Chapter 3

I confess that I was comforted by these hearty words, and braced in a determination that was beginning to splutter out. Drinkwater's divine urge was not unlike my own thread of flame and Denis's Holy Mother, who was a light even to the feet of Protestants. It was the same principle�that of a guide, an impulse, an illumination, which our own powers could generate when lifted up to, and associated with, the universal beneficence. I decided to take to formula, "Wish and watch, and watch and wish," as the device of my knight-errantry. As a matter of fact, by the sheer process of wishing I secured a secondary position for myself in the textile department of the Metropolitan Museum, while by that of watching I found that one of Bridget's boys and two of the Finn's had aptitudes highly worth developing right along this line. It wasn't much; but it was a beginning in the way in which I hoped to go, and might lead to something more.

In all this time, as you can imagine, Vio was my ruling thought, and guessing her intentions my daily occupation. Since she presumably wanted a divorce, there were doubtless grounds on which she could secure one by going the right way to work; but as to whether she was doing this or not nothing had yet been said to me. Nothing was said to me of any kind. I had not written to her, nor had she to me; and my other communication with Boston was only through my bankers. Even that was growing more irregular since I had changed my business address to Meeting-House Green.

What I was chiefly seeking was forgetfulness. Lydia had reproached me with being a "poor boob" in giving up the struggle for Vio's love; but Lydia hadn't known the wound Vio had inflicted. The more I thought of that the more I felt it due to the dignity of love to attempt neither explanation nor defense. On mere circumstantial evidence Vio had believed me guilty of the crime she would probably have rated as the blackest in the calendar. I couldn't forgive that. I had no intention of forgiving it. The more I loved her the less I could forget that she had returned my love in this way. The most chivalrous thing I could do, the most merciful toward her, and the most tender was what I was doing. I could leave her without a contradiction, so justifying tacitly whatever she may have thought, and putting no restraint on her future liberty of action.

I said so to Mildred Averill when we talked it over about the middle of March. I had not intended to renew this connection unless a sign was made from the other side; but it was given in the form of a line from Miss Averill begging me to come and see her in the apartment she had taken for herself in Park Avenue, where at last she had a little home. Knowing that my duties kept me at the Museum on week-days she had fixed the time for a Sunday afternoon.

It will be remembered that we had met in the previous December, so that I found little change in her now. As I had noticed then, she had grown more spiritual, with an expression of restfulness and peace.

"That's because I don't struggle so much," she explained, in answer to my remark on this change; "I don't fight so much. I'm not nearly the rebel I used to be."

"Does that mean that you've made up your mind to let things go?"

"No; to let things come. That's what I wouldn't do before. I wanted to hurry them, to force them, to drag them along. I begin to see that life has its own current upward, and that we succeed best by getting into it and letting it carry us onward."

"But doesn't that theory tend to take away one's own initiative?"

"I don't know that initiative is any good if it's directed the wrong way. Did you ever watch a leaf being carried down-stream? As long as it's in the current it goes swiftly and safely. Then something catches it and throws it into some little side-pool or backwater, where it goes fretting and swirling and tearing itself to pieces and never getting anywhere. Well, it's something like that. I was in a side-pool, lashing round and round and churning my spirit, such as it is, into nervous irritations of every kind, making myself the more furious because my efforts were to no purpose."

"And how did you get out into the current again?"

"By wishing, in the first place. It began to seem to me such a foolish thing that, being given all the advantages in the world, I could do nothing but frustrate them. I was like a person with a pack of cards in his hand, not knowing how to play any game. I longed to learn one, even the simplest; and I think it was the idea of the simplest that saved me."

"I'm not sure that I get that, the simplest."

"Oh, it's nothing abstruse or original. I suppose it's no more than the accepted principle of doing the duty that's nearest. Hitherto, I'd felt that nothing was a real duty but what was far away. Then I began to see that right under our own roof� You see, Boyd and Lulu weren't very happy, and I'd been leaving them to shift for themselves while I tried to do things for people like Lydia Blair and Harry Drinkwater, and a lot of others who were perfectly well able to take care of themselves. So I began to wonder if I couldn't ... and to wish.... And it's so curious! The minute I did that the things I could do were right there just as if they'd been staring me in the face for years, and I hadn't had the eyes to see them."

"What sort of things?"

"Oh, hardly worth naming when it comes to words. Not big things, little things. If Lulu wanted something she couldn't find in New York, a particular sort of scarf or piece of music, no matter what, I'd tell Boyd and he'd send for it; and, of course, you see! Or if Lulu said anything nice about Boyd, which she did now and then, I'd make it a point of telling him. That's the sort of thing, nothing when you come to talk about it, and yet in practice� That's what I mean by the simplest, the easiest, and most natural; and so I formed a kind of principle."

"Do you mind telling me what it is?"

"Only that, whoever you are, your work is given you; you don't have to go into the highways and hedges to look for it. That queer boy, Harry Drinkwater, gave me the secret of it first. I asked him one day how it was that, in spite of all his handicaps, he managed to get on so well. He said he had only one recipe for success, which was wishing and watching, and watching and wishing. He said there was no door that wouldn't open to you of its own accord if you stood before it long enough with that Sesame in your heart. I remember his saying, too, that in the matter of work, desire�desire that's not wrong, of course�was our first point of contact with the divine, since the thing that we urgently wish to do is the thing by which we re-express the God who has first expressed Himself in us. The most important duty, then, is to find out what we really want, and then to wish and watch. Most of us don't know what we want, or, if we do, we're not clear enough about it, and so we get lost in confusion, like travelers in a swamp. Of course he said it all much more quaintly than I'm doing it; but that was the gist, and it helped to put me into the line of thought in which I've�I've found content."

"That is, you analyzed first what it was you really wanted to do."

"Exactly; and I discovered two things: first, that I didn't want anything half so much as to help�I've told you that before�unless it was the happiness of the people to whom I was nearest. I found, too, that if I began at the beginning and followed the line of least resistance I'd get farther in the end. Up to that time I'd begun in the middle, and so could get neither backward nor forward, as I used to complain to you."

Having thought this over, I said:

"You're fortunate in having the people to whom you're nearest close enough to you for�for daily intercourse and influence."

There was distinct significance in her response.

"Perhaps I'm fortunate in never having turned my back on them as long as they were in need of me. Do you remember how I used to want a home of my own? Well, something kept me at least from that. Whenever I came face to face with doing what I've felt free to do at last, there was always a second thought that held me back. If Boyd and Lulu had had children it would have been different. But Lulu didn't want any till�till lately, and so I felt that something was needed to ease the grinding of the wheels between them. I did recognize that. But now that they've got the little boy�"

"Got a little boy?" I said, in astonishment.

"Why, yes. Didn't any one tell you? Two weeks old to-day, and such a darling! One day he looks like Lulu, and the next like Boyd, and they're both as happy as two children. That's why I've felt free to be my own mistress, to this extent, at least. Things do work out, you know, if you'll only give them half a chance, and stop fretting. That's another thing," she smiled; "it came to me one day in church when they were reading the Psalms, though I'd often heard the words before without paying them attention. 'Fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil.' I suppose people worried three thousand years ago just as we do to-day; and had to be told not to. Well, I've tried not to fret myself, and I've got on, oh, so much better."

She was so serene that as I passed my cup for more tea I ventured on something from which otherwise I should have shrunk:

"I'm a little surprised that in your analysis of the things you really wanted you've forgotten the one most people crave for first."

She took this with her customary simple directness.

"Oh no, I haven't. It's only that something seems to have been left out of me that�that I don't demand it as much as many other women; and then�it's hard to put into words�the conviction has come to me that�that whenever I'm ready for it I shall get it. I'm not ready for it, yet." Her amber eyes rested on me with the utmost truthfulness. "It's odd; but I'm not. The very fact that I don't demand it yet, some women, you know, are like that, and I suppose some men, but that very fact shows that it's wiser not to congest one's life by tackling too many things at a time. The one thing I'm growing certain of is that it all depends on oneself as to whether or not the windows of heaven are open to pour us out blessings, and that whatever I want, within reason, I shall get in the long run."

It was partly this theory of life, and partly a sense of assurance and relief, that led me on to talk of my personal situation. As Drinkwater had done, she dismissed my mental misfortunes as incidental, interesting pathologically, but not morally decisive. As to my return to New York after having actually found my way home I felt obliged to give her some explanation. It was while I was doing this that she asked, as if casually:

"Do you like Colonel Stroud?"

"No," I said, bluntly. "Do you?"

"I can see that he has a sort of fascination ... for other women." She nodded, more thoughtfully, "I don't trust him."

"Neither do I."

"I thought not. That's what makes me wonder�"

She hesitated so long that I was compelled to say:

"Wonder, what?"

"Perhaps I had better not go on."

"Please do."

"I only will on condition that you authorize me."

"I authorize you to say anything you choose."

"Well, then, since you don't trust him, I wonder how you could expose any woman to�to his influence."

"Oh, but I don't. The�the events all took place while I was away, and I've no control over them."

"No control, perhaps; but there are other things in life besides control."

"I know that; but what things, for instance, do you mean?"

"Oh, lots of things." She looked about the room as if not attaching much importance to her words. "Love, for one."

"But in this case love has to be counted out."

"Can you ever count out love? I thought that was the one permanent factor in existence, though the skies were to fall."

"It may be a permanent factor, and yet have to remain in abeyance."

She laughed.

"Nonsense! Who ever heard of love remaining in abeyance? You might as well talk of fire remaining in abeyance when it's raging, or water when it's bursting a dam, or any other element in active operation. If I loved any one, no matter how little, I should want to save them from a man like Colonel Stroud."

"In spite of the fact that you'd been considered guilty of�"

"Oh, what does it matter what any one thinks of so poor a thing as oneself? I mean that oneself to oneself is so very unimportant."

"Oh, do you think so?"

"Of course I know that there are other points of view, and that from some of them oneself to oneself is the most vital of all considerations. But in the detail of what other people think of one�"

"Even when the other people are those of whom you think most in all the world?"

"Let us think most of them then. Don't let us think most about ourselves."

"Do you suppose I'm thinking most about myself now? I assure you I'm not."

She laughed again, not lightly, but rather pitifully.

"I must leave you to judge of that."