Chapter XVI: Part 16

"Yes. But there's nothing between them ... not even a kiss ... of that I'm certain. Darrie is as cool as a cucumber ... and Penton is as shy with women as--you are!"

I smiled to myself. If Ruth had seen us that preceding afternoon!

"Of course the fault could not all be on Hildreth's side."

"No, they're both a couple of ninnies ... but there's this to be said for Penton, he's trying to get something done for the betterment of humanity ... while Hildreth's only a parasite."

"And Darrie--how about her? What does she do but loaf around in a more conventional manner, talking about her social prestige, the dress of one of her ancestresses in the Boston Museum, her aristocratic affiliations ... how many and how faithful those negro servants of hers are, down South ... between the two, Hildreth has the livest brain, and puts on less."

"Take care! You'll be falling in love with Penton Baxter's wife yet!"

Our talk was halted by Darrie's re-appearance. Hildreth came furtively back, too, from the little cottage, like a guilty child. She apologized to Darrie, and her apology was accepted, and, in a few minutes we were talking ahead as gaily as before....

We rehearsed Hildreth in her part as Titania ... for that was the part she was to play in _The Mid-Summer Night's Dream_, that the Actors' Guild of the colony was to put on in their outdoor theatre, a week from that afternoon ... Hildreth insisted on dressing for the part ... in her green, skin tights ... letting her black hair flow free ... wearing even her diadem, as fairy queen. She had a good, musical voice ... a way of speaking with startled shyness that was engaging.

But Hildreth stuck to her original intention of moving to the cottage. She had Mrs. Jones move her things for her.

As I sat in the library of the big house reading Tolstoy's _Anna Karenina_, I overheard Darrie telling Ruth in the bathroom that Hildreth would not have insisted on donning her tights, if she had not been proud of her symmetrical legs, and had not wanted to show them off to me.

Between the three women, nevertheless, Hildreth was easily my choice already ... Darrie was lovely, but talked like a debutante from morning till night....

Ruth had too much of the quietist in her, the non-resistent. She had a vast fund of scholarship, knew English poetry from the ground up ... but her bringing that knowledge to me as an attraction was like presenting a peacock's feather to a bird of paradise....

However, when Penton came home that night, he found us all in huge good humour. I had just received a check from Derek, and had insisted on spending most of it for a spread for all of us, including a whopping beefsteak.

And we ate and joked and enjoyed ourselves just like the bourgeoisie.

* * * * *

If Penton only had had a sense of humour ... but this I never detected in him.

Even at singing classes, which I attended one evening with him ... his whole entourage, in fact....

With solemn face he sang high, and always off key, till the three women had to stuff their handkerchiefs in their mouths to keep from laughing at him before his face....

After class, we strolled home by a devious path, through the moonlight. This time Ruth walked ahead with little Dan, Hildreth with her husband, Penton,--Darrie with me....

"Drag back a little, Johnnie ... Penton and Hildreth are having a private heart-to-heart talk, I can tell by their voices."

We hung back till they disappeared around a bend. We were alone. Darrie began to laugh and laugh and laugh.... "Oh, it's so funny, I shall die laughing"....

* * * * *

"Why--why, what's the matter!"

For I saw tears streaming down the girl's face in the moonlight.

"It's so awful," replied Darrie, now crying quietly, "--so tragic ... yet I had to laugh ... I'm so sorry for Penton ... for both of them....

"Penton _is_ such a jackass, Johnnie," she gulped, "and God knows, as I do, he's such an honest, good man ... helping poor people all over the country ... really fighting the fight of the down-trodden and the oppressed."

I put my arm around the girl's waist, and she wept on my shoulder.

Finally she straightened up her head, stopping her crying with difficulty.

"We're all so funny, aren't we?"

"Yes, we're a funny bunch, Darrie ... all so mixed up,--the world wouldn't believe it, would they, if we told them?"

"And you could never make them understand, even if you did tell them. You know, my dear, old Southern daddy--he thinks Penton is a limb of the old Nick himself ... with his theories about life, and the freedom of relations between the sexes, and all that ... even yet he may leave me out of his will for coming up here, though he has all the confidence in the world in me."

And Mary Darfield Malcolm--whom we always called "Darrie"--went quickly to her room when we got back, so the others wouldn't notice that she had been crying....

* * * * *

Quite often, in the afternoons, toward dusk, around a dying fire, the whole community had "sings" out in the woods, near the one large stream that abutted the colony, and gathered into itself, all the little brooks....

The old songs were sung; rich, beautiful, old Scotch and English and Irish ballads--which were learnt, by all who wanted to know them, at the singing school ... and the old-fashioned American songs, too.

And the music softened our hearts and fused us into one harmony of feeling. And all the bickerings of the community's various "isms" melted away ... after all, there was not so very much disharmony among us. And, after all, the marvel is that human beings get along together at all.

* * * * *

The afternoon before the "circus" the little settlement more than ever took on the appearance of a medieval village ... almost everybody took turns in participating in the "circus" ... almost everybody togged out in costume. But first we had a parade of the "guilds" ... the Actors' Guild, in which Hildreth bore a part; in her pretty tights she looked like a handsome boy page in some early Italian prince's court.

Don Grahame was the son of the leader of the community whom Jones had promised to rake over the coals that night, after the circus.

