AS spring approached this affair moved on apace. The work of the Corbin
Company was no harder than that of the Lovell Company, and I had more
time to myself. Because of an ingrowing sense of my personal importance
and because I thought it such a wonderful thing to be a newspaper man
and so very much less to be a collector, I lied to Alice as to what I
was doing. When should I be through with collecting and begin reporting?
I was eager to know all about music, painting, sculpture, literature,
and to be in those places where life is at its best. I was regretful now
that I had not made better use of my school and college days, and so in
my free hours I read, visited the art gallery and library, went to
theaters and concerts. The free intellectual churches, or ethical
schools, were my favorite places on Sunday mornings. I would sometimes
take Alice or my Scotch girl to the Theodore Thomas concerts, which were
just beginning at the Auditorium, or to see the best plays and actors:
Booth, Barrett, Modjeska, Fannie Davenport, Mary Anderson, Joseph
Jefferson, Nat Goodwin. Thinking of myself as a man with a future, I
assumed a kind of cavalier attitude toward my two sweethearts, finally
breaking with N—— on the pretext that she was stubborn and superior and
did not love me, whereas I really wanted to assume privileges which she,
with her conventional notions, could not permit and which I was not
generous enough not to want. As for Alice she was perfectly willing to
yield, with a view, I have always thought, to moving me to marry her.
But being deeply touched by her very obvious charm, I did nothing.
Once my work was done of an afternoon, I loitered over many things
waiting for evening to come, when I should see Alice again. Usually I
read or visited a gallery or some park. Alice was intensely sweet to me.
Her eyes were so soft, so liquid, so unprotesting and so unresenting.
She was usually gay, with at times a suggestion of hidden melancholy. At
night, in that great world of life which is the business heart of
Chicago I used to wait for her, and together, once we had found each
other in the crowds, we would make our way to the great railway station
at the end of Dearborn Street, where a tall clock-tower held a single
yellow clock-face. If it chanced to be Tuesday or Thursday I would go
home with her. On other nights she would sometimes stay down to dine
with me at some inexpensive place.
I never knew until toward the end of the following summer, when things
were breaking up for me in Chicago and seemingly greater opportunities
were calling me elsewhere, that during all this time she had really
never relinquished her relationship with my predecessor, fearing my
instability perhaps. By what necessary lies and innocent subterfuges she
had held him against the time when I might not care for her any more I
know not. The thing has poignance now. Was she unfaithful? I do not
think so. At any rate she was tender, clinging and in need of true
affection. She would take my hand and hold it under her arm or against
her heart and talk of the little things of the day: the strutting
customers and managers, the condescending women of social pretensions,
the other girls, who sometimes spied upon or traitorously betrayed each
other. Usually her stories were of amusing things, for she had no heart
for bitter contention. There was a note of melancholy running all
through her relationship with me, however, for I think she saw the
unrest and uncertainty of my point of view. Already my mind’s eye was
scanning a farther horizon, in which neither she nor any other woman had
a vital part. Fame, applause, power, possibly, these were luring me.
Once she said to me, her eyes looking longingly into mine:
“Do you really love me, Dorse?”
“Don’t you think I do?” I replied evasively, and yet saying to myself
that I truly cared for her in my fashion, which was true.
“Yes, I think you do, in your way,” she said, and the correct
interpretation shocked me. I saw myself a stormy petrel hanging over the
yellowish-black waves of life and never really resting anywhere. I could
not; my mind would not let me. I saw too much, felt too much, knew too
much. What was I, what any one, but a small bit of seaweed on an endless
sea, flotsam, jetsam, being moved hither and thither—by what
subterranean tides?
Oh, Alice, dead or living, eternally sleeping or eternally waking,
listen to these few true words! You were beautiful to me. My heart was
hungry. I wanted youth, I wanted beauty, I wanted sweetness, I wanted a
tender smile, wide eyes, loveliness—all these you had and gave.
Peace to you! I do not ask as much for myself.
My determination to leave the Corbin Company was associated with other
changes equally important and of much more emotional interest. Our home
life, now that my mother was gone, was most unsatisfactory. What I took
to be the airs and plotting domination of my sister M——, toward whom I
had never borne any real affection, had become unbearable. I disliked
her very much, for though she was no better than the rest of us, or so I
thought at the time, she was nevertheless inclined to dogmatize as to
the duty of others. Here she was, married yet living at home and
traveling at such times and to such places as suited her husband’s
convenience, obtaining from him scarcely enough to maintain herself in
the state to which she thought she was entitled, contributing only a
small portion to the upkeep of the home, and yet setting herself and her
husband up as superiors whose exemplary social manners might well be
copied by all. Her whole manner from morning to night, day in and day
out, was one of superiority. Or, so I thought at the time. “I am Mrs. G.
A——, if you please,” she seemed to say. “G—— is doing this. I am going
to do so-and-so. It can scarcely be expected that we, in our high state,
should have much to do with the rest of you.”
Yet whenever A—— was in or near Chicago he made our home his abiding
place. Two of the best rooms on the second floor were set aside for his
and M——’s use. The most stirring preparations were made whenever he was
coming, the house swept, flowers bought, extra cooking done and what
not; the moment he had gone things fell to their natural and rather
careless pace. M—— retired to her rooms and was scarcely seen for days.
T——, another sister, who despised her heartily, would sulk, and when she
thought the burden of family work was being shouldered on to her would
do nothing at all. My father was left to go through a routine of duties
such as fire-building, care of the furnace, marketing, which should have
facilitated the housework but which in these quarreling conditions made
it seem as if he were being put upon. C——, another sister, who was
anything but a peacemaker, added fuel to the flames by criticizing the
drift of things to the younger members: A——, E—— and myself.
The thing that had turned me definitely against M—— followed a letter
which my brother Paul once sent to my mother, enclosing a check for ten
dollars and intended especially for her. Because it was sent to her
personally she wanted to keep it secret from the others, and to do this
she sent me to the general postoffice, on which it was drawn, with her
signature filled in and myself designated as the proper recipient. I got
the money and returned it to her, but either because of her increasing
illness or because she still wanted to keep it a secret, when Paul
mentioned it in another letter she said she had not received it. Then
she died and the matter of the money came up. It was proved by inquiry
at the postoffice that the money had been paid to me. I confirmed this
and asserted, which was true, that I had given it to mother. M—— alone,
of all the family, felt called upon to question this. She visited an
inspector at the general postoffice (a friend of A——’s by the way) and
persuaded him to make inquiry, with a view no doubt to frightening me.
The result of this was a formal letter asking me to call at his office.
When I went and found that he was charging me with the detention of this
money and demanding its return on pain of my being sent to prison, I
blazed of course and told him to go to the devil. When I reached home I
was furious. I called out my sister M—— and told her—well, many things.
For weeks and even months I had a burning desire to strike her, although
nothing more was ever done or said concerning it. For over fifteen years
the memory of this one thing divided us completely, but after that,
having risen, as I thought, to superior interests and viewpoints, I
condescended to become friendly.
The first half of 1891 was the period of my greatest bitterness toward
her, and in consequence, when my sister C—— came to me with her
complaints and charges we brewed between us a kind of revolution based
primarily on our opposition to M—— and her airs, but secondarily on the
inadequate distribution of the family means and the inability of the
different sisters to agree upon the details of the home management.
According to C——, who was most bitter in her charges, both M—— and T——
were lazy and indifferent. As a matter of fact, I cared as little for
C—— and her woes as I did for any of the others. But the thought of this
home, dominated by M—— and T—— and supported by us younger ones, with
father as a kind of pleading watchdog of the treasury, weeping in his
beard and moaning over the general recklessness of our lives, was too
much.
Indeed this matter of money, not idleness or domination, was the crux of
the whole situation, for if there had been plenty of money, or if each
of us could have retained his own earnings, there would have been little
grieving. C—— was jealous of M—— and T——, and of the means with which
their marital relations supplied them, and although she was earning
eight dollars a week she felt that the three or four which she
contributed to the household were far too much. A——, who earned ten and
contributed five, had no complaint to make, and E——, who earned nine and
supplied four-and-a-half, also had nothing to say. I was earning twelve,
later fourteen, and gave only six, and very often I begrudged much of
this. So between us C—— and I brewed a revolution, which ended
unsatisfactorily for us all.
Late in March, a crisis came because of a bitter quarrel that sprung up
between M—— and C——. C—— and I now proposed, with the aid of A—— and E——
if we could get it, either to drive M—— from the house and take charge
ourselves, or rent a small apartment somewhere, pool our funds and set
up a rival home of our own, leaving this one to subsist as best it
might. It was a hard and cold thing to plan, and I still wonder why I
shared in it; but then it seemed plausible enough.
However that may be, this revolutionary program was worked out to a
definite conclusion. With C—— as the whip and planner and myself as
general executive, a small apartment only a few blocks from our home was
fixed upon, prices of furniture on time studied, cost of food, light,
entertainment gone into. C——, in her eagerness to bring her rage to a
cataclysmic conclusion, volunteered to do the cooking and housekeeping
alone, and still work downtown as before. If each contributed five
dollars a week, as we said, we would have a fund of over eighty dollars
a month, which should house and feed us and buy furniture on the
instalment plan. A—— was consulted as to this and refused, saying, which
was the decent thing to say and characteristic of him, that we ought to
stay here and keep the home together for father’s sake, he being old and
feeble. E——, always a lover of adventure and eager to share in any new
thing, agreed to go with us. We had to revise our program, but even with
only sixty dollars a month as a general fund we thought we could get
along.
And so we three, C—— being the spokesman, had the cheek to announce to
my father that either M—— should leave and allow us to run the house as
we wished or we would leave. The ultimatum was not given in any such
direct way: charges and counter charges were first made; long arguments
and pleadings were indulged in by one side and the other. Finally,
seeing that there was no hope of forcing M—— to leave, C—— announced
that she was going, alone or with others. I said I would follow. E——
said he was coming—and there you were. I never saw a man more distressed
than my father, one more harassed by what he knew to be the final
dissolution of the family. He pleaded, but his pleas fell on youthful,
inconsiderate ears. I went and rented the flat, had the gas turned on
and some furniture installed; and then, toward the end of March, in
blustery weather, we moved.
Never was a man more distrait than my father during these last two or
three days of our stay. Having completed the details, C——, E—— and I
were busy marching to and fro at spare moments, carrying clothes, books,
pictures and the like to the new home. There were open squabbles now
between C—— and M—— as to the possession of certain things, but these
were finally adjusted without blows. At last we were ready to leave, and
then came our last adieux to my father and A——. When my turn came I
marched out with a hard, cheery, independent look on my face, but I was
really heavy with a sense of my unfairness and brutality. A—— and my
father were the two I really preferred. My father was so old and frail.
“Well,” he said with his German accent when I came to say good-by,
“you’re going, are you? I’m sorry, Dorsch. I done the best I could. The
girls, they won’t ever agree, it seems. I try, but it don’t seem to do
any good. I have prayed these last few days.... I hope you don’t ever
feel sorry. It’s C—— who stirs up all these things.”
He waved his hands in a kind of despairing way and after some pointless
and insincere phrases I went out. The cold March winds were blowing from
the West, and it was raw, blowy, sloppy, gray. Tomorrow it would be
brighter, but tonight——
------------------------------------------------------------------------