Part 30

But she wouldn’t have entered upon that adventure that had come so near to ending disastrously for herself and Tickles—for certainly if Gil had ever found out he could have taken Tickles away from her—if it hadn’t been for that book _Heyday_ which Mr. Barclay wrote and which she came across just when she was feeling so out of sorts with life and Gil and everything. That had pictured her own life so keenly and truly; indeed, it seemed to set her own life before her just as it was and as though some one were telling her about herself. It was the story of a girl somewhat like herself who had dreamed her way through a rather pinched girlhood, having to work for a living from the age of fourteen. And then just as she was able to make her own way had made a foolish marriage with a man of no import in any way—a clerk, just like Gil. And he had led her through more years of meagre living, until at last, very tired of it all, she had been about to yield herself to another man who didn’t care very much about her but who had money and could do the things for her that her husband couldn’t. Then of a sudden in this story her husband chose to disappear and leave her to make her way as best she might. The one difference between that story and her own life was that there was no little Tickles to look after. And Gil would never disappear, of course. But the heroine of the story had returned to her work without compromising herself. And in the course of time had met an architect who had the good sense or the romance to fall in love with and marry her. And so the story, which was so much like hers, except for Tickles and the architect, had ended happily.

But hers—well—

But the chances she had taken at that time! The restless and yet dreamy mood in which she had been and moved and which eventually had prompted her to write Mr. Barclay, feeling very doubtful as to whether he would be interested in her and yet drawn to him because of the life he had pictured. Her thought had been that if he could take enough interest in a girl like the one in the book to describe her so truly he might be a little interested in her real life. Only her thought at first had been not to entice him; she had not believed that she could. Rather, it was more the feeling that if he would he might be of some help to her, since he had written so sympathetically of Lila, the heroine. She was faced by the problem of what to do with her life, as Lila had been, but at that she hadn’t expected him to solve it for her—merely to advise her.

But afterwards, when he had written to thank her, she feared that she might not hear from him again and had thought of that picture of herself, the one Dr. Realk had taken of her laughing so heartily, the one that everybody liked so much. She had felt that that might entice him to further correspondence with her, since his letters were so different and interesting, and she had sent it and asked him if his heroine looked anything like her, just as an excuse for sending it. Then had come that kindly letter in which he had explained his point of view and advised her, unless she were very unhappy, to do nothing until she should be able to look after herself in the great world. Life was an economic problem. As for himself, he was too much the rover to be more than a passing word to any one. His work came first. Apart from that, he said he drifted up and down the world trying to make the best of a life that tended to bore him. However if ever he came that way he would be glad to look her up and advise her as best he might, but that she must not let him compromise her in any way. It was not advisable in her very difficult position.

Even then she had not been able to give him up, so interested had she been by all he had written. And besides, he had eventually come to U—— only a hundred and fifty miles away, and had written from there to know if he might come over to see her. She couldn’t do other than invite him, although she had known at the time that it was a dangerous thing to do. There was no solution, and it had only caused trouble—and how much trouble! And yet in the face of her mood then, anything had been welcome as a relief. She had been feeling that unless something happened to break the monotony she would do something desperate. And then something did happen. He had come, and there was nothing but trouble, and very much trouble, until he had gone again.

You would have thought there was some secret unseen force attending her and Gil at that time and leading him to wherever she was at just the time she didn’t want him to be there. Take for example, that matter of Gil finding Mr. Barclay’s letters in the fire after she had taken such care to throw them on the live coals behind some burning wood. He had evidently been able to make out a part of the address, anyhow, for he had said they were addressed to her in care of somebody he couldn’t make out. And yet he was all wrong, as to the writer, of course. He had the crazy notion, based on his having found that picture of Raskoffsky inscribed to Alice, some months before, that they must be from him, just because he thought she had used Alice to write and ask Raskoffsky for his picture—which she had. But that was before she had ever read any of Mr. Barclay’s books. Yet if it hadn’t been for Gil’s crazy notion that it was Raskoffsky she was interested in she wouldn’t have had the courage to face it out the way she had, the danger of losing Tickles, which had come to her the moment Gil had proved so suspicious and watchful, frightening her so. Those three terrible days! And imagine him finding those bits of letters in the ashes and making something out of them! The uncanniness of it all.

