A Cry in the Wilderness
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I rode down the Bowery oblivious of myself; I was lost in wonder at the multitudes. I knew those multitudes were composed of individuals; that those individuals were distinct the one from the other. Each had his experience, as I was having mine. Life was interpreting itself to each in different terms: to some through drink; to others through prostitution; to a few—thank God, only a few!—through threatened starvation; to a host through the blessing of daily work; to hundreds of unemployed through the misery of suspense. And love, hate, faithfulness, treachery—all were there, hidden in the hearts of those multitudes.
Some lines of William Watson's kept saying themselves over and over to me in thought, as I watched those throngs; as I listened to the glare of street bands, the grinding of hurdy-gurdies, and heard the flow of street life, which is the life, of the foreign East Side;
"Momentous to himself, as I to me,Hath each man been that ever woman bore;Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy,I felt this truth, an instant, and no more.""Momentous to himself." Oh yes—not a soul among those thousands who was not "momentous to himself", no matter how low soever fallen! "Momentous to himself"—I watched the throngs, and understood.
I made my way into V– Court, unafraid and unmolested. Delia Beaseley opened the door. At sight of her all the pent-up emotion of weeks threatened to find vent.
"Delia, it is I, Marcia Farrell—"
"Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried, as she drew me into the hall under the dim light. "It is good to see you again! But what is it?" she asked anxiously, lifting my hat from my face. "Are you sick?"
I could not answer her. She led me into the back room I remembered so well. There, as once before, she pushed me gently into the rocking-chair. She removed my hat and brought a fan.
"What is it, my dear? Can't you tell me?"
Oh, how many times, during her life of helpfulness, she must have asked that question of homeless girls and despairing women!
"Delia," I began; then I hesitated. Should I tell her, or carry in silence my trouble about with me? Before I could speak again, she had her arms—those motherly arms I had felt before—around me; my head was on her shoulder; my arms about her neck. I sobbed out my story, and she comforted me as only a woman, who has suffered, can comfort.
"Let me stay a little while with you, Delia, till I get work again."
"Stay with me! Bless your heart, I couldn't let you go if you wanted to. Here 's my Jane—she 's out now—ready to drop with the work and the heat; we 've had a long spell of it, and I not knowing where to turn for help just now, for I want her to go away on a vacation; she needs it. Just you stay right here with me, and I 'll pack Jane off to-morrow."
"Have you—is any body with you?" I asked.
"Yes." She nodded significantly. "There 's two of 'em on my hands now. One's got through, and the other is expecting soon. Both of 'em can't see the use of living, and Jane 's about worn out."
"You will let me help? I can do something, if it's only the housework."
"I can tend to that." She spoke decidedly. "What I want is to have you round 'em, comforting 'em, cheerin' 'em—"
"I comforting, I cheering, Delia?"
She nodded emphatically. "Yes, my dear, just that. Your work is cut out for you right here, for a few weeks anyway. You come upstairs with me now and set with one of 'em, and give her a bowl of gruel—I was just going to come up with one from the kitchen when you rung,—while I get Jane's things together; she 'll be in by ten. She 's over to one of the Settlement Houses helping out to-night."
Somehow, on hearing this account of Jane's activity—tired Jane who could help and rescue at home, and then go out to the Settlement House to give of her best till ten at night—my own life dwindled into insignificance. The true spirit of the great city entered into me. I felt the power of it for good. I felt its altruism; I realized its deepest significance; and I saw wherein lay my own salvation from selfish brooding, from forbidden craving, from morbid thinking.
"Let me have Jane's work," I said.
We talked no more that night of matters that were personal. I gave my whole time and strength to help "bring her through", as Delia defined the state of things in regard to a girl, five years younger than I, "who had missed her footing".
It was an anxious week. There was delirium, despair, suicidal intent; but we "brought her through".
While watching by that girl's bedside, I relived that experience of my mother, the result of which was that I, Marcia Farrell, was there to help. In those night watches I had time for many thoughts. Cale's voice grew insistent, for the roar of the city was subdued at one and two in the morning:
"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."
