CHAPTER XXV
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
THERE followed a long hot summer. There followed days of hopelessness. There followed a wild desire for crisp muslin curtains, birds to wake me in the morning, a porcelain tub, pretty gowns, tea on somebody's broad veranda. There were days in mid-July when if I had met Bob Jennings, and he had invited me to green fields, or cool woods, I wouldn't have stopped even to pack. There were days in August when a letter from Breck, post-marked Bar Harbor, and returned like three preceding letters unopened, I didn't dare read for fear of the temptation of blue sea, and a yacht with wicker chairs and a servant in white to bring me things.
If it hadn't been for Esther's quiet determination I might have crawled back to Edith any one of those hot stifling nights and begged for admittance to the cool chamber with the spinet desk. My head ached half the time; my feet pained me; food was unattractive. The dead air of the New York subway made me feel ill. In three minutes it could sap me of the little hope I carried down from the surface. I used to dream nights of the bird-like speed of Breckenridge Sewall's powerful automobiles. I used to wake mornings longing for the strong impact of wind against my face.
The big city, the crowds of working people that once inspired, the great mass of congregated humanity had lost its romance. Even my own particular struggle seemed to have no more "punch" in it. The novelty of my undertaking, the adventure had worn away. They had been right at the Y. W. C. A. when they advised me a year ago to go home and give up my enterprise. I had been dauntless then, but now, although toughened and weathered, discouragement and despair possessed me. I allowed myself to sit for days in the room in Irving Place, without even trying for a position.
It was Esther who obtained a steady job for me at last, in a book-binding factory down near the City Hall. From eight in the morning until five at night I folded paper, over and over and over again, with a bone folder; the same process—no change—no variation. The muscles that I used ached like a painful tooth at first. Some nights we worked until nine o'clock. Accuracy and speed were all that was required to be an efficient folder—no brains, no thought—and yet I never became expert. The sameness of my work got on my nerves so at last—the everlasting repetition of sound and motion—that occasionally I lost all sense of time and place. It was like repeating some common word over and over again until it loses all significance except that of a peculiar sound.
It broke me at last. I became ill. What hundreds of other girls were able to do every day the year round, had finished me in three weeks. I was as soft as a baby. It was my nerves that gave way. I got to crying one night over some trivial little thing, and I couldn't stop. They took me to a hospital, I don't remember how or when. I became aware of trained nurses. I drifted back to the consciousness of a queer grating sound near the head of my bed, which they told me was an elevator; I smelled anesthetics. I realized a succession of nights and days. There were flowers. There was a frequent ringing of bells. Heaven couldn't have been more restful. I loved to lie there and watch a breeze blow the sash-curtains at the windows, in and out with a gentle, ship-like motion. Esther visited me often. Sometimes she sat by the window alone, correcting proof (she had secured a position in a publishing house the first of the summer), and sometimes one of the other girls of our little circle was with her. I never talked with them; I never questioned; they came and went; I felt no curiosity. They tell me I lay there like that for nearly three weeks, and then suddenly with no warning and with no sense of shock or surprise the veil lifted.
Esther and the struggling artist we called Rosa were by the window. They had both come from the same little town in Pennsylvania. I'd been watching them for half an hour or more. They had been talking. I had liked the murmur of their low voices. In the most normal fashion in the world I began to listen to their conversation.