After an hour's wrangle, it was decided that they could not stop us from
attacking Root. But we were to hold up the posters asking votes for
Lipsky. He would not permit his name to be used without the consent of
the local.
As they were going downstairs, I heard Kaufmann protesting--"Aber,
Genossen--ich bin eine echte revoluzionaire!"
So Benson ran the campaign unaided. The effect of his posters was
electric. The next day he brought out some more:--
"ASK THE OLD MAN."
Of course they both denied. But as the posters made no specific
allegations, they did not know what to deny. Their output was
conflicting. During the afternoon, Benson stirred things up again with
a series--
"IF ROOT WON'T TELL, ASK 'PIGGY' BREEN."
Breen was rattled, and said it was all a lie, that the red light
business had not been discussed at the meeting in Billy Bryan's saloon.
Both Root and the Old Man had denied the meeting. So Benson had them on
the run. The more they explained the worse they tangled things. The
cadet from whom I had forced our information, fearing the wrath of The
Old Man, was of course keeping his mouth shut. We did not give away on
him. So they could not guess Benson's source of knowledge, and would
have given anything to know just how much he knew.
The Socialist local nearly broke up over the affair. A number were
absolutely set against accepting aid from a "Bourgeois philanthropist,"
like Benson. Lipsky was in a violently embarrassing position. Suddenly
there was a good chance of his election. The people of the district
were manifestly excited over the issue. They were ready to vote for any
one who would promise effective war against the cadets. It must have
been a frightful temptation to him. But he stood fast for his
principles. He did not want to be elected on a chance reform issue. If
the people of the neighborhood stood for Marxian economics, he would be
glad to represent them. But he would have nothing to do with demagogy.
On the other hand, a young Jewish lawyer named Klein was the Socialist
candidate for alderman, and he saw a chance of being elected on the
"Down with the red light" cry. He was ready to tear the hesitaters to
pieces. He felt that the social revolution and universal brotherhood
only awaited his installation in office.
At last it was agreed that a mass meeting should be called in the Palace
Lyceum on Grand Street and that Klein and Benson should speak on the red
light issue and Lipsky on economics. We brought out the "Vote the
Socialist Ticket" poster.
Benson was at the very top of the advertising profession, and he
certainly threw himself headlong into this job.
"I've persuaded about fourteen million people to buy Prince of Wales
Aristocratic Suspenders," he said. "I don't see why I can't persuade a
few thousand to vote right once in their lives."
He certainly did marvels at it.
The night before election, the Palace Lyceum was packed to the roof.
And this in spite of the organized efforts of the strong-arm men of the
machine. But the meeting was a miserable fizzle. Benson was helpless
between those two speakers.
Klein's discourse consisted in telling what he would do if
elected--among other things, I recall, he was going to nationalize the
railways and abolish war.
Benson was not much of a public speaker. As far as I know, it was his
one attempt. But his success at advertising was based on his knowledge
of the people and how they thought. They were not interested in Klein
or the nationalization of the railroads. The one thing which moved them
was the sale of their daughters. Benson went right to the point,
reminded them of it in a few words, and then told the story of Root's
treachery, piecing together our facts and guesses. "It is not legal
evidence," he said, "you can take it for what it is worth. It's up to
you--tomorrow at the voting booths."
"To hell with Root!" somebody yelled.
"There's only one candidate better than Root," Benson shouted
back,--"Lipsky!"
When they got through cheering, he gave them the words of a song he had
written to "Marching through Georgia." He had trained the Maenner Chor
of the Arbeiter Studenten Verein to sing it. It caught on like
wildfire. I am sure that if the meeting had broken up then, and they
could have marched out singing that song, Lipsky would have been elected
overwhelmingly. But Lipsky spoke.
"Der Socialismus ruht auf einer fasten ekonomischen grundlage...."
For twenty minutes in deadly German sentences he lectured on the
economic interpretation of history. Then for twenty minutes he analyzed
capitalism. Then he drank a glass of water and took a fresh start. He
referred to Klein's speech and pointed out how the election of one or a
hundred officials could not bring about Socialism; the only hope lay in
a patient, widespread, universal organization of the working class. Then
in detail he discussed the difference between reform and revolution, how
this red light business was only one by-product of the great injustice
of exploitation by surplus value.
When he had been talking a little over an hour, he said "Lastly." He
began on a history of the International Socialist Party from its humble
beginning in Marx' Communist League to its present gigantic proportions.
On and on he drawled. Many got up and left--he did not notice. Someone
in the gallery yelled,
"Cheese it! Cut it out! We want Benson!"
He went right on through the tumult, and at last discouraged the
disturbers. The recent International Socialist Congress had discussed
the following nine problems: (1) The Agrarian Question, (2) The Relation
of the Political Party to Trade Unions.... It was hopeless. The
audience melted. And they did not sing as they left.
At last he was through. I remember the sudden transformation. The set,
dogged expression left his face, as he looked up from his notes. His
back straightened, his eyes flashed--a light came to them which somehow
explained how this dry-as-dust professor of economics had suddenly left
his class-room and thrown his weak gauntlet at the Tsar of all the
Russias. It was the hope which had sustained him all the weary years in
Arctic Siberia.
"Working-men of all lands--Unite!" he shouted it out to the almost empty
house--his arms wide thrown in his only gesture--"You have nothing to
lose but your chains! You have a world to gain!"
There was a brave attempt at a cheer from the few devoted Socialists who
remained. The exultation left him as suddenly as it had come, and he
sat down, a tired, worn old man. Klein rushed at him, with tears in his
eyes. "You've spoiled it all!" he wailed. The old man straightened up
once more.
"I did my duty," he said solemnly.
When the returns came in the next night, the Socialist vote had jumped
from 250 to 1800. Root had only 1,000. O'Brien, the machine candidate,
won with 2,500. At the last moment, the Old Man, seeing that Root was
hopelessly beaten, had gone back on his bargain and sent out word to
elect O'Brien.
"The funny thing about the Socialists is," Benson said to me, "that they
are dead right. Take Lipsky. He's a dub of a politician, but pretty
good as a philosopher. Wasn't it old Mark Aurelius who wanted the world
ruled by philosophers--not a bad idea--only it's impracticable. They
are right to suspect us reformers. Nine out of ten of the settlement
bunch are just like Maynard--quitters when it comes to the issue.
They'd like to uplift the working class, but they don't want to be
mistaken for them. And after all this red light business is only a
symptom. You and I and Lipsky can afford to be philosophic about it--we
haven't any daughters. But the fathers who live in this dirty
district--they ask for bread--not any philosopher's stone. Any way, we
fixed Root, and that is what we set out to do."
"It cost me a lot of money," he said later. "And I did not want to go
broke just now. There is a bunch of swindlers out in Chicago with a
fake shoe polish they want me to market. It will ruin a shoe in two
months. They are offering me all kinds of money. I hate to go to
it--but I guess I'll have to."