And then that time he saw her speeding through the gate into Briscoe Park. They couldn’t have been more than a second passing there, anyhow, and yet he had been able to pick her out! Worse, Mr. Barclay hadn’t even intended coming back that way; they had just made the mistake of turning down Ridgely instead of Warren. Yet, of course, Gil had to be there, of all places, when as a rule he was never out of the office at any time. Fortunately for her she was on her way home, so there was no chance of his getting there ahead of her as, plainly, he planned afterwards. Still, if it hadn’t been for her mother whom everybody believed, and who actually believed that she and Alice had been to the concert, she would never have had the courage to face him. She hadn’t expected him home in the first place, but when he did come and she realized that unless she faced him out then and there in front of her mother who believed in her, that _she_ as well as he would know, there was but one thing to do—brave it. Fortunately her mother hadn’t seen her in that coat and hat which Gil insisted that she had on. For before going she and Alice had taken Tickles over to her mother’s and then she had returned and changed her dress. And before Gil had arrived Alice had gone on home and told her mother to bring over the baby, which was the thing that had so confused Gil really. For he didn’t know about the change and neither did her mother. And her mother did not believe that there had been any, which made her think that Gil was a little crazy, talking that way. And her mother didn’t know to this day—she was so unsuspecting.

And then that terrible night on which he thought he had seen her in Bergley Place and came in to catch her. Would she ever forget that? Or that evening, two days before, when he had come home and said that Naigly had seen her coming out of the Deming. She could tell by his manner that time that he thought nothing of that then—he was so used to her going downtown in the daytime anyhow. But that Naigly should have seen her just then when of all times she would rather he would not have!

To be sure it had been a risky thing—going there to meet Mr. Barclay in that way, only from another point of view it had not seemed so. Every one went through the Deming Arcade for one reason or another and that made any one’s being seen there rather meaningless. And in the great crowd that was always there it was the commonest thing for any one to meet any one else and stop and talk for a moment anyhow. That was all she was there for that day—to see Mr. Barclay on his arrival and make an appointment for the next day. She had done it because she knew she couldn’t stay long and she knew Gil wouldn’t be out at that time and that if any one else saw her she could say that it was almost any one they knew casually between them. Gil was like that, rather easy at times. But to think that Naigly should have been passing the Deming just as she was coming out—alone, fortunately—and should have run and told Gil. That was like him. It was pure malice. He had never liked her since she had turned him down for Gil. And he would like to make trouble for her if he could, that was all. That was the way people did who were disappointed in love.

But the worst and the most curious thing of all was that last evening in Bergley Place, the last time she ever saw Mr. Barclay anywhere. That _was_ odd. She had known by then, of course, that Gil was suspicious and might be watching her and she hadn’t intended to give him any further excuse for complaint. But that was his lodge night and he had never missed a meeting since they had been married—not one. Besides she had only intended to stay out about an hour and always within range of the house so that if Gil got off the car or any one else came she would know of it. She had not even turned out the light in the dining-room, intending to say if Gil came back unexpectedly or any one else called, that she had just run around the corner in the next block to see Mrs. Stofft. And in order that that statement might not be questioned, she had gone over there for just a little while before Mr. Barclay was due to arrive with his car. She had even asked Mr. Barclay to wait in the shadow of the old Dalrymple house in Bergley Place, under the trees, in order that the car might not be seen. So few people went up that street, anyhow. And it was always so dark in there. Besides it was near to raining which made it seem safer still. And yet he had seen her. And just as she was about to leave. And when she had concluded that everything had turned out so well.

But how could she have foreseen that a big car with such powerful lights as that would have turned in there just then. Or that Gil would step off the car and look up that way? Or that he would be coming home an hour earlier when he never did—not from lodge meeting. And besides she hadn’t intended to go out that evening at all until Mr. Barclay called up and said he must leave the next day, for a few days anyhow, and wanted to see her before he went. She had thought that if they stayed somewhere in the neighborhood in a closed car, as he suggested, it would be all right. But, no. That big car had to turn in there just when it did, and Gil had to be getting off the car and looking up Bergley Place just when it did, and she had to be standing there saying good-bye, just as the lights flashed on that spot. Some people might be lucky, but certainly she was not one of them. The only thing that had saved her was the fact that she had been able to get in the house ahead of Gil, hang up her cape and go in to her room and undress and see if Tickles was still asleep. And yet when he did burst in she had felt that she could not face him—he was so desperate and angry. And yet, good luck, it had ended in his doubting whether he had really seen her or not, though even to this day he would never admit that he doubted.

