Part 8

In the scented dark of the spring evening, Margaret came to the porch again. A little curved moon sailed the sky--less a light-giver than a shining ornament on the breast of night. A while before children's laughter and skurrying footfalls had echoed down the sidewalks. Boys had played ball in the middle of the street, with running and violent contortions, and shouts and calls rejoicing in the release of their animal energies. But these sounds had ceded to silence as the soft darkness fell. Then young strollers, two and two, had passed; but these also were gone. A gentle wind rustled very softly in the dead vine-stalks. The world was alone with the fragrant wind and the dreaming dusk and the little silver scimitar of moon.

The house opposite was all dark, except for a line of lamplight beside the drawn blind of a side window. Earlier, Jean had turned on the porch lights and sat under them in the most graceful of the wicker chairs, reading, or affecting to read, and Frank, coming down the street, had seen her in all that glow. Then they had turned off the lights and gone away together, and the house had sunk into shadowy repose. Vague lines of wanness betrayed the place of the cement walks. The fruit-trees were dim, withdrawn, half-hinted shapes of whiteness, but their perfume, grown bolder in darkness, wandered the winds with poignant, sweet desire.

Margaret leaned against the weather-worn corner-post of the porch; her hand passed over its cracked, paint-blistered surface with, a soft, absent touch. She felt to her finger-tips the wooing lure of the night. In the spring of her pulses she was aware of Frank and Jean somewhere together in the dusky, fragrant, crescent-clasped folds of it. She seemed to draw in with her breath and gather subtly through the pores of her flesh all the shy, sweet, youthful yearning of the world--and, behind that, wordlessly she knew the driven sap, the life-call, the procreant urge. She sighed and stirred restlessly. The strand of pain that runs in the pleasure of such moods began to ache gently like an old wound touched with foreknowledge of evil weather. She shared the pang that lies at the heart of spring.

Words of poetry pressed into her mind, voices of the great interpreters. She was not a cultivated woman, hardly to be called educated; her horizon, even of books, was chance-formed and narrow; but what circumstance had given her she remembered well. The groping, vain longing that stirred in her fell on speech, and moved among the haunted echoes of the world.

"Bloomy the world, yet a blank all the same-- Framework that waits for a picture to frame."

And then, sudden as a cry:

"Never the time and the place, And the loved one all together!"

She drew a long, shivering sigh, and deliberately thrust the lines out of her mind. Best not to remember them--on such a night! Their edges cut like young grass drawn through careless fingers.

The little new moon was rising higher in the deep, soft blue-darkness of the sky. Margaret looked up at its gleaming curve, and other words of poetry came to her, words she had read once in an old magazine--translated from the Persian:

"Quaffing Hadji-Kivam's wine-cup, there I saw by grace of him, On the green sea of the night, the new moon's silver shallop swim!"

They swung on, like a familiar, wistful, passionate tune:

"Oh, my heart is like a tulip, closing up in time of cold! When, at length, shy Bird of Fortune, shall my snare thy wings enfold?"

Footsteps sounded along the walk, the linked steps of two, lingering, yet with the springing fall of youth; then a murmur of voices, girl's and boy's interchanging, lingering, too, and low, weighted, like the footsteps, with the burden of their hour. Margaret drew back a little behind the sapless vine-stems. She knew that she could not be seen in the shadow of the porch, even by a passer far less absorbed than the two who drifted by. She had recognized Frank and Jean at once, and thrilled intimately at the quality of their voices. Both were changed from the careless tones of every day, Frank's husky and strained, Jean's vibrant and tremulous. What they said was quite inaudible--only that betraying _timbre_, conscious and unconscious, hung on the scented air. A single word in the girl's thrilled voice--a sharpened, quivering note of life at high tension--pierced the shadows of the porch:

"---- you ----"

"'You!'" Margaret leaned forward among her shadows, thrusting her clenched hands downward, then pressed them tight upon her heart. "You!" That little key unlocked the flood-gates. The barriers went down, and the tide of passionate loneliness swept her soul.

"You!" she whispered to the fragrant, shimmering, vitalizing night; and the word mocked her, and returned unto her void. She leaned her bosom against the angled surface of the porch-post; she pressed her face among the dry, unbudded vines. The cry went out from her into the empty spaces of the world--a voiceless, hopeless call: "You! you! you! Oh, you who never came to me!"

Her soul was ravaged by that mocking bitterness of loss which comes only to those who have not possessed. She, crying for a lover in the night, she who had never been sought! If ever her shy and homely girlhood might have attracted a youth, poor Margaret's love of poetry would have frightened him away. If the burdened poverty of her maturity might have admitted a suitor, her acquaintance numbered no man who would not have shunned an earnest-minded old maid. And she knew this utterly. A thousand old aches were in the sudden rush of anguish, and shame fought among them. She was shocked and startled at the drip of salt tears down her cheeks, at the heaving of her shaken breast.

