"Oh, I know the pretty impression our American women make in the eyes of visiting foreigners,--so "clever," so "fascinating," so "original," so "independent," and such "charm"! Those are the words, aren"t they? While their dull husbands are "money-getters." They at least are doers, not talkers! ...
"Do you know what you are, women like you, who have money and freedom to "live your own lives"? You are s.e.xless; you haven"t nature"s great apology for the animal,--desire. Such women sin, when they sin, with their minds.
Great G.o.d! I had rather those broad-hipped Italian peasant women of Calabria, with solid red-brown flesh, bred b.a.s.t.a.r.ds for the country than have these thin, anaemic, nervous, s.e.xless creatures, with their "souls"
and their "charm," marry and become mothers! What have you done to the race? The race of blond giants from the forests of the north? Watch the avenue in New York!"
Again,--"So what have you made of marriage, "leading your own lives"? You make marriage a sort of intelligent and intellectual prost.i.tution--and you develop divorce. The best among you--those who will not marry unless the man can arouse their "best selves"--will not bear children even then. And you think you have the right to choose again when your so-called souls have played you false the first time.... And man, what of him? You leave him to his two gross temptations,--Power and l.u.s.t. Man is given you to protect, and you drive him into the market-place, where he fights for your ease, and then relaxes in the refined sensualities you offer him as the reward for his toil. With the fall of man into the beast"s trough must come the degradation of women. They cannot travel apart; they must pull together.
What have _you_ done for your husband?" He turned sharply on Isabelle.
"Where is he now? where has he been all these years? What is he doing this hour? Have you nursed his spirit, sharpened his sword? ... I am not speaking of the dumb ones far down in the ma.s.s, nor of the humdrum philistines that still make homes, have traces of the nest-instinct left; but of you, _you_,--the developed intelligences who flatter yourselves that you lead because you are free to do as you like. By your minds you are betrayed!"
Before the blast of his scorching words Isabelle saw her ambitions shrivel into petty nothings,--all the desires from her first married days to find a suitable expression of her individuality, her wish to escape Torso, her contempt for St. Louis, her admiration for Cornelia Woodyard, her seeking for "interesting" people and a cultivated and charming background for herself, and last of all her dissatisfaction in her marriage because it failed to evoke in her the pa.s.sion she desired. It was a petty story, she felt,--ashamed before Renault"s irony.
He knew her life, more than she had told him, much more. He knew _her_. He read below the surface and had known her from the first hour they had met.
It was all true,--she had wanted many things that now she saw were futile.
She had accepted her marriage as failure--almost with relief, as an excuse for her restlessness. Yes, she had made mistakes; what was worse, was a mistake herself! Crushed with this sense of futility, of failure, she cried:--
"But we are caught in the stream when we are young and eager. The world seems so big and rich if you but reach out your hand to take."
"And from its feast you took--what?"
She was silent, self-convicted; for she had taken chaff! ...Nevertheless, it was not dead within her--the self. It cried out under Renault"s pitiless scorn for satisfaction, for life. The rebellious surge of desire still suffocated her at times. There was beauty, the loveliness of the earth, the magic wonder of music and art,--all the clamor of emotion for an expression of self. And love? Ah, that was dead for her. But the life within, the self, still hungered for possession at times more fiercely than ever. Why should it be killed at her age? Why were they not good, these hungry desires, this fierce self that beat in her blood for recognition? The conquering, achieving SELF! That was the spirit of her race, to see and take that which was good in their eyes, to feed the SELF with all that the world contained of emotions, ideas, experience; to be big, and strong, and rich,--to have Power! That was what life had meant for her ancestors ever since the blond race emerged from their forests to conquer. All else was death to the self, was merely sentimental deception, a playing at resignation....
As if he traced her fast thoughts, Renault said:--
"A house divided against itself--"
"But even if I have failed--"
"Failed because you did not look deep enough within!"
Renault"s voice insensibly softened from his tone of harsh invective as he added:--
"And now you know what I meant when I said that a neurasthenic world needed a new religion!"
So he had remembered her,--knew her all the time!
"But you can"t get it because you need it--"
"Yes, because you feel the need! ... Not the old religion of abnegation, the impossible myths that come to us out of the pessimistic East, created for a relief, a soporific, a means of evasion,--I do not mean that as religion. But another faith, which abides in each one of us, if we look for it. We rise with it in the morning. It is a faith in life apart from our own personal fate.... Because we live on the surface, we despair, we get sick. Look below into the sustaining depths beyond desire, beyond self, to the depths,--and you will find it. It will uplift you.... When you wake in the morning, there will come to you some mysterious power that was not there before, some belief, some hope, some faith. Grasp it! ... When the clouds lift, the physical clouds and the mental clouds, then appears the Vision and the knowledge. They are the truth from the depths within,--the voice of the spirit that lives always. And by that voice man himself lives or dies, as he wills,--by the voice of the spirit within."
