Casey stood under the single gas-bracket, striking a match. As I went toward him, the light flickered up, dimly revealing a clean, bleak room, whose only furniture was a bed, a broken chair, and a small gas-stove. On the chair lay an empty tin cup and a spoon. The child, her back to both her visitors, stood beside the bed. Characteristically, though Casey had spoken to her, she ignored his presence. She was whimpering a little under her breath, and pulling with both hands at something that lay before her, rigid and unresponsive.
With a rush I crossed the room, and the desolate mite of humanity at the bed turned to stare at me, blinking in the sudden light. For an instant her wet brown eyes failed to recognize me. In the next, with an ecstatic, indescribably pathetic little cry, she lurched into the arms I opened to her. Icould not speak, but I sat down on the floor and held her close, my tears falling on her curly head with its brave red bow. For a moment more the silence held. Then the child drew a long, quivering breath and patiently uttered again her parrot-like refrain.
"Fine-kine-rady," she murmured, brokenly.
Casey, his cap in his hand, stood looking down upon the silent figure on the bed. "Starvation, most likely," he hazarded. "She's bin dead fur an hour, maybe more," he mused aloud. "An' she's laid herself out, d'ye mind. Whin she found death comin' she drew her feet together, an' crost her hands on her breast, an' shut her eyes. They do ut sometimes, whin they know they's no wan to do ut for thim. But first she washed an' dressed her child in uts best an' sint ut out—so ut w'u'dn't be scairt. D'ye know th' woman?" he added. "Have ye ivir seen her? It seems t' meIhave!"
Holding the baby tight, her head against my shoulder, that she might not see what I did, I went forward and looked at the wasted face. There was something vaguely familiar about the black hair-line on the broad, Madonna-like brow, about the exquisitely shaped nose, the sunken cheeks, the pointed chin. For a long moment I looked at them while memory stirred in me and then awoke.
"Yes," I said, at last. "I remember her now. Many evenings last month I saw her standing at the foot of the elevated stairs when I was going home. She wore a little shawl over her head—that's whyI didn't recognize her at once. She never begged, but she took what one gave her. I always gave her something. She was evidently very poor. I remember vaguely that she had a child with her—this one, of course. I hardly noticed either of them as I swept by. One's always in a rush, you know, to get home, and, unfortunately, there are so many beggars!"
"That's it," said Casey. "I remember her now, too."
"If only I had realized how ill she was," I reflected aloud, miserably, "or stopped to think of the child. She called me 'kind lady.' Oh, Casey! And I let her starve!"
"Hush now," said Casey, consolingly. "Sure how could ye know? Some of thim that's beggin' has more than you have!"
"But she called me 'kind lady,'" I repeated. "And I let her—"
"Fine-kine-rady," murmured the child, drowsily, as if hearing and responding to a cue. She was quiet and well content, again playing with a coat-button; but she piped out her three words as if they were part of a daily drill and the word of command had been uttered. Casey and I looked at each other, then dropped our eyes.
"D'ye Know the Woman?" He Said
"D'ye Know the Woman?" He Said
"Find kind lady," I translated at last. Then I broke down, in the bitterest storm of tears that I have ever known. Beside me Casey stood guard, silent and unhappy. It was the whimper of the childthat recalled me to myself and her. She was growing frightened.
"Oh, Casey," I said again, when I had soothed her, "do you realize that the poor woman sent this baby out into New York to-night on the one chance in a million that she might see me at the station and that I would remember her?"
"What else c'u'd the poor creature do?" muttered Casey. "I guess she wasn't dependin' on her neighbors much. 'Tis easy to see that ivery stick o' furniture an' stitch o' clothes, ixcept th' child's, was pawned. Besides, thim tiniment kids is wise," he repeated. His blue eyes dwelt on the baby with a brooding speculation in their depths. "She's sleepy," he muttered, "but she's not starved. Th' mother fed her t' th' last, an' wint without herself; an' she kep' her warm. They do that sometimes, too."
With quick decision he put on his cap and started for the door. "I'll telephone me report," he said, briskly. "Will ye be waitin' here till I come back? Thin we'll take th' mother t' th' morgue an' the child t' th' station."
"Oh no, we won't," I told him, gently. "We'll see that the mother has proper burial. As for this baby, I'm going to take care of her until I find an ideal home for her. I know women who will thank God for her. I wish," I added, absently—"I wish I could keep her myself."
Casey turned on me a face that was like a smiling full moon. "'Tis lucky th' child is to have ye fora friend. But she'll be a raysponsibil'ty," he reminded me, "and an expinse."
I kissed the tiny hand that clung to mine. "That won't worry me," I declared. "Why, do you know, Casey"—I drew the soft little body closer to me—"I feel that if I worked for her a thousand years I could never make up to this baby for that horrible moment when I turned her adrift again—after she had found me."
Two hours later my waif of the fog, having been fed and tubbed and tucked into one of my nightgowns, reposed in my bed, and, still beatifically clutching a cookie, sank into a restful slumber. My maid, a "settled" Norwegian who had been with me for two years, had welcomed her with hospitable rapture. A doctor had pronounced her in excellent physical condition. A trained nurse, hastily summoned to supervise her bath, her supper, and her general welfare, had already drawn up an impressive plan indicating the broad highway of hygienic infant living. Now, for the dozenth time, we were examining a scrap of paper which I had found in a tiny bag around the child's neck when I undressed her. It bore a brief message written in a wavering, foreign hand:
Maria Annunciata Zamati3½ years old
Parents dead. No relations. Be good to her and God will be good to you.
Besides this in the little bag was a narrow gold band, wrapped in a bit of paper that read:
Her mother's wedding-ring.
Broodingly I hung over the short but poignant record. "Maria Annunciata," I repeated. "What a beautiful name! Three and a half years old! What an adorable age! No relations. No one can ever take her from us! I shall be her godmother and her best friend, whoever adopts her. And I'll keep her till the right mother comes for her, if it takes the rest of my life."
The doctor laughed and bade us good night, after a final approving look at the sleeping baby in the big bed. The trained nurse departed with evident reluctance for her room.
The telephone beside my bed clicked warningly, then tinkled. As I took up the receiver a familiar voice came to me over the wire.
"Is that you, May?" it said. "This is Josephine Morgan. Did you get a dinner invitation from me yesterday? Not hearing from you, I've been trying to get you on the telephone all evening, but no one answered."
"I know," I said, cheerfully. "Awfully sorry. I've been busy. I've got a baby."
Maria Annunciata stirred in her sleep. Speaking very softly, that I might not awaken her, I told Josephine the story of my adventure.
"Come and see her soon," I ended. "I mustn'ttalk any more. Annunciata is here beside me. She's absolutely different from any other child in the world. Good night."
I undressed slowly, stopping at intervals to study the pleasing effect of Maria Annunciata's short black curls on the pillow. At last, moving very carefully for fear of disturbing her, I crept into bed. As promptly as if the yielding of the mattress had been a signal that set her tiny body in motion, Maria Annunciata awoke, smiled at me, cuddled into the curve of my left arm, reached up, and firmly grasped my left ear. Then, with a long sigh of ineffable content, she dropped back into slumber.
The only light was the soft glow of an electric bulb behind an amber shade. The button that controlled it was within easy reach of my hand; a touch would have plunged the room into darkness. But I did not press the little knob. Instead, I lay for a long, long time looking at the sleeping child beside me.
There was a soft knock at the door. It opened quietly and my servant appeared.
"Mr. and Mrs. Morgan are outside," she whispered. "They say they've come to see the baby."
"But," I gasped, "it's after eleven o'clock!"
"I know. Mrs. Morgan said they couldn't wait till morning. Shall I show her in?"
I hesitated. I felt a sense of unreasonable annoyance, almost of fear. "Yes," I said, at last, "let her come in."
Josephine Morgan came in with a soft little feminine rush. Something of the atmosphere of the great world in which she lived came with her as far as the bedside, then dropped from her like a garment as she knelt beside us and kissed me, her eyes on Maria Annunciata's sleeping face.
"Oh, the darling, the lamb!" she breathed. "She's the most exquisite thing I ever saw! And the pluck of her! George says she ought to have a Carnegie medal." Still kneeling, she bent over the child, her beautiful face quivering with feeling. "What do you know about her family?" she asked.
With a gesture I indicated the scrap of paper and the ring that lay on my dressing-table. "There's the whole record," I murmured.
She rose and examined them, standing very still for a moment afterward, apparently in deep thought. Then, still holding them, she returned to the bedside and with a quick but indescribably tender movement gathered Maria Annunciata into her arms. "Let me show her to George," she whispered.
I consented, and she carried the sleeping baby into the next room. I heard their voices and an occasional low laugh. A strange feeling of loneliness settled upon me. In a few moments she came back, her face transfigured. Bending, she put the child in bed and sat down beside her.
"May," she said, quietly, "George and I want her. Will you give her to us?"
The demand was so sudden that I could not speak. She looked at me, her eyes filling.
"We've been looking for a little daughter for two years," she added. "We've visited dozens of institutions."
"But," I stammered, "I wanted to keep her myself—for a while, anyway."
She smiled at me. "Why, you will—" she began, and stopped.
"You may have her," I said, quietly.
She kissed me. "We'll make her happy," she promised. "I suppose," she added, "we couldn't take her awayto-night? Of course the first thing in the morning willdo," she concluded, hastily, as she met my indignant gaze.
"Josephine Morgan," I gasped, "I never met such selfishness! Of course you can't have her to-night. You can't have her in the morning, either. You've got to adopt her legally, with red seals and things. It will take lots of time."
Mrs. Morgan laughed, passing a tender finger through one of Maria Annunciata's short curls. "We'll do it," she said. "We'll do anything. And we're going to be in New York all winter, so you can be with her a great deal while she's getting used to us. Now I'll go." But she lingered, making a pretext of tucking in the bedclothes around us. "You've seen theSentinel," she asked, "with that story about you?"
I shook my head at her. "Don't, please," I begged. "We'll talk about that to-morrow."
She kissed the deep dimple in Maria Annunciata's left cheek. "Good night," she said, again. "You'll never know how happy you have made us."
The door closed behind her. I raised my hand and pressed the button above my head. Around me the friendly darkness settled, and a silence as warm and friendly. In the hollow of my neck the face of Maria Annunciata rested, a short curl tickling my cheek. I recalled "the great silence" that fell over the convent at nine o'clock when the lights went out, but to-night the reflection did not bring its usual throb of homesickness and longing. Relaxed, content, I lay with eyes wide open, looking into the future. Without struggle, without self-analysis, but firmly and for all time, I had decidednotto be a nun.
Every seat in the primitive town hall was occupied, and a somber frieze of Dakota plainsmen and their sad-faced wives decorated the rough, unpainted sides of the building. On boxes in the narrow aisles, between long rows of pine boards on which were seated the early arrivals, late-comers squatted discontentedly, among them a dozen women carrying fretful babies, to whom from time to time they addressed a comforting murmur as they swung them, cradle-fashion, in their tired arms.
The exercises of the evening had not yet begun, but almost every eye in the big, silent, patient assemblage was fixed on a woman, short and stout, with snow-white hair and a young and vivid face, who had just taken her place on the platform, escorted by a self-conscious official of the little town. Every one in that gathering had heard of Dr. Anna Harland; few had yet heard her speak, but all knew what she represented: "new-fangled notions about women"—women's rights, woman suffrage, feminism, unsettling ideas which threatened to disturb the peace of minds accustomed to run in well-worngrooves. Many of the men and women in her audience had driven twenty, thirty, or forty miles across the plains to hear her, but there was no unanimity in the expressions with which they studied her now as she sat before them. In the men's regard were curiosity, prejudice, good-humored tolerance, or a blend of all three. The women's faces held a different meaning: pride, affectionate interest, admiration tinged with hope; and here and there a hint of something deeper, a wireless message that passed from soul to soul.
