“Here are three of us. I’m quite contented.” She gave him a most flattering smile. “And look at Mrs. Cushing.”
Mrs. Cushing certainly seemed the picture of silken ease; her beaded scarf gleamed over rounded outlines, her fair placid face serenely pleasant, in spite of Morgan looking patently bored on one side of her, and Mr. Smith looming haughtily on the other.
Stella was trying to reach some sort of understanding of the playwright’s point of view. She was so patient and calm under his sharp replies that Morgan grew restive.
“You mustn’t object,” Alicia told him. “Women don’t mind being taken up like that — when they respect a man.”
“I don’t see why she should respect that person,” said Morgan aside.
“Oh — of course she does! He’s a writer, you know — a real writer. I respect him immensely.” She turned large eyes toward him. “Oh, Mr. Smith, aren’t you going to read your play to us?”
Mrs. MacAvelly answered for him. “He certainly is, Mrs. Cushing — if he will be so kind. Have you all had coffee?”
They had, and grouped themselves comfortably, to listen, or as far as Morgan Widfield was concerned, not to listen, to the reading.
“It is only a part of a play,” Mr. Smith explained, unfolding a manuscript. “It is not finished. I cannot get time to finish it.” He gazed somberly at them as if they were somehow to blame for his pressing necessities. “Besides, I need more knowledge of how the other half lives — the half I do not belong to. That is why I was willing to come,” he added, almost to himself.
Tillotson grinned, sitting safely out of range, and shot an appreciative glance at Mrs. Widfield, but she was gazing at the stern lean face of the young enthusiast with every appearance of interest.
Mrs. MacAvelly placed at his elbow a solid little table with a shaded drop light, and a glass of water, and they all sat silent.
In a voice that was harsh and strained at first, moving his ill-shod feet awkwardly on the soft rug, and taking refuge in sudden gulps of water now and then, he began.
There was some exaggeration, there was evident limitation in experience, there was a strain of pronounced bitterness, but, to the sharp astonishment of Mr. Tillotson, and even the reluctant admiration of Mr. Widfield, it was a strong and gripping piece of work.
When he finished the first act they sat, a little breathless, waiting for him to go on.
He remained silent, however, and slowly folded the paper into a tight packet again.
“You’re not stopping, are you?” asked Mr. Tillotson.
“That is all I have completed,” he replied. “The rest is outlined only. I must see more, know more — I cannot get it from books.”
There was a burst of congratulation from the ladies. Mr. Widfield told him he was much impressed by the opening, and the critic offered sincere compliments in a very different tone from his previous one.
So warm was the atmosphere of approval that the young man quite relaxed his defensive attitude. These seemed to be real persons after all, and able to somewhat appreciate good work, in spite of their class. It needed but a few words now to set him talking, really talking, as he loved to do. He looked about for more coffee; Mrs. MacAvelly supplied it. With a succession of cups beside him, and the flicker of burnt brandy in his nostrils, with cigarettes uncounted freely at hand, and with five more or less appreciative listeners, Mr. Smith launched forth as if in his favorite cafe or club room.
He talked of the drama in Europe and America, of numbers of authors, some of whom he had apparently met, though he gave no details as to the incidents. He talked of various European countries, always from the underside, from a background of poverty and oppression. And having entered upon that ground he held it, speaking with fire and passion, and a half-veiled biting irony.
At first they took some part in this discussion, or tried to. Alicia’s amiable questions, sometimes a little aside the mark, he tossed aside like leaves upon a flood. Stella was more discerning; she reached him in light keen comment and query, but he merely poured forth more fully and overwhelmed her.
The hostess sat smiling and silent. Morgan relapsed into his attitude of quiet dislike again. Only Mr. Tillotson held his ground, seeking to defend Mrs. Widfield’s position, and to make some protests as to his own.
Nothing but an opposing group of equally loud and earnest enthusiasts could have checked Mr. Smith, however. He was accustomed to unsparing interruption, to opponents who held against his flailing words a steady guard and were ready with cut and thrust and counterrush at a second’s pause.
