"It's your cousin, Dr. Drake."
"Oh. Hello, Oliver," I said, shaking hands.
I realized at once that this had not been an entirely fitting way to
respond to his dignified, almost pompous greeting. I find it hard not
to portray Oliver in caricature. He was so utterly foreign to the life
I was leading, so different from the people I knew that inevitably he
looked outlandish--at times comical. I have always regretted that
Browning did not write another poem, the reverse of "Bishop Blougram's
Apology," giving us the free thinker's account of that interview.
At first Oliver seemed to me appallingly affected. But as I got to see
more of him I changed the adjective to "adapted." Just as a practicing
physician must develop certain mannerisms so had Oliver adapted himself
to his _metier_. His voice was most impressive. It was his working
capital and he guarded it with infinite care. He was as much afraid of
a sore throat as an opera singer. He belonged to that sub-variety of
his species which is called "liberal." He had accepted the theory of
evolution end higher criticism. He prided himself on being abreast of
his time. He strove--successfully--to give the impression of a
broad-minded, cultured gentleman.
I think he enjoyed the flattery of success and he had the brains to win
it. His wife, whom I met later was, I think, dominated by "social"
ambitions. She also had brains. They were a strong team. Their
progress had been a steady upward curve. From a small town to a small
city, then from a mission chapel in Indianapolis to its biggest church,
from there to Chicago and at last to a fashionable charge in New York.
And when you saw Oliver this progress seemed inevitable.
Spirituality? I do not think he had need of any. It would have been an
impediment to his progress. It was very hard to remember that he was the
son of Josiah Drake.
"How long is it," he said in his suave, modulated voice, "since we saw
each other. Not since I left you at your prep. school--at least fifteen
years."
"More," I said, "twenty." I could think of nothing to say. His
presence was rather oppressive. But it was part of his profession never
to be awkward.
"Well. Now that we are in the same city, I trust we will see each other
more frequently. You were in Europe when we arrived. I wasn't quite
sure whether you were back yet or not. But I came in on the chance--I
got your address from your publishers"--he made a congratulatory
bow--"to see if we could have you for dinner next Friday. It's been a
great pleasure to meet Mr. and Mrs. Benson, I envy you such
friendship...."
"Nina," Norman interrupted, "has been chanting your praises for the last
half hour."
"Ah. You cannot dodge your responsibilities that way, Mr. Benson,"
Oliver remarked, with rather heavy playfulness. "You have been a most
effective chorus. Of course, Arnold,"--he turned to me--"your friends
will always be welcomed at our house. I would be very glad, and I am
sure Mrs. Drake would be also, if you could bring them with you on
Friday night."
Norman bounced off the divan, as if someone had exploded a bomb under
him.
"Oh, no," he said. "We're very much obliged to you. But Nina and I
never go out in society,"--as Oliver looked a bit taken aback, Norman
went on to explain. "You see our marriage was--well--picturesque. I've
forgotten the date, but you can find the details in the files of any of
our newspapers. Fortunately, my wife has no social ambitions, so we
don't have to risk embarrassing people who are kind enough to invite
us."
Oliver had regained his poise.
"Being a stranger to the city," he said, "I am of course ignorant of the
matter to which you refer but"--he gracefully took Nina's hand--"I am
quite sure that Mrs. Benson would honor any society. However if it would
expose you to any embarrassment, I cannot, of course, insist."
Nina's attitude to Oliver after he was gone was amusing. She had
evidently been impressed with his grandeur. But when Norman jokingly
accused her of having fallen in love with him, she shuddered.
"No," she said with real but ludicrous solemnity--"I wouldn't like to be
his wife."
Marie, who had had to undergo the ordeal of sitting on his knee,
remarked that he did not know how to play.
But in spite of the dislike she had taken to him Nina made me tell in
detail everything about the dinner party. It had, I am sure, been a
great success from Mrs. Drake's point of view. There had been two Wall
Street millionaires at the table, a great lawyer, a congressman and an
ambassador. Because French came to me easily I had to entertain the
latter's wife. The food and the wine had been exquisite. Socially a
success, but humanly a barren affair.
I made my duty call on Mrs. Drake and would never have gone near them
again, if it had not been for a letter I received from Oliver about a
month later. He asked me to come for lunch to talk over a scheme he was
working out for penal reform. It interested me immensely to see him and
his wife working together. He began with a sonorous peroration. The
reason the church was losing influence was that it did not take
sufficient interest in social problems. He was developing this idea at
some length when Mrs. Drake coughed.
"The idea is familiar," she said.
"Yes, my dear."
Coming, as he did, to the direction of one of New York's most
influential churches, a congregation which included many people of great
wealth, many people of great influence in the world of business and
politics.... Mrs. Blake coughed.
"I'm sure Cousin Arnold knows about the church."
"Yes, my dear. I was about to say...."
He was about to say that he felt it his duty to try to utilize this
great force in the cause of human betterment. In a few minutes Mrs.
Drake coughed again and said, "Naturally." He had given a good deal of
consideration, prayerful consideration, to the subject: personally he
was opposed to the church going into politics. He spoke of several
well-known clergymen who had gone into the fight against Tammany Hall,
he doubted their wisdom. Of course if one could be sure that all their
congregation were republicans.... The lunch was finished at this point
and we went into the sumptuous library. Mrs. Drake took the subject out
of his hand.
"You see, Cousin Arnold," she said, "we think that the role of the
church should be conciliating. It is our object to attract people--all
people to the church--not to alienate anyone. And the church cannot mix
in any of the issues which are vexed--which have partisans on each
side--without offending and driving people away. It is evident that the
church must interest itself in social questions, must show that it is a
power to overcome this horrible unrest. But it is very hard to find a
social problem which is consistent with the conciliatory role which the
church must preserve.
"When Oliver and I read your book, we both had the same inspiration.
Here is just the very problem. What you wrote about the prisons is
awful. And no one can object to the church taking a definite attitude
on this question. The Master, himself has instructed us to visit those
who are in prison."
"Exactly," Oliver put in.
