Part 10 (1/2)
This was a true remark of Marie's, and I have often had occasion to perceive the great degree of it throughout the radical world. Men and women often try in that society to be tolerant; they give one another free rein sometimes for years, but generally in the end, the resistance of one or the other weakens; human nature or prejudice, whichever it is, a.s.serts itself, and tragedy results. This I had occasion to see over and over again: how nature triumphed over the most resolute idealism and brought about in the end either ugly pa.s.sion or pathetic unhappiness.
As Terry began to doubt his deepest hope, as he began to turn away from the ideas about which his salon was formed, he saw and felt more clearly the limitations of Marie's personal character; and her acts began to hurt him. Perhaps he began to lose faith in both--Marie and the Salon--at the same time.
”I am afraid,” he wrote, ”that the days of the salon are numbered. I am of the opinion that most of our latter-day radicals are on a par with our latter-day Christians. They have grown weary, or wary, of their original purpose. They seem to think Liberty a beautiful G.o.ddess who will never come: they willingly believe in her as long as there is no danger of or in her 'coming.' How frantically most of the radicals signal back the 'waiting' reply: the track is not clear for the coming of Liberty!--and they do not want to have it cleared!...
”You will be surprised to know that I have dropped the radicals, with the exception of Thomson, and I fear he too must walk the plank and go by the board. I am becoming quite implacable toward these intelligent people, and the salon will soon be void of my presence. The spirit of it has gone already and cannot be revived. That is why I left my mother's home--because the spirit of home had gone--and why I must leave the salon. I cannot submit to being a discordant spirit; therefore I must be a wandering one.
”So I must leave Katie and Marie. If I could make a living I would work for it, as I did when I thought so. But I shall never work--or toil rather--for sheer subsistence except behind the bars. I am driven to be a parasite, for honest living there is none. The time is up, and I must leave. Several years ago I ruined whatever robustness I had by tending bar so that Katie might knock down some three hundred dollars. At one meal a day and a place to try to sleep, I think that she and I are about even; she also thinks so, though she never says so, to me. She is willing and able to take care of Marie, for she has five hundred dollars in the bank and a great love for the girl.”
Terry, sometimes terribly frank, is extremely reticent about Marie; and the account of their misunderstanding comes mainly from her letters:
”I have had such a bad misunderstanding with Terry, or he with me, I don't know which it is. My G.o.d, but women can be brutal, though! You ought to read Jack London's 'The Call of the Wild.' You might subst.i.tute women for dogs. Some years ago I was a feast for the dogs (women), and now I see much of this same fierce brutality in myself, and poor Terry is feeling it. I have been away with a man, and Terry somehow feels it much more keenly than ever before.
”And yet I love Terry: surely if I ever knew what love means, I love him and have loved him always. Though I am the most brutal person on earth, I am so without intention, without knowing it even, at times. And I am so tired that sometimes I have no feeling for anything, not even for Terry, and he does not understand that. I feel out of harmony with every one just now. It is hardly indifference, rather a terrible weariness.
Perhaps my recent reading of Nietzsche has helped to give me a feeling of weary hopelessness. And then, too, the spirit of our salon is gone; I don't know exactly why. Even Terry has changed very much in his feelings and ideas. He is not much interested in the things he used to be absorbed in. He is more cynical, especially of social science, and yet he seems to me to be making a very science of looking at things unscientifically. He seems to be holding his emotions in check, is less impulsive than ever, and is losing much of that delicacy of feeling and expression which was so admirable in him.
”I too am growing cynical, and I hate to do so. I should like to accept people at their apparent value and not always look for motives, as I am getting more and more to do. I should like to approach everything and everybody with a perfectly open heart, as a child does, but I find that I no longer do that, that I am always prejudiced. I am sure that this is due to Terry's influence, for he more and more excludes everything: nothing is good enough for him. He pa.s.ses up one person after another and he has no joy in life. His personality is so much stronger than mine that I am like a little thin shadow, weaker than water, and he can always bring me around to see his way of looking at people and things.”
This note in Marie--protest against Terry's tendency to cut out the simple joy of life--grew very strong at a later time; now, however, it was only suggested, and played no important part.
Indeed, the idea of his leaving her was to her an intolerable thought; and yet there is many a letter which suggests the approaching dissolution of the salon and of their relation. They were both, at times, terribly tired of life: with no strenuous occupation, the word of Nietzsche and of world pessimism, of excessive individuality, tortured their nerves and made everything seem of no avail.
Work takes one away from life, is a buffer between sensitive nerves and intensest experience. Strong natures who for some reason are dislocated and therefore do not work, or work only fragmentarily, come too much in contact with life and often cannot bear it; it burns and palls at once.
So it was with Terry and Marie. Without either work or children, they were forced into strenuous personal relations with one another and into a feverish relation with ”life.”
”I feel so depressed,” she wrote; ”so many things have happened this last year which seemed trivial at the time, but have had big results, while other things which seemed events have turned out to be only incidents, and very small ones. Thus, a careless remark of mine resulted in a quarrel between Terry and me which did not lessen with time, but grew larger and larger, until now the relations of us two idyllic lovers are anything but pleasant. And a very serious attack of love from which I suffered last summer has pa.s.sed as quickly and lightly as a breath of wind, while another light love of mine, which came to me last February, has a.s.sumed large proportions simply because I have been abused for it by Terry, whom no one could ever displace in my heart. I was bound to defend my lover from the attacks of Terry, whom I had always regarded as above such a common display of irritation in such matters. So this other man became a sort of ideal lover in my mind, and all because of Terry's opposition. This man had wooed me in a great, glorious, G.o.dless fas.h.i.+on. He was a big man in the labour world, and he flattered me immensely, but I should never have cared for him, if Terry's nature had not suddenly seemed to weaken....
”I have been so uneasy about Terry lately. He has been talking so much about joining the criminal cla.s.s. He seems to be losing his interest in our movement and to be looking for some other way of escape, as he calls it. He says his liberty is only a figment of his mind, that he has now reached the time for which he had all along been unconsciously preparing himself. I am, of course, used to this kind of talk from Terry. He has been in the depths of despondency often enough, but nothing ever came of it except a saloon brawl. He would usually seek Harris; they would break a mirror or a few gla.s.ses in some saloon, and the next day Terry would have a headache, after which he was usually content to browse around his philosophy in that mild and subtle way of his, for a week or so.
”But now Harris is gone, and Terry does not know any other person quite so strenuous in the fine art of breaking gla.s.ses and barroom fixtures in general, so, finding no vent for his acc.u.mulated despondency, he may possibly do real things. I feel so sadly for him and wish I could help him. The Lord knows I would be willing to break any amount of gla.s.sware with him, but he has not much confidence in my aim, I guess; women never can throw straight. In fact, he has little confidence in me in any way lately, for he never tells me the details of his schemes, but only throws out dark and terrible hints....
”Truly, something may indeed happen this time. He is so anti-social. He positively won't go out anywhere to meet people, won't go to our picnics or socials, and in manner is very strange, distant, cold, and polite to Katie and me. One would think he had been introduced to us just five minutes before. Perhaps he thinks that Katie and I want him to go to work--common, vulgar work, I mean, for Katie has lost her job and we are living in the most economical way, for we don't know when another desirable job can be found. Now, Terry really ought to know that I shouldn't have him work for anything in the world. I know that Katie has not said the least word to him, but he is so terribly sensitive that perhaps he suspects what she may be thinking.
”Katie is despondent, too, and nearly makes me crazy talking of her life, past, present, and future, in the most doleful way. Last night, after talking to me for two hours about the misery of life, she made the startling proposal that she and I commit suicide. 'For,' said she, 'I cannot see anything ahead of me but work, work, like a cart-horse, until I am dead. I'd rather die now and be done with everything, and you had better come with me, for you haven't anything, and if I went alone, what would become of you, such a poor helpless creature; see how thin you are, I can almost look through your bones! Who would take care of you?'
”After talking in this strain for what seemed to me hours and hours, Katie went to bed and to sleep, and then came Terry from his solitary walk--he usually goes for a walk if there are any indications that Katie will do any talking--and entertained me by carelessly, carefully hinting at one of his dark, mysterious plots. Then he, too, went to bed, and I, too, had forty winks and seventy thousand nightmares.”
But Marie, even in this growing strain, never failed in her love and admiration for the strange man with whom she lived. On the heels of the above came the following:
”Terry is one of those characters who has not lost any of his distinct individuality. His is a nature which will never become confounded or obliterated in one's memory. The instantaneous impression of large soul, sincerity, and truthfulness he made upon me at our first meeting has never left me. This impression must have been very strong, for generally these impressions grow weaker, if people live together so closely as poor people must. All his faults, as well as perhaps his virtues, come from the fact that he is not at all practical. In spite of his experience, he does not know the world, and is a dreamer of dreams.
His wild outbursts are the result, I think, of his sedentary life.
Sometimes we two remain at our home for weeks without venturing out, without hardly speaking to each other, and then suddenly we burst out into the wildest extravagances of speech!”
A few days later there was a wilder burst than ever, and Terry left the salon. Marie wrote:
”Last week we all had a row, and Terry has not been seen or heard of since. The last words he uttered were that he should return for his belongings in a few days. I am dreadfully sorry about it, especially that we could not have parted good friends. I realise and always shall be sensible of the great good I had from him and shall always think of him with the best feeling and greatest respect. The parting has not been a great surprise to me, for it really has been taking place for a long time, ever since he withdrew his confidence from me, now months past, and I have been acting with other men without his knowledge.
Nothing mattered in our relation but mutual confidence, but when that went, it was, I suppose, only a question of time. And, at the same time that he withdrew spiritually from me, he seemed to lose his interest in the movement, and grew more and more solitary and hopeless.
”I don't know what Terry is doing, or where he has gone, and I am uneasy. I would not fancy this beautiful bohemian life alone with Katie, and I don't know what to do.”