Don led the Carpenters' Guild, looking like nothing else than a handsome boy Christ. Don, secretly disliking in his heart the free-love doctrines his father and others taught (though he always rose loyally in his father's defence) had gone to the other extreme, he lived an ascetic, virgin life. But it didn't seem to hurt him. He was as handsome as Hildreth was beautiful.

Everybody liked the young fellow. He had sworn that he would maintain his manner of abstinent living till he fell in love with a girl who loved him in return. Then they would live together....

That, he maintained, was the true and only meaning of free love. He had no use for varietism nor promiscuity.

The Guilds paraded twice around the Village Green, led by the Guild of Music Masters, who played excellently well.

The Children's Guild was a romping, lovely sight.

* * * * *

The circus was held shortly afterward in the huge communal barn, in the centre of its great floor,--the spectators seated about on the sides....

There was the trick mule, made up of two men under an ox-hide, the mule fell apart and precipitated Don Grahame in between its two halves ... each half then ran away in opposite directions.

Don rode so well that that was the only way they (I mean the mule) could unseat him. He won much affectionate applause.

Then there was the fearful, great boa-constrictor ... which turned out to be a double-jointed, lithe, acrobatic, boy-like girl whom we knew as Jessie ... Jessie, they whispered, was marked for death by consumption, if she didn't look out and stop smoking so many cigarettes ... she was slender and pretty--but spoke with an adenoidal thickness of speech.

The colony was as merry as if no storm impended.

We adjourned for supper.

After supper, under the evening star we marched back to the barn again, which also served as our town hall. On the way there our talk was subdued and expectant. Many people were disgruntled with Jones.

"Why must he do this?"

"Why can't old Jones let well enough alone?... no community's perfect, not even our community."

Daniel had been put to bed, angrily objecting.

The five of us joined the flow of people toward the barn. Penton carried a lantern.

"Jones is all right," said Penton to me, "I like his spirit. I'm going to stand by him, if he finds himself seriously pressed, just because the man's spirit is a good one ... nothing mean about him ... but I know he'll place me among the snobs and wealthy of the community."

When all were gathered, as still as at the opening of a prayer meeting, Grahame came in, and, with his son and other friends, took seats opposite Jones. Grahame, who had been master of ceremonies and ring master for the afternoon circus, had not changed his dress of knee-britches and ruffed shirt.

The debate was prolonged and fiery....

Jones launched into a gallant attack on Grahame, and was replied to evasively. Don Grahame wanted to punch Jones's head for what he called slurs cast at his father's good name....

Penton made a famous speech reconciling, almost, the irreconcilable parties.

And so we adjourned.

Penton and I accompanied Jones home. All the way the latter was arguing against Baxter's plea, that he be more lenient with Grahame....

"You look out, Penton," Jones warned with genial firmness ... "Grahame has been trying to persuade people in this community not to bring shoes to me to be mended ... a dirty attempt to starve me out ... Oh, no!... I haven't the slightest trace of persecution mania....

"And you'd better look out, Penton, and not play tennis this Sunday, for I'm going to strike back at the tennis-playing snobs here, of whom you're one."

"Jones, what do you mean by that? Surely not a bomb to smear us all over the courts!" Penton joked.

"A bomb, yes ... it will be a bomb of sorts ... but I warn you you shan't play games on Sunday any more. I'll see to that ... not that I've unexpectedly grown religious, but that I mean to strike back as pettily as the way in which I'm being persecuted."

* * * * *

"I suppose he means the Blue Laws," Penton commented seriously, "but surely he can get no one to enforce them."

* * * * *

But Jones found a facetious officer of the law or so, down in Philadelphia, who were as glad of a chance to molest a radical colony as of an opportunity to put over a good joke....

Baxter, Grahame, Bedell, and others of the prominent members of the community were haled in to court ... and, to the surprise of everyone, sentenced to forty-eight hours hard labour on the rock-pile, in the workhouse....

And Jones sang triumphant snatches of song and hammered away merrily at shoes in his little shack along the road, while unused hands gathered water blisters making big stones into little ones, with other and heavier hammers.

The newspapers made a great to-do about the matter. The affair was just serio-comic enough to attract nation-wide attention. And the story was a good one--the story of the anarchist-shoemaker who invoked the use of archaic, reactionary laws, in his battle against his less radical antagonists, the Single Taxers and Socialists.

Story after story was also written about our curious little colony.

Penton Baxter shared honours with the shoemaker. Reporters swarmed over his front porch and into his house to interview him, on the triumphant return of the party when they had served their forty-eight hours.

Penton gave out interview after interview. And, to his credit let it be said, though he revelled in the notice accorded him, he also effected two serious results from what had begun as almost a practical joke ... he started a fight on the absurd Blue Laws by focusing publicity on them ... and he exposed the bad prison conditions his unknown fellow prisoners lived under, who had _not_ gone to the workhouse in a jocular mood because of resurrected Blue Laws.

Jones was willing to let the matter rest, as well as were his other opponents ... but Baxter kept the fight going as long as he could. He was accused of loving notoriety. His attitude toward it was mixed. He did love notoriety ... he enjoyed every clipping about himself with infinite gusto. But he also used publicity as a lever to get things done with, that would otherwise never have been noticed. The others were willing to consider what had happened to them, as a private affair. Penton gracelessly used that, and every private adventure for propaganda--turned it sincerely in the way he thought it might benefit people....

