Chapter 27

"But it could not be done. He could not work. Somewhere in the world, he told me, was a spot where he could work, ... Where there were no memories. Somewhere in the seven seas lay the place. He would know it when he saw it. After so many years of exclusion, he was certain he would feel the atmosphere of the place where he could work. And there he would stay till he finished, till he produced the big thing that was in him. Thus, regilded, he would return to her again. One more effort, once more to feel his power, once more to hear the stimulating rush of praise, then he would give it up again, quite content to sit beneath his wine-glass till the end. But this first.

"So I put him down where I have told you, on a lonely island, somewhat north of the equator, ten thousand miles away from Her. Wistfully, he said it was quite the right spot; he could feel it. So we helped him, the China boys and I, to build a little hut, up on stilts, thatched with palm-leaves. Very desolate it is. On all sides the burnished ocean, hot and breathless, and the warm, moist heat close around. Still and stifling. Like a blanket, dense, enveloping. But he said it was the spot. I don't know. He has been there now three years. He said he could do it there, if ever. From time to time I stop there if the passengers are willing for a day or two's delay. He looks very old now and very thin, but he always say it's all right. Soon, very soon now, the manuscript will be ready; next time I stop, perhaps. Once I came upon him sobbing. Landing early in the morning--slipped ashore and found him sobbing, head in arms and shoulders shaking. It was early in the morning, and I think he'd sobbed all night. Somehow I think it was not for the gift he'd lost but for her.

"But he says over and over again that it is the right spot, the very right place in the world for such as he. Told me that I must not mind seeing him so lonely, so apparently depressed. That it was nothing. Just the Tropics, and being so far way, and perhaps thinking a little too much of things that did not concern his work. But the work would surely come on. Moods came on him from time to time that he recognized were quite the right moods in which to work, in which to produce great things. His genius was surely ripe now; he must just concentrate. Some day, very shortly, there would be a great rush; he would feel himself charged again with the old, fine fire. He would produce the great work of his life. He felt it coming on; it would be finished next time I called.

"This is the next time. Shall we go?" asked the captain.

Accordingly, within a day or two, the small coastwise steamer dropped her anchor in a shallow bay off a desert island marked with a cross on the captain's chart, and unmarked upon all other charts of the same waters. All around lay the tranquil spaces of a desolate ocean, and on the island the thatched roof of a solitary hut showed among the palms. The captain went ashore by himself, and presently, after a little lapse of time, he returned.

"It is finished," he announced briefly; "the great work is finished. I think it must have been completed several weeks ago. He must have died several weeks ago, possibly soon after my last call."

He held out a sheet of paper on which was written one word, "Beloved."

A THING OF BEAUTY[19]

[Note 19: Copyright, 1919, by The American Hebrew. Copyright, 1920, by Elias Lieberman.]

BY ELIAS LIEBERMAN

From _The American Hebrew_

Simonoff told it to me over the coffee cups. It was the twilight hour on Second avenue and we were enjoying a late afternoon chat. The gates of the human dam, shut all day long, had been opened and the rushing, swirling stream of men and women beat past us relentlessly--past the door of the Cafe Cosmos open to the sights and sounds of the street.

Every person in that human torrent seemed eager to reach a haven of rest. Not that their faces looked tired or haggard. But each gave the impression that something had been worn off in a subtle, persistent process--a certain newness, freshness, gloss, call it what you will. Shadows of men and women they were in the twilight as they scurried past. And yet the rhythm of their footsteps beat upon the ear as steadily as the roar of many waters.

"The ghosts are having a holiday," said Simonoff.

His voice was barely audible in the hum of conversation. Simonoff was one of those rare teachers on the lower East Side who neither taught night school nor practised law after his daily duties were over. His passion was to understand his fellow men--to help them, if possible--although, for a reformer, he was given entirely too much to dreaming. His cafe bills for a year, when added together, made a surprisingly large total. But then Simonoff never bothered with useless mathematics.