So as the drear day of the dying winter drew to a close, as the ashes powdered on the hearth and the face of Renault became obscure in the twilight, the dim outlines of a great meaning rose before her, reconciling all.... The Vision that abides within apart from the teasing phantasmagoria of sense, the Vision that comes, now dim, now vivid, as the flash of white light in the storm, the Vision towards which mankind blindly reaches, the Vision by which he may learn to live and endure all!
And this Vision was all that really mattered,--to see it, to follow where it pointed the way!
... "The waste in life, the wrong steps, the futile years!" she murmured.
"Rather the cost, the infinite cost of human souls--and their infinite value once born," Renault corrected. "Do not distress yourself about what to do, the claims of this or that. The thing to do will always be clear, once you trust yourself, seek wholly the Vision. And as for beauty and satisfaction and significance,--it is infinite in every moment of every life--when the eyes are once open to see!"
There was the sound of footsteps outside, and Isabelle moved to the door.
"So," Renault concluded, putting his hands on her shoulders, "it is not the End but the Beginning. And always so,--a mysterious journey, this life, with countless beginnings.... We go out into the night. But the light comes--when we forget to see ourselves."
The wind raged in the trees outside, sweeping across the earth, tearing the forest, cleansing and breaking its repose, preparing for the renewal to come. Like a mighty voice it shouted to man; like the whirlwind it shook his earth.... For the first time since Vickers lay dead in the dawn of the June morning Isabelle could bear to look at the past,--to accept it calmly as part of herself out of which she had lived, in recognition of that beginning within.
CHAPTER LXV
"They seem to be in such a pother, out in the world," Isabelle remarked to Margaret, as she turned over the leaves of her husband"s letter. "The President is calling names, and a lot of good people are calling names back. And neither side seems to like being called names. John doesn"t like it, and he calls names. And they sulk and won"t play marbles. It all sounds like childish squabbling."
Margaret, who was unusually absent-minded this evening, sighed:--
"So many desires of men, always struggling at cross-purposes! I haven"t read the papers for months! They don"t seem real up here, somehow. What"s happening?"
"I haven"t opened my papers, either. Look there!" Isabelle pointed to a pile of unwrapped newspapers in the corner. "But I must go through them and see what John is grumbling about. It isn"t like John to grumble at anything." Then she read from her husband"s letter: "The President in his besotted vanity and colossal ignorance has succeeded in creating trouble that twenty Presidents won"t be able to settle. The evils which he may have corrected are nothing to those he has brought upon innocent people.... So far as our road is concerned, this prejudiced and partisan investigation, instigated by the newspapers and notoriety seekers, will do no great harm.... I suppose you have seen the garbled press account of my cross-examination,--don"t let it disturb you."...
Isabelle looked up.
"I wonder what he means by that! "My cross-examination"? It must be something rather out of the ordinary to stir John to such expression,--"Besotted vanity and colossal ignorance." Whew!"
After Margaret left, Isabelle began abstractedly to strip the wrappers from the newspapers, glancing at the thickest headlines:--
BANK FAILURE--SUICIDE OF BANK PRESIDENT--SENSATIONAL DIVORCE, etc.
Here it was at last:--
THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC ON THE GRILL!! INVESTIGATION OF THE GREAT RAILROAD"S COAL BUSINESS
Isabelle scanned the newspaper column indifferently. As Margaret had said, the squabbles of the great, conglomerate, writhing business world seemed remote indeed. They had never been actual to her, though she was the daughter of a merchant. In the Colonel"s house, as in most American homes of the well-to-do, the newspaper was regarded as a necessary evil, largely composed of lies and garbled rumors. It was taken for granted that almost everything to be seen in print was vitiated by sensational falsehood, and so far as "business"--mystic word!--was concerned, all "news" was pure fabrication. This sceptical att.i.tude had been intensified by John, who regarded any criticism of the actions of capital as dictated by envy, as "unpatriotic," aimed at the efforts of the most energetic and respectable element in the community; moreover, "socialistic," that is, subversive of the established order, etc. According to John the ablest men would always "get on top," no matter what laws were made. And getting on top meant that they would do what they wished with their own, i.e. capital. Thus without thinking about it Isabelle had always a.s.sumed that men in general were envious of their betters. Sometimes, to be sure, she had suspected that this simple theory might be incomplete, that her husband and his friends might be "narrow." Some people whose opinion she respected even approved of the President"s policy in seeking to curb the activities of capital. But she had slight interest in the vexed question, and skipped all references to industrial turmoil in her reading.