At a melodeon on the left of the platform a pale local belle, who had volunteered her services, awaited the signal to play the opening chords of the song that was to precede the speaker's address. In brackets high on the rough walls a few kerosene lamps vaguely illumined the scene, while from the open night outside came the voices of cowboys noisily greeting late arrivals and urging them to "go on in an' git a change of heart!"
The musician received her signal—a nod from the chairman of the evening—and the next moment the voices of a relieved and relaxed audience were heartily swelling the familiar strains of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." As the men and women before her sang on, Dr. Harland watched them, the gaze of the brilliant dark eyes under her straight black brows keen and intent. Even yet she had not decided what she meant to say to these people. Something in the music, something in the atmosphere,would surely give her a cue, she felt, before she began to speak.
Sitting near her on the platform, I studied both her and her audience. The Far West and its people were new to me; so was this great leader of the woman's cause. But it behooved me to know her and to know her well, for I had accompanied her on this Western campaign for the sole purpose of writing a series of articles on her life and work, to be published in the magazine of which I had recently been appointed assistant editor. During our long railroad journeys and drives over hills and plains she had talked to me of the past. Now, I knew, I was to see her again perform the miracle at which I had not yet ceased to marvel—the transformation of hundreds of indifferent or merely casually interested persons into a mass of shouting enthusiasts, ready to enlist under her yellow banner and follow wherever she led.
To-night, as she rose and for a moment stood silent before her audience, I could see her, as usual, gathering them up, drawing them to her by sheer force of magnetism, before she spoke a word.
"My friends," she began, in the beautiful voice whose vibrating contralto notes reached every person in the great hall, "last Monday, at Medora, I was asked by a missionary who is going to India to send a message to the women of that land. I said to him, 'Tell them the world was made for women, too.' To-night I am here to give you the samemessage. The world is women's, too. The West is women's, too. You have helped to make it, you splendid, pioneer women, who have borne with your husbands the heat and burden of the long working-days. You have held down your claims through the endless months of Western winters, while your men were away; you have toiled with them in the fields; you have endured with them the tragedies of cyclones, of droughts, of sickness, of starvation. If woman's work is in the home alone, as our opponents say it is, you have been most unwomanly. For you have remained in the home only long enough to bear your children, to care for them, to feed them and your husbands. The rest of the time you have done a man's work in the West. The toil has been yours as well as man's; the reward of such toil should be shared by you. The West is yours, too. Now it holds work for you even greater than that you have done in the past, and I am here to beg you to begin that work."
The address went on. In the dim light of the ill-smelling lamps I could see the audience leaning forward, intent, fascinated. Even among the men easy tolerance was giving place to eager response; on row after row of the rough benches the spectators were already clay in the hands of the speaker, to be molded, for the moment at least, into the form she chose to give them. My eyes momentarily touched, then fastened intently on a face in the third row on the left. It was the face of a woman—alittle, middle-aged woman of the primitive Western type—her graying hair combed straight back from a high, narrow forehead, her thin lips slightly parted, the flat chest under her gingham dress rising and falling with emotion. But my interest was held by her eyes—brown eyes, blazing eyes, almost the eyes of a fanatic. Unswervingly they rested on the speaker's face, while the strained attention, the parted lips, the attitude of the woman's quivering little body betrayed almost uncontrollable excitement. At that instant I should not have been surprised to see her spring to her feet and shout, "Alleluia!"
A moment later I realized that Dr. Harland had seen her, too; that she was, indeed, intensely conscious of her, and was directing many of her best points to this absorbed listener. Here was the perfect type she was describing to her audience—the true woman pioneer, who not only worked and prayed, but who read and thought and aspired. The men and women under the flickering lights were by this time as responsive to the speaker's words as a child to its mother's voice. They laughed, they wept, they nodded, they sighed. When the usual collection was taken up they showed true Western generosity, and when the lecture was over they crowded forward to shake hands with the woman leader, and to exhaust their limited vocabulary in shy tributes to her eloquence. Far on the outskirts of the wide circle that had formed aroundher I saw the little woman with the blazing eyes, vainly endeavoring to force her way toward us through the crowd. Dr. Harland observed her at the same time and motioned to me.
"Will you ask her to wait, Miss Iverson?" she asked. "I would like to talk to her before she slips away." And she added, with her characteristic twinkle, "That woman would make a perfect 'Exhibit A' for my lecture."
I skirted the throng and touched the arm of the little woman just as she had given up hope of reaching the speaker, and was moving toward the door. She started and stared at me, almost as if the touch of my fingers had awakened her from a dream.
"Dr. Harland asks if you will wait a few moments till the others leave," I told her. "She is anxious to meet you."
The brown-eyed woman drew in a deep breath.
"Tha's whut I want," she exclaimed, ecstatically, "but it looked like I couldn't git near her."
We sat down on an empty bench half-way down the hall, and watched the human stream flow toward and engulf the lecturer. "Ain't she jest wonderful?" breathed my companion. "She knows us women better 'n we know ourselves. She knows all we done an' how we feel about it. I felt like she was tellin' them people all my secrets, but I didn't mind." She hesitated, then added dreamily, "It's high time men was told whut their women are thinkin' an' can't say fer themselves."
In the excited group around the speaker a baby, held high in its mother's arms to avoid being injured in the crush, shrieked out a sudden protest. My new acquaintance regarded it with sympathetic eyes.
"I've raised six of 'em," she told me. "My oldest is a girl nineteen. My youngest is a boy of twelve. My big girl she's lookin' after the house an' the fam'ly while I'm gone. I druv sixty miles 'cross the plains to hear Dr. Harland. It took me two days, an' it's jest about wore out my horse—but this is worth it. I ain't had sech a night sence I was a girl."
