The Land of Promise: A Comedy in Four Acts (1922)

first saw it, into what it was now. Not that she could ever have worked the miracle alone.

She smiled sadly to herself. How all her thoughts, like homing pigeons, had the one goal!

And how proud he was of it all. With what delighted, almost childlike interest, he had watched each little change. And how he had acquiesced in every suggestion and helped her to plan and carry out the things she could not have done alone.

She lived again those long winter evenings when, snug and warm, the grim cruelty of the storms shut out, she had read aloud to him while he worked on making the chairs.

How long would it keep its prettiness with no woman's eye to keep its jealous watch on it? The process of reversion to its old desolation would be gradual. The curtains, the bright ribands, the cushions would slowly become soiled and faded. And there would be no one here to renew them. For a moment, the thought of asking Mrs. Sharp to look after them came into her mind. But, no. She certainly had enough to do. And, besides--the thought thrilled her with delight-- he would not like having anyone else to touch them!

And she? She would be back in that old life where such simple little things were a commonplace, a matter of course. And what interest would they be to her? She could see herself ripping the ribands from an old hat to tie back curtains for Mrs. Hubbard! Certainly that excellent lady would be astonished if she suggested doing anything of the sort, and small wonder. She hired the proper people to keep her house in order just as she was going to hire her.

She found it in her heart to be sorry for Mrs. Hubbard. She had always had her money. The joy of these little miracles of contrivance had never been hers. She had bought her home. She had never, in all her pampered life, made one.

Home! What a desolating word it could be to the homeless. She knew. Since her far-off childhood, she had never called a place 'home' till now. And just as the word began to take on a new meaning, she was going to leave it! Had anyone told her a few short months ago, on the night that she had first seen what she had inwardly called a hovel, that she would ever leave it with any faintest feeling of regret, she would have called him mad. Regret! why the thought of leaving tore her very heartstrings.

What if it had been only a few short months that had passed since then? One's life is not measured by the ticking of a clock, but by emotion and feeling. She had crowded more emotion into these few short months than in all the rest of her dull, uneventful life put together.

Fear, terror, hatred, murderous rage, bitter humiliation, she had felt them all within the small compass of these four walls. And greatest of all--why try to deceive her own heart any longer--here she had known love. She had fought off the acknowledgment of this the crowning experience and humiliation as long as she could. She had called on her pride, that pride which had never before failed her. And now, to herself, she had to acknowledge that she was beaten.

They were all against her. Her own brother had spoken, only a few moments ago, of her marriage as horrible. 'A girl like you and a hired man!' She could hear him now. And he had spoken of her leaving as a matter of course. He couldn't have done it if he had cared. He liked the comforts that a woman brings to a house, the little touches that no man's hand can give, that a woman, even as unskillful as she, brings about instinctively, that was all. Almost any other woman could do as well. He did not prize her for herself.

And she would go back to England and, as Hornby had gleefully said, no one need ever know. She would have a place, on sufferance, in other people's homes. The only change that the year would have made in her life would be that the check in her pocket, safely invested, might save her eventually, when she was too old to serve as a companion, from being dependant on actual charity. And to all outward intents and purposes, the year would be as if it had never been.

'In six months, all you've gone through here will seem nothing but a hideous dream,' her brother had promised her. Was there ever a man since the world began that understood a woman! A dream! The only time in her life that she had really lived. No, all the rest of her life might be of the stuff that dreams are made on, but not this. And like a sleep-walker, dead to all sensation, she must go through with it.

And she was not yet thirty. All of her father's family--and she was physically the daughter of her father, not of her mother--lived to such a great age. In all human probability there would be at least fifty years of life left to her. Fifty years with all that made life worth living behind one!

She supposed he would eventually get a divorce. She remembered to have heard that such things were easy out here, not like it was in England. And he was a man who would be sure to marry again, he