Chapter 11

On the theoretical side, Mrs. Eddy's contribution to mental healing has been, in the main, fallacious, pseudodoxal, and absurd, but upon the practical side she has been wonderfully efficient. New movements are usually launched and old ideas are revivified, not through the efforts of a group of people, but through one person. These dynamic personalities have not always conformed to our highest ideals; their effectiveness has not always been associated with a large intelligence or with nobility of character. Not infrequently it has been true of them--as it seems to be true of Mrs. Eddy--that their power was generated in the ferment of an inharmonious and violent nature. But, for practical purposes, it is only fair to measure them by their actual accomplishment and by the machinery they have set in motion.

THE END

HER FRUITS

BY

MARY ELEANOR ROBERTS

These are her fruits, kindness and gentleness, And gratefully we take them at her hands; Patience she has, and pity for distress, And love that understands.

Ah, ask not how such rich reward was won, How sharp the harrow in the former years, Or mellowed in what agony of sun, Or watered with what tears.

THE KEY TO THE DOOR

BY FIELDING BALL

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER JACK DUNCAN

"_There was the Door to which I found no Key; There was the Veil through which I might not see. Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was--and then no more of Thee and Me._"

The postmaster was lounging in an open window, cleaning his fingernails with his pocket-knife, as Allison went into the post-office. He rose with some show of animation at sight of the tall, boyish figure in the doorway.

"I got a hired girl for you all right, Mr. Allison," he said, advancing to meet him. "Used to work down to Webb City, in a restaurant, but got tired of it--hours too hard. She's a good cook, and she knows how to get things on the table so they look real nice--I knew that would mean considerable to you folks."

He went on to dwell at length upon the girl's good points, becoming more nervously demonstrative in his praise as he found that Allison's face reflected none of his enthusiasm, but remained unexpectedly impassive and non-committal.

Allison interrupted at the first opportunity.

"You have been very kind, Mr. Barbour," he said, with impersonal civility. "Would you be so good as to get me my mail?"

He took the letters which the man handed him and walked out without giving him another glance.

Just outside of the door he met Jim Brown, man-of-all-work at the station. Allison himself was station agent. Allison looked at Jim as he passed with such a cold, unswerving gaze that in spite of himself the other dropped his eyes. Jim had been present at the interview between Billings and Allison that morning; Allison knew that he was coming now to tell the postmaster about it. The young man set his lips hard at the thought of some of the things he had done during the last two weeks, when he had been full of glad confidence in himself and in this invention of his--this brake which Billings had told him an hour ago was not worth the stuff of which it was made. The recountal of his performance would doubtless afford much entertainment to the pair in the post-office. Just yesterday he had asked the postmaster to find for him, if possible, a capable maid-servant, and had said, without thinking anything in particular about it, that he would pay a satisfactory girl five dollars a week. Five dollars a week--it had not seemed much to him; he had been amused by Barbour's evident astonishment. To-day he saw more reason in it.... Then there was that perfume for Gertrude--he should have to countermand his order for that. He had no choice in the matter, he told himself, with bitter resentment that a paltry nine dollars should mean so much to him. In spite of the fact that he had come to this decision before he reached the drug store, he did not go in, but walked past with his head in the air, looking neither to right nor to left. He felt as though every one must already know of the morning's experience; and he was fearful of meeting eyes alight with cynical understanding.

The postmaster and Jim watched the young man from the post-office door as he made his way up the one hilly street of the little town. The soldierly precision of his carriage and gait, together with a certain air of distinction about his clothes, made him seem singularly out of keeping with all about him--the narrow, stony road, the straggling white houses on each side of it, the unkempt yards, the neglected trees, the dilapidated sidewalks half hidden by an amazing growth of dog-fennel.

"You'd know somep'n had gone wrong by the way he had his head reared back, wouldn't you?" Jim asked with a smile on his dark face.

He had just finished telling Barbour of what had happened that morning. Several days before, Allison had got word from the railroad company that some time this week they would send a man to tell him what offer they were prepared to make for the brake on which he had been working for so many weeks, and had finally finished; and this morning Billings had put in his appearance. The brake was practically good for nothing, he assured Allison--certainly not worth a cent to the company; and he told him the reasons why this was so.

He went on to say, however, that he felt sorry for Allison,--sorry for that nice little wife of his,--Jim smiled grimly as he repeated the condescending phrase,--that he knew they were having a mighty hard time of it. Sixty dollars a month was not enough for a single man to live on decently, much less a married one; and the way in which Allison had been brought up made it harder. He didn't mean to criticize Allison's father--he didn't believe in criticizing the dead--but he certainly should not bring up _his_ son in such a way that he couldn't make a living for himself if necessary. You never could tell what was going to happen in this world; Allison wasn't the first gay young fellow who had grown up not expecting ever to have to do a day's work, and then all of a sudden had found himself glad to get almost any sort of a job. Well, as he said, he was sorry for Allison, and ready to help him out a little. He meant to see to it that Allison got something out of this brake of his--a couple of hundred dollars, perhaps; of course, two hundred dollars wasn't a great deal; it wouldn't mean much to him--Billings--but it would probably mean considerable to Allison.