She struggled to rebuild her old barriers against the woe--pride, and dignity, and the decent acceptance of one's lot. But those were for the eyes of men and women; and here were no eyes, only night, and the risen sap and the wild heart in her breast. Duty? She had never swerved in doing it, but she thrust the thought by with passionate rebellion at the waste of her in dull service to the outworn lives which neither asked nor could take from her anything but the daily drudgery. She groped for the old humble consolations, tender appreciations, generous friendships, the joy in others' joy. But there the wall had broken through. "I am nothing to them!" thought Margaret bitterly. "Jean will not care to talk to me after to-night. And I can't always kiss other people's babies! I want one of my own!"

The gauzy veil of dream that wrapped her often had fallen from before her eyes. Rent by the piercing beauty of the night, and soaked in her tears, that fragile fabric of vision served no more. Imagined blisses had betrayed her, naked and tender, to the unpitying lash of truth. The remote, the universal, mocked her sore longing for something near and real, of earth and flesh--oh, as welcome in sorrow as in joy!--to be imperiously her own! The river of life dashed by and would not fill her empty cup. The love she loved so had passed her by.

She faced the hollowest desolation known to humanity. She had committed no sin; she had been true and tender and faithful; she had not failed in the least and humblest dues of love: yet, now she stood wrapped in torment, and saw, across a great gulf fixed, the joys of love's elect. She stood utterly frustrate and alone--a shared frustration were happiness! Her mental life had been so intensely uncompanioned that she was tortured with doubts of her own reality. What warrant of Being had that soul which could not touch in all the blank, black spaces of the void another soul to give it assurance of itself? What if the aching throat and riven breast were but the phantom anguish of a dream Thing, unpurposed, unjustified, a Thing of ashes and emptiness!

There remained God--perhaps! Was God a dream too? Was there any _You_ in all the empty worlds?

She stood quite still, questing the universe for God. She thought of her father's God--the savage Hebrew deity he thought he worshiped, the harsh Puritan formalist who ruled his creed, the hysterical, illogical sentimentalist who swayed his heart. She dropped them all out of her mind. God was not, for her, in the ancient earthquake or fire or whirlwind. But--perhaps--somewhere!

She sank to her knees in the darkness, and, laying her head upon her arms on the railing, sought in her soul for God.

"You are Love," she said. "They say it, but they do not believe it; but _I_ believe it. You are Love that creates, and makes glad--and wounds. You are Love that rises in all creatures in spring, and would make all things beautiful and kind. You are Love that gives--and gives itself. You made me to love love and love's uses, and nothing else in the world! You made my life loveless. Why?"

She waited a moment, then, with a sobbing breath of remembrance, "Oh, one spring they nailed you on a cross because you loved too much!"

After that she was very still, her head bent upon her arms, her heart quiet, waiting for the still, small voice, the answer of God.

It came presently, and she knew it was the answer. She accepted it with comfort, and sad pride, and submission, and a slow, strange, white happiness of consecration. The answer came without any words. If there had been words, they might have been, perhaps, like these:

"Bear the pain patiently, my daughter, for life is wrought in pain, and there is no child born without sharp pangs. I have not shut thee out from my festival of spring. Thy part is thy pang. I have given thee a coronal of pain and made thee rich with loss and desire. I have made thee one of my vestals who guard perpetually the hearth-fire which shall not be lit for them. I have denied thee love that love shall be manifest in thee. Wherever love fails in my world, there shalt thou re-create it in beauty and kindness. The vision thou hast, and the passion, are of me, and I charge thee find some fair and sweet way that they perish not in thee. All ways are mine. Be thou in peace."

Margaret rose at length. The moon was gone from the sky, but out of its deep, tender darkness shone the far, dim light of stars. A cool wind touched her cheek, bearing a faint, ethereal odor of blossoms as from a great distance. And upon her face, if one might have seen for the darkness, shone a fine, ethereal beauty far-brought from that great distance which is nearer than hands and feet.

Against the shadowy front of the house opposite, two figures were vaguely discernible, the taller a little darker than the encompassing space, the other a little lighter. As Margaret looked, they melted together, and were no longer two but one.

She smiled in the darkness, very sweetly, and, holding her head high, turned and went quietly into the dark little house.

Work Is a Blessing

_By Lafayette Young_

Work is a blessing to the human race.

If this had remained a workless world, it would have been a homeless world. The progress of the human race began when work began. When work began, men began to wear clothes; thus progress commenced.

Industry and happiness go hand in hand.

Men who feel that they are doomed to daily toil, and that there is no so-called emancipation from the daily routine, imagine that happiness would be theirs if they did not have to work. The man whose employment compels him to get up at six o'clock in the morning imagines if he could just get out of that slavery he would ask for no greater happiness. But if he ever does reach that condition he will find out what true misery is.