She looked at me, her brown eyes lighting up again with their queer, excited fires.
"My Jim he 'most fell dead when I told him I was comin'," she went on. "But I says to him, 'I ain't been away from this place one minute in twenty years,' I says. 'Now I guess you folks can git 'long without me fer a few days. For, Jim,' I says, 'ef I don't git away, ef I don't go somewhere an' have some change, somethin's goin' to snap, an' I guess it'll be me!'"
"You mean," I exclaimed, in surprise, "that you've never left your ranch in twenty years?"
She nodded.
"Not once," she corroborated. "Not fer a minute. You know whut the summers are—work, work from daylight to dark; an' in the winters I had t' hol' down the claim while Jim he went to the city an' worked. Sometimes he'd only git home onceor twice the hull winter. Then when we begin to git on, seemed like 'twas harder than ever. Jim he kept addin' more land an' more stock to whut we had, an' there was more hands to be waited on, an' the babies come pretty fast. Lately Jim he's gone to Chicago every year to sell his cattle, but I ain't bin able to git away till now."
During her eager talk—a talk that gushed forth like a long-repressed stream finding a sudden outlet—she had been leaning toward me with her arm on the back of the bench and her shining eyes on mine. Now, as if remembering her "company manners," she sat back stiffly, folded her work-roughened hands primly in her lap, and sighed with supreme content.
"My!" she whispered, happily, "I feel like I was in a diff'rent world. It don't seem possible that only sixty miles out on the plains that ranch is right there, an' everything is goin' on without me. An' here I be, hearin' the music, an' all the folks singin' together, an' that wonderful woman talkin' like she did! I feel"—she hesitated for a comparison, and then went on, with the laugh of a happy girl—"I feel like I was up in a balloon an' on my way to heaven!"
I forgot the heat of the crowded hall, the smell of the smoking lamps, the shuffle of hobnailed shoes on the pine floors, the wails of fretful babies. I almost felt that I, too, was floating off with this ecstatic stranger in the balloon of her imagination.
"I see," I murmured. "You're tired of drudgery. You haven't played enough in all these years."
She swung round again until she faced me, her sallow cheeks flushed, her eager, brilliant eyes on mine.
"I ain't played none at all," she said. "I dunno what play is. An' work ain't the only thing I'm tired of. I'm tired of everything. I'm tired of everything—except this."
Her voice lingered on the last two words. Her eyes left my face for an instant and followed the lecturer, of whose white head we obtained a glimpse from time to time as the crowd opened around her. Still gazing toward her, but now as if unseeingly, the plainswoman went on, her voice dropping to a lower, more confidential note.
"I'm sick of everything," she repeated. "Most of all, I'm sick of the plains and the sky—stretching on and on and on and on, like they do, as if they was no end to 'em. Sometimes when I'm alone I stand at my door an' look at 'em an' shake my fists an' shriek. I begun to think they wasn't anything but them nowhere. It seemed 's if the little town back East where I come from was jest a place I dreamed of—it couldn't really be. Nothin'couldbe 'cept those plains an' the cattle an' the sky. Then, this spring—"
She turned again to face me.
"I dunno why I'm tellin' you all this," she broke off, suddenly. "Guess it's because I ain't had noone to talk to confidential fer so long, an' you look like you understand."
"I do understand," I told her.
She nodded.
"Well, this spring," she went on, "I begun to hate everything, same as I hated the plains. I couldn't exactly hate my children; but it seemed to me they never did nothin' right, an' I jest had to keep tellin' myself they was mine, an' they was young an' didn't understand how they worried me by things they done. Then the hands drove me 'most crazy. They was one man—why, jes' to have that man pass the door made me feel sick, an' yet I hadn't nothin' again' him, really. An' finally, last of all, Jim—even Jim—"
Her voice broke. Sudden tears filled her eyes, quenching for the moment the sparks that burned there.
"Jim's a good man," she continued, steadily, after a moment's pause. "He's a good, hard-workin' man. He's good to me in his way, an' he's good to the children. But of course he ain't got much time for us. He never was a talker. He's a worker, Jim is, an' when night comes he's so tired he falls asleep over the fire. But everything he done always seemed pretty near right to me—till this spring."
Her voice flattened and died on the last three words. For a moment she sat silent, brooding, a strange puzzled look in her brown eyes. The crowd around Dr. Harland was thinning out, and peoplewere leaving the hall. We could easily have reached her now, but I sat still, afraid to dam the verbal freshet that was following so many frozen winters.
"This spring," she went on, at last, "it jest seems like I can't bear to have even Jim around." She checked herself and touched my arm timidly, almost apologetically. "It's a terrible thing to say, ain't it?" she almost whispered, and added slowly, "It's a terrible thing tofeel. I can't bear to see him come into the room. I can't bear the way he eats, or the way he smokes, or the way he sets down, or the way he gits up, or the way he breathes. He does 'em all jest like he always has. They ain't nothin' wrong with 'em. But I can't bear 'em no more." She beat her hands together softly, with a queer, frantic gesture. Her voice took on a note of rising excitement. "I can't," she gasped. "I can't,I can't!"
I rose.
"Come," I said, cheerfully. "Dr. Harland is free now. I want you to talk to her. She can help you. She's a very wise woman."
A momentary flicker of something I did not recognize shone in my companion's eyes. Was it doubt or pity, or both?
"She ain't a married woman, is she?" she asked, quietly, as she rose and walked down the aisle by my side.
I laughed.
"No," I conceded, "she isn't, and neither am I.But you know even the Bible admits that of ten virgins five were wise!"
Her face, somber now, showed no reflection of my amusement. She seemed to be considering our claims to wisdom, turning over in her mind the possibility of help from either of us, and experiencing a depressing doubt.
"Well, you're women, anyway," she murmured, at last, a pathetic note of uncertainty lingering in her voice.
"Will you tell me your name?" I asked, "so that I may introduce you properly to Dr. Harland?"
