To
MILDRED SISSON
*THE RESTLESS SEX*
*PREFACE*
Created complete, equipped for sporadic multiplication and later for
auto-fertilization, the restless sex, intensely bored by the process of
procreation, presently invented an auxiliary and labeled him [male
symbol].
A fool proceeding, for the inherited mania for invention obsessed him
and he began to invent gods. The only kind of gods that his imagination
could conceive were various varieties of supermen, stronger, more cruel,
craftier than he. And with these he continued to derive satisfaction by
scaring himself.
But the restless sex remained restless; the invention of the sign of
Mars ([Mars symbol]), far from bringing content, merely increased the
capacity of the sex for fidgeting. And its insatiate curiosity
concerning its own handiwork increased.
This handiwork, however, fulfilled rather casually the purpose of its
inventor, and devoted the most of its time to the invention of gods,
endowing the most powerful of them with all its own cowardice, vanity,
intolerance and ferocity.
"He made us," they explained with a modesty attributable only to
forgetfulness.
"Believe in him or he'll damn you. And if he doesn't, we will!" they
shouted to one another. And appointed representatives of various
denominations to deal exclusively in damnation.
Cede Deo! And so, in conformity with the edict of this man-created
creator, about a decade before the Great Administration began, a little
girl was born.
She should not have been born, because she was not wanted, being merely
the by-product of an itinerant actor--Harry Quest, juveniles--stimulated
to casual procreation by idleness, whiskey, and phthisis.
The other partner in this shiftless affair was an uneducated and very
young girl named Conway, who tinted photographs for a Utica photographer
while daylight lasted, and doubled her small salary by doing fancy
skating at a local "Ice Palace" in the evenings. So it is very plain
that the by-product of this partnership hadn't much chance in the world
which awaited her; for, being neither expected nor desired, and,
moreover, being already a prenatal heiress to obscure, unknown traits
scarcely as yet even developed in the pair responsible for her advent on
earth, what she might turn into must remain a problem to be solved by
time alone.
Harry Quest, the father of this unborn baby, was an actor. Without
marked talent and totally without morals, but well educated and of
agreeable manners, he was a natural born swindler, not only of others
but of himself. In other words, an optimist.
His father, the Reverend Anthony Quest, retired, was celebrated for his
wealth, his library, and his amazing and heartless parsimony. And his
morals. No wonder he had grimly kicked out his only son who had none.
The parents of the mother of this little child not yet born, lived in
Utica, over a stationery and toy shop which they kept. Patrick Conway
was the man's name. He had a pension for being injured on the railway,
and sat in a peculiarly constructed wheeled chair, moving himself about
by pushing the rubber-tired wheels with both hands and steering with his
remaining foot.
He had married a woman rather older than himself, named Jessie Grismer,
a school teacher living in Herkimer.
To Utica drifted young Quest, equipped only with the remains of one
lung, and out of a job as usual. At the local rink he picked up Laura
Conway, after a mindless flirtation, and ultimately went to board with
her family over the stationery shop.
So the affair in question was a case of propinquity as much as anything,
and was consummated with all the detached irresponsibility of two
sparrows.
However, Quest, willing now to be supported, married the girl without
protest. She continued to tint photographs and skate as long as she was
able to be about; he loafed in front of theatres and hotels, with a
quarter in change in his pockets, but always came back to meals. On
sunny afternoons, when he felt well, he strolled about the residence
section or reposed in his room waiting, probably, for Opportunity to
knock and enter.
But nothing came except the baby.
About that time, too, both lungs being in bad condition, young Quest
began those various and exhaustive experiments in narcotics, which
sooner or later interest such men. And he finally discovered heroin.
Finding it an agreeable road to hell, the symptomatic characteristics of
an addict presently began to develop in him, and he induced his young
wife to share the pleasures of his pharmaceutical discovery.
They and their baby continued to encumber the apartment for a year or
two before the old people died--of weariness perhaps, perhaps of old
age--or grief--or some similar disease so fatal to the aged.
Anyway, they died, and there remained nothing in the estate not subject
to creditors. And, as tinted photographs had gone out of fashion even
in Utica, and as the advent of moving pictures was beginning to kill
vaudeville everywhere except in New York, the ever-provincial, thither
the Quest family drifted. And there, through the next few years, they
sifted downward through stratum after stratum of the metropolitan
purlieus, always toward some darker substratum--always a little lower.
The childishly attractive mother, in blue velvet and white cat's fur,
still did fancy skating at rink and Hippodrome. The father sometimes
sat dazed and coughing in the chilly waiting rooms of theatrical
agencies. Fortified by drugs and by a shabby fur overcoat, he sometimes
managed to make the rounds in pleasant weather; and continued to die
rather slowly, considering his physical condition.
But his father, who had so long ago disowned him--the Reverend Anthony
Quest--being in perfect moral condition, caught a slight cold in his
large, warm library, and died of pneumonia in forty-eight hours--a
frightful example of earthly injustice, doubtless made all right in
Heaven.
Young Quest, forbidden the presence for years, came skulking around
after a while with a Jew lawyer, only to find that his one living
relative, a predatory aunt, had assimilated everything and was perfectly
qualified to keep it under the terms of his father's will.
Her attorneys made short work of the shyster. She herself, many times a
victim to her nephew's deceit in former years, and once having stood
between him and prison concerning the matter of a signature for
thousands of dollars--the said signature not being hers but by her
recognised for the miserable young man's sake--this formidable and
acidulous old lady wrote to her nephew in reply to a letter of his:
You always were a liar. I do not believe you are married. I do not
believe you have a baby. I send you--not a cheque, because you'd
probably raise it--but enough money to start you properly.
Keep away from me. You are what you are partly through your father's
failure to do his duty by you. An optimist taken at birth and patiently
trained can be saved. Nobody saved you; you were merely punished. And
you, naturally, became a swindler.
But I can't help that now. It's too late. I can only send you money.
And if it's true you have a child, for God's sake take her in time or
she'll turn into what you are.
And _that_ is why I send you any money at all--on the remote chance that
you are not lying. Keep away from me, Harry.