Books: Lifted Masks

S >> Susan Glaspell >> Lifted Masks

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

During her luncheon, as she watched the strange people coming and
going, she did much wondering. She wondered why it was that so many
of the men at the dictionary place were very old men; she wondered
if it would be a good dictionary--one that would be used in the
schools; she wondered if Dr. Bunting had made a great deal of money,
and most of all she wondered about the man at the next table whose
voice was like--like a dream which she did not know that she had
dreamed.

When she had returned to the straggling old building, had stumbled
down the narrow, dark hall and opened the door of the big bleak
room, she saw that the man at the next table was the only one who
had returned from luncheon. Something in his profile made her stand
there very still. He had not heard her come in, and he was looking
straight ahead, eyes half closed, mouth set--no unsurrendered
boyishness there now. Wholly unconsciously she took an impulsive
step forward. But she stopped, for she saw, and felt without really
understanding, that it was not just the moment's pain, but the
revealed pain of years. Just then he began to cough, and it seemed
the cough, too, was more than of the moment. And then he turned and
saw her, and smiled, and the smile changed all.

As the afternoon wore on the man stopped working and turning a
little in his chair sat there covertly watching the girl. She was
just typically girl. It was written that she had spent her days in
the happy ways of healthful girlhood. He supposed that a great many
young fellows had fallen in love with her--nice, clean young
fellows, the kind she would naturally meet. And then his eyes closed
for a minute and he put up his hand and brushed back his hair; there
was weariness, weariness weary of itself, in the gesture. He looked
about the room and scanned the faces of the men, most of them older
than he, many of them men whose histories were well known to him.
They were the usual hangers on about newspaper offices; men who, for
one reason or other--age, dissipation, antiquated methods--had been
pitched over, men for whom such work as this came as a godsend. They
were the men of yesterday--men whom the world had rushed past. She
was the only one there, this girl who would probably sit here beside
him for many months, with whom the future had anything to do.
Youth!--Goodness!--Joy!--Hope!--strange things to bring to a place
like this. And as if their alienism disturbed him, he moved
restlessly, almost resentfully, bit his lips nervously, moistened
them, and began putting away his things.

As the girl was starting home along Dearborn Street a few minutes
later, she chanced to look in a window. She saw that it was a
saloon, but before she could turn away she saw a man with a white
face--white with the peculiar whiteness of a dark face, standing
before the bar drinking from a small glass. She stood still,
arrested by a look such as she had never seen before: a panting
human soul sobbingly fluttering down into something from which it
had spent all its force in trying to rise. When she recalled herself
and passed on, a mist which she could neither account for nor banish
was dimming the clear hazel of her eyes.

The next day was a hard one at the dictionary place. She told
herself it was because the novelty of it was wearing away, because
her fingers ached, because it tired her back to sit in that horrid
chair. She did not admit of any connection between her flagging
interest and the fact that the place at the next table was vacant.

The following day he was still absent. She assumed that it was
nervousness occasioned by her queer surroundings made her look
around whenever she heard a step behind her. Where was he? Where had
that look carried him? If he were in trouble, was there no one to
help him?

The third day she did an unpremeditated thing. The man in the skull
cap had been showing her something about the copy. As he was
leaving, she asked: "Is the man who sits at the next table coming
back?"

"Oh yes," he replied grimly, "he'll be back."

"Because," she went on, "if he wasn't, I thought I would take his
shears. These hurt my fingers."

He made the exchange for her--and after that things went better.

He did return late the next morning. After he had taken his place he
looked over at her and smiled. He looked sick and shaken--as if
something that knew no mercy had taken hold of him and wrung body
and soul.

"You have been ill?" she asked, with timid solicitude.

"Oh no," he replied, rather shortly.

He was quiet all that day, but the next day they talked about the
work, laughed together over funny definitions they found. She felt
that he could tell many interesting things about himself, if he
cared to.

