CHAPTER XXXI
JOHN FAY
"Denny," said Hagar, "ask Mary Magazine to give you a coffee-cup."Denny came back with it and she filled it from the silver urn. "Rosewent to Brooklyn to-night?"
"Yes.--I was to have spoken down on Omega Street, but at the lastmoment Harding came in and I sent him instead. 'Onward!' 's got thestrongest kind of stuff this week, and there are some finishingtouches--I'm going back to the office in an hour or two. Rose said thatshe asked you for that poem, and that you said you would give it, andshe thought you might have it ready. I've got a telling place for it--"
"Drink your coffee and talk to the others while I copy it out," saidHagar. She rose and went to the desk in the smaller room. When she cameback, Lily was dreaming with her eyes upon the forest bough, and thetwo men sat discussing Syndicalism. She laid a folded piece of paperupon the table beside Denny's hand. "There are only three verses."
He opened the paper and read them. "Thank you, Hagar! You've struck ithome."
He refolded the paper and was about to put it in his pocket when JohnFay held out his hand. "Mayn't I see it, too?" He looked at Hagar.
"Yes, of course, if you wish."
Fay read it, held the paper in his hand for a moment, then gave itback to Denny. "I wish I could write like that," he said.
His tone was so oddly humble that Hagar laughed. "I wish that I couldbuild great bridges across deep rivers!" she said.
They sat and talked, and the poem gave leadings to their talk, thoughthey did not speak of the poem. At first it was Fay, answering Hagar'squestions, telling of the struggle of muscle and brain with thephysical earth, of mountain-piercing, river-spanning, harbour-making.He was thirty-nine; he had been engineering, building in strangeand desert places since he was a boy; he had a host of memories ofstruggles, now desperate and picturesque, now patient and drudging,grapples of mind with matter, first-hand encounters with solids andliquids and gases. He had had to manage men in order to manage these;he had had to know how to manage men. Born with an enquiring mind, helearned as he went along his governments and peoples, their customs,institutions, motor-faiths, strengths and weaknesses; also he knew thenatural history of places, and loved Mother Earth and a good part ofher progeny. He had also a defined, quizzical humour which saved theday for him when it grew too strenuous. He talked well, with a certaindrawling fitness of phrase which brought Medway into Hagar's mind, butnot unpleasantly. There had been much in Medway which she had liked.
Fay was no monopolist. The talk went from one to another, and Dennydrew more into it. He had been listening attentively to Fay. "It's yourwork," he said, "and it's tremendous and basic work. You've been doingit through the ages ever since it first occurred to us that we couldlengthen an arm with a stick and crack a nut--or an enemy's head--witha stone. It's tremendous and basic still. And the people who work underyour direction, and atom by atom give you power?"
"Why, one day," said Fay, "they'll work as artists. A far day,doubtless, and there are degrees in artists; but I see no otherconclusion. And to give the artist component in the mass of humanitya chance to strengthen and come out is, I take it, the tremendous andbasic work to which we've all got to devote the next century or two."
"Oh, you're all right!" said Denny.
Hagar smiled. "My old 'News from Nowhere'--"
"But with a difference," said Denny. "Morris's was an over-simplifieddream."
"Yes; we are more complex and flowing than that. But it was lovely. Doyou remember the harvest home, and the masons, so absorbed and happy intheir building ... like children, and yet conscious artists, buoyant,free--"
Fay looked at her. "What," he said, "is _your_ vision of the countrythat is coming?"
Her candid eyes met his. "I have no clear vision," she said. "Visions,too, are flowing. The vision of to-day is not that of yesterday andto-morrow's may be different yet. Moreover, I don't want to fix avision, to mount it like a butterfly and keep it with the life goneout. We've done too much of that all along the way behind us. Visiongrows, and who wishes to say 'Lo, the beautiful End!' There is no End.I do not wish a rigid mind, posturing before one altar-piece. Picturesdissolve and altars are portable."
"Yes," said Denny, "but--"
"Lily says she reads Vedanta. Well, it is the Yogi's _Neti--neti!_Almost your only possible definition as yet is, 'Not this--not this!'The country that is coming--It is not capitalism, though capitalismis among its ancestors. It is not war, though in the past it warred.It is not ecclesiasticism, though ecclesiasticism, too, was an inn onits road. It is not sex-aristocracy, though that, too, is behind it;it is not preoccupation with sex at all. It is not sectionalism, nornationalism, nor imperialism. It is not racial arrogance. It is notarrogance at all. It is not exploitation. It is not hatred. It is notselfishness. It is not lust. It is not bigotry. It is not ignorance,or pride in ignorance.--_Neti, neti!_... It is beauty--and truth....And always greater.... And it comes by knowledge, out of which growsunderstanding, and by courage, out of which come great actions."
She ceased to speak, and leaned back in her chair, her hand at theamethysts about her throat. Fay kept his eyes upon her. He wasconscious of a resurgence of a morning of a couple of years before whenhe had cut from a magazine a page bearing a half-tone portrait and hadpinned it above his book-shelf. HAGAR ASHENDYNE had said the legendbelow. The rustle of the palms outside his hut came to him, and themist of early morning above the waters.
The clock on Hagar's mantel-shelf struck ten with a silvery stroke.
Denny started. "I've got to go--work's calling!"
"I had rather hear you say, at ten o'clock, that sleep was calling,"said Hagar. "You're working too hard, Rose says so, and I say so." Shelooked at him with friendliness deep and tender, soft and bright."Almost Denny's only fault is that he makes his work his god ratherthan his servant. At times he's perilously near offering it a humansacrifice. Why will you, Denny?"
"There's so much to do and so few are doing it," said Denny. His eyeswere upon the great forest bough, but he seemed to be looking beyondit, down long, long vistas. "I don't know that I worship work. But Iwant every prisoner of wrong to rebel. And there's no time to wastewhen you have to pass the word along to so many cells. Sometimes Ifeel, too, like sitting down and playing, but when I do, I always beginafter a little to hear the chains." He laughed. "And I like you andRose preaching _dolce far niente_! If ever there were two who had thepower of work--!"
"All the same," said Hagar, "go to bed before two o'clock, won't you?"
He shook hands around and was gone. "What a wonderful face!" said Lily;and Fay nodded. "A kind of worn, warrior angel--"
Hagar took Lily's hand and kissed it. "You've defined Denny to anicety! 'A kind of worn, warrior angel'--I like that!... No, don't go!It isn't late."
"We'll stay, then, just one other half-hour. And now," said Lily, "tellme about yourself. We see your name, of course, and what the papersthink you are doing. But you yourself--"
"But I myself?" said Hagar. "Ah, if you'll tell me, I'll tell you!" Thegreat bough of red leaves against the wall was repeated in miniature bya spray upon the table, resting in a piece of cloudy Venetian glass.Hagar took it from the vase and sat studying it, colour and line. Shesat at ease in the deep chair, her long, slender limbs composed, herhead thrown back against green-bronze, an arm bent and raised, thewine-red spray in her hand. "What," she said, "does a man or woman doin a dusty day's march of every great transit? About that is what I andmany others have been doing, in this age as in other ages. Millions ofminds to reach with a statement that for reasons of weight the columnmust surmount such a hill and again such a hill, the line of marchlying truly on higher levels. The statement did not originate with themessengers of this or any other age; it is social, and the inner urgewould send the marchers somehow on, but there is needed interpreting,clarifying, articulation--hence the office that we fill, though we fillit as yet, I know, weakly enough! So it means a preoccupation withcommunication--ways and means of reac
hing minds. And that, lackinga developed telepathy, means the spoken and the written word. Andthat means, seeing we have such great numbers to reach, a continuingendeavour to reach people in congregation. And that means arrangement,going from place to place, much time that you sigh for consumed, someweariness, a great number of petty happenings--and a vast insight intolife and the way it is lived and the beings who live it! It meanscontacts with reality and a feeding the springs of humour and anacquaintance with the truly astonishing forest of human motives. Andthere is organization work and correspondence, and much of what mightbe called drudgery unless you can put the glow about it.... And thereis the weaving all the time of the web of unity. The human family, andthe dying-out before love and understanding of invidious distinctions.The world one home, and men one man, though of an infinite variety, andwomen one woman, though of an infinite variety, and children one child,and the open road before the three. And back of the three, Oneness. TheGreat Pulse--out, the Many; in, the One.... So I with others speak andwrite and go about and work."
When the clock struck again, Lily and John Fay said good-night. Lilywas to come once more before her boat sailed.
Hagar looked at Fay. "You are going to England, too?"
He hesitated. "I've said so--"
"He's just built a great bridge," said Lily, "and he hasn't reallytaken a holiday for years. Robert and I want him just as long as hewill travel with us."
When they were gone, Hagar went to the window and looked out far andwide upon the city settling to its rest. Here, to-night, would be deeprepose, here fevered tossing, here perhaps no sleep at all. There wouldbe death chambers and birth chambers--a many of each. And spiritualdeath chambers and spiritual birth chambers and the trodden middlerooms, minds that cried, "Light, more light!" and minds that said, "Wesee as it is." ... And over all, the suns so far away they were butglittering points. Hagar's gaze moved across the heavens from host tohost. "Ah, if you were hieroglyphics, and we could find the key--"
She came back to the lamplit table; Thomasine away, Mary Magazineasleep--the place was alone with her. She had been tired, but she didnot feel so now. She sat down, put her arms above her head and her eyesupon the forest bough, and began to think.... She thought visuallywith colour and light and form, luminous images parting the mist,rising in the great "interior sphere." She sat there till the clockstruck twelve, then she rose, put out the lights, opened every window.In the east, above the roofs, glittered Orion, with Aldebaran red andmighty and the glimmering Pleiades. Hagar stood and gazed. She liftedher eyes toward the zenith--Capella and Algol and the street whose dustis stars between. Her lips moved, she raised her hand. "All hail!" shesaid; then turning from the window opened the door that led into herbedroom. It was a white and fair and simple place. As she undressed,she was thinking of the October woods at Gilead Balm.
Three days later, at the hotel, Lily and John Fay had a short butmomentous conversation. "_Do_ you want to go, John? I don't want you togo if you don't want to go, you know."
"That's what I came to talk to you about," said Fay. "I have mystateroom. The boat sails day after to-morrow. I've written to menI know in London and in Paris. I want to see them. They're men I'veworked with. I want to see Robert. I even want to keep on seeing you,Lily! I've been about as eager as a boy for that run over Europe withthe two of you. And I don't want to disappoint you and Robert, if it isthe least disappointment. But--"
"I don't know that she'll ever marry," said Lily. "She'll not, unlessshe finds some one alike to strengthen and be strengthened by. A lot ofthe reasons for which women used to marry are out of court with her.Even what we call love--she won't feel it now for anything less thansomething that matches her."
Fay walked across the floor, stood at the window a moment, then cameback. "I won't fence," he said. "It's simple truth, however you divinedit. And I'm going to stay. I don't match her, but I've never proposedto stop growing."