Part 5

I think my own answer surprised me. “Bodies sometimes sin when souls are clean,” I said. “It could have been a passing sin of the body that did not touch the spirit, which is still true to you. If the spirit sinned he would not want to come back—he would not be sorry. Oh, child, don’t you see?”

“I never—did see—it like—that.” The girl’s words trailed like broken winged birds, her face paled.

We were under the shed in Washington and a solitary passenger, travelling bag in hand, was coming down the aisle of our coach. At sight of her, for he did not know me, his face whitened, too. In one great throb of my heart I took in the situation. I knew that he was her husband, and that he loved her. I saw it in the flash of his face at sight of her—a blind man given back his sight might look out on his restored world with a look like that.

In a lightning-like flash of time I had leaped to my feet, pushed him into the seat where I had been, and, without in the least knowing what I was saying, I heard myself say: “You foolish children. Go back to the little grave and put the two urns for flowers together. Then start life all over again.”

I left them staring into each other’s eyes in a sort of mesmerized trance, and went into the next coach. When my eyes cleared of tears I saw that the bright sunlight world beyond the car window was filled with yellow butterflies. In their circling they made a great golden wedding ring. The sweet prophecy seemed mine—not belonging to the people I had left back in the other coach. At lunch they asked me to come to their table, but I smilingly refused. When two people have just been caught up in a golden chariot and given passage direct to Paradise there is no room in the vehicle for outsiders.

I could not grind under the river and get out in the heart of the city, as the advertisements say. I had to see the skyline from the Jersey side. How wonderful it is as it glitters in the soft spring light—a proud wonder city that rests on great, tossing waters. And there lie the docks. I can read the names of the different lines on the dark little houses. And far down the stretch of moving water I see a gallant little tug assisting a great vessel out to sea. A sort of trembling seized me. Like a vision that fades, all thought of the life that lay behind me—John, mammy, the little mountain village—slipped away. As the boat drifts near and nearer to that white wonder city I want to fling the people huddled on the seats, apathetic as sheep, into the water. I want to cry aloud, “City, city, I am coming!” But they wake up at the dock. How alive they are! I am alive, too. I am over the mountain wall. At last I am part of the big, alive, throbbing world.

_April 16th._ 12 P. M.

Late yesterday afternoon when I ran up the steps of 30 West Twentieth Street and the door opened and closed on me, my one sensation was relief. I had taken a cab at the ferry and I had marvelled at the dexterity with which the cabby turned and twisted through the dingy streets. Safe, not kidnapped, money still in my bag, the wonderful adventure of getting to my destination without adventure accomplished, I stepped from that cab. The cabby took my trunk from the top of his hansom, banged it on the sidewalk, accepted the dollar we had agreed upon, and waited. I waited, too, politely. Suddenly he turned very red and climbed to his perch, swearing roundly.

As I followed Miss Jackson up the stairs to the third floor I asked her why he did that. She answered vaguely that they were rude.

I came to Miss Jackson’s because her mother and my mother knew each other, and because it is eminently respectable. As we climbed the dark stairs my elation dropped from me. The hall needs the winds of heaven to blow through it. Coming back to dinner, I fairly groped through the dimness. But the dining-room was bright and cheerful. All the people seemed young. They were very gay. At dinner the whole talk was of the theatre. As I have not been to a play since I was eighteen, I sat stupidly quiet. Everybody went out after dinner—most of them to the theatre. Miss Jackson went, too. Up in my room I leaned from the window and tried to realize the wonderfulness of being in New York. Below me the street was dark, but far away across the housetops I saw a glow that I took to be the lights of Broadway. After a long time I stole down the dim, depressing stairs. I opened the door, let in the sweet, cool April air. I don’t know how long I stood there looking out at the dark, deserted street. I thought of it as a siren of the sea, calling, luring to it the youth of our wide, free land. My mind went to my little room up two dark flights of stairs. I was paying ten dollars a week for a room just about the size of the rug in front of my fireplace at home. What was the size of the working girl’s room who paid five dollars a week? How many flights of dark stairs did she have to climb? I seemed to feel the city—the city that I have not yet seen. I seemed to feel its immensity—stretching away, street after street, in overpowering sameness the length of the island. I thought of the overcrowded East Side and the foreigners herded like cattle, overflowing into the streets, and then I thought of Bobby—or had I been thinking of him through all my thoughts?—jostling in the crowded streets, loitering, listening, feeling the beat of the city’s great heart.

