An American Idyll Part 10

"You."

"Well, then, you know perfectly well you are to do anything in this world you want to do." With a chuckle he would add, "Think of it--not a look-in in my own home!"

Seattle, as I look back on it, meant the unexpected--in every way. Our little sprees together were not the planned-out ones of former years.

From the day Carl left Castle Crags, his time was never his own; we could never count on anything from one day to the next--a strike here, an arbitration there, government orders for this, some investigation needed for that. It was hara.s.sing, it was wearying. But always every few days there would be that telephone ring which I grew both to dread and to love. For as often as it said, "I've got to go to Tacoma," it also said, "You Girl, put on your hat and coat this minute and come down town while I have a few minutes off--we'll have supper together anyhow."

And the feeling of the courting days never left us--that almost sharp joy of being together again when we just locked arms for a block and said almost nothing--nothing to repeat. And the good-bye that always meant a wrench, always, though it might mean being together within a few hours. And always the waving from the one on the back of the car to the one standing on the corner. Nothing, nothing, ever got tame. After ten years, if Carl ever found himself a little early to catch the train for Tacoma, say, though he had said good-bye but a half an hour before and was to be back that evening, he would find a telephone-booth and ring up to say, perhaps, that he was glad he had married me! Mrs. Willard once said that after hearing Carl or me talk to the other over the telephone, it made other husbands and wives when they telephoned sound as if they must be contemplating divorce. But telephoning was an event: it was a little extra present from Providence, as it were.

And I think of two times when we met accidentally on the street in Seattle--it seemed something we could hardly believe: all the world--the war, commerce, industry--stopped while we tried to realize what had happened.

Then, every night that he had to be out,--and he had to be out night after night in Seattle,--I would hear his footstep coming down the street; it would wake me, though he wore rubber heels. He would fix the catch on the front-door lock, then come upstairs, calling out softly, "You awake?" He always knew I was. Then, sitting on the edge of the bed, he would tell all the happenings since I had seen him last. Once in a while he'd sigh and say, "A little ranch up on the Clearwater would go pretty well about now, wouldn't it, my girl?" And I would sigh, and say, "Oh dear, wouldn't it?"

I remember once, when we were first married, he got home one afternoon before I did. When I opened the door to our little Seattle apartment, there he was, walking the floor, looking as if the bottom had dropped out of the universe. "I've had the most awful twenty minutes," he informed me, "simply terrible. Promise me absolutely that never, never will you let me get home before you do. To expect to find you home and then open the door into empty rooms--oh, I never lived through such a twenty minutes!" We had a lark's whistle that we had used since before our engaged days. Carl would whistle it under my window at the Theta house in college, and I would run down and out the side door, to the utter disgust of my well-bred "sisters," who arranged to make cutting remarks at the table about it in the hope that I would reform my "servant-girl tactics." That whistle was whistled through those early Seattle days, through Oakland, through Cambridge, Leipzig, Berlin, Heidelberg, Munich, Swanage, Berkeley, Alamo in the country, Berkeley again (he would start it way down the hill so I could surely hear), Castle Crags, and Seattle. Wherever any of us were in the house, it meant a dash for all to the front door--to welcome the Dad home.

One evening I was scanning some article on marriage by the fire in Seattle--it was one of those rare times that Carl too was at home and going over lectures for the next day. It held that, to be successful, marriage had to be an adjustment--a giving in here by the man, there by the woman.

I said to Carl: "If that is true, you must have been doing all the adjusting; I never have had to give up, or fit in, or relinquish one little thing, so you've been doing it all."

He thought for a moment, then answered: "You know, I've heard that too, and wondered about it. For I know I've given up nothing, made no 'adjustments.' On the contrary, I seem always to have been getting more than a human being had any right to count on."

It was that way, even to the merest details, such as both liking identically the same things to eat, seasoned the identical way. We both liked to do the identical things, without a single exception. Perhaps one exception--he had a fondness in his heart for firearms that I could not share. (The gleam in his eyes when he got out his collection every so often to clean and oil it!) I liked guns, provided I did not have to shoot at anything alive with them; but pistols I just plain did not like at all. We rarely could pa.s.s one of these shooting-galleries without trying our luck at five cents for so many turns--at clay pigeons or rabbits whirling around on whatnots; but that was as wild as I ever wanted to get with a gun.