"Tildy Mears," she answered, promptly; then added, with stiff formality, "Mrs. James Mears of the X. X. M. Ranch."
We were already facing Dr. Harland, and I presented Mrs. Mears without further delay. The leader met her with the brilliant smile, the close hand-clasp, the warm, human sympathy which rarely failed to thrill the man or woman she was greeting. Under their influence Mrs. Mears expanded like a thirsty plant in a gentle shower. Within five minutes the two women were friends.
"You're at the hotel, of course," Dr. Harland asked, when she heard of the sixty-mile drive across the country. "Then you must have supper with Miss Iverson and me. We always want something after these long evenings, and I will have it sent up to our sitting-room, so that we can have a comfortable talk."
Half an hour later we were grouped around the table in the little room, and over the cold meat, canned peaches, lemonade, and biscuits which formed our collation Tildy Mears retold her story, adding innumerable details and intimate touches under the stimulus of the doctor's interest. At the end of it Dr. Harland sat for a long moment in silent thought. Then, from the briskness with which she began to speak, I knew that she had found some solution of the human problem before us.
"Mrs. Mears," she said, abruptly, and without any comment on the other's recital, "I wish you would travel around with us for a fortnight. We're going to remain in this part of the state, and you would find our meetings extremely interesting. On the other hand, you could give me a great deal of help and information, and, though I cannot offer you a salary, I will gladly pay your expenses."
This was a plan very characteristic of Dr. Harland, to whom half-way measures of any kind made no appeal. I looked at Tildy Mears. For an instant, under the surprise of the leader's unexpected words, she had sat still, stunned; in the next, her eyes had flashed to us one of their ecstatic messages, as if she had grasped all the other woman's proposition held of change, of interest, of growth. Then abruptly the light faded, went out.
"I'd love to," she said, dully, "I'd jestloveto! But of course it ain't possible. Why, I got to start home to-morrer. Jim," she gulped, bringing outthe name with an obvious effort, "Jim expecks me back Sat'day night."
"Listen to me, Mrs. Mears"—Dr. Harland leaned forward, her compelling eyes deep in those of the Western woman—"I'm going to speak to you very frankly—as if we were old friends; as if we were sisters, as, indeed, we are."
Tildy Mears nodded. Her eyes, dull and tired now, looked trustfully back at the other woman.
"I feel like we are," she agreed. And she added, "You kin say anything you've a mind to."
"Then I want to say this."
I had never seen Dr. Harland more interested, more impressive. Into what she was saying to the forlorn little creature before her she threw all she had of persuasiveness, of magnetism, and of power.
"If you don't have a change," she continued, "and a very radical change, you will surely have a bad nervous breakdown. That is what I want to save you from. I cannot imagine anything that would do it more effectively than to campaign with us for a time, and have the whole current of your thoughts turned in a new direction. Why, don't you understand"—her deep voice was full of feeling; for the moment at least she was more interested in one human soul than in hundreds of human votes—"it isn't that you have ceased to care for your home and your family. It's only that your tortured nerves are crying out against the horrible monotony of your life. Give them the change they are demandingand everything else will come right. Go back and put them through the old strain, and—well, I'm afraid everything will go wrong."
As if something in the other's words had galvanized her into sudden action Mrs. Mears sprang to her feet. Like a wild thing she circled the room, beating her hands together.
"I can't go back!" she cried. "I can't go back! Whut'll I do? Oh, whut'll I do?"
"Do what I am advising you to do."
Dr. Harland's quiet voice steadied the hysterical woman. Under its calming influence I could see her pull herself together.
"Write Mr. Mears that you are coming with us, and give him our advance route, so that he will know exactly where you are all the time. If your daughter can manage your home for five days she can manage it for two weeks. And your little jaunt need not cost your husband one penny."
"I brought twenty dollars with me," quavered Tildy Mears.
"Keep it," advised the temporarily reckless leader of the woman's cause. "When we reach Bismarck you can buy yourself a new dress and get some little presents to take home to the children."
Tildy Mears stopped her reckless pacing of the room and stood for a moment very still, her eyes fixed on a worn spot in the rug at her feet.
"I reckon I will," she then said, slowly. "Sence you ask me, I jest reckon I'll stay."
The next evening, during her remarks to the gathering she was then addressing, Dr. Harland abruptly checked herself.
"But there is some one here who knows more about that than I do," she said, casually, referring to a point she was covering. "Mrs. Mears, who is on the platform with me to-night, is one of you. She knows from twenty years of actual experience what I am learning from study and observation. She can tell you better than I can how many buckets of water a plainsman's wife carries into an unpiped ranch during the day. Will you tell us, Mrs. Mears?"
She asked a few questions, and hesitatingly, stammeringly at first, the panic-stricken plainswoman answered her. Then a woman in the audience spoke up timidly to compare notes, and in five minutes more Dr. Harland was sitting quietly in the background while Tildy Mears, her brown eyes blazing with interest and excitement, talked to her fellow plainswomen about the problems she and they were meeting together.
Seeing the success of Dr. Harland's experiment, I felt an increased respect for that remarkable woman. She had known that this would happen; she had realized, as I had not, that Tildy Mears could talk to others as simply and as pregnantly as to us, and that her human appeal to her sister workers would be far greater than any even Anna Harland herself could make. One night she described a stampede in words that made a slow chill run the lengthof my spine. Half an hour later she was discussing "hired hands," with a shrewd philosophy and a quaint humor that drew good-natured guffaws from "hired hands" themselves as well as from their employers in the audience.
Within the next few days Tildy Mears became a strong feature of our campaign. Evening after evening, in primitive Dakota towns, her self-consciousness now wholly gone, she supplemented Dr. Harland's lectures by a talk to her sister women, so simple, so homely, so crudely eloquent that its message reached every heart. During the days she studied the suffrage question, reading and rereading the books we had brought with us, and asking as many questions as an eager and precocious child. Openly and unabashedly Dr. Harland gloried in her.
