When I awoke the next morning my mind was clear, and though the
recollection of the fact that woman had forsaken man came back to me
like the memory of a deeply painful blow, I was still enough like
myself to assist Mr. Lister in the task of breakfast-getting with
some show of cheerfulness. Breakfast was, however, with the exception
of coffee, in the making of which Mr. Lister showed some skill, a
repetition of the supper of the previous evening. That it was not again
eaten from the original tin cans was, I remember, due to my calling
Mr. Lister’s attention to the fact that it was said to be dangerous to
eat food which had stood for even a brief period of time in open tin
cans. This suggestion threw him back unwillingly upon the necessity
of dish-washing, for he had to open fresh cans and empty the contents
into dishes, which he procured from the pantry. I had observed before
during my life that where men, under the stress of circumstances, had
assumed the function of dish-washing their dish-cloths speedily took on
a grotesque blackness that made them a positively fascinating study.
Two or three times after this, in spite of the strange facts which were
pressing upon my attention, I found myself absorbed in a kind of rapt
contemplation of Mr. Lister’s dish-cloths.
While the meal was in progress I remember that I inquired of Mr. Lister
how I could possibly pass the time till the ballots should be cast, for
I was conscious of such a horror of home-sickness that I felt I must do
something to divert my mind till the terrible suspense should be over.
Among other things which I suggested at random, I spoke of visiting
some club, as I presumed, without doubt, that there must be several in
the town.
“My dear Mr. Carford,” said Mr. Lister looking at me sympathetically,
“I fear you have only just begun to fathom the depth of the effect of
this desolating and singular Strike, if you suppose that men’s clubs
could possibly exist after woman had forsaken man as she has now done.”
“Clubs not exist!” I replied in astonishment. “I should suppose that
they would be the only solace in this intolerable gloom.”
“I know,” said Mr. Lister, “that clubs drew men from their homes before
the Strike began, and that they were therefore the source of some
domestic trouble from woman’s natural jealousy of them. But this you
must bear in mind was when the man who went to his club possessed a
home made radiant by a patient, beautiful, subjugated woman who awaited
his lordly pleasure. Man took the ownership of woman as a matter
of course, a desirable and comforting thing to be sure, but still
something that was always to be at his beck and call, and therefore a
thing for which he was not called upon to make any sacrifice. But when
all women, calling each other sisters, withdrew themselves utterly
from men with the awful completeness which you now see, there was a
fearful reaction. For days men shunned each other as if they were
wild beasts, and the thought of assembling together for anything like
social interchange, was simply intolerable. The club houses closed
immediately.”
“But there are the theatres, are there not?”
“Unfortunately, no,” said Mr. Lister. “The theatres made a desperate
effort to continue for a time, and even sought to carry on their dramas
by having their male actors personate women. But all men fled from this
hollow deceit as if it were a ghastly mockery, and the actors were
soon stalking before empty seats. The theatres, too, closed.”
“But the churches,” I said, with a groan; “surely the churches are
accessible?”
Mr. Lister shook his head. “I am sorry,” said he, “to have to deny
you that last consolation. When the Strike began the churches were
suddenly filled to overflowing by men who seldom or never went there
before. They seemed to have an unreasoning instinct that the church
might afford them some salutary consolation in their unexampled
bereavement, but such did not prove to be the case. The truth was, that
the ministers themselves felt as much as any class the deep reproach
which woman’s action cast upon all mankind. They justly felt that
teachers though they were, and exemplars though they were supposed
to be, they had done even less than far less favoured men to lighten
woman’s woes. Hence their perfunctory ministrations were without force,
utterly inadequate, valueless, and comfortless. It was but a little
while before they were feebly talking to empty pews. The churches
closed. There are no assemblies of men of any kind except such as are
for urging on the completion of the guarantee, and arranging for the
casting of the ballots. This, as I told you, will take place the day
after to-morrow. Till then I will spend as much time as possible with
you, but I must now excuse myself as I have some clerical duties to
perform in connection with the coming casting of the ballots.”