We liked the same friends without exception, the same books, the same pictures, the same music. He wrote once: "We (the two of us) love each other, like to do things together (absolutely anything), don't need or want anybody else, and the world is ours." Mrs. Willard once told me that if she had read about our life together in a book, she would not have believed it. She did not know that any one on earth could live like that. Perhaps that is one reason why I want to tell about it--because it was just so plain wonderful day in, day out. I feel, too, that I have a complete record of our life. For fourteen years, every day that we were not together we wrote to each other, with the exception of two short camping-trips that Carl made, where mail could be sent out only by chance returning campers.

Somehow I find myself thinking here of our wedding anniversaries,--spread over half the globe,--and the joy we got out of just those ten occasions. The first one was back in Oakland, after our return from Seattle. We still had elements of convention left in us then,--or, rather, I still had some; I don't believe Carl had a streak of it in him ever,--so we dressed in our very best clothes, dress-suit and all, and had dinner at the Key Route Inn, where we had gone after the wedding a year before. After dinner we rushed home, I nursed the son, we changed into natural clothes, and went to the circus. I had misgivings about the circus being a fitting wedding-anniversary celebration; but what was one to do when the circus comes to town but one night in the year?

The second anniversary was in Cambridge. We always used to laugh each year and say: "Gracious! if any one had told us a year ago we'd be here this September seventh!" Every year we were somewhere we never dreamed we would be. That first September seventh, the night of the wedding, we were to be in Seattle for years--selling bonds. What a fearful prospect in retrospect, compared to what we really did! The second September, back in Oakland, we thought we were to be in the bond business for years in Oakland. More horrible thoughts as I look back upon it. The third September seventh, the second anniversary, lo and behold, was in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts! Whoever would have guessed it, in all the world? It was three days after Carl's return from that awful Freiburg summer--we left Nandy with a kind-hearted neighbor, and away we spreed to Boston, to the matinee and something good to eat.

Then, whoever would have imagined for a moment that the next year we would be celebrating in Berlin--dinner at the Cafe Rheingold, with wine!

The fourth anniversary was at Heidelberg--one of the red-letter days, as I look back upon those magic years. We left home early, with our lunch, which we ate on a bed of dry leaves in a fairy birch forest back--and a good ways up--in the Odenwald. Then we walked and walked--almost twenty-five miles all told--through little forest hamlets, stopping now and then at some small inn along the roadside for a cheese sandwich or a gla.s.s of beer. By nightfall we reached Neckarsteinach and the railroad, and prowled around the twisted narrow streets till train-time, gazing often at our beloved Dilsberg crowning the hilltop across the river, her ancient castle tower and town walls showing black against the starlight. The happiness, the foreign untouristed wonder of that day!

Our fifth anniversary was another red-letter day--one of the days that always made me feel, in looking back on it, that we must have been people in a novel, an English novel; that it could not really have been Carl and I who walked that perfect Sat.u.r.day from Swanage to Studland.

But it was our own two joyous souls who explored that quaint English thatched-roof, moss-covered corner of creation; who poked about the wee old mouldy church and cemetery; who had tea and m.u.f.fins and jam out under an old gnarled apple tree behind a thatched-roof cottage. What a wonder of a day it was! And indeed it was my Carl and I who walked the few miles home toward sunset, swinging hands along the downs, and fairly speechless with the glory of five years married and England and our love. I should like to be thinking of that day just before I die. It was so utterly perfect, and so ours.

Our sixth anniversary was another, yes, yet another red-letter memory--one of those times that the world seemed to have been leading up to since it first cooled down. We left our robust sons in the care of our beloved aunt, Elsie Turner,--this was back in Berkeley,--and one Sat.u.r.day we fared forth, plus sleeping-bags, frying-pan, fis.h.i.+ng-rod, and a rifle. We rode to the end of the Ocean Sh.o.r.e Line--but first got off the train at Half Moon Bay, bought half a dozen eggs from a lonely-looking female, made for the beach, and fried said eggs for supper. Then we got back on another train, and stepped off at the end of the line, in utter darkness. We decided that somewhere we should find a suitable wooded nook where we could sequester ourselves for the night.

