"I know very well why you don't get healed," she said. "You fill your mind with antagonistic thoughts by reading papers that are fighting some one on every page. You want to get into some kind of society where you can pay $15 or $20 a week and get free healing, and you are disappointed because I won't give you my time and strength for nothing, so that you can have the money to go somewhere and have a good time. Oh, I know you society people!"
By degrees her voice had lost its cooing tone and had risen to a shriek. I was amazed—until I remembered the rival across the street, who was probably watching me from behind closed blinds.
As I walked away with the woman's angry words ringing after me from the doorstep, I was divided between amusement and despair; I cannot express it by any other phrase. And that cynical mingling of feelings was the nearest approach to contentment that I had known for days.
The feeling died away; reaction came. It was the worst hour of my life. The thought of suicide—the respite I had always held in reserve against a day too evil to be borne—pressed upon my mind.
I wandered to a ferry and crossed the East River to some unfamiliar suburb where saloons were thicker than I had ever before seen them; and all the way over I looked at the turbid water and knew in my heart that I should never have the courage to throw my beautiful body into that foul tide.
From the ferry I presently reached a vast, forbidding cemetery, and as I went among the crowded graves there came floating out from a little chapel the sound of prayers intoned for the dead. I almost envied them; almost wished that I, too, might be laid to rest in the little churchyard at home.
Then I lay down flat upon the turf in a lonely place, and tried to think of myself as dead. Never had the pulse beat stronger in my veins then at that moment. There were little living things all around me, joying in the warm sun; tiny insects that crawled, unrebuked, over my gown, so busy, so happy in their way, with their petty affairs all prospering, that I wondered why I should be so out of tune with the world. And then a rain of tears gushed from my eyes. I do not think that any one who should have seen me there could have guessed that the prone and weeping woman was the most beautiful of created things; I do not think I have an enemy so bitter that she would not have pitied me.
I tried to think, but I was too tired. I had a vision of myself returning to the narrow round of farm life, to Ma's reproaches, to dreary, grinding toil that I might win back dollar by dollar the money I had squandered—my back bent, my face seamed, my hands marred, like Aunt Emily's; and I shuddered and wept and grovelled before fate.
Then I saw myself remaining in the city, seeking work and finding nothing. Teach I could not; every door was barred except—I saw myself before the footlights, coarsened, swallowing greedily the applause of a music hall audience, taking a husband from that audience perhaps—a brute like Bellmer! Better die!
But as the vision passed, a great desire of life grew upon me. It seemed monstrous, hideous, that I should ever die or be unhappy; the fighting instinct sent the blood galloping. I sat erect.