Books: Lifted Masks
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Susan Glaspell >> Lifted Masks
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A motion to adjourn immediately followed--no one wanted to do
anything more that afternoon. They all wanted to say things to the
Senator from Johnson; but his face had grown cold, and as they were
usually afraid of him, anyhow, they kept away. All but Senator
Dorman--it meant too much with him. "Do you mind my telling you," he
said, tensely, "that it was as fine a thing as I have ever known a
man to do?"
The Senator from Johnson moved impatiently. "You think it 'fine,'"
he asked, almost resentfully, "to be a coward?"
"Coward?" cried the other man. "Well, that's scarcely the word. It
was--heroic!"
"Oh no," said Senator Harrison, and he spoke wearily, "it was a
clear case of cowardice. You see," he laughed, "I was afraid it
might haunt me when I am seventy."
Senator Dorman started eagerly to speak, but the other man stopped
him and passed on. He was seeing it as his constituency would see
it, and it humiliated him. They would say he had not the courage of
his convictions, that he was afraid of the unpopularity, that his
judgment had fallen victim to the eloquence of the Senator from
Maxwell.
But when he left the building and came out into the softness of the
April afternoon it began to seem different. After all, it was not he
alone who leaned to the softer side. There were the trees--they were
permitted another chance to bud; there were the birds--they were
allowed another chance to sing; there was the earth--to it was given
another chance to yield. There stole over him a tranquil sense of
unison with Life.
III
FOR LOVE OF THE HILLS
"Sure you're done with it?"
"Oh, yes," replied the girl, the suggestion of a smile on her face,
and in her voice the suggestion of a tear. "Yes; I was just going."
But she did not go. She turned instead to the end of the alcove and
sat down before a table placed by the window. Leaning her elbows
upon it she looked about her through a blur of tears.
Seen through her own eyes of longing, it seemed that almost all of
the people whom she could see standing before the files of the daily
papers were homesick. The reading-room had been a strange study to
her during those weeks spent in fruitless search for the work she
wanted to do, and it had likewise proved a strange comfort. When
tired and disconsolate and utterly sick at heart there was always
one thing she could do--she could go down to the library and look at
the paper from home. It was not that she wanted the actual news of
Denver. She did not care in any vital way what the city officials
were doing, what buildings were going up, or who was leaving town.
She was only indifferently interested in the fires and the murders.
She wanted the comforting companionship of that paper from home.
It seemed there were many to whom the papers offered that same
sympathy, companionship, whatever it might be. More than anything
else it perhaps gave to them--the searchers, drifters--a sense of
anchorage. She would not soon forget the day she herself had stumbled
in there and found the home paper. Chicago had given her nothing but
rebuffs that day, and in desperation, just because she must go
somewhere, and did not want to go back to her boarding-place, she had
hunted out the city library. It was when walking listlessly about in
the big reading-room it had occurred to her that perhaps she could
find the paper from home; and after that when things were their worst,
when her throat grew tight and her eyes dim, she could always comfort
herself by saying: "After a while I'll run down and look at the paper."
But to-night it had failed her. It was not the paper from home
to-night; it was just a newspaper. It did not inspire the belief
that things would be better to-morrow, that it must all come right
soon. It left her as she had come---heavy with the consciousness
that in her purse was eleven dollars, and that that was every cent
she had in the whole world.
It was hard to hold back the tears as she dwelt upon the fact that
it was very little she had asked of Chicago. She had asked only a
chance to do the work for which she was trained, in order that she
might go to the art classes at night. She had read in the papers of
that mighty young city of the Middle West--the heart of the
continent--of its brawn and its brain and its grit. She had supposed
that Chicago, of all places, would appreciate what she wanted to do.
The day she drew her hard-earned one hundred dollars from the bank
in Denver--how the sun had shone that day in Denver, how clear the
sky had been, and how bracing the air!--she had quite taken it for
granted that her future was assured. And now, after tasting for
three weeks the cruelty of indifference, she looked back to those
visions with a hard little smile.
She rose to go, and in so doing her eyes fell upon the queer little
woman to whom she had yielded her place before the Denver paper.