He sat down to his desk and began studying his bills and bank-book.
"How would 'shin-ide' do for a bum shoe-polish?" he said, looking up
suddenly. "'Shin-ide. It puts halos on your shoes.'"
Our sudden burst into politics, at least Benson's--my small part in it
was never known--attracted a good deal of newspaper notice. Certainly
Root realized where his troubles started, and he went heartily about
making us uncomfortable.
A couple of mornings after election, the Rev. Mr. Dawn, the head-worker,
came to our room, his hands full of newspapers and letters--the "corpus
delicti."
I wish I could give more space to Dawn. He was a thoroughly good man.
And although we judged him harshly at the time, I think an admirable
man. At least, I feel that I ought to think so about him, but some of
the old contempt still clings to his memory.
His whole soul was wrapped up in the settlement movement. Socialism was
repellent to him because it insisted on the existence of class lines.
He had come to America from England because the class distinctions--so
closely drawn there--were repugnant to him. He hoped in our young
Republic to see a development in the opposite direction. His hope
blinded him.
And in spite of his loudly-professed Democracy, he was essentially
aristocratic in his ideas of social service. The solution of our
manifest ills he expected to find in the good intentions of the "better
bred." Their loving kindness was to bring cheer and comfort to the
lowly. His faith in the settlement movement was real and great, which of
course made him very conservative in the face of any issue which
involved its good repute.
"You people seem to have seriously offended Mr. Root," he began.
"You don't say so!" Benson replied. He was shaving.
Dawn could not understand Benson's type of humor.
"I am afraid you have," he said.
Benson cut himself.
"I don't remember having called him anything worse than a cadet," he
said sweetly.
"Oh, I see you are joking."
"No. I did call him that."
"I'm sorry to hear you say it. Sorry to have you verify the report that
you used intemperate language. I have never met Mr. Root. But he has
many friends among...."
"The best people?" Benson interrupted.
"I was about to say among our supporters. It is most regrettable that
your ill-advised attack on him may alienate many of them. It seems also
that you have dragged the name of the settlement into the mire of
Socialism. I must confess that I hardly know--that, in fact, I am at a
loss...."
"You needn't worry about it. Whitman and I will leave. All you have to
do is to roll your eyes if we are mentioned, and say--'Yes. It was most
regrettable--but of course they left the settlement at once!' Invite
Root to dinner a couple of times. Walk up and down Stanton Street with
him--arm in arm. It will blow over--it will square everything with 'the
best people'!"
"I am sorry to hear you speak so bitterly," Dawn said, "But frankly, I
think it wisest that you should sever your connection with us. When the
welfare of the whole settlement movement is at stake, I cannot allow my
personal feelings to blind my...."
"Oh, don't apologize. There is no personal ill-feeling."
And so we left the settlement.
*BOOK V*
*I*
Benson and I set up housekeeping in the top floor of an old mansion on
Eldridge Street. Once upon a time it had boasted of a fine lawn before
it, and of orchards and gardens on all sides. But it had been submerged
in the slums. You stepped out of the front door onto the busy sidewalk,
and dumb-bell tenements springing up close about it had robbed it of all
its former glory. Two mansard bedrooms in the front we threw together,
making a large study. We put in an open fire-place, built some settees
into the walls and before the windows. There were bookcases all about,
some great chairs and a round table for writing and for meals. Of the
rooms in the back we arranged two for sleeping, turned one into a
kitchen and a fourth into a commodious bath. With his usual love for the
incongruous, Norman nicknamed the establishment--"The Teepee."
In my work in the Tombs I had one time been able to clearly show the
innocence of an old Garibaldian, who was charged with murder. He felt
that he owed his life to me, and so became my devoted slave. His name
was Guiseppe and he had fought for Liberty on two continents. It was
hard to tell which was the more picturesque, his shaggy mane of white
hair or his language--a goulash of words picked up in many lands. Within
his disappointed, defeated body he still nursed the ardent flame of
idealism. The spirit of Mazzini's "Young Italy," the dream of "The
Universal Republic" lived on in spite of all the disillusionment which
old age in poverty and exile had brought him.
In the Franco-Prussian War, while campaigning in The Vosges, he had
cooked for the Great Liberator. We installed him in the kitchen of the
Teepee. His especial pride was a pepper and garlic stew which Garibaldi
had praised. This dish threatened to be the death of us. It was the
trump he always led when in doubt.
*II*
During the years I was in the settlement, I received regularly two
letters a month from Ann. They were never sentimental. They dealt with
matters of fact. Norman's uncle and aunt had interested themselves in
her ambition and had allowed her much time to study. At first her work
in Pasteur's laboratory had consisted in cooking bouillon for the
culture of bacteria. It did not seem very interesting to me, but it
fascinated her. She even sent me the receipt and detailed instructions
about using it. After awhile she had been promoted to a microscope and
original research. She soon attracted Pasteur's attention and he
offered her a position as his personal assistant. Her employers were
immensely proud of her success and, securing another nurse, released
her. She was enthusiastic over this change. She could learn more, she
wrote, watching the master than by any amount of original work.
It was part of her character that her letters gave me no picture of
Paris. She had no interest in inanimate things, no "geographical
sense." I knew the names and idiosyncracies of most of the laboratory
assistants, she gave me no idea of Les Invalides, near which she lived.
There was much about the inner consciousness of a German girl with whom
she roomed, but I did not know whether the laboratory was in a business
or residential section of the city. She wrote once of a trip down the
river to St. Cloud, and all she thought worth recording was the
amusingly idiotic conversation of an American honeymoon couple, who sat
in front of her, and did not suspect that she understood English.
Although she wrote so much about people, the characters she described
never seemed human to me. She did not understand the interpretive power
of a background. Her outlook was extremely individualistic. Auguste
Compte wrote somewhere that there is much more of the dead past in us
than of the present generation. I would go further and say that there
is much more of the present generation in us than there is of ourselves.
If we stripped off the influence of our homes, of our friends, of the
contempore books we read, of our thousand and one social obligations,
there would be precious little left of us. Ann carried this stripping
process so far that even Pasteur, for whom she had the warmest
admiration, seemed to me a dead mechanism.
She never referred to our personal relations, never spoke of returning
to America. And I avoided these subjects in my answers. I was afraid
of them.
I thought about her frequently and almost always with passion. I
dreamed about her. Fixed somewhere in my brain was a very definite
feeling that such emotions ought not to exist apart from love. I was
not in love with Ann. Her letters rarely interested me. It was a task
to answer them. Our contacts with life were utterly different.