"Why, she's a born orator," she told me one day, almost breathlessly. "She's a feminine Lincoln. There's no limit to her possibilities. I'd like to take her East. I'd like to educate her—train her. Then she could come back here and go through the West like a whirlwind."
The iridescent bubble was floating so beautifully that it seemed a pity to prick it; but I did, with a callous reminder.
"How about her home?" I suggested—"and her children? and her husband?"
Dr. Harland frowned and bit her lip.
"Humph!" she muttered, her voice taking on theflat notes of disappointment and chagrin. "Humph! I'd forgotten them."
For a moment she stood reflecting, readjusting her plans to a scale which embraced the husband, the home, and the children of her protégée. Then her brow cleared, her irresistible twinkle broke over her face; she smiled like a mischievous child.
"I had forgotten them," she repeated. "Maybe"—this with irrepressible hopefulness—"maybe Tildy will, too!"
That Tildy did nothing of the kind was proved to us all too soon. Six days had passed, and the growing fame of Mrs. Mears as a suffrage speaker was attracting the attention of editors in the towns we visited. It reached its climax at a mass-meeting in Sedalia, where for an hour the little woman talked to an audience of several hundred, making all Dr. Harland's favorite points in her own simpler, homelier words, while the famous leader of the cause beamed on her proudly from the side of the stage. After the doctor's speech the two women held an informal reception, which the Mayor graced, and to which the Board of Aldermen also lent the light of their presence. These high dignitaries gave most of their attention to our leader; she could answer any question they wished to ask, as well as many others they were extremely careful not to bring up. But the women in the audience, the babies, the growing boys and girls—all these turned to Tildy Mears. From the closing words of her speechuntil she disappeared within the hotel she was followed by an admiring throng. As I caught the final flash of her brown eyes before her bedroom engulfed her it seemed to me that she looked pale and tired. She had explained that she wanted no supper, but before I went to bed, hearing her still moving around her room, I rapped at her door.
"Wouldn't you like a sandwich?" I asked, when she had opened it. "And a glass of lemonade?"
She hesitated. Then, seeing that I had brought these modest refreshments on a tray, she stepped back and allowed me to pass in. There was an unusual self-consciousness in her manner, an unusual bareness in the effect of the room. The nails on the wall had been stripped of her garments. On the floor lay an open suit-case closely packed.
"Why!" I gasped. "Why are you packing? We're going to stay here over to-morrow, you know."
For an instant she stood silent before me, looking like a child caught in some act of disobedience by a relentless parent. Then her head went up.
"Yes," she said, quietly. "I'm packed. I'm goin' home!"
"Going home!" I repeated, stupidly. It seemed to me that all I could do was to echo her words. "When?" I finally brought out.
"To-morrer mornin'." She spoke almost defiantly. "I wanted to go to-night," she added, "but there wasn't no train. I got to go back an' start from Dickinson, where I left my horse."
"But why?" I persisted. "Why?I thought you were going to be with us another week at least?"
"Well"—she drew out the word consideringly. Then, on a sudden resolve, she gave her explanation. "They was a man in the fourth row to-night that looked like Jim."
"Yes?" I said, and waited. "Was he Mr. Mears?" I asked, at last.
"No."
She knelt, and closed and locked the suit-case.
"He looked like Jim," she repeated, as if that ended the discussion.
For an instant the situation was too complicated for me. Then, in a flash of understanding, I remembered that only the week before I had been made suddenly homesick for New York by one fleeting glimpse of a man whose profile was like that of Godfrey Morris. Without another word I sought Dr. Harland and broke the news to her in two pregnant sentences.
"Mrs. Mears is going home to-morrow morning. She saw a man at the meeting to-night who looked like her husband."
Dr. Harland, who was preparing for bed, laid down the hair-brush she was using, slipped a wrapper over her nightgown, and started for Mrs. Mears's room. I followed. Characteristically, our leader disdained preliminaries.
"But, my dear woman," she exclaimed, "you can't leave us in the lurch like this. You're announcedto speak in Sweetbriar and Mendan and Bismarck within the coming week."
"He looked jest like Jim," murmured Tildy Mears, in simple but full rebuttal. She was standing with her back to the door, and she did not turn as we entered. Her eyes were set toward the north, where her home was, and her children and Jim. Her manner dismissed Sweetbriar, Mendan, and Bismarck as if they were the flowers of last year. Suddenly she wheeled, crossed the room, and caught Dr. Harland by the shoulders.
"Woman," she cried, "I'm homesick. Can't ye understand that, even ef you ain't got a home an' a husband ye been neglectin' fer days, like I have? I'm homesick." Patiently she brought out her refrain again. "The man looked jest like Jim," she ended.
She turned away, and with feverish haste put her case on a chair, and her jacket and hat on the case, topping the collection with an old pair of driving-gloves. The completeness of this preparation seemed to give her some satisfaction. She continued with more animation.
"I'm startin' early," she explained. "I told the hotel man soon's I come in to have me called at five o'clock. So I'll say good-by now. An' thank ye both fer all yer kindness," she ended, primly.
Dr. Harland laughed. Then, impulsively, she took both the woman's toil-hardened hands in hers.
"Good-by, then, and God bless you," she said."My cure has worked. I'll comfort myself with that knowledge."
For a moment the eyes of Tildy Mears fell.
"You ben mighty good," she said. "You both ben good. Don't think I ain't grateful." She hesitated, then went on in halting explanation. "'S long's you ain't married," she said, "an' ain't got nothin' else to do, it's fine to travel round an' talk to folks. But someway sence I see that man to-night, settin' there lookin' like Jim, I realize things is different with us married women."
She drew her small figure erect, her voice taking on an odd suggestion of its ringing platform note.
"Talkin' is one thing," she said, tersely, "livin' is another thing. P'rhaps you ain't never thought of that. But I see the truth now, an' I see it clear."
