Chapter V: Book II: The Hill-Cabin (1)

1

MORNING sat in the yielding leather of the _Boabdil_ library, quite as if he had passed his youth in the midst of people who talk of doing things. Liaoyang had been written, even the abandoned impediments of retreat covered. It had all come to pass quite according to the early ideas of Noyes and Field. John Morning was Liaoyang in America. His book _Liaoyang_, magazine and newspaper articles gathered together, was established as important authority in encyclopædic and other reference books. The most captious must grant that living man can do no more than this.

Morning had dined with the president. One after another he had made every magazine of note, and much money. He had done his own story of the journey, which proved more of a comment maker than the battle description; and his article on the deck passages of the Chinese coolies will always be an incentive to foreign missions. New York had waited upon him, had exploited him, given him bewildering payments, and called him everything, even Hugoesque and Tolstoianic. It was very hard for Morning to retain the conviction that there wasn’t ten pages of all this copy that ranked in sheer value with the ten pages of Fallows’ _Ploughman_. He didn’t for awhile.

Liaoyang was on in full magazine blast in America, while Mukden and Sha River were being fought across the world. At this time Morning spent an hour a day, as war-expert for a particularly incessant daily newspaper of New York. So all people knew what the campaign was about, and what certain generals might do, from past grooves of their wearing in history. Also German gentlemen of military pasts wrote letters disputing the prophecies. Morning had certainly arrived.

The condition or place of arrival was slippery. The peace of Portsmouth had been protocoled.... Liaoyang, deep in the valley of desuetude, was without even the interest of perspective. The name, Liaoyang, made the mind of the world lame.... Even in the heat of arrival, the thing had puzzled him. Money ceased to gladden him after a few mails; did not spare him from the nearest irritation. Plainly he was quite the same John Morning after appearing in the great magazines as before; and the people whom he had interested were mainly of the same sort that had come forward in the _Polander_ bar.

He had been a sick man since the Hun Crossing. When the big New York task was finished, and it was done with something of the same drive of will that characterized the second writing of the main story on board the _Sickles_, he was again ready to break, body and brain. Running down entirely, he had reached that condition which has an aversion to any task. His productive motors had long lain in the dark, covered from the dust. This was the time he clubbed about. The _Boabdil_ was a favorite, but even here, men drew up their chairs from time to time, day and night, dispatching the waiter for drink and saying:

“Those Japs are pretty good fighters, aren’t they?” or, “What do you consider will become of China in the event of----” or, very cheerily, “Well, Mr. Morning, are you waiting for another war?”

He slept ill; drank a very great deal; the wound in his side had not healed and he had made no great friends. He thought of these four things on this particular mid-day in the _Boabdil_ library.... Nearby was old Conrad with the morning papers, summoning the strength to dine. It was usually late in the afternoon, before he arose to the occasion, but with each stimulant, he informed the nearest fellow-member that he was going to eat something presently. The old man stopped reading to think about it. After much conning, he decided that he had better have just one more touch of this with a dash of that--which he took slowly, listening for comment from within.... After dinner he would smoke himself to sleep and begin preparing for the following morning’s chops. “Eat twice a day, sir--no more--not for years.”

Conrad in his life had done one great thing. In war-time, before the high duty was put on, he had accumulated a vast cellar full of whiskey. That had meant his hour. Riches, a half century of rich dinners, clean collars and deep leather chairs--all from that whiskey sale.... “Picturesque,” they said of Conrad at the _Boabdil_. “What would the club do without him?”...

Morning watching him now, remembered an old man who used to sit at a certain table in a Sixth avenue bar. The high price of whiskey had reversed conditions in this case, and a changed collar meant funeral or festivity. Forty years ago this old man had bred a colt that became a champion. That was his hour, his answer for living. After all, Morning concluded, having seen Conrad fall asleep one night, the old horseman was less indecent.

Finally Morning thought of the little Englishman at Tongu and the blanket; then of Fallows and Nevin--Fallows saying, “Come on upstairs,” that day of their first meeting at the _Imperial_, and Nevin saying, “Well, you gave me a night----” .... Morning began to laugh. “Picturesque, what-would-we-do-without Conrad”--sitting five days and nights on the deck passage from the mouth of the Pei-ho to the lowest port of Japan....

He hadn’t thought much of Nevin and Fallows and the Tongu Endicott in the months that followed his arrival from San Francisco, when the work went with a rush. And Betty Berry--there were times when he was half sure she--name, Armory and all--formed but an added dream that Nevin had injected hypodermically the night before.

Morning could think about all these now. The editors had begun to tell what _they_ wanted. He had sent in stuff which did not meet their needs. He was linked to war in their minds. Moreover, plentiful money had brought to the surface again his unfinished passion to gamble, as his present distaste for work had increased the consumption of alcohol.... It was _Reverses_ that reminded him of Fallows and Nevin and the Tongu blanket and the angel he had entertained in the Armory room.

Editors didn’t care for his fiction. “A good war story is all right any time,” they said, but apparently his were not, for five or six trials didn’t take. He had a tendency to remember Fallows when he wrote fiction. The story of the Ploughman came curiously back to mind, when he was turned loose from straight narrative, and he was “balled” between planes.... He thought of a play....