Having said this, Mr. Lister withdrew from the house, but before doing
so he showed me into his well-filled library and promised to return at
noon.
Left alone, I essayed to read a volume of new poems, but the face of a
woman, not that of any particular woman whom I had known, but a typical
face representing all women, hovered persistently, and with reproachful
mien, between mine eyes and the page. I cast the book aside. I was
strangely nervous. Presently the door-bell rang, and I sprang from my
chair in unreasoning terror. For several moments I stood motionless in
the centre of the room, muttering only, like Macbeth, “Silence that
dreadful bell,” but at last arousing myself I went to the door. A boy
stood there holding a bundle of papers under his arm, one of which he
pertly extended toward me.
“Have a _Bitter Cry_, Mister?”
“A _Bitter Cry_!” said I petulantly, “what in Heaven’s name is that?”
The boy stared at me for a moment in great surprise, and then said:
“Why it is the paper which the women print every morning; just out,
don’t yer know?”
“Yes, yes, to be sure,” said I, eagerly snatching at the paper which
he held toward me. “Give me the _Bitter Cry_; it is the echo of my own
soul.” The boy stared at me in irreverent wonder, but took the coin I
gave him and dashed down the street, while I closed the door and sank
into a chair to read. I absorbed rather than read the contents of this
strange paper, and this was the first article upon which my eye fell in
the _Bitter Cry_:
“TIMOTHY’S COMING.”
Considering the vast number of people who positively did not want
little Timothy Totten, but who would have felt infinitely obliged to
him if he had utterly stayed away, it is somewhat surprising that he
should have ventured into this cold world.
In the first place, his once patient, much-enduring mother, on whose
breast he lay alternately squalling and sleeping, cannot be said to
have wanted him for she had already borne nine like him, and had long,
long ago spent all of her beauty and most of her strength in bearing
and caring for Timothy’s troublesome predecessors. On her part, then,
it must be admitted at the outset, that the bearing of Timothy was
simply a common example of the sublime and unsurpassable endurance of
woman, combined with the stolid submission of a drudge who sees no
escape from her lot. Indeed, the sentiments of Timothy’s mother in
regard to having children had long ago come to be quite the reverse
of those of the Bible Rachel. Instead of saying, “Give me children or
I die,” the feelings of her heart on this subject, had they found any
expression, through many wearisome years, would have taken this form:
“Save me from undesired children or I die.” Certainly, whoever else in
the wide world may have wanted Timothy, it was clear that his mother
did not want him.
There is but little less doubt that Timothy’s coming was unwelcome to
his father, although he observed it with his usual stolid indifference.
He was a day-labourer, and already had so many children that he
could not support them in anything like comfort or decency; and for
Timothy to come and swell the number of gaping mouths, just when it
was so difficult to get work, and labour was so cheap, was decidedly
inconsiderate on his part and a downright piece of ill-luck. Then there
would be some scanty clothing to be bought for Timothy, and possibly a
doctor’s bill, and school taxes (provided Timothy had any schooling),
and as all these things loomed up, in prospect, before Timothy’s
father, he felt decidedly inhospitable toward Timothy, and as though,
if it were possible, he would like to send him back where he came from
with a surly note of rejection. Yes, nothing was plainer than that, so
far as Timothy’s father was concerned, Timothy was not wanted. He was
superfluous, or _de trop_, as the French say.
As Timothy’s parents clearly did not want him, neither can it be said
that Timothy’s brothers and sisters wanted him. They always licked
their plates and fingers very clean at their meagre table, and sighed
ruefully for more, and had they in any way realized that their already
too scanty rations were to be divided with this new-comer, they would
have clamored louder than anybody against his coming. Timothy’s
brothers and sisters, already poorly cared for, were evidently to gain
nothing by his coming, therefore they could not possibly want him. He
had better have stayed away so far as they were concerned.