Some years ago the warden of the Iowa penitentiary told me that he had a prisoner serving a long term, who begged a day off. He wanted to stop the regular routine. He wanted to be set free in the courtyard for one day. He wanted to look straight up at the sky, and to breathe the air of the outdoors. I was at the penitentiary the day the prisoner's request was granted, and at ten o'clock the prisoner had grown tired of idleness. The sky had lost its attraction. There was something missing. And he got word to the warden that he wished to be returned to labor.

There are millions of men toiling in factories and in mines, laying brick on tall buildings, swinging cranes in the great iron mills, tending the machines in cotton or woolen mills, who think that they would be perfectly happy if they were once perfectly idle. But their experience would be like that of the prisoner's.

What a wretched world this would be without work! How many things we have which are indispensable, that we would not have but for somebody's work. Work has built every great bridge, every great cathedral, every home, large or small. It has made every invention. Work found man in a cave, and put him into a good home. Work has made man decent and self-respecting.

The great nations are the working nations; the great peoples are the working peoples. Nations, like individuals, date their prosperity and happiness from the beginning of work. The start was made when man gave attention to the primal curse of the race recorded in the book of Genesis: "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou return to the ground." This mandate has never been repealed. Lazy men in all parts of the world have undertaken to nullify it. The ambition for idleness fills jails and penitentiaries. It causes man to commit forgeries and murders. Every man slugged in a dark alley is put out of the way by some other man desiring money without working for it.

There has been a foolish notion in many countries in regard to labor. They do not consider it dignified. In some countries, missionary families learn that they cannot cook their own victuals without losing caste. In other countries a certain number of servants must be kept if the family would be respected. In our own country there is a false pride in regard to labor. Young men avoid the learning of trades because they do not wish to soil their hands. Laboring men themselves have been guilty of not sufficiently estimating their own callings. They demand the rights of their class, but fail to respect it themselves. This causes many young men to seek some employment which will not soil their hands. Many thousands of young men make the mistake of not having some regular calling, some work which they can do better than anybody else. The man who has a regular trade is never found walking the streets looking for a job. Even when he is called old, he can secure employment.

Industry is indispensable to happiness. Idleness destroys the souls of more young men, and leads to more forms of dissipation, than any other influence.

The experienced mechanic knows how rapidly and joyfully time passes when he is interested in his work. He never watches the clock; to him quitting time comes all too soon.

Labor can be made a joy if man wills it so.

An appreciation of what a man earns and the thought that he can do something with his money, ought to be a part of the happiness of labor. Work develops the man. It develops his appreciation of others. He is likely to be unhappy if he works solely for himself. The Indian hunter, returning from the chase, lays the evidence of his prowess at the feet of his squaw. He is glad that he has accomplished something, and in her eyes he is a hero.

Once I was driving in the Allegheny Mountains in the early summer. Unexpectedly I came to a little cottage almost covered with flowers and vines. A brown-faced woman with pruning shears was at her work. Around her bees were humming, and birds were twittering. I sought to buy some flowers. She said she never had sold a flower in her life. I asked her what induced her to work early and late, cultivating, planting and pruning. She said, "I do this work because I enjoy it, and because my husband and two sons will enjoy these flowers when they come home at night." This woman had the whole philosophy of human happiness. If there are women in heaven she will be there.

Work came as a blessing. It remains as a blessing. It makes us tired so that we can enjoy sleep. We awaken in the morning refreshed for a new day. When kings and queens shall be no more, when autocracy shall end, when the voices of intelligent men and women shall govern, then if work shall be universal, thus satisfying the energy, and giving direction to the ambitions of men, there will be no more wars.

To make work enjoyable, men and women must be proud of it; must not pretend that they are above it; must not apologize for it. Once I was in Holland. I saw women with a peculiar headdress as if they belonged to some lodge. They wore smiling faces. I inquired what their regalia meant, and was told that they were working women of the peasant or some other humble class. They were proud of their position. They were content, with plenty to do. They enjoyed the society of their families and friends. But their happiness consisted in being proud of, and satisfied with, the things they were doing. Who can say that they have not chosen the better part?

September

_By Esse V. Hathaway_

Blaze on blaze of scarlet sumach, Roadsides lined with radiant gold, Purple ironweed, regal, slender, Rasping locust, shrill and bold.

Dusty smell in field and upland, Sky of copper mixed with blue, Life intense as is the weather-- Let's away, just me and you!

The Poet of the Future

_By Tacitus Hussey_

Oh, the poet of the future. Will he come to us as comes The beauty of the bugle's voice above the roar of drums-- The beauty of the bugle's voice above the roar and din Of battle drums that pulse the time the victor marches in?

--_James Whitcomb Riley._

"Oh, the poet of the future!" Can anybody guess Whether he'll sound his bugle, or she'll wear them on her dress; An' will they kinder get their themes from nature, second hand, An' dish 'em up in language that plain folks can't understand?