Mr. Tillotson shrugged his shoulders and desisted. The ladies sat silent, perforce. Mr. Widfield covertly looked at his watch, but Mr. Smith had the floor — and there was none to call him to order.
It was brilliantly interesting for a while, but by and by Alicia’s pink mouth twisted in careful suppression of a yawn, and Stella began to wear that strained look her husband dreaded — she would be tired out for days. He went near her and showed her the time — but she waved him away. Tired or not, she was deeply stirred and excited, not convinced by any means, but shaken to the depths by this blazing picture of life she did not know, the raw, ragged painful life of millions. She felt the gaps in his logic, and had agreed fully with the objections advanced by the journalist, but he, to her regret, had withdrawn from the combat.
As for the orator, he seemed to see in them now mere types of the oppressors of whom he spoke. “It is easy for you to be indifferent now,” he bitterly declared. “But a time will come when you cannot be indifferent. A time will come when the lines will be drawn, when the classes will be sharply divided, when the enormous overwhelming numbers of the proletariat will be organized at last, when the upper classes will seem but a handful, and even the bourgeoisie, the grossly contented, blind, selfish, middle class, will see their weakness. A time will come — —”
Mr. Tillotson rose to his feet.
“I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Smith, but a time has come when I feel that I must tear myself away. Mrs. MacAvelly, I have to thank you for a very pleasant evening.”
He made his adieux with pronounced deliberation, lingering especially with Mrs. Widfield, and hoping that he might have the pleasure of seeing her again. “There are many things I should like your opinion on,” he told her. “I have seen, even in this limited opportunity, that you can think.”
She was bright-eyed, flushed, still keyed up by the unusual onslaught of ideas. “Come and see us by all means,” she urged. “Mr. Widfield will love to have you, I am sure.” Her husband added most cordial assurances. He liked Tillotson for himself, admired his work, and could have offered him a loving cup for breaking up that interminable evening.
Mr. Smith sat forward in his chair, looking from one to the other, expecting the others to sit down again, but with thanks and compliments they all withdrew, even the sympathetic Mrs. Cushing.
Mrs. MacAvelly returned smiling from her door. “If you will excuse me one half moment, Mr. Smith, I have a favor to ask you.” She withdrew, leaving him alone long enough to look at his dollar watch and realize the hour. It was not late for him, or for his usual companions, but his uneasy sense of unfamiliarity with their conventions had returned to him, and she found him standing when she came back.
“Just a letter to post,” she said. “I ought to have asked Mr. Tillotson — the others all live in this house — you don’t mind?”
He took it awkwardly, placed it with great care in the pocket of his hired suit — and never thought of it again, which was of no great consequence as there was nothing in the envelope save a blank sheet of paper.
“It was worth two cents,” thought Mrs. MacAvelly.
Alicia bubbled over with amiable enthusiasm as Morgan took her to her door.
“Wasn’t he splendid!” she said. “Absolutely he seemed like a prophet of old.”
“If the prophets of old were like that, I don’t wonder they were stoned,” he told her. “You are too amiable
to live, Alicia. Good night.” Stella was walking the floor of their long rooms, her head up like an alert antelope’s, her eyes shining.
“I feel like Dante!” she said. “As if I’d been taken through the infernal regions. Morgan, is it true? Is any of it true? Are people worked like that — and housed like that, and treated like that, and paid like that?”
“Oh yes — in some cases — in some countries,” he assured her. “But those fellows come over here, into a free country, where every man has a chance — and bring their old prejudices with them. There’s no need of such talk here. It’s absurd!”
“But he told about Pittsburgh — and Chicago — and the children in the Southern mills. Some of it was here — some of it is our fault.”
“It’ll be my fault if I let you talk any more tonight. Come, let’s go to sleep as soon as the Lord will let us.”
“Talk any more!” she smiled. “When have I talked tonight?”