When I closed the door and came down the hall I saw the telephone in spite of the dimness. Almost before I knew it I had found the number I sought, my hand was on the receiver. But I did not take it down. The memory of a bright-eyed little lady bird who waited for her lover to come to her restrained me. I must be as wise as she.

I ran up to my room. A fog had crept in from the sea. The river must be near. The calls of whistles and horns came shrill and often. They seemed to give anxious warning. The city _is_ a siren. It wrapped itself closer in this white fog sheet of mystery and it called to me. Hastily I donned coat and hat, ran down the stairs and out on the street. I did not hesitate—to hesitate was to go back. In front of me, not far away, another street opened. I reached it, stood still for a moment; a wraithlike little figure hurried past. “What street is this?” I asked. Wraithlike he sped on without a reply. I hurried after him, caught him by the arm. “What street is this?” I insisted. “And which is up and which down?”

“Whut’s de matter wid y’nut?”

Humbly, I told him that I was a stranger; that I lived near and had just walked out for a little glimpse of the city. He told me to keep straight ahead until I came to Twenty-third Street, and stand there a while till the hayseeds fell off me. I gave him a dime. He graciously allowed me to accompany him. The city street widens beautifully at Twenty-third. It had seemed like one of our narrow mountain gulches. I gave my little lad another dime. I wanted to be told so much. The open space, vague in the fog, is Madison Square; the street that rolled away into the gloom, the Avenue, and the white, white foggy flare of light, Broadway.

Some weight of the city’s loneliness fell on me as I retraced my steps alone. The fog seemed denser—it might have been because the light lay behind. A few blocks down, as I turned into my own street, my own audacious thoughts brought me to a standstill. If I kept straight on I would come to Washington Square. An old schoolmate lived there.

I had no difficulty in recognizing the Arch, the cross on the church, the light that burns always. I found the number. I would have thought I had made a mistake, but I have written it so often. I went up the bare, worn steps, rang a jangly bell. A slatternly woman came to the door. Back of her I could see a dingy hall lighted by a blinking gas jet. She called my friend loudly. There was no reply. She said her work was heavier in the spring, that she was often very late.

I had pictured my artist friend in her studio home surrounded with comfort. “Hasn’t she a studio?” I stammered. The woman laughed loudly. “Her room, third floor back, ain’t no bigger ’n yo’ hand. She paints an’ sews an’ cooks, eats an’ lives an’ sleeps there, ’cept when she got jobs out.”

I turned and fled. I was trembling so I could hardly stand. Such a fragile, lovely creature—my friend back in my school-girl days. A joyous young creature, fashioned for joy. I did not want to see her; I knew instinctively that she did not want to see me.

On the street again, out of the foggy darkness, a shadow lurched toward me. I shrank against the building I was passing. It bent and looked into my face, laughed drunkenly, and passed on. I tried to move. My limbs had taken root. As I stood there flattened against that wall I heard cautious, descending footsteps, whispering voices. Some people were coming down nearby steps, and I was glad. I would follow close behind them. After what was to me a very long time, as they did not pass, I went in the direction of their voices, until I stumbled over a dark mass that lay in my path. Something told me. The slow, cautious steps, the whispering voices—I dropped to my knees on the pavement. The face I lifted and looked into was a young girl’s. She was unconscious. I sprang up. There was movement in my limbs now. I ran, breathless, into a man. I caught him by the arm, pleading with him to hurry; I dragged him to the girl on the pavement. I gasped out all I knew.

He took a flashlight from somewhere about him, knelt, looked at the girl, and I—I looked at the pool of blood widening on the pavement. I had not seen it before. She was dying. I dropped down by her, too. “Oh, poor little girl,” I cried, “why did you come to this city of Gomorrha? Why didn’t you stay at home?”

“See here”—the light flashed full in my own face, the low, cold voice bit into my spirit as a bullet of steel might have burrowed in my flesh—“how do I know that what you’ve told me is on the level?”

