The Thread of Flame

Chapter 10

Within a fortnight my nearly two hundred dollars had come down to nearly one, and this in spite of my self-denials.

Self-denials were new to me. I knew that by my difficulties in beginning to practise them. Such economics as staying at the Barcelona instead of a more luxurious hotel, or as buying ready-made clothes instead of waiting for the custom-made, I do not speak of as self-denials, since they were no more than concessions to a temporary lack of cash. But the first time I made my breakfast on one egg instead of two; the first time I suppressed the eggs altogether; the first time I lunched on a cup of chocolate taken at a counter; the first time I went without a midday meal of any kindthese were occasions when the saving of pennies struck me as akin to humiliation. I had formed no habits to prepare me for it. The possibility that it might continue began at last to frighten me.

For none of my artful methods had been successful. I frequented the hotels; I hung about the entrances to theaters; I tramped the streets till a new pair of boots became a necessity; but no one ever hailed me as an old acquaintance. Once only, standing in the doorway of a great restaurant, did I recognize a face; but it was that of Lydia Blair, dining with a man. He was a big, round-backed, silver-haired man, with an air of opulence which suggested that Miss Blair might be taking the career of adventuress more seriously than I had supposed. Whether or not she saw me I couldn't tell, for, to avoid embarrassment both for herself and me, I withdrew to another stamping-ground. What the young lady chose to do with herself was no affair of mine. Since a pretty girl of facile temperament would have evident opportunities, it was not for me to interfere with her. Had she belonged to my own rank in life I might have been shocked or sorry; but every one knew that a beautiful working-girl...

As to my own rank in life a sense of going under false pretenses added to my anxieties, though it was through no fault of my own. Miss Averill persisted in giving me the rle of romantic seeker for the hard facts of existence. She did it only by assumption; but she did it.

"There's nothing like seeing for oneself, is there? It's feeling for oneself, too, which is more important. I'm so terribly cut off from it all. I'm like a bird in a cage trying to help those whose nests are being robbed."

This was said during the second of the excursions for which Miss Blair captured me from the lobby of the Barcelona. Her procedure was exactly the same as on the first occasion, except that she came about the middle of the afternoon. Nothing but an unusual chance found me sitting there, idle but preoccupied, as I meditated on my situation while smoking a cigar. My first impulse to refuse Miss Averill's invitation point-blank was counteracted by the thought of escape from that daily promenade up and down the halls of hotels which had begun to be disheartening and irksome.

Of this the novelty had passed. The expectations that during the first week or two had made each minute a living thing had simmered away in a sense of futility. No old friend having recognized me yet, I was working round to the conviction that no old friend ever would. If I kept up the tramp it was because I could see nothing else to do.

But on this particular afternoon for the first time I revolted. The effect was physical, in that my feet seemed to be too heavy to be dragged along. They were refusing their job, while my mind was planning it.

Thus in the end I found myself sharing the outing given nominally for the blind boy, but really planned from a complication of motives which to Miss Averill were obscure. It did not help to make them clearer that her wistful, unuttered appeals to me to solve the mystery surrounding my personality passed by without result.

The high bank of an autumn wood, the Hudson with a steamer headed southward, more autumn woods covering the hills beyond, a tea-basket, teathis was the decoration. We had alighted from the motor somewhere in the neighborhood of Tarrytown. Tea being over, Miss Blair and Drinkwater, with chaff and laughter, were clearing up the things and fitting them back into the basket.

"She's very clever with him," Miss Averill explained, as she led the way to a fallen log, on which she seated herself, indicating that I might sit beside her. "She seizes on anything that will teach him the use of his fingers, and makes a game of it. He's very quick, too. The next time he'll be able to take the things out of the tea-basket and put them back all by himself."

So we had dropped into her favorite theme, the duty of helping the helpless.

She was in brown, as usual, a brown-green, that might have been a Scotch or Irish homespun, which blended with the wine shades and russets all about us with the effect of protective coloration. The day was as still as death, so breathless that the leaves had scarcely the energy to fall. In the heavy, too-sweet scents there was suggestion and incitementsuggestion that chances were passing and incitement to seize them before they were gone.

I wish there were words in which to convey the peculiar overtones in Miss Averill's comparison of herself with a bird in a cage. There was goodness in them, and amusement, as well as something baffled and enraged. She had been so subdued when I had seen her hitherto that I was hardly prepared for this half-smothered outburst of fierceness.

"If you're like a bird in a cage," I said, "you're like the one that sings to the worker and cheers him up."

Her pleasure was expressed not in a change of color or a drooping of the lids, but in a quiet suffusion that might most easily be described as atmospheric.

"Oh, as for cheering people upI don't know. I've tried such a lot of it, only to find that they got along well enough without me. A woman wants more than anything else in the world to feel that she's needed; and when she discovers she isn't"

The sense of my own apparent superfluity in life prompted me to say:

"Oh, it isn't only women who discover that."

Her glance traveled down the steep wooded bank and over the river, to rest on the wine-colored hills on the other side.

"Did youdid you ever?"she corrected herself quickly"I meando men?"

"Some men do. It'sit's possible."