I kept to the "forms" of chastity. There are those who believe that
there is some virtue in preserving forms. I have never felt so. It did
not require much effort to keep to this manner of life. I was
constantly observing prostitution from the view-point of the Tombs. And
to anyone who saw these women, as I did, in their ultimate misery and
degradation, they could excite nothing but pity. There is no part of
the whole problem of crime so utterly nauseating. Although I held
myself back from what is called "vice," the state of my mind in those
days was not pleasant,--and I think it was not healthy. It was no
particular comfort for me to learn that other men, living, as I was, in
outward purity, were also tormented by erotic dreams.
Shortly after we moved into the Teepee a letter came from Ann which was
bulkier than usual. The first pages were a statement of new plans. An
American doctor, who had been working with Pasteur, was returning to
establish a bacteriological laboratory in this country. He had offered
her a good salary to come with him as his chief assistant. The
laboratory was to be built in Cromley, a Jersey suburb, thirty minutes
from the city. As soon as it was ready she was coming. It would be
interesting, responsible work and she could make a home for her mother
who was becoming infirm.
The rest, pages and pages, was a love letter. Every night, these years
of separation--so she wrote--had been filled with dreams of me. As
always she put her work above her love. Bacteriology was the great fact
of her life. She held it a treason to reality when, as so often
happens, people lose their sense of proportion and allow love to usurp
the place of graver things. But now that her work brought her towards
her love, she looked forward to a fuller life--a life adorned.
The letter brought a great unrest. Her passionate call to me certainly
found an echo. I lost much sleep--tormented, intoxicated with the
images her words called up. Years before an immense loneliness had
pushed me into the comfort of her arms. This was no longer the case.
My life was full, almost over-full of work and friends. But the pull
towards her seemed even more irresistible now than before.
Marriage seemed to me the only worthy solution. But even more clearly
than in the hospital days I knew I did not want to marry her. It was, I
suppose, above all because I did not love her. It was partly because I
liked my bachelor freedom, the coming and going without reference to
anyone. It was partly my deep attachment to Norman. I felt he would
not care for Ann. Anyway it would break up our household in the Teepee.
At last a letter came setting the date of her arrival. It coincided with
a long-standing engagement I had made to lecture on criminology in a
western college. I had an entirely cowardly sense of relief in the
realization that the meeting and adjustment were postponed. But I
thought of little else. Returning from my lectures, on the long ride
across half the continent, with the knowledge that Ann was awaiting me
in the city, that I could postpone things no longer, I won to a
decision. I would see her at the earliest convenience--it seemed more
straightforward to see her than to write--and tell her that I did not
wish to recommence our intimacy. I might not be able to explain why I
wanted to break with her, but I could at least make it plain that I did.
On my return, I found a letter waiting me in the Teepee. It contained
her telephone number and a query as to when I could come out for dinner.
I called her up at once. I would come that very day. The train out to
Cromley seemed perversely slow. I was impatient to be through with it,
to get back undisturbed to my work. It was only a short walk from the
station to her house. The row of gingerbread cottages along her street
is one of the fixtures of my memories.
Ann opened the door for me. She held me out at arm's length a minute.
"Woof!" she said, "You've grown old." Then she gave me a sudden kiss.
"Come. You must meet Mother."
In the little parlor, Mrs. Barton greeted me cordially. She was a tall,
angular New England woman, dried up in body, but her eyes were still
young. I have seen many women like her down Cape Cod way. But her
presence threw me into as much confusion as if she had been some
threatening sort of an ogress. I could not fight out this matter with
Ann before her mother. And some instinct warned me that I must plunge
into my subject at once, if I wished to do it at all.
"Dinner is ready," Ann said in the midst of my embarrassment.
"This is my little grandson, William," Mrs. Barton said of a tow-headed
youngster, of three, who caught hold of her skirt.
Ann picked him up.
"Can't you shake hands like a gentleman, Billy Boy?" she asked. "No?
Well, you don't have to."
She swung him into a high chair opposite mine. I have never been more
embarrassed in my life. It was all so different from what I had
foreseen. I suppose I had expected some heroics. It was entirely
common-place. It was hard to keep in mind that a big moral issue was at
stake. Mrs. Barton was evidently taking my measure. And "Billy Boy"
glared at me across the table out of his big, inane, blue eyes.
Ann did the talking, telling us of the wonders of her new laboratory and
something of the personality of her chief. She looked younger than when
she went away. She had filled out considerably and her face had lost
the oldish, narrow look which I remembered. She had that surety of
gesture and tone which comes only to those who have found the work they
are fitted to. Above all she seemed happy, and contented and merry.
Each glance I stole at her told me it would be harder than I had thought
to keep my resolution. It was impossible to look at "Billy Boy," he
would have stared the Sphinx out of countenance. So I gave most of my
attention to Mrs. Barton.
When the dinner was over, we moved into the parlor for coffee. In a few
minutes Mrs. Barton took the youngster to bed. The door had hardly
closed behind them when Ann's arms were about me. There was a broken
flood of words. I do not remember what she said. But somehow it seemed
as if I were saying it myself, so wonderfully her words expressed my own
longings. A great happiness had fallen upon me. Perhaps this passion
was not right, perhaps it was neither moral nor wise, but it was
overwhelmingly a part of me. It would have been utter self-repudiation
to deny it.
In the morning I again asked Ann to marry me. It was my last ditch.
"Don't," she said, "dearest, don't talk of marriage. Why? Why do you
want to take our love into a courthouse? Once for all--let's fight this
out and be finished with it."
It was all very clear to her. Promises of love were futile. She had
loved once before, had thought it would last forever. She was glad
there had been no promises.
"I'm older now--not so likely to change--but why go to law about it?
Why do you want to marry me? Isn't it partly because some
people--perhaps your own family--would be shocked at a free love union?
Well, haven't I a right to think of my people? My sister, who's dead,
Billy's mother--she didn't think it was necessary to have a wedding ring
and all that. My people would be grieved if I got married. They'd
think I'd conformed--gone back on my principles. It would break
mother's heart. It would seem like a repudiation of her way of living.
And she's the finest mother anyone ever had. Even if I didn't believe
in free love, I'd never get married on her account."
Despite what Ann told me I was decidedly embarrassed to meet her mother
at breakfast. But when we appeared, Mrs. Barton kissed me. Her hands
on my shoulders, she searched my face with her eyes.
"Ann loves you very much, my boy," she said. "Be good to her."
The breakfast was a far pleasanter meal than the dinner had been. Even
Billy Boy's stare was not quite so hostile.
Yet as I rode into town on the early train my scruples came back. To be
sure I had very little respect for the "sanctity" of formal marriage. I
had seen too much of it in the Tombs. Certainly no amount of legal or
religious ceremony is a guarantee of bliss or even of common decency.
The minor marriage failures are attended to in the civil divorce courts.
The domestic difficulties which are threshed out in the criminal courts
show very clearly that there is no magic in church ritual to transform a
brute into a good husband. Ten wedding rings will not change an
alcoholic woman into a good mother. And then I was always witnessing
"forced" marriages. Such was the cheap and easy solution in cases of
seduction and rape in the second degree. Our law givers have decreed
eighteen as the age of consent. The seduction of a girl under that
arbitrary age is rape. Most of our grandmothers were married earlier.
But the law is too majestic a thing to consider such details. It deals
with general principles. If it has been flouted, Justice must be done
though the heavens fall. However, it is an expensive matter to send a
man to prison. So he is offered the alternative of marrying the girl.
Justice gives no heed to the morality nor happiness of the two young
people who have fallen in trouble, cares not at all for the next
generation. Send the guilty couple to the altar. Their sins are
forgiven them. The conventions have been vindicated. The juggernaut is
appeased. No. I was very little impressed with the virtue of "legal"
marriage.
But I had a strong, if rather indefinite, ideal of a "true" marriage, a
real mating, a close copartnership, a community of interest and a
comradely growth, sanctified by a mutual passion. I saw no chance of
this in my relation to Ann.
At the Tombs that day, I tried, and to a large extent succeeded, in
forgetting the problem. But back in the Teepee, at dinner with Norman,
it seized me again. Even Guiseppe noticed my preoccupation and walked
about on tiptoe.
"What's eating you?" Norman asked as we drank our coffee. "Any way I
can lend a hand?"
"A woman," I said.
"That lets me out." And after a while he muttered "Hell."
"What do you think," I asked--suddenly resolved to get an outside
opinion--"about one's right to be intimate with a woman, outside of
marriage?"
"I don't think about it at all," he snapped. "Not nowadays. Time was
when I didn't think of much else. It didn't do me any good. The times
are rotten--out of joint. Everything we do is out of joint--inevitably.
Ninety per cent of us want to do what's right and as it is ninety-nine
per cent of us ball things up. I don't think much of marriage. I tried
it once--divorced."
This was news to me.
"I don't like to talk about it. No use now. It was a miserable affair.
I tried to be decent--did all I knew how to make it right. But I guess
the girl suffered more than I did--which is one of the reasons why I
hate God. Some people tumble into happiness--but it seems luck to
me--pure luck."
I cannot recall that evening's talk in detail. Norman was unusually
reticent. It was only by questions that I could draw him out.
"What do you think about free love?" I asked.
"It's a contradiction in terms. There's nothing free about love. It's
tying oneself up in the tightest kind of a knot. A man will not only
work his fingers off for the woman he loves--he'll have his hair cut the
way she likes. A person in love doesn't want to be free. The hell of it
is when the slavery continues after the love is dead. Don't try to free
love--what's needed is the emancipation of the loveless."
We were silent for a while, very much distressed that we could find no
solid anchorage. I was about to ask some other question when he broke
out again on his own line of thought.
"Abolishing marriage won't do it. These Anarchists are naive. They
want to make things simple--say free love would simplify the matter.
But all progress--all evolution--is towards more complex forms. Our
brains are better than monkey brains because they're more complex. This
"simple life" talk is rank reaction. I don't want to see laws
abolished, but brought up to date. Civilization means ever increasing
complexity in the forms of life. And we try to govern it by Roman law,
plus a hodge podge of mediaeval common law. Not less laws--but modern
laws."
For a while his mind played about this idea, then he ended the
discussion abruptly.
"Why put your problem up to me? As far as solving the man and woman
question goes, my life has been a miserable failure. No matter what you
do, whether you quit or go ahead--unless you're lucky as hell--you'll
wish you were a eunuch before you're through."
So I got little help from him in this matter. I never really settled
it. More or less it settled itself. There were forces at work which
were stronger than my scruples. Sometimes it seemed horribly wrong to
me and I decided not to go back to Cromley. But as the days passed I
began to think more and more of Ann. Sooner or later I telephoned. I
did not surrender without many struggles. But gradually she became an
accepted fact in my life and with the years an increasingly valued fact.
I am not proud of the moral indecisions, not at all proud of my
contentment with what seemed less than perfect. But so it was.
Nothing in my life has seemed to me of so uncertain ethical value. Of
course it was a violation of our traditional morality, but there are
very few who blindly accept the conventions as always binding. I cannot
dismiss it offhand as simply right or wrong; my own judgment in the
matter was swung back and forth with almost the regularity of a
pendulum.
At first it seemed to me unfair to take so much more than I could give.
But after all I think little is gained by trying to treat love like
merchandise, by trying to measure and weigh it. Certainly Ann would
have been glad if I had loved her more wholly. But she regarded that as
a work of fate, which no amount of wishing--by either of us--could
change. She would have run away if our intimacy had begun to interfere
with her work. She threw herself into her specialty with a
wholeheartedness I have never seen equalled. Once I asked her if she
had no desire for children.
"Of course I have," she said, "but sometimes I've wanted the moon to
wear in my hair. I'd like to live till I could see the triumph of
medicine. I'd like to be a pall-bearer at the funeral of the last
malignant germ. I'd like a yacht. I never went sailing but once--and it
was very wonderful. But I don't want any of these things in the same
way I want to work."
She was not entirely satisfied. Who is? She had been taught contempt
for the cheap respectability we could have secured for a small fee from
a justice of the peace. I think she got as much happiness out of our
relationship as most women do from their home lives. I cannot picture
her as getting any added pleasure out of sewing buttons onto my clothes
or darning my hose. No doubt there were lonely evenings when she wished
the fates had given her a more ordinary life and a husband who came home
regularly. Although she never complained, I knew that it hurt her if
the rush of other--to me more important--affairs kept me in town when
she was expecting me. But she would have been more unhappy if she had
been in love with a man who interfered in the least in her freedom. It
does not seem so unfair to me now as it did at first. We were neither
of us getting all we could dream of. But no more was either of us ready
to give up the half loaf.
And "half loaf" seems a very inadequate term for my share. I find
myself trying to "argue" about this--I am rather vexed by things I
cannot call either black or white. But so much of it was utterly
unarguable. If we are, as some say, to judge life by the pleasure it
brings us, Ann was beyond question the biggest and best thing in my
life. I remember one Sunday in the late fall, we were afoot with the
first streak of dawn; all day long we tramped through the Jersey
mountains. The autumn coloring of the maple groves was unutterably
gorgeous. Just at sunset, all the western sky brilliant with red and a
hundred shades of hot orange--even more brilliant than the frost nipped
leaves had been--we reached a little railroad station and so came back
to Cromley and the roaring wood fire and New England supper Mother
Barton had prepared for us. I would feel sorry for anyone to whom such
a day would not seem glorious. But to me, living six long days a week
in the seething slums, in the even gloomier shadow of the Tombs, such
outings were a renewal of life, a rebirth.