We stumbled along until we could not see another inch in front of us for the dark and the thick fog; so made camp--which meant spreading out two bags--in what looked like as auspicious a spot as was findable. When we opened our eyes to the morning sunlight, we discovered we were on a perfectly barren open ploughed piece of land, and had slept so near the road that if a machine pa.s.sing along in the night had skidded out a bit to the side, it would have removed our feet.

That day, Sunday, was our anniversary, and the Lord was with us early and late, though not obtrusively. We got a farmer out of bed to buy some eggs for our breakfast. He wanted to know what we were doing out so early, anyhow. We told him, celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary.

Whereat he positively refused to take a cent for the eggs--wedding present, he said. Around noon we pa.s.sed a hunter, who stopped to chat, and ended by presenting us with a cotton-tail rabbit to cook for dinner.

And such a dinner!--by a bit of a stream up in the hills. That afternoon, late, we stumbled on a deserted farmhouse almost at the summit--trees laden with apples and the ground red with them, pears and a few peaches for the picking, and a spring of ice-cold water with one lost fat trout in it that I tried for hours to catch by fair means or foul; but he merely waved his tail slowly, as if to say, "One wedding present you don't get!" We slept that night on some hay left in an old barn--lots of mice and gnawy things about; but I could not get nearly as angry at a gnawy mouse as at a fat conceited trout who refused to be caught.

Next day was a holiday, so we kept on our way rejoicing, and slept that night under great redwoods, beside a stream where trout had better manners. After a fish breakfast we potted a tin can full of holes with the rifle, and then bore down circuitously and regretfully on Redwood City and the Southern Pacific Railway, and home and college and dishes to wash and socks to darn--but uproarious and joyful sons to compensate.

The seventh anniversary was less exciting, but that could not be helped.

We were over in Alamo, with my father, small brother, and sister visiting us at the time--or rather, of course, the place was theirs to begin with. There was no one to leave the blessed sons with; also, Carl was working for the Immigration and Housing Commission, and no holidays.

But he managed to get home a bit early; we had an early supper, got the sons in bed, hitched up the old horse to the old cart, and off we fared in the moonlight, married seven years and not sorry. We just poked about, ending at Danville with Danville ice-cream and Danville pumpkin pie; then walked the horse all the way back to Alamo and home.

Our eighth anniversary, as mentioned, was in our very own home in Berkeley, with the curtains drawn, the telephone plugged, and our Europe spread out before our eyes.

The ninth anniversary was still too soon after the June-Bug's arrival for me to get off the hill and back, up our two hundred and seventeen steps home, so we celebrated under our own roof again--this time with a roast chicken and ice-cream dinner, and with the entire family partic.i.p.ating--except the June-Bug, who did almost nothing then but sleep. I tell you, if ever we had chicken, the bones were not worth salvaging by the time we got through. We made it last at least two meals, and a starving torn cat would pa.s.s by what was left with a scornful sniff.

Our tenth and last anniversary was in Seattle. Carl had to be at Camp Lewis all day, but he got back in time to meet me at six-thirty in the lobby of the Hotel Was.h.i.+ngton. From there we went to our own favorite place--Blanc's--for dinner. Shut away behind a green lattice arbor-effect, we celebrated ten years of joy and riches and deep contentment, and as usual asked ourselves, "What in the world shall we be doing a year from now? Where in the world shall we be?" And as usual we answered, "Bring the future what it may, we have _ten years_ that no power in heaven or earth can rob us of!"

There was another occasion in our lives that I want to put down in black and white, though it does not come under wedding anniversaries. But it was such a celebration! "Uncle Max" 'lowed that before we left Berkeley we must go off on a spree with him, and suggested--imagine!--Del Monte! The twelve-and-a-half-cent Parkers at Del Monte! That was one spot we had never seen ourselves even riding by.

We got our beloved Nurse Balch out to stay with the young, and when a brand-new green Pierce Arrow, about the size of our whole living-room, honked without, we were ready, bag and baggage, for a spree such as we had never imagined ourselves having in this world or the next. We called for the daughter of the head of the Philosophy Department. Max had said to bring a friend along to make four; so, four, we whisked the dust of Berkeley from our wheels and--presto--Del Monte!