"What did Mr. Allison say?" the postmaster asked.

"Never changed face. Set there starin' at Billings with those darned cool eyes o' his that look's if they'd never blink 'f a cannon went off under his very nose--waited till Billings got good and done, 'n' then said with that high 'n' mighty air of his, f'r all the world's if he was speakin' to some poor, half-witted Swede: 'Two hundred dollars doesn't mean as much to me as you think, Mr. Billings.' Then he stopped a minute, 'n' went on in a little diff'rent tone, 'You needn't concern yourself any further about me and my troubles'--'n' that had very much the sound of 'I'll make kindling-wood of you if you do!' Then he looks at his watch. 'I've given you all the time I can spare,' says he; and with that he swings around 'n' begins looking over some papers on his desk. Billings reddened up a little--coughed 'n' wriggled around in his chair, 'n' tried to get up courage to say somethin' more--but he simply didn't _darst_. He went off finally lookin' sort o' cheap. Mist' Allison never give him another glance, no more'n 's if he was that dog o' yours."

The postmaster was silent for a minute or two. Then he turned to Jim. "I'm not particularly sorry to see Billings get left," he said. "Still, it might be just as well for Mr. Allison if he'd have kept on the right side of Billings from the start. There's no use talking, he's got an awfully uppish way with him, that boy."

Jim nodded an emphatic assent. Along with other smaller grievances there still rankled in his mind the memory of how, when Allison had first come as station agent to the little town, a year ago now, he had one day asked Jim if he did not suppose that the nice-looking girl who had passed their house with Jim the Sunday before could be induced to come and work for them. Allison had asked the question in all innocence, not dreaming that this unshaven young man in blue seersucker shirt and greasy trousers considered himself in every way Allison's equal, and was as much affronted by this suggestion as Allison would have been by one of the same sort. Jim could not forgive him for it--any admiration he felt for Allison was invariably tempered by resentful remembrance.

"It's about time he woke up to the fact that he doesn't have a father worth two millions behind him these days," Barbour went on. "Extravagant! Lord, he never stops to ask what a thing costs before getting it, as long as he has money in his pockets. Went into the book-store the other afternoon to get some magazines--carried off about everything Henry had in the place. Three dollars and fifteen cents his bill was. Never thinks, when he's buying anything in the way of shirts or ties, of getting less than half a dozen at a time--s'pose he hasn't found out you can buy them any other way. And his laundry bills--guess he about runs the laundry. And just yesterday he was telling me in the most off-hand way that he would pay five dollars a week to a hired girl. Five dollars a week! I could hardly believe my ears. But I guess he's gone back on that." The postmaster smiled sourly.

The young man of whom they were talking was almost at the top of the hill by this time. So far he had met few people; and those whom he had met had not forced any formal recognition from him. But as he passed Mrs. Jennings, she called out a greeting that could not be ignored. Gertrude had stopped once to talk to her and to admire her collection of shells; and since then every noon and night he found her waiting here by her gate to speak to him; and she invariably asked the same question about his wife, always in the same tone, always with the same inflection. The meeting with her had become one of the frightfully unvarying things of his day. As he walked on now, he saw stretching before him an interminable vista of days, weeks, years--one deadly sameness of hard work, long hours, scanty pay, poor living, growing debts--and inextricably mixed up with it all, this dreary, gaunt black figure, waiting always for him at the top of the hill.... He had not realized what it meant to him, the success of his invention--how much he was depending on it. He felt now as he might if, moving blindly through a dark passage, hoping any minute to see a glimmer of light ahead, an outlet into the open air, he had run full into a locked door--a door to which he had no key.

The thought of going home to his wife brought no comfort with it. They had long ago ceased to be honest with each other, Gertrude and he; their attempts to make the best of a sorry situation had in the end become a barrier which held them apart. Gertrude would not admit that she was ever tired, or lonesome, or discouraged; would find no fault with their poor little house, their scanty means, her unaccustomed duties. She never spoke of the past any more, nor of the future, lest in that there might be an implied criticism of the present; she was resolutely, unvaryingly, aggressively contented. But this contentment was too constant, too uniform, like false color on a woman's cheek. He sometimes wished she would throw pretense to the winds--would put her head on his shoulder, and sob and cry, and confess that she wished she were dead--or that she would upbraid him, reproach him, call him some of the hard names he called himself. But she was insistently cheerful; and there was nothing for him to do, in the face of this, but play an awkward second to her, ignore his aching back, his sore hands, his throbbing head, and keep a resolute silence as to all that happened to vex and humiliate and perplex and hurt him. It was not always easy; to-day he was conscious that he was walking more and more slowly as he drew near the house.