And besides the evident pleasure of these holidays, Ann brought me a
feeling of mental and physical wellbeing and healthfulness I had never
before known. My grip on life was surer, my vision clearer, my store of
energy was better adjusted, more economically utilized, because of her.
I believe that a man, who says he cannot live in celibacy, is lying.
But with equal emphasis, I believe that the circumstances which make it
wise for a man or woman to live out their lives alone are extremely
rare. The hours I spent at Cromley were recreation in the deepest sense
of the word.
The rides into town on the early train stick in my mind as a memory
apart from all the rest of my life. I seemed at those times to be in a
higher mood than usual. Speeding into the city, to my grim task in the
Tombs, from the sweet solace of her home, I found inspiration and hope
for my daily grind. There was an entirely special sensation,
experienced at no other time, when I found myself aboard the ferry,
leaning over the fore-rail, watching the sky-scrapers struggle up
through the morning mist. Perhaps all of us know some such exhilarating
environment, which makes us exult in life and work and purpose.
Standing forward on the upper deck, my lungs full of the sweet salt air
of the harbor, some foolish association always recalls the lines from
the speech of William Tell and makes me want to shout aloud--"Ye rocks
and crags, I am with you once again."
None of the obvious objections to such an irregular relationship seem to
me to have much weight in the face of the very real good it brought me.
And yet--I cannot accept it without qualifications any more than I can
condemn it. I have come to feel that its unsatisfactoriness was due to
its fragmentary character. I cannot agree with Ann in her theory of
keeping work and love apart. A man who divorces his religion from his
business finds both of them suffer. I think the same rule holds for our
problem. I did not enter in any way into Ann's work, nor she into mine.
She gave me new energy for it, rested me from its weariness, but never
was a part of it.
I think the fact that I can, in writing of my life, make one section
deal with her and another with my work and very seldom mention both in
the same paragraph, is the severest criticism which can be brought
against our relationship.
*III*
Benson persuaded an editorial friend to publish as articles some of the
lectures on criminology which I had delivered out west. A supreme court
justice attempted to answer my criticisms of the judicial system and
carelessly denied some patent facts. The newspapers made a nine days
sensation out of our controversy. One effect of the discussion was to
awaken the Prisoner's Aid Society to a realization that something ought
to be done. In order to relieve themselves of this responsibility they
proposed to employ me as their secretary in the place of an elderly
gentleman who had held that position gratuitously--and sleepily--for
twenty odd years. The offer did not, at first, attract me. My work in
the Tombs held all my interest. Until Baldwin came along, I did not see
any chance of real service with the society.
He was assistant superintendent of the state industrial school--a sort
of intermediary prison for those offenders who were too young for state
prisons and too old for the house of refuge. He had started out as a
"screw" in Sing Sing, had been transferred to the state hospital for
insane criminals and from there to the industrial school, where he had
worked his way up to the position he then held. He really seemed to
like the details of institutional management; he knew convicts and he
was filled with a great enthusiasm over the possibility of reforming
youthful offenders.
He saw my name in the papers, as one interested in criminology and he
wrote to me about this enthusiasm of his. After several letters had
been exchanged he came to the city so we might talk it over. We put him
up at the Teepee. He was getting close to forty-five, but was the
youngest man of that age I have ever known. Benson and I went over his
project in detail. For three solid days we talked of nothing else.
Although my work dealt chiefly with accused persons who were waiting
trial, still I was always being brought face to face with the horrors of
our convict prisons. The unspeakable stupidity of treating young boys
as we mistreat old offenders has always seemed to me the crowning
outrage of our civilization.
It is hard to realize today how revolutionary Baldwin's scheme for a
reformatory then sounded. Only the most feeble and timid experiments in
such matters had been tried. We were still in those dark ages, when
orphan and destitute children were sent to jail.
The weak point in his proposal--as is the case with almost every
reform--was the expense. The state paid about ten cents a day for the
maintenance of its convicts, the per capita for the reformatory would be
three or four times as much. Baldwin had foreseen this criticism and
had collected endless figures to prove that it was only an apparent
extravagance. One of the biggest elements in the cost of crime is the
expense of "habitual offenders." Baldwin had the life-story of one man
who was serving his twelfth term in state prison and he had figured out
just how much this man's various crimes and arrests and trials and
imprisonments had cost the community and how much cheaper it would have
been to have spent enough to reform him while he was young. It was an
impressive document. By a number of such tables he made a conclusive
case. The greater expense of the reformatory, would be a real economy if
he could save one third of the boys. He believed that two-thirds could
be reformed. With the help of a constitutional lawyer he had
crystallized his ideas into a bill, which he hoped to have introduced
into the legislature.
As I have said, Norman and I gave three days close attention to the
project. Baldwin had had much practical experience in such matters and
had prepared his case admirably. The scheme looked feasible to us--as
indeed it has since proved. We were all unsophisticated enough to
believe that a good plan once explained to the people would be
immediately accepted.
I went before the executive committee of the Prisoner's Aid Society and
offered to accept the secretaryship, if they would pledge their support
to Baldwin's bill. They could find no precedent for such a measure in
their books on European penology and I doubt if I could have swung them
into line single-handed. But Benson was one of their board of directors
and they relied on him to meet their annual deficit. He was able to
bring more potent arguments to bear than I.
By this time I had become a sort of established institution in the
Tombs. With the exception of O'Neil, I had won the confidence of the
judges. They were, within certain limits, well-intentioned men and they
did not like to condemn young boys to the contagion of state prison any
more than you or I would. I got their signatures to a letter endorsing
the reformatory idea, and through them arranged with the district
attorney for such leaves of absence as I would need.
I find myself with very little enthusiasm for chronicling this campaign
for a reformatory. It was so dolefully disheartening, so endlessly
irritating--it dragged on so much longer than we had foreseen. But it
is important not only to my own story, it influenced not only my way of
thinking; it has also a broader and more compelling significance. There
was hardly one of my friends, the people of my generation who were
trying to make this world a more livable place, who were not at one time
or another involved in a similar fight. One thing we all had experienced
in common--the journey up to Albany to try and cajole our legislators
into doing something, the value and wisdom of which no sane man could
doubt. A new Acts of the Apostles might be written about the endless
succession of delegations which gathered in the Grand Central Station,
en route for the capital, fired with enthusiasm for some reform--a new
tenement house law, some decent regulation of child labor, some
protection against the crying evils of the fraudulent immigrant banks or
the vicious employment agencies and so forth. It would take a fat book
to even list all the good causes which have inspired such pilgrimages.
And the ardor with which the delegations set out for Albany was only
equalled by the black discouragement which, a few days later, they
brought back.
After some trouble we found an assembly man who consented to introduce
our bill. It was pigeon-holed at once. Then we went in for publicity.
I wrote articles in magazines and newspapers. Benson and Baldwin got
out and widely circulated a pamphlet. They were a strong combination,
with the former's knowledge of advertising and the latter's familiarity
with the subject. I took the stump.
Everyone, I suppose, who has done similar work, has made the same
discovery. You cannot win your point with the ordinary audience by an
appeal to reason. At first I treated my subject seriously--with dismal
effect. But Norman came to one of my New York city meetings and cursed
me roundly for a fool when it was over. I took his advice and went up
and down and across the state telling "heart-interest" stories; yarns
about the white haired mother whose only son was sent to Sing Sing for
some trifling offense and was utterly corrupted by evil associates;
about the orphan boy who stole a loaf of bread for his starving sister.
How I came to hate those two! Once in my dreams I murdered that "white
haired mother" with fierce glee. But I could always rely on them to
start tears. If I tried to give my audiences our constructive ideal,
what we meant by the word "reformatory," I lost my grip on them. They
demanded thrills. Well--I gave them thrills. It was the only way, but
it made me feel like a mountebank, like a charlatan selling blue pills.
By the end of the year we had worked up enough popular interest to force
a discussion of the bill on the floor of the legislature. On the first
reading it was referred to the Senate Committee on State Prisons. After
several weeks of suspense the committee announced a date for a public
hearing. I remember that at the time we thought this meant victory. At
last we were to have an opportunity to present our case in a serious
manner to serious men. Baldwin and Benson and I put in the preceding
week preparing our briefs. On the day set for the hearing we marshalled
our forces in the lobby of an Albany hotel. There was Allen, the
president of the Prisoner's Aid Society; Van Kirk, a vice-president of
the State Bar Association and the three of us. It was arranged that
Baldwin and I should speak first, he was to deal with the financial side
of the project and I with its broader human phases. Allen and Van Kirk
were to add the endorsements of the organizations they represented. I
recall how perfect our case looked to us, how utterly impossible it
seemed to fail of convincing the committee.
The room in the old state house, where the hearing was held was a dingy
place. There was the air of a court about it and the attendants. What
seemed vitally important to us was dismal routine to them. When we
arrived the committee was listening to a deputation of screws from Sing
Sing who were asking for a revision of the rules in regard to vacations.
The sight of the three committee men cooled my ardor. The chairman,
Burton, was an upstate lawyer, who affected the appearance of a farmer
to please his constituents. The other two, Clark and Reedy, were New
Yorkers, one a Republican the other a Democrat, both fat and sleepy. At
last the screws finished their plea. Burton rapped with his gavel.
"What is the next business?" he asked wearily.
"Hearing in the matter of a bill to establish a reformatory for juvenile
offenders," the clerk drawled.
"Does the Commissioner of State Prisons endorse this bill?" Clark asked.
"No"--the Commissioner was on his feet at once. The charter of the
Prisoner's Aid Society gave it authority to inspect the penal
institutions of the state, to audit their accounts and so forth. It was
a thorn in the flesh of all commissioners and they could always be
counted on to oppose any suggestion of the society's.
"Well. What's the use of going into the matter, then?" Reedy asked.
"It's not our custom to throw down the Commissioner."
"As it's on the calendar we'll have to listen to it," Burton ruled.
"How did it get on the calendar?" Clark growled.
"I was under the impression the Commissioner was in accord," the clerk
apologized.
"Well, I want to know where you got that impression," Clark insisted
with ill temper.
"Not from me," the Commissioner spoke up.
Burton rapped with his gavel.
"Order, gentlemen," he said. "We are wasting time. We will hear anyone
who wishes to speak in favor of the bill."
Baldwin stood up and opened his notes.
"I have an important business matter I would like to attend to," Reedy
said. "May I be excused?"
"Hold on," Clark protested, "It's my turn to get off early."
"I can't excuse both of you," Burton snapped. "This is the last business
on the calendar. It will not detain us long. Proceed. What's your
name? Baldwin? Proceed."
The two other senators scowled sullenly like children who were being
kept in after school. Suddenly Reedy began to grin. He leaned back in
his chair, so that he could attract Clark's attention behind the
shoulders of the chairman who was writing a letter. He held out a coin.
"Odd or even?" he whispered. It took Clark a moment to understand, then
his scowl relaxed. "Even" he whispered back. Reedy looked at the coin
and his face clouded up.
"I have no objection to excusing Senator Clark," he said, interrupting
Baldwin in the midst of a sentence.
Burton looked up from his letter in surprise. Clark chuckled audibly as
he left the room. Reedy slouched sullenly in his chair. "Proceed,"
Burton said and turned back to his letter. Baldwin did admirably in the
face of his levity, but no one was listening. Just as he was on the
point of closing, Burton interrupted him again.
"You have had fifteen minutes. I will give the other side ten and
adjourn."
Van Kirk tried to argue with him, but Burton ignored his existence.
"Mr. Commissioner," he said, and turned once more to his letter. It was
a relief to me that he cut me off. I was too furious to have spoken
coherently. The Commissioner, sure of success, took the matter
flippantly.
"Mr. Chairman, Senators. The Department of State Prisons is opposed to
this bill on the ground that it is a visionary piece of nonsense. The
whole talk of a reformatory was started by this Mr. Baldwin, an employee
of my department, who is discontented because we have not sufficiently
recognized his abilities. I understand that he wishes to be made
superintendent of the State Industrial School, in which institution he
is now employed in a subordinate position. He has secured the support
of the undoubtedly sincere, but visionary theorists of the Prisoner's
Aid Society. As far as I know there are no other advocates of this
bill. I could not recommend so large an appropriation of the people's
money to satisfy the ambition of Mr. Baldwin--nor to please the
gentlemen of the Prisoner's Aid Society!"
He had hardly regained his seat when Burton's gavel fell.
"Adjourned."
Baldwin was one of the steadfast kind who do not know the meaning of
discouragement. And Benson was so angry that he threw himself into the
fight with redoubled ardor. Between them they carried me along.
We started again at the bottom--trying to make an effective demand reach
the legislators from the voters. I went again through the state, but
stayed longer in each place, until I had formed a permanent committee.
That year's work persuaded me that I could have earned my living as a
book-agent or by buncoing farmers into buying lightning rods.
I remember especially New Lemberg, a sleepy town on one of the smaller
lakes. I was the guest of the Episcopalian clergyman and stayed at the
rectory. It took me three days to land him, and he gave in at last from
sheer boredom. He had been willing enough to let me come and speak to
his congregation after morning prayer, and he had called a conference of
the ministers and leading citizens in his parlor on Sunday afternoon.
But when I asked him to act as chairman of the county committee he held
back. His life was full to overflowing already with his parish work, he
was fond of the open country and of books. His hobby was translating
Horace. I was asking him to give up some of this recreation for a cause
which had never come close to him. I was sorry for him, but I needed
him to give "tone," the fashionable stamp, to the committee. On Monday
afternoon--I had been harassing him all morning, he proposed to teach me
golf. A general discussion of literature carried us as far as the third
hole and he had been happy. But as he was teeing for the next drive, I
began on him again. He pulled his stroke horribly, and sat down in a
pet. I remember those links as the most beautiful spot in all the
state. There was softly rolling farm lands, woods and fields in a rich
brocade of brown and green, and below us the lake. Here and there a
fitful breeze turned its surface a darker blue.
"I'm so busy as it is," the rector pleaded, "I can't take on this.
Really--you know all my time is taken up already. I don't get out like
this more than once a week. You must--really it's asking too much of
me--I'm getting old."
It was his last spurt of resistance. I hung on desperately and in a few
minutes he gave in. He was a valuable acquisition, no one worked on any
of our committees harder than he. But somehow I was ashamed of my
conquest. I am sure he shudders whenever he thinks of me. If he should
meet me on the street even now, I would expect him to run away.
After a solid year of this work--I groan still when I think of it--we
had committees in almost every assembly district. They called on the
various candidates and secured their promises to support the bill. We
circulated immense petitions and sent formidable lists of signatures to
the successful candidates. We had also stirred the women's clubs to
action. The newspapers made considerable comment on the "Petition of
the Hundred Thousand Mothers." When the new legislature convened, we
had the signatures of over two-thirds of the assemblymen, and a good
majority of the senators to pledges to vote for the reformatory.
Instead they gave their attention to the routine jobbery of their trade
and just before they adjourned they elected a joint commission, three
members from each house, to consider the matter.
I am quite sure, and having travelled so much through the state, I was
in a position to know, that if we could have had a referendum, eighty
per cent of the votes would have been for our bill. Fifteen of the
twenty per cent of hostile votes would have come from the most ignorant
and debased districts of the big cities. I doubt if a measure has ever
gone before the state legislature with the more certain sanction of the
electorate. Democracy is a very fine Fourth of July sentiment. But in
those days it had nothing to do with "practical politics."
The new commission did not begin work for six months. As the members
received ten dollars a day for each session, they sat for an hour or two
a day for several weeks. But at last we had our chance to present our
case in a thorough and serious manner. The opposition to the bill was
based on the testimony of half a dozen wardens who had been ordered to
the stand by the Department of State Prisons. They had nothing to offer
but prejudice and ignorance. Van Kirk, his fighting spirit stirred by
the snub he had received from the senate committee, acted as our
attorney and did it ably. Benson took hold of the press campaign and
the newspapers were full of favorable comments. I am sure that when
they adjourned after hearing our arguments, every commissioner was
convinced of the wisdom of our project.
But our opponents were better politicians than we. We let our case rest
on the evidence. Just what wires the Department of State Prisons pulled
during the recess, I do not know. But when the commission reconvened, a
sub-committee introduced a substitute bill, which was accepted without
discussion and unanimously recommended to the legislature. It was a
travesty on Baldwin's scheme. The age-limit was raised to admit men of
thirty. Instead of being for first offenders, the new bill read for
persons "convicted for the first time of a felony"--which opened the
door to a large class who have become almost hopelessly hardened by a
life of petty crime. Ordinary cellular confinement was substituted for
the original plan of cottages. It was not at all what we had been
fighting for.
As soon as I read the new bill, I went before the Prisoner's Aid Society
and begged them to repudiate it, to stand for the original project or
nothing. But in the first place they were not sufficiently informed in
the matter to recognize the difference between the two bills and in the
second place the four years of unwonted activity had overstrained them.
They wanted to rest. Ever since they have boasted of their enterprise in
getting this mutilated reformatory established.
I would have given it up in disgust except for personal loyalty for
Baldwin. He felt that the reformatory, even in its emasculated
condition, was an opening wedge and that as superintendent he might
gradually be able to persuade the legislature to amend the charter back
to his original design. Certainly he deserved the position, the
institution would not have been established at all except for his
persistent efforts. Norman and I went into the fight again to bring
pressure to bear on the governor to appoint Baldwin. We got no help
from the Prisoner's Aid Society; it had fallen hopelessly asleep. A few
of our county committees came to life again and circulated petitions.
My rector at New Lemberg was the most active. I think he was afraid I
would visit him again. But the public was tired of the issue. The
governor appointed a political friend.
I resigned from the Prisoner's Aid Society and went back to my work in
the Tombs. I felt that I had wasted four years.
*IV*
Early in this campaign for the reformatory our peaceful life in the
Teepee was shaken up by the advent of Nina.
Norman and I were coming home from the Annual Ball of The Arbeiter
Studenten Verein. It was near one o'clock Sunday morning as we turned
into the Bowery. At the corner of Stanton Street a girl flagged us.
"Hello, boys. Ain't you lonesome?"
An arc-light sputtered and fumed overhead. I will never forget its
harsh glare on her face. It was a north Italian face, wonderfully like
a Bellini Madonna. But on it was painted a ghastly leer. Above all she
looked too young.
"Aren't you afraid the Gerry Society will get you?" Norman asked good
naturedly.
There was elemental tragedy in the foul words with which she answered
him. But with a sudden change of mood--as unexpected as her appearance,
as bewildering as her blasphemy--she threw her arms about his neck and
kissed him.
The look of horror on Norman's face changed slowly to another
expression. It was not wholly incomprehensible. There was something
exotic--something tantalizing to over-civilized nerves--in her youthful
viciousness. Baudelaire would have found her a "_fleur de mal_." He
would have written immortal verses to her. Norman was stern with
himself in such matters. He had steeled himself against the usual
appeals of vice. It was the novelty of the attack that got through his
armor. He pulled her hands apart, pushed her away from him and looked
at her, his face drawn and rigid. A south-bound elevated roared past us
overhead. With a sharp intake of breath he turned to me.
"I've half a mind to take her home."
"It would be a great treat for her," I said, "compared to how she'll
spend the night if you don't. I suppose it's you or a drunken sailor."
"Will you come home with me?" he asked with sudden resolution.
"Sure. You don't look like a cheap-skate."
So we started on along the Bowery, arm-in-arm. At first we were all
silent. But intent on the business of amusing her clients, she suddenly
jerked her feet off the ground, and hanging to our elbows, swung her
soiled little red slippers in the air before us.
"Gee!" she said, when we had recovered our balance, "You're solemn
guys."
"You're in line with the best traditions of philosophy, kid," Norman
admitted. "There's no virtue in sinning sadly. We might as well
laugh."
The rest of our progress home was a noisy scramble. A hideous nightmare
to me--out of the vague impressions of which, I remember most clearly
the complaisant grin of the policeman on the beat; who twirled his stick
as we passed.
Guiseppe was dumb-founded at the addition to our number. Norman told
him curtly to set a third cover for our supper.