Her peroration filled the little room, and like a swelling organ tone rolled through the open door and down the stairs, where it reached the far recesses of the hall below. Her lean right arm shot upward in her one characteristic gesture, as if she called on high Heaven itself to bear witness to the wisdom of her words in this, her last official utterance.
"Woman's place," ended Tildy Mears, "is in the home!"
The Authors' Dinner had reached that peak of success which rises serenely between the serving of the dessert and the opening words of the first postprandial speech. Relaxed, content, at peace with themselves and their publisher-host, the great assemblage of men and women writers sipped their coffee and liqueurs, and beamed benignly upon one another as they waited for the further entertainment the speeches were expected to afford. Here and there, at the numerous small tables which flowered in the great dining-room, a distinguished author, strangely modest for the moment, stealthily consulted some penciled notes tucked under his napkin, or with absent eyes on space mentally rehearsed the opening sentences of his address. Even the least of these men was accustomed to public speaking; but what they had said to Chautauqua gatherings or tossed off casually at school commencements in their home towns was not quite what they would care to offer to an audience which included three hundred men and women representing every stage of literary success, and gifted, beyond doubt, witha highly developed sense of humor. A close observer could discover the speakers of the evening by running an eye over the brilliantly decorated tables and selecting those faces which alone in that care-free assemblage wore expressions of nervous apprehension.
At my table, well toward the center of the room, I felt again a thrill of delight at being a part of this unique composite picture. My first book, still an infant in the literary cradle, had won me my invitation; and nothing except the actual handling of the volume, hot from the press, had given me so strong a sense of having at last made a beginning in the work I loved. Save myself, every man and woman of the eight at our table stood on the brow of the long hill each had climbed. Three of them—a woman playwright, a man novelist, and a famous diplomat—were among my close friends. The others I had met to-night for the first time. The Playwright sat opposite me, and over the tall vase of Spanish iris which stood between us I caught the expression of her brown eyes, thoughtful and introspective. For the moment at least she was very far away from the little group around her. Beside her sat the Author, his white locks caressing a suddenly troubled brow. He was one of the speakers of the evening, and he had just confided to his companions that he had already forgotten his carefully prepared extemporaneous address. At my right the grand old man of American diplomacy smiledin calm content. He rarely graced such festive scenes as this; he was over ninety, and, he admitted cheerfully, "growing a little tired." But his Reminiscences, recently published, was among the most widely read literature of the day, and the mind which had won him distinction fifty years ago was still as brilliant as during his days at foreign courts.
Over our group a sudden stillness had fallen, and with an obvious effort to break this, one of my new acquaintances addressed me, her cold blue eyes reflecting none of the sudden warmth of her manner.
"Do you know, Miss Iverson," she began, "I envy you. You have had five years of New York newspaper experience—the best of all possible training. Besides, you must have accumulated more material in those five years than the average writer finds in twenty."
I had no opportunity to reply. As if the remark had been a gauntlet tossed on the table in challenge, my companions fell upon it. Every one talked at once, the Best Seller and the Author upholding the opinion of the woman with the blue eyes, the rest disputing it, until the Playwright checked the discussion with a remark that caught the attention of all.
"There's nothing new in this world," she said, "and therefore there's nothing interesting. We all know too much. The only interesting things are those we can't understand, because they happen—elsewhere."
The Author looked at her and smiled, his white eyebrows moving upward ever so slightly. "For example?" he murmured.
Almost imperceptibly the Playwright shrugged her shoulders.
"For example?" she repeated, lightly. "Oh, I wasn't contemplating an example. Not that I couldn't give one if I chose." She stopped. Then, stirred by the skeptical look in the Author's eyes, her face took on a sudden look of decision. "And I might," she added, quietly, "if urged."
The Best Seller leaned across the table and laid a small coin on her plate. "I'll urge you," he said. "I'll take a story. We want the thing in fiction form."
The Playwright smiled at him. "Very well," she said, indifferently; "call it what you please—an instance, a story."
"And mind," interrupted the Best Seller, "it's something that didn't happen on this earth."
The Playwright sat silent an instant, intent and thoughtful, as if mentally marshaling her characters before her. "Part of it happened on this earth," she said. "It began two years ago, when a friend of mine, a woman editor, received a letter from a stranger, who was also a woman. The stranger asked for a personal interview. She wished, she said, for the editor's advice. The need had suddenly come to her to make her living. She had had no special training; would the editor talk to her andgive her any suggestions she could? The editor consented, naming a day and an hour for the interview, and at the time appointed the stranger called at the other's office.
"She proved to be a beautiful woman, a little over forty, dressed quietly but exquisitely in black, and with the walk and manner of an empress. The editor was immensely impressed by her, but she soon discovered that the stranger was wrapped in mystery. She could learn nothing about her past, her friends, or herself. She was merely a human package dropped from space and labeled 'Miss Driscoll'—the name engraved on her card. Who 'Miss Driscoll' was, where she had come from, what she had done, remained as much of a problem after half an hour of conversation as at the moment she had entered the editor's room. She wanted work; how could she get it? That was her question, but she had no answers for any questions asked by the editor. When they were put to her she hedged and fenced with exquisite skill. She had a charming air of intimacy, of confidence in the editor's judgment, yet nothing came from her that threw any light on her experience or her qualifications.
"All the time they talked the editor studied her. Then suddenly, without warning, she leaned forward and shot out the question that had been slowly forming in her mind.
"'When did you leave your Order?' she asked.
"The stranger stiffened like one who had receivedan electric shock. The next moment she sagged forward in her chair as if something in her had given way. 'How did you know?' she breathed, at last.
"The editor shook her head. 'I did not know,' she admitted. 'I merely suspected. You have one or two habits which suggest a nun, especially the trick of crossing your hands as if you expected to slip them into flowing sleeves. They look like a nun's hands, too; and your complexion has the convent pallor. Now tell me all you can. I cannot help you until I know more about you.'"
Around us there was the scrape of chairs on the polished floor. Some of the dinner-guests were rising and crossing the room to chat with friends at other tables. But the little group at our table sat in motionless attention, every eye on the Playwright's charming face.
