§ 4
She returned, to find the manuscript still in his hand.
“Tell me,” he asked with an enthusiasm new to him, “where did you get all this?”
“From the hunger in me. I was born to beat out the meaning of things out of my own heart.”
Puzzled, he studied her. She was thin, gaunt, with a wasting power of frustrated passion in young flesh. There was the shadow of blank nights staring out of her eyes. Here was a personality, he thought, who might reveal to him those intangible qualities of the immigrant—qualities he could not grasp, which baffled, fascinated him.
He questioned her, and she poured out her story to him with eager abandon.
“I couldn’t be an actress or a singer, because you got to be young and pretty for that; but for a writer nobody cares who or what you are so long as the thoughts you give out are beautiful.”
He laughed, and it was an appreciative, genial laugh.
“You ain’t at all like a professor, cold and hard like ice. You are a person so real,” she naïvely said, interrupting the tale of her early struggles, her ambitions, and the repulse that had been hers in this very university of his. And then in sudden apprehension she cried out: “Maybe the dean and the English professor were right. Maybe only those with a long education get a hearing in America. If you would only fix this up for me—change the immigrant English.”
“Fix it up?” he protested. “There are things in life bigger than rules of grammar. The thing that makes art live and stand out throughout the ages is sincerity. Unfortunately, education robs many of us of the power to give spontaneously, as mother earth gives, as the child gives.
“You have poured out not a part, but the whole of yourself. That’s why it can’t be measured by any of the prescribed standards. It’s uniquely you.”
Her face lighted with joy at his understanding.
“I never knew why I hated to be Americanized. I was always burning to dig out the thoughts from my own mind.”
“Yes, your power lies in that you are yourself. Your message is that of your people, and it is all the stronger because you are not a so-called assimilated immigrant.”
Ach! just to hear him talk! It was like the realization of a power in life itself to hold her up and carry her to the heights.
“Will you leave this manuscript here, so I can have my secretary type it for you?” he asked as he took her to the door. “I can have it done easily. And I shall write you when I’ll have time for another long talk about your work.”
Only after she had left did she fully realize the wonder of this man’s kindness.
“That’s America,” she whispered. “Where but in America could something so beautiful happen? A crazy, choked-in thing like me and him such a gentleman talking together about art and life like born equals. I poverty, and he plenty; I ignorance, and he knowledge; I from the bottom, and he from the top, and yet he making me feel like we were from always friends.”
A few days later the promised note came. How quick he was with his help, as if she were his only concern! Bare-headed, uncoated, she ran to him, this prince of kindness, repeating over and over again the words of the letter.
Her spirit crashed to the ground when she learned that he had been suddenly called to a conference at Washington. “He would return in a fortnight,” said the model-mannered secretary who answered her feverish questions.
Wait a fortnight? She couldn’t. Why, the contest would be over by that time. Then it struck her, the next best thing—the professor of English. With a typewritten manuscript in her hand, he must listen to her. And just to be admitted to his short-story class for one criticism was all she would ask.
But small a favour as it seemed to her, it was greater than the professor was in a position to grant.
“To concede to your request would establish a precedent that would be at variance with the university regulations,” he vouchsafed.
“University regulations, precedents? What are you talking?” And clutching at his sleeve, hysterically, she pleaded: “Just this once, my life hangs on getting this story perfect, and you can save me by this one criticism.”
Her burning desire knew no barrier, recognized no higher authority. And the professor, contrary to his reason, contrary to his experienced judgment, yielded without knowing why to the preposterous demands of this immigrant girl.
In the end of the last row of the lecture-hall Sophie waited breathlessly for the professor to get to her story. After a lifetime of waiting it came. As from a great distance she heard him announce the title.
“This was not written by a member of the class,” he went on, “but is the attempt of a very ambitious young person. Its lack of form demonstrates the importance of the fundamentals of technique in which we have drilled.”
His reading aloud of the manuscript was followed by a chorus of criticism—criticism that echoed the professor’s own sentiments: “It’s not a story; it has no plot”; “feeling without form”; “erotic, over-emotional.”
She could hardly wait for the hour to be over to get back this living thing of hers that they were killing. When she left the class all the air seemed to have gone out of her lungs. She dragged her leaden feet back to her room and sank on her cot a heap of despair.
All at once she jumped up.
“What do they know, they, with only their book-learning?” If the president had understood her story, there might be others who would understand. She must have faith enough in herself to send it forth for a judgment of a world free from rules of grammar. In a fury of defiance she mailed the story.