He laughed with her. “That’s so. You didn’t have any show at all, did you? Even Tillotson was knocked out in a few rounds and he can hold his own pretty well. I never heard such a word wrangler!”
“Mr. Tillotson is very interesting, isn’t he? I hope we shall see more of him.”
He seconded the hope, and suggested that they both have a glass of milk to sleep on.
Mr. Tillotson, going home to his bachelor apartment, took from the ammonia-piped refrigerator in his porcelain-lined kitchenette, not a glass of milk, but several glasses of beer with wheaten wafers, and sat a long time over them, thinking in words, as a writer is apt to: “Pretty woman — Mrs. Cushing,” he meditated. “Ought to be Cush ion. Alicia Cushing — what a feathery name. She’s the kind to rest on — if that’s all a fellow wants....
“As for Mrs. Mac — that woman’s a genius. I can’t read her. She never shows her hand — not a card — not a single pip. But I’m convinced she’s a genius; her simplicity is too perfect. Nice woman, I love to go there. She knows how to make you comfortable and never seems to try....
“That confounded windbag’s a genius too, for all his talk. Awfully good stuff, that act he read. We’ll hear from him yet — at a safe distance, I hope....
“Widfield’s a nice fellow enough, but as for Mrs. Wid — I’ve got to see more of that woman. Brain and heart and energy — and not a thing to do, I warrant — all on edge. People certainly are mighty interesting....”
And having finished his third glass of cold comfort, with many a crisp biscuit, he betook himself to the orderly, well-furnished, unalluring bedroom of his expensive pseudo-home.
CHAPTER 7
When Stella Widfield opened her eyes next morning it was with an unusual sense of well-being. She had slept, really slept, and her mind, instead of focusing at once on the thought of Morgan’s fading affection, was occupied with several fresh images.
The bright chintzes and soft colors of her pretty room looked fresher than usual; the soft air that stirred the white curtains felt good to her; there was sunlight shimmering on the floor. She lay quiet for a little, smiling to herself as she thought of the torrent of fierce words so dexterously checked by Mr. Tillotson, then sobered as she thought of what the words had shown.
“I’ll go down to see Miss Woodstone,” she determined. “She’ll tell me what to read. If what he says is so—” This did not come to any definite conclusion.
She was up and dressed and out to the sunny breakfast table, for a wonder a little late. Morgan was surprised not to find her before him, with every detail of his possible wants anticipated, but not displeased; he rather enjoyed a few minutes to read the paper before she came in. As she chatted brightly over the coffee cups he felt, without analyzing it, a lessening of the strain of that soft, indescribable tension which had been growing between them.
She told him how interested she was, how she had determined to find out for herself how much of those lurid horrors were true, and though he by no means shared her enthusiasm he was glad to see her eyes shining impersonally upon him.
“That’s a good idea,” he agreed. “Miss Woodstone’s a good sort — she’ll straighten you out.”
While not much in sympathy with any radical movements he had great respect for the work of Social Settlements, considering it to be high-grade modern philanthropy of considerable use, and quite suited to occupy the energies of benevolent unmarried ladies, and of some few men whose minds, while unquestionably able, were unequal to the supreme task of achieving success.
“What an awful bore that fellow was!” he said again.
“Why, I don’t think so. One might be very weary of a typhoon — but I shouldn’t call it a bore, should you?”
“I call him one — unqualifiedly.”
“Oh, Morgan, bores have to be slow, and dull, and uninteresting!”
“Not a bit of it. There’s a fellow at the club. He talks like a mill-race; he’s so bright he makes jokes in every sentence. He’s a newborn encyclopedia for fresh information — but everybody ducks. It’s a tax on the mind — awfully wearing. But if you like this chap, have him up — have him up. Personally I like Mr. Tillotson better by a thousand miles. Ask him to dinner — without Smith — won’t you?”
“Yes, I want to see more of him. He is certainly most attractive. But that poor boy does appeal to me tremendously.”
“Boy! He’s well over thirty!”
“Oh, I dare say — but he seems so young, so inexperienced, with all he’s been through.”
