Sara Lindsay Coleman

“ The magic of night on Broadway—the flashing signs, the whizzing motors, the hurrying, surging throngs, the snatches of speech that drift to one’s ears, there on the street where all seems youth, laughter, joy—human documents, the snatches of speech one hears. “How can I leave you here?” I heard the words spoken by a plain anxious-faced woman, and the overdressed, under-dressed, doll-faced girl’s answer: “You poor dear! How you worry! What have I to fear? New York’s lovely, and my job’s lovely, and my boss is loveliest of all.” ”

“ It is Bobby’s chivalry that makes him feel he should go through the form of asking me for Dicky. I have wired no. There’s a little kodak of him that I cut from a magazine and put in my little silver frame. I can reach out my hand and touch it here where I sit, and, vaguely, it comforts me.
I have faced it. I love Bobby. To love—it is to give. Bobby’s wife must give. The hands that take into their keeping that precious thing—his genius—what tender, comprehending hands they must be. There’ll be times, lots of ’em, when Bobby’s wife will have to do all the loving for two. ”

“ He turns. Not the Bobby of my letters, not the Bobby of my dreams, not the Bobby of Washington Square, a politely impatient-to-be-gone stranger.
Always, it is the unexpected that overtakes me. To my amazed surprise I wet with salty tears my New York finery.
“I’m tired, Bobby,” I gasp. “I’ve been having a party—and I’m not used to having parties. That’s what makes me such a cat. And, oh, Bobby, you’ll have to pardon things—Dicky just sprung your coming on us.” ”

“ Big and fierce my heart cried out, “No!” It was I who was outside of life, not Jane. Her man’s arm went round her shoulders nights when she stood over the kitchen stove. Her baby lifted its dirty, loving, laughing little face to hers as it clutched her knees. Taking my lonely after-supper walk I had seen them through the open kitchen door. What had I? A dream that was bodiless, life emptied of the big, vital things. And if I sent Mr. Elliott away as I sent the others, the boy lovers who came over the mountains to tell me what he is telling me now? What have I left that is more than I refuse? ”

“ I had to see the skyline from the Jersey side. How wonderful it is as it glitters in the soft spring light—a proud wonder city that rests on great, tossing waters. And there lie the docks. I can read the names of the different lines on the dark little houses. And far down the [Pg 70] stretch of moving water I see a gallant little tug assisting a great vessel out to sea. A sort of trembling seized me. Like a vision that fades, all thought of the life that lay behind me—John, mammy, the little mountain village—slipped away. ”

“ In the twinkling of an eye the mysterious change had come. Sallie had poked in the back, the old back that she knowed, a contented spinster teacher. A horse whisked about in the shafts and made to go in a direction contrary to the one he was travelling might understand the bewilderment of the woman who fled from Sallie Singleton. I did not. We are strange creatures, blown upon by winds from the Invisible. We dwell forever in a little fenced-about cleared plot of ground that is our daily life and we are frightened if we but glimpse beyond the cleared land. ”

“ It is being claimed by the twilight, the soft, slow, lingering spring twilight. There must be a lot of moisture to make such a brilliant aftermath. The heavens are so pink they have tinged the eastern hills. League on league the cloud waves blush pink as the heart of a seashell. The whole world glows. My mood catches the sky’s glowing mood. It is explained. He has been ill unto death, but he is not dead—he is alive—alive.
Something drops from my belt and I pick it up and stare at it stupidly. It is Dicky’s little letter. Dicky will know about Bobby. ”

“ As I threw the kiss to my mountain the shadow of no man was on my heart, or had ever been, but I felt the thrill of life’s infinite mystery and promise—felt it and called it an editor’s check. At thirty a spinster woman may begin to run to fat, or she may show tendencies to shrivel, but I boldly declare, my knowledge dating back some dozen hours, that her heart is unwrinkled, ridiculously young, and scanning the horizon for Eastern treasures that the camels that hang in the skyline are to pour into her lap.
Back home, breakfast over, as John left the table he tossed a letter to me. ”

“ Books are people to you. You live placidly in that dull little mountain town, and when your time comes you’ll die there placidly. Had you been Eve the angel with the flaming sword would never have had the unpleasant duty of driving you out. You to tempt a man! You’re like that coldly beautiful statue Pygmalion fashioned. She waked to life, but you never will. I wonder why I tell you, Caroline. The probationers in this hospital—probably in all big city hospitals—are made to feel like the dirt under foot—if there was under foot any good honest earth-dirt. ”

