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ANGEL
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THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Books bt
ALEXANDER BLACK
The Seventh Angel
The Great Desire
Modem Daughters
Miss Jerry
Richard Gordon
A Capital Courtship
The Girl and the Guardsman
Miss America
The Story of Ohio
Thomey
THE
SEVENTH ANGEL
BY
ALEXANDER BLACK
Author of "The Great Desire"
And the seventh angd poured out his vial into the air;
and there came a great voice otU of the temple of heaven,
from the throne, saying, It is done.
REVELATIONS
Days work! Days work! Who is to be master of the worldt
THUS SPAKE ZARASTHUSTRA
She that hat that, is clad in complete steel.
COM US
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Seventh Angel
Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
A-V
kURL
TO
ARTHUR D. CHANDLER
CONTENTS
rAGB
PART ONE i-xi Dawn 1
PART TWO i-xn The New Day 59
PART THREE i-xir Voices in the Fog .... 117
PART FOUR i-xiT Counter Currents ... 182
PART FIVE i-xi Mirage 250
PART SIX i-xiT Destinies 297
THE SEVENTH ANGEL
PART ONE
Dawn
WITH so many watching the girl, you might think
there would have been some agreement as to
what had happened; in particular as to just
what it was she did that brought about such a commo-
tion. Or that brought the commotion to an end. You
could have put it that way if you liked.
But there was no agreement, no unanimity as to any-
thing beyond that point where she came face to face
with the man.
Rankin, who sat very near, and should have had an
intelligent theory, declared that she had contrived, in
that second or two, to hypnotize the victim. He said
"victim" quite in his misogynist manner.
"It must have been something like that," he said;
"otherwise how can you account for what happened
afterward? How could a girl like that ..."
And he was off i.gain.
There should, indeed, have been some one in Vecellio's
that night capable of a plain narrative — some one other
than the girl and the man; but at the time this came to
seem altogether improbable.
As to only one fact was there anything like complete
accord. This one fact was expressed by Jimmy Ingle,
2 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
and a kind of wistfulness shone behind his owlish horn-
rimmed glasses as he got it out:
" Spoiled a good fight."
On that night, even in a reasonably quiet place like
Vecellio's, a fight need not have seemed altogether an
anachronism; that is, if one were to proceed by the fore-
casts. A nation in the Twilight of Booze (Jimmy Ingle)
was huddled at the brink of a vast and terrific Darkness
called Prohibition (Franklin Hebb), and it was nervous.
Nevertheless, nervousness was the last quality you
would have ascribed to the gathering at Vecellio's on
this occasion. There were people there who were sullen,
like Hebb, and whimsically depressed, like Jimmy Ingle.
There were people who giggled over jests about cellar
stocks and soft drinks and "kick" tablets, and so on.
There were memento mori gestures. But mostly Vecellio's
wore its normal aspect, with the variation that it was as
populous on this Monday night as it was ordinarily
expected to be on Saturdays only.
Vecellio's is not, indeed, an emotional place. It is
seasoned without being sedate. It holds its youth. I
suppose it is "Bohemian," although it betrays no wish
to look the part. A stag's head, moth-eaten — but benig-
nant, a varnished fish, a bright-blue tub bearing a
comatose evergreen bush, a framed Italian cartoon, and
two mantels of painted marble, recalling a last-century
drawing-room, all seem like features appointed and be-
longing to its comfortable ugliness. People who go there
really like what they get to eat. The broiled chicken,
cooked by a man who resembles the First Pirate in an
old play, is to be remembered. The spaghetti, if you
escape disturbance from contemplation of the prodigious
quantity, may occur to you as not necessarily a sub-
terfuge.
Professional artists go there, but they go to eat rather
than to look like artists. Mostly the men are normal
enough, and the women wear their own lips.
DAWN s
Yet this was an occasion, even if most of the diners
might have seemed to come without thought of the
calendar and its significance. Certainly those young
women at that corner table gave no effect of having come
to celebrate. Celebrating (as appeared afterward) was
mostly one of those impulses that are not impulses at all.
In other parts of the continent it may have been differ-
ent, but in New York the celebrants seemed to have
been prodded into activity by a theory of melancholy
fitness, and Vecellio's, not being artificial, often forgot to
conform.
There was the feeling in many quarters that something
was due to a tremendous situation. This feeling had
acquired a weight. Men who hadn't tasted liquor for
years exhibited an irritated sense of responsibility, a
comical, driven need to clutch at something that was
passing for the last time. The solemnity of the crisis,
this bereavement without real grief, this resentment
that was not genuine indignation, will long be remem-
bered for something funny that clung to it, for instances
of a sulky horror stupidly acted, of a rebellion without
fire.
Among all the other places, each, I suppose, had its
color. Probably there did not exist a waterside bar, a
chop-suey parlor, a cabaret, a Ritz, or a club grill in all
the town that was not trying to live up to something
promised or believed to be impending, and awaiting
some form of awful protest that would make a noise.
And the silence was dreadful.
There were places where the epochal thing was to be
celebrated on a vast scale. It was threatened that in
one big arena they would have an epic bar, an astounding
Olympian bar, receding in an incredible vista, a bar
dazzling, defiant, expressing with a hysterical brutality
the climactic emotion of baffled booze. There was to hap-
pen in this place a Gargantuan guzzle (Rankin), an
irony appalling and expansive. Abandonment by for-
4 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
mula that was to be as insulting as possible to all re-
formers. And reformers had accepted the insult before
the thing had time to happen. Loud protests appeared
in print. Civilization was warned that the stain of so
cynical an orgy never could be rubbed out. . . .
But here at Vecellio's the situation was more humane,
as befitted a table d'hote of so many homely qualities.
If there was gloom, it was in spots.
" It is a good deal like a wake," said Jimmy Ingle.
There were, it must be admitted, many men like
Hebb who had not merely worked themselves up to a
frenzy of protest, but who were acutely annoyed — par-
ticularly after long concentration on the point of being
annoyed. These gave picturesqueness, I have no doubt,
to every ceremonial of that night.
Hebb could strike the table with his fist and splutter:
"I tell you it's the last straw — the last! After this,
individual rights are to be merely historical. We're to
be a bunch of puppets wabbling about at the end of
socialistic strings. With the Bolshevists, on the one hand,
giving government into the hands of plumbers, we're
confronted, on the other, by the Puritans rattling their
handcuffs. Oh, it's going to be a merry continent!
To-night's a sample. Did you ever know good Scotch to
be as tasteless as it is to-night? That's what they want
to accomplish — to take the taste out of life, to leave us
doddering on a drab, sterilized earth. Good God! Is
there anything left for a man with a jaw and a backbone
but the supreme illegality of suicide? I ask you."
"Don't ask us," said Jimmy Ingle. "Just go on.
You speak for a weeping world."
"And the average man," continued Hebb, "sits back
like you fellows, letting the Puritans get away with it.
The thing is ghastly. It makes me sick, positively sick."
Hebb's contorted face verified his assertion. He was
radiantly outraged.
"There was a time," he burst out, with his fist still
DAWN 5
forward as if to maintain his position — "there was a
time when the Aye of liberty had it over the No of re-
pression. Now repression wins every time. Not repres-
sion of violence. Lord, no! There's no violence, no
anything. Just repression for its own sake. . . Repres-
sion of a flabby race of half-men. We're losing our
spines."
"Well," grunted Ingle, "the Puritans must be keeping
their spines, don't you think?"
II
Webb had just glared before voicing his response to
this when that chair went over and the words, "A
fight!" sent their electrical tension into the scene. The
fact is that there was no fight; there was simply that
sharp note of the back of the chair striking the tiled
floor. After that, the tension, with every face set in-
quiringly. I shall always remember the fantastic pose
of a waiter, a waiter with cropped white hair and a red
face, who stood poised, as if on a single foot, a glass in
his left hand, a filled tray aloft in the other, looking over
his shoulder with one of those incompleted expressions
possible only in a waiter. This man's suspended anima-
tion typified the situation in that room during those
questioning seconds.
Then the girl rose up. I caught a mere glimpse of her
transit. Very likely the distance between where she
had been sitting and the point where she disappeared
among the standing figures was not more than eight or
ten feet. Hebb afterward insisted that she ran across
this space. No one supported him. It seemed to me
that she not only walked, but walked without haste.
What impressed me most, perhaps to the extent of mak-
ing it unlikely that I could be a witness as to other details,
was her face — its expression. I know now that her
face is in no way astounding, in itself. She may have
6 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
an exceptional chin. . . . She has needed that at dif-
ferent times. Maybe her eyes are exceptional. Whether
you thought so or not would depend. As the light struck
them under the brim of one of those easy hats that slide
on like a casque, her eyes didn't show any excitement at
all. You would have said they were the quietest eyes
in the place. But the look of her face, somehow, was ex-
traordinarily impressive. Maybe I am adding something
after the event. That is inevitable. And a setting like
that, giving the solitary figure that moved an arresting
significance, would, naturally, gather to itself all sorts
of illusory effects. What stood out — there was no way
of doubting this afterward — was that the owner of the
face was going to do something. She was going, straight
and sure, to get it done.
The thing she did do remained a mystery until Rankin
joined us. We heard that second noise — a thump; in-
credibly it was as of some one falling. There was a
scattering of the standing figures, and the number of
standing figures increased — we were on our feet our-
selves, in a moment . . . waiting, prepared for anything
after that sound.
Then we saw the big fellow walk out . . . looking
nowhere, finding his zigzag path among the tables;
plunging, yet always with an effect of accuracy, not in
the least with any loose-jointed uncertainty, until he dis-
appeared through the door.
I can remember that all this time that waiter — there
were enough other waiters, but my brain photographed
this one — stood in that cataleptic way, only his cropped
head moving, moving slowly around, following the big
fellow to the vanishing point.
Until eyes were released by this exit it is probable that
few noticed what became of the girl. By that time she
was at her own table again, with her back toward most
of us. It was possible to see that the two other girls
with her were sitting there, blanched with excitement
DAWN 7
and embarrassment. Their situation had become in-
tolerable. As the hum of comment arose — a hum soft-
ened, presumably, by the general consciousness of that
embarrassed group — I began to understand that a
youngster in khaki had somehow been related to the
incident. He sat staring at his plate. His neck carried
a flush deeper than sunburn. Men beside him were
chattering and making emphatic gestures.
"Just like a wake," repeated Jimmy Ingle.
When Rankin really had fitted that Falstaffian body of
his into the space by the wall, with the air of a man who
carries high credentials and with no effect of making the
visit for any special reason, Hebb caught him by the arm.
"What was it.'*" he demanded.
"What was what?" returned Rankin, blandly. "Has
no one a cigarette? Has the last cigarette in the world
been consumed.'*"
"Here—" Hebb flipped his leather case. "Will that
buy a little civility.''"
"I repeat," continued Rankin, with the cigarette
bobbing between his large lips, "what was what?"
"Cut that," piped Jimmy Ingle. "What d'you see?"
"My friend," and Rankin smiled gravely upon the
motion-picture promoter, "I saw everything. I always
do. That is what makes answering so foolish a question
an exceedingly complicated matter."
Hebb glowered. " If Rankin ever speeded up he'd lose
his figure."
"On a night like this," said Rankin, softly, "we should
all be actuated by a solemn harmony of sentiment.
That is why I was grieved, why I am grieved, by the
incident I am going to describe. I say describe. Perhaps
I should say review or discuss. Yet I may not discuss
it. There is no one here, excepting, perhaps, Maxton"
— and he twisted his eyebrows at me — "who is capable
of appreciating the subtleties of the occurrence."
Oh yes! he brought forward a mass of subtleties, until
8 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Hebb was squirming. The fact that he claimed to have
seen everything did not prevent his elaboration of theories
as to why, of a sudden — electrically, he insisted — the
chap who had left the place and that young lieutenant
were suddenly glaring at each other. He even insisted
that no word seemed to have passed between them —
across that gap between the two tables — before the "big
fellow" was up, toppling the chair.
Hebb declared that this was absurd. Something must
Lave happened before that.
"Happened. Ah!" exclaimed Rankin, "happened!
Very hkely. But when — where? Not necessarily on
that spot. Can't you see that? Suppose two men had
a profound antecedent grudge, some terrific kill-on-sight
difference — "
"Oh, hand your whole bag of tricks over to Ingle for
the screen!" protested Hebb. "Get to the girl."
"Wait a moment," said Rankin. "Wait a moment.
She did. She waited until she saw what I saw, and what
I am going to tell you about — not adequately, because
you're too impatient; but to make the case clear. I tell
you the face of our friend who has gone away was some-
thing to be noticed. Even Ingle would have noticed it.
I never saw such a look of fury — not anger of any ordinary
kind — at any theoretical fighting point. No. It was
fury, ten-thousand-volt fury, incandescent — hideous to
look at. You know, I had the feeling that such a thing
inside a man must burn out a fuse. Those things do
happen, of course. It had him. I suppose that's why
he just stood there, glaring, with his lips in a tight line,
and his eyes with that crazy, lost look.
"Well, the girl came over precisely at the moment
when I thought he was going to make the dive, and
against all possible interference — that was a funny thing,
by the way, that the fellow's look seemed to burn a hole
through. The crowd there actually parted for it as if it
were scorching a path over which he was going to leap.
DAWN 9
"The girl stood squarely in front of him, precisely
where no one else dared to stand, evidently — I don't
count the lieutenant, who was six or eight feet away,
hovering beside his chair. I didn't hear what she said.
I don't believe anyone heard what she said but the man
himself, and I saw his lips move, savagely, as if he were
saying, 'Go and sit down.' Wliatever he told her to do
she didn't do. She made a quick gesture — I call it a
gesture because — well, it's against all reason that it
should have been a blow. Anyway, the important thing
is that he went down."
"She knocked him down.''" cried Hebb, incredulously.
"I said that he went down. Observe . . ."
It was here that Rankin elaborated the hypnotism
theory to explain those moments elapsing while they
stood face to face.
"Rot!" voted Hebb, as to the hypnotism theory.
"Evidently she simply knocked him down. And a
damned good trick I'd call it. Very neat and conclusive.
Saved a lot of trouble. But why did she edge in? Tell
me that. WTiy — "
"If you had seen what I saw," pursued Rankin, "if
you had seen that fellow's face, you would have under-
stood that something should be done at once. She did
it. No man could have done it. That fellow would have
exploded before any man could have made a stroke. He
would have borne him down. But the sight of her walk-
ing straight for him must have held him where nothing
else would — hypnotized him, as I say, as any crazy,
unaccountable thing would. If she had rushed in a
feminine way — well, if there had been any of the regular
hysterical distress, any ' Gentlemen-f or-my-sake ! ' stuff,
he would have brushed her aside. That's perfectly clear.
But that look of hers — it must have been to him like one
of those transfixing surprises they use to check the insane.
Something like that."
Hebb rapped the table. "The new world! It is
10 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
symbolical. We shall never be able to explain anything
again. All reason and order and social coherence have
been swept away. We are writhing in a lot of wreckage.
The upheaval begun by the war will be ended by revo-
lutionists, sanctimonious and otherwise. The remnants
of humanity, bled white by the reformers, will crawl
about — "
Suddenly Rankin ejaculated, "They've gone!"
Ingle, who seemed to know at once what Rankin
meant, craned to search the region of the table where
the three young women had been sitting, and made a
gesture of despair. "A rotten shame!"
It was, indeed, quite true that the much-discussed
young woman and her two companions had disappeared.
Hebb's look might have passed for a contemptuous
concealment of baffled curiosity.
"They had me thinking," said Ingle, "of a sort of
modern feminine Three Guardsmen. And Miss D'Artag-
nan — well, she must be interesting."
"My friend," said Rankin, "all women are interesting
to a man who has had a few drinks. That is what has
frustrated so much analysis. Henceforth there will be
no drinks, and analysis will be more lucid. Henceforth,
also, few women will be interesting."
Ill
In telling this story I feel strongly called by the thing
that happened later that night to Ann Forrest. But I
cannot ignore my own relation to the whole matter. And
if, after leaving Vecellio's, I had not gone with the others
to Andy Crown's, this story might never have been
wTitten. Or it would have been a very different story.
It is true, too, that the incident at Crown's was in its
little way extraordinary, at least in its effect upon me.
Who shall say that it was not momentous to a youngster
like Jimmy Ingle, for example, or Aaron Karlov?
DAWN 11
The street picture of that night in which our quartet
sauntered toward old Crown's, Ungers as having a sig-
nificance of an ironic sort. It was impossible not to sense
a coloration imparted by the grotesque assumption that
it was to be historic. If the prevailing mental muddle
were actually reflected, one might have looked for some-
thing murky, with blatant markings. In fact, the pro-
jection was of a reduced, a kind of sheepish, glitter.
There were street demonstrations. The theory that a
sarcastic variation on Armistice Night would be a happy
idea found supporters, but the perfunctory noises were
hollow and subsided mournfully. The silences took the
accent. So that the streets failed, for the most part, to
verify the prophecy that drunkenness, since it might hope
for a final condoneraent, would wallow in the depths.
After all, alcohol was celebrating a defeat. Angry fes-
tivities must lack much. A lurching figure that emitted,
hoarsely and soddenly, the words, "Damn prohibition!"
spoke to a leaden and unanswering night. Those who
were agreed were agreed. It seemed to be too late for
protest and too early for rejoicing.
I was quite sure of one thing — that incident at Vecel-
lio's lingered in the heads of the group, though, of a sud-
den, talk about it had ceased. Those three girls were
somewhere else; perhaps in some street near by, discuss-
ing the affair frantically, one might fancy. At the time
I had the feeling that they could talk at a great advan-
tage, for they had the chief actor with them. Yet they
had their mystery too. There was the man. Unless
they knew him, as I figured the matter, the man would
be profoundly obscure, as profoundly obscure as he was
to us. His way of taking himself off had been at once
simple and dramatic. There was, of course, nothing else
for him to do. But it was interesting to see an inevitable
thing done in its elemental terms. That zigzag had
been enforced by the tables. Practically he had walked
straight out. . . .
12 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
It was Rankin who suggested dropping in to see old
Crown, perhaps because Crown's place was not so far
away; or it may have been because this was assumed to
be, in a fantastic sense, an epoch-marking hour, and
Crown would have an angle.
Andy Crown's is in a basement. You go down three
steps, and a bell twitters when you open the door. Be-
yond the dingy electrical shop you go up three steps again
to that strange room beyond, in which you are likely to
discover that Crown has not turned his head from the
table at the far side among the sagging bookshelves.
Nevertheless, the bit of mirror in a strategic position
leaves no doubt that your identity has been wirelessed
to the master of the shop.
It was characteristic of Rankin that his first words
should be casual and apropos of nothing at all, unless
that twitter excused him.
"Crown," he said as we trooped in, "it just occurs to
me to ask whether you are responsible for any of these
damned shivering bells that keep people awake in this
city? There is a vague tradition of their having been
invented to frighten burglars, but I defy you to walk
home at three o'clock in the morning and not hear one
burbling fiendishly somewhere in every street you may
traverse. One at my corner kept it up the other night
for four hours. It's droll to think how this must amuse
burglars. If I were a burglar I'd start a good imitation
going wherever I was at work. Evidently it would
keep every responsible person away until I got through.
Somehow I don't think that anything could make me
hate you. But if you had devised any of these aural
parallels to poison gas . . ."
Andy Crown paid not the slightest attention to this
harangue. When the old electrician did turn about and
push up his spectacles it was to review us swiftly by a
movement of his eyes that did not accent the slow turn
of his head. We discovered, on our own part, that
DAWN 13
there was another person in the room — a Russian boy
I remembered seeing there before. The boy had been
reading, and looked up from under heavy black eyebrows
in obvious annoyance.
Crown did not ask anyone to be seated. Neither
was it possible to guess that we were unwelcome. We
were accepted as a phenomenon whose qualities were to
be awaited.
The man himself I had thought to be an extraordinary
physical oddity when I first saw him a good many years
before, at the time when he used to make soap-box
speeches. His shoulders seemed to droop, yet they were
uncommonly powerful. And his arms were too long,
ending in big, hairy hands whose fingers you were likely
to remark. I remarked them on this night, and how,
while he talked, at one point, three of these fingers,
without evident concentration, snapped a thick pencil in
half. It was not until you saw him standing that you
noticed the absurd shortness of his legs. If you dis-
liked Andy Crown you might have a moment in which
you would permit the image of an ape to reinforce you.
But to do this you would have to forget the size and
splendor of his head. I used to think his eyes were like
those I had seen in pictures of John Richard Green, the
historian, and this is to speak handsomely of them. There
is no antecedent I can imagine to his bristling red and
gray hair. Maybe Cicero had a forehead like his.
Some sculptor thought so. His steel-rimmed spectacles,
when he pushes them up, give him the effect of a spiritual
aviator just after a flight.
"Andy," said Hebb while we pursued the matter of
finding ways to sit down — there was an old green sofa, very-
lumpy, that held three — and placed hats in various unre-
ceptive situations, "you don't seem to be celebrating."
"We've come from a wake," said Ingle.
Crown was still silent, though he seemed to go so
far as to be mildly puzzled. I had a notion at the time
14 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
that he was waiting for Rankin, who was just then
handling an extremely dusty volume he had plucked
out of one of the shelves. The Russian boy had closed
his book and sat with a blank face.
"The fact is," said Rankin, as if he had found it in the
book, " that these people have come here to sulk. Especial-
ly Hebb. He couldn't feel worse if he were a bartender."
"I see," said Crown, finally. "It is June thirty."
Rankin added in a solemn voice, "The end of the
Old Order."
Hebb grunted over a ritual with his pipe. "The
funeral of Liberty."
"The clipped life begins Joyously to-morrow," said
Ingle tilting his chair.
Crown's bristles twitched. "You are all very — how
do they say it? — oracular."
"Our intention," said Rankin, "is to appear cha-
grined. I fancy there is a general hope that you will
respond in some appropriate way."
"I'm not interested," said Crown. "I took my
alcohol early — when everybody took it. In late years
I've been too busy."
"You put it shamelessly," declared Hebb. "Are you
interested in nothing that doesn't touch you? Why — "
"When one of my men gets drunk I'm very much
interested," returned Crown, quietly. "I was interested
last Fourth of July when a delirious brute over on Seventh
avenue struck me with a crucifix — a large crucifix."
His hand went mechanically to a spot in the arch of
his skull. "I was drunk myself once. Nobody ever
was drunker than I was. It was a terrible thing. Like
an earthquake, a typhoon, and a break in a thousand-
ton fly wheel at the same time. I didn't seem to know
how to take it. . . . What I meant was — "
"Andy," interjected Rankin, "we understand you
perfectly. You were speaking of your thirst interest.
Now, all of these gentlemen, well known to you as
DAWN 15
highly reputable," and he made an inclusive gesture,
"have a thirst interest, and you are in danger of letting
it appear to them that their interest does not appeal
to you at all, which is shocking and incredible."
"As I get older," observed Crown, pinching his chin,
"other people's appetites affect me less and less — I
mean in the way of letting them get at me." He
smiled faintly. "Of course I wouldn't say that I
couldn't be sorry for them."
"We are greatly relieved," said Rankin. "Just now
a little sorrow is all we want. We're a new lot of con-
scientious objectors, and very sensitive."
Hebb put out his pipe hand, as if missing a table to
attain emphasis. "I want to ask you, Andy, as a man
who knows the proletarians ..."
It was in this way that the discussion had its start.
The discussion was about as large as that modest room
could hold. I afterward recalled the Russian boy, the
book on his knees, his long, bruised hands holding it
squarely, his inky eyes leaping from one face to another,
halting most intently at the face of Andy Crown. It
was strange to see his face awaken by degrees until it
seemed like the surface of an exquisitely sensitive
instrument on which those strident expressions of opinion
were rasping. There was a moment in the midst of
it when I thought he was going to fling himself into the
fray, and when I awaited the result of the quite evident
impulse with a thrilled curiosity. In fact, this was the
beginning of my interest in young Karlov. I know now
something of what he felt on that night, and I am in a
position more freely to admire the control that kept
him quiet almost to the end.
IV
The discussion itself there is no need to set down.
Doubtless a hundred thousand discussions precisely like
16 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
it were going on at the same moment. This may have
made it significant, but did not make it the more
profitable.
Crown went through several storms, though it is
probable that he started out to refuse challenge. The
trouble was that Rankin had tricks for getting him into
the open.
The outstanding thing was Crown's summing up,
which he prefaced — if you can preface a summing up —
by certain caustic thrusts at Rankin, who is one of
those pugilists of expression with whom it is futile to
be tender. Not that Rankin took position against
Crown on the question of socialism, which so soon came
to be a buffeting point. He was ready with big con-
cessions. If we took our cue from "nature" our com-
petitive system was quite all right. Beautifully so. But
what a damnable idea taking our cue from "nature"
was! What did man climb out of "nature" for? And
so forth — chiefly as a slap at Hebb.
"You know," Rankin was saying, "all this started
because we went out to break bread and any intrud-
ing commandment in acknowledgment of a crisis. We
went to a place without temperament — advisedly, by
choice, because we knew that any really temperamental
place would be as gloomy to-night as a respectable
French ball. We were hampered, willingly, by Hebb,
who is chronically low-spirited, as you know. Hebb is
not the person of whom it was said that he is the only
man east of the Mississippi who can strut sitting down.
But the description fits him like a new overshoe. Well,
we had Hebb along to stiffen the party, and remember-
ing that while it has been one hundred and twenty-
five years since this country had a whisky insurrection — "
"Insurrection!" Crown rasped out the word, then
laughed unpleasantly. "You're comic. We're losing
the plain spunk to have insurrections."
"Loud applause!" shouted Hebb.
DAWN 17
"Yes!" Crown nodded his head with a sarcastic
smile. "Fire eaters! All the really violent talk is by
the respectable sentimentalists. All the really violent
conduct is monopolized by the champions of law. As
for a fury of conviction. . . . Good God! If there was
such a thing — a downright, smashing sense of justice
that was willing to get its head broken — "
"Do you want a whisky insurrection now?" de-
manded Hebb.
"You will have it," said Crown — "with words. No.
I'm not interested in whisky. It doesn't matter that
this happens to be Prohibition. Any old issue would
show the same ghastly inertia everywhere — the inertia
that reaches a vigorous gesture only through a fit of
hysterics — that has to be doped to fight and calls the
eflfect patriotism."
There were several seconds of silence in which I
meditated reminding Crown that he was rather good at
phrases himself. I remember, too, being closely con-
scious of the boy Karlov and his illumined face.
Meanwhile Crown, this man who was not like the
rest of US', this man who lived by day with hard things,
and by night with books and dreams, had managed to
hold us. He could talk this way. Sometimes he
sounded like a book. You get a glimpse of such men
in the corners of public libraries. They flame up in
civic forums. They split the crust of formalism at
meetings of investigation. They ask startling questions
of the smugness that has finished things. They often
annoy because they are so hard to label. They soil
their hands, but they also think and talk, which is
perplexing. A professor in a great university once sought
to mark a type by the title. The Forgotten Man. When
the forgotten become audible there is an inevitable
perplexity.
Of a sudden Crown burst forth again.
"When I hear talk like this — when I hear myself
18 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
talk — I know that we're like a lot of rats scurrying
around under a crushed house. We don't realize what
has happened. We sit reading denatured print, or go
around . . . celebrating."
Rankin was about to break through.
"Oh, I know you! Word jugglers. Socialism, Bolshe-
vism, anarchism, democracy — all words. You don't feel
the quivering flesh underneath. You fix things with a
new word. Think of how long men lived on the earth
fighting one another, breaking one another, eating one
another without understanding that blood ran through
their veins. You'll remember how they treated the first
man who said blood did run through veins. . . . Well,
humanity is now — at this minute, while we sit here yap-
ping — as ignorant of its humanity body as men in those
days were of their individual bodies."
We were silent — even Rankin was silent — simply be-
cause we saw that Crown was going through to the end.
We saw it in his face, and in the tenseness of his strange
body.
Crown reached out and produced from some place
near him a battered Bible.
"You've read your Revelations. Perhaps you've had
revelations of your own. Anyway, you have seen the
Plagues, whether you read of them in the book or not.
You have seen the nations in the muck of the big horror.
You have seen Battle as a great sore. You have seen the
blood of men dye the waters. You have seen men
scorched by fire. You have seen the way cleared for
that 'great day of God Almighty,' that Armageddon for
a sniveling world. No trifling matter of a few smashed
villages, a few singed landscapes. It was bigger, the
thing that was to come — bigger than all the bigness of
the physical crash. It was a spiritual crash that was
coming — a whopping soul-calamity that the drunken
world had been getting itself in for. 'And the seventh
angel poured out his vial into the air.' . . . Then the mess!
DAWN 19
'There were voices' — what a babel! — 'and thunders and
lightnings,' yes, and 'the cities of the nations fell.' . . .
God made a thorough job of it, a particularly thorough
job. There was to be no doubt of his disgust with things
... of the need to begin over, somehow. Why, 'the
mountains were not to be found.' Things were mag-
nificently banged about, you see, until there could be
no doubt at all that beginning over was imperative.
'And there came a great voice out of the temple of
heaven, from the throne, saying. It is done.'
"This is what has happened. We now have the
Seventh Plague of confusion. It is done. You will find
people who don't know it, who will crawl out of their
holes in the ground and simply wonder. Staring people,
with their mouths open. The kind of people who, when
there is a revolution, understand that there has been
some sort of a scrap on the next street. If there is the
mind of a world and the body of a world I suppose most
p)eople belong to the body. They show what the doctors
call reflexes. They feel. They cry out. But their
thinking is so rudimentary that brute shrewdness puts
them to shame. Not merely under-dog people. Oh no !
All sorts of people with ossified brain filaments. Some
of them are in stock exchanges. Some of them are in
pulpits. You find them every^^vhere. They don't 'get'
God. They won't see. Their wireless won't work.
There are no revelations for them. They love ruts — like
an old wheel. You can knock their bodies down, but
you can't get at their souls.
"There are others who are not blind if you can kindle
the flame of fear. They are busy enough now, scurrying
in a frightened eagerness to build another make-believe
barrier against any other possible Armageddon — fawning
before the noble laboring man . . . women, too. Women
who built up a system of servant slavery, who elegantly
stifled the lives of other women . . . without a thought of
what they were doing. Mostly without a thought, I
20 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
should say. But it was damnable just the same. And
now, when they find that they have fastened on the
blessed ministrations of the home an evil mark so ghastly
that girls prefer the frightfulest factory labor or the vilest
sweat shops to these ministrations, they are aghast at
the completeness of their work. . . . Positively dum-
founded. And they're cringingly eager, not so much to
make amends as to lure the victims back again by some
trick, to plaster money over the wounds, to do anything
but recognize that the whole infamous system, still
standing like a galvanized corpse, has been done for.
"I tell you the old order is dead. It will go on twitch-
ing. You can believe that. The cadaver will stare . . .
like something that doesn't know it's dead. There are
people who will stand around it arguing that it isn't
dead . . . that we can go right on. ..."
"You mean," muttered Ingle, "that the war simply
spilled the beans."
It was here that young Karlov astonished me by
becoming audible.
He had been staring at Crown as if listening to a stu-
pendous messianic recital. In the moment of pause his
lips parted with a sort of quiver.
"You haven't said it, Andy, but it's all plain. . . ."
Crown peered at him savagely.
"All plain," pursued Karlov, with an effect of defiant
steadiness. "The seventh angel is red."
Crown tightened his scowl.
"Wrong," he said. "The seventh angel is white —
big, and awfully white. But it may be . . ." He seemed
actually to be weighing the matter. "It may be that
the tincture in the vial from which the seventh angel
poured was red."
At this point the door bell gave its little, nervous shiver,
and there was the sound of a quick step coming through
the shop.
Crown was the only one of us who would be in range
DAWN 21
of the door to a person approaching from the street
entrance, until that person came quite to the opening of
the room. Before the newcomer could see us and we
could see him, it was too late for his retreat. He was,
it is true, quite taken aback. And I fancied he had been
doing a bit of walking since he made that zigzag way out
of Vecellio's,
That recognition of Wayne Halland as the central
figure in the incident at Vecellio's came to us variously.
Life chucks such answers into your lap, especially in a
city, so that I suppose that entrance was properly not
dramatic at all. But it was surprising, and I felt that it
had a kind of awkwardness.
Rankin may have felt this awkwardness, but he
appeared merely to be staring his amused astonishment.
Hebb fidgeted, and Jimmy Ingle acted as if he were
personally responsible for the embarrassing pause. I
could see in his nervous lips that he thought some one
should enlighten Halland as to the truth.
The room was so small and crowded that one of those
all-around introductions became imperative.
"My nephew, Halland," said Andy Crown. "Just
back into human clothes." He named the group, in-
cluding Karlov, who peered intently at Halland's
bronzed face.
"I saw you at Vecellio's,*' came quickly from Jimmy
Ingle.
"I know," said Halland, who was then finding a place
for his hat. When he turned about his eyes went to
Rankin. It was Rankin he remembered as a figure in
the restaurant scene.
Under the circumstances Rankin's remark need not
have been taken as a matter of sheer impudence. He
may have had a theory of an alleviating lightness.
"You left us rather suddenly," he said.
22 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"About the only thing to do, wasn't it?" demanded
Halland, that strong upper Hp of his pretty well down,
as if denying a smile.
"What else could a man do?" echoed Ingle.
Ranking nodded as if to admit that there wasn't
anything else a man could do, yet as if this did not cover
the whole case.
"You see," said Halland, turning to his uncle, "I
made a fool of myself in that restaurant . . . and a
girl. . . ." At this he swung about to face the others,
with a grin that was, if not wholly honest, at least with-
out discernible sign of caution. "What did she do?"
Rankin made himself spokesman. "We haven't
been able to agree about that."
"Agree?" Ingle gave vent to a contemptuous
gesture. "Agree? AVhy, Rankin was the only one who
saw — "
"I saw what I saw," said Rankin, "and I assume,'*
he added, with his incorrigible audacity, "that the de-
tails are unimportant."
"I don't know what you mean by that," returned
Halland. "Anyway, it was here," and he brought the
palm of his hand under his chin. "Something like that.
Very lightly, but just right, somehow. It must have
been just right. Perfectly ladylike. But it did the
trick. Lost my balance. Of course there's always some
damn thing that catches a man's heel when he loses his
balance. And there you are."
Andy Crown, with his scowling intentness, extended
the hand that held the broken pencil. "Do you think
you are telling me something? WTiat was all this?
You didn't have an encounter with a girl . . . ? "
Halland laughed again, perhaps with an uneasy
inflection. "No. Nothing like that. I guess you
would say that the girl — but how did you put it?"
He threw a glance at Rankin. "The details are
unimportant.'*
DAWN 23
This might have passed for Halland's way of closing
the door on the matter. A set look came into his chin.
But he was not through with his uncle.
"Celebrating!" muttered Crown.
There was something contemptuous in Crown's way
of saying this, something that made me wish to get away.
Ingle and I arose at the same moment.
"Don't let me — " began Ingle. It was as if he
deprecated the dissolution of the party. Nevertheless,
we all seemed to take for granted the movement toward
departure which seconded the suggestion.
I saw that Karlov watched us file out. Under the
blankness of his face there was, I know, a profound
curiosity. He has told me how he wondered why we
were electing not to hear more as to something that
certainly interested us uncommonly. American men,
he thought, were very difficult to read. They had
funny silences. This made it hard to get at them some-
times. At other times they talked very much and very
foolishly.
Of course I did not suspect at the moment that
strange faculty of Karlov — how he could hold up, as
with a piece of broken mirror, an image of something
he had seen, leaving other things completely obscure.
I found a freakish beauty in his mind. The discovery
of his innocent astuteness, a penetrating simplicity that
was mostly, perhaps, wide-eyed honesty, with an eager
caution behind it, was a later matter. His way of
describing an incident or a feeling had, for me, at least,
a singularly illuminative power quite out of proportion
to anything I could grasp or name. So that in the
small matter of that passage after we had gone, as in
more important subsequent incidents, I might actually
find it easy to believe that I myself was the witness.
All this with no profusion of words ; in fact, I have known
him to go dumb in the midst of a recital without seem-
ing to break the continuity of his communication. His
24 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
eyes, and that slanting upper lip of his, went mutely
forward with the business.
I can seem to see Karlov, when we had quite gone,
turning to look at Halland, who had lighted a cigarette.
He was a soldierish fellow, Karlov thought, cropped
and clean-looking. His hair was cut very short at
the back and over his ears, as the fashion was. His
hair at the top was combed straight back. There was
a way about the corners of his mouth that made Karlov
wary. Very likely he was all right. He was the old
man's nephew. All the same, he was of a different style,
somehow. He wasn't a workingman. You could see
that. Look at his hands.
This was one that had been to the war. A lieutenant
or something, he had heard the old man say. The sort
that ordered other men to do things. Because he was
the sort that only ordered other men to do things he
had to be called "sir." That was at the war. Now
you didn't have to say "sir." Now he was only the
old man's nephew. Now he had to do something
himself.
Karlov saw that Halland did not look at him. Evi-
dently Halland did not count him at all. It was as if
Karlov had not been there, which, in a way, was rather
insulting.
Halland only studied his cigarette. And then sud-
denly looked up at old Crown. It was odd, wasn't
it, he said, that he should run into the only man the war
really made him hate?
"I thought it was a girl," said Crown.
Halland laughed, with his eyes back to the cigarette.
The girl didn't belong — just butted in. "You see" —
Halland drew his lips into an unpleasant composite of
grin and scowl — "you see, I was thinking of obliterating
that fellow."
"You'd hardly call it thinking, would you.?" de-
manded Crown.
DA^^'N 25
"I think you would," nodded Halland. "I had gone
over it before. It really looked like one of those ad-
visable things. One of those things that ought to be
finished."
"Who is he?"
"Nobody in particular. The son of some one prom-
inent in the sausage line. A blackguard — a dancing
blackguard. His name in Rickerd."
Crown still looked stony. In the matter of hating,
he made it out, Halland was supposed to concentrate
on the enemy.
Halland flung down the last of his cigarette and put
his heel on it. "Of course, this whole fool thing — "
"I know," said Crown. "Looks idiotic now that it's
over."
"Damn it!" Halland jerked himself out of the old
chair, strode across the room and back again. " Wouldn't
you . . . ? Yes, you would. Thinking is the very thing
that would get you do\\Ti into it. If a fellow like that
cast a slur on a girl — in a party where it stcod out — "
"Was this to-night?" asked Crown, intently.
"No, no! Over there. One night in Belgium. I
began it then ..."
"Began what?"
"Punishing him. And to-night he let me hear him
say something — again, because he knew I would hear it."
"I see," said Crowm, as a man says it who doesn't
see. Presently he added: "Being a hand of God is
sometimes quite a job."
"Yes — I understand you," returned Halland, with
a look that deepened Karlov's curiosity. " I'm a fool —
a hot-headed fool. Of course — "
Crown sat up straight, his hands gripping the wabbly
arms of his chair. "Are you through with it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Is it out of your system? I don't mean the story.
I don't understand that at all. I mean the hate part.
3
26 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
If not, there ought to be some way. . . . You can't go
on — and get anywhere — "
"Forget it, uncle," said Halland calmly. "Forget it."
"Take your own advice," said Crown.
"Right," said Halland, "To-night was a chance in a
million — seeing him again. . . . But I'll begin forgetting —
when I've told you one thing more. And I didn't
come here to tell you anything of the kind, naturally.
This fellow Rickerd — I was dragged in with that slur
of his, that thing he said on the other side, in a way a
man doesn't like to be dragged in. I'm telling you that
— well, so that you'll get a little of my slant on it, so
that I won't seem quite so — so sentimental."
"I wasn't thinking much about it," declared Crown,
slowly. "Except that it's a pity — the things men get
excited about. When I think of the world at this
minute — "
Halland made a sweeping gesture of impatience.
"Yes. I know. You think we're all in for some sort
of a mess and that we should be awfully solemn about it.
Damn it, I'm sick of solemn things. And you'll tell
me again that I'm young and all that. But the way
I see it, this is the same little old world, full of men
and women — men and women. And no matter what
happens, no matter how many crazy discussions come
up, no matter how many revolutions are tried, it '11 be
'ladies first' to the end of the game."
Crown peered up at his nephew with an incredulous
frown. "What are you saying.? What's in your mind
when you make a speech like that.'' Women! Are
there no other subjects of importance? Are young men
incapable of any other kind of thinking?"
"Well," replied Halland, "a bunch of us have been
giving a year or two's attention to a subject that wasn't
women."
"Evidently your attention wasn't altogether un-
divided," and Crown twisted in his chair.
DAWN 27
Karlov looked from one face to the other. He heard
Halland laugh, and his fear that something very awkward
might happen was not greatly abated by the sound of it.
"Don't forget, uncle," Halland was saying, "that
women were mixed up with the war in a good many
ways. Some very fine women. Some stupid ones, too.
On the fringe of it were a lot that are not talked about
much. If you had been handed the work of O.K.ing
letters for back home you would understand that even in
war men don't stop thinking about women. There's no
chance they ever will — not while they're young enough."
"Yes," said Crown. "I'm an old man."
"What I mean is, that while you're arranging the
world it's better not to leave them out."
"I'm not arranging the world!" growled the uncle.
"The foolishest thing I'm doing is asking boys like you
not to leave out everything else. I'll admit that's
being foolish.
"Don't worry about me," said Halland, comfortably.
"I'm sales manager. Beginning to-morrow."
Karlov decided that half of Halland was like his
uncle. If there had been a row somewhere he was sure
that it was the uncle half that had been responsible.
He decided this in no disrespect. He was without
formulas. He seemed to think with his eyes, which
told him things that often made him wonder. His
eyes had said to him that Crown was not proud that
his sister's son had been a soldier. To be sure, he knew
how Crown hated war. Everybody knew that. But
he might have been proud just the same. Some people
were contradictory like that. This matter of relation-
ship frequently rose up before Karlov as quite astound-
ing. He had been without relatives for so long that
he had lost the faculty for understanding relationship
irritations, w^hich from the outside looked so queer at
times. Evidently there was something about being
related that made people touchy. The marriage rela-
28 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
tion he had fixed as the supreme difficulty. There was
a man in his house over near Second Avenue who kicked
his wife a good deal. He was a fine man, too. Very-
likely it was best not to marry. . . .
When Halland had gone, and this had the after effect
of having happened suddenly, Karlov sat watching
Crown until the electrician gave a curt turn to say,
"You'd better go home."
Karlov arose, closed the book and placed it in one
of the shelves. Andy was his boss by day. While it
was true that he was not his boss by night, unless they
were working overtime, this was his place. And he was
rather an old man — over fifty, anyway. Besides, the
evening was spoiled. Better to go when he said go.
At the door Karlov paused.
"I wanted to ask you," he said, "was the Red Angel
"A man? What a crazy question."
"I — " Karlov stammered, but I am sure his eyes
were steady.
"Suppose he was," growled Crown, "what then?"
"You know ..." I can see Karlov recede, leaving
his eyes behind him. "The rabbi never told me that
story."
"The rabbi . . . ? Yes. The man with the nine
children. ... He couldn't tell you all the stories. Be-
sides, this was no story of his. He had only half the
truth."
"But not lies, do you think?"
"I didn't say lies," retorted Crown. "And I'm not
going to wrangle with you, either."
Karlov turned away. Neither of them said good
night.
VI
If I had met those three young women after they left
the restaurant that night I am sure that I should first
DAW^ 29
have noticed Irma Kane. But, given a full glance, I
should have had the longest memory of Ann Forrest.
In street range Evelyn Dower was less noticeable than
either of the others, except for the matter of the kliaki,
which she still wore. She was, in fact, wearing it for
the last time. However, the looks of Evelvn Dower
had no bearing at that moment, whereas it is reasonable
to suppose that the appearance of her companions
belonged to the issue — especially, of course, the ap-
pearance of Ann Forrest.
It was her blond head that marked Irma Kane, and
that way she had of looking up, even when she faced
a person no taller than herself. Her glance was not
arch or conscious. When I first spoke with her at any
length she was, indeed, in no mood for artifice. In
general, you might have agreed that she had a quiet
naturalness — an entirely female naturalness, I should
say. I remember meeting an Armenian refugee, a
girl who had undergone the most frightful experience,
but who had managed to retain that same look; that
smooth, rather wistful, subject-to-circumstances look.
Her smile had the effect of having been waiting very
near at hand, and when it withdrew there was likely
to be a left-over line that was whimsical or pathetic, as
you happened to get it.
Ann Forrest was sharply different. It seemed to me
at first that she was utterly uncompromising, which
made it easy to see in her straight, frank challenge a
quality that was more than resolution. It would be
easy to say that she had a very American look, which
should mean something, and doubtless does, but which
leaves the matter rather vague, after all. It happens
that I am fond of her particular shade of light-brown
hair, and of the particular line her eyebrows chose to
follow. K her blue-gray eyes were ever twice the same
in color and effect I have not chanced to be a witness.
The round strength of her chin naturally brought up
30 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
that question of positiveness, though a real physi-
ognomist would, in all likelihood, remind me to look
elsewhere — at her lips, for example. These I noticed
chiefly for a charming trait of parting slightly just be-
fore she spoke. I am sure that a lover would have
given disproportionate importance to a faint dimple that
appeared when she smiled, and in a place, high in the
cheek, where dimples do not commonly pause, and
where they require a special classification, not being
sweet dimples in the ordinary sense. Maybe that
qualifying touch might be taken as suggestive of certain
vagaries in Ann Forrest. Yet Doctor Barring once
solemnly undertook to prove to me that a dimple is
actually an integumental tenacity. This may in-
dicate that the unlearned should never talk about
dimples, or that, if one wishes to keep the dimples of
life, he should never be learned.
It is to be gathered that Evelyn Dower said least at
the moment when the trio had slipped into the summer
street, with the twilight still to reach its last phase.
She could carry a red rage under that creamy complexion
of hers. On this occasion she kept it there. Anything
said had the hazard of pointing straight to Ann Forrest.
She had made the mess. And one did not needlessly
annoy Ann Forrest.
Irma Kane was flushed, breathless, and profuse in
unfinished sentences.
"Did you ever . . .?"
I am sure she said this many times, for it was part of
the narrative when she looked up at me and strove so
hard to convey to me some sense of an interval that was
of so much less significance than that which preceded
and that which followed it. To be sure, Ann's mind
seems to have been a blank for that time — the time of
the odd reaction. Yet she must still have kept up that
air of being quite cool.
Evelyn Dower knew that she was not so completely
DAWN 31
collected as the signals pretended. Irma evidently
acquired from these signs an emphasis for her torrential
comments.
"Ann! How in the world . . . ?"
"You know," said Ann at last, "it was rather an
adventure, wasn't it?"
"And you thought," said Evelyn bitterly, "that you
weren't impulsive."
"I suppose it was an impulse," Ann returned. "You
must admit it had to be quick."
The curious thing, according to Irma, was that Ann
was so deliberate. "You marched right over ... !"
"With my heart thumping."
"I don't believe it," said Irma.
"Wondering just how I'd do it."
"I didn't notice any wondering," Irma added. "I
guess he wondered."
It appears that they had reached the solemn old
brownstone house of Evelyn Dower when Ann, her eyes
staring through the dusk into distant spaces, asked
Irma, "Do you remember the big sergeant — Brockway.'' "
Irma remembered him vividly.
"After the gas," said Ann. "The night they backed
the ambulance through that door and we were all
slipping around in French mud. He had torn up most
of the bed. Then he looked at me. . . . Well, he looked
exactly like that fellow to-night. ... as if four huskies
might hold him if they sweated. And I did something
. . . without thinking. I said No! No! . . . with head
and hands at the same time. And his head clicked
back. It wasn't reasonable. I shouldn't have been able
to do it. But it happened. He took a deep breath,
and the glare faded out of him. . . .
"To-night I got a flash of Brockway when I saw this
other face. I forgot how many were there. Something
inside of me said. You can stop this — somebody must
stop it, and stop it now."
32 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Did you see the other . . . ?
"I didn't see anything but that crazy look — like
Brockway's. I went straight over to say, No! ... I
guess he tripped over something."
vn
Ann wanted to walk after parting with Evelyn
Dower.
There were many things to talk about without regard
to the incident to which Irma contrived to bring them
back again and again. There was Irma's plan for the
future, still so hazy; and the matter of the letter from
Ann's mother in Denver, and of how long Ann should
remain in New York.
France had begun to seem vastly distant, and the
war to be dimming, sheepishly, like tired anger, with
ugly streakings over all of its romance. The afterglow
had a dirty color. The city appeared to be forgetting
the war as soon as it could. The latest homecoming
men and women were shedding their khaki gladly, if
not contemptuously. Glory and chagrin jostled each
other. It was as if the world had been fooled once
more.
War symbols began to look tawdry, like the raw side
of a stage spectacle seen by daylight. Ann, with a sort
of chill, wondered whether the blind and crippled would
soon become simply a private grief. There was some-
thing in the brushing aside of the war, the crumpling
of the flags, the indifference to uniforms, the cynical
coldness toward those lofty phrases of the fighting time,
that had the effect of repudiation. To those who had
been close, who had put their hands into the real thing,
it was as if the sustaining vision might have been a
grotesque delusion, a huge fake devised by fear and
hysteria.
Ann told herself (she had a breezily impressive way
DAW^ 33
of making this pkin) that she would not permit her
memories to be poisoned. She believed that she had
gone to France with very little of the emotional. She
believed that she had seen the thing as it was, and not
as a promissory sacrifice on which a grateful country
was to make good. She believed that she had come
home with balanced books — that she had received her
reward, and that she had put away that part of her life
with her tawny skirt.
Nevertheless, there was an effect in the city — it would
be the same in any city — of impatience toward the past,
as when people hurry away from a sick room where
solicitude had a semblance of reality while it was being
acted, but where sympathy had imposed a rather galling
strain.
Above all, the city had the air of pretending that
nothing had happened to the world, an after-the-funeral
we've-our-own-life-to-live effect.
This contrast between the sense of what had happened
to herself and the ignoring of such a happening in the
outward signs of life, had puzzled Ann mightily, though
it had reached no stage of deep analysis. It was only a
feeling. She wondered if others would have the feeling,
and whether she ought to lose it as soon as possible;
whether she ought to ignore the sense of difference in
herself — whether, indeed, the difference was real.
In France she used to tliink that the men would be
different. It was impossible to believe that they would
not be different when the row was over. Men had told
her so. They had told her, for example, that they
would ever thereafter think differently about women,
which had occurred to her as a pretty idea. Evidently
it was desirable that men should think differently
about women. The profoundly confident way in which
men declared their belief in this certainty of change
was doubtless in itself an indication of the need
for it.
34 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
If women also thought differently about men there
should be a result somewhere. In actual numbers there
might be fewer women whose thinking would be modified.
But it might be that the opinions of women were not so
greatly in need of modification. Ann herself was not
sure. It was easier to feel differences than to see
them.
Ann did not mention these thoughts to Irma Kane.
They had been very close, these two. They had w^orked
side by side for many months. They had been drenched
by the same rain and stained by the same red. Each
knew all the outer signs of the other. But Ann had
learned that the furnace test could leave one strangely
ignorant of ingredients, and that in such a situation
personal history became as negligible as the antecedents
of an actor in a play. Ann knew that Irma had a
cousin in an artillery division; that she had a father in
Pennsylvania; that she had been a stenographer in
Philadelphia and perhaps in New York. She had been
secretary to a scientist, or to a technical expert of some
sort. Yet Irma remained rather indistinct as an Ameri-
can fact. Somehow it had not seemed necessary on the
other side that she should in this aspect be more distinct
than she was. She was quick with laughter or tears.
She was capable of unexacting devotion. She had
read little, but had a shrewd sense of the world. In
a group she had certain inexplicable reticences. With
Ann these did not show themselves except upon rare
occasions.
Just now, in the interval between the old and the
new, the war still colored their association. How
thin the ultimate tie might be Ann had never con-
sidered. Her mind was too full of confused specula-
tions and of the new oldness of the city in which she
seemed bidden to vent some of her lonesomely form-
ulated intentions.
Something tingled in her that was ambition or curi-
DAWN 35
osity, or perhaps just unorganized energy. She was
intensely ahve and alert. . . .
They passed a Uttle movie theater, arched with hghts
and httered with blatant posters. There were no re-
flections of war in the startling scenes from features
" Now Showing," Only the normal murders, and escapes,
and suggestive crises in romance. . . .
I should never have known Ann Forrest as I know her
now but for the next shifting in that kaleidoscopic
scene. It is altogether unlikely that but for my white
hair I ever should have known the whole truth about
that disturbing incident in her career, or have been
drawn into knowledge of how she set about dismissing
that too, and of the strange outgrowing complexities.
It had been difficult for me to explain precisely what
was in her mind when she stopped suddenly in that
garish avenue. She told me that she thought she had
come face to face with the young man of the restaurant.
Perhaps I looked my amazement. White hair may
suggest experience but it does not assure sagacity. To
me it seemed quite absurd that she should, by any im-
pulse whatever, have been led to add to the grotesque-
ness of that earlier adventure by any performance
in a public street. Naturally I was a trifle late in saying
so. Ann's point was that she simply wanted to say
that she was sorry. If she had said it she would have
been speaking the truth. She was sorry. She still in-
sisted that Halland (she didn't know who he was then)
had needed to be checked, but she could have wished
that it were a case more like Brockway's.
Unfortunately, the young man beside whom she
halted was not Halland. He must have had his propor-
tions and some special semblance even if you would have
said that Ann was in no state to be keen in such a matter.
But he was not Halland, and he stared at her, without
quite pausing. He must have seen her chagrin, which
would have puzzled him. She remembered the tran-
3G THE SEVENTH ANGEL
sition in his face — from a slanting contempt to a groping
astonishment.
"I beg your pardon!" Ann stammered, and turned
away. It was all a matter of a few seconds.
Meanwhile Irma Kane had walked for a distance of
several yards. It was like her, Ann thought, to detach
herself in such a manner. She had some theory or
code that expressed itself in an exaggerated fear of in-
truding. It might have been personal, or perhaps it
was simply rustic. Ann knew only that she always had
to be signaled or reached for to be introduced.
At the moment when Ann realized that Irma was to
be caught up with she was conscious of being prodded,
prodded sharply, and a voice out of the thick air of the
night said, "Come along!"
A man, yellowish and with a peculiarly ugly mustache,
mangy at the ends, was beside her. His eyelids had red
rims. His cigar was very wet beyond his lips.
"Well, what about it?" said the man.
"What do you mean?" Ann demanded. Once she
would have been frightened. She was sure that here,
at least in the first instant, she was not frightened
at all.
"Mean?" minced the man. "Ain't we the innocent
things! I don't mean nothing. Not a thing. Only
you're pinched. Must I get the wagon? Or will yer
stroll down?"
Ann never could make it very clear as to the language
finally employed in giving her to understand that she
was arrested as a street walker.
She was clearer as to her anger. This she could make
utterly vivid. According to her she was too deeply
enraged to be frightened. She looked at the creature
with a scathing pity. But he would not wither.
"You've made a mistake," said Ann
"Right along," commanded the yellow lips. "Tell it
to the judge."
DAWN 37^
She was not merely threatened. She was arrested.
She was going to the cage, Hke a drunken private. They
actually began walking downtown.
vni
This was the amazing thing to Ann — that she should
have been enabled to feel compelled without other
compulsion. She had seen men arrested. There was
always the clutch. Once she had seen handcuffs shin-
ing. . . . But now there had been nothing but that prod.
This was doubtless a tribute to feminine docility. In
particular it might be expressing the fact that the female
cannot effectively run.
This was not Ann's first thought. Her very first
thought, erecting itself out of the first rage, was of Irma
Kane. Somewhere, not far off, Irma would have been
standing, or moving slowly with a backward glance.
She would have seen both meetings. She would have
seen Ann begin to move away with the creature. . . .
No. Ann said No to herself even before her thought
had fully formed the question as to how she should call
Irma Kane and tell her what had happened. K there
had been two of them they would both be the same sort
in this man's mind. To call Irma Kane might be to
drag her into the farcical catastrophe. Ann must not
even look back.
There was the chance that Irma would hurry after
her to ask, to demand, to protest. But Irma did not do
this. Very likely she did not understand. One scarcely
would without hearing the words. It would surely
have implied a lively imagination to penetrate the
incident if it must be had simply as a bit of panto-
mime.
For this reason there was a certain lack of the spec-
tacular which a woman prisoner should, perhaps, have
been grateful for. On this account, being freed of
38 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
consciousness as to the figures that passed her, Ann
was more easily enabled to turn to herself, and to the
man; to say to herself: "I will see this thing through.
I will see what it is that may happen to any free woman
in a modern city. I will see this thing through. I will
see how a certain delicate piece of machinery in a man-
managed world contrives to pursue its functions. I will
see this thing through without irritation, and without
malice toward the System, but only to learn and perhaps
to understand. Nothing matters. It's a pity to puzzle
Irma Kane. It may really be a pity to make a fool of
this man — and of his System. But no System can be
any better than its final man, and there is nothing about
this man to suggest compunction. No System should
use such a nasty implement. Maybe most Systems go
wrong on account of final implements. This would, in
a large way, always be worth finding out, and here is a
concrete case."
Then came the man's voice again, from behind a
match with which he was relighting his cigar.
"What yer doin' over here? Where yer been cruisin'
before?"
But now Ann was pretty much Miss Forrest again.
"By the way," she said, "have you a badge or
anything?"
" 'A badge or anything!' Well, ain't you cute!
Sure." He slipped back his coat. Ann saw the glitter
of the police symbol. "Nice little piece of jewelry, ain't
it? But what's yer game, dearie? I don't get yer."
Ann felt him studying her profile while an elevated
train howled through the sky.
"Honest, I don't," came the voice out of the diminish-
ing clatter. "One of the haughty ones, eh? Like on
the Waldorf beat. Honest to God, I'm sorry for you
girls. Always bein' interfered with!"
She caught the leer from the corner of her eye. Be-
fore her, against the greenish blue of the night, she saw
DAWN 39
a clock tower. Its face was a hot ball in the crisis of
the scene.
"Say," came the voice again, and flicked sparks fell
somewhere out of a gesture with the cigar, "have yer
done anything for the Red Cross?"
This gave Ann a twinge and a sense of mystification.
"Yes," she said, "quite a good deal."
"Always askin' for money," he went on. "Never seem
to get through. Y' know, I collect for the Red Cross."
"Do you?" returned Ann, still without suspicion,
lep.
Short silence.
"I was thinkin' maybe you'd like to chip in — again."
Dawning suspicion in Ann.
"Anything in yer stockin' ?"
"No," said Ann.
"But yer know where yer can get it, maybe?"
"\\Tiat do you mean — exactly?" Ann all but halted
her stride.
The man's eyes lifted toward the clock tower. "I
don't mean nothin'," he said, "except the Red Cross.
And a person ought to be treated good who helps the
Red Cross. Don't you think so? Yer know how I
hate to pinch a nice girl — one that maybe ain't in the
game very long."
"You keep right on making mistakes, don't you?"
declared Ann, walking freely again.
"So!" said the man. "Miss Haughty! Well, we'll see."
"Beast!" remarked Ann.
The man turned to the right at the street of the clock
tower. She looked up and saw the barred windows in
the silhouette. Across the dim way was Patchen Place
into which she had once peered on a sight-seeing trip.
"Home again!" said the beast.
They mounted several steps.
I'm afraid Ann's topographical sense played her false
at certain points in her recital of that experience. Her
40 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
description of Jefferson Market prison was awry in
various particulars. But she was vividly clear as to the
frightfully barred effect of that interior entrance to the
police office. As to what happened in the police office
she is vague except as to her feelings. There were two
police officers and a desk . . . and quite simple questions.
Above all, the question, "Name.'*"
There may be two opinions as to whether Ann Forrest
should have uttered her own name, but it is quite
evident that she had not a moment's hesitation.
I remember suggesting, without weighing the words,
that if a writer or actress might use a pseudonym, she
owned the same privilege in pursuit of her adventure.
Had the suggestion been made at her elbow on that
night I am sure that Ann would have been quite as
emphatic in regarding it as a circuity.
She was Ann Forrest. Let them make the most of
it. The record must be straight.
"F-o — " began the rather bald police officer, laboring
with the pen after a deliberate perusal of Ann.
"Two r's," he was reminded.
At this there was a shuffling behind Ann, and a negro
girl with a custodian appeared at the gate through which
Ann and her ogre had just been admitted. The police-
man who was not laboring with the pen came casually
from beyond the desk, unlocked the gate, and clanged
it shut again when the new company had duly entered.
" Hello, Gus ! " remarked the custodian of the negro girl.
Ann's man emitted a moist response.
The negro girl, who was lean and little, with sickish
gray lips and a lounging indirectness of posture, stood
mostly on one foot, close beside Ann, until the writing
policeman (who made profuse use of a blotter) had
finished with an official piece of paper and had copied
(and blotted elaborately) the facts in a book.
In the end the paper was handed to Gus, who indicated
that Ann was to follow him, which she did, up a winding
DAWN 41
iron stair. At the end of the first twisted flight Ann saw
a sign, "Men's Prison." At the second they came face
to face with a woman.
"A boarder for you, IVIrs. Farrell," said Gus, who
dehvered the paper.
Ann caught a glimpse of that paper on Mrs. Farrell's
desk in the matron's httle white oflBce after Gus had
dropped into the gulf of the stairway. . . . She was able
to read a few significant words. She would always
remember that they ran like this:
"The warden and keeper of the city prison will
receive and hold the body of Ann Forrest ..." They
echoed loudly in Ann's brain while she answered questions
and waited for Mrs. Farrell to write slowly and concisely
in a book and on sheets of ruled and printed paper.
The System had extraordinarily intricate tentacles.
Meanwhile the negro girl came up and was delivered
with her document by Gus 's acquaintance, who ajjpeared
to be in a hurry to get away, possibly to join Gus.
The negro girl's name was Millicent Jackson. She
regarded Ann curiously.
"Ever arrested before.'^" asked Mrs. Farrell, glancing
at Ann.
Ann shook her head. Evidently it was not necessary
to ask certain questions of Millicent.
"Let's see, Millicent," said the matron, "are you
seventeen or eighteen.'*"
"Eighteen to-morrow,'* answered Millicent, who
seemed to know an angle from which she could catch
the clock tower through the window.
"Seventeen," wrote Mrs. Farrell.
Presently all three went up another twisting flight of
steps.
IX
A beautiful theory — that of being innocent until
proved guilty. Few things invented by System were,
42 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Ann thought, more beautiful than that. Really, it was
a noble conception of System to figure Innocence, with
System sensitively safeguarding every approach, serenely
awaiting the solemn ministrations of Justice. This
notion of Innocence as secure, of System as an alert
protector, incorrigibly devoted to the rights of the
individual — so confident, so expectant of individual
integrity as to force itself to the most solicitous self-
examination, the most indefatigable measuring of circum-
stances. Under the spell of such a theory one saw the
individual as smilingly assured, as radiantly safe, as a
precious charge in whose presence System scurried about
its protective business.
Yet somehow as an actual fact the theory seemed
to work differently. The very first effect, at least,
seemed to be of guilt challenged to prove its innocence.
For twelve hours or more, twelve hours including a
night, the presumption of guilt would have precedence,
whatever might be its way thereafter. Perhaps System
had to start with, "You're guilty!" to begin the debate.
In beginning the debate System would have an immense
advantage if it had a salaried liar. But then the In-
dividual was so likely to have illusions, or even de-
ficiencies, if, indeed, he was not also a liar, that the issue
would be joined with fairly balanced difficulties.
Of course it should be remembered that System had
to begin with accusation, or there would be nothing to
go on. This naturally complicated its protective func-
tions. Having begun with, "You're guilty!" System
must inevitably have tangled emotions at times. To
prove itself mistaken could never be a simple satis-
faction.
Being a human affair. System would, reasonably
enough, not escape occasional gratification in finding
that it was not mistaken, especially if being mistaken
had the effect of belittling System. System being so
big a thing, and the Individual so little, the comfort
DAWN 43
of System was something to be considered and even
safeguarded.
K only the individual could accuse himself, everything
would be simplified — magnificently simplified. In that
case System could pursue an absolutely unified course
in establishing individual innocence. If it still retained
a few salaried liars this need not be detrimental to System
comfort, and proving that the individual was mistaken
as to his guilt would have its justifying side.
Meanwhile, physical surroundings cast an odd light on
that theory of innocence.
"... will receive and hold the body of Ann Forrest . . ."
The body of Ann Forrest. This body was important
to the issue and was to be set aside until it could be proved
innocent. Nothing said about the mind of Ann Forrest.
Ann Forrest's soul was still free. The body was to have
a suitable cage, to make quite sure that Ann Forrest's
body would be in the same place in the morning.
At the top of the twisting flight of steps the matron
said to Ann, "On this side."
Millicent stood at the parting of the ways, as if know-
ing her destination and awaiting a formality. She seemed
to have her syncopated swagger even while she stood in
one spot.
Ann followed the matron down the right-hand corridor,
between the tall, outer windows and the row of cell
doors. . . .
The first cell was empty. So was the second. Ann
thought she saw a figure in the third cell. . . . Yes. A
girl in white, lying prone on the cot. The rims of metal on
the heels of her white shoes shone oddly through the bars.
"First-timers go on this side," said the matron.
Naturally, a first-timer being a first-timer, might be
interested in such information. There was something
sociable in the voluntary enlightenment. Also it classified
Millicent. Once Millicent would have been on the first-
timers' side.
44 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
The fifth cell, for some reason, was the cell to which
Ann was led. Its door, standing open, looked like the
frame of a great broiling iron.
"I'll be back," said the matron.
Ann stepped into the narrow place and seated herself
on the hinged cot.
"... the body of Ann Forrest."
The brown body of Millicent was being placed some-
where in the other corridor. Millicent could stare south-
ward. Ann's door looked to the north — toward the tall
bars of the windows that flanked the passage and the
heavy machinery by which sections of the windows were
tilted to let in the air and the low night hum of the city.
Everything was hard, ponderous, stodgy, like the System.
Very likely it had to be so. It would be foolish to have
a soft prison. The prison had to be strong enough for
the burliest gorilla of a man who might chance to be de-
tained therein. In the matter of Ann and Millicent this
massiveness of precaution naturally had an ironic quality.
Doubtless the hardness, the unbroken surfaces of paint
and cement, meant cleanliness also. This was an impor-
tant matter.
The cell was clean. One could look about — at the wash-
bowl with its two taps, at the folding shelf that was a
bed, at bars and floor, at a section of the tall windows
beyond that admitted light without images, at the wheels,
levers, and other machinery of adjustment — and feel that
all was prepared in the essential way. As sheer mechan-
ism it was utterly logical. One who was quite committed
to the System might reach a point of emotion in which it
would seem superbly logical — as much like heaven as like
hell.
There was the awkward thing that it nowhere sug-
gested a waiting place for Innocence. There was no
indication, at any point, of doubt as to a will or need to
hold the guest tightly. The architecture was curt, when
you came to consider it in actual detail. The enveloping
DAWN 45
hardness was, in fact, not questioning, but accusatory.
In those first minutes Ann felt an enormous pressure, Hke
a weighted shadow that momentarily grew heavier, and
her heart, which had scarcely changed its rhythm when
the nasty creature plucked at her arm, in the street, now
began a tumult in her bosom. . . . Suddenly the silence
became noisy and she bent as under a frightful heap of
stone and iron. She began to doubt herself. A silly
feeling of being an actual offender gave her a curious,
slinking dread, of something that seemed to be whisper-
ing out of the silence. . . . After all, she was guilty until
she proved her innocence. Being here was the minor
premise in the whole ghastly syllogism. How did weak
people meet such situations? How many hours of this
pressure would be needed to crush the innocent feeling
and make it like a guilty terror — something that would
act quite like guilt?
She sprang toward the doorway, under an impulse to
rush, screaming, down the corridor — to shout to some
one that this whole affair was absurd — to recant, to make
a gentlemanly apology for something that amounted to
a trick, a sort of practical joke, on the System that was
going a bit too far for the perpetrator.
Then she saw the matron round the corner of the tier,
stepping as in pursuit of household duties, and humming
a tune. The humanness of the matron dissolved the
horror. The shuffle of her shoes, and a certain homely
briskness in the swing of her arms, somehow checked
and quieted Ann. Suppose the jailer were a sinister
beast who clanked, a turnkey leering and cruel, such as
one used to read of. Millions of women, women innocent
and guilty, must have known what it was to cower
before men like that. . . . And here was Mrs. Farrell,
plump, businesslike — rather motherly, you would say —
lifting her face with almost a startled look at the spec-
tacle of her guest, motionless, in the opening of the cell.
"What's the trouble?" asked Mrs. Farrell.
46 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"I was wondering," said Ann, "whether I might have
a drink of water."
"Sure," answered Mrs. Farrell, glancing into the cell,
then turning away to find a tin cup somewhere farther
along the corridor. When she saw Ann peer at the cup,
she remarked, rather sharply: "It's clean. Everything's
clean, here. What's more" — and her eyes went to the
cot — "there's no bugs. . . . The right-hand faucet."
She watched Ann drink, studying the tall girl with a
frankly appraising stare.
"I guess you're new to this, all right."
"You seemed to take my word," said Ann.
"And their word, too," added Mrs. FarreU.
"Do they never make mistakes.'*"
"Of course," the matron admitted. "An old one gets
by as a new one once in a while. Though I generally spot
them."
"I mean," said Ann, "one that isn't one at all."
"I get you. Somebody just takin' a little fling — and
pinched at it. Well, a judge is light enough with ihemt
especially if they have a sister or something, or some-
body to show they got a job. Y' know, you . . ."
The matron's effort at classification of the person before
her drew her brows together and gave an odd slant to
her mouth.
"It was a mistake," said Ann. She was going to see
the affair through, yet an impulse to clear the mind of
the matron had the foreground for the moment.
There was, however, no sign that the matron's mind
underwent any change.
" Yes. . . . But of course they say that. They got to.
What can a girl say? Unless they're old ones. Even
then . . . y' know, they'll brazen it out . . . with their
fingers in the book."
"Their fingers ... ?"
"The prints. Identification."
"For everybody?'' Ann's own mind began spinning
DAWN 47
again. There was something about fingerprints that
seemed a Uttle too much. It would be Hke branding
. . or a scarlet letter.
"When they're convicted," added Mrs. Farrell, with
rather an official sound in the words.
"I see," said Ann, and breathed a little better.
There wouldn't be fingerprints, then, unless one saw
it all the way through.
"I always say," pursued Mrs. Farrell, "that them girls
ain't right. Something wrong," and she tapped her head.
It was as if she were speaking of the girls on the other
side of the tier, or of a class or kind not implicating
present company. Ann warmed to her for the flattery,
found herself steady enough — quite, indeed, without a
tremor — as Mrs. Farrell laid her hand on the edge of the
outstanding door. The time had come for the completed
effect.
"There's one that's sick," said Mrs. Farrell.
Evidently this implied going away, and there was the
matter of the door.
The big gridiron frame swung close. Ann watched
Mrs. Farrell as she folded the long, metal tongue that
had the keyhole. It was a small keyhole, quite such as
one might find in a wardrobe; not in the door itself, for
it became, when duly in place, a keyhole in the wall
rather than in the door. That the little key Mrs. Farrell
took from a pocket in her skirt should not be the huge
jail key of tradition was a matter of special interest.
Doubtless it was an efficient key, even if one missed the
thud of a bolt.
"Good night," said the matron, in a low voice.
"Good night!" whispered Ann. It seemed natural to
speak a little lower with the bars closed.
Retreat by the matron, who had moved but a few
steps when Ann called, softly:
"Oh, Mrs. Farrell!"
Again the matron was at the door.
48 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"I'm glad, MrsrFarrell, that it wasn't an Irishman
who arrested me ! "
"What a notion!" cried the matron, with her puzzled
look. "Have you a bit of Irish in you?"
"A bit," said Ann.
"Well, Irishmen have their job to do like the rest.
Remember that."
At this there was a bell or other sound that drew Mrs.
Farrell sharply away.
Ann's first cell thoughts, she told me, were neither of
the cell nor of herself. The question, "Do you want to
telephone.?" came back to her. This must have been
from the bald sergeant. She had said no. And she
didn't want bail, either. That matter of keeping the
record straight evidently had not occurred to her as im-
plying immediate publicity. There was, in fact, no
present need to take anyone into her confidence. Her
mother's friend, Mrs. Wallace, with whom she was then
living, she knew to be at the moment out of town.
There was only a servant to consider — Clarice, with the
awful hair, the bulging eyes, and the voice always sug-
gestive of advanced bronchitis.
Irma Kane was a nearer consideration. Although she
had resolutely refused to look back, and assured herself
that she was grateful, through every step of the way,
that Irma had not joined her, Ann nevertheless could not
dismiss a sense of something that was more than mysti-
fication. There was an effect that was not like Irma.
The separation had proceeded as Ann wished it. She
assured herself of this. Alone she felt herself to be capa-
ble of managing the situation, even if here, seated on
the cot, managing seemed somewhat remote as an idea.
There was a question as to how Irma might have behaved
under stress of this particular sort. Yet something with
an ache in it persisted.
DAWN 49
Ann had known Irma under stress. As she stretched
herself on the cot, tentatively, with a fresh sensation of
closeness in the cell ceiling, another scene came back to
her — a cold night in France, when a film of snow lay in
powdery patches on a landscape crinkled like a half-
healed sore. The shambling place that had to be a hos-
pital lay under the deep drab sky, with the torn boys
who had been dragged out of the maw. It had been a
very still night until the moment of that first shuddering
sound of the bomb. Ann's premonition of a raid was not
shared by the four other girls who huddled with her in
the kitchen, breathing deeply and listening. There was
complete enough agreement that if a real raid began the
men must in some way be removed to the cellar. A few
might help themselves. Others would have to be lugged
. . . somehow. The orderly had gone away to a little dis-
tance. Ann knew the spot . . . over the fields to the
south. She ran out, over the lumpy ground. The wind
was bitter, the footway ugly. To recall the orderly
quickly was the great point . . . quickly. Then a mighty
roar, and blackness. . . .
When her eyes opened — before they opened — there was
the feeling of a weight, like the weight of a world, on her
chest, and a racing thought of an end to things, under
an obliterating weight. If she could throw off the weight
the end might be postponed or fought with. She made
a mighty effort. She flung at the weight, violently. . . .
It was Irma, sobbing — she had, evidently, been prone
upon her, as if to shut out the winter.
"O my God!" whispered Irma. "You were so
cold!"
She dragged Ann for a distance — until Ann found her
feet, and they came again to the battered corner of the
building. There were other bombs . . . and they finished
the job by themselves, those five girls . . . down the stone
steps to the cellar, one man at a time. Irma's blond
head was always in the thick of each struggle. . . .
50 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Ann arose again. A night was a long time. She
stood at the bars and Hstened.
For the matter of that, how did she know what Irma
Kane might be doing? After reviewing the number of
awkward things she might do, Ann preferred to think
that she might be doing nothing. This was a one-woman
affair.
The prisoner in the fifth cell turned once more to the
cot. Seated with her back to the wall and her heels
gathered in, she stared squarely at this one-woman affair.
She had never done this before — not even on that eve-
ning in Vailly when she had wrangled with Major Slade.
It had astonished her that she should have let it come
up with the major. She believed that it was not be-
cause he was an old Regular Army doctor. More likely
it was the war. Girls thought only vaguely of such
things — of women who offended. It was true that some-
times they were intrigued by certain allusions in talk
or print. It was true, too, that once she had wondered
just what these offending women looked like. Perhaps
the best of women did. But mostly, Ann believed,
girls thought indefinitely and inconclusively about such
things. It was not fear, not actual disgust. It v/as a
consciousness, you might say, of something essentially in-
accessible, something one did not recognize or know
about, that involved unpleasant if not impossible w ords.
Although women were deeply concerned, it was a matter
that men managed, taking the soiling words with the
job.
Yet the war, which had brought Ann to face so many
things she had never faced before, had appeared to drive
away the dread of certain ideas if not of certain words.
When some turn of talk with the major had swung
them squarely athwart the subject, Ann had blazed up.
"You know," she declared, with her cheeks hot, "I
think it's a horrible thing that the woman should be
arrested and punished and the man allowed to escape.'*
DA\^^ 51
I can quite fancy the way the major looked at her.
He was smoking a cigarette, she said, and he threw it
away, peering after it for a moment.
He did not tell her that the thought had occurred to
millions of women before her. He was not a philosopher.
He was simply a man doctor. A woman doctor might
have put the case a little differently, though both might
have reached the point he reached in the rather deliberate,
fatherly speech he made to her, looming there in the
twilight of a battered village.
There were, he told her, many wrong things in the
world — natural things, for all human actions, right and
wrong, were natural — that people did not talk about.
It was a pity, for a great many wrong things thrived
on not being talked about. Of all the wrong things
that were made worse by cowardly concealment or
evasion, the most important were certain things related
to the matter of sex.
Ann admitted to me that she had always winced at
the word "sex." And I remembered an old-school
managing editor who told me that the word "sex" was
never to appear in his paper. But this was a long time
ago.
Ann admitted also that when the major said "sex"
the word, while it had a sternness, was as gentle as a
gentleman.
"You are indignant," said the major, "because you
are a woman. Also because you are ignorant. By
strange social standards your ignorance is not un-
becoming, but it is ignorance just the same. Perhaps
the woman side of you would always keep a kind of
indignation. Yet in the end perhaps your indignation
might be against God rather than against men. For
God, it must be admitted, has put upon women dis-
abilities not put upon men. Many modern women
believe, I have reason to know, that woman has been
treated unfairly. Naturally we can't go into that.
52 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
God may have thought that making woman the mother
is all the favoritism she should ask. How much she
appreciates the favoritism we needn't go into, either.
Woman having been created first, as science now admits,
and man being the afterthought, it is possible that we
ought to look for in him, if not an improvement, let us
say a reconsideration of disabilities."
"Are you making fun of me?" asked Ann.
"No, I am not," protested the major, without per-
mitting himself to feel interrupted. "If what I have
said has a whimsical sound it may be that you will
decide some day that there is a kind of irony in creation.
Anyway, I want to tell you that I see planted in man-
kind the strongest of all instincts, called the sex instinct.
For whatever reason, this instinct is stronger in men.
After millions of years, and in spite of some thousands
of years of rebuke, it still remains stronger in man than
in woman. So that, just as individuals, the man wants
the woman more than the woman wants the man.
But woman has developed a secondary instinct, which
overlays the primordial one, so that, looking at the
two, you are likely to find the man wanting the woman
for herself, and the woman wanting the man for her
economic advantage. Naturally there is a quarrel in
that statement."
"I should think there might be," said Ann.
"Yet if the statement were to stand you could see
why man might feel that, observed from the natural
side, he cuts the better figure. He is obeying a fun-
damental instinct. Woman is obeying a derived in-
stinct. Man having behaved very badly in taking
advantage of this derived instinct, and woman having
taken what advantage she could from the existence of
man's fundamental instinct, you have a situation for
infinite conflict. Never mind that now. I am more
concerned in saying to you very plainly that the instinct
of women to take mercenary advantage of men's ele-
DAWN 53
mental craving runs against a barrier that is not like
the barrier we try to build against men, but an ordained
barrier. The circumstance that a Solomon may have a
hundred wives, but that a woman may not have a
hundred husbands, is not a socially established circum-
stance. It is Nature that protests, and her protest is . . .
well, it is a terrible protest. It is a law before law — a
law back of these army anxieties we have, a law not to
be repealed, a law which may mean, to the right man,
that women are more sacred than men.
"Now the woman you find in the position of being
discriminated against, the woman seized by society,
disobeys this natural law. You think of a sin and want
both sinners to be punished. But while the man's sin
is a social sin, the promiscuous woman's sin is also a
natural sin. Society's real horror — in this instance — is
not simply against the social sin, but against the natural
sin — against a business. The discrimination is against
women. No question about that. But the discrimina-
tion was not invented by men, or by society. It was
invented by Nature. It is Nature that is invidious —
though it passes on its punishments indiscriminately.
It is Nature, which provides no punishments for a pro-
miscuous Solomon, that protests against the promiscu-
ous woman, and it is the promiscuousness involved in
making sex a trade that is the real basis of society's
protest."
"I think that is a perfectly outrageous theory!" cried
Ann, who was, in fact, in a state of dazed astonishment.
She told me that in the cell every word came rolling
back to her, with a kind of whisper of the major's
original rumble, as if scene and sound were coming to
her out of that opposite wall.
Her indignation, somewhat weakened, came back to
her, too. Was it true that any of her indignation was
against God? Was most of it against the complacence
of men? Wasn't it true that when women, as women.
54 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
did anything to check offenders against this natural
law the major was so sure of, that they were accused of
disloyalty to their own sex?
Everything in Ann herself proclaimed the major's
theory to be a monstrous lie. But there was Millicent
lying over there beyond the stone and cement. Who
was going to judge Millicent? Had God really made
blunders? If he had, were their results to last forever?
On that wall opposite, Ann saw herself as a little girl.
There was a time when her legs seemed to be too long
and they were restlessly active. She used to jump
the last four steps of the stair, and her mother's mother
said this shook the house to its foundations. Also it
seemed to jar a comb out of her mother's mother's head.
At all events, her mother's mother used to adjust the
comb immediately after the cataclysm. She really
preferred to straddle the banister. This shot you al-
most into the middle of the front hall. It was as thrill-
ing as when you rode a bicycle without sitting on the
seat, when you seemed to be fairly flying. Her mother
said she was terrific. She was accused of doing her
piano practice terrifically. Her hurry in eating waffles,
for example, had also caused anxiety and much comment.
All this was before her mother and father were di-
vorced, and of course still longer before Ann had her
second father. Her first father, who was slender and
tall, and very handsome, Vvas an important man in
Denver, though Ann retained the impression that he
was always in trouble about money. He seemed never
to mind Ann's jumping the last four steps, and he would
let her off from piano practice, but he bothered her a
good deal about her clothes. He seemed to think that
her toes should turn out more than they did. And he
did not want her in sight when certain men were there.
But she could hear things from the hall. One night,
right after dinner, she heard her father exclaim: "What
do you want to do? Scatter these women all over the
DA^VN 53
town?" She had a picture after that of women, in
all sorts of positions, in flung heaps, httering the streets.
She asked her mother what her father meant, and her
mother opened her eyes and her Hps very wide for a
moment, and her face got red. Ann gathered that she
had been terrific again and was told to go to bed at once.
Her second father was stout and pink. He never
seemed to have any trouble about money. Her mother
was not so cross with him, though she still was cross
with Ann. She continued to find many ways in which
Ann made her nervous. Ann's second father, who owned
a great many things, and who seemed to regard all of
Ann's activities as uproariously funny, had wonderfully
soft hands and his shirts were very white and stiff. He
died just when Ann was getting ready to go to college,
and her mother made her wait a year. That year was
not pleasant, though it was interesting in a good many
ways, since after a while her mother took her to Europe.
Her mother continually complained that Europe was
chilly, and was always having trouble about bathrooms.
There was a time in London when Ann was afraid she
was going to have a third father. Somehow the idea
did not please her. But this did not happen, and when
they came home Ann really went away to college.
The college years had been good years for her, and her
mother had grown less nervous as well as rounder in
figure and distinguished-looking. They were to have
gone to Europe again after that, but it was only Ann
who went over, with a motor unit. Her mother wept
at the end of that long conflict about her going, and held
Ann tightly against her beautiful bosom for a long
time. . . .
Her mother met her in New York when she came back
with that strange jumble of overseas workers, and they
were together for a month, during which time Ann man-
aged to make it seem reasonable that she should stay in
New York for a while to get her spiritual bearings. She
56 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
didn't say spiritual bearings. What she actually said to
me was that she wanted "to look things over." She
didn't tell me what things. I think she had begun to
have an expectation, perhaps with something of fatalism
in it, and something more that certainly was youth, that
tremendously interesting things happened to you when
you were ready for them. There had been an example
in that hospital chance. Nurses' helpers could slip in by
the canteen route or by the motor route if they chal-
lenged the chance. . . .
Well, as to the matter of looking things over, Ann had
an opportunity to find something ironic in that view
through the bars when she left the cot again. The hap-
pening she hadn't been ready for was interesting enough,
appallingly so. Maybe it w^as all part of the vast ab-
surdity that was life. Her uncle Martin, the minister,
would have told her that it was a dispensation for her
improvement. And above everything, she had not
wanted to be improved
The night sounds, spattered with the clangs and
squawks of transit, had an extraordinary solemnity, and
there can be no doubt that for a time Ann lost a fair hold
on that feeling of opportunity. Yes, she was seeing
something through, but the facts behind her resolution
were tremendously pathetic. What a rotten thing life
could be ! The ugly war had faded. And this was peace.
How different from war was the mess one found under
the shell .f*
Some one going by the prison was singing. It was a
man's voice . . . like that of the French boy, Bleneau, who,
when forbidden an anaesthetic, sang on steadily until the
knife was through with its work. . . .
The barred windows across the passage blurred and
writhed. Ann had not wept for many months.
The moment may offer some excuse for the shocking
accompaniment to her about-face movement.
"Oh, helir
DAWN 57
She kicked off her shoes, flung herself on the cot, and
closed her eyes defiantly.
When she opened them it was morning.
XI
Dawn. Shufflings. A pine table in the corridor.
Coffee. Bread. The girl in the white dress sipping the
coffee with sullen lips. Another matron person. Voices
from Millicent's side of the world. The mutter of the
city oozing through the ventilator places. Factory whis-
tles. Throaty roars from river boats. A heavy, warm
smell of summer.
It was intimated to Ann that she could send out for
anything she wanted for breakfast. She wanted only
the System's breakfast, black coffee and all. She was,
in fact, entirely clear of mind by now as to the logic of
her situation. Quite without regard to the special
blunder part of it, she w'anted to see. . . .
A girl who was late in appearing, a girl with an in-
tricate coiffure and a green tafteta dress, who frequently
consulted a gold wrist watch, ate cereal with cream, an
egg and mufiBns. She had a gorgeously beaded handbag.
A shabby girl, with shifting, frightened eyes, drank
half of her coffee, then sat with drooping shoulders, as if
huddled in a storm.
By and by there was the little journey across the
Bridge of Hope to the purgatorial anteroom. Upon the
w^all benches of this pale cavern Ann became one of those
who awaited judgment. It was part of the ordeal of inno-
cence. You who deny or who ask, look upon one another.
Ann was sure that she would never forget a single face.
Millicent was humming. It was her birthday. A much
older colored girl beside her was absorbed in a newspaper.
Presently there was the tall, gray-haired, patient-
looking woman, who expressed Probation. I was im-
mensely interested to find how she and her oflSce came
5
58 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
to Ann's consciousness. It was astonishing to see that
Ann, without any knowledge of anything that had gone
before, of any amehorating idea that this figure repre-
sented, should so quickly sense the effort to soften the
impact of System. The sight of Mrs. Miles drawing
aside this girl or that, eliciting gently and searchingly all
that System so often ignores, should have impressed Ann
profoundly. I believe it did. But Ann was set like a
grenade.
"I will tell the judge," she said.
Mrs. Miles looked at her blankly. She would not have
been so easily put aside, you may be sure, but something
happened to call her away for a moment. And then
came the name of the young colored woman who sat
beside Millicent.
Presently — Ann retained no consciousness of minutes —
this prisoner came again past the doorway on the re-
versed journey across the Bridge of Hope.
"What did you get.?" called Millicent.
"To-morrow," called back the girl who was vanishing.
One by one.
Mrs. Miles was invisible. Evidently she was in the
court. Ann was sorry she has been short with her.
Mrs. Miles did not deserve any of the indignation.
And she was a woman. There was as good reason for
being glad of her as of Mrs. Farrell. Women were
having something to do in a man's world . . . something
beyond furnishing a problem.
After all, thrilling as it was, and however disturbing it
became to a carefully balanced defiance, when Ann
stepped at last into the churchlike place that was a
courtroom, and looked straightly and accusingly at the
seat of accusation, it seemed entirely inevitable that the
judge should be a woman.
PART TWO
The Neio Day
I KNEW Hester Royce long before they made her a
judge, and at the time of which I am writing I was
still under the spell of a more than curious emotion
in fancying her as magisterially robed. There was no
means of knowing how familiar women magistrates
might come to be. Yet even if, as Rankin suggested,
they were ultimately to overrun the courts, and to
"saturate law with the acrid lavender of feminism,'*
it remained true that a friend's elevation was an event.
In the case of a judgeship it became a spectacle. In the
case of a feminine judgeship it seemed canonistic.
It was Hester Royce herself who called me a cynical
sentimentalist. She was always calling me something;
especially if I had an opinion, and it was exceedingly
difficult to talk with her without having an opinion.
She had what the elder Yeats has called "an Irish
delight in diversity." I think she could be irritated at
finding me pretty much as she had found me before.
My standardization did not entertain her. I once had
to plead to her the peculiarity of the Hebrew law by
which the opposite is permitted. When I once had the
misfortune to say that I could talk better after I had
been nourished, she said, "I suppose you mean talk
more." She could be sharp about women, too. I
remember, in the matter of a noisy person, one of those
tumultuous women, how her dark-lashed, blue-eyed
60 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
levelness of glance gave edge to the word. "She comes
in like a fire engine."
Yet she was a thorough politician. And on the
bench . . .
I wanted to see her entrance, to see her emerge from
the sacristy and get the robe rightly into that chair.
So that I had waited for a morning when I could arrive
in court before ten o'clock. One fact is worth mention-
ing. Police courts smell better than they used to smell.
Of course I am going back a bit for the comparison.
Perhaps the character of courthouse hangers-on has
changed. It may be that the different odor of these
contributed most to the ancient impression. Anyway,
I was grateful, both as a selfish consideration and in
thought of Hester Royce.
I mounted the marble steps to the level of the Woman's
Court, without haste, being well ahead of the hour, and
was advancing rather absently with my comparisons
when I saw in the corridor the unmistakable round
shoulders of Spot Marshall. The little white splash in
his hair, shining on his young head from under the
brim of his hat, completed the identification. He was
listening to a grayish woman, whose upturned face,
eagerly contorted, was seeking to convey to him some
matter of tragic importance.
A suspicion that Marshall was here on distasteful
business proved to be well founded. "To please a fool
alderman," he said to me. One of those annoying little
jobs a man has to accept. Some pestiferous girl. The
father whines to the alderman. The mother takes the
nasty part.
He drew me with him down to the bench where the
counsel sit. He indicated his impression of a crazy
world. Everything twisted. Nothing where you could
be sure of it. A drunken orgy of spending. People
screaming about landlords, fighting for a shelter. Too
many people. Every dirty little hotel jammed to the
THE NEW DAY 61
roof. Business men in a price delirium. The new rich
scrambling for diamonds and silks. The lazy earning
enough in two days to loaf for the rest of the week.
Nothing finished. Building stopped while men sulked
or fought. The city getting dirtier. Who wants to be
a street cleaner.'' Nothing really honest being done
about labor. Not a thing. Politicians listening, wonder-
ing, and doing nothing. Reformers bawling about firing
squads and deportations. Radicals weeping behind their
muzzles. The beautiful harmony of war-time absolutely
shattered. . . .
Nevertheless Marshall caught the first flicker of
Hester Royce. In an instant he had left the world in a
heap and was standing and staring with me at the
transit of the new magistrate.
More than anything else she made me think of a
college dean. The edging of white at the neck was a
masterpiece. There was a full wave in her parted dark
hair on which the tall windows behind her shed a crown-
ing tint. Outwardly, from the first moment, she seemed
to me to be acting — being slow, when in fact she is
quick; being cautious, when she is a plunger; being
forbearing, when she is impatient; beyond all, being
monosyllabic, when the clear fact of her volubility is one
that you never by any chance forget. But all judges
must do some acting. It is a penalty of the spectacular.
And she was feeling her way. She may be a feminine
Judge Jeffreys yet.
Officially she did not see me. Actually my admiration
would have been as clear to her as the solemn papers
under her hand.
One of the fussy court policemen had an inaudible
communication to make, leaning over the edge of the
judical bulwark. She gave him some answer or in-
structions without lifting her eyes from her papers.
At last a first culprit was brought in. . . . There were
others.
62 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Mrs. Miles, the probation officer, hovered close. I
liked the way Hester Royce looked at her — with a bent
earnestness as if she wanted to reach the very core of the
truth.
I was glad that there were postponements. I rather
preferred not to sit so near an actual examination.
Suddenly Marshall gripped my arm and I seemed to
know that I must look toward that door from which
the figures had emerged. The truth is that we both had
heard a name.
"My God!" gasped Marshall, close at my ear. "Ann
Forrest!"
She came forward as if to receive a diploma. She
was steady, incredibly so, but her face was unmistakably
white. She was all ready, you see, to say her say to the
System, and the adroitness of the System in putting
a woman in that chair had quite upset the details of her
speech, if not the plan of it.
I, who did not know who Ann Forrest M'as, but who
had other reasons for gazing with incredulous awe at
that charming image, must have seemed to Marshall to
be quite fully participating in his amazement. Marshall
was on his feet, moving forward a step, as if answering
some automatic impulsion, and all the time questioning
that set, accusing face of Ann Forrest.
I cannot say whether the magistrate spoke or simply
gave the interrogating glance that says, "Is this person
represented by counseLf*" She would have accepted as
part of the mechanism the appearance on the side of the
witness chair of the plain-clothes policeman I was after-
ward to have labeled as Gus, and with him his crony.
Without having looked at Gus, I can be sure that he had
been uneasy and that the sinister partnership in perjury,
adjusted to awkward crises that demand invention, was
ready for action.
"It seems to me ..."
This was Ann, who began to speak before anyone
THE NEW DAY 63
else had said a word. What it was that seemed to her
I can fully understand, and that the scathing part was
coming.
But Marshall was in action. He must have seen
something. I give him credit for an extraordinary flash
of divination. There was a slight turn of his head and
something that was not precisely a gesture that seemed
to summon me and to shut out everyone else behind
him. He drew close to Hester Royce as if gathering
about that spot a curtain that excluded the rest of a
chuckling world.
"I appear ..." he began, and Ann looked at him for
an instant as if she had never seen him in her life. Then
the prisoner's eyes went back to the face beyond the
bulwark.
"I wanted to see," Ann thrust in, "what may happen
to any American woman ..."
That speech was having a hard time of it!
"A moment please," said Hester Royce, after an
electric look that took in Ann, Marshall, and Gus, and
then darted to that sheet of paper.
Marshall might be a good reader of situations, but he
needed something more to go on. He came close to
Ann, and I was near enough now to hear him say, "Keep
quiet!" Poor Marshall! He knew how a name could
be sent rolling to the Pacific, and he couldn't know just
then that this was precisely what Ann, at the moment,
would like to have happen — if it carried that speech
with it!
Drawing Ann aside for a moment, which would have
been quite in good form, and would have been advised
by the magistrate, was Marshall's simple plan. But
Ann had a particularly immovable air.
The important thing was that Hester Royce under-
stood Marshall's wish. Also she understood Gus. And
she made the fortunate error of including me in con-
tributory knowledge of the blunder. By the magic of
64 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
a very slight movement, and something in her eyes, she
summoned Ann to come close to her, which Ann, though
still fixed upon talking to the United States, reluctantly
did. . . .
I shall always believe that the hardest thing for Hester
Royce w as letting up on that animal Gus. She had to
choose quickly between evils. Marshall made it his
business, first and last, to see to it that she made the
choice that stood forward in his lawyer mind. Silence.
Marshall wanted only that, and plenty of it. When he
knew all the circumstances he felt completely sustained.
When he knew that not even at the police office had Ann
made any explanatory protest or summoned easily
accessible evidence of her status in the world, he may,
I fancy, have acted a trifle reprovingly.
"You have seen something," he said to her afterward.
"In particular, you have seen what might happen to a
woman who offered no explanation."
"Yes!" Ann flared. "I could have called help, and
didn't. But many a decent girl might have been unable
to call help, or to give any kind of proof. . . . Only her
word. And there would be a beast — two beasts — to
invent things and smear her. I began to see — and I
wanted to see — what could happen to a girl in that
situation! I wish — "
"Please don't wish it," pleaded Marshall.
I think they w^ere close to a real wrangle.
The important thing for me was coming to know Ann
Forrest.
II
It may be true, as I have told myself since then, that
I should have been more sympathetic toward Ann's
escapade — have tried harder to get at her outlook when
she started that business of seeing things through. My
contention with her, when my time came, was that she
had, to a reasonable degree, made her point; that she
THE NEW DAY 65
had placed her documents, as it were, in good hands.
Marshall was worth impressing, even if I was to be
left out of account. Certainly it was significant to
have reached Hester Royce. Surely Ann had made her
point there, even if she didn't deliver the speech. I
insisted, warmly, that making her point there would be
a fruitful matter. And there was Gus. Probably Gus
should be considered. He would not have been a
changed man. That would have been too much to
expect, though his occupation was somewhat changed —
Hester Royce quietly saw to that. But even if there
was no hubbub, he and his kind undoubtedly received
an impression.
There was, later in the summer, another Gus who tried
to whisk away a young woman then waiting for a hus-
band who had momentarily stepped into a shop. Of
course we all hate violence. At least we all say so,
quite as if there were no possible exceptions in our
devoted prejudice. But the protest of the young
husband was a masterly thing, taken by itself. It
appears to have been one of those intensive rebukes
that give a startling delight to the elemental sense of
cause and effect. The spectators agreed that it was
difficult to believe that anyone could be so much rebuked
and survive. The young husband left nothing undone
that can be done quickly and strongly with the closed
hands. If he did not have an utterly amazing versa-
tility, that was the impression he managed to convey.
And he did not pause until this Gus was like a soggy
clutter of dirty clothes on the sidewalk. It turned out
that the scientist was Bifif Hannigan, the middleweight
champion.
I related the case to Ann for a certain effect that it
might produce on her mind, or, let us say, as if to carry
to any surviving irritation the possible solace of a
delayed justice.
She puzzled me by looking annoyed.
66 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"You are just a man, aren't you?" she said.
"Just a man," I admitted.
"And yet I have gone and told you everything about
myself."
"That is because I am a grave and reverend senior,"
I said.
She looked dissatisfied again. She frequently had that
unanswered look. Invariably she wanted something
conclusive. It was as if, with regard to so many traits
of the world, she found the unfinished, and wanted to
see the job concluded. Why didn't people do something?
Yes, that was it. Why did people stand things? They
were always standing something, and peeving about it
tamely when they ought to say it out loud, when they
ought to bang something.
Well, I suggested, there was Biff . . .
But she meant down-deep things. And just then I
didn't find out what a down-deep thing was.
This was some weeks after that morning in the court
w^hen I had seen her for half an hour and had no means
of knowing that I should ever see her again. Marshall
having taken charge of that occasion, even Ann did as
she was told. And she was told to wait in the corridor
for a few minutes, with me for company. The few min-
utes stretched to fifteen, and I can't say that I was
altogether comfortable during that interval while Mar-
shall was attending to the girl who called him there. We
were standing, and Ann betrayed the reactions which
might have been looked for. Very few of her confidences
came then. Under these quite grotesque circumstances
she actually said as little as she well might by way of
being civil. She confessed afterward that she wanted to
say more, but that it would have seemed absurd. "You
would have thought I was a still bigger fool," she de-
clared, "if I had spilled everything in the first minute of
meeting you. Besides, I think I was worse off at that
minute than at any time — well, from the beginning. You
THE NEW DAY 67
would have felt like my mother — you would nave thought
I was terrific."
"Whereas—" I said.
She maintained that I looked like a person one might
say things to. She used to insist that she couldn't have
told everything to Marshall — except in a sort of way.
Her contention was that he had a funny effect of being
fearfully legal and then quite as fearfully personal. WTien
she had known him in Denver he was the same way.
Awfully nice — just like his mother in so many traits — but
shutting you up somehow. When they met again in
New York (this was before she went to France), they
didn't wrangle so much. Maybe this was because she
was soon to go across.
"You see," I said, "he is a man, too."
"You really mean," she cut in, "that I'm only a
woman."
I left it to her conscience whether she had the right to
inject the "only."
" It doesn't matter," she said. " Very likely it's foolish.
But I've formed the habit of telling you things. You're
so comfortable."
"Not always," I protested. "You've made me out-
rageously uncomfortable at times — you've abused my
safeness — taken advantage of my age."
"What an idea!" And Ann laughed.
"Some day," I said, "I'm going to see you pitifully in
love — it will be one of those absolutely abandoned cases.
And I'll tee-hee all over the place."
"Now you are funny," said Ann.
Ill
When Ann spoke of having told me everything about
herself she was speaking particularly of a certain first
evening. I remember that first evening as belonging to
a day of sparkling brightness, one of those days vivid and
68 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
lifting, when the streets are full of pictures, and when
night comes like a glittering inheritance.
However, though I chance to recall the weather — and
in the matter of New York's vagaries this is always some-
what of a feat — a more important circumstance was the
manner of our meeting. There had been every reason to
suppose that a meeting might happen by way of Marshall.
Indeed, this had been implied, measurably, by a sus-
pended effect in that corridor conversation and in Mar-
shall's termination of it. Ann had not enjoyed Marshall's
managerial manner. But she was not discriminating
between nice points of enjoyment on that morning, and
I had been left quite free to gather up any expectations
that pleased me. If Marshall had assumed that I should
like to see more of Ann Forrest he would have been
entirely correct. I did want to see her again. Ann was
the sort of person one inevitably wanted to see again.
As it turned out, I came under no obligation but that
to chance, for, on the edge of a crowd that listened to a
woman who spoke from the tonneau of a motor car near
the Public Library, I saw Ann's intent face. In view of
her intentness it was odd that she should have noticed me.
I made no pretense of not being eager to speak, and she
turned at once from the crowd.
Evelyn Dower was with her. Ann had a pleasant,
though not at all concentrated way of making us ac-
quainted. Miss Dower had been about to board a bus,
and she was away, presently, with a saluting fling of her
hand.
"I'm walking," said Ann.
I was permitted to move beside her up Fifth Avenue.
We cut across the Park, and just before reaching the west
boundary we sat for a time on a bench. The foliage lined
itself sharply against the pale sky. An old woman in
black, on a seat near by, was eating something from a
paper bag. At a distance children were screaming in a
hollow of grass. Couples shuffled by, appraising the
THE NEW DAY 69
intermittent benches. Lights in the city beyond the Park
wall dripped into the mauve of the evening.
By now I was rather tired, but Ann was all alive;
not restless, as I have seen her, but with that glow in
her that always has seemed to belong with the wonderful
young onrush of life; something expectant rather than
aggressive, yet with a ready leap.
We had spoken not a word of that other day during
the walk, and when she said, with a straight look, that
she was going to tell me a story about herself, I was not a
little surprised. Perhaps, at the last, the fact that I
knew Denver, and Spot Marshall's father, may have
been factors to go with that other circumstance of know-
ing Hester Royce, which she had come to understand
before we left the courthouse. At the time, though
there was the momentary surprise, it seemed quite
natural that she should speak of herself as she did. The
explanation of the naturalness was in herself — in herself
as her life had made her.
One thing of which she spoke on that night I find has
not been set down. This was of Irma Kane. Ann did
not diagnose Irma's problem in that street separation.
She took the surface of it, or seemed to do so. And
Irma's emotional outburst when the two came together
again called out all of Ann's sympathy.
"She was awfully cut up," said Ann. "Afraid, I
suppose, that I would think her a quitter. Of course
she couldn't know what it was about. How could she?
Thought I had met some one I knew. Then saw me
walk away with some one else. If I had looked back —
if I had wanted her. . . . Well, why didnt I want her?
That was what puzzled her. And no wonder when I
told her what had happened, she broke down . . . terribly.
I had never seen her cry. And yet I couldn't help
feeling that she knew what had happened. Isn't that
odd? Of course she couldn't know. But I felt that
she wasn't really astonished when she did know. It
70 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
seemed to be something else — mostly, I guess, that I
would think she was a weak sister, a cowardly quitter.
Her way of looking at me was pitiful. 'You don't
think, Ann, do you . . . ?' And so on."
For a little space I carried the impression that the
relations of these two had suffered some sort of change
as a result of all that Ann described. Not that this
affected me as important in itself. In fact there were
moments when I wondered at my own interest, when
Irma Kane seemed scarcely to warrant the emphasis.
Yet you are to remember that I had just listened to a
rather startling personal revelation — to the whole story
of the prison and its obligate of Ann's thoughts — and
Irma Kane was certainly a figure in the story. More-
over, she was a figure in the revelation of Ann, as much
so now as in the action itself. If as a person she seemed
shadowy and negligible, she was still making Ann vivid
to me.
My suspicion about a derangement of their friendship
appeared to be brushed aside a little later (we were
nearing Ann's destination on Central Park West) when
Ann spoke of Irma's need for something like permanent
living quarters. "It seems to be all but impossible to
find a nice room in New York now," she said. "It's
disheartening."
Usually I am particularly helpless as to practical
suggestions in such a matter, and there was still the
spell of the story. My reaction was involuntary. Irma
might try Mrs. Breckles — I knew people there.
"Mrs. Breckles....?"
"She would like Mrs. Breckles," I said— "if Mrs.
Breckles happened to like her. Really, it's a pleasant
house, over east of Madison Square." Ann wanted to
know more than I could tell her. No, I couldn't say as
to the prices. Would I speak a word to Mrs. Breckles
on the phone in the morning as preparing the way for a
call by Irma . . . ?
THE NEW DAY 71
As usual, Ann took hold of things. In three days she
had Irma established as one of Mrs. Breckles' roomers.
IV
The first time I called upon Rankin he remarked of
Luella Breckles that she was a kind of female Gabriel —
always calling people up to judgment. This was a
poor image, for jNIrs. Breckles had no clarion summons
on any occasion. She had the voice of a small girl,
high and soft. It never acquired accentuation. There
might have been a certain likeness in another fact.
Gabriel did not judge. He was the summons. Mrs.
Breckles never seemed to condemn. You found your
own pit. She took the position of the church in the
time of the Inquisition, which, when you went wrong,
released you "to the secular arm." In Mrs. Breckles'
way the secular arm was Circumstances. When you
went wrong with her she appeared simply to withdraw
her sheltering influence. Circumstances then gathered
you up. Precisely when Mrs. Breckles wished it to
happen you knew that you were through.
Mrs. Breckles had silky hair arranged in an invariable
pompadour. She had a soft round face and soft eyes
and the smile of a favorite child. She had an innocent
way of asking a genuinely climactic question, one that
might absolutely determine a roomer's fate.
In the matter of questions she reserved a special
variety for Rankin. It was to Rankin, who was as fixed
as the furniture (furniture extremely heavy, like Rankin),
that she brought all questions relating to the welfare of
the world, as well as any that should properly have been
carried to the dictionary. Rankin had given her a dic-
tionary for Christmas. Thereafter she brought the dic-
tionary as well as the word with her.
"It was the worst thing I could have done," said Ran-
kin. "Like buying a private still for a drunkard. She
72 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
seems to tank up on strange words. Tells me they were
in the paper, but I know better. Then- she complains
that the dictionary doesn't come to the point — gives you
two or three ways, which is no satisfaction at all, and
what do I think?"
The spectacle of Rankin exercising patience was one
of the most extraordinary I have known; for, of course,
he was sometimes not in the mood to expound.
"Mrs. Breckles," I remember hearing him say, "I just
happen to dislike that word" — I've forgotten what it
was — "and it really hurts me to hear it again. Isn't it
sad that they don't let words die when they are like that —
not exactly kill them, but just let them die decently?
But what do they do.? Embalm them in a dictionary,
which keeps them hanging around . . . among the live
ones. Bobbing up, and leering at you as if they belonged.
Idiot words, shells, gone at the toj) — no use at all.
Blithering bunches of letters."
"What Si funny idea!" cried Mrs. Breckles, with her
baby smile.
I assume that Rankin closed his door when he went to
bed. At other times it was always slightly ajar, and Mrs.
Breckles signified her wish for communion by a soft
patter with the tips of her fingers that sounded like a
cat. Then Rankin grunted "Entrez!" which Mrs.
Breckles had said made her think of broiled chicken or
something.
When she found a visitor with Rankin she betrayed
an arch surprise, as if no one had ever been with him
before, and as if, on the whole, the circumstance were
altogether delightful. The presence of another added,
I fancy, a few words to her formula, a little emphasis of
apology. Yet she was not embarrassed. She led in her
little question like an infant friend. Rankin once de-
scribed her as being " as unabashed as a singer practicing."
His tolerance toward Mrs. Breckles was always per-
plexing to me. Making all allowance for the concession
THE NEW DAY 73
due the importance of her relation to the matter of a
roof in a congested world, there was the fact that Rankin
was so ironic about women. I used to enjoy his tirades,
since he insisted neither on support nor on contradiction.
I can remember one occasion when he was ranting
about a certain girl who had messed things in the office
of a corporation that owned him during the day.
"It isn't that I'm a woman hater," he growled through
the cloud of cigarette smoke. "Far from it. In fact, it
has nothing to do with personal likes or dislikes. I have
even loved individual women."
"You amaze me," I said.
"Some of them are damnably interesting. But, as to
that, I once knew — personally, you understand — an
utterly charming burglar. He was wonderful. But these
are digressions of the selective faculty. It remains true
that most v/oraen are a frightful nuisance, partly because
they are ethically so distressing, but mostly because they
insist on being specialists, and I hate specialists. They
spend their whole time in being female. A man can't be
successfully male unless he spends a reasonable amount
of time in being good at something else. He belongs to
the sex that buys. He has to be good at something else.
This gives him a certain collateral interestingness.
Whereas, most women . . .
"Of course they sometimes try to repudiate this spe-
cialization. In which case they are still more tiresome,
for then they specialize on not being female. Their sex
is seldom, by any chance, incidental.
"Now, this girl was by instinct and device one of those
girls who bring out all the maleness in every man they
meet, and who then hug the horror to their hypocritical
souls.
"You know the kind — growing fewer, maybe; stupefied
to find that men are male rather than munificent, and,
confronted by the frightful alternative of honest work,
such girls used to turn wistfully to the river. It seemed
6
74 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
to be work or water, and water had the call. Victorian
lady novelists (of both sexes) used to love them — they
were such a sure bait for boarding-school sympathy.
Nowadays boarding schools are wiser, and the river 's
going out of fashion. I don't see how they get along now.
When people used to find them drunk, or trying to drown,
they would sob so pathetically, 'What was left for me?'
But they're not drowning much now. And there's no
booze. Nothing left but men, and they are male. What
do you suppose they'll do next?"
Rankin never appeared to know much about other
people in the house, which I took to indicate that
Mrs. Breckles' consultations were mostly academic. He
never joined the front-step parties of a summer night,
being content to thread his way through one of these
clusters without comment, unless a voice hailed him —
Ingle's, for example, as when I came in with Rankin one
night to see a candlestick and snufiFers he had picked up
on Fourth Avenue.
Ingle had a room on another floor. It does not appear
that Mrs. Breckles ever honored him with any attention.
Ingle's connection with the motion-picture business,
though not in a department that assured actual contact
with stars, made him significant in any discussion of
the movies. He was likely to know when and where
there was a good thing, where a director had fallen down,
where a fabulous heap of money had been spent, where
they were standing in the lobbies, where there was a good
laugh or something tremendously weepy, if you liked that.
A Miss Stewell, I have understood, was always rather
intent in the matter of Ingle. Miss Stewell, who was
mysteriously thin, and who, when seated, had a nervous
habit of rebuking her skirt for not covering all of her that
could be covered, once had an awkward moment with
Ingle. He told me about it with his infectious grin. This
was soon after he came to the house. She confided to
him that there was a man in the room next to hers who
THE NEW DAY 75
dropped his shoes at night. The later he came home
the harder he dropped them. One night he got home at
three o'clock, and the concussion nearly threw her off
her couch. As Ingle seemed deeply interested, Miss
Stewell warmed to her description. She told how hard
it was for her to get asleep at best, even after the phono-
graph stopped in the house with the pink shutters; how
agonizing it was to lie there, knowing that the man was
not home yet, and that the thud — the two thuds — had
yet to happen.
Ingle was thrilled by the dramatic intensity of the thud
moment as she worked it up. He could see in her mind
a figure large, coarse, brutal, looming high, climbing, per-
haps, upon some piece of furniture, to gain a fiendish
advantage, and then hurling a shoe at the quivering floor.
" Honest to God, " he said to her, " I'll never do it again ! "
"You don't mean — " cried Miss Stewell, her little wisp
of a handkerchief at her lips.
"Yes, I do. I'm it. After this I'm going to get on my
knees and put them down like a full cocktail glass on a
velvet cloth."
Miss Stewell made a profuse attempt to explain how
she had mistakenly placed Ingle as on the floor above her
— at the front. And of course she had imagined quite a
different sort of person.
"I get you. A big brute with hobnailed kicks. No
wonder."
After that Miss Stewell was always fervently friendly.
Ingle, as it happened, was the first occupant of the
house to make the acquaintance of Irma Kane. That
this should have been two weeks after she came there as
a roomer is evidence of the detachment possible in a city
hive.
Leading up to this acquaintance was a fire in the not
distant house with the pink shutters. During that echo-
76 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
ing clamor the hallways of Mrs. Breckles' house became
inhabited by strange figures in bathrobes, all variously
excited. Any window at the back was a vantage point,
but Jimmy Ingle, his black hair on end, and in great
spirits, I have no doubt, had a fertile instinct for hos-
pitality, and his room was soon chosen as an observatory.
Miss Stewell was there, her pale eyes shining under a
boudoir cap. Also, there was old Mrs. Taylor (she had
been Mrs. Schneider before the war), and Mr. Brintz, a
surrogate's clerk, as well as Mrs. Breckles and the servant
Doris. Rankin refused to get up until he could be assured
that his bed was burning under him. Lastly came Irma
Kane, and Ingle stopped looking at the fire.
The first time I saw Irma and Jimmy together I was
seated with Spot Marshall at the Golden Kettle, in the
corner opposite the picture of Diana. Marshall was still
as much troubled about new conditions in general as that
other legal person, Franklin Hebb, had been about pro-
hibition in particular. He had had, I am sure, solemn
political ambitions, and politics was in a frightful muddle.
A man didn't know which way to turn. His state of
mind as to this muddle, of which he had spoken so bitterly
in court, was not helpful to a politician. To be sure, he
was only a novice. He had been looking far ahead. But
no one could look far ahead now. You couldn't count up
your Democrats. Sometimes they seemed to be turning
into something else — Socialists, mostly. Anyway, even
if all that could be ironed out at last, people were wild,
restless, asking crazy questions, denying simple facts they
used to admit, demanding where they used to suggest —
acting cocky where they used to have a little decent
humility. People who could afford to sit tight were
sitting tight, waiting for something to turn up. After an
earthquake or an;^'ihing like that the loot instinct always
got busy. Now, after the shake-up of war, and all foun-
dations cracked, and debris everywhere, the looters were
out as usual . . . with a fearful earnestness in some cases;
THE NEW DAY 77
at other times grinning as if it were a great joke. And
the stand-patters wanted a lot of shotguns and nooses.
Of course everybody knew that the old game had been
rotten. But how much better would any new game be?
Look at the Bolshevists. . . .
"I wish we could look at the Bolshevists," I said,
"could see straightly and clearly into what their strident
idealism is actually working out."
"If the newspapers were any good ..."
Marshall left that matter there. My newspaper
history was always likely to furnish a germinating point,
and we had had the thing out a good many times. It
entangled debate that he himself had a record of six
months newspaper service, a fact upon which he pre-
sumed in painting journalistic sin. I don't deny
making use of the other fact that I had a remote year
at law.
And so the young and the old were wrangling un-
profitably when I saw Irma and Jimmy come in.
They took a table at some distance, though within
eye range, and there was an interval in which I sought
to estimate Jimmy's interest in Irma. Such an estimate
was weighted by the difficulty of Jimmy's temperament.
In the presence of any girl Jimmy was likely to glow.
The point of actual incandescence became a subtlety
of measurement. Jimmy was not merely responsively
susceptible. He was, I think, not so commonplace as
that. He kept the affirmative. He had an appreciative
attitude toward femininity, something more than a
brothering instinct and something less than a predatory
eagerness, that had the effect, in the presence of young
women, of making it seem that he had the right to them.
He was so obviously happy about them, that I should
have doubted whether the shrewdness of any one of
them would, at the beginning, have intruded to wonder
how personal he was. So that he became very good
company, and while I looked across the tables at this
78 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
pair it appeared to me that Irma had already reached
that conclusion.
She wore a hat of black and crimson straw from under
which the flashes of her fair hair shone in a brilliant
harmony. She looked up at Jimmy and laughed, and
the blend of his humor and earnestness was reflected in
her face during the intervals. Her lips had a way of
moving debatively, as if getting ready for another
expression.
It was natural, I suppose, that I should have sought
to appraise Irma Kane. She belonged to Ann's story,
and even if her relation to that was shadowy, Ann her-
self did give her an importance. But no logic could
explain why I found myself singling out of that evening's
chance contact the way she looked at Spot Marshall.
We met in the lobby of the restaurant as Jimmy was
carrying Irma off to a show.
"He lets me call him Uncle Syd," declared Jimmy in
introducing me to Irma, whose eyes had already made
that leap to Marshall. Yes, it was that looking-up
glance, with something added. As she shook hands with
Marshall after my mention of his name, her look had in
it a light which a mature person may have the detach-
ment to notice without being able to read. There can
be no doubt that she liked Marshall from the first
moment.
"I have heard about you!" cried Irma to me in the
parting. Whether from Jimmy or from Ann I couldn't
know.
"Awfully nice girl," said Marshall when the others
had gone.
"A friend of Ann Forrest."
"Of Ann . . . ? Ah, yes! The one who was with
her ..." Presently he added: "Ann's going in for
things."
My interrogating pause brought more of it. "She
wants to change the world overnight."
THE NEW DAY 79
"It's the fashion," I said without intending to sound
so trite and unsympathetic.
"She didn't use to be that way. Anyway, I didn't
get it then. Wonder if all that rough stuff has made
them different. . . . Women, I mean. Full of notions.
Horribly serious. For smashing things. Talking to all
sorts of people. Won't let you off without an opinion
as to this or that. Makes you nervous. Really, it does."
"Politicians hate questions," I thrust at him, rather
cruelly.
"I'm not a politician!" Marshall retorted warmly.
"I'm a citizen. I'd like to see things straightened out.
Nothing immoral about that, is there?"
"Unless you want to straighten them into old grooves,"
I said, "unless you object to straightening them
forward.^^
" Of course. Forward. But forward in which direction?
That's just it. Which way? W^ho knows? I'm sure
Ann doesn't. I tell her she's getting to be just like the
rest of them — not interested in straightening things out
but in tearing them up, ripping them."
As to that, I suggested that we had to tear up a
pavement before we could relay it.
"Yes, but we ought to know where we're going.
That's what they don't know. They don't even seem
to care. And when they put their paving do^\^l again —
when somebody puts the paving down again — it will have
to be on solid ground, the same old solid ground. That's
what they'll find out. It won't stand up in the air."
I think he was rather pleased with the success of this
image, pleased enough to go on with it.
"Ann's up in the air."
"I fancy her as making a pretty good landing," I said.
Nevertheless, when I had gone home to my rooms, and
the warm murmur of the city night came like a deep,
unhurried current through the open windows, the
Metropolitan bell booming its "every day is doomsday"
80 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
incantations, I sat for a time thinking about Ann, and
trying to visualize the Anns of the world . . . and the
Irma Kanes that mingled with them.
I took out an old picture of my mother, with her hair
so firmly laid, and her eyes looking, looking . . . searching
the horizon of life with infinite patience and a compelling
expectation that seemed so often actually to influence
the course of things. Had she been a sort of Ann?
Had she sometimes been up in the air? She had been
reared in the doctrine that hell was paved with infant
skulls. And one day when she had walked into a
strange little church she came forth in an elated rebellion.
It had become suddenly clear to her that God did not
do things like that, and that she was free, magnificently
free, to believe much better things of him. Perhaps this
was the beginning of her discovery that truths and
labels for truths were not the same, that most prejudices
and most expectations originated somewhere in a say-so,
and that even in the matter of sheer revelation there
must always be frightful errors in transmission. If a
dinner is only as clean as the cook, and a man is only as
witty as his biographer, a god must be dwindled to the
span of the interpreter's vision. Of course only a god
could understand a god, but it was a great thing to
feel privileged to look straight into the heart of the
Light, to listen-in at the wonderful Wireless, to be free
honestly to compare notes with other seers and listeners,
and to grasp the truth that the realest thing is the
interior distillation of all that has been seen and heard
and felt.
My mother was accused of too great eagerness for
"new" notions. She lived in a time when there was a
great rush of these — perhaps as great as in the era of
which I am now speaking. She wanted to know. She
asked why.'' Doubtless she was very annoying to some ,
persons. She had no passion for difference. She knew
that good new things were different, but she happened
THE NEW DAY 81
to know that all different things were not good; so that
she was only one kind of a radical. The other kind
bewildered her quite as much as if there had been no
false bond. I like to think that she made her point of
emphasis to get the good thing. If it was different, let
it be so — in art and in life difference was refreshing only
if she really liked it. And she had a splendid faculty for
liking. Hating never amused her. She had very few
actual theories, but one of them was that people must,
in spite of their whining, really like life more than they
hate it or there wouldn't be so many of them here.
If my mother had been a sort of Ann, she reached the
stage of awakening much later than Ann herself. At
the close of that other great war she had been of about
the same age, but the period of shattered national nerves
had found her absorbed in children. When her time
came she seemed to know it, and I was young enough
at the beginning not to know what was happening, or to
take it for granted. I came to apprehend, to examine
the impression that had been laid upon me, to grow in
wonder of her and to become uneasily critical of
myself. . . .
It was only when I had put away my mother's por-
trait that I noticed a letter, addressed in Ann's script,
lying on the corner of my desk.
VI
There was nothing in Ann's letter to suggest that she
was up in the air. Would I go with her to call on some
friends who might interest mei* — that was the blunt
matter of the communication. Her comfortable feeling
about asking me was not unpleasant. If I was perplexed
as to that, there was a line of illumination. "Of course
it may be queer to run after your father confessor like
this. But it's your own fault. You shouldn't have
begun listening to me."
82 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
I was to telephone before the suggested day if I would
go. I meekly obeyed all instructions.
But before I saw Ann again there came an experience
that belongs to her history.
On lower Broadway in the vicinity of noon one is
prepared to meet any living creature. Steamship and
customs offices at the far end, the Trinity region, Wall
Street, and, on both east and west, various "quarters"
of a far different sort, all furnish currents to the great
artery. In fair weather the sidewalks are actively
thronged. The figures are moving most quickly soon
after twelve. At one the tide has a slower average, as
befits the movement of beings who have been fed. Girls,
some of them in clothes bright enough and scanty enough
for a ball, stroll laughing and talking shrilly. Some-
times they move with linked arms, three or four abreast,
oblivious of the transit perplexity thereby introduced.
Through the paling of Trinity churchyard one sees quieter
girls, seated on tombstones, nibbling, or reading books.
Other figures emerge from the noon service of St. Paul's,
through the doorway Washington knew, to become part
of the eddying current. Hurrying figures slip around
obstacles, weaving a nervous line, halting and begging
pardon in sharp turns into side streets. The shifting
mass seems to represent a miracle of adjustment. Ten
thousand faces flicker and vanish within the space of a
few minutes — important-looking faces and faces hinting
of all the grades of struggle or drifting until one touches
at last the broken and hopeless at the bottom. In other
words, it is just a bit of the world, a glittering gulley,
fenced by towers, and sending upward the murmur, gut-
tural and incessant, of competitive life.
In the midst of this medley I heard my name, and
Irma Kane was moving northward beside me.
"The idea!" she exclaimed. "I thoucjht it was you!
And yet — with your hat — you looked — "
"Not quite so venerable. I'm going to wear it all the
THE NEW DAY 83
time." (A man reaches the age when he makes stodgy
remarks like that — especially when the girl . . . )
"Different,'' Irma completed.
I assm-ed her of being glad I hadn't looked too different.
A Goliath of a man with a sweater, a cap on the back of
his head, contrived to plunge between us, and when we
were restored Irma was saying,
"... one of my lonesome days, and I wished I'd
meet somebody."
Her Man had been away for a week, and when he was
away she had little or nothing to do. He was a queer
man, stiff and polite, set in his ways, very formal as to
the manner which his letters must follow, and as to
how certain people were to be called or answered on
the phone. He took medicine out of a green bottle,
breathed deeply at an open window, and his overshoes
were always in a certain place. When he was away she
read magazines. She often wished she knew how to
crochet. Something simple. Anything at all. She
used to think she would like a lazy position. Maybe
she had changed. Did I think it was possible for people
to change like that?
Yes, I thought it was quite possible. Especially after
certain experiences.
That was just it. She was sure. On the other side
there had always been a lot to do and always some one
to talk to. A lot of amusing boys. And then there was
Ann.
Her saying this brought the feeling that she had
wanted to speak of Ann.
"Don't you think," and she turned to me with an
earnestness that seemed to have waited, "that Ann has
changed?"
" How should I know? " I asked her. " I've known her
only-"
"Oh of course ! I forgot that."
I slowed down at my doorway, and Irma, after a
84 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
glance backward, suggested that her own doorway might
have been left somewhere behind us, fixed me with an
eager look.
"I wish I could talk to you about Ann! You see,
there isn't anybody else I can talk to about her, and — "
There was a sudden intensity in her manner which at
that time it was hard for me to understand. It seemed
out of all proportion to the expression of a misgiving.
For whatever reason, she was ardently bent on saying
something, and the intensity carried its own influence.
"If you're not afraid of a newspaper office," I said,
"why not pay me a visit? The worst that can happen
is that you'll be taken for a writing person."
Irma laughed expectantly. "I won't stay five
minutes."
When we had traversed the crooked passage and I
was seeing her from the other side of my desk in the
littered coop, it became evident that her impulse had
resulted in some excitement. She had a naturally
beautiful color, and a flush heightened her charm in a
marked degree. I was so sure of her embarrassment in
the presence of a situation she herself had brought about,
that the first moment was a trifle awkward for me.
"You know," I said, "if you really were a writing
person, and looked like that, an editor would be afraid
to buy copy from you. His conscience would put him
on edge."
Fortunately the well-intentioned clumsiness of this
did not disturb her.
"That's nice of you," she said. "At least I'm sure
you mean something nice. I can see whv Ann adores
you."
At which I began to need rescue myself.
" You'll make me think you are going to try to sell me
something."
"Oh no!" Irma assured me, with a brief laugh that
had a bit of breathlessness in it. She placed her elbows
THE NEW DAY 85
on the desk, then took them away. "I just wanted to
say to you — I've thought about how I'd say it to you if
I had a chance — that Ann — " She made a gesture. "I
don't know how to say it — that she's changed, somehow —
since — You do Icnow about that night, don't you?"
'That night . . . ?"
"In the street-
"When she was arrested?"
Irma nodded, with her lips drawn tightly.
"Well . . . since then — I'm sure it's since then — she's
been different, somehow."
It would have disturbed Ann a good deal, I suggested.
Naturally. And she was looking about her very earnestly.
"I know," said Irma, with a sort of persistence. "I
don't mean that. I'm thinking of how she is changed
with me. That's the thing."
"But I don't know as to that. How could — "
"Of course," she added, quickly, but with the clearly
visible wish that I did know as to that. However, if I
was speaking the truth, she had reason for some comfort.
Her intuition may have gone so far, for she added,
"Maybe she wouldn't have told you that."
" Told me ! " I protested. " She told me the story, very
plainly. And I tell you very plainly that she didn't give
me the impression of leaving anything out. I assure you
that what she put in was in no way discreditable to you."
I could seem actually to hear the echo of "no way
discreditable" in her mind — it was almost as if I saw it —
and hastened to add: "She spoke very handsomely of
you. Ann is tremendously loyal. You'd be foolish to
believe anything else."
"Yes ... I know!" Irma put forward a hand on the
desk. "And Fm loyal — but I couldn't do anything.
You don't think I could have done anything, do you?"
"No. Ann wouldn't have let you. And you might
have made a worse mess of it."
"I'm glad you think that."
86 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
She turned her head so that her face came into shadow,
and I saw the droop. When the flash of her came back
the tears — extraordinarily large tears they seemed to
me — had made their marks.
She was not the first woman wno had wept in that
chair, and I was annoyed.
" If you happened to feel like taking my advice," I said,
"you would forget about that night — yes, and forget to
search for something in Ann that I'm sure isn't there
at all."
With the tears finding their own way she looked up
steadily and with a kind of wistful vehemence.
" You know . . . I've simply got to have Ann ! "
"This," I said, "might be the way to lose her."
She took a deep breath, and there was a little quiver,
like the holding of a sob.
"I mustn't lose her! . . . You couldn't understand that.
No. There's nobody to understand it! I don't see how
you can help thinking that I'm just a fool. But having
Ann is the best thing in my whole life — the very best."
"Tell her that," I urged. "Tell her everything, and
have it out."
"Tell her everything . . . !"
It was here, in the mechanical repetition and the
gasped pause, that I caught the most inscrutable phase
of Irma Kane. Perhaps the glitter of the tears exag-
gerated the startled effect in her eyes, as of some cross-
circuiting in her emotions that made her shrink and that
flung open the shutters of her reserve at the same time.
She could make no headway with her problem, whatever
it was. It was too big for her, or too intricate. And all
the time it was clear that she was considering me. I
wanted to shout to her, "Say it! Say it!" — to topple
over with the spoken thrust any absurd barriers she had
been building. Also, I wanted to pledge myself never
again to listen to a personal story if I could help it. It
was ruinous to the nervous system. Why be everybody's
THE NEW DAY 87
psychiatrist? That was it — be a boor, and keep your
health.
She was standing, and dabbing with her handkerchief.
"I don't know what you'll think of me," she said.
"I wish you wouldn't worry about what anyone
thinks."
She shook her head. "You can say that. But some
things . . . You're a\\'fully good, and I hate to ask you
. . . will you let me ask you something else?"
"If you promise to start forgetting, this minute."
There was the wan beginning of a smile.
" You won't speak to Ann about . . . about this — about
my being here, will you? She would think it was silly."
"I promise."
I went with her through the crooked passage to the
elevator.
At the last moment, just before the cage came, she
turned to me and spoke, almost in a whisper, as when
one casts something ashore when the boat starts.
"I wish I could tell you everything!"
VII
My promise to Irma, while it had seemed so reasonable
a sop, nevertheless gave a curious color to the meeting
with Ann.
In that telephone response Ann had refused an invita-
tion to dinner, and she wouldn't let me go uptown to get
her. As to the meeting place, she said eight o'clock,
sharp. And she was there, quite with the effect of sharp-
ness, under the arch near the subway station.
If I hadn't made a promise, or if the occasion for it
hadn't been evident quite without regard to promises, a
question as to Irma Kane would have been close to a
first matter in this meeting. As it was, for a time, Irma
seemed to be at my elbow. I received one of those after
impressions, stronger than any actual visualization, of
88 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
her cream- and-gold person, of the remarkably clear eyes
that could laugh and weep, that were like little windows
to a spring sky, in which one could see the most astound-
ing changes; of the firmly lined lips that seemed to be
first to express any minutest shade of feeling, as if they
were quicker than the thoughts behind them. On the
whole, my after-impression was disconcerting, if not
downright disagreeable, for the total of Irma's expres-
sions had left with me a sense of uneasiness out of all
proportion to my theories. I had adopted the view of a
trivial feminine anxiety, yet her look had left a piercing
echo, and her emphasis in the exclamation "I wish I
could tell you everything!" was absurdly in contradiction
to that view. I said to myself that I didn't wish her to
tell me everything or anything. Nevertheless, there was
something unpleasantly haunting in her phrase — as of a
revelation that impended. If anything waited it waited
as to Ann, and this circumstance I could not shake clear
of. In the midst of so much that was perplexing I had
formed an obstinate desire to hold a peaceful beauty for
Ann. In the mad uncertainties of the hour, in the turmoil
of exasperations, big and little, that was giving so gro-
tesque a complexion to life, I had a fury of wish that her
figure might remain steady and tangible, perhaps as if
to be assured by that steadiness — by my steadiness —
that there was illusion or the transitory in everything else.
After all, I was holding to Ann, as Irma was, and this
sent me back to the blond head and that sudden, tearful
fierceness of fear.
As for Ann herself, nothing was to be had from her
that favored any longing for the settled. Whether she
walked beside me or strode alone, she was, I knew, on her
way. She had her own notion as to what was significant.
"You see," said Ann, as we traversed the cross street
eastward, "I'm finding people that are an old story to
you — in a general way, I mean. I don't think they can
be so very old, either. I feel that certain things have
THE NEW DAY 89
only begun to happen. Then I wonder if it is only that
/ have begun to happen. Maybe you think that might
be it."
"And you want me," I said, "to furnish a sort — "
"I want you," declared Ann, with an eager candor
shining in her, "to tell me — well, I like your way of
telling me what you think. I don't mean that I want
you to tell me what / should think — about these people,
for instance."
"I'm sure you don't," I said.
"It isn't that. But — " She turned to me with a
quick, earnest, almost awed look: "It's the Thing. Has
something broken loose in the world? Has this always
been? Is it just what must happen — now, I mean — or
is it something new, like a sickness that never happened
before? Or not like a sickness, either, if it's right. May-
be something like — well, a vision."
"I think you should tell me what you are talking
about," I said.
"You mean," said Ann, "that you want a minute to
think it over."
"You must," I protested, "have some definite appear-
ance in your mind. You can't mean the general mess that
is the natural result of the war."
"No," Ann insisted, "it's not 'general' at all that I'm
thinking of. It's a result, I suppose, in a way. But
don't you feel — you must feel — that something rather
wonderful, and maybe rather startling to think of, has
grown up — pushed up out of things?"
"I'd rather not see you worrying — " I began.
"Don't!" she cried. "DontI You're not the kind!
Shoving things away. That's shameful."
She was bent, evidently, on having her dragon — a
colossal monster heaving under the crust of life, wriggling
to the surface and searing the scenery with its flaming
breath. Or if it wasn't a dragon (I was being defensively
unseeing) it was, at all events, some appearance mysteri-
7
90 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
ously evoked and capable ot exciting awe. And Ann
herself looked so imperishably young. Yet she looked
valiant, too. There are brave flowers in the jungle.
Of course I had more than an inkling of Ann's emotion,
even if her intensity inspired grotesque images. That
enigmatic Thing that was puzzling her was, I had little
doubt, not merely the loosened spirit of change that
smugness was belittling or trying to shoulder out of its
path, but a profound, if mostly a secret phase of rebellion
among women. This sounds trite in view of the very
plain history of all the radical waves that have ever
broken on the shores of life. Perhaps no man could write
it without an instinctive shrug. Nevertheless, I knew
that the most astounding change in the world-status of
women that war or war-time makeshifts had ever
wrought must have its specific reactions on women
themselves. And if this expectation, too, was trite, no
complacence was likely to have an easy time in figuring
these reactions, in coming very close to surmising what
the heart of Woman would make out of the thing that
had happened to her. The fact that Woman would
exaggerate the happening did not dismiss the matter.
The trouble is that Woman and women are so different.
If some women exaggerated the happening some others
were quite unconscious of any happening at all, in which
particular they were precisely like men.
"I wish you would say it," Ann declared, "instead
of leaving me to get it by wireless."
"I'm afraid. Miss Forrest," (I had not then begun to
call her Ann), "that I weakly want you to be different."
"Different from what.?"
"From the others — from so many of the others. I
expect you to be caught up. We are all being caught
up by something — all of us that are not in the vegetable
class — but, you know, there is a Utile tendency in women
to like martydrom, to rush into suffering, and somehow
you don't seem quite — "
THE NEW DAY 91
"You are perfectly absurd to-night," said Ann, looking
straight ahead.
"First," I went on, "men denied women a soul. Then
they denied them intelligence. They locked them up
in harems, when there was a group, in kitchens when
they were to be considered singly. They bought and
sold them. They insulted them with gewgaws. All
this time there was plenty of chance for suffering. At
last they let them out of the harems and the kitchens.
They let them do an extraordinary number of things,
but they still denied that they could think, so they
couldn't let them vote. But women were thinking, and
by and by they thought their way to the ballot box.
They weren't fit to fight, yet somehow they did. They
couldn't handle tools, yet somehow they dug and filed
and forged. They couldn't understand engines, yet
somehow they drove locomotives and helped build
battleships."
"What are you driving at?" Ann demanded.
"At you," I said. "It occurs to me to wish that you
might choose or chance to be different at this crisis when
all the old martyrdoms of denial or repudiation are
brushed aside, when women have won the coveted
privilege of entry into the world's free fight — "
"That's just it!" Ann exclaimed, "that's just it!— -
Oh, here we are!"
This referred to the fact that we had reached the
house that was our destination.
I am not sure of the ritual by which Ann secured
entrance. I was too much absorbed by the subject of
our talk. The fact of stair flights — four of them — was
made clear. Then Ann opened a door and hooted.
And there was what looked like a ladder.
"Good heavens!" I gasped. "Where are you taking
me? To the roof? Really, this is — "
"Climb," said Ann.
It wasn't precisely a ladder. It was, however, a
92 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
hybrid stairway, or something suggesting arrested
development.
I climbed.
VIII
There was an impression of cretonne, reddish and
pictorial, and of prints tacked up in the gulf of the
stair. Somewhere overhead there was a lantern, remi-
niscent of those symbols that are used to convert a plain
place into a "studio."
At the top of the steps I was confronted by a girl
smoking a cigarette, and there was that embarrassing
suspension of greeting that precedes the arrival of the
one who is to do the introducing.
The girl with the cigarette was Evelyn Dower. She
looked me over with obvious curiosity, and in the cross
light I began to relate her to Vecellio's and to Ann's
story of that evening. I came to think of her as caustic,
and this made her fine complexion, her humorous dark
eyes, and softly curving lips, if not contradictory, at
least unexpected. One might have looked for a more
acidulous effect. She was round-shouldered, like so
many of the girls of her period. The lines of her, shining
through the filmy waist of her dress, indicated that she
could have afforded to be upstanding. (There came a
day when I saw her shoulders thrown back.)
The space at the top of the steps had the dimensions
of a wide hallway upon which three rooms opened.
That primitive approach from lower regions was ex-
plained by the fact that these had been the servants'
quarters of a house once occupied by the nobility.
There were dormer windows overlooking a back stretch
of skylight for the floor below, and on the wide ledges
flowers shone against the roofscape of the city.
Another girl arose from a pillowed couch in the corner,
a big, full-bosomed girl, sturdy, yet pale, who gave me a
listless handclasp and a welcoming smile that was
THE NEW DAY 95
made notable by beautiful teeth. This was Stella
Hayes.
"Tuckered?" asked Ann, with her arm about Stella's
shoulders.
"Rather," admitted Stella, who presently acquired a
cross-legged position on the couch.
"You're breathless from the stairs," said Ann to
me as I found a chair, " but if you had been making
sweaters all day ... eh, Stella? "
Stella smiled as if sweaters had ceased to be an ab-
sorbing topic, though evidently one that was to be
looked for as likely to come up.
My chair adjoined the couch, and it seemed pertinent
to show an interest in sweaters. Stella told me that she
had gone from the University of Chicago to service in a
canteen and other war-time things, and that since then
she had been helping to unionize the textile workers.
There had been adventures in New England, and now
in New York she had taken a factory place —
"And is really living on the money — sending back the
checks from home," interjected Ann.
It was rather a ticklish matter (in addition to being
mighty hard work) because union propagandists were —
well, they were quietly chucked when they were found
out. But she had had great luck, really. The tough
thing at first was to get the lingo of the other girls, or,
anyhow, to keep their confidence. One of the other
girls on that day had said to her that she was a fool,
being as smart as she was, not to go after more money
in an office job. The suggestion was not very comforting
at a moment when Stella was feeling so secure as to the
acting of her part. There was a foreman who was
rather troublesome. But foremen were always some-
thing.
"You can't have slavery without slave drivers,"
remarked Evelyn Dower.
I was astonished at the cutting edge that was given to
94 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
tne observation, because Evelyn did not look down-
trodden, and the remark evidently had personal ex-
perience behind it.
My questioning look elicited from Ann the announce-
ment that Evelyn had accepted a commission from a
labor committee and was making six-day tryouts in
different workrooms. She had no trouble finding jobs,
because people were screaming for girl help. It was funny
to see the advertisements, and the pleading signs plas-
tered over the city. She didn't mean that it was
amusing exactly, but there was something fantastic
about it.
Where were the girls? I wondered aloud. With so
many long out of war work . . .
"Maybe it's the revolution," said Evelyn, dryly as she
lighted another cigarette.
It was plain that this was intended, from some angle,
as a taunt — as possibly provocative. There might be
a question as to where I stood, and at the moment I
couldn't have made that clear. I was not only daunted,
but a little depressed, and quite aware, at the same
time, that this resulted from facing something — not
simply these individual girls, but a drama behind them.
Most of us were walking around things. These girls,
for better or worse, were putting their hands into the
mess. I might have cross-examined them glibly and
made myself unhappy. Not doing so was possibly
another case of walking around something. The fact
that stared at me was my ignorance. I was com-
pletely ignorant of matters they at least knew the touch
of ... a world I had never actually seen, a living world,
tingling with utterly human resentments or aspirations.
In all probability arguing into the question might have
brought out phases that would seem to me like a failure
of logic. But it was not a matter of logic. It was a
matter of emotions that were older than logic. It was a
matter profounder than stodgy formulas of economics.
THE NEW DAY 95
And mere glimpse as this was, I felt with regard to it
as if a door opened and a confused human mass had
outlined itself in a strange light.
There was no need to ask if I might smoke, and I
covered an interval by bringing forth a cigar.
"Now you look more at home," said Stella Haj'es from
the couch, as I found a place in which to dispose of the
match. "Maybe we'll get a shake-up now."
"Good Heavens!" came a voice from behind me,
"don't let us yap about the revolution. I'm sick of it."
"You weren't sick of it last night," retorted Stella
Hayes as the owner of the voice came into the room.
The new member of the group, who was introduced
by Ann as Miss Santzeff, and who thereafter found a
place beside Stella on the couch, was a little, sharp-
featured girl, with eyes of a glittering black, whose
yellow smock gave her an appearance of exotic
quaintness.
"I thought you were primping," said Ann.
"Just listening," returned Miss Santzeff, casually.
"It made me nervous to hear you people trying to start
something, and Mr. Maxton not coming across. I
didn't blame him. Sometimes, you know, I do get sick
of it."
Stella smiled wearily, and Evelyn Dower appeared to
disapprove.
"I wish," I said, "in a human way, and not to start
anything, that you would tell me what you do."
"Tracts," answered Miss Santzeff, not quite con-
vincingly. "Of course I couldn't confess that unless
you had been properly introduced."
"Does it happen," I asked, "that you have any
here?"
"You say that as if they were something to sing, or
play on a piano. No," Miss Santzeff went on with a
mischievous grimace, "it wouldn't do if we were
raided."
96 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"I'm immensely flattered," I said.
"And yet you are, or have been, a newspaper man.
We sm-ely are a trustful bunch. I don't see how in-
nocent confidence could go any further." Miss
Santzeff crossed her knees and interrogated a yellow
slipper.
"Think of it! — a newspaper man."
"A nice kind," said Ann.
Miss Santzeff laughed unctuously. "Don't get this
wrong, but I was just thinking that a girl with a burglar
friend probably says the same thing."
"I'm game," I said, with a startled twinge, "even for
anything so rough as that."
"If it amuses me, you mean. Well, maybe I was
adding to the flattery. You didn't look as if you would
get it wrong. And I'm sore on newspapers."
"In that case," I said, I'm sure you don't vote for
them."
"What do you mean?"
"Newspapers are elected — every day. When they
are not elected enough they die, poor things."
"Unless they are subsidized," thrust Miss Santzeff,
with a shrewd look.
" In which case they are not true newspapers, and are.
generally, only a little longer in dying."
"How clever! Really, I'd love to have it out with
you about newspapers. We'd go to the mat. We must
do it. Sometime when you're feeling strong — "
"And you're feeling sore enough — "
"It would be a riot," concluded Miss Santzeff.
"I think you ought to remember, Lida," remarked
Miss Hayes with a drawl, "that a reporter said you were
a 'striking brunette.' That was not so bad."
"He wasn't intelligent enough to see the joke. I was
striking all right." Lida's laugh had a quite easy
merriment in it. She rose from the couch, found a
cigarette, and strolling to one of the dormer windows.
THE NEW DAY 97
glanced across the roofs. The glance seemed to suggest
a diversion.
"Mr. Maxton," she said, "they tell me they've sold
the dog's million dollar runway.?"
"Seems to me I have heard the story" — I began.
"I hope you didn't dare to print it. It would have
offended the wrong sort of people."
"Are we starting that riot now?" I demanded.
"No, no! I only wanted to suggest that the precious
place is only a block or so away. We have so little
to show you. I can't show you the dog. They wanted
the rich lady to sell them that lot for a million or
so. Foolishly thought the ground might as well be
working. Maybe they suggested that there didn't seem
to be room for all of us. But after a long siege the rich
lady declared that her dog needed the lot. Where
could he run if anybody took that lot.? And what in
God's world would she do with that other million?
The millions she had were bore enough. So that up
here, where they used to imprison cooks and chamber-
maids (one evening out a week, and no visitors), we can
catch a glimpse of the reservation."
I had followed to the window, and Ann stood beside
me.
"At all events," I said, "we don't have to be sorry
for the dog just yet."
"Of course there are the other dogs," suggested
Evelyn.
"And the other people," added Stella.
"Somehow," I said, "I was feeling sorry for the rich
lady."
"The trouble is," Lida said with her appalling read-
iness, "that your sorrow won't help her any."
I agreed to this. The sympathy that counted was
the sympathy that mitigated something. Yet the rich
needed sympathy too. They were so often pathetic.
It was a sparring matter. I didn't want a downright
98 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
discussion; and all this time, running in my thought, was
the situation of Ann — what was her situation? What
was her feeling with regard to these friends, if they were
friends? Was she drawn by their individual qualities, or
by that Cause that hovered behind them beckoning to
rebellious imaginations? Was she really stirred by a
sense of wrong, or only intrigued by the drama of revolt?
Was she already in the stage of conviction, or only hover-
ing, fascinated, perturbed to a point of torture, perhaps,
by the look of certain living reactions?
It didn't suffice that she was quiet and casual at this
moment. I knew that something was working itself out
in her. It came to me that she might be at a parting of
the ways. While this suspicion held me I couldn't be
honest. Too much might be deduced from either con-
cession or denial. I believed that she had gone far in
sheer sympathy for all that animated the zeal of these
girls. I was not sure that I did not stand as close to her
in that sympathy as I stood there in that summer eve-
ning light (we were in a semidarkness by now) waiting
for something conversational to turn up. But with me
it was a different matter. I, alas, was likely to go on
being a spectator, or if, perchance, a bit better than that,
not an active crusader. Ann was where she might irre-
trievably gird herself for some path. There would be a
show-down for me, there or elsewhere, so far as Ann was
concerned. I preferred that it should not be there. She
would have her discomfort about this meeting. She
would feel that none of us had performed very well.
This was always to be expected. For myself, I felt stupid,
if not cowardly. Let it be so. I should square myself
with Ann.
Perhaps there was the sound of a bell. At all events
Evelyn Dower turned on the light in the lantern, and
presently there was a step on that ladderish ascent.
The head that came up was of the boy Karlov. He
carried a packet or big envelope.
THE NEW DAY 99
"Ah! proofs!" cried Lida Santzeff, in her electrical,
enthusiastic way.
Karlov stared at me.
DC
Something was accomplished by my open recognition
of Karlov, yet his puzzled stare left an obscurity,
"How is Andy Crown?" I asked, wondering not of
Andy Crown but of Karlov.
"All right."
Miss Santzeff took the packet, and I heard her say to
Karlov, "I wish you'd tell Boris I'll see him to-morrow
night." She may have asked him to sit down, for he
remarked, "I must go somewhere."
Nevertheless he did sit down, and without looking
directly at any of us, or seeming to require occasion,
said:
"That was a funny question. A man just asked me
where I was educated!"
"Could you tell him?" asked Stella.
"Oh, I had something for him. A man said it on a
ship. The man said it was like where had he taken all
his meals? I remembered that."
"You have a good memory, Aaron," said Lida, as if
to punctuate a pause.
"Not so good," declared Karlov. "The other day I
wanted to remember something the old rabbi said I
must never forget, never, and I couldn't. I think it's
this country. You can't remember things in this
country."
"But you remember the kantchik" suggested Lida.
Karlov gave a sharp laugh.
"Yes! I remember the way the old rabbi looked —
very savage. Nine of his own children in that room when
the rest of us came for the Talmud-Tor ah. An awful
smell. And cold — phew! it was cold! The rabbi kept
100 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
on his shtramel. All of us making a noise. And we were
so dumb. We never knew the lesson. Then he got mad,
and he grabbed the kantchik."
Karlov shook with the recollection.
"I remember the payes over his ears. And how his
mouth went. My uncle's mouth I couldn't see at all.
My uncle was a miller. He was very hairy. Only his
eyes you could see — and his nose. His beard was very
long — it was the longest beard anybody had. You
wouldn't believe how long his beard was. I used to
wonder, when he went to bed . . . did he have it under
the bedclothes, or on top?"
That childhood perplexity gave us all a moment of
laughter, out of which came Ann's voice:
"What did they think about America — over there in
Russia?"
Karlov pondered. "America? I don't know. Except
that there was money. . . . Yes, that there was a lot of
money here."
"Did they think of liberty, of—"
"Liberty?" Karlov looked up quickly, then seemed
to be going back, conscientiously. "Liberty? No. I
don't remember that. I think it was only the money —
that you got a lot of money when you came here." He
added, with eyes gathered, "That's a funny word,
liberty."
"About the funniest we have around," remarked Lida.
After glancing intently at Lida, Karlov repeated, in
his slow way, "I must go somewhere."
He got up.
When he had gone Ann told about a Russian lad in a
French regiment who had lost an arm after great sufiFer-
ing, and of something he said about his family. Ann
recalled him vividly by the time he stood, very pale,
beside her, while a French band played in a village, and
a group of old women wept silently, their wet faces shin-
ing in the sun. . . .
THE NEW DAY 101
"There was a girl he worried about," said Ann. "He
had not heard from her for two years. He was sure now
that he would never see her again."
(A line from ten thousand stories!)
"What did you dream of . . . over there?" Stella asked,
abruptly. She was looking at Ann with that respectful-
ness I had noticed as characteristic. Evelyn Dower put
away her cigarette.
"Dream ... .''" Ann clasped her knees, and a faint
tension appeared in her forehead. "I was living the
dream. . . . That's what it seemed like. A bad dream,
mostly, and fearfully real at the same time. Odd, wasn't
it? The real thing — waiting, in a sort of way — seemed
to be back here. And I got it into my head that when
I came back nothing but real things would do at all.
Nothing that fooled me, or made believe, or only prom-
ised. I guess I began to think, generally, of doing some-
thing, without figuring how hard it would be to decide
what that should be. Oh, no! I didn't figure that. Or
how horribly brutal so many things would seem when
you looked squarely at them — or about the ugliness under
the shells. That was the startler — that coming home
should be like waking up.
"Another thing . . ." Ann's glance touched me before
it turned to the windows, and she went on: "I guess we
can speak honestly here. ... I dreamed out that I wanted
a baby."
No one moved or made a sound until Lida muttered
(her chin rested in her hand), "What an original
ambition!"
There may have been an angry eflFect when I swung
toward her. "If you really thought it original enough
I'm sure you would have been more polite to it."
Lida chuckled, but not without a nervous glitter. "I
think it's a perfectly splendid idea," she said.
I felt a senior responsibility in that strange grouping.
Also I felt the hazard of being solemn.
102 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Speaking of love — " I said, quite impulsively at
last.
"But no one has said a word about it!" snapped Lida.
"Never a whisper."
"It occurred to me," I went on, conscious of being in
for it, "that while we are taking notice of other circum-
stances in the world it wouldn't be so foolish a notion to
give a thought occasionally to the elemental things that
are not fashionable — "
"O piffle!" cried Lida. "Isn't liberty elemental?
Isn't labor elemental? Isn't hunger elemental.? — and if
you have it all fixed that there is no hunger now, ask
some of the men and women who've tried changing the
conditions of labor."
"You're jumping on me," I said, "for that word
'fashionable.' But we might have talked about love
without a row, don't you think? Have I said something
awkward? Love isn't taboo, is it?"
"It's only mushy," said Lida, "and in this case intro-
duced to have fun with us."
"What a failure!" I lamented.
"And what could you have told us?" challenged Stella,
"you, an old bachelor!"
"Probably nothing," I said. "In an older time a
man of my years, magnanimous enough to talk about
love, would have had the like of you at his feet, listening
in maidenly eagerness — "
Lida's laughter couldn't wait. "All gone, with the
thumbscrews, and the slave collars, and the chastity
belts, and the nasty courts of love. We don't sit at
men's feet any more. I'm sorry — it might be more
clubby . . ."
"Perhaps," remarked Stella, dryly, "it's being
maidenly that's gone out."
"I hope so!" cried Evelyn, with a sudden color in her
cheeks. "I always hated that. Maidenly! . . . I'm
not pitching on you," she added. "But — '
>>
1
THE NEW DAY 103
"I'm glad of that," I said, "because I wasn't ask-
ing for anything maidenly — one shouldn't think of it
nowadays — "
"Now don't pull hair," snapped Lida.
Evelyn was not through. "What I mean is, that
it has always made me furious to be put in a class —
to be sent over to sit down quietly with the wise virgins
— as if I were a kind of creature with limited privileges
and fearful obligations. They don't do that with men.
Take your case, if you were a woman — "
"Good heavens!" I protested. "This is getting to be
frightfully personal!"
Evelyn relented, but Lida was writhing with joy of
the picture.
"Think of you," she shouted, "sitting there — by every
polite inference a seasoned he-virgin — and talking about
love! It's too much. It's thrilling. Really, it is!"
I was laughing by now — and feeling uncomfortable.
"It's easy to see," I said, "who's furnishing the fun.
And he's a nice man, too."
"So sympathetic!" thrust Lida, those black eyes of
hers sparkling electrically.
"Right!" I said, shaking a fist at Lida. "Almost
miraculously tolerant — for a man. I want you all to
have your fling and get it done with. Sow your rebellions
early — that's the great thing. Find the thrill and make
the most of it. There's a lot of amusement to be had
from the prodigious stupidity of the world. You'll
maybe succeed in flopping the old monster over onto
his back. And he'll wriggle around in the night and
be found on all fours in the morning. I say 'he.' The
monster is still masculine. But you never can tell when
it may be a Brunhilde who will do for him. You have
new, shining swords. You have high spirits — I can see
that glimmering through your sarcasms. You have
beautiful contempts, and an absolutely dazzling de-
termination. You are o£f into the new day, with the
104 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
sky flung over your shoulders and your swords flashing.
I stare after you, enviously."
Lida looked at Ann with a whimsical quiet.
"Think of our being like that!"
*'I must go," said Ann, getting up.
When Stella shook hands she said: "I can't make out
just how you feel."
"It doesn't matter," I said. "One thing you can
be sure of : I want those textile workers to be unionized. ' '
"That counts some," said Stella.
"You don't hate me, do you?" asked Lida.
When I said that this was awfully sudden, she turned
to Ann. "Tell him" — she began.
"I won't tell him a thing," said Ann.
X
Ann did show a disposition not to begin a Who's WTio
on the Top Floor. I might have told her, if it could
have been made to seem not impolite, that just then I
would rather think than talk. Whatever may have been
her intention, it turned out that one particular curiosity
stood out in her mind at the moment. At least, this was
to be assumed from her first question in the street.
"And so you know that Russian boy,?"
He seemed rather an oddity, I said, and yet one might
scarcely call him an oddity when he was so plainly a type. .
He was very likable, I thought.
This, it appeared, did not answer the query that was
in Ann's mind. I could see that she wanted to know,
without asking, how I came to know him — quite as if she
had assigned him to Lida Santzeff, or to that top-floor
group, and was puzzled to guess how, in the current of
things, I could have encountered him.
"He's an electrical worker," I said. "I've seen him
in the shop of an old chap named Crown. He is employed
by Crown, and they have a peculiar relationship, not
THE NEW DAY 105
exactly like boss and worker. He reads Crown's books.
The other night when I dropped in I found them there
in thai queer back room wrangling about money — not
wages money in a personal sense, but money in general.
And Karlov had a notion — heaven knows where he picked
it up — that money should be nontransferable, like a pass-
port; that it ought to be a receipt for effort which should
somehow not be possible of accumulation by anyone not
earning it. Naturally this big idea was a bit complicated
for him. Yet it was beautiful to see him fight for it in
his gentle way. And to see Crown violently poking holes
in the theory — Crown, who has such savage radicalisms
of his own."
At first it seemed that Ann might have taken up the
subject of Karlov as a means of avoiding another, and
had let me go on talking about Crown for the same
reason. But presently it appeared that some actual in-
terest had been awakened. There was no way of tracing
these extraordinary tangents in Ann's processes, though
I have no doubt they all grew out of her peering rest-
lessness.
"This man Crown," she said, "must be fascinating.
I met a man like that in France, but he spoke such funny
French."
Most Frenchmen did, I suggested, wickedly.
"Do you say that you drop in on him — on this man
you speak of — at any old time?"
"Yes. Sometimes he seems outrageously interrupted.
At others he seems scarcely to be annoyed at all."
"Why couldn't we drop in — to-night? Where is he?"
"Look here!" I said to Ann. "You're getting to be
too infernally solemn, or investigatory. You need some-
thing quite different, in my opinion. You should be
going to a dance. That would be more like it. You need
a little frivolity. I won't be a party to filling your
head—"
"I had plenty of dancing on the other side," Ann
8
106 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
answered, with a laugh. " I danced with ninety-six men
in one evening. And most of them couldn't. It was
part of my job."
"Well, it isn't part of your job now to be — "
"Wait," said Ann. "Don't be so reformatory. Be a
sport. If I were a man — "
" If you were a man you wouldn't be saying, ' If I were
a woman!'"
"If I were a man I'd say anything I liked. I'd say,
'Let's go and dig out this old bird.' And you'd amble
along without arguing."
"I know," I said. "You're something just as good.
But Crown — how do I know that he doesn't hate women .f^
Or that you wouldn't upset him.f*"
"That I wouldn't be terrific.''" added Ann. "But I
won't. It would be just as if we, you and I, were two
chums. You don't mean, do you, that you have an old-
fashioned feeling that it would be compromising?"
" I'm afraid I have very few old-fashioned feelings left,"
I said. "Mostly, I guess, I'm thinking — and steering
you downtown, against my judgment — that you're too
confoundedly high strung, that you're away above con-
cert pitch. I can't seem to follow you up there. If you
were my daughter I shouldn't manage you — that sort of
thing is no longer done — but I should know how to take
you, how to translate you. At least I suspect that I
should, although I fancy there are a good many fathers
to-day who are rather winded trying to follow their
daughters. I dare say they find it hard to make up their
minds that they don't have to follow them — that they
can let them run loose, as they do their sons."
"There's an idea!" cried Ann. "I'll adopt you as a
father! It's been done. I like you, in some ways, better
than either of my other fathers — and that's a big com-
pliment, whether you know it or not."
"I object to being Father the Third," I told her.
"Oh, you don't have to adopt me!" Ann said. "Take
THE NEW DAY 107
it under consideration. But you re adopted. Please let
me adopt you!"
"That means," I retorted, "that you may manage me,
but that I must be content — "
"Rot! I don't expect you to be content. You have
such a nice way of growling."
"And I object to having my conscience entertain you.
Fatherhood in America, so far as grown daughters are
concerned, seems to be a kind of comic page relation-
ship. You want some one to say it to. You want the
joy of watching things bounce off me."
"Don't be stingy," pleaded Ann. "You said yourself
that I needed to be frivolous."
"But not necessarily with me. And let me tell you
one thing: Don't try to have fun with Crown, or
I'll order you to bed — if he doesn't."
"Don't worry," urged Ann.
I was so busy considering Ann, and the top floor
group, and adjusting her there, and filling the blank
space of her poorly concealed reticence as to real sym-
pathies and intentions, that a certain quite obvious
thought did not enter my head until my hand was on
Crown's door. I actually halted while the bell chattered,
as if it were still possible to turn back and consider the
hearings of a matter which surely should have been
considered at the beginning instead of at the end. Ann
saw my hesitation, and that it had in it, I have no
doubt, signs of startled realization, if not of dismay.
Ann's look, the bell's insistence, and an expectation that
Crown would have fastened me in the strategic mirror,
sent me on my way at last with Ann following.
The jumble of the shop seemed more shadowy and
mysterious than usual, and the retreat beyond to glow
more significantly on that account.
Crown was not in his accustomed chair. No chance,
then, to exhibit to Ann the man's highly original casual-
ness of greeting. I had begun to wonder whether the den
108 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
was deserted when I saw the figvire in the chair — in two
chairs, for Wayne Halland, his feet comfortably sprawled,
was smoking and reading in an absorption that seemed
hkely to ignore the sounds we had made. It was in-
deed my pause at the door that brought him up, as you
might shake a man out of slumber, and he looked hard
for a moment before signaling any recognition.
Our first words crossed each other.
I remembered his name if he had forgotten mine,
and could greet him accordingly. He, occupied with
the business of getting himself out of the chairs, be-
trayed nothing but a wish to convey the fact that Crown
had gone out and would be back in a few minutes. He
had thought my step was Crown's.
Halland had not yet seen Ann, for she had halted in
the doorway and was at an angle that reserved her for
the intervening seconds. This gave her the advantage
of his profile before the time came for the actual meeting.
As a practical joke such a matter would have been
entirely symmetrical, and a sense of this deepened my
chagrin. If I could have said to Ann the thing that
was in my mind at the door while the bell was hurrying
me — "you know this man Crown, I have stupidly
forgotten to remark, is the uncle of the man you toppled
over in the restaurant — " there might have been a
slight mitigation. Ann has said that she would have
gone anyway, though she has not pretended that she
would have counted upon meeting the nephew.
And there they were, face to face, acting quite, I
thought, as if two ghosts had met on a spectral bypath
— ghosts whose last meeting had been rather awkward.
Probably I introduced them clumsily. I wouldn't
accept either of them as a witness as to that, for both
were flustered.
Halland I am sure was having one of the rememberable
emotions of his career. He flushed quickly, and as he
came forward with an extended hand, a little turn in
THE NEW DAY 109
his s>\oulders marking the typical gesture of greeting,
his eyes betrayed something more than increduHty or
astonishment. I had the thought of having seen a
flash of fear in them, which seemed absurd enough.
Quite formally he said that he was very happy to meet
Miss Forrest.
As for Miss Forrest, there can be no doubt that she
was violently jostled out of her previous mood, what-
ever it may have been. However she might admit or
deny, she was appalled. And she looked it. There
could be no occasion to assure Halland that the meeting
had not been planned. Ann may be a cool one, but she
is no actress. To her the startling recognition was
plainly an incident in the presence of which her theories
quite failed to work. Her smile was the queerest action
I ever saw her face perform.
Ann afterward insisted that I shouldn't have waited
for a cue — that I should have plumped into history —
filled the pause by acknowledging the antecedent
calamity. She was speaking of the needs of that interval
in which Halland, with a dazed politeness, was indicating
where we might sit. My contention was that she was
supposed to be carrying about with her the apology
that failed to get spoken on the night she was arrested.
Her rebuttal was that the apology had evaporated, that
she hadn't been carrying it or thinking about it, and
that she felt like a fool when she looked at him.
Fortunately Halland had gathered himself before Ann's
delay or mine became too painful.
"It seems to me," he said, looking at Ann with a
helpless steadiness that lost some of its helplessness after
he started, "that we have met before."
"Yes," said Ann.
"You may have forgotten," I remarked, "but I also
was there — and here afterward."
"I do remember," Halland assured me. "I came
around to have an uncomfortable session with Uncle
110 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Andy." He folded and unfolded the pamphlet he had
been reading. "Uncle Andy was pretty rough." His
eyes went to the door with a transparent anxiety.
"He wouldn't have known the right and wrong of it,"
I said.
"I had all the wrong of it," Halland added quickly.
" Don't forget me," said Ann.
This gave us the lift of a laugh.
"You were perfectly right," Halland declared, pos-
sibly with something of the officer manner.
I suggested that this was a dangerous admission.
"Something very foolish might have happened," he
said. "I was glad it didn't happen, of course. It
would have been . . . You know," he went on, with the
pamphlet reduced to a shapeless wad, "I wish," and his
glance rested upon Ann, "I wish I could tell you what
went before that. Maybe it doesn't matter. It doesn't
excuse me. I don't mean that."
Evidently he had not in mind anything that was to
be said at the moment.
"A man doesn't like — "
I could estimate his alertness for the appearance of
Crown by the sharpness of the pause when the noisy
coming of his uncle prepared us for the swerving of the
current.
XI
As Crown came through the shop he was to be heard
saying, "that letter won't make them actually think —
they're not quite capable of that — but it will — "
And then he saw that Halland was not alone.
Naturally Ann was the special occasion of his glaring
effect. It was as if she were quite incredible. My
introduction may have softened the effect, but it is
doubtful whether Ann saw any modification. I think
she was captivated by his curtness.
"I asked Mr. Maxton to bring me," said Ann.
THE NEW DAY 111
Crown's eyebrows lurched toward the crevices above
his rugged nose.
"Why?" he demanded.
"I wL,nted to see you," Ann answered.
"Do you mean, look at me?" Then Crown relented.
"I suppose not. I'm not on exhibition." And he got
himself into his accustomed chair.
"After all. Crown," I ventured, "it must have been
something I said. The responsibility comes back to me."
"Then probably you weren't insulting," said Crown.
"Anyway," I said, "I hope it may never turn out
that the interest of one human being in another needs to
be apologized for."
"Yet," and Crown stroked his chin (I think he had
not shaved on that day), "there are a good many kinds
of interest. There was a man in here early to-night.
He seemed interested in me. But I wasn't interested
in him. I came close to putting him out. I think you
would say I did put him out. And his theory with him."
"We're all carrying that luggage now," I said.
Crown hated theories, especially theories that "had
nothing in the bank" — theories that meant no kind of
action.
"You mean," said Ann, "like the theory that letting
women vote would settle everything."
Crown grunted. "Dropping a piece of paper in a box and
going to sleep for a year. Good God ! " He swung toward
Ann. " I suppose you've got a theory of doing something."
"Not a theory," returned Ann. "I just wish."
For at least ten minutes Halland and I were ignored.
Crown talked, and Ann watched and listened. Occasion-
ally, indeed, she broke through, as when she said: "But
I don't see it as a man or woman matter. I see it as an
honesty matter."
"A very simple way to see it," said Crown. "Very
simple. But how much honesty you get depends on
interests. And how are you going to get women to see
112 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
interests in things like that? It's hard to interest them
in anything they can't feel with their gloves. Women
who don't have gloves — and that is most of them — want
a still closer feel of a matter to believe in it. Women have
been tricked. But so have men. That isn't the point.
The point is that ..."
He stopped abruptly here, leaving the point flickering
in the air, to look quite straightly at Ann for the first
time, and he had to move those wide shoulders of his a
trifle to do it.
"You know," he said, "about the last thing a woman
can do is imagine other women. They are not all like
you — not by a long shot. And you haven't realized that
enough."
"That's funny," said Ann. "You know, I was just
thinking that you were a trifle different from other men.'*
"Let it be so," retorted Crown. "Very likely. The
biggest mistake of all is forgetting differences, and differ-
ences are overlooked because people haven't imagination
enough. What I am telling you is that I don't think
women can imagine other women as closely as men can
imagine other men. That has its results."
"But don't men usually speak of women as if they were
all alike.'* Haven't you done something like that? "
Ann spoke so sincerely that Crown received nothing
but the flavor of pure argument.
"Naturally," he went on. "It's not only a way of
speaking. Men are ignorant about women. But that
isn't so unfortunate as that women should be ignorant
about women. Man's imagination for men gives men
cohesion. Woman's lack of it as to women fritters her
power — blocks things — leaves her at a disadvantage in
the fight with the other sex. Something good would
come of a fairer fight."
"Good heavens!" Ann cried, with the preliminary
twitchings of a smile, "it sounds like a — what do they
call it? — preamble to a League of Sexes!"
THE NEW DAY 113
They were going pretty deep. I can't be sure how
much deeper they went or how Ann fared, for I had
become conscious of Halland's look. In general, he
seemed uneasy, as if on the edge of an anxiety as to what
his uncle might say, and as if, perhaps, not in a lesser
degree dazed as to Ann's unabashed frankness. All the
time his eyes were intent upon Ann. In the swirl of the
talk he was reaching out, fumbling, as it appeared, for
a grip of her. It was as if she were new to him as a kind,
and not quite to be reached by any method he had ever
practiced or thought of. I recalled the fact that in
Crown's family quarters in the upper part of the house
next door, with the white-haired, nervous Mrs. Crown,
whose unnamed infirmity had made her a house prisoner
for many years, was a demented daughter whom I had
never seen. It would be inevitable that Crown should
revert to that calamity when he looked at Ann.
He might well have been frustrated by the girlishness
of the figure before him — the big girlishness, if you like,
yet with the girl-glow so markedly there. Ann's face
shone from under that turban affair with a young vivid-
ness that came through as a warmth rather than as a
color. She was wearing one of those one-piece gowns of
very deep blue, with scarlet stitchings in it at the round
of the neck — and a neck like Ann's happens only once in
a long while. She made Crown look grisly. She made
me feel fearfully venerable — like an old tree peering into a
spring garden. She made Halland look like a danger.
But that was the natural result of making me feel like
an old tree.
Ann produced these effects, I am sure, by no special
complexity. On the contrary, she seemed rather extraor-
dinarily simple — like a blade, or a flame, or a single flower
in a dim place. She had no tricks. She had an easy,
mental litheness, that matched her body, and that was
as free as her body of any artifice. There was no rouge
on Ann's mind. Yet it is true that I could have seen her
114 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
daubed with the most hideous paint, and smoking a large,
black cigar, without losing my confidence in her fineness.
She could be amazingly foolish, and she could be annoy-
ing. She could give me a distressing curiosity as to what
she might do in certain circumstances — a real misgiving
as to whether she would let herself know the sort of thing
that shouldn't be done. But I was sure that she was
born to be clean.
Halland, I found a much less definite image, as he sat
there writhing under a heavy control. Because he had
impatient eyes, lips capable of an ugly tension, and a
smile that might make you forget both, he could keep an
observer in uncertainty. In form he was forcible, but
there was no such unity of effect in his signals. Of course
it was true that he had good reason to be disconcerted.
I tried to make a right allowance for this as I looked him
over. Unfortunately, making this allowance kept call-
ing up that first-night picture.
So far as his present imeasiness was concerned, you
might have thought that it would wear off, but there
were signs that it increased. He probably looked for an
explosion, something irreparably violent, and the longer
it was delayed the more nervous he became — as when
you are uncertain whether a time fuse is going to work
or not, and the detonation that doesn't happen begins to
fill all the spaces to the horizon, and to be straining at
the lid of the universe.
Then Crown did burst forth, but with a sentiment so
far out of proportion to anything anxiety might have
pictured as to produce a sensation of its own.
" You won't do any harm in the world. But you might
be very disturbing. God knows the world needs disturb-
ing — its sores have got to be kept open until the healing
can be done right. Maybe you women will be the nurses
— ^beside the men with the knives. . . ."
"And the patient?" I asked.
"The big, lazy, selfish, cowardly body of the world."
THE NEW DAY 115
He made a gesture toward Ann. " Maybe the like of you
will see the way — or be able to blunder through because
you don't know about the obstacles."
He turned to me with a puckered radiance that struck
me as fantastic.
" Wouldn't it be astounding if a Joan could lead us to
real peace!"
"I suspect," I said, "that there might turn out to be
two of them. As it looks now, if you found your \Vhite
Joan there would be a Red one, too."
As Crown made his protesting gesture, I found myself
searching Ann's face. She did not look at all like a Joan.
And that Joan note sounded a trifle flambuoyant.
"I don't think," I added, "that Miss Forrest is look-
ing for a legion. It doesn't seem to be indispensable to
her to find a spotlight. Thank heaven she doesn't want
to make New York stare."
"Stare , . . ?" Crown weighed this. "Why, you
can't get a blink from the old beast."
"She would find out that much," I said. "If New
York were a waiter it couldn't be harder to attract its
attention. Fortunately — "
Ann laughed. " Yes, fortunately ... ! '*
XII
When Halland followed Ann and me to that outer door
it was with the evident wish to retain hold of some thread
that would have insured another meeting. For either of
us separately he might have had a formula, or a quick
device. As it was, he failed. I think he would have
tried a simultaneous departure as aiding the chance, if
he had not been restrained by something imfinished as
to his uncle. At all events he let us go with a broken-off
look. I took Ann to Central Park West, and we both
indulged in large silences on the way.
Perhaps the spectacle of Ann and Andy Crown, both
116 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
groping, both with a now-is-the-critical-time effect, em-
phasized certain mellowed convictions. Of course all
hours are critical. Of course the world is never finished.
Of course plagues are always present or impending. Of
course always the last of the great have just died, and
Satan sees his chance. Of course pauses are only a
theory, and tranquillity is ever a blindness. Yet it seems
a pity that the machinery of life should make so much
noise that we can't hear ourselves live. It seems a pity
that with nature steadfastly on the job, with the great
forces holding to their unbroken bargain, men should
spend all of their time wrangling about the disposition
of the spoils. It seems a pity that, in the matter of the
world, with no obligation but to give or get out, the most
conspicuous images should be those of Greed, clutching,
feverishly scheming, crippled and stupefied by the sheer
burdens of calculation, and of Fear nervously building
its intricate entanglements, skulking under an honest
sky. It seems a pity that the spiritual nourishment of
fighting, if that is to be admitted, should become an
obsession, and conflict a business absorbing every waking
hour and invading even the dreams of destination. ....
This is what I was thinking after I left Ann. '*
I saw her as one who should have been an image of
Love. If she really had a birthright it should have meant
something with beauty in it. She was entitled to dreams.
If dreams are more beautiful than so-called realities,
what a shame to miss them — not to have a dream time!
If the past is secure, dream-beauty is part of the legacy.
She should have been thinking. . . .
I saw an impressive panorama of all that.
And if I had spread it before her she would have been
crisp with me. She would have insisted that she had a
dream. She would have pointed out that there was
beauty in being what Crown had called a nurse beside
the men with the knives , . . God! And she hated that,
with her whole soul and her whole body.
PART THREE
Voices in the Fog
HOW much different was Irma Kane?
I saw her sitting with Jimmy. Yes, she was
different; precisely how, I was not always good
at deciphering. If I had not had my glimpse I should
have thought, foolishly, that life was touching the
surface of her and not getting through. She laughed
now as if the touch amused her extraordinarily. Her
laugh was wholly treble. It did not begin in the con-
tralto register as Ann's did, and her lips gave it out
with a flexible freedom, as if her welcome to the occasion
for laughter was always alert and eager.
It appeared to me then that Irma was not worrying
about the world, and people who did not worry about
the world were in themselves alleviating. They seemed
to make the world less formidable for the moment. If
some one said: "The ship is leaking badly! — do you
notice the list to starboard?" one would have a catch
in the throat, perhaps. And if some one else laugked,
without affirming or denying, and suggested a round or
two of poker, the total of the situation would lose in
awesomeness. Of course the ship might go on sinking.
But if there was nothing one could do but have a state
of mind, the poker game might turn out to have been
incidental to a supreme wisdom.
Because the terrors of life go so largely by election,
every vote for cheerfulness directly affects the equation.
118 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
The trouble is that blind cheerfulness, the turn-your-
back-and-grin kind, often looks so much like the other,
the creative kind, that delusions multiply. Yet I have
been so persistently haunted by a conviction that sheer
theory can not only affect the impression of life but
actually change the color of it, that I have listened
gratefully to the laugh. K we look back through
history and see that things were generally wrong, shall
we decide on that account that the weepers were right?
Isn't it plain enough that the laughers had the best
of it?
An "illustrious infidel" once said that good nature is
often mistaken for virtue. It is true that virtues often
give false effects. Certain of them, for example, have
never been so bad as they look. Yet good nature is
not only in itself a virtue, but it has stood up for me as
deserving a place well to the front as the only virtue
that is contagious. And in the face of that effect it
surely deserves a large deference.
Jimmy, while he could be responsively peevish, or
at least argumentative, as in the instance of a thing like
a prohibition amendment, resembled Irma in preferring
to be cheerful. He was more concerned in picking the
near fruit than in the future of the orchard. He was
kind, but he was not a caretaker. He did not tell the
world to go hang, but if it was to get itself into trouble
it could find its own way of getting out. He belonged
to the club without wishing to be on a committee.
Jimmy had high color. Probably he had been much
freckled when he was a boy. On this night he was
pinkly joyous and urgently responsive to rhythm. I
could see his toes ragging as he sat beside Irma. The
crash of the drum seemed to make his bones quiver, and
he looked at Irma as if she were the music.
This was at an absurd party given by Franklin Hebb
and his drab little wife in the waning time of the summer.
Hebb had the connivance of Wichert, the sculptor, who
VOICES IN THE FOG 119
had quarters adjoining Hebb's in the wide old house off
Madison Square. By the opening of a door long
nailed shut (the door was actually lifted from its hinges
and used as a table), something of the style of a suite
was brought about. Wichert, who always expressed
a horror of "junk," and asked only a fair stretch of
walking space for his work, had a large room that was
readily cleared to the zones of the walls, on which hung
a few studies in low relief. A ledge on one side held half
a dozen busts, one of them of heroic size and of marked
distinction, representing an eminent physician. The
original bronze stands in the foyer of a large hospital.
A crouching figure of a girl, in plaster, and with the
mold marks still awaiting treatment, shone near the
shadow of the great doctor.
In Wichert's alcove (after the couch had been placed
on its beam ends) Hebb had established his miniature
jazz band. The three boyish negroes had an extraor-
dinary facility, especially the one with the drum and
its family of supplementary inventions. Technically
their din was of the right sort. It had an epileptic
abandonment, and operated as if under the impulse
of a high-voltage alternating current. The drummer
was particularly temperamental. He shrugged his
shoulders and swung his head. He threw himself into
the litter of devices and emerged with an astounding
effect of stubbing his toes and frantically avoiding an
utter tumble on his way out.
Although the band was so small in numbers, its tonal
volume was many sizes too large. The music was as
dreamy as a boiler factory. Its lift was explosive,
thunderous. The exaggerated pianissimo passages ex-
cited nervous apprehension. Invariably they expressed
the calm before the storm, and when they were extremely
soft there was the dread that there might not be room
for the cyclonic crisis.
I thought there was a look of faint misgiving in Hebb's
120 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
face at one time as he stood in the doorway looking into
the dancing space with a twitching smile. The windows
were open. He may have made a legal appraisement
of the situation. At all events he swung about and
retreated to his own quarters.
It was in his quarters that the company was complete
during the intervals, for the studio beyond offered no
sitting accommodations in its transformed condition.
It was here that Hebb unfolded the real purpose of his
party, for his speech made the point so vivid that the
merely social side of the affair began to seem incidental,
if not negligible.
You might say that he diagramed his explanation, for
he dragged out of one of his closets three large crocks
— two-gallon crocks, he said. The three ludicrous ob-
jects sat in a row in the middle of his floor. He looked
at them with a fanatical pride. He twisted them one
by one, as a magician might in establishing the in-
tegrity of his performance. They were brown and
shiny on the inside.
I can seem to hear his voice, and to see his gestures.
He has a glistening forehead and very black hair. His
sharp chin always carries the shadowy protest of a beard
that resents being shaved. When he spoke to us col-
lectively it was easy to fancy him sobbing before a jury.
"Corn meal, raisins, sliced lemons . . . the yeast
cakes . . . filtered water — oh yes! the brown sugar. ..."
The crocks were mutely aiding the visualization of
Hebb's process, which nevertheless grew hazier to his
listeners, I have no doubt, as he approached the obvious
denouement.
"... every day for fifteen days, and then. ..." It
was intricate, I am sure, judging by the fragments of
the formula. I heard little more than fragments, for
I was watching the faces — noticing that there was a
face there for every one of Hebb's fifteen days in which
something was to be done.
VOICES IN THE FOG 121
"And all this time," said Hebb, dramatically, "when
I listened, listened close to the crocks, there was an
absolutely marvelous sound — a kind of seditious whisper
•"—all the time — never stopping."
"The spirit of protest!" piped Jimmy.
"Precisely!" admitted Hebb. "The murmur of
spiritual revolution. That mutter, night and day, was
one of the most extraordinary sounds you can imagine.
I tell you, it was a Voice — the voice of Nature. It had
the wonder of allegory, something sublimely simple,
yet as subtle as ineffable wisdom."
"You're going strong," announced Jimmy.
"And then," Hebb went on, "came the great day of
the siphon. I don't think I ever before appreciated the
marvel of the siphon principle. It appears to have
been applied at least fourteen hundred years before our
era, but — "
"I know!" shouted Rankin, who for some reason had
been quiet from the time of his coming, "it has just
reached you. But let me urge you, Hebb, if you are
coming to the drink itself, to move a little quicker.
We're unanimous for acquittal. Bring out the prisoner."
"I will not be hurried," declared Hebb. "In my
present state of awe for the benign deliberation of Nature
any kind of rush would make me feel vulgar."
"I'm willing to be vulgar," cried one of the women.
"Rush it. ..."
"The bottling . . ." Hebb began ironically. Further
exposition was drowned by indignant and derisive noises.
When the drink actually came it was carried by
Wichert on a huge tray, accompanied by an ingeniously
prearranged fanfare from the negro boys.
"It was a pahsh liquid and it received much attention.
The first comment was by Jimmy Ingle.
"No kick," he said, definitively.
An interrogating expression flitted over the faces in
the circle. Was there no "kick"? Some faces in-
9
122 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
dicated that this was to be regarded as Incredible.
Others bore signs of an amused conviction that Hebb had
been duped. Still others remained judicial — the face of
Rankin, for instance, betrayed that attitude.
"No kick.?" echoed Hebb. "A stupid decision. Pre-
mature, to begin with. Ingle wants something that
promptly blisters the throat. He has the gullet of a
longshoreman. I'm not inhospitable enough to put it
in the form of a warning, but this has the kick. Give
it a chance and find out. It has a padded kick."
"A padded . . . ?" Jimmy groped to the idea. "A
padded kick! Now there's a notion!"
"Hebb," grunted Rankin, "you may be more a poet
than a distiller. I reserve decision as to that. But
you have produced a liquid with a pleasant enough
taste. As your whole purpose was rebellious, I can
understand a certain disappointment. You would feel
better if it scorched."
"Nonsense!" retorted Hebb. "I wanted something
subtle. Something that would pretend — do you under-
stand.''" He reviewed us all. "I wanted something
that would harmonize with ourselves — sweetly conform-
ing on the outside, but having a devilish revolt
within. ..."
He liked this image so much that he would have gone
further, but the band, whether by an error in cues or
by sheer restlessness, emitted a portentous crash and
began a ragging melody that promptly disintegrated the
group.
II
"You see," said Ann, "I can dance."
In view of certain antecedent comments this was
supposed to be comforting to me, or at least correc-
tive.
I told her that I hoped they would all whoop it up,
that I was tired of quarreling and pessimism and uplift.
VOICES IN THE FOG 123
and that Hebb's illegal infatuation could not disturb
me — especially as it was harmless.
"So you think it hasn't the kick!" cried Ann, glee-
fully.
It was a sincere drink, I suggested, and harmless sin-
cerity was very respectable.
"But Mr. Hebb doesn't want it to be respectable."
"Nevertheless," I said, "his drink is like his talk.
Nothing will happen. You shouldn't be discussing such
things. Go and dance."
"Not without you."
She insisted, to the extent of dragging me out of
Hebb's best chair, and I shuffled around the studio in
the din of the band, bumping into Jimmy and Irma,
wedging myself in corners where I lost the step, turning
one way when Ann seemed to be expecting that I would
turn the other, and finding it hard to introduce any
variety, even in the blunders.
"You should hold me tighter," said Ann.
"Very well," I assented. "But I shan't be able to
do anything else."
"Try it," urged Ann.
"You surely don't mean like . . . *'
Ann knew that I alluded to Hebb's young brother
and a lean girl in a falling-off dress, who moved about
in an extraordinarily merged manner.
"Not quite," Ann admitted. "Just be sociable."
It was as I expected. With Ann close, the room
blurred. And I crunched one of her slippers. Fortu-
nately the band halted.
"I suppose," I panted, "that you are a delightful
dancer. But / should have to be a dancer to find out."
"For a graceful speech — "
"I'm only an adopted father. Remember that. Spot
Marshall will be here presently. Try him."
"Spot Marshall.''" Ann was really surprised. "How
does that happen?"
124 THE SE^^NTH ANGEL
Probably it did seem mysterious, and I had spoiled
the effect of an entrance, so far as Ann was concerned.
Hebb, I explained, had appeared helpless, and had
asked me if I knew a young fellow or two. He had
begun with Jimmy, who insisted on Irma, and Irma had
suggested Ann as one who, if she could be lured, would
give a rare distinction to Hebb's escapade. When I
named Marshall, Hebb agreed that, as a friend of Ann,
he was just right, "particularly," said Hebb, "as I've
met him. I fought Marshall in an ugly replevin case
and liked him." I found no reason to be concerned
as to Mrs. Pellamore, who was cluttered with beads
and laughed violently, or with a bald Mr. Sayles, who
knew Lord Cummington and David Belasco and Champ
Clark, and who was always being reminded of some-
thing uninteresting. There was also a pale young man
who understood batik and antiques; a person in a
sport suit who was sure about stocks and Turkish
tobacco; and a plump Miss Marwin, who was con-
stantly occupied with her hair.
"The joke is," said Ann, "that I've just had an awful
row with Spot."
This may have been true, but when Marshall, free
of a meeting, came in soon after nine, there were no
discoverable signs of an estrangement. They made an
impressive dancing picture. Marshall was far from his
political mood. The sternness of his face always gave
a charm to his smile, which was never grudging. His
manner was gentler than his mind. Even as he danced
— and there was every appearance of his doing it very
well — I thought that he would have made a good
prelate.
I was less certain of this as he danced with Irma, or
as he listened, when they were seated together, to what
she said when she looked up. I should have thought
that he had no equipment or instinct for being all
things to all women. Yet if Ann and Irma had been
VOICES IN THE FOG 125
cross-examined they would have furnished quite different
descriptions. It was not a matter of length of ac-
quaintance. It seemed probable that he would always
be like that with Irma. Every man, doubtless, has
response to at least two kinds of women. Marshall I
should have counted among the least versatile, certainly
as not adapted to a conscious repertory, but in response
I had to admit his elemental duality.
The thought turned me to Ann and Irma, and to the
recognition of Ann's greater intricacy. Irma, I said to
myself, is a mirror. Ann is a prism. . . . Then I looked
at the shimmer of both and caught myself muttering,
"You old fool!"
How Ann would have laughed at my pontifical anal-
ysis! When women are remote enough one can analyze
them beautifully. When they are near . . . That dance
was illuminating. I could manage to dance with Ann
when she was far enough away. To hold her tighter
cross-circuited my thinking machinery.
There was one glimpse of Ann and Irma together
that would have quite brushed aside any debate as to
their friendship, if I could have forgotten the possi-
bilities of the future. The attachment on both sides
was transparently genuine. Ann's big, roomy affection
was as clear as her color, and Irma's embarrassing word
"adore" certainly fitted the glow of her own glance.
When Ann put a hand over one of Irma's, and Irma
made no movement, but only looked her answer to
the touch, it was as when one holds still for a bene-
diction.
Everything depended, I thought, on the individual
paths they took. Could Irma possibly keep up a
stride that would hold her in hailing distance? Was
not Ann shaking herself free of everything entangling? . . .
(An adopted father was no burden, it was to be pre-
sumed.) If Irma implied simply a sense of obligation
on Ann's part, the tie was tenuous. There were many
126 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
possible releases to the hold. How many war-time
friendships were undergoing the same test? A little
distance, a little time . . ,
When I think of those two at Hebb's meaningless
party it is to recall how diflBcult it has been to realize
individual images against the background of that time —
a background laced by the lightnings of violent talk,
seared by apprehensive pro]>hecy and obscure tragedies
briefly written. One had only to do as I did when, a
week later, I followed the thronging figures into the
auditorium of the People's House, to feel the pervading
reality of mass in that background. The "masses"!
Wliat an ironic color they give to the delusive conceits
of written history! "The reign of Louis XV" — and the
mass let in long enough to act the part of a necessary
rabble !
Was this a rabble that I saw from my crowded corner
near the stairway to the gallery.? Was this the rebellion
of which limousined satisfaction was so vaguely in-
formed.'* Was this utterly still audience, so deferential
to itself, so concentrated in attention, so individualistic
in the effect of its units and so passionately fused by an
idea, the raw material of revolution? What a pity, I
thought, that even those who look so far as the horizon
stand back to back, forgetting one another! What a
pity that civilization should be a class Tower of Babel,
built in bitterness, most of it elaborately useless, and
that the heads and hands concerned in the rearing of
it should be found at last not glorying in height or out-
look, but wincing in a fury of acute exasperation! . . .
I heard the professor's earnest plea for a truer liberty.
I heard the recital of the woman with the steady voice
and the cautious reasoning. I saw "Red" Malone
swing across the platform, saving his chuckling ironies
for the turn of his steps. He was "Red" by the color
of his hair, now touched with gray, and he was a master
VOICES IN THE FOG 127
hand at arousing emotion, Mark Antony's "all honor-
able men" had the same shrewd method.
"That," he said, when he had finished a picture with
blood in it, "was a hundred-per-cent Americanism!"
and there was a low murmur, a subdued unanimous gasp
in the audience. "Do we want that.''" he demanded
with a leveled hand, "or do we want a hundred-per-cent
manhood? "
The answer came in a loud murmur.
"This country has boasted of certain things. It has
boasted of all it gives to those who come. It has
shouted that word 'Americanism.' It has held up that
word 'citizen' "... He walked several steps, then
stopped with folded arms. "I tell you, when a man
comes from another country, gets work here and does
that work, he is an industrial citizen!"
This sentiment was openly approved, the women, old
and young, who made up possibly a third of the audience,
leading the response.
He was talking of the I. W. W., a synonym — perhaps
the synonym — for Redness, and it behooved him to move
adroitly. He seemed to know how to cover, with his
ironical chuckle (which sometimes had an ingenious
pathos), the things that couldn't be spoken. It was,
indeed, a grotesque scene, with this rapt audience getting
something that couldn't be said, from the man out of a
prison who knew when and how not to say it.
He did not use philosophy. He used wives, and chil-
dren, and crises of sickness, and dirty work huts, and
food-supply systems with methods of keeping workers
in debt, and pressures of penalty for buying elsewhere
than in company stores, and the martyrdom for leaders
of opinion.
"There is a word 'submerged' that is very polite," he
said. "And submerged people are acknowledged. They
are the people who are down under. Just hoio they are
submerged, what is done to them to submerge them, and
128 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
to keep them submerged, you don't hear so much about.
I think they are expected to stay down under and not
complain. They have done a lot of that — not complain-
ing. Oh yes ! Maybe they won't always remember not
to complain. You can't be sure. Maybe there is a way
of forcing them never to complain, a way of holding them
under, without noise."
Then he touched the edge with a simple dramatic note.
" The Czar tried it."
I shall never forget the quick burst of feeling that
sounded in echo to this. It was an ominous sound, par-
ticularly since it came from men and women, boys who
had listened at w'hite heat, and girls who sat forward in
their seats, that were of the sort we see about us every
day. Yes, in a village near a lumber camp they would
have been a rabble. Here they were . . . What were
they?
In all of that group of close to a thousand I saw but
two faces that I knew. One was of a woman with in-
tensely white hair, whose husband had been a successful
speculator in real estate before his smash. I knew her
later as one who did exquisitely neat typing. The other
face was Karlov's. He sat in an aisle seat without making
a single sign.
When the meeting broke up, after a collection (there
was a score of bank notes in the basket that came my
way in the hands of a girl), I found a means of intercept-
ing him, and was struck by his instant awakening to
some happy, perhaps relieved, sense of significance in
my being there. We walked eastward together.
in
As we walked I found that we had in our hands copies
of various circulars and publications available at the
doorway of the People's House. By the street light
I recognized one of these as the One Big Union Monthly,
VOICES IN THE FOG 129
with a cover cartoon labeled "Degradation," showing
the Prostitute Press kissing, under compulsion, the flag
of International Brigandage. The flag bore a crowned
skull, with a dollar sign woven into the design of the
crown. On an inside page another cartoon revealed
"Russia Giving the World's Workers a Lift."
Karlov watched me curiously as I glanced at the
sheets.
"You will read these?" he asked.
"Yes. I shall read them."
"I hope," he said, quietly, "you will think they tell
the truth."
I was greatly depressed. "The truth, Karlov.'' It
would be a great thing if you and I could find the truth
— simply the truth, without anger, or ... or anything
else that spoils the truth or that keeps us from seeing
it."
"But they did lynch the I. W. W. man," said Karlov,
earnestly, "and he had been a soldier, too."
"There were others who died," I said.
"You heard the man say — they were breaking into
the I. W. W. hall—"
Both trying, I said, to cure things by murder. It was
too bad. And people would go on saying that — that it
was too bad, and more killings would happen. We were
living in an insane world.
Karlov stared across Union Square.
"It is the Red Angel."
We noticed at the same time, I think, the old man
with the telescope that pointed at the moon in its second
quarter.
"What difference does it make," asked Karlov, "about
the moon.'*"
"It's dead," I said, "and that makes a difference.
It's dead, and stays put. The only quarrels they have
about it are those they have about dead things. That's
a comfort."
130 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"There are no people there."
"No capital, no labor, no selfishness. It's just a bit
of the One Big Union of the Universe."
Karlov pondered over the sound of this.
"It's dead, but it isn't through. It's a very useful
reflector — like one of those things the movie men use
by sunlight to soften shadows in a scene. A tre-
mendous job softening the shadows in the world."
"Why" — Karlov began to forget the moon when we
had passed the old man and the telescope — "why do
you think they hate the I. W. W..?"
" Why does the I. W. W. hate.? " I asked him in return.
"Is it just the same?"
"I think it is," I told him. "It has been going on
since the beginning of the world. There is always love
and hate, and both have a price. When you love some-
thing or hate something you must get ready to pay.
We might think that love cost less — even that we could
give it and have no price at all to pay. But if we love
liberty, for instance, or our own notion of justice, we
may find that they cost a good deal — even our lives.
When socialism was written prettily in books, a vast
number of people thought very well of it. You see,
it wasn't costing anything in the books. The dream of
a situation in which we should, quite wonderfully, be
One Big Union, became absolutely fascinating. Every
one was to do something, something useful, for a living.
Each was to help every other. There were to be no
favored ones. People differed as to how we were to
manage the lazy and the nasty, but they watched the
growing detail of a noble communism with a gracious
interest, quite as they would glance at a pretty picture
on the drawing-room wall — right behind where the
butler would stand when he arranged the wineglasses.
But when communism wanted to happen, that was a
different matter. When it did happen, in Russia — then
we had the uproar. All of us, you see, had been dis-
VOICES IN THE FOG 131
honest. We were thinking only in pictures. We
weren't tl)inking of giving up anything, of paying any-
thing. We were like crazy Mary I used to see on
South Street, who had been putting on clothes for
years and years without ever remembering to take any-
thing off. When she keeled over at last they found her
wearing eight skirts, and all horrible."
A queer sound came from Karlov's throat. "That's
it! Giving up! They won't like that!"
This was with the meaning of one who bad seen the
full draft of the terms.
"The trouble is," I said, "that some of us will keep
on thinking, to the end, that only the others will be
giving up. There will never be anything like that,
I'm afraid."
"A man at Forward Hall," Karlov added, confidently,
"said that a great happiness would come to all the
people."
"A fine thought. All the people. Unfortunately
they will be the same sort of people — that is, people
full of differences. And always they will have to keep
on paying something, giving up something — all the
different sorts^ — for what they get. If all the different
sorts remembered that, Karlov, we should come to the
end sooner. I mean come to the real beginning."
"But what could the poor give up?" and Karlov
turned intently for the answer.
"They could give up wanting the things they have
blamed the rich for wanting. We should all have to
do that, don't you think? A great philosopher once
said that the richest man is the man who wants the
least. And selfish beasts with plenty have used that
idea to prove to the poor that they ought to be proud
of their poverty. I don't mean that we shall have to
give up wanting. I mean that we should give up want-
ing things because somebody else wants them or be-
cause somebody else has them."
132 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"But it makes you mad," said Karlov, "to see the
rich—"
"To see the rich. Yes. But in your case, Karlov,
I'm sure that isn't because of what you see the
rich have. It is because of what it makes you feel
as to the poor — as to why they are poor. Isn't that
so.?"
" I always think of that," said Karlov, fervently. " We
must clear away the rich."
" You mean clear away riches. It may be done. But
there will always be riches. If this that we have is
cleared away I hope we shall find a better under-
neath."
"A better . . . ?" Karlov was puzzled by this, and
I, who had been moving on the stilts of talk, found myself
climbing down in a kind of chagrin that I had been
thinking as in a book, with no clear idea of what I should
be called upon to give up, or was actually ready to give
up for any unequivocally better state of things. If I
have written of my wanderings it is because they have
been typical, I fancy, of a vast number of other wander-
ings on the stilts of talk; because I, the "practical" man,
had been making gestures having all the futility of
dreams, mere condescending speculations in the realms
of theory, while this young Russian dreamer, vague as
to what was behind him, was thinking forward in terms
of a portentous reality, ready to put his hard workman
hands into the sheer hazards of action. I talked to
Karlov earnestly, because not to talk to him earnestly
was to see him fumble and recede. Yet he himself,
while always earnest, was never solemn. I never saw
him outwardly excited. His mental revolt could have
a heat without scattering sparks. He did not seem to
need either pleasure or rage.
He wanted to show me something in a book about
Russia, if I would go to where he lived, and when we
had come near to Second Avenue, and had passed up a
VOICES IN THE FOG 133
stairway adjoining a blacksmith's shop, I found his
room. It had a black bed with a garish coverlet, a
square table, a bureau, heavy and battered, and three
chairs, each of its own kind. Along the top of the
bureau ranged a row of books.
"There is a woman in the front who keeps this for
me," said Karlov. "Her husband is a porter in a
department store. She has a little lame boy. Some-
times I carry him to the movies. Sometimes I have
him in here. He tells me stories. I think he gets
them in a green book he has. He is very funny.
Like a little monkey sometimes, and sometimes like
a fairy."
It was here that Karlov told me of talks with Crown.
He seemed to think that Crown was a remarkable but
very obstinate person. Crown knew about capitalism
and what it did, but he pounded his desk when Karlov
talked about Lenine. What held me closest was Kar-
lov's picture of the Russian people he remembered. It
was like a boyish drawing on a slate, but it was strangely
vivid, producing a feeling rather than an image. He
was not sentimental, yet he was unvaryingly gentle in
description, even when he said, "The Gentiles didn't
like to see the rabbi walking that way in the street,"
and his hands met in front of him; even when he told of
something with blood in it.
He tried to express to me his sense of the Russians
as a people. It was difficult for him, as it well might be.
I should find it hard to believe that I got his meaning
by the words, and not by the look of him while he spoke.
His eagerness to make me believe was itself an illumi-
nation. He wanted me to believe that the Russians had
a wonderful gift for consecration — he did not say "con-
secration." They saw things, those Russians, things far
off, no matter whether they themselves were in holes in
the ground, whether they were very, very poor. Maybe
when they were very poor, and it was cold, they could
134 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
see those far-off things stronger. Nothing could make
them stop thinking about those things. . . . Nothing.
They were rehgious. They could go hungry to pay for
their religion, and not cry about it — sell something they
loved very much to get the money to pay. In America
people were not religious like that, were they? And
even if those Russians were very stern with their children,
they thought about them every day. They watched
them grow up, thinking all the time of how it was to
be with them. When the girl was married, that was
wonderful. So much sewing! And it would cost all
the money — all of it. And when there was a baby,
that was wonderful. It cost a lot of money, too, but
everything must be done right. . . . There were beautiful
things Russian people liked that you worked a long
time to make or saved a long time to buy. Even the
very poor ones liked to have one of these beautiful
things, anyway. Some brought them to America. You
could see them here.
The beautiful things people liked in America were
different. ... Of course. In America everything was
different. The Jews were different when they came to
America. So many that were orthodox stopped being or-
thodox after a while. At Passover . . . Oh well ! maybe
it was the same with everybody who came to America.
You got to thinkiiig like the Americans. And the
Americans thought about money.
"Yet you in Russia had to think a good deal about
money," I said.
"Oh yes!" assented Karlov.
"And maybe the Americans began by hating that
so much that they formed the habit of thinking about
it before they had to. This might explain how so many
of them have come to forget what it's all about."
"I like the Americans," Karlov said, "all except — "
" Except the bad ones.**
"Except the exploiters.'*
VOICES IN THE FOG 135
We seemed to agree that we would not go into that
just then.
IV
Karlov's word "exploiters," by the way, was one of
the perplexities I heard Mrs. Breckles carry to Rankin.
We had been sitting with our pipes, Rankin and I,
talking about Europe, when ISIrs. Breckles pattered on
the door.
"Entrez!" shouted Rankin.
After being appropriately siu-prised at my presence,
and remarking that it was getting to be fall, Mrs.
Breckles diffidently suggested that "exploiters" were
bothering her more and more. Wliat was an exploiter?
The anarchist people were always talking about it.
"As to that," said Rankin, "I guess they would say
that you are an exploiter."
" Me ! " exclaimed Mrs. Breckles. " You're joking."
"Fact," insisted Rankin. "Exploiting us — us here
in the house. You didn't build the house. Neither
did the landlord. The landlord charges you a rent — a
good stiff one. You perform the stunt technically known
as passing the buck. You charge roomers enough to
pay you a profit on the rent you pay to the man who
didn't build the house. You exploit us for your personal
advantage. And there you are."
"The idea!" gasped Mrs. Breckles. "But what do
they mean — the anarchists .f* Aren't there nice ex-
ploiters, then?"
"Not one," declared Rankin. "All infamous. The
cause of all the trouble, according to the proletariat."
"The what?"
"The proletariat."
"Oh yes!" cried Mrs. Breckles. "That's always in
with exploiters. What is that — the proletariat? "
"That's the crowd that gets its hands dirty. There
are several crowds, you see. For instance, the crowd
136 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
that gets its heads hurt, the crowd that gets its pockets
picked, and the crowd that gets its hands dirty."
"But I get my hands dirty," murmured Mrs. Breckles.
"How do they—"
"There's one of the puzzling and distressing things,"
Rankin announced. "You're a proletarian when you
get your hands dirty. And you're an exploiter when you
collect the room money. You lead a double life."
"The idea! — a double Hfe!" Mrs. Breckles giggled.
"But what should I do?"
"You should see that you didn't have any profit."
"But" — Mrs. Breckles shrewdness was not long with
this — "if my roomers saw that they didn't have any
profit how would they pay anything at all for the rooms.'* "
"I don't know," said Rankin with a studied vacancy.
"I'm only telling you how to lead a truly single life.
A true proletarian never thinks about how anybody else
is going to do anything. You mustn't think about to-
morrow or you will be bourgeois. You mustn't save
anything or you will be a capitalist."
"I think they're all going crazy," said Mrs. Breckles.
"Don't you think so, Mr. Maxton?"
"We might think so, Mrs. Breckles, if we took some
people seriously."
"I'm very serious," said Rankin.
"As I was saying to Otto — " Mrs. Breckles began.
^^ Please don't bring in Otto!" pleaded Rankin.
Mrs. Breckles laughed appreciatively.
"How is Otto.'*" I asked, and Mrs. Breckles answered,
"Very well, thank you, Mr. Maxton," quite as if Otto
merited the acknowledgment. The truth is that Otto
sat on the mantel in Mrs. Breckles's room. Rankin
once led me, when the coast was clear and he was feeling
quite cheerful, to where I might behold the truth as to
Otto. Otto was stuffed. He had a raucous shade of
authentic carrot-colored hair, outstanding ears, two
beads for eyes, and a mouth having a suspended ex-
VOICES IN THE FOG 137
pression. With his green jacKet, trousers striped in
pink, and comic-page shoes, he attained a plausibihty
that might, I fancy, have made him very companion-
able, especially as his gesture was, as I assumed, adjust-
able. He had a peering, appreciative look that would
inevitably have suggested solace to the right sort of
detached person. His static and sympathetic serenity,
the fixed attention of his beads, glistening wakefully and
with a pleasant, responsive yet unassertive interest,
became a perpetual incitement to confidence. If he
did not actually possess this trait it was not difficult in
his presence to accept Rankin's chuckling assurance that
Mrs. Breckles talked to him, or at least found in him
qualities that enabled her to get satisfaction from saying
that she did. "After all," Rankin had said, "I suppose
everyone should have an Otto. The heathen calls his
equivalent a god. But it isn't necessary to go so far.
Something to talk at, that releases the communicative
emotions and that soothes the nerves by having no
reactions. No complexes about an Otto. No intrusions.
In this particular world he's essentially restful. A wife
with some of his qualities would be profoundly excusable."
"I was saying to Otto," pursued Mrs. Breckles, "that
the world is thinking too much about its liver."
"If you had said it to me," returned Rankin, softly,
"I should have told you that the world is beyond that.
It has quite made up its mind that it doesn't need any
insides at all. Old-fashioned — that's what it calls
them."
"The idea!" said Mrs. Breckles. . . .
I saw Rankin looking at the door after IVIrs. Breckles
had gone, filling his pipe, pushing down the tobacco
with his big thumb. . . . When they banish tobacco
two cronies will scarcely be found sitting in a rich
silence like that in which I compared Rankin and Karlov.
Both were characteristic of the times in which we were
living. Yet the baffling simplicity of Karlov and the
10
138 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
complicated obscurity of Rankin were, doubtless, both
illusions, the explanation for which lay in my own im-
perfect faculties. I suppose all character is written in
cipher, and only the holder of a master key could fail
to build up a theory of fantastic disparity. For the
present the arranging of a life in which Karlov and
Rankin should both feel at home would certainly have
looked like an appalling job. Meanwhile conflict seemed,
as ever, more alert than conscience. The mechanics
of life held the foreground, as if in the quarrel clothes
were more important than character. On the other
hand, this very thought afterward began to appear like
the basic blunder. Wasn't it true that even while men
quarreled about the mechanics of life their real hunger,
whether they knew it or not, was for a character con-
quest, a spiritual unionization which should answer
both the cry for liberty and the passion for peace.'* . . .
(Something went wrong with Rankin's pipe and he
disentangled his heavy legs from a supplementary chair
to go and look for a cleaner.)
It would, to the last, produce irritation to tell liberalism
and reaction that they were really not so very far apart.
Unless they saw personal advantage spread out on the
council table, both were likely to have a fury of resent-
ment. What? Were they to be robbed of the com-
fort of their difference? Was the complacence of piety
to have the door shut on its vision of the wicked writh-
ing in hades? Was the man who saved a dollar or
his soul to lose the joy of competitive triumph? Was
the trouble maker, the lover of rebellion for its own sake,
to be cheated of his ogre?
Rankin's pipe was going very well, now. His head
rested against the back of his chair, and the smoke arose
in a mighty cloud. A city night muttered at his windows.
I fancied that he would be asking himself, what did
he truly feel as to the soul crisis of the world?
Then he turned to me after the long silence.
VOICES IN THE FOG 139
"Sid," he said, "do you think Rooney makes as good
a Welsh rabbit as he used to . . . ?"
Wayne Halland went through an interv^al in which
he turned over a good many possible ways of meeting
Ann again. It became evident, though he did not say
so, that his favorite unfoldment would have implied
talking with me before he saw her again. There was
that story of the other side that he wanted to tell, quite
as if it was of real importance either to Ann or to me.
I think he had the feeling that our first knowledge of
him began wrongly, and he was quite to be justified in
this. Possibly he was not altogether to blame for
magnifying the significance of anything that might in
any way mitigate the rawness of that introductory
incident at Vecellio's. It was his notion, I fancy, that
if he could have had it out with me, man to man, he
might fare better with Miss Forrest, quite without
regard to any bearings she might find when his time
came with her.
"I don't assume that he didn't waver before any
thought of direct action in getting at me. He didn't
want to make the story an excuse for his distressing
exhibition of anger — not too specifically. Because he
would be satisfied simply to soften any estimate of that
display he would have preferred to make his story in-
cidental, and to hunt me out would not have furthered
an incidental intention.
As it happened, Halland saw Ann again before he
saw me, and by a fortuity that was, I fancy, simpler
than any of his plans.
Halland's mother, the sister of Andy Crown, was
in many respects a remarkable woman; a woman of
enormous energy, sometimes to be called strident,
bristhng with infectious enthusiasms, full of animation — •
140 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
even her pauses were animated — and a humor that often
enough had Andy Crown's sharpness. She had
married Halland's father when she was very young,
and at once began pushing him. Sam Halland was the
son of an Ohio State senator richer in friends than in
money. In her youth Wayne's mother preferred to
keep Sam out of poUtics, and succeeded. Now, after
having pushed him into the presidency of a proUfic soap
corporation, she herself was to be discovered as fervently
interested in politics, and ready to point out, at right
moments, her husband's shameless neglect of civic
obligations. Her brother Andrew she saw very seldom,
not because she was without affection for him — certainly
not because he remained a poor man — ^but because she
regarded him as hopelessly fanatical on social questions,
and because they couldn't keep away from social ques-
tions; they wrangled tumultuously whenever the un-
happy opportunity came. They ignited each other
dangerously. She regarded herself as notably progres-
sive, in fact as somewhat of a radical, as strongly com-
mitted to all sorts of new things. But Andy— well,
Andy was too much. Those street incidents put her
on edge. It wasn't the unfortunate sound of "soap
boxing." Long before Clara Halland's caustic friend
remarked that Sam Halland made the soap box a busi-
ness while Andy Crown made it a pulpit, she had
fidgeted at the thought of Andy out there with the
fortune-telling parrots, the patent knife sharpeners, the
striking shirtwaisters, the Salvation Army, the single-
taxers, and the anarchists.
Sam Halland liked Andy and kept on very good
terms with him by the simple expedient of taking his
brother-in-law quite for granted, and never by any-
chance coming into responsive contact with any of his
theories. He was, in fact, wholly untouched by any
of these theories. He was no more affected by Andy's
interest in them than he would have been by his brother-
VOICES IN THE FOG 141
in-law's devotion to some eccentric phase of religion
or collecting. He was a kindly, clean, good-natured man,
to whom the logic of business had come like the multi-
plication table. This logic was to him immutable, not
as something he had thought out, but as something self-
evident, belonging, like the multiplication table, among
those basic things one started with and went on with.
Any suggestion that business might be fundamentally
wrong came to him simply as a vagary of the light
headed or the sentimental, whom one heard like the
sparrows in the park. There were, he thought, trance
mediums of economics, expressing a kind of spiritual
cubism, who must for their own diversion be permitted
to make a certain amount of noise. He read no prophetic
views of labor, because he knew before he read them
that they would prove impractical. They had all been
tried and had gone to smash. As for Andy and his
way of running his electrical business, it wasn't business
at all. It wasn't even a sport. It was a charity, and a
mismanaged charity at that.
The elder Halland regarded his wife as vocally radical,
and he considered her brother as, on the whole, a val-
uable restraint, nothing being so corrective to radicalism
as another radicalism that is a little more so.
In the most active days of his rise, Sam Halland had
as partner, Edward Wallace, a good fighter and a good
friend. When Wallace died, Halland had done all he
could to make things smooth for his widow. Mrs.
Wallace retained her shares in the corporation, and was
in the habit, once or twice a year, of calling on her
husband's old partner to have him tell her about the
business and to hear him say how handsome she was
looking. He really had a nice, unconventional, and
convincing way of saying this.
It was on the occasion of one of these visits, just after
her return to the city, that Wayne Halland met Mrs.
W^allace in his father's offices. She was especially af-
142 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
fable. And so he had been on the other side! Wasn't
it a blessing that you didn't have to think about the
war any more! Why didn't he come to see her? He
really should, now that her friend Miss Forrest was there.
She had been on the other side, too.
Halland must have stared. "It doesn't happen, does
it," asked Halland, "that she is a Miss Ann Forrest.?"
"Yes, it does!" cried Mrs. Wallace. "Do you know
her? How interesting.''"
"I'm happy to say I've met her," admitted Halland.
"When will you let me come?"
"Let you? Think of that! Why not come to-
morrow night? I know Ann's going to be in. She
promised. It's poor Edward's birthday, and I always
have a little special dinner."
This was the little special dinner to which Ann had
asked me. The obstacle that prevented my making
Mrs. Wallace's acquaintance on that night left Halland
his free field. It appears to have been a real event for
him, and for Mrs. Wallace. Ann gave me the impression
of not having been altogether comfortable. If she had
been meeting Halland for the first time she might have
had a different reaction. As it was, she had a good deal
of disentangling to do in order to think of him clearly.
She felt, I believe, that he still had too much of the
lieutenant attitude. But he was very nice. Mrs.
Wallace liked him tremendously.
VI
When I came upon Halland at the Parchment Club
I was not long in learning that Ann was a delightful
person. Halland had not at all the lieutenant way with
me, unless one could have imagined that I was at least
a colonel. And he managed to get that narrative of the
other side off his mind.
There was a beautiful French girl in the story. Hal-
VOICES IN THE FOG 143
land was insistent upon that point of beauty. One of
those girls whose faces made you think of some roman-
tic painting; one of those girls who are just like their
beauty. Did I know what he meant? There were girls
who were pretty, even startlingly pretty, who didn't
sound or act like their faces. As if they had just put
on a mask. . . . There were a number of other children.
The father had not been heard from for a year. Prob-
ably he was dead. Halland had a chance to do a good
turn for the family.
Well, this fellow Rickerd pestered the girl, even after
she made it clear enough that she hated him. He must
have seen that, though he wasn't the kind that would
have been able to see what the timid brevity of the
mother meant as to her feelings.
One day Rickerd made a flippant remark about French
girls. In some quarters one wouldn't have blamed him
so much. But when he brought in the name of Adele,
Halland dropped a hint. It was to the effect that Rickerd
was likely to get his face broken, court martial or no
court martial.
"So that's it!" exploded Rickerd, with a mean laugh.
These things were not characteristic, Halland wanted
to assure me. Quite the contrary. He tried to make me
understand that there had been something better than
a high code. It was a natural high respect for homes.
And about the last thing in the world he ought to do
was say a word about it. But there was a situation to
be met, a peculiar situation of which I was sure to get
his angle. After all, a man couldn't make the honor of
a group stand out better than by marking an exception.
There was a night soon after — perhaps it was the next
night — when a group of headquarters men were having
a little party in a house on the battered main street of
the village. The rules had been quite strictly followed
as to the windows. Every one carefully covered. Hal-
land himself had gone outside to test the completeness
144 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
of the work, to see that the two candles gave no faintest
whisper of light to any possible man in the sky. They
had a chicken dinner. There were foraging rules, too,
but you know how mess sergeants are. It was a better
dinner than they had had for some weeks. An old
Frenchman with a scar on his forehead had dug up some-
where a single bottle of wine. After the coffee the chap-
lain, a good sport if ever one was born, had just come in
from the front lines, and he had things to tell, odd
things, and some of them funny.
Then they heard the first plane. After a while they
recognized two. Each always had its own voice. At
last came the deeper groan of one of the big bombers
— all looking for the village.
The chaplain was the only man in the group who gave
no slightest sign of hearing anything beyond the walls
of that little parlor. Halland found himself thinking of
each of the four windows in turn, and wondering how
religiously he had considered every chink where a glim-
mer might show. Captain Mackering fingered one of
the buttons in his tunic. The youngest lieutenant in
the party, a chap named Wace, had a way of lifting one
eyebrow at a time when he was deep in any matter, and
it was interesting to see him now, with eyes attentive to
the chaplain's steadfastly casual narrative, working these
wrinkles in his forehead.
Rickerd sat opposite Halland at a loose end of the
group. When the "eggs" began to drop, first at some
distance, then closer, until the old house shivered vio-
lently at each detonation, Rickerd slowly, and without
losing eye-contact with the chaplain, slid down in his
chair. Halland was absorbed and puzzled by the strange
contortion of Rickerd's figure, until he saw his hand
come up from the floor with his helmet. Still quite
slowly, as if to preserve the minimum of observable
movement, he slipped the thing on his head.
A frightful roar told them that the big fellow up there
VOICES IN THE FOG 145
in the dark had shed his whole basket of eggs at a clip
— six of them, maybe. This was for a bridge that was
quite wiped off the map.
"... And what do you think he said — this boy with
his legs gone?" drawled the chaplain, as if no one there
had missed a word. "'No more running after women!'
And a grin with it about as merry as you would get from
a man who was sitting on hot coals."
A grunted sound or two that could scarcely be called
a laugh was the only response to this in the first
moment.
It was Halland's theory that Rickerd preferred to seem
unconscious of the strain they all felt. Any sort of re-
mark would serve his purpose if he could make it lightly
enough.
" Probably his look had traveled to me when the chap-
lain reached this point," said Halland, "and he jerked
out the first beastly thing that came to him.
" ' One lover lost to poor Adele ! '
"An absolutely insane fling. You may say that. You
may say it didn't mean anything. But you have to
consider all the circumstances. I didn't consider them
at the time. I just got them in a flash. I could only
grip the arms of that old chair with my head spinning,
and every nerve in me suddenly shrieking hellishly.
"Then the world came to an end. That's what it
sounded like. When they hit within ten yards you hear
the loudest noise you are ever likely to hear, and live.
This one landed in the garden right back of the house.
It threw in the rear wall, emptied every window, flung
down the folding doors, and there was a ghastly shower
of plaster under which I found my hands on Rickerd's
throat. I suppose I struck him several times in the face.
I rapped his head against the floor. I wanted to kill him
as that bomb might have done so easily.
"'Thank God!'
**I heard the chaplain say this. Funny thing to thank
146 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
God for. Of course he meant to thank him for our
reprieve. He seemed to know at once that we were all
ahve, though that was a gambhng guess in the black
room. He didn't know what had privately happened to
Rickerd's head. It seemed a long time before there was
any light, before we were all right side up, and dared
risk a single candle. . . , Some of us looked a trifle shaken
up. But we were all there."
VII
Halland lighted another cigarette, and extinguished
the match with a series of meditative prods in the ash
tray.
"That was how it was with Rickerd and me when we
came back last April. At that next table in the restau-
rant he began by singing a bit of a song with the name
'Adele' in it. I didn't think he could get me again. I
thought I had better control than I used to have. The
trouble was that so far as it went it was only control.
The rush that had to be controlled came climbing just
the same. You know what I mean. I suppose you really
have to not feel the rush. Anyway, when he raised that
highball glass and said, with that dirty voice of his,
'Here's to the popular kisses of Adele!' the control
broke."
Halland made a nervous movement.
"I knew what he was doing. I knew what jumping
him would amount to."
"And you knew he was in uniform," I suggested.
Yes, he knew. It was this that held him for those few
seconds —
"Until Ann Forrest came."
He looked at me squarely. "Have I made it worse —
telling you this?"
"If you mean made it worse to me," I said, "I will say
no. But I can't honestly say that you've made it much
VOICES IN THE FOG 147
better. Your confiding in me, I can't complain about.
The trouble is — "
"I wish you would tell me," he said, earnestly.
"You shouldn't have it to tell. That's the short of it,
naturally. And I have no right to say it. Also, it is no
pleasure to preach to you after the event. You've given
it altogether too much importance — as to him."
"I know," said Halland.
"Correcting rotters is a foolish occupation. The im-
portance as to yourself is another matter. I don't need
to say that. You created this situation. You're not
afraid of a troop of Rickerds. If you'll forgive my say-
ing so, it is yourself you're afraid of."
Halland had been staring at his shoes. Now he turned
quickly.
"How did you know that?"
"You've been telling me."
He looked across the wide lounging room.
"It's so, isn't it," he went on, "that control of bad
temper isn't the game?"
" You've been thinking of that," I said. " I know from
your remark of a few moments ago. We all have to think
of it. We're all controlling something or we couldn't be
here. How much we build of the thing we have to waste
energy in controlling, every man has to answer for him-
self. It is no trouble for you or me to control the theft
instinct, but we can't figure the job it may be to imagin-
able others. It is easy to say that the game is not to
have the bad temper. Here's the world itself wasting
nine tenths of its energy in control. The militant re-
former wants to use the last tenth in more control, and
the sentimental reformer wants the world, as a special
favor, to stop having a bad temper. As for your temper,
you didn't draw the chart of it. You're only superin-
tendent of construction. You've used a lot of control
in the matter of Rickerd, for example. If you had seen
him as a joke, or simply as a pitiful fool, you wouldn't
148 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
have had to use any control at all. You could have
enjoyed that drama of the bomb without the distraction
of walloping him.
"Look at me!" I cried to Halland at last. "A malady
flourishing, and control gone! You couldn't have a
more pathetic warning example."
"You.?" . . . Halland gazed at me with a perplexed
smile.
"I've promised myself ninety- three thousand times
that I wouldn't moralize. And — you see — off again!
Let's have a drink of the most devilish ginger pop they've
got in the place."
It is true that I felt no sort of excuse for preaching to
him, particularly as he had failed to impress me deeply
one way or the other. He had told me an interesting
personal story with no very profound point. If he had
endured tortures from an infirmity, he hadn't gone far
enough in confession to stir acute solicitude. The
infirmity he suggested is, I suppose, one of the most
devastating in life. I have seen it excoriate, and I have
seen it kill. I've known it to exhibit a sickening mean-
ness, and I have known it to reach a kind of grandeur.
As power in the wrong place it can have the fascination
of a flood. When Halland's uncle described his hour
of mighty drunkenness he had etched something of the
calamity that may lurk in the force of it. To escape
contempt it must have more than pathos. And I
suppose that to elicit more than an abstract sympathy
it must have a setting . . . perhaps to visualize at the
white point, the inherent conflict of life.
VIII
If Ann found difficulty in disentangling Halland, in
getting a definitely new impression of him, she did not
stress her feeling in that matter on the night I met her
Mrs. Wallace, though an interval before Mrs. Wallace
VOICES IN THE FOG 149
appeared furnished full opportunity. I was left to
surmise that Ilalland had not found it convenient to
tell her the story that interested him so much, and there
was a moment then, and a time later, when I contem-
plated a translation. It might be that he had in mind
some such effort on my part, an intermediary modifi-
cation of her first impression. I found myself resenting
this. There was the effect of his being explained rather
than excused, and in any case my translation might
have no better success, unless I emphasized a plea I was
not ready to offer. The sight of Ann made me feel that
he should, properly, tell her his story himself when his
time might come.
Mrs. Wallace quite maintained control of our tri-
angular group. I can fancy that Wallace had been
socially a listener. Mrs. Wallace would have been one
of the wives who do not merely lead conversation, but
furnish most of it. In company such a woman's silences
are all accomplished by effort, and the effort is soon
discovered by the most casual observer. One senses
the strain and is tempted not to impose it by more than
polite participation. She was plump in a rosy way, with
carefully dressed ruddy hair into which the gray had
come gracefully. Her eyes and lips were alive with
alert expressions.
In that one evening I learned more about sanitariums
than I had ever known. Mrs. Wallace did not journey
directly from one to another, though a listener acquired
such a picture. There were always intervals, inves-
tigatory intervals, in each of which she became affected
by a new enthusiasm and the essential malady. She
had been baked in all the ways known to an ingenious
science. She had been rubbed, pounded, rolled, sprayed,
steamed, oiled, permanent-waved, and electrized. She
had sat or stretched out in every sort of cabinet yet
invented. She had been harnessed in shaking machines.
She had been drenched with violet rays. She had
150 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
traveled around rooms on all fours, and, quite recently,
had been initiated in the art of standing on her head.
She wondered if I had tried that, but didn't wait quite
long enough to be clear as to whether I had or not.
Really, standing on your head was something tre-
mendous in the way of benefit. The Yogis knew what
they were about when they invented it. And it was
■perfectly reasonable. Why not give your poor abused
intestines a change?
She assured me that she had absolutely no bigotries
about therapeutics. Find the right doctor. That was
the thing. She didn't care whether he was an allopath,
a homoeopath, an eclectic, an osteopath, a chiropractor,
or an electrothermist so long as he was a specialist.
Find your specialist, and there you were. Some of
them had the most thrilling sort of "rests." She so
often needed just a rest. Some of these rests, I gathered,
had been amazingly dramatic and exciting.
Just now Mrs, Wallace was occupied with a new diet.
Really, when you came to think about it, diet was
everything. In some ways it seemed a trifle awkward
that no two specialists agreed about the pabulum in-
dispensable to sal vat' on. I mutely disagreed with her
misgiving. It was impossible not to speculate on the
calamity of a general agreement, and what it would
mean to the sanitariums as well as to Mrs. Wallace.
Balance! — that was the great idea. To eat balanced
meals. The great idea was new enough to Mrs. Wallace
at that time to have acquired a romantic glamour. Of
course one accepted the balance as struck by the sani-
tarium one had just left. Sometimes one was puzzled
to remember precisely which balance had immediate
authority. There was danger of their overlapping. At
that juncture milk was very questionable, if not actually
disastrous, as a feature of the adult diet. And why not?
If nature had intended milk for the mature wouldn't
some provision have been made? Naturally. Water
VOICES IN THE FOG Ul
was under grave suspicion. People were frightfully
intemperate about it. Of course one shouldn't touch
it at meals. And it was risky in between. Very, Look
at what the Yogis did without meat. It was amazing.
Positively inspiring. But the great thing was balance —
to keep your starches all by themselves, and your
proteins all by themselves. It was so simple when you
could remember which was starch and which was
protein.
Naturally one didn't need to be bigoted. Once in a
while . . .
"For instance," cried Mrs. Wallace, exuberantly,
"to-night I remind myself that others are — well, that
we don't all have the same point of view. Take Clarice.
She would soon be giving me notice if she didn't have
an occasional steak. I don't dare tell her where her
despondency comes from. She would be insulted, and
servants are so easily insulted nowadays. She looks
at me sometimes . , . I'm afraid Ann does, too."
"Only in admiration," said Ann.
"She means, as one looks at a martyr, IVIr. Maxton,"
declared INIrs. Wallace.
"Have you tried Doctor Thornish?" I asked, by way
of indicating an intelligent interest.
"Oh yes! Last fall. A delightful man. I didn't
like his wife. Too talkative. But it's a lovely place,
except for the poultry. I think they should have the
hens farther away — or at least the roosters. You know
how fowl are in the morning. And I think he is a little
peculiar about cheese. You know I simply can't like
cheese. Edward liked it so much, and it was always
drying up unless he ate a lot of it. Ann surprises me by
eating it like a man. She says she got used to it in
France."
"I suppose she got used to a great many things in
France," I suggested.
"Including men!" and Mrs. Wallace gave a gleeful
152 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
shout. "I tell her one man will never furnish her
sufficient entertainment any more!"
"I was thinking ..." I began.
"That I might be fed up?" asked Ann .
"It wouldn't be incredible," I said.
As Clarice brought in the nesselrode pudding I took
occasion to notice that Ann understood perfectly how
much I was enjoying Mrs. Wallace.
"You know," Mrs. Wallace was saying, presently,
"when Ann's mother comes I'll be ridiculed again.
Jeannette doesn't agree with me at all about health
matters. You know she's a perfect horse for health.
Nerves, of course, but nothing really wrong with her.
And it makes her furious to see a person obeying any-
one. Eats everything. I don't know how she does it,
really."
It was permissible to be conscious that Mrs. Wallace
ate heartily of each feature of that pleasant, quite
conventional dinner — as permissible, surely, as that she
should discuss diet before a dinner guest. However,
both her indulgences and her remarks gave a charming
detachment to a subject which might otherwise have
acquired too intimately physical a cast. I felt in-
tensively informed. Much is to be said for the mon-
ologue as opposed to true conversation. Superficially
it may be one-sided, but there is an effectiveness in its
consecutive revelations. It is exceedingly difficult to
attain a balanced conversation. The starches and pro-
teins of talk are likely to collide. Whereas the oral
chemistry of the monologue may readily reach a happy
equability. . , .
I must not forget that it was on this evening that the
telephone brought a plea from Spot Marshall that he
be permitted to call. Ann's assent did not seem to be
particularly cordial. Her hesitation, if it was a hes-
itation, may have been due to her wish to tell me some-
thing while our hostess was taking her after-dinner rest.
VOICES IN THE FOG 153
Evidently the interval before Marshall's arrival — it was
to be a matter of fifteen minutes — did not offer satis-
factory dimensions, for it was not until a later day that
Ann saw fit to startle me with news of her activities.
The interval was actually used by Ann for a letter from
Mrs. Forrest asking when her daughter might be re-
turning to Denver, and for the recounting of an extraor-
dinary experience with a dressmaker who betrayed an
interest in alcohol.
Marshall's discovery of me brought forward a special
topic.
He halted, in fact, in the middle of the room after
gripping my hand, to vent an impulse of resentment.
"Raiding again! Just heard of a new one on a
theoretical I. W. W, headquarters. They weren't satis-
fied with the blunder of the People's House. They seem
to want to goad the crowd to something."
He was flushed with an intensity of indignation. That
wide forehead and the straight-looking brown eyes
arrested my admiring attention as I saw him there in
a kindled state, all aflame, as if Ann were not in sight.
I suppose the fact that Ann was there had a good deal
to do with ray momentary thought of his looks, and with
an impression of magnetic force in his young, positive,
valiant face and figure.
"You know, Mr. Maxton," he said, from a forward
position in the chair he had found when Ann was seated,
"I suppose you would say that I stood in with the
established order. I stand in with order. Of course.
That is what we have law for. And I haven't shouted
for socialism with a big S. But we're going somewhere,
surely. I don't know just where, but we ought to be on
our way. We're bound to be, finally. This badgering
and humiliating of the people who ask when we're going
to start — I tell you something rotten is going to come
of it."
"Was anyone hurt.'*" asked Ann, earnestly.
11
154 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"I think not. But there has been plenty of hurting in
this country. You know," and he turned to me ardently,
"I believe we could do it — put the lid on again. It's
against all reason that any country could, but I believe
we could do it. It may happen. But the bill will come
in some day. They're cramming down the ingredients
of an explosion. The look of the thing turns a man's
stomach. It's hideous. Here, in the country that has
been prating about its superior brand of liberty, that has
written down its pledge to let people think and speak.
Speak! Good God! Speaking is not even to be thought
of. Free speech is only an old joke. It's thinJcing they're
after now — to worm in and find out what people are
thinking. Why do we have to carry the shame of this.''
England hasn't chucked its labor dissenters into prison.
Why must we.''"
"You are excited about it!" said Ann.
IX
Hearing Marshall complain and prophesy so bitterly
did not arouse me at the moment either to assent or
argument. I heard a great deal of that sort of thing.
There was no getting away from it. One formed the
habit of saving his furies. As for Marshall, it did not
seem needful to him that he should be supported. I
think he took for granted that only a certain class, or the
pressure of a certain class, was responsible for the actions
against which he was so vehement. If one had been
arguing it would have been pertinent to suggest that it
must have been a pretty large class, and he might have
admitted this readily enough.
The odd thmg was that Marshall could not have been
called a radical. I became more accustomed, as months
passed, to this spectacle of men and women who were not
radicals in the old sense, reddening in anger at the conduct
of those who wanted to hold fast to the old order.
VOICES IN THE FOG 155
Ann, I am sure, started to be rather judicial as to
Marshall's tirade. She saw that he was excited, that his
emotion of resentment had taken hold of him harshly,
that there was a change in him that may have seemed
not wholly to fit into some earlier estimates of him.
However deeply she may have felt as to his views, she
evidently was not inclined to let him sweep her into
anything she couldn't come to in her own way.
I fancied this from her way of looking at him with her
unclouded eyes. There was just a trace of tension in
the brows that betrayed a tension so quickly. She was
looking at him, but soon she was looking through him
into a vision of the muddle his intensity had lighted up.
When she did that her lips parted very slightly, and when
they closed again one was likely to take fresh note of the
fact that she had a chin.
"But Allen," she said, in one of Marshall's pauses,
"doesn't the law look after people whose rights are
kicked about?"
Marshall gave a sarcastic grimace. "For Heaven's
sake, don't let us talk about law ! Law! Why, some of
the beastliest things have been done with Law folding
its hands in the background. Law didn't invent the
slogan, * Treat 'em rough' — didn't invent all the tortures
for political prisoners. Law didn't prescribe the manner
in which uniformed hoodlums were to clean out the office
of a Socialist newspaper. No, it only has a way, like a
cast-iron god, of letting these things happen under its nose.
"I tell you, Ann," said Marshall, his eyes glittering,
"the Romanoffs were pikers — cheap amateurs in repres-
sion. The German machine chucked Liebknecht for two
years. Our machine chucked Debs for ten. The
land of the free and the home of the brave has the punch.
The horror hall of our Inquisition, once we get it working,
will have all the Yankee improvements!"
When Ann's slight turn told me that I was being in-
terrogated, I found myself immensely disturbed, not by
156 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Marshall's words in themselves, but by the sound of
them in the presence of Ann. I was the Past listening
to the clamor of the Present. Ann was the Future, ask-
ing . . . asking; waiting at the brink for the authentic
starting signal. ... At least that is how she shone to me
there in that room. I saw her not merely as an indi-
vidual figure, as a potent atom in the mass, but as a
woman person, as one who would be a mother, whose
children would be of the new world, whatever it was to
be, whose impress would pass from them to their children.
. . . An old-fashioned thought that muttered itself tritely
in the midst of the rush and jostle of immediate things.
I was glad that Ann did not press me by a spoken
question. Marshall, in large terms, had said the worst
for the conditions of the moment. If I had brought
forward palliating points; if I had objected to his "they
have done," and had insisted that "we have done"
should take its place; if I had shown his hated reactions
as the simple effect of a common lethargy or selfishness,
above all, as the result of an inactive willingness or a
ruthless clutch to get something for nothing — I should
have felt, when I got through, as if I had merely vocalized
the obvious, held out for a thought that must be throb-
bing its warning in the blood of every rational creature.' .
It was utterly clear that Marshall's irritation was a
matter different from any emotion that might be stirred
in Ann. Annoyance like his, even if I gave it the best
complexion, represented the exasperation of the torn
rather than the effect of restraint upon single-minded
rebellion. The two lobes of his conscience had yet to
reach agreement. He was a lawyer. The tentacles of
the established system not only held him as they held
the rest of us, in one way or another, but the established
system made peculiar and circumstantial demands upon
him. Its language was essentially his language. With
his hands in Business it was a bit hard for him to lift his
head into the sky. . . . Yet I have seen him do it.
VOICES IN THE FOG 157
Ann was ready to say that if any good thing was "bad
business," so much the worse for business. She typified
the economic awkwardness which saw women, just as they
had been trained to apprehend business, dropping it in
a gesture of welcome to an exalted Something that
seemed to them more essential. Business, the most
elaborate accomplishment of man, a structure upon which
he has spent more time than upon any other, in whose
interest he has made more sacrifices of ideals and of
blood than for any other, naturally has seemed to him
a bulwark without which there would be chaos. He
could see revolution change everything else; he could
see the church, or art, or notions of the family, subjected
to extraordinary transformations, but assaults upon the
grammar of business have found him making his last
stand, girded to go down grimly when there should be
nothing left but an abyss.
Ann could look calmly at an idea that involved the
toppling of the whole structure of business — not merely
painting it another color, but scrapping it entirely — with-
out being able to sense the feverish anxieties of the
guardians. Before women had a vote their leaping logic
had occasioned but mild misgivings. Hoary Business
patted them upon the head and assured them that they
didn't understand, which, in general, was quite true.
With the vote, and with their participation vastly beyond
that, shrugs or pats on the head became a trifle inade-
quate. Women like Ann could take sky and earth, man,
woman, and the baby, and, without a quaver, consider
the beauty of "playing house" in an entirely new way.
. . . Yes, and quite overlook the agony of the business
builders.
And yet, when Mrs. Wallace returned from an abbre-
viated after-diimer rest, I am sure she did not find Ann
looking like a menace. The fact is that we put our sub-
ject aside, from our thoughts as well as from our speech,
as instinctively as one would hide a dog from a conductor
158 THE SE\TNTH ANGEL
on a train. One did not talk sociology before Mrs.
Wallace. The necessary translations were too intricate.
The result was that Ann and Marshall suddenly became
a milder appearance, still lighted, but with the heat
turned off. Ann became a girl again. Without dis-
paraging that elated image of her as Woman, an image
by which I was persistently awed, I liked the girl look
of Ann, the flesh-and-blood loveliness of her ripe youth.
I am sure that at Marshall's age I couldn't, even in the
midst of an earthquake, have kept my eyes off her as
long as he did. If I had met an Ann . . .
But these tunes were not like the times of my youth,
and if Marshall had at that hour any notion of making
his way with Ann he could not, perhaps, have chosen a
better method of going about it. Moreover, he immedi-
ately seemed to become another Marshall altogether — as
much different as he was when I saw him with Irma Kane.
It was Ann's mention of Irma, in the idle talk that
followed, which drew from Marshall an inquiry. He
asked about their association in France, and Ann did
not appear to be interested in the subject of France.
"I put that away with my khaki," she said.
I hinted that she would come back to it when she was
older.
"Just as we pull out old war clothes!" laughed Ann.
"She's a peach of a dancer," Marshall remarked, inno-
cently, ignoring the digression.
"Irma.? The men used to say so," returned Ann.
"She's awfully good company. It was great sport to see
her do an interpretive thing by herself — she didn't call
it interpretive; there was a funny name she had for it —
when the girls were together."
"Somehow I never thought of you as girls together —
the bunch, I mean. I always imagined you as mixed
up with men all the time."
" Did you ever know girls not to find a way of bunch-
ing?" asked Ann, with a touch of challenge. "Don't
VOICES IN THE FOG 159
men always find a chance to break away? If you had ..."
She never finished that. Ann was marvelously quick
on her conversational feet. Though I missed the point
at the time, I had Ann's reminder that it would have
been an unpleasant matter to suggest that if he had been
on the "other side" he^ would have understood. No
one did harder war work than Marshall, even if he didn't
get his ship chance, and Ann had no wish to make this
a taunt.
There was rescue, too, from Mrs. Wallace, who wanted
to know whether it was true that it would be possible
once more to get genuine Roquefort cheese. The Ameri-
can imitations were scandalous. Absolutely. And
Roquefort was so important. If she could get the real
thing she had thought that in spite of an instinctive
dislike . . .
After the Roquefort we did not get back to revolution,
or to Irma.
We were destined to come back to Irma by a quite
different route.
"This is almost romantic," I said to Ann as we sat
on the bench in the park.
"You are a romantic old thing," said Ann. "But
there isn't much of romance about this — not as I think
of romance."
"I said 'almost.'"
"Romance isn't a place"
"Of course not; else this would be rather worn. Be-
sides you are rather fed up on places."
"I wish you wouldn't think of me as blase,'' Ann
protested, impatiently. "I'd hate to be that."
"And if you would hate to be anything I must re-
member not to think you are that."
"You know very well I'm not blase. Vfhen a person
is blas6 simple nice things won't do at all."
160 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Well, this is a simple nice thing."
"Yes."
"But not romantic."
"Why must it be romantic?"
"Just to amuse me. You see — "
" But I don't want to amuse you," Ann declared with
emphasis.
"In that case I promise not to be amused."
"I want to make you understand how some things
have happened, and what I am doing, and what a
fearful muddle — "
"I know," I said, to help.
"But you dont," cried Ann. "You know about the
muddle of everything else. But you don't know about
the muddle of me."
At this I was beautifully contrite. Ann was made to
see that I would listen abjectly.
All the same, the autumn was lovely. It had so
high a color that there were times when one might have
thought it had been drinking. Old Cavenham, the
painter, once told me New York had only one decent
season. That was fall. Winter not knowing its own
mind. Summer a hot, unspeakable mess. Spring cut
out altogether. Nothing but fall that you could really
call a season. . . .
The birds and the children knew what parks were for.
Grown-up people — of various ages — wrangled about
romance.
There was the undertone of leaves swishing. ... A
Valhalla of leaves. And the afternoon sun, gilding the
gold of the trees, drenched with a pale amber the great
bosom of the lawn.
XI
Ann's recital of an incident that gave her a new
glimpse of Irma confused my impression of her own
enterprises when she came to that matter. There was.
VOICES IN THE FOG 161
indeed, a definite connection between Ann's groping
journey into the heart of things, and that scene between
Irma and Evelyn Dower of which Ann spoke with so
much earnestness and perplexity. Both were typical
of the time. Yet the personal lines were sharper than
the typical. Ann and Irma stood out beyond the
conditions.
Ann had seen Evelyn Dower gathered up by the
swirling activities of labor. She had seen Irma shp
again into the shadows of the great business machine.
She had seen other friends and acquaintances melt into
vaguely sensed places, scattered places — homes mostly
— with ties, with unfinished obligations, with suspended
questions, with resolves, or hungers, or merely with an
eagerness to snuggle back in the arms of a splendid
pause. Yet there was no pause. Something that had
been called Great was over, but nobody could seem
to sit down. The clatter of clearing debris, the scurry-
ing of distracted figures, and a murmur that always
appeared to come from somewhere beyond, were making
hfe nervous. People one met often suggested a crowed
at a railway station when the train schedule has been
upset by an accident, and the question as to when there
is to be a train, rolling in the old comfortable way, is
absolutely unanswerable by anyone in sight.
So that, again and again, Ann found herself peering
searchingly at figures that had been familiar and that
now grew hazy in outline and often seemed about to
lose their identity for her. Evelyn, for example, who
so frequently hovered close to the unrecognizable point,
then came into view once more in a kind of staring
reality. Yes, she was quite amazing sometimes. Like
a drugged person. As if she had cut herself off from all
that had gone before — saying contemptuous things
about almost any matter you could imagine. Maybe
there was a sound of Lida Santzeff in some of these
remarks and an echo of this sharp-tongued Russian
162 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
girl in certain mannerisms. At other times Evelyn
emerged as an actress might slip out of her part in the
let-down beyond the wings. Perhaps this didn't mean
that Evelyn was only playing a part. Perhaps it meant
that there w^ere two sides to her, and that she was
experimenting with both.
"Or maybe," said Ann, "she's like me — halfway
to something and feeling that she has to get free
once in a while to see how the something looks from
farther ofiP."
Then there was Irma. Irma was simpler in a way, but
puzzling too. She was lucky. She didn't seem to need
s6 much to make her contented. A dance or a show —
especially a show — set her up wonderfully. She wasn't
worried about the world. 'Wlien Ann talked of certain
things, Irma just listened and looked sympathetic but
detached. She wanted to follow Ann, but if she had
done so one would have thought that she didn't really
know why. This didn't mean — Ann was sure of this —
that Irma wasn't keen and delightfully alive. When
near things were all right she was happy. And this
made Ann wonder whether there wasn't something
essentially right about Irma. Surely there was a kind
of rightness in contentment. A priest in France had
told Ann that there was a glory in contentment. The
war, he said, had been created by discontent. But even
then, when she hadn't been thinking of the conditions
she now began to apprehend, she had asked the priest
whether the prophets, before and after Jesus, had not
preached action against things that were, had not
sanctioned noble resentments. What the priest went
on to say about soul contentment didn't seem to answer
completely. Complete answers were hard to find.
Anyway, happy dispositions rather pulled you up when
you met them.
Oddly, Irma showed a trace of unhappiness when men
proposed to her. It was as if she felt guilty; or maybe
VOICES m THE FOG 163
she hated to hurt them, even though a rejection didn't
seem to hurt them so much when they were over there.
^^^len boys were far from home they proposed rather
easily. Evidently it was a sort of vent. Being re-
fused didn't seem to be especially blighting. Some-
times Irma's traces of unhappiness lasted for several
days. . . .
"How about your traces.?" I asked Ann.
"I should have more traces," she answered promptly,
"if I had brought it out — if I had led a man to the
point. I'd feel like a crook. But over there you
couldn't help yourself. It was part of the job to be
proposed to."
1 see.
The only boy Ann had been really sorry about — she
almost admitted a downright misery in this instance —
was a flying-corps chap from South Carolina, who had
a way of looking into your eyes that was something
tremendous, and his own eyes were the kind you re-
membered. He thought he had better tell her that he
had been engaged. For some reason he thought this
was important. Also he felt the need to explain that
there had been a justification for the break. He had
made the discovery that the girl had had a serious affair.
He was utterly astounded when Ann questioned the
righteousness of his logic. It appeared that they must
have indulged in a warm discussion on the subject of
chastity, and that the young man readily admitted a
precociousness in romantic adventure. His sense of
privilege as to his past had a ciuality of absolute in-
nocence. Ann wasted no time in being shocked or
corrective as to this, but there must have been some-
thing scathing in her way of asking him whether he had
the man-honesty to maintain that he was playing fair.
Her own theories may have been new to her, but she
held them ready, and she wanted to know, now that she
had the issue right in front of her, what he thought of
164 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
such a game. Did he mean that a girl hadn't the same
right to her hfe that a man had to his? . . . And so on.
It must have been a picturesque bit of conversation.
I judged that the flying-corps person gave sign of
being dazed. Did Ann really mean . . . ? He was dum-
founded; not altogether by the theory — a maiden aunt
of his had advanced the same idea in the course of an
abstract discussion; but by something in Ann's way.
Evidently he couldn't adjust the exposition to its author.
He looked at her with a bewildered earnestness and then
went about being more insistently in love with her.
There was a distinguished family behind him and he let
her get a glimpse of all that was holding him high in
everything he did. On the night before he was to
rejoin his squadron he made a plea that had a
passionate gentleness mixed with a quite wonderful
chivalrous intensity that one could not meet with in
any comfort. Ann assured me of that. Ten days
later he was shot down.
But Ann was digressing. The point was Irma. Ann
and Irma had been together on that top floor with Evelyn,
Stella Hayes, and Lida, and a murky picture had unrolled
before Irma. They had asked Irma just what she was
doing, and Irma had frankly recited her idling, inconse-
quential story of the office, and Mrs. Breckles, and a
funny encounter with Rankin, and Jimmy Ingle's enter-
taining fertility. I can surmise the charm of such an
ebulition from Irma, how that blond head would turn,
and how the long, golden lashes would splash the blue
of her glance. I can surmise, too, how such a recital
might fall in the mutinous atmosphere of that room.
Ann would have known how to effect a certain degree
of reconciling. It was not necessary to help make Irma
likable. But she stood out strangely, particularly as over
against Lida; and Stella made Irma seem like a child
telling of its toys. It was, however, Evelyn who ap-
peared most to resent Irma's flicker over the surface of
VOICES IN THE FOG 165
life, when going forw^ard over stony new paths was a
recognized obUgation. She held a friend's right to
intrude.
Evelyn had been looking at Irma very steadily for a
long time when she suddenly came out with —
"Irma, you're simply slipping back."
That was all of it, and there was nothing in the remark
by which Ann could account for the extraordinary effect
it produced.
"You know," said Ann to me, "I've seen Irma in a
good many different situations, and I thought I knew her
pretty well. But I never had seen her look as she looked
then. She repeated the words 'slipping back,' and stared
at Evelyn as if — well, it wasn't exactly as if she were
astonished or insulted or merely jolted. It was as if she
were frightened. Can you understand that. ^ Frightened!
It was only for a moment, but you can't imagine how it
took hold of me — seeing her stare, and then turn to me
as if I were to say yes or no to that opinion. She may
have flushed at first, but she was white enough afterward,
until the flash of it went by."
"I don't know what you mean," returned Irma, as if
her breath had just returned to her.
And Ann had laughed, with a defensive intention.
"She means that you're doing what you want to do
instead of what you ought to do. That is very
wicked."
"I mean," said Evelyn, who saw what she saw and was
probably pulled up a trifle, "that — do you remember the
speech the man made near the canteen.? Do you re-
member his saying — it was something like, 'You young
women will have a high purpose to fulfill when you
return to America.' And I thought — "
"But what did he mean?" demanded Irma.
"We all have a guess," suggested Stella Hayes.
"'Purpose,' anyway," came from Lida, though she
added, "Quit your scrapping."
166 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Irma had farther to go. "High purpose." She re-
peated this in a way that deeply impressed Ann by a
new sound she gave to it. "Well, maybe I have a high
purpose." Then she stopped abruptly, perhaps defiantly.
"Good work!" exclaimed Lida. "We haven't any
corner in high purposes." Which was rather big of her,
Ann thought.
Ann was not able to make me understand why she was
stirred so markedly by this Irma incident. She knew
only that she had seen a different phase; and that she
didn't sympathize at all with Evelyn's attitude. We
couldn't all be thinking the same things and doing the
same things. For example, she herseK, while she ad-
mired the pluck — and perhaps she ought to say, the
vision — of Stella and Lida, and Evelyn's dogged plunge
into rough work, and all that, couldn't feel the same call.
"I do want to see the world different," said Ann,
warmly, "but there are so many things that seem to need
hurry and that aren't part of changing the whole game.
That's so, isn't it? Heart things."
It sounded transcendental, but Ann managed to con-
vince me that she was not "up in the air." This does
not mean that I escaped bewilderment in listening to the
plain facts of her own crusades.
XII
"Don't tell me," I said to Ann, "that there is another
man in your case. "When I consider Halland, who
quite plainly is fascinated, and Marshall, who is an
established feature — "
"You are always flippant," said Ann, "when you think
an awkward decision may be coming. This man isn't
in my case. Besides, I'm not a case."
And she went on with her story. It was (I first
assumed) all part of her fantastic leap into the business
of mending humanity. She had failed to be lured by
VOICES IN THE FOG 167
the formulas of the rebellions. She felt rebellious and
there were rebels she liked. But the logic of smashing
the system, while it often appeared to have an inevitable
cast, could not seem to demand her hands just then.
The smashers seemed to be forgetting a good deal. May-
be you had to forget a good deal to be a successful
smasher.
She knew that Lida Santzeff wanted to go straight
toward a definite end. But to Ann so much seemed to
be lying nearer than that end, so much of the immediate
and the overlooked, that she had asked herself, Can all
this wait for any new order? She wondered, in fact,
and had a surprisingly clear way of putting it, whether
there were not two big classes of things that must
always stand out as perhaps of equal importance — the
things that aimed toward change in system, and the
things that immediately considered individual condition.
It was all well enough to say that either included the
other, but this wasn't quite true. Certainly the hungry
or sick or blighted wouldn't always be ready to say so.
There were imperative things older than government.
"Yes," I said, "and younger than yesterday."
Ann had the incident of the woman at the Socialist
meeting who arose to ask whether the speaker meant to
imply that after socialism came there would still be
discussion and difference; of how the speaker had said,
"I hope so," and how the poor woman had sat down in
a bewildered disappointment. All manner of traits
would, of course, survive any system ever to be in-
vented. Most people who objected to change were,
Ann was sure, quick to use this fact as justifying in-
action. It was true, too, that all propagandists of
progress had a tendency to promise too much. Ann was
in a mood to shut both classes out of her mind while
she made her leap.
"I wanted to see what is happening now," she said.
And so she had gone up and down the byways. Yes,
1G8 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Lida and the others knew something about it, but not
much. They were sufficiently satisfied as to Ann's
sympathy. What she might do on her own account
was her own affair and news of it would await her
pleasure. I was reserved, seemingly, for crises.
The first crisis was peculiar and arose out of Ann's
interest — flaming suddenly amid her early discoveries —
in a certain "home" for girls. What had astounded
Ann was the discovery that these girls were so often
not — well, not so greatly different from other girls as
you might think. . . .
I listened to a description of very old conditions in
settings not so old, but all quite new to Ann. I was
concerned in looking through Ann's eyes, in finding
some glimmer of new hope in her new reactions. She
had yet to find the desperate futility of some efforts
and the meager possibilities lying behind certain others.
Her young indignations were, nevertheless, a living
power. Such rushlights in a dark world have an irony
for the old, but their brave beauty contrives, all the
same, to keep from utter obscurity the paths to places
of hope. Ann had all the advantage of not knowing
that certain things can't be done.
She had all the advantage of having yet to come upon
the theory that the cards were stacked against her. She
had yet to meet the tired what's-the-use desperation of
those who count up things that can't be reached. Above
all she had the advantage of not wanting a label, of not
being concerned in the glory of a movement. She
cared most, it appeared, for those women workers who
were individualists of sympathy. Yet she knew that
there could be a kind of bigotry in this, for if there was
anything elemental in the need of unionization, the
soviet of sympathy — of applied sympathy — might be as
practical as any labor combination.
The man of whom she told me was thirty or so, very
earnest, a clean, honest-looking sort of person. He
VOICES IN THE FOG 169
wanted to marry a certain girl. He knew all about the
girl. That was understood by her and by him. And the
girl had refused to marry him. Ann had been quite
bewildered by the study of this situation. She was sure
that she understood the man. It was not pity with him,
nor merely an infatuation, either. He loved the girl.
You could believe that, after you had seen him and heard
him, and he wanted her. The girl, Ann was incapable
of understanding. She was not bedraggled or in any way
outwardly distressing. She was not sullen or defiant.
She would not say why she wouldn't marry him. She
had only said "Marry . . . ?" with a look that Ann failed
to measure — a look that seemed to be going back and
going forward, and without any sign of feeling that Ann
was able to fathom. Naturally it should have been a
matter between those two. If, knowing what he knew, he
wanted to marry her, he was free to make his choice.
And she was free to say yes or no. No outsider had
excuse for coercion, or anything more than a question-
able excuse for advising. Yet the man had asked Ann
to intercede for him. He had flatly urged her to persuade
the girl to marry him. Ann liked his way of indicating
the girl's mistakes not as something unimportant; it was
as if she were more important than anything she had
done; and this idea, though he got to it crudely and
vaguely, gave Ann long thought. He had made mis-
takes, too, he said. . . . And they would be better together.
He had known her, as it happened, when she was a little
girl ... up in Massachusetts somewhere. He knew her
folks. He and the girl were together in the same factory
early in the war.
The mind of the girl was impenetrable to Ann. She
wasn't ashamed — she betrayed no emotion that would
give you something to go on. Ann had never been con-
fronted by a human appearance so baffling. Remem-
bering the rebuke to the soldier in the matter of the
broken engagement, as Ann had just unfolded it, I knew
12
170 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
the kind of theory she was capable of carrying in the
back of her mind, and naturally it occurred to me that
this theory might have affected her effort to look can-
didly at the present struggle. Yet she did not mention
theories. She had found herself looking at two human
creatures, in the presence of whom everything suddenly
became intensely personal. Nothing in her own experi-
ence seemed to be giving her much help. But she did
not pull away. She was, one might have thought, fas-
cinated by the problem, all unconscious, I am sure, that
she herself was involved, that the struggle she looked at
was repeated in herself, that the want of clearness in
herself was a sign of the same elements that were work-
ing themselves out before her eyes under other clothes.
Ann seemed to have arrived at an acceptance of the
man's idea. At least, he was living up to an obligation
she had assigned to his sex. Moreover, his affection was
clear. He was forgetting everything but that. The
girl's affection might have been real enough. In fact,
there seemed to be no doubt about that part of it —
whether she could not forget everything else was the
mystery. Ann had thought at first that his forgetting
everything else was sufficient. Then she began to see
that this was not all of it. She could see, or she thought
she saw, that the girl was not drawing away from the
man, but from marriage. . . .
Inevitably I reminded Ann that persuading people to
marry was a grave responsibility.
"But I've not tried to do that," Ann protested. "I
didn't promise to try any persuading. Maybe I have a
notion that a man ought to do his own persuading.
But I wanted to understand that girl. I wanted to know
just what it was that made her say no. It seemed to
me that only a woman could ever find out such a thing.
Yet I couldn't ask her. Can you imagine that? I
couldn't. You would have to know that look in her
face to understand."
VOICES IN TIIE FOG 171
"Did you take counsel of any of the older women in
your group?" I asked Ann.
"Yes. If you knew Mrs. Abernethy you would know
why I went to her. She has for twenty years been doing
things other people leave undone, \^^thout pay, and with-
out much of thanks, I fancy. She has a serenity that
isn't at all like that professional philanthropical smooth-
ness that is so irritating. I think she's a trifle despairing
about men, but she's as truly kind as any person I know.
And when I spoke to her she shook her head — I mean
as to urging the girl. 'She should decide for herself,' she
said. At first there seemed to be something fair about
that. If we wanted to stand beside her and claim that
she had all the rights a man had — if we wanted to show
that she still owned a woman's privilege to choose, we
had no more right to badger her now than we should
have had before she made her mistakes. But you see,
it is a woman's affair. It came to me that it is the way
women, 'good' women, have acted that has made the
others feel desperate. That's what I came to. Somehow
it seemed that it was a kind of duty to say to that girl
that she had the choice if she wanted to make it — if she
wanted to make it. But I haven't said it. Maybe that
is why horrible things stay horrible. People just don't
have it out."
XIII
For some reason Ann had chosen to put the case up to
Lida Santzeff.
"Why Lida.?" I asked Ann.
Because Lida was very wise, and she was a woman —
a woman quite different from Mrs. Abernethy, for exam-
ple, but with a wisdom worth reaching. It was all part
of getting the woman view.
Lida had been disappointing. In fact Ann had wanted
to shake her, and there had been vigorous words.
172 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"You talk," Lida had said, "as if you could save a
soul with a ceremony."
"I wasn't thinking of the ceremony," Ann replied,
"I wasn't thinking of the form. It was the fact I was
after, the fact that these two perhaps belong together
and are being kept apart by something that amounts to
a kind of wretched formality of hate."
"The crudest thing," said Lida, "is bothering people
about their personal affairs. I think the girl's right. No
wonder she's contemptuous about the whole driveling
system. That beastly pressure is a system pressure, and
you want to offer her the sublime alternative of another
system trick. You have her by the throat and ask her
to make a choice. It's funny — horribly funny."
"Don't you believe in marriage? " Ann demanded.
"When it's the real thing," Lida returned to this.
"But I want to make the girl feel that the real thing
is free to her — after all."
Lida laughed. "Ann, you're a true sentimentalist.
And I thought they were dying out. I thought that had
been hammered out of us."
I should like to have heard Ann's outburst following
that. You are to fancy it as happening in that top-floor
setting; with Lida at the beginning and the others as
drawn in at the end. Ann's translation to me was doubt-
less somewhat diluted, though this did not lack pun-
gence. The thing had to be rather personal. At all
events it began to merit that designation. Lida was told
that marriage — the real thing she talked about — hap-
pened before systems, and that all the yapping of an
hysterical world was less deeply significant than the cry
of a single baby. There was a lot to be done. Systems
might be rotten. The housekeeping of the earth might
need overturning. Ways of filling stomachs and keeping
people from killing one another might have to be adjusted
on a new plan. But if there were no babies all plans
became ironical. Everything else might be a matter of
VOICES IN THE FOG 173
talk. Babies alone were undebatable. If this was true
they should be decently come by. It could never be
ludicrous to consider them. If they were left to happen
like potatoes, the Socialist millennium or any other mil-
lennium would have only vegetable material to go on
with. The delirium of fat men with money, painted
women with nasty dogs, political thieves, ranting re-
formers, slave drivers, sleight-of-hand idealists, and the
whole Babel of hucksters never emitted an echo of hope
for the beginning consideration. Babies were just a trou-
blesome by-product of the game called living, and there
was notliing that could ever be excitingly "new" or inter-
esting about them. Marriage was interesting only when
it failed, and the failure had to be picturesque to get
much attention. It was something old-fashioned, to
make jokes about. You were sentimental if you took it
seriously. The trick was to have a career or a poodle.
Ann brushed a crumpled maple leaf from her lap, and
prodded the fallen symbol of autumn with her foot.
"And what did Lida say?" I asked, without giving
any particular color to the inquiry.
" It doesn't matter. It was enough to have the asking
of! my mind. I had to get it out. Of course I know that
her sneers are mostly a highly strung sound. Sometimes
she answers with her nerves; especially when she's pre-
tending to be very quiet. Actually I believe she said,
*In that case, I'm astonished to think you haven't even
a license!"*
Ann found another leaf on the bench beside her. This
she held in her fingers, studying the hieroglyph of the
veins.
"Naturally Lida had an opinion. It was much like
Mrs. Abernethy's. Letting the girl alone. But what I
really wanted to know was what the girl was thinking.
I wanted to know why she wouldn't marry the man."
"I see," I said. "That happens to be important to
you."
174 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"It seemed to me that the secret of that would be a
useful thing to know. It would help me in doing some
things. Don't tell me that is simply curiosity. Can't
you see that I want to understand that girl?'*
"My dear Ann, you would have to know a great deal
more of life than you have lived long enough to know
in order to understand that kind of girl. You might
get a true glimpse of that particular girl by a miracle.
Any true glimpse of a soul must be a kind of miracle.
But understanding — "
"A man might be shut out," Ann persisted. "How
could a man understand, even — "
"Even a venerable bachelor."
"Even a kindly wise one."
" Being old and a bachelor, I have attained the detach-
ment that ought to help. Being on the moon would
give an advantageous view of the earth — if one happened
also to have the necessary kind of eyes. I'm afraid we
can't reallj'^ see hearts better for being far away from
them. We can be more logical. But being logical about
hearts won't do, will it? Your girl might have any one
or any number of reasons for not marrying your man.
What good would it do to catalogue them? That
wouldn't tell what held her. I'm more interested in
your mind. I think I know what is urging you. You
think the girl's feeling probably amounts to an ac-
cusation of our feeling."
Ann nodded.
"And I think it is safe to assume that it does, in some
degree. What then? You can't rub away the common
feeling. You can't even rub away hers. Yet — "
"Stella Hayes said, 'She doesn't want the man
enough.' "
"What did Irma say?"
"Irma was very quiet. I didn't look at her after I
saw that tears were coming. She said, 'She's afraid of
the man after.' "
VOICES IN THE FOG 175
Ann turned to me. "What do you really think?"
** I think a good deal like Irma," I said.
XIV
When I told Ann that I was more interested in her
reactions than in the incident that occasioned them, I
was speaking quite within the truth, and I ca mot write
this without recalling with a kind of curiosity my own
attitude at that time.
Neither of us could know how startlingly Ann's theory
of sex equality, as brought out by the two glimpses of
life so oddly thrown together in our talk, was to bear
upon a later experience of her own. I was seeing a
sign that I had seen before in others, most frequently
in expressing a rebellion against sex discrimination.
Since Ann could not be morbid, I knew that her feeling
was simply incidental to a wider rebellion. In fact,
the account of her adventurings proved that she was not
obsessed by a single theory of evil or distortion, and had
not undertaken in any spirit of specialism to revise
humanity.
That account had the first effect of making me ap-
prehensive that she was galloping rather wildly over an
appalling stretch of high and low ground.
I suffered correction in due time. She had peered
into settlements, reading centers, playgrounds, com-
munity kitchens, day nurseries and so on. She had
followed sanitary squads. She had watched simpering
benevolence, and she had watched the work of the
plucky women who found the sick in tenements, who
lent a hand at bandaging sores and washing babies or
dishes. She had hung up her skirt and cleaned more than
one desperate kitchen herself. She had gone house-hunt-
ing for evicted families. All of this as if she were hav-
ing a look at that thing called life, with the notion of
finding out what in general was wrong with it, and of
176 THE SEVENTH A^^GEL
ascertaining, incidentally, what it was that life wanted of
those who were free or able to lend a hand. And she
had paused for the moment at one or two points that
held her.
I doubt whether I could make it clear that Ann did
not impress me as being actuated by any self-effacing
devotion. I had seen the passion for service sublimely
illustrated — often in forms of activity that never get a
name. Without disparaging Ann's motives, I knew
that she had not begun a self-obliteration. She would
not have made a good nun. I'm not sure that she could
have been gentle with a drunken mother. And a father
who kicked his children would have missed a refined psy-
chology in Ann's way of meeting the case. I'm sure,
too, that standardized commiseration couldn't have en-
listed her. Any smug formalism of charity would have
given her the creeps, and she would have been un-
fortunate enough to say so. She knew that the meek
are blessed, and she wasn't sorry. But she couldn't see
her way to being meek.
In fact, Ann wasn't really looking for a life work. She
was looking for life. Ah yes! I pride myself on per-
ceiving that she was life. She was about the business
of finding herself. She couldn't find herself in the dark.
War was a fearful illumination, but one didn't live
in a war. One couldn't say, "in the midst of death we
are in life." . . . War shook her free — ripped her out of
old thought places, with the roots dangling. She was
young enough to transplant. . . .
This is what I made out of it — that Ann wanted to
reappraise life, and to do this she must look squarely
at it, from head to foot. Theretofore she had known
nothing but its head feathers. She was ready to look
at the figure as it nakedly was. She wanted to know
what she was a part of.
If this sounds as if she were simply slumming it will
prove I had reason to doubt whether I could make her
VOICES m THE FOG 177
effect clear. The truth is that she was utterly without
the dabbling or intruding instinct. Her way of telling
me things was a constant reminder of that astonishing
blend of innocence and sophistication which Americans
think is peculiar to their own girls but which is in fact
a modern trait of much wider expression. I must al-
ways make allowance for the influence of the war period.
If Ann had reached her twenty-sixth year before the war
began instead of after it was over she would have been
measurable for a different expression, yet the traits
would have been there. She had been loosened in a
shaken world. I was watching her readjust the ele-
ments of herself while she remarked the heterogeneous
models of humanity. What she might feel privileged to
be as a final fact would, whether she knew it or not,
depend upon her sense of the life about her.
It was a pity, I thought, that the life about her was
then so abnormal, yet its abnormalities had revelations
if these should happen to reach her. We were all being
disclosed much more completely than during the be-
numbed or hysterical times of the war. The disclosure
of New York as a city was largely a revelation of its
insularity. Ann had been brought up in a West whose
spiritual windows are kept open. The tighter civili-
zation of the East has a more intricate way of unfolding
its hypocrisies. Ingrowing stupidity is naturally the
most pitiful under disturbance. In New York, Ann
could see the old spenders dazed and chagrined by the
antics of those who were newly drunk with money-
She could see the new poverty of those who for the first
time in their lives couldn't buy servility. And she
could see the one constant element in the wretchedness
of the forgotten. The overlooked would always be
explained by both sides in any controversy as ascribable
in some way to the question of money. To the revo-
lutionist, Capitalism accounted for all evil. To Supply
and Demand, the wretched represented that unadjusted
178 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
waste heap which the discretion of nature had chosen
to maintain from the beginning. Evils older than
money remained because they were only elemental. . . .
"But you haven't told me," I said to Ann, "precisely
what you mean by 'muddle.' "
"That comes last," said Ann. "I've been offered a
good job."
I assured her she had already given the impression
that she was not without one.
"I mean an honest-to-goodness job — with a pay
envelope."
"But—"
"That's what makes part of the muddle. I don't
want to give up some of the other things. So I've
suggested making it a half-day job."
"You haggled for a twenty-four-hour week. And
what is this elastic benefaction.?"
"I'm sure you won't approve of it."
"And I'm sure that won't deter you."
"A man named Garvel wants a certain sort of person.
Mrs. Wallace knows him — I mean Garvel. She told
me about it quite incidentally. I said, ' Why wouldn't I
do?' And she gasped. You see, Garvel himself must
be a certain sort of person — "
"You don't mean William H. Garvel.?"
"Yes. Is there something impossible about that?"
"There's something impossible about him."
"How interesting! Anyway, there's a funny little
man named Cobbing who has been doing the looking.
Cobbing's job was to produce the certain sort of person.
I think William H. must have said, 'Cobbing, get me a
female wonder — anything that isn't like the others.'
And Cobbing, poor man, went forth upon his bewildered
search."
" But, Ann, this old beast Garvel — really, you know — '*
"I've met old beasts before," said Ann. "I like them
better than pussy-men. I'm sure to like him better than
VOICES m THE FOG 179
Cobbing, who is the meekest thing you can imagine —
a perfect lady. You should have seen him look at me
with his sharp little eyes, as if he were going over a list
of requirements and was worried for fear of forgetting
some of them before it was too late to notice whether I
fitted. He was on edge until I told him I wasn't a
stenographer or typist. It appears that old Garvel
had said that if I were either of those I wouldn't do.
Mr. Cobbing had a way that was intended to be delicate,
of telling me that Mr. Garvel wanted a young lady who
could hit things off in a large way — not have her head
in letters — and who could meet people. Yes, meeting
people was a featiu*e. JVIr. Garvel would explain all
that to me himself. He suggested this with a wincing
effect as if Mr. Garvel might be expected to do it
violently. It was funny — the gentler ^Ir. Cobbing be-
came the more you could see the roughness of Mr.
Garvel. As for part time, that was an extraordinary
idea. He was sorry to have to be plain about it. Half
a day! . . . Really that was a staggerer; though he had
to admit that it was becoming a sort of fashion with
women. Had I noticed ihat? People coming in and
not exactly belonging. *0h, I'll belong enough,' I told
him. And he said he would put the matter up to Mr.
Garvel. Then he wrote me a note asking me to come
to-morrow morning."
"Just what is your idea?" I asked.
"There are a lot of ideas mixed up in it," said Ann.
"First, there is getting a view of Big Business. I want
to look at it."
"While your friends are at the other end of the
game."
"I wasn't thinking of that — at least as looking at
*the other end.' I wanted to see it — where its bigness
happens. I wanted to see Capitalism — itself. This
seemed like a chance. Do you think Mr. Garvel is It?"
"No doubt about that."
180 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Then I'll take him."
"Better wait until he takes you."
"Somehow I think he will."
"You don't mean that you're going to *vamp' him?''
Ann laughed in her best manner : " No, Father Max-
ton. I mean that I'm going to make him want me
there—"
" Until your conscience sends you away."
"It may be my conscience that will keep me there —
for a while anyway. If I'm going to do a thing — if I'm
going to know something about this dragon Big Business
— it will be a duty to see it through."
"It will be a confidential relation."
Ann hesitated for a moment. "So is the relation of
the girl who sees how things are actually produced in a
factory."
"I wasn't warning you," I said. "I was simply
bringing up a consideration."
"I'm not going to write an expose or anything like
that. This is for me. I'm a dreadfully personal person.
I'll play the game. And then — this is a second part of
my idea — I do want to be earning money at something.
When I spend money I want it to be my own."
"I thought—"
" Yes. I have something that is called my own. But
Uncle Howard earned it. I'm through being kept, even
by a dead man."
"You're going to be a producer."
" If I can be that at a capital of capitalism. Naturally,
you won't be happy about it."
"Why . . . ?"
"You know how men always talk about parasite
women. But did you ever know a man — honest! —
who enjoyed seeing his woman, or any woman he liked — "
"Adored," I corrected.
" — going to work?"
"Men are very weak about women," I admitted.
VOICES IN THE FOG 181
"And they have a strong way of talking, too," re-
turned Ann. "But I'm not thinking about that — "
"I hope not," I said, "when you say it to me."
"I'm thinking that this is my chance. And there's
another thing."
Ann added this so significantly that I jumped to the
conclusion that she had reached the entangled point.
"Is this where the 'muddle' comes?"
"Perhaps. I think Spot is going to ask me to marry
him."
My look of surprise was quite genuine. From any
viewpoint of romance the crisis was to be lamented, and
I may have shown this feeling also. "Better wait,"
would have been my wireless to any suitor just then.
To Ann I said, "A motion to marry is always in order."
Ann laughed again, but not in her best manner this
time. "I wish he wouldn't," she said. "You see,
there's so much happening!"
PART FOUR
Counter Currents
k NN had managed to communicate to me so much
/\ of her confidence with regard to the Garvel
I \ situation that I found myself taking entirely for
granted that eventual report. I knew she would get
what she wanted, but curiosity as to that meeting with
the old ruffian supplied the uneasy element. On the
evening following her recital, Halland was to take her
to a play. For the next evening I was held by an
ornate banquet, large as to place, small as to food and
talk, and in the interval had to be content with a crisp
enthusiastic telephone announcement that the ruffian
had made terms.
"I've put it over," said Ann.
(When Ann is emphatically colloquial, I sometimes
come to the edge of an elderly misgiving. Probably all
who resent slang have already begun to be old, even if
the indignation is of the sophomore period. Each age
thinks not only that its slang is new, but that slang
itself is new. I remember the little shock, at the time
of a popular phrase, of reading in Macaulay that the
Duke of Luxembourg came out of his tent, on hearing
a great noise, "to see what was doing." The revelation
that all language once was slang has the same disquieting
effect upon the conservative as the truth that we all
have had illegitimate ancestors. Certain moods or habits
of mind result in a wish to close the books on language.
COUNTER CURRENTS 183
This wish to see it finished — like the dead ones — is old
and respectable. Dean Swift pleaded for no more
changes, "or what will become of the validity of our
records?" Scholarship is at it again to-day. Fatuous
conservatives! They want to see system finished.
They'll consent to any change if you'll promise that it
will be the last! It isn't form but the fixed that they
want. And the current of a universe is against them.)
Because there remained a further evening obligation
of her own, Ann asked me to lunch in the downtown
maelstrom.
"Only lunch," she said. "I can't make it luncheon,
for I have to be brief on account of a little errand."
I took this as a pleasantry of the conventional fem-
inine invitation, but when the moment came Ann drew
forth the money.
My protesting hand was ignored.
"I know it always hurts a man," she said. "I'm
acquainted with a woman who supports her husband.
Of course I can understand his being sensitive. She
slips him the money privately, I suppose, when he runs
low. Evidently the distressing thing is letting the
waiter into the ritual. But you see you might be a
retired nabob, bored by details, and I might be your
daughter taking gross functions off your hands. Also,
the waiter, and any possible observers, will know that
I am not a secretary being fed by her boss."
"Ann," I said, "you are very difficult. Hereafter — "
"Oh, you men pretend to like the grafters better, or
at least you keep on doing your best to perpetuate the
grafting habit, but down in what a man calls his soul — "
"Presently he won't be able to call it his own," I
said, sadly.
"You old scrapper!" cried Ann as she adjusted the
tip. "You know well enough that Man used to hold
all the patents on Soul. He mustnt call it all his own.
What woman wants is a fifty-fifty partnership."
184 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
We had eaten in a vast bustling basement, very
modern in everything, including the prices and the
condescension of the waiters. There was a great vista
of tables. A kaleidoscopic medley of figures, mostly
of men, receded into a fog of smoke. The drone of talk
had a level effect as by the absence of the convivial
and the presence of business. I have forgotten what
we ate. Ann's latest experience was the vivid matter.
The short of it was that Ann had become part of
Big Business, and her first impression was that it looked
pretty much like any other sort. I think that at this
stage she was disappointed that Bigness did not ex-
hibit itself in more burly appearances. To be sure,
Garvel himself had a largeness. He was, I remembered,
in the traffic-cop class as to figure. His neck had an
enormous diameter, and his hands were thick with black
hair on the back of them. The planes of his big head
were sharply defined as a sculptor shows them in the
first stage. A mustache, half gray, and cropped close,
left the upper lip without disguise. The lower lip was
full to the loose point. When he gathered it there
appeared a fresh repertory of expressions ranging from
the savage to the suave. The eyes that waited under
their shaggy eaves, like twin guns in a turret, were
sharply dark.
Ann had the recklessness to say that she liked the
bruiser style of him. Her description was briefer than
mine.
"He looks like a piano mover," she said.
While I gazed at her in growing fury that Garvel
who had seized so much of the world should have had
the glory of this image added to his foreground, Ann
had a good time telling me just how he directed her to
be seated, looking her over meanwhile. "I think he
didn't miss anything," she said. "I don't mean that
he was insolent. I imagine he looks at anything in the
same way when he has any reason to be interested. It
COUNTER CURRENTS 185
is more than what you would call a keen look. It goes
through. As I was willing to be transparent this didn't
bother me. I suppose his questions were quite ordinary.
Probably my answers were, too. I hadn't worked at
anything but helping the United States at a time when
it couldn't be very particular. I knew nothing about
business, except that men who were good at it could
leave you money.
"He told me that what he needed was somebody with
a little plain sense. 'I've got that,' I said.
"'Most people think they have,' he grunted.
"'You know,' I said, 'you only asked for plain sense.*
"He pushed out that huge fist of his. 'That's just
it!' he boomed in a voice that began to get a rasp in it —
as if his polite voice had been mislaid for a moment —
'that's just it! You can get fancy sense, but plain
ordinary sense — well,' and he unlocked his fist, 'you
don't find it, that's all. What do you suppose business
is? — it's that — plain sense.' He shifted in his chair.
'Are you nervous?' 'No,' I said, 'not at all.' 'Thank
God!' he said, 'I hate nervous women. They — ' I
don't know what he was going to say, but I helped him
out. 'They make you nervous,' I said.
"Then he looked at me savagely. *I guess they
do.' That was all, until he rather concentrated on
me again.
" 'What's this about part of a day? That's foolish.
I couldn't be bothered that way.'
" 'I'm sorry,' I said, 'but I have only half a day free.'
" 'Free?' You should have heard him say that. 'I
thought — '
" * I have other interests,' I said.
"'Interests?' This floored him. He couldn't seem
to get over it. 'Interests? Do you suppose I could
have here a girl who had other business affairs to attend
to? I never heard a thing like that in my life. Isn't
this important enough to give a little attention to? Do
13
186 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
you expect to drop in like a window cleaner or the
postman?'
"'Not business interests,' I said. 'Other things that
take time — a certain amount of day time. You must
have other interests yourself.'
" * Other interests? You don't think this is a factory,
do you? This is my personal office. All of my in-
terests wire up to this desk in one way or another — and
there are more of them than I ought to have, I can tell
you that.'
"Of course," Ann went on, "I knew that he was there
only from ten to twelve-thirty each day. Cobbing told
me that. But I had to look out for Cobbing. He
might not like to have had Cobbing quote his actual
hours."
"Ann," I said, " I believe you really have a good deal
of plain sense."
"'How would nine-thirty to three do?' — that was
how I put it finally.
"He didn't want to admit that it would do. Instead
of answering he leaned forward over that mahogany to
look through me again. 'If I may ask you, what is —
eh — the line of your interests?'
"And you have no idea," continued Ann, "how hard
it was to answer that. I was stumped for a moment.
It was no concern of his, but it didn't seem worth while
to say so. I think it must have sounded rather flat
when I did get it out, that I was interested in a good
many things that were not business, things that neither
business nor governments took much interest in, things
that were mostly left to individuals or groups of people
who couldn't see them go undone.
" 'I see,' he grunted. 'Charity work.'
" 'You might call it that,' I said. 'Some people do.'
" 'But it is charity work, isn't it?'
"I told him it was always work, and that sometimes it
might be real charity, but that I didn't like the word.
COUNTER CURRENTS 187
"*It seems to me,' he said, with his worst scowl, 'there
are old women enough at that to get it done.*
"I wanted to throw his inkwell at him, but I said only
that some of the finest women in America devoted their
lives to it, and not too many of them.
"'Good idea,' he said, quickly, with a razor edge on
the speech, ' devoting your life to what you're at. What
does a person with plain sense like you think of dabbling
around, trying to do everything at once?'
"He thought he had me. Maybe he almost did have
me. 'I think,' I said, 'that I'm entitled to a httle longer
time to decide what I shall devote my life to. The war
interrupted me — and woke me up. I'm looking things
over. You may win out.'
"This seemed to get his first grin. When he smiles
he is quite a human being. I can see how he might make
money with that smile.
"'You win,' he said, then. 'Nine-thirty to three
goes. You're obstinate, evidently, but you're not nerv-
ous, and you can keep your head. No quarrel now
but the money. W'hat's the price of your particular
brand of plain sense?'
"'Suppose,' I said, 'you pay me what the kind of per-
son you want is worth. Then you'll only have to find
out whether I'm the kind of person.*
" ' Say ! ' he burst out, with the grin fading to a make-
believe scowl, 'you keep on being clever — and a little
smoother — and you'll be the kind of person. We'll make
it twenty-five hundred — or let's have it fifty a week for
a starter. It doesn't need to stick there. I pay one
woman twenty thousand. You ought to know her. No
nerves. A fool about an adopted child, but a hustler.*
"Then I was introduced to an auditor, an accountant,
a filing-cabinet girl, a stenographer, a young man who
opens letters and stands very close to the throne, an old
man who flits in and out with a deaf-and-dumb mysteri-
ousness, and Cobbing. We are on the twenty-second
188 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
floor and can see the Bay. I wonder if I will ever see
anything else."
"You'll get the Big Business angle," I said, "and illus-
trate it by persuading me that you never do see anything
else."
"You never can tell!" laughed Ann.
II
In due time — I am thinking particularly of that first
month — ^Ann acquired a way of translating Garvel, and
of picturing the nerve center of business at which she
hovered, without disturbing her sense of obligation. She
kept close to the human side without, I am sure, being
conscious that in the end there can be no other. The
slow tracing of those motor nerves of business into chan-
nels so various that for a time she was quite bewildered,
did not in itself absorb her so much as the contemplation
of the men and women who responded to the stimulus.
Inevitably she made comparison with the functioning
of the military machine as she had caught glimpses of it.
Garvel was, after all, a good deal like a corps commander,
with scattered divisions that were sometimes very small
yet significant, and sometimes very large and not so im-
portant. You were left to suppose that most of these
divisions did not know about him at all, in which respect
he was, of course, not in the least like a corps commander.
The parallel was followed in the matter of somebody or
something higher than Garvel — a power which Ann was
in no likelihood of identifying at once.
The truth is that in the beginning Big Business, despite
the visualization of various material functions, widely
scattered in so many instances, was strangely intangible
to Ann. She continued to be disappointed in looking for
the effect of bigness. She may have expected the dra-
matic. If she had known of some of the happenings
beyond Garvel's door, if she had known what it would
COUNTER CURRENTS 189
have been necessary to know to apprehend their signifi-
cance, she might have been satisfied in this respect. As
it was, she would have grown restless but for the expand-
ing gallery of human figures with which she became
acquainted.
For the most part she did not know what these figures
meant. All of them had some relation to the drama in
which Garvel was exerting control, or they would not
have reached Garvel. The names that belonged to them
could be duly placed, after a while, so that they became
partly intelligible as representing matter-of-fact activi-
ties. To be sure, some of these activities seemed rather
insignificant, if not quite meaningless, until Ann got the
impression of walking labels, of mere names, detached
from invisible mahogany desks, out of which nothing
seemed to emanate but cigar smoke.
Thus there was a time in which she came to feel an
exasperated wish so see something real. She told me
that by comparison an iron foundry would have had an
atmosphere of sheer romance. It may be surmised that
her transit from the battered realities of what Garvel
called her "charity work" intensified these early im-
pressions of a coldness, of a stultifying futility. In those
hours she lived in a world of letters, telephones, muffled
talk from Garvel's room, motions without destination
in the mechanics of the office, tiresome repetitions in the
management of callers.
She used to tell herself that this must be what Big
Business was — a lot of people, endless multiplications of
people, going through tiresome motions in obedience to
signals from some one with a thick neck.
Meanwhile, there was Garvel. He always had an
interest for her. If in the beginning she had thought
him absurdly simple, she afterward began to feel that
he was not quite so simple.
She had reached her first conclusion because she had
fancied men doing what he did as having a glittering
190 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
sagacity, outward signs of a complex resourcefulness,
whereas Garvel, looking like a piano mover, was essen-
tially an animal of fearful plainness.
In his early days he had led a rough life, a rougher
life than Ann was ever likely to surmise in any detail.
Tales about his adventures became classic when he
reached the lighted levels. As a boy runaway he had
exhibited a gamin's gifts for picturesque hardship. He
had roamed impudently from his home town in Iowa
to Seattle and back to Boston. In a later period he
fired engines on Western trains, operated as bouncer in
a dance hall, broke into the prize ring, captained a
logging crevf, filled a turbulent term as sheriff, herded
repeaters for a political boss, and organized an oil
company. He was at the storm center of a great
traction scandal, and emerged from the group involved
in one of the noisiest of divorce cases with an undi-
minished faculty for being heard of. His own marriage
had happened in his early twenties. There was a
curious story (probably of his own telling) about the
manner of his meeting the young cook in a Chicago
restaurant who became Mrs. Garvel, and there were
many reminiscences of her evolution. When they came
to have money, Mrs. Garvel blossomed in an extraor-
dinary way. Garvel resented the big house. He
fidgeted in Mrs. Garvel's glaring drawing-room. . . .
"No place to spit." . . . They were a formidable pair
when expanding business connections brought invita-
tions, and social mixing thrust them to the fore. No
grotesqueness of setting ever belittled Garvel. He could
bluff in a fight, but he made no pretenses in a parlor, and
had the weight of his silence. Pretty women, especially
if they were of the vigorous type, elicited that quick,
measuring glance and the smile that alleviated his
coarseness in so marked a degree. He knew when he
was being "worked" long before the process had a
good start. When an attractive woman was assigned to
COUNTER CURRENTS 191
the job he gave her full liberty, profiting at once by
what she shouldn't have told and by the entertainment
of her performance. Once, in more recent times, an
opera singer of great beauty and almost equal ingenuity
had been delegated to subjugate him. She did reach his
attention. By all accounts she aroused his interest in
herself. But opinion was united as to the disaster for
the instigators.
Garvel, indeed, belonged to the strong-arm group.
As a hitter he was beautifully noiseless. His loud talk,
w'hen he indulged in that, was simply the usual strategic
feint, less profane, I fancy, than in his earlier days,
though sufficiently enriched. His quieter voice w^as
much more ominous. When it became actually sweet
the victim had reached his crisis.
In other words, I should say that Garvel had no point
of originality. He was a product in which, for the
worldly, there were no surprises. Pour energy and
shrewdness into the mold of his experience and the
result would be inevitably a Garvel. Yet he had
personality, the distinctiveness that justified men in the
triteness of saying, "There is only one Garvel."
Ann would have been sure that there could be only
one of him. To her he was new, and her heavily handi-
capped effort to apprehend him belongs to the story I
am trying to set down. No one could say what she
might be able to read in him. I reminded myself that
she was doing a great many things that stale sophisti-
cation was always ready to laugh at, yet that a million
translations cannot diminish the advantage of reading
life in the original.
m
One day a woman came asking for Mr. Garvel. She
had the appearance of being a comfortably situated
person, but excitement gave a disheveled effect to her
face. She flashed at Ann an agitated look that con-
192 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
tradicted the quiet of her inquiry. The switchboard
girl was to be classified. Ann was another matter.
The woman's glance said plainly that she couldn't fix
Ann's grade. No, she didn't have an appointment.
Really, you might say that it was rather personal —
she was doing something on her own account. Probably
it wasn't proper business at all. It might even be a
terrible thing . . . Men were so horribly silent about
some troubles — as if speaking out would bring the
world to an end. . . . She must see Mr. Garvel. If she
could see him . . .
Ann caught the thread at last. She had never heard
the husband's name. He was vice-president of some-
thing. There was an intrigue. He was being squeezed
— there was something very nasty in it. If Mr. Garvel
knew, it could be stopped. The husband had devoted
his life to the business — night and day. Just now he
wasn't very strong. He had done too much. The men
who were against him saw their chance. He couldn't
or wouldn't say anything. Men hated to squeal. Why
shouldn't his wife, knowing what she knew . . . ?
There was a moment in which the vice-president's
wife flushed as with chagrin or dismay at having said
these things to a girl she had never seen before. . . .
Ann left her in the big leather chair of the waiting
room and went rather slowly to Garvel. Technically
she was doing the wrong thing in venturing upon more
than a subterfuge to send the visitor away. There was
a grammar of lies scrupulously arranged; and there were
plenty of devices that were not exactly lies. These had
been unfolded to her — mostly by Cobbing. Garvel was
to be protected. Yet the vice-president's wife impressed
Ann as more important than the code. She was not an
ordinary woman. A fine note sounded through her
emotional indiscretion.
Ann made it brief, and Garvel listened until she was
through.
COUNTER CURRENTS 193
"Good God!" he said then. "Don't you understand
that I can't have whimpering women dumped in on me?
I can't see her. Get rid of her."
"She says—"
"I don't care what she says. Damn-fool women like
that make monkeys of their husbands. They're a
nuisance. They're worse than that. They can raise
hell with things."
Ann turned to the door of Garvel's room, then turned
back. She says that he looked at her incredulously, as
if the motion of his hand should have been enough, and
it became mysterious if not astounding that there should
be a pause.
"I was just thinking," said Ann, "that maybe every
fine thing this man has done in business has been done
with the help of this woman — she seems like that sort
of a woman to me — and that perhaps it wouldn't be
bad business to get a slant on things from her angle now
that you have her here."
Garvel folded his arms, his loose underlip came up
tightly, and he made an odd movement of his head from
side to side, "as if," according to Ann, "he were looking
for something to throw at me."
For an instant Ann thought he had been made
speechless.
Then he said very quietly, but in a tone Ann found
exceedingly unpleasant, "Are you telling me how I
should manage my affairs?"
"You hired my plain sense," said Ann, "and this is
one of the ways it works."
"So."
"I don't think you should have me here at all if
I'm not fit to make a suggestion. You yourself said
that business was simply plain sense. WTiat I thought
was that maybe plain sense might be good business in
a case like this. We're all human beings. This woman
doesn't know the rules, but she is human too. I have
194 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
an idea that she might turn out to be rather a forcible
citizen. She must have some nerve to come straight
to WilUam H. Garvel.'*
"I'm damned!"
Nevertheless, Garvel did not look damned.
He looked straight at Ann, and Ann looked straight
back into the sharp blackness of his eyes until he said
at last, with a guttural gasp that might have meant
anything you liked to believe:
"Well, as you have taken charge of thii^gs, send her
in."
And Ann did.
She contrived not to see Mrs. Melville when that
person went away, but her strategy did leave her free
to observe that Garvel from his doorway watched his
visitor's departure, and would know that Ann had not
intercepted her. Since a vast florid man with a wheezing
habit, who carried an enormous silver-headed cane,
and had the privilege of calling Garvel "Bill," was
awaiting audience, there was no interval in which a
sequel might have happened. The fact was that no
further word about IVIrs. Melville or her squeezed hus-
band had ever been said.
On another day there was an incident with a caller,
a nervous man with a bundle of papers, which had no
sign of importance to Ann, but which resulted in special
recognition by Garvel.
"Young woman," he said, "you managed that very
well."
Ann was standing in his room at the time. He loomed
beside her. She had, it appeared, done something
brilliant, which amused her.
Perhaps Garvel noticed that she was amused. He
may have thought that she was elated by his praise.
She felt his hand touch her shoulders, then catch her at
the waist.
"You're a good sport," he added.
COUNTER CURRENTS 195
"In business," said Ann, without moving.
The hand fell away.
IV
Sometimes Ann went to her midday meal with Irma.
At other times she joined Miss Doremus, the ste-
nographer, who wore a crippling skirt, and shoes that
hurt her feet, and who kept her nose in a condition of
distressing whiteness. Often she chose to go alone.
Once Mr. Miles, the young man who held the closely
confidential relationship with Garvel in the matter of
letters, had thrown out a hint that suggested a lunch-
time attitude of mind. Mr, Miles had a perplexing
face. Ann was induced to be grateful that he did not
feel obliged to treat his nose as Miss Doremus treated
hers. His nose had an eager point. The shape of his
head, his receding forehead and chin, and the shape of
all of his features, including his ears, had an effect as
of having taken their form in a high wind which the
end of his nose had confronted with a wistful bravery.
This impression was heightened by watery eyes, and the
total of his bleakness rather prejudiced Ann against a
lunch-table adventure. There was another thing. Mr.
Miles's legs were unsatisfactory. And he polished his
nails on his sleeve.
I found myself listening with particular attentiveness
when Ann spoke of Irma. I am sure that I am not
fancying this alertness in the light of what happened
thereafter. It is plain that something stirred by that
talk with Irma and by a peculiar and quite nameless
appearance in the picture of the two together, furnished
all that was needed to give a kind of suspense to any
specific glimpse of the friendship. I can remember ask-
ing myself what it was that made this a matter of more
than ordinary speculation — more than one of those
situations in which one applies a momentary measure-
ment with a theory. I decided that a more than or-
196 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
dinary interest in Ann was enough to explain any
curiosity or any solicitude with regard to her attach-
ments. Moreover, there was that sense of a typical
quality in the possible vicissitudes of a war-time comrade-
ship. Of course this sense was heightened from the
first by the contrast, a contrast that often seemed
extraordinarily sharp, and that at other times struck
me as a charming harmonic fortuity amounting to the
happiest, the most obvious rightness. If they had been
man and woman they might have been hastily described
as "made for each other," but only if Ann had been
figured as the man. The other way about would not
have promised well, even if Irma's fanatical devotion
might have been a practical asset on the masculine side.
And figuring Ann as a man is an unpleasant suggestion.
One had only to see her beside Marshall or Halland (I
wish I could have seen her beside W. H. G.) to receive
indelibly the impress of woman in lines and tones of a
beauty so . . .
But I am always in danger of being extravagant about
Ann; and for that reason I have always desired to "see"
Irma, as the artists say — to do full justice to her in
my thoughts. I think I have. It has not been difficult
to find inducement. I liked her from the first — her
charm took care of that. I saw her, too, as Woman.
At this hour I am confirmed in my responsive estimate
of the woman side of her — for while we are, each of us,
in the older analysis, all sex (and new science likes to
squabble over the psychology of that), we shall make
big blunders if we overlook the divergence between that
which is essentially sex and that in which sex is merely
the transmitter. Each of us gives incandescence to a
current from a power house upon which we can put
no sex label. It invites error to overlook the suffusing,
the enveloping spirit of the common Source. . . .
Because I did not know what was in Irma's mind I
made poor surmises as to the personal drama of the
COUNTER CURRENTS 197
two. Ann's mind was to be read, and from that reading
it was clear that on her side there was no feeling of
dependence such as that to which Irma had confessed.
Her feeling was warm and constant, but she did not
cling.
When they went about together, Ann was sometimes
annoyed by Irraa's rejection of the initiative, or at all
events by her habit of yielding it. Ann had no theory,
but she indicated in at least one comment the hazard
in a friendship with a one-sided practice of leading.
Yet it was plain, too, that Irma was far from being
negative. I wondered whether her ebullient way with
life was not indispensable to Ann. I am sure, moreover,
that Ann had a high respect for her shrewdness with
regard to questions introduced by the ordinary motions
of living. Ann liked to say, "You know, Irma, I'm
only an uncouth Westerner. You must hold the lid on
when I get too wild." And Irma's chuckle had
understanding.
Irma was drawn into some of Ann's adventures and
some of her drudgeries. Here there seems to have been
more than a natural modification of her cheerfulness.
Where Ann's elation held, Irma seems frequently to
have become sober and even solemn.
"She is fearfully serious when a game is on," said
Ann. " She takes things to heart. Gets to be positively
miserable. She can tackle a sick man all right. But
a sick baby starts her to crying — quietly, of course,
with her hands busy, but it sends me to sniffing some-
times when I've seen her."
At a community center, with good-cheer work to do,
Irma behaved better. In fact she had astonished Ann
by her sympathetic and clever resourcefulness. She
was often unabashed and adroit where Ann was eager
but puzzled. Among striking girls, too, she exhibited a
natural effectiveness that might have escaped criticism
even from Lida Santzeff .
198 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"There's an odd thing about Irma," Ann told me.
"She doesn't like Mrs. Abemethy. I can't make out
why. Perhaps she hasn't any reason. It may be one
of those freak prejudices people get hold of. Anyway,
she manages to escape going there."
Once when they passed on the street a girl to whom
Ann very definitely nodded, they turned into a discussion
of sex and Ann seemed to have amazed Irma by the
radical tone of her contempt for the smugness of the
world. "All the same," said Irma, "when you put a
mark on a girl like that, she hasn't much of a chance."
This struck Ann as another odd thing, especially as
Irma had been rather harsh about it.
"Irma isn't the sort you would think of as narrow,"
Ann added.
An incident that Ann came to quietly in the course
of her confessions had for me almost a startling novelty.
It occurred at some meeting having a relation to distress
in Europe. Ann and Irma had gone together. It was
in a fashionable house, though the hostess was an
earnest and practical woman. In the moving of chairs
after the discussion and preparatory to a pleasant nibble,
the women were shifted about and Ann and Irma found
seated between them a person to whom Ann instinctively
turned with a sense of recollection. The face, and
especially the eyes, were unmistakably reminiscent; and
the eyes had a recognizing action.
"I'm sure," said Ann, "that I have met you
somewhere."
"I'm sure you have," was the smiling and altogether
friendly response. "I saw you when you came in to-
night, and remembered. We met under rather un-
pleasant circumstances." This with the faintest possible
gesture that seemed to raise a question as to Irma
without in any way making it possible that Irma should
appear to be indicated.
"You are the judge!" said Ann.
COUNTER CURRENTS 199
Hester Royce acknov-ledged the correctness of the
recollection with a whimsical glance that had an in-
tentness behind it.
"The idea!" Ann was certain that she had flushed.
The scene and all that went with it flared into her
foreground.
"Irma," she said then, "this is the dreadful magistrate
who sentenced me to go on minding my own business! —
Judge Royce."
"Glad to meet you," said Irma in a lying whisper.
Magistrate Royce had been very cordial. Just as
soon as Ann was through with that expression of grate-
fulness for courtesy — an expression which had been
delayed for quite a while (Ann had no doubt, and said
so, that prisoners were negligent about such nice points)
— Miss Royce talked about something else. But she
did have a curiosity about Ann, I am assured, and the
talk about something else led to Ann in the end. In
fact Ann saw to it that this happened. She wanted to
know about certain things; and when the hostess in-
truded to take Miss Royce away the parting was delayed
until Ann should have promised to make the magistrate
a personal visit.
"I had to see you!"
There was an unforgettable emphasis in Irma's delivery
of this. She made an ineffaceable picture as she stood
there with her hand touching the back of a chair, and
her look fastened upon me with a tenacious earnestness.
I remember that she wore an olive-colored hat having
a quaint curve in it, and curious lacings of emerald.
Her fur piece had fallen from one shoulder, and I could
see a minute throbbing place in the white hollow of her
throat. Somehow I shall always associate the picture
with the rising murmur of the streets, a dissonance deep
and obscure that can be thrillingly symphonic when life
200 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
is sounding certain significant individual notes. . . . The
murmur came insistently through all the mufflings,
penetrating every pause, drifting like the ghost of
orchestrated irony. . . .
We were in the office of Irma's man, at the hour
when the going-home tide had set in. This had been
her idea. Evidently she wanted a detachment that
would preclude interruption. I resented that appeal
over the wire, which had a telephone excuse for being
unexplanatory, and I still held the resentment when I
saw the expectant agitation, so poorly hidden under the
quiet. I had just left a person who laid before me
evidence of an impending doomsday for civilization.
To be called, as if into consultation, on a matter of
feminine hysteria, had the effect of comic anticlimax.
I didn't wish to be consulted by any living creature.
I was drunk with confidences, prophecies of evil, gro-
tesque alternatives and pottering decisions. Even at
that moment when she said, "I had to see you!" I was
of a mind to back out, to tell her that for me life was
altogether too serious at this junctm-e to be occupied with
questions as to whether she should say this or that to
Ann. I can think of admirably violent things.
There appeared to be no reason why she should be
dressed to go out, unless I was to be taken somewhere.
I was left to suppose that her garb had something to
do with making the meeting seem casual, or at least
incidental, in the event of a not-to-be-expected intruder;
though it is possible that she had nervously added her
outdoor garments as if thereby detaching herself from
the office.
Probably I did not look responsive, for she began to
say, "I know ..." and went silent as if fumbling over a
choice.
In that instant's pause her delicate color receded,
leaving her rather startlingly white. It may have been
a twinge of fear. There could be no question of an
COUNTER CURRENTS 201
agitation profoundly painful to her, and my annoyance
grew.
"Do you remember," she said finally, fingering a little
appendage to her fur piece, "saying to me that I ought
to — that I ought to tell Ann everything?"
"Yes," I said, relieved to have the business begun.
"Something like that."
"Well — when you said that you didn't know — oh no I
You didn't know what you were telling me to do!"
"My dear girl," I protested, "I haven't issued any
orders. I hadn't even a notion of advising you except
as to certain foolish chances of a misunderstanding with
regard to that affair on the street. I — "
" That affair ! " She brought her hands together. " O
my God!"
I wanted to move over to her chair, bring her to her
feet, tell her to stop acting like a babbling child and go
home. She checked me with her next exclamation.
"Of course you didn't know that I couldn't follow
Ann!"
She turned her face toward the near window, her lips
holding control by an effort that was costing her all her
resolution.
"AVhy not?" There was nothing else to ask.
When she looked at me once more I saw that she had
not yet lost her head. She had come a little nearer to
something that had been working its way out in her.
Perhaps it was a kind of speech. It may be that she
had gone over it again and again. I have imagined her
lying in bed with her face upturned repeating words that
she would use when the time came. . . .
" I wanted to explain to some one why . . . some one
who would tell me — tell me the truth ..."
"You keep on being mysterious," I said.
"I know. I don't blame you. That other day I
shouldn't have said anything unless I was going to say
— everything. You see, I wasn't ready yet. I guess
202 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
I had fooled myself. When you said to tell everything
... it was sudden — almost as if you knew. And you
didn't know anything about me, did you?"
"Nothing," I said, "except that you had a morbid
streak in you. Which was exasperating, for I thought —
I've gone on thinking — that you have one of the happiest
dispositions — "
"Yes, yes! I do want to be happy! I've always
wanted to be happy. I want to be happy now. It
seems as if I could be if only — if I could say to myself
that I had a perfect right to be happy. . . "
"Nonsense," I said with impatience. "We all have
a right to be happy."
"But we've got to be happy — inside. Don't you see
that? And when there's something that keeps coming
back . . . mostly when I'm with Ann. I mean that once
in a while — but I can't tell you unless I tell you the
beginning."
I wanted to say, "Out with it!" yet I was silent.
And she began at the beginning. She turned her face
to the window as if to look back into the time when she
was a little girl. This part of it came to me at first
as colorless, though it seemed to be explaining something
to her. She had a parenthesis in which she protested
that she didn't want to accuse her parents. People did
that to excuse themselves, and she didn't want to dig
out an excuse. She had been over all that part with
herself. She had reached something else now . . .
Maybe there was a difference between showing how a
thing happened and trying to excuse something. Any-
way, her home hadn't been much like a home. In fact
they lived in so many different places — a good part of
the time in hotels — because her father's business pulled
him about a good deal and he wanted her mother with
him. Her mother loved to dance. Her father didn't
dance. He drank a great deal of beer. Sometimes it
Tvas wine. He used to make Irma see how good it was.
COUNTER CURRENTS 203
Irma's mother would say, "Do you want to make a
drunkard of that child?" which would induce her
father to laugh. He had a great laugh. People used
to laugh just from hearing him.
She remembered most of the places where they lived
as places where she had a good time. She went to
school in a strange variety of schools. Once — this was
after her father had encountered some vaguely under-
stood kind of luck — her mother thought it would be a
good idea to have a tutor for her. But she had the
tutor for only a week because there seemed to be neces-
sity for moving again, and then it was the beginning
of a summer and her mother wanted to go to a sea resort,
to which her father did not go and where her mother
danced every evening, generally with a Mr. Barrett.
It was here that Irma met a young man named Hill.
She did not describe him. He was remarkable at recit-
ing. He had thought of going on the stage, even if his
father had been furious at the notion. Irma was seven-
teen at the time. She liked Hill better than anyone
she had ever met.
A year later when Hill found her, quite by accident,
in a hotel at Delaware Water Gap, he had given up the
idea of going on the stage. In fact he had gone into the
steel business with his father. The old man had every-
thing planned out for him. He indicated that it was
an awful thing to have your life staked off for you like
that. . . . Everything figured. Why, his mother even had
the impudence to think she knew the girl he would
marry. Could you beat that.^ As for marrying, he
would do his own picking. And marriage was a tough
gamble anyway — didn't she think so? Everybody
getting divorced. People went too much by rules.
You couldn't manage love that way. Love was just a
thing that happened. They understood those things in
France. V/ouldn't it be wonderful if Irma and he could
slip off to Paris! It was true love — the real thing —
'o
204 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
when you didn't give a hang for anything — for anything
except that you just had each other.
He talked much about love. He could recite poetry
about it. Once he recited a poem to her while they
were dancing in a casino, and afterward when they were
eating ice cream he leaned over to whisper to her, "I
meant that. That was me!"
It was very late, but they went out in a boat. . . .
There was a place that always made him think of a
poem. In fact, it was exactly like it when you came to
see it with a moon. It was a sort of miracle — but not
a bit more of a miracle than two people, a certain two
people, just happening to be brought together. When
you thought of all the people in the world and all the
'places in the world. . . .
She had liked the way he kissed her that night. They
sat together for a long while and he kissed her many
times. She admitted having been deeply impressed by
his way of saying, as if he and she were quite in the hands
of fate, "I guess love's got us, hasn't it?"
VI
"Love and adventure!' — those were the two biggest
things in life, according to Hill. And he told Irma that
life had become too infernally flat. Flat and grey. He
had a poem with "grey" in it.
The only saving thing, he said, was for two who under-
stood, who had the sense of adventure, the sense of
beauty, the sense of love, to take what belonged to them
— what belonged to them. She understood this to relate
to scenery, when, on the following day, he waved his
hand toward the wooded hills.
They went off with a lunch package, climbing, strolling,
peering into romantic wood vistas, and sitting together
with eyes on the far view. Toward late afternoon a
rather long shower came up, and they huddled under
COUNTER CURRENTS 205
some pines until it had passed. When the last of the
warm sun came again Hill made Irma take off her stock-
ings and put them out to dry. . . .
When they got to the hotel much after the dinner hour
Irma was sure that everyone, and especially her mother,
would notice that her face was very red.
It was red enough now while she searched my face. I
knew that she would be watching me, but I had seen what
was coming and my indignant regret had no suddenness.
I still was of a mind to tell her that, quite aside from what
might have happened to her, there was something neu-
rotic about her telling me, for any reason whatever.
Allowing that there might be possible justification for
the telling, why should I . . . ?
Her look seemed to say, "Wait!" I sat stupidly and
let her go on.
That extraordinary mother had been invisible, and
Irma had gone to her own room without finding her.
The next day her mother had seemed to forget to make
any inquiry. Everything seemed to be just the same.
But Irma grew very miserable as the days v/ent by.
She began to feel that while she had always been free —
as free as the outside circumstances of her life permitted
— she now was checked, pulled up, haunted by some-
thing inside, something that kept on whispering to her
at all sorts of times. When she arose in the mornings the
something was there. She didn't like her face in the
mirror. It was hard to look straight into her own eyes.
She wanted to feel as she had felt before, and there
seemed to be no way of getting to that old feeling. She
wondered if it would always be this way, if she was
always going to feel bereaved, intolerably, as if something
was dead that must be carried about with her; whether
when she splashed the water in her face there would
always remain the sense of not being able to feel clean.
And one night, after lying awake for a long time, she
made up her mind to tell her mother in the morning.
206 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Her father was coining on that day and she would
have the thing over before her father came. She imag-
ined her mother crying and storming. It would be
horrible, but she pictured the horror as burning away
some of her distress. The more horrible it was the more
certain she would be of the burning away. The situation
called for a violent, arresting atonement, if that ever
could be possible. She wanted to be accused by some
voice that was not her own. It was as if this would
lessen the stifling effect of the secret.
Her mother was again invisible in the morning, and
when her father came he found a letter. As he threw it
down he looked more terrible than she had ever seen him
look.
"That's what you get!" he said.
Her mother had gone for good, it seemed. Irma never
saw her again. She did get a scrawl of a letter on which
her mother said there were "bitter tears." Irma never
clearly understood with whom she had gone. Her father's
"Damn him!" had not been illuminative. In the brief
talk he had with Irma on the subject of the calamity her
father stressed the fact that "you and I've got to go it
together." As for Hill, she had a letter saying that his
father had decided to send him to their Chicago office.
He wrote again after a letter from her. Then silence
until the day of an unsigned poem about souls that are
separated by "the cruel fingers of fate."
Irma's life with her father had been horribly lonesome
— chiefly that, because "with" him meant without
him most of the time. For reasons connected with the
topography of his business operations he had fixed on
Pittsburgh as a home town, and here she was to be.
He had great plans, which began with her going to a girls'
school. She was there a year. He even had a theory
of getting her into college, but at the end of that year
he seemed to be unsettled about everything, and they
had become established at a hotel once more. It was
COUNTER CURRENTS 207
without his consent that she went to a business school.
He never wanted her to do anything. He looked at her
over his highball at dinner and said, "You're my
daughter. That's your job."
At the hotel she met a young man named Vanelle, a
dancer. He had established a cabaret at a fashionable
restaurant, and supervised dances at the hotel. Vanelle
had urged her father to have her trained for "inter-
pretive" work. He was sure that she would have a
great career ahead of her.
Her father said, "Nix on the career.'*
Nevertheless, Vanelle taught her dancing. She won
a prize with him in a tango contest. It all looked very
silly now, but at the time . . . Well, she was very much
distressed about her father's habits, and when he was
away the lonesome ness was frightful. Vanelle kept ou
talking to her about a career and what he could do for
her. He knew important people . . . and so on. He
outlined a "specialty" in society dancing that would
make them very rich. Of course she would be the
"star." He would be her dancing partner.
All this time she knew that she was not really fond
of Vanelle. He was a terrible egotist. But when
there was music he became . . . she couldn't describe
what he became, but whatever it was a girl could be
fascinated by it. And he talked with her about the
love that would leave them both free to accomplish
their destinies.
Then she began to see, as if something that had been
closed in her had opened very wide, all that might lie
before her. After feeling almost free again she became
frightened. She found that while she was not really
afraid of Vanelle, she was afraid of herself. She saw
that it was all a matter of herself. She had been so
much alone; she had been left so much to find her own
paths and her own comforts, that in that moment she
saw herself suddenly as on some narrow space with a
208 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
frightful muck of things on each side. If she could have
turned to her father. . . . She looked at him when he
returned from a trip and wished . . .
On that night her father made a ghastly scene in the
lobby of the hotel. He was very drunk.
It was after she had thought it out — that he was
hopeless, and that there was but one chance — that she
ran away.
She went to Philadelphia and found a position.
I think that this third part of Irma's story was hardest
for her. Certainly it was hardest for me.
She stood up, dropping the fur piece into the chair in
which she had been sitting, and stood by the window.
Then she came back, walking at last the length of the
room. I remember feeling as if the steel and stone
of the office walls were expressing the impossibility of
escape.
This third part was most incoherent. It may be that
I had begun to lose something that held in the earlier
parts and that this fact confused the effect. There
might have been something more nakedly shameless in
this effect if her father had not found her. His drunken
visit introduced an element that forced me anew to
a special sympathy. And the war, which had been
a distant background, became a near influence. This
colored everything. During the war, I myself had been
so much less than a rational creature that I could not
think of any judgment or failure of judgment in that
space as subject to normal measure. The man, Cart-
wright, may have been a stupendous appeal in hia
khaki. She may have believed that they would be
married in New York before he went away, and she
may have had in her mind a splendid sacrificial romance
to mend the meanness of her life. It may be that in
the delirium of that next day, the postponed license was
not a lying subterfuge. Clearly, she began to doubt
Cartwright long before that last dinner, and it is plain
COUNTER CURRENTS 209
that a sickening irony lurked in the wine he drank with
her. . . . They drank a lot of wine.
He was called to his ship that night. Since he after-
ward went through the ordeal that is known as dying
for his country we should perhaps give judgment of
him a special classification. The unfortunate fact at
this time was the effect of the parting upon Irma. I
seem to see first a whimpering anger. There was an im-
plication of rage, not altogether against him. I think
she gathered in the universe. She had a bitter notion
that life was appallingly unfair. Anyway, it was awfully
unfair to women. Very likely they were fools to accept
the unfairness. Being a girl was an extraordinary
joke.
The hysteria that followed the anger I'm sure she did
not understand. She admitted laughing aloud. The
streets were very bright. You would think the war
was a festival. She walked in a kind of dream, vaguely
conscious of the recent wine, the disappearing face of
Cartwright, the swirl of brightness. The thing was not
to care about anything . . . anything. Caring only
made her miserable.
A tall, rather good-looking man smiled at her. She
smiled back. When he stopped her she froze up. She
could have spat in his face. But he persisted. He
asked her where she was going. She refused to answer
him. He touched her arm, and he suddenly became
loathsome. She called him a scoundrel. Then he told
her to come along. She was arrested. . . .
Irma dropped into the chair again, her hands
laced, her face squarely set. It was as if she were
accusing me.
"So," she said, "you see why it happened that I
couldnt follow Ann."
I stared at her incredulously as if she had devised a
theatrical trick.
"My fingerprint was in the book."
210 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
I saw her arms go to the desk beside her and her head
droop. She sobbed at last without restraint.
vn
She presented one of the world's oldest pictures. And
my man-stupidity was just as old.
What ought I to say when she asked me the inevitable
question? — I could feel it drawing nearer. She might
frame it with her next words when she lifted her head.
Should she tell Ann?
To answer honestly I must first do something with
the annoyance of being asked. I felt a bit of nausea
that she should have spoken at all. The instinctive
rebellion was, I suppose, a good deal like that felt by
a person who has been asked to hold an infant and then
finds that the mother has absconded. Once having been
accepted the burden must be disposed of decently.
Something that had been concealed was uncovered.
When I pleaded with myself that she had confessed for
her own comfort, resentment answered that her search
for comfort was selfish — that her confession was not
noble but egoistic, the expression of a feminine passion
for getting a thing said somehow. I was a good old
mark. Why couldn't she have kept her head shut?
Why give me an anguish? Why give it to Ann or to
anyone else? Why not carry her private burdens where
private burdens belong?
Perhaps it was like the feeling a man has when a
bleared caricature of a creature he once knew very well
halts him to ask for a trifling loan. There is first the
sense of outrage at a disturbed peace; then the savage
annoyance at having to look into the naked horror of
failure, to see personified a suffering that has been
admitted or surmised and is now revealed in living flesh
as a reward of friendship. There are, I am sure, gen-
erous souls who wholly escape this initial twinge, whose
COUNTER CURRENTS 211
giving does not have to carry the remorse of the blunder.
To have a sympathy alert and unquestioning — that is
a fine thing. The beauty of a compassion that can
never be caught unprepared, that never has to gird
itself, that has no self -nerve from which the jiujitsu
of circumstances can wrench a gesture of involuntary
caution, has alwavs kindled mv envious admiration.
It was my second thought, then, which told me that
Irma had, in effect, asked me for something that I
could give. It was not fault, but need, that I was to
consider. And I must let her translate her need. . . .
Even the need to tell.
Her head did not come up with a question. There
was more to be said. She went through something in
the court that was called a conviction. The judge
suspended sentence. Perhaps he knew the two men —
there were two — were lying. And after the thumb-
printing she had walked out into the city feeling like an
outcast. At the very best she knew she was common.
She had been chucked. Even the city told her to
begone.
She heard a man haranguing from the tonneau of a
car. If she had been a man she would have enlisted.
They would not have asked her any questions if she
had been a man. They would have asked only whether
the man could do the thing that was to be done. A
great longing seized her. She had no training for the
kind of work they would ask of a woman. And they
were very sensitive about the character of women.
But she felt an intense longing to go.
She did not pretend that she could foresee what the
adventure would do for her. No. It had been simply
to get away. On the third day she found a cousin of her
father, an influential person who had seen her last when
she was fourteen. He was very kind. It seemed to
be easy for him to fix things so that she should be at-
tached to a unit that was going across.
212 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
When the ship moved away it was as if a great curtain
of sky came down over all that misery. She worked
very hard and was very happy. She forgot in the
midst of all the labor of it that there was any reason
why these girls should not like her. They all did like
her. She was sure of that. She began to have a dif-
ferent sense of herself. It was as if she had died
and come into another world altogether. Of course it
really was another w^orld for all of them. What she
meant was that sky and earth and people all seemed to
be different in a way that was like beginning again, and
beginning again without question or handicap. She had
met some wonderful women. She had never suspected
that there were such women on earth. Above all, there
was Ann.
When she was called from the canteen as a hospital
helper, Ann was there. Very soon she felt no anxiety
except that they might be separated. There was a ter-
rible night when she thought Ann had been killed. If
Ann had been killed she would have been sure that her
new w orld would come tumbling down. I could see how
this idea had grown, how Ann had come to represent the
reality, the stability, the fulfilled promise of the new,
liberated Irma. So long as she had Ann, so long as Ann
believed in her, everything remained real and worth
while. It was that which had gone before that became
unreal. Also there came a new sense of values. Ann
didn't care about the labels of things. In fact, she
startled Irma at times by her blunt repudiation of re-
spectable make-believes. Some of these points of view
Irma had to acquire, like a new language. Meeting the
men had helped. Seeing them laugh or cry, hearing about
their mothers, the girls they were to marry or had mar-
ried, and what they were going to do when they got back,
drew a splendid new picture of life. Where they were
was not a real world. It was as if they had the chance,
from a far vantage point, to see it as it was and as it
COUNTER CURRENTS 213
might be. Yes, that was very important ... as it might
be.
When they came home the as-it-might-be dream
seemed to begin to come true. But always the trueness
seemed to imply iVnn. To keep on believing in the true-
ness without Ann was unthinkable. It was for this rea-
son that I was to understand how the incident where
the man led Ann away was the worst that could have
happened. Although the full calamity seemed to pass,
something had begun to grow in her thoughts. The more
complete her happiness was on the outside the more
unfair it seemed to be that Ann should be deceived.
Yes, it was a deception. It might not have been called
a deception over there. But now it was. You would
think to hear Ann talk that nothing could make any
difference. But only a girl whose life had been fearfully
honest could talk like that, and you could see that Ann
thought she was talking to a girl like herself — to a girl who
played fair. Not that Ann wouldn't forgive. She might
— she probably would — forgive anything. Forgive — be
sorry, be kind. You could believe that. Could you be-
lieve that she could be the same? She couldn't go on
talking to a girl like herself. K she couldn't, everything
was spoiled . . . smashed.
Speaking to me would make a difference, to her and
to me. Didn't I see that.' But the inference was that
I was not holding up her world. If she had been a
Catholic she would have told it all sometime — perhaps
long ago. If I were a priest what should I have said?
Should I have said to tell Ann everything?
VIII
"Irma," I said, "you have been thinking aloud. Let
me do that too."
She gave no sign of an eagerness. An exhausted quiet
was what I saw. Yet she was intent enough.
214 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"If I am to be honest I must tell you that while I've
sat here, feeling very cheap and futile, I've let myself
wonder — without considering whether it was sacrilegious
or anythmg of that sort — if the Man of Nazareth ever
said, 'I don't know'; whether he ever felt like saying
that. It would brace a poor old fumbler to know that
he had."
"You're the best — " Irma began.
"Yes," I said. "I've made a good enough job of lis-
tening. A wooden god on the mantelpiece could have
done that. Come to think of it, a wooden god isn't a
bad idea. Like Mrs. Breckles's Otto, he throws back
the decision. In the end it is your decision."
"I know," said Irma.
The drone of the street, punctuated by the barking of
brass in the traffic, stretched its questioning recitative.
"I could say — if I thought aloud — why did you speak
at all? Why not go on being? And if you had to speak
to get something free of you, why not let me suffice?
Why think of Ann?"
"But I must think of Ann!"
"What struck me at first was, that thinking of Ann
ought to include thinking of how your story would affect
her. She has her rights — including the right to find you
as you really are. We have that right with regard to
the world itself. The world has been a rascal. But it's
not a bad notion to take it as we find it, and go on.
Think of what a frightful thing it would be to carry the
obligation of measuring every life we met! We've all
had pasts, some of them mean, some of them simply
blundering. If it wouldn't do to ask some men how
they got their money, it wouldn't do to ask some
others how they got their characters. I'm thinking
of good characters. I know splendid characters that
have not for long been free of the mud. God has a
way of working. . . .
"You see, I am thinking aloud. This isn't what I
COUNTER CURRENTS 215
ought to say. You don't want me to preach. I'm
ashamed.*'
"I want . . .'* and Irma faltered.
"The way you feel — that's the keynote. All of his-
tory sounds in it, and your answer is there, too, if we
could get it."
"The way I feel . . ." Irma repeated the phrase
gropingly.
"I once did something foolish — very foolish. I think
I should like myself less now if I had never had the
suffering that went with it. But I wish I hadn't been
foolish. . . . There's the measuring point, you see. The-
ories of individual liberty fall down right there. We
ourselves get the real hurt. We have to live with our-
selves. Aside from that — we may balance the account
and make some sort of workable terms with ourselves —
there are the others. If I found myself with but one
other person in the world it would make a difference
what he thought of me — make a difference, whether I
cared or not. And what he thought would depend on
what he knew about me. We have to admit that, and
we can make all sorts of foolish mistakes in remembering
it — almost as foolish as some people make in forgetting
it. Sometimes I wish we could both remember and for-
get it. If we could recognize it and then go straight
forward with the business of being ourselves we should
be doing pretty well. Certainly nursing an anxiety as
to what others may think of us leads rather directly to
a morbid and useless life."
"I don't want to be morbid and useless," Irma re-
peated. "I just want to be fair."
"You prove that. If it weren't for the way you feel
— well, you could decide that you were playing fair.
You're not asking Ann to live with the Irma Kane that
was. You're asking her to live with the Irma Kane that
is. But the way you feel is part of what you are. If
I were really wise enough to deserve your expectation
216 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
of help I should know how to measure that problem.
You can see that I'm wandering around it — trying to
think through into the light."
Irma made a gesture. "I wish," she said, "you would
. . . think it through as if — as if you were thinking for
Ann."
"I can't avoid doing that, can I? She is part of it. I
suppose if you were asking me about the world in gen-
eral I should say to let the world in general go hang. I
should be justified in doing that because you have fought
out the fight with yourself and the world in general has
good reason to be glad you did that — or maybe we ought
to say, glad you have begun it. It's plain that you're
not through. We never do quite get through. Adjust-
ing is never finished.
"The reason you're having trouble adjusting yourself
to Ann has back of it your need to adjust yourself to the
world. The offense that is making you unhappy was not
against nature but agsdnst folks. You left out the ritual.
The ritual is part of our contract with others. People
couldn't get along without contracts. They make a
covenant with one another which men break when they
steal. They make another which is represented by mar-
riage. The marriage certificate is a receipt. No better
plan, as a plan, for the comfort of the world, has ever
been worked out. Like all mass covenants it sometimes
hurts individuals — crushes them, it may be. Individuals
may be defiant or contemptuous, but nothing more
crushing has ever been invented than the withdrawal of
the world. We're not built to stand alone. When you
say you need Ann you're thinking of all this. You're
fancying her pulling away.
"What bothers us most of all is another thing. I'm
sure you feel as I do about it. I'm sure you're not specu-
lating upon how much mass prejudice may affect Ann,
how much she may be influenced merely by a reverence
for form or no form. We both know that she thinks she
COUNTER CURRENTS 217
is liberal — that she is liberal. We are sure of a splendid
sympathy. But you have a feeling, a very close feeling,
that has nothing to do with Ann or anyone else. No
matter how you came to have that, you have it. It is
the most intimate, down-deep thing we can imagine.
Maybe sometimes like the very faintest whisper; some-
times screaming."
"Yes, yes!" cried Irma.
"What we have to think of is that Ann, if she knew,
in spite of the most generous reasoning, in spite of the
most perfect compassion, would have the echo of that —
and that you would know she had the echo of it. You
would be doing what you call playing fair with her,
and she would certainly play fair with you. Whether
you would be asking her to help you carry a burden —
whether you would be playing fair with her in giving
her . . ."
It was I who got up this time. I couldn't seem to find
my pipe in the usual pocket. Irma watched me move
up and down the ofl5ce. Perhaps it was as if the jury
were out.
"I don't know," I said. "I don't know. . . . And yet
Ann is so much bigger than I am. When I think of
her in a certain way I have the impulse to say, ' Tell it !
Tell it! Tell it all! Tell her nature's had another
tussle with the code, and isn't cowardly enough to fear a
show-down.' You're on your feet. I haven't said a
word about how big you look in this struggle of yours.
You're not an old woman squinting at her youth.
You're not ashes lamenting the fire. If you want to
know what the part of me that isn't advising you really
thinks, it is that you who carry the living flame are
lifting it higher, that you're trying to see your horizon,
and that no God I can think of could possibly wish that
you wouldn't reach it."
Standing there in the middle of the floor I felt her
two hands gripping my arm.
15
218 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"I'm glad! I'm gladi I wanted to know that you
wouldn't hate me!"
She stood off, her hands falling again to her sides.
"Hate you . . . ?"
" That 2/oM feel—"
"Irma," I said, "what I feel isn't the question. I'm
too grown up to hate anybody. But that isn't what
we're considering."
"But you do wish — "
"Oh yes! I'm a great wisher. That's the best thing
I do. I could wish that you hadn't given yourself
reason or excuse to feel belittled in the presence of any
other. Naturally. But if I wished that, it may be
that I should be wishing you were not Irma Kane, or
that you were a different Irma Kane, which would be
assuming a responsibility. Irma Kane isn't through.
I wish her the best of luck. I wish she would forever
and ever refuse to feel belittled. That applies whether
she tells Ann or never tells her. I wish that if she ever
tells Ann she would speak confidently as the Irma Kane
that is and not as the Irma Kane that was. Perhaps
Ann's philosophy would be the better for the test.
Perhaps Ann herself would be the better for the test.
I don't know. I don't hanker to see tests applied.
Enough of them seem to happen. If this had reasonably
happened — "
"Reasonably . . . ?"
" If you had been forced — by any circumstances. You
haven't been forced."
"No. . . . Not forced — not by circumstances exactly."
Irma reviewed this, then emitted a flash of her woman
shrewdness. "But if I spoke when I was forced, when
I had to, would Ann ... ?"
"If, in waiting, you had considered her as well a3
yourself, wouldn't she understand that?"
"She might understand it," admitted Irma.
There was the unconvinced inflection.
COUNTER CURRENTS 219
"And you mean that your feeling — that this has been
forcing you?"
"Pushing."
"It pushed you into speaking to me. Perhaps that
will ease the push a little."
We looked at each other. The low thunder from
Broadway had subsided to a muttering softness.
"I'U never forget how kind you've been."
"Better forget all you can," I said.
She and Jimmy were going to dinner with Ann and
Spot. I reminded her that she would have to hurry.
We went down to earth together in the steel cage.
IX
When something ugly happens I am likely to go to
TuUy's and have a large steak — to order a meal of a
vulgar amplitude in the matter of boiled potatoes and
asparagus and beans, and an appalling forest of celery.
Only a man with a truckman appetite could really face
the mess with an honest intention. My attitude is
defensive. I go into Tully's, which smells uproariously
on account of the public broiler, to build a food barricade
against circumstances. I skulk behind the array of
food and nibble my way free of the crisis. Maloney, the
waiter, has a man-to-man decency with me. WTien he
recommends the rice pudding I know that he means
it. He never insults my meager capacity by notic-
ing the quantity of anything he carries away. He
seems to understand the spiritual bearing of the total
in relation to the residuum. He knows that the
waste, while immoral in itself, has served some high
purpose.
I sat smoking in Tully's for a long time on the evening
of Irma's story and let Maloney tell me some of the
inside history of the waiters' union, how his son-in-law
was pulling down money in the automobile business.
220 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
and what Quayle said they were going to do to land-
lords who jumped rents a hundred and fifty per cent.
While Maloney, with one fist resting on the edge of the
table, talked of the outrageous way Europe was be-
having, and especially England, I was seeing a Penn-
sylvania hillside in a shower, and a New York street
with the white lights twitching. . . .
Then I wandered over toward Andy Crown's.
The autumn night was no particular comfort. The
streets looked down-at-the-heel. Figures had an effect
of foolish motion. A baby carried by a scrawny girl of
eight or ten was screaming in a tired anger, and the
girl was singing through the din wuth a wisp of a voice.
Taxicabs nosed by one another at the corners. A
policeman under the shadow of an Italian fruit stand
was swallowing the last of a banana. An old man,
frightfully bent, was shuffling in short, cautious steps,
and looking up obliquely at what seemed to be mechan-
ically fixed intervals. He carried a soiled paper bag.
Groups of boys, smoking cigarettes in doorways, scuffled,
threw missiles, and broke into noisy laughter. Warm
smells oozed from basements and cellars. A yellow
dachshund of a bus, consecrated to the seeing of China-
town by night, wheezed by on its way to the south.
Over all was the stare of the stars. At such a time
one does not feel an immensity but an encroaching
clutter. Even the stars looked crowded.
One listens for a dominant note in a night scene, as
if to relate it to some haunting vibration of his own,
and to miss in the thickly woven dissonance any ad-
justable element is to suffer a sense of a pressing unfair-
ness in things.
It occurred to me, with bitterness, that I could not,
like Irma, plausibly carry my questions to anyone else.
One of the burdens of years, if often one of a melancholy
sweetness, was the carrying of confidences, most of them
offered, doubtless, in exoectation not so much of wisdom
COUNTER CURRENTS 221
as of security. Irma had used the word "priest," and
I was immensely startled at the matching of the fresh
recollection of that word with the broad back of a
figure I saw before me on that cross street. I knew the
figure for that of Father Ryan, whom I had first met
when he was a fire-department chaplain. I let my-
self come abreast of him, and heard his cheery "Hello,
Sid!" with a kind of comfort. The round, jovial face
with the deep-set, experienced eyes and the heavy,
crisply black and white eyebrows, gave me a pleasant
lift.
"And how goes it with you in these turbulent days?"
he asked.
Turbulently sometimes, I said. I asked in turn how
the rancors of the world might be affecting his life.
"Ah, Sid!" he returned, "it keeps on being pretty
much the same old world. They try to make it out
for something new. And it won't be new for them!
No, men and women are men and women just the same.
They love, and struggle, and die, don't they? When
have they done anything else? All the noises end the
same way. There's quiet for them at the last. I'm
just after closing the eyes of Jerry Shane — you knew
Shane? A big man in his time. Crocker used to say
there was no one like him. And I'm going a bit slow
on the way home. There's sure to be somebody
waiting and I wanted — well, to meet the likes of you,
and—"
"And get away from problems."
"Sure, Sid, it's all a problem. Isn't that so? But
don't let us be solemn. I said to myself this morning
when I saw the paper, 'Holy Mother! When is the
world going to learn to live?' Then I thought back a
bit and wondered if I wasn't getting old. There may
be something in that for you and me."
"If only getting old would help us to see" I said.
"It does!" cried Father Ryan. "It does! I believe
222 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
it. But they won't believe us! Think what might be
done, Maxton, if they would beheve their elders — the
whole scrambling crew of them!"
"I'm not feeling omniscient," I said, gloomily.
" You rebuke me — "
"No, no!"
"I understand you. God knows I don't feel om-
niscient either. It isn't that. Not at all. It's — "
"It hurts to see the same mistakes happening over
and over again."
"That's it! As if they were blind — and deaf, too.
As if there were no dead by the road. As if they could
escape the fingers of the Great Hand."
We were silent for a space.
"But they do listen to you," I said. I remembered
a certain awed group.
"Listen? Yes — afterward. I saw a man behind the
bars this afternoon. He listened and blubbered. ' Damn
it!' I said. 'Why didn't you listen to me before?' It's
the same with the crazy world. If it had listened before
there was a war. If it would listen now. ... If it would
think a little ..."
We had come to the door beside the church.
"In case," I said, "there is nobody waiting, I have a
question I should like to ask you myself."
"Of course you will come in! It's a long time since I
talked with you."
No one awaited, and with our pipes glowing we drew
up beside the gas lamp in that high-ceilinged, rather bare,
but friendly back room.
"Father Ryan," I said, "I'm not a Catholic, but—"
He uttered his rich laugh. "I hope that isn't troubling
you!"
" I never confessed, except to my mother — '*
"And to your God."
" But I have heard a good many confessions.**
"It would ripen your soul."
COUNTER CURRENTS 223
"Mostly they made me feel small, inadequate — oh, a
pitifully dry spring."
He nodded understandingly, moved his lips as if about
to speak, then waited.
"I heard a story this afternoon. It was as much a
question as a story. I found that I couldn't answer. I
could only feel. Maybe I did partly answer it. I don't
know. Do you come to the point sometimes where you
don't know?"
"Often. Very often."
"Where a full answer seems too great a risk ... ?"
"Yes. And you must go yourself to — to the question-
ing place."
I told him the story and watched those deep-set eyes
seem to grow deeper beyond the haze of the smoke. I
thought he winced when I came to Cartwright. At the
arrest his pipe was held away, and when I had reached
the question there was no haze between him and me.
He was staring at the fur rug in the middle of the shiny
floor.
"It was better," he said at last, "that she should tell
you — tell somebody. It will do something for her —
perhaps everything that can be done by anyone but her-
self — herself and . . . naturally I should have said to
her—"
"You would have given her something — "
"But that would have been herself. She would have
to feel it, to accept it, to use it, to go on . . ."
"Yes. And if she had looked at you with the thing
that was the great question for her still shining through
— the question of the other girl — "
Father Ryan found a match in the brass cup on the
near table, and elaborately relighted his pipe.
"You know," he said, "there is a thing both of us are
thinking — as men — that she might have made her peace,
such as it could be, with herself, between herself and her
God, if she is capable of that, and then have — have held
224 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
her tongue. If she could have done that, mind you — if
she could have made her peace. But there is a fear with
women — it's as if their sin were flying about like a hor-
rible, winged thing, that would some day come home to
roost. Men can shut their eyes and plunge ahead.
Women seem to hear the wings. Sometimes it seems as
if they had a suspicious conscience. In some matters
they are more skeptical than men. No use thinking of
the logic of the chance that they will be found out. . . .
Perhaps it is something finer in them. Their souls like
to sit very close to the real truth. Actually, they hate
concealments. It's a funny thing to say when you stop
to think of the way the world is made for them. But
I believe they hate the hidden. We don't take suflBcient
account of that when we blame them for speaking.
* Can't keep a secret,' we say. And Heaven knows I've
known trouble enough to come from that. All the same
there is, I'm sure, something good under their instinct.
I think that men are naturally better liars. There may
be wisdom in keeping secrets. And there can be a kind
of lying, too. Wisdom! What is it.? Expediency,
mostly. Perhaps divine wisdom that we talk about is
sometimes only expediency on the supreme scale, with
the lying left out. All the time there is a right. But
getting at it . . ."
"What struck me," I said, "as the gist of the matter
• — as the high point of the revelation — was the attitude
of this girl's mind in the presence of her friend. As I
see it, she might even have made terms with herself —
evidently she had done that; she might even have made
the higher terms. I don't know. I'm afraid she was
brought up in what you would call a godless way. But
this feeling as between one mind and another would re-
main. And such a sensitiveness is a very beautiful thing
in itself."
"It is," said Father Ryan.
"This friend expresses for her the clean part of the
COUNTER CURRENTS 225
world. Understand that this friend is no sanctimonious
person. She is just a live woman. To complicate it, she
has amazing ideas of individual freedom."
"Ideas," said Father Ryan.
"Just ideas. As between the two you would say that
she was vastly the more radical. But my troubled one
knows. . . . Oh yes, anyone would know as to her friend.
She's—"
"I see." Father Ryan plunged a thumb into his pipe
and gave me a keen look from under those shaggy brows.
" It is for us to wonder how her theories would stand up.
They might stand or be shaken. It might be a whole-
some ordeal for them. She might have better theories
thereafter. But if you are thinking about herself — this
strong one ..."
"I'm thinking very much about herself."
"I can see that, too. Well, theories are poor things,
Maxton. Hearts were made first. I don't think we need
consider the theories at all. They might make her wish
to behave in a certain way. But if she knew about the
sin of the other one ..."
"That is the point of fear for the one with the sin."
"The one with the theories and the one with the sin,"
muttered Father Ryan.
"Yes," I said, "one better than her theories and the
other better than her history. I remember that."
"You are a good spokesman for them," added the
priest.
"And a helpless adviser."
"We're both helpless, if you're looking for a smooth
road. The troubled one wants the impossible. She finds
the present road hard. The other road . . ."
"That might be harder."
"She'd lose something she wants to keep. It's in the
blood of them. A woman without what you call a his-
tory. . . . She would shrink. No avoiding that. The
bloom of the friendship would be lost. Her being sorry
226 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
wouldn't avoid that. Her having the compassion of a
Christ wouldn't avoid that. If the girl with the history
were big enough — "
"She's had the pluck to pull herseK out."
"In new scenes, with the inspiration of another. She
needs the other, or has needed her. That's clear. The
other's ignorance of her was a factor. That's clear, too.
How it would be — for both of them — if the other ceased
to be ignorant ..."
"We're at the end of the string," I said.
"It's like the situation of the world," said Father
Ryan. "The world has committed beastly mistakes.
It makes its private confessions and resolutions, but it
wants to slip along somehow without the open acknowl-
edgments, which is natural enough. And the girl is
entitled to hold her secret."
"But here is a girl who wants to bare her heart to the
one who represents to her the best of life, and she hesitates
mostly for thought of that other one. Her peace — such
as she may have — is derived from the other one. It was
born beside the other one. There is a selfish need. Yet
I can't get rid of the notion that she is thinking mostly
of the friend."
"If you're right in that," said the priest, "if her great
point is the peace of the friend, the answer is plain. She
shouldn't speak."
"We have," I said, "both arrived at the same con-
clusion — or the same perplexity."
He made an odd little gesture and a somber smile
worked its way into his lips. "Two old men trying to
see into the heart of youth! ..."
A little later, when his bell rang, he put away the pipe.
"I didn't plan to bring you a burden," I said, as we
parted.
COUNTER CURRENTS 227
"You brought your pipe with you," he returned,
whimsically.
This priest, I said to myself, when I was once more
under the stars, belongs among the forgotten men. All
the priests, of all the creeds, are forgotten men. The
world jabbers about every sort of economics except soul
economics. The last producers to be thought of are
those who are struggling to produce peace. . . .
Properly, I should have gone, at that hour, to some
place where there would be laughter; or I should have
gone home to some amiable book. Certainly I ought not
to have risked any high tension at Andy Crown's. But
there is a perversity in glooms. A gulp of trouble is
often like a first drink that whimpers for another. Per-
haps we look for another strong savor to take away the
taste of a trouble. The merely amiable is likely to seem
tepid. Crown would have a tang.
Actually, as it appeared, he had rheumatism. Or
maybe it was neuritis. At all events the thing was in
possession of one of his short legs. I learned of this soon
after contemplating him there in the old chair, his spec-
tacles thrust up, his eyes with a fiery glint, and his jaw
set with a wrath-of-God expression.
The matter of the leg, I was told, could have been
managed but for a supplementary and absolutely excori-
ating calamity. His men had struck — his men — after
all he had done for them. High wages and a ridiculous
bonus — he had done everything but give them the busi-
ness — and now . . .
Of course it was a union complication. Some one
else to be punished. No matter of money, as it hap-
pened. A principle. Recognition. It seemed to be
recognition.
Karlov — had I met him as I came in? He had just
been there.
"I told him to go and take gas or something!" cried
Crown, with a gesture of left-over rage.
228 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
No doubt, then, of an unpleasant session.
"I had two of them here," said Crown, "for an hour."
It would have been a picturesque hour!
" Principle ! " ejaculated Crown. " That's what Oakley
talked about. Principle! 'How about the principle
of a bargain?' I asked him. He had some fine words —
they pick these things up — about a higher principle.
The principle of the bargain with me was all right.
That was for their good and my good. But there was
a higher principle — oh, he had it all trimmed up! — the
principle of the good of all the men in the union, all of
thtem together. ' Very good, ' I said. ' All of the union.
Very well. But how about the principle that is higher
yet — the principle of all the people? The whole is
greater than any part. When I make my bargain with
the union, and add to that bargain with you as much
as I like — as much as we both like — that bargain isn't
for the good of you and me alone, or for the union alone.
It's for the good of all the people. There is work to be
done. You know those switches in Mangin's flats?
How about the broken wiring in the school? Suppose
there was a fire in the school? How would your one-
legged principle stand up then? A fire. All the little
corpses in a row, and you standing there sniveling about
your principle! God almighty!' "
Crown shook his great fist in my face.
*' Oakley got mad then. 'There are exploiters that
wouldn't care if children were laid out in a row,' he
said. 'You talk about the school. You didn't put
the wiring in. Do you know who built that school?
Mork. He did it. You know what he is. You know
how he makes men do things. If the school burned
down Mork would be your man. He would be the
murderer. An exploiter of the worst kind. A dirty
exploiter. You know that. You're all right.* *I am,
am I?' 'But the union — all the workers — has to think
about Mork and the rest. If the people want bargains
COUNTER CURRENTS 229
to be kept they must put the screws on — on Mork and
the whole damned system. You said that yourself.
I heard you say that yourself on Ninth Avenue. One
shop can't change things.'
"And there we were, you see. 'One shop can't
change things.' 'But one shop can play fair, can think,
and change things a little,' I told him. 'You can't
change everything at once.*
"Then he was out with 'maybe we can — some day,'
he said. 'All at once.'
" 'You mean, if we all struck together?' said Karlov,
in that infernally innocent way of his.
"I think Oakley thought it was better to take him-
self ofif. 'I didn't know you for a Red,' I shouted after
him.
"And there was Karlov looking at me with eyes like
two lamp sockets.
" 'Have the Reds got you all?' I asked him.
"He went on looking at me. I tried talking to him
quietly. I read him a bit of Karl Marx. ' You're a Jew,'
I said. 'You have read your holy Law, too. "Thou
shalt not oppress an hired servant." I haven't done
that, have I?' 'No,* he said. 'And you notice that
"hiring" is an accepted principle. But it must be a
fair hiring. And the service must be fair. We shall
drop that word "servant," but we can't drop service.
We all must serve. The Reds are looking for a magic
that will obliterate service.' 'Exploited service,' he
corrected me, without a wink. 'No!' — I'm afraid I
roared at him here. 'You make all hiring exploita-
tion. No. The point is fair hiring and fair service —
between free men. You shouldn't let unfair hiring
blind you to that. Your Bolshevists are finding that
there must be service, service by the bargain we call
hiring.' 'Service to the State,' he said — as if he was
quoting me."
(I could fancy the two face to face, the big shoulders
230 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
of Crown heaving in argument, and Karlov, as gentle
as poetry, and as inflexible as bronze.)
" 'The State!' I said to him then. 'Each of us is the
State. We must think like that. In every little thing
we do. It would bring us happiness quicker than any-
thing else we could do.'
"'The State is bigger than anybody,* Karlov said.
*A11 the people. One man doesn't matter.'
" '/ don't matter. I know.'
"Karlov shook his head, as if he didn't want it to
mean me.
" 'What would the Reds do with me?' I asked. This
bothered him. I could see him fumble.
" ' If they had to ... ' He got that much forward,
" *I've no doubt. If the Red business demanded it,
if it called on you, all that I have tried to do for you
wouldn't coxmt at all. I believe they have got you, body
and soul. You've lost your balance. And I thought you
could think, that violent things would never get you. I
believe now, at this minute, that you would strike me
down if your "all the people" was surging in your head.'
" 'If I knew it was for all the people,' he said with his
face twisting, 'maybe I . . . '
"'You would. 5^ You fool!' I grabbed him by the
shoulders . ' You f ool ! '
" 'But then — after,' he went on, * I would kill myself.' "
Crown sank back in his chair.
He evidently looked for no controversy with me. His
recital was more as of a bereavement.
XI
Halland left no doubt as to the spirit of his interest
in Ann. As the autumn drew into winter he increased
the activity of his campaign. ^Mien I saw them togethei'
in the lobby of a theater I thought thej' made a handsome
couple.
COUNTER CURRENTS 231
Unquestionably Ann liked certain traits in him. This
was as clear as that she did not like certain others. The
tall, vigorous look of him had, I am sure, an appeal. If
one had been casting a play Halland would have fulfilled
the pictorial requirements of Ann's "support," and no
woman can be insensible to that consideration. Once
past the drag of that first memory of their meeting,
Halland had, too, a dash, a man-of-the-world grip on
the machinery of life, that made him interesting. A
kind of cool impulsiveness gave him something that
attracted Ann. The trait was a good deal like her own,
and an echo trait has a peculiar lure.
Even the sharp contrast in Halland's natural outlook
on things must, at least at the beginning, have had an
entertainment for her, if it did not capture a phase of
interest demanded by her mental need for resistance.
He had a fighting mind. He was the product of a fight-
ing habit. This could be exhilarating. If his pugnacity
had taken the line of sheer ideas his progress with Ann
would have been surer. Unfortunately for their peaceful
relations he was inclined to follow his father's simple
lines of reasoning about the world. This made him a
good business asset. The elemental strategies of trade
opened up before him as a fixed diagram. He put all
dreams and theories over on the other side. He had
studied efficiency with indefatigable tenacity of purpose.
He had sat in classes on salesmanship. He understood
all the formulas of advertising, that "eye salesmanship"
of print. "To attract attention; to arouse interest; to
create desire; to produce action." These things were im-
mensely fascinating. He unfolded them to Ann. He
told her how the expert had said to the bunch of them,
"You must eat, drink, sleep this matter of selling." The
great thing was to cultivate, to the point of passion, the
selling instinct. Really, everything had to be sold. Sell-
ing was persuading. Quite aside from the question of
money, the poet, for instance, had to sell his ideas — that
232 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
is, convince his readers. The preacher had to sell the
gospel. He had to attract attention — with his church;
arouse interest with his ceremonials; create desire — the
tcish to live rightly — by the force of his sermon; and it
became imperative at the last that he should produce
action — the will to do something, to go out and do some-
thing, or to go down for the money to put in the plate —
just like the dotted line in the contract. It was beauti-
fully logical.
"But how about living?" asked Ann.
He thought that was living. The minister couldn't
live without the money. Nobody could live without
money. Didn't Ann find that most troubles came for
lack of money? Salesmanship was the scientific basis of
human adjustment. Each person had the fruits of his
sales.
"And those who are not good at selling . . . ?" queried
Ann.
Halland guessed that differing capacities must bring
differing rewards — that this was established by the
Creator. How otherwise could you call it reward? What
was to be the incentive that would push men upward?
Ann wanted to know if all this would apply to the
buying and selling of men and women.
It naturally would, Halland thought. Every man was
under obligation to sell himself — that is, to put his talents
into the market and get the most he could for them.
When he was very poor at selling himself, some one else
had to take him up and do the selling for him. Under
such circumstances he couldn't expect the reward that
went to those having the initiative — and the vision.
"The vision!" Ann seems to have repeated these
words in some mystification.
"Precisely!" exclaimed Halland. "One man — the
little man — says of a thing, 'I believe I could sell one of
these.' And he makes it and sells it. Another man — a
big man with a vision, a vision of the mass and of all the
COUNTER CURRENTS 233
needs and habits of the mass — says, *I believe I could
sell a million of these.' And he hires a hundred of the
little men — men without the big vision — makes a million
of the things and does sell them."
"You mean that the hundred men make the million
of the things."
"With their hands. The big man makes them with
his brain — as Napoleon made empires."
"But they fell down," said Ann. . . .
The two came, I suspect, close to some sharp wrangles
in the course of Halland's effort to reveal the wonderfully-
co-ordinated logic of business. Halland must have ac-
quired an agility in stepping around Ann's inclosed
spaces and a facility, too, in silences or evasions when it
came to her special enthusiasms. Early in their acquaint-
ance she probably threw little light on the details of her
personal work. He knew about Garvel, of course, and
was deeply stirred by that adventure. Every glimpse of
that vague and intriguing enterprise riveted his atten-
tion. He envied Ann her proximity to the enchanted
figure. The contact invested her with an additional and
quite glamorous interest, an interest that was clearly to
be seen in him whenever the merest allusion to Garvel
chanced to enter their talk.
Halland was obliged, also, to consider with nicety
Ann's reservations as to hours. She made meager
allotments to amusements, although she was never half-
hearted about any gayeties she accepted, and found
him a fertile companion. He had something of the
lieutenant way of ordering a dinner. There was, in fact,
something entirely efficient about that. But it was to
be said of him that, in general, when he was having a
good time he seemed to have no manner that she found
at all detracting. He was a healthy male animal,
capable of exuberant spirits.
It is apparent that Ann chose to admit him dis-
criminatingly to certain of her moods. He was per-
16
234 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
sistent, and when she felt frivolous — and such moods I
surmised as a sort of intermittent rebellion against her
self-imposed exactions — there may have been a strong
appeal in his dynamic enjoyment of light and action.
How much he sensed of Marshall at that time, I never
knew. They met first at IVIrs. Wallace's, where Halland
was likely to acquire a picture of Marshall as a family
figure. In fact he asked Ann, "Is he your cousin?"
This amused her hugely for some reason. The way
Marshall looked at Halland did not go unnoticed by
Ann. She may have been amused by that too. There
was something of astonishment in his attitude. Perhaps
there were signs of an outraged proprietary sentiment.
At all events Marshall was keenly curious. He made
the mistake of associating Halland directly with some
acquaintance begun in Europe. Since he had heard the
story of Vecellio's it pleased Ann to flash to him the
identification. The circumstance struck Marshall as
sensational. According to Ann you might have thought
there was something indecent about the situation. Even
the fact of Mrs. Wallace's introduction didn't seem
greatly to soften Marshall's bewilderment. He ap-
peared to go on thinking that Ann was extraordinary —
"perhaps even terrific," said Ann. And when he gave
such a sign, or one that Ann translated adversely, he was
in for a shaking up.
No doubt Ann became very difficult at such times.
No dexterity that Marshall may have developed could
avail much for his peace when she felt an encroachment.
The management of coquetry may, after all, be reduced
to an art. The traditionally feminine contradictions
can be translated. But Ann had no coquetries. Trans-
lating her was a large matter. It is doubtful whether
the length of Marshall's acquaintance proved of much
help. Strategically it may even have been a disad-
vantage. He seemed to have lost track of her by the
misadventure of the war. When she came back her
COUNTER CURRENTS 235
notes were recognizable, but the tune was different.
I'm sure that he lived in expectation that she would
subside. He had said " up in the air." It was incredible
that she should keep in flight. My notion was that at
her first landing he intended to pounce.
xn
If this was his idea he was doubtless compelled to
modify it. I have no theory that he ever believed she
had come down. He compromised, I fancy, on a
vigorous leap. This ended in a tumble. Ann got
avv'ay.
When she told me that Marshall had actually come
to the point of proposing to her I had the fully warned
sense of the inevitable, and a crestfallen feeling of
participation — that sneaking bystander annoyance, a
guilty helplessness sometimes to be felt by those who
are near enough to watch the subtle movements of the
drama that belongs to mating.
"Rightly," I said, "there is, probably, something
shameless about your telling me of this."
"I am telling my adopted father," said Ann.
"Your adopted father is humiliated," I said. "Es-
pecially in view of your avowed ethics as to controlling
such matters."
"You don't understand — " she began.
"I'm sure I don't."
"There are limits to control," she expostulated in a
warm tone.
"Very likely Marshall thinks so."
"You shouldn't blame me for his thinking."
"Perhaps I should. I have no doubt you gave him a
mortgage with no foreclosure provision. That happens."
"But I didn't give him a mortgage. That's just it.
I don't like his thinking I have. I don't like your
thinking I have."
236 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Poor Marshall!" I said.
She gave me a look I had not the imagination to
interpret.
"Can't you see," she went on, "that a woman has to
consider her whole life — her life ? "
"Somebody," I said, "has called this the City of the
Successfully Single. It was a mocking designation. But
perhaps it fits. Perhaps — "
"I should hate you if you became mocking," said Ann.
" That doesn't fit."
"My dear," I protested, "I'm only wondering — "
"That's what Vm doing. Wondering. It's silly, too
— wondering! Sounds so empty — no grip in it. We
can't wonder things through, can we? I see people
wondering — wondering what wretched thing is going to
happen to them next. ..." She turned to me with the
suspended look in her dauntless eyes, and the faint
crimson tinge high in her cheeks. "Spot wanted to
know . . . yes, if it was Wayne Halland. Of course I
couldn't make him believe it wasn't anyone at all.
That it was just me. He was pretty rough, and I guess
I said some rather mean things, when I had to."
I was sorry for the look of her. Whatever may have
happened she had not enjoyed it. Her brilliant as-
surance was not abated, but it was shot through with a
strange slant of color — like that amazing iris paradox
one saw between her lashes.
"I'm sorry it had to be done that way," I said.
"Are you scolding me?" There was a tingle of real
indignation in this.
"No," I said. "I meant just that. I'm sorry that
you both made a mess of it. There might have been
no way of taking the pain out of it for Spot. But such
an incident needn't be ugly. I have an old-fashioned
notion — "
Ann still flared. "I hope you don't think I simply
chucked him, flippantly."
COUNTER CURRENTS 237
"I know better. The two of you — "
"That's just it. The two of us. It's a two-of-us
.matter, unfortunately." Since this sounded rather
acrid, Ann hurried to add: "Don't you see that it is
the two of us? He makes me say things. And I
suppose I make him say things. When the things are
said ..."
"I wish you hadn't told me," I muttered In dejection.
"Cheer up!" cried Ann with a flinging-it-off gesture.
But the look I regretted was still there. I am quite
sure that she had not been flippant. Perhaps there is a
philosophy to explain these things. Perhaps Ann her-
self hit upon it in the "two-of-us matter," without seeing
far into the entanglements of that profound suggestion.
No man ever could hope to know the real meaning be-
hind a woman's "yes" or "no," especially since no
woman ever has issued a decipherable diagram. The
infinitely venerable platitude came to me with the
freshness of a revelation. The supreme platitude of
love itself has always the impenetrable mystery of a
new star. It belongs to the ages, yet can dazzle like a
sudden prodigy of enchantment. That tenuous flicker
of will by which "Yes" or "No" is determined fixes
the fate of the world. History rises in an inverted
pyramid on the exquisite point. . . . The trouble
is that women seize this very notion in watching for
Love.
As I peered at Ann I asked myself whether she was
of the sort that looks for the ineffable image which they
may challenge like a cross-examiner. "Are you it?"
they whisper. The image must be resplendent and the
voice strong and unmistakable. I don't know what
form the sublime specter is supposed to take. Girls
grow up, I fancy, with a notion that they will recognize
the real thing by a peculiar and wholly unquestionable
thrill. When the thrill waits they become acutely
interrogatory. There must be some evidence of a
238 THE SE\nENTH ANGEL
profound magic if the visitant is genuine. That magic
should suffuse the heavens, transfigure the lineaments
of life, touch every detail of human environment with
an ultimate glory. And a plain man, perhaps in a
sack suit, or it might be even in a blazer, is called upon
to evoke this apotheosis. In view of the colossal dis-
parity between the thing to be evoked and the average
agent of evocation the real miracle might seem to be the
large proportion of "Yes" answers. Only a prophetic
quality in feminine intuition or an obstinate optimism
in all nature can begin to explain the recurring
adventure. . . .
As usual, it was quite impossible to fit any of my
theories to Ann. I suppose it would have been the same
with any concrete case, though at the moment I thought
the difficulty was with her. In all probability Marshall
was of the same mind. The man looks for the Girl.
The girl looks for the great right Love. To him she is a
reality. To her he is a syllogism. . . .
"Whatever you are thinking," said Ann, "I'm sure is
wrong."
"If I wanted to be snappy," I retorted, "I should
mention the pleasure of seeing you sure about
something."
We both felt the safeguard of being caustic.
XIII
The next time I saw Marshall he figured in an odd
group, and played a part in an incident that dimmed
for the time any associations of romance.
"Life," Joe Payn had said to me, "is just one damned
restaurant after another."
This was because, after eating dinner at one restaurant
we were presently to go to another, where we might
not wish to eat, but where certain human circumstances
were to be considered.
COUNTER CURRENTS 239
"Is there any home-eating any more?" asked Payn.
"Everybody seems to spUJ out to the restaurants when
feed time comes. My wife likes the idea. She says she's
tired of housekeeping. Is it really all a matter of serv-
ants, do you suppose? It's awful, anyway. No domes-
tic board with papa carving, and swearing softly at the
joints in the meat that are never twice in the same place.
You can't get the things you once liked. My mother
used to make a coffee cake that was a wonder. I could
eat a whole one, and they were nine inches across.
Imagine looking for anything like that! And try to get
a lamb pie! Just try. You find restaurants marked up
for all the nationalities in the list and all the states in
the Union. But after putting up a bluff on some 'char-
acteristic' dish they slide off into stuff just like every-
body else's. The Southern waffles aren't Southern. W hy,
even the chow mein tastes like Connecticut. No. The
old system's fading out. Family is gone, except as a
breeding unit. Well, maybe that means that Socialism's
really coming. Meanwhile, the restaurant table is the
capitol of human intercourse. You see men signing con-
tracts between the cups. They seal the covenant with
gravy. I know a man who has been engaged to a girl
for four years. Except for the sidewalks, he has to take
out his love-making at a restaurant table. There used to
be a parlor in her rooming house, but that is rented now
to a beauty specialist. I suppose we'll all get to have
the restaurant look after a while, with faces like bills of
fare. It can't help happening. What do they call it —
evolution?"
("The Forgotten Family!" was what I said to myself.
A "breeding unit" jest gives it a place with the belittled
— as when the summer society reporter says nobody is
in town. Yet the home circle, reiterated in twenty
straight miles of city, is by sheer dimension the dominant
fact. It is least "news" when it is most successful. Its
harbor light cannot compete with the screaming pyro-
240 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
technics of White Ways, yet it manages somehow to go
on being an anchorage, to stabiUze the wabbUng con-
science of mankind.)
Payn, who has kinky black hair, and an absurd short-
cropped mustache, invented a buckle that earns him
ten thousand a year. He has never seemed to cease
being amiably astonished by this result of his shrewd-
ness. "It's all a lottery," he said to me. "And I've
drawn a good many blanks since."
Three of his enthusiasms are particularly noticeable —
his mineral-water business (he discovered the Vedic
spring somewhere in Ohio), golf (he patented a putter),
and Social Reform. He has given an extraordinary
amount of time and money to movements with a social-
istic trend, if not with the socialistic label, and his wife
has been quite as persistent as he in parallel enthusiasms.
During the war period he appeared benumbed by the
upheavals of opinion. When he awoke to the crisis of
the new era it was with a fresh ardor of faith and a
curiously circumstantial expectation. Knowing my habit
of prowling he asked me to see with him an odd caf6
near Rutger's Square, where an old Socialist he knew
always spent his evenings. It had, he believed, a Czecho-
slovak cast, although he had understood that the actual
owner was a Swiss.
At dinner time Stanik's is altogether a restaurant.
At the hour when we came it had begun to be a kind of
club, and acquired more of the character as the evening
advanced. In this transition period of legal pressure it
wore an anomalous air. It was not yet a coffee house,
and beer stains seemed hardly to have disappeared. In
the old days beer was the evening staple, and neither talk
nor meditation appeared as yet to have been fully ad-
justed to the new conditions.
A group of card players occupied a far-corner table.
Two old men played checkers, the board wrinkling a
soiled cloth. There were many distinctive individual
COUNTER CURRENTS 241
figures, as, for example, a gray man, with an empty-
coffee cup beside him, sitting absolutely silent and mo-
tionless save for the methodical movement of the hand
that held a clay pipe. Two men, one with an intensely
black beard, sat together without speaking. One of these
seemed occupied with the ceiling. The other gave a
vague, wide-eyed attention to every little happening, as
when anyone laughed, or the swarthy waiter (with a
damaged eye) dropped a fork. At a wall table, opposite
a ruddy, out-of-door sort of person, in a bro\sTi suit, sat
a young man whose face was not to be escaped. He had
an invalid whiteness, and wore a muffler, though the
place was very warm. The vociferous talkers were con-
centrated, at the moment, about a round table near the
recently denatured bar with its food crocks and cash
desk. A woman, florid and enormous, appeared now and
then in the kitchen doorway. She seemed wholly to fill
the aperture on each occasion, producing a total eclipse
of the region beyond.
But for me the outstanding human elements were Spot
Marshall and a young hunchback who sat with him.
When Marshall swung about to address a remark to the
young man with the muffler, I caught his eye. We waved
a salute.
The gesture induced Payn to ask me who Marshall
was. He had seen him somewhere. I remarked in turn
that Marshall's companion, the hunchback, had an in-
teresting face.
"Anson Grayl," said Payn. "He's the secretary of
one of the Forums. Has a beautiful wife; maybe you've
heard her speak. She gets 'em."
Payn's Socialist friend was late in coming in. TNTien
he did appear — a lanky man of thirty -five or thereabouts,
with reddish hair — it was with unmistakable signs of ex-
citement.
"They've pitched the Socialists out of the Assembly!"
He spoke to Payn, but his voice carried, and every
242 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
head in tlie place came up. Even the statuesque gray
man with the clay pipe was guilty of a start.
"God!" The exclamation cut into the startled pause,
and the black-bearded man brought down his fist with
a clattering effect.
Then came the torrent of strident talk, out of which
emerged a raucous voice, shouting: "This gives notice
to the whole country that the ballot won't do. It
says, 'If you people want a change, violence is the
way!'"
Payn looked at me with an incredulous stupefaction.
The historic blunder became at once the topic of emo-
tional debate.
XIV
Close upon an hour later, while the talk still held to
the same theme, though the card players made efforts
to concentrate upon their game, and the two old men
with the checkerboard had the appearance of having
again withdrawn from the world, four young men came
bustling into the restaurant.
They found a table, and ordered coffee and cakes.
From something in their manner my impression was
that they had either misjudged the character of the place
or had knowingly chosen to gather its effect. They were
out of key with these surroundings. One of the quartet
was exuberant, loud in his speech, and appeared un-
pleasantly conscious that he was being heard. A com-
panion addressed him as Ryerton, in whispering, quite
clearly, the name "Bolshevik!"
Perhaps Ryerton had been drinking a little. He had
a package with him, which he soon began to open.
"Might as well show you what it is," he said to the
others. "Guess I had you going, all right."
There was some difficulty with the string.
At last Ryerton held aloft the object of his remarks —
a German helmet, to which had been fastened support-
COUNTER CURRENTS 243
ing prongs in furtherance of an intention to make it
stand as a receptacle. He flung it to the floor with a
flourish.
"They killed my buddy — damn their souls! . . . Now
when I kick it out of my way I'll think of this Hun. And
how he looked when I got him. Nice little companion
for smoke time."
Ryerton's youngest companion emitted a disagreeable
laugh.
As Ryerton spat into the helmet the gray man with
the clay pipe quivered and stared.
I was turning away when I noticed the sickly face of
the boy with the muffler. He was eying the thing on
the floor, but not as if he were seeing. A faint color
came into his impoverished skin, and his lower lip
twitched as by the signal of a hurt.
The flinging of the insulted helmet had carried it
rather near to where Marshall sat. Both he and Grayl
drew back their chairs.
For some reason it was Marshall whose look Ryerton
caught.
"You don't like my little idea," he said, lighting a
cigarette and defiantly measuring the range in dropping
the match.
"No," said Marshall.
"Why not?"
"It doesn't happen to amuse me," returned Marshall.
"What's the point?" insisted Ryerton, with a swag-
ger. "Do you think I should have kissed him?"
"It was your job to kill him," answered Marshall.
"I'm not considering that."
"I see. Spittoons are vulgar."
It was evident enough that ISIarshall did not regard
the fool Ryerton as worth an effort. The truth turned
out to be that he took account of two of the young men
who were with Ryerton. They had managed to impress
him; and something in the collective effect of that group
244 THE SEVENTH AI>[GEL
of ex-service men supplied an incentive. He may have
had recent happenings in mind.
"I wasn't even considering your invention," Marshall
went on. " I was imagining the lad who wore that hat —
thinking that maybe he was a decent fellow."
The room grew silent. I could see the card players
standing. The two old checker players were twisted
about to stare and listen.
"I can tell you — " began Ryerton.
"I suppose you could — what he looked like. But
you know," and Marshall gathered himself from the
casual position he had occupied in the chair, "I was
thinking that he might not have wanted to wear
that helmet. He may have had a deep disgust for
the horror his gang had forced upon him. Ask any
of our men who took common prisoners not only what
prisoners said, but what our people came to believe
after talking with them. That's what I was thinking
just now."
"Hell ! " grunted Ryerton. " I know how they whined.
But this devil knew what he was doing!"
"Yes, both of you knew what you were doing. And
yet this man may have hated to do it. When they
hated to do it enough to refuse, you know what hap-
pened to them. He may have hated even to wear this
mark. He may have said so. He may have tried
scorning to wear war clothes. He may have staked
everything in flatly refusing to put his head into this
contrivance."
The young man with the muffler made a faint motion
with his hand as if in automatic protest.
"If you are skeptical as to what may have happened
to a German boy who tried doing that," Marshall
continued, with a gesture commanding silence, "just
let me tell you about one American boy who tried the
same thing here — who refused to put on our hat."
There was a moment in which I think Marshall med-
COUNTER CURRENTS 245
itated turning to the white face near him, but he went
on without a sign.
"I can produce my witness. But perhaps you will
believe what I tell you without that — without seeing
the results — the outside results. This boy was foolish
enough to believe that war was wrong. He was even
foolish enough to believe that war clothes were wrong.
We won't go into that. I wore them myself. We'll
begin at the point where he found out that he believed
this. He must have believed it pretty hard to make a
stand. You know how much was against him. He got
a glimmer from his neighbors and friends. He got a
further glimmer at the very start from the way he was
handled when his arrest came. Oh yes! He had one
eye-opener after another. If he had killed a woman
other women would have carried flowers to his cell.
But you don't carry flowers to the cell of a man who
thinks war clothes are wTong, and thereby offends the
United States of America. It would be very dangerous.
It is more troublesome to offend the United States of
America than to offend Almighty God. It may be quite
reasonable that this should be so. Almighty God is
perhaps supposed to be capable of looking out for him-
self, whereas the United States of America is a structure
that can be shaken. The mass is of more concern than
the individual. And so on. We all understand that.
The point is the treatment of this offender — in our
name.
"Of course we could kill him and be done with it.
The principle is recognized. We are very sensitive
about how we kill offenders. What puzzles me is that
we don't seem to be correspondingly sensitive about how
we keep offenders alive. An executioner who was
habitually brutal would have the whole country on its
hind legs. We can have ten thousand brutal jailers
without raising a ripple of interest.
"Well, they didn't sentence this boy to die. They
246 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
sentenced him to tortufe. They didn't call it that, and
I don't think I had better go into those things that do
not strictly express the authority of the United States
of America. We are responsible for all that our agents
do, but some of these agents were very young and very
hysterical. The youth and hysteria of these agents
could produce misery, and a victim couldn't always
separate his official and unofficial miseries. Perhaps we
ought to pass over the tortures that were simply in-
dividual inspirations — "
"No— by God, no!— tell it all!"
This was shouted by the gray man, whose sudden
audibility was to me the most astounding effect in the
whole incident.
"It's true," continued Marshall, "as I have hinted,
that some of these were nasty enough. I mean things
like a stream from a fire hose, or certain little tricks with
bayonets. A man naked in the winter air of a yard with
the alternative of war clothes — that was a prank, of
course. Yet these things, kept going long enough,
pulled a man down. They unsteadied him for snappy
action in a lock step. They rather bruised the technic
of his deportment, and when that wavered, the fact
that he was a Conscientious Objector was all against
him. It was then that the United States of America
got busy.
"I don't know whether you know what happens to a
man when the usual props of his manhood are taken
away, what it feels like to live under a certain kind of
contemptuous pressure. You just spat into that dead
man's helmet. I wonder if you can guess what happens
when the appointed representatives of the United States
spit into a living man's heart.
"The man I'm talking about was not very strong to
begin with. He knew that, and he prayed to escape
the wrecking places. All pride or spirit was broken at
last. He felt horribly sick, hour after hour. It was
COUNTER CURRENTS 247
easy to stumble or to make a clumsy answer. Being a
C. O. — not a man who had done anything, but a man
who had refused to do something — he was marked as
'unruly.' Then he went to the rock pile. Breaking
stone didn't quite break him. But he blazed up for an
instant. When he said he couldn't break any more
stone he said it the wrong way. This carried him to
solitary."
Afterward I was annoyed not to have studied the
faces in that strange audience. But I was doing what
everyone else was doing — ^watching Marshall.
"The United States of America still sanctions the
dark one-man cell with bread and water. It makes a
magnanimous concession. This may happen only for
fourteen days. It cannot happen again until fourteen
days have intervened. But by an oversight, possibly,
the law is not precise. Ingenuity has discovered that
the letter of the law may be kept by feeding the man
regular fare in solitary during the second fourteen days,
and then imposing another 'solitary and bread and
water' for the third fourteen-day period. Beautifully
clever, you'll admit. This keeps a man in solitary^
when it is thought to be beneficial, for an indefinite
period. But I'm thinking now of forty-two con-
secutive days, and twenty-eight of these days meant
bread and water."
Perhaps because I watched Marshall so intently, and
the image of his earnestness became so vivid, I missed
some of the story. It is true that quite in the midst of
it I thought of Ann, and that this same young pleader
had urged her. . . . There was, I believe, a picture of a
dark cell, the physical fact of it, and what it could mean
as days dragged; the things a man was likely to feel —
a man who heard no voice; who could write no letter
and to whom no letter could come; who was quaky
with body torments, and whose mind had nothing to
go on; who was left to feel that the country he was born
248 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
in had thrown its whole crushing strength on top of
him. Perhaps he remembered that phrase " two against
one's not a fair fight!" Boys said things Hke that and
beheved them. Yet here was a whole country, millions
of men and women, tearing at his single soul. And his
soul was in the dark. With the rats.
"You used to read about things like that," I heard
Marshall saying, "in mediseval history, and always in
the records of unenlightened countries. It might be
all right now if only prisoners had improved. But in a
dark cell, alone, they still get queer. No improvement
at all. And our friend had hard luck. He should have
been kind to the 'screw' who supervised his bread and
water. I think he tried to be. Unfortunately the
screw had taken a notion not to like him, and when the
shadow of him came out into the light he did something
wrong again. I don't think he knows what it was.
Anyway he was reported, condemned, put back into the
hole and handcuffed to the cell door for nine hours.
" Even then he might have thought that he could keep
alive — that against all reason he could somehow not
die — if he hadn't been told that down the corridor was
an I. W. W. man who had been manacled to his cell
door daily for Jive months! "
"Christ!"
Some one uttered this in a kind of screamed whisper
as the young man with the muffler slid into a heap on
the floor. . . .
That was a strange picture. The hunchback, Gray],
on his knees lifting the head of the prostrate one and
lowering it again at the command of that hulking, black-
bearded man who dabbled at the face with a dripping
paper napkin. The gray man with the clay pipe rigid,
the veins in his neck standing out, his eyes bulging.
Marshall with the sorriest look I ever saw on a human
countenance. Ryerton, his mouth open in a stiff
astonishment.
COUNTER CURRENTS 249
"I'm as bad as the rest," came Marshall's shaking
voice, "I didn't think what it would do to himl"
Marshall and Grayl helped the bewildered C. O. into
a chair as soon as his eyes began to blink.
Old Stanik came lumbering out.
"Drink this!" he ordered, thrusting forward a httle
glass containing a reddish liquid. I suspect that it was
something illegal.
The C. O. blinked again and coughed over the drink.
"I suppose" — Ryerton began, and his tallest com-
panion, a bronzed blue-eyed youngster with shoulders,
slapped a hand over his mouth, and with a prod of an
elbow indicated that there was no question as to re-
treating. It was this tall one who lingered for a final
moment and glanced at Marshall as if about to speak.
Whatever he thought to say did not come. He followed
the others to the street.
Old Stanik picked up the helmet and carried it away,
right side up.
I heard his deep voice in the region of the back room.
"Mother, tell Emil he should get these things off."
17
PART FIVE
Mirage
WALKED a little way with Anson Grayl, Payn
following after with Marshall.
" You know,"said Grayl, " I was pretty savage with
conscientious objectors. I got hold of the logic of the
situation, and there was plenty of logic for what we did
in handling them. Some of them were rather aggra-
vating. Of course, when one wouldn't even stand up
when the national air sounded it was hard to follow his
processes. We were, most of us, war-minded then — a
good many of us who have since forgotten about it.
When we knew that things were to be rather awkward
for those who refused to help, it was easy to turn away
without noticing closely what it was that happened.
The fact that enforced participation had the outward
appearance in so many cases of having benefited the
victims of force, and the other fact that so many objec-
tors were plain enemies of the group whose privileges and
protection they were accepting, helped to blind our war-
minded zeal. A good many fine young fellows were lost
in the shuflfle. Anything the Department of Justice says
is likely to receive close attention. What the Depart-
ment of Justice does is less under observation than any
other national function. Of course this shouldn't be so.
Once all correction was public."
Hardly all of it, I suggested. Third degrees always
had a way of being private.
MIRAGE 251
"Ah, yes ! " said Grayl. " The third degree ! Some one
should write a book about the third degree. Maybe some
one has."
"It had some droll names in history," I said.
"The depressing thing," Grayl continued, "is that if
we said that a civilization is to be known by its third
degrees we'd not find much to feed our optimism. Third
degrees seem to be j ust about what they have always been. ' '
It seemed to me that this was true chiefly in the
tendency of "justice" to hate a noise. The awkwardness
in the instance of the young man we had just seen was
said to have been that his case had made a noise. Sym-
pathizers insisted that word had been passed to find him
"troublesome." The fact that real troublesomeness was
a conspicuous embarrassment of any corrective system
naturally confused so obscure a situation.
"We have no reason to apologize," Grayl maintained,
" for challenging the system to explain. As Marshall said,
these things are done in our name. After all, a man's
offense is his affair. Our punishment of him is our affair."
"Challenging the system to explain," I said, "is the
most expensive and the most futile thing we do."
"What's wrong, then?" asked Grayl, in his quick,
vehement way. "How are we going to mend the sys-
tem? Of course there will always be a system, always be
social machinery."
"I can see nothing better than a larger participation,"
I said, "so that our noises will be more intelligent, more
persistent, more partner-noises, and less of the outsider
sort."
"I wish I knew how that could be made to happen,"
mused Grayl, earnestly.
"In my opinion it never will happen while we con-
tinue to let our complaining or challenging keep the out-
sider effect."
"But how are we to give it any other character?"
"Perhaps only by having a system that will have no
252 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
outsiders. We can't all be on the committee called the
government. But if we all were participating members
we should not only have a different sort of committee,
but the committee we did choose would have a livelier
sense of the common sentiment as well as the common
need. In other words, as everybody knows, we shall
always have politics, but — to be trite again — we shall
never have a right politics until all of us are politicians.
That sort of a system is far off. It represents too much
hard work. Most people want something out of a bottle."
Grayl looked up at me without speaking, then seemed
to be meditating a rejoinder.
"You point out a hard road," he said at last.
"And hard roads are unpopular. They don't appeal
to the emotions like a catchword signpost. The world
is tired of roads."
"Tired of trying." Grayl seemed depressed. The
scene at Stanik's was lingering with both of us. Pres-
ently he added, " I don't suppose it would get so tired if
its tools weren't so bad."
I was in no mood for sureness. "And the materials
are men. This is what hampers building."
"Systems are implements," Grayl said, thinking aloud.
"Dream implements, mostly. Even when they are
real their work is limited to the material."
"Well," said Grayl, with a flash of prophetic confi-
dence that I admired, "there's a lot of splendid oak and
hickory that the present system isn't using at all. In my
opinion what we need now above everything are dreams
and implements. We've been trying to build with a
jackknife. . . . By the way," and he turned to me again,
"what is your dream? What is your great desire?"
"You are kind not to ask what tvas my great desire.
When a man reaches my years his desires have been a bit
bruised. He is likely to hug closest the desire for peace."
"A poet once said to me that 'peace is the proof of
beauty.'"
MIRAGE 253
"You are being kind again. The young shouldn't be
looking for peace. Desire itself is not a peace. It doesn't
ask for peace. Energy asks for expression. Desire is a
producer. Sometimes I think that peace might be pro-
duced. It is then that I know I am getting old. And
yet . . ."
"Finish that!" urged Grayl, eagerly.
"And yet, I suppose the very top of power is tran-
quillity. The lion doesn't fidget. One can imagine a
god angry, but not one liying in a state of exasperation.
Nature expresses conflict, yet it expresses serenity also.
Fight is the means. The end is peace."
"The end," repeated Grayl, shrewdly.
" I see your point," I said. " If we could have peace as
an end before the end. ..."
"You may tell me I'm wrong," said Grayl, "but I'm
afraid I think that peace is an illusion, a struggler's
mirage. If there is a reality for every mirage isn't it
possible that we shouldn't hurry too desperately toward
the reality of peace?"
"We shouldn't let the word fool us. I have permitted
myself to do it. I don't mean the peace that is sleep, not
the end that is finis. I'm thinking of a living peace, a
peace with feet and hands, a conflict without cruelty, a
fellowship without killing, a magnificent give and take
without exasperation. You see, my dream has no horizon
at all!"
"I'm glad of it!" cried Grayl with a gestiu'e.
We had come to the parting place. Marshall and Payn
joined us at the corner before we had begun, like the
traveling matrices in a typesetting machine, to drop into
our respective pockets.
u
The foggy breath of the night blew stingingly cold,
though I was not pierced by the fact until I was alone.
Sauntering in talk had left me chilled, despite that kin-
254 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
dling Interchange with Grayl. I seemed to be accom-
panied by a group of faces that had an unaccountable
and tenacious clearness, and something in the feel of the
ghostly street gave them a bleakness that was haunting.
... In the foreground the young man with the muffler.
Spot Marshall his passionate earnestness, and his cha-
grin. The tall youngster, of the Legion, who wanted to
speak before going out. The cripple with the noticeable
head and the searching eyes, who had asked me about
my great desire. . . . And that enormous woman. Why
should her bulk intrude?
Yet she did not obscure Ann. Nor Irma Kane. Both
of these were with me, floating forward with a disquiet-
ing vividness. There is a fantastic concatenation in such
thoughts, in an unfoldment, without summons, leaping,
clamorous and absurd. One gets the color, the very odor
of actuality, until his mind is overwhelmed, as in an
appalling crowd. ... I saw Andy Crown as distinctly
as if that mighty fist really knotted before me. And
Karlov . . . asking about the Red Angel. I saw Rankin,
looking like Dumas. To reduce the process to absurdity,
Mrs. Breckles was displaced by Mrs. Breckles's Otto, of
the raucous hair, peering patiently with his bead eyes —
Otto, a stuffed thing, hanging there in the vapor of the
surly street, and expanding to a monstrous size until his
green jacket blotted out the vista. . . .
Who shall explain the phantasmagoria of uneasy
thought, the images, crazy and incredible, that pattern
the backgrounds of solitude?
In such a crisis I look to my bed light and a book to
erase the obsession.
In order to succeed in this I should ignore any letters
McAndrews, the house man, may have placed on my
table. Yet I look at the addresses and separate the
obvious from the debatable. I identify the emphatic
script of my nephew in Arizona, and the copy-desk
lubricity of good old Bud Jennings, in Chicago. I know
MIRAGE 255
the Washington letter of Shannon by the "Esqr.,** and
the youth-time friendship of Harkness, in Waco, by the
"S. L." instead of the full surname and the dropped
initial. I know the half-printed effect of Pinney, the
designer, the defiant, unladylike roughness of my cousin
Clara, and see sober Professor Raines shining through
the drunkenest scrawl that ever happened. If I choose
I can turn the key against them all; tell these late-in-the-
day callers to go away and come to breakfast.
On this night I was intrigued by an envelope with the
New York postmark, which managed to have an unac-
countably personal emanation. It was from Irma Kane.
"I have tried to tell Ann," she said, and I found
myself muttering aloud, "the blunderer I"
The latter went on:
You were so kind that I felt I must never bother you again.
You understand — you thought I shouldn't have spoken, but
you listened and made me feel — oh, I can't tell you how it
helped to be able to tell some one who would understand ! This
seemed like all I had a right to ask, and I did promise myself I
wouldn't carry any burden to you again. Afterward — not
right away, but in a httle while — I saw that I had done some-
thing that must have seemed dreadful — telling you such a thing,
and yet when I felt better I knew I must be right. It was
right for me. It might not have been right for anyone else.
Perhaps I am different. Some things Ann has said have helped
make me different. Something that Ann is has had a lot to
do with it.
You see, at first I thought of writing, not to bother you
again, not to ask you anything, but just to be able to say
sometliing that is in my heart — something you ought to know
— I mean something that belongs to your knowing. But I
want to do more than that. I tried to tell Ann, and she stopped
me. Perhaps you will know how she can stop a thing. I had
thought it out that if I ever told her I should watch her; so that
no matter what she said I should know how it would be. Then
when I began, somehow I couldn't watch her. I couldn't see.
And she stopped me. She said: "Irma, you've been a pretty
256 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
good sport. Don't spoil it by dragging in anything that doesn't
belong. The war's over." "Af?/ war isn't over," I said. She
held up her hand. It made me think of Brockway, and Wayne
Halland. "I won't listen," she said. "I won't hear another
word. I don't know what it is, and I don't care what it is. I
wouldn't let anybody hold me to account for the pitiful fritter-
ing thing 7 was before the war, and I won't let you do anything
but forget it. There's too much ahead." Somehow, the way
she looked when I could see her, made me afraid to go on. I
wonder if I'm really a coward, I don't feel like a coward. My
heart was thumping when I had her there in her room, and
began. But I didn't feel like a coward. I thought I was going
to be able to stand up, right in front of her, at last. Even if
no one else in the world would have thought I ought to do that,
I wanted to do it. You didn't quite say I shouldn't. Maybe
it wouldn't have mattered. And now I think I've made every-
thing worse. Don't you see that? I should have gone through
with it somehow. I'm sure it would have been better. She
hasn't any idea what I was going to tell her. She has no sus-
picion that I had to desert her on the street that night.
Perhaps you will think that if I had any pluck or intelligence
or any real stuff in me, I could have finished what I began. I
can imagine your saying, "This simpleton can't either say it
or keep quiet." That isn't true. I have proved that I could
keep quiet. And I could say it — all of it — next time. I know
that. But I'm going to ask you the most I ever asked of any-
one. I'm going to ask you to tell Ann — the whole story of me
— the whole of it. This way came to me last night. If you
will do that, something that is very hard will be brushed away
— for me. I'll promise you to go on being "the Irma Kane
that i»." I'm asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to
believe me — not that I'm right in having Ann know — you may
not believe that — and you may go on thinking that I'm morbid
or something of that sort — but I'm asking you to believe when
I say that for me there must be a clean slate with Ann. Even
if I lose her —
Even if she lost her! And she had started out with
the proposition that she must not lose her. I threw down
the letter, and picked it up again. There was a last
line or so of gratefulness.
MIRAGE 257
Yes, the war was over and humanity was still face
to face with itself.
I followed the ritual that called it a day. When the
moment came for the obliterating book I interrogated
Strindberg. I swung to Henry Adams. For an instant,
I had accepted the compromise of Mary, Mary. Then
I turned off the light. The obstinate plunge into
darkness seemed imperative. I wanted oblivion and
plenty of it.
in
Meanwhile Jimmy Ingle had been instrumental in
the summoning of his personal friends to a motion-
picture party.
The invitations had an air of elegance. They were
vague as to special character of the incident. There
was no promise of a "first showing." The big, spec-
tacularly ramified production studios were, it appeared,
to be the scene of a celebration marking an anniversary
or departure in the great picture-play corporation upon
which Jimmj'^ lavished his devoted service. I was in-
formed by Jimmy himself (over the telephone) that
Gladys Glade would be there "in person." Also Marty
Hammond, and John Z. Kensington — in fact "the whole
push" now in the East. By just a week they were
going to miss having Pearl Parker. Hard luck, eh?
I think my most vivid pictorial impression of that
incident was of Rankin sprawling in a rustic chair
within a vine-grown cottage "set," while Doris Archer,
a mite of a creature, flickering in a blue satin slip, sought
to tease him with her feather-tipped fan. There was
something so violently disproportionate in the two
figures, the sentimental background so emphasized the
lumbering silhouette of Rankin, that I was riveted.
"Symbolism," grunted Rankin without stirring. "Ir-
reverent Youth frolics at the shrine."
" I was thinking — " I said.
258 IHE SEVENTH ANGEL
*' Of something much worse, I've no doubt. My dear,"
he added to Doris Archer, "go and frivol "with this old
gentleman."
"But I don't know him," said Doris.
"It doesn't matter," Rankin assured her. "It will
be much more amusing. Knowing anybody is very
complicating."
Doris turned to me with her fan in abeyance.
"Is it so, what he says?" she asked, with a quaint
movie smile. "He says he has 'untold millions,' and
that he is building a gondola to sail from here to Italy
with a special company to picturize some novel called
Stones of Venice."
"What a delightful idea!" I said.
"On second thought," growled Rankin, "I wish you
wouldn't go away. I see that Mrs, Willow. I'm afraid
she wants to sit around here. She will be ' charmed ' with
something. She's always charmed. Leads a charmed
life. I don't happen to feel equal to her just now."
"She's an old cat!" exclaimed Doris.
"Living her ninth," added Rankin. "Don't go away."
Nevertheless, Doris was presently whisked off, and I
sat beside Rankin in the midst of the grotesque scene,
singling out familiar screen faces, and less familiar
figures in a heterogeneous company that scattered itself
throughout the theatrically cavernous place to the
limits of the vast largest hall, in one corner of which
was an orchestra. The screen faces were the most
provocative. The ruthless, unlimited detail of the
"close up" had made these faces instantly recognizable.
One did not hesitate as in appraising faces from the less
literal speaking stage. Take the case of Marty Ham-
mond. His grim mouth was a fact as clear and un-
mistakable as the portal of St. Patrick's.
"It's the lips that make or break you in the movies,"
Abe Meinzer had told me.
Rankin might have found a caustic parallel to that.
MIRAGE 259
As for the lips, I remarked to Meinzer that cannine,
seen at first hand, was whimsical enough to be tolerable,
often perhaps fascinating, but that the black lips of the
screen sometimes gave me a nausea.
The best directors, according to Meinzer, tried to
reduce the make-up for close work. But there was the
job of managing the girls. It was the very devil. Some
of the girls were careful — real artists. Thought about
the screen a little. Like Gladys Glade. I never saw
her lips overloaded, did I?
I wasn't sure about Gladys.
This young person was always the center of a group
of admiring eyes that had two orbits — a near circle
belonging to those who felt the privilege of speaking, and
a remoter circle that ventured only to stare. Gladys
was very gauzy. Her costume had the hue of a faint
blush, from her satin slippers and net stockings to the
fillet in her dark hair. Her head exhibited the con-
trolled turns of the screen artist. When I heard her
laugh it occurred to me as fortunate that cinema in-
ventiveness still stopped short of audibility.
Jimmy Ingle insisted upon presenting Rankin and me
to Miss Glade. The star twinkled archly.
"I've often tried to catch your eye," said Rankin.
"I almost did once. Something interfered. I think it
was a woman behind me reading the titles to her deaf
husband."
It was here that I became acquainted with Miss
Glade's laugh.
"There was another time wnen I wanted to tip you
off that the ruffian was coming up through the floor —
in 'Secret Sins.' I couldn't understand why you didn't
hear him. Everybody else did, including somebody
right behind me — probably the same woman."
"I'll never forget that day," said Gladys, humanly.
"It was awfully hot. And the director — he was a
bigger man than you — yelling to me where to look."
260 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"I'm glad he isn't here," said Rankin, ponderously.
Archibald Chester, the vice president of the cor-
poration, came up with a grizzled banker, and the
youngest of New York's aldermen, one clutched with
each hand, and at the same moment, from a quite
astonishing distance, I saw Ann. It was, I think, a
strong splash of light falling upon her hair through some
stagy window, that picked her out in the medley.
With diffused lights, Ann's hair looked richly compact,
as if the coils of it were molded in low relief. A con-
centrated illumination seemed to aerate it, to send it
floating with an aureole, to give it an altogether dif-
terent color. I remember remarking to her that this
trait of her hair was quite unreasonable, or, at all events,
that the paradox was one of nature's invidious gifts.
One could not distract Ann by speaking of her hair.
She must have given it some attention, but when she
had disposed it on her head it was evidently no longer
on her mind. This I recognized as in itself a gift of
great rarity.
When I came through the crowd I saw that Ann was
talking with a reticent-looking man who reminded me
very strongly of "O. Henry" as I had known him. The
fact that this was the last place in the world in which
Sidney Porter would ever have been found, gave a touch
of oddity to the resemblance. Ann introduced us. He
was a Mr. Falk, who knew Garvel, had seen Ann in
Carvel's office, and had singled her out reticently to say
so. I did not learn until later that he was Ronald K.
Falk who owns railroads. Here he was a "fan," peering
at scenery and apparatus, and discussing cinema people
with an awkward, monosyllabic curiosity.
When Falk was drawn away by Chester, Ann, ignoring
the striking incident of Falk, accused me of dallying
with the beauties. In the interest of discipline I with-
held comment on the lovely picture she made at that
moment. I hadn't often seen her wearing the tenuous
MIRAGE 261
festal draperies of the period. Possibly it would be
wrong to say that her fine figure excused them. If they,
on their part, did not excuse her, they did describe her
subtly. It was an era of frankness. Clothes had given
occupation to an entirely supplementary sense of humor.
Yet there was the lovely picture of Ann. If her picture
was lovely, I suppose the clothes must have had a
plausibility.
On this night Ann was not a rebel. She did not, like
Evelyn Dower, display radical symbols. Evelyn wore
above her simple skirt a garment that seemed to me a
cross between a smock and a mandarin coat. Her
black hair was drawn straight back. The total of her
effect was exotic.
I had commented on this effect to Ann before noticing
that Evelyn was talking with Marshall, a circumstance
that answered one of my own curiosities. It had
seemed certain that Jimmy would invite him.
"Spot has been very stiff," said Ann, lightly, as if it
were a matter in passing.
I suggested to her, as apropos of information I had
been forced to receive, that few things were so petrifying
as a rejection.
"Oh, I don't blame him for being cool," said Ann.
"But I wish he wouldn't be lofty. That old family
sort of thing is so like his mother."
These unprofitable personalities were checked by the
surprise of John Z. Kensington at my elbow, asking Ann
to dance. The apparition of the handsome actor was,
I thought, as astonishing to Ann as to me.
I looked after them into the big hall until they were
lost in the throng, then wandered through an archway,
past a clutter of properties and a vast stand of arc
lights. There were figures everj'where.
To watch these figures I sought a point of vantage
less turbulent than the dancing space. A throne chair
was occupied by a bulging woman in beaded black.
262 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
who shrieked amiably at the witticisms of two little men
who flanked her. In an alcove beyond I fomid a box
resembling a treasure chest, with enormous mediaeval
hinges. Near that object one might dream of castle
casements, moats, chain mail, pike shafts, and heroines.
No need to conjure the scenic side of the past. Op-
posite was a dungeon set with reahstic prison bars. . . .
And there was a golden head. ... It might have been
Marguerite's. As for Faust ... It was only Franklin
Hebb. Oddly I identified him before discovering that
the golden head belonged to Irma Kane.
IV
In that short note I had written to Irma (it was, I
fear, a trifle curt, or might have seemed that, which
would be the same thing) I had taken into account, as
I ought, the state of her mind. That she should meet
Ann and remain in doubt, from one time to another, as
to whether Ann knew all that her fanatical friendship
insisted upon divulging, was unthinkably painful. There
would be a kind of absurdity in it. I assured her that
if I ever told Ann (it would have sounded as if I had
simply said when I told Ann) I should make the fact
known over the telephone, at once, or at the first possible
moment.
Having made this fantastic compact I could not see
that I had created a much better situation. Short
of taking a cab and going immediately to Ann, no
better way had shown to me at the time. I began to
feel implicated, and ludicrous. I could fancy a woman
of my age filling such an oflfice. A woman, yes. As a
man I seemed to be unpleasantly characterized by
Irma's appeal. It might have been sufficient to rebuke
this selfish consideration as unimportant so long as I
was the chosen instrument, to remember that it was as
Ann's friend that I was chosen, and so on, if I were not
MIRAGE 263
so resentful of the whole process. I balked and I
pitied. I was in an impasse. After all, I had not
taken awkwardness out of the interval. Irma, when she
saw me, would be wondering, . . .
I wished there wasn't a prison set behind Irma. I
wished that everybody would go home, that I had the
sense to go home, especially that the orchestra wouldn't
play a waltz suggesting that infernally recurring motive
from "Faust" . . . that wrings your heart when
Marguerite is in the straw.
The plain fact was that Irma was smiling. Her
smile would fade out for an instant if she saw me. And
it would come back. That was the puzzle of her. If
she looked morbid; if she went about in a white, atoning
steadiness; if she had Ann's devoted adventurousness,
or was to be seen like a pale thing who had taken the
veil — or the rebuke of the world — grimly inviting hard-
ship, she would have satisfied tradition, and would have
been no puzzle. One would not have had to ask his
conscience how old-fashioned he really was under his
fine gestures of liberalism. Yet I was sure that I did
not resent Irma's wish, as between apparently alternative
blessings, to have both. That had been very much
my own habit. I had proved, again and again, that the
impudence can win. I have known geniuses who proved
my case. Perhaps that is what genius is — an extended
capacity for recognizing apparent alternatives as il-
lusory . . . the capacity to prove that one can have
both. . . .
Now came Jimmy Ingle, flushed by the ardor of his
committee labors, discovering Irma and Hebb, and
swinging toward me.
"Rotten, the way things go when you can't depend on
anybody!" he gasped, with an alleviating finger under
his collar. You would have thought he was at least
second vice president.
"By the way," he said, presently, pulling over a bench
264 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
to sit close, "don't you think Irma's foolisli to take a
stand like that?"
I gaped at him speechlessly.
"Take a stand—"
He rushed on without apology for his astounding
pause. "Won't do it. That's the short of it. Here I
had it all fixed— all the way to McGrath— for a tryout.
Not satisfy-somebody motions. The real thing. Every-
thing arranged. And she says she doesn't care a prune
for this stuff. Can you beat that? You'd have thought
there wasn't a girl in America who wouldn't jump at
that chance. I tell you, it's a chancel McGrath, too.
Hard as nails. Insulting to the sweeties that get to him.
And she— what do you think she says? — that she'd rather
see the pictures from a front seat in the balcony of the
Rialto! I'll say that's a surprise to me."
"We can't all act in the movies," I said.
"I guess noti That's just it. She has a chance."
Jimmy shrugged his shoulders despairingly, and was up
again with the air of a man having vast suspended obli-
gations. I started to move away with him, and was
halted by the sight of Marshall beside Irma. Jimmy
also observed, with a quick intentness, that Marshall
and Irma hurried off through the drab archway toward
the dancing floor, leaving Hebb to his own resources. ^
"As I was saying — " pursued Jimmy. He said it ia
several different ways, before Chester beckoned to him
authoritatively, and he was gone.
I took Ann home. She had emerged from an animated
group, in which I was able to notice Kensington, to tell
me that her adopted father had this obligation. She
made no mention of a possible awkwardness in the
matter of Marshall. Evidently his stiffness, and a crisis,
were not to be subjected to any avoidable pressure.-
:miiiage sca"
Ann appeared to be interested in assuring me that she
really liked an affair such as the reception at the motion-
picture place. I listened to her without being able to
exclude the vivid flutter of Irma as she vanished with
Marshall.
It was to be gathered from that speech in the rolling
taxicab that Ann had responded heartily to the back-
ground of the incident. And the people — some of them
were very amusing. They were all thinking of some-
thing in particular. It was all so different from a flat,
social sort of affair. Didn't I think that society was
about the stupidest thing in the world?
I confessed not knowing much about unmitigated
society. I had had a few glimpses in my time. Most of
them were painful. It seemed likely that people who
went in for "society," who made a business of it, were,
if not the stupidest in the world, close to being the most
tiresome. But even tiresome people had to have some-
thing to do.
This seemed to suggest to Ann that she really didn't
know much about society in New York. Somebody had
said that there were a great many "societies" in the
town — that this had begun to be true even before ISlrs.
Astor died and there was nobody to be a leader.
"You've had a glimpse," I said, "of motion-picture
society."
Ann laughed.
"Anyway, it meant something."
"Of course," I said, "society with a purpose may not
be society at all. Perhaps it's like art. The Brahmins
will tell you it mustn't have a purpose. Society for
society's sake. Just folks. There's a kind of plausibihty
in it. They have to get what they can out of that."
"You know," Ann confided, "you sometimes worry
me with your way of seeing both sides of a thing."
"You wouldn't like me at all," I said, "without that
trait. It helps conceal a really savage disposition."
18
^66 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Do you mean that you only 'pretend to see both
sides?" she demanded.
I insisted that I was not pretending. And seeing both
sides, when I could, didn't keep me from feeling savage,
either. It simply helped me to conceal my savageness.
"I believe you have two sides," declared Ann.
"Naturally. That means that youve begun to see
both sides. Prejudice is a great deal simpler for people
who can see things in the flat — who don't insist on walk-
ing all the way around anything."
There was an instant's pause while the cab halted in
the traffic.
"Have you walked all around Irma.''" asked Ann,
suddenly.
" No," I answered, with uneasiness. " It can't be done.
You can do it with an idea. Seldom with a person.
Never, if you are a man, and the person is a woman."
"What a curious notion!"
"You see, a woman is backed up against a wall of
mystery. You can't get around. You may wonder, as
Ruskin did about the marble Doges, whether they are
sculptured on the other side. You may even reach an
angle, in a specific case, that tells you not all of them
are, and be resentful. But you never can get around."
Ann looked off into the blur of Broadway.
"I shouldn't have asked you that — about Irma —
if I weren't going through an experience with myself.
I mean, an experience as to Irma. It's so different
from anything that ever happened to me before that I
feel lonesome about it."
I should have preferred having the cab overturned
to having Ann betray Irma. The few seconds in which
I had time to make this declaration to myself did not
represent a pause in which I could be vocal; and the
interval, short as it was, gave me time to dismiss the
doubt, to realize that this could not be her intention.
It gave me time also to realize that the situation had
MIRAGE 267
gone beyond the theory point, that, for better or worse,
Irma was going to accompUsh her obstinate purpose.
"You know how I felt about Irma," said Ann. "That
there seemed to be blank spaces behind her. I never
had the least desire to have them filled up. We came
together over in that mess and I've always liked the
idea of our taking each other just as we are, without
regard to our people or anything of that sort. Life
isn't usually arranged so that we can do that. It's
just the other way about. People meet on account of
connections and ordinary groupings. Well, over there,
where ordinary habits didn't count — ^where we just
slipped together out of nowhere — where we were what
we were — there were Irma and I. And we went right
along comfortably together. I hoped — ^without thinking
that when we had been home long enough we should
have to be more than simply two persons who had come
together out of nowhere — that it might always be that
way. It would seem like spoiling something that was
simple and beautiful — I don't care whether you call
that sentimental or not — to have us get the usual fem-
inine frames on us. Two men could do that — come
together from the ends of the earth — without asking
fool questions about family, or clubs, or business history
— or jail history, for that matter. There's something
big about that. Don't you suppose that women have
often felt the same about having a man come to them
that way — with nobody, with nothing tagged on?"
"I'm sure of it," I admitted.
"Then when Irma showed those odd little with-
drawing signs I felt that she was thinking of some
circumstance or other that didn't match up with the
perfect harmony of that comfortable war-chum picture
we had built. It has often irritated me that she should
think of such things. If I told her more than she told
me it was because it amused me to do it. But I never
told her as if I were explaining myself. We didn't need
268 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
to be explained — any more than men do. We were.
I tell you, she's a brick! I've seen her tested. That's
settled. And now — well, she's got it into that head of
hers that she ought to tell me something — very hkely
about her family — and I saw it coming and shut her
up. That's settled too. I won't hear it. She has a
queer streak in her, and it seems all the queerer when
you know what a happy disposition she has. A queer
streak. But she's entitled to have her own streaks. I
have mine. You've queer streaks yourself."
"You astonish me," I said.
The cab stopped in Central Park West. I told the
man to wait.
"All the same," Ann continued as we moved into her
lobby, where the switchboard man was reading a night
extra, "my shutting her up hasn't worked any magic.
I feel, somehow, that for the very first time there is
something wrong, or at least something not quite right,
between us. And that's silly. It's a downright shame.
I don't think it's anything I could have done — "
There was a settee in Ann's lobby. We mutually
paused here.
"Ann," I said, lowering my voice reasonably, "real
friendships are very important. There are few things
in the world that count as they do. And in my opinion
you were wrong."
"Wrong.? How?"
She was keenly drawn for an answer.
"One big enough to dream such a friendship should
have kept her heart open. I'm sure you didn't mean to
close the door in her face."
"You think..."
"I think you should have let her tell you anything she
wanted to tell. If yoiu: ideal won't stand that, it is
perhaps time you knew it. It may be that she is foolish
in wanting to tell you — "
"I'm sure she is," persisted Ann.
MIRAGE 269
"It's a question of how much room there is in your
friendship. You've admitted that you couldn't expect
to go on — "
"I want to"
"But she has her wishes. Evidently they won't stay
under. If you thought it would make her feel better — "
"And you think I'm wrong."
"I think you're so right in your wish" I said, "that
I should like to think it could endure anything.'*
I arose with a desire to escape further hazard.
"Endure." Ann stood before me. "I wonder if a
friendship could endure anything."
It appeared at that moment as if she were not thinking
of Irma, but rather as if her impetuous idealism might
be looking off toward a horizon.
"If it were one of the great ones," I said.
VI
Fussing around in my brain there was, I think, a notion
that Ann might go deliberately about challenging Irma
to have it over, whatever it might be. Perhaps I felt
that I had piqued her pride in the matter, and that in
her way of grappling with things she might feel incited
to prove to herself that some of her theories were weather-
proof. I told myself that this would be quite like her.
Something approximating a wish to precipitate the in-
evitable was giving an irritated momentum to all my
thinking as to the two of them. If there was to be a
crisis I wished to be past it myself.
Nothing could well be more personal than such a crisis,
yet for me it continued to associate itself with the un-
easy abnormalities of the time. It became another
question mark wriggling in the colossal interrogatory
scowl the period continued to wear.
Ann's vision, not only of a new world, but of a new way
of taking hold of it, was likely to be responsible for her
270 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
wish to deny elemental instincts, to stalk past them with
her head up — or, for that matter, to try cheerfully knock-
ing them down. And Irma, not in a lesser degree, per-
haps, was seeking to make real a dream not only of a new
unfoldment for herself, but a new kind of life in which
that desperate dream might successfully be lived. In
both, I was sure, something born of that great detach-
ment was hovering at the brink of the eventual test.
I hoped that neither of them might see the shadow of
contemptuous inertia leering in the background of all
fresh effort, nor hear too distinctly the ironies of those
who sniggered at the stagy idealities of war time. If it
had been the fashion to make believe that this was a
nation of devoted idealists, there were new moments in
which one caught sight of a cynical expectation that
those glittering emotions of 1918 would be recognized as
of a theater experience from which one would emerge to
the gray actualities of workable fact. K America was
to look out for America, the natural corollary was, every
man for himself. One heard this translated into pleas
for business safety. One saw the new mood in the sordid
equanimity of certain women. Young women like Ann
might hold obstinately to great resolutions, but various
established types seemed to bear their old look. These
appeared, indeed, to be quite unchanged. They were to
be recognized by frankly paraded signs. It was impossi-
ble to be conscious of young women without sensing
these types. Expectation made itself utterly plain. . . .
To "come out" at seventeen or eighteen without ever
having stayed in; to grow up in the midst of an expensive
depravity; to be bored at twenty; to know everything
that doesn't require thinking; to get everything possible
for nothing, including men's hearts; to have a dog, a
car, and a horror of hips, and then at last to marry a
eunuch with a million.
This was the static calamity against the background
of which I thought I saw both Ann and Irma mov-
MIRAGE 271
ing — the calamity of a persistent indifference upon which
idealism had been hurling itself from the beginning of
time. In Ann's case the indifference would be merely
disenchanting; in Irma's case it would be accusatory,
and perhaps crushing.
Naturally it was in individual lives that one saw the
real effect of the backwash. Sometimes the era of dis-
enchantment seemed to be rushing recklessly, derisively,
toward the checking point, wherever that was to be.
People assured one another that it had become the same
old world, only more so. Particularly, they were sure
that it was the same old United States. Europe might
be going too far in assuming that America had practiced
a huge deception, but one had to be practical. Those
sky-filling slogans of brotherhood had accomplished their
purpose. What more could be asked of slogans?
Individuals asked too much. They were continually
demanding more than the traffic would bear. An Irma,
for example, might dream an untenable dream; or an
Ann might have no right to leave out of account the
fixed failings of humanity. It was true that all eras were
eras of disenchantment. Yet certain illuminations quite
reasonably kindled to a fine height the flame of expecta-
tion. The individual, peering into the crowd, read what
he had eyes to read. An Ann read hopefully. In the
market of human idealisms a Garvel sold "short." . . .
When Ann began to apprehend this trait of Garvel,
this gift for guessing the point to which humanity would
slip back, she began to apprehend a good many things
that went with it. She wasn't shocked. I think the
process was too gradual for that. And I fancied that
the discovery of its simple relation to elemental shrewd-
ness fascinated her. The fact that a system of profit
could be built up, and infinitely multiplied, on a frank
expectation of the sordid, everywhere, and in everybody,
was a revelation curiously thrilling in itself.
The game of a Garvel could not be frustrated at any
272 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
point by a stroke of selfishness. It could be frustrated
only by a stroke of unselfishness.
It was hugely interesting, too, to discover that Garvei's
assumption did not seem to make him cynical. Ann
would have been sure that a theory of universal selfish-
ness would pervert its holder, give him a misanthropic
leer. But Garvel was not at all misanthropic. Perhaps,
for one thing, he had no theory. It was an instinct.
He never assumed that anyone, great or small, acted
upon any impulse save that of self-interest. Invariably
taking this for granted seemed to save him a lot of
trouble. In figuring degrees of unselfishness one had
prodigious difficulties. In accepting a fundamental self-
interest there was a working level. And it avoided
irritations. Garvel never winced at finding that any-
one was looking out for himself. It was only when some
one didn't play the game according to expectations
based on the assumption that he would look out for
himself that trouble was injected.
Thus Garvel would have said that if a beautiful
sentiment could be hurled at Europe to strike there
with a force greater than that of all the world's ex-
plosives put into a heap, then that beautiful sentiment
was a good idea. It had the significance and the ef-
ficiency of its effect. But after a war was over beautiful
sentiments were to be put away with other obsolete
machinery. Shooting sentiments became just as an-
achronistic as shooting guns. There might be a tune to
sing for those who could sing. Practical life was to be
conducted with plain talk. Obligation in the matter
was fixed by what people would understand.
To Garvel a piece of sentiment was a draft on an im-
aginary bank. It might be pretty, but if it couldn't?
produce cash it was a dishonesty. Moreover, ordinary
people preferred ciu^rency. The more sentimental
people were — the more they had lived on make-believe
checks — the more eagerly they clutched at real money.
MIRAGE 273
So that when Garvel asked Ann if she would take a
run out to Chicago for him on a certain deUcate mission,
she had gone far enough in estimating his philosophy
that was not a philosophy to assume that she had be-
come available to the elemental processes.
She jumped at the conclusion that the difficult sit-
uation was a man. She was wrong. The obstacle was
a woman. I was left properly in the dark as to the
woman's identity or relations, and I fancy Ann never
knew much about anything lying below the surface of
the errand. She was to get a signature. Garvel rightly
calculated the. chance that Ann would get it. The
woman was extraordinary — one of the most extraor-
dinary that Ann ever met, a creature who certainly
knew nothing about imaginary banks, whose face was
as human as the door of a vault, and who looked at Ann
with barred eyes.
These eyes might have haunted Ann under other
conditions. As it happened, Ann carried with her an
obliterating impression that imparted a strange feel to
the journey, and to the annoying delay that kept her
for many days in Chicago, and included a supplementary
journey to St. Louis.
On the evening before leaving New York Ann gave
thought to an utterly personal wish. I am not clear as
to the situation of the young woman in the tenement
somewhere close to the murky aura of Bellevue Hospital.
It is enough that Ann felt called to see her before going
away. Perhaps there was a crisis of some sort, present
or impending. There was already a baby and a quite
horrible complexity arising from the attitude of the
husband's mother following the disappearance of the
husband.
My sense of the occasion for the visit, with whatever
inquiry or service may have gone with it, was lost in a
realization of the outcome. For Ann found Irma in the
dingy room. Each, it appears, had been actuated by
274 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
a like impulse in going there, from which I surmised
some peculiar and urgent appeal to the sympathies.
My understanding is that Ann may have indicated at
least a feeling of the unexpected in finding Irma. This
would have played its part in all that followed. Probably
Irma was at some tension when the two emerged into
the cold street, in which there was already a suspicion
of a drizzle.
VII
"I wish she wouldn't go back so much," was Ann's
first comment upon the bit of drama they had left
behind them. The words were mixed with a sigh of
perplexity.
"That's what she sees," said Irma. "The past. It's
all around her — wrapping her in. It's all she has."
Ann found an unusual emphasis in this response from
Irma, an effect of tensity hardly to be explained by that
situation on the fourth floor or by any usual signs in
Irma. The touch of something that was almost acerbity
had, in fact, a little of the startling in it, and Ann sud-
denly felt herself held to a defense of her resentment.
"I mean," she said, "that the poor girl persists in
looking the wrong way — looking that way all the time.
The past has happened. No use lingering over that. If
we could have made her see that a lot may be done with
the future — if we could only have made her feel that,
somehow."
" But don't you see, Ann, that it depends — oh, that it
depends terribly — on what the past has been.?"
Irma came out with this so sharply that Ann was all
but impelled to halt at the corner they were passing and
to get a face-to-face hold on their issue. One view of
Irma's remark caught her up sharply. Ann's own past
looked so trivial in the light of any real record of calam-
ity, an easy, sheltered, complacent up-coming was sud-
denly thrown into such accusatory contrast with any-
MIRAGE 275
thing like real struggle, that she saw, as by some simple
turn in a path, how arrogantly theories can be formed.
She saw how grotesque egoism might be in arranging the
world, and especially how inadequately it might under-
take to advise another individual soul whose language
of suffering it had not learned. It wasn't a question of
sheer weakness or strength. It was a question of under-
standing. Could they who had merely seen suffering,
but who had not themselves suffered, or suffered enough,
really feel? Wasn't the world in so much trouble because
the strong hadn't learned to feel, and the suffering, who
could understand, had lost the strength to fight their
way through.?
These thoughts flashed to a white focus in the illumi-
nation of that moment. They sent a heat into Ann's
face. . . . Yet it was necessary that things should be
fought through. If there was calamity it must be met.
All the time there was life to be lived. It wouldn't do
to stay down. The harsher the calamity the greater
need to put it behind.
"You and I," Ann went on, "know that the past must
be shaken loose, no matter what anyone may have made
of it."
"Or what it may have made of them?" asked Irma
deliberately.
"Made of them?" Ann held on. "Life knocks
some of us flat. But, Irma, it won't do — it won't
do — to let anyone stay down. We, just as ourselves,
can be a power — ^we can shake loose from the pressure
and push out. That's what I think of sometimes.
Standing free."
"Ah, yes!" cried Irma. "Standing free. If you have
left yourself free. If there isn't something ... in your-
self. Right inside. It would be hard for you to under-
stand that."
She said this without turning, as if obstinately pursuing
a course.
276 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"I have my miseries," murmured Ann.
"But you can chuck them when you feel strong.'*
"Why not?"
"When they are the kind you can chuck — "
"Nonsense . . ."
"Not my kind, Ann."
And the barriers broke. It was a curious place for
such a matter. Ann had mechanically glanced about a
few moments before in the hope of a cab. That region
of the East Side offered but small chance of such a
beneficence. They passed under the iron of an elevated
road. The cold drizzle stung their faces. They forgot
everything but the thing that was happening . . . that
they were in the winter wet, that a dull purple pall cov-
ered the night, that the street lights, nervously spatter-
ing the sticky pavement, saw them strolling . . . strolling
as if it were midsummer, as if all appointed courses had
been halted to permit one thing to be done; as if the
doing of this one thing had the right or need to imply
shutting out even the elements.
The manner of this amazing interchange was, indeed,
as if both, for the moment, stood aside from life. They
spoke into the night. They could not see each other's
face, save in the oblique of their side-by-side movement.
The tears ran with the rain, and need not be confessed.
When they had come close to the region of Irma's
house Ann had, by a mute touch, suggested that they
keep on, postponing contact with responsibilities that
might encroach, holding all of that in abeyance, so that
neither places nor elements could have any part or
reality until the suspended spirit of their crisis had
somehow found feet. They were deferring that look
into each other's eyes which should sum up, irretrievably,
all that each was feeling. They did this, I am sure,
without reasoning, without sense either of resolution or
of fear, but rather as yielding, without power of re-
sistance, to a swift current that carried strongly in its
MIRAGE 277
own course toward something that neither menaced nor
invited, that simply loomed and awaited.
The first effect upon Ann was of being stunned. An
abstraction had come to the point of touch. Neither
temperament nor philosophy can take suddenness or
surprise from such a happening. A mother may believe
her boy is a bit "wild," but no assumption of knowledge
can avert the shock of meeting the concrete case. The
married may contrive an excellent tolerance for conduct
that is never sharply visualized. Our friend is possibly
this or that, and we are indifferent, or patient, or whim-
sically philosophical until time and place and raw
conditions of fact actually smear him with the color
of his conduct — until his conduct thus touches us.
Society has the same reactions. We can have a gay
dog to dinner so long as his gayness preserves its an-
onymities. We are not involved until he is found out.
Even a woman may, as a matter of sheer private theory,
be debated abstractly in comfortable accord with the
degree of enlightenment of those who debate her, but
the cloak of mystery must remain opaque. Most fre-
quently, perhaps, an assumption of virginity is not a
matter of decency but of convenience. Here at least
humanity finds it practicable to assume innocence until
guilt is advertised. As Rankin once flung it out, "Neither
needs to be proved."
Ann had not gone far enough to have social cynicisms.
She thought she knew about life. Like any other
healthy girl she took the best for granted. Doubtless
she was quite honest with herself when she said that
L'ma's life, as a private fact, seemed to be not at all an
indispensable consideration. Yet putting upon it the
bitter light of complete revelation proved, in a flash,
how important obscurity had been to her state of mind.
She recalled the instance of a married woman she had
liked profoundly, and the struggle enforced when that
woman had permitted certain astonishing circumstances
278 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
to become known to her. It was not quite as if the
woman had conveyed the facts directly. Yet her seem-
ing to take for granted that Ann might safely know, or
might not mind knowing, had somehow loomed as an
offense in itself. Irma's revelation did not take for
granted. It was possible to give it an opposite val-
uation. Evidently she spoke because she refused to
take for granted. One found it hard to separate the
annoyance of knowing from the annoyance of being told,
and to separate either from what should be considered
the larger question of the fact.
I am sure that Ann, after the first shock and its
rather stupefying reactions, did intuitively and un-
grudgingly seize Irma's side. Those quick tears would
have meant that, however silent she may have been
while they fell. Irma was speaking. To feel with her
was inevitable. There well may have been a peculiar
and poignant visualization in the circumstances of the
unfoldment, in the absurd situation that forbade either
of them to retreat to herself. They were detached, and
they were set upon a track — the track of the public
way. To have turned away sympathy from Irma's
mind would have been like discarding Irma's body in
a wet world.
I am sure, too, that even that early in her mental
struggle Ann was influenced sharply by accusation of
herself. Her own life suddenly looked so negative and
meaningless that she had a burning sense of not being
privileged to do anything but pour out her compassion
to the dregs. This was not the beginning impulse.
She began, fortunately for her afterthoughts, with the
unquestioning impulse of affection, as she would have
begun had she come upon Irma's wounded body. The
self-accusing sense reinforced her. Her theories nat-
urally came last. In the end she had to sit down with
all of these emotions. Just now she had to keep her
feet.
MIRAGE 279
I surmise that she did this pretty well, that they both
came finally to Irma's door, intact, in a damp des-
peration that was still steady if not tranquil. That
handclasp, the kiss between the shadowed lips, and Ann's
parting word, marked the peak. Both seemed to know
that it was better that Ann should not go in. At
Madison Square Ann caught an untenanted Black-and-
"VVhite and sat, squarely upright, in the middle of its
leather seat until the bare park trees began shivering
past.
VIII
This was what Ann carried with her on that Western
journey. There was an abundance of thinking time in
that interval — rather more, perhaps, than was salutary.
To be withdrawn for a space would have been well
enough, but as the days drew on, with utterly blank, in-
active periods, in hotel reading rooms and stuffy train
seats, she was brought to a nervous fury of impatience
that might, to a less persistent mind, have threatened
the success of her mission itself.
The result was that Ann arrived at a great many dif-
ferent conclusions, and came back with no conclusion at
all. Irma's story streaked its way across a thousand
landscapes. Irma's voice, and the oblique sense of her
silhouette in the damp streets; vague conjurings of pic-
tures in the story — of the father and the mother, and Hill
and Cartwright; of the calamitous evening in New York
— all this hovered and intruded in each fresh and utterly
futile effort to reduce the whole matter to some shape
that could be handled. There was a way, she was sure,
in which her knowledge of the thing could, as a burden,
be made portable. She had a notion of gathering it
vigorously and striding on.
She did reach a clearness as to Irma herself, as to how
circumstances had sinned against Irma, as to how many
extenuations there were, as to the frightful disproportion
280 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
between Tnomentary offenses and the duration of punish-
ments, especially when human creatures had anything to
do with the punishments. She could not fancy herself
as yielding as Irma did to parental conditions, but even
here she was able to see that it would be absurd to say
what she might have felt compelled to endure, or have
been molded to accept. In the crisis Irma did boldly
strike out for herself. As to the men. . . . She dwelt long
upon this question, and upon how impossible it was to
do the thinking for anyone else. She let herself review
all the men she had ever met, and wonder whether there
could have been any possible circumstances . . . There
was one man in France. . . . She had moments in which
the rebel in her said that if she felt ready to stand against
all the world she was capable of doing it. Yet there was
always waiting another rebel instinct that pushed the
man away with the rest of the world, not in fear — she
was sure it wasn't fear — but until he could come as the
appointed and eternally right one. Perhaps she felt that
when she stood against the world she wanted to be sure
that the world was wrong. Of course one might come to
a feeling about the world that would turn out to have
been momentary. There was the ugly point. Her
theories weren't prepared for that, for the big mistake
that couldn't be pushed about or changed like the prem-
ise in an argument. Deciding that the world hadn't
been wrong was not the end of it. . . . There seemed to
be no end. And what should she herself do with a thing
that had no end? What became of feelings of independ-
ence when there was a constant accuser whose cre-
dentials had been accepted.? Of how much use was
defiance? Could one keep on defying oneself? Did the
pressure of such things wear off like the impingement of
a chronic malady? Did one have to go on thinking about
the world? Could the pain be kept as wholly personal?
Evidently that was hard. Look at Irma. Evidently
Irma had kept it as wholly personal until . . . Was there
MIRAGE 281
always a time when another came in? Wasn't this think-
ing about the world after ail?
Irma's great point about playing fair had made a
deep impression. There was something fine about that.
Even if it was fantastic it was something fine. The finer
Ann thought it to be the clearer shone the obligation to
meet it fairly. What was implied in meeting it fairly?
All of Ann's impulses gathered behind the wish to give
the utmost. Irma unquestionably had a glimpse of this
at that very beginning. Above all, it was not to make a
difference. This first rushing thought stood guard over
all the thoughts that followed, stood in a sentinel im-
mobility beside every consideration that presented its
pleas.
And yet —
I saw it in Ann's eyes. You might have said that it
was gathered up in a sorry look. These eyes had the
echo of countless hours of staring straight out. There
had been quick compassion; there had been as much of
understanding as the keenest wish could carry; there
had been a rebelHous challenge of all the codes of history;
there had been a newborn expectation that life was to
be made over, and that the individual, like the world,
was to have his chance to start with a clean slate; there
was even a crusader eagerness to glorify the concrete
case, to say, "Here is the opportunity for sublime proof!"
Yet the surviving fact was a white shadow. She who
came back from a war with the bloom of an apparently
inexhaustible confidence, came back from this ordeal with
a battered buo.yancy. There was the bluff; if I had not
known, it would have been easy to be deceived. In fact
there was something an elation of resolve had contributed
to her natural vitality that gave to her a newly brilliant
effect. But she was a different Ann.
She knew that I had the somber tlu-ead of the story.
Irma had found it indispensable to convey this; and
Ann's knowledge of my participation had a certain
19
282 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
natural bearing in her reactions. She was privileged to
speak, but she could not speak without giving an account
of herself. This I felt to be an unhappy fact. I wished
that she might have held her problem in her own heart.
I regretted devoutly that the problem had not remained
where the bond lay — that they had not been able silently
to strive through together. If I had not known, Ann,
in that interval, would have been undecipherable. As
it was, I understood the pause that preceded our meeting,
as well as the artificial exuberance that came with it.
The blank days following her return from the West
meant that she wanted to bring an attitude with her,
and that she didn't have this ready.
I may say that I was in the same distress. When
Irma whispered in j\Irs. Breckles's hall that the thing was
done, my anxieties fixed themselves upon Ann. The
situation now lay in her hands; and I could not escape
the need to have not only a conviction but an attitude
of my own. I could not change Ann's real feelings, but
I could affect her consolations. I was at the third point
of the triangle into which all human considerations are,
I suppose, to be diagramed.
And I should have liked to run away to Africa or to
Cape Nome.
There w^as a broad daylight upon our meeting — a rush
of it, for a snowfall accentuated the stare of that De-
cember Sunday.
I was as effusive as possible, and I am very clumsily
effusive.
Ann tried to bubble. She rattled the narrative of the
trip, and hit off crisply and humorously that extraor-
dinary woman. Garvel had been grimly delighted.
Being afraid of spoiling her he had been content to
grunt. It was an eloquent grunt. On her own part
she had been quite matter of fact. There was the
signature. She did not belittle the effort. Neither did
she leave pauses for praise. Doubtless she was helped
IVIIBAGE 283
quite beyond any artifice by absorption in a matter that
was vastly more important to herself.
"I did have a thinking time," she said to me.
To make clear that which she would wish to know I
spoke of Irma's whisper.
"I'm sorry for you," she said, and her look verified
the word.
"Forget me," I suggested, lamely.
"I can't quite do that," she said. "You see," and
her lashes drew close, "I'm sorry not only because of
what came to you, but — ^well, you're not finished — "
"With you."
"With me."
"You are very important," I said.
"I'm very stupid," she added with a smile.
Most of us, I told her, felt that way when we met
real life.
"Real life!" she repeated. "I suppose I don't know
much about it."
And yet, I warned her, it was a silly blunder to assume
that life was real only when it was ugly. The trite
thing I meant to say was that the ugly twist in realities
gave us our test. As a matter of fact she had seen an
amazing amount of life.
"From the outside — and far off," declared Ann,
bitterly.
"It seems that way where we haven't felt it," I said.
"Ah! Yes!" Ann cried. "Felt it! I've had my
hands in it, too. Maybe it isn't until we get our heart
in it. . . . "
"No need to tell me your heart's in this."
She drew out some of the thoughts of that journey,
and felt her way back to that wet night in the streets.
She made it all grippingly vivid without trace of a wish
to do more than show me what she had been thinking.
Transmitted by her ardent apprehensions the incident
acquired a strange, sometimes a dreary, visage. The
284 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
cross-lights of the drama fell upon Ann at the moment.
I saw her as valiant but with arms drooping, with all
the alertness and courage at the top, looking for the
strong way, for one path where there seemed to be
many. I sat there resenting her sense of confusion. I
was afraid to be confident, and I had no sense of direc-
tion for any confidence I might have summoned. Some-
times the thing itself appeared small and simple. Irma,
a single soul over against all of life — a hving creature,
free to move as she chose — not crippled, not assailed by
anything but an idea. Again, I saw most tragedy as
not different from this. An idea. It is enough. To
CEdipus the idea transcended the blindness. Ann had
her idea. It became her beast in the arena. I could
understand that she would have times when she would
see the thing as simple, when she would think to dismiss
her beast by a formula of resolution. And she would
wake up and find it still there — find that she herself was
not an idea but a woman.
Nevertheless, I began to emerge from my gloom in
the presence of herself. She betrayed no plan, or pur-
pose in any terms one could follow. Yet I still had an
unshakable confidence. It was not necessary to sum-
mon a pretense that she was a young miracle of wisdom.
I should have quailed before anything so appalling.
She had Garvel's "plain sense." That was potent.
Perhaps there was a plain-sense solution for Irma. But
I was depending upon more than Ann's plain sense.
The outward situation might be saved with shrewdness.
Irma could be deceived. It might even be a benevolence
to deceive her. But I looked for better than that. And
I thought I saw the better thing in Ann.
I was glad to be able, without acting, to give some
sign of this to her; and she was quick to notice the mood.
Doubtless she had been watching closer than I had
suspected.
She arose suddenly and walked to a window to stare
MIRAGE 285
at the snow. Then she turned and spoke from where
she stood.
"Irma tried to tell me — what you said."
I had to admit that this would have been difficult.
"She got it. It gave her a brace."
"No harm then."
"I'm glad you did that."
"So am I."
Ann strode over and stood before me, carrying with
her, not very successfully, a little of her rebel manner.
" I know you are wondering whether those fine theories
of mine will stand up."
I looked back at her brazenly.
"I shouldn't put it that way. Say that I'm hoping —
and more. And not merely because they were your
theories. Perhaps not even because I thought they
were, necessarily, fine theories. Theories are like swords.
People sometimes trip over them. No. I'm hoping that
you will find a way to stand up — both you and Irma —
hoping that you may prove that there is a way in which
this can happen."
Something lighted in her at this, and because I was
looking intently enough to see it I caught the glint of
something else that signaled faintly but startlingly. It
required no keenness to connect this sign with her next
impulsive remark.
"Speaking of Irma" — this was very much in her rebel
manner — "Spot has taken her out."
"Spot . . . ?"
I saw her back as she walked over to the tea wagon
and began fussing with the cups. She seemed to recede
into a confusion.
rx
Spot and Irma. Well, it was natural enough. Marshall
had been refused comfort from Ann. And Ann had
been exiled by business. I recalled Irma's look when
286 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
she met Marshall in the restaurant, and that picture
of them on the night when Hebb exhibited his magic
crocks. There was nothing anomalous in such a thing.
One had at least temporarily to dispose of alert Jimmy
Ingle to affect the apposition, and in view of Jimmy's
strategic advantage of residence under the same roof
this was to be regarded as a definite consideration. But
admitting such a possibility, the way was open.
Ann would have known what I was thinking. Evi-
dently she decided to let me keep my thoughts and to
conceal her own, for she managed to create a diversion.
"I haven't said a word," she exclaimed, with an effect
of vaulting a high fence into another field, "about some
odd circumstances at the office. Wayne Halland's
father stalked in the other day. Of course that means
that Garvel has a hold there. And who do you suppose
happened along the same day.? — your huge friend, Mr.
Rankin."
"As for that," I said, "I should pay lavishly for a
box seat at a wrangle between Rankin and Garvel."
"Wrangle?" Ann looked incredulous. "We don't
have things like that, really. You shouldn't wish your
friend such hard luck. People don't wrangle with Garvel.
It isn't done. Actually your crony was very meek. Most
of them are when they come, or are sent, to see Garvel."
"Tell me," I said, "did he recognize you.f^"
"Oh yes! Handsomely. I think he was impressed —
by my official relation, I mean. You can afford to let
him see you with me. I made a polite inquiry as to
the health of my adopted father. 'Do I know him?'
he asked. When he got to you, *0h — Maxton! Have
you adopted him? He would be a dangerous parent.
He would spare the rod.' 'You think,* I said, 'I need
a parent with the punch.' And he grinned that large
grin he has. 'Like me,' he suggested. 'Something
discriminatingly brutal.' 'One father at a time,' I
said. Of course he didn't actually understand that.
MIRAGE «87
"But the most interesting thing is that Lida SantzeflF
has marked Garvel as one of the arch devils — if there can
be more than one arch."
I hoped that if any bomb-carrying rebel should take
the same view, and should become closely interested in
Garvel. he wouldn't fix on the office, and in Ann's hours.
"Somehow I think bombs are going out of fashion,"
said Ann.
" We're all frightened enough without them. We hear
them now before they go off."
Ann ruminatively suspended her cup of tea. "Funny,
isn't it, that notion of the anarchist as violent.'^"
"His violence is all most of us ever hear of him. Of
course we don't get his poetry. Meanwhile we don't
expect to be known by our violence."
"They're such absolutely sentimental chaps, most of
them," mused Ann. " When I think of some Reds I know
and compare them with Garvel — well, it is funny. Take
Lida's man — "
"Has she a man?"
"She likes to let me believe she's married — the rebel
way. Her Anton is so innocent — like a baby, playing
with building blocks — and matches."
"Lida has knowledge enough for both."
"Often she seems innocent. Refuses to know anything
if it's bourgeois. That shuts out a good deal."
"Naturally."
"But she knows some things that give you a strange
feeling. You wonder where she gets hold of them. For
instance, she seems to know that that Russian boy —
what's his name? — who was there the day you came —
is likely to be taken."
"Taken?"
"Deported. Emma Goldman's ark hasn't carried them
all. How do you suppose she knows things like that?"
"Karlov — deported?" I felt a pang. "I hope not.
I hope Lida's mistaken."
288 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Ann observed that I was upset,
"What about him?" she asked, earnestly.
"Just a dreamer. Not a posing poet of anarchism, or
anj'^thing like that. Simply a dreamer, a gentle, wishing,
book-fed, peasant-souled dreamer. He works for Andy
Crown — if the strike is over."
"Lida wanted him to hide, and he wouldn't."
"Probably it is too late," I said.
That night I went to look for Karlov, without having
any clearness as to what good would come of finding him.
I knew only that a heat of individual protest had started
in me. I knew only that whatever else might be right
this arrest would be wrong. It was, perhaps, not to be
prevented, but I might be of use after it happened —
perhaps even before.
As I passed Cooper Union, students were leaping the
steps to the study floors, where the dream of a capitalist
was shining in the night. Other figures were thronging
into the public meeting hall below where another phase
of the capitalist's dream was being expressed in widening
circles started by the pebble of his money. The placard
beside the door read:
Dreams of SociaIi Redemption
Can They Ever Come True?
A Psychological Study of Ideal Commonwealths
By recalling the walk with Karlov I traced the way to
the stair beside the blacksmith's shop. That floor above
the street had an untenanted blankness, but my knock
brought the little, round Jewish woman, who looked at
me with puckered eyebrows.
"He's taken Simon to the movies," she said, when I
had made my inquiry.
They had gone at six o'clock. They would be back
MIRAGE 289
soon — yes, it was nearly eight. Where were the movies?
Always they went down to the Crystal. "On the next
block." She pointed to the east.
I found the Crystal with its very yellow bills and the
arc light sputtering at the door. The black-haired girl
behind the little window received my ten cents and
pushed out the ticket, holding a finger on it until assured
that it would not be stolen by the wind.
The place was crowded, and while I fumbled in the
darkness for a seat near the door there was a sharp clatter
of applause. This, I soon discovered, was because the
villain had been knocked down. The fact that he was
in evening clothes, and that his silk hat went rolling into
the gutter, accentuated the charm of the incident. The
hero had his arm around the girl. What happened to
the villain was always the breathless matter. ... I was
reminded of how important villains are. How hard it
is to have heroes without them. . . . How hard it is to
have audiences without them. Something to give focus
to resentment. Precisely as in life. The great audience
wants its villain as well as its hero. Theology has its
villain. Nations cast a new one for the part as soon as
the old one drops out. He is indispensable. He per-
sonifies obstacle, repugnant pressure. The calamity that
falls upon him in the play is a judgment upon all unwel-
come people. The hero condenses the unexpressed pro-
tests of humanity. . . .
Presently I could measurably see the audience, but I
found no trace of Karlov and Simon. A couple in front
of me was blended. The interlocking j)rinciple seemed
to be well established. The treble of children punctuated
the silences. One baby bleated plaintively in a remote
corner. . . . Ah ! here was the coup de grace for the villain.
Caught in his own horrible trap. And then at last that
indispensable close-up kiss, deliberately begun . . .
brought to a melting crisis, and left to last forever by
the subtle charity of darkness.
290 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Yet no one went away because now there was a funny.
This I could not describe because I was absorbed in
watching the audience. Noise became continuous, since
children who had merely gaped at romance screamed
with joy at the epileptic excitements of the comic. The
mature spectators were scarcely less responsive. A fat
man beside me shook and rolled and wiped his eyes with
a colored handkerchief.
Then I was conscious of the silhouette of Karlov
carrying the crippled boy toward the door.
I followed after them, and saw, under the arc light,
that Simon had an oldish, eager face. Karlov, with one
hand, swung a scarf about the boy's neck. The huddled
body was very small. I thought that Simon was possibly
twelve years old.
By the time I came beside him Karlov, cautiously
balancing his burden, had descended the two steps to
the street.
He was much astonished at sight of me, and stopped
short. Simon stared at me wonderingly.
"Simon," said Karlov, in an embarrassed voice, "this
is a friend of mine." Then he turned to me with his queer
smile. "You'll let me say that?"
We began walking as I assented. I saw no way of
getting to the matter of my errand imtil the child
should be deposited at home. It was better to parry
Karlov's curiosity and to ask about the strike. It
had been over for a long time — since the week before.
Andy was still very bad with the rheumatism. The
strike seemed to make it worse, and it had not gone
away. Rheumatism was a terrible thing. Karlov once
had an uncle who had it. But he didn't swear like
Andy. He prayed, and that was funny, because he
died of the rheumatism.
MIRAGE 291
As we drew near Karlov's house I saw the two men in
the shadow of the blacksmith's shop.
"Karlov," I said, without turning my head, "if trouble
comes to you, keep quiet, and be patient."
"Trouble . . . ?"
He interrogated me over the child's shoulder. An
instant later he must have noticed the two figures, and
his step slowed.
"You will be helped," I whispered.
I knew that by now Karlov's room would have been
ransacked. Simon's mother would have told the agents
of the Department of Justice what she told me. It might
be just as well if she had not told them that some one
else had been asking for him.
The shorter man, wearing a gray ulster, stepped out,
deliberately lifted off Karlov's hat, and surveyed his face.
"You're Aaron Karlov," he said.
"What — about it?" asked Karlov, slowly, and Simon
twisted his head to stare.
"You're wanted." And the hat was perfunctorily re-
placed. "Drop the kid."
"Drop ..." Karlov's mouth went open.
"I'm in a hurry — see.'" and the man jabbed Karlov's
shoulder with a stiffened paw.
"He means," I said to Karlov, "that you must get
Simon to his mother at once."
"How do you know what I mean?" snapped the lips
beyond the collar of the ulster. "Shut your damn
mouth — or you'll get yourself into trouble."
The voice of the taller man came over my other
shoulder, and I felt a nudge from his elbow. "Who's
this? Another Red?"
There was a short way. I opened my coat and gave
them a glimpse of my police badge — foolish survival of
a reporting days' habit.
"It just happens," I said, "that I'm a newspaper man.
I hope that won't annoy you."
292 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Don't it beat hell!" exclaimed the man in the ulster.
"Tipped! A dirty — come, you!" This to Karlov.
"Get rid of your Teddy bear!"
There was nothing for it but to watch Karlov be
taken. . . . There could not even be bail. When the
three had mounted the stair I slipped up after them.
Simon's mother was carrying him down the little hall-
way and Karlov was standing in the doonvay of his
room, his inky eyes fixed upon the wreckage. The
floor was white with litter. The little black bureau had
been disemboweled. In a corner was a mess of books,
clothes, magazines, and unrecognizable debris, the whole
smeared with the contents of an ink bottle.
I saw Karlov's arm move, and his hand waveringly
indicate, on a spot near the doorsill, a crushed fragment
of a little image I remembered seeing somewhere near
his books,
"I wish — you hadn't — done that!" he said.
The tall man emitted a bellow of laughter.
"Ain't they the birds!" he chuckled, turning to me.
"Wouldn't it give yer a pain? Why" — he drew from
his outer pocket a wad of papers. "This stuff, y'know,"
and he flashed a page of The Anarchist Soviet Bulletin —
"smash everything — and when anything happens to
them — wouldn't it make yer sick? I tell yer, it's a
joke."
I looked innocent and sought a glimpse of the sheet.
The left-hand "ear" of the heading bore the words,
"Capitalism is Based on Exploitation, Violence and
Murder." On the right I read, "Anarchism is Based on
Freedom. Equality and Happiness," . . . That word
"Happiness" was very much a Karlov word. He was
always likely to pick it out, as his eyes to-night had
singled that crushed fragment on the floor. ... It was
an amazing illustration of the significance of words —
the stalking or sulking power of words. The Depart-
ment of Justice had gathered a pocketful of words. It
MIRAGE 293
was as if it had gathered knives. Words. And they
were always to be free. The United States had sworn
to itself, before a staring world, that they should always
be free. But it was very young when it smote its
breast and uttered this oath — very young and fresh
from strong words of its own. Now it was older, and
fatter, and tired. It had thought that so long as words
did not grow feet and hands they were harmless enough.
Now it was shrewder and knew the words were knives.
Karlov was found to have slept beside them. . . .
XI
If it were a matter of the New York police I should
have known quite what to do. But these were not
New York police. The impulsion was too remote.
Softening the way to an offender was here an utterly
different affair. There were, however, certain fore-
ground possibilities.
"This man," I said as they were about to descend to
the street, "is a friend of mine." Karlov's look fell
upon me with the absent steadiness. "I have known
him for some time. He is a workingman. I know his
boss. All of that part is straight. You have your
job. You'll find that he won't give you any trouble."
I told them where to find me, and that I was not
writing anything. I didn't say that if he should be
beaten up it would make a loud noise. They went away,
Karlov between them.
For half an hour I worked over the room, Mrs. Amheim
helping. She wept silently.
"^Vhat didhedo?"
She stood limp for a moment to repeat this perplexing
question.
"They'll call him a Red," I grunted out of my corner.
"A Red?" she turned out the palms of her hands with
their blotches of ink, then went limp again. "He
294 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
'ain't . . . ?" It was hard to get out. "He 'ain't — killed
nobody ? Not Aaron ? ' '
"I don't think so," I said.
"Gott!"
A thin voice came from the front of the place. "Ain't
Aaron coming back?"
"What should I know!" called Mrs. Arnheim, sharply.
It was close to nine o'clock when I went to look for
Marshall, In turning to him I was not thinking of
great experience and subtlety of influence, but of sym-
pathy. Legal eminence would have been embarrassed
by such a job. If Karlov had murdered, smuggled or
sold strong drink, the formula of defense would not have
been stultifying. Fighting the United States in the
matter of a Red stain was quite different.
Though I was sure of Marshall's sympathies, I was by
no means sure of his attitude in a case like this. I had
seen him aroused, but I had heard, too, his pungent
protests against unthinking disturbance. How he would
classify the instance of a Karlov, and whether his
active sympathy would be at all influenced by a clas-
sification, were questions that awaited answer.
I wavered as to the telephone, then scurried to his
house in Thirteenth Street.
The taciturn old woman who supervised the quarters
occupied by Marshall and his friend O'Brien had seen
me but two or three times, but she had a discriminating
memory. Marshall, she said, was out. O'Brien was
there, if that had any significance. O'Brien, his shoes
off and his feet upon a chair, was blowing pipe smoke
into a mighty law book.
"He's gone to something at the Astor," said O'Brien.
"Let me see." He shuffled over to a table and con-
sulted Marshall's memorandum book. Yes, it had to
do with his college alumni. Late getting back, probably.
I was briefly grateful, and headed for the White Way.
MIRAGE 295
Eighth floor, said the Astor schedule, with supple-
mentary information that had a military exactness. A
score of dinners and dances were buzzing in the great
hive. Two of these seemed to brush against each other
at the point where I stepped off the elevator. It was
a matter of turning to left or ri<rht. Something of a
Marine cast, and middle-aged, held the right. On the
left there was youth, a high-spirited orchestra, and a
chromatic ballroom.
I hovered in the corridor. The waltz had a full-
blooded pulse. I followed the blond violins and the
sensuous insinuations of the brunette 'cello. The
waltz ! Poet among the dances. After being shouldered
aside it was, they said, coming back; not merely the
three-quarter time but the old pulsing whirl of it. . . .
The moment to see a bevy of girls is immediately after
the last swing of a dance, when the tingle of the rhythm
still echoes in them, when the left-over color of a rapt
response has a kind of quivering beauty that is partner
of the pearl hue in the teeth, flashing everywhere through
fading or beginning laughter.
Irma, I thought when I saw her, was at the top of her
elation. She fluttered beside Marshall as they hurried
through the corridor to join some group. . . .
"Ogre!" I said to myself. "You are an ogre to this
pair. You will take all of the youth out of Marshall's
face when you talk Red to him. . . . And you will re-
mind Irma of another world, when this seems so glitter-
ingly suflScient."
My cowardly hesitation let them find their group.
There were ten of them. The bald alumnus, with a
rich sleekness about him, was trying to be the j oiliest
of all. He would have made a wonderful second husband.
In the end I caught Marshall's eye, and he hurried
to meet me in my corner.
I liked the way he took it. The measuring attention;
the earnest lines in his brow; an effect in the set of his
296 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
jaw that suggested both energy and caution — every
sign fortified my wish.
Then he smiled in a wry way, with an absent glance
over my shoulder.
"The funny thing is that I've just been asked to
help hunt them."
"The Reds.?"
He nodded.
"There are many kinds," I said.
"I know that. We've plastered the title over all the
discontented."
"Even over the harmless visionaries."
"There are wise visionaries too."
"I agree with you."
He took out a card and made his notes.
"We can't do much," he said, "except let them know
he has friends, and bring the friends up if necessary."
"That often goes a long way. I can place a little
pressure from certain high quarters."
"I'll get as far through as I can the first thing in the
morning. Evidently there isn't much chance of prose-
cution. It's just a matter of the next ship. Did you
say he was a union man.?"
I gave this assurance.
"Now go back to your frivolity," I said, solemnly.
He went to fetch Irma. Her eyes were wide with
curiosity and excitement.
"We are being good citizens," I told her.
"Can't I help.?" she asked. The flush that started
under her eyes seemed to travel down to her bosom.
" Yes," I said. " You can urge Marshall to do his best."
She looked up at him. "I'm sure he will."
The excitement remained in her face. Would she
never be able to see me without that shadow.? Was she
losing it with Marshall? Why did I go away with a
blurred image of poor Karlov and a bright, staring image
of Ann?
PART SIX
Destinies
NEVERTHELESS, it seemed to me that I must
carry my news to Andy Crown, if I might do
so without getting him out of bed. A fortuity
had entangled me in the obHgation, and I found myself
suddenly drawn by a feeling of acute personal concern
for the fate of this single figure in the maelstrom. The
very smallness of this figure, its apparent insignificance
in the mass, its muflfled cry in the midst of the roar from
"the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly," accentuated
my sympathy. Perhaps a sense of this piercing dispro-
portion is most frequently felt by the victim himself.
Yet as a spectacle it has a mighty appeal.
A great robber, very likely the master train-bandit of
his time (he has since reformed), confided to me on a
certain occasion that he had more than once escaped
conviction by emphasizing the effect of sitting alone with
all the world against him. He insisted that there was
something in juries that hated to smash the defenseless
when the defenseless looked lonesome enough. But this
bandit was famous. He appealed to the imagination.
Moreover, he had the personal charm that might have
been expressed by blending the magnetism of a great
revivalist, the grace of a movie hero, and the serenity of
a glorified head waiter. He was incredibly and disas-
trously handsome. So that I could not accept his point
as a working principle. It was too plain that juries
20
298 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
believed that anyone who could be so good even at
stealing, and could look like that while he did it, was not
to be despitefully used. Also there had been the chance
that one might meet the bandit again.
These ironies crept into my mind while I considered
Karlov and the bitter futility of his isolation. I read
allegory into his plight, which had about it no dramatic
glamour. To the system he would be negligible in any
conflict with the needs of a formula. When loud voices
said "String them up!" or, "Stand them against a wall!"
the paroxysms took account, not of souls, but of irrita-
tions. As Marshall had complained in the matter of
the C. O., the willingness to be abstractly brutal led
straight to the personally murderous. Unfortunately,
the reactionary was ready with the same complaint about
the radical of the left, whose idealistic "Turn things
over!" so often had murder at the end of it. Both were
ready to forget the individual. Both smugly arrogated
the aspirations of the mass. . . .
Andy Crown heard me in a speechless rigidity. He
who was so ready to slash with words, and who had a
picture-perdition for all opponents, stood there with
loosened lips as if stricken by an irretrievable calamity.
He swung a chair out of his way as if to face me fully in
a challenge to explain whether I knew what I was talking
about. Karlov arrested as a Red? Good God! "What a
— tomfoolery !
"A Red?" He glared his sense of outrage. "Why,
they might as well have taken me!"
"I'm afraid, Crown," I said, "that you wouldn't do.
It is quite plain that you're an exploiter."
He sank into his old chair with a twist that indicated
a concession to one of his legs.
" I tell you the boy is simply a sentimentalist."
"The United States," I said, "is drawing a color line
in sentimentalism."
"Sometimes I have called him a fool," and Crown
DESTINIES 299
banged his mighty fist. "A fool! Sometimes I thought
he was a rare kind. I don't know any fool like him. But
the United States has something better to do than ferret
out fools."
I suggested that it was too late to decide that.
It was monstrous, he insisted — absolutely monstrous
— with a fearful danger in it. Why couldn't our people
have a little of the sense of the English and let them
talk it off? Every exile became a blazing star in the sky
of radicalism. Every thinker felt taunted and goaded.
One man went away, and a thousand smoldering men
broke into a flame. Where was the profit in that? In
the front of capitalism you saw the greedy and the logi-
cal. In the front of radicalism you saw the greedy and
the sentimental. Why not let them sputter their way
through? Couldn't they take the hint from nature that
fermentation had to have a vent? It was nature they
were defying, not culprits.
Crown harangued as if I were implicated.
Then his head drooped into those hairy hands, and he
groaned out, "What can we do?"
That, I said, was something that Marshall would find
out. I had not come to urge action. I thought he ought
to know. Of his sympathy and understanding I was sure.
We were confronted, not by individual animus, but by
the weight of a cumbersome machine. The machine,
started by collective fear, by a mass-instinct to claw
defensively, could not discriminate. Karlov might be
dragged out of the way. The boy himself would make
no compromises. If his notion of honesty threatened to
kill him, his head would be ready.
"Yes," shouted Crown, his eyes lighting fiercely, "you
can't shake him. You might as well argue with a magnet
or a plumb line. But even the stupidity of hired correc-
tion ought to be able to see that he could never hurt
anybody."
The trouble was, I said, that hired correction —
300 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"I know," he rasped, bitterly, "no eyes. Just speci-
fications. They have a damnable set of specifications.
Before the war the application of such a formula would
have put a big part of our best men in jail. Having
fought a war to establish brotherhood and the loftiest
possible form of liberty — well, maybe the Lord God
understands the trick. Who knows? — He may have in-
vented it to make the whole cowardly crew of reaction-
aries ridiculous. We had to have gun fodder in the war
to make that ridiculous. Perhaps Karlovs are needed
for fuel in this war. The seventh angel's job has got to
be finished. ..."
Marshall's report was not encouraging. Karlov had
been deposited in the most convenient police station for
the night. The next morning, after a session at the D. J.
oflace, he had been taken to Ellis Island, that purgatory
of the unaccepted. Marshall had not been able to see
him as yet. Save for the matter of Karlov's own state
of mind, that was unimportant, and the fact that I had
given assurance to him of whatever friendly help could
be offered was of itself perhaps the best mental aid that
might be given for the present.
I regretted that Marshall had not known Karlov.
Had he known him he might, I thought, have been more
deeply kindled. Then I swung to a conviction that the
situation was better as it was. On the whole, it seemed
more desirable that he should be incited by the principle
rather than by personal compassion. In the matter of
such a plea the personal can be a serious hindrance. I
saw him as profoundly aroused by the typical case. The
men who had been made the eyes of the nation were to
look at Karlov and decide whether he was a danger. No
sentiment of personal concern could be of any service in
influencing the decision. It was enough that Marshall
tingled with an emotion of the injustice in such an attack,
and was sufficiently convinced of its futility and danger
DESTINIES 301
as a political expedient. He had made his emotions and
his convictions so clear, long before there was any Karlov
to consider, that I felt assured of his fighting ardor.
Meanwhile, after full consultation with him, I went
about the business of bringing certain influences to bear —
fair-play influences that seemed of right to belong to a
just measurement.
Incidentally I took occasion to have a talk with Hester
Royce. She was never the judge with me, but neither
did she ever forget that she was a judge, and that the
thing called law was not to be trifled with. She had a
way of reminding me that for the very reason that we
were not made for law but that law was made for us
a definite obligation on our part was set up. Naturally,
this occasioned the remark on my part that if we were
to be sensitive to this obligation it would be a good idea
that we should be able to keep on feeling, with regard to
any law, that it was not only made for us, but was
actually worth being made at all; and particularly that
it should be doing the thing that was expected of it.
Quite judicially she made clear her point that when a
law happened its application and reactions must happen
also.
"And if we don't like the application and reactions
we must change the law — I know," I said. "Our
wonderful democracy is brought up on that. But I
don't need to remind you — "
"That there are many ways of applying a law — I know
that too," she cast back at me. "Just as there are many
ways of complaining about it — and of not doing much
else."
There was a lot more to our wrangle. Yet it was not
useless, for I emerged with certain practical bearings
of the Karlov case very clearly in my mind. Perhaps
I was a little more conscious of the fact that every
Karlov was a case; that the United States was afraid of
something, nervously afraid, and that if any individual
302 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
helped accentuate that fear, so much the worse for
him.
Ann had a view. There was a sort of innocence about
it, but it was a big innocence. She thought that most
injustices came from lack of knowledge of the individual
— «>f simple understanding. Justice went after kitids of
people — and there were no such things. What could
national justice, away off there in Washington, know
about a single person.? What could it know that M^as
true? The best it could do was get him classified as a
kind, and that was always an injustice when you got
close to the man. Maybe it was like schools — made for
kinds of children, when there were as many kinds as
there were children. Of course there ought to be a
justice for every single man.
"For that," I said, sadly, "we'll have to look to the
Great Ruler."
"All the same," said Ann, tenaciously, "the thing is to
fight all the time for the individual man — to keep on
trying to show that no man ought to be treated as a
kind."
She mused for a moment.
"I wish I could do something. I believe I could say
it to them."
That she should ever try so astonishing an adventure
never entered my thoughts.
II
I do not find that Christmas dinner devised by Mrs.
Wallace an altogether pleasant memory.
Although it was to be Ann's company, the fact that
it was Mrs. Wallace's device was responsible for a
queer character it took on. Her mother's friend was
not in Ann's confidence at all points. For example,
she was unaware of the situation with regard to Marshall,
which was unfortunate. She may have deserved Ann's
DESTINIES 303
reticence with her, yet her ignorance became an awkward-
ness all the same. It was, however, less awkward
than it might have been had she not been familiar with
the outward signs of the long friendship between Ann
and Marshall. These signs had included spaces of
animation and spaces of quiet. Just then — while the
dinner plan was being made — Marshall was invisible.
This not being without precedent occasioned no comment.
Moreover, Mrs. Wallace was ardently interested in
Halland. She regarded him as a very fine young man;
good looking, very much of a gentleman — and so prac-
tical. It struck Ann as perverse that Mrs. Wallace's
comments on Halland never by any chance emphasized
the qualities in him which Ann foimd most likable.
There was even a day when Mrs. Wallace took occasion
to compare the two men. Perhaps it was natural that
she should be more exuberant with regard to the man
who was newer to her, though as an effect this might
have resulted from taking Marshall's excellences for
granted.
"Sometimes, you know," Mrs. Wallace had said to
Ann, "I think Spot is flighty — excited. He didn't used
to be that way. He was so steady. But now he's all
for new ideas. There's no following him. I suppose
it was the war."
That Ann should be for new ideas Mrs. Wallace had
accepted as an unavoidable, and probably a passing,
vagary. But with men it was a more serious matter.
With men, for one thing, it had a direct bearing on
income.
That Marshall should be bidden to the Christmas
festival was taken for granted by the originator of the
affair. Once or twice she had known him to go West at
Christmas. There would be the question about that.
If Halland wasn't tied up in his family, he was to be
counted. Of course there would be Irma Kane and
Evelyn Dower — maybe there were others who wouldn't
304 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
otherwise be sitting at a home table. In a gust of feeling
Mrs. Wallace became rather sweeping. "Mr. Maxton
might like to bring some of the men. There's that
lively fellow — Mr. Ingle. At Christmas I just love to
have somebody who is lonesome. Can't you think of
somebody ....?" Mrs. Wallace was, in fact, emotionally
eager at the moment to strain to the utmost the hinges
of hospitality. This was betokened by a mental search
beyond the pale of her habitual sympathies, and reached
a fine crisis of liberality. "Maybe one of those queer
girls . . . like that Russian what's-her-name."
Including Lida seemed like a stroke of extremely
adventurous catholicity, yet Ann, who began by wincing
at Mrs. Wallace's ruthless initiative, ended by yielding
to a fascination in the prospect. There was a sort of
symbolism in the mixture. The innate disorder of
Mrs. Wallace's social outlook resulted at this juncture
in a list that somehow typified for Ann the heterogeneity
of the time. One had all sorts of friends and acquaint-
ances, but one did not always choose to emphasize their
variances by contact, to hazard dissonance by seeking
to fuse them in a chord. There were, however, oc-
casions . . . like Christmas, when fusing was promised
by the pressure of sentiment. Yes, Ann finally enjoyed
the notion of a recklessly inclusive party.
Her acquiescence explained the character of that
company, and certain uneasiness that went with it. I
could not get rid of a sense of its explosive possibilities,
and if the potential detonations were not actually to
be heard, I went on feeling the submerged threat.
In the interest of balancing the table, after she knew
that both Stella Hayes and Lida were coming, Mrs.
Wallace took the liberty of asking her old friend Mr.
Tomes, of the Central Electric, and induced Halland
to bring a friend who had been near him in France, a
Mr. Fessenden. Tomes, with a bald space, a white
mustache, a wide smile, and a torrent of stories, in-
DESTINIES 303
dulged a mediaeval gallantry. Fessenden was shy and
whimsical. He added to an effect of highly experienced
youthf Illness a waiting caution, as if warned by previous
experiences in going too far. He brought a mandolin.
Prodigies of shrewdness and an immoral expenditure
enabled Mrs. Wallace to secure a benignant-looking
colored serving man, as well as a special assistant to
Clarice, so that the dinner itself (the summons came at
two o'clock) was permitted to function as formally as
Mrs. Wallace wished. I fancy that Lida decided that
the manner of the dinner was unreservedly bourgeois.
Mrs. Wallace's practice of a sideboard carving for the
extraordinary turkey avoided the hazards that might
have accompanied an honor that would have gone,
I suspect, to Mr. Tomes, who had, indeed, an old family
look, but who did not suggest efficiency as a carver.
Mr. Tomes would have endeavored to maintain that
casual and diverting flow of talk which, when it is
punctuated with the faint gasps induced by the major
surgery, is known to make carving the supreme distress
of a dinner. As it was, Mr. Tomes's flow, being with-
out the gasps, happily lubricated the first phase of the
meal. When the younger element had established its
pace, Mr. Tomes was rather crowded for vocal room,
and had to content himself with pla^-f ul spurts, in which
he enjoyed himself vastly.
By one of those natural processes never to be traced,
Jimmy Ingle came to the fore, perhaps in a give-and-take
with Fessenden. I detected in Marshall a frank new
discovery of Jimmy. AMiat was more peculiar, Lida
seemed to discern something very interesting in Jimmy's
ebullitions. Possibly he was a new sort to her. Stella
Hayes I suspected of knowing Fessenden's type very
well, as from an earlier era. It appeared to be agreeable
to her, as part of the game, to revert to him amiably.
^Vhenever Halland spoke, Irma watched Ann. On
Irma's part there was, I had no doubt, a deep dislike
80G THE SEVENTH ANGEL
for Halland. He fixed a certain matter in her mind.
He had been, indeed, the special occasion of a calamity,
and was to be charged with that to the end of time. If
Ann cared for him, appraisement must be under control.
Irma was certain never to forgive him, but she might
have to seem to forget.
For me Ann had a shadowed radiance. She was under
a kind of elation and was as animated in word and man-
ner as one might have asked her to be. I am sure that
a stranger, and perhaps most of her friends, would have
remarked her mood as delightful. Her color was high;
her eyes had a deep brilliancy of response. An eager
gayety appeared in every flash and turn. The trouble
was that I saw it as an eagerness rather than as a true
reflection of the emotion lying below. Her conscience
was happier than she was.
m
I was sensitive to this because I had my own guilt.
I was not brooding, but it was impossible not to feel, as
from a vantage point aside, the potentialities in this
group. Every human group holds its elements of drama,
and we might make grotesque mistakes in assuming to
measiu^e cliances. The dullest assemblage of figures —
a pair, perhaps, vacuously living out, in an animal stu-
pidity, some routine of existence under the most prosaic
circumstances — may be nourishing the germ of the pro-
foundest tragedy. Nothing could be more unprofitable
than looking apprehensively at these faces. I think I
ought to do myself the justice to insist that I was not
really apprehensive. Yet I knew too much to be tranquil.
This was the day that saw "peace on earth," and there
was no avoiding the sense of inevitable conflict. If you
like, it was an elderly feeling, this consciousness of lurk-
ing passions and complexities. In a group of the old we
see this complexity historically, in the fixed residuum of
DESTINIES 307
dregs — or, let us say, more equitably, of crystallization.
In the young the forces that have yet to find their way,
that have yet to come to grips, are to be read like lines
of living fire under the perishable film of circumstances.
To the old the thought must always be as poignant as
if it had never been thought before. Only the old can
fully realize that foolish youth, making the great deci-
sions, determines the inner drama of life that ever colors
the big one; and this thought, trite as time, breeds mis-
givings that belong to the foolishness of the old.
"Mr. Maxton," chirped Mrs. Wallace, out of the med-
ley, "you are awfully quiet to-day."
"No wonder," tossed Jimmy. "No chance for a
look-in."
"Some one has to have a little dignity," said Stella
Hayes.
"And do the listening," added Evel;yTi.
"And tell us the real truth," suggested Ann, mis-
chievously.
"The real truth," I said, "is that you embarrass me
very much."
"Of course," added Marshall, "he wouldn't really tell
us, but it's a safe bet that he hasn't been able to think
about the League of Nations."
"Then we have performed a benevolence," summed
up Mr. Tomes.
"Well," cried Mrs. W^allace, "it is the children's day,"
which was greeted with a derisive chorus.
"When Ann was a little girl," ISIrs. Wallace began.
"Please don't!" protested Ann.
"Oh, it's nothing scandalous, my dear!"
("Too bad!" whispered Jimmy.)
"I was just going to tell about the time Allen Marshall
threw mud on Ann's dress. I think he didn't mean to
do it, but it was done. She caught him — she was the
quickest runner you ever heard of — and managed some-
how to get his face into a puddle of mud."
308 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Good work!" said Mr. Tomes, without realizing that
the victim was listening.
"But that isn't the point," continued Mrs. Wallace.
"I hope not," murmured Ann.
"The point is that when Mrs. Marshall, in some dis-
tress, recited the incident to Mrs. Forrest, Ann piped
up, 'It's your fault for having a boy.'"
There was a simulated groan from several of the
men.
"How she has changed!" chuckled !Mr. Tomes.
"Why not give it all.'*" said Marshall, whose face had
a bit of a flush. "They tell me that the next day Ann
said to me, 'Of course you've got to be a boy now. It
isn't your fault.' You see, she had a very keen sense of
justice."
Ann emerged from the laugh with lips parted. "I out-
grew the dress," she said, enigmatically.
IV
I recall vividly the fantasy of Fessenden seated
gnomishly on a rug, strumming the mandolin; and, of
all unexpected combinations, Lida Santzeff at the piano,
her fingers flickering like a wild wind over the keyboard.
The piano, to which Lida had gone without invitation,
was bourgeois, but I fancied that she had been long
enough without the feel of one to hunger for it. She
drifted toward the keys as one with a sudden ravenous
emotion might be lured to an odorous display of food;
or as, under other impulsion, one might be drawn to a
gorgeous bank of flowers, or to a great picture. She had
an extraordinarily magnetic touch, a nervous, imagina-
tive phrasing that gave a coloration eerie and original to
every sound she made. I was not sure that I liked the
effect. It was arresting, and even brilliant, but there
was a suggestion of the pathological that made the nerves
uneasy. I did not recognize the first thing she swept
DESTINIES 309
into. The piece of Brahms that came after was a familiar
elf in a new garb. Fessenden fumbled to invent a second.
When Lida's fingers drifted into a scene of Tschaikow-
sky's, Fessenden seemed to be on ground he knew. His
tinkle added a quaintly romantic glitter.
Ann may have seen something, for she exclaimed, sud-
denly, "Irma — why not?"
Irma, whose hands had been clasped over her knees,
sat back with a quick flush and a deprecating hesitation.
"Oh no! It's so long since . . ."
"Nonsense!" Ann whispered, through the music. "It
would be just the thing!"
No one understood, save, perhaps, myself. The in-
tense blue of Irma's eyes interrogated the group. Then
she was up. She looked dazed, but kindled. It was as
if all of us had been swept away like an illusion, leaving
a space bare to the drenching light of the music.
At her first gesture Tomes and Marshall drew back
intruding chairs.
Mrs. Wallace clapped her hands. " What a delightful
idea!"
Irma did not hear her. She moved slowly across the
appointed circle of floor, evoking with her arms the first
outlines of an idyllic picture. Her fingers became petals
in a softly fluttering dream-garden into which presently
came the footfall of dryads.
Her mauve gown had not been cut for an interpretative
dance, and there were, I assumed, restrictions. Yet she
contrived to make that interlude amazingly rich in dra-
matic suggestion. The play of her figure, every step or
sway, seemed always to be transmuting some subtlety
of the musical lines with an uncanny responsiveness
until that odd, poetic crisis of invocation, and the
swooning finale that dissolved the amber and mauve
and flashing flesh that were Irma into a heap before us.
The last note was followed by a little tempest of ap-
plause, and there were cries for "More!" led by an
310 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
illuminated Jimmy. Irma stood up with an emerging
smile, then turned to Lida Santzeff.
"Do you know that dance in 'Sylvia'? Ann has it on
the phonograph, but . . ." There was a whispered con-
sultation at the piano.
"Never mind that," protested Ann, who seemed to
know what was coming.
Irma turned with signs of an excited daring.
"The way we did it that night!" she said.
" No, no ! " Ann seemed intensely embarrassed. When
it was clear that she was challenged to participation there
was a spirited clamor. Jimmy Ingle, ever unabashed,
simulated a fanfare.
"Miss Forrest and Miss Kane," announced Mr. Tomes.
Unless I was profoundly deceived, Ann went through
several seconds of an extremely painful indecision.
Other eyes might have seen a mere diffidence, the com-
mon reluctance of the prodded amateur. I thought I
saw more than that. . . . But it is perhaps foolish to at-
tempt to set down my impressions. I am certain to find
them entangled with later perceptions and reactions. . . .
If they had danced together in some high moment of an
earlier time, there would have been a clear sky for them
. . . nothing but sky, with no world at all; no eyes, either,
near or in the rim of space. For Ann, at least, simply
the infinite ether of young imagination. Even Irma,
with her conjuring facility, might have snatched an
obliviousness glittering and complete. But this was a
different moment. It asked no words, only mute, physi-
cal poetry, a playful flinging of the mantle of fancy, a
trivial dance that could unreservedly pretend. Yet the
light challenge must have touched the quick of Ann's
emotions, must have revealed in a luminous instant
how the very fiber of her had suffered a strain that made
this particular response acutely difficult. The call was
not for a thought or a wish, but for a feeling, a simple,
elemental feeling, that would suddenly have found itself
DESTINIES 311
without the heat to stir. There would have been a
dazed astonishment for that, perhaps a kind of indigna-
tion that anything within the dominion of the will should
be discovered to have nursed grievances of its own, with
a power of its own that defied reason and sulked at a
summons.
I thought she paled a trifle as she arose with that lying
smile. I knew she had taken herself by the throat, that
the very triviality of this demand accentuated her re-
sentment and pricked the heels of her bravado. It was
as if she had said to herself that she would show her
emotions what she could do with them,
Irma held out her hands. Lida Santzeff struck into
the dance that began like a zephyr.
Doubtless it was a beautiful thing. Certainly that
audience was rapt and enthusiastic.
I was freshly amazed by the revelation of the sugges-
tive resources of music ... by the wonder of the com-
poser's power to visualize through spattered hieroglyphs
an imagery rich and specific in detail; to indicate a spring,
a waterfall, a chalice, a garland, a blaze of sunlight, a cool
gush of air out of mysterious recesses, white bodies, pas-
sions, and even the pall of the impending. I was the
more amazed to see two separate minds reading suflS-
ciently far to verify the authenticity of the romance and
to be making plausibly real through other sophistries
the fancy of that remote other mind.
I can recall images of Irma — as if she were the zephyr,
a zephyr freighted with tiny and darting golden wings.
But it is the image of Ann that is indelible. I had never
apprehended this phase of her. INIaking all allowance
for the magic of the music, she seems to me to have been
transformed in a quite bewildering sense. I think of her
not as a figure in the dance — the dance, as such, is a
hazy matter with me — but as a luminous spirit, detached
and defiant; detached even when her hands touched
Irma's in the swing and dip of the rhythmic painting.
312 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
She was, for the time, shaken free of everything, even of
herself. Something in the twinge of rebeUion, I had
imagined, may have flung her desperately far. I could
not tell. I did not know this lithe, shimmering, aban-
doned bit of poetry. . . . There was a moment when I
thought she came to the top of her effort, when she felt
that she had reached the lifting currents. I sensed this
in the leaping light of her eyes as she poised with arms
raised opposite Irma. And she was a radiant Ann at
that instant.
Yet when it was over and she came through the clatter
of applause and comment to sit beside me, something
that had been in her look was already beginning to lose
its bloom. Nevertheless her bravado had had its moment.
I leaned close to whisper, "I think you won out."
"I had to," she said.
It was my recollection of that dance, and of some of
the other phases of the curious Christmas joarty, that
gave a sharpness of surprise to my discovery that during
the holiday time Ann went to see Andy Crown, and
talked with him about Karlov. Evidently something in
the young Russian's catastrophe had seized her strongly.
She had found her individual case. Her one glimpse of
Karlov became immensely significant to her. Lida Sant-
zeff gave further information. Whatever it was it did
not cool her ardor. She seems to have seen the thing as
an outstanding instance that invited a close look. Any-
one else would, I am sure, have gone about it differently.
Perhaps any other situation with regard to Marshall
would have suggested consultation with him. It may
be that in the best circumstances she would have avoided
the chance of being checked by him or by me. As usual,
she wanted to know for herself.
That note from her was quite characteristic. It indi-
cated that I, too, was to have no privilege of interposing.
DESTINIES 313
"I'm off to Washington, I've heard of a man. I
want to look at him and say some things to him — about
Karlov. It's about time I looked the United States
squarely in the face. You can't tell — I mightn't find it
such a fool."
This impudence occurred soon after the holidays. It
appears that Garvel had been notified of a necessary
absence for a few days. He had stared, growled, and
assented, "There's something I want . . ." he had
begun. But it would wait. It was evident enough that
it had to wait. And Ann, without document or device,
invaded the capital.
It was impossible to guess what she might have had
in her mind except that it was likely to be some notion
of going across lots where others took the twisting road.
I was prepared for her chagrin and for the tirade that
might reasonably go with it. There would be a great
many circumstances of which she would take no account
at all, particularly the necessary intricacy of the ma-
chinery of justice — the necessary intricacy of any very
large machinery. She had said "a man." I surmised
that this was not the attorney-general himself. That
she expected to reach her man did not astonish me. I
expected that she would. Any intervening obstacles were
likely to find that she was rather good at getting through.
But it was at this point that her confidence was en-
dangered and humiliation invited. This Goliath had
many foreheads.
Yet, when she came back she was in high spirits,
so high that I felt better for Karlov than for her
discipline.
"Of course I didn't ask you, because you would have
said no. So would Spot. Spot would have been indig-
nant. You would only have been wise. And then I
shouldn't have seen things. At least, not if I had
obeyed."
"No ritual for you will ever have 'obey' in it," I said.
21
314 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"You know," she exclaimed, in a rush of enthusiasm,
"I said to you that we were wrong so often when we
talked about kinds of people — oh, I said that to my man !
— well, it applies to people at capitals. They're not
kinds. They're just folks, most of them. Maybe this
means that it is systems that deserve most of the blame.
Anyway, I think that's a good idea of mine — as good as
if I stole it from you. I told my man I was flabbergasted
to find he wasn't a monster — that he was a human being
— a 7nan, mind you, like the rest. 'There you have it,'
I said to him. 'This Karlov is a man, too. Can't you
think this out that way — as if this creature you have put
into a cage, as if he were a wild beast, might actually be
a man? Aren't you going to get close and see whether
something hasn't been hung on him that isn't part of
him at all? Aren't you going to find out whether he —
the man himself, under all the words — is anything that
ought really to frighten the United States — the United
States that said, 'Come unto me, all ye that labor and
are hea^'y laden'?"
"You must have made a speech," I said, with an
imperfectly concealed delight.
"I made several. I asked him whether he didn't think
it was tempting Providence to let a gang rush around, as
in a Huguenot massacre, marking doorposts. I told him
I didn't know much about history, but that an old
woman in Epernay told me how the French king screeched
in a delirium before the specters of the murdered — how
he tried to shut out the cries of the butchered ones. 'It
would be an awful thing,' I said, 'if a lot of perfectly
good American men should find themselves some day
thinking of other men w^ho had been beaten up, or
chucked out of the country, or both, because somebody
had smeared their doorposts.'"
"And did your man stammer, 'The prisoner is freed'?"
"I think he wanted to," said Ann, unabashed. "He
wouldn't have stammered in any case. He isn't the
DESTINIES 315
stammering kind. He is a backbonish sort of man.
Very plain and fair. No fumbling. He made a little
speech, too. Short and clear, and looking straight at
me. He told me what trouble they were taking (I knew
it was what trouble he was taking) to avoid the chance
that a mere accusation might condemn anyone — how
they should be, and were, eager to take account of the
fact that the accused couldn't defend himself as under an
ordinary criminal accusation. My theory, he said, was
an honest enough theory, but I must remember that a
great many respected Americans, including three Presi-
dents, had been killed by quiet men. A dreamer's
bullet hurt just as much as any other's. And when
dreamers — if I liked to call them that — got together to
dream a collective dream, and that dream specifically
included murder, it was a practical thing not to wait
until their dream came true."
"Rather neat," I said.
"Oh, he was neat enough," Ann continued. "Neat
as a knife. But all the time I saw something very human
in his eyes. He went on to tell me — I'm sure he shouldn't
have taken the time, but — "
"I know," I said.
"He told me that the very danger to the country in
dreams of revolution necessarily put in jeopardy a great
many men who weren't dreaming in terms of murder at
all. Possibly a good many people carried guns without
thinking of what haj^pened when the guns went off.
What the United States was doing was very largely a
matter like disarming. When men didn't like the way
a club was managed they might be allowed to remain
members. But there was a point of active, or even
menacing, disapproval, where they had to be expelled.
The United States had asked 'all ye that labor' to join.
That was quite true. It was a fair assumption, though,
that they wouldn't join unless they liked the club. Hav-
ing joined, the United States must see to it that they
316 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
played fair. Burning the clubhouse wouldn't be playing
fair. Didn't I agree to that?
"Of course mostly I had to agree to that. 'But it all
comes back,' I said, 'to what this fellow Karlov really
has done.' 'Doesn't it go back to more than that.?' he
asked me. ' Doesn't it go back to what he has threatened
to do? — to the real threat in his allegiances? We've got
to consider that — not by way of hanging him, you know,
but in deciding whether he can go on belonging to the
club.'
"You might think," said Ann, "that this made the
case look pretty dark. But all the time I kept on seeing
that human look. What he said was hard — terribly
logical. But there was something that wasn't hard back
of his eyes. I can't quite tell you how I got it, but I
know he will be fair to Karlov. And if he's fair he'll let
him free."
"The best thing you did," I said, "you haven't men-
tioned — naturally."
"What was the best thing?"
" To a man like that — and I'm glad there's such a man
there — the best thing you could do would be to illustrate,
as I believe you did, an absolutely unselfish human in-
terest. Washington sees so much of interest that is not
like that—"
"Oh, pshaw!" cried Ann. "Don't make me out a
saintly affair."
"I'd like to praise your arguments — I do praise them
— but all the same, when it comes to the work of human-
izing an abstraction called the Accused, an Ann Forrest,
hustling over on her own initiative, with no right but her
citizenship, no plea or interest but simple humanity — "
"He said that," Ann declared. "He beat you to it!"
"If he said that, then I'm right about the best thing
you did."
"I don't care," said Ann, "if only they let Karlov go.
I've just taken a notion that I want that."
DESTINIES 317
She never seemed to care for anything save the white
center of whatever she sought. There had been some
trouble about the train — a cold delay that landed her
shivering in Washington; a cab she took in the flurry
of snow broke down; she was disappointed, and might
well have been irritated in her first call at the depart-
ment oflices; at the hotel some stupidity resulted in her
being shown by a semiconscious negro boy to a room
in which a woman had taken poison that morning. . . .
The room was disordered, the bed unmade.
These things seemed to be negligible.
I wondered how she would manage defeat.
I was to see her in a time of failure, but not yet.
VI
Garvel had said that he would like Ann to make a
little investigation. There was an implication that she
might do more than investigate. But he was not amply
informatory as to this.
At the recollection of the word "strike" I seem to see
an ugly doorway, a square-headed little woman, and a
group of girls ... a multitude of girls, surging like the
populace in an allegory. If it had been allegory it would
have suggested a fearfully feminine ensemble — as in
Charlotte Oilman's fable of the land peopled wholly by
women.
Into this picture came Ann.
Although she did not know it, Halland was ahead of
her.
The oflSce mutterings about strikes, after having an
apprehensive sound at the beginning, had begun to have
a commonplaceness for Ann. The word itself continued
to carry a detonation. There was a thud in it, as if a
huge fist — not ordinarily big like Garvel's, but colossal,
with epic forces running into its knotted shape — were
pounding against the mailed door of the Established.
318 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Yet the sounds seemed to be silenced again and again,
until one lost the sense of immediate anxiety as to what
might happen if the sounds Were not silenced. Evidently
the sound could always be stopped with money. If
more than money were needed it was never very clear
what the other elements might be. In any case, Garvel
believed in anaesthetics.
Ann heard the murmurs as to a "general strike."
These murmurs might sometimes have been described as
a roar, but a roar that died down and left one to specu-
late as to whether he had not heard the last of it —
whether anxieties had not been childish. Ann became
keenly interested in the muttered reactions at the head-
quarters of business.
Garvel's confidence that anything could be doped into
passivity evidently had parallel convictions. Naturally,
x\nn never saw clearly the strategy of these supplemen-
tary activities. To those who believed in hidden forces
the general strike was to be the beginning of revolution.
Europe unrolled its precedents. Garvel never betrayed
a fear. Whether he could really see into the future or
merely had a superior way of figuring that two and two
make four, Ann couldn't guess. There was nothing
about him that made Ann think of seeing into the future.
When each thing happened there was a next move, and
the next move was predicated on something that was
likely to happen after that.
Generally Garvel seemed to be right as to what would
happen after that. It was new, unex-pected things that
slow^ed him down. These were often puzzling, even
infuriating, possibly because they didn't always have
very clearly a next-move side to them. They them-
selves might not be moves at all. Perhaps they were
just sounds — not a thud like the sound of a strike, but
more like creeping or scurrying sounds that come from
beyond the edges of managed spaces. Then, once in a
while, there was an individual figure that arose uncon-
DESTINIES 319
trollably, so much alone that it loomed massively and
menacingly — an individual figure that refused to know
that it was ludicrous as against the multitude of all
others — and that, because it refused to know and broke
all the rules, could be extraordinarily troublesome.
There was an instance of an individual figure of this
sort that Garvel brought to Ann's attention. It was of
a woman. The fate of nations was not at stake. It
was a small matter, in a way, but Garvel guessed that
it was typical, and it reached a certain importance on
that account. All sorts of crazy things were happening.
There was a method of straightening them out, but you
had to have the facts. Sending anybody to learn what
these facts were amounted to jumping over a good many
heads. For this reason Ann was to go quietly.
I have a confused idea of the matter. It began, in-
deed, with a confusion in one of those little, localized
rebellions that so often seemed to say, as in a squeaking
voice, that which had been muttered in seemingly end-
less waves of a larger voice. It was to be called little
because it represented a single factory, yet the crowd
in that snow-incrusted street near the river gave Ann
the impression of an immense human upheaval. It
seemed to stretch to the horizon. Its shrill murmur arose
to the sky.
The woman whom Ann described as little and square-
headed had refused to discharge girls discovered in
unionizing activities. Worse than that, she had been
found openly favoring the union idea. Soon afterward
she had been removed. Her department — some two hun-
dred girls — refused to work unless she was reinstated.
Moreover, the revolt spread. Other departments walked
out, and at a moment quite awkward for this particular
phase of the clothing industry. On the morning when
Ann arrived, the extent of the rebellion was still in doubt.
Probably over five hundred operatives had seceded and
were clamoring and intriguing crudely to keep others
320 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
from work. A score of men had joined the strike and a
score or so of other men, made idle by the revolt, were
hovering in the lower recesses of the gaunt building.
Several policemen were visible; one of them grinningly
listened to the chorus of five girls, who all talked at
once.
Ann found the pivotal woman, and beside her Evelyn
Dower and Lida Santzeff .
It was Ann's first glimpse at close quarters of this
thing called a strike. She didn't know how it differed
from any other, but she was profoundly stirred. The
presence of Evelyn and Lida connected it with a lot of
philosophy and of drama she had indefinitely sensed.
Mrs. Mace was a quiet woman with a firm jaw. She had
passed the point of high personal excitement, but the
attrition of the crowd and the intensity of the situation
were reflected in her face. The street was very cold.
" Can't we get in somewhere and talk this over? " asked
Ann.
Mrs. Mace gave Ann a puzzled look.
"Call me just a friend," suggested Ann.
"She's all right," said Lida.
There was an open space where the motor trucks were
lined up. This was too small. They might get into the
delivery room, Mrs. Mace suggested. Ann asked her to
lead the way. The crowd began to follow them.
At the wide door suddenly appeared Halland, looking
quite resolute.
"We've shut down," he announced, without having
seen Ann.
He extended an arm across the opening. The gesture
had a military definiteness.
Ann stepped to the fore.
"We want to get somewhere out of the cold to talk
this over," she said.
Halland's startled stare must have been a bit gro-
tesque. He lifted his hat.
DESTINIES 321
"We've shut down," he repeated, sternly, very much
in his mihtary way.
"Who are you?" screamed a voice from the crowd.
Halland was not recognized. The plant was a sub-
sidiary of the industry in which he had recently been
elevated to the post of assistant manager. His appoint-
ment to frighten the rebels by shutting down the plant
was one of the first of his new responsibilities.
"I left my muff!" shouted a voice. There were other
shouts.
"Say work is stopped," said Ann. "I think we had
better have a talk. This street , . ."
"I'm sorry," interrupted Halland. "I have orders.
We've shut down." His arm barred the way.
Ann turned to Mrs. Mace. "Is there a committee?"
Mrs. Mace nodded, and began calling out the names.
The owners of the names seemed to be near at hand, like
a bodyguard.
"A few of us must talk this over," said Ann to Halland.
"These workers are part of this factory. They haven't
offices like the other part. I'll guarantee their good
behavior." (I don't know how she could do that, but
I believe she was sure.)
She moved deliberately to enter the door. Halland's
arm was slowly lowered.
At this there was a rush. When the noisy scramble
that dislodged Halland from his post had slowed down,
the shipping room was crowded.
Halland drove his way through from a side door
until he found Ann. She saw that his face was con-
torted, the lips and chin white, and in an odd way a
flush spread across his forehead and hung about his
eyes.
" Look here ! " he muttered, very close. " You've taken
advantage. . . . This isn't . . . Damn it! You once
checked me when I was wrong. This time . . . this time
you re wrong! Can't you see — "
322 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Tell your people a bunch of women rushed you,'
said Ann. "What could you do?"
vn
Halland's eyes retained a look of fury.
"You — it was a trick, . . . You've made me
ridiculous."
The jostling of the crowd and the pressure of those who
sought to get into the place wedged these two tightly
together.
"There's no harm in them," said Ann, with half of her
breath. "They're just workers."
"You see what they are!" gasped Halland.
There was a clatter of voices, with many variations of,
" Gee ! It's cold here ! " and, " Stop yer shoving ! " Laugh-
ter and squealings punctuated the shrill murmur. There
was the vapor of many breaths.
"They're yours if you can get them," said Ann.
Halland glared interrogatively. "Get . . .?"
"Talk to them."
But a figure had mounted a packing case. It was Lida
Santzeff . . . telling them to "stand together."
"We're standing, all right!" shouted a fat girl with a
ruddy face.
"You've got rights!" exclaimed Lida. "You're not
asking much, but you've got the right to get what
you're asking for. You won't get it unless you stick.
You are the producers. If you don't want them to
walk on your faces — if you don't want the capitalist
gang to . . ."
"Wait a minute!"
There was a fresh stir near the packing case, and Mrs.
Mace was up beside Lida.
"Wait a minute! This ain't an I. W. W. meeting!
Get this straight. I can't speak much — "
"You're all right, Ginger," came a chorus.
DESTINIES 323
"WTiat I mean is," said Mrs. Mace, in a husky
treble, "that we ain't saying nothing about the owners
if they'll give us a chance. Somebody's dead wrong
about this — "
"And it ain't us!" screamed a voice.
"No, it ain't us — not if we hold on tight to — to the —
to the principle. The principle! That's it. The union
idea. That's all this is about. Don't let us have any
dirty stuff here. I don't mean — " and she glanced at
Lida. "I mean no rough-house or fooling or anything
but standing for a thing that's fair. I didn't begin
this union talk, but I stood for it. I believe in it.
The union's coming — ^for everybody. The bosses has
got to see it. Just because they're all women here I
don't see — "
"Ginger, you're all right," repeated the chorus.
" I got fired for letting the union work go on. What-
ever happens to me, you go ahead and get the union
settled. You'll get it if you — "
"If you fight for it!" Lida swung in with a slashing
gesture. " Fight ioriV."
"Holding together— that's the fighting that '11 do it!"
added Mrs. Mace.
There must have been something fantastic enough
about the spectacle of Lida and Mrs. Mace side by side
on the box. The spectacle appears to have had its effect
on Halland.
Suddenly his voice boomed.
"Let me say a word!" he demanded.
He seems to have made a very unfortunate speech.
Ann was certain that it was definitely the wrong kind —
the kind, possibly, that bosses used to make a good many
years ago. Its paternal touch was received in silence,
and the thrust of authority brought derision.
"How about them lunch rooms we was to have?"
"And that overtime scale?"
"How about the union?"
324 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
When Halland hesitated over the interruptions there
was laughter, and the laughter dazed him. The flush
appeared again on his forehead.
"We want Mrs. Mace!"
The voices caught this up. They began to chant it.
" We— want— IVIrs.— Mace ! "
Halland could not be heard. He raised a hand, then
waved both arms angrily.
"This factory is closed down! Get out before I call
the police!"
This produced louder laughter.
"Before they go!" called Ann, gesticulating for Hal-
land's attention. He peered down at her stupidly, then
actually helped her to a place on the box, stepping down
himself.
Ann assured me that she didn't make a speech. No,
it wasn't a speech. She simply told them that she was
an outsider; that she worked in another line; but some-
times an outsider could see things. She saw that in
fighting for Mrs. Mace they were fighting for the privi-
lege of getting together and understanding one another
and making themselves understood to the people they
worked for. If the management had removed Mrs.
Mace because she was interested in unions she believed
the management would find that it was wrong. (Loud
noises of approval.) In Ann's opinion anyone who wasn't
interested in unions was a back number, (Another din
of indorsement.) And anyone who thought unions were
a good thing for men, but that women could be fooled
into doing without them, needed to be waked up out
of a dangerous sleep. (Cries of, "You're all right!"
and, "Kid, you said it!") The important thing, in
Ann's opinion, was that they should know what they
wanted, and hold together. One reason why women
often didn't get a square deal was that they didn't
hold together,
"I'd hke to ask you," said Ann, "if you'll let me — will
DESTINIES 325
everyone here who works in this factory hold up her
hand?"
The flutter of gloved and bare hands extended to the
door and out through the passage. Girls in the street,
seeing the signal, followed the gesture.
" That means all of you," said Ann. " Now, will every-
one here who wants to belong to a union raise her hand.^
. . . Good heavens! Some of you are voting double — but
you work with both hands, too. Anyway, that's unani-
mous, as I see it. Once more — ^just to make it clear — so
that nobody can say he didn't know — how many of you
want Mrs. Mace?"
This time a sharp shout accompanied the vote.
"That seems to be unanimous again," said Ann.
"Now I know. Now everybody knows. I haven't any
right at all to offer it, but would you listen to a word of
advice from me?"
"Sure! — Shoot!" screamed the voices.
" My advice is to let it go at that for to-day."
Halland stood with his hands savagely jammed into
the pockets of his fur coat when the last of the chattering
crowd had gone, perhaps not unconscious of certain
workmen figures that lurked vaguely in distant door-
ways.
Ann, who had told Mrs, Mace that she would meet her
in the street, stopped before him.
They were, you see, face to face again after many
months — face to face in the midst of his struggle with
his old enemy. My impression is that anger always
interested Ann, but Ilalland again missed tlie luck of
making it seem important. A flame needs its altar.
Even in this setting controlled rage had looked little.
"After all," Ann said, "this was a woman's affair."
"I should say it was," he repHed, sulkily.
"If they're fit to work they're fit to have a voice."
"A voice? — do you see what you've done?"
326 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"I'll take my chance with Garvel."
" Lord ! " Halland fixed upon her an incredulous stare.
"Garvel didn't tell you . . .? "
"No," said Ann. " I'm going to tell him."
In the street Ann was confronted by Lida Santzeff.
"Very clever," said Lida, with her glitter. "You
have sugared things over."
Ann was puzzled, and doubtless gave that sign.
"It can be done," Lida went on. "It's plausible."
" What else could . . .? " Ann halted in her perplexity.
"Like chloroform," Lida flung out in her staccato.
"Dopes the fight impulse. Leaves them quite flabby
and manageable. Really, as compared with that male
boob in there — "
"Must you have fight?" Ann demanded.
" If we're to get anywhere."
Ann faced her squarely. "I think you're old-fash-
ioned. There's a better trick. I don't think you should
let the money crowd monopolize it."
"Rot!" cried Lida. "Nothing but real fight will
ever beat the money crowd. It's the only thing they're
afraid of. You can fool these girls with words. The
money crowd has to see the weapon."
"They've been seeing it for thousands of years,"
returned Ann, "and they don't seem to be shivering
much. No. I think you're wrong. I think — "
"Why, the money crowd has you!" Lida exclaimed,
with a bitter sharpness.
" Oh, I see ! " Ann began to understand. She touched
Lida's shoulder. "I hope you won't be too sure of that
— even if they don't fire me when they hear of this."
VIII
Ann's dispute with Garvel came close to ending her
experiment in big business.
DESTINIES 327
Garvel did not, indeed, insist on taking the striking
women solemnly. He adhered fairly to his first state-
ment that this particular disturbance was a small enough
matter.
But Ann's report took on a troublesome color. It was
in the talk growing out of the report that the lightnings
played.
"And so," he said, with his chin down, "I have one of
these industrial revolutionists here in my own office!"
"As for that," returned Ann, "what better place could
you have one? Right where you can — "
"I didn't hire you for a — what do they call them? —
provocative agent. No. Not for a financial adviser,
either."
"I don't know all you hired me for," said Ann. "You
didn't hire me for a fireman, for instance, but I threw a
bucket of water on your paper basket the other day when
somebody's cigarette started a blaze."
A stenographic report of that wrangle would have been
interesting.
Garvel's reasons for not telling Ann to go are part of
his mystery.
It may be that Ann's bit of self -revelation following her
remark that "somehow she expected big business to be
big," intrigued him. He must have been willing to listen.
It may have occurred to him that because the incident in
question was, as Ann had said to Halland, a woman's
affair, there was as good a reason for listening to her as
for sending her in the first place. Probably he did not
need to be informed by Ann that women's affairs were
going to play an increasingly large part in the world,
though some of her deductions from this situation may
have had for him a certain novelty.
I am not sure that Ann gave me a strictly accurate
report of what she said. Such a report would naturally
gather up a good deal of all that she thought and felt.
This did not matter to me. At least, the vivid thing that
328 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
survived was the revelation of her summed-up impressions
of business.
Of course it was a game. She wanted to begin with
that.
She did not suggest this as a discovery of her own. In
fact, she had often heard it called a game without think-
ing what calling it a game might mean. The point was
that, for her, calling it a game now gathered all that was
good about it and all that was bad — except the good
and bad found in the measurement of individuals as
such. . . .
She had seized this game idea with an amazing ardor.
She was sure that if people would approach business, big
or little, from this angle, they would come sooner to an
understanding of what must be done about it.
It was Garvel who accomplished her awakening. As
one of the big players in the game he had made the image
big enough to stand out. It stood out tremendously.
And she knew that his thick neck was only incidental.
A brutality in business resulted not from the thickness of
anybody's neck, but from the simple syllogism of the
game. If you accepted a football book of rules you
stopped asking anybody to be gentle. The roughness
went with it. Two perfect gentlemen could wear each
other down in boxing. Deception was basic. You didn't
call it lying in checkers. It wasn't lying in tennis when
you pretended that you were going to drive to the back
line, then made a whirlwind crosscut. It wasn't lying to
pretend elaborately and circumstantially that you were
running around the end with the football when the real
trick was a plunge in th ^ center or a foreward pass. The
chagrin of the outwitted was upon their own heads. To
learn the other man's mind and to conceal your own —
these went with all face-to-face games, and no competitive
game, face to face or elsewise, asked you to take less
than all you could get.
The presumptive gentleman's code in business had
DESTINIES 320
nothing to do with taking less than all you could get, nor
with deceptions that were part of the necessary strategy.
Probably you didn't properly call a diplomat a liar when
you were speaking of his business — of his game. Evi-
dently there was, everywhere, the game lie and the per-
sonal lie. Ann was confident that Garvel was not a
personal liar. But she knew that in his business truth
became entirely subjective. This was one of the curses of
the game idea.
Ann doubted whether Garvel had any ill will toward
anyone. He didn't hate a man bankrupted by a tactical
stroke any more than he would hate an opponent in chess.
If the occasion came for circumventing a friend, he did it.
His course belonged to the grammar of the game.
Ann was fascinated by this realization. The picture
of the players — the intensity, the intricate calculation,
the vast stakes — awed her.
And then she came to her feeling about a changed
world.
The notion of a changed world simply could not be
fitted to this picture of business as a game. There
seemed to be no way in which you could begin thinking
about it. So long as business — the elemental affairs of
the world — remained like a game — or like the game it
was — there couldn't be any changed world.
You couldn't say to a football player, " I have a little
brotherhood feature I want to introduce." No. It
couldn't be done.
There was no way of changing the world very much
without changing the whole theory of business, which
should not have the right to take the code of a sport. It
was not a sport. You couldn't expect it to be a religion,
but it had no right to act as if it were a sport. It meant
life and death. It meant a kind of life and a kind of
death. When playing a game meant avoidable misery
it was a bad game. It needed to be something else. Men
intrenched behind a code resembled, under the worst
22
330 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
circumstances, those who logically guided a Juggernaut.
Under the best circumstances they were likely to overlook
the simplest obligations of humanity. They let the game
carry the obligations. And with so much to be done this
was damnable. Life and business should not be separated.
A man shouldn't be able to put on a sport suit and go out
to mangle or embitter. He had no right to do something
on an adding machine, then blame the machine for
stupefied fathers or hungry children. ... He had no right
to go on thinking that the squeezing of labor was business,
and that the squeezing of capital was crime.
One thing I am convinced Ann did say to Garvel. It
had that sound as she said it to me.
It was to this effect: She had been looking a little at
people who were at the other end of the game, and what-
ever you might say as to how much misery was inevitable,
it was plain that nothing could be much improved until
the system was changed at the top. The biggest business
ought to be able to see farthest. Couldn't big business
see that a change must come? Couldn't big business,
even if little business stood still, see that something was
on its way — something that might be robbed of all its
terror if a change came first? Couldn't big business see,
for example, that the old idea of cringing workers was
as dead as the old idea of cringing servants? Should a
group of women, for example, in a great modern city,
have to fight for the simple privilege of a union? Was
it big business to make workers fight, to put it into
their heads that they got nothing without fighting?
Wasn't it bad psychology — bad business? Wasn't it
really stupid?
And Garvel laughed.
If it had been a sarcastic laugh there might have been
more trouble. But it didn't mean ridicule. It had no
disrespect in it. It was a laugh of sheer amusement.
Ann might just as well have been pelting Garvel's
burly person with violets, or have pushed aside a contract
DESTINIES 331
to read him a sonnet. She wasn't able then, or later, to
see that she had, as she put it, " made a dent in him."
Mrs. Mace was reinstated, and Mrs. Mace's workers
went ahead with their union, but this had been bound
to happen, or that seemed to be clear to Ann. Beyond
the satisfaction of having said her say, Ann wasn't able
to acquire any real comfort. The game seemed to remain
pretty much as it had been. For all she knew, it would
go on everywhere being pretty much as it had been. It
checked and startled her, as if she had beaten her fists
against a granite wall, a wall towering and complacent,
and extending to the horizon, to think that this was all
that saying your say was ever likely to mean.
She saw the wall as lacing the fretted surfaces of a
world, as creating dark, huddled spaces, spaces where
there was mute, exasperated struggling, pits out of which
arose rancorous tumult . . . with hands clutching.
She was not daunted, yet she was feeling the first deep
sense of a glowering hardness in all that had stretched
before her as awaiting transformation under the touch
of human will, and a still harsher consciousness of
the littleness of any single soul against all that lay
beyond.
It was not a good state of mind. The master mood is
one that feels singleness as having the power of a pene-
trating point. Alas ! there are dim times in which moods
must wait, and perhaps lose their edge.
That night in February when Ann asked me to see her
was a night of surly weather. The raw cold stupefied the
city. Lights were bleared. Winds scuffled in the squares.
Figures lost their vertical independence. They bent
under the strain, dragged, scrambled, stood hesitating in
odd places. What traffic there was lumbered in a ghostly
fantasy of its normal movement. The park seemed a
332 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
howling desert. One darted into a foyer with an immense
rehef. Warmth and quiet gave a thrill.
Ann looked very girlish as she greeted me. Per-
haps something huge and gruff in all that was out-
doors threw into a particularly dehcate relief the fact
of herself.
She wanted to tell me certain later developments as to
Garvel; and there was something she had been reading.
Beyond all that there was another letter from her mother,
who had not forgiven her for failing to come home at the
holiday time, and was seemingly letting that resentment
delay a promised visit to New York.
Throughout all of this I was accumulating an impres-
sion that bothered me mightily. She talked spiritedly,
but I kept on seeing that she was bruised. That incor-
rigible energy and optimism which had appeared in her
months before, the confidence, radiant and conquering,
that had so often given the effect of being inexhaustible,
were showing signs of wear, or at least of being somewhat
quelled.
I took the effect for granted. She had, indeed, been
about a good deal on that day, and it had been a trying
day.
"I'm tired," she said, at last.
She had never before used such a phrase. It tore some-
thing away from her and smote my sentimental habit of
forgetting her vulnerability.
"It isn't a very polite thing to say," she added. "But
you won't mind that. You understand. I can complain
to you if I want to."
"Naturally," I said.
" Don't you suppose that some people — ^your very most
trusted people — are like a diary? I never kept a diary.
But I've seen one or two. They were full of complaints,
beginning with the weather. That's what they seem to
be for. To complain into."
"In that case," I said, "I'll try to be like a diary in
DESTINIES 333
which the ink fades quite away in a little while." (But
I never succeeded !)
"Then I'd miss the rebuke of being able to see how
peevish I had been."
Suddenly I saw that as she sat there, with that strong,
round chin in her hand, a mistiness had come into her
eyes. . . . The glitter of a tear on her face was a phenome-
non so extraordinary, I felt so unprepared to meet the
oncoming menace, that I gaped in one of those little
terrors that seize us with a disproportionate sharpness.
I could, indeed, have heard her live up to her exaggera-
tions and actually complain. I should have known what
to do about that. But tears. . , .
She got up quickly, as if to fetch something. The
reprieve helped me.
"Better say it," I suggested, when she came back.
" Say what? " She was for being defiant.
"The deep thing — ^whatever it is."
"The deep . . ..'*" The tears wouldn't be tricked. I
went over to sit beside her. I felt as if I should be less
a staring spectator at that angle.
"You don't deserve any credit," she exclaimed, "for
being able to see that I'm miserable."
"There are troubles harder than getting any such
credit," I said.
I heard her sob. One can't retort to a sob.
She turned to me at last.
"I've failed . . . about Irma!"
The complete misery of that inflection was undebat-
able. As if she had raised her head in the midst of a ruin
that needed no testimony.
I tried to say that I had expected her to meet failures.
" I'm not fine enough ! " she cried. " I haven't the stuff
in me. There's something . . ."
Any consolation I may have mumbled meant nothing.
In the end she flung it out. She hadn't told me every-
thing as to the way she had felt. Maybe such things
334 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
never could be explained. She couldn't have found a
way of saying all of them even to herself.
She made a poor job of explaining them now. I was
reached by much that she didn't say, but that signaled
behind the words. . . . For one thing there was the feel-
ing after Irma's story that Irma suddenly was older.
This had been queer, and very perplexing at first. Ann
was actually the senior and she had been the leader.
Irma's attitude had always been as of the younger, the
one who followed. Their relation had seemed to be fixed.
It was a happy relation. Everything in Ann' s training,
experience, temperament, might have been taken to favor
Irma's view of the relation and Ann's acceptance of it.
Then, in the slanting light of a revelation, Irma at once
became older. . . . Perhaps the change couldn't be ex-
pressed in terms of age at all. Whatever the change was,
it had the effect of making Ann's position somehow
untenable, of giving something strained, false to that
position. No use pretending. Make-believe was well
enough for outside things. For heart things. . . .
You might wish not to care. But if you were on a long
road with some one and that some one were discovered
to have gone on before ... it would be hard to keep
pretending.
No woman is likely to admit to herself, much less con-
fess, the chaste jealousy stirred by contemplation of one
of her own kind who has, without ritual or sanction,
secretly shattered the veil and stepped beyond. Probably
a woman would regard the word "jealousy" as absurd,
outrageous. She might be right. All jealousies have this
absurdity. There may be no word yet invented for the
shadow^'' pang, the infinitesimal, galling whisper, that
gets itself translated into so many strange or familiar
reactions, so many bewilderments, so many of the
bitterest forms of cruelty; cruelty that has the sanction
of intrenched prudences, of the immense, frowning, safe-
guarding sentinels of experience.
DESTINIES 335
Ann might have managed the miracle of passing this
point. I cannot tell. Unfortunately for her wish, there
was a greater complexity. There was a man. There was
Marshall. It was not probable that she would know as
a matter of reason, but her intuition would point out,
with certitude, the corollaries of such a situation. Charm
has no logic. Before the mystery of woman men do not
diagram their emotions. If the trite pleasantry of
"charming widow" considers certain effects as well as
adopts certain assumptions, one who was physiologically
a widow . . .
Ann could not reach this fact with me. But I knew as
definitely as if she had said it that she recognized the
potential charm of Irma as Marshall would see her.
Marshall. Ann had known him all her life. She knew
the family from which he had emerged. It was impossi-
ble not to think of the stern codes of his mother. There
was the fine figure of his father, himself the son of a dis-
tinguished bishop. It was impossible not to revert to a
fanatical idealism in Spot Marshall, an idealism that so
often made him troublesome, that was not facile in sub-
tlety or compromise, that gave to his liberalism a peculiar
and persistent ardor. . . . Marshall and Irma. In the
midst of her struggle with something which she might
have cajoled herself into measuring as an abstraction,
Ann had seen them come together. It had simply hap-
pened. Their coming together was their affair. Abso-
lutely. To fancy an interference was to believe — well,
I could see as clearly as if she had said it, how Ann might
believe that every resoK^e, every obstinate theory of
loyalty, every dream of a lofty tolerance, would be sent
a-crashing by the slightest interposition. I could see
that, once this notion had full possession of her, she might
go the length of feeling that only the triumph of their
coming together would completely vindicate the integrity
of her determination.
So long as she held to this, only one deterrent might
336 THE SE\'ENTH ANGEL
remain — a deterrent prompted by Irma herself. To see
this responsibihty descending upon Irma, to wonder
what she would do with it, to wonder how her sense of
obligation might be affected by Ann's impassioned as-
surances — inevitably to balance the chances of her de-
cision — was to add another element to all that made
thought of Irma vastly more an extortion than it had
been at the beginning.
Ann's reason held fast. Her heart cried "failure."
There could be no exaggeration of the hurt behind that
cry. Part of the hurt, I had no doubt, was to her pride
of will. Yet the very affront to this pride told how much
farther the hurt had gone.
I did not check her effort to tell me what she meant by
failure. Nothing that she might say could come as
startling. There had been, it had seemed to me, but two
ways Ann might have been turned in the end. I had
reviewed both a hundred times. She had been turned
the failure way, even if (and I told her so) the failure way
did not altogether mean failure.
While she spoke there was one, and another, realization
traced for me in the confused scroll of the moment.
An archpessimist might have gloated over one — the
disaster to individual struggle against forces appre-
hended inside as well as outside of that which is called
Self — disaster that can happen even to those who have
not looked for a changed world.
The other came by no word. Nothing that Ann said,
of itself, could be held as verifying it. Neither was there
a sign of a conscious concealment. But I was sure.
It was that Ann loved Marshall.
It was a great relief that Ann grew steadier in her talk.
It was evident that she wanted to diminish the impression
of the tears. She made rather a pitiful effort to theorize.
DESTINIES 337
The effort was not pitiful because she could not theorize.
She had proved that she could make an excellent feint at
that. It was pitiful, because her real theories had top-
pled, because she was quite off the path where they
would stand up.
I couldn't tell her that her theories weren't having a
square deal.
She spoiled the chance of the simpler test when she
chose to stride past Marshall.
To have said that would have had more than one
danger. But I did succeed in asking flatly, "Do you
believe that Marshall is interested in Irma?"
"Interested . . .?" The whole history of woman was
expressed in her way of saying that. The eloquence of
the inflection was not lessened by the shading-down quiet
of the added sentence, "They are together a great deal."
I had tricked her by the suddenness of the inquiry; now
I felt warned to keep off.
In fact, I had begun to feel profoundly uncomfortable,
to feel myself slipping down from the debating level into
the ugly gulf at the bottom of which x\nn had crumpled.
There was nothing on which to take a grip. Advising
Ann was a mockery. It sounded worse than that as I
groped for the phrases. If Providence had asked me for
suggestions I could have talked better. If Providence
had taken a short holiday, leaving me the job, I should
have known just what to do.
Then the apartment bell clattered, and Clarice stood
between the curtains.
"It's Miss Irma."
Perhaps she actually said, "and Mr. Marshall." At
all events both came up.
They were flecked with snow. Marshall flushed and
nervous, with a little splash of blood on his face. Irma
with a wincing smile and a staggering limp.
Two cabs had bumped among the frozen hillocks. One
had gone over. The other, with Spot and Irma, lost a
838 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
wheel and had rattled them about like dice in a box.
Irma insisted on going to Ann. She was only three
streets off and would know what to do.
Ann did know what to do, and went about it quickly.
I knew presently that Irma had been put to bed in Ann's
room.
"Had to carry her part of the way," said Spot, as if in
explanation of his breathlessness. "No hope of another
cab." He belittled the bruise, dabbling at it with his
handkerchief. Under inspection it proved to be sHght
enough. I began, with Clarice's help, a clumsy first aid.
Thereafter I went out to commandeer a cab. I had
reached a stage of desperation before I found one. When
I returned, Ann was inspecting Marshall's bruise and
amending my work.
"You shouldn't go out again," she said.
"Nonsense!" He reached for his topcoat with a good
pretense of vigor. "Irma had the worst of it. I'm glad
she's" — he gave a quick look at Ann — "that she's in
good hands."
In the cab, on the way to his home, Marshall persisted
in keeping up a flow of excited talk — about the political
situation, about Karlov, about a strange case that had
taken him to Albany, about meeting Rankin in a lawsuit
that was nearer a burlesque than anything that had hap-
pened in the New York courts for twenty years. He was
too highly keyed to notice that I didn't say a word until
I said "Good night."
XI
I parted from Marshall with a feeling of bitterness.
I was irritated by his little calamity, which was as trivial,
it seemed, beside the real disaster imaged by Ann as that
scratch on his face was beside some utter mangling of a
body. At home I sat for an hour or more — with a book
in my lap waiting to be heard — counting the points for
and against him. I felt obliged to make the most of the
DESTINIES 339
fact that he had kno\ni Ann for a long time and that
when he came to his moment the rebuff would have had
an effect quite different from one following a compara-
tively short campaign. One could imagine him picturing
the feminine trait that shows itself in a fondness for a
historic hanger-on, one of those doting men who are
always there to be teased, touched, or put away; one
who survives the woman's marriage to some one else,
and is still there like a venerable family servant or a
faithful dog, and who is eternally and with a saccharine
graciousness, to be indicated to friends or children as "a
very old beau of mine." Such men are very useful, and
are, perhaps, as a general thing, far from being miserable.
They adorn stage comedies, help balance dinner parties
or avert a last-moment awkwardness in a bridge group.
But Marshall might conceivably have balked before
such a pictiu'e.
There were other points in his favor, or that had a
neutral bearing. The charm of Irma was not to be over-
looked. She was Ann's friend. He had turned to her
quite frankly (though dropping her into Ann's bed might
well have been far from his calculations), and he made no
spectacular fling of it. One could not condemn him, per-
haps, in the matter of sheer technic. There might be
nothing wrong with his ethics.
But all the defense I was able to assemble seemed to
quake before my savage resentment of his failure to stick.
Assuming that he had taken an "understanding" for
granted, or had bided his time with whatever degree of
patience, he should have held on, though there were a
thousand Hallands in the middle distance, or "career"
signs littering the whole landscape. With an Ann to
win. . . .
I handed him to the executioner before I went to bed.
Irma, too, fared rather badly with me in that hour.
She took on an adventuress outline, as of one who, in the
beginning of her career, had stolen, then sniveled over
340 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
the theft; and who, after steahng Ann's peace to mend
her own, was now actually robbing her friend. . . . There
was an acrid taste to the recollection of my own earlier
sentiments of consolation, as if I had been tricked, swept
absurdly far, and were now paying heavy interest on the
investment. I permitted the ugliest things from those
voices out of the dark — those voices that feed perversity
and selfishness in individuals and hysteria in mobs. I
flung myself into an abandoned partisanship.
In the morning Ann told me over the wire that Irma
was "all right," but that she would not let her be moved.
There were some annoying contusions, and the doctor
admitted that she must have had a nasty shock. Nasty
shocks frequently enough have consequences; neverthe-
less, it was startling to me to hear, three days later, that
Irma was still with Ann and that she had had a bad turn.
I was sufficiently on edge with regard to the situation to
receive this news with an exaggerated excitement. It
was impossible to avoid going back to that crisis with
Ann into which this situation had intruded. It was im-
possible to avoid a sense of irony in that intrusion. Pre-
cisely what it might mean to Ann I was staggered to
conjecture.
I knew that Marshall called to make inquiries. I knew
also that Jimmy Ingle had carried with him to that door
something short of an armful of roses, and had turned
away with no very happy assurances.
I met Jimmy one evening when I had agreed to see
Rankin. We were not far from Mrs. Breckles's house
when we swung together.
"Hello, Uncle Sid!" he exclaimed, and was almost at
once in the midst of talk about Irma. Had I heard how
she was that day? Wasn't it a rotten shame . . . ? In a
cab like that. What chance had anybody? Why, once
he was taking a girl to the Grand Central, and the
drunken taxi pirate ran plumb into a truck and broke
DESTINIES 341
most of his own ribs. "We had luck," added Jimmy.
''Never a scratch. But the girl cried all over Park
Avenue. I had a devil of a time with her. You see, the
bump finished a new sixty-dollar hat she was going to
flash on Syracuse."
I found that I could not see even Jimmy without un-
pleasant consciousness of the entanglement. Such mor-
bidness reaches the absurdum level in the implication of
all humanity.
Rankin seemed safely detached, though seeing him re-
minded me of Marshall's allusion and brought me back
by that route to the persistent discomfort. To have
Rankin run amuck in sardonic talk was a diversion.
He had a grudge against Garvel and an antithetical
grudge against a radical in his office. He had a
thunderous laugh for a type blunder in an evening
paper, and made an inconclusive gesture, which he left
to express the idea of getting up to find the document.
Mention of the paper reminded him of some millionaire's
third marriage. He was uproariously amused at this.
"And that girl, too! Lord! I used to see her at
Kelly's. Not young, either. A common vamp. Made
you think of a harem. So much painted meat, smelling
of booze."
Then he became very earnest, and wanted to know
whether I thought the crash people talked about was
really likely to happen. . . . Was it reasonable to suppose
they could ship enough of the wild ones to do any good?
Did I remember the saying of Andy Crown (he had gone
to the Bible for it, in some fantastic way) that things had
to be stirred up? Did I think a country with so little
poverty, so much food, so many newspapers, and such
solid church interests, could possibly give to a bluff at
revolution any sort of hope? What were the politicians
going to do with so many people wanting something new,
and so many others wanting something as old as they
could get it?
34« THE SEVENTH ANGEL
It occurred to him presently to ask what was wrong
with me.
"Come to think of it, Sid, you don't often complain of
your liver, or anything."
I apologized for the deficiency, if he felt deprived.
"Don't mention it, Sid. Gizzards and things are a
great strain on the affections. Funny how some people
won't see how intensely uninteresting their aches are.
Such people, with the sensibility to pain, of course lack
the other kind that would enable them to know how they
bore. Maybe some of them aren't content until they have
passed the pain along."
And yet, I suggested, there were people with a real
gift. I knew a man who could make asthma positively
romantic. Unfortunately I had no talent for being en-
tertainingly miserable.
"But you're not miserable, Sid?"
"My liver's all right."
"I see. Your soul's out of sorts. No wonder. The
United States has the pip. Maybe worse. Sometimes
I'm afraid it has cerebral tuberculosis. . . . Look here,
Sid. Tell me, where do you stand on all this? You
consort with Reds, and with hard-shell Republicans. I
make it out that you know them all. You've scandalized
a plain man like me, with a living to make, and a nervous
system to consider, by showing sympathy for things that
often look to me rather revolutionary. What do you
really think — ^yourself? "
" I'm not in a discursive temper to-night," I said.
" I'm not asking you to discuss. You couldn't do any-
thing with me. You must have found that out. No. I've
never brought you right down to it, but I should like to
know where you stand just now. I don't ask you to
admit whether you've secretly enrolled in the Commu-
nist party or whether you're on the house committee of
the Union League. For all I know you may have found
a way of doing both. I may be entirely wrong in thinking
DESTINIES S43
that such things are antithetical. I'm thinking of you,
personally. Where have you arrived?"
"I continue," I said, "to be sympathetic toward
Mr. Columbus."
"Where does he come in?"
"It seems to me," I said, "to be a profoundly note-
worthy fact that Columbus was a radical in his geography
but a conservative in his navigation."
"I get you," growled Rankin, reassembling his pon-
derous legs.
"Columbus was Red in his attitude toward the old
maps. He was hard-shell in his attitude toward the north
star. I sympathize with conservatives until they stop
moving. I sympathize with radicals until they curse
the compass. I sympathize with neither when they for-
get men. Occasionally I feel like reminding the radicals
that some things, like gravitation, are here to stay. And
occasionally I feel like reminding the conservatives that
nature has a process for things that stop growing. There
have been Reds since the stone age. Some of them
started revolutions in laboratories. Some of them in
front of Bastiles. And departments of justice are quite
as old. Nature seems to have decided that she needs
them both. You might think that nature was altogether
a conservative until you saw a storm or felt an earth-
quake. Each individual has to make his own blend. The
penalty for making no blend at all is death. Only some
sort of mixture prevents disintegration — in a man or a
nation. . . . Somewhere along about there is as far as I
have gone."
Rankin chuckled. "In anyone but you, Sid, I'd call
that straddling."
"Nature's a straddler."
Rankin mused, and turned to me with a vehement
scowl. "It may be something like nature, but it re-
sembles more trying to be like God."
"He appears to have his own way of punishing pre-
344 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
sumption. I'll take the risk. The stand-pat conserva-
tive who thinks he can put back the hands of the clock,
and the kind of rebel that loves the sheer drunkenness of
destroying, that is 'against* everything because it is,
including the universe, are taking a bigger risk. But it's
not a question of risks; it's not even a question of
convictions. It's a question of hungers in conflict with
selfishness and inertia. That conflict has to work its way
out. I suppose it will never be finished.
"Maybe I sometimes think of that radical of Naza-
reth, who never lost his bearings — ^who taught individ-
ualism, and who 'rendered unto Csesar'; who preached
without a church, but refused to have the temple in-
sulted; who hated theft, though he yielded the ultimate
promise to the suffering thief; who saw life as a fellow-
ship, yet was ready to do his dying alone."
Rankin surveyed his pipe critically. "Well," he said,
" I suppose I save myself a good deal of wear and tear by
not being a philosopher."
I met Mrs. Breckles in the lower hall.
She looked at me with especial amiability. I thought
she had almost a sparkle. There was an emphasis of some
quality in her. Perhaps it was an ornate effect in her
hair. If there was a permanent wave I should have said
that it was in her spirits, and at the moment I didn't feel
responsive to amiability. . . . Only one in a situation like
Otto's would be likely to know the whole truth about
Mrs. Breckles; to know whether she has expectations —
whether that reckless misogynist, Rankin . . . No.
That would be too whimsical altogether.
xn
That summons from Ann was peremptory. Irma
wanted to see me. Could I come in the afternoon — say
about four o'clock?
DESTINIES 345
I read in this nothing but trouble. Irma in the best of
health had been an anxiety. Irma prostrate offered no
alleviating prophecy. . . .
Ann took me to a window overlooking the park.
"I've 'come back/ " she said. There was no "failure"
in her signs now.
Probably I looked stupid.
" Irma went pretty near the edge with whatever it was
— a good deal nearer than I went that night in France
when she dragged me. . . . She hasn't said much. Just
looked at me, mostly. And I got hold of myself. I have
it pretty clear now. I guess I needed some sort of a jolt.
She's going to see Spot to-morrow. I made the time as
soon as I could."
I was prepared to find in Ann a kind of stricken
serenity. But the effect was not like that. She was not
stricken. It was simply that her will was in charge
again. Her eyes seemed amazingly deep. She was pale,
yet luminously so. The conquering quiet touched me like
a pause in a superb symphony.
"I don't need to tell you," she began, looking toward
the room where Irma lay.
"I'll try to be good," I said.
Ann's room was a delightful place. I have an impres-
sion of its being pearl gray and white.
Irma was propped up slightly. A thick, golden rope
of her hair came slanting across the pillows.
A few empty words passed while I moved to the ap-
pointed chair.
"I'm going to leave you two old cronies for a little
while," said Ann, cheerily. "I've something to do."
Irma watched her recede, and her next glance seemed
to bid me move closer.
"It was too bad, wasn't it?" she said, with a quiet
that was made absurd by the quiver in her lashes.
"So long as it ends happily," I muttered, as gently as
I could.
23
346 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Her eyes opened wide, to a curious stare.
''Happily...?"
"You'll be quite all right in a little while."
She made a slight, hopeless gesture. "That would be
easy, wouldn't it, if I could be happy by — ^by just getting
out of this bed?"
I ventured to tell her that being well was the beginning
of everything —
"But it isn't the end, is it? The end. You know,"
and she lowered her voice to a whisper, "there was a
day here when I thought I could do the best thing I ever
did— the very best thing — by simply — simply fading
out." I made a protesting gesture. "If there had been
a way that wasn't ugly— that wouldn't hurt Ann."
" But since nothing would hurt Ann more disastrously
than that—"
She looked at me for several moments, her hps, which
seemed to gain color, moving faintly.
"I want to tell you before anything happens to stop
me — ^yes, I must— that at first there didn't seem to be
anything wrong with me. I thought I'd be away the
next day, or the day after that, anyway. On the night
of the next day I reached over for one of Ann's books.
There was a letter in it. You know how people will mark
a place with a letter — and forget about it."
It was not easy for her to go on, though it was quite
evident that she would go on — that this was one of the
things I had come to hear.
"I could have refused to see a single word of the letter,
but a line jumped at me before I could smother it. It
jumped at me because it was Spot's writing and because
Ann had drawn a pencil line under several of the words.
I know her way of making a line like that. It was as if
it whispered a secret. I suppose if a knife whispered to
you it would do it that way. I had never thought of
Spot's saying words like that to Ann. It seemed to make
a frightful difference . . . with that pencil mark under-
DESTINIES S47
neath. There was something I hadn't thought of at all.
... I got out of bed and put the book as far away as I
could — into that row on top of the desk. . . ."
Her hand on the coverlet made a little nervous move-
ment back and forth.
"I sat in that chair where you're sitting, and tried to
think out how it might be. I went away back to the
beginning. After a while I found I was shivering. It
was very late. The room must have chilled down. I
crawled into bed again. I couldn't get warm. And all
night I could see Ann. ... I didn't seem to have needed
that old letter of Spot's. I seemed to know, all at once,
how it was. I watched her the next day — though every-
thing was very confused the next day. When I men-
tioned Spot's name I watched her. Lying here, I seemed
to be able to — to see things. ... I know."
She turned her cheek to the pillow and stared past me.
"Spot's the only man I ever met who is good enough
for Ann."
"You couldn't praise him more than that," I said, not
to appear wholly mute; and she looked toward me again,
as if her mind had found in this something of immense
■ignificance, yet a significance of which she could more
readily ponder than speak.
"... Like Ann," came trailing out of the thought. I
could see her tracing the traits of Marshall. "I didn't
know there were such men. ... As wonderful as Ann."
I sat crouched uncomfortably in the chair, in a kind
of numb helplessness, letting one impulse give and an-
other hold back.
Then I saw the hand reaching to the table beside the
bed. She gathered a letter that was her own. Her eyes
went to it, and she dropped the hand that held it lan-
guidly into the folds of the coverlet. Yet there was a
sudden intensity in her way of exclaiming:
"Poor Jimmy!"
The meaning of this it was impossible to seize. It
S48 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
came to me that she was thinking to me rather than
speaking to me. If this were true I was not to consider
the discomfort. I must play my part, even if my part
became that of a sounding board to her whispers. . . .
I knew the fact of the propped head, the gleaming hair,
the golden rope against the white, the arm, round and
fair, shining in the folds. Yet I was removed to an in-
credible distance. Rather, it may have been as if I savr
and heard through something that intervened.
"I know all about Jimmy."
This, at last, brought me nearer. It was not as if she
were trying to make me understand. I am sure she was
not conscious of making either plea or explanation. She
wanted to hear these things said aloud — to have the
excuse for making her whispers audible.
"He's not wonderful, like Spot. . . . He hasn't been . . .
hke Spot. But . . ."
"Irma, my dear!" came Ann's voice, as a remote sig-
nal. Presently she was at the door. "Your boss is very
strict. She forgot to give your visitor a time limit!"
Nevertheless, Ann crossed back of my chair, and seated
herself, chin in hands, on an ottoman at my elbow.
Irma's eyes fixed themselves upon her with a rested
exultation.
" Of course I know how interesting some men can be I "
I hadn't heard the apartment bell. Perhaps neither
Ann nor Irma had heard it, since I had seen no sign in
them, so that I was startled to sense Clarice at the door
and to hear her brusque voice.
"Your mother," said Clarice
XIII
If I had been looking toward the door I might have
grasped the real situation, yet this is doubtful. It may
be that Clarice gave nothing but the words, for Ann
arose sharply.
DESTINIES 349
"My mother!" she gasped.
I cannot tell how it occurred. I am aware only that I
knew, of a sudden, that there was a figure behind Clarice,
and that Ann was staring in a bewildered way at the
thing that was happening.
The woman brushed her way past Clarice.
"My poor httle girl!"
It was Irma who made me understand, by the most
extraordinary expression I have ever tried to analyze.
If one had been touched by ice and fire at the same time
some such twinge might have been the reaction. But
something more would have been needed to explain the
amazing look in her eyes and the fumbling movement of
her lips. I am sure that at first she made no sound at
all. And her mother, discordantly swathed in furs, was
on her knees by the bed.
A woman who looked like a plump Irma, a slightly
theatrical Irma, with eyes lined and lips fuller — and
redder. Tendrils of the same hair under the curve of a
dashing hat.
Before I accomplished the retreat I had my impression
of the hat being removed and tossed aside, of murmured
words, and of Irma's arms going out, soundlessly, as from
a stupefaction.
Ann and I looked at each other blankly. We hovered
in a maze of intangible anxieties.
"Her mother!"
Ann peered across the space of the park.
"What an unfortunate time!" she murmured.
"You mean — "
"She was bound to be a bit excited, seeing you . . . and
talking. And now this — out of the sky."
"It may be an unfortunate time," I said, "in the mat-
ter of her convalescence. But perhaps not mifortunate
in the time of her life."
Ann looked uncomprehending.
350 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
" ...Her life?"
"It may be a clearing-up time with her."
Ann was silent. We were both reviewing Irma*s
earlier story.
The chapter added by her mother, as we came to know
it, was simply that — an added chapter. It shed no new
light. As a chapter H had chasms of obscurity. For
example, the man with whom the mother ran away was
lost in this obscurity, quite erased. Under some circum-
stances she had been in New Orleans and in Havana.
When it had appealed to her as essential she had secured
a divorce from Kane and had married one Standrick.
Standrick was an "investor," she told Irma. Just now
he was going to Europe in a very important matter, and
she was going with him. She had tried so hard to find
Irma — oh, for a year at least — particularly to be able to
tell her about her father, who was in an asylum, where
his younger brother had put him. He wasn't violent, or
anything like that. Just foolish. He had brought it on
himself. There would, evidently, have been no way of
finding Irma but for that girl friend in Altoona, who had
a letter that gave her an address. And what a shock to
hear from Mrs. Breckles that Irma had been hurt and
was at the home of a friend! She had jumped into a cab
without waiting a moment. What a pity this Europe
trip had to come just when it did — now that she had
found Irma!
One would have thought she were on her way to the
boat; yet she told Ann that she hoped to see Irma again
in a day or so, before sailing. She was sure Irma was
simply suffering from the natural results of a nervous
upset. Those things were sometimes very trying. And
Irma always had been high strung — though not what you
would call a nervous child, either. It was so nice to
think of her having a good friend.
She went away with the effect of hurry, and presently
I left Ann and Irma together. I received orders to do so.
DESTINIES 351
At the time I could not conclude that Mrs. Standrick's
grotesque transition was likely to have any profound
influence beyond that of the inevitable shock, which was
bad enough, coming when it did. Yet Ann, who began
with apprehensiveness as to the shock, was able to see,
within a day or two, that Irma was steadier — astonish-
ingly quiet, but steadier. Ann was able to mark both
of these effects most definitely after the visit from Mar-
shall, for which Irma resolutely " sat up." On the whole,
Ann was inclined to believe that the removal of some-
thing ragged in Irma's knowledge of her parents, quite
without regard to the character of the information when
it came, or the way of its coming, was to her advantage.
The very fact that she had said she would go and see her
father was of itseK indicative of her surer way of thinking.
Yes, Ann seemed always to be thinking in terms of the
friend. It was beautiful, but it made me wince at times.
It was on the third day after Mrs. Standrick's visit
that I asked Ann, "Has Jimmy called?"
"No," she said. "He wrote a letter, and she has
answered it. Both Spot and Jimmy have been very kind
about flowers. So has a certain other person who, by
the card, seems to have been thinking of me"
"A certain other person will always be thinking of
you," I said, "somebody who often wonders about the
way you may be going."
I took hold of her hands.
"Ann," I said, "if I were a young fellow, this might
mean that I was going to make a momentous suggestion.
Just now it means that these hands of yours illustrate a
thought I have. They are, as you may have noticed,
superbly capable hands. You brought them back into
our American confusion with a feeling of using them to
smooth things out. If it seems absurd to you to talk in
terms of hands, remember that I happened to become
acquainted with you through a hand adventure — "
352 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Now you are outrageous!" Ann exclaimed, and she
slipped through my fingers.
"All the same," I said, "there was a symbolism in
that adventure — a. symbolism that has been — well, I
might almost say haunting. If I had never seen you
again I should have gone on fancying you as pushing
the world about, as — "
"You are very brutal," Ann declared, with real
annoyance.
"I mean—"
" It's quite easy to see what you mean. And it seems
unfortunate — ' '
"I mean," I went on, "that I shouldn't have got the
thing as symbolism if I hadn't come to know you. If
I had seen but that one flash of energy and confidence
and shrewd impulse I should have missed the symbolism
— I should have missed you, and missed a vision of woman
in a world crisis. You see, what I know of you gives a
beauty to that first happening."
"Indeed!"
" It does more than that — a great deal more. But I'm
not going to annoy you by confessing too much. I'm
simply admitting so far for the sake of adding — of pointing
out — that a tremedously human thing has happened,
and that you must look at it. I don't mean that you
must be halted, that you won't go on. My assurance as
to what you will do has the white intensity of utter faith.
I mean that your big feeling of moving the world, the
feeling that tingled in you last year, has come face to
face with something that confronts each of us somehow,
sometime. The great hulk of a world has a way of mak-
ing us see, at some point, that the final problem — or, call
it the beginning problem, if you like — is in our own heart.
It may enrage us to begin by reading a message on the
sky, to get the challenge as horizon-wide, and then to
come down to the fine print in our own brain; to exult
in the roar of a great voice, and then to be riveted by
DESTINIES 353
the piercing whisper within. But truth and peace — real
conquest — come that way. You were quite ready for
everything that was outside of yourself, and you have
been forced to feel the supreme touch — the ultimate pain
of the personal. It is, as I see it, a commonplace and a
catastrophe. Commonplaces usually do the hurting.
And what hurts worst is the effect of the dwindled. We
start out thinking that if we are to be hurt it will be in a
big way — "
"You're as solemn as Crown," said Ann. But she
listened.
"Do you remember Crown's calling up that picture
of Joan? It made me uneasy, even if I could find
an elation in a flashing image of you. We can tol-
erate relinquishing our best friend if the sacrificial
pyre glitters enough. But, of course, all glory isn't in
spectacular sacrifice — "
"Good heavens!" Ann ejaculated, "you don't think,
do you — ?"
"No, no! I'm teUing you about my foolish self. I
let these crazy things come into my mind. Yet I knew,
and I know at this moment better than I ever knew
before, that a sublime Joan, without the oriflamme but
with the aureole, often sits alone in a dim place. . . some-
times with a baby. In fact — and you can call me any
kind of an old sentimentalist you like for saying it —
there is one image beside which even that of a Joan
comes to look pale — "
Ann's hand found one of mine. "I know . . ." she
murmured, "the Madonna." This quelled us both.
Then Ann stood up as if rising out of a confusion.
"That notion of yoiirs — that I was going to slam
things—"
I wanted another word. " I'd rather see you slamming
things than — than being too sacrificial."
Ann caught hold of this in a short moment. "Sacri-
ficial . . . ? So that's the — "
354 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
"Yes. Rather than see you give up anything because
it was only yours."
I refused to hear what she called after me.
XIV
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon of a day in
March that I received the word of Karlov's release. My
informant was Marshall, whose voice came through the
receiver with unmistakable inflections of satisfaction.
He appeared to have some reason for brevity and I
learned no more than that Karlov insisted on going to
Andy Crown. I announced an intention of running up
to Crown's place to meet him. "I'll see you there in
an hour," Marshall said, and was away.
This meant that he was coming with Karlov.
I was guilty of a reservation in speaking to Ann a few
minutes later. She did not have an office voice, yet there
was a real change in the quality, even of its friendly tone,
when I conveyed the news. I could fancy the face behind
that other receiver suddenly lighting as by an incan-
descence in the wire. I did not wait to hear her say more
than: "Hooray! That's corking good news ! " I wanted
to shut off questions— to hold my little reservation.
Would she go with me to Crown's? — that was the point.
It would give me a certain satisfaction, and I was rather
inclined to insist.
"If you insist," laughed Ann, "I think I had better
do it."
"Will you meet me at Crown's in half an hour?"
She would.
One of Crown's men was the only occupant of the shop
when I reached there. He recognized me as a friend of
the boss, and told me, with an oblique effect of apology,
that Crown might not be back for an hour. Maybe it
would be sooner. He wasn't sure. He was engaged with
DESTINIES 355
a battery upon which, in a moment, he became occupied
again with a sort of absent intentness.
I felt privileged to invade the den beyond and to evoke
a light. Crown's swinging chair, with its contused black-
leather cushion, was turned so that its back grazed the
desk, as if its owner might have leaped from it in a hurry.
I took down a book, then put it back when I realized
that Ann was due. It still lacked fifteen minutes of three
o'clock. At last I saw her descending the three steps,
and went out to greet her.
We were seated on that decrepit sofa in the den, and
had exchanged but a few words, when Crown came.
The workman may have made a signal. At all events.
Crown strode through like a fragment of tempest, and
looked us over with an expression which an utter stranger
would, I am sure, have translated as indignation. Never-
theless, as he shook hands with Ann and me the
vehemence was not to be misjudged.
When I said that Karlov was free and was coming
straight to him, he stopped short in a stride toward his
chair, and shot a look from under that overhanging brow.
Then he turned quite away from us for a moment, halted,
walked across the little room, came back to the chair,
and without a sound reached for his pipe.
"Aren't you glad?" asked Ann.
"Yes," he said, "I'm glad." lie had lighted a match
but held it suspended while he looked at Ann. "Did you
do it?" he demanded.
WTiile Ann's blush protested, I said that I was afraid
she had, to some extent, and that I was by no means sure
with how much violence. Her real partner in the esca-
pade of liberation would appear presently.
They both looked mystified,
"Marshall is coming with Karlov," I said.
"You didn't tell me — " Ann began.
Crown had started to say "Do you mean — ?" when
the bell checked him.
356 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
I suspect that Crown may have seen something in his
strategic bit of mirror, for he was out of his chair, stand-
ing, his long arms down, his shaggy head fixed, with chin
drawn back and eyes flashing a kind of incredulous fear.
That look was explained by sight of the figure that
came first. It was what was left of Karlov. There was
something grotesque in the bhghted difference, as if some
sarcastic hand had molded a caricature, diminished,
shrunken, with an unearthly falseness of color. His eyes,
always so inky, had a piercing glitter that seemed to
come out of an infinitely deep ^hadow. The grayness of
his face gave to the tightly stretched skin the cast of
ironic reminiscence. And, staring at Crown — I'm con-
vinced he saw no one else — he was pitifully trying to
smile. That was the hardest thing about it all — that
ghastly smile.
In recaUing the next moment I can think only of a
marionette whose manipulator had lost the strings. He
seemed to dissolve, to melt from the semblance of a man
into a disjointed heap before our eyes, with Marshall
standing blankly above him.
When we had him in Crown's chair, blinking and tell-
ing us he was sorry, I could hear Crown's voice, as in a
booming whisper from a great distance, saying, " Damn
them ! Damn them ! " — twice, with a solemn anger.
From somewhere in that unintelUgible place Crown
elicited a glass of brandy, which Ann administered. Ann
drew up a stool and sat beside the crumpled figure.
" He told me — what you did," I heard Karlov saying
"Who told you?"
"Mr. Marshall."
Marshall was then standing quite close to Ann.
"Yes," I said, "they are a great team!"
Ann did not turn from Karlov while she murmured,
"We know who began it."
Karlov nodded and peered at me.
" When you — have friends . . ."
DESTINIES 357
I can believe the thing Marshall told me, that Karlov
had made no complaint beyond remarking upon the cold-
ness of one night when something had happened to the
steam pipes. The truth is that he had passed through a
fever period that broke him. He had bhnked during the
journey like a man coming out of the dark. I read in the
look of him something before which a man hangs his
head.
Ann was for holding fast, for going into the matter of
the care of Karlov. The necessity was immediate. We
actually began a whispered discussion, when we heard
Crown, and saw him beside the old chair with a hairy
hand on Karlov's shoulder.
"I'll attend to him," he said.
It would be difficult to convey a sense of the finality in
this brief declaration. There was in it a dismissing
authority, like that of a voice coming out of a cloud.
When I saw them last, at the time of ray going with Ann
and Marshall, he was still standing there with the hand
on the shrimken shoulder.
S9 May.
I am writing at the brink of June with a feeling of some-
thing garish in the beauty of the days; which is, I sup-
pose, to say that I am not entirely attuned. Perhaps the
return of an old ache has something to do with it. I
don't know. Perhaps, again, it is the mutter of the world.
I wajs thinking again this morning of Crown's awesome
fantasy, unfolded close to a year ago; that a new Six
Plagues had been followed by a Seventh, a plague of
spiritual confusion, a plague which plainly insisted that
life should purge itself of its sins and begin anew. One
has not needed the help of allegory to feel the confusion,
nor the reminder of any circumstantial Babylon to know
that life for the most part would, once more, sit unpurged,
waiting for things to straighten themselves out. Once
more humanity leaves its housecleaning in the hands of
a servant Grod, to whom it is perpetually in arrears.
358 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
Once more men are looking for miracle where the call is
still for atonement.
Once more we stare at "crowds" as if every crowd
were not "Me" multiplied, or stammer "They" as if
"We" had lost its obligation. Once more we are shuf-
fling about to find the Supreme Trick that will unify
without sacrifice, that will get without giving, that will
help fiilch from the lottery an unearned prize of Peace.
i June.
We see only beginnings. Endings are hidden in a mist.
We discern the space of our little clearing. The Main
Road has no end. I wish I might be, as in the phrase of
Zarathustra, "the creating friend who has always a
complete world to offer." I have mislaid my world.
The depression of a would-be optimist is tinged by a
special pain. Perhaps I escape the lowest depths — ^which
would be beating the game, for I go high in the other
moods. Yet I know the darkness. (I remember the cry
of Gorky, "There is a dog barking in my soul.")
They hover, these figures I have singled out. It would
be a privilege profound, magnificent, to follow each —
yes, into the very mists.
There is the beginning of a darkness for Karlov.
Crown has quarters in the upper part of the house ad-
joining his shop. Mrs. Crown, white and fragile, dragging
the ball and chain of her unnamed weakness, and still a
house prisoner, received Karlov without, I suspect, offer-
ing complaint, though I suspect also that she regarded
bringing him there as an absurdity, quite as I did. Cer-
tainly she came to feelings of a devoted solicitude. If
he had been her son she could have done no more.
It was only when I went to see Karlov that I saw for
the first time Crown's demented daughter, a sturdy-look-
ing girl with a great fluff of sandy hair and a habit of
looking to the left of you.
I can imagine nothing more pathetic than Karlov's
DESTINIES 359
way of gazing at that girl, out of that wasted face . . .
with the black beard growing upon it. It appears that
he has fully explained to her how the world is to be, how
all the harsh things are at last to be brushed away.
This was new fuel to the flame of my distress, yet I
gripped and held to the beauty of it.
Who shall say how much we owe and will owe to the
seed of dreams? \Vlio shall say which are the foolish
dreamers ? WTio shall say to whom a dream is unprofitably
told?
Perhaps I have misjudged the Lida Santzeffs.
I have seen Evelyn Dower rise up to speak at a meet-
ing. And there was no droop in her shoulders.
Perhaps I have watched Irma Kane with eyes that
have seen too much. Youth ! — think of being born with
a foreknowledge of the real chances ! Perhaps something
that gleams behind the horn-rimmed glasses of Jimmy
Ingle is truly prophetic. Say it leads only to the happy
beginning that romance calls the end. Shall we quarrel
about a happy beginning? As well quarrel with Jimmy's
success in making me laugh.
H June.
One night I carried to Karlov a book I had heard him
speak of. He will not be able to read it now, but he can
rest his hands upon it. I read to him from the book, with
Mrs. Crown sewing in the front of the house, and the
demented Martha sitting bolt upright in a chair just
beyond the door of the room where Karlov lay.
I reached a passage which described, as I recall it, the
true meaning of Socialism, and Karlov made a curious
movement with his hand that was like a hieroglyph of
applause. Thereafter he closed his eyes, as if he had
gathered up his dream and was for taking it away with
him.
I looked at the face with the wasted skin, and a sense of
something solemnly grotesque took hold of me. The pres-
ence of either of us in this house, after being progres-
360 THE SEVENTH ANGEL
sively plausible, suddenly became fantastic. . . . That girl
became a sarcasm, appalling, as if mocking the aspiration
for harmony in a discordant world. Her empty stare
seemed to be mocking the inertia that knows only the
dreams of sleep. An immense melancholy seemed to
fall about me, a sadness profound and derisive, as if that
ever-unfinished symphony we call life had returned once
more to the aching note. I felt frustrated, belittled,
accused. The sense of a staggering futility in things
seemed to convict me, to convict all humanity. I saw
Karlov as mere debris in the cluttered highway, and
myself sitting beside him as a worn traveler huddled in
the shadow of a bit of wreckage. I saw myself, and the
futility of my own days, so filled with deferred partici-
pations, with unanswered wishes . . . without son or
daughter to renew the promissory note we give to life,
and left at last to long fiercely for vicarious fulfillments.
Yes, I had come to wish devoutly that Ann might not
be battered, that she might not take on the stale colora-
tions, that something vivid might survive in her. Per-
haps it was sheer sentimentalism — though I think a sense
of obstacle, with its rebellions, should take from me some
of the blame — that made me wish.
Crown came thumping up the stair, and Karlov opened
his eyes. The noise Crown made enveloped the lesser
sound of the other footfalls.
Then I knew that Ann and Marshall were there.
Karlov made a little movement of his head, and his
eyes changed as if a flame had lept in the chamber behind
them. He had revealed strange intuitions, but he could
never have guessed what it meant to me to see those
two together.
THE END
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