He gave the papers a very bad poem--_The Prison Night_. I remember but one line of it--

"The convict rasped his vermin-haunted hide."

* * * * *

"Come, get into the group; I want the papers to tell the public about you, too," he urged me, prophetically, as I stood on the outskirts, while three camera men were focusing on him, as he stood, expectant, blandly smiling, and vain-glorious.

"Boys, I want my friend, the poet, Mr. John Gregory, in the picture, too."

"Oh, all right!" they assented indifferently, which injured my egotism. But I was too adroit to show it. I still demurred with mock modesty. Penton would have been franker.

Finally, at his urgency, they snapped us, our arms about each other's shoulders.

In the light of subsequent events, they were glad of that picture.

* * * * *

Our tennis-playing, Blue-Law martyrs, as I have said, were held over night in the workhouse ... or maybe two nights, I do not exactly remember which ... and when they came back they were full of the privations of jail-life, and the degradation of the spirit and mind suffered by prisoners there. To me, their attitude seemed rather tender-foot and callow. It was something that would have been accepted off-handedly by me. I had been in jail often, not for a cause, as I punned wretchedly, but _be-cause_. I did not accord hero-worship to Penton when he returned, as the women of the household did.

For a week it quite reconciled Hildreth with him....

* * * * *

But on the first night of his absence Hildreth and I took a stroll together in the moonlight.

Long the three women and myself had sat in the library, while I read aloud from a MSS. volume of my poetry, which I intended submitting to the Macmillans soon. For Ruth knew Mr. Brett and promised to give me an introduction to him. And I was to make a special trip to the city on the money I had saved from my weekly remittances ... for Penton would not permit me to spend a cent for my keep while I visited him. And I had already been with him three weeks....

* * * * *

I read them many love poems--those I had written for Vanna....

"Why," commented Hildreth, "these verses sound like what a very callow youth would write, who never had experience with women ... I mean by that, intimate knowledge of them."

I flushed and sat silent.

"Some day, when you've lived more," remarked Ruth, "you'll write love-poetry more simple, more direct."

"Though infinite ways He knows
To manifest His power,
God, when He made your face,
Was thinking of a flower!"

I read.

"There again you have an instance, of what I mean ... you are only rhetoricising about love; not partaking of its feelings."

"But I wrote all these poems about a real girl," and I told them the story of my distant passion for Vanna.

"No matter--you're a grown-up man who, as far as knowledge of women is concerned, has the heart of a baby," observed Hildreth.

--"in these days of sex-sophistication a fine thing!" cried Ruth.

"Yes, when out of the mouths of babes and sucklings come quotations from Havelock Ellis and Ellen Key!" cried Darrie.

"Good! Darrie, good!" Hildreth applauded....

"--time to go to bed ... here it's almost one o'clock."

"--had no idea it was so late. I have a lot of typing to do to-morrow. Good night, folks!" and Ruth was off to her room upstairs.

"Good-night, Hildreth,--suppose you're going to sleep down in the little house!" It was Darrie who spoke.

"Yes," answered Hildreth, in a simple tone, "I will feel quite safe there ... Johnnie's tent is only a few yards away."

Hildreth and Darrie kissed each other on the mouth tenderly.

"Good night, Johnnie--" and impulsively Darrie stepped up to me, took me by the two shoulders, and kissed me also a kind sisterly kiss.... I responded, abashed and awkward.

A ripple of pleasant laughter at me from both women.

"Johnnie's a dear, innocent boy!" Darrie.

"He makes me feel like a mother to him!" said Hildreth.

Though each of these remarks was made without the slightest colour of irony, I did not like them ... I lowered my head, humiliated under them.

Ever since I had been among them the three women had treated me in the way they act with small boys, preserving scarcely any reserve in my presence. Penton himself had lost all his first disquiet.

Outside--

"I'll take you as far as the cottage ... it's right on the way, you know."

"All right, but where are you going?"

"Into the kitchen to get a lantern."

"The moon is almost as bright as day. We won't need it."

We stepped out into the warm, scented night. In a mad flood of silver the moon reigned high in the sky, dark and bright with the contours and shades of its continents and craters, as if nearer the earth than it had ever been before....

"This night reminds me of those lines in Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_, the ones that follow after 'Is this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilion?' which are, to me, a trifle over-rhetorical ... the ensuing lines are more lovely:

"'Fair as the evening air--

"'Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars,' or is it 'ten thousand stars'?"

Hildreth turned her face up to me. Her arm went through mine. She drew my arm close against her body and held it tight in silent response for a quiet interval....

"You _are_ a poet ... a _real_ poet ... and," she dropped her voice, "and, what is more, a real man, too!" there was a world of compassion in her voice....

"--You remember Blake's evening star--that 'washed the dusk with silver?'"

"Jesus, how beautiful!" I cried.

We were standing in front of her cottage, that darkled in the trees.

Suddenly, roused by our voices, like some sweet, low, miraculous thing, a little bird sang a few bars of song, sweet and low, in the bushes somewhere, and stopped....

"Hildreth, don't let's go to bed yet." I caught her arm in my hands, "it's too beautiful ... to go to bed."

I was trembling all over....

"Yes, boy?"

"Let's--let's take a walk."

* * * * *

We went through the little sleeping community. She clung to my arm lightly....

"You're the first woman I haven't been frightened of, rather, have felt at home with."