A hand organ outside was droning the "Miserere." Children of the tenements, like moths drawn to globes of brilliant light on midsummer nights, hovered about the organ and danced. There was a capricious abandon about their movements which fascinated Simonoff. He had a way of running his slender fingers through his wavy, brown hair, when he was emotionally stirred.

"The dancing maidens of Trebizond were not more graceful than these," he sighed as his eyes followed the sinuous movements of two ragged little tots. "They outgrow it after a while."

"Never," I protested. "The Grand street halls----"

"I mean the search for beauty," drawled Simonoff. "This is the dance of Greek maidens at the sacrificial rites to Demeter. The Grand street thing is a contortion before the obese complacency of the great god Jazz. And Jazz has no soul."

Through the ever-gathering darkness the electric lights began to twinkle like blue-white diamonds against purple velvet. The lights in the cafe too were turned on by a pottering waiter whose flat-footed shuffle had become familiar to us through many years of observation.

A bedraggled looking person entered the cafe, clutching awkwardly a dozen or more cut roses. He passed from table to table and offered them for sale. The price was ridiculously small.

It seemed strange to me that Simonoff's face should turn so white. His manner suggested great agitation. When the peddler reached him, Simonoff purchased the entire stock and gave him in payment far in excess of the amount asked. The happy vender directed one searching glance at him, then went out whistling.

"What will you do with all those roses?" I asked.

"Give them away," he answered, "to the dirtiest, most woebegone, most forlorn little children I can find. I shall do this in memory of John Keats."

I looked my astonishment.

"'A thing of beauty is a joy forever,'" Simonoff intoned dreamily. "But there's a story connected with it."

"I suspected it," I said quietly. "When a school teacher consents to part with a perfectly good dollar for a dozen wilted roses, there must be an esoteric reason."

"Materialist," he laughed.

The dancing and the scurry of pattering feet had both ceased. The sounds of the night were now more soothing, more harmoniously blended. The earliest arrivals of the theatre crowd were besieging the sidewalk ticket office of the burlesque house opposite. Simonoff launched into his narrative.

* * *

I was sitting here one evening all alone. The day had been particularly trying. I had been visited by my district superintendent, a perfect paragon of stupidity. He had squatted in my class room until I wished him and his bulk on the other side of the Styx. When it was all over I came here, glad to shake off the chalk dust and the pompous inconsequence of my official superior. Suddenly I was startled out of my brooding.

"You are unhappy," I heard a voice murmur ever so softly. It seemed like the sighing of a night wind through the tree tops.

I looked up. Before me stood a young man with deep blue eyes, blond hair, exquisite daintiness of feature and unnaturally pale complexion. He was dressed in soft gray tweeds. In the crook of his left elbow he carried roses. Their fragrance permeated the cafe and, for once, the odor of stale tobacco was not dominant.

"You are unhappy," he repeated mildly as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to say.

"I am," I answered frankly. "The world is a stupid place to live in."

"You must not say that," he reproached quietly. "It is we who are stupid. The world is beautiful. Won't you accept a rose?" Like a prince in a fairy story he bowed grandly and offered me an American Beauty still moist with the mock dews of the florist.

"But why do you honor me thus?" I asked, taking the flower and inhaling its fragrance.

He looked a bit put out as if I were asking the obvious thing. "You were sad, of course, and a thing of beauty----"

"Is a joy forever," I concluded.

He flushed with pleasure.

"I am so glad you have read my Endymion," he exclaimed delightedly. "Suppose we walk out together and preach the gospel of beauty to those who like yourself forget the eternal in the trivial. I have some powerful sermons here." He caressed his roses as a mother would stroke the head of a child.

Along the avenue we were followed by hordes of little girls with starved eyes. My good samaritan picked the poorest and the most wistful for his largesse of roses. And to each one as he handed the flower he repeated the famous line from the work of the great romantic poet.

"'A thing of beauty is a joy forever.'"

Soon there were only two left. These my friend was inclined to withhold from the clamoring tots who assailed us.

