My dear Mr. McBirney [the girl began], did anybody ever tell a story about a big general who limbered up his artillery, if that's the thing they do, and shouted orders, and cracked whips and rattled wheels and went through evolutions, and finally, with thunder and energy, trained a huge Krupp gun—or something—on a chipmunk? If there is such a story, and you've heard it, doesn't it remind you of your last letter at me? Not to me, I meanatme. It was a wonderful letter again, but when I got through I had a feeling that what I needed was not suicide—I do dare say the word, you see—but execution. Maybe shooting is too good for me. And you know I appreciate every minute how unnecessary it is for you to bother with me, and to put your time and your strength, both of which mean much to many people, into hammering me. And how good you are to do that. I am worthless, as you say between every two lines. Yet I'm a soul—you say that too, and so on a par with those tragic souls in North Baxter Court. Only, I feel that you have no patience with me for getting underfoot when you're on your way to big issues. But do have patience, please—it means as much to me as to anybody in your tenements. I'm far down, and I'm struggling for breath, and there seems to be no land in sight, nothing to hold to except you. I'm sorry if you dislike to have it so, but it is so; your letters mean anchorage. I'd blow out to sea if I didn't have them to hope for. You ought to be glad of that; you're doing good, even if it is only to a flippant, shallow, undeveloped doll. I can call myself names—oh yes.
I have been slow answering, though likely you haven't noticed [McBirney smiled queerly], because I have been doing a thing. You said you didn't advise me to go slumming—though I think you did—what else? You said I ought to get beyond the view-point of a child; to realize the world outside myself.
I sat down, and in my limited way—I mean that, sincerely, humbly—I considered what I could do. No slumming—and, in any case, there's none to be done in Forest Gate. So I thought I'd better clear my vision with great books. I went to Robert Halarkenden, the only bookish person in my surroundings, and asked him about it—about what would open up a larger horizon for me. And he, not understanding much what I was at, recommended two or three things which I have been and am reading. I thought I'd try to be a little more intelligent at least before I answered your letter. Don't thunder at me—I'm stumbling about, trying to get somewhere. I've read some William James and some John Fiske, and I realize this—that I did more or less think God was a very large, stately old man. An "anthropomorphic deity." Fiske says that is the God of the lower peoples; that was my God. Also I realize this—that, somehow, some God,theGod if I can get to Him, might help might be my only chance. What do you think? Is this any better? Is it any step? If it is, it's a very precarious one, for though it thrills me to my bones sometimes to think that a real power might lift me and bring me through, if I just ask Him, yet sometimes all that hope goes and I drop in a heap mentally with no starch in me, no grip to try to hold to any idea—just a heap of tired, dull mind and nerves, and for my only desire that subtle, pushing desire to end it all quickly. Once an odd thing happened. When I was collapsed like that, just existing, suddenly there was a feeling, a brand-new feeling of letting go of the old rubbish that was and somebody else pervading it through and through and taking all the responsibility. And I held on tight, something as I do to your letters, and the first thing, I was believing that help was coming—and help came. That was the best day I've had since I saw those devil doctors. Do you suppose that was faith? Where did it come from? I'd been praying—but awfully queer prayers; I said "Oh just put me through somehow; give me what I need;Idon't know what it is; how can you expect me to—I'm a worm." I suppose that was irreverent, but I can't help it. It was all I could say. And that came, whatever it was. Do you suppose it was an answer to my blind, gasping prayer?
Now I'm going to ask you to do a thing—but don't if it's the least bother. I don't want you to talk to me about myself just now, any more. And I want to hear more about North Baxter Court and such. You don't know how that stirred me. What a worth-while life you lead, doing actual, life-and-death things for people who bitterly need things done. It seems to me glorious. I could give up everything to feel a stream of genuine living through me such as you have, all your rushing days. Yes—I could—but yet, maybe I wouldn't make good. But I do care for "life, and life more abundantly," and the only way of getting it that I've known has been higher fences to jump, and more dances and better tennis and such. I never once realized the way you get it—my! what a big way. And how heavenly it must be to give hope and health and help to people. I adore sending the maids out in the car, or giving them my clothes. I just selfishly like pleasing people, and I think giving is the best amusement extant—and you give your very self from morning to night. You lucky person! How could I do that? Could I? Would I balk, do you think? You say I'm not capable of loving anything or anybody. I think you are wrong. I think I could, some day, love somebody as hard as any woman or man has, ever. Not Alec. What will happen if I marry Alec and then do that—if the somebody comes? That would be a mess; the worst mess yet. The end of the world; but I forget; my world ends anyhow. I'll be a stone image in a chair—a cold, unloveable stone image with a hot, boiling heart. I won't—Iwon't. This world is just five minutes, maybe—but me—in a chair—ten years. Oh—Iwon't.
What I want you to do is to write me just about the things you're doing, and the people—the poor people, and the pitiful things and the funny things—the atmosphere of it. Could you forget that you don't know me, and write as you would to a cousin or an old friend? That would be good. That would help. Only, anyhow, write, for without your letters I can't tell what bomb may burst. Don't thunder next time. But even if you thunder, write. The letters do guard the pistol—I can't help it if you say not. It has to be so now, anyway. They guard it. Always—
AUGUST FIRST.
