The Public Square

PIDGE felt the hugeness of life around her at last. Doors were being opened as never before. She saw as clearly as if Rufe Melton had confessed to her, that it was he who wanted to be free. She could grant this well enough; having been forced to it, in effect, from the beginning. He would doubtless come again soon, making it plain that he wanted her to agree to divorce. The point was that certain barriers and limitations in her own life were suddenly lifted. It was as if she had emerged from a city, to the shore of the sea, and before her eyes was an unbroken horizon line.

The abrupt extension frightened her. The story of Amritsar now unfolding for her from the Indian mail—in its hatelessness, in its devotion to truth and unsentimental love for the people—unveiled for her eyes a man—not Gandhi, not Nagar, but Richard Cobden, himself. The few sentences he had inserted in his letter about Gandhi, “—the great thing you have done, pushing me back, forever pushing me back into myself, until the day when I shall be able to stand, not fall for you!”—in these words there was for Pidge an invincible call.

She had searched the language for another expression to convey what that little slangy verb “to fall for” meant. It was one of her treasures. When one “fell for” a person or thing—one couldn’t stand for the same. One was captive, not co-worker. Here was the difference between infatuation and romance. Dicky had found it out. There was expressed in his letter more than she had dreamed as possible; and this time words thrilled her furiously, because she believed they had become working knowledge, before it had occurred to him to express the idea. She saw this knowledge working out in his studies of Gandhi. He did not “fall for” the Little Man. He did not rush into eulogy; he sought to understand. In a word, he stood for Gandhi. But now that Dicky was ready to stand for her, she was ready to fall, and all her horizons were being pushed back to give her room.

... She was very weary. She had not known it before. The Public Square thrived. It was strong pulsed with new life. For the first time in her experience she sensed from the magazine’s field, following the issue of the first Amritsar story—silence, the perfect tribute, the instantaneous readjustment of all other journals; then crowded mails, the answer from people everywhere. Something about Gandhi touched hundreds of people to the point of saying so, in a letter to The Public Square.

Yes, she was weary. She had held grimly to the post. She wanted to turn it over to Dicky Cobden now.... It had been like this once before—on the night of Somebody’s Shoulder. She had wanted to give him what he wanted that night—the tiredest and most hopeless girl in New York. Only that night it had been—for what he had. Now it was for what he was.

John Higgins lost his bearings in the city traffic. A copy of the issue containing the first section of the Amritsar story was in the old editor’s hand when he fell in the street. She was with him for several hours, until the end. He looked at her long and strangely—eyes more “run-out” than ever. He did not seem to hear her words, but if she remained in silence too long, a little frown gathered on his forehead, and his hand would pull at hers. He had waited for the big story. Once he said:

“I wish Dicky would come,” and that brought Pidge’s slow tears.

The next day a solicitor called at the office and Pidge still felt squally. She couldn’t grasp what he was saying. She thought it had something to do with a secret society that was going to attend an absurd matter, known as “obsequies.” She was deluged in words.

“... Be perfectly calm, Mrs. Melton,” the solicitor said at last. “This isn’t exactly bad news, but I’ve known lasting injury from the one, as well as the other——”

“Please—what are you talking about?”

“Your legacy——”

“My—I don’t——”

“From the late John Higgins——”

“But it was only last night!”

“The late John Higgins, nevertheless. The demise——”

“And what about it?”

“That he has left you—this paper in my hand being the memorandum—his interest in The Public Square——”

“Me——”

“A half-interest in the ownership, to be exact——”

Pidge glanced around the room. The man was sitting. The first and terrible obstacle of life was to remove him, or escape from him.

“What have I to do?”

“Just sign——”

But he was still sitting, after she had signed. He wanted to be sociable.... She was on the car going home. She hopped off at Eighth Street, and was turned into Harrow, before she realized that she didn’t live there any more but in Gramercy Park.... Curving Harrow Street was quiet and calling. She went in to the curve and stood before the old green front. A sign on the door announced “Rooms, Permanent and Transient.”... “What kind of rooms are transient rooms?” she thought. The curb and doorstep thronged with memories. “Oh, Dicky, it’s too much,” she whispered at last. “Come soon, and prop me up!”