BOOK II. THE HILL-CABIN (continued 2)

“After that I went down to Petersburg to tell my story, and to Moscow. I have told it in cellars and stables—in Berlin, in Paris, and London. I am making the great circle—to tell it here—and on, when we are finished, to Chicago, to Denver and San Francisco—and then the long sail homeward, following the first journey to the foothills of the Bosk range. I will go to my old mother there, and to the little boy, who looked up into my eyes—as if we were born to play and talk and sleep together.

“The days of the conscript gangs are over here, men. Such days are numbered, even in Russia. They don’t come to your door in this country and take you away from your work to fight across the world—but the Lubans are here—and the cities are full of horror. It is in the cities where the herds are, where the little Lubans whip, and the bigger Lubans thrive. In the pressure and heaviness of the cities—the thought that comes to the herd is the old hideous conception of the multitude—that the way of the Lubans is the way of life.... It isn’t the way. The way of life has nothing to do with greed, nor with envy, nor with schemes against the bread of other men. It is a way of peace and affiliation—of standing together. And you who have little can go that way; you who labor can go that way—because you are the strength of the world. Don’t resist your enemies, men—leave them. The Master of us all told us that. And when the herds break, and this modern hell of the city is diminished—the Lubans will follow you out—whining and bereft, they will follow you out, as the lepers of Peking follow the caravans to the gates and beyond.... I have told you of my home—the little cabin that came to me from the beginnings of compassion. And there is such a home for every man of you—in the still countries where the voice of God may be heard.”

Morning, desperately ill, rose to leave the hall. In the momentary hush, as he reached the door, the voice of Duke Fallows was raised again, calling his name.

10

“John——” a second time.

Morning turned, his arms lifted despairingly.

“Wait, John, I’ll join you!”

Fallows came down.... The man who gently held the door shut smiled with strange kindness. There was a shining of kindness in men’s faces.... Morning did not feel that he belonged. He was broken and shamed.... The big man was upon him—the long arms tossed about him.

“I’ve been looking and listening for you too long, John, to let you go.”

“... I just wanted to hear you. I’m shot to pieces, Duke; I’ll get a few drinks and wait for you. Then, you’ll see, I’m all out of range of the man you are——”

There was no answer. Morning looked up to find the long bronzed face laughing, the eye gleaming. Fallows turned to the doorman and another, saying:

“Both of you go with him. He needs a drink or two, and one of you come back to show me the way to him—when I’m through here.... This is a great night for us, John.”

The three went down in the elevator.... And so the sick man had not come back—the dithyrambic Duke Fallows was gone for good. The sick man was strong; the impassioned phrase-maker had risen to the simple testimony of service. From scorn and emotion, from judgment and selection, he had risen to the plane of loving kindness.... The air in the street refreshed him a little. Morning found a bar.

“I’ve been drinking,” he said to the men. “Fallows is a king. I was there with him at Liaoyang.... Maybe you saw my story in the World-News.... He stayed in the grain with Luban. I went on to see the cavalry fight.... I came back home to do the story. He went on to Russia on the Ploughman story——”

“Is he a preacher?” said one of the men.

“Yes—but he learned about war and women first.”

“I’ll take a soft drink and go back. You stay here, and I’ll bring him to you,” the same one went on.

The other drank with Morning and agreed that they would not leave until Fallows came.

“And so he learned about war and women first,” he said queerly, when they were alone. “But he has been a laboring man——”

“Yes. You heard him.”

“But before that farm in Russia——”

“Oh, yes; he was a laborer.”

“Well, he certainly got the crowd with him,” the man acknowledged.

“You know why, don’t you?” Morning said impressively.

“No.”

“He’s for the crowd. People feel it.”

“Oh, I knew that.”

There was quiet, and then the face turned to Morning:

“Say, how did you get such a start as this? This kind means weeks——”

“It got away from me before I knew it. I must have got to gambling with myself to see how far I could go.”

“Are you going to quit?”

A mist filled Morning’s mind. The question seemed an infringement. Then it occurred to him how he had fallen to lying to himself.

“He’ll make you quit, but don’t let him stop you too short. You’d be a wreck in a few hours. You see how you needed these two or three drinks?”

... Fallows entered with several of the committee. He had promised to speak to them again.

“It’s what I came for,” he was saying. “So long as I am wanted I’ll stay.... Yes, I’m a socialist.... Yes, I believe in fighting, but when our kind of men stand together, there won’t be anything big enough to give us a fight. When our kind of men look into one another’s eyes and find service instead of covetousness—there’s nothing in the world to stand against us.”

Fallows and Morning were in a steam-room together two hours afterward. Morning was limp and light-headed. He had told of some of the things that had happened since Baltimore—of men he had met—of the slummers—of harrowing nights and waiting for the bank to open.

“You had to have it, John?”

There was something in the way Fallows spoke the word, John, that made Morning weaker and filled his throat. He had to speak loudly for the hissing of the steam.

“Why, if you didn’t get humble and stay humble after such a training—you’d be the poorest human experiment ever undertaken by the Master. But you can’t fail. It isn’t in the cards to fail. You’ve ridden several monsters—Drink, Ambition, Literature—but they won’t get you down. Why, even the sorrel mare didn’t kill you, as I promised aforetime. I saw a lot in that story. You loved her to the last. You left her dead and hunched on an alien road. You’ve loved these others long enough. You’ll leave them dead—even that big fame stuff. I think you’ve ridden that pompous fool to death already. They are all passages on the way to Initiation. Your training for service is a veritable inspiration—and you’ll write to men—down among men. I love that idea—you’ll write the story of Compassion—down among men——”

Fallows’ face came closer through the steam. He scrutinized the wound that wouldn’t heal. “Did you ever hear about Saint Paul’s thorn in the flesh?... ‘And lest I be exalted above measure through the abundance of revelations, there was given me a thorn in the flesh—?’ It all works out. You’ll have to excuse me. The Bible was the only book I had with me up in the Bosk country. I found it all I wanted. I would take it again.... Yes, John, it’s all right with you.”

Morning was telling of that afternoon at the Armory. He passed over quickly the period of worldly achievement in New York to the quiet blessedness he had hit upon, finding the hill and the elms.

“That’s the formula—to get alone and listen——”

“That’s what you preached to-night, wasn’t it?”... Presently he was back to Betty Berry again—finding her at the ’cello—the wonderful ride to Baltimore—which brought him to the drink chapter once more.... He couldn’t see Duke’s face as he spoke of the woman. There was a peculiar need of the other saying something when he had finished. This only was offered:

“We won’t talk about that now, John.... You’d better take another little drink. Your voice is down.... You’ll be through after a day or two, and I’ll stay with you——”

“We’ll go over to the cabin to-morrow,” said Morning.

They were lying cot by cot in the cooling-room, and the talk for a time concerned Lowenkampf, his court-martial and discharge.

“Do you know how I thought of you coming back, Duke?” Morning whispered afterward.

“Tell me.”

“I always thought of you coming back a sick man—staring at the ceiling as you used to—sometimes talking to me, sometimes listening to what I had written. But the main thought was how I would like to take care of you. I was rotten before. I wanted you sick, so I could show you better.”

The huge hand stretched across from cot to cot.

“It was afterward—that all the things you said in Liaoyang came back to me right.... We were lying in ’Frisco waiting for quarantine, and my stuff was finished the second time, before I read your letter to me and the one to Noyes—and the Ploughman story. That was the first time I really saw it right. There was a little doctor with me—Nevin—who got it all from the first reading. At Liaoyang we were down too low among the fighting to get it. That Ploughman story made my big yarn look like a death-mask of the campaign. Betty Berry got it too.... It was the same to-night—why, you got those men, body and soul.”

“I’d like to think so, John; but I’m afraid you’re wrong. It was just a seed to-night. Men need to be cultivated every day in a thousand ways.... Women get things quicker; they can listen better.... The last night before Jesus was taken by the Roman soldiers, he told the Eleven that he could be sure only of them. He knew that of the multitude that heard him—most would sink back. He counted on just the Eleven, and built his church on the weakest, upon the most unstable—counting only on the strength of the weakest link.... The fact is, John, I’m only counting on you. I’ve got to count on you.”