WARCHESTER,St. Andrew's Parish House,Sept. 12th.
You're right. It's idiotic to leap on people like that. I knew I was all wrong the moment after the letter went. And when nothing came from you—it wasn't pleasant. I nearly wrote—I more nearly telegraphed your Robert Halarkenden. Do you mind if I say that for two days, just lately—in fact, they were yesterday and the day before—I was on the edge of asking for leave of absence to go west? You see, if you had done it, it was so plainly my fault. And I had to know. Then I argued—it's ghastly, but I argued that it would be in the papers. And it wasn't. Of course, it might possibly have been kept out. But generally it isn't. My knowledge of happenings in Chicago and thereabouts, since my last letter, would probably surprise you a little. Yes, I "noticed" that you didn't write—more than I noticed the heat, which, now I think, has been bad. But when you're pretty sure you've blundered in a matter of life and death, you don't pray for rain.
You've turned a corner.Acorner.Thecorner—the big one, is further along, and then there's the hill and the hot sun on the dusty road. You'll need your sporting instincts. But you've got them. So had St. Paul and those others who furnished the groundwork for that oft-mentioned Roman holiday. That's religion, as I see it. That's whattheydid; pushed on—faced things down—went out smiling—"gentlemen unafraid." It's like swimming—you can't go under if you make the least effort. That's the law—of physics and, therefore, of God. The experience you tell of is exactly what you have the right to expect. The prayer you said; that's the only way to come at it, yourself—talking—with that Other. There's a poem—you know—the man who "caught at God's skirts and prayed."
But you said not to write about you. All right then, I've been to the theatre, the one at the end of our block. That may strike you as tame. But you don't know Mrs. Jameson. She's the relict of the late senior warden. A disapproving party, trimmed with jet beads and a lorgnette. A few days after the rector left me in charge she triumphed into the office, rattled the beads and got behind the lorgnette. She presumed I was the new curate. No loop-hole out of that. I had been seen at the theatre—not once nor twice. I could well believe it. The late Colonel Jameson, it appeared, had not approved of clergymen attending playhouses. She did not approve of it herself. She presumed I realized the standing of this parish in the diocese? She dwelt on the force of example to the young. Of course, the opera—but that was widely different. She would suggest—she did suggest—not in the least vaguely. Sometime, perhaps, I would come to luncheon? She had really rather interested herself in the sermon yesterday—a little abrupt, possibly, at the close—still, of course, a young man, and not very experienced—besides, the Doctor had spoiled them for almost anybody else. Naturally.
The room widened after she had gone. You know these ladies with the thick atmosphere.
That night I went to the theatre. There's a stock company there for the summer and I have come to know one of the actors. He belongs to us—was married in the church last summer. The place was packed—always is—it's a good company. And Everett—he's the one—kept the house shouting. He's the regular funny man. The play that week was very funny anyhow—one of those things the billboards call a "scream." It was just that. Everett was the play. He stormed and galloped through his scenes until everybody was helpless. People like him; it's his third summer here. Well, at the end, nobody went. A lot of lads in the gallery began calling for Everett. We're common here; and not many of the quality patronize stock. Soon he pushed out from behind the curtain and made one of those fool speeches which generally fall flat. Only this one didn't.
Then I went "behind." The dressing rooms at the Alhambra are not home-like. Bare walls with a row of pegs along one side—a couple of chairs—a table piled with make-up stuff and over it a mirror flanked by electric lights with wire netting around them. Not gay. And grease paint, at close range, is not attractive. A man shouldn't cry after he's made up—that's a theatrical commandment, or ought to be. Probably a man shouldn't anyhow. But some do. I imagined Everett had, and that he'd done it with his head in his arms and his arms in the litter of the big table. I think I shook hands with him—one does inane things sometimes—but I don't know what I said. I had something like your experience—I just wasn't there for a minute or two.
Afterward, I went home with him—a long half-hour on the trolley, then up three flights into "light housekeeping" rooms in the back. There was cold meat on the table, and bread. The janitor's wife, good soul, had made a pot of coffee. "Light housekeeping" is a literal expression, let me tell you, and doctor's bills make it lighter. I followed him into the last room of the three. It looked different from the way I remembered it the afternoon before. When he turned the gas higher I saw why—the bed was gone—one of those stretcher things takes less room. Besides, they say it's better. So there she was—all that he had left of all that he had had—the girl he'd been mad about and married in our church a year ago. He wasn't even with her when she died; there was the Sunday afternoon rehearsal to attend. She wouldn't let him miss that. "Go on," she told him. "I'll wait for you." She didn't wait.
And he faced it down, he jammed it through, that young chap did—and was funny, oh, as funny as you can think, for hours, in front of hundreds of people. He never missed a cue, never bungled a line, and all the time seeing, up there in the light-housekeeping rooms, in the last room of them all, how she lay, in the utter silence.