Stupidly I stared at him. Whose face was this—as familiar as my own viewed in the looking-glass?

The eyes looking into mine were suddenly confused, the apology he gave murmured. He stared as though I bewildered him. He pushed his hat back. I hadn’t recognized Bobby Haralson, but I knew that lock of hair on his brow. Had I not once watched a flame devour it? Head and heart awhirl, I smiled at him. “Mr. Haralson,” I said, and I laughed outright. “I am on the level.”

There was the sound of approaching footsteps. He flashed the light out. “So you know me?” he said.

“Who does not?” I answered. “But you do not know me, honest, now.”

“I do—and I don’t,” he said.

Not far away a figure loomed; it brought us back to the poor little girl that lay there so quietly between us.

“You must get away, quickly. Officer!” he called. His voice has a carrying quality if it is so low, for soon an answering hail came through the fog.

“Will you go? Go!” he commanded. “I’ll see this through.”

“I can’t,” I said, and I suddenly knew that I spoke out of a vast content. “I’m lost. It’s no use to tell me west. I don’t know west.”

“West what?” Again his words bit into me like they were steel.

“Twenty.” The officer was only a few steps away and Bobby fairly forced it from me.

“The Arch, the Avenue, Twentieth Street, then to your left.”

Obediently, I did it all. I am safe at Miss Jackson’s. But, oh, will I ever sleep again? When I close my eyes I see the girl’s fair little face, that widening pool of blood; and then I see Bobby’s eyes—the puzzled stir of memory in them.

_April 17th._

I fell asleep at daylight this morning. When I waked the breeze was tossing the curtains, the sun shining, there was a sense of joyousness in the morning. I shopped with an agent—I could not have shopped without one. We lunched at a cunning tearoom just off the Avenue. I ordered just about what mammy would have for a guest of ours: soup, broiled chicken, two vegetables, a salad, a sweet, and coffee. I nearly fainted when I saw my bill. And then the tip! I would not have given it, but I saw it offered at a nearby table. I was confused to give it, but the pretty, refined looking girl did not seem to mind accepting it.

This afternoon, by appointment, I met Mr. Elliott. Mr. Elliott is a member of the firm. He is young, tall, slender. Somehow I thought all publishers were middle-aged, stocky as to build, and with close-cut white moustaches.

Mr. Elliott asked me if I had ever dined at Mouquin’s. His face was a compliment when I told him that like a little mountain boy of my acquaintance I had never “ben nowhar nur seen nothin’.” I _do like_ Mr. Elliott. My heart is almost leaping out of me! I drove straight to Mrs. Christopher again. She told me all the literary people go to Mouquin’s. If Bobby should be there to-night! If we should meet!

_One_ A. M.

Out of gratitude to Mrs. Christopher I must acknowledge that the girl who looked back at me from the mirror to-night was a stranger to me. Mr. Elliott did not know her, either. As I came down the boarding-house stairs—the parlours at present are occupied by people from the South and the stuffy hall is the only reception-room—I flushed under his gaze. It is most bewildering to emerge from a Marsville spinster to a New York belle.

Mouquin’s. A confused memory of a flight of steps, a clutter of tables, a sea of faces.

“Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you like your oysters? It is a trifle late for them.”

We were seated. I knew that. It was Mr. Elliott’s voice. I knew that, too. I was glad, although he seemed so far away, that I had not lost him. The plate that was rising, falling, lurchingly, drunkenly, held oysters——

“Drink your cocktail.” Out of the blur of things he pushed it toward me. Obediently I drank it. I saw that the oysters numbered six, that their shells were as pink and polished as a lady’s finger-nails. Obediently I ate them—the oysters, not the shells.

“What makes you so quiet to-night? But maybe you aren’t having a good time?”

With the help of the wine that sparkled and bubbled at my right hand, blessed little helper in time of need, I did not have to give account of my appetite again; I was making quite respectable headway with my chicken. Feverishly I assured Mr. Elliott that I was having the loveliest time but one I’d ever had in my life.

Mr. Elliott beamed. “Will you tell me about that time?” he asked.