Less than five weeks had elapsed, and yet the worst seemed as far back, in some of Morning’s moments, as the deck-passage out of China. He had suffered abominably. Fallows stood by night and day at first. He brought back a certain quality from the Russian farm that was pure inspiration to the other. They spoke about the Play. Morning was more than ever glad that Markheim had refused it. They sat long by the fire. More happened than modern America would believe off-hand—for John Morning began to learn to listen. Fallows was happy. His presence in the room was like the fire-light. Twice more he went across to the Metal Workers’ Hall, and still the New York group would not let him go. The Socialists brought him their ideas. He was in the heart of threatening upheavals. He reiterated that they must be united in one thing first; they must have faith in one another. They must not answer greed with greed. They must be sure of themselves; they must have a pure voice; they must know first what was wanted, and follow the vision.... Duke Fallows knew that it was all the matter of a leader.... He told them of the men and women in Russia who have put off self. Finally Duke appeared to see that his work was done, and he retired from them.

“It is delicate business,” he said to Morning. “There’s fine stuff in the crowd—then there’s the rest. If I should show common just once—all my work would be spoiled, and even the blessed few would forget the punch of my little story. They think I’ve gone on west.”

Still he didn’t leave the cabin on the hill.

It was only when Morning undertook to touch upon the love story—that Fallows looked away.... Morning tried to comprehend this. Something had happened. The big man who had stared at so many ceilings of Asia, breaking out from time to time in strange utterances all colored with desire; the man who had met his Eve, and talked of being controlled by her even after death—shuddered now at the mention of Betty Berry.... Morning even had a suspicion at last that the other construed a relation between the woman’s influence and the excess of alcohol. These moments dismayed him.

There is a dark spot in every man’s radiance—and this was the Californian’s, Morning concluded. In the transformation which the journey to Russia had effected, his particular weakness seemed hardened into a crust of exceptional austerity. The only women he ever spoke of in the remotest personal fashion belonged to the peasant family of the Ploughman. His audiences were unmixed by his own arrangement. In tearing out his central weakness, a certain madness on the subject had rushed in, a hatred that knew no quarter, and a zeal in denial that only one who has touched the rim of ruin can know.

On the last night of February they talked and read late. The reading was from Saint Paul in the different letters. Fallows seemed impassioned with the figure.

“I understand him,” he said.

“He was afraid of women. Sometimes he seems to hate women,” Morning remarked. Certain lines of Paul’s on the subject had broken the perfection of the message for him.

A strange look came to Fallows. The finger that was turning a page drew in with the others, and the hand that rested upon the book was clenched.... “Paul knew women,” he muttered.

“You think before he took that road to Damascus—he knew women?”

“Yes——”

“Even the Paul who stood by holding the garments of the stoners of Stephen?”

“He was a boy then. He learned afterward, I think.”

“He couldn’t have known the saints among them,” said Morning, who was smiling in his heart.

“Perhaps some saint among them was the one who made him afraid. You know women won’t have men going alone—not even the saints among women.... There may have been one who refused to be dimmed altogether even by that great light.”

“But he went alone——”

“In that way she wouldn’t be the Thorn,” Fallows said slowly. “She would be greater power for him. Yes, Saint Paul went alone. We wouldn’t be reading him to-night—had he turned back to her.”

That hurt. Morning was no longer smiling within. “I didn’t learn women—even as a boy,” he said.

Fallows was unable to speak. He had never loved Morning as at this moment. He was tender enough to catch the strange pathos of it, which the younger man could not feel.

“You’re a natural drunkard, John,” he said presently. “You are by nature ambitious, as it is intimated Cæsar was; but you are naturally a monk, too. I say it with awe.”

“You are wrong,” Morning said with strength. “When this woman came into the room at the Armory that first day—it was as if she brought with her the better part of myself——”

“You said that same before. You were sick. You were torn by exhaustion and by that letter of mine about Reever Kennard. It was the peace and mystery a woman always brings to a sick man.... Your woman is your genius, John. Any rival will stifle and defame it. It’s the woman in a man that makes him a prophet or a great artist. Your ego is masculine; your soul is feminine. When you learn to keep the ego out of the brain, and use the soul, you will become an instrument, more or less perfect, for eternal utterances. When you achieve the union of the man and woman in you—that will be your illumination. You will have emerged into the larger consciousness. You are not so far as you think from that high noon-light. If you should take a woman in the human way, you will not achieve in this life the higher marriage, of which the union of two is but a symbol. That would be turning back, with the spiritual glory in your eyes—back to the shadow of flesh.”

“How do you know that?” Morning asked coldly.

“Because of the invisible restraints that have kept you from women so far.... I believe you are prepared to tell men something about the devils of drink and ambition—having met them?”

“It is possible.”

“I speak with the same authority.”

Morning did not accept this authority, but was long disturbed after the light was out.... Her ship had been six days at sea.

They opened the door wide to the first morning of March. Snow was upon the hill, but there was a promise in the air, even in the sharpness of it. The wind came in, searched among the papers of the table, disordered the draughts of the chimney, filling the room with a faint flavor of wood-smoke, that perfect incense. They stood there, testing the day, and each was thinking of the things of the night before. Fallows said:

“John, you didn’t build this cabin with the idea of a woman coming?”

“No; it was built before I found her the second time. It was my escape from Boabdil.... But I thought of her coming, many times afterward—just as I thought of you coming back to stare at the rafters——”

Fallows looked down intently at him for a moment, and said:

“John, you’ve got about all your equipment now. You can’t stand much more tearing down. My road is not for you. You were given balance against that. Don’t venture into what is alien ground for you. You will get back your health. Even the wound will heal. Then will come to you those gracious ideals of singleness, plainness of house and fare, of purity and solitude and the integration of the greater dimension of force.... You are through looking—you must listen now. The blessedness you told me of this last summer was but a breath of what you will get....

“You are a natural monk. If you were in a monastery, the laws restraining you would be gross and material, compared with those bonds which nature has put upon you. The cowl, the cell, and the solitude are but symbols again of the inner monasticism a few rare souls have known. You need no exterior bonds, vows, nor threatenings—no walls, no brandishing threats of damnation. But, if you should betray the invisible restraints that have held you for so many years, the sin would be far deadlier than breaking any vows made to a church or to an order. Vows are for half-men, John; vows are but the crutches of an unfinished integrity.”

11

On the morning of the Third, at ten, her call came to him. Shortly after twelve he was across the river and far uptown in the hallway of an apartment-house. Even as he spoke her name, his was called from the head of the stairs. He always remembered the intonation.... A fire was burning in the grate. The ’cello was there. She left the hall-door of the room open, but they heard voices, and it was draughty.... She went to close it and returned to Morning, who was still standing.

“What is the matter? You are not well,” she said.... It was hard for him to realize that this was only the third time he had seen her. He was trying to adjust her in the other meetings with this—the angel who had come helping to the Armory; the concert Betty Berry, her nature flung wide to expression, bringing her gift with love to her people. The Armory was one; but the Betty Berry of the concert-night was many: she who had come forth from the stage to his arms (and that was the kiss of all time); the listening Betty Berry in the dimness of the Pullman car; holding fast to his hand as a child might, while they watched the dawn of morning together; the Betty Berry who had led him to her berth on the ship—that kiss and this....

The room had disordered him at the first moment. It was so particularly a New York apartment room. But the ’cello helped it; the grate-fire was good, and after she had shut the door—there was something eternal about the sweetness of that—it was quite the place for them to be.

He was animate with emotions—and yet they were defined, sharp, of their own natures, no soft overflow of sentiment, each with a fineness of its own, like breaths of forest and sea and meadow lands. These were great things which came to him; but they were not passions.... He saw her with fear, too. Simply being here, had the impressiveness of a miracle. It was less that he did not deserve to be with her, than that the world he knew was hardly the place for such blessedness. He was listening to her, in gladness and humility:

“... I asked myself again and again after you were gone, ‘Is it a dream?’ ... I moved about the decks waiting for the night, as one in a deep dream.... You were gone so quickly after that voice. Oh, I was all right. I was full of you. It would have seemed sacrilege to ask for you again.... Yet I seemed to expect you with every knock or step or bell. They asked me to play on shipboard, and I could hardly believe you were not among those who listened.... That first night at sea, the moon was under a hazy mass. I don’t know why I speak of it, but I remember how I stood watching it—perhaps hours—and out of it all I only realized at last that my hands were so small for the things I wanted to do for you, and for everybody.”

That was the quality of her—as if between every sentence, hours of exterior influences had intervened.... He began to realize that Betty Berry never explained. All that afternoon, in different ways, his comprehension augmented on how fine a thing this is. She was glad always to abide by what she said or did. Even on that night, when she came from her playing to the wings where he stood, came to his arms, while the people praised her—she never made light of that acceptance. Many would have diminished it, by saying that they were not accountable in the excitement and enthusiasm of a sympathetic audience. It was so to-day when the door was closed. It seemed to Morning as if human adults should be as fine as this—above all guile and fear.