But the real reason why she hadn’t seen Mr. Barclay since (and that in the face of the fact that he had been here in the city once since, and that, as he wrote, he had taken such a fancy to her and wanted to see her and help her in any way she chose), was not that she was afraid of Gil or that she liked him more than she did Mr. Barclay (they were too different in all their thoughts and ways for that) or that she would have to give up her life here and do something else, if Gil really should have found out (she wouldn’t have minded that at all)—but because only the day before Mr. Barclay’s last letter she had found out that under the law Gil would have the power to take Tickles away from her and not let her see him any more if he caught her in any wrongdoing. That was the thing that had frightened her more than anything else could have and had decided her, then and there, that whatever it was she was thinking she might want to do, it could never repay her for the pain and agony that the loss of Tickles would bring her. She had not really stopped to think of that before. Besides on the night of that quarrel with Gil, that night he thought he saw her in Bergley Place and he had sworn that if ever he could prove anything he would take Tickles away from her, or, that he would kill her and Tickles and himself and Raskoffsky (Raskoffsky!), it was then really that she had realized that she couldn’t do without Tickles—no, not for a time even. Her dream of a happier life would be nothing without him—she knew that. And so it was that she had fought there as she had to make Gil believe he was mistaken, even in the face of the fact that he actually knew he had seen her. It was the danger of the loss of Tickles that had given her the courage and humor and calmness, the thought of what the loss of him would mean, the feeling that life would be colorless and blank unless she could take him with her wherever she went, whenever that might be, if ever it was.

And so when Gil had burst in as he did she had taken up Tickles and faced him, after Gil’s loud talk had waked him. And Tickles had put his arms about her neck and called “Mama! Mama!” even while she was wondering how she was ever to get out of that scrape. And then because he had fallen asleep again, lying close to her neck, even while Gil was quarreling, she had told herself then that if she came through that quarrel safely she would never do anything more to jeopardize her claim to Tickles, come what might. And with that resolution she had been able to talk to Gil so convincingly and defiantly that he had finally begun to doubt his own senses, as she could see. And so it was that she had managed to face him out and to win completely.

And then the very next day she had called up Mr. Barclay and told him that she couldn’t go on with that affair, and why—that Tickles meant too much to her, that she would have to wait and see how her life would work out. And he had been so nice about it then and had sympathized with her and had told her that, all things considered, he believed she was acting wisely and for her own happiness. And so she had been. Only since he had written her and she had had to say no to him again. And now he had gone for good. And she admired him so much. And she had never heard from him since, for she had asked him not to write to her unless she first wrote to him.

But with how much regret she had done that! And how commonplace and humdrum this world looked at times now, even with the possession of Tickles. Those few wonderful days.... And that dream that had mounted so high. Yet she had Tickles. And in the novel the husband had gone away and the architect had appeared.

XIV

THE “MERCY” OF GOD

“Once, one of his disciples, walking with him in the garden, said: ‘Master, how may I know the Infinite, the Good, and attain to union with it, as thou hast?’ And he replied: ‘By desiring it utterly, with all thy heart and with all thy mind.’ And the disciple replied: ‘But that I do.’ ‘Nay, not utterly,’ replied the Master, ‘or thou wouldst not now ask how thou mayst attain to union with it. But come with me,’ he added, ‘and I will show thee.’ And he led the way to a stream, and into the water, and there, by reason of his greater strength, he seized upon his disciple and immersed him completely, so that presently he could not breathe but must have suffocated and drowned had it not been his plan to bring him forth whole. Only when, by reason of this, the strength of the disciple began to wane and he would have drowned, the Master drew him forth and stretched him upon the bank and restored him. And when he was sufficiently restored and seeing that he was not dead but whole, he exclaimed: ‘But, Master, why didst thou submerge me in the stream and hold me there until I was like to die?’ And the Master replied: ‘Didst thou not say that above all things thou desirest union with the Infinite?’ ‘Yea, true; but in life, not death.’ ‘That I know,’ answered the Master. ‘But now tell me: When thou wast thus held in the water what was it that thou didst most desire?’ ‘To be restored to breath, to life.’ ‘And how much didst thou desire it?’ ‘As thou sawest—with all my strength and with all my mind.’ ‘Verily. Then when in life thou desirest union with the All-Good, the Infinite, as passionately as thou didst life in the water, it will come. Thou wilt know it then, and not before.’”

