She stood in the bedroom of the little three-roomed flat, and looked about. Her hat lay on the dresser. Her suitcase lay open on the bed. Mary was making her a cup of "something hot" in the kitchenette that opened like a flat cupboard in one side of the sitting room. They had just arrived, and Mary wanted her to have something right away. It was Mary who had lifted off her hat and laid it there, who had opened the suitcase, and told her to get out her kimono and put it on, and lie down while she made the hot drink. But she had not moved since Mary left the room. Something within her was very still, as if listening. She could hear Mary and Jim talking a little in subdued voices, then out clear, as if remembering to be natural. The telephone rang with a loud careless clangor in the sitting room. Jim's voice answered. "Hello! . . . Yes, this is Jim. . . How strange it was to hear Jim talking in that easy familiar way to some invisible stranger; how much a part of the city it made him seem, almost as if the city itself had called him up to talk, like a friend! Jim seemed suddenly different too, grown up. "No," he was saying. "Not to-night. I can't go out to-night well, maybe some night next week. to-night.... ... ... No, I can't Silence, while some one at the other end of the wire talked. Jim laughed, a suppressed awkward laugh, as at a joke out of place. “All right, good-by." He hung up the receiver, and she could hear a question from Mary and his answer in the same subdued tone. Jim whistled a little, then stopped. Mary came in with a steaming cup. "Oh, mother, you ought to be lying down." "I'm not tired, Mary-I'm all right." "I know, dear, but after the trip; sit here in this rocker and let me brush your hair while this cools." It was only six o'clock. You would think she was being put to bed. Mary's hands were tender, oh, so terribly tender, as she took out the pins, and began to brush in long gentle strokes, back from the forehead, down the length of the hair. "There, I think it's cool enough now. Drink it, dear, it will do you good." She sipped the hot drink obediently. Mary came round to the dresser to lay down the pins. "You didn't bring anything from the old place, did you, Mary?" Mary looked startled, as if the question held some embarrassment. Wasn't she supposed to remember the old place? "No, we sold everything as it stood. We rent this place furnished, you know." Without quite knowing it, she had looked forward to seeing the old familiar things she had imagined them hereMary and Jim using them-that was why the little flat had looked so strange to her at first. There was the sound of a light skipping step in the hall outside, a rat-a-tattat on the sitting-room door, the knob turned, and a girl's voice, fresh, eager, a little breathless from running up the stairs: "Me, Mary! . . . Oh, hello, JimMary here?" Mary went out to the sitting room, leaving the door ajar. Their voices came through, mingled, they were watching her anxiously all the exclamatory, bright. time? "Aren't you coming out to dinner, Mary, you and Jim?" "No," said Mary, "we're cooking a little dinner in to-night." "Why? It's Saturday night. Everybody's there. Come on!" "Not to-night." Mary's voice dropped low. "Mother's here, you know." "O-oh." A little silence. Had Mary whispered something, or made a warning gesture toward the bedroom door? Now the voices were different, on guard. "You couldn't-bring her along?" "Oh, no-it's been a tiring trip." She wasn't tired! The young voices, lowered, intimate, were in the hall. After supper they let her help "clear the table," but insisted upon her sitting there in an easy chair while they washed the dishes and put them away. That night when they were getting ready for bed she said suddenly: "Mary, I've put you out of your room.' "It's your room now, mother. I'm perfectly comfortable here on the couch in the sitting room." The next day was Sunday. It was ten o'clock when she heard Mary and Jim moving carefully about, taking care not to waken her. She had been lying awake since dawn. There were little extra delicacies for the late breakfast. She could see how much pains they had taken to have "Bye!" they called at the head of things nice for her. Yet within her the stairs. "Good-by!" continued that stillness, that curious Mary came through to the bedroom listening. again.. "Didn't you want to go out with your friends, Mary?" "I should think not! The first night you're here!" She smiled and patted her mother's shoulder as she passed. "But you mustn't let me interfere; you mustn't let me make any difference." “Interfere, the idea!" Mary's voice was playful, full of loving reprimand. "Now you're going to lie right here and rest while Jim and I get supper," she said. She got a checked apron out of the closet and tied it on. So she lay and "rested" until supper was ready, and Mary came in and did up her hair in a soft loose knot, and brought her out to the sitting room where the table was set. They said how good it was to be all together again; they talked of Rod, his last letter, and how he was getting on; and of many trivial cheerful things; they said how good the home cooking tasted after "eating round in restaurants"; they laughed and made little affectionate jokes. Yet was she wrong-were they really avoiding her eyes, though she felt In the afternoon their friends began to drop in. It seemed there was always a knocking or a young fresh voice at the door. She could see they were used to meeting there on Sunday afternoons. Mary and Jim were popular, that was plain. And she was proud of them; proud of those bright-eyed girls and boys who were their friends, who were so kind to her because she was the mother of Mary and Jim, and who came in so happily, so full of high spirits and talk, yet so soon seemed to grow uneasy and make an excuse to hurry away. She wondered how much they knew, or if she only imagined that her presence embarrassed them. Again Mary and Jim cooked supper, and allowed her to help only in the lightest work. · To-morrow, she thought, to-morrow would be different. The children would be away at their work, and she would surprise them with a nice supper prepared when they returned. She planned what she would have. All the things they liked. To-morrow would be different. To-morrow their life together would really begin. But when to-morrow came, and breakfast was nearly over, there sounded a knock at the door, and Mary started up as if caught in some sudden guilt. "That must be Mrs. Adams now!” she said, and went to open the door. Jim made an excuse to carry something to the kitchenette. A stout elderly woman, plainly dressed, was following Mary into the room. Why did she feel that sinking of her heart? "This is Mrs. Adams, mother, who's going to stay with you while Jim and I are at work. . . That instant everything seemed to have stopped. The stillness within her seemed to encompass them all, to reach to the walls of the room. Would she ever be able to move or speak? Was it for this that deep-rooted caution within her had been waiting, listening? . . . A guard, O God! a guard! And they had not been able to tell her before! . . . She was suddenly aware of the beseeching frightened faces of her children, waiting now in that stillness for her to move, to speak. A passionate pity for them swept her to her feet. "Oh-yes," she said, "yes-I just didn't think for the minute who it was-" She managed a smile, and Mrs. Adams responded at once in a strong pleasant voice: "Don't you worry, Miss Mary, we'll get along all right together, I guess." Time flew, stood still, moved on again —a minute or an hour, while Mary and Jim went here and there in the little flat, putting on hats and coats, getting ready to go. "Now you won't be lonely, mother, with Mrs. Adams here and there's everything for a nice lunch." "Yes, dear," she said, "yes, dear." And now they were gone. They had kissed her good-by and gone. Mrs. Adams had hung up her hat and coat, and was beginning to clear away the breakfast things. The day that was to be "different" had begun... "Yes," Mrs. Adams was saying-it was noon and she was clearing away after lunch, and talking as she worked"yes, my children made a great fuss. You'd have thought I was going out to scrub offices. But the minute Miss Mary asked me, I said I'd come. It was something to do. The children said they didn't want their mother to work, but I told them it was just what I needed, something I could do by myself that didn't depend on anybody else—” The voice that interrupted was quiet and conversational. "I shouldn't have thought they'd object so much just for a week or two.” Mrs. Adams' back was turned, and she paused rigid a second with arm upraised to the shelf where she was hanging up the cups, before she turned slowly round, and tried with all her presence of mind to speak in her casual pleasant voice. “A week or two? I understood Miss Mary to say you'd be here right along.” "Oh, I couldn't do that," she even smiled, a little superior, "I have my work too, you see. I've so much to do this summer at home, so much transplanting in the gardens, and work on the house. Then you see I'm not used to being crowded like this, my place is so big. It's all right for Mary and Jim, they're young, but when you're older you want your own home. . . . No, I don't think I'll be staying more than a week or two. . . .” She could see, by the expression of Mrs. Adams' face, how easy it was to be. Civilized Unreason BY ELTON MAYO Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, University of PennsylvaniaTM AVISITOR to London or New York isfaction with progress "on the whole." or any great city approaches the metropolitan center in a comfortable railway carriage, every convenience at his hand; and he rides high above ugly roofs and mean streets. If he reflects at all, the contrast cannot fail to strike him. The triumph of science over problems of rapid transit has created, apparently as a necessary by-product, the sordid slum. In his novel The New Machiavelli Mr. H. G. Wells draws a vivid picture of these undesired consequences of "progress." The pleasant country village of Bromstead in Kent, after centuries of smiling repose, is caught in the outward thrust of metropolitan expansion. It acquires railways and a gas works, and becomes an unsightly gash upon the face of nature. Ordinarily we forget these things; we are content with progress "upon the whole." Yet it remains true that civilization must be judged by its by-products as well as by its triumphs; the by-product no less than the triumph plays a part in ultimate determinations. Mr. Wells, to drive home his argument that disintegrating factors cannot safely be ignored, applies it to the individual. His hero, Remington, is unusually able, his education is of the best. He works hard for intelligent reform based on “fine thinking," but at the moment when a deserved success is within his grasp he ruins his own career and the influence of his group by inability to keep faith with his wife. A disregarded by-product of his education has destroyed him. Individual education and social democracy must be judged by the totality of their achievement. It was easy for the nineteenth century to feel a complacent sat Emphasis of success and disregard of failure can always contrive a speedy satisfaction. But in the twentieth century we cannot afford to follow such a lead. We look out over a world seething with international suspicion and industrial unrest; the number of individuals suffering from mental breakdown shows a serious increase. There are few of us who cannot now understand an assertion made by James Bryce many years ago that the believer in democracy needs to be grimly determined to see between the clouds all the blue sky he can. But there is nothing in the scene which justifies a pessimistic estimation of civilization and democracy. We have before us, it is true, serious problems which urgently demand solution; but progress is accomplished by the statement and solution of problems. The sciences are like the mills of God; they grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small. Until recently Science has left the handling of humanity to politicians and other empirics. There are many indications now that Science is lifting her impersonal gaze to the social scene, that she is preparing to ask what facts of human nature have been left out of account in our historic social organization. As the scientific investigation of man advances, the sense of social futility and hopelessness will be exorcised. Society will discover once again that knowledge and understanding are the basis of civilization. By this I do not mean that civilization is to be saved by pseudo-scientific essays in the direction of socialism or syndicalism or bolshevism. These things are of the past; if once they had life, that life |