He was in a risen world that afternoon. Often he wished he could make the world see her as he did. But that was the literary habit, and a tribute to her. Certainly it was not for the writing. He was clay beside her, but happy to be clay.... She did not know it, he thought, but she was free.

That was his thought of the day. Betty Berry was free. The door of the cage was open for her. She did not have to stay, but she did stay for love of the weaker-winged.

“Will all our meetings be so different and lovely?” she asked in the early dusk. “Please tell me about yourself very long ago—the little boy, before he went away.”

It was queer for her to ask that. He had expected her to inquire at once about the three months since their parting in Baltimore. He had determined to tell if she asked, but it was hard even to think of his descents, with her sitting by the fire so near. Such things seemed to have nothing to do with him now—especially when he was with her. They were like old and vile garments cast off; and without relation to him, unless he went back and put them on again. Little matters like Charley and his sister had a relation, for they were without taint. His thoughts to-day were thoughts of doing well for men, as in fine moments with Duke Fallows—of going out with her into the world to help—of writing and giving, of laughing and lifting.... It was surprising how he remembered the very long ago days—the silent, solid, steadily-resisting little chap. Many things came back, and with a clearness that he had not known for years. The very palms of her hands were upturned in her listening; it seemed as if the valves of her heart must be open.

“I can see him—the dear little boy——”

He laughed at her tenderness.... They went out late to dinner; and by the time he had walked back to the house it was necessary for him to leave, if he caught the last car to Hackensack. Duke Fallows would be expecting him at the cabin....

It came to him suddenly, and with a new force, on the ferry, that he had once wished she were pretty. He suffered for it again. He could never recall her face exactly. She came to him in countless ways—with poise for his restlessness, with faith and stamina that made all his former endurings common—but never in fixed feature. It was the same with her sayings. He remembered the spirit and the lustre of them, but never the words.... She was a saint moving unobserved about the world, playing—adrift on the world, and so pure.

He realized also that he had spoken of Betty Berry for the last time to Duke Fallows. There was no doubt in his mind now that Fallows had replaced his old weakness with what might be called, in kindness—fanaticism.... The thought was unspeakable that Betty Berry could spoil his work in the world—he, John Morning, a living hatch of scars from his errors ... and so arrogant and imperious he had been in evil-doing! This trend made him think of her first words to-day: “You are not well.” It was true that he had been astonished often of late by a series of physical disturbances, so much so that he had begun to ask himself, in his detached fashion, what would come next. He could not accept Fallows’ promise that he would get altogether right in health again. He was certainly not so good as he had been. These things made him ashamed.

Now that he was away from her, the sense obtained that he had not been square in withholding the facts of the wastrel period. It didn’t seem quite the same now, as when she was sitting opposite. He would have to tell her some time, and of that certain mental treachery to her, and of the wound, too.... He saw the light of the hill cabin. A touch of the old irritation of Liaoyang had recurred of late. Morning could master it better now. Still so many things that Fallows had said in Asia had come true. Climbing up the hill, he laughed uneasily at the idea of his being temperamentally a monk.... He had not strayed much among women; he had been too busy. Now he had met his own. He would go to her to-morrow. His love for her was the one right thing in the world. Fallows nor the world could alter that....

The resistance which these thoughts had built in his mind was all smoothed away by the spontaneous affection of the greeting. They sat down together before the fire, but neither spoke of the woman who had come between.

12

On the way to Betty Berry the second day, Morning could not quite hold the altitude of yesterday. There was much of the boy left in the manner of his love for her. The woman that the world saw, and which he saw with physical eyes, was only one of her mysteries. The important thing was that he saw her really, and as she was not seen by another.... They had been together an hour when this was said:

“There comes a time—a certain day—when a little girl realizes what beauty is, and something of what it means in the world. That day came to me and it was hard. I fought it out all at once. I was not exactly sure what I wanted, but I knew that beauty could never help me in any way. I learned to play better when I realized this fully. I have said to myself a million times, ‘Expect nothing. No one will love you. You must do without that,’ I believed it firmly.... So you see when I went back to the Armory that next morning I had something to fall back upon.... I would not have thought about it except you made me forget—that afternoon. Why, I forget it now when you come; but when you go, I force myself to remember——”

“Why do you do that?”

She was looking into the fire. The day was stormy, and they were glad to be kept in.

“Why do you do that?” he repeated.

“Because I can’t feel quite at rest about our being together always. It seems too wonderful. You must understand—it’s only because it is so dear a thing——”

She had spoken hastily, seeing the fear and rebellion in his eyes.

“Betty Berry.... We’re not afraid of being poor. Why not go out and get married to-day—now?”

Her hand went out to him.

“That wouldn’t be fine in us,” she said intensely. “I would feel that we couldn’t be trusted—if we did anything like that.... Oh, that would never keep us together—that is not the great thing. And to-day—what a gray day and bleak. We shall know if that day comes. It will be one such as the butterfly chooses for her emerging. It must not be planned. Such a day comes of itself.... Why, it would be like seizing something precious from another’s hand—before it is offered——”

“And you think you are not beautiful?” he said.

“Yes.”

He tried to tell her how she seemed to him when they were apart—how differently and perfectly the phases of her came.

“It makes me silent,” he went on. “I try to tell just where it is. And sometimes when I am away—I wonder what is so changed and cleansed and buoyant in my heart—and then I know it is you—sustaining.”

“It doesn’t seem to belong to me—what you say,” she answered. “I don’t dare to think of it as mine.... Please don’t think of me as above other women. I am not apart nor above. I am just Betty Berry, who comes and goes and plays—dull in so many ways—as yet, a little afraid to be happy. When you tempt me as now to be happy—it seems I must go and find someone very miserable and do something perfect for him.... But, it is true, I fear nothing so much as that you should believe me more than I am.”

A little afterward she was saying in her queer, unjointed way, as if she spoke only here and there a sentence from the thoughts running swiftly through her mind:

“... And once, (it was only a few weeks after the Armory, and I was playing eastward) I heard your name mentioned among some musicians. They had been talking about your war, and they had seen the great story.... I couldn’t tell them that I know you?... It was known you were in New York, and one of the musicians spoke of an early Broadway engagement—of starting for New York that very night. It was the most common thing to say—but I went to my room and cried. Going to New York—where you were. Can you understand—that it didn’t seem right for him, just to take a train like that? And I had to go eastward so slowly. For a while after that, traveling out there, I couldn’t hold you so clearly; but as we neared New York—whether I wished it or not—I began to feel you again, to expect you at every turning. Sometimes as I played—it was uncanny, the sense that came to me, that you were in the audience, and that we were working together.... And then you came.”

Her picture changed now. Morning grew restless. It was almost as if there were a suggestion from Duke Fallows in her sentences:

“I thought of you always as alone.... You have gone so many ways alone. Perhaps the thought came from your work. I never could read the places where you suffered so—but I mean from the tone and theme of it. You were down among the terrors and miseries—but always alone.... You will go back to them—alone, but carrying calmness and cheer. You will be different.... It’s hard for me to say, but if we should clutch at something for ourselves—greedily because we want something now—and you should not be able to do your work so well because of me—I think—I think I should never cease to suffer.”

A dozen things to say had risen with hostility in his mind to check this faltering expression, the purport of which he knew so well in its every aspect. He hated the thought of others seeing his future and not considering him. He hated the fear that came to him. There had been fruits to all that Fallows had said before. He had plucked them afterward. And now Betty Berry was one with Fallows in this hideous and solitary conception of him. And there she sat, lovely and actual—the very essence of all the good that he might do. He was so tired of what she meant; and it was all so huge and unbreakable, that he grew calm before he spoke, from the very inexorability of it.

“There is no place for me to go—that you could not go with me. Every one seems to see great service for me, but I see it with you. Surely we could go together to people who suffer.... I have been much alone, but I spent most of the time serving myself. I have slaved for myself. If Duke Fallows had left me alone, I should have been greedy and ambitious and common. I see you now identified with all the good of the future. You came bringing the good with you to the Armory that day, but I was so clouded with hatred and self-serving, that I really didn’t know it until afterward.... All the dreams of being real and fine, of doing good in work, and with hands and thoughts, of sometime really being a good man who knows no happiness but service for others—that means you—you! You must come with me. We will be good together. We will serve together. Everybody will be better for us. We will do it because we love so much—and can’t help it——”

“Oh, don’t say any more—please—please! It is too much for me. Go away—won’t you?”

She had risen and clung to him, her face imploring.

“Do you really want me to go away?” he said.

“Yes—I have prayed for one to come saying such things—of two going forth to help—prayed without faith.... I cannot bear another word to be said to-day.... I want to sit here and live with it——”

He was bewildered. He bent to kiss her brow—but refrained.... Her face shone; her eyes were filled with tears.... He was in the street trying to recall what he had said.