Perhaps I shall come across a braver thing than that before I die, but I doubt it. I tried, of course, to get him not to do it. But it was very simple to him. It was his job. Nobody else knew the part; it was too late to substitute. The rest would lose their salaries if they closed down for the week, and God knew they needed them. So he said nothing—and was funny.
I don't know what you'd call it, but I think you know why I've told it to you. There's a splendor about it and a glory. To do one's job—isn't that the big thing, after all?
Meantime, mine's waiting for me on the other side of this desk. He has laid hands on every article in the room at least three times, and for the last few minutes has been groaning very loud. I think you'd like him—he's so alive.
Your letter saves me the cost of the western papers, and now that I know you'll—but you said not to write about you.
The Job has stopped groaning, and wants to know if I'm "writing all night just because, or, for the reason that."
It's night now—big night, and so still down-town here. Sometimes I stay up late to realize that I'm alive. The days are so crammed with happenings. And late at night seems so wide and everlasting. You've got the idea that I do things. Well, I don't. There are whole rows of days when it seems just a muddle of half-started attempts—a manner of hopeless confusion. There's a good deal of futility in it, first and last. That boy tonight for instance. And, sometimes, I get to wondering if, after all, one has the right to meddle in other people's lives. It's curious, but with you I've been quite sure. Always it has been as clear as light to me that you must come through this—that it will be right. I don't know how. Even that day you came, I was sure. As soon asyouare sure, the thing is done. That man isn't to be worried about—or the doctors. Easy for me to say, isn't it?
Are you interested to know that I'm to have my building on the West Side? There was a meeting today. It's the best thing that's happened yet, that is, parochially. Maybe she's human after all. I mean Mrs. Jameson. She's going to pay for it.
I think that's all. You can't say I've tried to thunder at you this time. I really didn't last time. I've known all along that you wouldn't be impressed by thunder. The answer to that young devil's question seems to be: I'm writing "for the reason that," and not, "just because." Every time I think of that boy's name I have to laugh.
GEOFFREY McBIRNEY.
September 17th.
MY DEAR MR. McBIRNEY—
Whatisthe boy's name? It must be queer if you laugh every time you think of it. Don't forget to tell me.
Your letters leave me breathless with things to say back. I suppose that's inspiration, to make people feel full of new ideas, and that you're crammed with it. In the first place I'm in a terrible hurry to tell you that something really big has touched the edge of my anaemic life, and that I have recognized it; I'm pleased that I recognized it. Listen—please—this is it. Robert Halarkenden; I must tell you who he is. Thirteen years ago my uncle was on a camping trip in Canada and one of the guides was a silent Scotchman, mixed in with French-Canadian habitants and half-breed Indians. My uncle was interested in him—he was picturesque and conspicuous—but he would not talk about himself. Another guide told Uncle Ted all that anyone has ever known about him, till yesterday. He was a guardian of the club and lived alone in a camp in the wildest part of it, and in summer he guided one or two parties, by special permission of the club secretary. This other guide had been to his cabin and told my uncle that it was full of books; the guide found the number astounding—"effrayant." Also he had a garden of forest flowers, and he knew everything about every wild thing that grew in the woods. Well, Uncle Ted was so taken with the man that he asked the secretary about him, and the secretary shook his head. All that he could tell was that he was a remarkable woodsman and a perfect guide and that he had been recommended to him in the first place by Sir Archibald Graye of Toronto, who had refused to give reasons but asked as a personal favor that the man should be given any job he wished. This is getting rather a long story. Of course you know that the man was Halarkenden and you are now to know that my uncle brought him to Forest Gate as his gardener. He thought over it a day when Uncle Ted asked him and then said that he had lived fifteen years in the forest and that now he would like to live in a garden; he would come if Uncle Ted would let him make a garden as beautiful as he wished. Uncle Ted said yes, and he has done it. You have never seen such a garden—no one ever has. It is four acres and it lies on the bluff above the lake; that was a good beginning. If you had seen the rows of lilies last June, with pink roses blossoming through them, you would have known that Robert Halarkenden is a poet and no common man. Of course we have known it all along, but in thirteen years one gets to take miracles for granted. Yesterday I went down into the wild garden which lies between the woods and the flowers—this is a large place—and I got into the corner under the pines, and lay flat on the pink-brown needles, all warm with splashes of September sunlight, and looked at the goldenrod and purple asters swinging in the breeze and wondered if I could forget my blessed bones and live in the beauty and joy of just things, just the lovely world. Or whether it wouldn't be simpler to pull a trigger when I went back to my room, instead of kicking and struggling day after day to be and feel some other way. I get so sick and tired of fighting myself—you don't know. Anyhow, suddenly there