"Isn't it," she asked, tackling the subject in her sensible way, "primarily a question of money? If you have enough of it not to have to earn a livingand no particular dutiesdon't you find yourself edged out of the current of life? After all, what the world wants is producers; and the minute one doesn't produce"

"What do you mean by producers?"

She reflected. "I suppose I mean all who contribute, either directly or indirectly, either mentally or physically, to the sum total of our needs in living. Wouldn't that cover it?"

I admitted that it might.

"And those who don't do that, who merely live on what others produce, seem to be excluded from the privilege of helpfulness."

"I can't see that. They help with their money."

"Money can't help, except indirectly. It's the great mistake of our philanthropies to think it can. We make a great many mistakes; but we can make more in our philanthropies than anywhere else. We've never taken the pains to study the psychology of help. We think money the panacea for every kind of need, when as a matter of fact it's only the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. If you haven't got the grace the sign rings false, like an imitation coin."

"Well, what is the grace?"

"Oh, it's a good many thingsa blendof which, I suppose, the main ingredient is love." She gave me a wistful half-smile, as she added: "Love is a very queer thingI mean this kind of big love forjust for people. You can always tell whether it's true or false; and the less sophisticated the people the more instinctively they know. If it's true they'll accept you; if it's only pumped up, they'll shut you out."

"I'm sure you ought to know."

"I do know. I've had a lot of experiencein being shut out."

"You?"

She nodded toward Drinkwater and Miss Blair. "They don't let me in. In spite of all I try to do for them, they're only polite to me. They'll accept this kind of thing; but I'm as far outside their confidenceoutside their heartsas a bird in a cage, as I've called myself, is outside a flock of nest-builders."

"And assuming that that is sothough I do not assume ithow do you account for it?

"Oh, easily enough! I'm not the real thing. I never wasnot at the Settlementnot nownot anywhere or at any time."

"But how would you describe the real thing?"

"I can't describe it. All I know is that I'm not it. I'm not working for them, but for myself."

"For yourselfhow?"

"To fill in an empty life. When you've no real life you seek an artificial one. As every one rejects the artificial, you get rejected. That's all."

"What would you call a real lifefor yourself?"

The fierceness with which she had been speaking became intensified, even when tempered with her diffident half-smile.

"A life in which there was something I was absolutely obliged to do. I begin to wonder if parents know how much of the zest of living they're taking away from their children by leaving them, as we say, well provided for. When there's nothing within reason you can't have and nothing within reason you can't dowell, then, you're out of the running."

"Is that the way you look at yourselfas out of the running?"

"That's the way I am."

"And is there no means of getting into the running?"

"There might be if I wasn't such a coward."

"If you weren't such a coward what would you do?"

"Oh, there are things. You'veyou've found them. I would do like you."

"And do you know what I'm doing?"

"I can guess."

"And you guesswhat?"

"It's only a guessof course."

"But what is it?"

She rose with a weary gesture. "What's the good of talking about it? A knight in disguise remains in disguise till he chooses to throw off his incognito."

"And when he has thrown it offwhat does he become then?"

"He may become something elsebut he'she's none the lessa knight."

We stood looking at each other, in one of those impulses of mutual frankness that are not without danger.

"And if there was a knight whowho couldn't throw off his incognito?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Then I suppose he'd always be a knight in disguisesomething like Lohengrin."

"And what would Elsa think of that?"

Seeing the implication in this indiscreet question even before she did, I felt myself flush hotly.

I admired the more, therefore, the ease with which she carried the difficult moment off. Moving a few steps toward Drinkwater and Miss Blair, who were shutting up the tea-basket, she threw over her shoulder:

"If there was an Elsa I suppose she'd make up her mind when the time came."

She was still moving forward when I overtook her to say:

"I wish I could speak plainly."

She stopped to glance up at me. "And can't you?"

"Were you ever in a situation which you felt you had to swing alone? You know you could get help; you know you could count on sympathy; but whenever you're impelled to appeal for either something holds you back."

"I never was in such a situation, but I can imagine what it's like. May I ask one question?"

I felt obliged to grant the permission.

"Is it of the nature of what is generally called trouble?"

"It's of the nature of what is generally called misfortune."

"And I suppose I mustn't say so much as that I'm sorry."

"You could say that much," I smiled, "if you didn't say any more."

She repeated the weary gesture of a few minutes earlier, a slight tossing outward of both hands, with a heavy drop against the sides.

"What a life!"

As she began to move on once more I spoke as I walked beside her.

"What's the matter with life?"

Again she paused to confront me. In her eyes gold lights gleamed in the brown depths of the irises.

"What sense is there in a civilization that cuts us all off from each other? We're like prisoners in solitary confinementyou in one cell and Boyd in another and Lulu in another and I in another, and everybody else in his own or her own and no communication or exchange of help between us. It'sit's monstrous."

The half-choked passion of her words took me the more by surprise for the reason that she treated me as if the defects of our civilization were my fault. Joining Lydia Blair and taking her by the arm, she led the way back to the motor, while I was left to pilot Drinkwater, who carried the tea-basket. During the drive back to town our hostess scarcely spoke, and not once to me directly.