13

He did not cross the river, but wandered about the city.... She had starved her heart always, put away the idea of a lover, and sought to carry out her dreams of service alone. Then he had come. In the midst of mental tossing and disorder to-day, he had stumbled upon an expression of her highest idea of earth-life: for man and woman to serve together—God loving the world through their everyday lives.... And she had been unable to bear him longer near her. It was the same with her heart, as with one who has starved the body, and must begin with morsels.

He was in the hotel writing-room—filling pages to her. He did not mean to send the pages. It was to pass the time until evening. He lacked even the beginnings of strength to stay away from her until to-morrow. He would have telephoned, but she had not given him the number, or the name of the woman who kept the house. The writing held his thoughts from the momentarily recurring impulse to go back. The city was just a vibration. Moments of the writing brought her magically near. In spite of her prayer for him not to, his whole nature idealized her now. His mind was swept again and again with gusts of her attraction. Thoughts of hers came to him almost stinging with reality ... and to see her again—to see her again. Once in the intensity of his outpouring, he halted as if she had called—as if she had called to him to come up to her out of the hollows and the vagueness of light.

It was nightfall. He gave way suddenly—to that double-crossing of temptation which forces upon the tempted one the conviction that what he desires is the right thing.... He would be a fool not to go. She would expect him.... He arose and set out for her house.

But as he neared the corner something within felt itself betrayed.

“And so I cannot be content with her happiness,” he thought. “I cannot be content with the little mysteries that make her the one Betty Berry. I am not brave enough to be happy alone—as she is. I must have the woman....”

He was hot with the shame of it. He saw her bountifulness; her capacity to wait. Clearly he saw that all these complications and conflicts of his own mind were not indications of a large nature, but the failures of one unfinished. She did not torture herself with thoughts; she obeyed a heart unerringly true and real. She shone as never before; fearless, yet with splendid zeal for giving; free to the sky, yet eager to linger low and tenderly where her heart was in harmony; a stranger to all, save one or two in the world, pitilessly hungry to be known, and yet asking so little.... Compared with her, he saw himself as a littered house, wind blowing through broken windows.

... That night, sitting with Duke Fallows before the fire, brooding on his own furious desires, he thought of the other John Morning who had brooded over the story of Liaoyang in so many rooms with the same companion. All that former brooding had only forced the world to a show-down. He knew, forever, how pitifully little the world can give.... A cabin on the hill and a name that meant a call in the next war....

The face of the other cooled and stilled him. Duke was troubled; Duke, who wasn’t afraid of kings or armies or anything that the world might do; who didn’t seem even afraid now of the old Eve violence, whoever she was—was afraid to speak of Betty Berry to his best friend.... Morning wondered at this. Had Duke given up—or was he afraid of mixing things more if he expressed himself? The fire-lit face was tense. One after another of the man’s splendid moments and performances ran through Morning’s mind—the enveloping compassion—in Tokyo, Liaoyang, in the grain, in the ploughed lands—the Lowenkampf friend, the friend of the peasant house, the friend of men in Metal Workers’ Hall, his own friend in a score of places and ways—the man’s consummate art in friendliness....

“Duke, there’s a lot to think about in just plain living, isn’t there?”

The other started. “Hello,” he said. “I didn’t think you were in my world.”

Betty Berry was waiting at the stairs the next morning.

“Did you get my letter?” she whispered, when the door had swung to.

“No.... Mailed last night?”

“Yes.”

“I left the cabin two hours before the mail. It’s rural delivery, you know. Jethro reaches my box late in the forenoon——”

“I wrote it about dark, but didn’t mail it until later. I thought you would come——”

He told her how he had written, how he had come to her house, and turned away. They were very happy.

“To think that you came so far. I couldn’t sit still, I was so expectant at that very time.... But it was good for us——”

“I understood after a while.”

“Of course, you understood.... I was—oh, so happy yesterday. Yet, aren’t we strange? Before it was night, I wanted you to come back.... I didn’t go out last night. I couldn’t practice. To-night, there are some friends whom I must see——”

Morning, in a troubled way, reckoned the hours until evening.... She was here and there about the room. The place already reflected her. She had never been so blithe before.... It was an hour afterward that he picked up a little tuning-fork from the dresser, and twanged it with his nail. She started and turned to him, her thumb pressed against her lips—her whole attitude that of a frightened child.

“I wonder if I could tell you?” she said hesitatingly. “It would make many things clear. You told me about little boy—you. It was my father’s——”

He waited without speaking.

“... He used to lead the singing in a city church,” she said. “Always he carried the tuning-fork. He would twang it upon a cup or a piece of wood, and put it to his ear—taking the tone. He had a soft tenor voice. There was never another just like it, and always he was humming.... I remember his lips moving through the long sermons, as he conned the hymn-book, one song after another, tapping his fork upon a signet ring. How I remember the tiny twanging, the light hum of an insect that came from him, from song to song, his finger keeping time, his lips pursed over the words.

“He never heard the preacher. There was no organ allowed, but he led the hymns. He loved it. He held the time and tone for the people—but never sang a hymn twice the same, bringing in the strangest variations, but always true, his face flaming with pleasure.

“For years and years we lived alone. As a little girl, I was lifted to the stool to play his accompaniments. As a young woman, I supported him, giving music lessons. The neighbors thought him an invalid.... All his viciousness was secret from the world, but common property between us from my babyhood. I pitied him and covered him, fed him when he might have fed himself, waited upon him when he might have helped me. He would hold my mind with little devilish things and thoughts—as natural to him as the tuning-fork.... He would despoil the little stock of food while I was away, and nail the windows down. My whole life, I marveled at the ingenuity of his lies. He was so little and helpless. I never expected to be treated as a decent creature, from those who had heard his tales. They looked askance at me.

“For years, he told me that he was dying, and I sat with him in the nights, or played or read aloud. If any one came, he lay white and peaceful, with a look of martyrdom.... And then at the last, I fell asleep beside him. It was late, but the lamp was burning. I felt him touch me before morning—the little old white thing, his lips pursed. The tuning-fork dropped with a twang to the floor. I could not believe I was free—but cried and cried. At the funeral, when the church people spoke of ‘our pain-racked and martyred brother’——”

She did not finish.

Morning left her side. “I never thought of a little girl that way,” he said, standing apart. “Why, you have given me the spirit of her, Betty. It is what you have passed through that has made you perfect.... And I was fighting for myself, and for silly things all the time——”

But he had not expressed what was really in his mind—of the beauty and tenderness of unknown women everywhere, in whose hearts the sufferings of others find arable ground. Surely, these women are the grace of the world. His mother must have been weathered by such perfect refinements, otherwise he would not have been able to appreciate it in Betty Berry. It was all too dreamy to put into words yet, but he felt it very important in his life—this that had come to him from Betty’s story, and from Betty standing there—woman’s power, her bounty, her mystic valor, all from the unconscious high behavior of a child.

She had given him something that the Ploughman gave Duke Fallows. He wanted to make the child live in the world’s thoughts, as Duke was making the Ploughman live.

It was these things—common, beautiful, passed-by things, that revealed to Morning, as he began to be ready—the white flood of spirit that drives the world, that is pressing always against hearts that are pure.

He went nearer to her.

“Everything I think is love for you, Betty,” he said.

The air was light about her, and delicate as from woodlands.

14

The horse and phaeton—both very old—of the rural-carrier could be seen from the hill-cabin. Duke Fallows walked down to the fence to say “Hello” to Jethro whom he admired. He returned bearing very thoughtfully a letter addressed to John Morning. It was from across the river; the name, street, and number of the sender were written upon the envelope.... Fallows sat down before the fire again, staring at the letter. He thought of the woman who had written this, (just the few little things that Morning had said) and then he thought of the gaunt peasant woman in Russia, the mate of the Ploughman, and of the mother of the Ploughman. He thought of the little boy, Jan—the one little boy of the six, that had his heart, and whom he longed for.

He thought of this little boy on one hand—and the world on the other.

Then he thought of Morning again, and of the woman.

He loved the world; he loved the little boy. Sometimes it seemed to him when he was very happy—that he loved the world and the little boy with almost the same compassion—the weakness, fineness, and innocence of the races of men seeming almost like the child’s.

He thought of John Morning differently. He had loved him at first, because he was down and fighting grimly. He thought of him of late as an instrument, upon which might be played a message of mercy and power to all who suffered—to the world and to the little boy alike.