But she did not give him time to go on. She rapidly laid before me
their plan. Oliver was to call together a group of a dozen fellow
clergymen, the most influential--I presume she meant the most
fashionable--in each denomination. I was to speak to them and help him
to get them interested. They would organize a committee, they would
give out interviews to the newspapers, preach sermons on the subject,
get some good bills introduced into the legislature--and make a great
splash!
I sat back and listened to it with grim amusement. This was to be
Oliver's debut in New York. In vulgar phrase it was a "press agent
campaign." Oliver--the progressive, the fighting clergyman--was to get
columns of free advertising. There would surely be a great mass meeting
in one of the theaters and Oliver would get his chance to cast the spell
of his oratory over fashionable New York. It was an admirable scheme.
No attack on Tammany Hall, was not one of his deacons a director in the
street car company? Did not the real owner of the gas company rent the
most expensive pew in the church and did not complaisant Tammany Hall
arrange to have the gas company's ashes removed by the city's street
cleaning department? No support to the campaign for decent tenements,
some of the congregation were landlords. And of course no playing with
the dangerous subject of labor unions.
"J. H. Creet doesn't belong to your church, does he?" I asked.
"No," Mrs. Drake replied. "Why?"
"Well, he has a fat contract for manufacturing cloth for prison
uniforms."
"J. H. Creet?" Oliver said, making a note. "A queer name. I never
heard of it."
Their interest in the matter was evident, but where did I come in?
Well--after all--publicity is a great thing. It must be the basis of
every reform. I had very little faith in any real good coming from such
a campaign, but at least it would call people's attention to the issue.
It was not to be despised. So I fell in with the scheme.
Several outsiders have complimented me on the newspaper noise we made,
supposing that I was the motive power of it. The praise belongs to
Oliver--and his wife. It was remarkable the skill with which they
handled it. It was amusing to watch the suave manoeuvres by which
Oliver always secured the top line. For a month he worked hard, put in
hours of real study. His great speech in Daly's was masterful. And then
things fizzled out. None of the bills got past a second reading.
At one of the last conferences I had with Oliver, he asked me why I did
not go to Tennessee and visit the Father.
"Why don't you have him come on here for a vacation?" I asked. "He
hasn't been in New York since before the war."
Oliver shrugged his shoulders.
"I make a point of going out to see him every two years--but he'd be out
of place here. The world has moved a lot since his day. He would not
understand. He's the type of the old school. Progress is heresy. Why
I'm sure he'd be shocked at my wearing a collar like this. He'd accuse
me of papacy. I always put on mufti when I visit him."
It was the patronizing superiority of his tone that angered me. I
realized suddenly how lonely the Father must be. I had always thought
of him as quite happy in having a son who had followed in his footsteps.
I am not sure but that with all my outspoken heresy, I was more of a
true son to him than Oliver. I resolved to go out to Tennessee at my
first opportunity.
I am half sorry I went. It was an unsuccessful visit. The barren little
mountain village had changed not at all in the years I had been away.
There were a few more battle monuments on the hillside and the people
still talked of little beside the war. The big parsonage beside the
barn-like church was just as I had left it. The Father's wants were
looked after by the numerous progeny of Barnabas, the negro body servant
who had followed him through the war.
I had been thrown out for my Godlessness and had been expected to go to
the dogs. It was something of an affront to the traditions that I had
not. To have written a book was a matter of fame in that little
village. I found that the Father with childlike pride had boasted far
and wide of my having been chosen as delegate to the prison congress at
Rome. It was not to be accounted for that instead of coming back as the
prodigal I should return as a "distinguished son." The minor prophets
of the place were disappointed in me.
Even the Father was bewildered. He came down to the gateway to meet
me--a fine old figure, leaning on his ebony cane, his undimmed eyes
shining from under his shaggy white eyebrows. He put his arm over my
shoulder as we walked back to the house, as though he was glad of
someone to lean upon. And all through supper he talked to me about my
father and mother. He told me again how my father had died bravely at
the head of a dare-devil sortie out of Nashville. And he told me with
great charm about the time when they had been children. We sat out on
the porch for a while and he went on with his reminiscencing. Then
suddenly he stopped.
"Oh," he said, "how I ramble. You will be wanting to go and call on
Margot."
It was like visiting the ghosts. Margot had aged more than any of my
generation. We were still under forty but her hair was quite gray. Her
face had lost its beauty--pinched out by her narrow, empty life. And yet
as she stood on the porch to greet me, as I came up the walk to her
house, there was much of the old charm about her. There are few women
like her nowadays. I knew many in my childhood--the real heroes of the
great war. The women who in the bitter days of reconstruction, bound up
the wounds of defeat, bore almost all the burdens and laid the
foundations of the new South. They were gracious women, in spite of
their arrogant pride in their breed. They knew how to suffer and smile.
We sat side by side on the porch--leagues and leagues apart. I found it
strangely hard to talk with her. She told, in her quiet colorless voice,
all her news. Her mother had died several years before. Al was married
and established in Memphis and so forth. Just as the supply of news ran
out, a rooster awoke from some bad dream and crowed sleepily.
"Margot," I said, "do you still steal eggs?"
"O Arnold," she laughed, "haven't you forgotten that? I have--almost.
A long time ago I paid mother back and I saved fifteen dollars out of my
allowance and sent it to the Presbyterian church."
I had always considered myself a fairly honest man, but it had never
occurred to me to make restitution for these childish thefts.
"It was awful," she went on, "why did we do it?"
"Margot," I said, "haven't you ever committed a worse sin than that?"
She fell suddenly serious. It was several minutes before she replied.
"Yes, Arnold, I've been discontented and rebellious."
I looked out at the village street, at the uninteresting houses, at the
glare of the "general store" where liquor was sold and where doubtless
Col. Jennings, illumined by the moonshine whiskey of our mountains, was
recounting to a bored audience of loafers some details of one of
Stonewall Jackson's charges. It was needless to ask what it was that
made her discontented, against what she had been rebellious. And the
deadly torpor of that village life seemed to settle about me like a
cloud of suffocating smoke. There sat beside me this fine spirited
woman--useless. Her glorious potentiality of motherhood unused.
