague struck back, he was a heavier man than my husband, -but in a minute the others had rushed in between them. They were drawn -back and held; Tommy's nose bled profusely, he appeared dazed, and -accepted Montague's forced apology without a word. The men were all -scared and yet excited; some of them were ashamed of themselves. They -suspected it was not the sort of thing that should go on at a Board of -Trade, and agreed it ought to be kept out of the papers. Some one walked -home with my husband, and on the way he was seized with a violent fit of -vomiting. - -"Who was it hit me?" he asked at the door, and seemed but vaguely to -remember what it was about. The next morning he opened the store as -usual and appeared quite himself to old Rathbone, who came shuffling and -sidestepping in to his nest at the accustomed hour. About half-past ten -the tailor was made aware by the rapping of a customer on the deserted -counter, that Tommy had gone out without a word. He must have gone -straight to Miss Rathbone; those who met him on the street recalled that -his gait was unsteady. She must have been greatly concerned to have him -there at that hour, for people were moving about the streets and -customers beginning to come in, and in the presence of Tillie Hemingway -he could offer her no adequate explanation. - -She was desperately revolving the risk of taking him into the front room -to have out of him what his distrait presence half declared, when he was -taken with a momentary retching; she went into the next room to fetch -him a glass of water and a moment after her back was turned she heard -him pitch forward on the floor. - -When Rathbone had sent for me by the wire that passed me on the way -home, he sent also to Tommy's father, who got in before noon the next -day. I remember him as a quizzical sort of man always with his hands in -his pockets, and a bristling brown moustache cut off square with his -upper lip, and a better understanding of the situation than he had any -intention of admitting. I had by some unconscious means derived from him -that though he was fond of Tommy, he never had much opinion of his -capacity. I think now it must have been his presence there and his -manner of being likely to do the most unexpected thing, that pulled -those same live business men who had stood listening in loose-mouthed -relish of Monty's ribaldry, out of the possibility of entertainment in -the case that might be made out of his implication in my husband's -death, to the consideration of the town's repute as a place where such -things could not possibly happen. By the time Forester came on, a covert -discretion had supplied the event with its sole consoling circumstance -of secrecy. Not even my family got to know what led up to that blow -which had precipitated an unsuspected weakness. It was quite in -accordance with what they believed of the life I had chosen, that my -husband's death in a brawl should be among its contingencies. Poor -Tommy's end took on a tinge of theatricality. - -It was toward the end of the second day that he began to respond to the -stimulants the doctor had been pouring into him. He opened his eyes and -looked at us, conscious, but out of all present time. Feebly his glance -roved over the figures by the bed, and fell at last on me. - -"Ollie," he whispered, "Ollie!" It was a name he had not called for a -long time. - -"Oh, my dear, my dear!" I took his hand again and felt a faint pressure. -Miss Rathbone hardly dared to look at him with the others standing -about. I whispered her name to him, and his partner's, but he did not so -much as turn his eyes in their direction. I could see him studying me -out of half-shut glances; there would be an appreciable interval before -the sense of what he saw penetrated the dulled brain; I thought I knew -the very moment when the significance of our standing all about his bed -crying, took hold of him. All at once he spoke out clearly: - -"Is my father here?" I fancied he must have hit on that question as a -confirmation; but before there could be any talk between them he slid -off again into the deeps of insensibility. At the end of half an hour or -so he started up almost strongly. - -"Ollie!" he demanded, "where is the baby?" - -"Asleep," I told him. - -"Then I will sleep too," and in a little while it was so. - - * * * * * - -The Odd Fellows took charge of my husband's funeral, his body was moved -from the Rathbones', to their hall and did not go back again to the -rooms over the store. Miss Rathbone made up my crape for me. I believe -it gave her a little comfort to do so. Forester came and settled up my -husband's affairs; he was rather inclined to resent what he felt was an -effort of the Rathbones to claim a larger share in the business than the -books showed, but he thought my indifference natural to my grief. He was -shocked a little at my determination to go on with my engagement; we -were not so poor he thought, that I could not afford a little retirement -to my widowhood. But in that strange renewal of communion after death, I -felt my husband nearer than before. He would go with me at last out of -Higgleston. Strangely, I wanted to see Miss Rathbone, but she kept away -from me. That was as it should have been in Higgleston. She had tried to -get my husband, she had been, in a way, the death of him. It was hardly -expected that I could bear the sight of her, though it would have been -Christian to forgive her. - -I did see her, however, the night before I went away. It was the dusk of -the first of September. There was a moon coming up, large and dulled at -the edges by the haze, and that strange earthy smell with the hint of -decay in it, kept in by the banded mists that lay below the moon. The -darkness crept close along the earth and spread upward like an -exhalation into the sky where almost the full day halted. I had slipped -out down a side street and across an open lot to the cemetery. I would -have that hour with my dead free from observation. - -I went between the white head stones and the flower borders. As I neared -my husband's grave, something moved upon it. It arose out of the low -mound as I approached; for one heart-riving second I stopped, -speechless; it moved again and showed a woman. - -"Miss Rathbone!" I called. "Henrietta!" I had not used her name before; -I have just now remembered it. - -"You might have left me this," she said. I saw that she had covered the -mound with flowers, and I was glad I had not brought any. - -"I am leaving," I answered. "I am going to-morrow ... where my work is." - -"Yes, _you_ can go. But I have to stay ... where my work is. I stay with -him. You can go ... you always wanted to go. And I, I have been talked -about and I daren't even cry for him, not even at night, for my father -hears me." She was crying now, deeply, bitterly. "You never cared for -him," she insisted, "and now he knows it; he knows and has come back to -me ... to _me_." - -"He comes back," I admitted. I was stricken suddenly with the futility -of all human conviction. Moving about the house that day I had been -conscious of him beside me then, and now, lying there beside my boy, -touching him ... mine ... sealed to me in the certainty of death. And he -had come back to _her_. I did not know even now what she and my husband -had been to one another. - -It swept over me somehow, drowningly, that this was the secret that the -dead know, how to belong to all of us. They had no bond, how could they -be unfaithful? For a moment I was caught up by the thought to nobility. - -"Look here, Henrietta, if you feel that way, I'll leave it to you. I'll -not come here any more." I did not know what else I could do about it. - -"It's the least you _can_ do." She was accepting it as her right. Any -woman will understand how I wanted to lay my hand there, above his -breast. She must really have believed I did not love him. I turned back -across the borders. - -"Good-bye, Henrietta." She made a nearly inarticulate sound. The last I -saw of her in the dusk she was tucking her flowers into the fresh sod as -one tucks a coverlet about a child. He had been, I suppose, both man and -child to her. - - - - -BOOK III - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -I have to take up my story again about eighteen months later at the -point of my going out to Suburbia to ask Gerald McDermott for a part in -his new play, which was being rehearsed with Sarah in the _rôle_ of -_Bettina_. But before that there had been some rather mortifying -experiences to teach me that though I was done with Higgleston, it was, -to a certainty, not done with me. In any case I suppose the shock of my -husband's death must have affected my work unfavourably, but the -knowledge of his secret defection, and the excuse he found for it in -what was best in me, made still corroding poison at the bottom of my -wound. - -What it all amounted to in my career was that the season which should -have swept me back to Chicago in triumphant establishment of my gift, -trickled out in faint praise and cold esteem. It was not that you could -place your finger and say just there was the difficulty, but what came -of it was another year on the road with Cline and Erskine, in stock. The -Hardings, notwithstanding their disappointment in what they expected to -make of me, managed to be kind. - -"You'll pull up," they assured me; "it's because you are really an -artist that you show what you've been through!" And they didn't know the -half of what that was. - -To Henry Mills my engagement with Cline and Erskine, was a step forward -into that blazoned and banal professionalism which passes in America for -dramatic success; but Sarah knew, and I think I knew myself, that the -dance they led us in the spotlight of copious advertisement, was a dance -of death to much that the plastic art should be. In this instance it was -demonstrated even to the hopeful eye of Henry Mills, for the play chosen -proved so little suited to the semi-rural, Middle West cities where we -played it, that before the season was half over we were recalled, and, -after an empty interval, finished out the engagement in one of those -sensation mongering shows with which such combinations as Cline and -Erskine clutch at the fleeing skirts of a public they never understand. - -It was about a month after the closing of this engagement that I took -Sarah's suggestion about applying to Gerald McDermott, but not before I -had tried several other things. The truth was, as I knew very well when -I faced it, that I had at the time nothing in me. To those who haven't -it, a gift is a sort of extra possession, like an eye or a hand that can -be commanded to its accustomed trick on any occasion; but to the owners -of it it is a libation poured to the Unknown God. I had emptied my cup -of its froth of youth, and as yet nothing had touched the profounder -experience from which it should be fed and filled again, and I had no -technique to supply the insufficiencies of my inspiration. Somewhere -within me I felt the stuff of power, stiff and unworkable, needing the -flux of passion and the shaping hand of skill. - -Looking back now from the vantage of a tolerable success, if you were to -ask me what, more than any other thing, prevents the fulness of our -native art, I should say the blank public misapprehension of its -processes. Turning every way to catch the favourable wind, what met me -then, was the general conviction on the part of my friends that if you -had talent you succeeded anyway, and if you weren't succeeding it was -because you hadn't any talent. I suffered many humiliations before I -learned how absolutely, by that same society that so liberally resents -the implication of any separateness in art, the artist is thrust back -upon himself. To do what seemed necessary for the development of my -gift, to have a year or two to travel and study, to connote its powers -with its limitations, required money; and though there in Chicago there -was money for every sort of adventure that stirred the imagination of -man, there was none for the particular sort of investment I represented. -At least not at the price I was prepared to pay. - -The half of what had been put into setting my brother on his feet would -have served me, but I learned from Effie, that as much of my mother's -capital as had been put into Forester's business, was not only -impossible to be withdrawn from keeping him upright, but threatened not -to hold him so for as long as it was necessary for mother to see in him -the figure of a provider. This had been made plain at Christmas, when -Effie had written me that a particular wheeled chair which my mother had -set her heart upon because of a hope it held out of church-going, would -be impossible unless I came forward handsomely. I did come forward on a -scale commensurate with the Taylorville estimate of my salary, which was -by no means comparable to its purchasing power in Chicago; and now I was -beginning to realize that unless some one came forward for me, I stood -to lose the Shining Destiny to which I felt myself appointed. I was slow -in understanding that it was not to be looked for by any of the paths by -which interest and succour are traditionally due. Not, for instance, -from Pauline and Henry Mills. - -I was seeing a great deal of them since I had come to Chicago, not only -because of our earlier friendship, but because I found myself constantly -thrown back on all that they stood for, by my distaste for much that I -saw myself implicated in as a theatrical star who had not quite made -good. I hated, quite unjustly, I believe, the players with whom for the -time I was professionally classed; I loathed the shallow shop talk, the -makeshift rooms we lived in, the outward smartness and the pinch of -anxiety it covered. I was irritated by my external and circumstantial -resemblance to much that I felt instinctively, kept them where they -were, and vexed at some cheapness in myself which seemed to be revealed -by the irritation. I had been thrown up out of the freemasonry of the -preliminary struggle into a kind of backwater of established -second-rateness, where there were also second-rate manners and morals -and social perceptions. It was a great relief to get away from it to -Pauline's home in Evanston, and the air it had of being somehow -established at the pivot of existence. Pauline had two children by now, -and a manner of being abundantly equal to the world in which she moved, -a manner which I was only just realizing was largely owing to the figure -of her husband's income. What Pauline furnished me at her home, over and -above the real affection there was still between us, was a sort of -continuous performance of the domestic virtues. - -That faculty for knowing exactly what she wanted, which had led her to -make the most of her housekeeping allowance in the days when making the -most of it was her chief occupation, now that the centres of her -activity had been shifted from the practical to the social and cultural, -stood her in remarkable stead. I was so constantly amazed by the -celerity and sureness with which she seized on just the attitude or -opinion which suited best with the part she had cast herself for as the -perfect wife and mother, that it was only when I discovered its complete -want of relativity to the purpose of the play or to the rest of the -company, that I was not taken in by it. I doubt now if Pauline ever had -an idea or permitted herself a behaviour which was not conditioned by -the pattern she had set for herself, which she intrigued both Henry and -myself into believing was the only real and appreciable life. - -At the time of which I write it was a great comfort to me to get away -from my own dreary professionalism, to the nursery at Evanston, or to -add my small flourish to the _scene à faire_ of Henry's homecoming, made -every day to seem the one event for which the household waited, from -which, indeed, it took its excuse for being. For all of this was so well -in line with what Henry, who with the amplification of his income had -taken on a due rotundity of outline and a slight tendency to baldness, -conceived as proper for a man's home to be, that he played up to it as -much as was in him. He had still his air of knowingness about the -theatre, and if there was at times in his manner a suggestion that he -might have found it pleasanter to adjust his relation to me on the basis -of what I was as an actress, if I had not been quite so much the friend, -it was so far modified by his genuine admiration for his wife and his -cession to her of every right of judgment in the home, that I was -inclined to accept him at his own and Pauline's estimate as the model -husband. - -It was only a few days before my visit to Gerald McDermott, that I had -undertaken to state to Pauline the nature of the help I required and my -title to it. I had gone out to dinner and found her putting on a new -gown, one of those garments admirably contrived between the smartness of -evening dress and the intimacy of negligée, in which Evanston ladies of -that period were wont to receive their lords. - -"I'm needing something new myself," I said for a beginning, "and I'm -divided between the certainty that if I don't get an engagement I can't -afford it, and if I don't afford it I probably won't get an engagement." -Pauline stopped in the process of hooking up, to take stock of me. - -"You absurd child!" The note of amused admonition with which she -ordinarily accepted my professional exigencies turned on the note of -correction. "Don't you think you put too much stress on those things?" - -"What things?" She had touched upon the spring of irritation. - -"Clothes, you know, and appearances. Isn't it better just to do your -work well and rest upon that?" - -"Pauline, if you had ever looked for an engagement you would know that -getting it is largely a matter of appearing equal to it, and clothes -are the better part of appearing." - -"But if you know that your work is good, what do you care what people -think of you?" I dodged the moral situation about to be precipitated on -me. - -"It's about the only way you know it is good, knowing what people think -of it." - -"Now see here," Pauline protested, reinforced by the evident superiority -of her viewpoint to mine, "you're getting all wrong; these things you -are thinking of, they are not the real things; they don't count, not in -the long run; it's only the spiritual things that really matter." She -had put on all the plastic effect of nobility that was part of her stock -in trade with Henry Mills. I thrust out against it sharply. - -"Do you realize, Pauline, that if I don't get an engagement soon I -shan't be able to pay my board?" - -"Oh, you poor dear!" She came over and took my hand. I don't know why -women like Pauline do that, but when they do it it is a sign they are -not equal to the situation and are trying to fake it with you. - -"I know it is hard"--she found the cooing note with facility--"but it -will come right; it always does. I've always found that there is a way -provided." - -Something flashed into my mind that I had read in the newspapers -recently about the corporations Henry worked for, and I wondered if -Pauline had the least notion how the way, for her, was humanly provided, -but the sound of Henry's latchkey put an end to the conversation, which -I hadn't felt sufficiently encouraging to warrant my taking up again. - -I went from Pauline's, at the very first opportunity, to Sarah Croyden, -who was playing in Chicago, and doing her kindliest to blow the wind of -hope into my sagging sails. I met Cecelia Brune there. It had been to me -the witness of how far I had fallen from my mark, that I had been thrown -with her again in my last engagement. Hers was the sort of talent that -Cline and Erskine could play up to the limit of the inadmissible. There -were not wanting intimations that Cecelia had moved her own limit a -notch or two in that direction. She had taken a characteristic view of -my reappearance in her neighbourhood. - -"Got into the band-wagon, didn't you?" she remarked. "I saw Dean on the -road last year and she said you was going in for high-brow stunts. -Nothin' to it. You stay with Cline and Erskine; they get you on like -anything." Her own notion of getting on was to figure as the sole female -attraction in a song and dance skit in what she pronounced "Vawdville." - -"It's the only place havin' a figgur does you any good!" That she did -not recommend it for me must be taken for her estimate of mine. -Nevertheless I was amused by her, and Sarah, I knew, was even a little -fond. Sarah's affections were a sort of natural emanation from her, like -the rays of a candle, and warmed all they lighted on. On this afternoon -I found Cecelia drinking tea there and I wasn't able to conceal my -professional depression from her sharp, shallow inquisitiveness. There -were never two or three players got together, I believe, but the talk -turned on the comparative ineffectiveness of Merit as against Pull in -the struggle for success. - -"There's no two ways about it," insisted Cecelia Brune; "you gotta get a -hold of some rich guy and freeze to him." The extent to which Cecelia -had blossomed out in ostrich tips and orchids that bright spring -afternoon, might have suggested to an experienced eye, that the freezing -process had already begun. I say might have, because Sarah and I found -it difficult to disassociate her from the hard, grubby innocence in -which our acquaintance had begun. Sarah, I know, believed in her and had -her in often to informal occasions as a bulwark against what, with all -her faith and pains, she didn't finally save her from. - -"You can talk all you want to," Cecelia asseverated, "about man being -the natural provider. I've noticed he don't work at the job much without -he's gettin' something out of it. If you're sufferin' with that little -old song and dance about men doin' for you because you're a woman and -need it, you gotta get over it. There's nothin' laid down over that -counter unless you deliver the goods." She was nibbling lumps of sugar -moistened in her tea, and the wild rose of her cheeks and the -distracting rings of her hair made her offensiveness a mere childish -impertinence. - -"Look at Helen Matlock," she ran on, "gettin' five hundred a week. And -when old Sedgwick put it up to her she said she'd die rather; and then -she went home and found her mother sick, and what did she do? Never -batted an eye, but told her she'd got an engagement, and went back and -made it good. An' now she's gettin' five hundred. That's what I call -doin' well by yourself." - -"She can't mean it," Sarah extenuated when Cecelia had gone; "she's too -frank about it. When she stops talking I shall begin to suspect her." - -"But is it true, about Miss Matlock, I mean?" Just at that juncture -Helen Matlock was doing the work I felt most drawn to, most fit to -undertake. - -"I suppose so," Sarah allowed; "it's a common saying that the way to the -footlights in the Majestic is through the manager's private room." She -came over and sat beside me on the bed, which, under a Bagdad curtain, -did duty as a couch. "There are other theatres besides the Majestic," -she said. - -"None that want me," I averred. - -"Oh," she cried, "you don't mean----?" - -"No," I had to own, "I don't mean that I have a chance to get on even -by misbehaving myself. I'm not the kind to whom that sort of chance -comes." Sarah stroked my hand a while. - -"I've been thinking, if you could get a small part or a season, you -could take it under another name until you are quite yourself again. -It's often done." I could see she had gone much farther than that with -it in her thought. It was just such cover as that I was seeking for the -renaissance of my acting power. - -And that was what led to my going out to Suburbia to see Gerald -McDermott about the part of _Mrs. Brandis_ in "The Futurist." - -It was out quite in the frayed edge of outer fringe of real estate -ventures which hedged Chicago round, in a district which was spoiled for -country and not quite made into town, and from the number of weedy plots -not built upon between the scroll-saw cottages, had almost a rural air. -Leaning trolleys went zizzing along the banked highways, and at the ends -of the unpaved avenues there were flat gleams of the lake. Depressed as -I was by the consciousness of having fallen from the estate of actresses -who command engagements to those who seek them, I was still able to be -touched a little by curiosity by what Sarah had told me of McDermott and -his wife, whom he had married for her pretty, feminine inconsequence, -who, having no point of attachment to her husband's life but femininity, -was able to imagine none for any other woman, and suffered incredibly in -consequence. - -"If one could only discover why clever men marry that sort of women!" I -wondered. - -"Oh, Jerry thought he was going to bend her to his will," Sarah -explained. "But that kind don't bend, they just slump." I had hardly -knocked at the door before I had an inkling of how painful to the author -of "The Futurist" the process of slumping might be. - -I could hear the fretting of a child, hushed suddenly by my knock, then -the patter of little feet across the floor and voices startled and -pitched low. I was just debating whether I shouldn't pretend I hadn't -heard anything and go away again, when Mr. McDermott opened the door. I -had met him once at Sarah's and should have known him again by the -pallor of his countenance against the dead blackness of his hair, -straight and shining like an Indian's. The effect of boyishness that one -derived from his tall, thin figure was increased now by the marks of -weeping about his eyes. In the glimpse of the room behind him I was -aware of a disorder only excusable in the face of a family catastrophe; -one of the children that ran to his knee was still in its little -petticoat, without a slip, and had not been washed or combed that day. I -wavered an instant between the obligation of politeness to ignore the -situation and the certainty that I couldn't. - -"Oh!" I cried. I snatched at my repertory for the proper mixture of -commiseration and consternation. "Is any one ill?" - -His desperate need of help opened the door to me. - -"My wife" ... he began, but the state of the room accounted for that, as -he perceived, taking it in afresh through my eyes. Mrs. McDermott was -lying on the sofa in the coma of exhaustion. She lifted her face to me -for a moment, swollen with crying, and then let herself go again into -that pit in which a woman sinks an impossible situation. She was really -faint, poor thing, and, if I judged by the state of the house, had had -no luncheon. I took all that in at a glance, but it was none of my -business. - -"Is it her heart?" I wanted to know of her husband as I bent over her. -He caught up the suggestion eagerly. - -"Yes, her heart ... she is very weak." He did whatever I suggested on -that explanation. I would have proposed putting her to bed if I had not -feared that that would involve more revelations of the family disorder -than I was willing to tax him with. - -We got her out of her faintness presently and found her a safety valve -in pitying her poor children with that sloppy sort of maternal affection -which is not inconsistent with a good deal of neglect. I wasn't working -for anything but to save Jerry--I came to call him that before many -weeks--from the embarrassment of what I was sure had been a family -fracas which threatened at every moment to break out again. I suggested -tea, for I was satisfied that both of them wanted food, and while I was -making toast before the sitting-room fire, Mrs. McDermott managed to -get herself and the children into some sort of order. I could see then -how pretty she had been in a large-eyed, short-lipped way, and how -charming in her youth had been the inconsequence which as the mistress -of a family made her a sloven. Not to seem to notice too much the -superficial air of being prepared for company which she managed to give -the children by washing their faces surreptitiously, I explained to Mr. -McDermott that I had come about the part of _Mrs. Brandis_. - -"Oh, you'll do," he assented heartily. "You'll do just as you are. _Mrs. -Brandis_ is a widow you know ... that is, the _Mrs. Brandis_ that I -created----" - -"Just as you conceived it of course," I insisted, "I should want to play -it that way." - -"The trouble is that Moresco isn't satisfied so easily; he wants me to -make changes in the part." - -"Well ..." I was prepared to make concessions. - -"I'm afraid he has somebody in mind ..." - -"Fancy Filette," his wife broke in, "a painting, flirting, immoral!..." -Jerry scraped his chair back along the floor to cover the word, but I -knew where I was in a twinkling. - -"Fancy Filette! She'll play it in short skirts!" - -"I'll be lucky if she doesn't insist on a song and dance." - -"He doesn't need to have her unless he wants to." Mrs. McDermott was -positive on that point. She was sitting with both children on her lap, -chiefly in order to keep up the fiction that I didn't know she had just -been having hysterics, I had cautioned her against letting them climb -over her, and she promptly let them, because the idea that she was -tending them at a risk to her health, rather helped out with her own -notion of herself as a misused but devoted wife and mother. - -Jerry looked at me over her head in a mute appeal to me to understand. - -"Unless Moresco puts on my play there is no chance for it," he -protested. "I've been to the others. I'll tell you, though, if you go to -him just as you are, he may think better of it. He can't possibly get -anybody so good." - -We neither of us believed that Mr. Moresco would turn down Fancy Filette -for anybody, but we kept up the game of thinking so from sheer -desperation. I played too at the pretence that Jerry's wife was a -delicate, idealized sort of creature who did not understand the great -hard world. That was no doubt what had appealed to him in the beginning, -but she wasn't made up for the part. She had begun to put on weight -after she had children, and her hair wanted washing. I got away as soon -as I could and went straight to Sarah. - -"They'd been having some kind of a row," I told her. - -"Oh, it must have been Fancy Filette who set her off," Sarah was -certain. "She took to you as a relief, but you'll be in for it too if -you get the part." - -I had to admit to myself after I had been to Mr. Moresco, that there was -not much likelihood that I would get it. He laid the tips of his pudgy -fingers together and addressed me with the slight blur in his speech -which convinced one of the racial affinity which he commonly denied. - -"Mr. McDermott thinks it will suit me admirably," I told him. - -"Ah, yes, the author," the manager mentioned him as though it were a -fact indulgently admitted to the discussion, "but then, my dear Miss -Lattimore, we have to think of the audience." - -There was this peculiarity of Moresco's handling of an audience, that he -treated it as an entity, a sort of human stratification of which the -three front rows were lubricious, the body of the orchestra high-brow, -the first balcony sentimental and virtuous, the gallery facetious. As -far as possible he arranged his plays to meet the requirements. - -"Now we have Miss Croyden for _Bettina_, she is your type."--He meant as -a woman, not as an artist; Sarah and I were both serious and -respectable.--"For _Mrs. Brandis_ I think we should have something a -little more snappy." - -"It isn't written snappy in the play," I reminded him. - -"Ah, no, that is the trouble; I have spoken to Mr. McDermott; he will -perhaps change it." - -"And if he doesn't you will keep me in mind for it." I kept my voice -with difficulty from being urgent. "You see, I don't feel like playing a -heavy part this year." I glanced down at my mourning; I hoped he would -accept it as an explanation. Two or three days later I saw Sarah and she -remarked that Jerry was rewriting some parts of his play at the request -of the manager. - -"The part of _Mrs. Brandis_?" Sarah nodded. - -"Mr. Moresco wants it more--more----" - -"Snappy," I supplied. "And who is to have it, have you heard?" - -"Fancy Filette!" - -"Oh, well, she's snappy enough, I suppose." - -"I know; I don't even like to be billed with her; but, anyway, the part -wasn't worthy of you." But I felt as I went home to my lodging that that -was only Sarah's kind way of putting it. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -I saw more than a little of Jerry McDermott during the spring and summer -that I stayed in Chicago, haunting managers' offices in my winter's suit -and a fixed determination not to let any of them suspect that I knew I -couldn't, for the moment, act at all. Where the gift had gone I did not -know, nor when, in some desperate encounter with the chance of an -engagement, I attempted to draw about me the tattered remnants of my old -facility, had I any notion what would bring it back again. - -Effie wrote me to come home for the hot weather, but though I regretted -afterward not having done so I could not make up my mind to leave -Chicago. It seemed to me then that the deadly quality of Taylorville lay -waiting like a trap, which in my present benumbed condition might close -on me if I put myself in the way of it. I thought that if I got out of -reach of the flare of light from the theatre doors, of the smell of back -scenes and the florid grip of the posters, that I should never in this -world win back to them. A summer in Taylorville would have saved me -money, would have rested and perhaps restored the balance of my powers, -but the inward monitor of which I was the mere shell and surface, -clutched upon the city with the grip of desperation. I hung upon -whatever slight attachments to the theatre my circumstances afforded, -like the drowned upon a rope, and waited for the resuscitating touch. -Somewhere beyond me I was aware of succour; not knowing from whence it -should come, I grasped at everything within reach and was buffeted and -torn about in the eddy of reverses. - -What more even than his need of me, drove me back on Gerald McDermott, -was the certainty that he was deriving from Fancy Filette the quality I -missed. She was playing in one of the cheaper theatres in one of those -entertainments that men are supposed to resort to when their families -are out of town, and I had a moment's feeling that he exposed his sex to -ridicule by the avidity with which he surrendered himself to her -perfectly obvious methods. Until he sent his family north to one of the -lake resorts for the hot weather, I found myself involved in certain -obligations of visiting at his house, where I saw that his wife created -for him by her incompetence much the same sort of background that my -bereaved and purse-pinched condition made for me, and watched with -alternate sympathy and resentment his flight from it to the effective -self-complacency which Miss Filette induced in him. - -I don't mean that Jerry wasn't fond of his wife in a way, and faithful -to her, in so far as she didn't interfere with his male prerogative of -being played upon by other women, but I do not think he had ever an -inkling that the vortex of anger and despair which she forced him to -share with her, in lieu of the passion which she couldn't any more -excite, was of the same stripe as his need of the high, inflated mood -that Miss Filette provided for him with her little bag of tricks. For -from the first Jerry seized on me, poured himself out, despoiled himself -of all the hopes, conjectures, half-guesses of his career, and that -without in the least discovering that I was in need of much the same -sort of relief myself. After his wife had taken the children to the -country--though she used even then to come down on him suddenly with -both of them and break up his work for days, or just when it was running -smoothly, wire to him to rush up to Lake View and allay the horrors of -her too active imagination--often evenings after the day's work, he -would take me to dine at queer little French or Italian restaurants -which were supposed to be preferred on account of the "atmosphere" -rather than their cheapness, and uncoil for me there all the intricate -turnings of his work upon itself, and the rich shapes and colours it -took, played upon by the slanting eyes and carmine smile of Miss -Filette. He would sit opposite me with a cigarette and a glass of "Dago -red," his black, shining hair, which he wore too long, slanting above -his forehead like a boding wing, uncramping his soul; and though I liked -him as a friend, and as a playwright thought him immensely worth while, -I was divided between exasperation at his tacit exclusion of me from the -world of excited powers in which any stimulation of his maleness threw -him, and fear that in missing his capacity for quick, shallow passions, -I had missed the one indispensable thing for my art. - -"It is the chance of a lifetime," Jerry would be reassuring me, "to -delineate a character that will be so intimate an expression of the one -who is to play it ... it's really extraordinary that she should have -been named Fancy ... it's symbolic." - -"Oh, if you imagine she is really in the least like the _Mrs. Brandis_ -you are creating ... besides, I happen to know her name is Powers, -Amanda Powers." He caught at this delightedly. - -"Ah, she's a poet, a poet! Such self-knowledge! To think of her knowing -what would suit her so exactly!" - -But I was not in the least interested in Miss Filette's psychology. What -I was trying to get at was the source of the creative mood which I was -sensible did not arise from anything Miss Filette was, but from what -Jerry was able to think of her. I admitted it was a mood you had to be -helped to, but I wasn't going to accept it from any male compliment to -his inamorata. I set up Jerry's case alongside of Miss Dean and Manager -O'Farrell, and a kind of fine intolerance drove me from it as ships are -driven apart upon the tide. - -It drove me back in the first instance upon what Pauline and Henry Mills -stood for in my life. I was full of a formless importunate capacity, -like the motor impulses of a paralytic, and I imagined a relief from it -in the shadow of some succoring male who, by assuming the traditional -responsibility of getting a living, should leave me free to produce the -perfect flower of Art. At the time I was as far from realizing as -Pauline, that she was eminently the sort of woman the sheltered life -produced; had Henry Mills been upon the market I should have seized upon -him promptly as the solution of all my difficulties. - -Pauline did her best for me--that is to say, she brought out for me an -infinite variety and arrangement of the sentimentalized sex attractions -with which she charmed dull care from Henry's brow. It was only by -degrees that I perceived that the utter want of relativity of the -quality that was known in Evanston as True Womanliness, was due to its -being conditioned very much as I thought of myself as happiest to be. It -was not until Pauline went to the country for the hot weather without -making any sensible change in my affairs, that I began to understand how -little she contributed. What I chiefly missed was a place to walk to -when I went out for exercise. - -I spent a great deal of time just walking, for there was not much doing -in the theatrical line to interest me, and I was sustained and -tormented by intimations that somewhere, not far from me, my Help walked -too. I don't know where this conviction came from that there was help -somewhere in the world; but by the middle of the summer the terrible, -keen need of it walked with me through all my days and lay down with me -at night. There were times when the certainty that it was there seemed -almost enough to lift me again to a plane of power, other times when the -sheer hunger of it bit into the bone. It was most like the sense I had -had as a child of the large friendliness that brooded over Hadley's -pasture; it was like the promise of the shining destiny that had moved -between my youth and the common occurrence; but now at times, just along -the edge of sleep, or out of the thick, waking drowse of heat, it shaped -familiarly human. I think about that time I must have dreamed again the -dream I had of Helmeth Garrett just after I had seen Modjeska, writing -that letter in his uncle's house; and with the help of what my mother -had told me I was able to read it plain. I do not distinctly remember -dreaming this, but there were times when, just after waking, my mind -would be full of him, and there would be a stir in me of the wings of -power. But in the broad day, though I thought of him often, I could not -so much as recall his face clearly. - -The one thing that I remembered about him was that I had pleased him. It -was a mortifying certainty that Jerry's ready acceptance of me as a -woman of whom his wife could not possibly be jealous, had defined for -me, that I didn't in general know how to please and interest men. They -often were interested in me, but I was never in the least conscious of -what drew them or caused them to sheer away. I had a suspicion, -doubtless of Taylorvillian extraction, that there was a sort of -culpability in knowing; but it came back to me now almost with a thrill -that I had known with Helmeth Garrett. I had been able, out of all the -possible things which might be said, to choose the thing that swayed -him. I hadn't known ever for what things my husband loved me; but in a -brief hour with Helmeth Garrett I was conscious of much in my manner to -him arising from his conscious need. And I had no more than shaped this -in my mind than I felt a faint stirring within me as of power. - -About this time I began to be more aware of the Something Without, -toward which my work tended, just after I had been asleep, as if the -self of me had gone on seeking more successfully in the silences. I -would arise very early with such a faint consciousness as a vine might -have toward the nearest wall, and get up in the blue of the morning to -go for