“ Elliott has been here, and I manage to leave the impression that he may be coming again.
This time Bobby’s face goes close to black. With a mocking little bow he bids me good-bye, turns, goes down the road. He marches straight ahead. I have never seen a lion stalk through an African jungle, but I think of one as I look at him. Where is he going? Where is Dicky’s lover going? A dumb sort of fright grips me. I spin down the road to where he marches breast forward with never a backward look—if a woman can spin in these narrow-not-made-to-overtake-anybody’s-lover New York frocks. ”

“ I am indifferent to men, as Dicky says. Always I have turned with distaste from the thought of marriage. In that I think I am different from most women. There have been two—such nice splendid fellows I knew in my college life—who have penetrated my wilderness more times than one. And I? I like them. Life with either would seem to hold much that it withholds now. I have tried to yield, but I cannot; the thought of the nearness of what should be sweet and sacred to a woman brings a wave of physical nausea. ”

“ Bobby wasn’t at the train. If he was, we missed each other. I wasn’t conscious of it on the train, but now I know I pictured him there at the station, standing just a little in advance of the mass of people; vaguely, I think my mind ran the gamut of earth’s meetings and thought of dim shores, not of earth, where [Pg 91] that one who goes first must surely await the other. To the whir of the wheels as they ate up the miles that lie between Boston and New York my heart sang, Bobby’s loved one, Bobby’s loved one. ”

“ Breakfast was not ready when I came down, so I rushed up the lane. If we lived more pretentiously it would be the drive. Beyond lay the white road that leads up to Marsville and trails round the mountain and out to a wider life.
The hills that neighbour with the blue ether were shaking night-caps of trailing mist from their heads. The mountain world breathed deep of August—proclaimed it exultantly in its vivid summer green as yet untouched by change; in its full-eared, ripening corn, massed on the hills like troops of soldiers. ”

“ How glad I am that Dicky does not know I am here—I simply can’t see Dicky yet. I am at sea as to Bobby’s reason for not meeting me, at sea that no message from him comes to me, but one thing I know: I can trust his, “Mum’s the word, Caroline.”
Mrs. Christopher and I shopped this afternoon. Afterward we had tea at the Astor and went down to the Waldorf and sat in Peacock Alley. Such a mix up of fine clothes and commonness. The women have hard faces, painted, world-weary, they are too much of—oh, everything: too red as to lips, too black as to eyebrows, too gold as to hair ”

“ My own eyes saw the sun-shot green May-mist of the trees in Madison Square, the clock’s big face above the treetops, against the sky’s soft blue the radiant, triumphant Diana. My ears heard the roll of wheels on the Avenue, the clang of cars [Pg 98] on Broadway; my veins felt the beat of the city’s hurrying, feverish life.
Out under the pines where mammy brought tea and helped me, with the dignity of a departed day, I still felt alien to it all. Mr. Elliott praised the beaten biscuit, and she told him as a mark of special favour the story of receiving my great aunt’s teeth when she was dying. ”

“ A light, restless wind has piled snowy, errant clouds above the mountain tops, the little green leaves are uncurling, the sun shining as it shines only in the spring and on an awakened world—and the birds——A lover bird, just the kind to capture a little lady bird’s heart, has been pouring out a passionate mating song for two whole days. ”

“ Robert Haralson! Do I see you this minute motoring down your brilliant Avenue? And do I see her, the pride of your Avenue? Our uplands do not breed such exotics.
November 15th.
The days drift by like dull-hued birds. There’s not a song in the throat of a single one. Dull-hued is the word, for the rains have washed the colour from the hills. And like a giant graystone prison wall the mountains, desolate, rattlesnaky things, stand against the sky. Jack the Giant Killer himself couldn’t scale them. Mammy watches me anxiously. She says I am sick. I am—sick for a bigger life. ”

“ Most of the year I wake with just the thought of scrambling into my clothes, swallowing my breakfast, and getting to the schoolroom in time. When it is winter it is almost dark when I get home; when it is spring I have my flowers. And there’s always John’s clothes to mend and my own to make and——”
[Pg 22]
But with a gesture that was passionate Ellinor Baxter stopped me. “All this may satisfy at thirty, but it won’t feed a woman’s heart at forty. Then she feels the need of love—contact with a man’s broader life. The monotony, the emptiness of life as she lives it alone tortures at forty. ”