And now Fallows was afraid for the instrument. Many things had maimed it, but this is the way of men; and these maimings had left their revelations from the depths. Such may measure into the equipment of a big man, destined to meet the many face to face. Fallows saw this instrument in danger of being taken over by a woman—to be played upon by colorful and earthly seductions. No man could grant more readily than he, that such interpretations are good for most men; that the highest harmony of the average man is the expression of love for his one woman and his children. But to John Morning, Fallows believed such felicity would close for life the great work which he had visioned from the beginning.

He did not want lyrical singing from John Morning, he wanted prophetic thunderings.

He wanted this maimed young man to rise up from the dregs and tell his story and the large meaning of it. He wanted him to burn with a white light before the world. He wanted the Koupangtse courage to drive into the hearts of men; a pure reformative spirit to leap forth from the capaciousness where ambition had been; he wanted John Morning to ignite alone. He believed the cabin in which he now sat was built blindly from the boy’s standpoint, but intelligently from the spirit of the boy, to become the place of ignition. He believed this of Morning’s to be a celibate spirit that could be finally maimed only by a woman. He believed that Morning was perfecting a marvelous instrument, one that would alter all society for the better, if he gave his heart to the world.

Fallows even asked himself if he did not have his own desperate pursuits among women in too close consideration.... It would be easy to withdraw. So often he had faltered before the harder way, and found afterward that the easy one was evil.... He left it this way: If he could gain audience with Betty Berry alone this evening he would speak; if Morning were with her, he would find an excuse for joining them and quickly depart. Last night Morning had returned to the cabin early; the night before by the last car. It was less than an even chance.... Fallows crossed the river, thinking, if the woman were common it would be easy. The way it turned out left no doubt as to what he must do. Approaching the number, on the street named on the corner of the envelope, he passed John Morning, head down in contemplation. He was admitted to the house. Betty Berry appeared, led him to a small upper parlor, and excused herself for a moment.

Fallows sat back and closed his eyes. He was suffering. All his fancied hostility was gone. He saw a woman very real, and to him magical; he saw that this was bloody business.... She came back, the full terror of him in her eyes. She did not need to be so sensitive to know that he had not come as a cup-bearer.... He was saying to himself, “I will not struggle with her....”

“Have I time to tell my story?”

“I was going out.... John Morning just went away because I was to meet old friends. But, if this is so very important, of course——”

“It is about him.”

“I think you must tell your story.”

Fallows talked of Morning’s work, of what he had first seen from Luzon, and of the man he found in Tokyo. He spoke of the days and nights in Liaoyang, as he had watched Morning at his work.

“He’s at his best at the type-writer. When the work is really coming right for him, he seems to be used by a larger, finer force than he shows at other times.... It is good to talk to you, Miss Berry. You are a real listener. You seem to know what I am to say next——”

“Go on,” she said.

“When a man with a developed power of expression stops writing what the world is saying, and learns to listen to that larger, finer force within him—indeed, when he has a natural genius for such listening, and cultivates a better receptivity, always a finer and more sensitive surface for its messages—such a man becomes in time the medium between man and the energy that drives the world——”

“Yes——”

“Some call this energy that drives the world the Holy Spirit, and some call it the Absolute. I call it love of God. A few powerful men of every race are prepared to express it. These individuals come up like the others through the dark, often through viler darkness. They suffer as others cannot dream of suffering. They are put in terrible places—each of which leaves its impress upon the instrument—the mind. You have read part of John Morning’s story. Perhaps he has told you other parts. His mind is furrowed and transcribed with terrible miseries.

“Until recently his capacity was stretched by the furious passion of ambition. It seemed in Asia as if he couldn’t die, unexpressed; as if the world couldn’t kill him. You saw him at the Armory just after he had passed through thirty days hard enough to slay six men. Ambition held him up—and hate and all the powers of the ego.

“This is what I want to tell you: ‘When the love of God fills that furious capacity which ambition has made ready; when the love of God floods over the broadened surfaces of his mind, furrowed and sensitized by suffering, filling the matrix which the dreadful experiences have marked so deeply—John Morning will be a wonderful instrument of interpretation between God and his race.’

“I can make my story very short for you, Miss Berry. Your listening makes it clearer than ever to me. I see what men mean when they say they can write to women. Yes, I see it.... John Morning has made ready his cup. It will be filled with the water of life—to be carried to men. But John Morning must feel first the torture of the thirst of men.

“Every misery he has known has brought him nearer to this realization; days here among the dregs of the city; days of hideous light and shadow; days on the China Sea, sitting with coolies crowded so they could not move; days afield, and the perils; days alone in his little cabin on the hill; sickness, failures, hatreds from men, the answering hatred of his fleshly heart—all these have knit him with men and brought him understanding.

“He has been down among men. Suffering has graven his mind with the mysteries of the fallen. You must have understanding to have compassion. In John Morning, the love of God will pass through human deeps to men. Deep calls to deep. He will meet the lowest face to face. He will bring to the deepest down man the only authority such a man can recognize—that of having been there in the body. And the thrill of rising will be told. Those who listen and read will know that he has been there, and see that he is risen. He will tell how the water of life came to him—and flooded over him, and healed his miseries and his pains. The splendid shining authority of it will rise from his face and from his book.

“And men won’t be the same after reading and listening; (nor women who receive more quickly and passionately)—women won’t be the same. Women will see that those who suffer most are the real elect of this world. It’s wonderful to make women listen, Miss Berry, for their children bring back the story.

“It isn’t that John Morning must turn to love God. I don’t mean that. He must love men. He must receive the love of God—and give it to men. To be able to listen and to receive with a trained instrument of expression, and then to turn the message to the service of men—that’s a World-Man’s work. John Morning will do it—if he loves humanity enough. He’s the only living man I know who has a chance. He will achieve almost perfect instrumentation. He will express what men need most to know in terms of art and action. The love of God must have man to manifest it, and that’s John Morning’s work—if he loves humanity enough to make her his bride.”

Fallows was conscious now of really seeing her. She had not risen, but seemed nearer—as if the chair, in which she slowly rocked, had crept nearer as he talked. Her palms resting upon her knees were turned upward toward him:

“And you think John Morning is nearly ready for that crown of Compassion?”

“Yes——”

“You think he will receive the Compassion—and give it to men in terms of art and action?”

“Yes——”

“You think if he loves me—if he turns his love to me, as he is doing—he cannot receive that greater love which he must give men?”

“Yes——”

“And you think it would be a good woman’s part to turn him from her?”

“Yes——”

“And you came to tell me this?”

“Yes.”

“I think it is true——”

“Oh, listen—listen——” he cried, rising and bending over her—“a good woman’s part—it would be that! It would be something more—something greater than even he could ever do.... What a vision you have given me!”

She stood before him, her face half-turned to the window. Yet she seemed everywhere in the room—her presence filling it. He could not speak again. He turned to go. Her words reached him as he neared the door.

“Oh, if I only had my little baby—to take away!”

15

Fallows stood forward on the ferry that night and considered the whole New York episode. He had done his work. He had told the Ploughman story five times. It was just the sowing. He might possibly come back for the harvest.... He had another story to tell now. Could he ever tell it without breaking?... He had tortured his brain to make things clear for Morning and for men. He realized that a man who implants a complete concept in another intelligence and prevents it from withering until roots are formed and fruitage is assured, performs a miracle, no less; because, if the soil were ready, the concept would come of itself. He had driven his brain by every torment to make words perform this miracle on a large scale.

And this little listening creature he had just left—she had taken his idea, finished it for him, and involved it in action. To her it was the Cross. She had carried it to Golgotha, and sunk upon it with outstretched palms.... There was an excellence about Betty Berry that amazed him, in that it was in the world.... He had not called such women to him, because such women were not the answer to his desires. He realized with shame that a man only knows the women who answer in part the desires of his life. Those who had come to him were fitted to the plane of sensation upon which he had lived so many years. He had condemned all women because, in the weariness of the flesh, he had suddenly risen to perceive the falsity of his affinities of the flesh. “What boys we are!” he whispered, “in war and women and work—what boys!”

Betty Berry had taught him a lesson, quite as enormous to his nature as the Ploughman’s. A man who thinks of women only in sensuousness encounters but half-women. He had learned it late, but well, that a man in this world may rise to heights far above his fellows in understanding, but that groups of women are waiting on all the higher slopes of consciousness for their sons and brothers and lovers to come up. They pass their time weaving laurel-leaves for the brows of delayed valiants....

Duke thought of the men he had seen afield, the gravity with which these men did their great fighting business, the world talking about them. Then he thought of the little visionary in her room accepting her tragedy....

Even now, in the hush and back-swing of the pendulum, it seemed very true what he had said. She had seen it. It is dangerous business to venture to change the current of other lives; no one knew it better than Fallows. But he considered Morning. Morning, as it were, had been left on his door-step. Morning would be alone now—alone to listen and receive his powers.... Fallows looked up from the black water to the far-apart pickets of the wintry night. He was going home.

