A Puritan Bohemia/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
"The river went weeping, weeping!
Ah me, how it did weep!
But I would never heed it,
The weeping of the river . . .
The stars—poor stars—were weeping
But I would not hear their weeping
Whilst yet I heard thy voice.
Then these, the river with its weeping,
The piteous stars, the miserable men,
All prayed the earth's dark depths to take thee from me,
That so my woe might understand their woe.
And now—I weep."
Mrs. Kent had taken many steps in her quest: own crowded shopping streets, past dime museums and cheap theatres, through the Italian square where intolerable hand-organs played forever "Home, Sweet Home." The cries, the jolting of the wagons, the heavy beat of horses' hoofs, and the sight of great loads of leather, granite, lumber, along the shipping streets, brought her a certain relief. In merely watching the hard play of life there was a sense of escape.
Very often Anne went with her. Mrs. Kent marvelled at the artist's insight into the expression of inanimate things, her swift recognition of human feeling. It was Anne who pointed out a door-step, worn by many feet; a bit of New England garden, sunflower or hollyhock, among the swarming tenements; the curve of a woman's arm as she held her child.
They enjoyed the pleasure of confidential intercourse in a crowd. They talked of themselves, of their friends, in half-whispers, the sentences interrupted often by a long line of passers-by.
One day, threading their way among the old-clothes shops of Salutation Street, they spoke of Howard.
"I like him," said Mrs. Kent. "He has preserved such a freshness and sweetness through all the experiences of his student life."
"He is a nice boy," Anne responded cordially. "Only he's spoiled. You see, he is the only son of a wealthy father. He always wanted too many things and he always got them. He lives in spasms. An idea possesses him and he thinks it is the only idea in the world, until a new one comes. And he insists on immediate responses to all his demands. What he needs is discipline."
Mrs. Kent looked down and smiled.
"You seem to have studied him very thoroughly. That temperament is usually sufficient punishment for itself, isn't it?"
"Then," Anne continued, "he's too egoistic. He says 'I' too often."
"That very egoism shows lack of self-consciousness. It is the egoism of a child."
"The fact is," said Anne with a laugh, "there are two of him, boy and fanatic. He's a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I like the boy very well. Look!" she cried, touching Mrs. Kent's arm. "See how that composes!"
It was a group of chattering Italian women on a dark side street. Children were playing about them.
"Those children all look ill," remarked Mrs. Kent sadly, as she guided Anne down the narrow alley way. "Most of them are bow-legged."
"Oh dear!" groaned Anne, "I never thought of that! I just saw how picturesque it all was, the bright kerchiefs and the wrinkled faces and the brown curls of the children. I don't believe I've got any human instincts. Why are people made with eyes that see only one thing and hearts that wish only one thing, unless they are meant to have it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Only that I can't imagine how one can look upon the world as anything except material for pictures. It is maddeningly full of things to paint. There is no time to lose."
"You don't lose much."
"I know. But it all seems so selfish. An idea gets hold of me and then the heavens and earth seem made to help me express it. Patches of colour on garden walls, and the sunlight on far-off things, and the look on faces in the streets show me how to do it. I can't see anything else, or think of anything else."
They passed one of the city's old burying-grounds, which make sudden silences along the busy streets. The clear sunlight on the leaves shading those forgotten graves brought tears to the artist's eyes.
"Oh!" she cried, "the pain of life presses down so heavily that I cannot bear it. I sometimes wonder if the reason why I am hard-hearted is because things hurt me so that I cannot feel."
On Sunday afternoons Howard usually accompanied Mrs. Kent. He was a welcome guest. The wicked old woman called him a beautiful young man. The girls in the Italian families flushed with pride at the honour of his calls. Children swarmed upon his knees. Babies rode upon his shoulder. He had a chivalrous way of protecting the helpless. He stopped one day abruptly in an exposition of his views, to guide an aged rag-picker across the street. Returning, he finished his dissertation. It was a mistake, he said, to care for the sick and the afflicted, the relics of the past. One should face toward the future, spending all one's effort on those for whom there is still hope.
It was midwinter. Morning after morning Mrs. Kent was wakened by the sound of the shovelling of snow. It fell with a thud, like the dropping of sod upon coffin-lids. To her bitter questioning as to why so great a love had been given her only to be taken away, no answer came, until, in a brief moment of experience on a cloudy winter day, she caught a sudden flash of the hidden meanings of things.
Her old feeling of the senselessness of all she did had followed her that afternoon. Only the mechanical acts of existence were left her, for the past was slipping, and she could not hold it back. She saw herself passing into a gray indifference.
As she climbed the tenement-house stairs she clung to the railing. She was dazed. Everything seemed crumbling away like ropes of sand. Then she summoned her courage and knocked at a grimy door.
Half an hour later she came downstairs with the light of a new knowledge in her eyes. She could never define for herself the precise nature of the experience through which she had passed. In the room she had entered was a woman sobbing at the side of her little child, who lay dead with the print of his tiny fingers still visible in the dirt on his cheek.
As she went away Mrs. Kent paused for a minute in the hall. Then she leaned her forehead against the rough plaster with a little sob of sheer joy. It was good to be hurt like that by another's pain. She bowed her head in thankfulness for a sorrow that had become to her a key to the grief of all the world.