“ The lights down the Avenue beckoned and beckoned. I wanted to follow them. The distance was swallowing the old man in his car. Just for once in my life I wanted a taste of the city at night; I wanted to forget the groans of the sick and dying. You’ve never been a prune, and a potato, and a slice of bread. Try it, Caroline. I, who used to be Henrietta Dickenson, am now one thousand four hundred prunes. I am one thousand and ninety-five potatoes. I spare you the slices of bread. If you think I exaggerate make the count yourself. Prunes four times a week—five of them to a saucer. ”

“ It is to-day—now, at twilight—when the hack gets in, that Dicky and her lover are coming. She apologizes that we do not know earlier, but mammy and I are equal to any emergency. I do feel sorry for mammy, but I walk on straight into the sunset glare, leaving mammy to her fate. That is my only sensation—I am sorry for mammy. She does love to splurge when company comes.
Far down the road I see a buggy. It is coming this way. There are two people in it, but it is too far away to recognize faces. It is two men. It stops. ”

“ Had I been a Puritan maid I would have said to my lover when we climbed to this hill soft days like this and looked to sea: “Dear boy, with my heart I give you all that women who are like me give to one man—the thoughts I have kept for you, the lips I have kept for you. ”

“ One man gets out, the other turns the buggy around and drives back toward the village. The man who got out of the buggy walks on in the rose-red haze that wraps the world. The lilies of the valley that I thrust in my belt send out a sudden fragrance—it is the trembling of my body that has shaken them. ”

“ All the people seemed young. They were very gay. At dinner the whole talk was of the theatre. As I have not been to a play since I was eighteen, I sat stupidly quiet. Everybody went out after dinner—most of them to the theatre. Miss Jackson went, too. Up in my room I leaned from the window and tried to realize the wonderfulness of being in New York. Below me the street was dark, but far away across the housetops I saw a glow that I took to be the lights of Broadway. After a long time I stole down the dim, depressing stairs. ”

“ It isn’t fair to you that I meet you. It is not fair to the nice little girl homesick for her southland who has never as yet spoken to a man to whom she has not been introduced. The “ad” was just a wager between a man and me. My name will mean nothing to you, but I sign it.’
“The name was Robert Haralson, Caroline. And who can say why things happen as they do? Who can really tell why that door flung open on the Avenue to let an old man out should have stirred me to such rebellion that I who have been well raised by you and dear old mammy should have done such a madcap thing. ”

“ The assistant is fresh from a bigger life: last winter she studied in Boston, and she has a friend who is doing wonderful things in Grand Opera abroad. It makes Ellinor quite tragic. Yesterday [Pg 20] when we reached the edge of the wood, and the mountain world lay about us like a vast picture, Ellinor flung out her arms as if to embrace all the several hundred peaks in sight and cried out: “Oh, how I hate that wall of mountains! If we could sweep it away we’d get a view, Caroline. We’d see what the world is doing. It’s a prison wall. ”

“ I meant to tell Bobby about Camel Back—for so long I have told my fancies to a pictured Bobby—but when I thought of it last night, just before he left for the “dinky” little hotel with Dicky’s doctor—he was busy fitting a piece of cardboard in which he had cut a round hole on a certain finger of my left hand, and, anyway, it is not easy to tell fancies to an eager man who is murmuring realities in one’s ears—like this: “Dearest one, will you hurry, oh, hurry, and get the gingham, and the barred muslin, and the bias bombazine fixed up, and let’s get married quick.” ”

“ Roseboro has just discovered that America’s most brilliant writer and playwright, to quote the papers, is none other than the man who as a little lad spilled the family wash—not the clean wash—in front of the Methodist Church as the congregation filed out from a revival service, and almost died of shyness. Roseboro, of course, is shaking congratulatory hands with itself that its prophecy has come true. Everywhere you go they talk of Bobby. Now he seems permanently to have settled in New York and to have found himself. ”

“ Above all nights I have loved these August nights—the clematis dropping from the upper porch airy and diaphanous as a bride’s veil, and there in the border, running parallel with the low, long, rambling, gray, gray old house the white phlox in masses neighbouring with the August lilies. Looking at the lilies I catch my breath in pain. In their faint, sweet breathings they say to me, “We live but for a day. Take warning. Youth flees, dies as we die.” ”