Behind the Beyond | Page 9

John's tone. It is very rough on him to find his
plan of going to Kafoonistan has been outdone by Mrs. Harding's going
to Balla Walla. She shakes her head.
"No, no; my life is of no account now. But you, John, you are needed
here, the country needs you. Men look to you to lead them."
Mrs. Harding would particularize if she could, but she can't just for the
minute remember what it is Sir John can lead them to. Sir John shakes
his head.
"No, no; my work lies there in Kafoonistan. There is a man's work to
be done there. The tribes are ignorant, uncivilized."
This dialogue goes on for some time. Mrs. Harding keeps shaking her
head and saying that Sir John must not go to Kafoonistan, and Sir John
says she must not go to Balla Walla. He protests that he wants to work
and she claims that she wants to try to think clearly. But it is all a bluff.
They are not going. Neither of them. And everybody knows it.
Presently Mrs. Harding says:

"You will think of me sometimes?"
"I shall never forget you."
"I'm glad of that."
"Wherever I am, I shall think of you--out there in the deserts, or at
night, alone there among the great silent hills with only the stars
overhead, I shall think of you. Your face will guide me wherever I am."
He has taken her hand.
"And you," he says, "you will think of me sometimes in Balla Walla?"
"Yes, always. All day while I am with the Maharanee and her women,
and at night, the great silent Indian night when all the palace is asleep
and there is heard nothing but the sounds of the jungle, the cry of the
hyena and the bray of the laughing jackass, I shall seem to hear your
voice."
She is much moved. She rises, clenches her hands and then adds, "I
have heard it so for five and twenty years."
He has moved to her.
"Margaret!"
"John!"
"I cannot let you go, your life lies here--with me--next my heart--I want
your help, your love, here inside the beyond."
And as he speaks and takes her in his arms, the curtain sinks upon them,
rises, falls, rises, and then sinks again asbestos and all, and the play is
over. The lights are on, the audience rises in a body and puts on its
wraps. All over the theater you can hear the words "perfectly rotten,"
"utterly untrue," and so on. The general judgment seems to be that it is
a perfectly rotten play, but very strong.

They are saying this as they surge out in great waves of furs and silks,
with black crush hats floating on billows of white wraps among the
foam of gossamer scarfs. Through it all is the squawk of the motor horn,
the call of the taxi numbers and the inrush of the fresh night air.
But just inside the theater, in the office, is a man in a circus waistcoat
adding up dollars with a blue pencil, and he knows that the play is all
right.
[Illustration: He takes her in his arms.]

FAMILIAR INCIDENTS

I.--With the Photographer
"I WANT my photograph taken," I said. The photographer looked at
me without enthusiasm. He was a drooping man in a gray suit, with the
dim eye of a natural scientist. But there is no need to describe him.
Everybody knows what a photographer is like.
"Sit there," he said, "and wait."
I waited an hour. I read the Ladies Companion for 1912, the Girls
Magazine for 1902 and the Infants Journal for 1888. I began to see that
I had done an unwarrantable thing in breaking in on the privacy of this
man's scientific pursuits with a face like mine.
After an hour the photographer opened the inner door.
"Come in," he said severely.
I went into the studio.
"Sit down," said the photographer.
I sat down in a beam of sunlight filtered through a sheet of factory

cotton hung against a frosted skylight.
The photographer rolled a machine into the middle of the room and
crawled into it from behind.
He was only in it a second,--just time enough for one look at me,--and
then he was out again, tearing at the cotton sheet and the window panes
with a hooked stick, apparently frantic for light and air.
Then he crawled back into the machine again and drew a little black
cloth over himself. This time he was very quiet in there. I knew that he
was praying and I kept still.
When the photographer came out at last, he looked very grave and
shook his head.
"The face is quite wrong," he said.
"I know," I answered quietly; "I have always known