Varce now came into the library and drew up a chair. Varce had one of his stories; Varce edited a magazine that sold several million every two weeks. Long ago, with great effort, and by paying prodigiously, Varce had secured from Morning one of the final tiles of the great Liaoyang mosaic.... Varce was tall, a girl’s dream of poet-knight--black, wavy hair, straight excellent features, a figure lean enough for modern clothes.

“Morning,” he said, “do you know the fighting game?”

“You mean pugilistically?”

“Yes.”

“I used to do fights.”

Varce went on presently:

“A great series of articles is to be written on the boyhood and general atmosphere of the men who have made great ring history--big stuff, you know--well written--from a man who can see the natural phenomena of these bruisers--how they are bred and all that. Now three things go into the fighter--punch, endurance, but, most of all, instinct--the stuff that doesn’t let him ‘lay down’ when the going is rough, and doesn’t keep him from putting the wallop on a groggy opponent. Many a good fighter has missed championship because he was too tender-hearted to knock-out a helpless----”

“Do you like that story of mine you have, Varce?” Morning asked yawning.

“Oh, it’s a good enough story--a bit socialistic--what are you trying to get at?”

“No need of me furnishing diagrams, if the manuscript leaves you that way,” Morning said. “You were just saying about the last touch to a beating--yes, I’ve heard about those three things----”

“Do you want the series?”

“No, I’m doing a play.”

... After Varce had gone, Morning thought it all out again. Varce was living a particularly unmitigated lie. Five years ago he had done some decent verse. He had a touch of the real poetic vision, and he had turned it to trade. He was using it now to catch the crowd. An especially sensational prostitution, this--one that would make the devil scratch his head.... And Varce could do without him. Liaoyang had not made the name of John Morning imperative. Moreover, he himself was living rotten. He wished he had told Varce what he thought of him and his multi-millionaire subscription.... He hadn’t; he had merely spoken of his play. The bridges were not burned behind him. He might be very glad to do a series of “pug” stories for Varce. There were good stories in these fighters--but the good stories, as he saw them, were not what Varce saw in the assignment.

It summed up that he was just beginning over again; that he must beat the game all over again in a different and larger dimension--or else quit.... He ordered a drink.... He could always see himself. That was a Morning faculty, the literary third eye. He saw himself doing a series of the fighters--saw it even to the red of the magazine covers, and the stuff of the announcements.... John Morning, the man who did fifty-mile fronts at Liaoyang, putting all his unparalleled battle color in the action of a 24-foot ring. Then the challenge to the reader: “Can you stand a descriptive force of this calibre? If you can, read the story of the great battle between Ambi Viles and Two-pill Terry in next issue.”... He would have to tell seriously before the battle description, however, how Ambi was a perfect gentleman and the sole support of his mother, an almost human English gentlewoman. It is well to be orthodox.

Somebody spoke of whiskey in the far end of the library, insisting on a certain whiskey, and old Conrad cocked up his ears out of a meaty dream.... Morning closed his eyes. He felt the warmth of a ship beneath, the drive of the cold rain on deck and the heaving of the sea. There was something almost sterile-clean about that deck-passage, compared to this.... Then he remembered again the men he had known, and the woman who came to the Armory room--and the long breath his soul took, with her coming.... Finally he saw himself years hence, as if he had quit the fight now and taken New York and Varce as they meant to use him.... He was sunk in leather, blown up like an inner tube and showing red, stalled in some club library, and forcing the world to remember Liaoyang, bringing down the encyclopædia to show his name, when extra drunk.... No, he would be hanging precariously to some porter job on Sixth avenue, trying to make the worn and tattered edges of his world believe how he had once carried the news from Liaoyang to Koupangtse....

A saddle-horse racked by on the asphalt, and turned into the park. Morning arose. There was stabbing and scalding from the unhealed wound in his side. The pain reminded him of the giants he had once known and of the woman who came to the Armory room. It had always been so; always something about him unsound, something that would not heal. He had accepted eagerly, but ever his giving had been paltry. And he had to be pulled down, out of the shine of fortune, before he remembered how great other men had been to him.

2

THAT night he dreamed that he had passed through death.... He was standing upon a cliff, between the Roaming Country and a valley of living earth. He did not want the spirit region; in his dream he turned his back upon it. He did not want the stars. Illusion or not, he wanted the earth. He looked down upon it through the summer night, down through the tree-tops into a valley that lay in the soft warm dusk. He watched with the passion and longing of a newly-dead mother, who hears her child crying for her, and senses the desolation of her mate.... The breath of earth came up to him through the exhaling leaves--leaves that whispered in the mist. He could have kissed the soil below for sheer love of it. He wanted the cool, damp earth in his hands, and the thick leaf-mould under his feet, and the calm wide listening of the trees.... Stars were near enough, but earth was not. He wanted to be down, down in the drip of the night. He would wait in ardor for the rain of the valley.... Looking down through the tree-tops, he sensed the earth passion, the lovely sadness of it--and desired it, even if he must die again.... There was an ache in the desire--like the ache of thirst that puts all other thoughts away, and turns the dream and the picture to running water.