So to-night her eyes slipped carelessly down the column, which was not intelligible without previous accounts, and she continued to rip the wrappers from newspapers, letting the stiff parcels of paper drop to the floor. She was thinking of what Renault had said, bits of his phrases constantly floating through her mind. If he had only been more precise! She wanted to know _what_ to do,--here, now. He had said: "Wait! It will all be clear. It makes little difference what it is. You will find the path." With her eager temperament that was all baffling. Margaret had found her path,--had seen her Vision, and it had brought to her peace. Her restless, bitter nature had been wonderfully changed into something exquisitely calm and poised, so that her very presence, silent in the room, could be felt....
Isabelle"s eyes caught the headline in the paper she was opening:--
OFFICIALS OF THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC BEFORE THE FEDERAL GRAND JURY
JOHN S. LANE, THIRD VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE ROAD, INDICTED
Isabelle"s mind suddenly woke to the present, and she began to read breathlessly: "As a result of the recent investigations by the Interstate Commerce Commission of the relation between the Atlantic and Pacific and certain coal properties, officials of that system have been examined by a special Grand Jury, and it is rumored," etc. Isabelle glanced at the date of the paper. It was a month old! Even now, perhaps, her husband was on trial or had already been tried for illegal acts in the conduct of his business, and she knew nothing about it! Another paper had the item: "This time the district attorney under direction from Washington will not be content to convict a few rate clerks or other underlings. The indictment found against one of the vice-presidents of this great corporation that has so successfully and impudently defied the law will create a profound impression upon the whole country. It is a warning to the corporation criminals that the President and his advisers are not to be frightened by calamity-howlers, and will steadfastly pursue their policy of going higher up in their effort to bring the real offenders before the courts. The coming trial before federal Judge Barstow will be followed with intense interest," etc., etc.
Isabelle rapidly uncovered the remaining newspapers, arranging them in the order of dates, and then glanced through every column in search of news about the trial, even to the editorial comments on the action of the Grand Jury. The earlier papers that had the account of the investigation by the Commission had been destroyed unread, but she inferred from what she saw that the affair rose from the complaint of independent mine-owners in Missouri and Indiana that they were discriminated against by the railroad.
The federal authorities were trying to establish the fact of conspiracy on the part of the Atlantic and Pacific to control the coal business along its lines. There were hints of an "inside ring," whose operations tended to defraud both stockholders and public....
As she read the wordy columns of report and suspicion, there suddenly shot into Isabelle"s mind a memory of a Sunday afternoon in Torso when she and John had ridden by Mr. Freke"s mines and John had said in reply to her question, "Mr. Freke and I do business together." Mr. Freke was the president of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company,--a name that occurred often in the newspaper report, the name which had been spread across the black sheds she had seen that Sunday afternoon. Now she remembered, also, that she had had to sign certain papers for transfer of stock when John had sold something to put the money--into coal. And last of all she remembered at the very beginning of her life in Torso the face of that man in her husband"s office and how he had begged for cars, and his cry, "My G.o.d! I shall go bankrupt!" Out of it all--the newspaper paragraphs, the legal terms, the editorial innuendoes, the memories--there was shaped something like a coherent picture of what this dispute really meant, and her husband"s concern in it.
It was now midnight. Isabelle"s mind was stung to keen apprehension. She did not know whether John was guilty of what the government was seeking to prove him guilty. She could not judge whether the government was justified in bringing suit against the railroad and its officials. There was doubtless the other side, John"s side. Perhaps it was a technical crime, a formal slip, as she had been told it was in other cases where the government had prosecuted railroads. That would come out clearly at the trial, of course. But the fact that stared her in the face was that her husband was to be _tried_--perhaps was on trial this very day--and she did not even know it! She reached for the papers again and searched for the date of the trial of the coal cases in the federal court. It was to open the nineteenth of March--it was now the twenty-second! And the last paper to reach her was the issue of the eighteenth. The trial had already begun.
Isabelle paced the narrow breadth of her chamber. Her husband was on trial, and he had not written her. His last letters, which she had destroyed, had betrayed signs of irritation, disturbance.... Renault"s charge, "The curse of our day is egotism," rang in her ears. She had been so much concerned over her own peace of mind, her own soul, that she had had no room for any perception--even for the man with whom she had lived side by side for ten years! Love or not, satisfaction or not in marriage, it must mean something to live for ten years of life with another human being, eat bread with him, sleep under the same roof with him, bear a child to him.... And there in her silent room Isabelle began to see that there was something in marriage other than emotional satisfaction, other than conventional cohabitation.