The cabin was lit. Fallows climbed the hill wearily. There was a certain sharpness as of treachery from his night’s work, but to that larger region of mind, open to selfishness and the passion to serve men, peace had come. He was going home, first to San Francisco—then to the Bosks and the little boy.

Morning arose quickly at the sound of the step on the hard ground, and opened the door wide. He had been reading her letter, which Fallows had left upon the table. The letter had been like an added hour with her. It was full of shy joy, full of their perfect accord, remote from the world—its road and stone-piles and evasions.... Fallows saw that he looked white and wasted. The red of the firelight did not mislead his eye. Its glow was not Morning’s and did not blend with the pallor.

“I’m going on to-morrow, John,” he said.

“’Frisco?”

“Yes—and then——”

“You’ll come back here?”

“No, I’ll keep on into the west to my cabin——”

“It would be nearer this way. I planned to see you after ’Frisco.”

“I’ll come back,” Fallows’ thought repeated, “for the harvest.”

“And so you are going to make the big circle again?”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t finished this first one, until you reach Noyes and your desk in the Western States.”

“The next journey won’t take so long.”

“You’ve been the good angel to me again, Duke. It’s quite a wonder, how you turn up in disaster of mine.... I wonder if I shall ever come to you—but you won’t get down. You wouldn’t even stay ill.”

“You won’t get down again, John, at least, in none of the ways you know about——”

Both men seemed spent beyond words.... Morning saw in the other’s departure the last bit of resistance lifted from his heart’s quest. Betty Berry had come between them. Morning’s conviction had never faltered on the point that Fallows was structurally weak on this one matter.... And so he was going. All that was illustrious in their friendship returned. They needed few words, but sat late before turning in. The cabin cooled and freshened. Each had the thought, before finally falling asleep, that they were at sea again.... And in the morning the thing that lived from their parting was this, from Duke Fallows:

“Whatever you do, John—don’t forget your own—the deepest down man. He is yours—go after him—get him!”

... She was at the top of the stairs when he called the next morning; and he was only half-way up when he saw that she had on her hat and coat and gloves. The day was bitter like the others. He had thought of her fire, and the quiet of her presence. He meant to tell her all about Duke Fallows and the going. It was his thought—that she might find in this (not through words, but through his sense of release from Duke’s antagonism) a certain quickening toward their actual life together. He wanted to talk of bringing her to the cabin—at least, for her to come for a day.

“You will go with me to get the tickets and things. I must start west at once.”

It was quite dark in the upper hallway. Morning reached out and turned her by the elbow, back toward the door of her room. There in the light, he looked into her face. She was calm, her eyes bright. Whatever the night had brought—if weakness it was mastered, if exaltation it was controlled. But she was holding very hard. There was a tightness about her mouth that terrified him. It was not as it had been with them; he was not one with her.

“You mean that you are going away—for some time?”

“Yes.... Oh, you must not mind. We are road people. We have been wonderfully happy. You must not look so tragic——”

It wasn’t like her at all. “We are not road people,” he thought.... “You must not look so tragic,”—that was just like a thing road people might say.

He sat down. The weakness of his limbs held his mind. It seemed to him, if he could forget his body, words might come. At first the thought of her going away was intolerable, but that had dwindled. It was the change in her—the something that had happened—the flippancy of her words.... He looked up suddenly. It seemed as if her arms had been stretched toward him, her face ineffably tender. So quickly it had happened that he could not be sure. He wanted this very thing so much that his mind might have formed the illusion. He let it pass. He did not want her to say it was not so.

Words of her letter came back to him. Neither the letter nor yesterday had anything to do with this day.... “You are drawing closer all the time. I have been so happy to-day that I had to write. You must know that I sent you away because I could not bear more happiness....”

Where was it? What had happened? He was fevered. Something was destroying him.... Betty Berry did not suffer for herself—it was with pity for him. The mother in her was tortured. It was her own life—this love of his for her—the only child she would ever have. She had loved its awakenings, its diffidences, the faltering steps of its expression. The man was not hers, but his love for her was her very own.... She had not thought of its death, when Fallows talked the night before. She had thought of her giving up for his sake, but not of the anguish and the slaying of his love for her. And this was taking place now.

“You will let me write to you?” he said, still thinking of the letter.

“Oh, yes.”

“And you will write to me?”

She remembered now what she had written.... The fullness of her heart had gone into that. She could not write like that again. Yet he was asking for her letters, as a child might ask for a drink.... She could not refuse. It wasn’t in nature to see his face, and refuse.... Surely if she remained apart it was all any one could ask.

“Yes, I will write sometimes.”

He stood in the center of the room, his head bowed slightly, his eyes upon the wall. He was ill, bewildered, his mind turning here and there only to find fresh distress.... Suddenly he remembered that he had not told her of his drinking.... That must be it. Some one else had told her, and she was hurt and broken.

“I meant always to tell you,” he said. “Only it really did not seem to signify by the time you came back. And when I was with you—oh, I seemed very far from that. I don’t understand it now——”

She did not know what he meant; did not care, could not ask. It was something he clutched—in the disintegration.... He looked less death-like in his thinking of it.

“It doesn’t greatly matter,” she said. “I have to go west.... Won’t you come with me to get the tickets?”

“I can’t go out into the street yet. If there is anything more I have done—won’t you let me know?”

Suddenly he realized her side, that he was detaining her; that it wasn’t easy for her to speak. It was not his way to impose his will upon anyone; his natural shyness now arose, and he fingered his hat.

“Dear John Morning—you haven’t done anything. You have made me happy. I must go away to my work—and you, to yours.... It is hard for me, but I see it as the way. I have promised to write——”

The words came forth like birds escaping—thin, evasive, vain words. That which she had seen so clearly the night before, (and which she seemed utterly to have lost the meaning of) was a lock upon every real utterance now. She had not counted upon this tragedy of her mother instinct—this slaying of the perfect thing in him, which she had loved to life.

He arose, and sat down; he swallowed, started to speak, but could not. He was like a boy—this man who had seen so much, just a bewildered boy, his suffering too deep for words—the sweetest part of him to her, dying before her eyes. And the dream of their service together, their hand-in-hand going out to the world, their poverty and purity and compassion together—these were lost jewels.... It was all madness, the world—all madness and devilishness. Beauty and virtue and loving kindness were gone, the world turned insane.... The thought came to tell him she was insane; a better lie still, that she was not a pure woman. She started to speak, but his eyes came up to her.... She tried it again, but his eyes came up to her. He fingered his hat boyishly. The mother in her breast could not.

Their dreadful night. The winter darkness was coming on swiftly. Her train was leaving.

“But you said you were not going to work for the present. You have been working so hard all winter——”

He had said it all before.

“Yes—but there is much for me to do—days of study and practice—and thinking. You will understand.... Everything will come clear and you will understand. You see, to-day—this isn’t a day for words with us.... One must have one’s own secret place. You must say of me, ‘She suddenly remembered something—and had to go away.’...”

“‘She suddenly remembered something and had to hurry away,’” he repeated, trying to smile. “But she will write to me. I will work—work—and when you let me, I will come to you——”

“Yes——”

He had to leave.... He kissed her again. There was something like death about it.

“If we were only dead,” she said, “and were going away together——”

... A man stepped up to him, regarded him intently. Morning realized that he must get alone. He had been shaking his head wearily, and unseeingly—standing in the main corridor of the station in Jersey—shaking his head.... It was full night outside. He forgot that he did not have to recross the river—and was on the ferry back to New York before he remembered....

He gained the hill to his cabin long afterward. That reminded him that Duke Fallows had gone, too—and that very morning.

It seemed farther back in his life than Liaoyang.

16

Betty Berry’s journey was ten hours west by the limited trains—straight to the heart of her one tried friend, Helen Quiston, a city music teacher. Her first thought, and the one buoy, was that she would be able to tell everything.... She could not make Helen Quiston feel the pressure that his Guardian Spirit (she always thought of Duke Fallows so) invoked in that half-hour of his call, but with a day or a night she could make her friend know what had happened, and something of the extent of force which had led to her sacrifice. Helen would tell her if she were mad. All through that night she prayed that her friend would call her mad—would force her to see that the thing she had done was viciously insane.

She was engulfed. For the first time, her spirit failed to right itself in any way. She was more dependent upon Helen Quiston than she had conceived possible, since the little girl had fought out the different cruel presentations of the days, during the early life with her father.