He awoke, and went to his window in the dark. He saw New York and realized that he was dying for the country. His eyes smarted to tears, when he remembered rides and journeys and walks he had taken over the earth, so thoughtlessly, without knowing their boon and beauty and privilege.... While he was standing there, that which he had conceived as To-morrow, became To-day, and appeared over the rim of the opposite gorge of apartments. The first light of it sank far down into the tarry stuffiness of the pavement, but the dew that fell with the dawn-light was pure as heaven to his nostrils.

That day he crossed the river, and at the end of a car-line beyond Hackensack, walked for a half-hour. It was thus that Morning found his hill. Just a lifted corner of a broad meadow, with a mixed company of fine trees atop. He bought it before dusk. The dairyman’s farmhouse was a quarter-mile distant; the road, a hundred and fifty yards from the crest of the hill, with trees thinly intervening. The south was open to even wider fields; in the far distance to the west across the meadows, the sky was sharpened by a low ribbon of woods and hill-land. In the east was the suspended silence of the Hudson.

“I want a pump and a cabin, and possibly a shed for a horse,” he said, drinking a glass of buttermilk, at the dairyman’s door.

He was directed to Hackensack.

With the falling darkness again upon the hills, he saw that certain crowded, mid-growth trees were better down. The fine thought of building his cabin of them occurred. By the time he reached Hackensack, the house of logs was so dear in thought, that he wanted nothing short of a cabinet-joiner for such a precious task. That night he met Jake Robin, who was sick of nailing at houses in rows, a job that had long since ceased to afford deep breaths to his capacity.

The next day Morning moved to Hackensack, and Jake was at work.... Three thousand he had lost gambling ... he wished he had it now. Much more had been lost, and not so cleanly, in reaching the final _Boabdil_ realization, but he had enough. Presently he was helping Jake, and there was joy in it.

They tapped a spring some thirty feet beneath the humped shoulder of the hill; built a shed for the horse he had not yet found, and then fitted the cabin to the fire-place of concrete and valley stone. One sizeable room it was, that faced the open south from the brow of the hill.

A fine unfolding--this love of Morning’s for wood itself, and woods. Over a half-hundred trees were his own--elm, beech, hickory, oak, ash, and maple--and like a fine clean colony of idealists they stood meditating.... One never knows the quality of wood until one builds his own house. Opening the timbers for the big mortices--each was a fresh and fragrant discovery. Jake and he lingered long, after the cabin was roofed, over the heavy oak flooring, and the finishing of windows and doors and frames. They built some furniture together of hickory, which is a wood a man should handle with reverence, for it is fine in its way as wheat and grapes and honey and wild olives. Hickory answers graciously to the work of the hand, and, like a good dog, flourishes with men.... They built a table and bed-frame and a chest of drawers; and Morning at last went to Hackensack for pots, kettles, and tea things. Jake Robin, like one who has built a ship, was loath to leave without trying the cabin. Morning kept him busy in the clearing, long after he was in the mood to start work on the play. There was a platform to build for the pump; also a certain rustic bench. The shed needed tinkering; an extra cabinet for books was indispensable--and screens.... No one had ever let Jake play before in his life.... Moreover, he was paid for the extra hour required to walk to and from town. All Hack heard about it.

“You’ll need a chicken-coop----”

“No,” said Morning. The look on Jake’s face was like old Amoya’s in Tokyo, when the rickshaw-runner was forbidden to take him to the Yoshuwara.

“I can fit you up a little ice-box near the spring--so’s you’ll pump it full of water, and keep your vittles----”

Morning wanted the stillness for the play, but he couldn’t refuse. Two days more. Then Jake scratched his head.

“You’ll be wantin’ a vine on the cabin,” he ventured. “I know the man who has the little ivies.”

This was irresistible. “Can you see me owning a vine?” asked Morning. Yet there was significance in the idea together with the play.

“And I’ll build a bit of a trainer to start it. By the end of summer----”

“Bring it on, Jake----”

“An’ I’ll fetch a couple of rose vines, and dreen them with broken crockery from the holler----”

The vine prospered and the play; and the roses began to feel for Jake’s trellis. The tool-box was still there.

“You’ll be needin’ fire-wood for the winter. To be sure, you can buy it, but what’s the good, with dead stuff to be knocked down and small trees to be thinned out, and the shed gapin’ open for the saddle-horse you’re not sure of findin’? It’s wood you ought to have in there----”

In fact, it was no small task to break Jake of the hill-habit. Morning grew accustomed to the ax, and the crashing of branches, many of which would have been sacrificed to the strong winds of the Fall. Meanwhile, the shed had come into its own, and there were piles of firewood seasoning in the sun and shade.

He was alone with the nights; sitting there in his doorway when it was fine, studying the far lights of the city.... City lights meant Varce and Conrad, not his great friends. Every hour that he looked, he liked better the wind about the doorway and the open southern fields.

One night he felt his first twinge of sorrow for the big city. Hatred, it had been before. Other men were tortured as he had been, but somehow, the way didn’t get into their dreams and drive them forth, as he had been driven. They were really not to blame for _Boabdilling_; they sank into the cushions and lost the sense of reality. And then the thousands in the hall-bedrooms and worse, to whom _Boabdil_ was heaven’s farthest pavilion! Morning seemed to have something to say to those thousands, but wasn’t ready yet.