long walks through the pleasant, empty streets, sometimes out to -the lake shore where the glint of the moving water under the mist, -struck faint sparkles from my stagnant surfaces. I would come back from -these excursions beginning to faint with the day's heat, to wear through -the afternoon with books and long drowses, and then in the cool of the -evening It would call me again, and I would seek It until late at night, -sometimes in the lit streets, fetid with the day's smells, sometimes on -a roof garden or at a park concert, where the lights, the gayety, and -the music served merely as a drug to my outer sense, which went on -busily at its absorbing quest. Sometimes men spoke to me in these lonely -wanderings; I would remember it afterward as one recalls little, -unnoticed incidents in the midst of great excitement; but for the most -part I was, except for the invisible presence, as unaccompanied as if -the city had been quite empty. If I could have laid the anxiety of my -diminishing bank account and the dread of not getting an engagement, I -should have been almost happy. - -It was along early in August that Chicago was greatly stirred by the -visit of one of the Presidential candidates--for that was a Presidential -year--who was also a popular hero. It had come rather unexpectedly and -the preparations for it were of the hastiest. There was to be speaking -at Armory Hall, and a reception afterward, and I thought I would go and -clasp hands with the great man, as if, perhaps, I might find in it, as -many of his admirers did, a sort of king's touch for the lethargy of my -spirit. The meeting began early in the sweating afternoon and dragged -out three heavy hours. Nothing of any importance transpired there until -we were moving up the right side of the hall toward the receiving -committee. The hall was split lengthwise by a bank of chairs, and down -the left aisle the company of those who had already gripped the broad -palm of the candidate, had been elbowed to oblivion by the committee. It -was in the very beginning of the handshaking and there were not so many -of them as of us. They lingered in groups and talked with one another. I -was about midway of the aisles and several persons deep in the crush, -when I saw him. How well I knew the lock falling over his forehead, and -the quick unconscious motion of the head that tossed it back! There was -the indefinable air of the outdoor man about him, though he was quite -correctly dressed and had a lady's light wrap over his arm. - -"Helmeth! Helmeth!" I cried out to him from the centre of my will. I -fought my way to the outer edge of the moving crowd, I caught at chairs -and struggled to maintain my position opposite him. He was talking to -two or three men, and just at the edge of the group a woman stood with -an air of waiting. I resented her immobility, so near him and so little -moved by him. - -"Helmeth, Helmeth, Look! Look at me!" I demanded voicelessly across the -bank of chairs. - -He heard me; slowly he turned; his attention wandered from the group. - -"Helmeth! Helmeth!" All my will was in my cry. Now he looked in my -direction. There was that in his face that told me my cry had touched -the outer ring of his consciousness. Then the lady who stood by, took -advantage of his detachment to touch him on the arm. Only a man's wife -touches him like that. I knew her at once; she was the type of woman who -subscribes to the _Delineator_, and belongs to the church because she -thinks it is an excellent thing for other people. She had blond hair, -discreetly frizzled about the temples, and her dress had been made at -home. - -As soon as she touched him, Helmeth Garrett turned to her with divided -attention. I saw her take his arm; he looked back; the cry held him; his -eyes roved up and down; the moving mass closed between us and carried me -completely out of sight. - -It was fully a quarter of an hour before the crowd released me, and by -that time he had quite vanished. I hung about the entrance to the hall, -I pushed here and there in the press, elbowed out of it by resentful -citizens. At last when the hall was closed and even the policemen had -gone from before it, I went home, to lie awake half the night planning -how to get at him. And the moment I woke from the doze of exhaustion -into which I finally fell, I knew that the thread which bound me to -Chicago had snapped. I stayed on two or three days, vaguely hoping to -come across him. I even looked in the hotel registers before I accepted -Sarah's urgent invitation to spend the rest of the month with her at -Lake View. - -One night when the wind out of the lake was fresh enough to suggest, in -the closed window and the drawn blind, a reciprocated intimacy, I told -Sarah all about Helmeth Garrett. - -"And to think," I said, "how different it all might have been if only I -had got that letter." - -"Yes," Sarah admitted, "but that doesn't prove you'd have been happy." - -"Not if we loved one another?" - -"Oh, I am not sure loving has anything to do with happiness, or is meant -to. Sometimes I think God--or whoever it is manages things--has a very -poor opinion of happiness, because you don't find it invariably along -with the best of experiences. It happens, or it doesn't. If love does -anything for you it is just to give you the use of yourself." - -"But it hasn't," I protested; "I'm just stumping along." - -"You haven't really had it--just being kissed once, what does that -amount to?" - -"Oh, Sarah, Sarah, that is what hurts me! I haven't really had it. I'm -never going to. I'll just go halting like this all my life." - -"No, you won't," Sarah shook her head, piecing her own knowledge slowly -into comfort for me. "You remember what I told you that time when you -found out about Dean and Mr. O'Farrell? There's a kind of feeling that -goes with acting that is like loving, only it isn't. I don't know where -it comes from. Maybe it is what they call genius, but I know you can -slide off from loving into it. That is what makes Jerry think he has to -be in love all the time; it is a little stair he climbs up, and then he -goes sailing off. You don't think Fancy Filette really does anything for -him?" - -"Goodness, no; she hasn't a teaspoonful of brains!" - -"Well, then," she triumphed. "After a while his genius will be so strong -in him that he won't need that sort of thing and he will think it -ridiculous." - -"And you think that will come to me?" - -"It did come. You didn't have to be in love to begin," Sarah objected. - -"Sarah, I will tell you the truth! I was in love all the time, I didn't -know with whom, but always wanting somebody ... trying to get through to -something; trying to mate. That was it. Nights when I would do my best, -and the house would be storming and cheering, I would look around -for ... for somebody. And I would go to my room, and he wouldn't be -there! I used to think Tommy would be He, I wanted him to be. I thought -some day I would turn around suddenly and find him changed into ... -whatever it was I wanted. But I know now he never could have been that. -And all this summer ... I've heard it calling. I've walked and walked. -Sometimes it was just around the corner, but I never caught up with it. -And when I saw Helmeth Garrett, I _knew_!" - -I had leaned back out of the circle of our small shaded lamp to make my -confession, but Sarah came forward into it the better to show me the -condoning tenderness of her smile. - -"It's no use, Sarah, I'm no genius; I have to be in love like the rest -of them." She shook her head gently. - -"You'll get across. Love would help; I wish you had it. But I'll confess -to you; I had love and it only opened the door. There's something -beyond, bigger than all men. You must reach out and lay hold of it. Oh, -if it were love one needed, I should die--I should die!" I had never -seen her so moved before. - -"Tell me, Sarah; I've always wanted to know." - -"I want you to know, but it isn't easy! I didn't know anything about -love ... how could I the way I was brought up! My father was a Baptist -preacher. I had been taught that it was wrong to let anybody ... touch -you; and when he kissed me I felt as if he had the right...." - -"I know, I know!" I had been kissed that way myself. - -"How can anybody know? I loved him, and I was the only one of many. He -left me without a word, ... like a woman of the street ... not looking -backward." She got up and moved about the room, the thick coil of her -rich brown hair slipping to her shoulders, and her bodily perfection -under the thin dressing gown distracting me even from the passion of her -speech. I had a momentary pang of sympathy with the delinquent Lawrence, -I could see how a man might be afraid almost, of the quality of her -beauty. - -"Sometimes," she said, "I think marriage is a much more real relation -than people think--that something real but invisible happens between -them so that even if they are parted they are never quite the same -again. It is like having a limb torn from you; you ache always, in the -part you have lost." I knew something of what that ache could be, but I -could only turn my face up to hers that she might see my tears. - -"You have enough of your own to bear," she said. "I must not lay my -troubles on you; but I wanted to tell you how I know it is not love that -makes art. I was dying for love when Mr. O'Farrell put me to acting. I -was bleeding so ... and suddenly I reached out and laid hold of Whatever -is, and I found I could act. It was as if the half of me that had been -torn away had been between me and It, and I laid hold of It. That's how -I know." She came behind me, leaning on my chair, and I put up my hands -to her. - -"Oh, Sarah, Sarah, help me to lay hold of it, too!" But for all her shy -confidences, deep within I didn't believe her. - -Toward the first of September we went back to the city, Sarah to begin -rehearsals for _The Futurist_, and I to take up the dreary round of -manager's offices and dramatic agencies. The best that was offered me -was poor enough, but it had a faint savour of a superior motive clinging -to it. It was from a Mr. Coleman, an actor manager of the old, -heavy-jowled Shakespearian type, who was projecting a classic revival -with himself in all the tragic parts, and I signed with him to play -_Portia_, _Cleopatra_, and the wife of _Brutus_. We had been busy with -rehearsals about ten days when I had a telegram from Forester saying -that mother had died that day and I was to come immediately. - -It was late Sunday evening when I received it and I hunted up the -manager at the hotel. - -"I'm going," I told him. - -"Well, of course, your contract----" - -"I'm going anyway ... and I know the lines." He was as considerate, I -suppose, as could be expected. - -"I can give you three days," he calculated. - -"Four," I stipulated. - -"Well, four," he grudged. That would allow two days for the funeral. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -As it turned out I was more than a month in Taylorville and so saved -myself from the Coleman players for a more kindly destiny, though at the -time it did not appear so. It grew out of my realizing, in Effie's first -clasp of me, something more than our common loss, more than family, -something that I felt myself answer to before we could have any talk -together that did not relate to the funeral and the manner of my -mother's death. - -They thought from little things that came to mind afterward, that she -must have been prepared for it, but forebore to trouble them with a -presentiment of what could not in any case have been much longer -delayed: she had clung to them more and been still more loath to trouble -them with her wants. The Saturday before, she had made Effie understand -that she wished all the photographs of my father brought together, -queer, little old daguerrotypes of him as a young man, a tintype of him -in his volunteer soldier dress, and a large, faded photo of him as an -officer leaning on his sword. She kept them by her and would be seen -poring upon them, as though she tried to fix the identity of one about -to be met under unfamiliar or confusing circumstances, though they did -not think of this until afterward. The Sunday of her death Cousin Judd -had come in to sit with her, as his custom was, an hour earlier than the -morning service. He had read the day's lesson from the Bible and sung -the hymn, and then after an interval Effie, who was busy about the back -of the house, heard him sing again my mother's favourite hymn, - - "Come, Thou fount of every blessing, - Tune my heart to sing Thy praise." - -and as he sung she saw the tears rolling down his face. So she turned -her back on them and let them say their good-byes without her, though -she had no notion how near the final parting was. - -Forester was dressing--he and Effie had taken turns at church-going ever -since mother's stroke--and he was surprised to find that Cousin Judd had -gone off without him. Mother clung to him when he went to kiss her -good-bye; she struggled with her impotence, but they made out that it -was not because she wanted him to stay at home with her; and for the -first time since her illness she wished not to be propped up at the -window where she could sign to the neighbours going by, but seemed to -want greatly to sleep. Effie wheeled her into the corner of the sitting -room; and a little later she noticed that mother's head had slipped down -on the pillow as it did sometimes, past her power to lift it up again. -So my sister straightened the poor head with a kiss and went back to -getting the dinner. She moved softly because mother seemed asleep, but -at last when she went as usual to tell her that Forester was visible at -the end of the street, on the way home, she saw that the head had -slipped down again, and this time as she lifted it up there was no life -in it at all. - -One of the strange incidents of that morning, and yet not strange when -you think how much they had been to one another, was that Cousin Judd, -though he had started home directly after church, could not get there, -but when he had driven a little way out of town, drawn by he knew not -what unseen force, turned back and pulled up in front of our door just -as the doctor who had been summoned hastily was saying that mother had -been dead an hour. - -It was Monday morning when I arrived, and the funeral could not be until -Tuesday, to allow time for the news to penetrate to all the distant -country places from which my mother's relatives would be drawn to it, -moved and anxious to come, though many of them had not seen her for a -matter of years. I think I realized at once how it would be about my -getting back to Chicago, especially when I spoke to Effie about it. She -cried out and clung to me in a way that made me see that I stood for -something more to her than just sisterliness. Without saying anything I -wrote to Mr. Coleman that I should be detained a week or longer, and -that though I hoped he would be able to save my place for me, I didn't -really expect that he would. - -It was not in the Taylorville cemetery that we buried my mother, but in -a little plot set aside from the old Judd place, along with the rest of -the Wilsons, Judds, and Jewetts, those that had dropped back peacefully -to their native sod, and those sent home from Gettysburg and Appomattox. -It was a longish ride; from turn to turn of the country road, teams -dropped into the procession that led out from town. On either side the -woods blazed like the ranked Cherubim, host on host; great shoals of -fiery leaves lay in the shallows of the burying ground. At the last, -shaken by the light breeze that sprung up, little flamy darts from the -oak whirled into the grave with her. They were to say in their own -fashion that there was nothing more natural. I think my mother must have -found it so. - -We had scarcely got home again, still sitting about, veiled and -voluminous, when I was drawn out of grief to meet Effie's emergency. It -was Almira Jewett who brought me face to face with it. Almira had taken -off her things and was getting tea for us in her brisk, capable way. - -"Anyhow," she said, "I 'spose you'll stay with your sister until she -gets sort of used to things." It flashed on me that what she was -expected to get used to, was going on just as she had been without the -excuse of my mother's needing her. - -"Oh, I'll stay till the breaking up," I met her promptly. - -"My land!" said Almira Jewett, "you talking of the breakin' up and your -mother ain't hardly out of the house yet. They do say there's nothing -like play-acting to make you nimble in your feelings." I knew of course -that they would lay it to the defibricating influence of my profession -that I should take the breaking up of my mother's home so lightly, but I -had caught a brief hiatus in Effie's sobs and I realized that what the -poor child was afraid of, was being hypnotized into a situation against -which her natural good sense revolted. I was bracing myself against the -tradition of filial obligation that I felt was going to be put in force -against me, when suddenly help arrived from an unsuspected quarter. - -"I 'spose you're going with a troupe yet?" Cousin Lydia interposed, for -the first time in her life, I believe, delivering herself of a -conclusion. "It's a pity, because if you was anyways settled you could -take Effie with you. Forester was a good son;" she ruminated on that for -a while. "He was what you call a real model son, but I don't know as I -want to see Effie married to him the same as your mother was." It gave -me a shock to think that all these years she must have been seeing how -things were. - -"She shan't," I assured her, "not if I have to stay with Forrie myself." -I had thought a good many times what was to become of Effie. I couldn't -take her with me, of course, but I wasn't in the least prepared to see -her intrigued by the popular sentiment into becoming a mere figurehead -for Forester's _rôle_ of provider. "Keeping up a home" they called it in -Taylorville, as though the house and furniture and the daily habit of -coming back to it, were the pivotal facts of existence. - -It almost seemed as if it might come to that. After the others were all -gone and the night closed in on us three, the spirit of the dead came -and stood among us. Effie wept in Forrie's arms and said that he should -not be quite bereft, he should have her anyway. - -"You poor child ... you've got a brother left; you too, Olivia. You -shan't want for a home while I live." That of course was the sort of -thing Taylorville expected of him. It began to seem as if I might have -to make good my word about staying with my brother to let Effie free. I -believe he would have accepted that without even a suspicion of what I -surrendered by it. If anything, he would have seen in it only another -dramatization of his _rôle_ of dutifulness. That a woman had any -preferred employment beside cushioning life for the males of her family, -had not impinged on the consciousness of Taylorville. - -But the very next morning I awoke anew to the purpose of rescuing Effie, -and to the recollection of an incident of the funeral, noted but not -taken into the reckoning in the stress of more absorbing emotions. - -"Effie, wasn't that Mrs. Jastrow I saw at the cemetery yesterday with -her head done up in a black veil--crape, too? I have just recalled it." -Effie nodded. - -"One would have thought," I resented, "that she was one of the family." - -"Ah, that's it; she thinks she is." - -"One of the family? Oh! you don't mean that Forrie----Where was Lily -then?" I demanded. - -"She wouldn't come, of course, not being recognized as one of the family -and yet counting herself one." - -"But, explain ... how could she? I thought that was broken off long -ago." - -"When mother was first taken," Effie agreed, "but you see she made such -a dead set at him, she had to keep it up somehow; she couldn't admit -that Forrie hadn't wanted her. So they made it up between them, Lily and -her mother, I mean, that she and Forrie had really been engaged, but it -had been broken off because Forrie couldn't marry so long as mother----" -She broke off with tears again, remembering how mother was now. - -"That was two years ago; you don't mean to say they've kept it up all -the time?" - -"They've had to. You see Lily hadn't been careful about not getting -herself talked about with Forester. Oh, not scandal, of course, but you -know how it is when a girl is crazy after a man; everybody gets to hear -of it. And then they had to make so much of the engagement never coming -to anything on mother's account, it quite spoiled Lily's chances, and -you know, Forester...." - -"Oh, he was taken in by it, no doubt; it was something to sentimentalize -over and be self-sacrificing about." - -"Well, of course, he couldn't quite abandon the poor girl; and she -really _is_ fond of him." - -"And perfectly safe to philander with. Well, now that he has no one -depending on him I suppose he will marry her!" - -"That's what is worrying me," protested Effie; "you see it all depends -on whether I go on depending on him." She broke down over that. Mother -hadn't wanted Forester to marry Lily Jastrow, and everybody by the mouth -of Almira Jewett, had thought it was Effie's duty to keep him from it if -she could. - -"And I could, by just staying on. It's mother's money in the business, -your's and mine as much as his, and this house ... it's partly ours ... -if we stay in it." - -"Well if you _want_ to...." - -Effie came over and sobbed on my shoulder, "Oh, I don't," she said. "I -suppose it is horrid and selfish. I'm fond of Forrie, but I want to do -things in the world ... like you have ... and I want to marry and have -babies. Oh, oh!" She was quite overwhelmed with the turpitude of it. - -"You shall, you shall," I determined for her. - -"Oh, Olivia, I have _wanted_ you so. I knew you'd understand. It was all -right so long as mother lived; I could do anything for her, but now I -want--I want to be _me_!" I understood very well what that want was. But -first off I had to explain to Effie why I couldn't take her with me. It -was wonderful how she entered into my feeling about my work, and my lack -of success in Chicago. - -"_Of course_, you ought to go to New York. You'll be a great tragic -actress, Olive, I know _that_. You could go, too, if you could get your -share out of the business. You could have mine and yours!" She glowed -over it. But the fact was we couldn't get the money out of the business. -As it stood we couldn't have sold the shop for what mother had put into -it, and, besides, we should have had to deal first with Forester's -conviction that he was taking care of our shares for us. I needn't have -worried about Effie; she was too pretty and competent not to have -arranged for herself. The principal and his wife drove over from -Montecito to say that they would be glad to have her come back and -finish the course interrupted within a few months of graduation by my -mother's illness. And for her board and tuition she was to act as the -principal's secretary. Within a year she wrote that she was engaged to -their son. - -In the meantime I undertook to stop the capacious maw of Forrie's need -of being important; and the only way I saw to do it, involved my -surrender of any hope I had of finding my own release in what my mother -had left us of my father's hard won savings. I shouldn't have had any -compunction, so fierce was my own need of success, about forcing my -brother's hand, but I meant definitely not to leave any gap in his life -for Effie to be drawn back into. Before we had come to this point, the -second afternoon after the funeral in fact, circumstances had begun to -work for me. Effie and I, looking out of the window, saw Mrs. Jastrow -coming along by the front fence with all her gentility spread, as it -were, by the feeling she had of her call on us being a diplomatic -function. - -"She's coming to see how we take it," Effie averred. - -"Her coming to the funeral as one of the family? Well, how do we take -it, Effie?" - -"Mother couldn't bear the idea of it." Tears came into my sister's eyes; -I could see the wings of self-immolation hovering over her. - -"Look here, Effie, you go and take home Mrs. Endsleigh's spoons." There -had been so many out of town connections dropping in for a meal that we -had been obliged to fall back on our nearest neighbour. - -"Lily's respectable, isn't she? and Forester has encouraged her. Well, -you don't want to spoil the poor girl's life, do you?" - -"Oh," said Effie, "oh, Olivia!" I could see she was torn between -compunction and admiration for my way of putting it on high moral -grounds. I heard her counting out the spoons in the kitchen as I went to -let Mrs. Jastrow in. - -I think she didn't know any more than Effie did, what to make of my -manner of receiving her. She sat on the edge of a chair and snivelled a -little into a handkerchief which was evidently her husband's, but it was -chiefly, I could see, because she had come prepared to snivel and -couldn't quickly adjust herself to my change of base. - -"Poor Lily," she moaned, "she thought such a lot of Mr. Lattimore's -mother; but I tell her she must bear up." - -"She must indeed," I assured her. "Forester needs all the sympathy he -can get just now." I could see her peeping over the top of her -handkerchief, trying to guess what to make of that; but the sentimental -was easy for her. - -"That's what I tell her; they'll have to comfort each other. Them poor -young things, they'd ought to be together. But Lily's so sensitive she -couldn't bear to put herself forward." - -"I'll tell Forrie you called," I assured her. - -Mrs. Jastrow fanned herself with her damp handkerchief; her poor little -pretence broke quite down under my friendliness. - -"He's got to marry her," she whispered. "Lily's been talked about, and -he's _got to_." I could guess suddenly what it meant to her to have -reached up so desperately for something better for her daughter than she -had been able to manage for herself, and to come so near not getting it. -I was able to put something like sympathy into my voice when I spoke to -Forester at supper. - -"Mrs. Jastrow called to-day. She says Lily isn't bearing up as she -might. I suppose you ought to go and see her!" - -Effie's eyes grew round at me over the teacups, but after all Forrie -didn't know what had passed between mother and me in regard to Lily. If -I chose to take his relation to her as a matter of course, he couldn't -object to it. We heard Forrie in his room changing his collar before he -went back to the shop again. - -"He'll go to her to-night after he closes up," Effie told me. "It will -end with her getting him." - -"So long as he doesn't get you----" But it was unfair to put ideas like -that in Effie's head. "After all it is a very good match for him in some -ways; she'll always look up to him, and that is what Forrie needs." - -It was natural to Effie to judge every situation by what it had for -those concerned; she wasn't troubled as I was by the pressure of an -outside ideal. By the end of a month, when I thought of going back to -the city, it was tacitly understood that as soon as convenient Forester -was to marry Lily Jastrow. He meant, however, to be fair with us both -about the property; he had given us notes for our share, and expected to -pay interest. The note wasn't negotiable, as I learned immediately, and -the interest wasn't any more than Effie would need for her clothing. I -felt that the jaws of destiny which had opened to let Effie out, had -closed on me instead. I returned to Chicago early in November; my place -with the Coleman players had long been filled, and there was nothing -whatever to do. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -Jerry's play, which had had its premier while I was away, was going on -successfully. One of the first items of news Sarah told me about him was -that his wife was expecting another child, undertaken in the hope that, -if she couldn't hold her husband's roving fancy, she could at least fix -his attention on her situation. All that she had got out of it so far, -was a reason for staying at home, which left Jerry the freer to bestow -his society where it was most acceptable. - -"Does she know--Miss Filette, I mean--about the child." - -"Not unless Jerry has told her--which he'd hardly do." Sarah laughed a -little, and that was not usual with her; she had very little humour. -"Fancy is so up in the air about the success of the play, she thinks she -inspired it. I imagine they'd feel it an indelicacy of Mrs. McDermott to -have intruded her condition on their relation. Of course it is -understood that there's nothing really wrong about it...." - -"It is wrong if his wife is made unhappy by it." I hadn't Sarah's reason -for being lenient. "Somebody ought to speak to Jerry." - -"You might--he would listen to you. It is just because there is so -little in it that it is so hard to deal with." - -I suppose I took to interfering in the McDermott's affairs because I had -so little of my own to interest me. Besides, I was fond of Jerry and -didn't see how he was to be helped by getting his family into a muddle. - -"But after all," Sarah reminded me, "it is his own wife and his own -inspiration." It wasn't in me to tell her, even if I had understood it -myself at the time, that the secret of my resentment was that it should -be so accepted on all sides that one must choose between them. I wanted, -oh, I immensely wanted, what Jerry was getting out of his relation to -Miss Filette, but I wanted it free of the implication that my -abandonment of my husband to the village dressmaker put me in anything -like the same case. - -"The real trouble with you," Jerry told me, "is that you are trying to -live in Chicago and Taylorville at the same time." - -Not being able to make any headway with him, I went to call on Miss -Filette. I wasn't on terms with her that would admit of an assault on -her confidence, I didn't know her well enough to call on her in any -case, but I wasn't to be thwarted of good intention by anything so small -as a breech of manners in doing it. It wasn't so much the offense of my -undertaking it that counted, I found, as Miss Filette's determination -not to hear anything that would ruffle the surface of her complacency. I -had to drop plumb into my revelation out of the opportunity she made for -me in the question, as to whether the play would or would not go on the -road before Christmas. - -"I should hope so," I dropped squarely on her; "Jerry's wife needs him. -There's a child coming in April." - -"Yes," said Miss Filette; she was giving me tea and she poised the -second lump over my cup with an inquiring eyebrow. "Have you seen what -we have done with the second act lately?" - -"Anyway," I said to myself as I went, "she knows. She can't skid over -the facts as she has my telling her." - -But it was the certainty that, knowing, she kept right on with Jerry, -that drove me back on Pauline and Henry Mills. I fled to them to be -saved from what, in the only other society I had access to, fretted all -my finer instincts; to be ricocheted by them again on to that reef of -moral squalour upon which the artist and woman in me were riven asunder. - -What I should have done was to take my courage in my hands and have gone -on from Taylorville to New York. But the most I was equal to was a fixed -determination to accept anything which would take me nearer Broadway, -which, even then, was to the player world all that the lamp is to the -moth. In the meantime I had settled in two housekeeping rooms in a -street that I wouldn't have dared to give to a manager as an address; -one of those neighbourhoods where there are always a great many -perambulators, and waste paper blowing about. There was never anything -for me, in the frame of life called Bohemian, more than a picturesque -way of begging the question of poverty. What I looked for in a lodging, -was escape from the bedraggled professionalism which went on in what -were called studios, by means of a cot bed, an oil stove, and a few -yards of art muslin. That I hadn't managed it so successfully as I -hoped, was made plain to me a few days after I had moved in, by the -discovery of a card tacked on the opposite door, that read, "Leon -Griffin, the Varieté." It was the same theatre at which Cecelia Brune -was playing the chief attraction in song and dance. In the glimpses I -had of Mr. Griffin in the dark hall going in and out, I was aware that -he gave much the same impression of unprofitable use that was associated -in my mind with the Shamrocks. - -All this time I kept going through the motions of looking for an -engagement. Now and then some shining bubble of opportunity seemed to -float toward me, to dissolve in thin air as soon as I put my hand out to -it. One of these brought me to Cline and Erskine's waiting room on the -day that Cecelia Brune elected to register her complaint against what -she considered a slight of her turn at the Varieté. She flounced about -more than a little, not to let the rest of us escape the inference that -she was not used to being kept waiting. When she had hooked and unhooked -her handsome furs for the fourth time, she introduced me to Leon -Griffin, who except for the name, I shouldn't have recognized for my -hall neighbour. It was like being slapped in the face with my own hard -condition to have him crowded on me in that character before the whole -roomful. Life seemed so to have beggared him. In broad day he looked the -sort of a man who has failed to sustain himself in the man's world, and -must reinforce his value with the favour of women. Little touches of -effeminacy about his dress failed to take the attention away from its -shabbiness. His hair had the traditional thespian curl in spite of being -cropped short, to allow of various make-ups, one surmised, and his very -blue eyes were in a perpetual state of extenuating the meagreness of his -other features. Being ashamed of my shame at meeting him there, I began -to be very nice to him. Cecelia, in spite of her magnificent raiment, -perhaps on account of it, had been disposed to graciousness. She drew us -together with a wave of her hand. - -"She ought to be doin' _Ophelia_ on Broadway," she introduced me -handsomely; "wouldn't that get you!" - -"I saw you with the Hardings last year," Griffin assented, almost as -though I might think it a liberty. "Where are you playing now?" He had -the stamp of too many reverses on his face not to estimate mine at its -proper worth. He had fine instincts too, for as soon as I told him that -I was out of an engagement that season, he put himself on record quite -simply. "My turn goes off next week--I'm trying to get Cline to put it -on the circuit." When we came out of the office together he fell into -step with me. One of the young women ahead of us made the shape of a -bubble with her hands and blew it from her. "Pouff" she said. "There -goes another of my chances." She laughed with a fine courage. - -"They all go through with it," Griffin affirmed. "There's Eversley----" -I have forgotten which of the well-known incidents he related. - -"Eversley told me I might come to it. What made you think of him?" I -demanded. - -"I saw his name in the paper; he's to play here this winter. He's a -wonder." - -"He said wonderful things to me once." I had just recalled them. - -"They'll come true then. Eversley never makes a mistake. Why, I remember -once----" He broke off as though he had changed his mind about telling -me. I was wondering if I couldn't get rid of him by stopping in at -Sarah's, when he broke out again suddenly. - -"To think of you being out of an engagement and a girl like Cecelia -Brown--yes, I know her name is Brown, Cissy Brown of Milwaukee----" - -"I've always suspected it," I admitted, "but it is her looks of course, -and the clothes; Cecelia has lovely clothes." - -"Well, so could you if...." He checked himself. "I don't mean to say -anything against a lady...." - -"I've always suspected that, too," I admitted, "but one doesn't like to -say it." - -"Well, you know what she gets--thirty-five a week. A girl doesn't wear -diamond sunbursts on that." - -"Mr. Griffin, I wish you'd tell me what sort of man it is that gives -diamond sunbursts to Variety girls: I've never seen any of them." - -"You have probably, but you don't know it. You meet their wives in -society." - -"Henry Mills." I don't know what made me say it; the image of him came -tripping along the surface of my mind and slid off my tongue without -having more than momentarily perched there. - -"Is he in business downtown, and has he got a perfectly proper family -and too many dinners under his vest?" - -"Mr. Mills's home life is ideal; but I didn't mean----" - -"Neither did I, but that's the type. They mostly have ideal families, -but they couldn't live up to them if they didn't have Cecelia Brunes on -the side.... I beg your pardon." - -He had looked up and caught me blushing a deep, painful red, but it -wasn't on account of what he had intimated. I was blushing because of -the discovery in myself of needs which, compared to the ideal of life I -had set for myself, were as much of a defection as anything our -conversation had suggested for Henry Mills. I was conscious in those -days of a slow, steady seepage of all my forces toward desperation. - -"You'll have to take a company out for yourself," was Jerry's solution. -"I'll write you a play. I've got a ripping idea--a man, with a gift, and -two women, good women both of them--that's where I score against the -eternal triangle--each of them trying to save him from the other and -breaking him between them." Jerry's plays were never anything more than -dramatizations of his immediate experience. "You and Sarah Croyden, you -set each other off; I'll write it for both of you." He walked up and -down in my little room with his hands in his pockets and his shining -black hair rising like quills. - -"Jerry, how long will it take you to write that play? And how much will -it cost to produce it?" - -"Ten thousand dollars," he answered to the last question. "About -eighteen months if I go right at it." - -"And I've money enough to last me to the end of February. No," to his -swift generous gesture. "You have to live eighteen months on yours--and -another child coming." I made up my mind that I should have to speak to -Pauline and Henry Mills. - -Greater than any mystery of creative art to me, is the mystery by which -the recipients of its benefits manage to keep ignorant of its essential -processes. I have never been able to figure to myself how Pauline and -Henry escaped knowing that the creative mood, the keen hunger of which -is more importunate than any need of food or raiment, was to be had for -very little more than they spent fattening their souls on its choice -products. For it is always to be bought; it is the distinction of genius -as against talent, always to know in what far, unlikely market the -precious commodity is to be bought. How was it that Henry escaped -knowing that the appealing femininity which plays so large a part in the -success of an actress with an audience of Millses, is largely the result -of having been the object of that solicitious protection which it is -supposed to provoke? With what, since it was agreed between Pauline and -me that I was not to pay down on that counter what Cecelia and Jerry -parted with cheerfully, was I ultimately to pay for it? Now that I had -on all sides of me the witness of desperation, I began to be irritated -at the way in which, in view of our long friendship, they accepted it -for me. - -As the holiday season approached, without any change in my circumstances -other than a steady diminution of my bank account, I came to the -conclusion that the only possible move was toward New York and that I -should have to ask Henry to advance me the money for it. In view of what -came to me afterward it was a reasonable proposition, but I reckoned -without that extraordinary blankness to the processes of art which is -common to those most entertained by it. - -It was a day or two after Christmas, from which I had been excused by my -recent bereavement, that I went out to dinner there with the -determination to bring something to pass commensurate with their usual -attitude of high admiration for and confidence in my gift. We had gone -into the library after dinner, at least it was a room that went by that -name, though I don't know for what reason except that Henry smoked there -and the furniture was upholstered in leather, as in Evanston it was -indispensable that all libraries should be. - -Here and there were touches that suggested that if Henry moved his -income up a notch or two, Pauline's taste might not be able to keep pace -with it. Henry warmed his back at the gas log and wished to know how -things went with me. - -"As well as I could expect them _here_. I've made up my mind to try for -New York as soon as I can manage it." - -"What's the matter with Chicago?" Henry's manner implied that whatever -you believed about it, you'd have to show him. - -"Well, I'd have to be capitalized to do anything here the same as in New -York, and the field there is larger." I went on to explain something of -what the metropolis had to offer. - -"I guess the worst thing about Chicago is that you're out of a job. -People don't get sore on a place where they are doing well." - -"No. They generally light out for a place where there are more jobs." I -thought I should get on better if I took Henry in his own key, but he -forged ahead of me. - -"If there's anything the matter with your acting, why don't you ask -somebody?" - -"There's nobody to ask. Besides, there isn't anything the matter with -it; the matter is with me." - -"Well, I must say I don't see the difference." - -"Oh!" I cried. I hadn't realized that they wouldn't just take my word -for it. "It is because I am empty--empty!" I trailed off, seeing how -wide I was of his understanding. I shouldn't have questioned Henry -Mills's word about the capitalization of a joint stock company; and I -resented their discounting my own statement of my difficulties. Pauline -got hold of my hand and patted it. I wondered if it was because all her -own crises were complicated with Henry Mills that she always thought -that affectionateness was part of the answer. - -"It is only that, with all your Gift, Henry can't understand how you -need anything else," she extenuated. - -"I need food and clothes," I blurted out; "pretty soon I shall need a -lodging." - -"Oh, my dear!" Pauline was shocked at the indelicacy. I don't know if -she didn't understand how poor I was, or if it was only the general -notion of the sheltered woman, to find in complaint a kind of heresy -against the institution by which they are maintained. "After all," she -caught up with her accustomed moral attitude, "there's a kind of -nobility in suffering for your art. It's what gives you your spiritual -quality." I thought I recognized the phrase as one that was current in -the women's clubs of that period. I took hold of my courage desperately. - -"Well, I'm offering you a chance to suffer two thousand dollars' worth." -Pauline's tact was proof even against that. - -"You Comedy Child!" she laughed indulgently. - -"You're getting ideas," Henry burbled on cheerfully; "all these -long-hairs and high-brows you've been associating with, they've filled -you up. That friend of yours, McDermott, somebody had him to the club -the other day, talking about the conservation of Genius. Nothing in it. -Let them work for their money the same as other people, I say." - -"You know you didn't have any money to begin with," Pauline reminded me. -I was made to feel it a consideration that she hadn't pressed the point -that if I couldn't do again what I had done then, there was something -lacking in the application. They must have taken my gesture of despair -for surrender. - -"I guess you were just getting it out of your system," Henry surmised -comfortably. - -It was not the first nor the last time that I was to come squarely up -against the lay conviction that whatever might be known about the -processes of art, it wasn't the artist that knew it. Later, when Henry -took me out to the car, he came round to what had been back of the whole -conversation. - -"I suppose you could use more money in your business; most of us could," -he advised me, "but you don't want to let people find it out. There's -nothing turns men against a woman so much as to have her always thinking -about money." - -It was a very cold night as I came down the side street to my door, -deserted as a country road. The narrow footpath trodden in the pavement -looked like the track of desolation, the cold flare of the lamps was -smothered in sodden splashes of snow. There had been the feeling of -uneasiness in the air that goes before a storm all that forenoon, and in -the interval that I had been revaluing a lifelong friendship in terms of -what it wouldn't do for me, it had settled down to a heavy clogging -snow. I was startled as I turned in at the entry to find a man behind -me. He had come up unsuspected in the soft shuffle and turned in with -me. - -By the light that filtered through the weather-fogged transom I saw that -he was Griffin of the Varieté. Now as I fumbled blindly at the latch he -came close to me. - -"Beg pardon!" He had put out his hand over mine and turned the key for -me. - -"My fingers are so cold," I apologized. I turned my face toward him with -the stiffness of cold and tears upon it and there was an answering -commiseration in his eyes. I reached out for the key and he took my hand -in his, holding it to his breast with a movement of excluding human -kindness. If the gesture was at all theatrical I did not feel it. I let -him hold it there for a moment before I went in and shut the door. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -Depression, as well as the storm which held on heavily all night and the -next day, kept me close, and the state of my coal bin kept me in bed -most of the next day. Along late in the afternoon I was aroused from a -lethargy of cold and crying, by Leon Griffin tapping at the door to know -how I did. The snow by this time had settled down to a blinding drift, -and the thermometer had fallen into an incalculable void of cold. -Griffin was in his overcoat as though he had just come in or was just -going out, though I learned later he had been sitting in it all day in -his room. The impression it created of his being in the act of passing, -led me to open my door to him, as I otherwise might not have done. A -terrible, cold blast came in with him and a clattering of the shutters -on the windward wall of the house. Outside, the day was falling dusk; -there was no light in the room but the square blank of the window -curtained by the sliding screen of snow, and my little stove which -glowed like a carbuncle in its corner. - -"You're cozy here"--he put it as an excuse for lingering, for I hadn't -asked him to have a chair--"you hardly feel the wind. On my side there's -a trail of snow half across the room where the wind whips it in between -the casings." - -Though he had come ostensibly to offer me a neighbourly attention, he -was plainly in need of it himself; it was his last night at the Varieté -and, between the storm and the depression of having nothing to turn to, -he was coming down with a cold. I had him into my one easy chair and -suggested tea. - -"I hardly slept any last night," he apologized over his second cup, "the -shutter clacks so." I could hear it now like the stroke of desolation. - -That night when I heard him stamping off the snow in the hall, I had a -hot drink for him, but when I saw him, by the rakish light of the hall -lamp, wringing his hands with the cold before taking it, I insisted he -should come on into my still warm room. I had to turn back first to -light my own lamp and, in respect to my being in my dressing gown with -my hair in two braids, to slip into my bedroom and experience, as I -looked back at him through the crack in the door, the kind of softening -a woman has toward a man she has made comfortable. The light of my lamp, -which was shaded for reading, like a miniature calcium, brought out for -me the frayed edge of his overcoat and all the waste and misuse of him, -the kind of faded appeal that sort of man has for a woman; forlorn as he -was, as he put the bowl back on the table, I was so much more forlorn -myself that I was glad to have been femininely of use to him. - -Pauline wrote me to come out and stay with her during the protracted -cold spell, but owing to the difficulty in delivery, the invitation -failed to reach me until the severity of the weather was abated. In any -case I was still too sore at what seemed to me the betrayal of my long -confidence, to have been willing to have subjected myself to any -reminders of it. And whatever kindness Pauline meant, it could hardly -have done so much for me as Leon Griffin did by just needing me. It -transpired that he had no stove in his room, and the heat from the -register for which we were definitely charged in the rent, scarcely -modified the edge of the cold. For the next two or three days we spent -much of the time huddled over my stove. Snow ceased to fall on the -second day, and nothing moved in our view except now and then the -surface of it was flung up by the wind, falling again fountain-Pwise -into the waste of the untrampled housetops that stretched from my window -to the icy flat of the lake darkening under a dour horizon. Somehow, -though I had never been willing to confess to my friends how poor I was, -I made no bones of it with Griff, as I had heard Cecelia call him, a -name that seemed somehow to suit the inconsequential nature of our -relation better than his proper title. We frankly pooled our funds in -the matter of food, which one or another of us slipped out to buy, and -cooked on my stove. I took an interest in preparing it, such as I -hadn't since the times when I imagined I was helping Tommy on the way to -growing rich, and when the room was full of a warm savoury smell and the -table pulled out from the wall to make it serve for two, we felt, for -the time, restored to the graciousness of living. We fell back on the -uses of domesticity, by association providing us with a sense of life -going on in orderliness and stability. It came out for me in these -moments that it is after all life, that Art needs rather than feeling, -and that, to a woman of my capacity, was to be supplied not by innocuous -intrigues like Jerry's but by the normal procedure of living. I believe -I felt myself rather of a better stripe, to find it so in the domestic -proceeding, though I do not really know that my necessity was any whit -superior to Miss Filette's, except in offering the minimum possibility -of making anybody unhappy by it. But because I knew my friends would -think it ridiculous that I could lay hold of power again by so -inconsiderable a handle as Leon Griffin, I suffered a corroding -resentment. Griffin was getting up a new act for himself, and evenings -as I helped him with it, I felt a faint stirring of creative power. When -he had finished, I would take the shade off the lamp and render scenes -for him from my favourite Elizabethan drama; and in the face of his -unqualified admiration for me, I could almost act. - -Toward the end of the week as the cold abated, Mr. Griffin asked me to -see a play in which some of his friends were playing; and Jerry being -prodigal of favours, I responded with an invitation to "The Futurist." I -hadn't mentioned Griff to Sarah, I never more than mentioned him to any -of my friends, but I saw no reason why I should not speak of them to -him, especially when they were so much upon the public tongue as Sarah -was just then. - -"Croyden?" he said; "isn't that an unusual name?" He appeared to be -puzzling over it. "I seem to remember a town somewhere by that name." - -"In New York," I told him. I was on the point of telling him how Sarah -came by it, but an impulse of discretion saved me. I had seen "The -Futurist" so many times now, that, once at the theatre, I occupied -myself with looking at the audience and took no sort of notice of my -escort until after Sarah's entrance near the close of the first act. - -"Well?" I laid myself open to compliments for my friend. I was startled -by what I saw when I looked at him. He had shrunk away into the corner -of his seat farthest from me, like a man whose garment had fallen from -him unawares. The stark naked soul of him fed visibly upon her bodily -perfection; Sarah's beauty took men like that sometimes when they were -able to see it--there were those who thought her merely nice-looking. I -could see his tongue moving about stealthily to wet his dry lips. I -couldn't bear to look at him like that; it seemed a pitiful thing for a -man to ache so with the beauty of a woman he had long ceased to deserve; -it was as though he had laid bare some secret ache in me. - -Coming out of the theatre he surprised me with a knowledge of Sarah's -affairs. He knew that she had begun with O'Farrell. - -"I played with him myself," he admitted; "that was before -Miss--Miss----" - -"Croyden," I supplied; "that was the town she came from; I shouldn't -have told you except that you seem to know." - -"I was expecting another name. Wasn't she--wasn't she married once? A -fellow by the name of Lawrence." - -"Oh, well, you may call it married. He was a cur." - -"You can't tell me anything about him worse than I know myself." From -the earnestness of his tone I judged that he had suffered something at -the hands of Lawrence. "But I'll say this for him, he didn't stay with -the other woman; she followed him and found him, but he wouldn't stay -with her." - -"I don't see that that proves anything except that he was the greater -scoundrel. The other woman was his wife." - -"It proves that he loved Miss Croyden best--that he couldn't bear the -other woman after her." I thought it was no use matching ethical ideals -with him and I let the matter drop. It came back to me next day that if -he had been with O'Farrell in Lawrence's time, he might have known -something of the other Shamrocks. I meant to ask him about it in the -morning, but put it off as I observed that the recollection of it seemed -to have stirred him past the point of being able to sleep. He was pale -in the morning, and the rings under his eyes stood out plainly; he had -the whipped look of a man who has been so long accused of misdemeanour -that he comes at last to believe he has done it. I could see the impulse -to confess hovering over him, and the hope that I might find in his -misbehaviours the excusing clue which he was vaguely aware must be -there, but couldn't himself lay hands on. I suppose souls in the Pit -must have movements like that--seeking in one another the extenuations -they can't admit to themselves. - -We didn't, however, strike the note of confidence until it was evening. -Griffin kept up the form of looking for an engagement, which occupied -his morning hours, and in the afternoon Jerry came in to see how I had -come through the cold spell, and to win my interest with his wife to -consent to his going as far as St. Louis with "The Futurist." I forget -what reasons he had for thinking it advisable, except that they were all -more or less complicated with Miss Filette. - -"But, heavens, Jerry, haven't you ever heard of the freemasonry of -women? How can you think my sympathies wouldn't be with your wife? -Especially in her condition." - -"It's only for a week; and, you know, except for her fussing, she is -perfectly well. And look here, Olivia, you know exactly why I have to -have--other things; why I can't just settle down to being--the plain -head of the family." His tone was accusing. - -"I know why you _think_ you have to. Honest, Jerry, is it so imperative -as all that?" - -"Honest to God, Olivia, unless I'm ... interested ... I can't write a -word." His glance travelling over my dull little room and makeshift -furniture, the cheap kerosene lamp, the broken hinge of the stove. "You -ought to know," he drove it home to me. I felt myself involved by my -toleration of Griffin in a queer kind of complicity. - -"What do you want me to do?" - -"Tell her you think it is to the advantage of the play for me to be -there in St. Louis for the opening. It's always good for an interview, -and that's advertising." After all I suppose I wouldn't have done it if -I hadn't found his wife in a wrapper at four o'clock in the afternoon, -when I went out there. If she wouldn't make any better fight for -herself, who was I to fight for her? And as Jerry said, for him to be -with the play, meant advertising. - -I talked it over with Griffin that evening, as we sat humped over my -tiny stove before the lamps were lighted. Outside we could see the roofs -huddling together with the cold, and far beyond, the thin line of the -lake beaten white with the wind in a fury of self-tormenting. It made me -think of poor little Mrs. Gerald under the lash of her husband's -vagaries. - -"I can't help think that she'd feel it less if she made less fuss about -it," I protested. Griffin shook his head. - -"It's a mercy she can do that; it's when you can't do anything it eats -into you." - -I reflected. "There was a woman I knew who looked like that. O'Farrell's -leading lady; she was jealous and there was nothing she could do. She -looked gnawed upon!" - -"Miss Dean, you mean?" - -"I forgot you said that you knew her." I wanted immensely to know how he -came to be mixed up with her. "She was jealous of me, but there was no -cause. How well did you know her?" - -"I ... she ... I was married to her." His face was mottled with -embarrassment; it occurred to me that his confusion must have been for -his complicity in the fact of their not being married now, but he set me -right. "I oughtn't to have told it on her, I suppose. She married me to -go on the stage. I was boarding at her mother's and I couldn't have -afforded to marry unless she had. You don't know how handsome she was. I -knew she couldn't act.... I can't myself, but I know it when I see it. -Her father had been an actor of a sort; he had taught her things, and I -thought I could pull her along." - -"She _has_ got on." I let the fact stand for all it was worth. - -"Yes, she had something almost as good as acting ... she could get hold -of people." - -"She had O'Farrell. Was it on his account you separated?" - -"Long before that. You see she could handle the managers in her own -interest, but she didn't know what to do with me. So I--I got out of her -way." Griffin's clothes were too loose for him, and his hair, which -wanted trimming, disposed itself in what came perilously near to being -ringlets, accentuating the effect of his having been shrivelled, and -shrunk within the mark of his capacity. There was a certain shame about -him as he made this admission, that made me feel that though to leave -his wife free to seek her own sort of success had been a generous thing -to do, it was all he could do; his moral nature had suffered an -incurable strain. - -"Griff, did they tell you when you were young, that love was all bound -up with what you should do in the world and what you could get for it?" - -"They never told me anything; I had to find it out." - -"Jerry too; he thought he was going to have a graceful, docile creature -to keep him in a perpetual state of maleness. I should have thought -you'd have left the stage after that," I said, reverting to the personal -instance. - -"I ought to have, but somehow I kept feeling her; even when I wasn't -thinking of her I could feel her somewhere pulling me. It was like -living in the house where some one has died, and you keep thinking -they're just in the next room and you don't want to go away for fear -you'll lose them altogether." - -"I understand." - -The afternoon light had withdrawn into the bleak sky without -illuminating it. I threw open the stove for the sake of the ruddy light, -and the intimacy of our sitting there drew me on to counter confession. - -"It's like that with me all the time," I said, "only there hasn't really -been anybody. Sarah says there doesn't have to be anybody; that we only -think so because we have felt it that way once. She thinks it is -just ... Personality ... whatever there is that we act to." - -"Well, I know you have to have it, anyway you can get it." - -"O'Farrell used to call it feeling your job. I wonder where he is now." -So the talk drifted off to the perpetual professionalism of the -unsuccessful, to incidents of rehearsals and engagements. I believe it -would have been good for me to have run my mind in new pastures, but -there was nobody to open the gates for me. - -I said as much to Sarah the very next time I saw her; it seemed a way of -getting at what I hadn't yet told her, that I was within a week or two -of the end of my means. I had the best of reasons for not calling my -case to her attention, in the readiness with which she offered herself -to my necessity. - -"You must go to New York of course; I've three hundred dollars, and I -could send you something every month----" I cut her off absolutely. - -"I'd rather try Cecelia Brune's plan first," I assured her. - -"Not while you have me;" she was firm with me. "Besides, you don't -really know that Cecelia----" - -"Didn't buy her diamond sunburst on thirty-five a week!" I told her all -that Griffin had said. Sarah looked worried. - -"I'll tell you about the diamonds. About a year ago, while you were with -the Hardings, she got into trouble. Oh, she loved him as much as she was -able! He gave her the diamonds; but Cecelia cared. And then when the -trouble came, he deserted her. That's what Cecelia couldn't understand. -She had never given anything before, and she didn't realize that that -had been her chief advantage. It gave her a scare." - -But in spite of Sarah's confidence in Cecelia's bitter experience -keeping her straight, I could see that she had taken what Griffin had -told me to heart. A day or two later she referred to the matter again. - -"If she goes over the line once, and doesn't have to pay for it, she is -lost." She was standing at my window looking out over the roofs and -chimneys cased in ice, and she might, for all the mark her profession -has left on her, been looking across the pasture bars. I was irritated -at her detachment, and her interest, in the face of my own problem, in -an affair so unrelated as Cecelia Brune's. - -"Why do you care so much?" - -"You'd care too, if you had seen as much of her; it's like watching a -drowning man: you don't stop to ask if he's worth it before you plunge -in!" - -"I can't swim myself," I protested. - -I didn't want to be dragged in, rescuing Cecelia; I had myself to save -and wasn't sure I could do it. It was after this talk, however, that -Griff, who still hung about the Varieté from habit, told me that Sarah -had fallen into the way of stopping to pick up Cecelia on her way home -from her own theatre. He thought it a futile performance. - -"Nothing can stop that kind; they don't always know it, but that's what -draws them to the stage in the first place. It's a kind of -what-do-you-call-it, going back to the thing they were a long time ago." - -"Atavism," I supplied; I thought it very likely. All the centuries of -bringing women up to be toys must have had its fruit somehow. Cecelia -was made to be played with; she wasn't serviceable for anything else. -And what was more, I didn't care to be identified with her even in the -Christian attitude of a rescuer. I said as much to Sarah one evening -about a week later, when I had gone with Jerry to give my opinion of -some changes in the cast, preparatory to going on the road with his -play, and in the overflow of his satisfaction at the way the audience -rose to them, he had asked me to go to supper with him. Then as Sarah -joined us and the spirit of the crowd caught him, pouring along the -street, bright almost as by day and with the added brightness of evening -garments, Jerry, always open to the infection of the holiday mood, -proposed that for once we stretch a point by going to supper at -Reeves's. Sarah and I demurred as women will at such a proposal from a -man whose family exigencies are known to them, but Sarah found a -prohibitory objection in a promise she professed to have made, to go -around for Cecelia on her way home, which Jerry promptly quashed by -including her in the invitation. I protested. - -"Supper at Reeves's is quite enough of an adventure for one time. -Cecelia paints." - -"Not really," Sarah protested. "It's only that she uses so little -make-up that she doesn't think it necessary to take it off." - -"All the better," insisted Jerry. "I never did take supper at Reeves's -with a painted lady, and I'm told it is quite one of the things to do." - -I let it pass rather than spoil his high mood. It was not more than -three blocks to the Varieté, and at the stage door Sarah insisted on -getting out herself. - -"Why did you let her?" I protested to Jerry. - -"Because it will please her, and Miss Brune will be gone; Sarah doesn't -realize how late we are." I could see her returning through the fogged -glass of the stage door. - -"Cecelia's gone! The man said she was going to Reeves's too; we can pick -her up there." - -"Oh," I objected, "I can stand Cecelia, but I draw the line at her -gentleman friends. She didn't go there alone, I fancy." - -"We'll have a look at him, anyway, before we give him the glad hand," -Jerry temporized. - -The cab discharged us into the press of black-coated men and -bright-gowned women that at that hour poured steadily into the anteroom -of Reeves's, which was level with the pavement, divided from it by a -screen of plate glass and palms. Beyond that and raised by a few steps, -was the palm room, flanked on either side by dressing rooms; and opening -out back, the great revolving doors, muffled with crimson curtains, that -received the guests and sorted them like a hopper, according to the -degree of their resistance to the particular allurements of Reeves's. -There was a sleek, satin-suited attendant who swung the leaves of the -door at just the right angle that inducted you to the public café, or to -the corridor that led to private rooms, and was famed never to have made -a mistake. Jerry dared us hilariously as we went up the steps, to put -his discrimination to the test. - -"You and I alone then; Olivia's black dress would give us away," Sarah -insisted. - -"I want you to stay here and watch for Cecelia," she whispered to me; "I -must see her; I _must_." - -Her going on with Jerry would give her an opportunity to look through -the café; if Cecelia hadn't already arrived, I would be sure to see her -come in with the crowd that broke against the bank of palms into two -streams of bright and dark, proceeding to the dressing rooms, and -returning by twos and threes to be swallowed up by the hopper turning -half unseen behind its velvet curtains. I slipped behind a group of -bright-gowned women waiting for their escorts under the palms. I was -hypnotized by the movement and the glitter; I believe I forgot what I -was looking for; and all at once she was before me. - -The theatrical quality of Cecelia's prettiness and the length of her -plumes would have picked her out anywhere even without the blackened rim -of the eyelids and the air she had always of having just stepped into -the spot light. - -She had stationed herself, with her professional instinct for effect, -just under the Australian fern tree, waiting for her escort, and in the -moment it took me to gather myself together he joined her. I had come up -behind Cecelia and was brought face to face with him; it wasn't until he -had wheeled into step with her that he saw me and his face went mottled -all at once and settled to a slow purple. Cecelia was magnificent. - -"Oh, you here! How de do!" She slipped her hand under her escort's arm -and sailed out with him. I caught the glint of the brass-bound door -under the curtains. I don't know how long I stood staring before I -started after her, to be met by the leaves of the revolving door which, -reversing its motion, projected Sarah and Jerry into the palm room -beside me. - -"I have been all over the café----" Sarah began. - -"Didn't you meet her?" - -"In the café? I was just telling you ..." - -"No, no. In the corridor, just now; they went through." - -"But they couldn't," urged Sarah. "I was standing at the door of the -café with Jerry ..." The truth of the situation began to dawn on her. - -"There's such a crowd, of course you missed her." Jerry began to build -up a probability by which we could sustain Sarah through the supper -which followed. We all of us talked a great deal as people will when -they are anxious not to talk of a particular thing. When we were in the -dressing room again, putting on our wraps, Sarah turned on me. - -"She wasn't in the café at all," she declared. - -"I never said she was. I said she went through into the corridor." In -the silence I could feel Cecelia dropping into the pit. - -"Did you know the man?" - -I nodded. "It was Henry Mills!" - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -Before I had an opportunity to talk the incident over with Sarah, she -had seen Cecelia. - -"She is perfectly furious with you," she reported. "She hasn't heard -from Mr. Mills since, and she thinks it is on your account; that you -have taken steps for breaking it off." - -"Well, if she admits there was something to break off ... I tell you, -Sarah, you are fretting yourself to no purpose, the girl had been there -before." - -"I'm afraid so." Sarah's taking it so much to heart was a credit to her, -but I was more curious than commiserating. - -"Tell me, what is in the mind of a girl when she does things like that? -What does she get out of it?" - -"Excitement, of course; the sense of being in the stir, and the feeling -of being protected. She says Mr. Mills has been kind to her. It is odd, -but she seems to think it is all right so long as it is going on; it is -only when it is broken off she can't bear it. That is why she is so -angry at you." - -"There might be something in that," I conceded. "When it is broken off -she is able to realize how cheap and temporary it has been; while it is -going on she can justify it on the ground that it is going on forever. -That _would_ justify it, I suppose." I did not know how I knew this, but -lately I had discovered in myself capacities for understanding a great -many things of which I had had no experience. What concerned me was not -Cecelia's relation to the incident. - -"Whatever am I going to do about going there again, to Pauline's, I -mean?" - -"You can't tell!" - -"And I can't go there and not tell. I've got to choose between deceiving -Pauline and condoning Henry, and I've no disposition to do either." -Sarah thought it over. - -"There is only one thing you can do. You'll simply have to go to New -York." - -"For a great many reasons besides. You needn't tell me that. But how? -How?" - -"You know what I offered----" - -"What I refused. It is out of the question. Don't speak of it." - -"I suppose after this you couldn't ask the Millses?" - -"Sarah ... I did ask." - -"Well?" All her interest hung upon the interrogation. - -"They told me it was good for my spiritual development to suffer these -things." We faced one another in deep, unsmiling irony. "Sarah, what do -you suppose it costs a man for supper and a private room at Reeves's?" - -"Don't!" she begged. "It's only a step from that to Cecelia." - -"Yes; I remember she said that men never afforded protection to women -except for value received." - -"You must go to New York," Sarah reiterated. "You must!" - -The truth was I had never told Sarah exactly how poor I was. - -In the end I let her go away without telling; at the worst I thought I -might borrow from Jerry, who had given up the notion of going to St. -Louis, largely no doubt because I had failed to back him up in it -completely, and then just at the end changed his mind and went anyway. I -knew nothing about it until Jerry wrote me from Springfield, for I had -grown shy of going there where all Mrs. McDermott's conversation was set -like a trap to catch me in something that would convict Jerry of -misdemeanour. Jerry asked me to visit her in his absence, but I put it -off as long as possible. I had to settle first about going to Pauline's. -I arranged to spend the afternoon there, meaning to come away before -dinner and so by leaving Henry to discover my attitude in the -circumstance of my having been there without destroying his home, open -the way to my meeting him again without embarrassment. To do that I -should have left the house before the persuasive smell of the dinner -began to creep up the stairs into the warm, softly lighted rooms, but -from the beginning of my visit, Pauline, in order that I might not feel -her failure to put her affection more cogently, had wound me about as -with a cocoon of feminine devices, from which I hadn't been able to -extricate myself earlier. I am not blaming her, I am not sure, indeed, -seeing how completely she justified herself to Henry Mills by what she -had to offer, that I had any right to expect her to understand how -completely her playful and charming affectionateness failed of any -possible use to me. But I felt myself so far helpless in the presence of -it, that I stayed on until the smell of the roast unloosened all the -joints of my resolution. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until I -found myself at a point where what Henry might think of me became -inconsiderable before the possibility of my being put out of the house -before dinner was served. - -At the same time I could have wept at the indignity of wanting food so -much. I remember to this day the wasteful heaping of the children's -plates, and my struggle with the oblique desire to smuggle portions of -my helping home to Griff, who looked even more of a stranger than I to -soup and fish and roast, to say nothing of dessert. - -It wasn't until we had got as far as the salad that I had leisure to -observe Henry grow rather red about the gills as he fed, and speculate -as to how far it was due to his consciousness that I could bring down -the pillars of his home with a word, and didn't intend to. - -There was nothing said during dinner about my prospects or the stage in -general, but when Henry took me out to the car about nine o'clock, he -cleared his throat several times as though to drag the subject up from -the pit of his stomach, where it must have lain very uneasily. - -"You know," he began, "I've been thinking about that scheme of yours of -going to New York. I am inclined to think there is something in it." - -"I haven't thought about it for a long time," I told him, which was only -true in so far as I thought of it as a possibility. - -"It would freshen you up a whole lot," Henry insisted. "Everybody needs -freshening. I have been taking a little stir about myself." So that was -the way he wished me to think of his relation to Cecelia! - -"I've given it up," I insisted. - -We were standing under the swinging arc light in a bare patch the wind -had cleared of the fine, white February grit. Little trails of it blew -up under foot and were lost among the wind-shaken shadows. I could see -Henry's purpose bearing down on me like the far spark of the approaching -trolley. - -"I wouldn't do that," he advised. "It looks like pretty good business to -me. You'd have to stay there some time to learn the ropes and if a few -hundred dollars----" - -"I've given it up," I said again. The car came alongside and Henry -helped me on to it. - -"If you were at any time to reconsider it, I hope you will let me -know----" The roar of the trolley cut him off. - -I knew I was a fool not to have accepted the sop to my discretion; I -don't know for what the Powers had delivered Henry Mills into my hands, -if it wasn't to get out of his folly what his sober sense refused me. -Without doubt there are some forms of integrity that, persisted in, -cease to be a virtue and become merely a habit; I could no more have -taken Henry Mills's money than I could have gone to New York without it. -I went home shivering to my fireless little room. I put on my nightgown -over my underwear and my dressing gown over that, and cried myself to -sleep. - -It was a day or two later that I recalled that Jerry had asked me to go -out and see his wife, and I thought if I must ask Jerry for help, it -would be no more than prudent for me to do so, but I wasn't in the least -prepared as I went up the path, from which the snow of the week before -had never been cleared, to find the house shut and barred, and no smoke -issuing from it. I made my way around to the kitchen door to try to -discover some sign which would give me a clue to the length of time it -had been deserted, if not the reason for it. - -While I was puzzling about among the empty milk bottles and garbage -cans, a neighbour woman put her head out of a nearby window and -announced the obvious fact that Mrs. McDermott wasn't in. - -"But in her condition----" I protested as though my informant had been -in some way responsible for it. - -"Well, if her own mother's isn't the best place for a woman in her -condition!... Three days ago," she answered to my second question. Mrs. -McDermott's mother lived in Peoria, and I knew that when Jerry left -there had been no such understanding, but as lingering there ankle deep -in the dry snow didn't seem to clear the affair, I undertook to rid -myself of a sense of blame by writing all that I knew of it to Jerry -within the hour. It was the third day after that he came storming in on -me like a man demented. He had been to Peoria immediately on receipt of -my letter and his wife had refused to see him. It hardly seemed a time -for indirection. - -"Jerry, what have you done?" I demanded. - -"Nothing--not a thing." I waited. "There was a fool skit in one of the -St. Louis papers," he admitted. "The fool reporter didn't know I was -married." - -"It was about you and Miss Filette?" He nodded. - -"She had bought all the St. Louis papers," he said, meaning his wife. - -"Well, that was natural; she wanted to read the notices; she was always -proud of you." - -"She believed them too," he groaned. "And she's talked her mother over. -They wouldn't even let me see the children." He put his head down on my -table and sobbed aloud. I thought it might be good for him, but by and -by my sensibilities got the better of me. - -"Would it do any good if I were to write?" - -"You? Oh, they think you're in it ... a kind of general conspiracy. You -know you said that--that one of the things nobody had a right to deny an -artist was the source of his inspiration." - -"Jerry! I said what you asked me." I was properly indignant too, when I -had been so right on the whole matter. Besides, as Jerry had written -little that winter except some inconsiderable additions to his play, I -was rather of the opinion that he measured the validity of his passion -by its importunity, rather than its effect on the sum of his production. -"Besides, I told you you would never get your wife to understand." - -"If she would only be sensible," he groaned. - -"She isn't," I reminded him; "you didn't marry her to be sensible, but -for her imagined capacity to go on repeating the tricks by which Miss -Filette keeps you complacent with yourself. The trouble is, marriage and -having children take that out of a woman." - -"An artist ought never to marry. I will always say that." - -I began to wonder if that were true, if Cecelia Brune were not after -all the wiser. We beat back and forth on the subject for the time that I -kept Jerry with me. The evening of the second day came a telegram. -Jealousy tearing at the heart of poor little Mrs. McDermott had torn -away the young life that nestled there. - -Jerry wrote me later that the baby had breathed and died and that his -wife was likely to be ill a long time. In view of the extra expense -incurred, I didn't feel that I ought to ask him for the loan I was now -so desperately in need of. - -It was about this time that Griffin and I began to avoid one another -about meal time. I have read how wild animals in sickness turn their -backs on one another; one must in unrelievable misery ... we dodged in -and out of our hall rooms like rabbits in a warren. And then suddenly we -would meet and walk along the streets together, mostly at night when the -alternate flare of the lamps and the darkness and the hurrying half-seen -forms, numb the sense like the flicker of light on a hypnotist's screen, -and we moved in a strange, incommunicable world out of which no help -reached us. We saw women go by with the price of our redemption flashing -at their breasts or in their hair. We saw men hurried, overburdened with -work, and there was no work for us. In our own land we were exiled from -the community of labour and we sighed for it more than the meanest -Siberian prisoner for home. And then suddenly communication seemed to -be reëstablished. Effie for no reason sent me half of the rent money. "I -don't need it here, and I think maybe I shall get more out of it by -investing it in you," she wrote. She had always such a way of making the -thing she did seem the choice of her soul. I bought meat and vegetables -and invited Griff to dinner. He took me that night to that sort of -dreary entertainment known as musical comedy. He could often get tickets -and it was a way of spending the evening that saved fuel. As we tramped -back through the chill, trying for an effect of jocularity in his voice, -so that he might seem to have made a joke in case I shouldn't like, -Griff said to me. - -"I suppose you wouldn't go with a musical comedy?" - -"My dear Griff," I answered him in the same tone, "I'd go with a flying -trapeze if only it paid enough." - -"I'm acquainted with Lowe, the tenor. I've been thinking I'd ask -him----" We were as shy of speaking of an engagement as though it were -wild game to be scared away by the mere mention of it. - -There was no reason why Griffin shouldn't have succeeded in musical -comedy, he had a fairish voice and had turned his gift as many times as -the minister's wife in Higgleston used to turn her black silk. It was -not more than two days or three after that, as I was coming back to my -cold room in the twilight--I had spent the day in the public library on -account of the heat--and as I was fumbling at the lock as I had been -that first evening he had spoken to me, I heard Leon Griffin come up the -stair three steps at a time, and I knew before I heard it in his voice, -that the times had turned for him. I struck out fiercely against a -sudden blankness that seemed to swim up to the eyes and throat of me. - -He was trembling too as he came into the room. - -"Olive," he cried, "Olive, I've turned the trick. I'm going with the -'Flim-Flams.'" That was the wretched piece we had seen together. He had -never called me by my name before, and I had no mind to correct him. In -the dusk he ran on about his engagement; they would go on the road -presently and settle for the summer in some city. I heard him speak far -from me. I was down, down in the pit of the cold room with the shabby -furniture and the bleak light that disdained it from the one high -window. - -"Don't take off your things," I heard him say. "I came to get you. We'll -have a blow-out somewhere. Olive, Olive!" His quick sympathy came out, -and the excusing charm. "Oh, my dear, you're crying!" - -"Griff, you're leaving me." It was as if I had accused him. I sank down -in a chair; I was dabbling at my eyes and trying to get my veil off with -cold fingers. - -"Not if you feel that way about it." He came and put his arms about me -and constrained me until I leaned against his body. I knew what he was, -what a man of that stamp must be feeling and thinking, and, knowing, I -permitted it. I was crying still, I think ... his hands came fumbling -under my veil ... presently he kissed me. - -"Olivia?" - -"Well, Griff!" - -"You know--it is for you to say if I shall leave you." - -"You mean that you will give up ... but how can you, Griff; it is the -only thing that's been offered." We were sitting still on the low cot in -my room and