Lifted Masks Part 10

Then she heard him get up. She heard him push his chair up to the table, and then for a minute he stood there. She wanted to turn toward him; she wanted to say something--do something. But she had no power.

She saw him lay an envelope upon her desk. She heard him walking away. She knew, numbly, that his footsteps were not steady. She knew that he had stopped; she was sure that he was looking back. But still she had no power.

And then she heard him go.

Even then she went on with her work; she finished her "take" and laid down her pencil. It was finished now--and he had gone.

Finished?--_Gone?_ She was tearing open the envelope of the letter.

This was what she read:

"Little dictionary sprite, suns.h.i.+ne vender, and girl to be loved, if I were a free man I would say to you--Come, little one, and let us learn of love. Let us learn of it, not as one learns from dictionaries, but let us learn from the morning glow and the evening shades. But Miss Noah, maker of dictionaries and creeper into hearts, the bound must not call to the free. They might fittingly have used my name as one of the synonyms under that word Failure, but I trust not under Coward.

"And now, you funny little Miss Noah from the University of Chicago, don't I know that your heart is blazing forth the a.s.surance that you don't _care_ for any of those things--the world, people, common sense--that you want just love? They made a grand failure of you out at your university; they taught you philosophy and they taught you Greek, and they've left you just as much the woman as women were five thousand years ago. Oh, I know all about you--you little girl whose hair tried so hard to be red. Your soul touched mine as we sat there writing words--words--words, the very words in which men try to tell things, and can't--and I know all about what you would do.

But you shall not do it. Dear little copy maker, would a man standing out on the end of a slippery plank have any right to cry to someone on the sh.o.r.e--'Come out here on this plank with me?' If he loved the someone on the sh.o.r.e, would he not say instead--'Don't get on this plank?' Me get off the plank--come with you to the sh.o.r.e--you are saying? But you see, dear, you only know slippery planks as viewed from the sh.o.r.e--G.o.d grant you may never know them any other way!

"It was you, was it not, who wrote our definition of happiness? Yes, I remember the day you did it. You were so interested; your cheeks grew so very red, and you pulled and pulled at your wavy hair. You said it was such an important definition. And so it is, Miss Noah, quite the most important of all. And on the page of life, Miss Noah, may happiness be written large and unblurred for you. It is because I cannot help you write it that I turn away. I want at least to leave the page unspoiled.

"I carry a picture of you. I shall carry it always. You are sitting before a fireplace, and I think of that fireplace as symbolising the warmth and care and tenderness and the safety that will surround you. And sometimes as you sit there let a thought of me come for just a minute, Miss Noah--not long enough nor deep enough to bring you any pain. But only think--I brought him happiness after he believed all happiness had gone. He was so grateful for that light which came after he thought the darkness had settled down. It will light his way to the end.

"We've come to Z, and it's good-bye. There is one thing I can give you without hurting you,--the hope, the prayer, that life may be very, very good to you."

The sheets of paper fell from her hands. She sat staring out into Dearborn Street. She began to see. After all, he had not understood her. Perhaps men never understood women; certainly he had not understood her. What he did not know was that she was willing to _pay_ for her happiness--_pay_--pay any price that might be exacted. And anyway--she had no choice. Strange that he could not see that! Strange that he could not see the irony and cruelty of bidding her good-bye and then telling her to be happy!

It simplified itself to such an extent that she _grew_ very calm. It would be easy to find him, easy to make him see--for it was so very simple--and then....

She turned in her copy. She said good-bye quietly, naturally, rode down in the lumbering old elevator and started out into the now drenching rain toward the elevated trains which would take her to the West Side; it was so fortunate that she had heard him telling one day where he lived.

When she reached the station she saw that more people were coming down the stairs than were going up. They were saying things about the trains, but she did not heed them. But at the top of the stairs a man in uniform said: "Blockade, Miss. You'll have to take the surface cars."

She was sorry, for it would delay her, and there was not a minute to lose. She was dismayed, upon reaching the surface cars, to find she could not get near them; the rain, the blockade on the "L" had caused a great crowd to congregate there. She waited a long time, getting more and more wet, but it was impossible to get near the cars. She thought of a cab, but could see none, they too having all been pressed into service.

She determined, desperately, to start and walk. Soon she would surely get either a cab or a car. And so she started, staunchly, though she was wet through now, and trembling with cold and nervousness.

As she hurried through the driving rain she faced things fearlessly.

Oh yes, she understood--everything. But if he were not well--should he not have her with him? If he had that thing to fight, did he not need her help? What did men think women were like? Did he think she was one to sit down and reason out what would be advantageous?

Better a little while with him on a slippery plank than forever safe and desolate upon the sh.o.r.e!

She never questioned her going; were not life and love too great to be lost through that which could be so easily put right?

The buildings were reeling, the streets moving up and down--that awful rain, she thought, was making her dizzy. Labouriously she walked on--more slowly, less steadily, a pain in her side, that awful reeling in her head.

Carriages returning to the city were pa.s.sing her, but she had not strength to call to them, and it seemed if she walked to the curbing she would fall. She was not thinking so clearly now. The thing which took all of her force was the lifting of her feet and the putting them down in the right place. Her throat seemed to be closing up--and her side--and her head....

Someone had her by the arm. Then someone was speaking her name; speaking it in surprise--consternation--alarm.

It was Harold.

It was all vague then. She knew that she was in a carriage, and that Harold was talking to her kindly. "You're taking me there?" she murmured.

"Yes--yes, Edna, everything's all right," he replied soothingly.

"Everything's all right," she repeated, in a whisper, and leaned her head back against the cus.h.i.+ons.

They stopped after a while, and Harold was standing at the open door of the cab with something steaming hot which he told her to drink.

"You need it," he said decisively, and thinking it would help her to tell it, she drank it down.

The world was a little more defined after that, and she saw things which puzzled her. "Why, it looks like the city," she whispered, her throat too sore now to speak aloud.

"Why sure," he replied banteringly; "don't you know we have to go through the city to get out to the South Side?"

"Oh, but you see," she cried, holding her throat, "but you see, it's the _other_ way!"

"Not to-night," he insisted; "the place for you to-night is home.

I'm taking you where you belong."

She reached over wildly, trying to open the door, but he held her back; she began to cry, and he talked to her, gently but unbendingly.

"But you don't _understand!_" she whispered, pa.s.sionately. "I've _got_ to go!"

"Not to-night," he said again, and something in the way he said it made her finally huddle back in the corner of the carriage.

Block after block, mile after mile, they rode on in silence. She felt overpowered. And with submission she knew that it was Z. For the whole city was piled in between. Great buildings were in between, and thousands of men running to and fro on the streets; man, and all man had builded up, were in between. And then Harold--Harold who had always seemed to count for so little, had come and taken her away.

Dully, wretchedly--knowing that her heart would ache far worse to-morrow than it did to-night--she wondered about things. Did things like rain and street-cars and wet feet and a sore throat determine life? Was it that way with other people, too? Did other people have barriers--whole cities full of them--piled in between?

And then did the Harolds come and take them where they said they belonged? Were there not _some_ people strong enough to go where they wanted to go?

VI

THE MAN OF FLESH AND BLOOD

The elements without were not in harmony with the spirit which it was desired should be engendered within. By music, by gay decorations, by speeches from prominent men, the board in charge of the boys' reformatory was striving to throw about this dedication of the new building an atmosphere of cheerfulness and good-will--an atmosphere vibrant with the kindness and generosity which emanated from the State, and the thankfulness and loyalty which it was felt should emanate from the boys.

Outside the world was sobbing. Some young trees which had been planted along the driveway of the reformatory grounds, and which were expected to grow up in the way they should go, were rocking back and forth in pa.s.sionate insurrection. Fallen leaves were being spit viciously through the air. It was a sullen-looking landscape which Philip Grayson, he who was to be the last speaker of the afternoon, saw stretching itself down the hill, across the little valley, and up another little hill of that rolling prairie state. In his ears was the death wail of the summer. It seemed the spirit of out-of-doors was sending itself up in mournful, hopeless cries.

The speaker who had been delivering himself of pedantic encouragement about the open arms with which the world stood ready to receive the most degraded one, would that degraded one but come to the world in proper spirit, sat down amid perfunctory applause led by the officers and attendants of the inst.i.tution, and the boys rose to sing. The brightening of their faces told that their work as performers was more to their liking than their position as auditors.

They threw back their heads and waited with well-disciplined eagerness for the signal to begin. Then, with the strength and native music there are in some three hundred boys' throats, there rolled out the words of the song of the State.

There were lips which opened only because they must, but as a whole they sang with the same heartiness, the same joy in singing, that he had heard a crowd of public-school boys put into the song only the week before. When the last word had died away it seemed to Philip Grayson that the sigh of the world without was giving voice to the sigh of the world within as the well-behaved crowd of boys sat down to resume their duties as auditors.

And then one of the most important of the professors from the State University was telling them about the kindness of the State: the State had provided for them this beautiful home; it gave them comfortable clothing and nutritious food; it furnished that fine gymnasium in which to train their bodies, books and teachers to train their minds; it provided those fitted to train their souls, to work against the unfortunate tendencies--the professor stumbled a little there--which had led to their coming. The State gave liberally, gladly, and in return it asked but one thing: that they come out into the world and make useful, upright citizens, citizens of which any State might be proud. Was that asking too much? the professor from the State University was saying.

The sobbing of the world without was growing more intense. Many pairs of eyes from among the auditors were straying out to where the summer lay dying. Did they know--those boys whom the State cla.s.sed as unfortunates--that out of this death there would come again life?

Or did they see but the darkness--the decay--of to-day?

The professor from the State University was putting the case very fairly. There were no flaws--seemingly--to be picked in his logic.