_Keshub Chunder Sen._

A friend of mine, a quite celebrated neurologist, psychiatrist, and interpreter of Freud, and myself were met one night to discuss a very much talked-of book of his, a book of clinical studies relative to various obsessions, perversions and inhibitions which had afflicted various people in their day and which he, as a specialist in these matters, had investigated and attempted to alleviate. To begin with, I should say that he had filled many difficult and responsible positions in hospitals, asylums, and later, as a professor of these matters, occupied a chair in one of our principal universities. He was kindly, thoughtful, and intensely curious as to the workings of this formula we call life, but without lending himself to any—at least to very few—hard and fast dogmas. More interesting still life appeared to interest but never to discourage him. He really liked it. Pain, he said, he accepted as an incentive, an urge to life. Strife he liked because it hardened all to strength. And he believed in action as the antidote to too much thought, the way out of brooding and sorrow. Youth passes, strength passes, life forms pass; but action makes all bearable and even enjoyable. Also he wanted more labor, not less, more toil, more exertion, for humanity. And he insisted that through, not round or outside, life lay the way to happiness, if there was a way. But with action all the while. So much for his personal point of view.

On the other hand he was always saying of me that I had a touch of the Hindu in me, the Far East, the Brahmin. I emphasized too much indifference to life—or, if not that, I quarreled too much with pain, unhappiness, and did not impress strongly enough the need of action. I was forever saying that the strain was too great, that there had best be less of action, less of pain.... As to the need of less pain, I agreed, but never to the need of less action; in verification of which I pointed to my own life, the changes I had deliberately courted, the various activities I had entered upon, the results I had sought for. He was not to be routed from his contention entirely, nor I from mine.

Following this personal analysis we fell to discussing a third man, whom we both admired, an eminent physiologist, then connected with one of the great experimental laboratories of the world, who had made many deductions and discoveries in connection with the associative faculty of the brain and the mechanics of associative memory. This man was a mechanist, not an evolutionist, and of the most convinced type. To him nowhere in nature was there any serene and directive and thoughtful conception which brought about, and was still bringing about continually, all the marvels of structure and form and movement that so arrest and startle our intelligence at every turn. Nowhere any constructive or commanding force which had thought out, for instance, and brought to pass flowers, trees, animals, men—associative order and community life. On the contrary, the beauty of nature as well as the order of all living, such as it is, was an accident, and not even a necessary one, yet unescapable, a condition or link in an accidental chain. If you would believe him and his experiments, the greatest human beings that ever lived and the most perfect states of society that ever were have no more significance in nature than the most minute ephemera. The Macedonian Alexander is as much at the mercy of fate as the lowest infusoria. For every germ that shoots up into a tree thousands are either killed or stunted by unfavorable conditions; and although, beyond question, many of them—the most—bear within themselves the same power as the successful ones to be and to do, had they the opportunity, still they fail—a belief of my own in part, albeit a hard doctrine.

One would have thought, as I said to Professor Z—— at this meeting, that such a mental conviction would be dulling and destructive to initiative and force, and I asked him why he thought it had not operated to blunt and destroy this very great man. “For the very reasons I am always emphasizing,” he replied. “Pain, necessity, life stung him into action and profound thought, hence success. He is the person he is by reason of enforced mental and physical action.”

“But,” I argued, “his philosophy makes him account it all as worthless, or, if not that, so fleeting and unstable as to make it scarcely worth the doing, even though he does it. As he sees it, happiness and tribulation, glory and obscurity, are all an accident. Science, industry, politics, like races and planets, are accidents. Trivial conditions cause great characters and geniuses like himself to rest or to remain inactive, and mediocre ones are occasionally permitted to execute great deeds or frustrate them in the absence of the chance that might have produced a master. Circumstances are stronger than personalities, and the impotence of individuals is the tragedy of everyday life.”

“Quite so,” agreed my friend, “and there are times when I am inclined to agree with him, but at most times not. I used to keep hanging in one of my offices, printed and framed, that famous quotation from Ecclesiastes: ‘I returned, and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.’ But I took it down because it was too discouraging. And yet,” he added after a time, because we both fell silent at this point, “although I still think it is true, as time has gone on and I have experimented with life and with people I have come to believe that there is something else in nature, some not as yet understood impulse, which seeks to arrange and right and balance things at times. I know that this sounds unduly optimistic and vainly cheerful, especially from me, and many—you, for one, will disagree—but I have sometimes encountered things in my work which have caused me to feel that nature isn’t altogether hard or cruel or careless, even though accidents appear to happen.”

“Accidents?” I said; “holocausts, you mean.” But he continued: