Chapter 33

"You, who have been a tramp, a worker all over the country ... in big cities ... do you mean to tell me that?--"

"Yes ... yes ... before God, it is true! You don't think I'm a fool, do you--a ninny?"

"No, on the contrary, I think you are a good man ... that it is miraculous ... I--I feel so old beside you ... how old are you, Johnnie?"

"Twenty-six."

"Why, I'm only two years older ... yet I feel like your mother."

* * * * *

In the groves adjoining the colony, for a mile on either side, wherever there was a big tree, a circular seat had been built about it. It was on one of these that we sat down, without a word.

I laid my head against Hildreth's shoulder. Soothingly she began stroking my hair. With cool fingers she stroked it.

"What fine hair you have. It's as soft and silky as a girl's."

"I took after my mother in that."

"What a mixture you are ... manly and strong ... an athlete, yet sensitive, so sensitive that sometimes it hurts to look at your face when you talk ... you've suffered a lot, Johnnie."

"In curious ways, yes."

"Tell me about yourself. I won't even whisper it in the dark, when I'm alone."

"I know I can trust you, Hildreth."

"What are you doing, boy?"

"I want to sit at your feet."

"You dear boy."

"I feel quite humble ... I don't want you to see my face when I talk."

She drew my head against her knees. Threw one arm as if protectingly over my shoulder.

"There. Are you comfortable, boy?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"Quite ... don't be ashamed ... I know much about life that you do not know ... tell me all."

* * * * *

So I told her all about myself ... my ambition ... my struggles ... my morbidity ... my lack of experience with girls and women....

"And I must have experience soon ... it's obsessing me ... it can't last this way much longer ... I shall go mad."

And I rehearsed to her a desperate resolve I had made ... to find a woman of the streets, in New York, when I went in, the ensuing week ... and force myself, no matter how I loathed it--

I buried my head in her lap and sobbed hysterically.

Then I apologised--"forgive me if I have been too frank!"

"I am a radical woman ... Penton and I both believe in the theory of free love, though we happen to be married ... what you have told me is all sweet and natural to me ... only--you must not do what you say you'll do--in New York!--"

"I must, or--" and I paused, to go on in a lower, embarrassed voice ... "Do--do you know what else I thought of--dreamed of--?

"In Paris--I understand--men live with women as a matter of course--

"You see--" I was hot with shame to the very ears, "you see--there, you know,--I thought if I went there I would find some pretty little French girl that I would take to live with me ... in some romantic attic in the Montmartre district ... and we would be happy together ... and I would be grateful, so grateful, to her!"

"Why you're the Saint Francis of the Radicals," Hildreth exclaimed.

"Please don't make fun of me ... I suppose you think me very foolish."

"Foolish?... No, I think you have a very beautiful soul. I wish every man had a soul like that."

She took my head in her hands and kissed me on the brow.

"Hildreth, only tell me what I am to do?"

"I do not know ... theoretically I believe in freedom in sex ... I wish to God I could help you."

"Why can't you?"

"Hush, you do not know what you're asking!"

"By the living Christ, I only know that I would crawl after you, and kiss your holiest feet before all the world, if you helped me."

"Now I understand what Lecky meant when he spoke of the sacrificial office of a certain type of women ... I only wish ... but come, we must go."

I was on my feet beside her, as she rose.

"Yes, we had better go home," I spoke quietly, though my heart pumped as if I had taken strychnine.

I put my arms about her, to steady her going, for she stumbled.

"Why, Hildreth, dearest woman, you're trembling all over, what's the matter?... have I--I frightened you with my wild talk?"

"Never mind ... no, take your arm away ... Let me walk alone a minute and I'll be all right ... I'll be all right in a minute ... it's just turned a trifle chilly, that's all."

"Hush!" going down the path by the big house, Hildreth stopped, hesitated. "I'm--I'm not going to the little cottage to-night."

"Then I'll say good-night!"

"No, come on in and we'll sneak out to the kitchen and find something to eat ... aren't you hungry?"

"A little bit. But I'm afraid we might wake Ruth and Darrie up."

We tip-toed in. Hildreth searching for the matches, knocked the wash-basin to the floor. We stood hushed like mice.

"Who's down there?" asked Darrie's voice, with a dash of hysteria in it ... of hysteria and fright.

"Damn it, there's Darrie waked up."

"Such a clatter would wake anyone up!"

_"Who's there, I say!"_

"It's only me, Darrie ... I got hungry in the night and came up to the house to snatch a bite to eat."

"Oh ... I'm coming down to join you, then."

We saw Darrie standing at the top of the stairs, her eyes luminous and wide with emotion.

She stood, rosy-bodied, in her night-dress, which was transparent in the light of the lamp she carried....

"Johnnie's here, too!" warned Hildreth.

"Oh!" cried Darrie, and turned back, to re-appear in her kimono.

"I'm sorry we waked you up. But I knocked that infernal basin down off the sink."

"You didn't wake me. I was awake already. I haven't slept a wink."

"Neither have we!" I responded.

"What?" Darrie asked me in so startled, impulsive a manner that Hildreth and I laughed ... and she laughed a little, too ... and then grew grave again....

"It was such a beautiful night, Johnnie and I took a walk in the moonlight."

Darrie looked from one to the other of us with a wide, staring look.

"You needn't look that way, Darrie!"

"Please, please, Hildreth!"

"You and Penton have taken walks in the moonlight."

"Hildreth, dear, I'm not rebuking you ... and you know my walks with Penton are all right, are harmless."

"Yes, I know they are ... but you mustn't rebuke me, either."

"I wasn't rebuking either you or Johnnie ... it isn't that I'm thinking of at all ... but everything has been so uncanny here to-night ... I could not sleep ... every little rustle of curtains, every creak or motion in the whole house vibrated through me ... something's going to happen to someone."

"You're only upset because Penton's in jail," I explained.

"No, that's not it ... that's nothing compared to this feeling ... this premonition--"

"Come on, let's make some coffee ... in the percolator."

"You girls sit down and I'll make it. I've been a cook several times in my career."

Someone was knocking about in the dark, upstairs. We heard a match struck....

"There, we've waked Ruth, too."

"What's the matter down there?" Ruth was calling.

"Come on down and join us, Ruth,--we're having a cup of coffee a-piece."

"It's only two o'clock ... what's everybody doing up so early? Has Penton come back?"

"No ... but do come down and join us," I replied.

* * * * *

"I tell you, I thought it was burglars at first, and I was going to the drawer in Penton's room and get out his six-shooter."

"Does Penton keep a gun?" I asked.

"Yes ... it's the one he bought to shoot the mongrel dog with."

* * * * *

We ate some cold roast beef sandwiches and drank our coffee.

Hildreth stayed in the big house, not going down the path with me.

I went silently to my tent. It was blowing a little now. The moon was surging along behind little, grey, running clouds. It would rain before daylight. A haunted shiver swept through my back as I stole along the path. I repeated poetry rapidly aloud to crowd out uncanny imaginings. I had a silly, sick impulse to run back to the big house and sleep on the couch in the library.

But I forced myself on. "If you're ever going to be a man, you'd better begin now," I muttered to myself, as if talking to another person.

In my tent ... I lit the lamp. I removed all hanging objects because their lurching shadows sent shivers of apprehension through me....

"That damned coffee--wish I hadn't drunk it."

* * * * *

The wind and rain came up like a phantom army. It sang in the trees, it drummed musically on my tent. It comforted me.

The floodgates of my mind, my inspiration, broke loose. I rose to my super-self. And now if a horrible thing had stood grey at my elbow, unmoved, I would have looked it unflinchingly in the sightless visage....

My pencil raced over paper ... raced and raced.

"Here it comes ... just like your good rain, so kind to earth.... Oh, beautiful God, I thank Thee for making me a poet," I prayed, tears streaming down my face.

* * * * *

The second act of _Judas_ stood complete, as if it had written itself.

I rose. It seemed hardly an hour had passed.

It took me a few minutes to work the numbness out of my legs. How they ached! I stepped out of the tent-door like a drunken man ... fell on my face in some bushes and bled from several scratches. The blare of what was full daylight hurt my eyes. I had been writing on, entranced, by unneeded lamp, when unheeded day burned about me.

Stepping inside again, I saw by my Ingersoll that it was twelve o'clock. I fell into a deep sleep, still dressed ... I was so exhausted. Usually I slept absolutely naked.

* * * * *

These were the things that happened while Penton was in jail because he played tennis on Sunday.

* * * * *

Now I was part and parcel of the household, no longer a stranger-friend on a visit. Though Penton's jail-experience did not thrill me, the continued thronging of reporters did, as did Baxter's raging desire to do good for the poor ordinary prisoners in jail. He had got at several of them who had received a raw deal in the courts, and was moving heaven and earth to bring redress to them. He gave interviews, dictated articles ... the State officials were furious. "What's the matter with the fellow? What's he bother about the other fellows for, he ought to be glad he's not in their shoes!"...

In agitations for the public good, in humanitarian projects, Baxter was indeed a great man ... I loomed like a pigmy beside him.

* * * * *

Darrie and I in dialogue:

She met me on the path, as I was proceeding toward the big house. She carried Carpenter's _Love's Coming of Age_ in her hand. She was dressed daintily. Her brown eyes smiled at me, and a rich dimple broke in her cheek.

But Darrie was taller than Hildreth, and I like small women best; perhaps because I am myself so big.

"Don't go up to the house, Johnnie."

"I want a book from the library."

"Hildreth and Penton are there. Hildreth is having a soul-state."

"A what?" I laughed.

"Oh, she thinks something is the matter with her soul, and, for the three hundredth time since I've known them, Penton and she are discussing their lives together."

"I don't see anything to jest about in that."

"I'm tiring of it ... if Hildreth has a tooth-ache, or anything that the rest of us women accept as a matter of course, she runs to Mubby, as she calls him ... and, as if it were some abstruse, philosophical problem, they talk on, hour after hour ... like German metaphysics, there's no end to it. They've been at it since ten and they'll go on till four, if they follow precedents ... Penton takes Hildreth too seriously."

"You talk as if you, you were jealous of Hildreth and in love with Penton."

"It's neither the one nor the other. I love them both, and I want to see them happy together."

"You see, Darrie, neither you nor I are married, and neither of us knows anything about sex, except in the theory of the books we've read--how can _we judge_ the troubles of a man and woman who are married?"

"There's a lot in what you say."

"I believe it would be better if we both cleared out and left them to fight this out alone."

"Perhaps it would."

* * * * *

"Darrie, Oh, Darrie!--want to come for a walk with Hildreth and me?"

So the three set off together, leaving me and Ruth alone.

* * * * *

Ruth and I had just settled down to a discussion of the writing of narrative poetry, how it was done, and the reason why it was no longer customary with the poets to write longer stories out of real life, like Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_,--when we heard a rustling as of some wild thing in the bushes beside the house, and here came Hildreth breaking through, her eyes blazing, her hair down, her light walking skirt that she had slipped on over her bloomers torn by catching on thorns.

She staggered into the open, swept us with a blazing glance as if we had done something to her, and hurried on down the path toward the little house where Penton had written in quiet till she had strangely routed him out and taken its occupancy for herself.

"Hildreth!" I leaped to my feet, starting after her, "Hildreth what's the matter?"

I had put all thought of narrative poetry out of my head.

"Don't follow her," advised Ruth, in a low, controlled voice, "it's best to let her alone when she acts like that ... she'll have it out, and come back, smiling, in an hour or so."

I plunged on. Ruth ran after me, catching me by the shoulder from behind.

"Listen to me. Take my advice and keep out of this--Johnnie!" she called my name with a tender drop in her voice.

If it had not been for her tell-tale pronouncement of my name I might have listened to her ... but that made me angry, and it ran through my mind how she and Penton had fatuously arranged my marrying her....

I ran after Hildreth. She slammed the door when I was so close upon her that the wind of its shutting went against my face like a blow.

I found myself on my knees by the door.

"Let me in," I said through the key-hole, for the door was locked; she had thrown the bolt on the inside.

"Go away, Johnnie, I want to be alone."

"Hildreth, dearest woman, do let me in. It hurts my heart to see you so suffer so."

"I don't want to see anybody. I want to die."

"I'll come in the window."

I was at the window madly. I caught it. It was locked. But I pulled it up like a maniac. The lock, rusty, flew off with a zing! The window crashed up. I tumbled in at one leap.

My whole life was saying, "this is your woman, your first and only woman--go where she is and take her to yourself!"

That avalanche of me bursting in without denial, struck little Hildreth Baxter dumb with interest. She had been kneeling by her bed, sobbing. Now she rose and was sitting on it.

"Well?" and she smiled wanly, looking at me with fear and a twinkle of amusement, and intrigued interest, all at one and the same time, on her face--

"I couldn't stand seeing you suffer, Hildreth. I had to come in. And you wouldn't unlock the door ... what has gone wrong?"

"It's Darrie!--"

"But you all three started on your hike like such a happy family, and--"

"For God's sake don't think I'm jealous of Darrie ... I'm only wild about the way she encourages Mubby to talk over his troubles with her--and tell her about him and me, asking _her_ advice ... as if _she_ could give any advice worth while--

"They began to talk and talk about me just as if I were a laboratory specimen....

"Damn this laboratory marriage! damn this laboratory love!

"Penton experiments, and Penton experiments ... on his cat, his dog, himself, me--you, if you'd let him ... everybody! let him marry Humanity if he loves it so much."

"But what did you do?"

"I caught myself running away from them, and sobbing."

"And what did they do?"

"'Hildreth, for God's sake!' Mubby called, 'what's the matter now?' in that bland, exasperating tone of his,--that injured, self-righteous, I'm-sacrificing-myself-for-mankind tone--"

I had to laugh at her exact mimicry....

I stroked her hair....

* * * * *

"I'm glad you came to Eden, John Gregory. You might be a poet, but you have some human sense in you, too....

"Oh, you don't know what I've been through," then, femininely, "poor, poor Mubby, he's been through a lot, too."

Her tears began to flow again. I sat beside her on the bed. I put my arm about her and drew her to me. I kissed her tear-wet mouth. The taste of her ripe sweet mouth with the salt of her tears wet on her lips was very good to me....

In a minute unexpectedly she began returning my kisses ... hungrily ... her eyes closed ... breathing deeply like one in a trance....

* * * * *

"Go up to the house now, Johnnie, my love ... go, so Mubby won't be suspicious of us ... I want to stay here ... leave the blinds drawn as they are....

"You have been so gentle, so sweet."

"Hildreth ... listen to me ... this has been the greatest day in my life, will always be! If I died now, I would go to death, singing....

"You're the most wonderful woman in the world....

"I want you to be mine forever....

"I know what it all means now....

"It's like Niagara, sweetheart ... one hears so much of it ... expects so much ... that it seems disappointing, the first actuality....

"Then afterward, it's more than any dream ever dreamed of what it would be!

"I want to work for you....

"I want to let you walk all over me with your little feet....

"I want you to kill me, sweetheart....

"I want to die for you....

"Hildreth, I love you!

"I'll tell Penton ... I'll tell everybody--'I love Hildreth! I love Hildreth!'"

* * * * *

"Johnnie, my own sweet darling, my own dear, pure-hearted, mad, young poet....

"Don't talk that way....

"Come to me again...."

* * * * *

"Penton must not know. Not yet. You must let _me_ tell him.

"It is my place to tell him, sweetest of men, my darling boy...."

* * * * *

"Go to your tent.

_"He'd see it in your eyes now."_

"No, I won't go to my tent. I'll go right up to the house."

* * * * *

"If he says anything to me I'll kill him.

"I'm a man now.

"I'll fight him or anybody you want me to."

* * * * *

These were the words we said, or left unsaid. I am even yet too confused to remember the exact details of that memorable time.

For I was re-born then, into another life.

Is there anyone who can remember his birth?

I returned to my tent in a blissful daze.

I had not the least feeling of having betrayed a friend.

The only problem that now confronted us was divorce! I would ask Penton to divorce Hildreth, and then Hildreth and I would marry.

But why even that? Was not this the greatest opportunity in the world for Hildreth and me to put to practical test our theories ... proclaim ourselves for Free Love,--as Mary Wollstonecraft and the philosopher Godwin had done, a century or so before us?

* * * * *

The following day Ruth and I ate breakfast together, alone. I had behaved with unusual sedateness, had showed an aplomb I had never before evidenced. Full manhood, belated, had at last come to me.

With more than usual satisfaction I drank my coffee, holding the cup with my hands around it like a child ... warming my fingers, which are nearly always cold in the morning....

Then, while Ruth sat opposite me, eyeing me curiously, I began to sing, half-aloud, to myself.

A silence fell. We exchanged very few words.

And it was our custom, when together, Ruth and I, to hold long discussions concerning the methods and technique of the English poets, especially the earlier ones.

This morning Baxter's secretary rose and left part of her breakfast uneaten, hurrying into the house as if to avoid something which she had seen and dreaded.

* * * * *

I ate a long time, dreaming.

Darrie came out, followed immediately by Daniel. Daniel was in an obstreperous mood ... he cried out that I must be his "telegraph pole," that he would be a lineman, and climb me. I felt an affection for him that I had not known before. I played with him, letting him climb up my leg.

He finished, a-straddle my shoulders. I reached up and sat him still higher, on my head. And he waved his arms and shouted, as if making signals to someone far off.

Darrie laughed.

"Which would you rather have, a son or a daughter?" she asked me.

"I don't know," I replied, letting Daniel slide down, "but I think I'd rather have a daughter ... the next generation will see a great age of freedom for women ... feminism....

"Then it would be a grand thing, too, to have a beautiful daughter to go about with ... and I would be old and silver-haired and benignant-looking ... and people would say, as they saw the two of us:

"'There goes the poet, John Gregory, and his daughter ... isn't she a beautiful girl!'

"And she would be a great actress."

* * * * *

Penton came forth from the big house ... he poised tentatively like a queer bird on the verge of a long flight ... then he wavered rapidly down the steps.

"--slept late!... has the mail come yet?... where's Ruth?"

"Isn't she in the house?" I queried.

"I saw her stepping out at the back door a minute ago" ... said Darrie.

"We had breakfast together ... I...."

"I hope she doesn't stay away long ... I have an article on Blue Laws as a Reactionary Weapon, that I want to dictate for a magazine ...--one of her moods, I suppose!"

I looked the little, large-browed man over almost impersonally. I saw him as from far away. He came out very clear to me.

I found a profound pity for him waking in my heart, together with a sort of contempt.

"And where's Hildreth?"

"Not up yet I presume," replied Darrie.

* * * * *

I excused myself and hurried back to my tent ... where, instead of settling down to work on the third act of my play, I lay prone on my cot, day-dreaming of the future. How beautiful it would be, now that I had at last found my life-mate!

I thanked God that nothing trivial was in my heart to mar the stupendousness of my love, my first real passion for a woman!

* * * * *

"Johnnie!"

I leaped alert. It was Hildreth, at my tent door....

"Get up, you lazy boy ... surely you haven't been sleeping all this time?"

"No, darling."

"I ate my breakfast all alone," she remarked, in an aggrieved tone, "where's Darrie and Mubby and Ruth?"

"God knows! I don't--and I don't care!"

"You needn't be peevish!"

"Peevish?--as long as you are with me I don't care if all the rest of humanity are dead."

I stepped out beside her. We stood locked in a long embrace.

She drew back, with belated thoughtfulness....

"We ought to be more careful ... so near the house."

"I'm so glad you're in the little house near my tent, Hildreth."

"But we can't be together there much ... it's too near the big house."

"What shall we do, then?"

"There's the fields and the woods ... miles of them ... the whole outside world for us."

"I don't see why _we_ shouldn't go strolling together ... the rest are all abroad somewhere, too ... but we must be careful, Johnnie, very careful."

"Careful--why?"

"Because of Mubby."

"But he doesn't love you any more?"

"I'm not so sure about that ... I'm not so sure about anything."

* * * * *

I never saw the world so beautiful as on that day. I was translated to the veritable garden of Eden. The community had been named rightly. I was Adam and Hildreth was my Eve.

And so it went on for two blissful weeks....

If the Voice of God had met us, going abroad beneath the trees, I would not have been surprised.

Hildreth took her volume of Blake with her on our rambles ... and we revelled in his "Songs of Experience" as well as "Songs of Innocence"; and we were moved deeply by the huge, cloudy grandeur of his prophetic books....

Why could it not go on forever thus? eternal summer, everlasting love in its first rosy flush?...