Over and over again I heard those words. The undertone of metropolitan life, when at its lowest vitality, went on and on.—Two o'clock, three. The girl on the bed grew quiet; delirium ceased. Four—I heard the rattle of the milk-carts and the truck gardeners' wagons coming up from the ferries.
"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Over and over again I heard it.
Cale's voice was louder now, more and more insistent. All that day I heard it above the push-cart vendors' cries and the hurdy-gurdy's dance music, above the roar of the Second Avenue Elevated and the polyglot street clamor.
Yes, I had to acknowledge it: my mother had wronged him. I visualized that act in her life. I saw her promising to marry him, although she was unwilling. I saw her giving herself in marriage to him in the presence of the minister and her sick father. I saw her young husband creeping out in the night to watch for her shadow on the curtain. I saw him lying down to sleep a little after his vigil—but I could not see my mother when she left the house. Not until she made sunshine in the old manor, where I was conceived, not until she made sunshine in the forest for old André, could I see her again in her youth and beauty, in the enjoyment of her stolen bliss.
But I could see him whom she deserted. I saw him in the pasture among the colts. I saw him raving at being made her dupe; I saw him even raising his hand against Cale. I saw him in his fruitless search, east, west, north, south. I saw him leaving the very house in which I was watching. I saw him broken, changed, "cutting loose" from his old life, determined to relive in other conditions, in other lands. I saw him returning from that far Australian country to that house where my mother's steps had resounded on the old flagging in the passageway at Lamoral,—unknowing of her former presence there, unknowing that her daughter was there awaiting him,—to that place which I, also unknowing, had made home for him. I saw him living again in his love for me who was her daughter!—and he knew this! Knew I was her daughter.
How had he dared? And he her husband—my mother's husband! The thought was staggering.
I looked at the girl on the bed. She was asleep, but her respiration was rapid; she was breathing for two. "What if—"
I dared scarcely formulate my thought. Was he her husband? Did merely the spoken word make Gordon Ewart and my mother, man and wife? What was it Cale said: she had pleaded so with his mother not to be with her husband that first night of her marriage. And there was no second.
I began to see differently, as Cale predicted. Horror, shame, humiliation, despair, jealousy of my own mother—all this that obstructed vision, deflected, distorted it, was being cleared away.
Had Mr. Ewart come to look at this matter in the same light, that he had never been my mother's husband? That words, alone, could never make him that?
"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Perhaps Cale was right.
"Why was he silent?" I asked myself, and found the answer: he could not have gained my love, had I known. And he wanted my love—wanted me, and me alone of all the world for his mate. But how could he, knowing?
I lost myself in conjecture, but I began to see clearly, differently. My own act, my desertion of him, after what he had mutely promised, was becoming a base thing in my eyes.
I asked Delia Beaseley once, if she had heard any word from Mr. Ewart.
"No, not a word," she said decidedly, "and remembering how he looked when he braced up and walked into this very basement twenty-seven years ago, I don't expect to hear from him. I ain't judgin' you, my dear, but you 've done an awful thing."
"And what of his act?"
"Well, there are two ways of looking at that," was all she would say. She used Cale's very words, when he told his story.
I asked once again, if she had heard from the Doctor?
"No. He was going out to California. He come to see me before he went, and he said he 'd about given up the farm plans; that he could n't see his way clear to carry them out for the present. And I don't mind telling you, that he said he would put half the interest money on that 'conscience fund', as he calls it, that he thinks your father provides to ease his soul, to helping me here in my work."
I remembered what I had advised on that memorable evening in Lamoral—and I wondered at the ways of life.
We "brought the girl through" with help of nurse and doctor. She and her child were saved, saved for good as I have every reason to believe, for I have kept in touch with her ever since. I am her friend, why quite such a friend, I do not feel called upon to explain.
I answered the door bell one day when the baby upstairs was ten days old—and found myself face to face with Cale.
III
When I saw him, I acknowledged to myself my weakness. Deep down in my heart I had been longing, with a desire which was prayer, that I might have some word from Lamoral.
"Cale—Cale, dear, come in." I caught his hand, which was not outstretched to mine, to draw him in. "If we were n't the observed of all in this court I would kiss you on the spot." He continued to stare at me; he did not speak.
"Cale, forgive me for my hardness of heart—say you forgive me, for I can't forgive myself; I was—"
He interrupted me, speaking quietly:
"I know what you was; you can't tell me nothin' 'bout thet, Marcia. I ain't laid up nothin' you said to me, nor nothin' you said against nobody; but I ain't fergiven yer fer leavin' me without knowin' of your whereabouts—
"Cale, I had to be alone—"
"I don't care whether you had to be alone or not," he said testily; "you might have let me know where you was goin'. You was n't fit to go alone, nor be alone. My hair 's turned gray thinkin' what might happen. Where was you?" he demanded sternly.
"I was in Iberville."
I led him unresisting into the back room; it was my turn to place some one in the rocking-chair.
"Iberville! How in thunder did you get to Iberville when you did n't go on the train?"
"How did you know I did n't go on the train?"
"The baggage-master told me. How did you go?"
"In the apple-boat."
"Wal, I 'm stumped. How long did you stay there?"
"Nearly four weeks. Why?"
"Why? Because I 'd been doing detective work on my own account. (How my heart sank at those words; Mr. Ewart had not attempted to find me then!). I 've been doin' it for the last six weeks. This is the third time I 've been in New York."
"But not here?"
"Yes, here—in this very house. I give Mis' Beaseley the credit; she knows how to hold her tongue. I see she ain't told you."
"No. But you have n't been here since I 've been in the house?"
"No, I just got here to-day."
"How did you happen to come this third time, Cale?"
"I come because the Doctor told me to try it again here—"
"The Doctor? Is he at home?"
"Guess he is by this time; I left him at Lamoral yesterday—"
"At Lamoral?" On hearing that word, a trembling I could not control seized upon me. If only Cale would speak of Mr. Ewart!
"Yes, Lamoral. I 've been lyin' right and left to Angélique an' Pierre, an' Marie, an' Mère Guillardeau an' all the folks 'round that's been inquirin'; but I didn't lie to the Doctor—not much!"
"How—how did the Doctor happen to be in Lamoral?"
"Guess you fergot he said he 'd like enough come back by the C.P."
I was silent. I saw that Cale did not intend to speak Mr. Ewart's name first. He was leaving it to me.
"Look here, Marcia, I 'm goin' to talk to you for once in my life like a Dutch uncle. I don't mean to live through another six weeks like those I 've been through, if I should live to be a hundred."
"I am sorry, Cale, to have been the cause of any anxiety, any suffering on your part—but I, too, suffered—and far more than you can ever know." I spoke bitterly.
"I ain't denyin' you suffered—but there 's others to consider; others have suffered, too, I guess, in a way you don't know nothin' about, bein' a woman."
"What do you mean, Cale?" I asked, trying to make him speak Mr. Ewart's name.
"Mean? Marcia Farrell, you know what I mean. Ain't you got a woman's heart beatin' somewhere in your bosom?"
"Oh, Cale, don't!"
"I 've got to, Marcia; you 've got to see things different, or you 'll rue the day you ever blinded yourself to facts."
"Is Mr. Ewart ill?"
"Ill?" There was a curious twitch to his mouth as he repeated that word. "Wal, it depends on what you call 'ill'. That's a pretty mild word for some sorts of diseases—"
"Oh, Cale, tell me quick—don't keep me waiting any longer—"
"Any longer for what?"
"You know, Cale, I want to hear of him—know about him—"
"Oh, you do, do you? Wal, it 's pretty late in the day for you to show some feelin'. Look here, Marcia, I ain't goin' to meddle. I meddled once thirty years ago when I tried to persuade your mother she loved George Jackson, an' I 've lived to curse the day I did it. I ain't goin' to fall inter the same trap this time, you bet yer life on thet; but I 'm goin' to speak my mind 'fore I leave you here. Will you answer me one plain question, an' answer it straight?"
"I 'll try to."
"Do you think different from what you did? Have you come to see things any different from what you put 'em to me?"
"Yes."
"Wal, thet's to the point; now we can talk. The Doctor and Ewart was talkin' this over 'fore I come away; I heard every word. I was right there, and they asked me to be. Gordon Ewart told the Doctor that when he fust see him aboard ship, that was nineteen years ago, he made his acquaintance because he knew he was the man who had brought you inter this world. He never let him go. He kept in touch with him. He come to be his closest friend. An' he never told that he, Gordon Ewart, is the one that puts that money regularly into the Doctor's hands, without his knowin' who it comes from, for the sake of helpin' others—"
"But he did not think of me." I could not help it; I spoke bitterly.
"No. He did n't want to think of you. He wanted to ferget there was anybody or anything in this world to remind him of what he 'd suffered from Happy Morey; an' he tried his best. An' he told the Doctor that when he 'd thought he 'd conquered, when he come to see things different too, he come back to settle in the old manor an' carry out his ideas. An' the very fust night, he found you there. He said he knew then, he couldn't get away from his past; it was livin' right there along with him.
"Marcia, I ain't meddlin', and mebbe I 'm to blame; but when I told you what I did, I done for the best as I thought. The Doctor done for the best as he thought. He believed you were Ewart's daughter, and he see what we all could n't help seein'—"
"What, Cale?" I longed to hear from Cale's lips that he had seen Mr. Ewart's love for me.
"You know, Marcia Farrell, I ain't goin' ter tell you. The Doctor said he thought fust along, it was because Ewart knew he was your father; but he said his eyes was opened mighty sudden—an' it 'bout made him sick, for he thinks a sight of you, Marcia. I see from the fust how things was driftin' with George, and as him an' me had recognized one 'nother from the fust, an' as he did n't say he knew you, I kept still. I was n't goin' to meddle, an' I ain't goin' to meddle now—only I 'm goin' straight off to tell him where you are."
"But he has n't tried to find me—"
"No, nor he never will. Your mother 'bout killed him when he was a boy, an' he is n't goin' to run after you who has 'bout killed him again as a man. You don't know nothin' what you 've done. I 've been through hell with him these last six weeks, an' I went through it with him once before twenty-eight years ago, an' that hell compared with this was like a campfire to a forest-roarer.– Now you know."
"Cale—Cale, what have I done?"
"You 've done what will take the rest of your life to undo. I ain't goin' to meddle, I tell you, but I 'm tellin' you just as things stand. My part's done—for I 've found you; an' I 'm goin' to tell him so."
He stood up; as it were, shook himself together, and without any ceremony started for the door.
"Cale, don't go yet—I want to tell you; you don't see my position—"
"Position be hanged. I guess folks that find their lives hangin' by a thread don't stop to argify much 'bout 'position'; they get somewhere where they can live—thet 's all they want."
He was at the front door by this time. I grasped his arm and held it tight.
"You will come again, Cale, you must."
"I 'm goin' home to Lamoral as quick as the Montreal express can get me there. I can't breathe here in this hole!"
He loosened his shirt collar and took off his coat. It was an unseasonable day in November—an Indian summer day with the mercury at eighty-four. The life of the East Side was flooding the streets. He turned to me as he stood on the low step. "I hope it won't be goodby for another six weeks, Marcia."
"Cale, oh, Cale—"
He was off down the court with a long stride peculiar to himself. I saw him step over a bunch of babies playing in the mud at the corner of the court. He turned that corner into the street. I went in and shut the door.
Delia Beaseley was out for the entire forenoon, but Jane, who had returned from her two weeks vacation, was upstairs. I had plenty of time to think, to feel. I must have sat there in the back room for an hour or more, then the front door bell rang again.
I answered it—and found Mr. Ewart.
IV
"Are you alone?"
"Yes."
"I wish to see you for a few minutes."
"Come into the back room."
I led the way. I heard him shut the front door.
There was no word of welcome on the part of either, no hand extended. All I could see, as he stood there momentarily on the step, was the set face, the dark hollows beneath his eyes, the utter fatigue in his attitude. He stood with his hand on the door jamb, bracing himself by it. So he must have stood long years before when he came to seek my mother. That was my thought.
He did not sit down; but I—I had to; I had not strength left to stand.
"I 'm going to ask you a few questions."
"Yes." My tongue was dry; my lips parched. It was with difficulty I could articulate.
"What did you think I promised you, even if without words, that last time I saw you in camp?"
"All."
"What did you promise me when you looked into my eyes, there on the shore of the cove?"
"All." I had no other word at my command.
"And what did 'all' mean to you?"
I could not answer.
"Did it mean that you were to be my wife, that I was to be your husband?"
"I thought so."
"And you came to think otherwise—"
"How could it be, oh, how could it be?" I cried out wildly, the dumb misery finding expression at last. "How could it be when you are my mother's husband—"
"Stop! Not here and now. I will not hear that—not here, where I found her dead in this basement; not now, when I have come to find her child. Listen to me. Answer me, as if before the judgment seat of your truest womanhood and our common humanity. Is she a wife who never loves the man who loves her, and is married to her in the law? Answer me."
"No."
"Is he a husband who never receives the pledge of love from the woman he loves, and to whom he is married in the law? Answer me again."
"No."
"Can words merely, the 'I promise', the 'I take', make marriage in its truest sense? Tell me."
"No."
"Was the woman who never loved me, my wife in any true sense for all the spoken words?"
"No," I answered again, but my voice faltered.
"Was the man who loved her, her husband simply by reason of those few spoken words?"
"No—but—"
"Yes, I know what you would say; the words, at least, were spoken that made us before the world man and wife in the law—but how about the 'before God'?"
I could not answer. The man who was cross-questioning me was trying to get at the truth as I saw it.
"The law can be put aside, and I put it aside; I was divorced from her. But what difference, except to you, does that make? Marcia Farrell, I was never your mother's husband. Had I been, had I taken her once in my arms as wife, can you think for one moment that I would have stayed in the manor, continued in your presence—watching, waiting, longing for some sign of love for me on your part? You cannot think it—it is not possible."
His voice shook with passion, with indignation. He bent to me.
"Tell me, in mercy tell me, what stands between us two? Speak out now from the depths of your very soul. Lay aside fear; there is nothing to fear, believe me. I am fighting now not only for my life, but for yours which is dearer to me than my own. Speak."
I took courage. I looked up at him as he bent over me.
"I thought you loved my mother in me—I was afraid it was not I you loved, not Marcia Farrell, but Happy Morey."
"You thought that!—And I never knew." He spoke rapidly, with a catch in his voice which sounded like a half laugh or a sob.
He straightened himself suddenly, then, as suddenly, he bent over me again, took my face between his hands and looked into my eyes, as if by looking he could engrave his words on my brain.
"I swear to you by my manhood, that I have loved and love you for yourself, for what you are. I swear to you by my past life, a life that has never known the love of a woman, that the past no longer exists for me; that it no longer existed for me from the moment I saw you coming down stairs that first night at Lamoral. I waited this time to make sure that a woman loved me as I wanted to be loved, as I must be loved—and I waited too long. You are not like your mother, except in looks. You are you—the woman I want to make my wife, the woman I look to, to make life with me. Marcia! Let the past bury its dead—what do we care for it? We are living, you and I—living—loving—"
He drew me up to him—and life in its fulness began for me....
"And now put on your hat, give me your coat, and come with me," he said a half an hour afterwards.
"Where?"
"To the City Hall to get our marriage licence."
"To-day?"
"Yes, now, before luncheon. Tell Jane you will not return—"
"But my bag—shall I take that? And Delia, what will—"
"Delia must look out for herself; you can explain by letter. Tell Jane to have your bag sent this afternoon to this address." He gave me a card on which he scribbled, "Check room of the Grand Central Station". "We can be married at the magistrate's office—"
I must have shown some disappointment at this decision, for he asked quickly:
"What is it, Marcia? Tell me. Remember, I can bear nothing more."
I took a lighter tone with him. I saw that the nervous strain under which he was suffering must be relieved.
"I am disappointed, yes, downright disappointed. Even if you don't want to make certain promises, I confess I do. I want to say 'I promise'; I want to hear myself saying 'I take you' and 'till death do us part'. I want to say those very words; I would like the whole world to hear. Why, think of it, I am going to be your wife! Do you grasp that fact?" I said, smiling at him.
I won an answering smile.
"Have your own way; I may as well succumb to the inevitable now as at any time, for you will always have it with me."
"Oh, I would n't be so mean as to want it all the time, besides it would be so monotonous; but I do want it this once—the great and only 'once' for me."