The Dwelling Place of Light, Volume 3

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"It never occurred to me to tell you," Insall replied.

"That must have something to do with it!" said Mrs. Maturin.

Insall got up and walked to the end of the terrace, gazing at a bluebird
on the edge of the lawn.

"Well, not necessarily," he said, after a while. "Did you ever find out
anything about her family?"

"Oh, yes, I met the father once, he's been out two or three times, on
Sunday, and came over here to thank me for what I'd done. The mother
doesn't come--she has some trouble, I don't know exactly what. Brooks, I
wish you could see the father, he's so typically unique--if one may use
the expression. A gatekeeper at the Chippering Mills!"

"A gatekeeper?"

"Yes, and I'm quite sure he doesn't understand to this day how he became
one, or why. He's delightfully naive on the subject of genealogy, and I
had the Bumpus family by heart before he left. That's the form his
remnant of the intellectual curiosity of his ancestors takes. He was born
in Dolton, which was settled by the original Bumpus, back in the Plymouth
Colony days, and if he were rich he'd have a library stuffed with gritty,
yellow-backed books and be a leading light in the Historical Society. He
speaks with that nicety of pronunciation of the old New Englander, never
slurring his syllables, and he has a really fine face, the kind of face
one doesn't often see nowadays. I kept looking at it, wondering what was
the matter with it, and at last I realized what it lacked--will, desire,
ambition,--it was what a second-rate sculptor might have made of
Bradford, for instance. But there is a remnant of fire in him. Once, when
he spoke of the strike, of the foreigners, he grew quite indignant."

"He didn't tell you why his daughter had joined the strikers?" Insall
asked.

"He was just as much at sea about that as you and I are. Of course I
didn't ask him--he asked me if I knew. It's only another proof of her
amazing reticence. And I can imagine an utter absence of sympathy between
them. He accounts for her, of course; he's probably the unconscious
transmitter of qualities the Puritans possessed and tried to smother.
Certainly the fires are alight in her, and yet it's almost incredible
that he should have conveyed them. Of course I haven't seen the mother."

"It's curious he didn't mention her having been Ditmar's stenographer,"
Insall put in. "Was that reticence?"

"I hardly think so," Augusta Maturin replied. "It may have been, but the
impression I got was of an incapacity to feel the present. All his
emotions are in the past, most of his conversation was about Bumpuses who
are dead and buried, and his pride in Janet--for he has a pride--seems to
exist because she is their representative. It's extraordinary, but he
sees her present situation, her future, with extraordinary optimism; he
apparently regards her coming to Silliston, even in the condition in
which we found her, as a piece of deserved fortune for which she has to
thank some virtue inherited from her ancestors! Well, perhaps he's right.
If she were not unique, I shouldn't want to keep her here. It's pure
selfishness. I told Mr. Bumpus I expected to find work for her."

Mrs. Maturin returned Insall's smile. "I suppose you're too polite to say
that I'm carried away by my enthusiasms. But you will at least do me the
justice to admit that they are rare and--discriminating, as a
connoisseur's should be. I think even you will approve of her."

"Oh, I have approved of her--that's the trouble."

Mrs. Maturin regarded him for a moment in silence.

"I wish you could have seen her when I began to read those verses of
Stevenson's. It was an inspirations your thinking of them."

"Did I think of them?"

"You know you did. You can't escape your responsibility. Well, I felt
like--like a gambler, as though I were staking everything on a throw.
And, after I began, as if I were playing on some rare instrument. She lay
there, listening, without uttering a word, but somehow she seemed to be
interpreting them for me, giving them a meaning and a beauty I hadn't
imagined. Another time I told her about Silliston, and how this little
community for over a century and a half had tried to keep its standard
flying, to carry on the work begun by old Andrew, and I thought of those
lines,

"Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore."

That particular application just suddenly, occurred to me, but she
inspired it."