"You, who have been a tramp, a worker all over the country ... in big cities ... do you mean to tell me that?--"

"Yes ... yes ... before God, it is true! You don't think I'm a fool, do you--a ninny?"

"No, on the contrary, I think you are a good man ... that it is miraculous ... I--I feel so old beside you ... how old are you, Johnnie?"

"Twenty-six."

"Why, I'm only two years older ... yet I feel like your mother."

* * * * *

In the groves adjoining the colony, for a mile on either side, wherever there was a big tree, a circular seat had been built about it. It was on one of these that we sat down, without a word.

I laid my head against Hildreth's shoulder. Soothingly she began stroking my hair. With cool fingers she stroked it.

"What fine hair you have. It's as soft and silky as a girl's."

"I took after my mother in that."

"What a mixture you are ... manly and strong ... an athlete, yet sensitive, so sensitive that sometimes it hurts to look at your face when you talk ... you've suffered a lot, Johnnie."

"In curious ways, yes."

"Tell me about yourself. I won't even whisper it in the dark, when I'm alone."

"I know I can trust you, Hildreth."

"What are you doing, boy?"

"I want to sit at your feet."

"You dear boy."

"I feel quite humble ... I don't want you to see my face when I talk."

She drew my head against her knees. Threw one arm as if protectingly over my shoulder.

"There. Are you comfortable, boy?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"Quite ... don't be ashamed ... I know much about life that you do not know ... tell me all."

* * * * *

So I told her all about myself ... my ambition ... my struggles ... my morbidity ... my lack of experience with girls and women....

"And I must have experience soon ... it's obsessing me ... it can't last this way much longer ... I shall go mad."

And I rehearsed to her a desperate resolve I had made ... to find a woman of the streets, in New York, when I went in, the ensuing week ... and force myself, no matter how I loathed it--

I buried my head in her lap and sobbed hysterically.

Then I apologised--"forgive me if I have been too frank!"

"I am a radical woman ... Penton and I both believe in the theory of free love, though we happen to be married ... what you have told me is all sweet and natural to me ... only--you must not do what you say you'll do--in New York!--"

"I must, or--" and I paused, to go on in a lower, embarrassed voice ... "Do--do you know what else I thought of--dreamed of--?

"In Paris--I understand--men live with women as a matter of course--

"You see--" I was hot with shame to the very ears, "you see--there, you know,--I thought if I went there I would find some pretty little French girl that I would take to live with me ... in some romantic attic in the Montmartre district ... and we would be happy together ... and I would be grateful, so grateful, to her!"

"Why you're the Saint Francis of the Radicals," Hildreth exclaimed.

"Please don't make fun of me ... I suppose you think me very foolish."

"Foolish?... No, I think you have a very beautiful soul. I wish every man had a soul like that."

She took my head in her hands and kissed me on the brow.

"Hildreth, only tell me what I am to do?"

"I do not know ... theoretically I believe in freedom in sex ... I wish to God I could help you."

"Why can't you?"

"Hush, you do not know what you're asking!"

"By the living Christ, I only know that I would crawl after you, and kiss your holiest feet before all the world, if you helped me."

"Now I understand what Lecky meant when he spoke of the sacrificial office of a certain type of women ... I only wish ... but come, we must go."

I was on my feet beside her, as she rose.

"Yes, we had better go home," I spoke quietly, though my heart pumped as if I had taken strychnine.

I put my arms about her, to steady her going, for she stumbled.

"Why, Hildreth, dearest woman, you're trembling all over, what's the matter?... have I--I frightened you with my wild talk?"

"Never mind ... no, take your arm away ... Let me walk alone a minute and I'll be all right ... I'll be all right in a minute ... it's just turned a trifle chilly, that's all."

"Hush!" going down the path by the big house, Hildreth stopped, hesitated. "I'm--I'm not going to the little cottage to-night."

"Then I'll say good-night!"

"No, come on in and we'll sneak out to the kitchen and find something to eat ... aren't you hungry?"

"A little bit. But I'm afraid we might wake Ruth and Darrie up."

We tip-toed in. Hildreth searching for the matches, knocked the wash-basin to the floor. We stood hushed like mice.

"Who's down there?" asked Darrie's voice, with a dash of hysteria in it ... of hysteria and fright.

"Damn it, there's Darrie waked up."

"Such a clatter would wake anyone up!"

_"Who's there, I say!"_

"It's only me, Darrie ... I got hungry in the night and came up to the house to snatch a bite to eat."

"Oh ... I'm coming down to join you, then."

We saw Darrie standing at the top of the stairs, her eyes luminous and wide with emotion.

She stood, rosy-bodied, in her night-dress, which was transparent in the light of the lamp she carried....

"Johnnie's here, too!" warned Hildreth.

"Oh!" cried Darrie, and turned back, to re-appear in her kimono.

"I'm sorry we waked you up. But I knocked that infernal basin down off the sink."

"You didn't wake me. I was awake already. I haven't slept a wink."

"Neither have we!" I responded.

"What?" Darrie asked me in so startled, impulsive a manner that Hildreth and I laughed ... and she laughed a little, too ... and then grew grave again....

"It was such a beautiful night, Johnnie and I took a walk in the moonlight."

Darrie looked from one to the other of us with a wide, staring look.

"You needn't look that way, Darrie!"

"Please, please, Hildreth!"