Parents of three children, who do most of their own work besides, do not need to be told in detail what those four days meant. Parents of three children know what the hours of, say, seven to nine mean, at home; nor does work stop at nine. It is one mad whirl to get the family ears washed and teeth cleaned, and "Chew your mus.h.!.+" and "Wipe your mouth!"

and "Where's your speller?" and "Jim, come back here and put on your rubbers!" ("Where are my rubbers?" Ach Gott! where?) Try six times to get the butcher--line busy. Breakfast dishes to clear up; baby to bathe, dress, feed. Count the laundry. Forget all about the butcher until fifteen minutes before dinner. Laundry calls. Telephone rings seven times. Neighbor calls to borrow an egg. Telephone the milkman for a pound of b.u.t.ter. Make the beds,--telephone rings in the middle,--two beds do not get made till three. Start lunch. Wash the baby's clothes.

Telephone rings three times while you are in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Rice burns.

Door-bell--gas and electric bill. Telephone rings. Patch boys' overalls.

Water-bill. Stir the pudding. Telephone rings. Try to read at least the table of contents of the "New Republic." Neighbor calls to return some flour. Stir the pudding again. Mad stamping up the front steps. Sons home. Forget to sc.r.a.pe their feet. Forget to take off their rubbers.

Dad's whistle. Hurray! Lunch.--Let's stop about here, and return to Del Monte.

This is where music would help. The Home _motif_ would be--I do not know those musical terms, but a lot of jumpy notes up and down the piano, fast and never catching up. Del Monte _motif_ slow, lazy melody--ending with dance-music for night-time. In plain English, what Del Monte meant was a care-free, absolutely care-free, jaunt into another world. It was not our world,--we could have been happy forever did we never lay eyes on Del Monte,--and yet, oh, it was such fun! Think of lazing in bed till eight or eight-thirty, then taking a leisurely bath, then dressing and deliberately using up time doing it--put one shoe on and look at it a spell; then, when you are good and ready, put on the next. Just feeling sort of s.p.u.n.ky about it--just wanting to show some one that time is nothing to you--what's the hurry?

Then--oh, what _motif_ in music could do a Del Monte breakfast justice?

Just yesterday you were gulping down a bite, in between getting the family fed and off. Here you were, holding hands under the table to make sure you were not dreaming, while you took minutes and minutes to eat fruit and mush and eggs and coffee and waffles, and groaned to think there was still so much on the menu that would cost you nothing to keep on consuming, but where, oh, where, put it? After rocking a spell in the sun on the front porch, the green Pierce Arrow appears, and all honk off for the day--four boxes of picnic lunch stowed away by a gracious waiter; not a piece of bread for it did you have to spread yourself.

Basking in the sun under cypress trees, talking over every subject under heaven; back in time for a swim, a rest before dinner; then dinner (why, oh, why has the human such biological limitations?). Then a concert, then dancing, then--crowning glory of an unlimited bank-account--Napa soda lemonade--and bed. Oh, what a four days!

In thinking over the intimate things of our life together, I have difficulty in deciding what the finest features of it were. There was so much that made it rich, so much to make me realize I was blessed beyond any one else, that I am indebted to the world forever for the color that living with Carl Parker gave to existence. Perhaps one of the most helpful memories to me now is the thought of his absolute faith in me.

From the time we were first in love, it meant a new zest in life to know that Carl firmly believed there was nothing I could not do. For all that I hold no orthodox belief in immortality, I could no more get away from the idea that, if I fail in anything now--why I _can't_ fail--think of Carl's faith in me! About four days before he died, he looked up at me once as I was arranging his pillow and said, so seriously, "You know, there isn't a university in the country that wouldn't give you your Ph.D. without your taking an examination for it." He was delirious, it is true; but nevertheless it expressed, though indeed in a very exaggerated form, the way he had of thinking I was somebody! I knew there was no one in the world like him, but I had sound reasons for that. Oh, but it is wonderful to live with some one who thinks you are wonderful! It does not make you conceited, not a bit, but it makes a happy singing feeling in your heart to feel that the one you love best in the world is proud of you. And there is always the incentive of vowing that some day you will justify it all.

The fun of dressing for a party in a hand-me-down dress from some relative, knowing that the one you want most to please will honestly believe; and say on the way home, that you were the best-looking one at the party! The fun of cooking for a man who thinks every dish set before him is the best food he _ever_ ate--and not only say it, but act that way. ("That was just a sample. Give me a real dish of it, now that I know it's the best pudding I ever tasted!")