Once seated at the table Nina--that we discovered was her name--did not
let anything interfere with the business in hand. Norman ate little. I
had no appetite. So she did duty for all of us. Norman made a few
remarks about the ball, but always he was watching her. I was
unresponsive and conversation died.
When Nina had made way with the last edible thing, the flood gates
opened and she began to talk and play. She had an immense animal
vivacity, which kept not only her tongue, but her whole body in action.
She was full of a spirit of fun entirely foreign to both of us. We were
rather serious minded, sombre men. Her love of horseplay was a novelty.
It is hard to characterize her talk. Much of it was utterly
unprintable. There were words, words--words! But somehow she seemed
innocent of it all, wholly ignorant of any better manner of
conversation, any better form of life. She grew immensely in my regard
during those few minutes. I have seldom listened to more depraved
language and yet a sort of intrinsic virtue--the light of unsulliable
youth--shone through.
I left them as soon as might be and went to my room. I passed Guiseppe
in the hall, he was muttering to himself strange oaths:
"_Dios_"--"_Corpo de Bacco_"--"_Sapristi_"--"_Nom de nom_." I silently
echoed his multilingual profanity. My passions had not been stirred
and, looking at it in cold blood, I could only disapprove. Norman
followed me to my room. Conversation did not start easily. But when at
last I took my pipe out of my mouth, he cut me off.
"Oh, don't say it. What's the use? I'm saying it myself. I wish I had
long ears to wave, so I could bray. There's only one thing to discuss.
These diggings are as much yours as mine. I'll take her to a hotel, if
you prefer."
"Here or elsewhere. What difference does the place make?" I growled.
"I haven't any geographical interest in the case."
He thrust his hands deep in his pockets, paced up and down a minute,
then turned with an abrupt "good-night" and went out. It was a troubled
night for me. The brutal strength of the sex-pull had never seemed so
malignant before. That I had begun to see something lovable in Nina,
only made it worse.
I got up early and although it was Sunday and I had no work at court, I
breakfasted in haste, hoping to get out before they appeared. But
Norman caught me just as I was leaving.
"Come here," he said, with his fingers on his lips.
He led me on tiptoe down the hall. Through his open door I could see
her sleeping. The coil of her black hair and one white arm showed above
the sheet. There was an ugly, half-healed bruise near the elbow. The
painted leer had been washed from her face. A smile came and
went--flickered--on her lips, a wonderful smile of peaceful happiness.
"Am I clean crazy?" Norman whispered fiercely, "or is she beautiful?"
We tiptoed back to the library.
"Can you keep an eye on her for a while?" he said. "I had to have
Guiseppe throw away her clothes--they were too dirty. I must get her
some new ones. It won't take me long."
But he stopped at the door and came back.
"It's the way she smiles in her sleep, Arnold, that gets me." He
hesitated a moment, trying to find words to fit his thought. He, who
was usually so glib, had to search now. "You know, they say dreams are
just a re-hash of waking experience. But--well--it isn't the kind of
smile you'd expect from her. God! I'd like to know what she dreams
about! It almost makes me feel religious. Reminds me of 'Intimations
of Immortality!'"
Then he gave up trying to say it and rushed out to buy the clothes. I
laid out my note-books and tried to work. Half an hour later she
appeared in the doorway, sleepy-eyed, arrayed in a suit of Norman's
pajamas.
"Where's he gone?" she yawned.
"He had to go out for a few minutes."--I did not tell her why, as I
thought he might enjoy surprising her with the new outfit. "He'll be
back pretty soon. If you ring the bell, Guiseppe will bring you some
breakfast."
"Where's the bell?" she asked, looking on the table.
"It's on the wall. Press the button."
"Oh, it's a door be-e-e-l-l." It ended in a yawn.
"If you wash your face, you may wake up enough to be hungry."
"Aw! Go to hell."
She thumbed her nose at me and departed. She had evidently entirely
forgotten the dream which had brought the smile to her lips and troubled
Norman. When Guiseppe brought in her breakfast, she came back and sat
down. She had no greeting for me and I, thinking of nothing worth
saying, went on with my writing. When there was nothing more to eat she
began to talk with Guiseppe in rapid Italian. After a while he turned
to me.
"It's very sad, Mr. Arnold. She comes from the same district in
Lombardy where I was born."
My nerves were on edge. I grunted that I did not see how that made it
any sadder. He was surprised at my tone, and was, I think, on the point
of reminding me that it was also in the same district that the Great
Liberator had been born. But he thought better of it and went off to
the kitchen in a huff.
Nina wandered about the room, examining the bric-a-brac with what seemed
to me a stupid interest. Her inspection finished, she helped herself to
a cigarette and sat down cross-legged on the divan. Out of the corner
of my eye, I could see that she was minutely studying her pajamas. She
would gently stroke the soft fabric, where it was drawn tight across the
knee. The tassels on the belt string held her attention for several
minutes.
"Say," she broke out suddenly. "The old man says he burned up my
clothes. Is it a lie?"
"No. They are burnt. Your friend thought they were too dirty to wear."
"What sort of a game is this?" she demanded, after blowing out a cloud
of smoke. "This here suit of clothes is all right--it's real silk, I
guess. But--say--I don't like parlor clothes. See? I won't stand
for...."
I interrupted her, seeing at once what was in her mind. "Parlor
clothes" are an old device--it was doubtless invented by some pander of
ancient Nineveh. The proprietors of "disorderly houses" often keep their
girls in bondage by withholding all decent clothes. The "parlor"
costume, is one in which no woman would dare to go on the street. They
are more effective means of guarding slaves than chains. I tried to
reassure Nina, telling her why Norman had gone out.
"Honest?" she asked. "He'll let me go? I'd raise hell--sooner than be
in a house. It's the sidewalk for mine--every time. He'd better not
try any fancy games on me. I sure would raise hell!"
"You wait and see," I said. "He's on the square."
I began writing again, she lit another cigarette and smoked awhile in
silence. But presently she came over and sat on the table.
"Say. He'll give me some money, besides the clothes, won't he?"
"You'll have to arrange that with him."
"I've got to have two dollars, by ten o'clock."
"Wouldn't you rather have some good clothes than two dollars?"
"No. Real money."
I leaned back in my chair and looked her over. At last I ventured what
was in my mind.
"I suppose women's clothes wouldn't suit your man. But wouldn't some red
neckties please him as well as money?"
"Say"--her eyes narrowed threateningly--"You're a wise guy, ain't you?
Think you know it all?"
"Well," I said, "I know some."
I turned back the flap of my coat and showed her the badge of a county
detective. She whistled with surprise, but did not seem dismayed. In
fact she became suddenly friendly. Everything about her recent
experiences, the bath, Norman's attitude towards her, the meals, the
rooms, had been strange and confusing. But a policeman! That came
within the circle of familiar. She knew dozens of them.
"Gee! I never would have thought you was a cop. Plain clothes man?"