"You and Penton have taken walks in the moonlight."

"Hildreth, dear, I'm not rebuking you ... and you know my walks with Penton are all right, are harmless."

"Yes, I know they are ... but you mustn't rebuke me, either."

"I wasn't rebuking either you or Johnnie ... it isn't that I'm thinking of at all ... but everything has been so uncanny here to-night ... I could not sleep ... every little rustle of curtains, every creak or motion in the whole house vibrated through me ... something's going to happen to someone."

"You're only upset because Penton's in jail," I explained.

"No, that's not it ... that's nothing compared to this feeling ... this premonition--"

"Come on, let's make some coffee ... in the percolator."

"You girls sit down and I'll make it. I've been a cook several times in my career."

Someone was knocking about in the dark, upstairs. We heard a match struck....

"There, we've waked Ruth, too."

"What's the matter down there?" Ruth was calling.

"Come on down and join us, Ruth,--we're having a cup of coffee a-piece."

"It's only two o'clock ... what's everybody doing up so early? Has Penton come back?"

"No ... but do come down and join us," I replied.

* * * * *

"I tell you, I thought it was burglars at first, and I was going to the drawer in Penton's room and get out his six-shooter."

"Does Penton keep a gun?" I asked.

"Yes ... it's the one he bought to shoot the mongrel dog with."

* * * * *

We ate some cold roast beef sandwiches and drank our coffee.

Hildreth stayed in the big house, not going down the path with me.

I went silently to my tent. It was blowing a little now. The moon was surging along behind little, grey, running clouds. It would rain before daylight. A haunted shiver swept through my back as I stole along the path. I repeated poetry rapidly aloud to crowd out uncanny imaginings. I had a silly, sick impulse to run back to the big house and sleep on the couch in the library.

But I forced myself on. "If you're ever going to be a man, you'd better begin now," I muttered to myself, as if talking to another person.

In my tent ... I lit the lamp. I removed all hanging objects because their lurching shadows sent shivers of apprehension through me....

"That damned coffee--wish I hadn't drunk it."

* * * * *

The wind and rain came up like a phantom army. It sang in the trees, it drummed musically on my tent. It comforted me.

The floodgates of my mind, my inspiration, broke loose. I rose to my super-self. And now if a horrible thing had stood grey at my elbow, unmoved, I would have looked it unflinchingly in the sightless visage....

My pencil raced over paper ... raced and raced.

"Here it comes ... just like your good rain, so kind to earth.... Oh, beautiful God, I thank Thee for making me a poet," I prayed, tears streaming down my face.

* * * * *

The second act of _Judas_ stood complete, as if it had written itself.

I rose. It seemed hardly an hour had passed.

It took me a few minutes to work the numbness out of my legs. How they ached! I stepped out of the tent-door like a drunken man ... fell on my face in some bushes and bled from several scratches. The blare of what was full daylight hurt my eyes. I had been writing on, entranced, by unneeded lamp, when unheeded day burned about me.

Stepping inside again, I saw by my Ingersoll that it was twelve o'clock. I fell into a deep sleep, still dressed ... I was so exhausted. Usually I slept absolutely naked.

* * * * *

These were the things that happened while Penton was in jail because he played tennis on Sunday.

* * * * *

Now I was part and parcel of the household, no longer a stranger-friend on a visit. Though Penton's jail-experience did not thrill me, the continued thronging of reporters did, as did Baxter's raging desire to do good for the poor ordinary prisoners in jail. He had got at several of them who had received a raw deal in the courts, and was moving heaven and earth to bring redress to them. He gave interviews, dictated articles ... the State officials were furious. "What's the matter with the fellow? What's he bother about the other fellows for, he ought to be glad he's not in their shoes!"...

In agitations for the public good, in humanitarian projects, Baxter was indeed a great man ... I loomed like a pigmy beside him.

* * * * *

Darrie and I in dialogue:

She met me on the path, as I was proceeding toward the big house. She carried Carpenter's _Love's Coming of Age_ in her hand. She was dressed daintily. Her brown eyes smiled at me, and a rich dimple broke in her cheek.

But Darrie was taller than Hildreth, and I like small women best; perhaps because I am myself so big.

"Don't go up to the house, Johnnie."

"I want a book from the library."

"Hildreth and Penton are there. Hildreth is having a soul-state."

"A what?" I laughed.

"Oh, she thinks something is the matter with her soul, and, for the three hundredth time since I've known them, Penton and she are discussing their lives together."

"I don't see anything to jest about in that."

"I'm tiring of it ... if Hildreth has a tooth-ache, or anything that the rest of us women accept as a matter of course, she runs to Mubby, as she calls him ... and, as if it were some abstruse, philosophical problem, they talk on, hour after hour ... like German metaphysics, there's no end to it. They've been at it since ten and they'll go on till four, if they follow precedents ... Penton takes Hildreth too seriously."

"You talk as if you, you were jealous of Hildreth and in love with Penton."

"It's neither the one nor the other. I love them both, and I want to see them happy together."

"You see, Darrie, neither you nor I are married, and neither of us knows anything about sex, except in the theory of the books we've read--how can _we judge_ the troubles of a man and woman who are married?"

"There's a lot in what you say."

"I believe it would be better if we both cleared out and left them to fight this out alone."

"Perhaps it would."

* * * * *

"Darrie, Oh, Darrie!--want to come for a walk with Hildreth and me?"