How poor and forlorn it looked in this glare of light! During these last weeks his thoughts had turned often to that stately house where he had lived for nineteen years--its green, close-clipped lawn glistening under a perpetual play of water, its great beds of white and green and cardinal foliage plants, its shut-in porches, its awnings, its flowering shrubs, its vines, its heavy iron fence. He looked with bitter attentiveness at the dingy frame cottage he was approaching, noticing each homely detail--the dish-towels spread on the bushes in the back yard, the mop hanging by the door, the kerosene can under the step, the lean hen scuttling away under the currant bushes, the vegetable garden lying parched and dry along the fence. There was a small artificial mound of stones at one side of the house, with a somewhat scanty growth of portulaca springing from its top. The last occupant of the house was responsible for that adornment. Allison wondered how they had happened to leave it there so long. That mound of stones--all his hopes might have been buried under it and he could not have hated it more. It stood, somehow, for all that chafed and irritated him here--the moral, mental, and physical stuntedness of the people--their petty ambitions, petty jealousies, petty quarrels, petty virtues.

Allison was seized with a sudden vague fear as he saw on the kitchen window-sill, just where he had left it at seven this morning, the package which Gertrude had promised to take to Mr. Fulton as soon as she had finished the breakfast dishes. He noticed almost at the same instant that the kitchen door was open; countless flies were sailing in and out; and there on the cellar door, in the blazing sunlight, was the morning's milk, thick and sour by this time. He quickened his steps--made his way hurriedly through the kitchen and dining-room, noticing, as he went, various signs of disorder. The kitchen fire was out--the floor unswept; the coffee he had knocked over when he had built the fire this morning lay where it had fallen: the room was full of its pungent odor. On the dining-room table were the remnants of breakfast, the oatmeal dry and stiff, the butter melted down to a thin oil. In the front room he found Gertrude, bending a flushed face over something she was writing. She gave a start of fright as he came in--then got very red.

"I sat down to write a little of that play I was telling you about last night"--she was picking up her papers with frantic haste as she spoke--"and I had no idea it was getting so late." She cast an appalled glance around the room, and hurried out to begin clearing off the table, making a great clatter with the dishes in her excitement and haste.

Allison stood for a minute looking after her wearily. Her manner hurt him. More than once, in days gone by, he had told her fondly that when she married him she should do nothing but what she liked to do--if she chose, she might work on her little dialogues and fairy stories from morning till night. The air of frightened apology which she wore--this servile haste--pained and irritated him. He threw himself into a chair and began mechanically to look over the mail which the postmaster had handed him. A week ago he had written to an Eastern firm asking for a catalogue of the refrigerators they made. Here it was--bulky, imposing, abounding in alluring pictures of tile-lined refrigerators filled with game, fish, fruit, wine. He found he could buy their smallest and most inexpensive refrigerator, "built especially to supply a demand for low-priced goods,"--so the advertisement ran--for forty-five dollars. He dropped the book, and turned to his other letter. It was from a great retail dry-goods house, and was in answer to a request he had made for samples of dotted swiss--he had thought he would like to get Gertrude a dress such as she had worn when he first knew her. The samples were sent, and along with them a letter expressing pleasure at being able to serve him, and a desire further to accommodate him whenever possible; its extreme deference and respect was like a calculated sarcasm. He pushed it away from him and leaned back in his chair, looking about the room with a curious stare, as a convict, who has just heard that his sentence is for life, might gaze at the walls of his cell. It was a low-ceiled room, with an uneven floor, cheap woodwork, painted in an unsuccessful imitation of natural wood, and walls hung with faded paper of an indeterminate pattern and even more indeterminate color. To-day it was in greater confusion than usual, with white dust thick on table and chair, a window-shade askew, the music-rack disarranged, and a plate of grape-skins which Allison had left last night on the piano still standing there. But it was not the disorder which irritated Allison most, nor the signs of poverty, but the fact that the poverty was so _genteel_, so self-respecting, so determined to make the best of things and present a brave front to the world. The kerosene lamp had a shade of red, crinkled tissue-paper--the cheap net curtains were arranged with the utmost elaboration--a rug was artfully laid down in such a way as almost to cover the square of zinc on which the stove stood in the winter time, and all of Gertrude's photographs were placed with a view to concealing various defects and deficiencies. His loathing for all this was intensified by a memory of vast rooms stretching out one after the other, hushed and cool, with gracious shadows lending their mystery and romance to everything. With sudden restlessness he rose, and walked over to the window; but the smell of dust and dry, dead vegetation smothered him. Gertrude had raked the long, sparse brown grass all in one direction; it had a grotesque look of having been combed.