He longed for Fallows, whom he saw more clearly every day--especially since the _Ploughman_ had crept into the play.... He wanted to wait upon the big sick man; to have him here, to prepare food for him, and sit with him in these silences. He wanted Endicott at Tongu, too, and Nevin--oh, yes, Nevin. It was like a prayer that he sent out some nights--for the unearthing of these giants from their hiding--so that he could listen to them, and serve them and make them glad for their giving to him.

* * * * *

A deep summer night. The purple of the north seemed washed and thinned in ether, (nothing else could bring out the heavenly lustre of it), and the black, fragile top-foliage of the woods leaned against it, listening, feminine. Darkness only on the ground; yet he loved it, the heart of the dusk that throbbed there. He loved the earth and the water that mingled in the hollows. He breathed with strange delight the air that brushed the grass and the clover-scent that came to him around the hill.... And this was the momentary passion--that he was going from all this. He loved it as one who was passing beyond. It was like the dream after all. Just as Mother Earth was unfolding, he was called. She was like a woman long lived-with, but unknown, until the sudden revelation of parting.... He touched the stones with his hand.

In the hush, waiting for a katydid to answer, that night, Morning fell asleep.... He had climbed to his cabin, as if it were a room on an upper floor. Before he opened the door, he knew someone was within. Before the light, it was clear that someone was curled up asleep on the foot of his hard bed.... Yes, it was she who had restored his soul, that day at the Armory--and there she lay sleeping.... He did not call her, as he had called Moto-san; there was no thought to waken her, for everything was so pure and lovely about it. He stood there, and watched her gratefully--it seemed a long time--until the katydid answered.

3

AFTER Markheim had kept the play three months--it was now November--Morning crossed to the city to force the decision. The producer was prevailed upon to see him.

“It will be read once more,” said Markheim. “It will go or not. We like it, but we are afraid of it. To-morrow we will know or not.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“I don’t know. I do not read plays.”

“To-morrow?”

“Yes.”

Markheim bought his opinions, and was attentive to those which cost the most....

Morning drew a napkin the size of a doll’s handkerchief from a pile. A plate of eggs and bacon rung, as if hitting a bull’s-eye upon the white marble before him. He was still wondering what Markheim was afraid of. He didn’t like the feel of it. The Lowenkampf of Duke Fallows’ had crept into the play--Lowenkampf, whose heart was pulled across the world by the mother and child. How they had broken his concentration on the eve of the great battle.

At the time, he had seen the tragic sentimentalist as one caught in a master weakness, but all that was gone. Lowenkampf still moved white in his fancy, while the other generals, even Mergenthaler, had become like the dim mounds in his little woodland.... And what a dramatic thing, to have a woman and a child breaking in upon the poised force of a vast Russian army. It was like Judith going down into the valley-camp of the Assyrians and smiting the neck of Holofernes with his own fauchion. Morning’s mind trailed away in the fascination of Fallows, and in the dimension he had been unable to grasp in those black hours of blood.... So many things were different after this summer alone; yet he had never seemed quite rested, neither in mind nor body.... He had been all but unkillable like the sorrel Eve before that journey from Liaoyang to New York. Now, even after the ease and moral healing of the summer alone, his wound was unhealed....

The telephone-miss in Markheim’s reception-room was very busy when he called the next afternoon.... Something about her reminded him of _Mio Amigo_. She was a good deal sharper. Was it the brass handle?... To hear her, one would think that she had come in late, and that New York needed scolding, even spanking, which exigencies of time and space deferred for the present. Her words were like the ‘spat, spat, spat,’ of a spanking.... She was like an angry robin, too, at one end of a worm. She bent and pulled, but the worm had a strangle-hold on a stone. It gave, but would not break.... Morning saw the manuscript at this point on her side-table, and the fun of the thing was done.... She looked up, trailed a soft _arpeggio_ on the lower-right of her board, grasped the manuscript firmly, and shoved it to him.

“Mr. Morning to see Mr. Markheim,” he said.

“Mr. Markheim is----”

But the husky voice of the producer just now reached them from within.

“Busy----” she finished with a cough.... New York was at it again. _Stuyvesant_ especially had a devil, and _Bryant_ was the last word.

“... You can’t see Mr. Markheim. This is your message----”

“Oh, it really isn’t. This is just an incident. I hesitate to trouble you, but I must see Mr. Markheim.”

The play was wrapped in the identical paper in which it had been brought.

She must have touched something, for a boy came in--a younger brother, past doubt--but so bewildered, as to have become habitually staring.

“Tell Mr. Markheim, Mr. Morning insists on seeing him.”

The boy seemed on the point of falling to his knees to beg for mercy. Morning’s personal distemper subsided. Here was a drama, too--the great American stage.... One word came out to him from Markheim:

“In-zists!”

“How do you do, Mr. Morning--good afternoon.”

Markheim had his hand in a near drawer, and was smiling with something the same expression that old Conrad used when listening for the dinner notice.