Defrauded of her birth-right--wasted! I had an impulse to jump up and
shake my fist at it all. I wanted to tell her that her greatest sin had
been not to revolt more efficiently. But that would have been cruel now
that her hair was so gray.
"Do you know who has helped me most?" she asked. "Your uncle. He is a
saint, Arnold. We are great friends now. He came here one time when
father was sick. He has been a wonderful comfort to me. Sometimes I go
and call on him. He's very lonely. And he's such a gallant old
gentleman. When I see him drive by in his buckboard I always wave to
him and as soon as he's out of sight I go over to the house and scold
the niggers. They would never do any work if somebody did not fuss
them. And you know it makes me more contented to watch him. I say to
myself that if such a wonderful man, so wise and learned can find plenty
to do to serve the Master in this little village there must be quite
enough for just a woman like me. There's a heap of comfort in that
thought. But sometimes I read some story or think about you all out in
the big world and it seems very small here--and lonely."
There was nothing I could think to say, so again we were silent.
"Arnold," she said suddenly. "Do you ever read King Arthur stories any
more?"
"Whenever I get five minutes," I replied. "The people I live with have
a little girl--Marie. I'm teaching them to her."
"I'm so glad--and Froissart?"
She went into the house and brought out the old soiled volume. We
looked through it together and then she said that perhaps I would want
to take it East for Marie. But I had a feeling that she wished to keep
it. So I said Marie was too young for Froissart yet. Once more we fell
silent. I remember the open book on her thin knees, her thin
aristocratic hand between the pages, the profile of her face.
Lamp-light shone out through the window upon her and she looked almost
beautiful again.
I am never sure of what is in a woman's heart. But I could not explain
the constraint upon us except that perhaps she had always been waiting
for my homecoming, still nourishing in her heart our childish
love--still hoping. But there was nothing to hope. It was not in her
power to conceive what I was. I was battered and scarred by fights she
had never imagined, disillusioned of dreams she had never dreamed. I
had left the village years ago--irrevocably. She would have been
utterly lost in my world. At last, rather mournfully, I said "good
night."
The next day the Father was on the porch when I came down. He greeted
me with a sort of wistful expectancy in his eyes. And my cordial "good
morning" did not seem to satisfy him. I did not understand until at
breakfast.
"My son," he said, "I have often wished--it would have made me very
happy--if you had married Margot." So he at least had hoped that this
would be the result of my home-coming.
"She's a rare girl," he said, "a fine spirit. A good wife is a great
help to a man in leading an upright life. A pillar of strength."
"The fates have denied me that help," I said. And I did not realize
till too late the pagan form I had given my words.
But the match had been lighted. The Father did not believe that any
good could come to a man except from the religion of Christ. Try as
hard as I might I could not prevent the conversation from taking that
turn. If he had loved me less we might have been better friends. But
the only thing which mattered to him was the salvation of souls. And in
proportion to his love for me he must needs seek my conversion. On the
one point where we could not agree, his very affection made him
insistent.
We both tried very hard to be sweet tempered about it. But I was in a
difficult position. If I did not try to answer his arguments he thought
I was convinced but unwilling to admit it. If I argued, it angered him.
He would lose his temper and then be very apologetic about it. For an
hour or so we would talk pleasantly of other things. Then inevitably
the conversation would swing back to the subject he cared most about.
After supper he at last brought things to a pass from which there was
but one escape.
"My son," he said, "the day after to-morrow is the first Sunday in the
month--Communion Sunday. You are still a member of my church, you have
never asked to be relieved of the solemn responsibilities you took when
you united with us. Will you join the rest of the members at the
communion table?"
"I'm sorry, Father," I said, my heart suddenly hardening at the memory
of the way I had been pushed into church membership. "I'll have to
leave to-morrow night. I must be back at work early next week."
I had expected to stay longer. But for me to have gone to church and
refused communion, would have been almost an insult to him. To have
pretended to a faith I did not have, seemed to me a worse sort of a lie
than the one I used. And so--having been home but two nights--I
returned to the city and work.
*IX*
Except for my vacations, I have missed very few working days in the
Tombs since. And as the months have slipped along I have added steadily
to my writings on criminology. To some it might seem a dreary life. It
has not been so. There have been compensations.
The chief one has been the pleasant home in the Teepee. It would be
easy to fill pages about it. But those who have been part of a loving
family will know what I mean without my writing it. And it is past my
power to paint it for those who have not shared it.
I recall especially the Christmas Eve when Marie was nine years old.
Norman was at work at the table. Marie sat on my knee telling me some
wonderful story. Nina came in from the kitchen where she and Guiseppe
were concocting the morrow's feast. She sat down on the arm of my chair
and said she had a secret to whisper in my ear. Norman looked up from
his work and smiled.
"It's the one thing which has troubled her," he said. "Not having done
her duty by the birth-rate but once."
The startled wonder came back again to Nina's eyes in those days. Even
little Marie felt the "presence" among us and was awed.
But the fates had one more blow reserved for me. The year was just
turning into spring when it fell. One morning at the Tombs, a court
attendant called me to the telephone. It was Nina. Norman, she said in
a frightened voice, was very sick. He had complained the day before of
a cold and had gone to bed in the afternoon. I had not seen him that
morning. When I reached the Teepee, he was delirious, in a high fever.
We had no regular doctor, so I called up Ann on the telephone.
"It looks to me like pneumonia," I told her. "Can you send us a good
doctor and a nurse?"
Within half an hour Ann had come herself with one of the city's most
famous doctors.
Nina would not leave the bed-side. I waited for news in the library.
It reminded me of the time, years before, when I had waited for a
verdict on my eyes. I do not suppose that there are many friendships as
ours had been. It is hard to believe that such relationships can be
anything but permanent. It seemed impossible that I could lose Norman.
But Ann made no pretense of hope. There was almost no chance she said.
She telephoned out to her mother that she would be kept in town, and
went back to the sickroom.
All the afternoon and all night long they fought it out. Sometimes when
the suspense was too great I would go to the door. Nina sat with
staring eyes at the head of the bed. Ann and the doctor were busy with
ice-presses. At night-fall I gave Marie her supper and put her to bed
in my room. She had become suddenly frightened and I sat beside her a
long time, comforting her with stories of the Round Table, until at last
she fell asleep.
Norman slept a little, but most of the time, tossed about
deliriously--calling out to someone who was not there. "Oh Louise!" he
would moan, "How can you believe that about me? I'm not spotless--but
that isn't true. Don't think that of me. It's too cruel." But he got
no comfort. The woman of his delirium was obdurate.
The dawn was just breaking when Ann came and told me he was conscious.
It was the end. Nina was kneeling beside him weeping silently. He
smiled at me and tried to hold out his hand, but he was too weak.
"It's as though they had let me come back to say 'goodbye,'" he
whispered. "Be good to them, Arnold--to Nina and Marie and the one
that's coming. She's a good girl...." A look of wonder came into his
eyes, with his last strength he stroked her hair.
"It's funny. I thought she was--just a toy--but she's got a soul,
Arnold. Don't forget that, old man. Promise me"--I gripped his
hand--"Oh yes. I know you'll be good to her. I know--that's all right.
Poor little girl. I wish she wouldn't cry so.--I'd like to kiss her
once more"--Ann lifted her up so that he might kiss her. "There!
There! Little one. You mustn't cry. It's not so bad as all that.
Arnold'll take care of you. Good luck--all of you. Don't be afraid....
I'm...."
It was a queer funeral. Some of his relatives, who had cut him since
his marriage, came. It was on a Sunday so the Studenten Verein could
turn out. Mrs. O'Hara, whose coal he had bought for seven years, came
with her eight children. So did our washerwoman, Frau Zimmer, with her
epileptic son. Guiseppe rode in the front carriage with Nina, Marie and
I, and cried more than any of us. The Studenten Maenner Chor sang a
dirge. In the motley crowd I saw a man in the costume of an
Episcopalian clergyman. As they were dispersing, he came up to me.
"I am unknown to you, sir," he said, "I want to tell you that I believe
in immortality--and that I am sure your friend is sitting on the
right-hand of our Heavenly Father. I hope to be worthy to meet him
again. He was so good that I am surprised that he escaped crucifixion.
I am only one of many whom he pulled out of hell. I can not...."
He burst into tears and disappeared into the crowd. Somehow, out of all
the tributes to Norman which poured in on me in those days, the
incoherent words of this unknown clergyman touched me most. What his
story was, how Norman had helped him, I have no idea.
When we got back to the Teepee, we found Ann there, she had put things
in order for us. She took Nina to bed and gave her something to make
her sleep. Then she joined me in the library. She picked up her hat to
go away, but I detained her. And so we sat together through the
afternoon. As I remember we talked very little--except for some
directions she gave me about Nina's health. At twilight Guiseppe came
in with Marie, whom he had taken for a walk in the park. We all had
supper together. Ann helped me put Marie to bed and then she went away.
It was very comforting, having just lost one friend, to refind another.
There has been no ripple of estrangement between us since. Our love
relation has been the anchor--the steadfast thing--of my later life.
Norman's will left a comfortable annuity to Nina and the children, the
rest went into his educational endowment. I am a trustee of both sums.
I think they have both been administered as he would have wished.
The baby was a boy. Nina told me that long before its father died, they
had arranged, if it was a boy, to name it after me. I would have
preferred to have called it Norman. One evening, as I was writing in
the library, I glanced up from my paper. Nina was nursing the
youngster, there were tears on her cheeks.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Oh! I wish he could have lived to see the man-child. Sometimes I was
afraid he might grow tired of me. But he would have loved his
son--always. I wish he could have seen him."
But I wish that Norman could have lived to see Nina. I had always a
feeling that he did not entirely appreciate her. She has developed
greatly since his death. Not long afterwards I began to notice long and
serious Italian conversations between her and Guiseppe. And I asked him
one day, jokingly, what they found to talk about so earnestly.
"I am teaching her, Mister Arnold, how to be a lady. Now that their
father, who was a gentleman, is dead, it is necessary that the mother of
the children should be a lady."
Guiseppe is too much of a Republican and Nina too little of a snob for
these words to have anything but the noblest meanings.
"It is difficult for a simple man like me," he went on. "But have I not
been a soldier of liberty on two continents? I have seen many fine
ladies and I tell her about them. And also I have read books."
Nina as well has taken to reading. Painfully she has recalled the
lessons of her brief school days. Of course I have helped her all I
could. She has taken the responsibilities of motherhood in a way she
would scarcely have done if Norman had lived.
It was perhaps a year after his death, that I came home one evening and
found Nina in a great flurry. On tiptoe, her finger on her lips, she led
me into the library and closed the door.
"Oh! my friend," she said, "you will not be angry? There's a woman in my
room. Such a sad old woman. She is very drunk. I found her
downstairs--in the hallway. There were boys teasing her. At first I
was frightened and ran upstairs. Then I remembered how he would never
leave anyone so. I brought her up to my room. You will not be angry?"
She has turned the Teepee into an informal sort of a rescue mission. I
never know whom I will find in my favorite chair. Sometimes they have
delirium tremens and shriek all night. At first I was worried about the
effect on the children. But Nina and Ann said it would do them no harm.
I cannot see that it has. One thing about it has impressed me immensely.
It has often happened in my work that I have brought home a boy or a man
from the Tombs and let them sleep on the divan till some better place
was found for them. Not infrequently these guests have departed without
formalities, taking as mementoes any silver spoons they found at hand.
Not one of Nina's women have stolen anything. It passes my
understanding.
Nina has a great admiration for Ann, but does not understand her at all.
She cannot conceive of the reasons why Ann refuses to get married. It
is a thing to philosophize about, the attitude of these two women
towards matrimony. They are both good women, yet to one marriage seems
a degradation and serfdom, to the other marriage meant escape from the
mire, emancipation from the most abysmal slavery the world has ever
known. Watching them has helped me understand many of life's endless
paradoxes.