Throughout the night en route she thought of the letter she had promised to write to John Morning. The day with him had brought the letter from a vague promise to an immediate duty upon her reaching the studio.... She was to write first, and at once. Already she was making trials in her mind, but none would do. He would penetrate every affectation. The wonder and dreadfulness of it—was that she must not tell the truth, for he would be upon her, furiously human, disavowing all separateness from the race, as one with a message must be; disavowing the last vestige of the dream of compassion which his Guardian Spirit had pictured.... She knew his love for her. She had seen it suffer. Would Helen Quiston show her that she must bring it back—that the Guardian Spirit was evil? There was a fixture about it, a whispering of the negative deep within.

She could not write of the memories. Not the least linger of perfume from that night at the theatre must touch her communication. Yet it was the arch of all. As she knew her soul and his, they had been as pure as children that night—even before a word was spoken. It had been so natural—such a rest and joy.... She had learned well to put love away, before he came. From the few who approached, she had laughed and withdrawn. The world had daubed them. In her heart toward other men, she was as a consecrated nun. And this was like her Lord who had come.... She had made her way in the world among men. She knew them, worked among them, pitied them. Her father had been as weak, as evil, as passionate, as pitiable. In the beginning she had learned the world through him—all its bitter, brutal lessons. As she knew the ’cello and its literature, she knew the world and the cheap artifices it would call arts.... She had even put away judgments; she had covered her eyes; accustomed her ears to patterings; made her essential happiness of little things; she had labored truly, and lived on, wondering why. And he had come at last with understanding. She had seen in Morning potentially all that a woman loves, and cannot be. He had made her mind and heart fruitful and flourishing again. Then his Guardian Spirit had appeared and spoken. As of old there had been talk of a serpent. As of old the serpent was of woman.

Helen Quiston was just leaving for a forenoon’s work away from the studio. She sat down for a moment holding the other in her arms; then she made tea and toast, and hastened off to return as quickly as possible.... For a long time Betty Berry stood by the piano. The day was gray and cold, but the studio was softly shining. All the woods of it were dark, approximately the black of the grand piano; floors and walls and picture frames were dark, but the openings were broad, and naked trees stirred outside the back windows.... She did not look the illness that was upon her. She was a veteran in suffering.... She forgot to breathe, until the need of air suddenly caught and shook her throat. It was often so when the hidden beauty of certain music unfolded to her for the first time.

She went to the rear windows, gradually realizing that it would soon be spring-time. There was a swift, tangible hurt in this that brought tears. There had been no tears for the inner desolation.... “Poor dear John Morning,” she whispered.

The reproduction of a wonderful painting of the meeting of Beatrice and Dante held her eye for a long time.... The blight was upon her as she tried a last time to write. It spread over her hand and the table, the room, the day. There was a hurt for him in everything she wanted to say. She was hot and ill—her back, her brain, her eyes, from trying. She could not hurt him any more. He had done nothing but give her healing and visions. His Guardian had done nothing but tell the truth, which she had seen at the time. This agony of hers had existed. It was like everything else in the world.

She wrote at last of their service in the world. They needed, she said, the strong air of solitude to think out the perfect way. It was very hard for her, who had fared so long on dreams and denials and loneliness. He must remember that. “Great things come to those who love at a distance,” she wrote bravely. Tears started when she saw the sentence standing so dauntlessly upon the page of her torture.... It would make them kinder, make their ideals live—and how young they were!... She said that she was afraid to be so happy as he had made her in certain moments. Often she found herself staring at the picture of Beatrice and Dante.

The thought that broke in upon this brave writing was that she was denied the thrill of great doing, as it had come to her while Fallows had spoken.... It would have lived on, had she gone that night, without seeing Morning again. Moreover, her way was different from that which she had pictured, as his Guardian talked. She did not see then that her action made a kind of lie of all her giving up to that hour; and that there could be no united sacrifice. It was pure, voiceless sacrifice for her—and blind murdering for him....

From the choke of this, her mind would turn to the song of triumph her spirit had sung as his Guardian told the story.... She had seemed to live in a vast eternal life, as she listened; and this which she was asked to do—was just to attend a temporary flesh sickness. She had the strange blessedness that comes with the conviction that immortality is here and now, as those few men and women of the world have known in their highest moments.

She could get back nothing of that exaltation. It would never come again. The spirit it had played upon was broken.... She had been rushing away on her thoughts. It was afternoon, the letter unfinished, the ’cello staring at her from the corner. It had stood by her in all her sorrows of the years, but was empty as a fugue now—endless variations upon the one theme of misery.... Happiness does not come back to the little things—after one has once known the breath of life.... She closed the narrow way of the letter, which she had filled with words—no past nor future, only the darkness that had come in to mingle with the dark hangings of the room of her friend.... She kissed the pages and sent them back the way she had come in the night.

The qualities that had brought her the friend, Helen Quiston, and which had made the friendship so real, were the qualities of Betty Berry. She had come to the last woman to be told of her madness, or to find admonition toward breaking down the thing she had begun.... They had talked for hours that night.

“I know it is lovely, dear Betty. Why, you look lovelier this instant than I ever dreamed you could be. Loving a man seems to do that to a woman—but the privilege of the greater thing! Oh, you are privileged. That’s the way of the great love. I should like sometime to know that Guardian. How did mere man grasp the beauty and mystery of service like that?... Stay with me. I will serve you, hands and feet. It is enough for me to touch the garment’s hem.... You are already gone from us, dearest. You have loved a man. You do love a man. He is worthy. You have not found him wanting. What matters getting him—when you have found your faith? Think of us—think of the gray sisterhood you once belonged to—nuns of the world—who go about their work helping, and who say softly to each other as they pass, ‘No, I have not been able to find him yet.’”

17

Morning awoke in the gray of the winter morning. The place was cold and impure. He had fallen asleep without the accustomed blasts of hill-sweeping wind from window to window. He had not started the fire the night before; had merely dropped upon his cot, dazed with suffering and not knowing his weariness. He was reminded of places he had awakened in other times when he could not remember how he got to bed. Beyond the chairs and table lay the open fire-place, the ashes hooded in white.

The blackness of yesterday returned, but with a hot resentment against himself that he had not known before. He had followed Betty Berry about for hours, and had not penetrated the hollow darkness with a single ray of intelligence. This dreadful business was his, yet he had been stricken; had scarcely found his speech. There was no doubt of Betty Berry now, though a dozen evasions of hers during the day returned. She was doing something hard, but something she thought best to do. The real truth, however, was rightly his property.... To-day she would write. To-morrow her letter would come. If it did not contain some reality upon which he might stand through the present desolation, he would go to her.... Yes, he would go to her.

His side was hurting. He was used to that; it had no new relation now. Everything was flat and wretched. Distaste for himself and this nest in which he had lain, was but another of the miserable adjuncts of the morning. He stood forth shivering from the cot; struck a match and held it to some waste paper. Kindling was ready in the fire-place, but the paper flared out and fell to ashes, as he watched his left hand. He went to the window and examined his hand closer. The nails were broken and dry; there were whitish spots on the joints. He had seen something of this before, but his physical reactions had been so various and peculiar, in the past six weeks, that he had refused to be disturbed.

Just now his mind was clamoring with memories. He had the sense that as soon as an opening was forced in his mind, a torrent would rush in. He felt his heart striking hard and with rapidity. The floor heaved windily, or was it the lightness of his limbs? He went about the things to do with strange zeal, as if to keep his brain from a contemplation so hideous that it could not be borne.

He lit another paper, placed kindling upon it, poked the charred stubs of wood free from the thick covering of white, and brought fresh fuel. Then, as the fire kindled, he opened the door and windows, and swept and swept.... But it encroached upon him.... The open wound was no longer a mystery.... His dream of the river and the boat that was not allowed to land; his dream of the cliff, and looking down into the life of earth through the tree-tops ... the ferry-man of the Hun ... and now yesterday with its two relations to the old cause.

His whole nature was prepared for the revelation; yet it seemed to require years in coming. Like the loss of the manuscript in the Liao ravine, it was done before he knew.

“Of course, they had to rush away, when they found out,” he mumbled. “Of course, they couldn’t stay. Of course, they couldn’t be the ones to tell me.”

It might have been anywhere in China; the ferryman on the Hun ... during the deck-passage.... It did not greatly matter. Some contact of the Orient had started the slow virus on its long course in his veins. He knew that it required from three to five years to reach the stage of revealing itself as now. He saw it as the source of his various recent indispositions, and realized that he could not remain in his cabin indefinitely. It would be well for a while. Neither Duke Fallows nor Betty Berry would tell. He could keep his secret, and then—to die in some island quarantine? None of that. This was his life. He was master of it. He should die when he pleased, and where.

... Yes, she had her gloves on, when he came. She had not removed them all day, not even at the very last.... How strange and frightened she had been—how pitiful and hard for her! She could not have told him. She had loved him—and had suddenly learned.... She had seen that he did not know.... It must have come to her in the night—after the last day of happiness. Perhaps the processes of its coming to her were like his. He was sorry for Betty Berry.

And he could not see her again; he could not see her again. He passed the rest of the day with this repetition.... His life was over. That’s what it amounted to. Of course, he would not let them segregate him. His cabin would do for a while, until the secret threatened to reveal itself, and then he would finish the business.... The two great issues leaned on each other: The discovery of his mortal taint took the stress from the tragedy of yesterday; and that he could not see Betty Berry again kept madness away from the abominable death.... The worst of it all was that the love-mating was ended. This brought him to the end of the first day, when he began to think of the Play.

The literary instinct, of almost equal disorder with dramatic instinct, and which he had come to despise during the past year, returned with the easy conformity of an undesirable acquaintance—that reportorial sentence-making faculty, strong as death, and as uncentering to the soul of man. Morning saw himself searching libraries for data on leprosy, being caught by officials—the subject of nation-wide newspaper articles and magazine specials, the pathos of his case variously appearing—Liaoyang recalled—his own story—Reever Kennard relating afresh the story of the stealing of Mio Amigo. What a back-wash from days of commonness! The ego and the public eye—two Dromios—equal in monkey-mindedness and rapacity.

Morning was too shattered to cope with this ancient dissipation at first.

After the warring and onrushing of different faculties, a sort of coma fell upon the evil part, and the ways of the woman came back to him. He sat by his fire that night, the wound in his side forgotten, the essence of Asia’s foulness in his veins, forgotten—and meditated upon the sweetness of Betty Berry. He approached her image with a good humility. He saw her with something of the child upon her—as if he had suddenly become full of years. “How beautiful she was!” he would whisper; and then he would smile sadly at the poor blind boy he had been, not to see her beautiful at first.... To think, only three days before, she had sent him away, because she could not endure, except alone, the visitation of happiness that came to her. People of such inner strength must have their secret times and places, for their strength comes to them alone. To think that he had not understood this at once.... He had been eloquent and did not know it.

“Hell,” he said, “that’s the only way one can say the right thing—when he doesn’t plan it.”

... If his illness had been any common thing she would not have been frightened away. He was sure of this. It took Asia’s horror—to frighten her away. He saw her now, how she must have fought with it. He shuddered for her suffering on that day.... That day—why it was only the day before yesterday.... He never realized before how the illusion, Time, is only measurable by man’s feeling.... He was a little surprised at Duke Fallows. He himself wouldn’t have been driven off, if Duke had suddenly uncovered a leprous condition. He had been driven off by Duke’s ideas, but no fear of contagion could do it. Yet Duke was the bravest man he had ever known—in such deep and astonishing ways courageous. Yet he had been brought up soft. He wasn’t naturally a man-mingler. It had been too much for him. It was a staggerer—this. Fallows was a Prince anyway. Every man to his own fear.... This was the second morning.

Old Jethro, the rural delivery carrier, drove by that morning without stopping. She could not have mailed her letter until last night—another day to wait for it. Morning tried to put away the misery. Women never think of mail-closing times. They put a letter in the box and consider it delivered.... He puzzled on, regarding the action of Duke Fallows, in the light of what he would have done. No understanding came.

All thoughts returned in the course of the hours, his mind milling over and over again the different phases, but each day had its especial theme. The first was that he would not see Betty Berry again; that Duke Fallows had been frightened away, the second; and on the third morning, before dawn, he began to reckon with physical death, as if this day’s topic had been assigned to him.

Sister Death—she had been in the shadows before. Occasionally he had shivered afterward, when he thought of some close brush with her. She was all right, only he had thought of her as an alien before. It really wasn’t so—a blood sister now.... He recalled scenes in the walled cities of China.... She had certainly put over a tough one on him.... It would be in this room. He wouldn’t wait until his appearance was a revelation.... He would do the play. Something that he could take, would free him from the present inertia, so he could work for a while, a few hours a day. When the play was done—the Sister would come at his bidding.... He had always thought of her as feminine. A line from somewhere seemed to seize upon her very image—this time not sister, but——

Dark mother, always gliding near, with soft feet——

He faced her out on that third morning. Physically there was but a tremor about the coming. Not the suffering, but a certain touch and shake of the heart, heaved him a little—the tough little pump stopped, its fine incentive and its life business broken.... But that was only the rattle of the door-knob of death.

It was all right. He wasn’t afraid. The devil, Ambition, was pretty well strangled. There must be something that lasts, in his late-found sense of the utter unimportance of anything the world can give—the world which appreciates only the boyish part of a real man’s work. So he would take out with him a reality of the emptiness of the voice of the crowd. Then the unclean desire for drink was finished—none of that would cling to him; moreover, no fighting passion to live on would hold him down to the body of things.... But he would pass the door with the love of Betty Berry—strong, young, imperious, almost untried.... Would that come back with him? Does a matter of such dimension die? Does one come back at all?...

Probably in this room....

Then he thought of the play that must be done in this room; and curiously with it, identifying itself with the play and the re-forming part of it, was the favorite word of Duke Fallows’—Compassion. What a title for the play! Duke’s word and Duke’s idea.... All this brought him to the thought of Service, as he had pictured it for Betty Berry—a life together doing things for men—loving each other so much that there were volumes to spare for the world—down among men—to the deepest down man.

His throat tightened suddenly. He arose. A sob came from him.... His control broke all at once.... How a little run of thoughts could tear down a man’s will! It wasn’t fear at all—but the same depiction running in his mind that had so affected Betty Berry when she begged to be alone....

“The deepest down man—the deepest down man.... It is I, Duke!... Surely you must have meant me all the time!”

But it passed quickly, properly whipped and put away with other matters—all but a certain relating together of the strange trinity, Death, Service, and Betty Berry—which he did not venture to play with, for fear of relapse.... He had been eating nothing. He must go to Hackensack. The little glass showed him a haggard and unshaven John Morning, but there was nothing of the uncleanness about the face in reflection.... He heard the “giddap” of Jethro far on the road. The old rig was coming.... It stopped at his box. He hurried down the hill.

18

Two letters; one from Duke Fallows. Morning opened this on the way up the slope. He was afraid of the other. He wanted to be in the cabin with the door shut—when that other was opened.... Fallows was joyous and tender—just a few lines written on the way west: “... I won’t be long in ’Frisco. I know that already. The Western States does very well without me.... Soon on the long road to Asia and Russia. I must look up Lowenkampf again before going home. He was good to us, wasn’t he, John?... And you, this old heart thrills for you. You are coming on. I don’t know anything more you need. I say you are coming on. You’ll do the Play and the Book.... John, you ought to write the book of the world’s heart.... And then you will get so full of the passion to serve men that writing won’t be enough. You will have to go down among them again—and labor and lift among men. Things have formed about you for this.... We are friends.... I am coming back for the harvest.”

The sun had come out. Morning was standing in the doorway as he finished. The lemon-colored light fell upon the paper.... It wasn’t like Duke to write in this vein—after running away. He repeated aloud a sentence to this effect. Then he went in, shut the door, and, almost suffocating from the tension, read the letter of Betty Berry.

It was just such a letter as would have sent him to her, before his realization of the illness.... He saw her torture to be kind, and yet not to lift his hopes. It was different from Fallows’, in that it fitted exactly to what he now knew about himself. And he had to believe from the pages that she loved him. There was an eternal equality to that.... The air seemed full of service. Two letters from his finest human relations, each stirring him to service. He did not see this just now with the touch of bitterness that might have flavored it all another time.... What was there about him that made them think of him so? If they only knew how meager and tainted so much of his thinking was. Some men can never make the world see how little they are.

He wrote to Betty Berry. Calm came to him, and much the best moments that he had known in the three days. He was apt to be a bit lyrical as a letter-lover—he whose words were so faltering face to face with the woman. Thoughts of the play came to his writing. He was really in touch with himself again. He would never lose that. He would work every day. When a man’s work comes well—he can face anything.... The play was begun the fourth day, and, on the fifth, another letter from Betty Berry. This was almost all about his work. She had seized upon this subject, and her letters lifted his inspiration. She could share his work. There was real union in that....

He was forgetting his devil for an hour at a time. There were moments of actual peace and well-being. He did not suffer more than the pain he had been accustomed to so long. And then, a real spring day breathed over the hill.

That morning, without any heat of producing, and without any elation from a fresh letter from the woman, he found that in his mind to say aloud: