Their Yesterdays Part 8

And this, too, I know: after the savior is crucified, those who nail him to the cross accept his teaching. While the world hinders and holds back its leaders, it always follows them.

But the man did not think of this that day when he left the scene of his labor in such anger. He thought only of that which he was trying to do. When he went back to his work, the next day, he was still angry and with his anger, now, came discontent, doubt, and fear, to cloud his vision, to clog his brain and weaken his heart.

A friend, at lunch, said: "You look f.a.gged, knocked out, done up, old man. You've been pegging away too long and too steadily. Why don't you let up for awhile? Lay off for a week or two. Take a vacation."

Again and again, that hot, weary, afternoon, the words of the man's friend came back to him until, by evening, he was considering the suggestion seriously. "Why not?" he asked himself. He was accomplishing little or nothing in his present mood. Why not accept the friendly advice? Perhaps--when he came back--perhaps, he could again laugh at the world that denied him freedom.

So he came to considering places and plans. And, as he considered, there was before him, growing always clearer as he looked, the scenes of his boyhood--the old home of his childhood--the place of his Yesterdays. There were many places of interest and pleasure to which the man might go, but, among them all, there was no place so attractive as the place of his Yesterdays. There was nothing he so wished to do as this: to go back to the old home and there to be, for a little while, as nearly as a man could be, a boy again.

If the man had thought about it, he would have seen in this desire to spend his vacation at the old home something of the same force that so angered him by hindering his work. But the man did not think about it.

He wrote a letter to see if he might spend two weeks with the people who were living in the house where he was born and, when the answer came a.s.suring him a welcome, quickly made his arrangements to go.

With boyish eagerness, he was at the depot a full half hour before the time for his train. While he waited, he watched the crowd, feeling an interest in the people who came and went in the never ending profession that he had not felt since that day when he had first come to the city to work out his dreams among men. In the human tide that ebbed and flowed through this world gateway, he saw men of wealth and men of poverty--people of culture and position who had come or were going in Pullman or private cars and illiterate, stupid, animal looking, emigrants who were crowded, much like cattle, in the lowest cla.s.s. There were business men of large affairs; countrymen with wondering faces; shallow, pleasure seekers; artists and scholars; idle fools; vicious sharks watching for victims; mothers with flocks of children clinging to their skirts; working girls and business women; chattering, laughing, schoolgirls; and wretched creatures of the outcast life--all these and many more.

And, as he watched, perhaps because he was on his vacation, perhaps because of something in his heart awakened by the fact that he was going to his boyhood home, the man felt, as he had never felt before, his kinship with them all. With wealth and poverty, with culture and illiteracy, with pleasure and crime, with sadness and joy, as evidenced in the lives of those who pa.s.sed in the crowd, the man felt a sympathy and understanding that was strangely new. And, more than this, he saw that each was kin to the other. He saw that, in spite of the wide gulf that separated the individuals in the throng, there was a something that held them all together--there was a force that influenced all alike--there was a something common to all. In spite of the warring elements of society; in spite of the clashing forces of business; in spite of the conflicting claims of industry represented in the throng; the man recognized a brotherhood, a oneness, a kinship, that held all together. And he felt this with a strange feeling that he had always known that it was there but had never recognized it before.

The man did not realize that this was so because he was not thinking of the people in their relation to his work. He did not know, that, because his heart and mind were intent upon the things of his Yesterdays, he saw the world in this new light. He did not, then, understand that the force which hindered and hampered him in his work--that denied him the full freedom he demanded--was the same force that he now felt holding the people together. Even as they all, whether traveling in Pullman, private car, or emigrant train, pa.s.sed over the same rails, so they all, in whatever cla.s.s they traveled on the road of Life, were guided by the Traditions--the established customs--the fixed habits--that are common to their race or nation.

And the strength of a people, as a people, is in this oneness--this force that makes them one--the Traditions and customs and habits of life that are common to all. It is the fences of the family dooryards that hold the children of men together and make the people of a race or nation one.

So it was that the man, knowing it not, left his work behind and went, for strength and rest, back to the scenes of his Yesterdays in obedience to the command of the very thing that, in his work, had stirred him to such rage. For what, after all, are Traditions and customs and habits but a going back into the Yesterdays.

As the train left the city farther and farther behind, the man's thoughts kept pace with the fast flying wheels that were bearing him back to the scenes of his childhood. From the present, he retraced his steps to that day when he had dreamed his first manhood dreams and to those hard days when he was asking of the world only something to do.