"After all they are young," he said. "Their sad moments vanish like the mists. But the sorrows of the years of discretion are not thrown off so easily. They persist like scars long after the original bruise has healed."

We entered a hallway to escape our little friends. From a door ajar on the first story a man's voice floated down to us. It was high pitched and strident, as if a relentless lawyer were arraigning a criminal.

"My friends," we heard, "how long are you going to remain blind to your condition? The interests of capital and labor are diametrically opposed to each other. You are the producers of the world's wealth and yet you submit to exploitation by the class of parasites who fatten upon your ignorance and your unwillingness to unite. Workingmen of the world, you have nothing to lose but your chains."

"Slavinsky, the great agitator, probably rehearsing his speech for the party rally at Cooper Union tomorrow," I explained.

"Agitator?" questioned the apostle of beauty. "He is agitated, indeed, and unhappy. I shall give him a rose."

Slavinsky sputtered with amazement when the rose was offered to him.

"A joy forever!" he mocked. "It isn't such a joy to work for starvation wages, to be bled by profiteers, to be flayed alive by plutes. I tell you, Mister--"

"You are addressing Keats, John Keats."

"I tell you, Mister Keats, there ain't no beauty when you're up against it. I tell you--"

"Won't you accept this rose?"

"I'll take it," growled Slavinsky with unnecessary fierceness. "It ain't Nature's fault. She don't go in for profiteering." The agitator's conversational style was more colloquial though no less vehement than his platform manner.

"Did you note the omission?" Keats inquired when we were again on the avenue.

"It isn't impoliteness," I replied. "Men of his class are too stirred by cosmic problems to say 'Thank you.'"

"It is a beautiful thing to say, nevertheless, and the world needs it." I thought the eyes of John Keats--a fitting name for such a fantastic personality--were filling with tears.

My companion held his rose before him as if it were a charm against the sordidness about him. He had a way of peering at the people we passed as if he were looking for someone he had lost in the crowd. At Sixteenth Street we turned into the small park at the right of the avenue, which with its neighbor on the left keeps alive the memory of green and growing things among the dwellers of the tenements.

It was at the fountain that he first saw her. John Keats had an abrupt manner, for all his gentleness, of proceeding along the path of his desires.

"At last I have found you," he said to the tall girl who was watching a group of youngsters at play near the gushing waters. In the darkness I could see only a pair of flashing eyes under a broad-brimmed straw and a cape of soft blue hanging gracefully from her shoulders.

She scrutinized both of us with the intuitive glance of one who has learned to tread warily amid dangerous surroundings. Apparently her preliminary examination was satisfactory. She put us into the non-poisonous class. Keats had flattened the palm of his right hand against his breast and was offering the last rose to her with the other. His manner was of the stage but not offensively so.

"At last I have found you," repeated my curious acquaintance. "For all your laughter you are unhappy. You are consumed with yearning, even as I am. Pray accept a rose."

With a murmured repetition of his formula he gave he his last flower.

His manner was earnest and the girl had immediately rejected the assumption that we were mocking her.

"This is a mistake," she explained, hesitating about the rose. "I don't think you know who I am."

"A lady of high degree, I am sure," responded Keats gallantly. There was a peculiar quaintness about his English, which like his name, took me back to the early nineteenth century. The coincidence of his name did not strike me as unusual, because the telephone directory is full of such parallels.

"No high degree about me," laughed the girl. "I'm a saleslady at Marmelstein's, that's all. What you said about being unhappy is true sometimes. When you came up I was just thinking."

Her voice with its overtone of sadness sounded in the semi-darkness like the faint tremolo of mandolins serenading in the distance.

"But there need be no unhappiness," contended Keats. "We must shut out from our sight everything but beauty, pure beauty. At this moment I am supremely happy."

He looked at her. There was an unreality about him for which I could not account. Like a mirage of the park he seemed. In a twinkle of the incandescents, I thought, he might vanish. The girl from Marmelstein's looked at him as if fascinated. Romance had come and touched her heart with a magic wand. She sniffed at the rose pensively.