So the three set off together, leaving me and Ruth alone.

* * * * *

Ruth and I had just settled down to a discussion of the writing of narrative poetry, how it was done, and the reason why it was no longer customary with the poets to write longer stories out of real life, like Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_,--when we heard a rustling as of some wild thing in the bushes beside the house, and here came Hildreth breaking through, her eyes blazing, her hair down, her light walking skirt that she had slipped on over her bloomers torn by catching on thorns.

She staggered into the open, swept us with a blazing glance as if we had done something to her, and hurried on down the path toward the little house where Penton had written in quiet till she had strangely routed him out and taken its occupancy for herself.

"Hildreth!" I leaped to my feet, starting after her, "Hildreth what's the matter?"

I had put all thought of narrative poetry out of my head.

"Don't follow her," advised Ruth, in a low, controlled voice, "it's best to let her alone when she acts like that ... she'll have it out, and come back, smiling, in an hour or so."

I plunged on. Ruth ran after me, catching me by the shoulder from behind.

"Listen to me. Take my advice and keep out of this--Johnnie!" she called my name with a tender drop in her voice.

If it had not been for her tell-tale pronouncement of my name I might have listened to her ... but that made me angry, and it ran through my mind how she and Penton had fatuously arranged my marrying her....

I ran after Hildreth. She slammed the door when I was so close upon her that the wind of its shutting went against my face like a blow.

I found myself on my knees by the door.

"Let me in," I said through the key-hole, for the door was locked; she had thrown the bolt on the inside.

"Go away, Johnnie, I want to be alone."

"Hildreth, dearest woman, do let me in. It hurts my heart to see you so suffer so."

"I don't want to see anybody. I want to die."

"I'll come in the window."

I was at the window madly. I caught it. It was locked. But I pulled it up like a maniac. The lock, rusty, flew off with a zing! The window crashed up. I tumbled in at one leap.

My whole life was saying, "this is your woman, your first and only woman--go where she is and take her to yourself!"

That avalanche of me bursting in without denial, struck little Hildreth Baxter dumb with interest. She had been kneeling by her bed, sobbing. Now she rose and was sitting on it.

"Well?" and she smiled wanly, looking at me with fear and a twinkle of amusement, and intrigued interest, all at one and the same time, on her face--

"I couldn't stand seeing you suffer, Hildreth. I had to come in. And you wouldn't unlock the door ... what has gone wrong?"

"It's Darrie!--"

"But you all three started on your hike like such a happy family, and--"

"For God's sake don't think I'm jealous of Darrie ... I'm only wild about the way she encourages Mubby to talk over his troubles with her--and tell her about him and me, asking _her_ advice ... as if _she_ could give any advice worth while--

"They began to talk and talk about me just as if I were a laboratory specimen....

"Damn this laboratory marriage! damn this laboratory love!

"Penton experiments, and Penton experiments ... on his cat, his dog, himself, me--you, if you'd let him ... everybody! let him marry Humanity if he loves it so much."

"But what did you do?"

"I caught myself running away from them, and sobbing."

"And what did they do?"

"'Hildreth, for God's sake!' Mubby called, 'what's the matter now?' in that bland, exasperating tone of his,--that injured, self-righteous, I'm-sacrificing-myself-for-mankind tone--"

I had to laugh at her exact mimicry....

I stroked her hair....

* * * * *

"I'm glad you came to Eden, John Gregory. You might be a poet, but you have some human sense in you, too....

"Oh, you don't know what I've been through," then, femininely, "poor, poor Mubby, he's been through a lot, too."

Her tears began to flow again. I sat beside her on the bed. I put my arm about her and drew her to me. I kissed her tear-wet mouth. The taste of her ripe sweet mouth with the salt of her tears wet on her lips was very good to me....

In a minute unexpectedly she began returning my kisses ... hungrily ... her eyes closed ... breathing deeply like one in a trance....

* * * * *

"Go up to the house now, Johnnie, my love ... go, so Mubby won't be suspicious of us ... I want to stay here ... leave the blinds drawn as they are....

"You have been so gentle, so sweet."

"Hildreth ... listen to me ... this has been the greatest day in my life, will always be! If I died now, I would go to death, singing....

"You're the most wonderful woman in the world....

"I want you to be mine forever....

"I know what it all means now....

"It's like Niagara, sweetheart ... one hears so much of it ... expects so much ... that it seems disappointing, the first actuality....

"Then afterward, it's more than any dream ever dreamed of what it would be!

"I want to work for you....

"I want to let you walk all over me with your little feet....

"I want you to kill me, sweetheart....

"I want to die for you....

"Hildreth, I love you!

"I'll tell Penton ... I'll tell everybody--'I love Hildreth! I love Hildreth!'"

* * * * *

"Johnnie, my own sweet darling, my own dear, pure-hearted, mad, young poet....

"Don't talk that way....

"Come to me again...."

* * * * *

"Penton must not know. Not yet. You must let _me_ tell him.

"It is my place to tell him, sweetest of men, my darling boy...."

* * * * *

"Go to your tent.

_"He'd see it in your eyes now."_

"No, I won't go to my tent. I'll go right up to the house."

* * * * *

"If he says anything to me I'll kill him.

"I'm a man now.

"I'll fight him or anybody you want me to."

* * * * *

These were the words we said, or left unsaid. I am even yet too confused to remember the exact details of that memorable time.