As the days went on he did tell some of those things--out of the way
places where he had worked, queer people whom he had known. It
seemed that words came to him as gifts, came freely, happily,
pleased, perhaps, to be borne by so sympathetic a voice. And there
was another thing about him. He seemed always to know just what she
was trying to say; he never missed the unexpressed. That made it
easy to say things to him; there seemed a certain at-homeness
between his thought and hers. She accounted for her interest in him
by telling herself she had never known any one like that before. Now
Harold, the boy whom she knew best out at the university, why one
had to _say_ things to Harold to make him understand! And
Harold never left one wondering--wondering what he had meant by that
smile, what he had been going to say when he started to say
something and stopped, wondering what it was about his face that one
could not understand. Harold never could claim as his the hour after
he had left her, and was one ever close to anyone with whom one did
not spend some of the hours of absence? She began to see that hours
spent together when apart were the most intimate hours of all.

And as Harold did not make one wonder, so he did not make one worry.
Never in all her life had there been a lump in her throat when she
thought of Harold. There was often a lump in her throat when the man
at the next table was coughing.

One day, she had been there about two months, she said something to
him about it. It was hard; it seemed forcing one's way into a room
that had never been opened to one--there were several doors he kept
closed.

"Mr. Clifford," she turned to him impetuously as they were putting
away their things that night, "will you mind if I say something to
you?"

He was covering his paste-pot. He looked up at her strangely. The
closed door seemed to open a little way. "I can't conceive of
'minding' anything you might say to me, Miss Noah,"--he had called
her Miss Noah ever since she, by mistake, had one day called him Mr.
Webster.

"You see," she hurried on, very timid, now that the door had opened
a little, "you have been so good to me. Because you have been so
good to me it seems that I have some right to--to--"

His head was resting upon his hand, and he leaned a little closer as
though listening for something he wanted to hear.

"I had a cousin who had a cough like yours,"--brave now that she
could not go back--"and he went down to New Mexico and stayed for a
year, and when he came back--when he came back he was as well as any
of us. It seems so foolish not to"--her voice broke, now that it had
so valiantly carried it--"not to--"

He looked at her, and that was all. But she was never wholly the
same again after that look. It enveloped her being in a something
which left her richer--different. It was a look to light the dark
place between two human souls. It seemed for the moment that words
would follow it, but as if feeling their helplessness--perhaps
needlessness--they sank back unuttered, and at the last he got up,
abruptly, and walked away.

One night, while waiting for the elevator, she heard two of the men
talking about him. When she went out on the street it was with head
high, cheeks hot. For nothing is so hard to hear as that which one
has half known, and evaded. One never denies so hotly as in denying
to one's self what one fears is true, and one never resents so
bitterly as in resenting that which one cannot say one has the right
to resent.

That night she lay in her bed with wide open eyes, going over and
over the things they had said. "_Cure?_"--one of them had
scoffed, after telling how brilliant he had been before he "went to
pieces"--"why all the cures on earth couldn't help him! He can go
just so far, and then he can no more stop himself--oh, about as much
as an ant could stop a prairie fire!"

She finally turned over on her pillow and sobbed; and she wondered
why--wondered, yet knew.

But it resulted in the flowering of her tenderness for him. Interest
mounted to defiance. It ended in blind, passionate desire to "make
it up" to him. And again he was so different from Harold; Harold did
not impress himself upon one by upsetting all one's preconceived
ideas.

She felt now that she understood better--understood the closed
doors. He was--she could think of no better word than sensitive.

And that is why, several mornings later, she very courageously--for
it did take courage--threw this little note over on his desk--they
had formed a habit of writing notes to each other, sometimes about
the words, sometimes about other things.

"IN-VI-TA-TION, _n._ That which Miss Noah extends to Mr.
Webster for Friday evening, December second, at the house where she
lives--hasn't she already told him where that is? It is the wish of
Miss Noah to present Mr. Webster to various other Miss Noahs, all of
whom are desirous of making his acquaintance."

She was absurdly nervous at luncheon that day, and kept telling
herself with severity not to act like a high-school girl. He was
late in returning that noon, and though there seemed a new something
in his voice when he asked if he hadn't better sharpen her pencils,
he said nothing about her new definition of invitation. It was
almost five o'clock when he threw this over on her desk:

"AP-PRE-CI-A-TION, _n._ That sentiment inspired in Mr. Webster
by the kind invitation of Miss Noah for Friday evening.

"RE-GRET, _n._ That which Mr. Webster experiences because, for
reasons into which he cannot go in detail, it is impossible for him
to accept Miss Noah's invitation.

"RE-SENT-MENT, _n._ That which is inspired in Mr. Webster by
the insinuation that there are other Miss Noahs in the world."

Then below he had written: "Three hours later. Miss Noah, the world
is queer. Some day you may find out--though I hope you never
will--that it is frequently the things we most want to do that we
must leave undone. Miss Noah, won't you go on bringing me as much of
yourself as you can to Dearborn Street, and try not to think much
about my not being able to know the Miss Noah of Hyde Park? And
little Miss Noah--I thank you. There aren't words enough in this old
book of ours to tell you how much--or why."

That night he hurried away with never a joke about how many words
she had written that day. She did not look up as he stood there
putting on his coat.

It was spring now, and the dictionary staff had begun on W.

They had written of Joy, of Hope and Life and Love, and many other
things. Life seemed pressing just behind some of those definitions,
pressing the harder, perhaps, because it could not break through the
surface.

For it did not break through; it flooded just beneath.

How did she know that he cared for her? She could not possibly have
told. Perhaps the nearest to actual proof she could bring was that
he always saw that her overshoes were put in a warm place. And when
one came down to facts, the putting of a girl's rubbers near the
radiator did not necessarily mean love.

Perhaps then it was because there was no proof of it that she was
most sure. For some of the most sure things in the world are things
which cannot be proved.

It was only that they worked together and were friends; that they
laughed together over funny definitions they found, that he was kind
to her, and that they seemed remarkably close together.

That is as far as facts can take it.

And just there--it begins.

For the force which rushes beneath the facts of life, caring nothing
for conditions, not asking what one desires or what one thinks best,
caring as little about a past as about a future--save its own
future--the force which can laugh at man's institutions and batter
over in one sweep what he likes to call his wisdom, was sweeping
them on. And because it could get no other recognition it forced its
way into the moments when he asked her for an eraser, when she
wanted to know how to spell a word. He could not so much as ask her
if she needed more copy-paper without seeming to be lavishing upon
her all the love of all the ages.

And so the winter had worn on, and there was really nothing whatever
to tell about it.

She was quiet this morning, and kept her head bent low over her
work. For she had estimated the number of pages there were between W
and Z. Soon they would be at Z;--and then? Then? Shyly she turned
and looked at him; he too was bent over his work. When she came in
she had said something about its being spring, and that there must
be wild flowers in the woods. Since then he had not looked up.

Suddenly it came to her--tenderly, hotly, fearfully yet bravely,
that it was she who must meet Z. She looked at him again, covertly.
And she felt that she understood. It was the lines in his face made
it clearest. Years, and things blacker, less easily surmounted than
years--oh yes, that too she faced fearlessly--were piled in between.
She knew now that it was she--not he--who could push them aside.

It was all very unmaidenly, of course; but maidenly is a word love
and life and desire may crowd from the page.

Perhaps she would not have thrown it after all--the little note she
had written--had it not been that when she went over for more
copy-paper she stood for a minute looking out the window. Even on
Dearborn Street the seductiveness of spring was in the air. Spring,
and all that spring meant, filled her.

Because, way beyond the voice of Dr. Bunting she heard the songs of
far-away birds, and because beneath the rumble of a printing press
she could get the babble of a brook, because Z was near and life was
strong, the woman vanquished the girl, and she threw this over to
his desk:

"CHAFING-DISH, n. That out of which Miss Noah asks Mr. Webster to
eat his Sunday night lunch tomorrow. All the other Miss Noahs are
going to be away, and if Mr. Webster does not come, Miss Noah will
be all alone. Miss Noah does not like to be lonely."

She ate no lunch that day; she only drank a cup of coffee and walked
around.

He did not come back that afternoon. It passed from one to two, from
two to three, and then very slowly from three to four, and still he
had not come.

He too was walking about. He had walked down to the lake and was
standing there looking out across it.

Why not?--he was saying to himself--fiercely, doggedly. Over and
over again--Well, _why_ not?

A hundred nights, alone in his room, he had gone over it. Had not
life used him hard enough to give him a little now?--longing had
pleaded. And now there was a new voice--more prevailing voice--the
voice of her happiness. His face softened to an almost maternal
tenderness as he listened to that voice.

Too worn to fight any longer, he gave himself up to it, and sat
there dreaming. They were dreams of joy rushing in after lonely
years, dreams of stepping into the sunlight after long days in fog
and cold, dreams of a woman before a fireplace--her arms about him,
her cheer and her tenderness, her comradeship and her passion--all
his to take! Ah, dreams which even thoughts must not touch--so
wonderful and sacred they were.

A long time he sat there, dreaming dreams and seeing visions. The
force that rules the race was telling him that the one crime was the
denial of happiness--his happiness, her happiness; and when at last
his fight seemed but a puerile fight against forces worlds mightier
than he, he rose, and as one who sees a great light, started back
toward Dearborn Street.

On the way he began to cough. The coughing was violent, and he
stepped into a doorway to gain breath. And after he had gone in
there he realised that it was the building of Chicago's greatest
newspaper.

He had been city editor of that paper once. Facts, the things he
knew about himself, talked to him then. There was no answer.

It left him weak and dizzy and crazy for a drink. He walked on
slowly, unsteadily, his white face set. For he had vowed that if it
took the last nerve in his body there should be no more of that
until after they had finished with Z. He knew himself too well to
vow more. He was not even sure of that.

He did not turn in where he wanted to go, but resistance took the
last bit of force that was in him. He was trembling like a sick man
when he stepped into the elevator.

She was just leaving. She was in the little cloak room putting on
her things. She was all alone in there.

He stepped in. He pushed the door shut, and stood there leaning
against it, looking at her, saying nothing.

"Oh--you are ill?" she gasped, and laid a frightened hand upon him.

The touch crazed him. All resistance gone, he swept her into his
arms; he held her fiercely, and between sobs kissed her again and
again. He could not let her go. He frightened her. He hurt her. And
he did not care--he did not know.

Then he held her off and looked at her. And as he looked into her
eyes, passion melted to tenderness. It was she now--not he;
love--not hunger. Holding her face in his two hands, looking at her
as if getting something to take away, his white lips murmured words
too inarticulate for her to hear. And then again he put his arms
around her--all differently. Reverently, sobbingly, he kissed her
hair. And then he was gone.

He did not come out that Sunday afternoon, but Harold dropped in
instead, and talked of some athletic affairs over at the university.
She wondered why she did not go crazy in listening to him, and yet
she could answer intelligently. It was queer--what one _could_
do.

They had come at last to Z. There would be no more work upon the
dictionary after that day. And it was raining--raining as in Chicago
alone it knows how to rain.

They wrote no notes to each other now. It had been different since
that day. They made small effort to cover their raw souls with the
mantle of commonplace words.

Both of them had tried to stay away that last day. But both were in
their usual places.

The day wore on eventlessly. Those men with whom she had worked, the
men of yesterday, who had been kind to her, came up at various times
for little farewell chats. The man in the skull cap told her that
she had done excellent work. She was surprised at the ease with
which she could make decent reply, thinking again that it was
queer--what one could do.

He was moving. She saw him lay some sheets of yellow paper on the
desk in front. He had finished with his "take." There would not be
another to give him. He would go now.

He came back to his desk. She could hear him putting away his
things. And then for a long time there was no sound. She knew that
he was just sitting there in his chair.

Then she heard him get up. She heard him push his chair up to the
table, and then for a minute he stood there. She wanted to turn
toward him; she wanted to say something--do something. But she had
no power.

She saw him lay an envelope upon her desk. She heard him walking
away. She knew, numbly, that his footsteps were not steady. She knew
that he had stopped; she was sure that he was looking back. But
still she had no power.

And then she heard him go.

Even then she went on with her work; she finished her "take" and
laid down her pencil. It was finished now--and he had gone.
Finished?--_Gone?_ She was tearing open the envelope of the
letter.

This was what she read:

"Little dictionary sprite, sunshine vender, and girl to be loved, if
I were a free man I would say to you--Come, little one, and let us
learn of love. Let us learn of it, not as one learns from
dictionaries, but let us learn from the morning glow and the evening
shades. But Miss Noah, maker of dictionaries and creeper into
hearts, the bound must not call to the free. They might fittingly
have used my name as one of the synonyms under that word Failure,
but I trust not under Coward.

"And now, you funny little Miss Noah from the University of Chicago,
don't I know that your heart is blazing forth the assurance that you
don't _care_ for any of those things--the world, people, common
sense--that you want just love? They made a grand failure of you out
at your university; they taught you philosophy and they taught you
Greek, and they've left you just as much the woman as women were
five thousand years ago. Oh, I know all about you--you little girl
whose hair tried so hard to be red. Your soul touched mine as we sat
there writing words--words--words, the very words in which men try
to tell things, and can't--and I know all about what you would do.
But you shall not do it. Dear little copy maker, would a man
standing out on the end of a slippery plank have any right to cry to
someone on the shore--'Come out here on this plank with me?' If he
loved the someone on the shore, would he not say instead--'Don't get
on this plank?' Me get off the plank--come with you to the
shore--you are saying? But you see, dear, you only know slippery
planks as viewed from the shore--God grant you may never know them
any other way!

"It was you, was it not, who wrote our definition of happiness? Yes,
I remember the day you did it. You were so interested; your cheeks
grew so very red, and you pulled and pulled at your wavy hair. You
said it was such an important definition. And so it is, Miss Noah,
quite the most important of all. And on the page of life, Miss Noah,
may happiness be written large and unblurred for you. It is because
I cannot help you write it that I turn away. I want at least to
leave the page unspoiled.

"I carry a picture of you. I shall carry it always. You are sitting
before a fireplace, and I think of that fireplace as symbolising the
warmth and care and tenderness and the safety that will surround
you. And sometimes as you sit there let a thought of me come for
just a minute, Miss Noah--not long enough nor deep enough to bring
you any pain. But only think--I brought him happiness after he
believed all happiness had gone. He was so grateful for that light
which came after he thought the darkness had settled down. It will
light his way to the end.

"We've come to Z, and it's good-bye. There is one thing I can give
you without hurting you,--the hope, the prayer, that life may be
very, very good to you."

The sheets of paper fell from her hands. She sat staring out
into Dearborn Street. She began to see. After all, he had not
understood her. Perhaps men never understood women; certainly
he had not understood her. What he did not know was that she
was willing to _pay_ for her happiness--_pay_--pay any price
that might be exacted. And anyway--she had no choice. Strange that
he could not see that! Strange that he could not see the irony and
cruelty of bidding her good-bye and then telling her to be happy!

It simplified itself to such an extent that she _grew_ very
calm. It would be easy to find him, easy to make him see--for it was
so very simple--and then....

She turned in her copy. She said good-bye quietly, naturally, rode
down in the lumbering old elevator and started out into the now
drenching rain toward the elevated trains which would take her to
the West Side; it was so fortunate that she had heard him telling
one day where he lived.

When she reached the station she saw that more people were coming
down the stairs than were going up. They were saying things about
the trains, but she did not heed them. But at the top of the stairs
a man in uniform said: "Blockade, Miss. You'll have to take the
surface cars."

She was sorry, for it would delay her, and there was not a minute to
lose. She was dismayed, upon reaching the surface cars, to find she
could not get near them; the rain, the blockade on the "L" had
caused a great crowd to congregate there. She waited a long time,
getting more and more wet, but it was impossible to get near the
cars. She thought of a cab, but could see none, they too having all
been pressed into service.

She determined, desperately, to start and walk. Soon she would
surely get either a cab or a car. And so she started, staunchly,
though she was wet through now, and trembling with cold and
nervousness.

As she hurried through the driving rain she faced things fearlessly.
Oh yes, she understood--everything. But if he were not well--should
he not have her with him? If he had that thing to fight, did he not
need her help? What did men think women were like? Did he think she
was one to sit down and reason out what would be advantageous?
Better a little while with him on a slippery plank than forever safe
and desolate upon the shore!

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14