"I couldn't just tell you why I was feeling queer. Marmelstein's is a nice place, honest. You see all sorts of people during the day and it's interesting to work there. But there's something missing--I don't know what."

"Beauty, my lady, beauty," declared Keats.

Out of the shadows a fourth form had materialized, a thickset man who approached us with a firm stride. He patted my friend gently on the shoulder.

"You're a bad boy, John," he reproached, "giving me the slip that way. I had the time of my life looking for you. The moment my back was turned you vamoosed from the waiting room. That wasn't kind. If I hadn't a known how fond you wuz of roses, I would a been stumped, stumped for good. I trailed you by them roses."

The girl sensed that there was something wrong.

"Lady, farewell," said Keats.

With a little moan she saw him being led off.

"What's wrong?" I asked the intruder.

"Bugs on beauty, that's all. Thinks he's a guy named John Keats who wrote poems. Harmless case. Wouldn't hurt a fly. I was bringing him over to see his mother when he give me the slip. Gee, but I can breathe easy now."

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever," declared the spirit of Keats.

"Sure, sure," said the attendant, lighting a cigar.

When I turned to leave the park the girl from Marmelstein's came up to me.

"What happened?" she inquired. Her fists were clenched and she was breathing heavily.

I explained.

"He was such a gentleman," she sobbed softly.

THE OTHER ROOM[20]

[Note 20: Copyright, 1919, by The McCall Company. Copyright, 1920, by Mary Heaton O'Brien.]

BY MARY HEATON VORSE

From _McCall's Magazine_

It was after John MacFarland was Captain of Black Bar Life-Saving Station for nearly twenty years. Every summer evening all that time I would see him and Mis' MacFarland driving along to the station, for in the summer the crew is off for two months and only the Captain stays there from sundown to sunup.

I never saw her drive past without thinking how she hated to look at the sea. She never sat where she could see salt water. She had been going out to Black Bar all these years and never once had seen the boat-drill. This was because she knew, on account of her husband's being a life-saver, what the sea does to the vessels and the men in them.

When Mis' MacFarland's married daughter died and her little granddaughter Moira came to live with her, I would see all of them, the Captain, Mis' MacFarland and Moira, driving to the station summer evenings, Moira's head peeping out between them like a little bird. And I would always think how Mis' MacFarland hated the sea, and I'd be real glad that the blowing of the sand grinds the station windows white till you can't see through them.

Then John MacFarland died all of a sudden just at the end of the summer. He had been building a yawl out there at the station for nearly two years, and she was just ready to la'nch. I remember meeting him on the boardwalk and him telling me about that boat of his, and thinking what a fine figure of a man he was for over sixty. And next I heard he was dead.

Then Mis' MacFarland had a spell of sickness, and that is how I came to be housekeeper to her and Moira. And I remember how she struck me the first day, for there she was sitting looking out over the bay watching the boats as though the sight of them gave her pleasure. I was so surprised I spoke right out:

"Why, Mis' MacFarland," says I, "I thought you couldn't abide the look of salt water."

"I don't seem to feel there's the difference between land and sea I used to," she says in her gentle, smiling way. "We learn."

I wanted to ask her how we learned what I saw she'd learned, for, if you can understand me, _she seemed to have gotten beyond grief_, but before I could speak Moira came running in and it seemed as if the joy in her heart shone out of her so the place was all lighted up. Her face was tanned so brown that her blue eyes looked strange, and against her skin the fair hair around her forehead looked almost silver.

"Where you been," I said, "to have so much fun?"

"In the back country," says she. "I'm always happy when I come from in back."

"Were you alone?" She stopped a minute before she answered.

"Yes--I suppose so," as if she didn't quite know. It was a funny answer but there was a funny, secret, joyful look on her face that suddenly made me take her in my arms and kiss her, and quite surprised to find myself doing it.

Then she sat down and I went around getting supper; first I thought she was reading, she was so still. Then my eyes happened to fall on her and I saw she was _listening_; then suddenly it was like she _heard_. She had the stillest, shiningest look. All this don't sound like much, I know, but I won't forget how Moira and Mis' MacFarland struck me that first day, not till I die.