For I was re-born then, into another life.

Is there anyone who can remember his birth?

I returned to my tent in a blissful daze.

I had not the least feeling of having betrayed a friend.

The only problem that now confronted us was divorce! I would ask Penton to divorce Hildreth, and then Hildreth and I would marry.

But why even that? Was not this the greatest opportunity in the world for Hildreth and me to put to practical test our theories ... proclaim ourselves for Free Love,--as Mary Wollstonecraft and the philosopher Godwin had done, a century or so before us?

* * * * *

The following day Ruth and I ate breakfast together, alone. I had behaved with unusual sedateness, had showed an aplomb I had never before evidenced. Full manhood, belated, had at last come to me.

With more than usual satisfaction I drank my coffee, holding the cup with my hands around it like a child ... warming my fingers, which are nearly always cold in the morning....

Then, while Ruth sat opposite me, eyeing me curiously, I began to sing, half-aloud, to myself.

A silence fell. We exchanged very few words.

And it was our custom, when together, Ruth and I, to hold long discussions concerning the methods and technique of the English poets, especially the earlier ones.

This morning Baxter's secretary rose and left part of her breakfast uneaten, hurrying into the house as if to avoid something which she had seen and dreaded.

* * * * *

I ate a long time, dreaming.

Darrie came out, followed immediately by Daniel. Daniel was in an obstreperous mood ... he cried out that I must be his "telegraph pole," that he would be a lineman, and climb me. I felt an affection for him that I had not known before. I played with him, letting him climb up my leg.

He finished, a-straddle my shoulders. I reached up and sat him still higher, on my head. And he waved his arms and shouted, as if making signals to someone far off.

Darrie laughed.

"Which would you rather have, a son or a daughter?" she asked me.

"I don't know," I replied, letting Daniel slide down, "but I think I'd rather have a daughter ... the next generation will see a great age of freedom for women ... feminism....

"Then it would be a grand thing, too, to have a beautiful daughter to go about with ... and I would be old and silver-haired and benignant-looking ... and people would say, as they saw the two of us:

"'There goes the poet, John Gregory, and his daughter ... isn't she a beautiful girl!'

"And she would be a great actress."

* * * * *

Penton came forth from the big house ... he poised tentatively like a queer bird on the verge of a long flight ... then he wavered rapidly down the steps.

"--slept late!... has the mail come yet?... where's Ruth?"

"Isn't she in the house?" I queried.

"I saw her stepping out at the back door a minute ago" ... said Darrie.

"We had breakfast together ... I...."

"I hope she doesn't stay away long ... I have an article on Blue Laws as a Reactionary Weapon, that I want to dictate for a magazine ...--one of her moods, I suppose!"

I looked the little, large-browed man over almost impersonally. I saw him as from far away. He came out very clear to me.

I found a profound pity for him waking in my heart, together with a sort of contempt.

"And where's Hildreth?"

"Not up yet I presume," replied Darrie.

* * * * *

I excused myself and hurried back to my tent ... where, instead of settling down to work on the third act of my play, I lay prone on my cot, day-dreaming of the future. How beautiful it would be, now that I had at last found my life-mate!

I thanked God that nothing trivial was in my heart to mar the stupendousness of my love, my first real passion for a woman!

* * * * *

"Johnnie!"

I leaped alert. It was Hildreth, at my tent door....

"Get up, you lazy boy ... surely you haven't been sleeping all this time?"

"No, darling."

"I ate my breakfast all alone," she remarked, in an aggrieved tone, "where's Darrie and Mubby and Ruth?"

"God knows! I don't--and I don't care!"

"You needn't be peevish!"

"Peevish?--as long as you are with me I don't care if all the rest of humanity are dead."

I stepped out beside her. We stood locked in a long embrace.

She drew back, with belated thoughtfulness....

"We ought to be more careful ... so near the house."

"I'm so glad you're in the little house near my tent, Hildreth."

"But we can't be together there much ... it's too near the big house."

"What shall we do, then?"

"There's the fields and the woods ... miles of them ... the whole outside world for us."

"I don't see why _we_ shouldn't go strolling together ... the rest are all abroad somewhere, too ... but we must be careful, Johnnie, very careful."

"Careful--why?"

"Because of Mubby."

"But he doesn't love you any more?"

"I'm not so sure about that ... I'm not so sure about anything."

* * * * *

I never saw the world so beautiful as on that day. I was translated to the veritable garden of Eden. The community had been named rightly. I was Adam and Hildreth was my Eve.

And so it went on for two blissful weeks....

If the Voice of God had met us, going abroad beneath the trees, I would not have been surprised.

Hildreth took her volume of Blake with her on our rambles ... and we revelled in his "Songs of Experience" as well as "Songs of Innocence"; and we were moved deeply by the huge, cloudy grandeur of his prophetic books....

Why could it not go on forever thus? eternal summer, everlasting love in its first rosy flush?...

Hildreth was very wise and very patient with one who was as yet a mere acolyte in love's ways and uses ... she taught me many things, and I adored her for it--as little by little, day by day, she brought me to the full stature of my manhood....

* * * * *

Of course the two other women of the household immediately sensed what was happening. But Penton remained pathetically blind....

What an incredible man! A mole would have gotten a glimmer of the gradually developing change.

