ASSISTANT WIDOW
AT Richard’s suggestion Walter moved into the older man’s stateroom.
There the two men spent many hours together. Walter was glad enough not
to have to appear among the others, and Richard wished to study the
boy. It was not entirely a humanitarian interest. Here was a mental
puzzle to study out, and just at the time when such studies were being
made in the treatment of neurotics. Certain midnight talks with a good
chum in the faculty of Columbia University were remembered; a lot of
desultory reading of the Freudians came rushing into memory; and Roman
bronzes fell to the background.
Walter’s antipathy to the mother underwent no change, except perhaps
to increase in intensity. It hurt her pride to have to give up her
position of influence and she did not do so without a struggle.
No one else save Richard, or perhaps a professor of the science of
mind, could have talked with her on the science of abdication. As
delicately as needful, for she had not yet recovered from the shock of
Walter’s sudden attack, he made clear the psychological necessity of
resigning if only temporarily.
“You arouse opposition. You make him strong to oppose you,” he said to
her one late afternoon as they chatted on the upper deck. “No one knows
why these mental storms arise, but it is always wise to guard against
stirring them up. He is in earnest about doing away with himself if
you try to control him again. He and I have talked it over and on that
one point he is unshaken. You must frankly face the fact that your boy
is a neurotic. Back of that is always the danger of self-destruction
if thwarted. Fortunately, there is the possibility of sudden cure. In
fact, there is more hope nowadays for mental ills than for physical
ones. You can’t grow a new leg or a new lung, but you can completely
remake the mind. Of course I don’t have to tell all this to you.”
“Are you a psychologist?” she asked. “I have never thought to ask about
your occupation.”
“I?” he laughed. “Oh, no; not at all. I’m not anything.”
“You talk so well on so many subjects,” she speculated, “ceramics,
Roman bronzes, psychology----”
“I’m a potterer,” he explained. “I just dabble here and there. One year
I’m daft on old printing, or the growing of white blackberries, or
multiple personality--oh, I’m jack of a dozen things. But I have one
real accomplishment. I kept at it once until I could read an Assyrian
cuneiform brick in the Metropolitan Museum! There’s an untranslated
Assyrian dream-book in the British Museum that I am just itching to get
at.”
“You mean that you just try a thing for a while and----”
“Not exactly. I keep a great number of things going. For instance, I’m
tremendously interested in primitive religions, Shinto and ghost dances
and sun worshippers and all that sort of thing; but I don’t keep at
it all the time. I drop one interest and take up another; give them
each a turn. Just now I’ve grown interested in your boy, but that’s
an old interest: I’ve been thrown a lot with twisted-minded people,
over in the West Side, New York, where I often live. There’s a little
settlement of social workers, Legal Aid Society folks, socialists, new
poets--oh, a delightful group. That district has some pretty odd cases,
too; and I’ve been up all night with some of them.”
“And you have no regular occupation?”
“No; nothing regular, unless----” he laughed at a thought that occurred
to him. “You see, I’ve a pack of awfully good friends who have money
and homes and all that sort of thing. When I get hard up--as I am just
now; I’ve only five dollars to my name--I pay them a visit. I go only
to places where they understand me and let me alone. So I suppose I
might call myself--uh--a professional guest. I pay visits for my board
and keep.”
“You’re not a sick man?”
“Lord, no! I’m terribly healthy. I’ve played football, rowed in a
crew, polo, and I can swim a dozen miles. I’m so strong I’m ashamed of
myself.”
“Then why don’t you work?”
“I wonder what you mean by work?” he asked mildly. He had long ago
ceased to resent this inevitable question. Here was a man without funds
who got along with the least amount of “work.” He explained. “By work I
suppose you mean making something to sell. I’ve no objection to that,
for those who can do it and like it. The mass of people are working in
that sense. Of course it’s necessary, but the most of them look pretty
down-trodden and driven, don’t you think? It’s a slave’s life for most
earth dwellers. Some of them never see sunlight: they drive away at
some monotonous task under gas-jets or arc-lights; they burrow in
wet mines; they count up endless figures with green shades over their
eyes; they shovel endless tons of coal, mix endless puddles of mortar
or teach endless classes of somebody else’s endless children. I can’t
do any of those things. For me it would be imprisonment, stifling,
maddening. I must follow my will and, unfortunately or fortunately,
my will does not lead on to fortune. Happiness is my goal, personal
happiness; and in a very large measure I get it. Work? All my work
is play and I play hard. You don’t know what hours it took me to get
enough information together to read that Assyrian brick! I lived
for weeks on bread and tea and an occasional chop cooked on Father
Maloney’s cook-stove over in the West Side.”
“But somebody had to pay for the chop and the bread and the tea.”
