“Yes—she’s in—but I don’t think—she said never to—”
She wanted Matthew to push past and go in unannounced, and he meant to, but he couldn’t. He stood hesitating.
Sara’s clear voice came from within:
“Who is it, Eliza?”
“It is Matthew Towns,” said Matthew. “I would like—”
There were quick steps. The maid withdrew. The door banged in his face.
Matthew wrote to Kautilya nothing of this, but only to continue that argument about work and wealth and race. He said:
“Art is long, but industry is longer. Revolution must come, but it must start from within. We must strip to the ground and fight up. Not the colored Farm but the white Factory is the beginning; and the white Office and the Street stand next. The white artisan must teach technique to the colored farmer. White business men must teach him organization; the scholar must teach him how to think, and the banker how to rule. Then, and not till then, will the farmer, colored or white, be the salt of the earth and the beginning of life.”
Then in a postscript he added:
“I have had notice of Sara’s action for divorce. I shall go in person to the hearing and answer, and I shall assent to whatever she may wish. I hope sincerely you are well. I have feared you might be sick and keep it from me. But even in sickness there is one consolation. Life at its strongest and longest is short. Bad as it is and beautiful as it has been for us, it is soon over. I kiss the little fingers of your hand.”
Kautilya replied with a little note that came in early March, scribbled on wrapping-paper, with uncertain curves:
“Matthew, I am afraid. Suddenly I am desperately afraid. Just what I fear I do not know—I cannot say. Perhaps I am ill. I know I am ill. Oh, Matthew, I am afraid. Life is a terrible thing. It looms in dark silence and threatens. It has no bowels of compassion. Its hidden soul neither laughs nor cries—it just is, is, is! I am afraid, Matthew—I am in deadly fear. The terror of eternal life is upon me—the Curse of Siva! Come to me, Matthew, come! No, no—do not come until I send. I shall be all right.”
Matthew’s heart paused in sudden hurt. He knew what must have happened: the Great Decision must be made. She had been summoned to India and must go. He started to pack his suitcase. He telephoned about trains. Then he hesitated. “No, no—do not come until I send.” That was her decision. Against her will he must not go. But perhaps already she had changed her mind. Perhaps she was physically ill. Perhaps already Death, cloaked in black, stood in the shadows behind her writhing bed! Or, worse, perhaps she was going away and could not pause to say goodbye.
He telegraphed—“May I—” No, he tore that up: “Shall I come?”
The answer came in a few hours.
“No, all is well. I have been very ill, but I am better and I shall be out soon in the sweet springtime. I am going to walk and sew; I am going to be happy: infinitely happy. I want to see the heavy earth curling up before the shining of my plowshare. I want to feel the gray mule dragging off my arms, with the sky for heaven and the earth for love. I want to see seed sink in the dead earth. How can you say that life is short? Life is not short, my darling Matthew, it is endless. You and I will live for a thousand years and then a thousand years more; and then ten thousand years shall be added to that. Oh, man of little faith! Do you not see, heart of me, that without infinite life, life is a joke and a contradiction? Wish and Will are prisoned and manacled in Fact, whatever that fact may be; but with life built on life here on earth, now and not in your silly Christian parlor heaven, the tiny spark that is God thrills through, thrills through to triumph in a billion years; so vast, and vaster, is the Plan.”
Matthew humored her mood. She saw the end of their earthly happiness here in time, and she was straining toward eternity. He could not deceive himself or her, and he wrote with a certain sad smile in his heart:
“Infinite and Eternal? Yes, dear Princess of the Winds; the Moonlight Sonata, snow on a high hill, the twitter of birds on boughs in sunlight after rain, health after sickness—God! are not these real, true, good, beautiful, infinite, eternal? Whether Immortal Life, dearest and best, is literal truth or not, I do not care. No one knows whether anything in life or larger than life bursts through to some inconceivable triumph over death. None knows, none can know. But, ah, dear heart, what difference? There is, after all, sunrise and rain, starlight, color, and the surge and beat of sound. And on that night when my body kissed yours, a billion years lived in one heartbeat. What more can I ask? What more have I asked or dreamed, Queen of the World, than that? Already I am Eternal. In thy flesh I have seen God.”
And Kautilya answered:
“I know, I know, heart’s-ease, but that is not enough: back of it all, back of the flesh, the mold, the dust, there must be reality; it must be there; and what can reality be but Life, Life Everlasting? If we, we our very selves, do not live forever, Life is a