As, step by step, he followed his way back, incidents, events, experiences, people, appeared, even as from the car window he caught glimpses of the whirling landscape, until at last he saw, across the fields and meadows familiar to his childhood, the buildings of the old home, the house where the little girl had lived, the old church, and the orchard hill where he had sat that day when the smoke of a distant train moving toward the city became to him a banner leading to the battle front. Then the long whistle announced the station. Eagerly the man collected his things and, before the train had come to a full stop, swung himself to the depot platform where he was met by his kindly host.

As they drove past the fields and pastures, so quiet after the noisy city, the man grew very still. Past the little white church among its old trees at the cross roads; down the hill and across the creek; and slowly up the other side of the valley they went: then past the house where the little girl had lived; and so turned in, at last, to the home of that boy in the Yesterdays. And surely it was no discredit to the man that, when they left him alone in his old room to prepare for the evening meal, he scarce could see for tears.

Scenes of childhood! Memories of the old home! Recollections of the dear ones that are gone! No more can man escape these things of the Yesterdays than he can avoid the things of to-day. No more can man deny the past than he can deny the present. Tradition is to men as a governor to an engine; without its controlling power the race would speed quickly to its own destruction. One of the Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life is Tradition.

For two happy, healthful, restful, strengthening, inspiring weeks, the man lived, so far as a man can live, in his Yesterdays. In the cool shade of the orchard that once was an enchanted wood; under the old apple tree ship beside the meadow sea; on the hill where, astride his rail fence war horse, the boy had directed the battle and led the desperate charge and where the man had dreamed the first of his manhood dreams; in the garden where the castaway had lived on his desert island; in the yard near mother's window where the boy had builded the brave play house for the little girl next door; in the valley, below where the little girl lived, beside the brook that in its young life ran so pure and clear; at the old school house in the edge of the timber; in the ancient cemetery, beside the companion graves; through the woods and fields and pastures; beside the old mill pond with its covered bridge; the man lived again those days of the long ago.

But, in the places of his Yesterdays, the man found, already, many changes. The houses and buildings were a little more weather-beaten, with many of the boards in the porch floors and steps showing decay.

The trees in the orchard were older and more gnarled with here and there gaps in their ranks. The fences showed many repairs. The little schoolhouse was almost shabby and, with the wood cleared away, looked naked and alone. The church, too, was in need of a fresh coat of white. And there were many new graves in the cemetery on the hill. As time had wrought changes in the man himself, even so had it altered the scenes of his boyhood. Always, in men and in things, time works changes.

But it is not the changes wrought by time that harms. These come as the ripening of the fruit upon the tree. It is the sudden, violent, transformations that men are ever seeking to make, both in things and in themselves, that menace the ripening life of the race. It is well, indeed, for the world to hold fast to its Traditions. It is well to cling wisely to the past.

Nor did the man live again in his Yesterdays alone. He could not.

Always, she was there--his boyhood mate--the little girl who lived next door.

But the opening in the hedge that, at the lower end of the garden, separated the boy's home from the home of the little girl, was closed.

Long and carefully the man searched; smiling, the while, at a foolish wish in his heart that time would leave that little gate of the Yesterdays always open. But the ever growing branches had woven a thick barrier across the green archway hiding it so securely that, to the man, no sign was left to mark where it had been.

With that foolish regret still in his heart, the man asked, quite casually, of the people who were living in the house if they knew aught about his playmate of the Yesterdays.

They could tell him very little; only that she lived in a city some distance from his present home. What she was doing; whether married or alone; they could not say.

And the man, as he stood, with bared head, under the cherry tree in the corner near the hedge, told himself that he was glad that the people could tell him nothing. In his busy, grown up, life there was no room for a woman. In his battle with the things that challenged his advance, he must be free to fight. It was better for him that the little girl lived only in his Yesterdays. The little girl who had helped him play out his boyhood dreams must not hinder him while he worked out the dreams of his manhood. That is what the man told himself as he stood, with bared head, under the cherry tree. With the memory of that play wedding and that kiss in his heart, he told himself _that_!

I wonder, sometimes, what would happen if men should chance to discover how foolish they really are.

No doubt, the man reflected--watching the pair of brown birds as they inspected the ripening cherries--no doubt she has long ago forgotten those childish vows. Perhaps, in the grown up world, she has even taken new and more binding vows. Would he ever, he wondered, meet one with whom he could make those vows again? Once he had met one with whom he thought he wished to make them but he knew, now, that he had been mistaken. And he knew, too, that it was well that he had found his mistake in time. Somehow, as he stood there again under the cherry tree, the making of such vows seemed to the man more holy, more sacred, than they had ever seemed before. Would he dare--He wondered.

Was there, in all the world, a woman with whom he could--The man shrugged his shoulders and turned away. Yes, indeed, it was much better that she lived only in his Yesterdays. And still--still--in the man's heart there was regret that Time had closed that gateway of his Yesterdays.

And often, in the twilight of those evenings, after a day of wandering about the place, visiting old scenes, or talking with the long time friends of his people, the man would recall the traditions of his family; hearing again the tales his father would tell by the winter fireside or listening to the stories that his mother would relate on a Sunday or a stormy afternoon. Brave tales they were--brave tales and true stories of the man's forbears who had lived when the country was young and who had played no small part in the nation's building. And, as he recalled these traditions of his people, the man's heart thrilled with loyal pride while he determined strongly to keep the splendid record clean. As a sacred heritage, he would receive these traditions. As a holy duty he would be true to that which had been.

Reluctantly, but with renewed strength and courage, when the time came for his going, the man set his face away from his Yesterdays--set it again toward his work--toward the working out of his dreams. And, as he went, there was for the thing that checked his progress something more than anger--for the thing that forced him to go slowly there was patience.

Standing on the rear platform, as his train moved slowly away past an incoming train that had just pulled onto a siding, the man saw the neighbor who lived next door to his old home drive hurriedly up. The man in the carriage waved his hand and the man on the moving train, answering in like manner, wondered idly what had brought the neighbor there. Surely he had not come to bid one who was almost a stranger good-bye. And, strangely enough, as the man watched from the window for a last view of the scenes of his Yesterdays, there was in his heart, again, regret that the little opening in the hedge was closed.

The city was sweltering in a summer heat wave. The sun shone through a dingy pall of vile smoke with a sickly, yellow, glare. From the pavement and gutter, wet by the sprinkling wagons, in a vain effort to lay the dust, a sticky, stinking, steam lifted, filling the nostrils and laving the face with a combination of every filthy odor. The atmosphere fairly reeked with the smell of sweating animals, perspiring humanity, rotting garbage, and vile sewage. And, in the midst of the hot filth, the people moved with languid, feeble manner; their faces worn and pallid; their eyes dull and weary; their voices thin and fretful.

The woman's heart was faint with the weight of suffering that she was helpless to relieve. Her quivering nerves shrieked with the horror of conditions that she could not change. Her brain ached with contemplation of the cruel necessity that tortured humankind. Her very soul was sick with the hopelessness of the gasping, choking, struggling, mult.i.tude who, in their poverty and blindness, toiled to preserve their lives of sorrow and pain and sought relief from their labors in pleasures more horrible and destructive, by far, than the slavery to which they gave themselves for the means to pay.

The woman was tired--very tired. Heart and nerves and brain and soul and body were tired with a weariness that, it seemed to her, would never pa.s.s. She was tired of the life into which she had gone because it was the custom of the age and because of her necessity--the life into which she had not wished to go because it denied her womanhood.

Because she knew herself to be a woman, she felt that she was being robbed of the things of her womanhood. The brightness and beauty, the strength and joyousness of her womanhood were, by her, held as sacred trusts to be kept for her children and, through them, for the race.

She wearied of the struggle to keep the things of her womanhood from the world that was taking them from her--that put a price upon them--that used them as thoughtlessly as it uses the stone and metal and wood that it takes from the earth. She was tired of the horrid life that crowded her so closely--that crushed itself against her in the crowded cars--that leered into her face on the street--that reached out for her from every side--that hungered for her with a fierce hunger and longed for her with a d.a.m.nable, fiendish, longing.

She was faint and weak from contact with the loathsome things that she was forced to know and that would leave their mark upon her womanhood as surely as the touch of pitch defiles. And she was weary, so weary, waiting for that one with whom she could cross the threshold of the old, old, open door.

Little time was left to her, now, for thought and preparation for the life of which she had dreamed. Little heart was left to her, now, for dreaming. Little courage was left for hope. But still her dreams lived. Still she waited. Still, at times, she hoped.

But the thing that most of all wearied the woman, who knew that she was a woman, was this: the restless, discontented, dissatisfied, uneasy, spirit of the age that, scorning Tradition in a shallow, silly pride, struggles for and seems to value only that which is new regardless of the value of the thing itself. The new in dress, regardless of beauty or fitness in the costume--the new in thought, regardless of the saneness of the thinking--the new in customs and manner of living--the new in the home, in marriage relation, in the education and rearing of children--new philosophy, new science, new religion, new art, new music, new books, new cooking, new women--it sometimes appears that the crime of crimes, the most degrading disgrace, these days, is to be held old-fashioned, behind-the-times, out-of-date, and that everything, _everything_, not new is old-fashioned--everything not of the times is behind-the-times--everything not down-to-date is out-of-date.