there was no light but the dull glow of the stove and the -last trace of the day that came in at the window. We had not been out to -dinner yet, and Griffin's arm was around me. I could feel it slack a -little now as if he definitely forebore to constrain me. - -"I mean, Lowe could get you a place in the chorus." - -"But, Griff, I can't sing." - -"You can sing enough for that, and Lowe would get you the place if--if -you belonged to me." I knew exactly what this implied, but no start -responded to it. The nerve of propriety was ached out. - -"Of course I know I'm not in your class," Griff was going on. "I -wouldn't do such a thing as ask you to marry me. But I'm awfully fond -of you ... and you're up against it." - -"Yes, Griff, I'm up against it." - -"Your fine friends ... what would they do for you?" - -"Nothing whatever." - -"Well, then ... you needn't go under your own name, and this is a -chance; you could live and maybe get somewhere. Lowe told me he meant to -strike for Broadway. You aren't insulted, are you?" - -"No, I'm not insulted." Curiously that was true. I was drunk and shaking -inside of me; I seemed to be poised upon the dizzying edge, but I was -neither angry nor insulted. - -"And I'd never come back on you if you got your chance for yourself ... -honest to God, Olive. I've had my lesson at that. You believe me, don't -you?" - -I believed him. I hadn't any sense whatever of the moral values of the -situation. It was too desperate for that. - -"I guess I ought to tell you ... I'm a bad sort ... bad with women. -After I knew that my--that Miss Dean didn't want me, I didn't care what -became of me. There was a woman in the company ... she liked me, and I -thought it would give Laura a chance. That was what the divorce was -about. I thought I could make it up to the other woman by marrying her. -But that didn't work either." He was silent a while, forgetting perhaps -that he had begun to explain himself to me. "There's a way you've got to -like a person to live with them ... and, anyway, I'm not asking you to -marry me." He got as much satisfaction out of that as if it were a -superior abnegation. - -"You've got to decide, right away," Griffin urged me. - -"I must have a day to think," I insisted, not because I hoped that -anything would interfere between me and disaster, but I wanted to be -able to throw it up to the Powers that I had given them an opportunity. - -I knew what he was. I had always known. When he put his cheek against -mine to kiss me I had felt the marks there of waste and looseness, just -as I felt now that native trick he had for extenuation, for putting -himself on the pathetic, the excusing side of things. But I did not -shrink from him. I suppose it was because just then he was a symbol of -the protection which I had so signally gone without. The need of -trusting is stronger in women than experience. Nothing saved me but the -persistent monitor of my art. Here, when all else was numbed by -loneliness and hunger and unsuccess, it waked and warned me. I had not -drawn back from Griffin nor the relation he proposed to me; but I -couldn't stand for _Flim-Flam_. I think just at first, though, I made -myself believe I was considering it. - -I went out to see Pauline the next afternoon. Not that I expected -anything from her. It was merely that she represented all that stood -opposed to what I was being coerced into, and I meant to give it a -chance. - -"I am thinking of going with 'Flim-Flam'," I told her. - -"Oh, but my dear--surely not with that!" - -"I'll get eighteen dollars a week and my expenses." - -"Well, of course, if you want to sell yourself just for a salary!" -Pauline's attitude could not have been improved on if she had known all -that the engagement implied, but it wasn't in her to be ungracious for -long. "I suppose you'll get experience?" - -"I'll get my board and clothes out of it," I told her bluntly. "And -whether I like it or not, it is the only thing offered." - -"And you are just taking it on trust? I suppose that is the right way; -you can never tell how things will be brought about." I don't know how -much of this was honest, and how much derived from the capacity for -self-deception which grows on women whose sole business in life is -getting on with a man. At any rate, having shaken my situation around to -the shape of a moral attitude, as a robin does a worm, nothing would -have prevented her from swallowing it whole. - -Faint as I was I refused her invitation to dinner. With what I had in -mind to do I didn't care to meet Henry Mills again. I was fiercer in my -detestation of him and Cecelia than I had been before I had thought of -being in the same case myself. I resented them as a ribald commentary on -my necessity. - -As I rode home on the car, all my outer self was in a tumult, dazed and -buzzing like a hive. I was dimly aware of moving, sitting upright, of -paying my fare, and of great staring red posters that flashed upon me -from the billboards. I remember that it occurred to me several times -that if I could only understand what I read on them, it might be greatly -to my profit. Somewhere deep under my confusion I was aware of being -plucked by the fringes of my consciousness. Something was trying to get -through to me. - -I refused to see Griffin at all that evening, and got into bed early, -staring into the dark and seeing nothing but fragments of red letters -that seemed about to shape themselves into the saving word, and then -dissolved and left me blank. I tried to pray and realized that I had no -connecting wires over which help might come. - -Belief in the God I had been brought up to, had been beaten out of me at -Higgleston, very largely by the conviction of those who professed to -know Him best, that He couldn't in any case be the God of my Gift. And -I hadn't been thinking since then of the Something Without Us to which I -acted, as Deity. Now it occurred to me, lying there in the dark, that if -the God of the Church had cast me off, there must still be something -which artists everywhere prayed to, a Distributer of Gifts who might be -concerned about the conduct of His worshippers. - -I reached out for Him--and I did not know His name. I must pray though, -I must pray to something which stood for Help. Slowly, as I cast back in -my mind to find the name for it, I remembered Eversley. Eversley was -everything which any player might wish to be, and Eversley had been -kind. I would pray to Eversley. All at once there flashed across the -blank of my mind, his name in letters of red. That was it! That was the -name on the billboards! Eversley was in town. I recalled that Griff had -spoken of it. I hadn't been able to spare a penny for a paper for a long -time, or I should have known it. I would see Eversley. I got up and -groped around in the cupboard for a piece of dry bread and ate it. Then -I went back to bed and dropped asleep suddenly with the release of -tension. To-morrow I would see Eversley. - -Griffin failed to understand my change of mood in the morning. - -"You aren't afraid that I shall try to hold you?" - -"No I'm not afraid." - -"Or that anybody will find it out?" - -"I shouldn't care if they did," I told him. "I'm going to see Eversley. -I suppose it's fair to tell you, you'll be the last resort, Griff." - -"I'll be the foundation of your fortune, if Eversley will let me, but he -won't." I think there was regret in his voice, but it was never in -anything he said to me. - -"I know you're not mean, Griff; that's why I told you." - -"Oh, I'll tell you, too. I was mean once; I didn't mean to be, but it -turned out that way." He was on the point of admitting something to me -that I felt if I was to depend upon him I shouldn't hear. - -I got out as early as possible and walked until I found a billboard. -Eversley was at the Playhouse; he had been playing here for three days. -I walked past it several times considering the possibility of getting -his address from the stage doorman, though I knew I couldn't. - -It was clear and bright, few people moved in the street. I walked -between the alleyways and a row of ash-cans waiting for the belated -carts of the cleaners. "Eversley, Eversley!" I called over and over as -if it had been a charm. Suddenly in the still cold brightness, a torn -fragment of newspaper flapped in the ash-can, it lifted and made a -clumsy flight like a half-fledged bird and dropped beside me. Its one -torn wing flapped gently as I passed it, and showed me part of a -pictured face. I said to myself that I was in a pretty state when even -a torn face in a paper looked like Eversley. I had gone on three steps, -and suddenly I stopped. It was Eversley, of course; his picture would be -in the papers. I went back and lifted the printed scrap. It was part of -an interview with the great tragedian, three days old, and it told me -the address of his hotel. - -It was nearly eleven when I arrived there. The foyer was crowded with -people among whom I fancied I recognized several of my profession. They -had the same desperate air that I knew must stand out on me. I thought -the clerk recognized it. - -"Mr. Eversley is not in this morning," I was told. They pretended, too, -not to know when he would be in. I understood that this meant that he -was in, but probably asleep or breakfasting. I found a chair close to -one of the elevators and waited. The room was warm and I was faint. I do -not know how long I sat there; I must have been almost unconscious. -Suddenly I snapped alert. There was Eversley and two or three others -stepping into the elevator on the opposite side of the room. I was too -late of course to catch them. - -"Mr. Eversley's apartments," I said to the elevator boy. - -"First turn to the left," he told me when he had let me out on the -fourth floor. I was afraid to ask the number of the room lest he should -suspect me of intruding. There were five or six doors down the left -corridor. I knocked at one at a hazard, and was rejected by a large -woman in deshabille. I was discouraged; somehow the prospect of knocking -at every one of those doors and inquiring for Mr. Eversley daunted me. I -was dividing between my dread of that and a still greater dread, if I -should be found loitering too long in the corridor, of being taken for a -suspicious person. In a few moments, however, a woman came out of one of -the doors farthest down and moved toward me. I thought it was she I had -seen getting into the elevator with Mr. Eversley; she had the gracious -air of women who know themselves relied upon. She stopped, hypnotized by -my evident wish to speak to her. - -"Mrs. Eversley?" She acknowledged it. "I am trying to find your husband; -I have his permission," I interpolated as I saw her pleasant, open -countenance close upon me. I learned afterward how much of her life went -to saving him the strain of publicity, and I did not blame her. - -"My husband never sees visitors in the morning." - -"If you would show him this card," I begged. "Perhaps he would make an -appointment." She recognized the writing on the card, and I saw her -relenting. Mr. Eversley, it proved, would see me. - -He pretended kindly to have recognized me at once, but he didn't ask -after the Hardings. He saw that it was the last lap with me. - -"My dear Miss Lattimore, sit here. Now, tell me." - -"So," I concluded at the end of half an hour, "I thought you could tell -me if it is all gone. If I am never to have it back again, I can go with -a musical comedy." I hadn't told him, of course, what the conditions -were of my having even that, "but if you think it could be brought back -again ..." I could hardly formulate a hope beyond that. - -"Never in the old way," he answered promptly. "_You_ wouldn't wish that. -What you did at twenty you must not wish to do at thirty, for then there -is no growth. What do you really feel about it?" - -"I feel," I said, "as if I could do something--something pressing to be -done, but somehow different, so different that I do not know how to -describe it to anybody nor to get them to believe in it." - -"And so you have begun to doubt it yourself?" - -"I shall believe you," I said. - -He sat still after that for a while, staring into the open fire and -rubbing his fine expressive hands together in a meditative way. It was -good to me to see him, just touched mellowly with age, the delicate -carving in his face of nobility and gentleness. There were men like that -then, men who made by their mere being, something more than a shibboleth -of the traditional dependability. He seemed to be far away from me, -groping around the root of truth in respect to that gift with which he -was so richly endowed. He rose presently and took a play-book which lay -face downward on the table. - -"Could you do a bit of this with me?" he suggested. "It will help me get -my lines." The play was "Magda," new then on the American stage. -Eversley was getting up the part of Colonel Schwartz. He explained the -story to me a little and I began reading and prompting him. Presently I -felt the familiar click of myself sliding into the part. All my winter -in Chicago rose up in the part of _Magda_ to protest against the -judgment of Taylorville. - -I knew better too than to attempt any sort of staginess with Eversley; I -said the words, trying to understand them, and let the part have its way -with me. It was not until we had laid down the book that I remembered I -was still waiting judgment, and did not feel to want it. - -"I won't take up any more of your time," I suggested. "You have been -very good to me." I got up to go. After all what was there that Eversley -could do for me. - -"Well," he said, "and is it to be musical comedy?" - -"No," I told him, "no, it may be starvation or the lake, but I'll not -let myself down like that.... Was that why you asked me to do the part?" -I said after a while, in which he had sat gazing into the fire without -taking any note of my standing. - -"Sit down," he said. "Have you ever heard of Polatkin?" - -I shook my head and sat provisionally on the edge of my chair. - -"Polatkin is a speculator; he speculates in ability. I think on the -whole the best thing I can do for you is to introduce you to Polatkin." - -Mr. Eversley thought of Morris Polatkin because he had met him the day -before in Chicago. Before I left the hotel it was arranged that I was to -see him the next day, and if he liked me--by the tone in which Mark -Eversley spoke of him I knew that was foregone--he would take me on to -New York with him and put my gift on a paying basis. - -So suddenly had the release from strain come that I found myself -toppling over my own resistance. I went out in the street and walked -about until reminded by the gnawing in my stomach, that I had had -nothing but the brewing of my twice-boiled coffee grounds for breakfast, -I turned into the first attractive café and paid out almost my last cent -for a comforting luncheon. It would have gone farther if I had bought -food and cooked it at home, but I was past that. I had pinched and -endured to the last pitch; I could no more. And besides the assurance of -Mark Eversley, which as yet I could scarcely believe in, there had come -a strange new courage upon me. For as I had suffered and struggled with -_Magda_, suddenly from some high unknowable source, power descended. I -had felt it fluttering low like a dove, hovering over me; it had perched -on my spirit. I could feel it there now brooding about me with singing -noises. It had come back! I rushed to meet it as to a lover. - -As I walked back to my lodging, a flood of hopes, half shapes of -conquests and surmises, bore me like a widening flood apart from all -that the last few months stood for. Suddenly at the door I realized how -far it had carried me from Griffin; the figure of him was faint in my -mind as one seen from the farther shore. I considered a little and then -I wrote him a note and slipped it under the door. I went out again, and -walked aimlessly all the rest of the afternoon, and when it was dark I -stole softly up to my room again, but he heard me. He came knocking -almost immediately, full of the appearance of rejoicing, but even the -dusk didn't conceal from me that embarrassment was on him. He looked -checked and confounded as when he had told me about his relation to Miss -Dean, like a man caught in an unwarrantable assumption. Whatever Dean -had done to him, it had broken the back of his egotism completely. He -knew well enough he had no business with a woman like me, a friend of -Mark Eversley's, and he was ashamed to have been caught thinking he had. -He sidled and fluttered for an interval, making up his mind to a -resumption of affectionateness, and finally making it up that he -couldn't, and remembering an engagement somewhere for the evening. - -It was about eleven of the next day that I had a note from Eversley to -come to his rooms to meet Mr. Polatkin. I went in a kind of haze of -excitement, numb as to my feet and finger-tips, moving about by reflexes -merely and with a vague doubt as each new point of the way presented -itself, the car I took, the hotel stair, the length of the corridor, if -I should be equal to any one of them, so far was my consciousness -removed from the means of communication. - -Eversley shook hands with me out of a cloud, moving in an orbit miles -outside of my own, and when he left me, saying that Polatkin would come -up the next moment, it was as if he had withdrawn into the vastness of -outer space. In the interval before I heard Mr. Polatkin's knock I -rehearsed a great many ways of meeting him, none of which were from the -right cue. - -I do not know why I hadn't been prepared by the name for his being a -Jew, nor for the sudden shifting of the ground of our meeting which that -fact made for me. So far as I had thought of him at all, it was in a -kind of nebulosity of the high disinterestedness that was responsible -for Mark Eversley's interest in me. It had been, his generous succour, -all of a piece of that traditional protectiveness, the expectation of -which is so drilled into women that it rose promptly in advance of any -occasion for it. The mere supposition that he was to provide for me, -had tinged my mind, unaware, with the natural response of a docility -made ridiculous by the figure of Polatkin edging himself in through a -door that an arrangement of furniture made impossible completely to -open. His height did not bring him above the level of my eyes, and as -much of him as was visible above his theatrical-looking, furred coat, -was chiefly nose and pallid forehead disdained by tight, black, curly -hair, and extraordinarily black eyes which seemed to have retreated -under the brows for the purpose of taking council with the intelligence -that informed them. - -I had put on my best to meet him, and though my husband had been dead -more than two years, my best was still tinged with widowhood, for the -chief reason that once having got into black I had not been able to -afford to put it off for anything more suitable. I had put a good deal -of white about the neck trying for an effect which I knew, as Polatkin's -eyes travelled over me, had been feminine rather than professional. Now -as I realized how I had unconsciously responded to the suggestion of -preciousness in the fact of his coming to take care of me, I felt myself -grow from head to foot one deep suffusing red. It comes out for me in -retrospect how near I was to the situation which had intrigued Cecelia -Brune and her kind, put at disadvantage, not by a monetary obligation so -much as by the inevitable feminine reaction toward the source of care -and protection. At the time, however, I was concerned to keep the -stodgy little Jew, who stood hat in hand taking stock of me, from -discovering that I had come to this meeting with a degree of personal -expectation which I should have resented in him. I hoped indeed that my -blush might pass with him for a denial of the very thing it confessed, -or at least for mere shyness and gaucherie. I was helped from my -confusion by the realization that Mr. Polatkin was not so much looking -at me or speaking to me, as projecting me into the future and gauging me -against a background of his own creation. - -I was standing still, after we had got through some perfunctory -civilities, for I thought he would want me to act for him--but I found -afterward that he had trusted Mr. Eversley for my capacity--and I had a -feeling of being able to meet the situation better on my feet. I caught -him looking at me with an irritating impersonality. - -"Jalowaski shall make your corsets," he affirmed; "he makes 'em for -Eames and Gadski--a little more off there, a little longer here ... -so...." He did not touch me, he was not even within touching distance, -but he followed the outline of my figure with his thumb, flourishing out -the alterations which made it more to his mind. "Jalowaski would fix you -so you wouldn't believe it was you," he concluded. - -He appeared so well satisfied with his inspection that he expanded -graciously. "And there is one thing you have which there is lots of -actresses would give half they got for it. You have got imagination in -the way you dress your hair. It is a wonder how some of them can act and -yet ain't got no imagination at all about the way they look, only so it -is stylish. For an actress it is all right for her to look stylish on -the street, but there are times when she has to look otherways on the -stage; y'understand me." - -I slid somehow into a chair; I don't know exactly what I expected, but -it certainly hadn't been this appraisement, which I had the sense to see -was favourable and yet resented. - -"The first thing we will see to yet, is some clothes; for you will -excuse me, Miss Lattimore, but what you are wearing don't show you off -at all. You don't need to wear black. Of course I know you are a widow, -Mr. Eversley was telling me, but there are some actresses what make out -like they was, because they think it becomes them, y' understand, but -there is no need for you to wear it, for Mr. Eversley is telling me that -your husband is dead more than two years already." He had loosened his -coat to display an appropriate amount of gold fob dependent over a small -balloon in the process of being inflated; now from somewhere in his -inner recess he produced a folded paper. - -"It is better we have a contract from the start. Though of course it is -all right if Mr. Eversley recommends you, but it is better we don't -have misunderstandings." He spread the paper out and weighted it with -one of his pudgy hands. - -"So you are going to take me ... you haven't seen me act yet." - -"Eversley has." - -"Well ... if you want to take his judgment ... but he hasn't told me -anything about _you_ yet. What do you want of me; what are you going to -do for me?" - -If Eversley had told him how desperate my situation was, it wasn't a -good move to try to hold out against him now, it might have given him -the idea that I was ungrateful, but I couldn't stand for being handed -about this way like a female chattel. That Eversley had told him, I saw -by the expression of astonishment on his face which slowly changed to -one of amusement. - -"I'm going to save you from starving to death," he began, and then as -the sense of my courage in the face of such an alternative grew upon -him, "I'm going to make you one of the leading tragic actresses of -America." - -"And what am I to do?" - -"Whatever I tell you. Eversley thinks you could study a while with Mrs. -Delamater. She is wonderful, wonderful!" He described with his arms a -circle scarcely larger than the arc of his cherubic contour, to show how -wonderful she was. - -"I should like some dancing lessons, too," I submitted. - -"Do you dance? Ah, no, it is too much to expect; but if I could find me -a dancer, Miss Lattimore, a born dancer!" He brought his arms into play -again to describe a felicity which transcended expression. "But they are -not so easy to find," he sighed audibly. "We must do what we can -already." - -Eversley told me afterward that Polatkin had the soul of an actor, but -the only part which he had ever been able to play without being -ridiculous, was Fagin, and now he was too fat even for that, so that he -took it out vicariously in the success of those whose opportunity he -made. It was the dream of his life to find a real genius, a dancer or a -prima donna; I believe I was the nearest he ever came to it; and I owe -it to him to say that I couldn't have arrived at more than the faintest -approach to it without him. - -It was that contract I signed with him there in Eversley's room which -brought him in the end about three hundred per cent. on the money he -advanced me, but I never begrudged it. He gave me a check then and -there, and an address of a hotel in New York where I was to meet him -within five days. He looked me well over as he shook hands with me. - -"You would be better if you would weigh about ten pounds more," he -assured me, and I was mixed between resentment at his personality and -thankfulness to have even that sort of interest taken in me. I had -lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Eversley afterward; there was not time for half -the things I wished to hear from him, but this sticks in my memory. I -had put it to him that the meagreness of my personal experiences had, so -far, tended to the skimping of my art. - -"There's no question as to that," he told me, "but it is nothing -compared to the effect that your art will have on your experience. It's -a mistake to let it set up in you an appetite for particular kinds of -it. There's the experience of having done without experience, you can -put that into your acting as well as the other, and you'll find it is -often the most valuable." I was later to find the worth of that, but -like most advice, it only proved itself in the event of my not taking -it. - -There was not much to be done about my leaving Chicago; I had rooted -there shallowly. I went out that afternoon to tell Pauline good-bye, for -I wished to avoid Henry. It seemed a great step, my going away. There -was a kind of finality about it. The casual character of my relation to -the stage had disappeared; I was about to be married to it. Pauline -cried a little; in spite of there being so much in my life that I -couldn't tell her, I remembered how long we had been friends and that we -were very fond of one another. She couldn't, of course, quite abandon -her favourite moral attitude. - -"You have a great work, Olivia, a great responsibility. You must -remember that you are the trustee of a rare gift." - -"I'll take as good care of it," I assured her, "as those who sent it -take of me." At the time I believe I felt that the Powers _had_ taken -notice of me at last. - -I got away as soon as possible; it seemed kinder to Griffin. We had been -divided as by a sword; he knew now there was nothing between us and he -was abashed at the memory of having touched me. All that time we had -lurked behind the pressure of packing and settling my affairs; we never -came out squarely and faced one another. I think some latent manhood -that had risen to my need of him, slunk back with the certainty that I -could do very well without him. - -"You'll be sure and hunt me up if you come to New York?" I urged; I -wasn't going to be accused of disloyalty because of the rise in my -fortunes. He shook his head. - -"You'll be up among the nobs then." He looked at me for a moment -wistfully, "You'll remember that I said I wouldn't try to hold you?" I -let him get what comfort he could out of the generosity he imagined in -himself at that. Seen against the shining background which Polatkin's -money had made for me, he looked almost weazened. "Good-bye," I said, -with another handshake, and I set my face steadily toward New York. - - - - -BOOK IV - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -The third season in New York found me in a very gratifying situation. I -had made a public for myself, and friends, not only new friends but old -ones drawn there by good fortune of their own. I had worked out my -obligation to Polatkin, though I was still on such terms with him as -allowed him to give me a good deal of advice, and for me to call him -Poly in his more human moments. I used even to go out to his house at -One Hundred and Twenty-Seventh Street to spend an hour with Mrs. -Polatkin and the several little replicas of himself, of whom, in spite -of their tendency to run mostly to nose and forehead, he was exceedingly -proud. The help he had afforded me had uncovered new layers of capacity, -to fill out satisfyingly the opportunities he created. I was a -successful actress, there was no doubt whatever that I was a success; I -would have been able to prove it by the figure of my salary. And often -when the house rocked with applause, and I was called time after time -before the curtain, I would question the high, half-lighted void. I -would look and ache and cry out inwardly. For what? Well, I suppose I -knew pretty well what I was looking for by the end of that year, though -it wasn't a thing I could say much about, even to Sarah. - -Sarah and I had a flat together on Thirty-first Street. The second -winter we had played together, in a comedy Jerry had written for us, -with so much success that it was impossible that we should remain -together long. To have kept together two players of such distinguished -and equal quality would have been to miss the lustre of achievement -which they might each shed on a lesser group, wholly without any other -excuse for coherence. Our managers, too, contrived to get us not a -little advertisement out of the circumstance of our being friends and -undivided by success. There was, however, one fact known to us both, -though without any conscious communication, which we would not for -worlds have made known to an unsuspecting public; and that was that -while I was still on the hither side of my full power, Sarah had come to -the level of hers. - -Sarah was always wonderful in what I call static parts, parts all of one -mood and consistency. She was notable as Portia; as Hermione, absolute. -Perhaps the greatest favourite with her public was Galatea, which, -besides being well within the average taste, allowed the greatest -display of her bodily perfection. Yet with all this, Sarah knew that she -was nearing the end of her contribution; knew it perhaps with that -prescience of the Gift itself, folding up its wings for withdrawal. I -have never been able to make up my mind whether she abandoned her -talent because she had no more use for it, or if it left her because its -time was served. - -I think we arrived at this certainty about our powers, night by night, -that year as we came together after the performance, Sarah as though she -had come back from a full meal, with a sense of things accomplished, but -I--I came hungry--_always_! Sometimes it was merely with the feeling of -interrupted capacity, as when one has left off in the middle of the -course; when I would continue acting in my room, going over my part, -recalling others, trying experiments with them, pouring myself out until -Sarah, poor dear, fell asleep in the midst of her effort to be -interested. Other times I would rage up and down, all my soul baffled -and aching with incompletion. - -I do not mean to say I hadn't taken a healthy satisfaction in what had -come to me, the knowledge of being worth while, of contributing -something; not less in sheer bodily well-being, leisure, beautiful -clothes, conscious harmony with my background. I had more feeling of -home for that little flat of ours than I had ever known in my mother's -house, or my husband's, for the plain reason that its lines and colours -and adjustments were in tune with my temperament, as nothing I had had -before had been. It wasn't until I had the means to give my personal -preference full scope, that I discovered how much of gracelessness in -myself had been but the unconscious reaction to inharmonies of colour -and line. I had developed, in response to my environment, the quality -called charm. - -And I was a successful actress. I have to go back to that to get -anything like the effect of solidity which my world took on with that -certainty. I was developing too, as my critics allowed, and gave promise -of steady growth. I was well paid and well friended. I don't mean to -say, either, that I did not get something out of being a part of the -dramatic movement of my time, knowing and known of the best it afforded. -I was integrally a part of that half-careless, hard-working, well-living -crowd so envied of the street: I knew a great many notables by their -first names. And all the time I wanted something! At last I knew what I -wanted. - -"It will come," Sarah had faith for me. "Everything comes if it is -called hard enough. But you mustn't allow yourself to be persuaded by -your wanting it so much, to take any sort of substitute." - -That was on an occasion when my Taylorville training had revolted -against some of the things that, though they passed current in my world, -wore to me the indelible stamp of cheapness. Every now and then some -aspect of it struck across my hereditary prejudices, and gave me a -feeling of isolation, of separateness which drove me back in time, to -condone the offences which set me apart in an inviolable loneliness. It -was something my manager had said in my hearing about liking his leading -woman to have a liaison with the leading man because "it kept her -limbered up." - -"I might as well," I said to Sarah. "I could have my leading man any -minute." This was true, though it was by no means the inevitable -situation, and Sarah in acknowledging it had not spared to point out to -me the probable outcome of such a relation. - -"This is the way we all end, isn't it?" I demanded. "Why should I go -looking for an exceptional experience. We both of us know that I shall -never come to my full power without passion and I have a notion that -with experiences as with everything else, we have to eat as we are -helped. And my leading man is the only thing on the plate." And then -Sarah had replied to me with the advice I set down a moment ago. - -It wasn't, however, that I hadn't seen clearly and enough of the -cheapness and betrayal that comes of such irregular relations, to be -warned; if only it were possible for women to be warned against -trusting. What I wanted, of course, was some such sane and open passion -as I appreciated between the Hardings and Mark Eversley and his wife, -noble, extenuating, without a shadow of wavering. How, when I was able -to conceive such a relation and to discriminate it so readily from the -ruck of affairs like Jerry's and my leading man's, I came finally to -miss it, is one of the things that must have been written in my destiny. -Perhaps the Distributers of the Gift were jealous. - -The beginning of the new coil of my affairs was in Sarah's going on the -road early in January and my finding myself rather lonely in -consequence, and going out rather too often to the McDermotts'. Jerry -had settled his family at Sixty-seventh Street, then in that -intermediate region which was at that time neither city nor suburb. Mrs. -Jerry insisted that it was for the sake of the park for the children, -though most of Jerry's friends were of the opinion that it was rather -for the very thing for which they made use of it, an excuse for calling -infrequently. - -No one could be on a footing of any intimacy with Mrs. Jerry without -being set upon by the little foxes of suspicion and jealousy which -gnawed upon the bosom that nursed them. Connubial misery was a kind of -drug with her, the habit of which she could no more leave off than any -drunkard, or than Jerry could his sentimentalized, innocuous -infatuations. All this comes into my story, for slight as my connection -was with Jerry's affairs, in my capacity as confidante, it served to set -in motion the profound, confirming experience of my art. Or perhaps I -merely seized on it objectively to excuse what was really the compulsion -of the gods. I could have gone anywhere out of New York to separate -myself from Jerry's affair; that I should have chosen to go to London is -the best evidence perhaps, that I was not really choosing at all. - -It began with my spending mornings in the park with Jerry's children, -who were nice children except for the way in which they continually -reflected in their attitude toward their father, a growing consciousness -of slighting and bitterness at home. Mrs. Jerry made a point of her -generosity in rather forcing him on me on these occasions, and on the -long walks which I fell in the habit of taking very early, or in the -pale twilight whenever affairs at the theatre would permit me. - -I remember how the spring came on in the city that year. I saw it go -with the children to school in a single treasured blossom, or trailing -the Sunday trippers in dropped sprays of hepatica and potentilla back -from the Jersey shore. Soft airs and scents of the field invaded the -town and played in the streets in the hours when men were not using -them. A spirit out of Hadley's pasture came and walked beside me. But it -was not due to any suggestion of what there was in the invading season -for me, that Jerry occasionally walked along with me, for the chief use -Jerry had of the earth was to build cities upon. - -Jerry drew the sap of his being out of asphalt pavements, and the light -that fanned out from the theatre entrances on Broadway was his natural -aura. He had developed, he had branched and blossomed in the degree to -which the inspiration of his work had been squeezed and strained through -layers and layers of close-packed humanity; and the more he was played -upon by the cross-bred, striped and ring-streaked passions and -affections of society, the more delicate and fanciful and human his work -became. His lean figure, now that it had filled out a little, was built -to be the absolute excuse for evening clothes, and never showed to such -an advantage as in their sleek, satiny blackness, with a good deal of -white front, and the rather wide black ribbon to his glasses which -brought out the natural pallor of his skin. His hair, which he wore -parted very far at one side, and made to curve glossily to the contour -of his head, was more like a raven's wing than ever, and had still its -little trick of erecting slightly and spreading in excitement, -especially when he was up for a curtain speech, and was, in the way he -looked the part of the successful dramatist, a good half of the -entertainment. His contribution to the occasion on which I was good -enough to take his children for an outing to the Bronx or Van Cortlandt -Park, was made by lying flat on his back with his hands clasped under -his head waiting until I had exhausted myself with games before he was -able to take any interest in me. I would come back to him after a while -and sit on the grass beside him. Jerry's way of acknowledging the pains -I had been at to amuse his offspring, was to pat one of my elbows with a -hand which he immediately restored to its business of propping his head. - -"Jerry," I said, "I am convinced that something very nice is about to -happen to me. Run your hands over the tops of the grass here and you can -feel news of it coming up through the stems." - -"Well, at any rate you can take it when it comes," he reminded me. -"There won't be anybody to be hurt by your good times but yourself." - -"Jerry, is it as bad as ever?" - -"So bad that if she doesn't let up on it soon I shall do something to -bring on a crisis." - -"And spend the rest of your life regretting it. Besides there is Miss -Doran; you'd have to think of her." Miss Doran was a dancer with a -spirit in her feet and a South Jersey accent, whose effect on him Jerry -was translating into quite the best thing he had done. It wasn't, -however, that I cared in the least what became of her that I had thrown -out that saving suggestion, but because it had been little more than a -year since Jerry had disturbed the peace and broken the----not -heart----let us say the organ of her literary ineptitudes--of Mineola -Maxon Freear who had interviewed him once, and taken him with the snare -of a superior comprehension. Mineola had advanced ideas as to the -relation of the sexes, and a conviction that she was fitted to be the -mentor of a literary career, and had missed the point of Jerry's -philanderings quite as much as his wife missed them. With Mineola in -mind and the tragedy she came near making out of it for herself, I -ventured on a word of caution. - -"You don't want to forget, Jerry, that there's one good thing about your -marriage; it keeps you from making another one just like it." - -"You think I'd do that?" - -"It is written in your forehead, Jerry, that you are to be attracted to -the sort of woman whom you have the least use for. The kind that would -make you a good wife, you couldn't possibly love well enough to live -with her." - -"I could live with you," he affirmed. - -"Then it would be because you have never been in love with me. Look -here, Jerry, what does the other all amount to? If you didn't have any -one ... like Miss Doran, I mean ... do you mean that you wouldn't write -plays at all?" - -"I'd write them harder and I'd write them different. How can a man tell? -This thing _is_. Once you know it is to be had, you just can't hold back -from it." - -"Not even if somebody else has to pay?" - -"Why should they?" Jerry sat up and began to pull up the grass by the -roots and throw it about. "Why can't they see that all a man wants is to -do his work?" I could see at any rate that he was near the breaking -point, and I knew that if the break came from Jerry himself, it would -be irrevocable. That was what put me in the notion of going away -immediately. I had barely saved my face with Mrs. Jerry in the Mineola -affair, and I thought if there was to be another crisis I had better -clear out before it. - -I had put off deciding about my vacation until I could hear from Sarah, -who was playing in the West and rather expected to go on to the coast, -but now the idea of getting off quite by myself began to appeal to me. -It was about a week after that at Rector's, where I had gone with a -party of players on the spur of the moment, we saw Jerry come in with -the dancer, and an air that said plainly that he knew very well what a -married man laid himself open to when he came into a place like that -with Clare Doran. I watched them by snatches all through the supper -before I made up my mind to send the waiter to touch him on the sleeve -and apprise him that I was there. What deterred me was the reflection -that if it came into Mrs. Jerry's poor, befuddled head to make a case of -his being seen there, the fact that I had stood her friend wouldn't in -the least prevent her from having me up as a witness to her husband's -private entertainments. I seemed to see in the set of Jerry's shoulders -that he expected that his wife would do something, and that it would be -unpleasant. The necessity of taking some stand myself, of living myself -for or against Jerry's connubial independence, had cleared my soul of -sundry vagrant impulses and left the call of destiny sounding plain -above the din of supper and the gurgle of soft, sophisticated laughter. -The authority of that call, coupled no doubt with some annoyance at -Jerry for putting me in a place where I had to decide against him, led -me to break it to him there that I was about to leave him with his -situation on his hands, rather than at a less public occasion. - -He came at once with his napkin trailing from his hand and his raven's -wing falling forward over his pale forehead, as he stooped to me. - -"I was wanting to see you," I said, as I put up my hand to him over the -back of the chair. "I shall be leaving the next day after we close." - -"For where?" - -"London," I told him. "I shall be in time for the best of the theatrical -season there." I hadn't thought of that as a reason until that moment. -"Besides I am crazy to go; I smell primroses." - -"Nonsense, that's Moet '85. Besides, you've never smelled them, so how -should you know?" That was true enough; Sarah and I had had six weeks of -Paris the summer before and a week in London in August, where it rained -most of the hours of every day, but as I said the word I realized that -what had been pulling at my heart was the feel of the London pavements -with the smell of the dust in the hot intervals between the showers, -and the deep red of the roses the boys cried in the street. - -Jerry stood looking down on me, and his face was troubled. - -"I don't blame you for going." - -"Come too, Jerry; bring the wife and babies," Miss Doran was tired of -sitting alone so long, she stood up as if for going. A flicker of -consternation passed in his face between his divided interest and a -suspicion of the reason for my desertion. - -"Look here, Olivia--oh, impossible!" It was plain that the dancer was -going to make it uncomfortable for him for taking so much time to his -good-bye. "I'll see you at your steamer." He clasped my hand with a -detaining gesture. I could see him looking back at me from the doorway -as though for the moment he had seen my destiny hovering over me. I have -often wondered if Jerry hadn't provided me with an excuse, what the -Powers would have done about getting me to London on this occasion. - -I had almost a mind the next day to go out to his house and persuade him -to drop everything here and take his family abroad with me. That I did -not was, I think, not so much due to what I thought such a plan might -contribute toward the saving of Jerry's situation, as the conviction as -soon as I had decided, that whatever it was that lay at the end of my -journey, I was called to it. I was as certain that in London I would -find what I went to seek as though it had been printed in my steamer -ticket. I shut up the house and left the key of the flat at the bank. A -letter I wrote to Sarah crossed hers to me saying that she thought she -would stay on in the West for her vacation. Two days after the theatre -closed for the season I sailed for London. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -For a week, perhaps, I was content merely with being there, simply happy -and human. I had brought letters and addresses which I neglected. In -spite of the excuse I had made to Jerry about it, I did not even go to -the theatres. I turned aside from the traditional goals, to ride on the -top of omnibuses and walk miles down the Strand and Piccadilly, touching -shoulders with the crowd. The thing that I had striven for in my art, -what men paint and write and act for, was upon me. Answers to all the -questions about it that I had not the skill to put to myself, lurked for -me behind the next one of the Greek marbles and the next. The pictures -were luminous with it. In the soft spring nights it took the streets and -turned the voices happy. It danced with the maids in the alleyways to -the tune of the barrel organs. Then all at once I had a scare. -That-Which-Walked-Beside-Me seemed about to take flight. I would be -smiling at it secretly. I would catch myself in the motion of saluting -it, and suddenly it would be gone. Mornings I would wake up in Chicago -to the old struggle and depression; I would have to go out in the -streets and court back my joy; it fled from me and concealed itself in -the crowd. I followed it by the trail of the first name I lighted on in -my address-book. It happened to be Mrs. Franklin Shane; I wrote her a -note and then walked out in Hyde Park to see the last of the -rhododendrons, and regretted it. Mrs. Franklin Shane was Pauline Mills -raised to the _n_th power, which I did not fail to perceive was due to -Franklin Shane being Henry multiplied by a million. The acute sense of -values, which had established Pauline at the centre of Evanston, had -landed Mrs. Shane at the outer rim of English exclusiveness. What she -would do with her time and energy when she had penetrated to its royal -core, interested me immensely. - -I had been entertained at her house the previous winter when I had been -studying a play that made me perfectly willing to be exploited by Mrs. -Franklin Shane, for the sake of what I got out of it to fatten my part. -There in London she called for me in her car the afternoon of the day -that brought her my note. I don't remember that anything was expressly -said about it, but it was in the air that Mrs. Franklin Shane had -arrived, in her study of Exclusiveness, at knowing that the younger -members of it were addicted to the society of ladies of my profession, -and meant to make the most of me. I thought it might be amusing to see -what, supposing with me as a tolerable bait, she could catch a younger -son, she would do with him. She was clever enough not to put the use she -was to make of me, too obviously. I was invited to an informal -reception the next afternoon in which she found herself involved by her -husband's business exigencies; I gathered from her way of speaking of it -that the guests were chiefly Americans and that she had made the best of -the situation, extracting from it for herself a kernel of credit by not -turning down her compatriots, now that she was assured of having the -English aristocracy to play with. - -The house in front of which a hansom deposited me the next day, was -notable; one could guess that the Franklin Shanes had been made to pay a -pretty penny for the privilege of occupying it. It was stuffed full of -the treasures of four hundred years of the selective instinct. - -"You must really see the Velasquez," my hostess had confided to me as -soon as I had shaken hands with her, and I judged from the fact of her -not mentioning my name to any other of her guests, that she was saving -me for a special introduction. - -The Velasquez was very wonderful; there was also an early Holbein and a -Titian so black with time that there was only one point in the room from -which you could make out what it was about. I was slowly making my way -to that point. I had been in the house half an hour and had met but one -or two people whom I slightly knew, when I was aware of my hostess -piloting toward me through the press, a black-coated male in whom I -suspected one of the pegs upon which her social venture hung. It -occurred to me that she had sent me to look at the pictures so that she -might know where to find me. The room was packed with Americans, -satisfying in the only way open to them, a natural curiosity as to the -shell in which the only kind of society which wasn't open to them, -lived, and the man blocking out a passage through it with his shoulders, -was so tall that it brought my eyes on a level with his necktie. There -was an odd freedom about it that set me at once to correct my impression -of him by his face, and the moment I raised my eyes to him I knew him. - -I could hear Mrs. Franklin Shane mumbling the phrases of introduction, -rendered unimportant by the radiant recognition that for the moment -enveloped us, that burst around us as a flame in which our hostess -seemed to shrivel and go out in a thin haze of silk and chiffon. I -remember looking around for her presently, and wondering how she had got -away from us. We began again at the point where we had left off. - -"So you did go on the stage then, in spite of Taylorville?" - -"And you," I pressed my foot into the velvet pile of the carpet to make -sure that I stood. "You are an engineer, I suppose?" - -"In spite of my uncle!" - -Somewhere in the next room some one began to sing. I did not hear the -song nor see the Titian. I was back in Willesden pasture and the soft -rain of dying leaves was on my face. I was conscious of nothing but his -hand which he had laid upon my arm to steady me against the pressure of -the crowd which swayed and turned upon itself to let Mrs. Shane through, -to drag me to be presented to the singer who was even more of a -notability than I was. - -There was an interval then in which I appeared to be going through the -forms of society, and going through them under an intolerable sense of -injustice in the fact that having found Helmeth Garrett at last, now I -had lost him. It was one of those occasions when the inward monitor is -so bent on its own affairs that the habit of living goes on -automatically, or does not go on at all. It went on so with me for half -an hour. By degrees, what seemed an immense unbearable throbbing of the -universe, resolved itself at the renewal of that electrifying touch on -my arm, to the thrum of an orchestra in the refreshment room. I felt -myself carried along by the pressure of the crowd in that direction, but -just at the turn of the stair that went down to it I was drawn -peremptorily aside. - -"Come," Mr. Garrett insisted, "come out of this. I want to talk to you." -There was the old imperiousness in his manner, exclusive of all other -considerations. He seemed to know the house. We took a turn through the -hall came out presently at the _porte cochère_ where a line of carriages -waited, supported by a line of skirt-coated figures like little wooden -Noahs before an ark. I let him put me into a closed carriage without a -word of protest. I had not taken leave of my hostess; I had not so much -as thought of her. I suppose he had been arranging this in the interval -in which I had not seen him. The moment the door of the carriage was -shut, we clasped hands and laughed shamelessly. - -"You had three little freckles high up on your cheek, what became of -them?" he demanded. All at once his mood changed again. "All the years -I've been without you!... I saw a picture of you in a magazine three -years ago in Alaska. I came near writing." - -"You should have. What were you doing there?" - -"Promoting Engineer, Alaska, Russia, Mexico." He began a gesture to -include the whole round of the mining world, but left off to take my -hand again. "The world _is_ round," he declared, as though he had -somewhat doubted it. "It brings us back again to the old starting -points." - -"They're always the same, I suppose, the places we set out from; but -we ... we are never the same." - -"Is that a warning?" He looked at me, checked for a moment. - -"Only a platitude." I had thrown it out instinctively against his -engulfing manner, against everything that rose up in me to assure me -that nothing whatever had changed, that it would never change. The life -of the London streets streamed around us; crossing Piccadilly Circus we -were held up with the traffic; the roar of the city islanded us like a -sea. - -"I suppose you know where we are going?" I suggested in one of the -checked intervals. - -"To your hotel; Mrs. Shane gave me the address. I told her we were old -friends. You mustn't be surprised if you find she expects us to have -gone to school together. I wanted to get away where we could talk." I -gave him an assenting smile. Still neither of us showed any disposition -to begin. He took off his hat in the carriage and ran his fingers -through his hair. About the temples it had gone gray a little. Now and -then he gave a short contented laugh as a man will, put suddenly at -ease. - -"I'm glad you kept the old name, Olivia Lattimore ... Olivia. I -shouldn't have found you without." - -"You knew I had lost my husband." - -"I read that in the magazine. There's where I have the advantage of -you." He dropped his light banter for a soberer tone. "My wife died two -years ago." We were silent after that until the fact had been put behind -us by a space of time. - -I don't know why London seems a more homey place than New York. It has -been going on so long, perhaps, is so steeped in the essential essence -of human living, and the buildings there are smaller, more personal, the -mind is able to grasp them to the uttermost. I remember as we stopped at -my hotel, being taken suddenly with a tremendous awareness of it all, -the noble river flowing by, the human stream, miles on miles of homes, -and the green countryside. I was aware of a city set in an island and an -island in the sea, the wide immortal sea going around and around it, the -coursing waves--I checked myself in an upward gesture of the arms, as -though I had pulsed and surged with it. I caught in my companion's smile -a delighted recognition. - -"Sh--" he said, "what'll Flora Haines think of you!" - -"Flora! Oh, Flora wouldn't even _think_ about a play-actor. What would -your uncle----" - -"He's dead now." He stopped me. - -"They are all dead," I told him, "all those that mattered to us." - -We had another mood when we came to my rooms. I perceived suddenly what -there was in him more than I had known. It was in his manner that he had -commanded men. I was pierced through with a sense of his virility, the -quality that goes to make a male. I was glad of an excuse to put away my -hat and wrap, to escape for a moment from the effect he produced on -me ... from inordinate pride in him that he could so produce it. The room -was full of the tumult we created for one another. - -"Will you sit here?" I said at last. I believe I pushed a chair toward -him. - -"No, you." He must have turned it back toward me, otherwise I do not -know how I came to be so near him. - -"You know," I said, ... "I never got your letter." - -"I guessed as much when it came back to me. I should have come to you -the next day, but I quarrelled with my uncle. I walked all the way to -the railway station before I remembered. But what had I to offer you?" - -"It was so long ago ..." - -"No, no, yesterday." His arms were around me. "Olivia ... yesterday and -to-day!" - -I think I moved a little to be the more completely engulfed by him, to -lay against his the ache of my empty breast; all these years I had not -known how empty. We kissed at last and Joy came upon us. We loved; we -kissed again between laughter. I remember little snatches of explanation -in the intervals of kissing. - -"All this time, Helmeth, I have wanted you so." - -"I was on my way to you. All last winter in Alaska ... in the long -night, Olivia. I should have come soon." - -"Oh," I cried, "I have been drawn across the sea to you. All the way I -felt you calling!" - -"We had to meet again; had to!" - -After a time I insisted that he should sit down. "You haven't had any -tea." I tried to get control of myself. I was crossing the room to ring -when he swept me up again. - -"Look here, Olivia, I don't want any tea. I want you. God!" he said, "do -you know how I want you?" All at once I was crying on his breast. - -"Oh, Helmeth, Helmeth, do you know you have only seen me twice in your -life." - -"And both times," he insisted, "I've wanted to marry you." - - * * * * * - -It was two or three days before we spoke of marriage again. I believe I -scarcely thought of it; we had all the past to account for, and the -present. We had moments of strangeness, and then we would kiss, and all -the years would seem to each of us as full of the other as the very -hour. - -"Where were you, Helmeth, the second summer after we met?" I had told -him of my visit to Chicago and the dream of him I had had there. - -"Out in Arizona, carrying a surveyor's chain, dreaming of _you_! Often -when the moonlight was all over that country like a lake, I would walk -and walk. I had long talks with you; they were the only improving -conversation I had." - -"For years," I said, "that dream of you was the only thing that kept my -Gift awake. Times I would lose it, and then I would dream again and it -would come back. I know now when I lost it completely, it was about a -year before I saw you that time in Chicago." I had told him of that, -too. - -"That year I married." I could see that there was something in the -recollection always that weighed upon him. - -"I didn't," he said, "until after my aunt had told me about you. I went -back there when she died; she was always good to me. You know, don't -you, Olive, that in spite of everything ... everything ... there is only -you." - -"Let us not talk of it." I do not know how it is proper to feel on such -occasions, but I supposed that he must have had as I had, stinging tears -to think of the dead and how their love was overmatched by this present -wonder. I would have had, somehow, Tommy and my boy to share in it. - -I went rather tardily to make my apologies to Mrs. Franklin Shane. I -hope they sounded natural. - -"My _dear_! you needn't expect me to be surprised at _anything_ Helmeth -Garrett does." She talked habitually in italics. "My husband says that -it is only because he so generally does right, that it is at all -possible to get along with him." I snapped up crumbs like this with -avidity. - -"His wife, too, you must have known her." I hinted. This was at the end -of a rather complete account of Helmeth's business relations with Mr. -Shane. - -"Oh, well," I could see Christian charity struggling with Mrs. Shane's -profound conviction of the rectitude of her own way of life. "She was a -_good_ woman, but no--imagination." She was so pleased to have hit upon -a word which carried no intrinsic condemnation that she repeated it. -"No imagination whatever. One feels," she modified the edge of her -judgment still further, "that so much might have been made out of Mr. -Garrett. These self-made men are so difficult." - -"Are you difficult?" I demanded when I had retailed the conversation to -him that evening. - -"I suppose so; anyway I am self-made. She is right so far; I dare say it -is badly done. You'll have to take a few tucks in me." - -"Not a tuck. I like you the way you are. Oh, I like you ... I like you -_so_!" There was an interval after this before we could go on again. - -"Tell me how you made yourself, Helmeth. Don't leave anything out, not a -single thing." - -"By mistakes mostly. Every time I had made one I knew it was a mistake -and I didn't do it again. I don't know that I'm much of a success -anyway, but I've got a large assortment of things not to do." - -"That was the way I learned how to act; filling in behind!" - -"I thought that came by instinct. What counts with a man, is not so much -getting to know how to do it, but getting a chance to prove to other -people that he knows how." - -"I've been through that too," I told him, but he was bent on making -himself clear. - -"I suppose I ought to tell you, Olivia, I'm only a sort of scab -engineer. I haven't any papers." - -"But if you can do the work? Mrs. Shane said----" - -"Oh, Shane will trust me; he's learned. What hurts is to have worked up -a scheme to the point where it is necessary to have outside capital, and -then have one of the outsiders stick out for a certificated engineer. -That's what comes of my uncle's notion that a man should 'pick up' his -professional training." There was the core of that old bitterness -rankling in him still; he could not yield himself quite to consolation. - -"But you have got on, Helmeth, you got _here_." What "here" meant to me -exactly, was more than my lover, more than the pleasant room behind us, -the obsequious servitors, more even than the sleek, silvered river and -the towered banks that took on shapes of romance under the London gray. -There was something in the word to me of fulfilment, the knowledge of -things done, the certainty of an unassailed capacity for doing. We were -sitting with the broad window flung open, the top of a lime tree tapping -the sill of it with soft shouldering touches, as of some wild creature -against its mate, creaking a little in somnolent content. I put out my -hand to touch his knee--oh, as I might have done it if the "here" had -been the point toward which we had travelled together all these years. -He laughed then as he often did when I touched him, a man's short full -laugh of repletion. He thrust out his knee quite frankly till it -touched mine, and closed his hand over my fingers; he returned to what -had been in the air the previous moment with an effort. The suspicion -that it was an effort, was all I had to prepare me for what was about to -leap upon me. - -"Oh, I've pulled through, I've pulled through. But I'm not where I might -have been. And I'm not rich, Olivia. Not what is called rich." - -"Is being called rich one of the things that goes with--what was it you -called yourself--a promoting engineer?" - -"It goes with it if you are any good at it. Not that I care about money -except for what it stands for ... and then there are the girls." - -"You have--girls." It struck me as absurd that I hadn't thought of it -until that moment. - -"I thought Mrs. Shane would have told you. I have two. It isn't going to -make any difference with you, Olivia?" - -"Ah, what difference should it make!" I was apprised within me by the -haste I made to cover my consternation, that there was more difference -in it than my words allowed. "Children of yours?" I said. "So much more -of you for me to love." The apprehension was whelmed in the possessing -movement with which he drew me to his breast. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -We Had to go back to the subject of course, it couldn't be left hanging -in the air like that. It was a day or two later at Hampton Court, where -we had gone for no reason really, except that it seemed a more -commensurate background for what was going on in us, the identification -in each by the other, of the springs of immortal passion. We had roved -through all the rooms, recharged for us with the exceptional experience, -and come out at last on the river bank where there was quite a holiday -air among the houseboats. - -Behind us we could hear the soft slither of the fountain in the sunk -garden; the warm sun streaming on us through the filmy air, the flutter -of curtains in the houseboats above the little pots of geraniums, the -voices of young people laughing and calling across, began to steal -across my mind with a sense of the extraordinary richness of life. Here -was all the stuff of which I had built up my earliest dreams of the -Shining Destiny ... young people growing up about me ... room to stretch -my capacity to the uttermost ... the orderly social procedure. For the -moment I believed that I might turn back on that path my feet had failed -in, and find in it all that I had missed. I recalled that there were -always children in my dream. For the instant they were back ... little -heads and faces ... all the eyes on me ... soft curls, like wisps of -gossamer. I suppose there must be such little unclaimed souls forever -hovering and flitting, little winged things, to love's mighty candle. -What should there be in the touch of a man's hand on a woman's that they -should come crowding to it like homing doves? - -There was a maid going by with her charge, one of those glowing -fair-haired English children who supply us with the images by which we -prefigure the angelic choirs. Helmeth held out his hand to the boy, and -with that swift spark that passes between the young and those by whom -they are beloved, he toddled forward and laid hold of the inviting -finger. - -If I had had more experience of the pang that shot through me then, I -should have known it for jealousy. It drove me on toward what, until -now, I had avoided. - -"Tell me about your girls, Helmeth." He felt in the pocket of his coat. - -"If you would care to see them----" He was so pleased and shy, I suppose -he must have understood better than I how it was with me. "They are with -an aunt in Los Angeles; it was handier for me to see them when I ran up -from Mexico. They are rather decent kiddies. You'll see them when they -come to New York this winter." - -"Shall you be in New York?" It struck coldly on me that he should speak -of plans that seemed to be going on regardless of the extraordinary -interruption of our love. - -"Until I get this Mexican scheme on its feet I shall be going back and -forth." - -"They look like their mother," I suggested. I was looking still at the -small, rather pale photographs he had handed me. - -"Because they look so little like me?" - -"You forget I saw her once, in Chicago." - -"I remember. You know, I think I went there that time because I heard -you were playing there." He was silent a moment, pitching bits of sod -into the river. "There is something that manages these things. If I had -met you then we couldn't have been like this. And we might never have -met again." - -When he said "like this," he had touched my knee with his hand with that -possessive intimacy with which a man may touch his own woman. I had to -go back to the photographs of the children to save myself from the -blinding lightning of his eyes. - -"_Are_ they like their mother?" - -"I suppose so. I hope so--she was a good woman." - -"I'm sure of that." He sat up with intention. - -"Ah, it isn't just a sense of what is due her that makes me say that. -She was thoroughly good. When I met her out in Idaho she was my chief's -daughter and the only nice girl in the place. She wasn't what you -are--no other woman is--but she was one of those plain, quiet women that -have a kind of a grip on rightness. There was nothing could make her let -go." - -"My mother was like that. I think I can understand." - -"Well, it was mighty good for me. I'm a bad lot, I suppose. I always -want things harder than most, and I think the wanting justifies me in -getting them, but she taught me better. She did things to me that made -me fit for you, and I don't want us to forget that." - -"Oh, my dear, it is I who am not fit." - -But I could see he did not believe that. He had come upon me that day in -the woods when happily the mood of Perdita had shut round the odd, -blundering Olivia like an enchanter's bubble, through which iridescent -surfaces he was always to see me; and by the mere act of loving he had -fixed me in my happiest moment. He was the only man I ever knew, whom I -could handle like an audience, perhaps he was the only man who never -knew me in any other character than the lady of romance. - -We went that evening to see Beerbohm Tree in a Shakespearian piece, -always so much more worth while in London than anything the same people -can do on any other soil, as if the play had mellowed there by all the -rich life it tapped with its four-hundred-year roots. Borne up by my -mood and the beauty of the production, so much greater than anything we -could manage in New York at that time, I was chanting bits of it all the -way home, and when we came to my room again I moved before him in the -part of Egypt's queen. - - "Who's born the day - When I forget to send to Antony - Shall die a beggar----" - -"Oh, Helmeth, if you could just see me do it!" I was aching to lay up my -gift before him as on an altar. - -"You shall do them all for me when we are out in the shack in Mexico." - -"Mexico!" I was blank for the moment. - -"We'll have to live there for a few years, until I get this scheme on -its legs. Look here, Olivia, you haven't said yet when you are going to -marry me." - -"I've only known you four days!" I tried for the note of feminine -evasion. - -"Four days and an afternoon, to be exact. What's that got to do with it, -when you are made for me?" - -"Don't you like this, Helmeth?" - -He caught me to him with that frank delight in the pressure of his arm -about my body, the feel of his cheek against mine that was as fresh to -me as water in a wilderness. "It's not this I'm objecting to, but the -trouble I shall have doing without you." He let me go at that, as -though he would not add the persuasion of his touch to what he had to -say. - -"The truth is I've no business to ask a woman to marry me for the next -two years. I'm pledged to this Mexican proposition. I've staked all I -have on it, and I've asked other men to put their money in, and I can't -go back on it. I shall have to be back and forth between London and New -York and the mines, for at least a couple of years. If it wasn't for -wanting you so ... but now that I've found you again, I know there's no -going on without you!" - -He turned his face toward me that I might see the lines of anxious -thought there, the buffetings and disappointings, and through it all, -the plain hunger of the man for his natural mate. - -I saw that and I didn't flinch from it. I took his face between my hands -and drew it down to my breast. - -"I'm under contract for the next year," I told him. "I signed just -before I left ... what does it all matter? Can't we be just ... -engaged." - -"We'd be engaged to be married. And I couldn't take you to Mexico on an -engagement." - -"I'm under contract," I told him again. - -"You mean to say that you'd go on acting after we were married?" - -It isn't worth while retailing what we said after that. It has been said -so many times. It was the same thing that Tommy said, better put, more -fully. He was ready, you understand, to make concession to my liking -for the stage, to feel himself sincerely a poor substitute for what I -had got for myself out of living, but there it was at the end, that he -couldn't make for his own work the concessions he demanded of mine. - -"We would have to live in Mexico," he said at last. "That's -incontrovertible. And besides there are the kiddies to think of. Their -mother wouldn't want them brought up in the atmosphere of the stage." He -had me there. I thought of Miss Dean and Griffin, of the Cecelia Brunes -I had known, and Polatkin tracing the outline of my figure with his fat -forefinger. - -"I wouldn't either," and my frank admission of it brought us out of the -atmosphere of controversy to the community of our love again. - -"You understand, don't you, that I feel even more obligation to her -_now_." I nodded. I understood fully that obstinate trace of disloyalty -that came of his having given himself to what she wouldn't approve of, -to what he couldn't for decency's sake admit of giving her daughters. - -"I know what people think of the life of the stage," I agreed; "and I -know what's worse, that most of it is true. Not that it need to be; but -it has got in the habit of being so." - -"Well, then, if you feel that way----" The inference was plain that he -didn't know in that case why I held on to it. - -"It has got into my blood, Helmeth. I can't explain, and I didn't -realize until we got to talking of it, but I don't believe I could live -away from it. It is with me as it is with you about your engineering." -If I had a momentary qualm lest that last should be not quite -disingenuous, it passed in the realization that the comparison hadn't -come home to him. I remembered how Forester would have accepted the -abnegation of my gift to his necessity of being important, and I didn't -hold it out against Helmeth that he failed to realize at all the place -that my work occupied, just as work, in the scheme of my existence. - -We came back to it the next day and the next. It would have been -simpler, of course, if it hadn't been for the children, and for my being -at one with him in the opinion that the stage wasn't the proper -atmosphere for the rearing of young ladies. I was still of the opinion -which was exemplified in so far as I knew it, by Pauline and Mrs. -Franklin Shane, that the function of mothering could not go on except by -complete separateness from the business of making a living. All my -training and heredity had fostered an ideal of family life which -rendered obligatory a proper house and servants, in the neighbourhood of -good schools, and the exclusion from it of everybody but those who found -themselves in an identical situation. And if we had been able to imagine -a compromise, Helmeth and I would have been hindered by the defrauded -capacity for loving, from working it out logically. At the mere -suggestion of anything to drive us apart, the mating instinct set us -toward one another irresistibly. We would leave off any argument and -fall to kissing. We were pierced through and through with loving. - -"Let us not think of it any more; something will work out for us. Let us -just be happy the way we are," I would protest. - -"Oh, child, child, will you never understand that the way we are is what -is so hard to bear!" Then he would snatch me up until the suffusing fire -of his caress would steal through all my body and sing in me like -bacchic sap of vineyards in the spring. - -"You oughtn't to marry me unless you can't help yourself," he would -laugh shamelessly. So we fell deeper in love and not out of our -difficulties. - -Toward the end of that week, the weather which had been thickening to a -storm, brought us to one of those thunderous London days, full of a -stifling murk that might have been breathed out by the nostrils of the -greasy, hurrying snake that went by in the bed of the river. -Inconsequential lightnings flashed in the smoky vault, from every -quarter of which rolled unrelated thunder. - -Helmeth came over from Mr. Shane's office in London Wall; the need we -had of being together was oppressive like the day which, when we had -sought it in the Park, we could hear like some great monster bellowing -for its mate. We went out and walked about for a time under the trees, -fancying the relief of freshness in the green obscurity that under the -ranked trunks, thickened to blackness. No one was about but a few -belated nursery maids, scurrying in silhouette against the pale glow of -the light pinned down and imprisoned under the thick cloud of foliage. -We were on the Broad Walk, when suddenly a wind tore loose in the -firmament. It made a whirling chaos of the murk, it wrung the treetops, -but the air along the ground was stagnant as a cistern. Now and then a -few great drops spattered on the leaves of the limes. Over a quarter of -a mile from us, near the Alexandria gate, the tension of the day snapped -suddenly in flame, a bolt had shattered one of the great trees. Straight -across the grass toward us the bolt sped like a ball of light. It -skimmed the ground knee high, flame points on its edges, flickered -viciously as it drove at us. - -There was no time for anything. Helmeth cried out to me once and I -stepped within the circle of his arms; we could hear the fire ball -sizzling as it cleared the grass; within a yard of us it went out in a -flare of gas and a crack like thunder. Suddenly buckets of rain were -precipitated on us, we could hear the slap of them on the pavement as we -ran. - -I was crying hysterically by the time we came to my room in a cab. I -remember Helmeth trying to rid me of my wet things and my clinging to -him crying. - -"Oh, my dear, my dear, it was so near, so near, I thought I was to lose -you before I had had you--before I had had you at all!" - -"No, no ... not that, Olivia, not that!" His arms were around me and all -my life up to that moment was no more to me than a path which led up to -those arms. I remember that ... and the world dissolving in the wash of -the rain outside ... and the lift of his breast; and deep under all, -old, unimagined instincts reared their heads and bayed at the voice of -their master.... - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -After the evening of the storm we talked no more of marriage for a -while, and about a week later I went over to Paris ostensibly to shop, -and was joined there by Mr. Garrett on the way to Italy. I suppose that -Italy must always lie like some lovely sunken island at the bottom of -all passionate dreams, from which at the flood it may arise; the air of -it is charged with subtle essences of romance. One supposes Italy must -be organized for the need of lovers. Nothing occurred there to break the -film of our enchanted bubble. For a month we kept to the hill towns and -to Venice, where we could go about in the conspicuous privacy of a -gondola, and all that time we met nobody we had ever known. - -It was all so easily managed--we had to think of the girls, of -course--no one seeing our registered names side by side, Mrs. Thomas -Bettersworth, New York, and Helmeth Garrett, Chilicojote, Mexico, would -have thought of connecting them. Helmeth attended to all his business -correspondence as though he were still in London, and nobody expected to -hear from me in any case. - -It is strange how little history there is to happiness. We had come -together past incredible struggles, anxieties, triumphs, defeats; we -had been buffeted and stricken, and now suddenly we were stilled. If at -any time the ghosts of the uneasy past rose upon us, we kissed and they -were laid. So long as we kept in touch, there ran a river of fire -between our blessed isolation and the world. And for the first time we -looked upon the world free of the obligations of our being in it. We -looked, and exchanged our separate knowledges as precious treasure. My -exploration of life had been from within--I knew what Raphael was -thinking about when he painted that fine blue vein on his Madonna's -wrist. But Helmeth had looked on the movement of history; what he saw in -Italy was the path of armies, lines of aqueducts, old Roman roads to and -from mines. Everything began or ended for him in a mine, in Gaul or -Austria or Ophir; dynasties were marked for him by change in the -ownership of mines. So he drew me the white roads out of Italy as one -draws fibre from a palm, and strung on them the world's great -adventures. There were hours also when we let all this great fabric of -art and history float from us, sure that by the vitalizing thread of -understanding which ran between us like a new, live sense, we could pull -it back again ... but we loved ... we loved. - -Nothing that happened to us there, came with a more revealing touch than -the attitude in which I caught myself, looking out for and being -surprised at not discovering in myself any qualms of conscience. All -that I had known of such relations in other people, had made itself -known by a subtle, penetrating, fetid savour, against which some -instinct, as sure as a hound, threw up its head and bayed the tainted -air. - -But in my own affair, the first compulsion that irked me was the -necessity I was under of not telling anybody. I wasn't conscious at any -time of any feeling that wouldn't have gone suitably with the outward -form of marriage; there were times even when I failed to see why one -should take exception to the neglect of such form. I was remade every -pulse and fibre of me, my beloved's ... and so obviously, that the -necessity of tagging my estate with a ceremony struck me as an -impertinence. Marriage I think must be a fact, capable of going on -independently of the prayer book and the county clerk. Whatever _you_ -may think, no god could have escaped the certainty of my being duly -married. - -There were days though, just at first, when I suffered the need of -completing my condition by an outward bond. I knew very well where the -custom of wedding rings came from; I should have worn anklets and -armlets as well, if only they could have been taken as the advertisement -of my belonging wholly to my man. Depend upon it, the subjugation of -woman will be found finally to rest in the attempt visibly to -establish, what the woman herself concurs in, the inward conviction of -possession. - -How much of what was in my own mind, was also in Helmeth's, I do not -know, but because I had brought upon myself the condition of not being -married, I failed to speak of what I found regrettable in it. What did -come out for me satisfyingly, was the man's sheer content in his mate, -the response, and our pride in it, of his blood and body to my presence, -and the new relish it created in him for the processes of living, for -his pipe and his meals, and his work. He had brought some estimates to -figure out; evenings at work on these, he would call me to him and sit -with his left arm thrown lightly about my chair, the pencil going as -though my presence were an added fillip to activity. He took on weight -in that holiday, and his mouth relaxed to a more youthful curve. - -We spent the last three weeks of it at a quiet hotel on the point of -land that divides Lake Como from Lecco, opposite Cadenabbia. Times yet I -will wake out of dreaming, to find the pulse of the city transmuted into -the steady lisping of that silver fretted lake. We had come to a phase -like that in our relation, deep and full and shining. We spent hours -sitting on the parapet in the sun, looking at it. I would sit on the -stone ledge and Helmeth would stretch himself, with his pipe, along the -ground. - -"Helmeth," I said on such a morning, "do you know this is the first time -I ever rested?" He gave a little gurgle of content; the sun turned on -the sails of the fishing-boats and flashed us sympathy. "I'm afraid," I -admitted, "I'm never going to want to do anything else." - -"Oh, I'm going to want to. This is good enough, but it wouldn't be half -so good if I couldn't take it along with me and do things with it--great -things." He threw his arm across my knees with one of those quick, -intimate caresses, flooding me full of the delighted sense of how -completely I belonged to him. "I feel," he said, "as if I had been going -about with one arm or one hand, and now I've got a full set of them. -Wait until I show you!" - -"When you talk of doing, Helmeth--that means leaving me." - -"That's for you to say, Olive." That was as near as he had come yet to -reminding me that it was I who had chosen this instead of a relation -which would have implied my going with him wherever his work led him, -and that the choice was still open to me. The night after the storm he -had written me: - - "There is nothing that troubles me about to-night except the fear - that you may regret it, that you might ever come to have a doubt of - how I feel about it. I want you to feel that whatever you choose is - right to me, and though I hope for nothing so much as to make you - my wife, I shall not urge you beyond what you feel that you can do - without urging." - -It was a generous letter, and no doubt it had its weight in persuading -me to trust the situation, in the face of that instinct which saves -women, even from passions that seem their own justification. If he had -counted on the naturalness of love to set up its own public obligation, -he had not been far wrong with me. If it had been practicable, I should -have walked out with him any day those first weeks to be married. But -marriage is a very complicated business in Italy. In a measure I had -satisfied my fret for the visible tie, with a ring which he had bought -me in Florence, which, as the stones flashed in the sun, turned me back -on the thought I had when first he set it on my hand. - -"Helmeth, do you suppose that we are pushed on to make laws and -observances about marriage because the bond that comes into being then -has a consistency and validity beyond what we feel about it?" - -"Oh, beyond what we feel about it, yes." He sat up then a little away -from me, as he often did when he drew upon experiences lying beyond the -points at which his life had been touched by mine, and began skipping -little stones into the water. "Yes, I'm sure that what you feel about a -thing that happens to you is not always the test of what it does to you. -Sometimes I think feelings haven't much to do with our experiences -except to get us into them." He left off skipping stones and began to -pile them into a little heap. "I was thinking of Laura," he concluded. -It was not often that he spoke to me of his wife. - -"I can't remember that I had a great deal of feeling about her; I was -too busy, I suppose, getting on with my engineering; but she had a grip -on me. She had a grip. Look here, my dear, I ought to tell you this, -you're the wonder of the earth for me, and I know very well that my -wife's world was a very little one; it was bounded by the church on one -side and by conventions on all the others. But somehow I don't want to -get too far away from it, and I don't want the girls to get too far." He -swung about to look squarely up at me. "This that you've given me, it's -heaven; it's a thing for a man to die for and die happy; but there's the -other too." He laughed a little awkwardly; he caught my feet in one of -his strong hands. "Have I made you understand?" - -"I understand that kind of life. It's like a clean, scrubbed room. I -_know_. I was brought up in it. There have been times when I have been -desperate because I couldn't go back and live there. But I ought to tell -you, Helmeth, I can't find my way back." - -"You! Why should you? You were made to live in Kings' houses. But I -wanted to be sure you weren't going to be disappointed if I haven't the -manners that always belong to palaces. I've been in camps where a -scrubbed room looked mighty good to me." He stretched himself and rolled -over on the ground, lying with his back to the sun, soaking in it in -simple, animal content. Little white flecks showed on the lake, the -sails of the fisher-boats tilted slowly and composed themselves anew -with the line of the shore and the flowing hills. Directly opposite, the -walls of Cadenabbia showed white amid the green, like a little streak of -Arcady. - -"We've never been," I reminded him. - -"I thought you wanted to leave it so you could always think of its being -as romantic as it looks, without making sure that it isn't." That was -the reason I had given him, but the truth was that Cadenabbia was on one -of those tourist routes where, supposing anybody we knew to be wandering -about Europe, we would be sure to run into them. This morning, however, -I was seized with an irresistible desire to visit it. - -"But supposing it isn't as interesting as it looks," I submitted, "if I -go there with you I shall never know it. And think how disappointed I -should be if I should ever come there without you and find that it is -the one place we ought to have seen." - -There was a little motor launch plying between the shores of the lake, -and an hour before tea time we crossed in it. We spent the hour in the -garden of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and then along the parapet we -strolled in search of tea. It was the height of the tourist season and -the gay groups moving in the streets between the quaint low houses, gave -it a holiday air. We heard them calling one to the other, exchanging -appreciations and information. All at once we heard them calling us. - -"Garrett, Garrett!" a party in the act of settling at a tea table in the -garden of one of the hotels, dissolved and reorganized about us as the -centre. There was laughter and garbled greetings and handshaking. -Presently Helmeth began to introduce me. They were a party of -Californians, all more or less acquainted and importunate; we were swept -back by them to the table and tea. There were two married couples and -one unmarried woman of about my age, and a boy of sixteen. I could see -by the way she appropriated him, that his acquaintance with Miss Stanley -had been of the degree that might have ripened into marriage, and that -Miss Stanley had not wholly made up her mind that it wouldn't. She was -one of those unmarried women who contrive by a multiplicity and vivacity -of interests to deny what is explicitly advertised by their anxiety to -have you understand that they consider themselves much better off just -as they are. I could see her taking in all the details of my appearance, -to find the key to what Mr. Garrett might presumably like in me, and -striking out in her manner to him a quick sketch of me, bettered in the -direction of what she believed it most to be. The other women, if they -had been brought up in Taylorville, would have resembled Pauline Mills; -that they didn't I could see was difference of geography. They were all -full of gay talk and reminiscence of a mutual life in the West, on a -footing that left me rather more than room to play the part, which I had -cast for myself with celerity, of being a casual acquaintance of his, -picked up at a hotel. He had introduced me to them as Mrs. Bettersworth, -and whether they would have known me or not by my stage name, I took -care they shouldn't have the opportunity. - -Nothing would do but he must stay to dinner; I guessed that there was -that degree of acquaintance between them which would have made it -unfriendly of him to refuse. I could see Miss Stanley prick up at his -manner of leaving the decision to me, and realized that whatever we -might have agreed upon, there would be no keeping our relation from -being at least a matter of curiosity to the women, the elder of whom had -promptly included me in the invitation. - -I invented a mythical travelling companion across the lake whom I must -join, and managed to make my being in Mr. Garrett's company appear so -casual that I came near to overdoing it by exciting his concern. - -"What's the matter; don't you like them?" He wished to know as he saw me -to the landing. - -"Ever so," I insisted promptly, "but they wouldn't like me after a -while. You behave as if we had been married five years." - -"Oh, well, haven't we?" He looked back and his brow gathered a little. -"For two cents I'd tell them." But after all there was nothing he could -do but see me comfortably off and go back to them. He told me afterward -that Mr. Harwood, the elder of the two gentlemen, had been useful to him -in business. - -It must have been close on to midnight when he waked me, sitting on the -edge of my bed. He must have gone to his own room very softly, meaning -not to disturb me; now I heard him calling my name in a whisper and his -hand seeking for my face. - -I reached up and drew his down to me. - -"Oh, my dear----" I was startled at what I found there. "Beloved, why -are you crying?" I could feel him shake with sudden uncontrollable -emotion. I kept his head on my breast and comforted him. - -"When did you come in?" - -"An hour ago--you were asleep." The commonplace question seemed to quiet -him. - -"Was it something went wrong at the dinner?" - -"Wrong, yes ... but not there, not there. It's all wrong, it has been -wrong from the beginning." - -"Dear heart, tell me." - -"Olive, marry me; say you'll marry me!" There was urgency in his -whisper, there was pain in it. "Say it; say it!" - -"I'll marry you. I've been waiting for you to ask." - -"Oh, my dear, when I have begged you so...." - -"Tell me," I urged.... - -"There isn't anything to tell, only ... we walked along the parapet and -were very happy together. They're a good sort. I've known them for -years. And we found a peasant woman selling lace, good lace, the women -said, and cheap ... Harwood bought some for his wife ... and Stanley -bought his sister some. Harwood went back, pretending he'd forgotten -something, and bought a piece his wife wanted and thought she couldn't -afford. And I couldn't buy you any ... not openly. I wanted Miss Stanley -to select some handkerchiefs that I said were for the girls and she said -girls shouldn't wear that kind. Oh, Olive, don't you understand?" - -"I understand; you shall go back to-morrow and buy me some." - -"But it won't be the same ... and afterward ... after dinner we sat in -the garden and Harwood sat with his arm round his wife's chair. And you -were over here ... _hiding_! Oh, Olive, I want my wife, I want her ... -in the light, before everybody. I want her." I was crying now. - -"It's all wrong," he insisted, "it's been wrong from the beginning. We -belong together, before everybody." He kept repeating that phrase over -and over. "All the years that we've been apart ... and now just to have -it in a hole in a corner!" - -"No, no, my dear!" I protested. "Before God ... it's been before God!" -We sobbed together. By and by Love came and comforted us. - - * * * * * - -I suppose if it had been possible to go out and be married immediately -we should have married the next morning; but in Italy there are -observances--it would have taken three weeks at least and hardly less in -Switzerland. In two weeks our vacation came to an end. Helmeth set out -by the shortest route for Mexico and I interposed a week's shopping -between me and Mrs. Franklin Shane to whom I had pledged myself for a -week at her country house. In November I was to meet Helmeth Garrett in -New York, "and settle things" he had stipulated. Somehow I could not -bring myself to think of my relation to him as involving cataclysmal -changes. I wouldn't say to myself that I intended to marry him, and I -couldn't say that I wouldn't. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -Within a week after my return, Polatkin came to see me about a project -of a theatre of my own, which had been on the horizon since the year -before. Polatkin himself was to furnish the money, which, considering -what he had made out of me under our earlier contract, he was not in the -least loath to do. He couldn't understand why I hesitated. - -"Is it that you think you are getting along without Polatkin? Well, you -can try." I hastened to reassure him. "Well then--are you getting cold -feet about that Ravenscroft woman? Understand me, she can't act at all. -It's something scandalous the way she tries to act like you do, and she -can't. If I was her manager I would introduce a tight rope into the -third act and have her walk it, but what I would have something that -wasn't copied from somebody else." - -"I wasn't thinking of Miss Ravenscroft," I confessed. "I'm thinking of -getting married." - -"Married! Married! And leave the stage? My God--it is a sin----!" He -clutched the air and shook handfuls of it in my face. "What do you want -to get married for?" he demanded. "Ain't you getting on like anything? -Ain't you popular? Ain't you making money?" - -"All of those," I admitted. - -"Well, then?" His wrath which had frothed white for a moment, cooled -down into a fluid sort of bewilderment which seemed about to set and -harden in a smile of disbelief. - -"The man I am going to marry lives in Mexico." - -"Mexico! Mexico!" he bubbled again. "I ask you is that any sort of a -place for a man to live what marries the greatest tragic actress ever -was going to be? - -"Ach, my Gott," in moments of great excitement he reverted to the trick -of the tongue to which he was born. "All these years I have waited for -this, I have said Miss Lattimore is a great actress, she has talent, she -has brains, and when she will have passion--Pouff!" He blew out his -loose lips and made a balloon with his hands to express the rate at -which I would rise in the scale of tragic actresses. "And now that it -has happened, she wants to live in Mexico." He deflated himself -suddenly, folded his hands over what he believed to be his bosom, and -looked at me reproachfully. This being the first time he had studied my -face directly since I came home, I suppose he must have seen there my -doubt and indecision. - -"Understand me," he said soberly, "I have known a lot of actresses, and -I want to tell you that this marrying business don't pay. They got to -come back to the stage; they got to. You ain't going to be any -different down there in Mexico to what you are in New York, understand -me. _Yah!_ Mexico!" The word seemed to inflame him. But he had the sense -to let me alone for a while. - -A few days later I saw in the paper that he had taken the lease of the -theatre he had mentioned to me, and I knew that he wasn't counting on my -going to Mexico. - -I suppose if I had had the courage to look into my own mind to find out -what I wished to do, I might have surmised what was going on there from -the fact that I didn't mention the idea of marriage to Sarah. I have -tried--all this book has had no other purpose in fact, than to try to -tell how I came to be in the relation I was to Helmeth Garrett, came -into it as to a room long prepared for me, without any struggles or -tormenting, and without thinking much about the effect that his presence -in my life would have upon my work. I suppose that in as much as I had a -man's attitude toward work, I had come unconsciously to the man's habit -of keeping love and my career, in two watertight compartments. I found I -was not able to think of them as having much to do with one another. -Still less had I the traditional shames of my situation. - -I remember the first time I went to rehearsal, groping about in my -consciousness for the source of what I felt suddenly divide me from the -rest of my company, and finding it in the knowledge of myself as a -woman acquainted with passion, with a secret, delicious life. And far -from identifying me with the cheapness and betrayal which until now I -had supposed inseparable from the uncertified union, it set me apart in -the aloofness of the exclusive, the distinguishing experience. It -remained for Sarah to pierce me, in spite of all I intrinsically felt my -relation to Helmeth Garrett to be, with the knowledge of where I stood -in the world which I still believed had the last word about human -conduct. - -It was not altogether the intent to deceive, that kept me from opening -the matter to her in the beginning, but a feeling that the less advice I -had about it the better. And if I did tell her, I wished first to -arrange that I need not feel any constraint upon me of our habit of -living together. I was anxious to have Helmeth find me when he came, -free to be all to him that our love demanded, and in view of all the -years in which Sarah and I had lived together, I did not know how to go -about it. I began to think that I should have to tell her after all, -when the Powers, who must have known very well what was going on, took -that into account also. - -Sarah's season began a week before mine, and I remember her saying that -she would be glad when we could come home together, as she had had an -uneasy sensation for the last night or two, of some one following her. -Sarah had any number of admirers, but the sort of men who were attracted -to her still splendour, were not the kind to follow her home at night. - -"Turn them over to the police," I suggested. I had had to try that once -or twice. - -"Oh, I couldn't!" She turned scarlet. Even after all those years I had -not realized how all her life was timed to catch the slightest -approaching footfall of what, to her simple faith, must inevitably come. -I found her waiting for me at the stage door on my first night--no -matter how many of them you have, first nights are always in the -balance--and we were so taken up with discussing how I had got on with -it, that it wasn't until I was fitting the key in the lock that I was -recalled to the occasion of her annoyance. Just below us there seemed to -be a man dodging in and out of the blocks of shadow made by the -high-railed stairways that led up to the first floor of the row of flats -in which our rooms were located. Something in the figure, or in our -standing there before the shadowed door with the dull light of the -transom over us, brushed me with a light wing of memory; I seemed to -recall some such conjunction before, but it was gone before I could -connote the suggestion with time or place. All I said to Sarah was that -if we saw anything more of that we would certainly speak to the police. - -The next night we went to supper with friends, and it was after midnight -when my cab--Sarah didn't afford cabs for herself--drew up at the door. -The approach to it was by way of a handsome pair of stairs with an -ornamental iron railing of so close a pattern that any one sitting on -the steps in the dark, would be pretty well concealed by it. That there -was some one so sitting, dropped there in a stupour of fatigue or -drunkenness, we did not discover until we stumbled fairly on to him. - -The exclamation we raised, awoke him; it arrested the attention of the -cab driver just turning from the curb, he raised his lamp and sent the -rays of it streaming over us. The man I could see, was shabby, ill and -embarrassed, he ducked his head from the light, but his hat had fallen -off on the step and as he threw up his arm to protect himself from -recognition I knew him by the gesture. - -"Griff," I cried. "Griffin! You!" I caught him by the arm. He let it -fall at his side and stood looking at us pitifully, like a trapped -animal. - -"I wasn't doing any harm," he mumbled. The cab driver seeing that we -knew him, let down his lights and clattered away. I thought quickly; he -must have been in want, he had looked for me and at the last was ashamed -to claim me. - -"But, Griffin," I insisted, "you don't know how glad I am to see -you--you must come in." He wasn't looking at me; he hadn't heard me. - -"Look out," he said, "she's going to faint!" He brushed past me to -Sarah. She leaned limp against the railing; he steadied her as a man -might a sacred vessel in jeopardy. But Sarah didn't faint so easily as -that, she gathered herself away from his hand. - -"Come upstairs," she commanded. It was only one flight up. I don't know -how we managed to get a light and to find ourselves in its pale flare, -confronting one another. I could see then that my first surmise had been -correct about Griffin, to the extent that he looked ill and in want. He -was holding his hat, which he had picked up from the stairs, and fumbled -it steadily in his hands. His hair, which wanted trimming more even than -when I had last seen him, had still its romantic curl; he looked -steadily out from under it at Sarah. I had an idea, though I think it -must have been derived from my own dizziness at what rushed in upon me, -that Sarah was floating in air, that she hung there swaying with the -breeze from the open window, as a spirit. She was spirit white and her -voice seemed to come from far. - -"Leon! Leon!" How he knew what she demanded of him only the God who -makes men and women to love one another, knows. - -"She died," he said to the unspoken question. "She died two years ago. -I've been all this time finding you." Suddenly a quick flame burst over -Sarah. - -"You came--you came to me!" I could see that she moved toward him, all -her magnificent body alight, her arms, her bosom. I turned quickly -through the door into the room beyond. I couldn't stay to see that. I -went on into my bedroom and knelt down, hiding my face in the -bedclothes. I think I meant to pray, but no words came. I rose presently -and went into the kitchen. The maid did not sleep in the flat but came -every morning at nine; on the table there was a tray as she left it -always, with everything laid out in case we should be hungry coming late -from the theatre. I moved about softly and made chocolate and sandwiches -and arranged them on the tray; I knew Sarah would understand. About half -an hour after I had gone to my room again, I heard her go out to find -it. - -From time to time I could catch a faint murmur from the front room. I -put the pillow over my head and cried softly. I remembered how Griffin -had looked at her that time in Chicago when I had taken him to "The -Futurist," and how I had been ashamed ever to introduce him. I wondered -whether his real name were Lawrence or Griffin. I had fallen asleep at -last, and I was awakened by Sarah standing beside me in her white gown. - -"May I sleep with you, Olivia? I've put ... Mr. Lawrence ... in my -room." I drew her under the cover with me; she was cold and now and then -a shudder passed through her from head to foot. - -"You guessed, didn't you?" she whispered. "He said you knew him in -Chicago. His ... Mrs. Lawrence is dead ... you heard him say that?" I -understood she meant by that to extenuate his coming back to her. It was -right for him to come if no other woman stood in the way; what there was -in himself that stood in the way didn't seem to matter. - -"He's been ill," she said. "I hope you didn't mind my keeping him in the -house, Olive.... We can be married to-morrow." - -I sat straight up in bed in my amazement. - -"Sarah! You don't mean that you are going to marry him!" - -"Why, what else is there to do?" - -"But, Sarah ..." I lay down again. After all what else was there to do? - -"You know, Olivia, you have never really loved anybody." I had no answer -to that; suddenly she broke out shaking the bed with her sobs. "Oh, my -dear, my dear, it is true that he loved me. It is true. He came back to -me as soon as he was free. Oh, Olive, if you had known what it is all -these years not to know if it was _true_! If he hadn't only taken me -just as a stop-gap ... a fancy ... how was I to know?" - -I didn't think very much of the proof that he loved her now. Sarah, -beautiful, prosperous, was a goal for any man to strive toward, even -without the necessity which was written in every line of Leon Griffin -Lawrence. - -"Sarah," I questioned gently, "do you mean to say you've loved him all -this time, that you love him now?" She left off sobbing to answer me -with that steady, patient truth with which she met any issue of life. - -"I loved him ... all the love I had I gave him. It's not the same now, -of course; its wings are broken, but it is his. Once you've given you -can't take it back again." - -"But he--he has no claim on you now. Sarah, do you need to marry him?" - -"I am married to him." - -"But, Sarah ... look here, Sarah, it isn't true that I have never loved. -I didn't love the man I was married to, but I have learned something -about love; I've learned that marriage without it is a thing no -self-respecting woman should go into." - -"Love," said Sarah, "is a thing that once you've gone into, binds you by -something that grows out of it that is stronger than love itself. -Olivia, I am bound ... if you want to know, I'd rather be bound to--to -Leon Lawrence by that tie than to the dearest love without it. Oh, -Olivia, can't you see, can't you understand that I have to do -_right_ ... that the way I see things there's a law ... not a civil law -but a law of loving that goes on by itself; and being faithful to it is -better to me than loving. You must see that, Olivia." - -"I see that this is the happiest thing for you and I'll not put anything -in your way, Sarah." I kissed her. What, after all, does one soul know -of another. - -It came to me as an extenuating circumstance when I looked him over the -next morning, that Mr. Lawrence wouldn't live long enough to do her any -particular harm. He had been so little of a man always to me, so much -less so now, eaten through as he was by poverty and sickness, that I -could never understand how he happened to be the vehicle of that -appealing charm which even as I looked, drew me over to his side in -something like a sympathetic frame. - -I could see that he regarded me anxiously, and I thought it to his -credit to be able to realize that there might be somebody not absolutely -delighted at his marrying Sarah. But it wasn't, as I learned later, any -sense of his shortcomings that waked in his eye toward me. - -He was lying on the sofa in our little parlour, for the shock of the -encounter had been too much for the abused and broken thing he was. -Sarah had gone out, to consult Jerry, I believed about their -marriage;--she wouldn't have asked me knowing how I felt about it. -Griffin looked up at me with the old formless demand on my -consideration. - -"You've never told her, have you?" - -"Told what?" On my part it was genuine amazement. - -"About us, you know ... there in Chicago." He dropped his eyes; -something almost like a blush of shame overcame him. I stared. - -"Good heavens, Griff, I'd forgotten it." - -"Oh, well, I didn't know--some women----" He stopped, embarrassed by my -sheer credulity of its having anything to do with his relation to Sarah. -"I told you I was a bad lot," he protested, "but I swear that since my -wife died and I could come back to her, I've been straight. You believe -that, don't you?" - -"Oh, I'll believe it if it's any comfort to you." When I talked it over -with Jerry afterward I could see the queer, twisted kind of moral -standard by which he made it appear that any irregularity of his during -his wife's life, was unfaithfulness to her, and not Sarah. - -She had come back with Jerry and I was walking with him to the City Hall -for the license; he had begun by protesting just as I had, and had -surrendered to his conviction that nothing less would satisfy Sarah. - -"After all," I said, "it shows that there is some sort of harmony -between them, that he should realize that the only reparation he could -make would be to come back to her." - -"Cur!" Jerry kicked at the pavement, "to pollute the life of a woman -like Sarah with his wretched existence." - -"That's how you feel," I reminded him, "but remember how all these -years Sarah has felt polluted by the thought that she wasn't married to -him." - -"Oh, _damn_!" - -"Sarah thinks, and I'm beginning to think so too, that there is -something to marriage that binds besides the ceremony." - -"I know." Jerry's wife had left him that summer and though he knew it -was the best thing for both of them, he was trying to get her back -again: "It binds of itself. If only they would tell us that in the -beginning instead of putting up all this stuff about its being the law -and religion. We think we can get out of it just by getting out of the -law, and none of us know better until it is too late." - -"People like Sarah know. They know just the way swallows know to go -south in winter. You'll see; she will be happier married, not because it -is pleasant but because it is right." - -They were married that afternoon in our apartment, and it was not until -I was settled in the hotel where I had elected to stay until I could -find suitable quarters, that I realized that the chance of this marriage -had accomplished for me the freedom that I had not known how to obtain -for myself. - -I lay awake a long time after I came from the theatre, and the mere -circumstance of my being alone and in a hotel, as well as the events -that led up to it, brought back to me the sense of my lover, of his -being just in the next room and presently to come in to me. I felt near -and warm toward him. And then I thought of Sarah and Griffin and how -almost I had become the stop-gap to his affections that she dreaded most -to find herself to have been. It didn't seem very real in retrospect. I -shuddered away from it. Then I began to think how I had first been -kindly disposed toward him, and that brought up an image of the dim -corridor of the hotel where I had come to my first knowledge of such -relations, and my abhorrence and terror of it. I thought of O'Farrell -and of Miss Dean, and that suspicion of sickliness which her personality -had for me, and saw how it must have arisen from her consciousness of -what she had done to Griffin rather than her relation to Manager -O'Farrell. Then I thought of Helmeth Garrett and one night in Sienna -when the moonlight poured white over the cathedral ... and a linden tree -in bloom outside the window ... and a nightingale singing in it ... -Suddenly it was mixed up in my mind with the slanting chandelier and the -tin-faced clock, and slowly a sense of unutterable stain and shame began -to percolate through and through me. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -It is a great mistake to suppose that assertiveness is the only mannish -trait taken on by successful women, nor is pliability the only feminine -mark they lose. By what insensible degrees it came about I do not know, -but I found myself on the peak of popularity, very much of the male -propensity to be beguiled. I was willing to be played upon, and so it -was skilfully done, to concede to it more than the situation had a right -to claim for itself. I pulled myself up afterward, or was pulled up by -the sharp rein of destiny, but for the time, while my success was new, I -was aware not only of the possibility of my being handled, but of my -luxuriating in it, of demanding it as the price of my favour, and in -particular, of valuing Polatkin for the way in which, by my own moods, -my drops and exaltations he brought me to his hand. - -How much of the fact of my private life he was really acquainted with, I -never knew, but he understood enough of its reaction to make even my -resistences serve to push me on to the assured position of a theatre and -a clientele of my own. It stood out for me as he described it, not so -much as a means of dividing me from my beloved, but as a new and -completer way of loving. I wanted more ways for that, space and -opportunity. I wished to lay my gift down, a royal carpet for Helmeth -Garrett to walk on; I would have done anything for him with it except -surrender it. Not the least thing that came of my condition was the -extraordinary florescence of my art. - -Every night as I drew its rich and shining fabric about me I was aware -of all forms and passions, the mere masquerade of our delight in one -another. Every night I embroidered it anew, I adored and caressed him -with my skill. Polatkin went about wringing his hands over it. - -"You are a Wonder, a Wonder! And you are wasting it on them swine." That -was his opinion of my support. "And to think you could have a theatre of -your own, and what you like----" - -"A theatre like me--_Me_ spread over it, expressed, exemplified, carried -out to the least detail?" - -"You shall have it even in the box office!" he responded magnificently. - -"How soon?" - -"I will bring the plans this afternoon; I got 'em ready in case you came -around." But he was much too intelligent to undertake to bind me to them -at that juncture. - -Things went on like this until the last week in November, then I had a -telegram from Helmeth saying that he would be detained still longer. -Every pulse of me had so been set to his coming on the twenty-seventh -that I thought I should not be able to go on after that, I should go out -like a light when the current is stopped. I had so little of him, not -even a photograph, nothing but my ring and a few trinkets he had bought -me in Italy. If I could have had a garment he had worn, a chair in which -he had sat ... I went round and looked at the Astor House, because he -told me that he had stopped there once, years ago. - -I stood that for three days and then I went down to New Rochelle where -he had written me earlier, his girls were at school; not on my own -account, you understand, but as a possible patron of the school on -behalf of my niece, who was, if the truth must be told, less than two -years old. While I was being shown about, I had Helmeth's children -pointed out to me. They looked, as I had surmised, like their mother. If -they had in the least resembled their father I should have snatched them -to me. Everything might have turned out quite differently. They were, -the principal said, nice girls and studious, but they did not look in -the least like their father. - -It was one of those dark, gusty days that come at the end of November, -damp without rain, and of a penetrating cold. There had been a great -storm at sea lately and you could hear the wash of its disturbances all -along the Sound. There was no steady wind, but now and then the damp air -gave a flap like an idle wing. It was like the stir in me of a -formless, cold desire, not equal to the demand Life was about to make on -it. As I turned into the station road after a formal inspection of the -premises, I met the girls coming back from their afternoon walk with the -teachers, two and two. The Garrett girls were next to the last, they -were very near of an age; I waited half hidden by a tree to watch them -as they passed. - -They were well covered up from the weather in large blue coats with -capes, and blue felt hats with butterfly bows to match at the ends of -their flaxen braids. They looked like their mother ... I couldn't see -them growing up to anything that would fit with Sarah and Jerry and -Polatkin. The wing of the wind shook out some gathered drops of moisture -as they passed, the branches of the trees clashed softly together, and -as they turned into the grounds I noticed that the older one had -something in her walk that reminded me of her father. - -I was pierced through with a formless jealousy of the woman who had -borne them in her body. I was moved, but not with the impulse to draw -them to my bosom. I felt back in the place where my boy had been, for -the connecting link of motherliness and failed to find it. I had had it -once, that knowledge of what is good to be done for small children and -the wish to do it, but it was gone from me. It was as though I might -have had a hand or a claw, any prehensile organ by which such things are -apprehended, and when I reached it out after Helmeth's children it was -withered. - -What I found in myself was the familiar attitude of the stage. I could -have acted what swept through me then, I could have brought you to tears -by it, but there was nothing I could do about it _but_ act. I wrote -Helmeth that night that I had seen the children and then I burned the -letter. - -He came at last. He was greatly concerned about his enterprise which was -not yet established on that footing which he would like to have for it, -and I think it was a relief to him to have me without the conventions -and readjustments of marriage. It was tacitly understood between us that -things were better as they were until that business was settled. I think -he could not have had a great deal of money at the time; all that racing -to and fro between London and Mexico must have cost something. His -anxiety about the girls, which occasioned his sending them to the most -expensive schools, and his affection for them, which led to their being -carted about by their aunt to meet him occasionally at far-called -places, was an additional drain. - -We were very happy; there is nothing whatever to tell about it. We met -in brief intervals snatched from our work and did as other lovers do. -Sometimes he would come for me at the theatre--the freshness of my -acting never palled on him. Other times I would find him waiting for me -in the little flat I had expressly chosen and furnished to be loved in. -The pricking warmth of his presence would meet me as I came up the -stair. Not long ago I found myself unexpectedly in a part of the city -where we used to walk because we were certain not to meet any of our -friends there. There was a tiny café where we used often to dine, and -the memory of it swept over me terrifyingly fresh and strong. - -With all this, it was plain that we got on best when we were most alone. -It was not that I did not every way like and was interested in the -friends he introduced to me, outdoor men most of them, and their -large-minded, capable wives. I got on with them tremendously, and found -them as good for me as green food in the spring, sated as I was on the -combined product of professionalism and temperament. It was chiefly that -the simplicity and openness of their lives brought out for him the -duplicity that lay at the bottom of ours. For it was plain that they -wouldn't have understood, wouldn't have thought it necessary. They could -have faced, those women, strange lands and untoward happenings, had many -of them faced sterner things for the sake of their husbands, with the -same courage and selflessness with which they would in my circumstances, -have faced renunciation. - -It was the realization of this, so much sharper in him who had seen and -known, that checked and harassed Helmeth; he wished to be at one with -them, to be felicitated on my success and my charm, to include me if -only by implication, in that community of adventure with which these -mining and engineering folk had ringed the earth. And the necessity of -holding our relation down to the outward forms of friendship established -on the supposition of our having grown up together, fretted him. - -"It isn't honest," he broke out once after he had tried to persuade me -to let him tell his friends that we were engaged. "It's all right -between us; you are my wife in the sight of whatever gods there are, but -that isn't what other people would call you." - -"Somehow, Helmeth, so long as it is with you, I don't care much what -they call me." - -"Well, I care; I care a lot. You don't seem to remember you are going to -be my girls' mother--sons' too, I hope. We ought to have some more -children; Sanderson's got four." Sanderson had been our host at luncheon -that day. - -Helmeth was knocking out the ashes of his pipe on my hearthstone; he -paused in the occupation of refilling it to look down at me in a moody -kind of impatience that was the worst I knew of him. There was the -suggestion of a cleft in his strong, square chin which came out whenever -he bit hard on a difficult proposition. The play of it now was like the -tiny shadow of disaster. - -"I was down in old Brownlow's office the other day," he went on, -"talking this Mexican scheme to him, and he had to break off in the -middle of it to telephone to some chorus girl he had a date with. God! -it made me hot to think of it!" - -"Because I'm in the same----" He cut me off with a sound of vexation. - -"Don't say it; don't even think of it! How long does this contract of -yours last?" - -"To the end of the season," I told him. - -"Well, you chuck it just as soon as you can. I'll put this thing through -somehow. We'll clear out of here." He had his pipe alight by now and -began puffing more contentedly. "I don't think much of this burg -anyway," he laughed as he settled himself in one of my chairs. "A man -doesn't have a chance to get his feet on the ground." - -There were times when he almost made me share in his distaste for it. -That was when I had drawn him into the circle of my professional -acquaintances which somehow shrivelled at his touch like spiders in the -heat. Understand that I hold by my art, that I have poured myself a -libation on that altar, that I value it above all other means of -expressing the drama of man's relation to the Invisible, and that I do -not think you do enough for it, prize it enough, or use it rightly. But -I suppose there is a yellow streak in me, or I wouldn't sicken so as I -do at what it brings to pass in the personalities by which it is most -forwarded. For since it must be that art cannot be served to the world, -except by a cup emptied of much that is most desirable in the -recipients, it ill becomes them as long as they fatten their souls at -it, to take exception to the vessel from which it is drunk. Nevertheless -I used to find myself, when Helmeth was with me, sniffing at the -spiritual garments of my friends for the smell of burning. I resented -Mr. Lawrence the most; it was not altogether for the incongruity of his -possessing Sarah, her fine smudgeless personality and her lovely body, -delicate and shapely as a pearl, but for the incontestable evidence he -offered me of how low I had stooped. From the peak of my present -prosperity, my troubles in Chicago, showed the merest accident, and the -distance I had sprung