There's a sight of this 'ere po'try stuff, each year, that goes to waste, Jest a-waitin' fer a poet who has the time and taste To tackle it just as it is, an' weave it into rhyme, With warp and woof of hope and love, in life's swift loom of time.

An' mebbe the future poet, if he understands the thing, Won't start the summer katydids to singin' in the spring, Jest like the croakin' frog; but let the critter wait at most, To announce to timid farmers that "it's jest six weeks till frost."

The katydid and goldenrod are partners in this way: They sing and bloom where'er there's room, along life's sunny way; So I warn you, future poet, jest let 'em bloom an' lilt Together--don't divorce 'em. That's jest the way they're built.

In order to be perfect, the future poet should Know every sound of nature, of river, lake an' wood, Should know each whispered note and every answerin' call-- He should never set cock-pheasants to drummin' in the fall.

"Under the golden maples!" Not havin' voice to sing They flap their love out on a log quite early in the spring; For burnin' love will allus find expression in some way-- That's the style that _they've_ adopted--don't change their natures, pray.

I cannot guess just what the future poet's themes may be; Reckon they'll be pretty lofty, fer, as anyone can see, The world of poetry's lookin' up an' poets climbin' higher; With divine afflatus boostin' them, of course they must aspire.

The poets of the good old times were cruder with the pen; Their idees weren't the same as ours--these good old-fashioned men-- Bet old Homer never writ, even in his palmiest day, Such a soul-upliftin' poem as "Hosses Chawin' Hay."

"Hosses" don't know any better out in the Hawkeye State-- Down to Boston now, I reckon, they jest simply masticate. The poet of the future'll blow a bugle, like as not-- Most all us modern poets had to blow fer what we've got.

To keep the pot a-b'ilin' we all have to raise a din To make the public look our way--an' pass the shekels in. The scarcity of bugles seems now the greatest lack Though some of us keep blowin' 'thout a bugle to our back.

The poet of the future! When once he takes his theme His pen will slip as smoothly as a canoe glides down stream. He'll sing from overflowin' heart--his music will be free-- Would you take up a subscription fer a robin in a tree?

He'll never try to drive the Muse, if he doesn't want to go, But will promptly take the harness off--er drive keerfully an' slow-- When po'try's forced, like winter pinks, the people's apt to know it An' labor with it jest about as hard as did the poet.

Putting the Stars with the Bars

_By Verne Marshall_

Midnight beneath a low-hanging strip of amber-hued moon. Smoke in one's eyes and sulphur in his nostrils; the pounding of cannon in his ears and a hatred of war and its sponsors in his soul. A supply wagon piled high with dead men on one side of the road and a little ambulance waiting for its bruised load to emerge from the mouth of the communicating trench near by. Sharp tongues of fire darting into the night on every side as the guns of the French barked their challenge at the Crown Prince on the other bank of the Meuse. A lurid glare over there to the left where the smoke hung thickest under drifting yellow illuminating bombs and red and blue signal bombs that added their touch to the weird fantasy that wasn't a fantasy at all, but a hill in whose spelling men had changed one letter and turned it into hell.

It was Dead Man's Hill at Verdun--Le Cote Mort Homme. And Dead Man's Hill it truly was, for among the barbed wire entanglements and in some of the shell craters in No Man's Land there still lay the skeletons of Frenchmen and Germans who had been killed there months before and whose bodies it had been impossible to recover because the trenches had not changed positions and to venture out between them was to shake hands with Death.

Dead Man's Hill at Verdun--where ten thousand men have fought for a few feet of blood-soaked ground in vain effort to satiate the battle-thirst of a monarch and his son! The countryside for miles around is laid waste. Villages lie in tumbled masses, trees are uprooted or broken off, demolished wagons and motors litter the roads and fields, and dead horses, legs stiff in the air, dot the jagged landscape. Not a moving object is seen there by day except the crows that flutter above the uptorn ground and the aeroplanes that soar thousands of feet above. But, with the coming of night, long columns of men wind along the treacherous roads on their way to or from the trenches, hundreds of supply wagons lumber across the shell holes to the stations near the line, ammunition trains travel up to the lines and back and the ambulances ply their routes to dressing stations. Everything must be done under night's partially protecting cloak, for the German gunners seldom miss when daylight aids their vision.

A tiny American ambulance--a jitney--threads its way down from the Dead Man to ----, carrying a boy through whose breast a dum-dum bullet had torn its beastly way. Three hours before, the driver of that ambulance had talked with the boy who now lay behind him on a stretcher. Then the young Frenchman had been looking forward to the wondrous day when the war would end. He had planned to come to America to live, just as soon as he could get back to Paris and say good-bye to the mother from whom he had received a letter that very day.