CHAPTER VIII
NEW FRIENDS
"Interesting girl," Longman said as he and Miss Train turned away from Yetta's door.
"Yes. I'll have to keep an eye on her. She may be a valuable recruit."
Longman laughed.
"What's so funny?" she asked sharply.
"Funny isn't just the word, but don't you ever see anything in people except enemies and allies?"
"I don't think much else matters – enemies and allies. There can't be neutrals in a fight for Justice."
"True enough, but I see a lot of interesting things in this little girl of the slums, which haven't anything to do with the fact that she is chuck full of fighting spirit and is sure to be on the right side."
"For instance?"
"Well. To begin with, a sweet and pure character, which in some amazing way has formed itself in this rotten environment – a wonderfully delicate sort of a flower blossoming in the muck heap. The kind of a sensitive plant that the slightest rude touch would blight. It's a marvel how it has escaped being trod upon – there are so many careless feet! I'm not proud of myself as I am, but I hate to think of what I'd be like if I'd been born in her cradle. It is always a marvel to me when some child of the slum wants to be good. From where in all this sordidness did she get the inspiration? And then it is always interesting to me – sad and interesting – to see how utterly stupid this desire for goodness is – how it is just as likely to lead to utter damnation as anywhere else. This Yetta Rayefsky has a beautiful and quite absurd trust in people. On a very short acquaintance she trusts you completely. I think she trusts me too – just exactly as she trusted that Cadet. And the faith she put in him was just as beautiful as what she has given you."
"Walter, a person who looked at you would never dream that you're such a – "
"Sentimentalist? I suppose you're going to call me that again."
Longman said it bitterly. And she, knowing how the taunt would sting him, with equal bitterness did not reply. They trudged on side by side in silence, across town to Broadway and up that deserted thoroughfare towards Washington Square. They were neither of them happy.
In the bottom of her heart Mabel Train knew that something had been neglected by those fairies who had equipped her for life. They had showered very many talents upon her. But they had forgotten that little knot of nerve cells which had to do with the deeper affections. There were heights and depths of life which she knew she would never visit. It made her feel unpleasantly different. And Longman, whom otherwise she liked very much, was always reminding her of this deficiency. It seemed to her that he was mocking her cold intellectualism. And being supersensitive on this point, she had hurled "sentimentalist" in his face.
Of all the odd types in New York City, Walter Longman was one of the most bizarre. His parents had died while he was in Harvard. They had left him an income of about five thousand a year. He did not make a brilliant record in the University. There were nearly always one or two conditions hanging over his head, but a marked talent for languages and a vital interest in philosophy carried him through. He was not popular with the students because in spite of his immense body he could not muster sufficient interest in football to join the "squad." He preferred to sit in his window-seat and read.
In the course of his junior year he chanced in his haphazard reading upon a German scientific review which contained an account of some excavations in the territory of Ancient Assyria. It told of the discovery of a large quantity of "brick" books, in a language as yet undeciphered. The matter interested him, and he set out to find what the library contained on the subject. He was surprised at the amount of material there was. The story of how Rawlinson and others had deciphered unknown languages fascinated him. He stayed on in Cambridge two months after graduation to finish up this subject. He found more information about the "brick" books which had first caught his attention. Several hundred of them had been brought to a museum in Berlin. Having nothing pressing to do in America, he went over to have a look at them. All the spoil from this expedition had been housed in one room. After studying the bricks for a couple of days, he thought he had found a clew. He could get more ready access to them if he was a student, so he went to the University and enrolled. He had no idea of staying long, nor of attending courses in the University, but his only plan for life in America was to write a book on philosophy, and that could wait.
The first "clew" proved to be an illusion. But those rows and rows of ancient bricks, with their cryptic writing which hid the story of a lost civilization, had piqued his curiosity. Again he decided that his work on philosophy could wait.
It was two years before he satisfactorily translated the first brick. Once having found the key, his progress was rapid. If he had been in touch with the Assyriologists of the University, he would probably have confided in them at once. But he knew none of them personally, and he went on with his work single-handed. It took him six months to translate the entire collection. They contained the official records of a certain King of kings, who had ruled over a long-forgotten people called the Haktites. It took him six months more to arrange a grammar and dictionary of the Haktite tongue. Then he remembered the University and took his two manuscripts to the Professor of Assyriology. He was decidedly provoked by the first scepticism which greeted his announcement, even more bored by the hullabaloo which the savants made over him, when investigation proved the truth of his claim. He stayed a year longer in Europe, to see an edition of his work through the press at Berlin and to translate the scattered Haktite bricks in other museums. This took him as far as Teheran and afield to the site of the excavations, where there were numerous inscriptions on the stonework which was too unwieldy to be taken to European museums. Then he came to New York to take up the position of Instructor in Assyriology in Columbia. He had stipulated that he should be granted a great deal of leisure. It was not a hard matter for the University to arrange, as there was no great clamor among the students to learn Haktite. But Longman had insisted on the leisure, so that he would have opportunity to write his book on philosophy, which seemed to him very serious and infinitely more important than the dead lore of his department. He was vexed with himself for having wasted so much time and acquired such fame in so useless a branch of human knowledge.
He established himself in the top floor of a two-story building on Washington Square, East. He took the place on a long lease, and making free with the partitions, had arranged a big study in the front overlooking the Square, a bath, a bedroom, and a kitchenette behind it. Two big rooms in the rear he sublet as storerooms to the carriage painter who rented the ground floor. Having a horror of servants, he made his own coffee in the morning and Signora Rocco, a worthy Italian woman, came in with a latch-key when he was out at lunch and put the place in order. Twice a week he had to go up to the University.
The rest of his time went to what he considered his real work. He was to call his book A Synthetic Philosophy. Hundreds of would-be sages had cut themselves off from all active communion with life, had retired to the seclusion of a study or cave, and had written solemn tomes on what Man ought to think. Longman was going to discover what his kind really did think. He went about it in a systematic, almost statistical way.
He had reduced the more important of the various possible human beliefs to twenty-odd propositions and many subheads, all of which he had had printed on a double sheet of foolscap. It began boldly by raising the question of Deity. From the heights of metaphysical discussion of the Existence, the Unity, and the Attributes of God, it came nearer to earth by inquiring into Heaven and a belief in a future existence. Again it soared up into the icy altitude of Pure Reason and the Erkenntniss Theorie. Again it swooped down to more practical questions of Ethics, what one considered the summum bonum and under what circumstances one conceded the right to suicide, and whether or not one believed that every man has his price. Whenever Longman found willing subjects he cross-questioned them by the hour. From the notes he took he tabulated the victim's credo on one of the printed questionnaires and filed it away. Almost every one laughed at his idea, but with the same dogged momentum which had kept him bent for months on and over Assyrian bricks, which interested him only slightly, he stuck to this work which interested him deeply.
In a way he was especially fitted for it. Every one liked him and found it easy to talk freely with him. And he was quick to detect any cant or lack of sincerity. If he wrote "yes" after the question, "Do you believe it pays to be honest?" it was the subject's basic belief, not a pretence nor a pose. And he had a knack of putting his questions in simple, comprehensible language. The printed questionnaire bristled with appalling technical words. But he did not use such phrases as "ultimate reality," "the categorical imperative." He did not ask his subject if his idea of God was anthropomorphic. Very few of the people whose faith he analyzed would have understood such terms.
It was the essence of his proposition that he should tabulate the convictions of all sorts and conditions of men. And in his quest for varied points of view he had come into very close contact with a strange mixture of people. Into his "operating room," as Mabel Train derisively called his study, he had enticed college professors and policemen, well-bred young matrons and street-walkers. One of his sheets recorded the intimate convictions of the man downstairs who painted carriages; another, those of a famous opera singer. The Catholic Bishop of New York had undergone the ordeal and a Salvation Army lassie, who had knocked at his door to sell a War-cry, had come in to try to convert him. She had been very much distressed by his perplexing questions, but like all the rest had quickly fallen captive to his gentle manners and understanding eyes. She had dropped her missionary pose and had talked freely to him, not only of her beliefs, but also of her doubts.
Almost every one who had gone through the ordeal remembered it with a strange, awed sort of pleasure. It is so very rarely that we find any one to whom we can tell the truth.
There was a wreck of a man, an habitué of cheap lodging-houses and gin-mills, who would tell you the story on the slightest provocation. One cold October night when he had no money for a bed and was trying to live through the night on a park bench with a morning paper for a blanket, a man had asked him if he wanted a drink. Not suspecting the good fortune which had befallen him, he had followed Longman to the "operating room." First there had been a stiff bracer of whiskey – "good Scotch whiskey, sir," – and then a plentiful cold supper of bread and cheese and sardines and a steaming cup of coffee – "as much as I could eat, sir" – and a cigar – "as long as yer foot, sir. He was a real gentleman, sir, and he talked to me like I was a gentleman."
There was a young wife of an elderly professor. Some of the ladies of the faculty raised their eyebrows when her name was mentioned and did not go to her teas. She had been smitten by Longman's broad shoulders and gentle bearishness and had quite eagerly consented to come to his study. She did not tell anybody about it, but she cried when she thought about it – cried that he had not asked her again.
Whether or not Longman's book promised any great usefulness to humanity, the preparing of it was of undoubted use to him. He had seen life at close quarters, with what Mirabeau called "terrible intimacy." His heart had grown very large there in his "operating room." As well as he could he hid his ever ready sympathy under a surface joviality and flippancy. There were very few people beside Mabel who realized what a sentimentalist he was. He was a brother to Abou ben Adhem. And that love of his fellow-men necessarily brought him into bitter revolt against things as they are. But he had no collective sense; he loved his fellow men individually. He had no feeling for mass movements. Intellectually he realized the need of united activity, he believed in trade-unions and socialism. But the sight of a crowd always made him angry. He was an ardent apostle of the Social Revolution. But he could not work harmoniously with an organization. So the socialists called him an Anarchist. He did not care what he was called. But most of the difference between his very small living expenses and his liberal income found its way unobtrusively into some socialist or labor organization.
But for three years now Mabel Train had been the "Cause" to which he gave his devotion.
She was also of the class of those who, never having had to work, had volunteered in the cause of those who must. But she had done so in a more intense, thoroughgoing, and practical way than had Longman. She had given not only what money she could spare, but herself.
She was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, and having come under the influence of the able and daring group of economists on that faculty had been educated to a position in labor matters which is very nearly as radical as that of the socialists. One of her professors had told her that in all his experience in coeducation he had never encountered a woman with a more masculine brain. At the time she had felt complimented. She had, at twenty, been proud that she did not have hysterics, that her mind did not have "fainting fits," that she could tackle the problems of the class-room in the same graceless, uninspired, direct way that men did. At twenty-seven she was beginning to realize that life was not a class-room exercise and that there were certain inevitable problems of womanhood which could not be solved man-fashion. She felt herself cold in comparison to other women. The romances of the girls in college had rather disgusted her. At twenty-seven she would have given her right hand for the ability to lose her head like some of the shop-girls among whom she worked.
As a matter of fact the professor had been quite wrong in calling her intellect masculine – it was only a remarkably good one. It had the fearlessness to look the folly of our industrial system in the face and understand it. She had a deep womanliness which made it impossible for her to accept a manner of life which was in contradiction to her intellectual convictions. Thinking as she did that the relations between capital and labor were basically unjust, it was necessary for her to spend her life in the fight for justice.
What might be called "the normal mother instinct" had been denied her. Her woman's nature had turned into an ardent desire to "mother" the race. The babes who die unborn, those who are poisoned by bad milk, who wither up from bad air, whose growth is stunted by bad food – all the sad little children of the poor – were her own brood. She wrote rarely to her two blood sisters – she was the big sister of all the girls who are alone.
Her parents were entirely out of sympathy with her interest in working people. Principally to escape their ceaseless nagging, she had come East. For several years she had been the head of the Woman's Trade Union League. Her gentle breeding made her successful with the wealthy ladies on whom the League depended for support, the working girls idolized her, the rather rough men of the Central Federated Union had come to recognize that she never got up in meeting unless she had something to say. And the bosses complimented her ability by hating her cordially.
Most of the young men who tried to court her – and there was a constant stream of them, for she was a very attractive woman – fared badly. She was distressingly illusive. Her intellect was so lively that it was hard to admire her manifold charms. She wanted the people who talked to her to think. And she checked sentimentality with scornful laughter.
Things were further complicated for her would-be suitors by the fact that Mabel, when she was not very busy, was always accompanied by her room-mate Eleanor Mead. Eleanor did not look like a formidable duenna. She was of a pure pre-Raphaelite type. By profession she was an interior decorator, and her business card said, "Formerly with Liberty – Avenue de l'Opera, Paris." She carefully cultivated the appearance of an Esthete. She nearly always dressed in rich greens and old golds and was never truly happy except during the limited season when she could wear fresh daffodils in her girdle. She was clever at her work and gained a very good income, which she augmented by fashionable entertainments where she lectured in French on subjects of Art and sometimes gave mildly dramatic readings of Maeterlinck and other French mystics.
Most men found her style of beauty too watery. But one of the "Younger Choir" had taken her as his Muse and had dedicated a string of Petrarchian sonnets to her. Eleanor had been rather flattered by the tribute until the unlucky bard had been forced by the exigencies of his rhyme to say that she had "eyes of sapphire." People had begun to make sport of her "sapphire" eyes – they did have a rather washed-out look – and had begun to call her "Sapphire." Most of Mabel's lovers shortened it disrespectfully to "Saph." She had given this aspiring versifier the sack, and his long hair was no longer to be seen in the highly decorated apartment on Washington Square, South.
Although her appearance was not at all dreadful, she was feared and hated by all Mabel's admirers. It was impossible to call on Miss Train – it was necessary to call on both of them. Without any open discourtesy, with a well-bred effort to hide her jealousy, Eleanor made the courting of her friend a hideous ordeal. Most aspirants dropped out of the race after a very few calls. But for three years Longman had held on. It had not taken him long to know what was the matter with him, and after two unsuccessful efforts to see Mabel alone and tell her about it, he went one night to the flat with grim resolution.
"Miss Mead," he said abruptly on entering, "I've got something very important I want to say to Miss Train. I want to ask her to marry me. Will you be so kind – ?"
He opened the door leading into the dining-room. His manner had been irresistible. And Eleanor with her head in the air had sailed out past him. He shut the door carefully. All the evening long, Eleanor knelt down outside it, with her ear glued to the keyhole. But she heard nothing to distress her.
Longman got no satisfaction. Mabel had rejected his offer as decisively as possible. But he had refused to be discouraged. The third time that he forced a proposal on her, it had made her angry and she had said that she did not care to see him again. A few days later she received a very humble letter from him. He pleaded for a chance to be her friend, and solemnly promised not to say a word of love for six months. She had not answered it, but the next Sunday he came to the flat for tea. They had drifted into a close but unsound friendship. Eleanor's dislike for him was so evident – she maintained that the way he had banished her to the dining-room proved that he was no gentleman – that he very rarely went to their apartment. But on every possible occasion he met Mabel outside. The people who saw him at her side, night after night at labor meetings, assumed that they were engaged. This added intimacy only whetted Longman's love. From bodyguard he fell to the position of slave. He ran errands for her.
With the masculine attitude towards such matters he did not believe that she would accept such untiring service if there was no hope.
When at the end of the stipulated six months she refused him again, – just as coldly as at first, – it was a bitter surprise to him. If a man had acted so, Longman would have unhesitatingly called him a cad.
He went away to the mountains to think it out. In a week he was back, proposing again. Once more she became angry. When she said "no," she meant "no." She did not want to marry him and did not think she ever would. He had asked to be her friend. Well. She enjoyed his friendship, but if he was going to bother her every few days with distasteful proposals of marriage it made friendship impossible. For two weeks he struggled with himself in solitude, torn between his desire to see her and his pride. Then he went to a meeting where he knew she would speak and walked home with her.
So it had recommenced and so it had continued – in all three years. A deep camaraderie had grown between them. They knew each other better than many couples who have been married twice as long. But Longman could see no progress towards the consummation he so earnestly desired. During the three years there had been alternate moods of hope and despair. At times he thought she surely must come to love him. At other times the half loaf of intercourse tasted bitter as quinine. He told himself that he was a weak fool, a spectacle for the gods to laugh at, hanging to the skirts of a woman who had no care for him. At times he said, "Let all the rest go hang, to-day's sweet friendship is better than nothing." There were sad and angry moments when he paced up and down in his study and cursed her and himself and his infatuation – and the next moment he wanted to kiss the dust she had trod upon.
But steadily the torment of their relationship grew worse. More and more insistent had become the idea of going away. Perhaps she would miss his friendship and call him back. But he had been too deeply enslaved to dare so drastic a revolt. However, that morning had brought him mail which had suddenly crystallized this idea. He had resolved to put it to the test.
"Mabel," he said as they entered Washington Square, "if you're not too tired let's go up to the Lafayette for a while. I've got something important to talk over with you."
A look of vexation crossed her face, which, with quick and painful sensitiveness, he interpreted.
"No," he said gravely, "I won't bore you with any professions of affection. It's a business matter on which I'd like your advice."
"Why not come up to the flat; we've some beer, and Eleanor's been making some fudge. It's more comfortable than that noisy café."
"Very well, then," he said stiffly. "I'll leave you at your door."
"Now, Walter – don't be a fool. What are you so sour about to-night? You haven't opened your mouth for six blocks."
"You know very well that I can't talk with "Saph" on the job – she hates me. I'd like to talk this over with you."
"All right," she said, shaking his arm to cheer him up. "But don't be quite so grumpy, just because I called you a sentimentalist."
Over the marble-topped table in the café, he told her that a letter had come inviting him to join an expedition, organized by the French Government, to excavate some Haktite ruins in Persia. From the point of view of an Assyriologist it was a flattering offer; they had selected him as the most eminent American in that department. But it would be a three or four years' undertaking in one of the most inaccessible corners of the globe. They would probably get mail no oftener than two or three times a year. And after all he was more interested in the thoughts of live men than in mummies and cuneiform inscriptions. It would stop his work on philosophy.
"In fact, Mabel," he ended, "there is only one thing that makes me think of accepting. I can't stand this. I don't want to bring up the forbidden subject. But I'm tired – worn out – with hiding it. If I stay here in New York, I'm sure to – bore you."
He tried to smile lightly, but it was not much better than the smile with which we ask the dentist if it is going to hurt. Mabel dug about in her café parfait for a moment without replying. She understood all the things he had not said. At last she did the unselfish, the kindly thing, which, if she had been a man, she would have done long before. She sent him away.
"It looks to me like a great opportunity. It isn't only an honor for past achievements, but a chance for new and greater ones. Sometimes I poke fun at your Synthetic Philosophy, but seriously I don't think it is as big a thing as your Assyriology. Whether you like it or not the Fates have given you a talent for that. Your wanting to do something else – write philosophy – always seems to me like a great violinist who wants to be a jockey or chauffeur. You're really at the very top as an Assyriologist. It's not only me – but most of your friends – think you have more talent for that. I think you'd best accept it."
Longman swallowed his medicine like a man. A few minutes later he left Mabel at her door.
She found "Saph" stretched out à la Mme. Récamier on the dull green Empire sofa.
"Will you never get out of the habit of staying to sweep up after the ball?" she asked languidly.
"I haven't been sweeping up," Mabel replied; "I've been over at the Lafayette with Walter. Now don't begin to sulk," she went on; "he's been telling me great news. The French Government has asked him to go on one of their expeditions to Central Asia. He's going."
"Goody," Eleanor cried, jumping up. "I'm glad!"
"I'm not," Mabel said; "I'll miss him no end."
"Mabel Train, I believe you're in love with that man."
"No, I'm not. And I'm half sorry I'm not. I'm tired, done up. Good night."
"Don't you want some fudge? – it turned out fine."
"No. Goodnight."
Mabel did not exactly bang her bedroom door, but she certainly shut it decisively, and for more than an hour sat by her window, watching the ceaseless movement in the Square. Once she saw Longman walk under an arc-light. His head was bent, his hands deep in his pockets. Although the sight of him left her quite cold, her eyes filled with tears as they had not done for years. It was just because the sight of him left her cold that tears came.