The only new thing which has come into my life since Norman's death has
been the children. I am legal guardian for Nina's two. And several
years ago, when Billy--Ann's nephew--grew to high school age, she turned
him over to me, fearing that all-woman household might not be the best
place for a growing boy. So he came to the Teepee, going to school in
the city, spending only his week-ends at Cromley.
My work in the Tombs goes on as ever. A new prison has been built, with
cleaner corridors, roomier cells, sanitary plumbing and so forth. But
the old tragedy goes on just the same. My title has been changed from
county detective to probation officer, and I have been given some
assistants. Certainly there has been improvement. The rougher edges of
justice have been worn off. But the bandage is still over the eyes of
the goddess. The names of the judges have changed, but the inherent
viciousness of their situation is unaltered. There is now, just as when
I started, ten times as much work as I can do to even alleviate the
manifold cruelties of the place. It is still--in spite of the new
building--called the Tombs.
And Suzanne? If anyone should ask me what has become of her, I would
have to reply by a question--"Which Suzanne?" I have seen very little
of the one who came back to America. Once or twice I have encountered
her in public meetings. Three years after I came back from Europe, I
received her wedding cards--an architect named Stone. I knew him
slightly. He seems to be very much in love with his wife. One comes
across their names in the papers quite frequently. They are active
socialists. But Mrs. Stone is a strange and rather unreal personality
to me.
But there is the other Suzanne, her of the slim, boyish form, who tried
to learn to throw stones like a man and was vexed when I laughed at her,
the Suzanne who loved the poppies, the Suzanne of our earnest
discussions, the Suzanne who was a prophetess, the enthusiastic apostle
of the new faith, who like Deborah of old, sang songs of the great
awakening to come, and the Suzanne of Moret--whom I loved. She still
lives. I cannot see that the passing years have in any way dimmed the
vision. Mrs. Stone is getting matronly, her hair is losing its luster.
Suzanne is still straight and slender. There are moments when she comes
to me out of the mystery of dreams and, sitting on the floor, rests her
head--her fearless head--on my knees. I run my fingers through her
amazing hair and try to capture the fitful light of the fire, which
glows there, now so golden, now so red.... And as the dream is sweet,
so is the awakening bitter.
*BOOK VII*
I come now to the last section of my book. There can be no doubt that
it must be about the children.
As I get older, in spite of my best intentions, the work in the Tombs
grows mechanical. Each new prisoner has of course his individual
peculiarities, but I find myself frequently saying: "It's like a case I
had back in 1900." And it is the same with my writing. It is mostly a
re-statement--I hope a continually better and more forceful
statement--of conclusions I have held for many years.
The light of these later yeans has been my vicarious parentage--these
three young adventurers who call me, "Daddy." I suppose I look at them
with an indulgent eye, magnifying their virtues, ignoring their
limitations. But they seem very wonderful to me. Thinking of them,
watching them, make me sympathize with Moses on Nebo's lonely mountain.
Through them I catch glimpses of a fairer land than I have known, which
I win never enter.
On his eighteenth birthday, Billy asked me why I was not a socialist. I
knew he was leaning that way. He is an artist. Ann wanted him to go to
college, but he broke away to the classes at Cooper Union. Now at
twenty-four he is bringing home prizes and gold medals which he pretends
to despise. Many of his artist chums are socialists. I tried to get
him into an argument on the subject, but, as is his way, he would not
argue. He would only ask me questions. What did I think about this?
What did I think about that?
About a week later at breakfast; he handed me a little red card, which
was his certificate of membership in the party.
"You can't join till you're eighteen," he said. "You see, Daddy, I
don't think a chap can ever paint anything, do anything worth while in
art, unless he believes in something besides himself--something bigger.
I don't know anything bigger than this faith in the people."
He had a pretty bad time of it the next Sunday at Cromley. His
grandmother is such a seasoned warrior for anarchism, that she has as
little tolerance for socialists as our "best people" would have for her.
Ann was neutral, for she holds that what one believes matters not half
so much as the way one believes it. And I would do nothing to dampen the
youngster's ardor. It is amazing to me. He has the faith to look at
our state legislature and believe in democracy, to look at the Tombs and
believe in justice.
In fact I have sometimes thought of joining his party. I would like to
enter as closely into his life as possible. But all this talk of
revolution repulses me. It is the impatience of youth. The world does
not move fast enough for them--they forget that it moves at all. But it
has spun a long, long way even in my life.
I recall our fight for a reformatory. It ended in fiasco. But it was
only the beginning of a movement. Baldwin was a man who held on. Before
long he had persuaded a western state to try his scheme. To-day there
are more than thirty of our states with reformatories for boys. The
later ones, better than Baldwin's dream. And then this probation
system. It is the biggest blow ever dealt to the old idea of the Tombs.
Of course it is having growing pains. The special advocates of the
system are distressed because of the hundreds of probation officers only
a few are efficient. Give it time.
And of broader import is the awakening of democracy in the land. It
will take a generation or more before historians can properly adjudge
this movement. To-day we see only sporadic demonstrations of it,
speeches here and there, in favor of referendum and so forth. The real
issue often veiled by the personalities of candidates. The noise is
only the effervescence of a great idea, a great aspiration, which is
taking form in the mind of the nation.
The country is ten times as thoughtful about social problems as it was
when my generation began. Recently the legislature made an
appropriation to give me a new assistant in the Tombs. I wrote to
several colleges and a dozen men applied for the job. I could take my
pick. Twelve men out of one year's college crop! I was a pioneer.
And young Fletcher, the man I chose, asked me the other day, what I
thought of Devine's book, "The Causes of Misery." He is beginning work
on the basis of that book. And Devine speaks of "The Abolition of
Poverty" as if it was a commonplace. No one dared to dream that poverty
could be abolished when I was a young man. We thought it was an
indivisible part of civilization. I remember when I first heard Jacob
Riis talk of abolishing the slums! I thought he was a dreamer. The
tenement house department reports that a million new homes have been
built in the city--under the new law--with no dark rooms. And the
abolition of tuberculosis! Why I can remember a cholera epidemic!
These young socialists do not realize what we have done.
Last summer I took Nina and Marie and young Arnold, he is ten now, down
on the Maine coast to an island where Billy and some of his artist
friends have a camp. As I mingled with this colony of ardent young
people, in spite of the sympathy, which real friendship with Billy has
given me for them, I felt like a stranger. I am sure they think I am an
old fogey. My mind kept jumping back to my own youth, comparing them
with what I had been at their age. In so many ways they were better men
than I was, better equipped for life.
I remember especially one conversation with Billy. He had just finished
a canvas as the twilight was falling. I think it is the finest thing he
has done yet. There is a stretch of surf in the foreground and beyond
the islands rise higher and higher to the peak of Mount Desert. I
cannot describe it beyond these barren details. Somehow he has
accentuated the rising upward lines, by some magic of his color he has
infused the thing with immense emotion.
"What are you going to call it?" I asked as he was putting up his tubes.
"It hasn't any name," he said. "It's just a feeling I get sometimes--up
here with the sea and the mountains." He pondered it a moment, seeking
words. He is not a ready talker. "I think it's one of the psalms," he
said at last, "you know the one that begins: 'I will lift up mine eyes
unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.' It's sort of
religious--being all by one's self and looking up."
"What is your religion, Billy?" I asked.
He sat silent, stopped arranging his brushes and looked off at the last
of the sunlight on the summit of the mountain.
"Have you got one?" I persisted.
"Oh, yes," he said quickly. "Yes--at least sometimes it comes to me.
There are days on end when it doesn't come--barren days. And then again
it comes very strong. I haven't any name for it. I think the trouble
with most religions is that people try to define them. It doesn't seem
to fit into words."
Again he was busy with his kit. But when everything was ready, instead
of starting home, he sat down again.
"It's funny," he said, "I'm quite sure you can't talk about religion
satisfactorily. But we all want to. And as soon as you try to put it
into words some of it escapes--the best part of it. I think that's why
painting appeals to me. You can say things with colors you can't with
words.
"You remember those reproductions, I showed you, of Felicien Rops, the
Belgium etcher. You didn't like them. I don't either. He's
wonderfully clever--My God! I wish I could draw like that man--but I
don't think it's art. I don't think he ever looked upward--lifted up
his eyes to the hills. I guess my religion is just that indescribable
something which changes craftsmanship into art. I want to draw well, I
want my color to be right, I want technique--all I can get of it. But
even if I was perfect in all these, I would have to lift up my eyes unto
the hills for help before I could do the real thing--the thing I want to
do."
"And when you lift up your eyes, Billy," I asked, "who is it that gives
you help?"
He spoke rather reluctantly after a moment's pause.
"That's the trouble with talking religion. You get mixed up between the
figurative and the literal. Does it really matter Who--or Where? I
don't think of any person up there in the afterglow on the mountain top.
There doesn't have to be any hills even. Sometimes I get 'help' in my
studio--with nothing to look up to but the white-washed lights and the
rafters.
"We all need 'help' and when we get it--we've 'got religion.' It's all
so vague that we have to use symbols. One person has associated 'help'
with high mass and choir boys and tawdry images. Another gets his
connection by listening to a village quartet murder 'Nearer my God to
Thee.' When Nelson was over illustrating that book on Egypt he learned
the Mohammedan 'Call to Prayer.' It's a weird sing-song thing. There
are millions of people who, when they hear that, get the feeling that
they need 'help' and chase round to the Mosque. I haven't found
anything more suggestive than those words of King David.
"Sometimes my pictures are rotten and I sign them 'William Barton.'
Once in a long while I paint one that is better,--better than my brush
tricks, better than my technique, better than just me--and I always put
a little star after my name. It means 'this picture was painted by
William Barton and God.' That's my religion."
"It's all summed up in that old Jewish song--'I will lift up mine eyes
unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.' Do you know it?"
Yes. I knew it. I sat in the Father's study, all one fine afternoon,
when the other boys were playing ball, and learned that song by rote, in
punishment for upsetting his inkwell. It seems very wonderful to me
that the Bible should seem a thing of beauty to a youngster. It was at
best an unpleasant piece of drudgery for me--more often a form of
chastisement. What stirs the deepest emotions in Billy's heart, only
reminds me of a blot of ink on the Father's desk and the shouts of the
boys out in the street whom I might not join.
I had been suspecting for some time that although Billy and Marie both
call me "Daddy," they were coming to realize that they are not brother
and sister. My suspicions were confirmed the other day by Nina. She
asked me solemnly what I thought of Billy. And when I declared that he
was the straightest, cleanest, finest youngster I knew, she said.
"Perhaps. But he is not as fine as Norman was."
I said that God had apparently mislaid the mold in which He had cast
Norman.
"I wish that Marie could have as good a husband as I did--she's a better
girl."
Nina has immense respect for her daughter. And Marie deserves it. A
habit of philosophizing forces me to realize that the greatest part of
the world has failed to appreciate, has in fact utterly ignored the
existence of, this marvelous foster daughter of mine. There are,
doubtless, many parents who even if they had had the good fortune to
know Marie would stubbornly prefer their own daughters. But if I were
twenty years younger, I would certainly enter the race against Billy.
She gets her looks from her mother--pure Lombard--but she has inherited
Norman's irreverent, incisive vision and his tricks of speech. She
decided to follow her father's chief interest and now, at nineteen, is
attending a kindergarten normal school.
But the thing, for which I give Marie my highest reverence is her
attitude to her mother. She knows the truth. I found that they had
talked this over before Norman died. It was his wish that she should
not be told by strangers. And so nothing was hidden from her, no
questions were evaded and she grew into the knowledge of her mother's
story, with as little shock as she learned the multiplication table. It
is very sweet to watch them together, this quiet, sad eyed old woman,
who can write with difficulty and this superbly modern girl, who has had
every advantage of education. Marie has sense enough to know that very,
very few people have been blest with finer mothers.
A few nights after this talk with Nina, I found Marie alone in the
library reading a red paper covered book by Earl Krautsky--"The Road to
Power." Across the corner, in his big, boyish handwriting, was
scrawled, "William Barton."
"Marionette," I said, thinking of what her mother had said, "Do you
believe in free love?"
"Not for a minute," she snapped, "it's just another of your man tricks
to get the better of your superiors."
Marie is a suffragette. But her jibe at me did not satisfy her. The
thing was evidently on her mind. She came over and sat on the arm of my
chair.
"Don't laugh at me, Daddy. It's so serious. I think it's all wrapped
up in the big woman question. How can there be any real freedom except
among equals? In the bottom of my heart I think it is a beautiful ideal.
If I were in love with a man, I'd just want to be with him. It seems a
little degrading to take a justice of the peace into one's confidence in
so private a matter. I would feel ashamed to tell a stranger I was
going to love my sweetheart. And in a sense I like the idea of freedom.
It would be horrible to have my husband kiss me because it was the law;
because he'd promised to--if he didn't really want to.
"But that's only a private personal view of it. It doesn't seem to me
the important thing, what the politicians call 'the main issue.' This
trying to be individually free, this fussing over individual rights,
seems sort of early Victorian...."
"What," I interrupted, "you wouldn't call Ann--one of the first women to
win distinction in a profession--you wouldn't call her Early Victorian?"
"Well. I don't mean Ann. She's an exception. No, she isn't either. I
mean her, too. Nowadays we think of things socially. It doesn't matter
so much whether I'm free, whether I get justice, it's the others--the
race--we must work for. Ann's wonderful. You know how much I love her.
But she don't look at things the way we do.
"We must think not only of the few women, here and there, the giants
like Ann, who are strong enough to stand alone, but of all the
women--and the children. That's just the point. We're trying to learn
how not to stand alone--how to stand together. We've got to ignore our
own preferences and rights and learn to fight for woman's rights.
"Doesn't most of the prostitution come from the free love of weak girls?
Even when the cadets go after them just to make money, isn't it love on
the girl's part? What they think is love? We must fight and fight and
fight to make women realize that they mustn't love just for themselves.
That it isn't right towards the race for them to love blindly--that it's
a sin, a social sin, for us to love until we're sure of ourselves, sure
of the man, sure for the children. It's a sin for a woman to sacrifice
herself to a man just because she loves him--a sin even to take risks.
"Somehow, until we've won freedom and equality and independence, we've
got to insist on guarantees. I don't see how we can get them except
through laws, through old-fashioned marriages. We women who are
stronger, and better educated and able to support ourselves and
children, we must always think of the others who are less fortunate.
And as long as you men take advantage of any of our sisters, we won't
listen to your free love talk. So there!"
"Daddy," she said after she had rested her cheek against mine for a
while. "I'll tell you a secret. Ssh! Don't you ever breathe it! Do
you know whom we suffragists have to fight? It's women! If it was only
you men, we'd have won long ago. It isn't the men who enslave us. It's
tradition and habit. Long training had made us selfish--divided--weak.
"Just take the worst case. It's mother's story all over again--all the
time. She tried to get away. Half a dozen men, instinctively, acted
together, for their common interest--and were strong. They didn't
reason it out. Blackie did not have to say to them, you help me beat my
girl, and I'll help you beat yours and so we'll keep them all scared.
It's a long inherited tradition with men to act together like that,
second nature--almost an instinct. But when a cadet beats a girl, do
the other girls rush together like that and fight for their common
interest? No. Each one for herself sneaks off and tries to placate her
man. It's just the same with 'respectable' people. If a woman tries to
be free, the men are all against her with their legislatures and courts
and all that. Do the other women stand together to help her? Oh, no.
They cut her. Just like the prostitutes, they try to ingratiate
themselves with their husbands by spitting at the one who tried to be
free.
"If we women were only civilized enough really to co-operate, to stick
together, shoulder to shoulder--oh, we'd put you men in your place quick
enough. Individualism, trying to stand alone, is the worst enemy women
can have to-day. We've got to learn how to use our united strength.
"And we are learning--too. Remember that big shirtwaist strike? It was
wonderful the way the girls stuck together. I don't believe that any
time before in the history of this old world women have stood by each
other like that--with such loyalty. A lot of your stupid men-papers,
had editorials wondering why up-town society women took so much interest
in the strike. Why, even the rich suffragists have sense enough to know
that solidarity is ten times more important than the vote. If you men
only give us a long, hard fight for it, make us throw stones and slap
policemen and go to jail and all that, we'll learn this lesson of
standing together and then we'll know how to use the franchise when we
get it. Oh! The time is coming, Daddy. Watch out."
"I'm not frightened." I said, "If I was as near to thirty as I am to
fifty, I guess I would be an enthusiastic suffragetter. Anything you
wanted would look good to me. Do you think I would have had any chance
if I had encountered you when I was young enough to be your lover?"
"I wonder what you were like, Daddy, twenty years ago--just when I WAS
beginning. Oh, I guess I would have liked you. But even if I did, I
would have sent a lawyer to you with a long contract, specifying my
various and sundry privileges and your corresponding duties. Then I
would have led you down to the City Hall and made you sign each and
every article with a big oath. How would you have liked that?"
"I'd have submitted joyfully."
Her arm tightened about my neck.
"And do you know what I would have done then, Daddy?" she asked after a
moment's silence. "I guess--just as soon as we were alone--I'd have
torn up that contract into little pieces. And I'd have said, 'Oh, My
Lord and Master, be humble to me in public, for the sake of all my poor
sisters who are afraid--but here in private, please, trample on me some.
And oh! if you love me--make me darn your socks.'
"Oh Daddy, that's the heart-break of it all"--there was a catch in her
voice--"That's what's hard. We know that we must fight for our freedom
and equality--for the other women's sake. And all the while--if we are
in love--what our heart cries out for is a ruler. We want to serve."
I think when I get a chance I will tell Billy to show his muscle now and
then.
So this is where I am today. My experiment in ethics? It has failed.
I can no more surely distinguish right from wrong today, than when I was
a boy in school.
My best efforts landed Jerry--innocent--in prison. The one time when I
violated every rule I had laid down for my guidance in the Tombs, when I
lied profusely, played dirty politics, compounded a felony, and went on
a man-hunt, with hate in my heart, I disposed of the pimp Blackie, freed
Nina, gave happiness to Norman. Marie is the result.
Certainly one of the best things in my life has been Ann's love. It
came to me without any striving on my part, it has been in no way a
reward for effort or aspiration. Step by step it has seemed to me
wrong. I do not believe in free love. I cannot justify it any more
than I could stealing eggs when I was a boy. It was something I wanted
and which I took. Yet I am quite sure it has been good.
On the other hand, the time when I strove hardest to reach a higher
plane, when I was most anxious to be upright and honorable, those days I
spent in France with Suzanne, resulted in the most bitter pain, the most
dismal failure of my life. This is not a little thing to me, even after
all these years. The days come when I must open my trunk, take out her
rucksac and the map--the only mementos I have of her--they are days of
anguish. Why should it not have been? My life seems bitter and of
small worth when I think of what it might have been with her.
I am as much at a loss today in regard to moral values as I ever was. I
have little hope left of succeeding in my experiment. This is the sad
thing. The good fight has been a long one. From the continued
campaigning, I am prematurely spent. Under fifty, I am prematurely old.
The _elan_ of youth is gone.
At the Hotel des Invalides in Paris they tell the story of a war-scarred
crippled veteran of the Napoleonic wars. His breast was covered with
service medals. At one of the annual inspections a young commander
complimented on his many decorations. "My General," the old soldier
replied, "I can no longer carry a musket, it would have been better to
have died gloriously at Austerlitz."
I am far from the sad pass of this decrepit veteran, yet his story
touches me nearly. The best days have flown. I have lived intensely.
Into each combat whether the insignificant skirmish of my daily work, or
the more decisive battles--I have thrown myself with spendthrift energy.
I do not regret this attitude towards life. I am glad I met its
problems face to face--with passionate endeavor. But the price must be
paid. Nowadays I have little ardor left. The youthful questing spirit
is gone--and I have not found the Holy Grail.
Perhaps these young people are right. I may have started wrong--in
trying to find the truth for myself alone. Perhaps there are no
individualistic ethics. They may find the answer expressed in social
terms. Perhaps. But I have no energy left to begin the experiment
again.
But once more I must repeat, I do not regret my manner of life. We are
offered but two choices; to accept things as they are or to strive
passionately for new and better forms. Defeat is not shameful. But
supine complaisance surely is.
Out of the lives of all my generation a little increment of wisdom has
come to the race. Neither the renaissance, nor the reformation seem to
me as fundamental changes as we have wrought. We have made the nation
suddenly conscious of itself. We have not cured its ills, but at least
we have made great strides in diagnosis. And my experiment--in its
tiny, coral-insect way--has been an integral part in this increment of
wisdom.
I am more optimistic today than ever before. And if I wish to live
on--as I surely do--it is to watch these youngsters in their struggle
for the better form. How much better equipped they are than we were,
how much clearer they see!
I think of myself as I left college--so afraid of life that I was glad
to find shelter among old books. I recall how strange seemed that first
dinner in the Children's House with Norman. And then I think of Billy.
Why! The knowledge of life those pioneer settlement workers were just
beginning to discover are conversational commonplaces among Billy's
friends. The abolition of poverty!
The vision comes to me of Margot, delicate, fragile, ignorant--too
ignorant to be afraid. All the wisdom of the ages--past and
future--seemed to her to be bound up in the King James version. I
compare her with Marie. She is as strong as a peasant girl. I have
given up playing tennis with her, she beats me too easily. And the
certain, fearless way she looks out at life takes my breath, leaves me
panting just as her dashing net play does. She speaks of Ann as early
Victorian, she would I fear place Margot as Elizabethan.
Most wonderful of all, these youngsters have never had to fight with
God, never had to tear themselves to pieces escaping from the deadly
formalism and tyranny of Church Dogma. They never had to call
themselves Atheists.
And then I think of how Billy and Marie are facing this biggest problem
of all--this business of love. They will have their squalls no doubt
and run into shoal water perhaps. But they are not blindfolded as I
was, as Norman was--as all my generation was. Pure luck was all that
could save us. They are steering--not drifting.
Yes. My story is ended. The old troupe has been crowded off the stage.
There would be little interest in writing of the work left me--brushing
the wigs of the leading man, packing the star's trunk,--pushing the swan
for Lohengrin, currying the horses of the Walkyrie--it will all be
behind the scene.
And how I envy them their faith!
Ave--Juventas--morituri salutamus!
* * * * * * * *
*The following pages contain advertisements of a few
of the Macmillan novels.*
*The Friar of Wittenberg*
BY WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS, author of "A Friend of Caesar," "God Wills
it."
In the character of Martin Luther, William Stearns Davis has found
admirable material around which to build an historical novel of more
than ordinary importance. He has succeeded above all else in making the
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the Friar of Wittenberg was so powerful a leader.
"In the tale the stirring episodes in which Luther played a part are
invested with so much reality that one may clearly visualize the
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Pa_.
"The story includes scenes and events so compelling and thrilling as to
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Francisco Chronicle_.
"'The Friar of Wittenberg' is written with power and earnest intention,
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* * * * *
*MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S NOVELS*
*The Choir Invisible*
*The Reign Of Law -- A Tale of the Kentucky Hempfields*
*The Mettle of the Pasture*
*Summer in Arcady -- A Tale of Nature*
*MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S SHORTER STORIES*
*The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky*
*Flute and Violin and other Kentucky Tales and Romances*
*A Kentucky Cardinal*
*Aftermath -- A Sequel to "A Kentucky Cardinal"*
*A Kentucky Cardinal and Aftermath*
*Two Gentlemen of Kentucky*
*MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S*
*The Doctor's Christmas Eve*
* * * * *
_*New Fiction*_
*The Man in the Shadow*