THE WAY OF ALL EARTH

[3]

THE WAY OF ALL EARTH

BY

EDITH BARNARD DELANO

Behold, I have set before thee an open door and no man can shut it.

Revelation

BONI AND LIVERIGHT

Publishers :: 1925 :: New York

[4]

Copyright, 1923, 1924, 1925, by Edith Barnard Delano

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, March, 1925 Second printing, May, 1925

[5]

PART I

[7]

THE WAY OF ALL EARTH

1

Five o’clock; and the lethargic slowness of the afternoon changed into activity with the abruptness with which light comes after the turning of an electric switch. The girls at the desks in the outer room—no bobbed locks in those days, but grotesque oddities of coiffure drooping low over foreheads and strangely puffed out over ears—stood up so unanimously, so instantly, that it was plain they had been waiting for the hands of the clock to mark the hour of liberation. The fugue of typewriters stopped; voices and the shuffling of feet sounded another rhythm. A stenographer closed a door behind her, came forward with red-ruled notebook and pencil and made her way to a desk near a window, a dissatisfied look on her face; she would have to get off those letters before she went home. Men opened and closed the drawers of their desks; then they, too, followed the girls down the stairs. One of them raised his arms and yawned.

“This spring weather gets you,” said he.

But nobody answered. The moment of release had come; in every man’s mind was the thought of getting away, just as eight hours before they had all been motivated by the idea of getting to work.

[8]

“Take the ferry?” Brice Denison asked a man whose shoulders brushed his as they went out the door.

“Tube’s quicker,” the other said.

“Well, I’ve got some grass seed to get.” He plunged into the human stream rushing westward, battling against the other stream forging to the east. Sometimes he could thread his way a step or two ahead of someone in front; sometimes he could do no more than keep pace with the onward moving crowd—a long step, a dozen short ones, looking for a gap, taking it, held again, then on. A street or two crossed, and the eastward stream grew less; it was possible to make better progress, to dodge more, to pass a couple of girls or a man; to walk swiftly under metal projections where halves of beef hung, and hogs with their sides held out by wooden pieces displayed the inner sheathing of their ribs, and crates and baskets of vegetables lay open to the dust, and fruit stands were piled high with oranges and apples, and vendors’ carts lined the curb with boxed strawberries. The air freshened as Brice reached the street lined on one side with ferries. He paused at the door of a shop, and stood for a moment looking at the blue and purple and yellow blooms.

“I’ll take a couple of those,” he said, and thrust his hand into a trousers-pocket.

Then over the broad street to the ferry house. Under a stairway the boy from whom he always bought the evening paper. He was recognized; the paper he wanted was snatched from the pile and thrust at him, [9] his coins dropped into a waiting hand. Not a second was lost. Men hurrying to the ferry must not be delayed. Moments were precious, invaluable. They were hastening home.

There were trains waiting on the other side. The ferry docked. Men rushed off, parting to right and left. Some glanced at the clock, then began to walk more slowly; others raced, and others went stolidly on their way, through the gates, on to forward cars. The forward cars got there a moment sooner. Brice found a seat, put his baskets of pansies in the rack overhead, unfolded his evening paper. Other men were doing the same thing. Their movements might have been directed as by an orchestra leader. Headlines, first—they had seen them on news-stands, in other men’s hands, glanced at them in ferry or tube; then in unison, with a swishing sound, up and down the car the papers were turned, folded. The base-ball season was open. Tired men, with no time for play, lost themselves in the printed accounts of the game. The train moved out, a few late-comers passing along the aisle in the hope of finding seats. A hand fell on Brice’s shoulder.

“Why—hello there, Ned!” he said, as the other took the place at his side. “Haven’t seen you for ages!” A wave of self-consciousness passed over him; that was an inapt thing to say: no, he had not seen Ned Allen for ages. But the other man ignored any awkwardness there might have been.

“How’s things?” he asked. “How’s Anne?”

“Fine, fine! How’s Mabel?”

[10]

“She’s well. Billy’s had measles. I see you’re still the same old farmer, Brice!”

Brice glanced overhead at his pansies. “Yes. But I had to buy a lawn-mower when we moved, Ned. Gosh—those were great old days!”

The other grinned. “Yes. I miss your tool chest. Like your new house?”