“You see we do not want it--we are afraid,” he began, and becoming suddenly hopeful, since Morning drew forth no bomb, he added, “You have a girl’s idea of war, Mr. Morning--good afternoon.”

He liked his joke on the name. “We were in doubt about the war part--afraid--and so we consulted an expert--one who was on the spot,” he said pleasantly.

Morning’s mind was searching New York; his idea was fateful.

“We are not bermidded to divulge who the expert is, but we did not spare money----”

Morning’s eye was held to the desk over the shoulder of Markheim, to a large square envelope, eminent in blue, upon the corner of which was the name “Reever Kennard.”

“I’m sure you did not. He was always a high-priced man,” he said idly.... And so this was the long-delayed answer to his appearance in the _World-News_ to the extent of eighty thousand words. He had heard that Mr. Reever Kennard was back on finance and politics.... Markheim had not followed his mind nor caught the sentence. Morning passed out through the hush. He paused at the door to give the office-boy a present--a goodly present to be divided with the sister, just now occupied with a fresh outbreak of obstreperousness on the part of _Gramercy_.

* * * * *

Morning had moments of something like the old rage; but the extreme naturalness of the thing, and its touch of humor, helped him over for the next hour or so. Apparently, the opportunity had fallen into the lap of Mr. Reever Kennard; come to him with homing familiarity. The war-expert had spoken, not as one offering his values gratuitously, but as one called and richly paid. Morning reflected that the summer alone on his hill must have subdued him. As a matter of fact, he was doubtful about the play; not because Markheim was afraid; not by any means because Mr. Reever Kennard had spoken, but because it had not come easily, and the three incidents which made the three acts did not stand up in his mind as the exact trinity for the integration of results. But one cannot finally judge his own work.

He wandered straight east from that particular theatre of Markheim’s where the offices were and passed Fourth Avenue. He never went quite that way again, but remembered that there was an iron picket-fence of an old residence to lean against; and at the corner of it, nearer town, the sidewalk sank into a smoky passage where lobsters, chops, and a fowl or two were tossed together in front. It was all but dark. He was averse to taking his present mood across the river. It wasn’t fair to the cabin. _Mio Amigo_ recurred queerly and often to mind....

“Look--there’s Mr. Morning----”

“Sh-sh--oh, Charley--sh-sh!”

Morning was compelled. Could this little shrinking creature, beside whom the under-sized brother now appeared hulking, be the same who had bossed Manhattan to a peak in his presence such a little while ago? She seemed terrified, all pointed for escape, sick from the strain of the street.

“Why, hello!” Morning said.

She pulled her brother on, saying with furious effort of will, “I’m sure we’re much obliged for your present----”

“I had forgotten that,” Morning said.

“We’re going to take in the show,” the boy remarked, drawing back. At large, thus, he was much better to look upon.

“Come on, Charley--we mustn’t detain----”

Morning had an idea, and looked at the sister as he said, “Won’t you have supper with me somewhere? I have nothing----”

Her face was livid--as if all the fears of a lifetime had culminated into the dreadful impendings of this moment. She tried to speak.... Then it came to Morning in a belated way that she thought she was accosted; that she connected his gift with this meeting. He couldn’t let her go now--and yet, it was hard for him to know what to say.

“I mean we three,” he began hastily. “This play being refused rather knocked me out, and I didn’t know what to do with the evening. I don’t live in New York, you know. I thought you and your brother--that we might have supper together----”

He spoke on desperately, trying to stir to life the little magpie sharpness again. It was more to her brother she yielded. New York must have frightened her terribly.... Morning managed to get down to the pair that night. He was clumsy at it, however, for it was a new emprise. Mostly John Morning had been wrapped and sealed in his own ideas. The boy was won with the first tales of war, but the sister remained apart with her terrors. No one had taught her that kindness may be a motive in itself.

And now Morning was coping with what seemed a real idea: What was the quality of the switch-board that harnessed her character? Here she was wild and disordered--like a creature denied her drug. With that mystic rumble of angry New York in her ears--the essential buzz of a million desires passing through her--she was a force, flying and valuable force. Was she lain open to obsession now because she was removed from that slavery? Was that maddening vibration the lost key to her poise?

He tried hard, not daring to be attentive in the least. She would have fled, if he had. He was boyishly kind to her brother. That awed, and was beginning to hold her.

Morning saw clearly that she stood like a stretched wing between her brother’s little soul and the world. She could be brave in sheltering Charley. The boy was really alive. He ate and answered and listened and lived, the show ahead.... In the midst of it, Morning awoke to the fact that he was having a good time; and here was the mystery--with the last two people in New York he would have chosen; a two, his whole life-business had taught him to employ thoughtlessly, as other metropolitan adjuncts--pavements, elevators, messengers. Here was life in all its terror and complication, the same struggles he had known; yet he had always seen himself as a sort of Titan alone in the great destroying elements. The joke was on him.

Charley left them for just a moment. The sister said, as if thinking aloud:

“... And yet, he cries every morning because he has to go to the office. Oh, he wouldn’t go there without me----”

A world of meaning in that. They were sitting in the dark of the _Charity Union_ play-house, with Charley between them. The aims and auspices of the performance were still indefinite to Morning, who had not ceased to grapple with his joke--the seriousness with which he had habitually regarded John Morning, his house, his play, his unhealed wound, his moral debility....

For fifteen minutes a giant had marvelously manhandled his companion. The curtain dropped an instant, and in the place where the giant had performed now stood a ’cello and a chair.... She came on like the wraith of an angel--and sat down and played.... How long she played Morning never knew, but somewhere in it he caught his breath as one who had come back to life.... And then she was gone. The audience was mildly applauding. He turned to the sister leaning on the knees of the boy:

“I know her. She is very dear to me. If you don’t mind, I’ll leave you now. You are safe with Charley--and some time again I’ll come. I thank you very much. I really want to do this again--we three----”

Even though his own joy was bewildering, he saw the sudden happiness of Charley’s sister, who, in spite of all, had been haunted by the dread of the _afterward_. Now that was gone from her. Relief was in her face. It was all so much better than she had dared to hope. He had wanted nothing--except to be kind--and now he was going. She gave her hand impulsively.... Charley did, too, and was ordered to call a carriage for his sister if he wished; at all events, the means was attended.... Then they saw him making his way forward--putting money into the hands of ushers, and inquiring the way to the stage.... And she was there, playing again.

4

SHE was making the people like her. Her effect was gradual. They had been held by more obvious displays. The instrument seemed very big for her, but the people liked her all the better for this.... He could not be one with the audience, but the old watching literary eye--the third eye--caught the sense of the people’s growing delight. She made them feel that she belonged to them; as if she said:

“I have come back to you. I will do just what you ask. Everything I have is yours----”

It was different and dearer to John Morning than anything he had ever known. The picture came clearly to him as he walked around behind.... This was the hour of her return. She had gone from the hearts of her people long ago to bring back music. It was the beautiful old story of their sacrifice to send her away. How splendidly she had learned; how thrillingly they remembered her beginnings. And she had never forgotten; she would always love and thank them--indeed, she was happier than any now.... Morning was lost for a moment in his story.

She was approaching, but did not see him yet. The house was pleased with her, not noisily, but pleasantly. She turned to bow to the people--and then back toward the wings. She saw him standing there. Her arms went out to him, though she had not quitted the stage.... The gesture was new to the people.... It was different from her coming to him at the Armory.... They were standing together.

“Why don’t you go on again?” a voice said, and with a queer irritation in the tone.

... She was playing again--and with dash and power.

Morning had to shut his eyes now, really to hear; and yet, he could not summon her face to mind when his eyes were shut. He thought with a quick burn of shame that he had once wished her prettier. Sadness followed, for, it seemed to him, their meeting had been broken. She belonged to the people and not to him. They loved her.... She was different. He saw it now. The audience, so pleased and joyous, lifted her in a way perhaps that he could never do.

It was everywhere--the music. It filled the high, brick-walled stage, vibrated in the spiral stairways, moved mysteriously in the upper darkness and immensity. Behind the far wings a man was moving up and down in a sort of enchantment--no, he was memorizing something. A few of the far front rows were visible from where Morning stood, and the forward boxes opposite....

Morning was wandering in a weird land, a hollow land. The woman’s playing was between him and the world of men; half for them, half for him. The Memorizer was but another phantom, wandering with the ghost of a manuscript. Between Morning and the player was only the frail, fluent current of music. This was a suspense of centuries.... Would she go to _Them_, or return to Him? The tall, dim canvases were fields of emptiness and silence, in which he wandered listening, tortured with tension; and the loft was sunless, moonless, unearthly....

The music ceased. He heard the calling of the other world to her. He was apart in the shadows. Would she go to them, or would she remember him, waiting?... She was coming. He heard her step behind the wings. It was light as a gloved hand upon a table. He was hungry and athirst and breathless. For the first time he saw that her throat and arms were bare.... They were standing together again, but the Other Phantom intercepted.

It was the Memorizing Man. He came forward in an agony of excitement. “You’ll have to prompt me,” he said to Betty Berry, speaking roughly in his tension. “It’s my first time with this new dope. I thought I had it, but I ain’t--and there’s a barrel of it.”

The stage was slightly changed. Morning was thinking how hideous the work of some men. The Phantom was scourged with the fear of one who was to do imperfectly what another had written. The woman had carried a small table and chair to the wings, out of view of the audience and as near as possible to the Memorizer.... Morning found something soft and fragrant in his hands. Betty Berry’s wrap, which she had given to him before going to the table. And now the monologue had begun.... It was to be humorous.

Betty Berry, standing beside the table, raised her eyes from the paper, and beckoned to Morning. His first thought was that he might disturb her prompting, and he hesitated. She looked up again. Then he thought she might want her wrap. He tiptoed forward and put it around her shoulders.

“It wasn’t that,” she whispered, her eyes upon the paper. “I wanted you to keep me company. This is long. Sit down.”

“Won’t _you_--sit down?” he said from behind, very close to her hair.

She shook her head.... It was peculiar--she standing, and he in the chair. The soft wrap winged out, and her arm beneath slid across his shoulder; the hollow of her left arm against his cheek. He kissed it, and his face burned against its coolness.