“Oh, yes; that’s true,” he seemed to recollect that his story did not
fit together. “Oh, I work, too, in your sense, to get enough funds
together to do my own kind of work. I’ve wired houses, fixed up leaky
roofs, cut grass on the big lawns--I’ve never had the least trouble in
selling my muscles--but my real job when I get down and out and don’t
feel quite like playing up my professional guest business--I had almost
forgotten my best money-maker!--I’m an assistant widow.”
“What?”
“Isn’t that good! Assistant widow, and you don’t know the business
at all, do you? Oh, it’s profitable--I make several hundred dollars
in a few weeks--it’s terrible drudgery, but it’s short and swift and
soon over. At Harvard college a ‘widow’ is a professional tutor,” he
explained. “There’s a famous one at Cambridge whose business it is to
put fellows through examinations with the least amount of effort on
the part of the student. Not a bad idea, eh? It’s a rather sorry trade,
I must admit, but it is very humanitarian. Old ‘Widow’ Knowells always
has work for me whenever I want it at the time of the hour examinations
and at midyears and at finals. He gives me careful notes of all the
professor has done during the term, synopses of outside reading,
etc., and I’m an expert in bottling it up. I can almost guarantee
to put a fellow through, if he has enough memory to last him over
night! Philosophy’s my stunt. I boil it down--from Thales to William
James--and make it palatable for the unphilosophic mind. I’ve had as
many as two hundred men in one group for a three-night cram before the
exam. Rather horrid; isn’t it? But Knowells charged ’em five dollars
apiece, and he generously gave me three. That was my banner group. I
made $600, enough to keep me a year and save something towards this
trip. But it took me a month to get the taste of the thing out of my
mouth. Work? Ugh!”
American-bound steamers in July carry few passengers, so Mrs. Wells
had been able to reserve a fine corner of the deck for her group,
which now invariably included Richard. At this moment as they talked
Walter lounged in his chair near the railing while Geraldine and two
middle-aged ladies who had been with the Freneau party, and Mr. Freneau
himself, were chatting quite near. Geraldine leaned forward.
“Excuse me for listening,” she said. “Richard tells such interesting
stories.”
“Oh, this is all true, every bit,” he told her.
“I don’t object to its being untrue,” she rejoined; “the only objection
to bad fiction is dulness. This story of yours is not at all dull. What
I want to know is what would happen to the world if everybody did as
you. The stokers, for instance, live like condemned devils. Don’t tell
me they like it. But if they obeyed their own sweet will where should
we be?”
“And that chap putting tar on the ropes,” he pointed; “I’ll wager he’d
throw that job for a couple of good sovereigns.”
“Of course he would,” she went on. “What I want to know is how you
manage to take care of the disagreeable jobs.”
“Very simple,” he said; “I don’t manage at all. I am not my brother’s
keeper. My interest is solely in steering myself. I have no theory for
the other fellow; I have only pity.”
“How cruelly selfish.”
“Exactly,” he spoke quietly. “The cruelty of living is the most
colossal mystery of creation. I don’t pretend to understand it, and I
know of no remedy for it. The struggle for existence is the acme of
cruelty until you renounce it, as I do. I live my life as simply as I
can. I try not to interfere with anyone else’s chance. That’s all I can
do.”
“What about the future?” the mother asked. “You will not always be
strong.”
“I take no thought for the morrow,” he said simply. “I live entirely in
the present. Who can take thought and prosper? Happiness is not to be
saved, put in a bank. I live contentedly from day to day. When I cannot
do that--well, the remedy then is equally simple, quietly end it.”
“Rather gruesome,” Geraldine shivered.
“Death is not gruesome to me,” he said. “I am very sensitive of the
shortness of life and of the inevitableness of death. Most of us
ignore the topic; but it is constantly in my thoughts, as it was in
Socrates’. That’s the way to rid yourself of fear of the sure end; face
it; every morning smile in your glass and say, ‘Thou shalt surely die.’
Then all the world spreads happily before you as a garden of delights,
and the pettiness fades and all the discords of smallness.... Well!
well! I grow poetic--as I should. It is the most magnificent event in
life; the very thought of it blesses the present hour.”
The steamship _Victoria_ was moving through the placidest of twilight
seas. The setting is very important to have in mind: the soft blur of
blue on the horizons, the high-banked clouds fringed delicately by an
unseen sun, the pure transparent grey of the zenith, and the cool,
salt breeze. Some themes cannot be set in midday, nor amid the turmoil
of business. A thousand miles from land with only the frailest tie to
existence, poised in the centre of tranquillity, there without mockery
one could speak of death, of man’s mortality. Here, if ever, was
Death’s sanctuary, where one could perform fittingly the ceremonies of
awe and praise.