But women have their little reserves. The lovely time to which I had reference was a mountain storm I once survived, on Craggy, six thousand feet above sea level, separated from my party, having followed a cattle path by mistake, and—_alone_. This time was just as lovely as that. Then, after a terrified scurrying here and there, I had gone back to the mountain top to wait. Out of what had seemed an innocent sky an electric storm broke. Lashing his steeds with whips of fire, Apollo drove them across the boiling heavens. At each ear-crashing report of thunder the earth threatened to crumble, hurling me down through bottomless space. With the sharp hissings of snakes the lightning fell about me. Rain-drenched, storm-torn, but too terrified to brave the electric fires darting across the mountain’s top to what seemed safety under the big rock where a flock of frightened sheep huddled, I took the storm in the open. When it had rolled away the sheep no longer huddled—I was indeed alone—they lay still.

“Does it meet your approval?” Mr. Elliott put the direct question to me, and somehow I knew it had been asked before. I looked down at my plate helplessly—we had reached the salad course—I tried to rouse my laggard brain. Approval of what, and what was approval?

“It gets my goat!” The words came from my lips. My ears heard them. And the fright of the foolish words cleared my brain.

“What!” There was astonishment, there was amusement, there was also a puzzled intentness in the eyes that looked into mine, and I stammered that the girl who sat at the next table—the girl who looked so cultured and smartly got up—had just said it, and that it was new to me, but it sounded like an idiom of the street.

With that careless, satiated New York glance Mr. Elliott’s eyes swept the girl. “Beef to the heel,” he said heartlessly.

“Beef to the heel!” That puzzled me, too.

We had drained our coffee cups when two people who sat at a table behind us passed—a man and a woman—Bobby Haralson and Dicky. I recognized Bobby as I came in; the lovely droop of Dicky’s back is not unfamiliar to me, either.

“That’s Bob Haralson—you’ve heard of him—one of our biggest men, and his biggest work is still in him. He’s the nicest, most lovable, queerest fellow you ever did see. He has hosts of friends, but mostly, he lives to himself. He’d give his last dollar to a friend and go hungry himself; and once I knew him to refuse to be introduced to a rich fellow of power in the literary world because that man belonged soul and body to a corporation—had been bought. That’s Bob Haralson! I often see him here, but I never saw him here with a woman before. Come to think of it, I never saw him anywhere before with a woman—not much in his line, women. But they seemed to be having a corking time. I never saw him so animated. That little witch—pretty, wasn’t she?—has got him going. I’d have asked him over to be introduced had he been alone.”

As we left the restaurant Mr. Elliott asked me to go with him to a little theatre where the one-act plays were all thrills. I couldn’t tell him that if I had any more thrills he’d probably have to call an ambulance and send me to a hospital; I couldn’t explain that as far as I was concerned the play was done, curtain down, and lights out.

We went. We sat in darkness. The darkness was a great relief. Mr. Elliott could not see me. I sat there with tightly shut eyes until, at a stir among the people about me, I heard some one say a man had fainted. “It gets my goat!” I murmured. Fortunately there was quite a little stir about us and Mr. Elliott did not hear me.

_April 18th._

Some hours ago, when I left New York, having decided to run up to Plymouth and finish up the work on the book by the sea, Mr. Elliott put me in the coach, having showered me with books, flowers, and magazines. I opened the flowers in the cab, and I stared at them and at him.

“Don’t you like them?”

Did I like orchids and lilies of the valley? Bobby’s Christmas gift to me? I pulled up. I wasn’t going to be beef to the heel. I joined the New York procession—and I think I made good.

There’s a little slit of a mirror in the coach, right here by my chair, and I take a peep at myself. Blessings on Mrs. Christopher, I don’t look like a spinster, and from Marsville. And then—then I bury my face in nice Mr. Elliott’s flowers, drinking in their perfume, and splashing them with some very big and salty tears.