away from them seemed somehow expressive of the -strength with which I had sprung from all that Lawrence represented. Not -all the care Sarah bestowed on him--and I think the best he could do for -her was to provide her in his impaired health with an occasion for -mothering--could quite distract the attention from the ineradicable mark -of his cheapness. - -He was as much out of key with the society in which Sarah's success and -mine had placed him, as he was flattered to find himself there. It had -brought out in him in the way privation had not, that touch of -theatricality which intrigued Sarah's unsophisticated fancy in the first -place. He let his hair grow into curls and made a mysterious and -incurable pain of his broken health. And though he offered it as the -best he had to offer, with humility, he suffered an accession of that -devoted manner which had won his way among women of his own class, but -which among the sort he met at my rooms was ridiculous. Jerry too, with -his married life in dissolution, for what looked to Helmeth, and in the -light of his strong sense, was beginning to look to me like an aimless -folly; out of all these blew a wind witheringly on the fine bloom of my -happiness. We did best when we shut it out in a profound, exalted -intimacy of passion. - -What leads me to think that Polatkin must have watched me rather closely -all this time, is the fact that he waited until Mr. Garrett was gone to -London again in the latter part of February, to put it to me that if I -really meant to leave the stage permanently, and it was a contingency -which, in speaking to me of it, he had the wit to speak seriously, I -could do no better for myself than to take flight from it from the roof -of my own theatre. He put it to me in his own dialect, mixed of the -green room and Jewry, that I had torn a large hole in the surrounding -professional atmosphere by the vitality of my acting that winter, and -that it would be a great shame to go out into the obscurity of marriage -without this final pyrotechnic burst. - -I could have, by his calculation, a short season to open with, and a -whole year of brilliant success before--well before anything happened. I -think by this time I must have known subconsciously that nothing would -happen. It must be because no man naturally can imagine any more -compelling business for a woman than being interested in him, that -Helmeth failed to understand that he could as well have torn himself -from the enterprise for which he had starved and sweated, as separate me -from the final banquet of success. I had paid for it and I must eat. - -We opened in May, not the best time of year for such an adventure; but I -suppose Polatkin was afraid to trust me to the distractions of another -vacation. It occurs to me now, though at the time I didn't suspect him, -that we couldn't have opened even then if he had not been much more -forward with the plan than at any time he had permitted me to guess. At -the last I came near, in his estimation, to jeopardizing the whole -business by opening with "The Winter's Tale" with Sarah in the part of -_Hermione_ and myself as _Perdita_. Jerry was writing me a new play, but -in the process of breaking off a marriage that ought never to have been -begun, he had found no time to complete it; but why, urged Polatkin, if -we must fall back on Shakespeare, choose a part that did not introduce -me to the audience until the play was half done? He stood out at least -for _Juliet_ or _Cleopatra_. "Why, indeed," I retorted, "have a theatre -of my own if it is not to do as I please in it?" I knew however that -what I could put into _Perdita_ of Willesden Lake and the woods aflame, -would have sustained even a more inconsiderable part. - -Effie and her husband came on to my opening night. I want to say here, -if I have not explicitly said it, that my sister is a wonderful, an -indispensable woman. When I think of her, the mystery of how she came -out of Taylorville, full-fledged to her time, is greater than the -mystery of how I came to be at all. For Effie is absolutely -contemporaneous. She lives squarely not only in her century, but in the -particular quarter of it now going. No clutch of tradition topples her -toward the generation of women past. Most women of my acquaintance are -either sodden with left-over conventions, or blowsy with racing after -the to-be, but Effie is compacted, tucked in, detached from but -distinctly related to her background of Montecito. She was president of -the Woman's Club, chairman of the book committee of the circulating -library, and though she had a letter every morning and a telegram every -night from the woman with whom she had left her two babies, it didn't -prevent her in the week she spent with me, from getting into touch with -more Forward Movements than I was aware were in operation in New York. - -"But, good heavens, Effie, how can you find time for them? It's as much -as I can do to attend to my own job." - -"Oh, you! You're a forward movement yourself. All I am doing is herding -the others up to keep step with you. You know, Olivia, I've wondered if -you didn't feel lonely at times, so far ahead that you don't find -anybody to line up _with_. Every time I see a woman step out of the -ranks in some achievement of her own, I think, 'Now, Olivia will have -company.'" - -"But, heavens!" I said again. "I'm not thinking of the others at all. I -don't even know that there are others, or at least who they are. I'm a -squirrel in a cage. I go round because I must. I don't know what comes -of it." - -"I'll tell you what comes--women everywhere getting courage to live -lives of their own. Do you remember what you went through in Higgleston? -Well, the more women there are like you, the less there will be of that -for any of them. It is the conscious movement of us all toward liberty -that's going round with you." I was dashed by the breadth and brightness -of her view. - -"Effie," I said, "is this a new kind of toy to dangle before your -intelligence to keep it from realizing it isn't getting anywhere?" - -"Like the love affairs of your friends?" she came back at me promptly. -"No, it isn't; it's--well, I guess it's a religion." - -I believed as I dressed at the theatre that night, that it was the -contagion of Effie's enthusiasm that keyed me up to a pitch that I -thought I shouldn't have reached without Helmeth. I had counted so on -his being there for the first night, but he was still in London, and for -a week I hadn't heard from him. - -I needed something then to account, as I proceeded with my part, for the -extraordinary richness of power, the delicacy and precision with which I -put it over line by line to my audience. I played, oh, I played! I felt -the audience breathing in the pauses like the silent wood; the lights -went gold and crimson and the young dreams were singing. So vivid was -the mood that, when from time to time I was swept out on billows of -applause before the curtain, I fancied I saw him there, leaning to me, -now from a balcony, or standing unobserved in a box behind the -Sandersons' and some friends of his who had pleased, on his -introduction, to take a great interest in me. It was a wonderful night, -flooded with the certainty of success as by a full moon; we danced under -it in spirit--I believe that Polatkin kissed me; two of my young men I -saw with their hands on one another's shoulders, capering in the wings -as I was being drawn before the curtain again and again to bob and smile -like a cuckoo out of a clock, striking the perfect hour. And through it -all was the sense of my beloved, the leaf-light touch of his kiss on my -cheek, the pressure of his arm, so poignant that as I came out of the -theatre late with Effie and her husband, I thought I could not bear it -to go back to my room and find it empty. - -"Willis," I said to my brother-in-law, "you must lend me my sister -to-night." I was sitting between them in the carriage, each of them -holding a hand. I do not know what they were able to get of my acting, -but nothing could have kept from them the knowledge of my tremendous -success. I could see though, that in his excited state it wasn't going -to be easy for him to spare his young wife, and that made it easier for -me as we drew up in front of my door to change my mind suddenly and send -her back with him. What really influenced me was the certainty that I -could not bear even for Effie to disturb the sense of my lover's -presence which I seemed to feel brooding over the room. I went up the -steps warm with it. - -I had a moment of thinking as I opened the door and found the lights -turned on, that my maid had left them so in anticipation of my return, -and then I saw him. He was sitting by the dying fire; he had not heard -me come up the stair, for his head was in his hands. He turned then at -my exclamation, and I had time, before we crossed the width of the room -to one another, to think that the attitude in which I had found him and -the new writing of anxiety in his face, as he turned it to me, had its -source in his finding me in what looked like a permanent relation to a -theatre of my own. For a moment I thought that, and then my apprehension -was buried on his breast. - -"Oh, my love, my love!" He held me off from him to let his eyes rove -tenderly over my face, my breast, my hair. I do not know if he -remembered the words he had spoken to me so long ago, or if they came -spontaneously to the command of the old desire: "Oh, you beauty--you -wonder...." - -Presently we moved to sit down, and stumbled over his bag upon the floor -beside his chair. It brought me back to the miracle of his being there -and to the certainty that he must have come to me direct from the -steamer. - -"On the _Cunarder_," he admitted, "six days and a half. O Lord!" His -gesture was expressive of the extreme weariness of impatience. "I came -ashore with the quarantine officers. I couldn't cable. I left at two -hours' notice." - -It occurred to me that he must have at least come ashore before sunset, -and in that case he couldn't have come straight to me. I began to feel -something ominous in the presence there of his bag. His overcoat, though -the evening was so warm, lay beyond him on another chair. It flashed -over me in a wild way that he had come to some sudden determination--he -had been at the theatre that night--he had taken my being there in that -circumstance as final--perhaps he meant to abandon me to my art, to -surrender me at least to its more importunate claim. He followed my -thought dully from far off. - -"I was at the theatre in time for your part," he said. "There wasn't a -seat, but they knew me at the box office and let me in." - -"Then it _was_ you that I saw in the balcony, and in Sanderson's box? I -thought it was a vision." - -"I had business with Sanderson." He turned back to what was beginning to -make itself felt through his profound preoccupation, the charm of my -presence. "There was that in your acting to-night that would have evoked -visions," he smiled. "I had them myself." I knelt down on the floor -beside his knees. - -"Helmeth, tell me," I begged. He began to stroke my face with his hand. - -"It doesn't seem so bad as it did a few moments ago, and yet it is bad -enough. I must leave for Mexico in an hour." - -"Leave me?" I was still, in my mind, occupied with what now began to -seem a monstrous disloyalty to him, my obligation to Polatkin. There had -been a great deal about our new venture on the programme, even if he -hadn't seen the papers, he must have learned it as soon as he came into -the theatre. - -"Unless you can go with me in an hour ... yes, my dear, I know it is -impossible...." He was silent a while, clasping and unclasping my hand -on his knee, knitting his brows and staring into the fire with the -expression of a man so long occupied with anxiety that his mind, in any -moment of release, goes back to it automatically. I stirred presently -when I saw that his perplexity had nothing to do with me. "I had a -cable in London," he said. "Heaven only knows how long they were getting -it down to the coast where they could send it; they have struck water in -the mines." I failed to get the force of the announcement except that -from the manner of his telling it, it was a great disaster. "I must -leave on the twelve twenty-three," he warned me. I did understand that. - -"Oh, no, _no_! Helmeth!" I cried out. "Not now ... not so soon!" I clung -to him crying. "Stay with me to-night ... just for to-night!" We rocked -in one another's arms. I remember little broken snatches of explanation. - -"I've worked _so_, Olivia ... I've worked and sweated ... and now...." -Presently he broke out again. "To have worked, and know that your work -is sound, and to be played a trick, to lose by a ghastly trick! If there -is a God, Olivia, why does He play tricks on a man like that?" - -"Hush, my dear! Oh, my dear ..." - -"Do you know what I've been doing since I came ashore? I've been buying -pumps, Olivia, pumps, and machinery to work them. Think of the delay; -and I'll have to ask Shane for more money ... more ... and I meant to be -paying dividends." He held me off from him fiercely with both hands. -"Olivia, suppose to-night instead of applause you had heard hisses, -and people going out, turning their backs on you in your best -lines ... oh ..." He broke off and covered his face with his hands. -I crept up to him. - -"If they had, I should have come back to you, beloved. And I shouldn't -have remembered it. Oh, beloved, what are all things worth except that -they give us this?" I was on his knee now, and my hair was still in its -maiden snood as it had been in the play. I drew it softly about his -face. - -"Oh, my dear, to be _this_ to me, what does it matter about the mines? -They will come straight again in a little time. But this ... this is -_now_." I could feel the yielding in his frame. He was my man and I did -what I would with him. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -Among all the devices with which we confound the Powers forever fumbling -at our lives, none must puzzle them more than the set of obligations and -interactions that go by the name of business. Unless, indeed, there is a -god of business, which I doubt. - -Past all misguiding of our youth, past all time and distance and -unlikelihood, the god who would be worshipped most by the welding of -spirit into spirit, had brought us two together only to be rived apart -by the necessity which tied us each, not only to our own, but to other -people's means of making a living. The two or three hours following on -Helmeth's announcement of the accident which had, who knows but at the -instance of the Powers which was bent upon uniting us, shattered the -point of his attachment to the Mexican scheme, we spent in that drowning -realization of the source of being and delight for each in the other, -which is the process and the end of loving. And then the withdrawing of -whole electric constellations from the city skyline and the clatter of -the morning traffic in the street, and the dispersing blueness, let in -with them the considerations which whipped us apart. - -If there is a god of business he is of a superior subtlety, for even -then we proposed to one another that the best way of being quit of the -obligation was to serve our time to it; and it was in pursuance of some -such idea that I found myself, toward the latter part of June, going out -to Los Angeles to meet Mr. Garrett who would by that time, have come up -the coast from Mazatplan to make purchases of supplies. I should have -gone much farther than that merely to have touch with him, the warm -pressure of his hand, his voice at my ear; all my dreams even, were -tinged by the loss out of my life of his bodily presence. It was a -singular flame-touched circumstance that the assured success of my new -venture set up in me a fiercer need. - -There had not been time for much in his letters but accounts of his -struggle with conditions at the mine and his slow conquest of the water -that flooded all the lower levels, of disheartening, incompetent labour -and the multiplied difficulty of distance from any base of supplies. But -that little was all timed to our meeting again. "I will explain all that -when I see you," "We will talk of that later," were phrases that cropped -out in his letters many times. I did not know, even in the act of going -there, just what he expected to bring to pass in our affairs by my being -in Los Angeles. I only know that I wanted desperately to see him. - -One thing I gathered from his letters, that in the preoccupation and -haste of his stay in New York he had wholly missed the significance of -my new entanglement with Morris Polatkin. I have to suppose, to account -for his never having any other conception of what my work was to me, -that he had never known a professional woman or one who worked at -anything except as a stop-gap between the inconsequence of youth and -marriage. He felt himself, humbly, rather a poor substitute for the -colour, the excitement and gayety of my career--why should so many -people suppose that an actress's life is gay--but he balanced that with -what he meant to purchase for me by his own achievement. He had, without -thinking it necessary to account for it, the idea that is so generally -and unexcusedly entertained that I am sometimes hypnotized into thinking -it must be the right one, that a woman in becoming a man's wife ceases -to be her own and becomes somehow mysteriously and inevitably his. It -was not that in all our talk about it, he had any conclusions about the -stage as an unsuitable profession for women, but that he was inherently -unable to think of it as possible for his wife. We were saved from -dispute by the proof I had had in Italy that his inability to think of -me as having a life apart, arose chiefly in his need of me, which had in -it something of the absolute quality of a child's need of its mother. I -am glad now, in view of all that came of it, that I was spared the -bitterness of not seeing, in his inability to accept the finality of my -relation to my work, anything nobler than an insufferable male egotism. - -I have thought since, that we might have made more of our love, if we -had but seen somewhere in the world the process of its being so made; if -we could have moved for a time in a footing of intimacy among other -pairs who had produced out of as unlikely material, a competent and -satisfying frame of life. We did not know any but theatrical people -among whom the wife had interests apart from her husband. That is where -Taylorville betrayed us. And now you know what I meant when I said in -the beginning that the social ideal, in which I was bred, is the villain -of my plot; for we wished sincerely for the best, and the best that we -knew was cast only in one mould. I have begun to think indeed, that -this, more than anything else, accounts for the personal disaster which -waits so often on the heels of genius, that we assume it to be the -inalienable condition. For genius tends to spring from that stratum of -society for which, when it has come to its full flower, it is most -unfit, and it comes up slanting and aside like a blade of grass under a -potsherd of the broken mould of unrelated ideals. Somewhere there must -have been men and women working out our situation and working it out -successfully, but the only example life afforded us was not of the -acceptable pattern. Still my agreement with Mr. Garrett, that it was -after all _the_ pattern, saved us from mutual accusation and -recrimination. - -Concerned as I was to make the most and the best of him, I kept looking -out all the way after the train struck into the southwest, for every -intimation of the life there which would have helped me to get at the -springs of his behaviour, and was by turns shocked away from its -bleakness and drawn with a rush of sympathy toward what a man must -endure to live in it. If I saw myself as he had sometimes sketched me, -filling its bleak and unprofitable reaches with my gift as with flame -and flower, I was as many times shudderingly brought face to face with -the question as to where, in the wilderness, I was to find wherewithal -to go on burning. At Los Angeles, a town of which I had heard him speak -as a place with a spirit with which he was in sympathy, I had nothing to -look at for a week but a great deal of rather formless, wooden -architecture expressing nothing so much as the attempt to reconcile -Taylorvillian tastes and perceptions with a subtropical opportunity. - -I do not know what that city may have become since I visited it, but at -the time it was notable for a disposition to take the amplitude of its -pretension for performance. Its theatrical season, if it had any, had -dwindled to that execrable sort of entertainment which comes up in any -community like a weed when the women are out of town; and if there had -been anybody I knew there, I should have been debarred from making -myself known to them until I had seen Mr. Garrett and learned his plans. -I took to spending my time as far out of town as I could manage, and by -degrees a strange, seductive beauty began to make itself felt with me, a -large, unabashed kind of beauty that disdained prettiness and dared to -dispense with charm. It was a land ribbed and sinewed with all I had set -my hand to, making free with it as kings do with their dignity, and the -moment Helmeth came, before the warmth of renewal had its way with us, I -saw that the land had set its mark on him. - -He was thinner, his manner hurried, obsessed. There are times, no doubt, -when loving must be set aside for the sterner business of living, but it -wasn't what I had come to Los Angeles for. I was flushed with success, I -had spread the crest of my femininity, I was prepared to be adorable, -enchanting; and I found that what was expected of me, was to sit by in -my room in the hotel on the chance of his having time for me between the -exigencies of buying cog-wheels and iron piping. He was so tired at -times that I was made to feel that my demand upon him for the lover's -attitude was an additional harassment. And there was so little else I -could do for him! Not that I wouldn't have been glad to have done him a -wifely service, laid out his clothes and seen to it that he had his -meals regularly, but what I could do was subservient to the necessity of -keeping our relation secret. It struck witheringly on all my sweet -illusion of what I could be to him, to have it so brought home to me -that the uses of affection are largely dependent on the habit of living -together. - -"At any rate," I said, consoling myself for his scant hours with me, "we -shall have all day Sunday together. Helmeth, you don't mean to say----" -something curiously like embarrassment suffused him. - -"I shall have to spend most of Sunday at Pasadena ... at the -Howards' ... the girls are there, you know." I didn't know, and the -circumstance of its having been kept from me smacked of offence. Why, -since I had been good enough to come all this distance to comfort him -with loving, had he not explained to me that I must share him with the -children; ... why not have at least included me in a community of -interest with them? - -"I thought," he extenuated, "that the girls were the chief obstacle to -your marrying me; that you might get to feel differently about them if -you didn't have them thrust too much upon you." - -"Oh, Helmeth!" I began to imagine a perversity in his avoidance of the -main issue. "It isn't the girls--it isn't anything of yours, it is -something of mine. It is my art you aren't willing for me to bring into -the family with me." - -"It is because, then, I'm not accustomed to think of the stage as being -the sort of thing that belongs in a family. I thought you agreed with me -about that?" - -He had me there; if I had seen a way to separate all that I loved in my -art, from all that was most objectionable in the practice of it, I -should have married him and trusted to carrying my point afterward. I -had a vision of Helmeth's girls overhearing Polatkin advising me about -the fit of my corsets, and me calling him Poly. I came back on another -path to my recently awakened resentment. - -"Just the same you ought to have told me. Mrs. Howard is Miss Stanley's -sister, isn't she?" - -"They don't live together." He had answered my unspoken question, as -though the ideas that were forming in my head had been in juxtaposition -in his own before. "Miss Stanley and the young brother--you remember him -at Cadenabbia?--live at the old place. She has been a mother to him." - -"Ah," I couldn't forbear to suggest, "and she's mothering your children -now." - -"Good heavens, Olivia! you are not jealous, are you?" - -"Yes, I am," I told him. "I'm jealous of every minute you spend away -from me. I'm jealous of the men you do business with, men who can talk -with you, hear your voice. Oh, my dear, my dear----" I put my hands up -to his shoulders and cried a little upon his breast; his arms were about -me; for me all time and place dissolved only to keep them there. - -"Look here, Olivia, if you feel this way, let us go and be married -to-day and then we can spend Sunday all together. I did not mean to -urge you just now; things are pretty rough with me; it will be a year or -two before I can straighten them out, but, after all, I guess our -feelings count for something." - -"I couldn't," I protested, "you don't understand; there's Polatkin and -Jerry; he has written this play for me, we are all tied up together; you -know how it would be if any of your partners should withdraw." - -"A woman has no business to be tied up to any man but her husband--" he -broke out, "think of any other man being able to tell my wife what she -should or shouldn't do!" We went over that ground again until we ceased -from sheer exhaustion. - -It came to this at last, that he proposed that I should marry him at -once; I could go back to Mexico with him. I hadn't to begin rehearsals -until September; we could have the summer together and then I could go -back to my work until he could claim me. - -For a wild moment I yielded to the suggestion ... if I could have him -and my art ... but I hope I am not altogether a cad. I saw what all his -efforts could not keep me from seeing, that even to do that for me, to -get me into his place in Mexico and back again would be a tax on him, -and to ask him to do it with a reservation in my mind would be more than -I would stand for. - -"It isn't fair, Helmeth, my letting you think that anything could pull -me away from the stage. It isn't that I don't agree with you about how a -husband and wife ought to be with one another, nor that I am not -entirely of the opinion that the atmosphere of the stage is not the -place to bring up children the way you want yours brought up; it is -because not even the kind of marriage you offer me would hold me." - -"You mean that you'd leave me? That you'd go back to it?" - -"Well, why not? I left my first husband. I know that wasn't the way it -seemed to me then, but that's what it amounted to ... and he fell in -love with the village dressmaker." I had never told him that part of my -life; I had never thought of it in the terms in which I had just stated -it, I saw him grow slowly white under the sun-brown of his skin. - -"I see ... if your only idea in staying with me is that I might----Good -God, Olivia, do you know what you've said to me?" - -"Nothing except what is right for you to know. Do you remember, Helmeth, -what I told you Mark Eversley called me?" - -"A Woman of Genius; I remember." He was looking at me now as though the -phrase were a sort of acid test which brought out in me traits -unsuspected before. - -"Well, then, I'm those two things, a woman and a genius, and the woman -was meant for you; don't think I don't know that and am not proud of it -with every fibre of my brain and body. I should have been glad once; if -it were possible I'd be glad now to have kept your house and borne your -children, and see to it that they brushed their teeth and had hair -ribbons to match their clothes." - -"Their mother thought that was important." He snatched at this as at an -incontestable evidence of my being all that I was trying to show him -that I was not. - -"It _is_ important.... I remember to this day the effect on me of my -hair ribbons----" He broke in eagerly. - -"If you can see that ... if you understand what their mother wanted ... -things I missed out of my life through having no mother, that I've heard -you say you missed partly out of yours ... birthdays and Christmas and -good chances to marry when they grow up----" - -"I do understand, Helmeth, but what I'm trying to tell you is that I -can't go through with it. Those are the things that belong to the woman, -that it takes all the woman's time to do the way their mother would have -them done, and for me the woman has been swamped in the genius. Oh, I -don't say that I'm not a better actress for having tried so long to be -merely a woman, for being able even now, to know all that you mean when -you say 'woman'; but there it is. I am an actress and I can't leave off -being one just by saying so." - -"And I can't leave off being a proper father to my girls. I owe them -the things we've been talking about just as I owe them a living. I -suppose I should have married for their sakes, supposing I could get -anybody to have me, even if I hadn't found you. And I don't want finding -you to mean anything but the best to them." I had nothing to say to -that, and he went back to a thought that had often been between us. "We -ought to have married when we were young," he insisted as though somehow -that made a better case of it, "if you hadn't begun you wouldn't have -been called on to leave it off." - -"The point is that it won't leave _me_. Genius--I don't know what it is -except that it is nothing to be conceited about because you can't help -it--isn't a thing you can pick up or lay down at your pleasure; it's a -possession." - -I could see that he didn't altogether follow me, that he was not very -far removed, and that only by his admiration for me, from the -Taylorvillian idea that to speak of yourself as a genius was to pay -yourself an unwarrantable compliment, and that the most I could get him -to understand of the meaning of my work, was what grew out of his being -a most competent workman himself. He went back to the original -proposition. - -"Does that mean, then, that you are not going to marry me?" - -"It means that I'm not going to leave the stage to do it." - -"It seems to me to mean that you don't love me as you have professed to. -Oh, I know how women love ... good women." - -"Helmeth!" - -"I beg your pardon, Olivia." We stood aghast at what we had brought upon -ourselves; across the breach of dissension we rushed together with -effacing passion. After all, I believe I should have gone with him if he -had had the wit to know that the point at which a woman is most prepared -for yielding is the next instant after she has just stated the -insuperable objection. Whether he knew or not, the whole of his outer -attention was taken up with the purchase of pump fittings. - -Understand that I didn't for a moment suppose that I had lost him, that -I didn't believe anything but that I could go to him at any moment if -the whim seized me, that I couldn't in reason pull him back if the need -of him arose. I finished out my vacation at resorts up and down the -California coast, warm with the certainty that I should see him in New -York the next winter. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -The next season was a brilliant one, made so by the strength of my -wanting him, and by the sense of completeness and finality which came to -me out of the faith that we had been ordained to be lovers from the -beginning. It began to seem, in the fashion in which we had been brought -together as boy and girl and then mated in ways which, creditable as -they had been, yet offered no obstacle to the freshness and vitality of -our passion, that we had been guided by that intelligence which in any -emergency of my gift, I felt rush to save it. That I had been prevented -from any absorbing interest until it had grown and flowered in me, -appeared now to have come about by direct manipulation of the Powers. I -had curious and interesting adventures that winter in the farthest -unexplored territory of the artistic consciousness, which tempt me at -every turn to put by my story for the purpose of making them plain to -you, and I am only deterred from it by the certainty that you couldn't -get it plain in any case. - -A few days ago I picked up a copy of Dante and found myself convicted of -shallowness in never having taken his passion for the cold-blooded -Beatrice seriously, by finding the evidence of its absolute quality in -the circle within circle of his hells and paradisos, the rhythm of aches -and exaltations. And if you couldn't get that from Dante, how much less -from anything I might have to say to you. After all these years I do not -know what is the relation of Art to Passion, but I have experienced it. -If I said anything it would be by way of persuading you that loving is -not an end in itself, but the pull upward to our native heaven, which is -no hymn-book heaven, but a world of the Spirit wherein things are made -and remade and called good. - -What I made out of it at that time was the material of a satisfying -success, and though I got on without him much better than I could have -expected, the fact that after all, he did not get any nearer to me than -the Pacific coast, had its effect in the year's adventures. - -That I missed my lover infinitely, that I was thinned in the body by the -sheer want of him, that I had moments of mad resolve, of passionate -self-abandoning cry to him, goes without saying. One need not in a -certain society, say more of love than that one has it, to be understood -as well as if one displayed a yellow ribbon in the company of Orangemen, -but since I couldn't say it, an opinion passed current among my friends -that I was working too hard and in need of a holiday. It came around at -last to Polatkin himself noticing it, though I believe with a better -understanding of the reason why I should be restless and sleepless -eyed. It was just after I had heard from Helmeth that he couldn't -possibly hope to be in New York for another year, that my manager -suggested that it might be good business policy for me to play a short -tour in three or four of the leading cities, a strictly limited season -which would be enough to whet the public appetite without satisfying it. - -"What cities?" - -I believe that I jumped at it in the hope somehow that it might be -stretched to include Los Angeles, where Helmeth was at that moment, and -where I felt sure he would come to me. When I learned, however, that -nothing was contemplated farther west than Chicago, I lost interest. -That very day I had a telegram: - - "Will you marry me? - - "Signed: GARRETT." - -It was dated at Los Angeles, and as I could think of no reason for this -urgency, I concluded that it must be because the association there with -the idea of me, had been too much for him, and in that new yielding of -mine to the beguiling circumstance, I was disposed to interpret it as -evidence that he was coming round. I wired back: - - "If you marry my work. - - "OLIVIA." - -and prepared myself for the renewal of that dear struggle which, if it -got us no further, at least involved us in coil upon coil of emotion, -making him by the very force he spent on it, more completely mine. I -expected him in every knock on the door, every foot on the stair, and -had he come to me then, would no doubt have provoked him to that -traditional conquest which, as it has its root in a situation made, -affected for the express purpose of provocation, is the worst possible -basis for a successful marriage. - -On the day on which at the earliest, I could have expected him from Los -Angeles, I sent my maid away in order that, if I should find him there -in the old place waiting for me, there should be no constraint on the -drama of assault and surrender for which I found myself primed. - -Then by degrees it began to grow plain to me that he did not mean to -come, that the question and my answer to it, had carried some sort of -finality to his mind that was not apparent to mine. By the time I had a -letter from him, written at the mine, with no reference in it to what -had passed so recently between us, I understood that he would not ask me -to marry him again. He had accepted the situation of being my lover -merely, and I was not any more to be vexed by the alternative. I said to -myself that it was better to have it resolved with so little pain, and -that it should be my part to see that what we were to one another was to -yield its proper fruit of happiness. I found myself at a loss, however, -in the application; for though you may have satisfied yourself of the -moral propriety of dispensing with the convention of publicity, you -cannot very well, with a week's journey between you, get forward in the -business of making a man happy. About this time Jerry began to be -anxious about what I couldn't prevent showing in my face, the wasting -evidence of love divided from its natural use of loving. - -"You'll break down altogether," he expostulated, "and then where will I -be?" He was tremendously interested in his new play, which was by far -the best thing he had done, and in the process of getting it to the -public he had so identified it with my interpretation that he was no -longer able to think of the one without the other. There had come into -his manner a new solicitude very pleasing to me, born of his sense of -possession in me, in as much as I was the lovely lady of his play, and a -sort of awe of all that I put into it that transcended his own notion -and yet was so integral a part of it. It had brought him out of his old -acceptance of me as a foil and relief for the shallow iridescence that -other women produced in him. He had begun to have for me a little of -that calculating tenderness with which a man might regard the mother of -his nursing child. Night by night then as he came hovering about me he -could not fail to observe, though he could hardly have understood it, -the wearing hunger with which I came from my work, pushed on by it to -more and more desperate need of loving, and drawn back by its -unrelenting grip from the artistic ruin in which the satisfaction of -that hunger would involve me. Now at his very natural expression of -concern, I felt myself unaccountably irritated. - -"Jerry," I demanded of him, "would it matter so much if we left off -altogether writing plays and playing them? _What_ would it matter?" - -"You are in a bad way if you've begun to question that? What does living -matter? We are here and we have to go on." - -"Yes, but when we go on at such pains? Is there any more behind us than -there is behind a ball when it is set rolling? Are we aimed at -anything?" - -"Oh, Lord, Olivia, what has that got to do with it?" He was sitting in -my most commodious chair with his long knees crossed to prop up a -manuscript from which he was reading me the notes of a tragedy he was -about to undertake, and his quills were almost erect with the tweaking -he had given them in the process of arriving at his climax. It was a -curious fact that the breaking off of his marriage, which in the nature -of the case could not be broken off sharp but had writhed and frayed him -like the twisting of a green stick, by setting Jerry free for those -light adventures of the affections which had been so largely responsible -for the rupture of his domestic relations, instead of multiplying his -propensity by his opportunity, had landed him on a plane of -self-realization in which they were no longer needful. The poet in Jerry -would never be able to resist the attraction of youth and freshness, but -the man in him was forever and unassailably beyond their reach. I was -never more convinced of this than when he turned on this occasion from -the preoccupation of his creative mood, to offer whatever his point of -attachment life had provided him, to bridge across the chasm of my -spirit. - -"I don't see why it is important that we should know what we are working -for; we might, in our confounded egotism, not approve of it, we might -even think we could improve on the pattern. I write plays and you act -them and a bee makes honey. I suppose there's a beekeeper about, but -that's none of our business." - -"Ah, if we could only be sure of that--if He would only make himself -manifest; that's what I'm looking for, just a hint of what He's trying -to do with us." - -"Well, I can tell you: He'll smoke you out of New York and into a -sanitarium, if you don't know enough to take a change and a rest." - -"Poly wants me to go on the road for a while; sort of triumphal -progress. He thinks applause will cure me." - -"You're getting that now. What would bring you around would be a good -frost." - -"You wouldn't want that in Chicago?" Jerry disentangled his limbs and -sat up sniffing the wind of success. - -"If I could have you to open with my play in Chicago," he averred -solemnly, "I'd be ready to sing the Lord Dismiss Us." He really thought -so. To go back to the scene of his early struggle with his laurels fresh -on him, to satisfy the predictions of his earliest friends and confound -his detractors, above all to be received in his own country with that -honour which is denied to prophets, seemed to him then almost as -desirable in prospect as it proved in fact not to be. I found another -advantage in the confusion and excitement of touring, in being able to -conceal from myself that I hadn't had a satisfactory letter from Helmeth -since the pair of telegrams that passed between us, and no letter at all -for a long time. It was always possible to pretend to myself that the -letters had been written but were delayed in forwarding. - -It was a raw spring day when we came to Chicago, the promise of the -season in the sun, denied and flouted by the wind. It slanted the tails -of the labouring teams and cast over the clean furrow, handfuls of the -winter rubbish from the stubble yet unturned, and between field and -field it wrung the tops of the leafless wood. Now and then it parted -them on white painted spires without disturbing them or the rows of thin -white gravestones. It laid bare the roots of my life to the cold blasts -of memory, it rendered me again the pagan touch, the undivided part that -the earth had in me. My dead were in its sod, in me the sap of its -spiritual fervours and renunciations. What was I, what was my art but -the flower, the bright, exotic blossom borne upon its topmost bough, its -dying top; here in its abounding villages, in the deep-rutted county -roads was the root and trunk. Outside, the wind flicked the landscape -like the screen of the moving picture that the swift roll of the train -made of it, and I felt again the pressure of my small son upon my arm, -and the pleasant stir of domesticity and the return of my man. For the -last hour Jerry had come to sit in my compartment, opposite me, and -stare stonily out of the window; now and then his jaws relaxed and set -again as he bit hard upon the bitter end of experience. No one, I -suppose, can go through that country so teeming with the evidences of -the common life, the common labour, the common hope of immortality, and -not feel bereft in as much as the circumstances of his destiny divide -him from it. We passed Higgleston; beyond the roofs of it the elms that -marked the cemetery road, gathered green. The roofs of the town were -steeped in windy light. I had no impulse to stop there. I withdrew from -it as one does from a private affair upon which he has stumbled unaware. -Rather it was not I who withdrew, but Life as it was lived there, turned -its back upon me. - -Getting in to Chicago through that smoky wooden wilderness, within which -the city obscures itself as a cuttlefish in its own inky cloud, I felt -again the wounding and affront, the cold shoulder lifted on my needs, -the eager hand stretched out to catch my contribution. Chicago received -me with its hat off, bowing to meet me, and when I remembered how nearly -it had let me fall into the pit prepared for me by Griffin and the -"Flim-Flams," I burned with resentment. - -It was seven years now since I had seen the city or Pauline, the only -friend I had made there who could be supposed to take an interest in my -coming again. I meant of course to see Pauline; we had kept up a -correspondence which with the years had shown a disposition to confine -itself to a Christmas reminder, and an occasional marked copy of a -magazine, but I meant, of course, to see her. I had trusted to her -finding out through the newspapers that I would be there and on such a -date. It fell in quite naturally with my inclination, to have her card -sent up to me the next morning a little after eleven. I was needing to -be distracted. On my way up from breakfast I had met Jerry going down -with his suit case. - -"Back to New York," he admitted to my question, "as quick as I can get -there." - -"But with all this success ... why, they fairly stood on their feet last -night." - -"I know, I know," he looked unendurably harassed. "I can't stand it, -Olivia, I can't stand it. This place is full of ghosts." I remembered -that both his children had been born there and that he had not seem them -for more than a year, and I did not press him. - -"I'll keep your end up for a week if I can," I assured him as he wrung -my hand. He turned back when he was a step or two down the stair. - -"Don't stay too long yourself," he admonished. "New York's the place." - -I was feeling that when Pauline came to me. It wasn't until I saw her -that I realized what a distance there was--in spite of our common youth, -had always been--between us. It started out for us both in the first -glimpse we had of one another, in the witness in all the inconsiderable -elements of line and colour which go to make up a woman's appearance, of -growth and amplitude in me and fulfilment in hers. Pauline had been in -her girlhood, if not pretty, at least what is known as an attractive -girl, and though there was only a matter of months between us, it came -to me with a shock that she was now, not only not particularly -attractive, but middle-aged. It was not so much in the fulness under her -chin which apparently caused her no uneasiness, nor in the thickness of -her waist, of which I was sure she made a virtue, but in the certainty -that all that was ever to happen to her in the way of illuminating and -self-forgetting passion, had already happened. - -She had reached, she must have reached about the time I was taking my -flight upward by the help of Morris Polatkin, the full level of her -capacity to experience. She was living still, as I saw by the card which -I still held in my hand, in Evanston, and she was living there because -it was no longer within the scope of her possibility to live anywhere -else. All this flashed through me in the moment in which Pauline, -checked by what she was able to guess of unfamiliar elements in me, was -crossing the room and taking me by the hands in the old womanly way, -keyed down to the certainty of not requiring it in her business any -more. It was so patent that Pauline was now in the position of having -done her duty toward life and Henry Mills, and was accepting all that -came to her from it as her due, that it almost seemed for a moment that -she had said something of the kind. What did pass between us besides a -kiss of greeting, were some commonplaces about my being there and how -pleased Henry and the children would be to see me. We sat down on a sofa -together and for a moment the old girlish confidence put forth a tender -sprig of renewal. - -"So many years since we were at school together! You've gone a long way -since then, Olivia." - -"A long way," I admitted, but she didn't catch the double meaning the -phrase had for me. - -"Henry and I were talking about it this morning. And the times you had -here in Chicago, you poor dear; you had to make a good many starts -before you got on the right road at last." - -"A great many." - -"But you found out that it all came right in the end, didn't you? That -it was best just for you to trust ... you used to be bitter about it ... -but trusting is always best." - -"Oh, if you think I've been trusting all these years ... I've been -working." - -"Of course, _of_ course." Much of her old manner came back with the -occasion for moralizing. "But you were too amusing, you were quite -fierce with Henry because he wouldn't do anything about it." She laughed -reminiscently. "And now, you see...." Her look travelled about the -rose-coloured room, full of the evidence of prosperity. - -"Pauline," I said, "if you are thinking that I could have gone to New -York and become the success I am, _without_ the help that you and Henry -might have given me, you are making a great mistake. What did happen was -that I had to accept it from a quarter where it wasn't so much to be -expected, and was not nearly so agreeable." - -"That man Mark Eversley found for you, you mean. Well, I suppose you did -get on better for a little start." - -"Start!" I cried. "Start! I had to have everything--food and clothes." -A sudden recollection flashed upon me of those first days in New York, -of myself become merely a dummy on which to hang a fat little Jew's -notions of acceptable contours; the offence of it; the greater offence -from which by the opportune appearance of the Jew I had so hardly -escaped. - -"Have you any idea, Pauline, what it means to have a man invest money in -you?... a man like Polatkin. I was his property, a horse he had entered -for the race. He had a stake on me...." - -Pauline looked aghast; vague recollections of the actress heroines of -fiction shaped her thought. - -"You don't mean to say, Olivia, that you--that you were----" - -"His mistress," I finished for her bluntly. "Is that the only thing your -imagination takes offence at? Isn't it enough for me to tell you that he -orders my corsets for me?" That did reach her. I could see her struggle -with the habitual effort to put the unwelcome fact down, anywhere out of -sight and knowledge, under the cotton wool of a moral sentiment. Even -now if she could escape being implicated in my predicament by avoiding -the knowledge of it, she would not only do that but convict herself of -superiority as well. My gorge rose against it. - -"But if I didn't sell myself to the Jew," I drove it home to her, "it -was chiefly because he was decenter to me than the circumstance gave me -a right to expect. I came near doing it for a cheaper man and for a -cheaper price, a man who had deserted one wife, and ... a bigamist in -fact. If you don't know that there were days when I would have sold -myself for something to eat, it was because you didn't take the pains -to." - -"But you never said a word. Of course if you had told me the truth ..." -she floundered and saved herself on what she believed to be a just -resentment, but I had no notion of letting her off so easily. I did not -know exactly how we had got launched on the subject, it had not been in -my mind to do so when she came in, but all the events of the past year -seemed to lead up to it, to come somehow to the point of rupture against -her smooth acceptance of my success as being derived from the same -process as her own. - -"I did tell you that I was in need of money to put me in the way of -earning a living," I insisted. "I did not ask you for charity; what I -offered you was the chance of a business investment, one that rendered -the investor its due return. The fact that you did not know enough about -the business to know how good it was"--I forestalled what I saw rising -to her lips--"had nothing to do with it. You were my friend and -professed to admire my talent; I had a right to have what I said about -it heard respectfully." I had got up from the pink and white sofa where -our talk had begun, and was trailing about the room in my breakfast -gown, and the suggestion of staginess in the way the folds of it -followed my movements, irritated me with the certainty that the effect -of it on Pauline would be to mitigate the sincerity of what I said. - -"You'd known me long enough," I accused her, "to know that I wouldn't -have asked for money until I was in the last extremity, and then I -wouldn't have asked it for myself. I don't know that it would have -mattered if I had starved, but my Gift was worth saving." - -"I didn't dream ..." she began. "I hadn't any idea ..." - -"Well, why didn't you ask Henry, then? Henry knows what becomes of women -on the stage when they can't make a living." This was nearer to the mark -than I had meant to let myself go, but I could see that it carried no -illumination. She drew up her wrap and braced herself for one more -gallant effort. - -"The things you've been through, my dear ... I don't wonder you feel -bitter. But when it has all come out right, why not forget it?" - -"Oh, right! Right!" - -The room was full of vases and floral tokens of the triumph of the night -before, and as I swung about with my arms out, disdaining her judgment -of rightness for me, I knocked over a great basket of roses and orchids -which had come from Cline and Erskine. I don't suppose Pauline had ever -knocked over anything in her life, and the violence of my gesture must -have stood for some unloosening of the bonds of convention, with an -implication which only now began to work through to her. - -"You don't mean to say, Olivia, that you ... that you are not ... not a -good woman?" - -"Oh," I said again, "good ... good ... what does it all mean? I'm a -successful actress." - -"Olivia!" - -"Well, no, if you insist on knowing, I'm not what you would call a good -woman." I threw it at her as though it had been a peculiar kind of scorn -heaped up on her for being what I had just denied myself to be. I saw -myself for once with all my thwarted and misspent instincts toward the -proper destiny of women, enmeshed and crippled, not by any propensity -for sinning, but by the conditions of loving which women like Pauline -set up for me. "And if you want to know," I said, "why I'm not a good -woman, it is because women like you don't make it seem particularly -worth while." - -"Oh," she gasped, "this is horrible ... horrible!" The word came out in -a whisper. I saw at last that she was done with me, that the only -thought that was left to her was to get away, to put as much space as -possible between us. I got around with my hand on the door to prevent -her. - -"Pauline, Pauline!" I cried almost wildly, as if even at the last she -could have helped me from myself. "Can't you remember that we grew up -together, that we had the same training, the same ideals? Can't you -remember that when we began I thought that the life you had chosen for -yourself was the best, that I thought I had chosen it for myself too? -Only--for heaven's sake, Pauline, try to understand me--there is -something that chooses for us. Don't you know that I wouldn't have been -any different from what you are if I hadn't been forced? Haven't you -seen how I've been beaten back from all that I tried to be? All this"--I -threw out my arms, as I stood against the door, to include all that had -entered by implication in our conversation--"it had to come, and it came -wrong because you won't understand that a Gift has its own way with us." - -I could see, though, that she wasn't understanding in the least, that -she was badly scared and even indignant at being forced to listen to a -justification of what, by her code, could have no justification. She was -standing not far from me, crushed against the wall, as though by the -weight of opprobriousness that I heaped upon her, and her whole -attention was centred on the door and the chance of getting out of it -and away from what, in the mere despair of reaching her intelligence -with it, I flung out from me now wildly. - -"I suppose," I scoffed, "that it never occurs to you that a gifted woman -could be as delicate and feminine as anybody, if only you didn't make -her right to fostering care and protection conditional on her giving up -her gift altogether. You," I demanded, "who tie up all the moral values -of living to your own little set of behaviours, what right have you to -deny us the opportunity to be loved honestly because you can't at the -same time make us over into replicas of yourselves?" - -I was sick with all the shames and struggles of the women I had known. I -forgot the door and went over to her. - -"You," I said, "who fatten your moral superiority on the best of all we -produce, how do you suppose you are going to make us value the standards -you set up, when the price you despise us for paying, nine times out of -ten we pay to the men who belong to you? What right have you to judge -what we have done when you've neither help nor understanding to offer us -in the doing? What right ... what right?" For the moment I had turned -away in the vehemence of my indignation; I was pacing up and down. In -the instant when my attention was distracted from the door, Pauline made -a dart for it. I could hear her scurrying down the hall, but I went on -walking up and down in my room and talking aloud to her. I was beside -myself with the sum of all indignities. Was it not this set of -prejudices which for the moment had presented itself in the person of -Pauline Mills, which at every turn of my life had been erected against -the bourgeoning of my gift? Was it not in the process of combating the -tradition of the preciousness of women as inherent in particular -occupations, that I had lost the inestimable preciousness of myself? Was -it for what came out of Pauline's frame of life--I thought of Cecelia -Brune here--that I had sacrificed my public possession of the man I -loved. And what came out of it that was more to the world than what I -had to offer? Had I cut myself off from the comfort and stability of a -home, simply because in my situation as famous tragedienne I didn't see -my way to bring up Helmeth's children so as to make little Pauline -Millses of them? I was still raging formlessly in this fashion when Miss -Summers, our ingénue, came to tell me that the cab waited to take us to -the theatre for the matinée. - -All through the performance, which I was told went remarkably well, I -was conscious of nothing but the seismic shudders and upheavals of my -world too long subjected to strain. It came back on me in intervals -through the evening performance; I was physically sick with it. But by -degrees through its subsidence, new worlds began to rise. By the time I -left the theatre that night I knew what I would do. - -It had been a mistake, a natural but cruel mistake, for Helmeth and me -to suppose that a way of living could at any time be worth the very sap -and source of life. Love was the central fact around which all modes -and occupations should arrange themselves. Let us but love then, and -live as we may. In all the world there was no need like the need I had -for his breast, his arm. - -Always the point of our conclusions had been that I agreed with him, -that I _had_ thought that failing to repeat the pattern of their mother -in his children, I had failed in all, that I didn't any more than he see -my way to keeping on with my work and meeting him at the door every -night when he came home, in the sort of garment that, in the ladies' -journals, went by the name of house gown. I laughed to think that we had -not seen before that it was ridiculous. I had no more doubt now, no more -trepidation. What burned in me was so clear a flame that he could not -but be illuminated. Only let me find him, let me go to him again. At the -hotel desk where I paused for my key I asked them to send up telegraph -blanks to my room. With them came letters forwarded from New York. I -started, as one does at an unexpected presence, to find an envelope -among them with his familiar superscription. For the first time I would -rather not have had a letter from him; it would be interposing a fresher -picture between me and my new resolution, to put him for the moment -farther from me. - -I saw then that the letter in my hand had been posted at Los Angeles; it -was as though he had leaped suddenly all that distance nearer than his -Chilicojote, Mexico. I noticed that it was a very thin letter. A -thousand conjectures rushed upon me, not one of them with any relativity -to what I would find, for when I tore it open there floated out a -printed slip. It was a clipping from a Pasadena newspaper and announced -his engagement to Edith Stanley. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -There is very little more to write. I held myself together until I had -written to Helmeth to say that I understood why he had done what he had -done, and that I hoped he would be happy. The letter was not written to -invite an answer; there was nothing he could say to please me that would -not have been disloyal to Miss Stanley. Accordingly no answer came, -though it was a long time before I gave over the unconscious start at -the sight of letters, the hope that somehow against all reason ... -sometimes even yet.... - -For I did not understand. I was married to him, much, much more married -than I had ever been to Tommy Bettersworth, and it wasn't in me to -understand how any man can take a woman as he had taken me, and not feel -himself more bound than ever church and state could bind him. It was ten -months since I had seen him, but that while my body still ached with the -memory of him, he could have given himself to another woman, was an -unbelievable offence. There are days yet when I do not believe it. - -There was nothing any of my friends could do for me. I had the sense to -see that and did not trouble them. Sarah, who was the only one who -might have comforted me out of her own experience, was all taken up with -her husband's declining health. Mr. Lawrence died the next winter, and -by that time my wound had got past the imperative need of speech. Effie -was expecting another baby and wasn't to be thought of, so I turned at -last, when the first sharp anguish was past, to Mark Eversley. He in all -America stood for that high identification of his work with the source -of power, that it is the private study of all my days to reach. I -repaired to him as did Christians of old to favoured altars. That I did -so return for comfort to that Distributer of Gifts by whose very mark on -me I was set apart from the happier destiny, was evidence to me, the -only evidence I could have at the time, that I had not been utterly -mistaken in the choice I had made before I I knew all that the choice -involved. Eversley and his wife were Christian Scientists, and, though -they did not make me of their opinion, I owe them much in the way of -practice and example that keeps me still within the circle of -communicating fire. I re-established, never to be broken off again, -practical intercourse with the Friends of the Soul of Man. I learned to -apply directly for the things I had supposed came only by loving, and I -found that they came abundantly. I grew in time even, to think of -Helmeth without bitterness. What I was brought to see, over and above -the wish to provide a home for his children, must have been at work in -him, was much the same thing that had driven me to my work; the very -need of me must have hurried him into the relief of being loved. It was -the only way which his purblind male instinct pointed him, to find an -outlet for what goes from me over the footlights night by night. For a -man, to be loved is of the greatest importance, but with women it is -loving that is the fructifying act. - -That I was able to go on loving him was, I suppose, the reason why the -shock I had sustained left no regrettable mark upon my career. The mark -it left on me was none other than work is supposed to leave on every -woman. What I am sure of now is that it is not work, but the loss of -love that leaves her impoverished of feminine graces. I grew barren of -manner and was reputed to be entirely absorbed in my profession. It was -not however, that I had excluded the more human interests, but they had -taken flight. All the forces of my being had been by the shock of loss, -dropped into some subterranean pit, where they ran on underground and -watered the choicest product of my art. If I had married Helmeth -Garrett, I might have grown insensible to him, as it was I seemed to -have been fixed, though by pain, in the fruitful relation. The loss of -him, the desperate ache, the start of memory, are just as good materials -to build an artistic success upon as the joy of having. And I did build. -I gathered up and wrought into the structure of my life the pain of -loving as well as its delight. I am a successful actress. Whatever else -has happened to me, I am at least a success. - -I never saw him again. I never saw Henry and Pauline Mills but once, and -some bitterness in the occasion, came near to driving me toward that pit -into which Pauline was willing to believe I had already descended. It -was the second season after I had parted from her in Chicago, that some -sort of brokers' convention had brought Henry on to New York and Pauline -with him, and to the same hotel where Mark Eversley was shut up with an -attack of bronchitis. Jerry and I, going up to call on him, came face to -face with them. - -They were walking in the lobby. Pauline was in what for her, was evening -dress, her manner a little daunted, not quite carrying it off with the -air of being established at the pivot of existence which she could -manage so well at Evanston. They were walking up and down, waiting, it -seemed, for friends to join them, and they wheeled under the great -chandelier just in time to come squarely across us. I could see Pauline -clutch at her husband's arm, and the catch in her breath with which she -jerked herself back from the impulse to nod, and looked deliberately -away from me. For her, the evidence of my misdoing hung about me like an -exhalation. She was afraid I should insist on speaking to her and some -of her friends would come up and see me doing it. I didn't, however, -offer to speak to her, I looked instead at Henry. I stood still in my -tracks and looked at him steadily and curiously. I wished very much to -know what he meant to do about it. He turned slowly as I looked, from -deep red to mottled purple, and very much against his will his head -bowed to me; his body, to which Pauline clung, dared not move lest she -detect it, but quite above and independent of his smooth-vested, -self-indulgent front, his head bowed to me. So went out of my life -thirty years of intimacy which never succeeded in being intimate. - -But though one may excise thirty years of one's past without a tremor, -one may not do it without a scar. To allay the irritation of Pauline's -slight, I came near to being as abandoned as she believed, as I had -moments of believing myself. For the possibility that Helmeth Garrett -had found in our relation of setting it aside, made it at times of a -cheapness which seemed to extend to me who had entertained it. I should -have been happier, I thought, to have taken it lightly as he did. If so -many women who had begun as I had begun, had gone on repeating the -particular instance, wasn't it because they found that that was the -easiest, the only possible way to bear it? How else could one ease the -pain of loving except by being loved again? And if I was to lose the -Pauline Millses of the world by what had been entered upon so -sincerely, why, then, what more had I to risk on the light adventure? -All this time I was sick with the need of being confirmed in my faith in -myself as a person worthy to be loved, to feel sure that since my love -had missed its mark, it wasn't I at least that had fallen short of it. - -It was that summer Jerry had been driven by some such need I imagined, -as I admitted in myself, to put his future in jeopardy by another -marriage which on the face of it, offered even a more immediate occasion -for shipwreck than the first, and I hadn't scrupled to put forth to save -him, the new capacity to charm which had come upon me with the -experience of not caring any more myself to be charmed. I knew; it would -have been a poor tribute to my skill as an actress if I hadn't by this -time known, the moves by which a man who is susceptible of being played -upon at all, can be drawn into a personal interest; and though I didn't -then, and do not now believe that a love serviceable for the uses of -living together, can be built up out of "made" love, I was willing for -the time to pit myself against the game that was played by Miss -Chichester for Jerry's peace of mind. I played it all the better for not -being, as the young lady was, personally involved in the stake. That I -thought afterward of doing anything for myself with what I had got, when -at last I had by this means brought Jerry down from Newport to my place -on the Hudson for a week end, was in part due to the extraordinary -charm that Jerry displayed under the stimulus of a male interest in me, -of whom for years he had thought of as being quite outside such -consideration. There was a kind of wistfulness about Jerry when he was a -little in love, that made him irresistible; no doubt I was also a little -warmed by the fire which I had blown up. - -He was to come from Saturday to Monday, and the moment I saw him getting -down from the dog-cart I had sent to the station for him, I knew that I -had only to let that interest take its course, to find myself provided -with a lover, whether or no I could command my heart to loving. I do not -remember that I came to any conscious decision about it, but I know that -I yielded myself to the growing sense of intimacy, that I consciously -drew, as one draws perfume from a flower, all that came to me from him: -his new loverliness, touched still with the old solicitous sense of the -preciousness of my gift. I dramatized to the full the possibility of -what hung in the air between us, I dressed myself, I set the stage -accordingly. - -It was Saturday evening after dinner that I sent him to the garden to -smoke, keeping the house long enough to fix his attention on my joining -him, by wondering what kept me, and so overdid my part by just so much -as I made myself conscious of the taint of theatricality. For as I went -down the veranda steps to meet him in the rose walk, the response of -the actress in me to the perfectness of the setting and my fitness for -the part of the great lady of romance, drew up out of my past a faint -reminder of myself going up another pair of stairs so many years ago in -the figure of an orphan child toiling through the world. Out of that -memory there distilled presently a cold dew over all my purpose. - -It was a perfect night, warm emanations from the earth shut in the smell -of the garden, and light airs from the river stirred the full-leafed -trees. At the bottom of the lawn the soft, full rush, of the Hudson made -a stir like the hurrying pulse. Beyond the silver gleam of its waters, -lay the farther bank strewn with primrose-coloured lights, and above -that the moon, low and full-orbed and golden. Its diffusing light mixed -and mingled with the shadow of the moving boughs. I was wearing about my -shoulders a light scarf that from time to time blew out with the wind, -and as we paced in the garden strayed across Jerry's breast and was -caught back by me, but not before on its communicating thread, ran an -electric spark. It must have been a good two hours after moonrise before -we turned to go in, where the great hall lamp burned with a steady -rose-red glow. - -At the foot of the veranda a breeze sprang up fresher than before, that -caught my scarf from me and wrapped us both in it as in a warm, -suffusing mood. We were so close that I had instinctively to put up my -hand as a barricade against what was about to come from him to me, and -as I did so I was aware of something that rose up from some subterranean -crypt in me ... that old romance of my mother's ... women like her, -worlds of patient, overworking, women who could do without happiness if -only they found themselves doing right. Somehow they had laid on me, the -necessity of being true to the best I had known, because it was the best -and had been founded in integrity and stayed on renunciations. I knew -what I had come into the garden to do. I had planned for it. I thought -myself prepared to take up, as many women of my profession did, the next -best in place of the best which life had denied me, but my past was too -strong for me. The unslumbering instinct that saves wild creatures -before they are well awake, had whipped me out of the soft entanglement, -and before Jerry could grasp the change of mood in me, I was halfway up -the stair. - -"This wind," I said, "I think it will blow up a rain before morning." I -went on up before him. "You can see the river darkling below its -surface, it does that before a change." I went on drawing the chairs -back from the edge of the veranda, I called Elsa to fasten all the -windows. When at last we came into the glow of the hall lamp, I could -see his face white yet with what he had missed; he thought he had -blundered. He caught at my hand as I gave him his bedroom candle in an -effort to recapture what had just trembled in the air between us. - -"Olivia! I say ... Olivia!" - -"Your train leaves at nine-thirty," I reminded him. "I'll be up to pour -your coffee." - -I went into my room and blew out my candle. The warm summer air came in -between the white curtains. I knelt down beside my bed; an old habit, -long discontinued. I was too much moved to pray, but I continued to -kneel there a long time listening to the soft shouldering of the maples -against the wall outside the window. Far within me there was something -which inarticulately knew that whatever the world might think of me, in -spite of what I had confessed to Pauline, I was a good woman; I had -loved Helmeth Garrett with the kind of love by which the world is saved. -Past all loss and forsaking, past loneliness and longing, there was -something which had stirred in me which would never waken to a lighter -occasion; and whether great love like that is the best thing that can -happen to us or the most unusual, it had placed me forever beyond the -reach of futility and cheapness. - - * * * * * - -All this was several years ago. Jerry and I are the best of friends and -I am far too busy a woman to miss out of my life anything Pauline Mills -could have contributed to it. Besides, I am very much taken up with my -nieces and nephews. Forester's oldest boy shows a creditable talent for -the stage, and I have him at school here where I can watch him. I shall -try him out on the road next summer. Effie's husband is in the -legislature now, and Effie looks to see him governor. I am very fond of -my sister; we grow together. I owe it to her to have found ways of -making things easier for women who must tread my path of work and -loneliness. It is partly at her suggestion that I have written this -book, for Effie is very much of the opinion that the world would like to -go right if somebody would only show it how. Sarah also added her word. - -"It is the fact of your telling, whether they believe you or not, of -your not being ashamed to tell, that is going to help them," she -insists. "At any rate it will help other women to speak out what they -think, unashamed. Most women are not thinking at all what they are very -willing to be thought of as thinking." - -I am the more disposed to take their word for it, since as they are both -happy, they cannot be supposed to have the fillip of discontent. Sarah -left the stage a year after Mr. Lawrence's death, to marry a banker from -Troy, and she has never regretted it. She calls her oldest girl Olivia. -It is the sane and sympathetic contact with the common destiny, which I -get at her house and my sister's that keeps me from the resort of -successive and inconsequent passions, such as fill the void in the -lives of too many women who are under the necessity of producing daily -the materials of fire. But you must not understand me to blame women for -taking that path when so many are closed to them. Haven't they been told -immemorially that loving is their proper function, their only one? - -Last year I walked in a suffrage parade because Effie wrote me that it -was my duty, and the swing of it, the banners flying, the proud music, -set gates wide for me on fields of new, inspiring experience ... all the -paths that lead to the Shining Destiny ... why shouldn't women walk in -them? I should think some of them might lead less frequently to bramble -and morass. - - * * * * * - -"And after all," said Jerry, a day or two ago when I had read him some -pages of my book, "you have only told your own story, you haven't found -out why all the rest of us run so afoul of personal disaster. We, I -mean, who as you say, nourish the world toward the larger expectation." - -"And after all," said I, "what is an artist but a specialist in human -experience, and how can we find out how the world is made except by -falling afoul of it?" - -"If when we fall we didn't pull the others down with us! I'm willing to -learn, but why should others have to pay so heavily for my schooling? -Where's the justice in making us so that we can't do without loving and -then not let us be happy in it?" - -"I don't believe it is the loving that is wrong; it is the other things -that are tied up with it and taken for granted must go with loving, that -we can get on with." - -"Marriage, you mean?" - -"Not exactly ... living in one place and by a particular pattern ... -thinking that _because_ you are married you have to leave off this and -take up that which you wouldn't think of doing for any other reason." - -"You mean ... I know," he nodded; "my wife was always wanting me to do -this and that, on the ground that it was what married people ought, and -I couldn't see where it led or why it was important. But what if it -should turn out that the others are wrong and we are right about it?" - -"Oh, I think we are _all_ wrong. People like us are after the truth of -life, and marriage is the one thing that society won't take the trouble -to learn the truth about. My baby, you know, I lost him because I didn't -know how to take care of him, and there was nobody at hand who knew much -more than I. But Effie's last baby came before its time and they saved -it by science, by knowing what and how. Why can't there be a right way -like that about marriage, and somebody to discover it?" - -"Then where would we come in--after it was all found out--if we are the -experimentors?" - -"Oh, there'd be other fields. Why shouldn't it be that when we have -found out our relation to the physical world--we are finding it, you -know, radioactivity and laws of falling bodies--go on finding out the -law of our relations to one another? And, when we've found that out, -then there's all the Heavenly Host. We'd have to find out how to get on -with Them." - -"And in the meantime we are spoiling a lot of people's lives because we -can't get on with one another----" He broke off suddenly. "My wife is -married again. I don't know if I told you." - -"Ah, then, you haven't quite spoiled her life; she has another chance. -And the children?" He had been very fond of them, I knew. - -"I haven't done so much with my own life that I'd insist on controlling -theirs." - -"You've done wonders," I assured him. "Jerry, honest, do you mind it so -much, not having a wife and family?" - -"Oh, Lord, yes, Olivia; I need a wife the same as a man needs a watch, -to keep the time of life for me." He faced me with a swift, sharp -scrutiny. "Honest, do you mind?" - -"Sometimes," I admitted, "when I think of what's coming ... when I can't -act any more." - -"You'll be leading them all still when you are seventy. You do better -every season." He threw away his cigar and came and stood before me, -preening his raven's wing which now had a little streak of white in it. -"Olivia, what's the matter with you and me being married? We get on like -everything." - -"There's more to it than that, Jerry." - -"Being in love, you mean? Well, I don't know that I would stick at a -little thing like that." He was looking down at me with an effect of -humour which I was glad to see covered a real anxiety about my answer. -"I've been in love lots of times; I've been mad about several women. I -don't feel that way about you, and I don't know that I care to. But if -wanting you is loving, if worrying about you when you aren't quite up to -yourself, and being proud of you when you are, if liking to be with you -and wanting to read my manuscripts to you the minute I've written them, -if owing you more than I owe any other woman and being glad to owe it, -is loving you, why, I guess I love you enough for all practical -purposes." - -"What would Tottie Lockwood say--or is it Dottie?" Miss Lockwood was -Jerry's latest interest at the Winter Garden. - -"Oh, _she_? She isn't in a position to say anything. It's only vanity on -her part and the lack of anything to do on mine. There'd be no time for -Totties if you married me." - -"Jerry ... since you've asked me ... I suppose you know that I ... that -I...." He put up an arresting hand. - -"I've guessed. There isn't anything you need to tell me. And I haven't -an altogether clean record myself. But, I want you to know, Olivia, that -there was never anything in my case that you could take exception, to so -long as my wife was with me. I couldn't make her believe it but it's -true. Except, of course, that I was a fool. I hope I'm done with that." - -"I'd want you to be a bit foolish about me, Jerry,--that is, if I make -up my mind to it." I had to defend myself against the encouragement he -got out of my admission. "But, Jerry, when did you begin to think -about--what you've just said?" - -"About marrying you? Ever since that time I went down to your place ... -when that Chichester girl...." - -"When I wouldn't take her place, a _pis aller_ merely. Well, suppose I -had; suppose I had been ... what the Chichester girl wouldn't ... would -you still have wanted to marry me?" I would not admit to myself why I -had asked that question. - -"I don't know, Olivia ... men, don't you know, not often ... but I want -to marry you now. I want it greatly." I held him off still, trying to -get my own experience in shape where I could leave it behind me. - -"Such affairs never turn out well, do they?" - -"Hardly ever, I believe." - -"Unless you turn them into marriage," I hazarded. - -"You know," he conjectured, "I've a notion that the kind of loving that -goes to making such affairs, can't be turned into marriage very easily. -It's a kind of subconscious knowledge of their unfitness that keeps us -from turning them into marriage in the first place." - -"I wonder." - -He let me be for the moment revolving many things in my mind. - -"It wouldn't be the vision and the dream, Jerry. You and I----" - -"Well, what of it? It might be something better. Something neither of us -ever had, really. It would be company." - -"No, I've never had it." I remembered how blank the issue of my work had -been to Helmeth Garrett. - -"Well, then, ... we have years of work in us yet. I'll buy Polatkin out -of the theatre." He was going off at a tangent of what we might do -together, but I had thought of something more pertinent. - -"We might solve the problem of how to keep our art and still be happy." - -"We might." He was looking down on me with great content, but quite -soberly. "Tell me, Olivia, suppose we shouldn't, even with the -unhappiness, with all you have been through, would you rather be what -you are, or like the others?" We were silent as we thought back across -the years together; there was very little by this time that we did not -know of one another. - -"No," I said at last, "if being different meant being like the others, -I'd not choose to have it any different." - - -THE END - - - THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS - GARDEN CITY, N. 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