She shivered slightly, but did not take her arm away. Now he looked up into her face--her eyelids drawn, her lips compressed, her gaze steadily held to the manuscript. The Phantom was carried on by the alien humor. Laughter was beginning to crackle here and there through the house. Betty Berry followed with her eyes--just the words.

“I was so glad to find you,” Morning whispered.

Her lips moved.

Matters tumbled over each other in his mind to say to her; he was thinking sentences rather than words. He knew that it was not well to talk now, but there seemed so much to say, and so little time. He caught himself promising to give her understanding, and he told her that she seemed everything he wanted to know. His cheek was burning as never before....

The remotest happened. The Phantom faltered in a climax, and covered the difficulty with a trick--awaiting the line from the wings. Betty Berry had become rigid. Her eyes would not see the page.

Morning spoke a sentence in a low, carrying way. He had plucked it from the page painfully near his own eyes. It may be that the Memorizer righted himself, or that the prompted line was what he needed. Anyway, he was going again, and rising to the end....

* * * * *

The two stood together while the house laughed, recalling the performer.

“Thanks. I caught it fine,” the Phantom said hastily. “Not even the front rows knew. I was listening for Miss Berry--and your cue came----”

“It went all right,” said Morning.

The other took the manuscript and passed on, rolling a cigarette.... For just a moment, the two were alone. Into each other’s arms they went, with the superb thoughtlessness of children ... and then they heard steps and voices.... He wondered that Betty Berry could laugh and reply to those who spoke to her.... He wanted to escape with her. Never had he wanted anything so much. He was exhausted, humbled, inspired. To be out in the street with her--it seemed almost too good to be.... She was saying good-night and good-bye. He followed, carrying the ’cello.

5

MORNING remembered that he had thought of her once before as having braids down behind--as if they were boy and girl together, and now it seemed as if they were wandering through some Holland street. He had never been in a Holland street, but the sense of it came to him--as he walked with her, carrying her instrument. His primary instinct was to turn away from the noise of the cars, and where the lights were less glaring. Moreover, now that they were alone, the impulse to say many things had left him.

“We must hurry to the ferry--there is only a few minutes----”

He had known somehow that she was going away--perhaps from something she had said to the others at the theatre.

“You’re not going way back to--to the Armory?”

“No, to Europe just for a few weeks. I sail to-morrow morning from Baltimore. All we have to do is to catch the ferry and train. I have sleeper-tickets--and berth and all----”

“I’ll--I’ll go across on the ferry with you,” he said huskily.

She felt his suffering by her own, and said:

“My old master is there. I am to meet him--I think in Paris--I shall know when I reach London. There is to be just a few private concerts and some lessons further from him. For two years we’ve planned to do this. I go to Baltimore, because it is cheaper to sail from there----”

“And you’ll be back--when?”

“By the first of March--just a few days over three months----”

He was silent for a time, and then asked: “Do you think this is just like a chance meeting to me--as one meets an old friend in New York?”

“No.”

“I was in a whirl when I saw you,” he said desperately. “It was such a pretty thing, too--the way I happened to come to the theatre ... and now you’re going away----”

“Yes--yes--but it’s only a little while----”

“Did you know I was here in New York?”

“I knew you had been. I saw your work----”

“But anywhere my work appears--a letter sent in care of the paper or magazine would find me----”

“We--I mean women--do not write that way----”

“I know--I know.... But _I_ didn’t have anything but the name, ‘Betty Berry’----”

* * * * *

“It seemed that night after I left you at the Armory everyone was talking about John Morning. And to think I supposed you just a soldier. Everywhere, it was what John Morning had done, and what he had endured--and I had spent the afternoon with you. I started to read that story about your journey, but I couldn’t go on. It seemed that I would die before I was half through your sufferings.... I would try to think of the things we said, but they didn’t come back. I couldn’t rest. I was glad you asked me to come again. I could hardly wait for the morning--to go back to the Armory----”

He had no answer. They were in a cross-town car.

“But I think I understand. We won’t say anything of that again....”

“You went back to the Armory that next morning?”

“Yes----”

“Oh, but I wasn’t ready,” he said at last, as if goaded by pain. “I had so much to learn. Why, I had to learn this--how little this means----”

He pointed out of the windows to the city streets.

“You mean New York?”

“Yes----”

“It really seems as if men must learn that, first of all. You have done well to learn so soon.”

“It’s so different now. I must have been half-unconscious that day when you came. You were like an angel. I didn’t know until afterward what it really meant to me.... You remember the men who came--newspaper men? They showed me what I could do in New York--how I could make the magazines and the big markets. I was knocked-out. You must see it--all I wanted to do in coming years--to make what seemed the real literary markets--all was to be done in a few weeks.... It was not until I was on the train that night that I remembered you were a living woman, and had come to me.... Then I didn’t know what to do.... But ever since I have thought of that afternoon, every day....”

They boarded the ferry and moved away from the rest of the people.

“I hate to have you go,” he said. The words were wrung from him. They were such poor and common words, but his every process of thought repeated them. He looked back the years, and found a single afternoon in the midst of passionate waste--the single afternoon in which she came.... She was everything to him. He wanted to go on and on this way, carrying her ’cello. He could ask no more than to have her beside him. He had learned the rest--it was trash and suffering. He wanted to tell her all he knew--not in the tension of this momentary parting--but during days and years, to tell his story and have her sanction upon what was done, and to be done. She was dear; peace was with her.... She would tell him all that was mysterious; together they would be One Who Knew. Together they would work--do the things that counted, and learn faith....

She took the ’cello from him, so that he could carry to the Pullman her large case checked in the Jersey station.... It was very quiet and dark in the coach. All the berths were made up but one, in which they sat down.... They were alone. It was perfect.

“I can’t go back now. I’ll go on with you to Trenton.... I have thought so much of meeting you.... When the men came that day to the Armory they showed me everything that seemed good then--fame and money waiting in New York. It seemed that it couldn’t wait another day--that I must go that night.... When the train started (it was like this in Oakland) I thought of you--of you, back in ’Frisco and coming to the Armory in the morning. It broke me. But I wasn’t right--not normal. I had worked like a madman--wounds and all. I worked like a madman in New York----”

She put her hand on his. Her listening centered him. That was it--as if he had not been whirling true before.... Her hand, her listening, and he was himself--eager to give her all that was real.

“It’s so good to have you here,” she said in a low, satisfied way. “Will you be able to get a train back all right?”

“Yes.” Now he thought of Charley and his sister.

“It was such a good little thing that brought me to you,” he said. “One of the little things that I never thought of before,” he told her hurriedly.

“They are very wonderful--those little things, as you call them.... A person is so safe in doing them----”

“I must tell Duke Fallows about that,” he added. “About that word ‘safe,’ as you just said it.... Did you read his story?”

“About the _Ploughman_?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, it was wonderful!” Betty Berry said. “He made me see it. It was almost worth a war to make people see that----”

She stopped strangely. He was bending close, watching her.

“Do you know you are a love-woman?”

“You mean something different?” she asked queerly.

“I mean you are everything--don’t you see? You know everything at once that I have to get bruised and tortured to know. And when you are here, I know where I am. It’s different from any kind of resting to be here with you. It’s kind of being made over. And then you are so--tender----”

“You make the tears come, John Morning.”

Now, it was very dark where they were; the real silences began. He knew the most wonderful thing about her--her listening.... Sometimes, she seemed hardly there. Sometimes the love for her and the sweet quality of it all--shut his throat, and he stared away in the dark. It came to him that Betty Berry--left to herself--would be infallible. She might do wrong, through the will of someone else, but her own impulses were unerringly right. There was delicacy, perhaps, from the long summer alone, in this sense that he must not impose his will. She would be unable to refuse anything possible. If ever Betty Berry were forced to refuse anything he asked, they would never be the same together. And so he studied her. Her nature was like something that enfolded. It was like an atmosphere--his own element.

“Betty----”

“Yes.”

“Betty----”

“Yes-----”

And then she laughed and kissed him. He was saying her name in the very hush of contemplation; so real that the name was all....

6

THE Pullman conductor passing through after Trenton gave Morning further passage, and moved on with a smile. A wonderful old darkey was the porter, very huge, past seventy, with a voice purringly kind, and the genial deference of the Old South. Morning was thinking there couldn’t be better hands in which to leave the Betty Berry.... Fifteen minutes at Philadelphia; they hurried out for a cup of coffee. As one of the big station clocks marked the minutes, Morning felt havoc with a new and different force.

“I can’t go back now,” he said.

“You look so tired--the long night journey back----” she faltered.

“Would you like to have me go farther--to Wilmington--to Baltimore?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you won’t mind staying up?”

Betty Berry covered her eyes.... “I never rested in quite the same way as to-night,” she said. “It has been happy--so happy, unexpected. I shall have nine days at sea to think of it--to play and think of it, moment by moment.”

“I’ll go with you clear through to the ship then.”

The clock ceased its torment.

“Have you plenty of money to get back--and all?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure--because I could loan you some?”

He told her again, but the thought held a comradeship that gripped him. It happened that he was plentifully supplied; though he would have walked back rather than confess otherwise--a peculiar stupidity. The beaming of the old porter made the moment at the steps of the coach so fine, Morning found himself explaining:

“The lady is sailing from Baltimore in the morning. I’ve decided to go clear through to the pier.”

This was an extraordinary thing for him to explain.

They sat in silence until the train moved, and they could forget the snoring.... The coach grew colder, and Betty unpacked a steamer rug which they used for a lap-robe. Even the old darkey went to sleep after Wilmington.

“Letters--” she said at last. “I have been thinking about that.... There’s no way to tell where I am to be. I won’t know until London, where I am to meet my old master. Perhaps then I could tell you--but I daren’t think of letters and risk disappointment.... You must wait until I write you----”

Morning began to count the days, and she knew what was in his mind.

“That’s just it--one gets to lean on letters. One’s letters are never one’s self. I know that extended writing throws one out from the true idea of another. I shall think of to-night during the weeks.... It seems, we forgot the world to-night. There--behind the scenes--how wonderful.... There was no thought about it. I just found myself in your arms----”

“Then I am not to write--until I hear from you?” he asked. It had not occurred to him before that she could have any deeper reason than an uncertain itinerary.