Together

by Robert Herrick

And thus, unwittingly, Woman becomes again in the revolution of the ages what she was at first, the female creature, the possession, the thing for lust and for amusement,—the cherished slave. For the death of woman's soul follows when she pays with her body,—a simple, immutable law…. Woman in America, splendidly free and Queen! What have you done with the men who were given into your charge? Clever, beautiful, brilliant,—our most shining prize,—but what have you done for the souls of the men given into your keeping? … The answer roars up from the city streets,—the most material age and the most material men and the least lovely civilization on God's earth. No longer the fighting companion at man's side, but reaching out for yourselves, after your own desires, you have become the slave of the Brute as you were before. And a neurotic slave. For when Woman is no longer comrade of man in the struggle, she is either Nothing or a—but blot the word!

* * * * *

Perfect justice, a complete picture of society in a civilization of eighty millions, requires many shades. The darker shades are true only of the rotting refuse, the scum of the whole. Among the married millions most are, fortunately, still struggling through the earlier types from the pioneer to the economist. But as the water runs there lies the sea beyond. From the prairie village to the city tenement, the American woman sees in marriage the fulfilment of her heart's desire,—to be Queen, to rule and not work. Thus for emancipated Woman.

And the poor creature Man, who fights for his Queen? A trained energy, a vessel of careless passion, a blind doer, dreaming great truths and seeing little ends,—Man is still abroad ranging his forest, his hunting blood up, "playing the game." There are moments when his sleep is troubled with feverish dreams in which he hears murmurs,—"The body is more than raiment," and "The soul is more than the body"; "There are other hunting-grounds, another warfare." But roused from these idle fancies he sallies forth from his cabin-palace, or his hotel apartment, or his steam-heated and childless flat into the old fray, to kill his meat and bring it home…. We chatter of the curse of Castle Garden, unmindful that in the dumb animal hordes, who labor and breed children, lies the future. For Theirs Will Be The Land, when the blond hunter of the market and his pampered female are swept into the dust heap.

CHAPTER LXVIII

In the vast eighteen-story, thousand-room New York hotel where Isabelle Lane stayed for the night on her way west, there was the usual constant bustle of arriving and departing people. The heat, the crowd, the luxury of this cliff-city with its throngs of much-dressed men and women overwhelmed Isabelle with a sense of startling unreality. It was not simply that she had been removed from the noise of city life for a number of months, secluded in the quiet of open spaces, and that the latest novelty in New York hotels contrasted sharply with primitive Grosvenor. But she found herself examining the scene, from the moment she entered the crowded foyer with its stucco-marble columns and bronze railings, its heavy hangings and warm atmosphere, with eyes that seemed to observe what was there before her for the first time. She looked at the thick rugs, the uniformed servants, the line of pale, sleek young men in the office enclosure, the swarming "guests" (according to the euphemistic slang of American hotels!),—all these women in evening gowns, much jewelled, on their way to dinner, with their attendant males; and she asked herself if it were the same world that she had always known.

The little bronze doors in the bank of elevators opened and shut, taking in and disgorging men and women, to shoot upwards to the tiers of partitioned privacy above or to hurry forth on their errands. Waiting for the hotel maid to fetch her key, Isabelle felt like a soul resurrected from a grave, come back to experience what had once been its theatre of activity and joy. She felt the tense hum of life in the activity of the clerks behind the desk, the servants hurrying on their errands, the coming and going of the horde of people, among whom watchful house detectives moved about silently. She knew that across the narrow street was another even larger cliff-city, where the same picture of life was repeating itself, and around the corner there were four or five more, and farther away dozens almost exactly like this one,—all crowded, humming with people, with the same heavy atmosphere of human beings hived together in hot air, men and women dressed like these, feeding like these in great halls, spending lavishly for comfort, pleasure, and repose! …

This mammoth caravansary was a symbol of the broad, riotously rich country,—a spiritual and material symbol, representing its thoughts, its ideals, its art, its beauty, its joy. Into these metropolitan cliff-cities flowed the stream of dominant, successful lives of the nation, seeking to find satisfaction for their efforts, their rightful triumph. Once Isabelle had had the child's pleasure in the hotel pageant. Later it had been an accepted convenience. Now she sat there looking on as from a great distance, and she said over and over wonderingly: "Can this be life? No, this is not life,—'tis not real!"

At the news-stand near by a group of men and women were loitering, the men buying theatre tickets, the women turning over the leaves of magazines, scanning lazily the titles of novels. The magazines were stacked in rows, each with a gaudy cover,—"artistic" or designed merely to capture the eye by a blaze of color. One of the women turned the leaves of several novels, idly, with a kind of fat ennui, as if loath to be tempted even by mental dissipation. Then noting a title that had somehow lodged itself with favorable associations in her brain, she said to the girl behind the counter, "You may send this up to my room."

So the work of imagination, the picture of life, the soul of the poet creator, was slipped from the pile to be sent upwards along with the other purchases of the day,—clothes and jewellery and candy,—what the woman had desired that day. This group moved on and another took its place. The books and the magazines disappeared like the theatre tickets and the cigars and cigarettes at the neighboring stand,—feeding the maw of the multitude, which sought to tickle different groups of brain cells. Gay little books, saucy little books, cheap little books, pleasant little books,—all making their bid to certain cells in the gray matter of these sated human beings! A literature composed chiefly by women for women,—tons of wood pulp, miles of linen covers, rivers of ink,—all to feed the prevailing taste, like the ribbons, the jewels, the candy, the theatre tickets! A great age, as Mr. Gossom, swelling with pride, would have said, and a great people, that has standardized its pleasures and has them marketed in convenient packages for all tastes! An age of women's ideals, a literature by women for women! … Isabelle bought a copy of Mr. Gossom's patriotic magazine for the People, and turned its fresh pages with a curiosity to see what it was like, and who was writing now. The sentimental novel by the popular English novelist that she had looked at when it first appeared came to its conclusion in this number. And it not having met with the expected popular approval, for all its sentiment, Mr. Gossom had abandoned the idyllic in favor of a startling series of articles on "Our National Crimes," plentifully and personally illustrated. Mr. Gossom would have preferred to prolong the sentimental note,—"pleasant reading," as he called it; personally he did not approve of hanging up the nation's wash in the front yard, for he himself was an investor in corporations. But what could he do? It was his business to give the People what the People wanted. And just now they wanted to be shocked and outraged by revelations of business perfidy. Another six months, perhaps, when the public was tired of contemplating rascality, the editor would find something sweet, full of country charm and suburban peace, to feed them…. On the title-page there were the old names and some new ones, but the same grist,—a "homely" story of "real life" among the tenements, a "humorous" story of the new school, an article on a marvellous invention to set the public on the gape, etc…. Fosdick had an article of a serious nature, on Trades Unions and Socialism. 'So Dickie, having ceased to roll about the world,' thought Isabelle, 'has begun to write about it.' She turned down the page at his article and looked into the advertising section. That was where the People's excelled,—in its thick advertising section. Between the automobiles and the pianolas were inserted some pages of personal puff, photographs of the coming contributors, and an account of their deeds,—the menus prepared for the coming months. Isabelle looked at the faces of the contributors, among whom was Dick's face, very smooth and serious. As a whole the photographs might be those of any Modern Order of Redmen, consciously posed before the camera of Fame. But they gave that personal touch so necessary to please the democratic taste. Thus from Aeschylus to Mr. Gossom's "literature." … It seemed no more real, no more a part of what life is in its essence, than the hotel and the sleek people thronging it.