Patriotism, love of country, is old, very old, and is also--or therefore--quite out-of-date. To speak or write of patriotism, seriously, or to consider it a factor in life--to live it, depend upon it, or appeal to it, is to be considered very strange and sadly old-fashioned. The modern, down-to-date, age considers seriously not patriotism but "graft" and "price" and "boodle." These are the modern forces by which the nation is said to be governed; these are the means by which the nation strives to go ahead. To talk only of these things, to believe only in these things, to live only these things, is to be modern and down--low down--to-date. To work from any motive but the making of money is to be queerly behind-the-times. To write a book or paint a picture or sing a song, to preach a sermon, to do anything for any reason under heaven but for cash marks you a fanatic and a fool.

To believe, even, that anyone does anything save for the money there is in it stamps you simple and unsophisticated, indeed. To profess such belief, save you put your tongue in your cheek, marks you peculiar.

Long, long, ago mankind put its best strength, its best thought, its best life, into its works, without regard for the price, simply because it was its work. And the work so wrought in those queer old-fashioned days has most curiously endured. There is little danger that much of our modern, down-to-date work will endure for the very simple reason that we do not want it to endure. "The world wants something new." Down-to-date-ism does not want its work to last longer than the dollar it brings. Never fear, the world is getting something new! But, though we have grown so bravely away from those queer, old-fashioned days we have not succeeded yet in growing altogether away from the works that those old-fashioned days produced. But, patience, old world--patience--down-to-date-ism may, in time, accomplish even this.

In those old, old, times, too, it was the fashion for men and women to mate in love. In love, they planned and builded their homes. In love, they brought forth children and reared them, with queer, old-fashioned notions about marriage, to serve the race. In those times, now so sadly old and out-of-date, men planned and labored for homes and children and women were home makers and mothers. But the world is now far from those ancient ways and out-of-date ideals. Marriage has little to do with home making these modern days. It has almost nothing to do with children. We have, in our down-to-date-ism, come to be a nation of childless wives and homeless husbands. We are dwellers in flats, apartments, hotels, where children would be in the way but dogs are welcome if only they be useless dogs. We live in houses that are always for sale or rent. It is our proud boast that we possess nothing that is not on the market for a price. The thought of selling a home is not painful for we do not know, the value of a home. We have, for convenience, to gratify our modern, down-to-date, ever changing tastes, popularized the divorce court as though a husband or wife of more than three seasons is old-fashioned and should be discarded for one of a newer pattern, more in harmony with our modern ideals of marriage.

From the down-to-date--the all-the-way-down-to-date woman, I mean--one gains new and modern ideas of the service that womankind is to render to the race. Almost it is as though G.o.d did not know what he was about when he made woman. To place a home above a club; a nursery above the public platform; a fireside above politics; the prattle of children above newspaper notoriety; the love of boys and girls above the excitement of social conquest; the work of bearing strong men and true women for the glory of the race above the near intellectual pursuits and the attainments of a shallow thinking; all this is to be sadly old-fashioned. All this is so behind-the-times that one must confess such shocking taste with all humiliation.

I hereby beg pardon of the down-to-date powers that be, and most humbly pray that they will graciously forgive my boorishness. I a.s.sure you that, after all, I am not so benighted that I do not realize how seriously babies would interfere in the affairs of those down-to-date women who are elevating the race. By all means let the race be elevated though it perish, childless, in the process. Very soon, now, womanhood itself will be out-of-date for the world, in this also, seems to be evolving something new.

So the woman, who knew herself to be a woman, most of all, was tired of things new and longed, deep in her heart, for the old, old, things that were built into the very foundation of the race and that no amount of gilding and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and ornamenting can ever cover up or hide; and no amount of disregarding or ignoring can do away with; lest indeed the race perish from the earth.

"And when do you take your vacation?" asked a fellow worker as they were leaving the building after the day's work.

"Not until the last of the month," returned the woman wearily. "And you?"

"Me, oh, I must go Monday! And it's such a shame! I've just received a charming invitation for two weeks later but no one cares to exchange time with me. No one, you see, can go on such short notice. I don't suppose that you--" she paused suggestively.

"I will exchange time with you," said the woman simply.

"Will you really? Now, that _is_ clever of you! Are you _sure_ that you don't mind?"

"Indeed, I will be glad to get away earlier."