“Not so new, now. Three years, nearly four, isn’t it? By Jove, it’s five!”

“Five—so it is! We still miss you. Movies near you?”

“Yes. Oh, yes. Anne’s sort of lost interest. Things come along, you know. You meet people, all that. I tell you what, Ned. We want you and Mabel to come up to dinner some night. Make it soon.”

“That’s indefinite. We’ll do better than that. Anything on tonight?”

“Not a thing.”

“Well then, you and Anne hop on a train and come down. Or maybe you keep a car?”

“No such luck!” said Brice, with a comforting warmth suddenly flaring within him; they had no car yet, but things were coming along.

“All right. You come down, and we’ll all go to the movies. Have a bite on the chafing-dish afterwards. We’ve got a new one—electric. Be like old times.”

“We’ll do it!” said Brice, as the train stopped and Allen arose. “In time for the second show, anyway.”

He did not open his paper again. Good, that, to meet Ned, especially today. Good to think of old [11] times. That little two-family house, Ned and Mabel in the apartment above. The lawn-mower that he borrowed from Ned when his turn came to cut the small plot of grass. The tools that Ned borrowed in turn. Mabel and Anne going shopping together, sometimes on a matinée spree in town; small triumphs shared, simple pleasures—good old times, particularly good to think about tonight. Good to have had them, good to have gone on to something else; good, very good, still to be going on.

The train stopped at his station; he thrust his newspaper into a hip-pocket, took down the baskets of flowers. A short walk along the side of the tracks, a turn to the left and a block or two—it was not far to his house; its convenience had been one of their reasons for choosing it, but now its nearness to things had become insignificant. Its importance, its meaning had grown. It represented something more than any other house on the street, even than the other houses that he passed on the more important street. He never turned into the by-street without a quickening of the pulse. His eye never caught the gray stucco front with its roof of red tiles coming oddly down in a sweep incongruously borrowed from the Chinese without a warm sense of satisfaction. That house was not like other houses; it was not like any other house on that street, even. They were all set on low terraces. Some were shingled, some stuccoed; some had red roofs, and others had brown; some were painted in gray or yellow, with white trimmings and green blinds; some had two [12]

smaller windows on the front porch, some had one larger. Those differences were due to the effulgence of the builder’s imagination and to the real-estate man’s knowledge of salesmanship. This was a neighborhood that was meant for nice people with moderate incomes; at the time the houses were built there were no garages, though later several owners had built them, of cement or corrugated metal, in the tiny back yards. People who lived in nice neighborhoods, however convenient to the commuters’ trains, did not want to live in houses like all the other houses on the street. The floor plans of all those on Lammermoor Place were as like as right and left gloves; but outside no two were alike. Individuality was the keynote; individuality and a certain smart look. That was what made for quick sales. No need of substantial building. Looks, looks—that was what counted. It had counted with Brice and Anne; but now the house had taken upon itself for Brice a personality of its own. It was home. He was going home tonight with grass-seed for that

bare spot on the lawn, and with pansies, and with something else. Anne would be pleased.

A little girl on roller skates skidded up to him as he turned the corner, threw herself upon him. He laughed, held out his hand, and the child set her feet together and let him drag her along.

“Mrs. Denison’s just come home. She came in an automobile,” she said. “See—? She hasn’t got out yet, but she’s there.”

A long gray runabout, “the latest sports model,” was [13] at the curb in front of his house. Brice dropped the child’s hands as he reached it. His eyes met Anne’s.

“I’ve brought her safe home, you see,” said the man at the wheel.

“Thanks,” said Brice, dryly, without smiling.

Anne jumped down, spoke a laughing word of farewell over her shoulder. They went up the walk together. But in the hall she turned to him with a look of resentment that was like a hand thrusting him away.

“I think you might have been ordinarily polite to Ranney,” she said.

“I thought I was,” said Brice; but without replying Anne started upstairs. He set his baskets of pansies on the hall table. From the landing where the stairs turned she looked down.

“Of course if you really want to make a white spot on the hall table it’s quite all right to put those wet things there,” she said. He hastily took them up. “I can’t see why you like to come home looking like a delivery boy, anyway,” she added, and went on up to her room.

Brice carried the pansies through a swinging door into the kitchen. “Hello, Lucille,” he said to a young colored woman who turned from the stove to greet him with an exceptional dental display.