was a rustle in the gold and purple hedge, and there was Robert Halarkenden. I wish I could make you see him as he stood there, in his blue working blouse, a pair of big clippers in his hand, his thick, half-gray, silvery thatch of hair bare and blowing around his scholar's forehead, his bony Scotch face solemn and quiet. His deep-set eyes were fixed with such a gentle gaze on me. We are good friends, Robin and I. I call him Robin; he taught me to when I was ten, so I always have. "You're no feeling well, lassie?" he asked; he has known me a long time, you see. And I suddenly sat up and told him about my old bones. I didn't mean to; I have told no one but you; not Uncle Ted even. But I did. And "Get up, lassie, and sit on the bench. I will talk to you," said Robin. So we both sat down on the rustic bench under the blowy pines, and I cried like a spring torrent, and Robin patted my hand steadily, which seems an odd thing for one's uncle's gardener to do, till I got through. Then I laughed and said, "Maybe I'll shoot myself." And he answered calmly, "I hope not, lassie." Then I said nothing and he said nothing for quite a bit, and then he began talking gently about how everybody who counted had to go through things. "A character has to be hammered into the likeness of God," he said. "A soul doesn't grow beautiful by sunlight and rich earth," and he looked out at his scarlet and blue and gold September garden and smiled a little. "We're no like the flowers." Then he considered again, and then he asked if it would interest me at all to hear a little tale, and I told him yes, of course. "Maybe it will seem companionable to know that other people have faced a bit of trouble," he said. And then he told me. I don't know if you will believe it; it seems too much of a drama to be credible to me, if I had not heard Robert Halarkenden tell it in his entirely simple way, sitting in his workingman's blouse, with the big clippers in his right hand. Thirty years before he had been laird of a small property in Scotland, and about to marry the girl whom he cared for. Then suddenly he found that she was in love with his cousin—with whom he had been brought up, and who was as dear as a brother—and his cousin with her. In almost no more words than I am using he told me of the crisis he lived through and how he had gone off on the mountains and made his decision. He could not marry the girl if she did not love him. His cousin was heir to his property; he decided to disappear and let them think he was dead, and so leave the two people whom he loved to be happy and prosperous without him. He did that. Two or three people had to know to arrange things, and Sir Archibald Graye, of Toronto, was one, but otherwise he simply dropped out of life and buried himself in Canadian forests, and then, just as he was growing hungry for some things he could not get in the forest, my uncle came along and offered him what he wanted.
"But how could you?" I asked him. "You're a gentleman; how could you make yourself a servant, and build a wall between yourself and nice people?"
Robin smiled at me in a shadowy, gentle way he has. "Those walls are a small matter of dust, lassie," he said. "A real man blows on them and they're tumbling. And service is what we're here for. And all people are nice people, you'll find." And when, still unresigned, I said more, he went on, very kindly, a little amused it seemed. "Why should it be more important for me to be happy than for those two? I hope they're happy," he spoke wistfully. "The lad was a genius, but a wild lad too," and he looked thoughtful. "Anyhow, it was for me to decide, you see, and a man couldn't decide ungenerously. That would be to tie one's self to a gnawing beast, which is what is like the memory of your own evil deed. Take my word for it, lassie, there was no other way."
"It seems all exaggerated," I threw at him; "there was no sense in your giving up your home and traditions and associations—it was unreasonable, fantastic! And to those two who had taken away your happiness anyhow."
I wish you could have heard how quietly and naturally Robert Halarkenden answered me. He considered a moment first, in his Scotch way, and then he said: "Do not you see, lassie, that's where it was simple, verra simple. Houses and lands and a place in the world are small affairs after love, and mine was come to shipwreck. So it seemed to me I'd try living free of the care of possessions. I'd try the old rule, that a man to find his life must lay it down. It was verra simple, as I'm telling you, once I'd got the fancy for it. Laying down a life is not such a hard business; it's only to make up your mind. And I did indeed find life in doing it, I was care-free as few are in those forest years."
I think you would have agreed with me, Mr. McBirney, that the middle-aged, lined face of my uncle's gardener was beautiful as he said those things. "Why did you leave the forest?" I asked him then; you may believe I'd forgotten about my bones by now.
"Ah, you'll find it grows irksome to be coddling one's own soul indefinitely," he confided to me with the pretty gentleness which breaks through his Scotch manner once in a while. "One gets tired of one's self, the spoiled body. I hungered to do something for somebody besides Robert Halarkenden. I'd taken charge of a lad with tuberculosis one summer up there, and I'd cured him, and I had a thought I could do the same for other lads. I wanted to get near a city to have that chance. I've been doing it here," and then he drew back into his Scotchness and was suddenly cold and reserved. But I knew that was shyness, and because he had spoken of his secret good deeds and was uncomfortable.