Submerged as she had been in her own desolation she had given no
heed to the small figure which came slipping along beside her beyond
the bare thought that she was queer-looking. But as her eyes rested
upon her now there was something about the woman which held her.
She was a strange little figure. An old-fashioned shawl was pinned
tightly about her shoulders, and she was wearing a queer, rusty
little bonnet. Her hair was rolled up in a small knot at the back of
her head. She did not look as though she belonged in Chicago. And
then, as the girl stood there looking at her, she saw the thin
shoulders quiver, and after a minute the head that was wearing the
rusty bonnet went down into the folds of the Denver paper.
The girl's own eyes filled, and she turned to go. It seemed she
could scarcely bear her own unhappiness that day, without coming
close to the heartache of another. But when she reached the end of
the alcove she glanced back, and the sight of that shabby, bent
figure, all alone before the Denver paper, was not to be withstood.
"I am from Colorado, too," she said softly, laying a hand upon the
bent shoulders.
The woman looked up at that and took the girl's hand in both of her
thin, trembling ones. It was a wan and a troubled face she lifted,
and there was something about the eyes which would not seem to have
been left there by tears alone.
"And do you have a pining for the mountains?" she whispered, with a
timid eagerness. "Do you have a feeling that you want to see the sun
go down behind them tonight and that you want to see the darkness
come stealing up to the tops?"
The girl half turned away, but she pressed the woman's hand tightly
in hers. "I know what you mean," she murmured.
"I wanted to see it so bad," continued the woman, tremulously, "that
something just drove me here to this paper. I knowed it was here
because my nephew's wife brought me here one day and we come across
it. We took this paper at home for more 'an twenty years. That's why
I come. 'Twas the closest I could get."
"I know what you mean," said the girl again, unsteadily.
"And it's the closest I will ever get!" sobbed the woman.
"Oh, don't say that," protested the girl, brushing away her own
tears, and trying to smile; "you'll go back home some day."
The woman shook her head. "And if I should," she said, "even if I
should, 'twill be too late."
"But it couldn't be too late," insisted the girl. "The mountains,
you know, will be there forever."
"The mountains will be there forever," repeated the woman, musingly;
"yes, but not for me to see." There was a pause. "You see,"--she
said it quietly--"I'm going blind."
The girl took a quick step backward, then stretched out two
impulsive hands. "Oh, no, no you're not! Why--the doctors, you know,
they do everything now."
The woman shook her head. "That's what I thought when I come here.
That's why I come. But I saw the biggest doctor of them all
today--they all say he's the best there is--and he said right out
'twas no use to do anything. He said 'twas--hopeless."
Her voice broke on that word. "You see," she hurried on, "I wouldn't
care so much, seems like I wouldn't care 't all, if I could get
there first! If I could see the sun go down behind them just one
night! If I could see the black shadows come slippin' over 'em just
once! And then, if just one morning--just once!--I could get up and
see the sunlight come a streamin'--oh, you know how it looks! You
know what 'tis I want to see!"
"Yes; but why can't you? Why not? You won't go--your eyesight will
last until you get back home, won't it?"
"But I can't go back home; not now."
"Why not?" demanded the girl. "Why can't you go home?"
"Why, there ain't no money, my dear," she explained, patiently.
"It's a long way off--Colorado is, and there ain't no money. Now,
George--George is my brother-in-law--he got me the money to come;
but you see it took it all to come here, and to pay them doctors
with. And George--he ain't rich, and it pinched him hard for me to
come--he says I'll have to wait until he gets money laid up again,
and--well he can't tell just when 't will be. He'll send it soon as
he gets it," she hastened to add.
"But what are you going to do in the meantime? It would cost less to
get you home than to keep you here."
"No, I stay with my nephew here. He's willin' I should stay with him
till I get my money to go home."
"Yes, but this nephew, can't he get you the money? Doesn't he know,"
she insisted, heatedly, "what it means to you?"
"He's got five children, and not much laid up. And then, he never
seen the mountains. He doesn't know what I mean when I try to tell
him about gettin' there in time. Why, he says there's many a one
living back in the mountains would like to be livin' here. He don't
understand--my nephew don't," she added, apologetically.
"Well, _someone_ ought to understand!" broke from the girl. "I
understand! But--" she did her best to make it a laugh--"eleven
dollars is every cent I've got in the world!"
"Don't!" implored the woman, as the girl gave up trying to control
the tears. "Now, don't you be botherin'. I didn't mean to make you
feel so bad. My nephew says I ain't reasonable, and maybe I ain't."
The girl raised her head. "But you _are_ reasonable. I tell
you, you _are_ reasonable!"
"I must be going back," said the woman, uncertainly. "I'm just
making you feel bad, and it won't do no good. And then they may be
stirred up about me. Emma--Emma's my nephew's wife--left me at the
doctor's office 'cause she had some trading to do, and she was to
come back there for me. And then, as I was sittin' there, the pinin'
came over me so strong it seemed I just must get up and start!
And"---she smiled wanly---"this was far as I got."
"Come over and sit down by this table," said the girl, impulsively,
"and tell me a little about your home back in the mountains.
Wouldn't you like to?"
The woman nodded gratefully. "Seems most like getting back to them
to find someone that knows about them," she said, after they had
drawn their chairs up to the table and were sitting there side by
side.
The girl put her rounded hand over on the thin, withered one. "Tell
me about it," she said again.
"Maybe it wouldn't be much interesting to you, my dear. It's just a
common life--mine is. You see, William and I--William was my
husband--we went to Georgetown before it really was any town at all.
Years and years before the railroad went through, we was there. Was
you ever there?" she asked wistfully.
"Oh, very often," replied the girl. "I love every inch of that
country!"
A tear stole down the woman's face. "It's most like being home to
find someone that knows about it," she whispered.
"Yes, William and I went there when 'twas all new country," she went
on, after a pause. "We worked hard, and we laid up a little money.
Then, three years ago, William took sick. He was sick for a year,
and we had to live up most of what we'd saved. That's why I ain't
got none now. It ain't that William didn't provide."
The girl nodded.
"We seen some hard days. But we was always harmonious--William and I
was. And William had a great fondness for the mountains. The night
before he died he made them take him over by the window and he
looked out and watched the darkness come stealin' over the
daylight--you know how it does in them mountains. 'Mother,' he said
to me--his voice was that low I could no more 'an hear what he
said--'I'll never see another sun go down, but I'm thankful I seen
this one.'"
She was crying outright now, and the girl did not try to stop her.
"And that's the reason I love the mountains," she whispered at last.
"It ain't just that they're grand and wonderful to look at. It ain't
just the things them tourists sees to talk about. But the mountains
has always been like a comfortin' friend to me. John and Sarah is
buried there--John and Sarah is my two children that died of fever.
And then William is there--like I just told you. And the mountains
was a comfort to me in all those times of trouble. They're like an
old friend. Seems like they're the best friend I've got on earth."
"I know what you mean," said the girl, brokenly. "I know all about
it."
"And you don't think I'm just notional," she asked wistfully, "in
pinin' to get back while--whilst I can look at them?"
The girl held the old hand tightly in hers with a clasp more
responsive than words.
"It ain't but I'd know they was there. I could feel they was there
all right, but"--her voice sank with the horror of it--"I'm 'fraid
I might forget just how they look!"
"Oh, but you won't," the girl assured her. "You'll remember just how
they look."
"I'm scared of it. I'm scared there might be something I'd forget.
And so I just torment myself thinkin'--'Now do I remember this? Can
I see just how that looks?' That's the way I got to thinkin' up in
the doctor's office, when he told me there was nothing to do, and I
was so worked up it seemed I must get up and start!"
"You must try not to worry about it," murmured the girl. "You'll
remember."
"Well, maybe so. Maybe I will. But that's why I want just one more
look. If I could look once more I'd remember it forever. You see I'd
look to remember it, and I would. And do you know--seems like I
wouldn't mind going blind so much then? When I'd sit facin' them I'd
just say to myself: 'Now I know just how they look. I'm seeing them
just as if I had my eyes!' The doctor says my sight'll just kind of
slip away, and when I look my last look, when it gets dimmer and
dimmer to me, I want the last thing I see to be them mountains where
William and me worked and was so happy! Seems like I can't bear it
to have my sight slip away here in Chicago, where there's nothing I
want to look at! And then to have a little left--to have just a
little left!--and to know I could see if I was there to look--and to
know that when I get there 'twill be--Oh, I'll be rebellious-like
here--and I'd be contented there! I don't want to be complainin'--I
don't want to!--but when I've only got a little left I want it--oh,
I want it for them things I want to see!"
"You will see them," insisted the girl passionately. "I'm not going
to believe the world can be so hideous as that!"
"Well, maybe so," said the woman, rising. "But I don't know where
'twill come from," she added doubtfully.
She took her back to the doctor's office and left her in the care of
the stolid Emma. "Seems most like I'd been back home," she said in
parting; and the girl promised to come and see her and talk with her
about the mountains. The woman thought that talking about them would
help her to remember just how they looked.
And then the girl returned to the library. She did not know why she
did so. In truth she scarcely knew she was going there until she
found herself sitting before that same secluded table at which she
and the woman had sat a little while before. For a long time she sat
there with her head in her hands, tears falling upon a pad of yellow
paper on the table before her.
Finally she dried her eyes, opened her purse, and counted her money.
It seemed that out of her great desire, out of her great new need,
there must be more than she had thought. But there was not, and she
folded her hands upon the two five-dollar bills and the one silver
dollar and looked hopelessly about the big room.
She had forgotten her own disappointments, her own loneliness. She
was oblivious to everything in the world now save what seemed the
absolute necessity of getting the woman back to the mountains while
she had eyes to see them.
But what could she do? Again she counted the money. She could make
herself, some way or other, get along without one of the five-dollar
bills, but five dollars would not take one very close to the
mountains. It was at that moment that she saw a man standing before
the Denver paper, and noticed that another man was waiting to take
his place. The one who was reading had a dinner pail in his hand.
The clothes of the other told that he, too, was of the world's
workers. It was clear to the girl that the man at the file was
reading the paper from home; and the man who was ready to take his
place looked as if waiting for something less impersonal than the
news of the day.
The idea came upon her with such suddenness, so full born, that it
made her gasp. They--the people who came to read the Denver paper,
the people who loved the mountains and were far from them, the
people who were themselves homesick and full of longing--were the
people to understand.
It took her but a minute to act. She put the silver dollar and one
five-dollar bill back in her purse. She clutched the other bill in
her left hand, picked up a pencil, and began to write. She headed
the petition: "To all who know and love the mountains," and she told
the story with the simpleness of one speaking from the heart, and
the directness of one who speaks to those sure to understand. "And
so I found her here by the Denver paper," she said, after she had
stated the tragic facts, "because it was the closest she could come
to the mountains. Her heart is not breaking because she is going
blind. It is breaking because she may never again look with seeing
eyes upon those great hills which rise up about her home. We must do
it for her simply because we would wish that, under like
circumstances, someone would do it for us. She belongs to us because
we understand.
"If you can only give fifty cents, please do not hold it back
because it seems but little. Fifty cents will take her twenty miles
nearer home--twenty miles closer to the things upon which she longs
that her last seeing glance may fall."
After she had written it she rose, and, the five-dollar bill in one
hand, the sheets of yellow paper in the other, walked down the long
room to the desk at which one of the librarians sat. The girl's
cheeks were very red, her eyes shining as she poured out the story.
They mingled their tears, for the girl at the desk was herself young
and far from home, and then they walked back to the Denver paper and
pinned the sheets of yellow paper just above the file. At the bottom
of the petition the librarian wrote: "Leave your money at the desk
in this room. It will be properly attended to." The girl from
Colorado then turned over her five-dollar bill and passed out into
the gathering night.
Her heart was brimming with joy. "I can get a cheaper boarding
place," she told herself, as she joined the home-going crowds, "and
until something else turns up I'll just look around and see if I
can't get a place in a store."
* * * * *
One by one they had gathered around while the woman was telling the
story. "And so, if you don't mind," she said, in conclusion, "I'd
like to have you put in a little piece that I got to Denver safe,
so's they can see it. They was all so worked up about when I'd get
here. Would that cost much?" she asked timidly.
"Not a cent," said the city editor, his voice gruff with the attempt
to keep it steady.
"You might say, if it wouldn't take too much room, that I was much
pleased with the prospect of getting home before sundown to-night."
"You needn't worry but what we'll say it all," he assured her.
"We'll say a great deal more than you have any idea of."
"I'm very thankful to you," she said, as she rose to go.
They sat there for a moment in silence. "When one considers,"
someone began, "that they were people who were pushed too close even
to subscribe to a daily paper--"
"When one considers," said the city editor, "that the girl who
started it had just eleven dollars to her name--" And then he, too,
stopped abruptly and there was another long moment of silence.
After that he looked around at the reporters. "Well, it's too bad
you can't all have it, when it's so big a chance, but I guess it
falls logically to Raymond. And in writing it, just remember,
Raymond, that the biggest stories are not written about wars, or
about politics, or even murders. The biggest stories are written
about the things which draw human beings closer together. And the
chance to write them doesn't come every day, or every year, or every
lifetime. And I'll tell you, boys, all of you, when it seems
sometimes that the milk of human kindness has all turned sour, just
think back to the little story you heard this afternoon."
* * * * *
Slowly the sun slipped down behind the mountains; slowly the long
purple shadows deepened to black; and with the coming of the night
there settled over the everlasting hills, and over the soul of one
who had returned to them, that satisfying calm that men call peace.
IV
FRECKLES M'GRATH
Many visitors to the State-house made the mistake of looking upon
the Governor as the most important personage in the building. They
would walk up and down the corridors, hoping for a glimpse of some
of the leading officials, when all the while Freckles McGrath, the
real character of the Capitol, and by all odds the most illustrious
person in it, was at once accessible and affable.
Freckles McGrath was the elevator boy. In the official register his
name had gone down as William, but that was a mere concession to the
constituents to whom the official register was sent out. In the
newspapers--and he appeared with frequency in the newspapers--he was
always "Freckles," and every one from the Governor down gave him
that title, the appropriateness of which was stamped a hundred fold
upon his shrewd, jolly Irish face.
Like every one else on the State pay-roll, Freckles was keyed high
during this first week of the new session. It was a reform
Legislature, and so imbued was it with the idea of reforming that
there was grave danger of its forcing reformation upon everything in
sight. It happened that the Governor was of the same faction of the
party as that dominant in the Legislature; reform breathed through
every nook and crevice of the great building.
But high above all else in importance towered the Kelley Bill. From
the very opening of the session there was scarcely a day when some
of Freckles' passengers did not in hushed whispers mention the
Kelley Bill. From what he could pick up about the building, and what
he read in the newspapers, Freckles put together a few ideas as to
what the Kelley Bill really was. It was a great reform measure, and
it was going to show the railroads that they did not own the State.
The railroads were going to have to pay more taxes, and they were
making an awful fuss about it; but if the Kelley Bill could be put
through it would be a great victory for reform, and would make the
Governor "solid" in the State.
Freckles McGrath was strong for reform. That was partly because the
snatches of speeches he heard in the Legislature were more thrilling
when for reform than when against it; it was partly because he
adored the Governor, and in no small part because he despised Mr.
Ludlow.
Mr. Ludlow was a lobbyist. Some of the members of the Legislature
were Mr. Ludlow's property--or at least so Freckles inferred from
conversation overheard at his post. There had been a great deal of
talk that session about Mr. Ludlow's methods.
Freckles himself was no snob. Although he had heard Mr. Ludlow
called disgraceful, and although he firmly believed he was
disgraceful, he did not consider that any reason for not speaking to
him. And so when Mr. Ludlow got in all alone one morning, and the
occasion seemed to demand recognition of some sort, Freckles had
chirped: "Good-morning!"
But the man, possibly deep in something else, simply knit together
his brows and gave no sign of having heard. After that, Henry
Ludlow, lobbyist, and Freckles McGrath, elevator boy, were enemies.
A little before noon, one day near the end of the session, a member
of the Senate and a member of the House rode down together in the
elevator.
"There's no use waiting any longer," the Senator was saying as they
got in. "We're as strong now as we're going to be. It's a matter of
Stacy's vote, and that's a matter of who sees him last."
Freckles widened out his ears and gauged the elevator for very slow
running. Stacy had been written up in the papers as a wabbler on the
Kelley Bill.
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