Down among men

by Will Levington Comfort

5

Helen Quiston was the brain of the studio, the eyes and fingers—even, in part, the spirit of the place that John Morning loved. It was a letter of hers that John Morning answered with this paragraph:

“I shut my eyes after the first reading—and it seemed to me I went sailing. There were many voyagers and many islands—but I found my Island. It called to me and I knew it was for me. The voyagers sailed on past the curving inlets and the arrowed points—but I sailed home. I found the fountains, the crags, the echoes, the virgin springs, the mysterious meeting places of the land and sea, the enchanted forest where the fairies are—and the sun was rising. It was thus I answered the calling mystery of your spirit....”

She was glad that his mind turned to the actual memory picture of Betty Berry, as he finished:

“I do love the woman that moves about the world, the woman others see—the lips that tremble, the eyes that fill with tears so swiftly over some loveliness, and so rarely over her own sorrow; the instant-enfolding mind, the listening and the vitality—but it seems that I love in a greater way the heart that called to its lover without words—who fared forth to meet her lover and gave her soul.”

More and more Helen Quiston perceived that John Morning was becoming sufficient unto himself—the larger lover, loving the world through his lady, and needing less, even in thought, her hands and kisses and emotions. She saw steadily that which Duke Fallows had made Betty Berry see for a night. She did not see it as clearly as Betty Berry saw it that night, but she beheld an enduring radiance from it, because her body was not in the wreck of sacrifice. She had a woman’s sense of the large relation of things, and a woman’s faith. The misery of life as she had met it, the disorder, monotony, and gray sorrow of it all, was her profound assurance of another and brilliant side to the shield. She wanted nothing for herself in these particular instances. For Betty Berry she saw a swift transfer to a certain indefinite perfection, no less attractive because it was unlimned in her mind. Her own happiness, her great privilege, was to be third in this miracle of a man and woman passing beyond in a truly royal way. There was a mystic quality that suited her mind in the coming of the Guardian to Betty Berry’s room, and in the fact that John Morning would never know of this. It was like the coming of some Michael or Gabriel. From what she knew of John Morning’s work, she could believe in the planetary promise that the Guardian seemed to see; indeed, she could have believed in it with less evidence, because the Guardian said so.... Her particular dream was for the man to appear who would make women see what it was in their hands and hearts to do for the coming race. She dreamed of a man to come with words to women that would be reflected upon the brows of children to be, that would help to fashion the latent dreams into great children. She believed it was the agony of being childless that put this dream into her own mind, and she believed that the world-ignition could only come from a man who knew the same agony.... So she listened raptly to the singing from the forge; and more and more, with almost unspeakable excitement, she realized that the voice of John Morning was slowly and surely taking to itself the authority and harmony which his Guardian had promised.

He wrote often now of the rehearsals of Compassion, of his large fears and small satisfactions in them. He was always glad to get back to the cabin and the Book.... That book—some of her own inner life would be in it. She had given in the letters everything she dared. Her tears were all shed; there was dry burning in her eyes, for what Betty Berry had given to that Book.... Now in mid-September it was done, all but a month’s chiseling and polishing. It would be given to the publisher two weeks before the first appearance of Compassion at the Markheim the first week in November.... She dared not think what would happen when the Book was done, and the destiny of the play established.... A letter from Morning at this time contained for Helen Quiston one winged, triumphant sentence. She was reading aloud to Betty Berry:

“It was straight, clean going, right to the end of the book.... It is hard-held. It is kind. It laughs. It goes after the deepest-down man.... You have to reach almost self-effacement to associate with fine ideas and to get to the front in service.... How hard it was to make me see that the real world is not over there among writers and publishers and drama-producers, but everywhere among the hearts of the poor!

“And, oh, Betty Berry, it isn’t the book—it’s the life that counts. You have made me live. You earned your strength alone—suffering alone through the years. That’s the highest honor that can come to man or woman in this world—to be chosen for such years as you have known. It comes only to the strong—the strength to stand alone. The world bows sooner or later before such character. Men feel it, though their eyes be shut.

“There is a certain excellence in the honor of standing alone. Alone, man or woman is either ahead or behind the crowd. In the latter case, he is imbecile or defective, and God is with him.... God is in the forward solitudes, too. What a splendor about standing in the full light! The crowd cannot get it. The crowd keeps the light from itself. There the maiming is, the suffering, the cruelty; there the light is divided, and the warmth is the low heat of men, not the grand primal vitality of the Sun. There in the crowd, Apparition and Appearance take the place of the Real.... Now and then, in the torturing passage of the crowd, the landmark of some pioneer is reached, and the cry goes up, ‘We are on the right road, for that man passed here!’ The name of the pioneer becomes part of the crowd’s impedimenta. Perhaps he smiles from the Other Side, not because the crowd has found his trail—he may have wanted that once, though not long—but looking back upon his greater birth, he smiles—the place where he emerged and stood alone on the grand frontier.... You have made me strong enough to believe that you and I may go away up into the coolness beyond the senses—even in this life——”