CHAPTER XVI

As soon as the I.W.W. article was done, Carl had to begin on his paper to be read before the Economic a.s.sociation, just after Christmas, in Philadelphia. That was fun working over. "Come up here and let me read you this!" And we'd go over that much of the paper together. Then more reading to Miss Van Doren, more correctings, finally finis.h.i.+ng it just the day before he had to leave. But that was partly because he had to leave earlier than expected. The Government had telegraphed him to go on to Was.h.i.+ngton, to mediate a threatened longsh.o.r.emen's strike. Carl worked harder over the longsh.o.r.emen than over any other single labor difficulty, not excepting the eight-hour day in lumber. Here again I do not feel free to go into details. The matter was finally, at Carl's suggestion, taken to Was.h.i.+ngton.

The longsh.o.r.emen interested Carl for the same reason that the migratory and the I.W.W. interested him; in fact, there were many I.W.W. among them. It was the lower stratum of the labor-world--hard physical labor, irregular work, and, on the whole, undignified treatment by the men set over them. And they reacted as Carl expected men in such a position to react. Yet, on the side of the workers, he felt that in this particular instance it was a case of men being led by stubborn egotistical union delegates not really representing the wishes of the rank and file of union members, their main idea being to compromise on nothing. On the other hand, be it said that he considered the employers he had to deal with here the fairest, most open-minded, most anxious to compromise in the name of justice, of all the groups of employers he ever had to deal with. The whole affair was nerve-racking, as is best ill.u.s.trated by the fact that, while Carl was able to hold the peace as long as he was on the job, three days after his death the situation "blew up."

On his way East he stopped off in Spokane, to talk with the lumbermen east of the mountains. There, at a big meeting, he was able to put over the eight-hour day. The Wilson Mediation Commission was in Seattle at the time. Felix Frankfurter telephoned out his congratulations to me, and said: "We consider it the single greatest achievement of its kind since the United States entered the war." The papers were full of it and excitement ran high. President Wilson was telegraphed to by the Labor Commission, and he in turn telegraphed back his pleasure. In addition, the East Coast lumbermen agreed to Carl's scheme of an employment manager for their industry, and detailed him to find a man for the job while in the East. My, but I was excited!

Not only that, but they bade fair to let him inaugurate a system which would come nearer than any chance he could have expected to try out on a big scale his theories on the proper handling of labor. The men were to have the sanest recreation devisable for their needs and interests--out-of-door sports, movies, housing that would permit of dignified family life, recreation centres, good and proper food, alteration in the old order of "hire and fire," and general control over the men. Most employers argued: "Don't forget that the type of men we have in the lumber camps won't know how to make use of a single reform you suggest, and probably won't give a straw for the whole thing." To which Carl would reply: "Don't forget that your old conditions have drawn the type of man you have. This won't change men over-night by a long shot, but it will at once relieve the tension--and see, in five years, if your type itself has not undergone a change."

From Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., he wrote: "This city is one mad mess of men, desolate, and hunting for folks they should see, overcharged by hotels, and away from their wives." The red-letter event of Was.h.i.+ngton was when he was taken for tea to Justice Brandeis's. "We talked I.W.W., unemployment, etc., and he was oh, so grand!" A few days later, two days before Christmas, Mrs. Brandeis telephoned and asked him for Christmas dinner! That was a great event in the Parker annals--Justice Brandeis having been a hero among us for some years. Carl wrote: "He is all he is supposed to be and more." He in turn wrote me after Carl's death: "Our country shares with you the great loss. Your husband was among the very few Americans who possessed the character, knowledge, and insight which are indispensable in dealing effectively with our labor-problem.

Appreciation of his value was coming rapidly, and events were enforcing his teachings. His journey to the East brought inspiration to many; and I seek comfort in the thought that, among the students at the University, there will be some at least who are eager to carry forward his work."

There were sessions with Gompers, Meyer Bloomfield, Secretary Baker, Secretary Daniels, the s.h.i.+pping Board, and many others.

Then, at Philadelphia, came the most telling single event of our economic lives--Carl's paper before the Economic a.s.sociation on "Motives in Economic Life." At the risk of repeating to some extent the ideas quoted from previous papers, I shall record here a few statements from this one, as it gives the last views he held on his field of work.