With bravado I acted my part of the triangular drama ... but Hildreth carried off her part with an easiness, a femininely delicate boldness, that compelled my utmost admiration ... she even threw suspicious Ruth and Darrie off the scent--at times.

* * * * *

The night of the performance of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ I shall never forget ... Hildreth as Titania in her green tights ... I sat in the back (she would not allow me in the front because it might fluster her, she pleaded) and enjoyed a sense of blissful ownership in her, as she glided about, through the Shakespearean scenes ...--such a sense of ownership that it ran through my veins with a full feeling, possessed my entire body....

Who was this little, alien man, Penton Baxter, who also dared claim her possession!...

Nonchalantly and with an emotion of inner triumph I let him walk homeward with Hildreth, while I paced along with Ruth and Darrie.

Let him congratulate her now on her triumph ... that she had had, as Titania, there under the wide heaven of stars, in our outdoor theatre ... in the midst of the Chinese lanterns that swayed in the slight breaths of summer air....

Later on, when she was warm in my arms, _I_ would congratulate her ... --tell her she was greater than Bernhardt ... than Duse herself!... tell her every incredible thing that lovers hold as mere, commonplace truths.

* * * * *

Jones had acquitted himself wonderfully as Bottom ... roaring like any suckling dove ... putting real philosophic comedy in his part ... to the applause of even the elder Grahame, who, to do him credit, was not such a bad sport, after all.

* * * * *

"Johnnie, we are having a sing to-night ... there'll be a full moon up. I have informed the committee that you will read a few of your poems by the camp-fire."

"--the first time I ever heard of it," I replied, concealing my pride in the invitation, under show of being disgruntled....

That was Penton's way, arranging things first, telling you afterward.

"But you will do it? I have said you would!"

"Yes, Penton, if you wish me to!"

* * * * *

Hildreth was always insistent on my strength ... my greyhound length of limb, my huge chest ... she stood up and pounded on my chest once....

"Oh, why do I pick out a poor poet, and not a millionaire, for a lover!"

* * * * *

There grew up between us a myth ... we were living in cave-days ... she was my cave-woman ... I was her cave-man....

As I came to her in my bath-robe (for now, bolder with seeming immunity, we threw caution aside, and met often in the little house)--

As I came to her in my bath-robe, unshaven, once ... she called me her Paphnutius ... and she was my Thais ... and she told me Anatole France's story of _Thais_.

But the cave-legend of our love ... in a previous incarnation ... was what spelled her most ... she doted on strength ... cruel, sheer, brute strength....

That I could carry her, lift her high up with ease, toss her about, rejoiced her to the utmost....

I caught her up in my arms, pleasing this humour, tossing her like a ball ... till my muscles were as sore as if I had fought through the two halves of a foot-ball game....

Out of all this play between us there grew a series of Cave Poems.

One of them I set aside to read at the sing, beside the camp-fire.

* * * * *

They had chorused _Up With the Bonnet for Bonny Dundee_ and _You Take the Highway_....

There ran a ripple of talk while they waited for me.

In the red glow of the camp-fire I towered over the stocky little husband as he introduced me. Hildreth was sitting there ... I must make a good impression before my mate. All I saw was she--too patently, I fear.

I went through poem after poem, entranced with the melody of my verse ... mostly delicate, evanescent stuff ... like this one ...

"THE EMPEROR TO HIS LOVE

"I've a green garden with a grey wall 'round
Where even the wind's foot-fall makes no sound;
There let us go and from ambition flee,
Accepting love's brief immortality.
Let other rulers hugely labour still
Beneath the burden of ambition's ill
Like caryatids heaving up the strain
Of mammoth chambers, till they stoop again ...
Your face has changed my days to splendid dreams
And baubled trumpets, traffics, and triremes;
One swift touch of your passion-parted lips
Is worth five armies and ten seas of ships."

Hildreth's applause was sweet. My heart almost burst with happiness within me, as those tiny hands, that had run through my hair and been so wonderful with me ... hands that I had kissed and fondled in secret--joined in unison with Penton's and Darrie's and Ruth's hand-claps.

"And now I will finish with the _Song of Kaa, the Cave-Man_," I announced ... it seemed that the poem was not, after all, in the bunch of MSS. I had brought along with me....

At last I found it--and read:

"THE SONG OF KAA

"Beat with thy club on a hollow tree
While I chant the song of Kaa for thee:
I lived in a cave, alone, at first,
Till into a neighbouring valley I burst
Wild and bearded and seeking prey,
And I came on Naa, and bore her away ...
Away to my hole in the crest of the hill,
Where I broke her body to my fierce will....

* * * * *

"My fellow cave-men, fell in a rage:
'What hast thou done?' cried Singh, the Sage,
'For I hear far off a battle-song,
And the tree-men come, a hundred strong ...'
Long the battle and dread the fight;
We hurled rocks down from our mountain height"--

I copy this from memory alone ... Hildreth has all my cave-poems. I gave them to her, holding no transcripts of them--

The upshot--

"All of our tribe were slain ... Naa and I alone escaped--
going far off--
To start another people and clan:
She, the woman, and I, the man!"

In my love-drunkenness, I looked directly at Hildreth as I read the last lines ... she lowered her head and picked at her sandal....

The applause was tumultuous....

Penton Baxter rose to his feet, as chairman of the occasion....

"I'm sure we all thank Mr. Gregory--"

* * * * *