THE SICK SOUL
"Oh, 'War,' you just must win! I know you will!" "Keep a stiff upper
lip, Old Fellow, and give them the best you've got." "Watch your
knees, Buddie dear, and don't let them shake. Just think of us before
you start, and remember we're pulling for you."--"Yes! and praying for
you," whispered Eva Martin, who was shaking his hand just as the
conductor called, "All aboard." And as Warren Waring gracefully swung
aboard the last Pullman, the entire senior class of Beloit High gave
the school-yell, with three cheers and a tiger for "War Waring."
What occasion could be more thrilling to a susceptible, imaginative
sixteen-year-old boy than this demonstration of the aristocratic
peerage of youth? For a half-hour he had been the center of--
admiration and encouraging attention, the recipient of a rapid fire of
well-wishing, of advice serious and humorous, and unquestionably the
subject of not a few unspoken messages directed heavenward. The kindly
eyes of the old Beloit station have looked out upon many a scene of
enthusiastic greeting and hearty well-wishing, but rarely has it seen
these good offices extended to one of more apparent merit than
handsome Warren E. Waring. One of the National Temperance societies
had been utilizing the promising declamatory powers of the high school
students of the country, through a series of county, district and
state competitions, to influence the public. The contest in Wisconsin
had finally eliminated all but the select few who were to contest for
the temperance-oratorical supremacy of the state, and for a gold
medal, as large as a double eagle, which was to be awarded by judges
from the University faculty. The good wishes and cheers, stimulating
advice, and silent prayers at the Beloit station had all been inspired
by enthusiasm and confidence and love for the unusually gifted comrade
now leaving for the competition.
For nearly a generation Squire Waring had struggled manfully, kindly,
quietly, on his little farm up Bock River, adding a little now and
then to the farm-income by the all-too-infrequent fees derived from
his office as justice-of-the-peace. If the Squire had been a better
farmer and less interested in books, especially in his yellow-backed
law-books, the eking might not have been so continuous; and if his
good wife had not been snatched away, at untimely thirty-five, by one
of those accidents which we call providential, leaving a forty-year-
old father alone with a five-year-old boy, her good sense would
undoubtedly have made times easier with the Squire. As it was, his
sister came to be mother in this little home. Good, steadfast Aunt
Fannie she was, a woman without a vision, who accepted what the day
brought with religiously unquestioning thanks. But as the only son
grew and his charms multiplied, as the evidence of his gifts became
manifest, the impracticable father let slip all personal ambition. The
dreams he had dreamed for himself were to be fulfilled in his son, who
would increase, even as he decreased. So it was that on his boy's
tenth birthday the father turned from his ambition of years, to
represent his county in the state legislature, and after forty-five
doubled the time and strength devoted to his less than a hundred
acres. "There must be money for the boy's education," he told his
sister Fannie, "even if you and I have to skimp for the rest of our
days. He's got the making of a state senator." The father was mistaken
only in that he so limited his boy's possibilities.
The Squire helped the little fellow in his studies, and he entered the
second grade of the near-by Beloit High School the fall before he was
fourteen. The train-schedule was so arranged that he could return home
every night; though, whenever the Squire felt that the farm-work
justified it, and there was no occasion for his honorable court, they
would drive to town together. This was the Squire's one joy. And proud
he was to share in acknowledging the greetings which came from all
sides, even when they drove through the best part of town in the old
buggy--to feel the universal popularity in which his boy was held.
Then there was the added satisfaction of a minute's chat with some one
of the teachers, for they all had praise, and never a word of censure.
Enjoyment enough this dear man got from these irregular trips to town
to lighten for weeks the, to him, unnatural farm-labor; while petty
offenders appearing before his tribunal were dealt with almost gently
after one of these adventures in happiness.
Many a wealth-sated father would have exchanged his flesh and blood
and thrown in his bank-balance to boot, could he have looked forward
to so worthy an heir as promised to bless Squire Waring. The boy
seemed to have been born to meet life successfully, whatever its
challenge. Strong almost to sturdiness, yet agile and accurate in
movement, he had "covered all sorts of territory around 'short,' and
could hit the ball on the nose when it counted," and to him went the
unprecedented glory of a forty-yard run for a touch-down and goal in a
High School vs. Varsity Freshmen game. His were muscles which seemed
to have been molded by a sculptor's hand. His face was manly. His
waving dark-brown hair, deep-blue eyes, strong nose and rarely turned
chin, his unfailing good-nature, his unquestioned nerve, his mental
keenness and clearness, his remarkable power of expression, whether in
recitation, school-theatricals or at young people's meetings; his
instinctive courtesy of greeting, his apparent openness and honesty of
dealing, his fairness to antagonist on field and platform, above all,
his devotion to his unquestionably rural father, had made Warren
Waring a school hero, even a model, in a church college-town.