“He’s inexperienced in good manners — that’s pretty clear. However, you be Mrs. Ponsonby de Tompkins all you want to. If it amuses you it’s all right.”
It annoyed him a little to have her so attracted by a man he did not consider a gentleman in any sense of the word. But on the other hand he was glad of her bright looks, even of a little opposition, for a change, and when she said good-bye to him at the door she did not look as if his kiss was only a payment on account.
The Clam Street Settlement was necessarily located in a poor neighborhood; on the outside were ravening wolves, as it were, but inwardly it was white as snow. The serene grace of its casts and photographs, the comfort, space, and beauty of its well-appointed rooms, Stella thought must seem to the huddled inhabitants of the surrounding tenements as cold water to Dives. Some of them, to be sure, could enjoy these pleasures for small fragments of their time; the place swarmed with them when they had free hours to spend there; but the fraction of the poor thus reached seemed only to make the contrast sharper with those beyond its reach.
Miss Woodstone was a tall, pale person with a penetrating eye. She looked willowy and lax, but her years of efficient work in that region proved the contrary.
“How do you bear it?” demanded her visitor. “How can you stand seeing it — and hearing it — and smelling it — all the time?”
“If I did not, would it be any less unpleasant?” she answered. “Less unpleasant for you, yes,” insisted Stella. “Couldn’t you work for them if you wanted to, and not live in it?”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t care as much if I did not live in it. Perhaps I should forget.”
“Oh no — I am sure you wouldn’t — you would care, always. How splendid it must be — to care so much.”
Miss Woodstone smiled her patient smile, giving one the impression of a person several hundred years old but still kindly interested. “Don’t you care about anything — you who have so much?”
“Not about outside things.”
“Outside of what?”
Stella smiled a little guiltily. “Outside of my own affairs, I suppose. But I want to — I do, really. I was tremendously impressed by that young man, Smith. He doesn’t look like a Smith.”
To this Miss Woodstone agreed. “He surely is a power. He’s crude yet; not so young in years, but young in his limitations. And his Socialism is still in the bitter stage; you wouldn’t wonder if you lived in the bitterness.”
“Are you a Socialist?” asked her visitor.
“Of course.
I do not see how anyone can help it, who knows conditions — and is not too blind.”
Stella was a little surprised. She had long known Miss Woodstone, distantly, as a power for good in the city and even farther, and had admired her tall grace at some of those semi-civic banquets in which New York abounds. And knowing her for a person of balanced judgment, universally respected, she had not supposed her to be one with a party always believed in her circle to be madly revolutionary.
“But don’t they want to break up everything — to destroy all our institutions? Wouldn’t it mean real danger and chaos?”
Miss Woodstone’s expression was more motherly than ever. “I’m afraid Mr. Smith has alienated as well as interested you. It is too bad they will see it that way and put it that way. But you cannot expect unbiased judgment from the underdog, you know.”
“Or from the upper one, either, I suppose,” said Stella, suddenly enlightened.
“Precisely. You see, the poor of today are for the most part lineal descendants of the poor of all the ages behind us. Their families are as ‘old’ as ours, you know, though they have no records. Their ‘bitterness,’ which some of us find so offensive, seems sweet as milk when you study their age-old grievances.”
“But aren’t they better off today, in all ways, than they ever were before? Better educated and everything?”
“They certainly are. That is precisely why they are becoming so aroused. Don’t you see? When they were absolute slaves or sodden peasants, tied to the soil, they were too utterly crushed to lift their heads at all, and too utterly ignorant to know or care about the condition of one another. Now they are thrilling the world over with a sense of solidarity; they begin to feel their common wrongs — and their common power.”
“But — is it wrong? That is, isn’t it a necessary evil? Won’t some men always be masters?”
Here Miss Woodstone balked, shaking her head with gentle firmness. “I am no propagandist,” she said. “If I begin to hold forth at length on this topic I should never see you again, I’m afraid. But I’ll tell you a book or two to read, if you care to.”
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 75