He seized his hat, and went to get Mr. Fulton's package from the window-sill. He had barely turned toward the gate, however, when his wife hurried out, remonstrating, apologizing, with an urgent hand on his arm. "It is important that Mr. Fulton should get these papers to-day," he said stiffly. It did not really matter whether Mr. Fulton got the roll of agricultural papers to-day, to-morrow, or next week; but Allison felt the necessity for doing something, it did not much matter what, to crush down his growing despair; and this was the only thing which suggested itself. Gertrude was persistent, however, in her entreaties that he come back; it was frightfully hot, and he already looked tired; she would take the papers to Mr. Fulton right after luncheon. He yielded at last, from sheer languidness, and came silently into the house. Gertrude's moist face, her loud, anxious voice, her warm, clinging hand, were exceedingly disagreeable to him--so much so that finally the desire to escape them became more importunate than any other.

He was again standing by the window, gazing out, when his wife came into the dining-room to set the table. He did not turn--gave no sign of seeing her.

"What are you thinking about, Philip?" she asked presently, with an effort to make her question sound casual.

"I am not thinking--at least I am trying not to," Allison answered, in a somewhat strained, unnatural voice. Why would she not leave him alone? Could she not see that he did not wish to talk?

"What was the last thing that you were thinking about before you stopped?" Gertrude spoke with painstaking gaiety.

Would she always keep up this dissimulation? Allison asked himself. For his part, he was done with it!

"I was thinking that this place was fit for a dog-kennel--and for nothing else!" he said. All the bitterness that was eating out his heart was in the low words.

"It does look pretty bad to-day," Gertrude acquiesced, after an appreciable interval of time.

"_To-day!_" Allison gave a hard, contemptuous little laugh. "As though it ever looked any other way!"

Gertrude did not reply.... When Allison noticed her silence, and turned to look at her, he saw that there was a peculiar light in her eyes, a red flush over all her face; after a moment's dazed wonder, he realized that she had misunderstood him--had misunderstood him utterly. His thoughts had been on the sagging floors, the cheap furniture, the marred wall-paper, the miserable ugliness and poverty of the house, and everything in it; but she had seen in his remark only scorn for her housekeeping, irritation at the room's untidiness. She was very angry. As Allison realized this, a sudden fierce satisfaction possessed him. Now at last she would speak out, without pretence, without reserve! He should hear the truth at last.

But the wrathful look died out of her eyes. She began arranging the knives and forks, looking suddenly old, and steady, and sober.

"I'm not much of a housekeeper," she said, quietly.

"No, you're not." Allison made his tone as ugly as possible--and waited. Surely she would turn upon him now, overwhelm him with bitter words!

She made no answer of any kind, however, but turned and hurried into the kitchen, striking her arm clumsily against one side of the door as she passed through, as though she had not seen very well. He heard her moving rapidly about, getting his luncheon. She brought it in with her head in the air and her lips compressed. The coffee was muddy, the steak burned, the creamed potatoes scorched--she had been having bad luck. Allison ate every scrap of what she brought him. He did not dare look at her--did not dare ask her to forgive him. What right had he to do that? He lingered on the steps some time before starting for the station, fussing with his cuff, pulling his hat into shape, breaking off from the tree at the corner of the house the branch Gertrude had complained was in her way. His wife usually followed him to the door to tell him good-by; but to-day she was sweeping the dining-room vigorously, singing the while a very gay and cheerful tune. It was one to which they had often danced together in the old days; at the same moment at which he realized it, the song stopped, as though Gertrude had been silenced by the same memory that had come to him. He whistled tentatively; but she did not answer, though she was near enough to hear, as he knew from the sound of her broom.

Allison went about his work that afternoon with a droop to his head, and a dullness about his dark eyes, which Jim noticed with vague discomfort, and which made him wish heartily that he had not confided to the postmaster the story of Billings and the brake. He had quarreled with Gertrude--everything else seemed insignificant to Allison beside that. He had quarreled with Gertrude--Gertrude, who had been so brave, so uncomplaining, so patient, so forbearing--had gone away from her with the shadow of a misunderstanding between them. He kept repeating to himself everything he had said and everything she had said, recalling every tone and gesture. He wondered how he could have felt such a shrinking dislike as she stood with her hand--her poor little scarred hand!--on his arm, begging him to come back, to let her take the papers to Mr. Fulton. How sweet she had been--how sweet! And he!