Then there was a silent but general conviction on the part of the
inhabitants of the town in which Timothy was born, that there were
Tottens enough. Although they might not have held a town-meeting to
take any steps to prevent the coming of Timothy, if they had had a
foreknowledge of it, there is none the less doubt that they regarded
his coming as something of a public calamity. They could not expect
that Timothy, with his slender chances for education and moral
training, would be any improvement on the other nine Tottens, and
these had long been looked upon as a grievous infliction. All of the
boys had been in the Reform School (the only schooling they ever had)
and they were generally accredited with all the hen-roost robbing,
watermelon thieving, and miscellaneous trouble-making which took place
in the village. The overseer of the poor regarded them as a future
inheritance, and even the Census Taker (although a stranger), when he
visited the house, looked as though he thought there were too many of
them. But perhaps his prejudice may have been owing to the fact that
when he got up to wipe his pen Bill Totten moved his chair back a
little, and when he sat down again it was not there.
In this swelling tide of remonstrance against the coming of Timothy, it
cannot in justice be omitted that even the dogs and cats of his native
village, as well as an ancient donkey who grazed upon the Common, would
have loudly joined could they have had any intelligent sense of it. Nor
would the very frogs in the adjacent marshes, already sorely stoned by
Timothy’s brothers, have failed to add their dismal, croaking protest
to the universal cry. To all these helpless creatures the coming of
Timothy simply meant the advent of another tormentor. It was of course
utterly impossible that they should want him.
Finally to add to this cloud of objectors to Timothy’s coming, a dry
and hard-headed and terrible old man by the name of Malthus, had
written a book on Population, in which he had proved by many stony
facts and immutable figures, that Timothy was not wanted; that, in
fact, the world would be greatly better off without him, and that he
ought, by every reasonable means, to be discouraged from coming.
All scientific people had great respect for this book, so that if
all the conditions had been understood, and a vote had been taken
throughout the whole world as to whether Timothy should come or not,
there is no doubt that there would have been an overwhelming, universal
negative.
But in spite of this general, though silent protest, beginning with
his own father and mother, and extending in larger and larger circles
to society and the great public, and even including the mute sufferers
among the beasts and birds and fishes, Timothy has come, and, as he
has thus audaciously braved the public, and defied the very universe,
as it were, he must smart for it. Of course he ought to smart for it,
and happily his worst enemy could not wish him a greater punishment
than that which will befall him. Indeed, we doubt not that if Timothy
himself could see the stony path which lies before him, he would
bitterly repent of having come, and would cry out as Cain did: “My
punishment is greater than I can bear!”
In the first place, though the milk which he draws from his mother’s
breast may taste sweet to him, there will be no love in his mother’s
heart for him, but in its stead a dull sense of hopeless bitterness and
abuse, of which, in spite of herself, Timothy will be the scape-goat.
Her motherly nature, long deadened to patience and gentleness, will
have left only harsh words for Timothy’s baby-fretfulness, and rude
blows for his baby-mischievousness. Kisses and caresses, a mother’s
yearning tenderness toward him, a mother’s guiding influence over
him, a mother’s aspirations for him, these Timothy will never know.
He will simply be sullenly and peevishly endured, so long as it would
be a flagrant crime to expel him, and will be left to his own harmful
devices as soon as possible. But then what business had Timothy to
come? He was not wanted.
To his father, little, curious Timothy will simply be as one of the
hens or pigs with which he plays around the back door, though of course
of nothing like the same importance to the Totten household. Rough
words, and blows unalternated by anything kindlier, rags and dirt, cold
and hunger, will be his home associations, and his education will be
gotten in the street. Brought up to no habits of settled industry, yet
impelled to in some way feed fierce passions which have been trained to
no other restraint than that of cruel want, what wonder that Timothy
becomes the little wild beast which society so much dreaded, and which
it was so fearfully interested to have kept back!
But Timothy grows up a predaceous, devouring creature, with life before
him which he must get through in some way.
Happily for society, he may be fenced in by jails for a part of the
time, and thus gotten rid of, but reappearing again at intervals
with accumulated terrors, he pursues his predatory career until, his
constitution too broken for active violence, he becomes an unsightly,
malodorous, pestiferous tramp, and thus ends his short, eventful
history,--a mournful example of retributive justice for coming where he
was not wanted.
[Illustration]