_April 25th._

I have spent the morning in Plymouth’s quaint old graveyard—such a soft, sunny, springlike morning. I have looked at the dim old slabs that bear testimony to the virtue of departed wives. I am sitting on the grave of a virtuous wife now, looking past the stones, past the big rock the nimble Pilgrims leaped on when they landed on free soil, far out to where sea and sky meet. Had I been a Puritan maid I would have said to my lover when we climbed to this hill soft days like this and looked to sea: “Dear boy, with my heart I give you all that women who are like me give to one man—the thoughts I have kept for you, the lips I have kept for you. If you had a great searchlight and should throw it back over the road of my life there’s not a single little bend that it would shame me for your eyes to see; but when I’m dead, don’t put my virtue on a tombstone.”

_April 26th._

This has been a heavenly day. Mr. Elliott came to Boston on business and ran down to Duxbury to see some friends of his, and all of them motored over to Plymouth and got me. I lunched at the loveliest home in Duxbury. The sea was almost in the back porch. Mr. Elliott came back in the machine with me and took the train for Boston. When he left he held my hands in a mighty close friendly clasp, and he said—never mind what he said. It is lovely of Mr. Elliott to be so good to me, and it’s comforting down to my toes. For some idiotic reason I want to cry again. I won’t cry! And I won’t sit here. (I have climbed to the old graveyard, and seated myself on the slab of a virtuous spouse.) I need all my nerve force. It must sparkle in the changes I’ve got to put in my book. And I know why I’m nervous, and I know why I want to cry. It’s always satisfactory when you can chase an emotion to its lair——I was taken to the graveyard when I was very little—mammy used to take me with her when she went to put flowers on my great-aunt’s grave, the lady whose false teeth fell into mammy’s care; and she (mammy) was always so solemn on these occasions—it was before the day of Christian Science—there was death then, and hell, and a devil. I feel quite cheerful since I have analyzed the teary feeling.

_April 26th._ _Night._

A letter from Dicky forwarded to New York and on here. It lilts like the song of the happy little wren that was singing in the big cedar tree at the garden gate the day I left home.

“Oh, Caroline,” Dicky says, “I want to go out under the stars to-night at home and bury my face in the pansies that always riot in your April garden. With their soft little faces close, close to mine, I want to tell them a secret. I want to tell it to you, too, Caroline. But not yet—not yet.”

I go out under the stars, through the quiet streets, and down to the quiet sea. The night is poignantly sweet and beautiful. Dicky, little sister, child of my love, keep your secret. I could not bear to hear it yet—not yet.

_April 27th._

A telegram from Bobby. He wants to come to Plymouth. He has something to tell me. It is Bobby’s chivalry that makes him feel he should go through the form of asking me for Dicky. I have wired no. There’s a little kodak of him that I cut from a magazine and put in my little silver frame. I can reach out my hand and touch it here where I sit, and, vaguely, it comforts me.

I have faced it. I love Bobby. To love—it is to give. Bobby’s wife must give. The hands that take into their keeping that precious thing—his genius—what tender, comprehending hands they must be. There’ll be times, lots of ’em, when Bobby’s wife will have to do all the loving for two. There’ll be times when he will thrust her out, and if she sits whimpering on the doorstep that it’s cold out there, heaven help her—how he’ll hate her. There’ll be times when the work presses, when he’s distrait—knows she’s there just as he knows the house furnishings are there, bed near centre of room, bureau against west wall, light above——If she gets frightened at the wilted leaves and jerks his love for her out of his body to look at the roots too often, then heaven help you, Robert Haralson.

Bobby, Bobby, I’d know at a glance—without a glance. When you opened the door I’d _feel_, Bobby. Sometimes her tired-out man child quivering with his day’s toil asks mother love of his wife. She’s got to be counsellor, comforter, friend—comrade with whom to forget life’s cares. Out of all the world she’s got to be the one woman that is his _need_. I am your _need_! If disaster stripped you of all that the world has showered on you, if it reduced you to the hurdy-gurdy man who grinds his organ under your window—Bobby, Bobby, would Dicky _love_ the gathering of the pennies?

_April 28th. Morning._

Bobby wires again: “What are you up to, Caroline, that you didn’t let me know you were here, that Dicky didn’t know; that Elliott wasn’t told it was Dicky with me; that you were so naughty in the Square the other night as to laugh at my confusion? Little girl with eyes like moonflowers, all right for youse. And mum’s the word.”