When I went to bed I couldn't get 'em out of my mind and I found myself saying out loud:

"There's joy and peace in this house!"

It was quite a time before I sensed what had happened to Mis' MacFarland and what made her change so toward the sea. She'd sit by the window, a Bible in her hands and praying, and you would catch the words of her prayer, and she was praying for those she loved--for the living and the dead. That was only natural--but what I got to understand was that _she didn't feel any different about them_. Not a bit different did she feel about the living and the dead!

They were all there in her heart, the dead and the living, and not divided off at all like in most folks' minds.

I used to wonder about Moira, too, when she'd have these quiet spells--like she was _listening_, but not to any sounds. Then next you'd feel as if she was gladder than anything you'd ever known, sitting there so still with that listening look on her face--only now like I told you, as if she'd _heard_. She'd be so happy inside that you'd like to be near her, as if there was a light in her heart so you could warm yourself by it.

It's hard to tell just how I came to feel this. I suppose just by living with folks you get to know all sorts of things about them. It's not the things they say that matters. I knew a woman once, a pleasant-spoken body, yet she'd pizen the air about her by the unspoken thoughts of her heart. Sometimes these thoughts would burst out in awful fits of anger--but you'd know how she was inside, if she spoke to you always as gentle as a dove.

I'd like to be near Moira those times and yet it made me uneasy, too, her sitting so still, listening, and Mis' MacFarland, as you might say, always looking over the edge of eternity. It was all right for _her_ but I'd wonder about Moira. I wondered so hard I took it up with Mis' MacFarland.

"Do you think you're doing right by that child?" I asked her right out plain.

"Why, how do you mean?" she says in her calm way.

"Teaching her things that's all right for us older people to know but that don't seem to me are for young things."

"Teaching her things!" says Mis' MacFarland. "I haven't taught Moira nothing. If you mean them still, quiet, happy spells of hers, she's always had 'em. _She_ taught _me_. It was watching her when she was little that taught me----"

"Taught you what?" I asked her when she wouldn't go on.

"It's hard to say it in words--taught me how near all the rest is."

I didn't get her, so I asked what she meant by "the rest."

"The rest of creation!" says she. "Some folks is born in the world feeling and knowing it in their hearts that creation don't stop where the sight of the eyes stop, and the thinner the veil is the better, and something in them sickens when the veil gets too thick."

"You talk like you believed in spooks and God knows what," I says, but more to make myself comfortable than anything else.

"You know what I mean, Jane McQuarry," says she. "There's very few folks, especially older ones, who haven't sometimes felt the veil get thinner and thinner until you could see the light shining through. But we've been brought up to think such ideas are silly and to be ashamed of 'em and only to believe in what we can touch and taste and, in spite of stars shining every night over our heads, to think creation stops with heavy things like us. And how anyone who's ever seen a fish swimming in the water can think that--I don't know. What do they know of us and how can they imagine folks on legs walking around and breathing the air that makes 'em die? So why aren't there creatures, all kind of 'em, we can no more see than a fish can us?"

I couldn't answer that, so I went back to Moira.

"She'll get queer going on like this," I said. "Thin veils and light shining through and creatures that feel about us like we do about fishes are all right for old folks who've lived their lives. She's got to live hers and live it the way ordinary folks do."

"Ain't she happy?" asked Mis' MacFarland. "Don't she like rolling a hoop and playing with the other children? Didn't you say only yesterday her mischief would drive you out of your senses?"

I couldn't deny this. Unless you'd seen her as I had, she was just like any other happy little girl, only happier maybe. Like, I said, you could see her heart shine some days, she was so happy. About that time I found out more how she felt. One still night, for no reason, I got out of my bed and went into Moira's room and there she was sitting up in her bed, her eyes like starlight.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Why--I--don't know--I'm waiting for something!"

"Waiting! At this time of the night! How you talk! You lie right down, Moira Anderson, and go to sleep," says I, sharp.