“My, ain’t them pretty!” she said.

“Yes. I’m going to plant them along the porch.”

“That’ll be grand! Mis’ Denison’s awful fond of flowers.”

[14]

“Got a tumbler or something?” Brice asked; he began picking off some of the larger blossoms. The girl brought him a small slim vase which he held under the faucet. Water splashed into the sink, spattered over his hands and coat.

“I’ll wipe you off,” said Lucille. “That faucet cuts up all the time.”

“Needs a new washer,” said Brice. “I’ll fix it tonight.” He carried the little vase into the dining-room, and in the doorway stopped short. There were flowers on the table, white lilacs and deep red roses, and thrust between them some purple orchids, such a forced mingling of the seasons as only the very rich can achieve. But Brice did not know that. He wondered vaguely what Anne had paid for them. Then he set his pansies in front of her place.

She came down in a moment; she was always deft in her changes of costume. It had not taken long, but she was fresh and elusively fragrant in a gown Brice had not seen before. She was smiling.

“You forgot to kiss me when you came in!” said she.

“I can make up for that,” Brice said. “You look like a party!”

“This?” she shrugged, turned herself about. “Do you like me?”

“You bet I like you!”

Lucille came in at the moment, and Anne slid into her chair at the table. She glanced at the pansies, set the vase out of the way. During the meal their talk [15] was only casual. For the past few years Anne had insisted that their one maid should wait upon the table as nearly as possible in the manner of the more highly-paid and trained servants of her friends. For a time Brice found the result diverting. Often it was ludicrous enough. But even a humorous thing may become irksome; when the novelty began to wear off, he had protested.

“Oh, let the girl eat her dinner in peace, Nance,” he said, “and give us a chance to be human and talk. I’m getting fed up with having her stand there by the pantry door, listening to every word we say, and staring at me every time I put the fork to my mouth like a dog waiting for a bone. Call it off, can’t you?”

“No,” said Anne, decidedly. “If I don’t train her properly while we are alone, what can we do when we have guests?”

“Let ’em get along as we do. Why not?”

“That’s absurd,” she replied.

It was not until their evening meal was ended and they went into the greater freedom of the living-room that there was anything more than broken, polite exchanges of phrases between them. Brice’s gift of small talk was largely lacking, and he saw that Anne had something on her mind. She was always preoccupied, when she had something on her mind.

“Coffee in the living-room, Lucille,” Anne said to the girl, from the doorway.

Brice, already lighting his pipe, chuckled. Dinner [16] had rested him. His sense of humor was uppermost again, and Anne was lovely in the light-colored gown. “You do keep it up, don’t you, old girl? You’re a wonder!”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He looked at her quizzically over the flaming match. “Coffee—and drawing-room. Gosh!” said he.

“Oh, I see the absurdity of it as well as you do,” she retorted. “This room——!”

Brice sobered a little. “Nothing the matter with this room,” he declared. “You’re a great hand at making a place home-like, old lady. Mighty cozy in here.”

She looked at him for a moment; then she asked, quietly, “Is that really your ideal, Brice? Cozy?”

“Well, why not? Looks good to me.”

She bit her lip, crossed the floor to press the little button in an electric lamp. He looked after her, added, “Not that I don’t wish it were—well, finer, and larger, and all that—for your sake.”

She came slowly back. He had thrown himself into a stuffed arm-chair which was worn into a permanent impress of his figure. They had bought it during the first year of their marriage, made an event of buying it, called it his birthday present, that birthday being two months in the future. He had never been willing to have it banished to those regions above where most of their early purchases filled spaces that would otherwise be vacantly gaping. Pipe-smoke was whirling about his head. He looked at her through its comforting haze.

[17]

“Look here, Nance,” he said. “Old Grant is going to resign. I’ve asked for his job.”

Instantly her expression changed.

“Oh, Brice! That will give us—how much does he get?”

“Well, twelve hundred, maybe fifteen hundred, more than I’m getting. But I suppose they wouldn’t start me off with that, you know. Getting the job’s the first thing.”

“But you will get it. Of course you will. And even twelve hundred more! Oh, Brice!”

“Don’t count on it too soon, old girl. There’s Farren, you know. He has more right to it than I have. And there’s always the chance of their bringing in a man from outside.”

“Oh! That wouldn’t be fair! And you’ve been there longer than Farren. Twelve hundred——”

The colored maid, with her cap awry and a grin on her face, at that moment backed through the portières that separated the dining-room from the living-room, bearing a tray too large for the two coffee-cups it held. She swung around to face Anne, and the coffee splashed over the rims of the cups to the saucers.

“Where you want it at?” she asked, cheerily.

“I will take it,” said Anne, with dignity, fully conscious of her husband’s suppressed amusement. “And the smaller tray next time, Lucille.”

The girl disappeared. “None of that for me,” said Brice. “Keeps me awake.”

[18]

Anne’s eyelids flickered. “You will need it tonight,” said she. “We are going out.”

“That’s so!” said Brice, cheerfully, reaching up for a cup. “How’d you know? Seen Mabel?”

She looked at him, plainly surprised. “Mabel?”

“Yes, Mabel. Ran into old Ned on the train. Said he and Mabel had been wanting us over in the evening for a long time, and why not tonight. So I said we’d go. Of course. Don’t like to drop away from old friends.”

Old friends. Ned, and Mabel. There flashed across Anne’s mind those first years of their married life, when she and Brice had had the downstairs apartment; those days when Ned was beginning his career of selling insurance, when Brice had been so triumphant over getting the new job with Whitten & Company. Yes, they were old friends. They had shared the lawn-mower, taken turns in clearing off the snow, gone to the movies together, compared the price of groceries, run in and out half a dozen times a day. Those grubby years, that she was so glad to have come away from. She hated to be reminded of them.

“I’m sorry, Brice, I promised Tessie Ogden we’d go there for bridge.”

“Oh, but look here! Mrs. Ogden won’t mind. Can’t hurt old Ned’s feelings.”

“I don’t want to hurt them. We’ll have them here to dinner some time.”

“But it’s been years since we were there, Nance. [19] And I said we’d go. They’ll have gotten things ready—you know how hospitable Mabel is.”

Anne knew. The latest record for the phonograph, perhaps a game of five-hundred or the movies, and at the end of the evening something on the chafing-dish, with Mabel explaining where she had discovered the recipe. Anne knew all of it. The scurrying of Mabel to get things in order, Ned hurrying across the tracks to the delicatessen store. Mabel’s discussion with ten-year-old Florence about bed-time, Billy’s calls for a drink of water. An endless retailing of jokes Ned had read in the paper, by way of conversation. Oh, Anne knew it all; whenever she thought of it she thanked the stars of her destiny that they had helped her get away from it. Even as it was, she had not got very far; but not back to that, not back to that. She thought of Tessie Ogden, with her languid voice, thought of the richness of Tessie’s house, of the people who would be there.

“I’ll telephone Mabel, Brice,” she said. “I can’t possibly disappoint Tessie.”

Brice sat up. His pipe had gone out, and he sent an exploring thumb into its depths. “I can’t see Tessie’s being disappointed, Nance, by our not turning up. But Mabel—and old Ned——”

“I’m sorry, Brice. We shall have to go to Tessie’s. It’s bridge.”

“Well—that’s all the more reason, then. I told you before, Nance, I am not going to play bridge with that bunch.”

[20]

She got up, moved about restlessly. If only Brice would not make himself so hard to manage.

“Oh, you need not be afraid, this time, of losing,” she said. “Tessie told me to say that she’d be your partner. She always wins.”

Brice stood up, crossed to the mantel for tobacco. “Sweet thing, Tessie,” said he.

Anne flared. “She’s no worse than the facts. The fact is that my husband is too—too——”

Brice supplied the word. “Stingy.”

“You said it, not I! But there it is, and everybody knows it, taunts me about it. Laughs at me, probably, when I’m not there.”

“What do you care?” Brice looked at her with an oddly lifted eyebrow, a trick of his that she used to love. Now it exasperated her because it was always the sign that Brice was opposing his will to hers. “What do you care what those people think or even say, Nance? What the dickens do they matter?”

“They are my friends.”

“But are they? What do they mean to you, what would they do for you, what——”

“Tessie, at least, would play as my husband’s partner to keep him from losing.”

Brice sat down. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his fingers fumbling over his pipe, his eyes on an unimportant figure of the rug.