Mrs. Wells spoke first. “How old are you, Richard?” she asked.
“Thirty-three.”
“You have the thoughts that usually come with old age.... Are you a
nihilist or--anarchist--or something?”
“I dislike labels,” he said, “but why shouldn’t I be called Christian?
I take no thought for the morrow and I would do unto my neighbour as I
would that he should do unto me--I let him alone.”
“Isn’t that just the opposite of Christian?” Geraldine asked.
“Christians are rather aggressive; aren’t they?”
“Yes,” he agreed, “the altruists are. Now I’m an egoist. I always felt
that Christ preached personal purity and renunciation of the world’s
goods. If each person were pure in heart and covetous of no man’s
goods, why, the millennium would appear.”
“I don’t understand your egoism,” said Geraldine. “I always thought
altruism was undisputed.”
“My altruism is universal egoism,” he said. “If each person on this
ship were trained to take perfect care of himself there’d be no need of
a sacrifice in case of shipwreck.”
Mr. Freneau drew his chair nearer. He had been neglected pretty
thoroughly by Mrs. and Miss Wells, and he did not particularly object.
It was a tiresome job to pilot four women and a vagrant man through
the cathedrals and art galleries of Europe. Mr. Richard was a welcome
assistant, who had suddenly relieved the tension and had given the
guide a needed rest. As the journey neared its end he began to recover
and, humanly enough, had a desire to talk and be heard.
“That’s very well put, Mr. Richard,” he nodded approval. “We’re all
selfish naturally, and it’s a really decent creed; only everybody
calls it bad names but goes on practising it just the same. But isn’t
it often cruel? The essence of Christianity, I take it, is sympathy,
brotherly love. Egoism, as you call it, fights all that, doesn’t it? It
is isolated.”
The other two ladies drew into the circle. Richard became silent.
“I’m asking you, Mr. Richard,” Mr. Freneau inflated his lungs and
began a dissertation in ethics. At the end he appealed to Richard for
confirmation of his analysis.
“I’m awfully sorry,” Richard arose and worried through his excuses. “I
have no doubt you are quite right. I have never studied such things.
I only know my own life and I know very little about that. I have no
really fixed opinions on anything. Who could have? But, excuse me,
I must go. Walter and I are playing a most exciting tournament of
cribbage. Hey, Walt, old chap; what d’y’ say? Another bout, eh?”
Walter sprang to attention eagerly. He understood the code. It meant
cribbage, of which he was desperately fond--Richard had found that out
early--but it meant also a gill of precious cognac.
“Sure!” he said, and dragged himself out of his chair and followed.
Mr. Freneau talked on, but his argument smelled of the recitation-room.
It was as far from life and living as a college debate. Mrs. Wells
watched her boy as he went off so willingly with Richard, and wondered,
a little enviously, what charm the piper played. As they made their way
forward in the dusk she heard her boy laugh at a remark of Richard’s,
the first laugh from him in many a day.
Geraldine found it too dark for sewing, so rested her hands in her lap
and looked out to sea. Before the interruption the conversation between
the three had been quiet and intimate. She felt that they were just
about to approach interesting and novel things, revelations about the
common modes of thinking that would illuminate them for ever. It was
not a doctrine of cruelty and selfishness that Richard was presenting,
and in no sense had he the attributes of a doctrinaire. As he talked
his face had taken on a wistful inquiry as if he were in the act of
coming to curious conclusions, he knew not what. “Life is a strange
land,” he had said to her once in talking about Walter; “I always act
towards it like a voyageur floating down an unknown river. At any turn
may be a peaceful lake, a wonderful vista, an enemy in waiting or a
dangerous waterfall. It is folly to predict too much on the sole basis
of the journey done. And it is all wonderful to the curious minded,
even the enemy in waiting--if you approach him right he may turn out to
be a friend!”
Neither Geraldine nor Mrs. Wells was listening to the eloquent Freneau.
“I am sure you have a thought on that point, Mrs. Wells,” Mr. Freneau
leaned forward expectantly. This was the proper professional attitude
to quicken interest among wandering students. “Do let us share it.”
“Well, I will,” Mrs. Wells arose. She got up carefully and breathed
deeply to steady herself, for she wished to conceal the fact that
Walter had struck her a hard blow. Her pride would never have owned
to it, but it took serious attention on her part to rise and walk
without a show of stiffness. “Well, I will,” she spoke firmly: “I
have been thinking very, very deeply on a matter that worries me much
as I get nearer home. I’m thinking exactly what I shall do to George
Alexander if he hasn’t weeded my hardy perennials exactly according to
directions. If he has permitted those sweet-williams and Michaelmas
daisies to monopolize the whole patch at the expense of those delicate
larkspurs, I’ll--I’ll--probably take away his corn pone for a month.”