So I was not frozen. "You have!" I pounced on him. And I made him tell me how, besides his unending gardening, besides his limitless reading, he has been, all these years, working in the city in his few spare hours, spending himself and his wages—wages!—and helping, healing, giving all the time—like you——
I felt the most torturing envy of my life as I listened to that.Iwanted to be generous and wonderful and self-forgetting, and have a great, free heart "of spirit, fire, and dew."Iwanted the something in me that made that still radiance of Robert Halarkenden's eyes. You see? "I"—always "I." That's the way I'm made. Utterly selfish. I can't even see heavenliness but I want to snatch it for myself. Robin never thought once that he was getting heavenliness—he only thought that he was giving help. Different from me. And all these years that I have been prancing around his garden of delight in two hundred dollar frocks—oh lots of them, for I'm rich and extravagant and I buy things because they're pretty and not because I need them—all these years he has been saving most of his seventy-five dollars a month, and getting sick children sent south, and never mentioning it. Why, I own a place south. I'm not such a beast but that—well, very likely I am a beast—I don't know. Anyhow, I've consistently lived the life of a selfish butterfly. And I cling to it. Despise me if you will. I do. I like my pretty clothes and my car, and how I do love my two saddle-horses! And I like dancing, too—I turn into a bird in the tree-tops when I dance, with not a care, not a responsibility. I don't want to give all that up. Have I got to? Have Igotto "lay down my life" to find it? For, somehow, cling as I will to all these things, something is pushing, pushing back of them, stronger than them. You started it. I want the big things now—I want to be worth while. But yet clothes and gayety and horses and automobiles—I'm glued tight in that round. I don't believe I can tear loose. I don't believe I want to. Do you see—I'm in torment. And—silly idiot that I am—it's not for me to decide anything. I'm turning into a ton of stone—I'll be a horrible unhuman monster and have to give it all up and have nothing in return. Soon I'll lay down my life andnotfind it. I won't. I'll pull the trigger. Will I? Do you see how I vacillate and shiver and boil? This is my soul I'm pouring out to you. I hope you don't mind hot liquids. What you wrote about the actor made me sit still a whole half-hour without stirring a finger, with your letter in my hands. It was glorious—there's no question. You meant it to inspire me. But he had a job. I haven't. Back to me again, you see—unending me. Do you know about the man who used to say "Now let's go into the garden and talk about me"?
In any case, thank you for telling me that story. I'm glad to know that there are people like that—several of them. I know you and Robin anyhow, but the actor makes the world seem fuller of courage and worth-whileness. I wish a little of it would leak into—oh,meagain.Meis getting "irksome," as Robin said. Remember to tell me the boy's name.
Yours gratefully if unsatisfactorily,AUGUST FIRST.
P. S.—Robert Halarkenden isn't his real name. It's his grandmother's father's name, and Welsh. I don't know the real one.
P. S. No. 2. If it isn't inconsistent, and if you think I'm worth while, you might pray just a scrap too. That I may get to be like you and Robin.
P. S. No. 3. But you know it's the truth that I'm balky at giving up everything in sight. I'd hate myself in bad clothes.Can'tI have good ones and yet be worth while? Oh, I see. It doesn't matter if they're good or bad so long as I don't care too much. But I do care. Then they hamper me—eh? Is that the idea? This is the last postscript to this letter. Write a quick one—I'm needing it.
WARCHESTER,St. Andrew's Parish House,Sept. 23d.
I don't think it matters what his real name is. I'd been thinking all along, that he was just a convenient fiction, useful for an address, and now he turns out about the realest person going. Sometimes I imagine perhaps it will be like that when we get through with this world and wake up into what's after—that the things we've passed over pretty much here and been vague about will blaze out as the eternal verities. A miracle happened that day in your September garden. You've surely read "Sur la Branche"—that book written around a woman's belief in the Providence of God? Well, that's what I mean. Why did Halarkenden come down out of the woods into your uncle's garden? Why did you tell him, of all people? Why was it you who got through to the truth about him? Why did it all happen just the minute you most needed it? Of course I believe it—every word, exactly as you wrote it. It's impossible things like that which do happen and help us to bear the flatly ordinary. It's the incredible things that shout with reality. Miracles ought to be ordinary affairs—we don't believe in them because we're always straining every nerve to keep them from happening. We get so confused in the continual muddle of our own mistakes that when something does come straight through, as it was intended to do, we're like those men who heard the voice of God that day and told one another anxiously that it thundered.
Just think what went to make up those five minutes which gave you the lift you had to have—that young Scotchman, beating back his devils up in the lonely mountains all those years ago—that's when it started. And then fetch it down to now; his leaving home forever—and his exile in the woods—considerably different from a camping trip—the silent days, worse—the nights. And all the time his mind going back and back to what he'd left behind—his home, seeing every little corner of it—you know the tortures of imagination—his friends—the girl—always the girl—wondering why, and why, and why. Think of the days and months without seeing one of your own kind. He had to have books; his wild garden had to blossom. That man wasn't "coddling" his soul—he was ripping and tearing it into shreds and then pounding it together again with a hammer and with nails. All alone. That's the hardest, I suppose. And then, when it was all done and the worst of the pain and the torment passed, away up there in the forests, Robert Halarkenden—itistrue, isn't it?—he rose from the dead, and being risen, he took a hand in the big business of the world. And his latest job is you. Has that occurred to you? I don't mean to say that he went through all that just to be a help to you. But I do say that if he hadn't gone through it he wouldn't have been a help to anybody. He did it. You needed to find out about it. He told you. It got through. Things sometimes do.
Suppose he hadn't come down from the mountains that day—that they'd found him there—that he hadn't had the nerve to face it? Who would have cured the tuberculosis lad—who would have sent the children south—who would have brushed through your uncle's garden hedge in Forest Gate, Illinois, and told you what you needed to be told? Ifyoushould turn out not to have the nerve—if, some day you—? Then what aboutyourjob? Nobody can ever do another person's real work, and, if it isn't done, I think it's likely we'll have to keep company with our undone, unattempted jobs forever. Mostly rather little jobs they are, too—so much the more shame for having dodged them. You say that you haven't got one. Maybe not, just now. But how do you know it isn't right around the corner? Did Halarkenden have you in mind those years he fought with beasts? No—not you—it was the girl back in Scotland. But here you are, getting the benefit of it. It's a small place, the world, and we're tied and tangled together—it won't do to cut loose. That spoils things, and it's all to come right at the last, if we'll only let it.
Possibly you'll think it's silly or childish, but I believe maybe this life with its queer tasks and happenings is just the great, typical Fairy Story, with Heaven at the last. They're true—that's why unspoiled children love fairy stories. They begin, they march with incident, best of all, one finds always at the end that "'They' lived happily ever afterward." "They," is you, and I hope it's me. The trouble with people mainly is that they're too grown up. Who knows what children see and hear in the summer twilights, on the way home from play? There's the big, round moon, tangled in the tree-tops—one remembers that—and there's the night wind, idling down the dusty street. Surely, though, more than that, but we've forgotten. Isn't growing up largely a process of forgetting, rather than of getting, knowledge? Of course there's cube-root and partial payments and fear and pain and love—one does acquire that sort of thing—but doesn't it maybe cost the losing of the right point of view? And that's too expensive. Naturally, or, perhaps, unnaturally, we can't afford to be caught sailing wash-tub boats across the troubled seas of orchard grass, or watching for fairies in the moonlight, but can't we somehow continue to want to give ourselves to similar adventure? There's a good deal of difference, first and last, between childishness and childlikeness—enough to make the one plain foolishness, and the other the qualification for entrance into the Kingdom of God. I'd rather have let cube-root go and have kept more of my imagination. The other day, in the middle of a catechism I was holding in the parish school, a small youngster rose to his feet and solemnly assured the company present that "the pickshers of God in the church" were "all wrong." Naturally we argued, which was a mistake. He got me. "God," said he, "is a Spirit, and spirits don't look like those colored pickshers in the windows." You see, he knew. He still remembers. But the higher mathematics and a few brisk sins will assist him to forget. Too bad. Still, when we get back home again surely it will all "come back" like a forgotten language.
Meantime there are two hundred dollar frocks to consider, as well as miracles in gardens. And that's all right, so long as the frocks are worthy the background, which I venture to suppose, of course, they are. The subject of clothes interests me a good deal just now, as I'm engaged in living on my salary. It's all a question of what one can afford, financially and spiritually. I gather you're not a bankrupt either way. I don't recall anything in Holy Writ that seems to require dowdiness as necessary to salvation. If one's got money it's fortunate—if money's got one—that's different. Which is my platitudinous way of agreeing with the last postscript of your letter. I know you're getting to look at things properly again. To lose one's life certainly does not mean to kill it, and to give it away one needn't fling it to the dogs. And when you do connect with your job you'll recognize it and you'll know how to do it. I'd like to watch you. Once get your imagination going properly again and the days are rose and gold. Oh, not all of them—but a good many—enough.
I nearly forgot about Theodore. There's humor for you—Theodore, "The Gift of God"—that's the name they gave him sixteen good years ago somewhere over in Scotland as you'd have guessed from the rest of it, which is Alan McGregor. He is an orphan, is Theodore, but he doesn't wear the uniform of the Orphans' Home—far from it! He wears soft raiment and lives in kings' houses, or what amounts to the same thing. I am engaged in exorcising the devil out of him and in teaching him enough Latin to get into a decent school at the earliest instant. The Latin goes well—three nights a week from eight to half-past nine. But the devil takes advantage of every one of those nine points of law which possession is said to give, and doesn't go at all. I am the only living person who knows how to define "charm." Charm is the most conspicuous attribute of the devil, and young McGregor has got it. Likewise other qualities, the ones, for instance, which make his name so rather awfully funny. You'd have to know Theodore to appreciate just how funny.
It was the rector who "wished" him on to me. The rector is one of his guardians, and being Theodore's guardian is a business which requires at least one undersecretary, and I'm that. Theodore and hot water have the strongest affinity known to psychological chemistry. So I'm kept busy. But it's all the keenest sport you can imagine, and it's going to be tremendously worth while if I can make a success of it. He's the right kind of bad, and he's getting ready to grow into a great, big, straight out-and-outer, with a mind like lightning and a heart like one of the sons of God. But that kind is always the worst risk. He has the weapons to get him through the fight with splendor, only they're every one two-edged, and you have to be careful with swords that cut both ways. His father was an inventor genius and there are bales of money and already it has begun to press down on him a little. Still, that may be the exact right thing. He has talked about it once or twice as a nice boy would. There's a place on the other side which comes to him, with factories and such things. He wanted to know wouldn't it be his business to see that the working people were properly looked after; I gathered he's been reading books, trying to find out. And then he got suddenly shy and very bright red as to the face, and cleared out. So far, so good, but it isn't far enough. Not yet.
That's my present job. You'll get yours.
Wasn't it wonderful—I mean Halarkenden! When I think of him and then of myself it gives me a good deal of a jounce. It surprises me that I ever had the conceit to think I could handle this parson proposition. Lately I've not been over-cheerful about it. That's one reason why your letter did me good.
I hear the Gift of God coming up the stairs, and I've neglected to look up the Future Periphrastic Conjugation and that ticklish difference between the Gerund and the Gerundive, which is vital.
One thing more—your second postscript. You didn't suppose that I don't, did you? Only, not like me!
GEOFFREY McBIRNEY.
The man took the letter down the three flights to the post-box at the entrance of the Parish House and dropped it, with a certain deliberation, as if he were speaking to someone whom he cared for, with a certain hesitation, as if he were not sure that he had spoken well, into the box. As he mounted the stairs again his springing gait was slower than usual. It was very late, but he drew a long chair close and poked the hard-coal fire till it glowed to him like a bed of jewels, all alive and stirred to their hot hearts; opals and topazes and rubies and cairngorms and the souls of blue sapphires and purple amethysts playing ghostly over the rest. He dropped into the chair and the tall, black-clothed figure fell into lax lines; his long fingers, the fingers of an artist, a musician, lay on the arms of the chair limply as if disconnected from any central power; there was surely despair, hopelessness, in the man's attitude. His gray eyes glowed from under the straight black brows with much of the hidden flame, the smouldering intensity of the coals at which he gazed. He sat so perhaps half an hour, staring moodily at the orange heart of the fire. Then suddenly, with a smothered half-syllable, with a hand thrown out impatiently, he was on his feet with a bound, and with that his arms were against the tall mantel and his head dropped in them, and he was gazing down so and talking aloud, rapidly, disjointedly, out of his loneliness, to his friend, the red fire. "How can I—how dare I? A square peg in a round hole—and the extra corners all weakness and wickedness. Selfishness—incompetence—I to set up to do the Lord's special work! I to preach to others—If it were not blasphemy it would be a joke—a ghastly joke. I can't go on—I have to pull out. Yet—how can I? They'll think—people will think—oh whatdoesit matter what people will think? Only—if it hurt the rector—if it hurt the work? And Theodore—but—someone else would do him—more good than I can. There ought to be—an older man—to belong. Surely God will look after His gift—His gift!" The quick lightning of the brilliant eyes, which in this man often took the place of a smile, flashed; then the changing face was suddenly grim with a wrenching feeling, yet bright with a wind of tenderness not to be held back. The soul came out of hiding and wrote itself on the muscles of the face. "She—that's it—that's the gist of it—fool that I am. To think—to dream—to dare to hope. But Idon'thope," he brought out savagely, and flung his shoulders straight and caught the wooden shelf with a grip. "I don't hope—I just"—the voice dropped, and his head fell on his arms again. "I won't say it. I'm not utterly mad yet." He picked up the poker and stirred the fire, and put on coal from a scuttle, and went and sat down again in the chair. "Something has got to be decided," he spoke again to the coals in the grate. "I've got to know if I ought to stay at this job, or if it's an impertinence." For minutes then he was silent, intent, it seemed, on the fire. Then again he spoke in the low, clear voice whose simplicity, whose purity reached, though he did not know it, the inmost hearts of the people to whom he preached. "I will make a test of her," he said, telling the fire his decision. "If she is safe and wins through to the real things, I'll believe that I've been let do that, and that I'm fit for work. If she doesn't—if I can't pull off that one job which is so distinctly put up to me—I'll leave." With a swing he had put out the lights in the big, bare living-room and gone into the bedroom beyond. He tried to sleep, but the tortured nerves, the nerves of a high-bred race-horse, eager, ever ready for action, would not be quiet. The great, rich city, the great poverty-stricken masses seething through it, the rushing, grinding work of the huge parish, had eaten into his youth and strength enormously already in six months. He had given himself right and left, suffered with the suffering, as no human being can and keep balance, till now he was, unknowingly, at the edge of a breakdown. And the distrust of his own fitness, the forgetfulness that, under one's own limitations, is an unlimited reserve which is the only hope of any of us in any real work; this was the form of the retort of his overwrought nerves. Yet at last he slept.
Meantime as he slept the hours crept away and it was morning and an early postman came and opened the box with a rattling key and took out three letters which the deaconess had sent to her scattered family, and one, oddly written, which the janitor had executed for his mother in Italy, and the letter to the girl. From hand to hand it sped, and away, and was hidden in a sack in a long mail-train, and at last, Robert Halarkenden, on the 25th of September, came down the garden path, and the girl, reading in the wild garden, laid aside her book and watched him as he came, and thought how familiar and pleasant a sight was the gaunt, tall figure, pausing on the gravelled walk to touch a blossom, to lift a fallen branch, as lovingly as a father would care for his children. "A letter, lassie," Robert Halarkenden said, and held out the thick envelope; and then did an extraordinary thing for Robert Halarkenden. He looked at the address in the unmistakable, big, black writing and looked at the girl and stood a moment, with a question in his eyes. The girl flushed. "Checkmate in six moves" was quite enough to say to this girl; one did not have to play the game brutally to a finish.
She laughed then. "I knew you must have wondered," she said, and with that she told the story of the letters.
"It's no wrong," Robert Halarkenden considered.
The girl jumped to her answer. "Wrong!" she cried, "I should say not. It's salvation—hope—life. Maybe all that; at the least it's the powers of good, fighting for me. Something of the sort—I don't know," she finished lamely. With that she was deep in her letter and Robert Halarkenden had moved a few yards and was tending a shrub that seemed to need nursing.
October the Sixth.
MY DEAR MR. McBIRNEY—
"The night wind idling down the dusty street"—You do make patterns out of the dictionary which please me. But I know that irritates you, for words are not what you are paying attention to—of course—if they were, yours wouldn't be so wonderful. It's the wind of the spirit that blows them into beautiful shapes for you, I suppose. To let that go, for it's immaterial—you think I might have a job? I? That I might do a real thing for anybody ever? If you only knew me. If you only could see the mountains of whipped cream and Maraschino cherries, the cliffs of French clothes and automobiles, the morasses of afternoon teas and dances and calls and luxury in general that lie between me and any usefulness. It's the maddest dream that I, with my bones and my money and my bringing up, all my crippling ailments, could ever,everclimb those mountains and cliffs and wade through those bogs. It's mad, I say, you visionary, you man on the other side of all that, who are living, who are doing things. I never can—I never can. And yet, it's so terrible, it's so horrible, so frightening, so desperate, sometimes, to be drowning in luxury. I woke in the night last night and before my eyes had opened I had flung out my hand and cried out loud in the dark: "What shall I do with my life—Oh what shall I do with my life?" And it isn't just me—though that's the burning, close question to my simple selfishness. But it's a lot of women—a lot. We're waking all over the world. We want to help, to be worth while; to help, to count. It won't do much longer to know French and Italian and play middling tennis and be on the Altar Society. You know what I mean. All that—yes—but beyond that the power which a real person carries into all that to make it big. The stronger you are the better your work is. I want to be strong, to be useful, to touch things with a personality which will move them, make them go, widen them. How? How can I? What can I do, ever? Oh whatcanI do—whatcan I do—with my life! I thought that day in August that it was only my illness, and my tie to an unloved man, but it's more than that. You have broadened the field of my longing, my restlessness, till it covers—everything. Help me then, for you have waked me to this want, question, agony. It's not only if I may kill my life—it's what I can do if I don't kill it. What can I do? Do you feel how that's a sharp, vital question to me? It's out of the deep I'm calling to you—do you know that? And it's my voice, but it's the voice of thousands—nowyou're in trouble. Now you wish you'd let me alone, for here we are at the woman question! I can see you shy at that. But I'm not going to pin you, for you only contracted to help me; I'll shake off the other thousands for the present. And, anyhow, can you help me? Oh, you have—you've delayed my—crime, I suppose it is. You've given me glimpses of vistas; you've set me reading books; widened every sort of horizon; you've even made me dream of a vague, possible work, for me. Yes, I've been dreaming that; a specific thing which I might do, even I, if I could cancel some house-parties, and a trip to France, and the hunting. But even if I could possibly give up those things, there's Uncle Ted. He's not well, and my dream would involve leaving him. And I'm all he has. We two are startlingly alone. After all, you see, it's a dream; I'm not big enough to do more than that—dream idly. Robin has a queer scheme just now. There's a bone-ologist here, the most famous one of the planet, exported from France, to cure the small son of one of the trillionaires with which this place reeks, and Robin insists that I see that bone-ologist about my bones. It's unpleasant, and I hate doctors and I don't know if I will. But Robin is very firm and insists on my telling Uncle Ted otherwise. I can't bother Uncle Ted. So I may do it. Yet, if the great man pronounced, as he would, that the other doctors were right, it would be almost going through the first hideous shock over again. So I maynotdo it. I must stop writing. I have a guest and must do a party for her. She's a California heiress—oh fabulously rich—much richer than I. With splendid bones. I gave her a dance last night and this morning she's off on my best hunter with my fiancé—save the mark! He admires her, and she certainly is a nice girl, and lovely to look at, with eyes like those young mediaeval, brainless Madonnas. I'm so glad to have someone else play with him—with Alec. I dread him so. I hate, Ihateto let him—kiss me. There. If you were a real man I couldn't have exploded into that. You're only the spirit of a thunder-storm, you know; I'll never see you again on earth; I can say anything. I do say anything, don't I? I can say—I do say—that you have dragged me from the bottomless pit; that if any good comes of me it is your good—that you—being a shadow, a memory, an incident—are yet the central figure of this world to me. If I fall back into the pit, that is not your affair—mine, mine only. The light that shines around you for me is the only kindly light that may save me. But it may not. I may fall back. I have the toy in the drawer yet—covered with letters. Good-by—I am yours always,
AUGUST FIRST.