What other boy in Wisconsin was so well equipped to win the gold
medal? Sixteen years and some months! A rather youthful lad to stand
before a thousand strange faces, to be the object of professorial
scrutiny, to listen to the exultant plaudits of local partisanship;
not to be, not to seem brazen, yet to face it all without a quake of
knee or, and what is more rare, a tremor of voice; not to forget a
syllable; and, in ten minutes, to so cast the spell of a winning
personality over his hearers as to evoke a spontaneous outburst of
applause, generous from his antagonists, enthusiastic from the
nonpartisan. And the medal!
The Professor of English honored our boy by having him at his home to
breakfast the following morning, for the double purpose of expressing
a genuine appreciation of merit, and of making an impressive bid for
his State University attendance next fall.
Aunt Fannie's asthma, with feminine perversity, was at its worst these
March nights, and the Squire--fine man that he was--never let his
nonimaginative sister know what it cost not to go to Madison with his
son--not to "hear him win the medal." "The trip would cost $10.00;
that would get him a fine gold chain to wear his medal on," he
ingeniously told her, and thus helped her enjoy her asthma a bit that
night, for it was getting a chain for Warren's medal.
The chain and the medal! Was it they that were fated to charm away
manhood and nobility and the rich earnest of success? Was it they that
were to entice, into this fine promise of fine living, crookedness of
thought, unwholesomeness of feeling--dishonorable years?
It was an exuberantly happy victor who returned from the Capitol City
with the elaborate gold medal, his name in full conspicuously engraved
upon its face--and the youthful society of his school-town was at his
feet. Every door was open. So almost without fault was he that few
mothers objected to his companionship with their daughters. Yes, here
was to be the flaw!--he was soon to find that it was easy for him to
have his way with a maid, a dangerous knowledge for a seventeen-year-
old boy who had already reached higher social levels than his own home
had known, who was much quicker of wit than his almost worshipful
father.
It was Eva Martin who had whispered the little prayer-message into his
ear that expectant afternoon at the station, and Eva Martin's ear was
destined to hear, in turn, whispered pledges of unending devotion, to
hear the relentless verdict of unquestioned dishonor.
High school was finished. A successful Freshman year--a Sophomore year
that was disappointing to his professors was passed. The fire of his
heart was heating many social irons. His earnings, so far, consisted
of one gold medal. The savings from the denials at home were about
exhausted. The boy had spent as much in the last two years as had been
hoped would carry him through college. Fifteen hundred dollars could
be raised by remortgaging the farm--it would take this to get him
through Law-school, and he was eager to go to Chicago. So a second
mortgage was placed. A good deal happened in Chicago which was not
written to the Squire nor to Eva. Waring craved being a popular "Hail
fellow," and with men, and especially with women, he knew no "No"
which would be displeasing. He corresponded with Eva regularly; they
would be married some day. He could not have chosen a more superior
woman. She lived simply, with her widowed mother, and continued for
years to conduct a private kindergarten. She was to save a thousand
dollars and he four thousand, then the wedding!
The gray-eyed girl from St. Louis came near saving Eva. Her steel-
gray-eyed father's knowledge of human nature alone intervened. It was
a chance introduction. She was pretty; she was wealthy. She ran up to
Chicago often. Finally the business-like father ran up to Chicago. He
invited young Waring to his club for dinner. There were tickets to the
"Follies." The younger man let no feature on the stage pass unnoted;
the elder remarked every change in the young man's face. There were
polite farewells, and a very positive twenty minutes which left the
daughter without a question in her mind that further relations with
young Waring held most threatening possibilities. Her eyes were not
gray without reason, as she proved discreet. There was a bundle of
uncomfortably fervid letters which he refused to return.
Warren was shifty with Eva about this affair, and others. He was
crooked, too, as the years passed, about his savings. It was
impossible to account for certain expenditures, to her. At twenty-
eight, she had her thousand dollars in the bank; his supposed four
thousand was a bare five hundred, most of which was spent on the
gorgeous wedding-trip which he said they both deserved. And shortly
after their return to the home, which, instead of being paid for in
full, was heavily mortgaged, explanations began which could not
explain. Clever as Waring was, his affairs were so involved that Eva
could not avoid the suspicion and, soon after, the revelation that her
wonderful husband's soul was without honor. It cannot be told, those
details of her devoted efforts to "put him right." To forgive
anything, everything, she was eager, but he never could come across
square, and as the years passed the horror of the uncertain "What
next?" enshrouded even her happiest days. Still the husband had
ability, and the wife's efforts helped immensely, and there were
profitable years. It was odd that, with his declamatory skill, he
rarely had a case in court, but proved unusually efficient in
developing a collection agency, and gradually represented the Bad
Accounts Department of more and more important concerns. At thirty-
five he was out of debt. They were living well--too well it proved,
for his nervous health. There must have been a neurotic taint, as
expressed in Aunt Fannie's asthma. Early that fall he had his first
attack of hay-fever. For years he had been self-indulgent; he always
drank when drinks were offered; he used much tobacco and rich food.
Athletic he had been; and, advocate of exercise as he was when he gave
talks to the boys, he took none himself. So toxins accumulated. He
stood this illness poorly. It was the first physical discomfort he had
ever known. The family doctor did not help much; patent medicines
brought relief. He was pretty hard to live with, these weeks. For a
number of years he used the threat of this disorder for a six weeks'
trip to Mackinac Island. "Finances" made it possible for the wife and
the little boy to spend only two of these weeks with him. During the
last four he always managed to keep pace with the fast set. The summer
he was forty, the combination of vacation, Mackinac, and fast set did
not ward off, in fact did not mitigate, his attacks. Waring returned
home "desperate," as he expressed it, and the family doctor succeeded
in getting him to a competent Chicago specialist who did some needed
nose and throat operations thoroughly and, in spite of careless
living, three years of immunity passed. He had become unquestionably a
clever handler of bad accounts, and could have made good, had he only
been good. A dry, dusty summer, his old enemy, hay-fever-and this time
a Chicago "specialist," the kind that advertises in the daily papers,
proved his undoing. He gave Waring a spray, potent to relieve and
potent to exalt him for hours beyond all touch of lurking
apprehension. Bottle after bottle he used; he would not be without it.
In a few weeks he realized that he could not be without it. And after
the hay-fever days were over he kept using it, furtively now, not only
for the exaltation it brought, but as protection from the hellish
depression it wrought.
For years Waring's office assistant had been an efficient, devoted,
weak woman who had managed well much of the office detail. She now
realized that things were not "going straight," that collections made
were not being turned over to her, that she was being asked to falsify
records. She never could resist his personality, and soon became more
adroit than he in juggling figures. Everything went wrong fast. No one
suspected cocain--they thought it was whiskey till Eva was forced to
tell much to the good old doctor-details revealing her husband's
uncouth carelessness of habits, his outbreaks of cruelty to her and
the boy, his obvious and shameless lying, his unnatural coarseness of
speech. This friend in need spent a bad hour, a hard hour with Waring.
Calmness was ineffective, clear reasoning impossible. The accusation
of drug-using was vehemently denied, and it was only the doctor's
courageous threat to have him arrested and tried on a lunacy charge
that broke down the false man's defiance.
Two months of rigid treatment in a sanitarium did much to restore this
broken man, and during these weeks the clever office assistant kept
his over four-thousand dollar embezzlements from becoming known.
Physically and mentally, Waring was restored. The moral sickness was
only palliated. When he returned he did not clean house; he swept the
dirt into the corners. Frank-facedly he lied to his wife. He met the
most pressing of his creditors with a certificate of his illness, and
they accepted his notes and promises. He almost crawled out. In so
many ways, he was the winning, old "War" Waring again. Gradually, his
regime of diet and routine of exercise were replaced by periodic "big
eats," little drinks, and many smokes. Then came the warning sneezes
and the charlatan's bottle. Irregular living grew apace; the accounts
were again manipulated. A Chicago house, which had shown him clemency,
became suspicious, and sent a representative who found many
collections not reported. A warrant was sworn out, followed by a dozen
others after his arrest.
The dear old Squire, now eighty-six, sat beside the brave little wife
at the trial. Neither of them thought of forsaking him. As the
testimony was given, the old father bowed, mute--as one stricken. The
verdict, "Guilty," was returned, and Judge Jefferson had evidently
considered carefully his duty. In passing sentence he addressed the
criminal: "Warren Waring, the law leaves it with the trial Judge to
determine the sentence which shall be passed on you; it may be from
five to fifteen years of hard labor in the State Penitentiary. You
deserve the full extent of the law's punishment. I have known you from
boyhood. Father, wife, God himself, have given you the best they have:
an honorable name, a lifetime of devotion, the full ten talents. For
these, you have returned dishonor, unchastity and self-indulgent
hypocrisy. You have begged extenuation on the basis of nervous ill-
health and temporary irresponsibility, both of which you have brought
upon yourself by violating the laws of right-living. It is your soul
that is sick. You are not fit to live free and equal with righteous
men and women. You have had love and mercy-they have failed. Justice
will now be given a chance to save you. For the sake of your wife
whose noble heart, crushed, pleads for you, I reduce your deserved
sentence five years. In respect for your disgraced but honorable
father, five additional years are deducted. I pray he may live to see
you a free man, chastened. Warren Waring, I sentence you to five years
hard labor within the walls of the State Penitentiary."