"You're a born schoolma'am," Insall laughed.

"I'm much too radical for a schoolmam," she declared. "No board of
trustees would put up with me--not even Silliston's! We've kept the
faith, but we do move slowly, Brooks. Even tradition grows, and
sometimes our blindness here to changes, to modern, scientific facts,
fairly maddens me. I read her that poem of Moody's--you know it:--

'Here, where the moors stretch free
In the high blue afternoon,
Are the marching sun and the talking sea.'

and those last lines:--

'But thou, vast outbound ship of souls,
What harbour town for thee?
What shapes, when thy arriving tolls,
Shall crowd the banks to see?
Shall all the happy shipmates then
Stand singing brotherly?
Or shall a haggard, ruthless few
Warp her over and bring her to,
While the many broken souls of me
Fester down in the slaver's pen,
And nothing to say or do?'"

"I was sorry afterwards, I could see that she was tremendously excited.
And she made me feel as if I, too, had been battened down in that hold
and bruised and almost strangled. I often wonder whether she has got out
of it into the light--whether we can rescue her." Mrs. Maturin paused.

"What do you mean?" Insall asked.

"Well, it's difficult to describe, what I feel--she's such a perplexing
mixture of old New England and modernity, of a fatalism, and an aliveness
that fairly vibrates. At first, when she began to recover, I was
conscious only of the vitality--but lately I feel the other quality. It
isn't exactly the old Puritan fatalism, or even the Greek, it's oddly
modern, too, almost agnostic, I should say,--a calm acceptance of the
hazards of life, of nature, of sun and rain and storm alike--very
different from the cheap optimism one finds everywhere now. She isn't
exactly resigned--I don't say that--I know she can be rebellious. And
she's grateful for the sun, yet she seems to have a conviction that the
clouds will gather again.... The doctor says she may leave the hospital
on Monday, and I'm going to bring her over here for awhile. Then," she
added insinuatingly, "we can collaborate."

"I think I'll go back to Maine," Insall exclaimed.

"If you desert me, I shall never speak to you again," said Mrs. Maturin.

"Janet," said Mrs. Maturin the next day, as she laid down the book from
which she was reading, "do you remember that I spoke to you once in
Hampton of coming here to Silliston? Well, now we've got you here, we
don't want to lose you. I've been making inquiries; quite a number of the
professors have typewriting to be done, and they will be glad to give
their manuscripts to you instead of sending them to Boston. And there's
Brooks Insall too--if he ever takes it into his head to write another
book. You wouldn't have any trouble reading his manuscript, it's like
script. Of course it has to be copied. You can board with Mrs. Case
--I've arranged that, too. But on Monday I'm going to take you to my
house, and keep you until you're strong enough to walk."

Janet's eyes were suddenly bright with tears.

"You'll stay?"

"I can't," answered Janet. "I couldn't."

"But why not? Have you any other plans?"

"No, I haven't any plans, but--I haven't the right to stay here."
Presently she raised her face to her friend. "Oh Mrs. Maturin, I'm so
sorry! I didn't want to bring any sadness here--it's all so bright and
beautiful! And now I've made you sad!"

It was a moment before Augusta Maturin could answer her.

"What are friends for, Janet," she asked, "if not to share sorrow with?
And do you suppose there's any place, however bright, where sorrow has
not come? Do you think I've not known it, too? And Janet, I haven't sat
here all these days with you without guessing that something worries you.
I've been waiting, all this time, for you to tell me, in order that I
might help you."

"I wanted to," said Janet, "every day I wanted to, but I couldn't. I
couldn't bear to trouble you with it, I didn't mean ever to tell you. And
then--it's so terrible, I don't know what you'll think."

"I think I know you, Janet," answered Mrs. Maturin. "Nothing human,
nothing natural is terrible, in the sense you mean. At least I'm one of
those who believe so."

Presently Janet said, "I'm going to have a child."