"Good beginning," remarked the Best Seller, helpfully. "And, by Jove, the orchestra is giving you the 'Rosary' as an obbligato. There's a coincidence for you."
"Then the story came out," resumed the Playwright, ignoring the interruption. "At least part of it came out. The stranger had been the Mother General of a large conventual Order, which she herself had founded twenty years ago. She had built it up from one convent to thirty. She had established schools and hospitals all over America, as well as in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. She was a brilliant organizer, a human dynamo. Whatevershe touched succeeded. She did not need to explain this; the extraordinary growth of her Community spoke for her. But a few months before she came to the editor, she said, a cabal had been established against her in her Mother House. She had returned from a visit to one of her Philippine convents to find that an election had been held in her absence, that she had been superseded, that the local superior of the Mother House had been elected Mother General in her place; in short, that she herself was deposed by her Community.
"She said that she never knew why. There was much talk of extravagance, of too rapid growth; her broadening plans, and the big financial risks she took, alarmed the more conservative nuns. She took their breath away. Possibly they were tired of the pace she set, and ready to rest on the Community's achievements. All that is not important. Mother General Elise was deposed. She could not remain as a subordinate in the Community she had ruled so long. Neither could she, she said, risk destroying the work of her life by making a fight for her rights and causing a newspaper sensation. So she left the Order, taking with her her only living relative, her old mother, eighty-one years of age, to whom for the previous year or two she had given a home in her Mother House."
"I am afraid," murmured the Best Seller, sadly, "that this story is going to depress me."
The Playwright nodded. "At first," she admitted."But it ends with what we will call 'an uplift.'"
The Best Seller emptied his glass. "Oh, all right," he murmured. "Here's to the uplift!"
"The editor listened to the story," continued the Playwright. "Then she advised Miss Driscoll to go to Rome and have her case taken up at the Vatican. Surely what seemed such injustice would be righted there, and without undesirable notoriety for the Community. She introduced the former Mother General to several prominent New York men and women who could help her and give her letters she needed. There were various meetings at the houses of these people, who were all impressed by the force, the magnetism, and the charm of the convent queen who had been exiled from her kingdom. Then Miss Driscoll and her mother sailed for Italy."
The Diplomat leaned forward, his faded eyes as eager as a boy's. "Let me tell some of it!" he begged. "Let me tell what happened in Rome!"
The blue-eyed woman who had started the discussion clapped her hands. "Let each of us tell some of it," she cried. The Playwright smiled across at the Diplomat. "By all means," she urged, "tell the Roman end of it."
The Diplomat laid down his half-finished cigar, and put his elbows on the table, joining his finger-tips in the pose characteristic of his most thoughtful moments. He, too, took a moment for preparation,and the faces of the others at the table showed that they were already considering the twist they would give to the story when their opportunity came.
"The mother and daughter reached Rome in May," began the Diplomat. "They rented a few rooms and bought a few pieces of furniture, and, because they were very poor, they lived very frugally. While the daughter sought recognition at the Vatican the old mother spent her days pottering around their little garden and trying to learn a few words of Italian from her neighbors. It was hard to be transplanted at eighty-one, but she was happy, for she was with the daughter she had always adored. She would rather have been alone with her in a strange land than in the highest heaven without her.
"One of the Cardinals at the Vatican finally took up the case of Miss Driscoll. It interested him. He knew of the splendid work she had done as Mother General Elise. He began an investigation of the whole involved affair, and he had accumulated a great mass of documents, and was almost ready to submit a formal report to the Holy Father, when he fell ill with pneumonia and died a few days later.
"That was a crushing blow for Mother Elise. Under the shock of the disappointment she, too, fell ill, and was taken to what we will call the Hospital of the White Sisters. Her mother went with her, because an old lady of eighty-two could not be left alone."
The old Diplomat paused and looked unseeingly before him, as if he were calling up a picture.
"The convent hospital had a beautiful garden," the Diplomat resumed, at last. "There the mother spent the next few days working among the flowers and following the lay Sisters along the garden walks as a contented child follows its nurse. Once a day she was allowed to see her daughter for a few moments. It was her custom to reach the sick-room long before the hour appointed and to wait in the hall until she was admitted. She said the time of waiting seemed shorter there, where she was so near. So one day, when a pale Sister told her that her daughter was not quite ready to be seen, the old lady was not surprised. This was her usual experience.
"Nothing warned her, no intuition told her, that her daughter had died exactly five minutes before and that the Sisters back of that closed door were huddled together, trying to find words to tell her what had happened. They could not find them; words scamper away like frightened beings in moments like that. So they sent for their Mother Superior, and she came and put an arm around the bent shoulders of the old woman and told her that her daughter's pain and trouble were over for all time. Later they took her into the room where her daughter lay in a peace which remained triumphant even while the mother's heart broke as she looked upon it. When they found that they could not persuade her to leave the room they allowed her to remain; and there she sat at the foot of the bed dayand night, while the Sisters came and went and knelt and prayed, and the long wax tapers at the head and feet of the dead nun burned slowly down to their sockets."
The Diplomat stopped. Then, as no one spoke, he turned to the Author.
"Will you go on?" he asked.
The Author took up the tale. "Mother Elise was buried in Rome," he said, "and in the chapel of the White Sisters tapers still burn for her. Her mother remained there, and was given a home in the convent, because she had no other place to go. It was kind of the Sisters, for, unlike her daughter, she was not a Catholic. But her old heart was broken, and as months passed and she began to realize what had happened she was filled with a great longing for her native land. The bells of Rome got on her shattered nerves. They seemed eternally ringing for her dead. From the garden she could see her daughter's grave on the hill just beyond the convent walls. She longed for the only thing she had left—her own country. She longed to hear her native tongue. She said so to all who would listen. One day she received an anonymous letter, inclosing bank-notes for five thousand lira. The letter read: