Woman Of Yesterday

<h3 class='c001'>CHAPTER XXVIII</h3></div> <div class='lg-container-b c009'> <div class='linegroup'> <div class='group'> <div class='line'>I took the power in my hand</div> <div class='line'>And went against the world;</div> <div class='line'>’Twas not so much as David had,</div> <div class='line'>But I was twice as bold.</div> </div> <div class='group'> <div class='line'>I aimed my pebble, but myself</div> <div class='line'>Was all the one that fell.</div> <div class='line'>Was it Goliath was too large,</div> <div class='line'>Or only I too small?</div> <div class='line in30'>—<span class='sc'>Emily Dickinson.</span></div> </div></div> </div> <p class='c014'>We all have need of that prayer of the Breton mariner, “Save us, O God! Thine ocean is so large and our little boats are so small.”—<span class='sc'>Farrar.</span></p> <p class='c010'>“Trunks checked for Utopia! Direct passenger route without change of cars! Ye gods, it doth amaze me!”</p> <p class='c011'>Thus Professor Ward, with a sardonic and yet discomfited smile, standing in the studio of his friend Pierce Everett, in Fulham. The room was in the disorder of a radical breaking up; packing boxes standing about and litter strewn everywhere.</p> <p class='c011'>Everett in his shirt sleeves was piling on a table a mass of draperies which he had taken from the wall. He was covered with dust, but his face was full of joyous excitement.</p> <p class='c011'>“Yes, my good friend—straight for Utopia now!</p> <div class='lg-container-b c009'> <div class='linegroup'> <div class='group'> <div class='line'>“‘Get on board, chil’en,</div> <div class='line'>Get on board, chil’en,</div> <div class='line'>For there’s room for many a more.’”</div> </div></div> </div> <p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>Everett trolled out the old negro chorus with hilarious enjoyment.</p> <p class='c011'>“<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Quos Deus vult perdere</span></i>—” began Ward, grimly.</p> <p class='c011'>“Oh, we’re all mad, you know. We are simply not so mad as the rest of you,” interrupted Everett, gayly. “We have intervals of sanity, and are taking advantage of one of them to get out of the mad-house, leaving you other fellows to keep up your unprofitable strife with phantoms by yourselves, while we actually—yes, we even dare to believe it—<em>live</em>. Think of that, Ward, if you have the imagination!” Ward shook his head. “No, you haven’t; that is so. If you had, you could not have listened to Gregory unmoved.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Confound Gregory,” muttered Ward. “What did you ever get the man here for, turning our world upside down!”</p> <p class='c011'>“That has been the occupation of seers and prophets from the beginning, I believe,” retorted Everett, carelessly.</p> <p class='c011'>“Seers and prophets!” cried Ward, angrily, “that is what I can stand least of all. This posing as a kind of nineteenth century John the Baptist strikes me as exquisitely ridiculous.”</p> <p class='c011'>Everett’s eyes flashed dangerously, but he made no rejoinder.</p> <p class='c011'>“I saw your John the Baptist this morning in the Central Station buying his railway ticket and morning paper like any other average man. The locusts and wild honey were not in evidence.”</p> <p class='c011'>“No, he doesn’t take nourishment habitually in railway stations,” put in Everett, coolly.</p> <p class='c011'>“I didn’t see any leathern girdle about his loins, either, although of course he may wear it next the skin <span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>for penitential purposes. His clothing appeared to be a species of camel’s hair—”</p> <p class='c011'>“Falsely so called,” put in Everett; “it is really English tweed. Very good quality.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Yes, I’ll venture to say that is true. Your prophet of the wilderness strikes me as knowing a good thing when he sees it. Plague take the fellow! He has just that sort of brute force and sheer overbearing personal dominance, which you idealists and credulous take for spiritual authority.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Come now, Ward, we may as well keep our tempers and treat this matter decently. Nothing is gained by calling names. You are naturally prejudiced against a man who attacks the existing social order, and suggests that even the rulers of the synagogue and the great teachers of the schools have something yet to learn. Gregory is radical, revolutionary perhaps, but not a whit more so than the New Testament makes him. He is an absolutely conscientious man; he has given up every personal ambition, wealth, position, all that most men cling to—”</p> <p class='c011'>“In order to become a Dictator, in a field where there is very little competition.”</p> <p class='c011'>Everett suppressed the irritation which this interposition aroused, and continued in a lighter tone,—</p> <p class='c011'>“You are enough of a dictator yourself to see this point, which had escaped the rest of us. I can see that it is a little bitter to you to have Mrs. Burgess seeking another spiritual and intellectual adviser,—going after other gods, as it were.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Yes,” said Ward, gravely; “it makes me sick at heart to see a woman like Mrs. Burgess, with all that glorious power of self-devotion of hers, throwing herself <span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>blindly into this wild, Quixotic experiment—sure to end in disappointment and defeat. It is mournful, most mournful,” and Ward shook his head in melancholy fashion. “And when it comes to Keith,” he resumed, “alas! our brother! Poor Keith, with his lifelong habits of luxurious ease, his conventional views of duty, his yardstick imagination, and his wretched health—to think of such a man being torn from all the amenities of a refined Christian home, and carted across lots, Government bonds and all, to be set down in some malarial swamp to dig ditches with a set of ploughmen, to prove, forsooth! that all men are created free and equal,” and Ward groaned and bent his head as if overcome by the picture he had called up.</p> <p class='c011'>Lifting his head suddenly, he added in a tone of pensive rumination.</p> <p class='c011'>“He is one of those men Thoreau tells of, who would not go a-huckleberrying without a medicine chest; and he would perish, I am convinced, if deprived of improved sanitary plumbing.”</p> <p class='c011'>“All very clever,” said Everett, “but I will take the liberty of mentioning the fact that the Burgess’s physician hails the North Carolina project as the very best thing which could happen for Keith’s health.”</p> <p class='c011'>Hardly had he finished the sentence when a light knock was heard on the half-open door of the studio, and Anna Burgess, at Everett’s word, stepped into the room.</p> <p class='c011'>She wore a thin black gown, for the day was warm, and a broad-brimmed hat of some transparent black substance threw the fine shape of her head and the pure tints of her face into striking relief. A handful of white jonquils was fastened into the front of her gown, and <span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>the freshness of the June day seemed to enter the dusty, despoiled studio with her.</p> <p class='c011'>Both men stood at gaze before her with deference and admiration in every line and look. With a delicate flush rising in her cheeks, Anna gave her hand to each, and spoke a word of greeting in which her natural shyness and her acquired social grace were mingled to a manner of peculiar charm.</p> <p class='c011'>“I ran up to hand you these papers for Mr. Gregory,” she said to Everett, a vibration of suppressed joy in her full, low voice which he had never heard before. “You know he said he would like it if you would bring them,” and she placed a long envelope in his hand. “No, I cannot stop a moment, Keith is waiting for me in the carriage. I did not give the papers to the maid because I wanted to say to you, Mr. Everett, that Keith does not see it any differently,—about the estate, you know. He pledges the income, freely, altogether, but he feels that the estate itself should be kept intact.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Thank Heaven, he has a spark of reason left!” exclaimed Ward under his breath, adding quickly,—</p> <p class='c011'>“Pardon me, Mrs. Burgess, but you know I am not a Gregorian psalm myself, yet.”</p> <p class='c011'>Anna turned to him with her rare smile, less brilliant than clear and luminous.</p> <p class='c011'>“But I was so glad you came to the house, Professor Ward, and heard Mr. Gregory,” she said with gracious courtesy; “we cannot expect every one to follow out these new theories practically as we hope to do, but at least we want every one we care about to know really what they are.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Do you think that many of those present at your house that afternoon were inclined to accept Mr. <span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>Gregory’s gospel, if I may so call it?” asked Ward, respectfully.</p> <p class='c011'>“Of course not,” interjected Everett, “there was no one there but cranks and critics.”</p> <p class='c011'>Anna’s face clouded a little. “No,” she said simply. “Fulham is not a good field for such a message; it was quite different in Burlington. Most of them went away saying it would be very fine if it were not wholly impossible.”</p> <p class='c011'>“And it does not occur to you, does it, Mrs. Burgess,” Ward pressed the question with undisguised earnestness, “that perhaps they were right? that there is something to be said for the old order, as old as the race? that possibly certain distinctions are inherent in the nature of things? Such distinctions, for instance, as separate you,” and Ward gave the pronoun a freight of significance to carry, “from that man,” and he indicated a labourer who had just left the room with an immense box of merchandise on his broad, bent shoulders, and whose slow, heavy steps could now be heard on the stairs below.</p> <p class='c011'>He had struck the wrong chord.</p> <p class='c011'>“Professor Ward,” cried Anna, her voice even lower than its wont, but her emphasis the more intense, “did that man choose to be reduced to the life and little more than the faculties of a beast of burden, to be a brother to the ox, to live a blind, brutalized, animal existence, with neither joy nor star?”</p> <p class='c011'>She paused a moment, and then added, with indescribable pathos dimming the kindling light in her eyes:—</p> <p class='c011'>“It is that man, Professor Ward, and what he stands for, that sends me to Fraternia, if perhaps I can yet atone. It is I that have made that man what he is, and <span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>you, and all of us who have clung gladly to our powers and privileges, and dared to believe that we were made for the heights of life, and men like him for the abyss. If we could read our New Testament once as if it were not an old story! If we, for one moment, could lay our social cruelties beside that pattern shown us in the mount!”</p> <p class='c011'>The deep heart of her and the innermost motive power broke forth from Anna’s usual quiet and reserve in these last words with thrilling influence upon both men. She was beautiful as she spoke, but with the beauty of some Miriam or Cassandra,—a woman, as had been said of her long before, “to die for, not to play games with.”</p> <p class='c011'>Professor Ward, the irritation of his earlier mood quite gone, stood regarding Anna as she spoke with a sadness as profound as it was wholly unaffected. Having spoken, she turned to go.</p> <p class='c011'>“Let me say one word, Mrs. Burgess,” he said, extending his hand to detain her a moment. “I sympathize deeply with your purposes, and I am not wholly incapable of appreciating your motives. From my heart I shall bid you God-speed on your way when your time comes to go out into this new spiritual adventure. It will be none the less noble because it is impossible.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Good-by,” she said, and smiled.</p> <div> <span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />