Part 6

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.”

“Her eyes, full and clear, with their white-encircled, gray irises, are like moonflowers.” That’s what Bobby says on page 131 about his heroine. And back in one of his first letters to me, “Please turn to page 131 of the book and try to think whose eyes I tried to describe.”

_April 28th. Noon._

On the heels of Bobby’s telegram I have this letter from him.

_To-day, Wednesday._

MY DEAR CAROLINE HOWARD:

Please hurry up and get all the sea air you want, and go up to Boston and let them show you Milk Street and the _Youth’s Companion_ building (that’s all there is there). Oh, I forgot the beautiful men. Look ’em over! I’ve seen ’em. They all carry a black network bag with a MS. play, and Emerson, and two watercress sandwiches for lunch in it. All right for youse. Do you know I have an idea that you’ll meet your fate up there among the _Baked Beans_. I’m told those Apollo “Belvidears” always take to a girl that’s both intelligent and good looking. Get that? Well, I won’t send you a wedding present—so, there!

But, speaking seriously, we’ve had rain here all day. It’s been cold, too—kind of like late of an evening when you go down barefoot in the ten-acre medder to drive the cow home, and your mind is on whippoorwills and stone bruises and Cherokee roses and hot corn-pone, and the little girl with the white sunbonnet on the adjoining farm that you saw picking cherries in the lane, and who you (I don’t mean you, I mean me) fondly imagine is going to come over to your farm some day and scold you when the cow doesn’t come home, but who really runs away with a patent churn agent and winds up by keeping a shooting gallery in South Bend, Indiana.

Oh, well, what’s the _odds_?

Hope you are feeling _quite well_ after your long trip from the soggy south.

Now while you are up “No’th” just turn yo’self a’ loose and have a good time. Down in our country the old-time opinion is that _Liberty Jams_ everything into a bad shape, but it ain’t so. No—the real and genuine liberty sets you _Free_; it doesn’t cramp you or lower your ideals _at All_.

A great many wise people have learned that; _you see Them Everywhere in Greater New York_. And I think you would like to bring your cow up here and spend the remainder of your time. You can live nicely on _fifty cents a week_; but a great deal better on _half a billion_ dollars.

Since I have discovered what a help printed matter is to me, I simply love to write letters. I know a man who writes 1,900 letters a day to his _Loved One_. But don’t you think he is kind of “crowdin’” the mourners?

Please ma’am write to me some more right away; I like to hear from you.

P.S. I’ve had a great time chopping up the papers and building this letter. You’ll excuse my frivolousness, won’t you?

BOB.

Bobby, I condone your offense—time spent cutting up the papers, time worth so many cents per word, to amuse me. Times spent together when apart, how close they come.

_April 29th. Morning._

How the sea flashes, and the blue, blue sky flashes, too. There’s a boat drifting this way. It looks like a white-winged gull afloat, a messenger of joy. How the waves sing, and their swelling song is all about a little girl in a white sunbonnet picking cherries in the lane. I remember that day, too, Bobby. It was a picnic. You climbed the tree and I caught up my dress to catch the big ripe cherries. When the picnic was over and we got home my gentle mother scolded over the ruined dress. She gave it to the washerwoman’s little girl.

How the waves sing, and their shouting song is—Bobby’s _loved one_.

_Afternoon._

The day’s mood has changed. A cold wind blows in from the sea. If mammy could see me out here on this deserted stretch of shore in the rain and the spray that dashes on me from the stormy, inrushing waves she’d say her prayers in thankfulness that she put the old storm coat and rubbers in, for I’ve got them on.

How fierce the rush of the waves! Something as elementally savage as their assault of the shore stirs in me, writhes in its travail—is born. Bobby is _mine_.

Dicky, light-hearted, laughing child who would pluck the flower of love as a baby gathers a posy, forgive me.

When the day is hot and the road is long, and the flower of love droops, what then, Dicky?

_Night._

I have wired Bobby that I will be in New York Wednesday. It will take me that long to finish the changes in the book. I wired him that my train gets in about five-thirty, and that if he likes I will take dinner with him.

_April 30th._

Bobby’s wire reads:

Sure, Mike, I’ll be on hand at 5:30 Wednesday to welcome you on your retreat from Bosting. And don’t bother yourself about the train getting in at six or later, for I’ll be on the job and I’ll be there when you get there.

I have already ordered the lye hominy and turnip greens for dinner, and you’ll be properly looked after by the committee of one when you hit the town.

Hoping these few lines will find you the same, I remain,

Yours continuously, B.

_May 1st._

Bobby wasn’t at the train. If he was, we missed each other. I wasn’t conscious of it on the train, but now I know I pictured him there at the station, standing just a little in advance of the mass of people; vaguely, I think my mind ran the gamut of earth’s meetings and thought of dim shores, not of earth, where that one who goes first must surely await the other. To the whir of the wheels as they ate up the miles that lie between Boston and New York my heart sang, Bobby’s loved one, Bobby’s _loved one_. I was in a maze of vague, happy thought—and he wasn’t there—he didn’t meet me.

It is 12 P. M. now. I went with Miss Jackson to a horrid little show, and when we came in I could not believe there was not a message of some sort for me.

_May 2d._

I stayed in all morning in such a tense state of expectancy that it has left me limp. How glad I am that Dicky does not know I am here—I simply can’t see Dicky yet. I am at sea as to Bobby’s reason for not meeting me, at sea that no message from him comes to me, but one thing I know: I can trust his, “Mum’s the word, Caroline.”

Mrs. Christopher and I shopped this afternoon. Afterward we had tea at the Astor and went down to the Waldorf and sat in Peacock Alley. Such a mix up of fine clothes and commonness. The women have hard faces, painted, world-weary, they are too much of—oh, everything: too red as to lips, too black as to eyebrows, too gold as to hair; they don’t walk—they can’t, poor things—their general appearance as they mince along the Avenue is that of a procession of mannikins done up in slit bolster cases. Bah! It all makes me think of a big rock near Marsville. Once I passed it with a mountaineer. “When I wuz a child,” he said, “that wuz a monster rock—the masterest (biggest) rock I ever seed. Hit’s dwindled sence I wuz a child.” Since I reached here New York’s dwindled.

“Caroline Howard,” I said to myself, sternly, out in the street again, “it isn’t New York that has dwindled—it is you. Robert Haralson didn’t meet you. Whatever his reason for a dime he could have ’phoned from his home; a slot machine would have cost him a nickel, a note a two-cent stamp.”

My shoulders braced, my chin went up, my spirit caught the spirit of this great wonder-town. Night fell. The magic of night on Broadway—the flashing signs, the whizzing motors, the hurrying, surging throngs, the snatches of speech that drift to one’s ears, there on the street where all seems youth, laughter, joy—human documents, the snatches of speech one hears. “How can I leave you here?” I heard the words spoken by a plain anxious-faced woman, and the overdressed, under-dressed, doll-faced girl’s answer: “You poor dear! How you worry! What have I to fear? New York’s lovely, and my job’s lovely, and my boss is loveliest of all.”

I heard a man’s voice, such a cultured, hearty sort of a voice, but a note of bitterness and discouragement rang through it. “That man—I gave him his chance—brought him here. Look where he is now, and look where I am. He is not an artist. His success is not based on a solid foundation. But look at him—money—fame—what’s the use of holding to one’s ideals, of being faithful to them. What’s the use of—anything?”

My train goes out in an hour. City of laughter and of tears, of power that can crush as a giant foot crushes an ant, marvel of the world—I bid you adieu.

_May 4th. Sunday Night._

I’ve broken the Sabbath by travelling all day. In town I hired a buggy to bring me home. Our hacks do not run on Sunday. It is raining. It has rained all the way. I had a silent driver who never spoke to me, seldom to his horses. I was glad that it was raining; glad that my driver was silent. My thoughts were as vague, as blurred as the dim mountain forms seen through the rain. We drove through Marsville without meeting a soul. As we passed the Duckett houses that forever watch each other like antagonists, I saw that poor old lady slipping home from doing up his work; I saw him rocking on his front porch in placid content. A sudden rage against this man-made world seized me.