CHAPTER XXVIII
NEW YORK AGAIN
It seemed strange to be back at the Maines', staying a fortnight withRachel while the apartment was being looked for. Nothing had been movedin that house; it was all just the same, only the tone of time wasdeeper, the furniture more worn, the prints yellower. She asked forand was given the third-floor back room again, though, indeed, Mrs.Maine protested that now that she was famous!... Bessie had changedas little as the house. More grey hairs, somewhat more flesh, a greatmany more pounds of chocolate creams to her credit--that seemed all.She was still amiable, sleepily agreeable, comely, and lazy. Powhatan,except to grow greyer and leaner, had not altered either. The oldservants held on. With some inevitable variations the same people camein the evenings--the Bishop's nephew and the St. Timothy people, andPowhatan's downtown acquaintances, and chance visitors from the otherside of Mason and Dixon's.
She noticed a slight difference in the cast of talk. They all seemeduneasily aware that the world was moving. Mostly they disapprovedand foreboded. She cast her mind back to that winter of '93-'94. Ithad been the terrible winter of unemployment, strikes, widespreaddiscontent. She remembered clearly how Powhatan had declaimed thenagainst "upsetters" and what the country was coming to. But now sheheard him and the Bishop's nephew agree that anti-Christ and ruin weremodern inventions. They sighed for the halcyon past. "Even ten ortwelve years ago, sir, men were content enough!"
Rachel--Rachel had not sat still. Rachel had climbed. She was theold Rachel, but sweetened and broadened. There was left something ofher old manner; she had her broodings that to the casual eye seemedhalf-sullen; at the end of long silences she might flare out, send attable or elsewhere a flaming, unexpected arrow, but her old ways werelike old clothes, kept half-negligently, worn from habit, while allthe time a fairer, more lately woven garment was in the wardrobe. Shelooked no older; she was slight and brown and somehow velvety. Hagarcalled her a pansy. She was no longer tragic, or tragedy had become buta dim background, a remembered cloud. And she was the strong, sane, andactual comrade of her children.
Betty and Charley.... Charley was blind. Charley and Betty had changed,changed more than anybody. Betty stood a frank, straight young Diana,what she said and did ringing true. Charley was the student. He hadhis shelves of Braille, and his mother's eyes and voice were his atcall. Just now they were doing general history together--that was whatCharley wanted, to be a historian. Charley and Betty claimed Hagarfor their own. There were her Christmas letters every year--wonderfulletters--and her Christmas gifts, small choice things from everyland. They worshipped her, too, with frankness because she had "donesomething"--because her name counted. Oh, they were very ambitious,Betty and Charley; filled with ideas, glorious for the new time, readyto push the world with vigour! "Oh," cried Hagar, "don't they make youfeel timid, cautious, and conservative?"
She watched with interest to see what effect the two had upon Powhatanand Bessie. She was forced to the conclusion that they had very little.They angered Powhatan sometimes, and he would strike the table anddeplore the days of silent reverence. But he was desperately proudof Betty's looks, and he had an odd, sneaking pity and fondness forCharley, and Hagar gathered that he would have sadly missed them out ofthe house. As for Bessie, she only gave her sleepy smile, and said thatall children talked foolishly, but that you didn't have to listen.
Upstairs, at bedtime, now in Rachel's room, now in Hagar's the twotalked together. Daytime, they looked for Hagar's apartment. Theyfound it at last, high in air, overlooking the great city; roofs androofs and roofs at a hundred levels; curling streamers of white steamlike tossed plumes against the blue sky, bright pennants floating fromtowering hotel or department store; a clock below a church spire, witha gilt weather-cock far above; blurs of occasional trees seen in somehollow opening; streets far below them, crossing, crossing--percolatingrivulets of manikins that were people; roofs and roofs and roofs, anda low perpetual, multitudinous voice; and the sky over all, high andclear and exhilarating the day they found the place. "I am going toutter a bromide," said Hagar. "How marvellous is modern life!"
They went over it again. "Thomasine's room, and a guest-room, andmy room, and a fine room for Mary Magazine who is coming--Ishamhaving remarried--to look after us, and two baths and a great biglibrary-study-drawing-room, and a little room for what we please,and plenty of closets, and a quiet and good caf? away up on theroof--Rachel, it's fine!" They sat on a window-seat and Rachel produceda pencil and notebook, and together they tinted the walls and laidrugs and hung pictures and ran bookshelves around and furnished theapartment. "There! that's quiet and perfect and not expensive. AsThomson would say, 'It's quite _comme il faut_, Miss!'"
"Where is Thomson?"
"Mr. Greer, the artist, has taken him over. He wrote me that he wasmaking thousands, throwing the light on millionaires, and especiallymillionairesses, and that he wanted Thomson, oh, so badly! He's thetype that Thomson likes, and so he joined him two months ago atNewport. Dear old Thomson! Mahomet has gone back to Alexandria."
They looked around the big room. "Soft lights at night and all thosetwinkling stars out there. It's going to be a dear home."
"You'll have people coming about you. Your own sort--"
Hagar laughed. "What is my sort? Everybody's my sort."
"Writers--artists--"
Hagar pondered the mantel-shelf with a view to what should go aboveit. "I don't know many of them. I know more of them abroad than here.We're a very isolated kind of craftspeople--each of us more or less ona little Robinson Crusoe island of our own. It may be different in NewYork, I don't know.... We could do a good deal if we'd put our headstogether and push the same wheel."
The apartment was not to be furnished in a day. They worked at it ina restful and leisurely manner, and in the midst of operations, Hagarwent to see the Josslyns who had a house up on the Sound.
That afternoon she and the Josslyns walked by the water and watchedthe white sails gliding by the green and rocky shore, then in theevening sat by a wood fire with cider and apples. Monday to Fridaythe children were in town at their grandmother's, going to school;Friday afternoon they entered the big living-room like a west wind anddanced about with their mother. A little later the whole family wouldgo into town; Christopher had had a course of lectures to write andhe was doing it better here. The fire crackled and blazed; at nightthrough the open windows came in a dim sound of waves, with passinglights of boats, and the fragrance of the salt sea, beloved by Hagar.On Monday, when the children had gone, she drove with Molly deep intothe sweet countryside, and the two talked as the quiet old horse joggedalong.... Molly had taken the advice of the woman at Roger Michael'sdinner-party three years and more ago. She was an active member of asuffrage organization, deeply interested, beginning to speak. "I'm agood out-of-doors sort. My voice carries and I don't have to strain it.Of course, we're just beginning out-of-doors speaking. I haven't halfthe intellect I wish I had, but I can give them good, plain doctrine.It's so common-sense, after all! And Christopher helps so much.... Oh,Hagar, when you're truly mated, it's _heaven_!"
Molly could tell much of the practical working, of the everyday effortand propaganda. "In two weeks we'll be back in town, and then if you'lllet me take you here and there--And when we get back to the house I'llshow you what I have of the literature we use,--pamphlets, leaflets,and so on,--from John Stuart Mill down to an article Christopher wrotethe other day. We broadcast a great amount of it in every state, butif we were rich we could make use of a thousand times more. But we'renot rich--whether that's to our damnation or our salvation! We haveto make devotion do instead. Then there are the books that help us,and they are coming out constantly now. And every now and then we gaina bit of the press. A number of the magazines help no end. And, ofcourse, we speak and have meetings and work quietly, each among herown acquaintance. It's to educate--educate--educate! We're just atthe beginning of things. There were the early stages and the heroicwomen who blazed the trail. They're all going,-
-Miss Anthony died lastMarch,--and their time is merging into our time, and now the trail'sa roadway and there are thousands on it, and still we're just at thebeginning--"
Molly could tell, too, something of the personality of the womeneminent in the movement. "The really eminent to-day are not alwaysthose whose names the reporters catch, and _vice versa_. And while thepapers talk of 'leaders,' I do not think that, in the man's sense, theyare leaders at all. We do not hurrah for any woman as the men do forMr. Roosevelt or Mr. Bryan. The movement goes without high priests andautocrats and personifications. We haven't, I suppose, the Big Chieftradition. Perhaps woman's individualism has a value after all. It'slike religion when it really is personal; your idea of good remainsyour idea of good; it doesn't take on a human form. Or perhaps we'remerely tired of crooking the knee. I don't know. The fact remains."
They jogged along by country roads and orchards. "It's the mostworth-_while_ thing!" said Molly. "Nobody can explain it, but every onewho takes hold of it _deep_ feels it. I heard a woman say the otherday that it was like going out of a close room into ozone and wind andthe blue lift of the sky. She said she felt as though she had wings!Discouragements? Cartloads of them! But somehow they don't matter. Nordo mistakes. Of course we make them--but the next time we do better."
The witching autumn week with the Josslyns over, Hagar went back totown, and, as she had promised, to the Settlement for three days.
The Settlement! The first day she had seen it came back clearly; theharsh, biting day and the search for Thomasine, and Omega Street, andthen how wonderful the old house had seemed to her, going over it withElizabeth. It was shrunken now, of course, in size and marvel, but itwas still a grave and pleasant place of fine uses. She had visited itbefore during this month, and she had marked certain changes. A few ofthe people in residence years before were here yet, others were gone,others of later years had come in. But it was not only people; otherchanges appeared. She found exhibited a deep skepticism of certainDana?des' labours still favoured or tolerated so many years ago. Thepolicies of the place were bolder and larger; every one was at oncemore radical and more serene.
Marie Caton met her. "Elizabeth has a committee meeting, and then shespeaks to-night at Cooper Union: _Women in the Sweated Trades_. Ihaven't had you to myself hardly ever! Now I'm going to."
"Can't I go to Cooper Union to-night?"
"Oh, yes! I'm going, too. It's an important meeting. But I've got youfor a whole two hours, and nowadays that's a long and restful sojourntogether! Get your things off and we'll take possession of Elizabeth'ssitting-room."
In Elizabeth's room, with her books, with the Psyche and the BotticelliJudith and the Mona Lisa and the drawing of the Sphinx, they talked oftwenty things, finally of the Settlement's specific activities, oldones carried on, new ones embarked in; then, "But more and more you getdrawn--or I get drawn--into the ocean of China Awake."
"China Awake?"
"Women Awake. It's an ocean all right, with an ocean's possibilities."
"I don't think it's women only who are waking, Marie. Women and men,all of us--"
"I agree," said Marie. "But it wasn't just natural sleepy-headednesswith women. They've been drugged--given knock-out drops, so to speak.They have a long way to wake up."
Hagar mused, her eyes upon the drawing. "Yes, a good, long way....There must have been a lot of pristine strength."
"Well, it's coming out. All kinds of things are coming out with anaccent on qualities they didn't think she had."
"Yes. The world _is_ rather in the position of the hen with theduckling--"
"The kind of thing we read and hear at this place emphasizes, ofcourse, the economic and sociological side. It's to be the Century ofFair Distribution, of Social Organization, of Humanism--_ergo_, WomanAlso. Which, of course, is all right, but I'd put an infinite plus tothat."
"And Elizabeth?"
"Oh, Elizabeth is a saint! What she thinks of is the sweated womanand the little children, and the girl who goes under--most often ispushed under. It's what we see down here; it's the starved bodies andminds, the slow dying of fatigue, the monstrous wrong of the ThingsWithheld that's moving her. Of course, we all think of that. How canany thinking woman not think of that? She wants the vote to use as alever, and so do I, and so do you.... But behind all that, in the placewhere I myself live," said Marie, with sudden passion, "I am fightingto be myself! I am fighting for that same right for the other woman! Iam fighting for plain recognition of an equal humanity!"
There was a crowd that night at Cooper Union. Elizabeth spoke; agrave, strong talk, followed with attention, clapped with sincerity.After her there spoke an A. F. of L. man. "Women have got to unionize.They've got to learn to keep step. They've got to learn that the goodof one is wrapped up in the good of all. They've got to learn tostrike. They've got to learn to strike not only for themselves, but forthe others. They've got to get off their little, just-standing-roomislands, and think in terms of continents. They've got to get an ideaof solidarity--"
When he had taken his seat came an announcement, made with evidentsatisfaction. "We did not know it until a few minutes ago. We thoughtshe was still in the West--but we are so fortunate as to have with usto-night--Rose Darragh!" Applause broke forth at once.