Mrs. Maturin sat very still. Something closed in her throat, preventing
her immediate reply.

"I, too, had a child, my dear," she answered. "I lost her." She felt the
girl's clasp tighten on her fingers.

"But you--you had a right to it--you were married. Children are sacred
things," said Augusta Maturin.

"Sacred! Could it be that a woman like Mrs. Maturity thought that this
child which was coming to her was sacred, too?

"However they come?" asked Janet. "Oh, I tried to believe that, too! At
first--at first I didn't want it, and when I knew it was coming I was
driven almost crazy. And then, all at once, when I was walking in the
rain, I knew I wanted it to have--to keep all to myself. You understand?"

Augusta Maturity inclined her head.

"But the father?" she managed to ask, after a moment. "I don't wish to
pry, my dear, but does he--does he realize? Can't he help you?"

"It was Mr. Ditmar."

"Perhaps it will help you to tell me about it, Janet."

"I'd--I'd like to. I've been so unhappy since you told me he was dead
--and I felt like a cheat. You see, he promised to marry me, and I know
now that he loved me, that he really wanted to marry me, but something
happened to make me believe he wasn't going to, I saw--another girl who'd
got into trouble, and then I thought he'd only been playing with me, and
I couldn't stand it. I joined the strikers--I just had to do something."

Augusta Maturity nodded, and waited.

"I was only a stenographer, and we were very poor, and he was rich and
lived in a big house, the most important man in Hampton. It seemed too
good to be true--I suppose I never really thought it could happen. Please
don't think I'm putting all the blame on him, Mrs. Maturity--it was my
fault just as much as his. I ought to have gone away from Hampton, but I
didn't have the strength. And I shouldn't have--" Janet stopped.

"But--you loved him?"

"Yes, I did. For a long time, after I left him, I thought I didn't, I
thought I hated him, and when I found out what had happened to me--that
night I came to you--I got my father's pistol and went to the mill to
shoot him. I was going to shoot myself, too."

"Oh!" Mrs. Maturity gasped. She gave a quick glance of sheer amazement at
Janet, who did not seem to notice it; who was speaking objectively,
apparently with no sense of the drama in her announcement.

"But I couldn't," she went on. "At the time I didn't know why I couldn't,
but when I went out I understood it was because I wanted the child,
because it was his child. And though he was almost out of his head, he
seemed so glad because I'd come back to him, and said he'd marry me right
away."

"And you refused!" exclaimed Mrs. Maturity.

"Well, you see, I was out of my head, too, I still thought I hated him
--but I'd loved him all the time. It was funny! He had lots of faults,
and he didn't seem to understand or care much about how poor people feel,
though he was kind to them in the mills. He might have come to
understand--I don't know--it wasn't because he didn't want to, but
because he was so separated from them, I guess, and he was so interested
in what he was doing. He had ambition, he thought everything of that
mill, he'd made it. I don't know why I loved him, it wasn't because he
was fine, like Mr. Insall, but he was strong and brave, and he needed me
and just took me."

"One never knows!" Augusta Maturity murmured.

"I went back that night to tell him I'd marry him--and he'd gone. Then I
came to you, to the soup kitchen. I didn't mean to bother you, I've never
quite understood how I got there. I don't care so much what happens to
me, now that I've told you," Janet added. "It was mean, not to tell you,
but I'd never had anything like this--what you were giving me--and I
wanted all I could get."

"I'm thankful you did come to us!" Augusta Maturin managed to reply.

"You mean--?" Janet exclaimed.

"I mean, that we who have been more--fortunate don't look at these things
quite as we used to, that the world is less censorious, is growing to
understand situations it formerly condemned. And--I don't know what kind
of a monster you supposed me to be, Janet."

"Oh, Mrs. Maturin!"

"I mean that I'm a woman, too, my dear, although my life has been
sheltered. Otherwise, what has happened to you might have happened to me.
And besides, I am what is called unconventional, I have little theories
of my own about life, and now that you have told me everything I
understand you and love you even more than I did before."

Save that her breath came fast, Janet lay still against the cushions of
the armchair. She was striving to grasp the momentous and unlooked-for
fact of her friend's unchanged attitude. Then she asked:--"Mrs. Maturin,
do you believe in God?"

Augusta Maturin was startled by the question. "I like to think of Him as
light, Janet, and that we are plants seeking to grow toward Him--no
matter from what dark crevice we may spring. Even in our mistakes and
sins we are seeking Him, for these are ignorances, and as the world
learns more, we shall know Him better and better. It is natural to long
for happiness, and happiness is self-realization, and self-realization is
knowledge and light."

"That is beautiful," said Janet at length.

"It is all we can know about God," said Mrs. Maturin, "but it is enough."
She had been thinking rapidly. "And now," she went on, "we shall have to
consider what is to be done. I don't pretend that the future will be
easy, but it will not be nearly as hard for you as it might have been,
since I am your friend, and I do not intend to desert you. I'm sure you
will not let it crush you. In the first place, you will have something to
go on with--mental resources, I mean, for which you have a natural
craving, books and art and nature, the best thoughts and the best
interpretations. We can give you these. And you will have your child, and
work to do, for I'm sure you're industrious. And of course I'll keep your
secret, my dear."

"But--how?" Janet exclaimed.

"I've arranged it all. You'll stay here this spring, you'll come to my
house on Monday, just as we planned, and later on you may go to Mrs.
Case's, if it will make you feel more independent, and do typewriting
until the spring term is over. I've told you about my little camp away up
in Canada, in the heart of the wilderness, where I go in summer. We'll
stay there until the autumn, until your baby comes, and, after that, I
know it won't be difficult to get you a position in the west, where you
can gain your living and have your child. I have a good friend in
California who I'm sure will help you. And even if your secret should
eventually be discovered--which is not probable--you will have earned
respect, and society is not as stern as it used to be. And you will
always have me for a friend. There, that's the bright side of it. Of
course it isn't a bed of roses, but I've lived long enough to observe
that the people who lie on roses don't always have the happiest lives.
Whenever you want help and advice, I shall always be here, and from time
to time I'll be seeing you. Isn't that sensible?"

"Oh, Mrs. Maturin--if you really want me--still?"

"I do want you, Janet, even more than I did--before, because you need me
more," Mrs. Maturin replied, with a sincerity that could not fail to
bring conviction....




CHAPTER XXI

As the spring progressed, Janet grew stronger, became well again, and
through the kindness of Dr. Ledyard, the principal, was presently
installed with a typewriter in a little room in an old building belonging
to the Academy in what was called Bramble Street, and not far from the
Common. Here, during the day, she industriously copied manuscripts' or,
from her notebook, letters dictated by various members of the faculty.
And she was pleased when they exclaimed delightedly at the flawless
copies and failed to suspect her of frequent pilgrimages to the
dictionary in the library in order to familiarize herself with the
meaning and manner of spelling various academic words. At first it was
almost bewildering to find herself in some degree thus sharing the
Silliston community life; and an unpremeditated attitude toward these
learned ones, high priests of the muses she had so long ignorantly
worshipped, accounted perhaps for a great deal in their attitude toward
her. Her fervour, repressed yet palpable, was like a flame burning before
their altars--a flattery to which the learned, being human, are quick to
respond. Besides, something of her history was known, and she was of a
type to incite a certain amount of interest amongst these discerning
ones. Often, after she had taken their dictation, or brought their
manuscripts home, they detained her in conversation. In short, Silliston
gave its approval to this particular experiment of Augusta Maturin. As
for Mrs. Maturin herself, her feeling was one of controlled pride not
unmixed with concern, always conscious as she was of the hidden element
of tragedy in the play she had so lovingly staged. Not that she had any
compunction in keeping Janet's secret, even from Insall; but sometimes as
she contemplated it the strings of her heart grew tight. Silliston was so
obviously where Janet belonged, she could not bear the thought of the
girl going out again from this sheltered spot into a chaotic world of
smoke and struggle.

Janet's own feelings were a medley. It was not, of course, contentment
she knew continually, nor even peace, although there were moments when
these stole over her. There were moments, despite her incredible good
fortune, of apprehension when she shrank from the future, when fear
assailed her; moments of intense sadness at the thought of leaving her
friends, of leaving this enchanted place now that miraculously she had
found it; moments of stimulation, of exaltation, when she forgot. Her
prevailing sense, as she found herself again, was of thankfulness and
gratitude, of determination to take advantage of, to drink in all of this
wonderful experience, lest any precious memory be lost.

Like a jewel gleaming with many facets, each sunny day was stored and
treasured. As she went from Mrs. Case's boarding-house forth to her work,
the sweet, sharp air of these spring mornings was filled with delicious
smells of new things, of new flowers and new grass and tender, new leaves
of myriad shades, bronze and crimson, fuzzy white, primrose, and emerald
green. And sometimes it seemed as though the pink and white clouds of the
little orchards were wafted into swooning scents. She loved best the
moment when the Common came in view, when through the rows of elms the
lineaments of those old houses rose before her, lineaments seemingly long
familiar, as of old and trusted friends, and yet ever stirring new
harmonies and new visions. Here, in their midst, she belonged, and here,
had the world been otherwise ordained, she might have lived on in one
continuous, shining spring. At the corner of the Common, foursquare,
ample, painted a straw colour trimmed with white, with its high chimneys
and fan-shaped stairway window, its balustraded terrace porch open to the
sky, was the eighteenth century mansion occupied by Dr. Ledyard. What was
the secret of its flavour? And how account for the sense of harmony
inspired by another dwelling, built during the term of the second Adams,
set in a frame of maples and shining white in the morning sun? Its curved
portico was capped by a wrought-iron railing, its long windows were
touched with purple, and its low garret--set like a deckhouse on the wide
roof--suggested hidden secrets of the past. Here a Motley or a Longfellow
might have dwelt, a Bryant penned his "Thanatopsis." Farther on,
chequered by shade, stood the quaint brick row of professors' houses,
with sloping eaves and recessed entrances of granite--a subject for an
old English print.... Along the border of the Common were interspersed
among the ancient dormitories and halls the new and dignified buildings
of plum-coloured brick that still preserved the soul of Silliston. And to
it the soul of Janet responded.

In the late afternoon, when her tasks were finished, Janet would cross
the Common to Mrs. Maturin's--a dwelling typical of the New England of
the past, with the dimensions of a cottage and something of the dignity
of a mansion. Fluted white pilasters adorned the corners, the windows
were protected by tiny eaves, the roof was guarded by a rail; the
classically porched entrance was approached by a path between high
clipped hedges of hemlock; and through the library, on the right, you
reached the flagged terrace beside a garden, rioting in the carnival
colours of spring. By September it would have changed. For there is one
glory of the hyacinth, of the tulip and narcissus and the jonquil, and
another of the Michaelmas daisy and the aster.

Insall was often there, and on Saturdays and Sundays he took Mrs. Maturin
and Janet on long walks into the country. There were afternoons when the
world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the
sun; and afternoons stained with blue,--the landscape like a tapestry
woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus, all aglow and
fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, but
they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of the
ginger. In the open spaces under the sky were clouds of bluets, wild
violets, and white strawberry flowers clustering beside the star moss all
a-shimmer with new green. The Canada Mayflower spread a carpet under the
pines; and in the hollows where the mists settled, where the brooks
flowed, where the air was heavy with the damp, ineffable odour of growing
things, they gathered drooping adder's-tongues, white-starred bloodroots
and foam-flowers. From Insall's quick eye nothing seemed to escape. He
would point out to them the humming-bird that hovered, a bright blur,
above the columbine, the woodpecker glued to the trunk of a maple high
above their heads, the red gleam of a tanager flashing through sunlit
foliage, the oriole and vireo where they hid. And his was the ear that
first caught the exquisite, distant note of the hermit. Once he stopped
them, startled, to listen to the cock partridge drumming to its mate....

Sometimes, of an evening, when Janet was helping Mrs. Maturin in her
planting or weeding, Insall would join them, rolling up the sleeves of
his flannel shirt and kneeling beside them in the garden paths. Mrs.
Maturin was forever asking his advice, though she did not always follow
it.

"Now, Brooks," she would say, "you've just got to suggest something to
put in that border to replace the hyacinths."

"I had larkspur last year--you remember--and it looked like a chromo in a
railroad folder."

"Let me see--did I advise larkspur?" he would ask.

"Oh, I'm sure you must have--I always do what you tell me. It seems to me
I've thought of every possible flower in the catalogue. You know, too,
only you're so afraid of committing yourself."

Insall's comic spirit, betrayed by his expressions, by the quizzical
intonations of his voice, never failed to fill Janet with joy, while it
was somehow suggestive, too, of the vast fund of his resource. Mrs.
Maturin was right, he could have solved many of her questions offhand if
he had so wished, but he had his own method of dealing with appeals. His
head tilted on one side, apparently in deep thought over the problem, he
never answered outright, but by some process of suggestion unfathomable
to Janet, and by eliminating, not too deprecatingly, Mrs. Maturin's
impatient proposals, brought her to a point where she blurted out the
solution herself.

"Oriental poppies! How stupid of me not to think of them!"

"How stupid of me!" Insall echoed--and Janet, bending over her weeding,
made sure they had been in his mind all the while.

Augusta Maturin's chief extravagance was books; she could not bear to
await her turn at the library, and if she liked a book she wished to own
it. Subscribing to several reviews, three English and one American, she
scanned them eagerly every week and sent in orders to her Boston
bookseller. As a consequence the carved walnut racks on her library table
were constantly being strained. A good book, she declared, ought to be
read aloud, and discussed even during its perusal. And thus Janet, after
an elementary and decidedly unique introduction to worth-while literature
in the hospital, was suddenly plunged into the vortex of modern thought.
The dictum Insall quoted, that modern culture depended largely upon what
one had not read, was applied to her; a child of the new environment
fallen into skilful hands, she was spared the boredom of wading through
the so-called classics which, though useful as milestones, as landmarks
for future reference, are largely mere reminders of an absolute universe
now vanished. The arrival of a novel, play, or treatise by one of that
small but growing nucleus of twentieth century seers was an event, and
often a volume begun in the afternoon was taken up again after supper.
While Mrs. Maturin sat sewing on the other side of the lamp, Janet had
her turn at reading. From the first she had been quick to note Mrs.
Maturin's inflections, and the relics of a high-school manner were
rapidly eliminated. The essence of latter-day realism and pragmatism, its
courageous determination to tear away a veil of which she had always been
dimly aware, to look the facts of human nature in the face, refreshed
her: an increasing portion of it she understood; and she was constantly
under the spell of the excitement that partially grasps, that hovers on
the verge of inspiring discoveries. This excitement, whenever Insall
chanced to be present, was intensified, as she sat a silent but often
quivering listener to his amusing and pungent comments on these new
ideas. His method of discussion never failed to illuminate and delight
her, and often, when she sat at her typewriter the next day, she would
recall one of his quaint remarks that suddenly threw a bright light on
some matter hitherto obscure.... Occasionally a novel or a play was the
subject of their talk, and then they took a delight in drawing her out,
in appealing to a spontaneous judgment unhampered by pedagogically
implanted preconceptions. Janet would grow hot from shyness.