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LIFTED MASKS
STORIES
By Susan Glaspell
1912
TO
THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND
JENNIE PRESTON
CONTENTS
I “ONE OF THOSE IMPOSSIBLE AMERICANS”
II THE PLEA
III FOR LOVE OF THE HILLS
IV FRECKLES M'GRATH
V FROM A TO Z
VI THE MAN OF FLESH AND BLOOD
VII HOW THE PRINCE SAW AMERICA
VIII THE LAST SIXTY MINUTES
IX “OUT THERE”
X THE PREPOSTEROUS MOTIVE
XI HIS AMERICA
XII THE ANARCHIST: HIS DOG
XIII AT TWILIGHT
LIFTED MASKS
I
“ONE OF THOSE IMPOSSIBLE AMERICANS”
“N'avez-vous pas--” she was bravely demanding of the clerk when she saw
that the bulky American who was standing there helplessly dangling
two flaming red silk stockings which a copiously coiffured young woman
assured him were _bien chic_ was edging nearer her. She was never
so conscious of the truly American quality of her French as when
a countryman was at hand. The French themselves had an air of “How
marvellously you speak!” but fellow Americans listened superciliously
in an “I can do better than that myself” manner which quite untied
the Gallic twist in one's tongue. And so, feeling her French was being
compared, not with mere French itself, but with an arrogant new American
brand thereof, she moved a little around the corner of the counter and
began again in lower voice:
“_Mais, n'avez_--”
“Say, Young Lady,” a voice which adequately represented the figure broke
in, “_you_, aren't French, are you?”
She looked up with what was designed for a haughty stare. But what is a
haughty stare to do in the face of a broad grin? And because it was such
a long time since a grin like that had been grinned at her it happened
that the stare gave way to a dimple, and the dimple to a laughing: “Is
it so bad as that?”
“Oh, not your French,” he assured her. “You talk it just like the rest
of them. In fact, I should say, if anything--a little more so. But do
you know,”--confidentially--“I can just spot an American girl every
time!”
“How?” she could not resist asking, and the modest black hose she
was thinking of purchasing dangled against his gorgeous red ones in
friendliest fashion.
“Well, Sir--I don't know. I don't think it can be the
clothes,”--judicially surveying her.
“The clothes,” murmured Virginia, “were bought in Paris.”
“Well, you've got _me_. Maybe it's the way you wear 'em. Maybe
it's 'cause you look as if you used to play tag with your brother.
Something--anyhow--gives a fellow that 'By jove there's an American
girl!' feeling when he sees you coming round the corner.”
“But why--?”
“Lord--don't begin on _why_. You can say _why_ to anything. Why don't
the French talk English? Why didn't they lay Paris out at right angles?
Now look here, Young Lady, for that matter--_why_ can't you help me
buy some presents for my wife? There'd be nothing wrong about it,” he
hastened to assure her, “because my wife's a mighty fine woman.”
The very small American looked at the very large one. Now Virginia was a
well brought up young woman. Her conversations with strange men had been
confined to such things as, “Will you please tell me the nearest way
to--?” but preposterously enough--she could not for the life of her
have told why--frowning upon this huge American--fat was the literal
word--who stood there with puckered-up face swinging the flaming hose
would seem in the same shameful class with snubbing the little boy who
confidently asked her what kind of ribbon to buy for his mother.
“Was it for your wife you were thinking of buying these red stockings?”
she ventured.
“Sure. What do you think of 'em? Look as if they came from Paris all
right, don't they?”
“Oh, they look as though they came from Paris, all right,” Virginia
repeated, a bit grimly. “But do you know”--this quite as to that little
boy who might be buying the ribbon--“American women don't always
care for all the things that look as if they came from Paris. Is your
wife--does she care especially for red stockings?”
“Don't believe she ever had a pair in her life. That's why I thought it
might please her.”
Virginia looked down and away. There were times when dimples made things
hard for one.
Then she said, with gentle gravity: “There are quite a number of women
in America who don't care much for red stockings. It would seem too bad,
wouldn't it, if after you got these clear home your wife should turn out
to be one of those people? Now, I think these grey stockings are lovely.
I'm sure any woman would love them. She could wear them with grey suede
slippers and they would be so soft and pretty.”
“Um--not very lively looking, are they? You see I want something to
cheer her up. She--well she's not been very well lately and I thought
something--oh something with a lot of _dash_ in it, you know, would just
fill the bill. But look here. We'll take both. Sure--that's the way out
of it. If she don't like the red, she'll like the grey, and if she don't
like the--You like the grey ones, don't you? Then here”--picking up two
pairs of the handsomely embroidered grey stockings and handing them to
the clerk--“One,” holding up his thumb to denote one--“me,”--a vigorous
pounding of the chest signifying me. “One”--holding up his forefinger
and pointing to the girl--“mademoiselle.”
“Oh no--no--no!” cried Virginia, her face instantly the colour of the
condemned stockings. Then, standing straight: “Certainly _not_.”
“No? Just as you say,” he replied good humouredly. “Like to have you
have 'em. Seems as if strangers in a strange land oughtn't to stand on
ceremony.”
The clerk was bending forward holding up the stockings alluringly.
“_Pour mademoiselle, n'est-ce-pas_?”
“_Mais--non!_” pronounced Virginia, with emphasis.
There followed an untranslatable gesture. “How droll!” shoulder and
outstretched hands were saying. “If the kind gentleman _wishes_ to give
mademoiselle the _joli bas_--!”
His face had puckered up again. Then suddenly it unpuckered. “Tell you
what you might do,” he solved it. “Just take 'em along and send them to
your mother. Now your mother might be real glad to have 'em.”
Virginia stared. And then an awful thing happened. What she was thinking
about was the letter she could send with the stockings. “Mother dear,”
she would write, “as I stood at the counter buying myself some stockings
to-day along came a nice man--a stranger to me, but very kind and
jolly--and gave me--”
There it was that the awful thing happened. Her dimple was showing--and
at thought of its showing she could not keep it from showing! And how
could she explain why it was showing without its going on showing? And
how--?
But at that moment her gaze fell upon the clerk, who had taken
the dimple as signal to begin putting the stockings in a box. The
Frenchwoman's eyebrows soon put that dimple in its proper place. “And
so the _petite Americaine_ was not too--oh, not _too_--” those French
eyebrows were saying.
All in an instant Virginia was something quite different from a little
girl with a dimple. “You are very kind,” she was saying, and her mother
herself could have done it no better, “but I am sure our little joke had
gone quite far enough. I bid you good-morning”. And with that she
walked regally over to the glove counter, leaving red and grey and black
hosiery to their own destinies.
“I loathe them when their eyebrows go up,” she fumed. “Now _his_ weren't
going up--not even in his mind.”
She could not keep from worrying about him. “They'll just 'do' him,” she
was sure. “And then laugh at him in the bargain. A man like that has no
_business_ to be let loose in a store all by himself.”
And sure enough, a half hour later she came upon him up in the dress
department. Three of them had gathered round to “do” him. They were
making rapid headway, their smiling deference scantily concealing their
amused contempt. The spectacle infuriated Virginia. “They just think
they can _work_ us!” she stormed. “They think we're _easy_. I suppose
they think he's a _fool_. I just wish they could get him in a business
deal! I just wish--!”
“I can assure you, sir,” the English-speaking manager of the department
was saying, “that this garment is a wonderful value. We are able to let
you have it at so absurdly low a figure because--”
Virginia did not catch why it was they were able to let him have it at
so absurdly low a figure, but she did see him wipe his brow and look
helplessly around. “Poor _thing_,” she murmured, almost tenderly, “he
doesn't know what to do. He just _does_ need somebody to look after
him.” She stood there looking at his back. He had a back a good deal
like the back of her chum's father at home. Indeed there were various
things about him suggested “home.” Did one want one's own jeered at? One
might see crudities one's self, but was one going to have supercilious
outsiders coughing those sham coughs behind their hypocritical hands?
“For seven hundred francs,” she heard the suave voice saying.
_Seven hundred francs_! Virginia's national pride, or, more accurately,
her national rage, was lashed into action. It was with very red
cheeks that the small American stepped stormily to the rescue of her
countryman.
“Seven hundred francs for _that_?” she jeered, right in the face of the
enraged manager and stiffening clerks. “Seven hundred francs--indeed!
Last year's model--a hideous colour, and “--picking it up, running it
through her fingers and tossing it contemptuously aside--“abominable
stuff!”
“Gee, but I'm grateful to you!” he breathed, again wiping his brow. “You
know, I was a little leery of it myself.”
The manager, quivering with rage and glaring uglily, stepped up to
Virginia. “May I ask--?”
But the fat man stepped in between--he was well qualified for
that position. “Cut it out, partner. The young lady's a friend of
_mine_--see? She's looking out for me--not you. I don't want your stuff,
anyway.” And taking Virginia serenely by the arm he walked away.
“This was no place to buy dresses,” said she crossly.
“Well, I wish I knew where the places _were_ to buy things,” he replied,
humbly, forlornly.
“Well, what do you want to buy?” demanded she, still crossly.
“Why, I want to buy some nice things for my wife. Something the real
thing from Paris, you know. I came over from London on purpose. But
Lord,”--again wiping his brow--“a fellow doesn't know where to _go_.”
“Oh well,” sighed Virginia, long-sufferingly, “I see I'll just have to
take you. There doesn't seem any way out of it. It's evident you can't
go _alone_. _Seven hundred francs_!”
“I suppose it was too much,” he conceded meekly. “I tell you I _will_
be grateful if you'll just stay by me a little while. I never felt so up
against it in all my life.”
“Now, a very nice thing to take one's wife from Paris,” began Virginia
didactically, when they reached the sidewalk, “is lace.”
“L--ace? Um! Y--es, I suppose lace is all right. Still it never struck
me there was anything so very _lively_ looking about lace.”
“'Lively looking' is not the final word in wearing apparel,” pronounced
Virginia in teacher-to-pupil manner. “Lace is always in good taste,
never goes out of style, and all women care for it. I will take you to
one of the lace shops.”
“Very well,” acquiesced he, truly chastened. “Here, let's get in this
cab.”
Virginia rode across the Seine looking like one pondering the destinies
of nations. Her companion turned several times to address her, but it
would have been as easy for a soldier to slap a general on the back.
Finally she turned to him.
“Now when we get there,” she instructed, “don't seem at all interested
in things. Act--oh, bored, you know, and seeming to want to get me away.
And when they tell the price, no matter what they say, just--well
sort of groan and hold your head and act as though you are absolutely
overcome at the thought of such an outrage.”
“U--m. You have to do that here to get--lace?”
“You have to do that here to get _anything_---at the price you should
get it. You, and people who go shopping the way you do, bring discredit
upon the entire American nation.”
“That so? Sorry. Never meant to do that. All right, Young Lady, I'll do
the best I can. Never did act that way, but suppose I can, if the rest
of them do.”
“Groan and hold my head,” she heard him murmuring as they entered the
shop.
He proved an apt pupil. It may indeed be set down that his aptitude was
their undoing. They had no sooner entered the shop than he pulled out
his watch and uttered an exclamation of horror at the sight of the time.
Virginia could scarcely look at the lace, so insistently did he keep
waving the watch before her. His contempt for everything shown was open
and emphatic. It was also articulate. Virginia grew nervous, seeing the
real red showing through in the Frenchwoman's cheeks. And when the price
was at last named--a price which made Virginia jubilant--there burst
upon her outraged ears something between a jeer and a howl of rage, the
whole of it terrifyingly done in the form of a groan; she looked at
her companion to see him holding up his hands and wobbling his head as
though it had been suddenly loosened from his spine, cast one look at
the Frenchwoman--then fled, followed by her groaning compatriot.
“I didn't mean you to act like _that_!” she stormed.
“Why, I did just what you told me to! Seemed to me I was following
directions to the letter. Don't think for a minute _I'm_ going to bring
discredit on the American nation! Not a bad scheme--taking out my watch
that way, was it?”
“Oh, beautiful _scheme_. I presume you notice, however, that we have no
lace.”
They walked half a block in silence. “Now I'll take you to another
shop,” she then volunteered, in a turning the other cheek fashion, “and
here please do nothing at all. Please just--sit.”
“Sort of as if I was feeble-minded, eh?”
“Oh, don't _try_ to look feeble-minded,” she begged, alarmed at seeming
to suggest any more parts; “just sit there--as if you were thinking of
something very far away.”
“Say, Young Lady, look here; this is very nice, being put on to the
tricks of the trade, but the money end of it isn't cutting much ice,
and isn't there any way you can just _buy_ things--the way you do in
Cincinnati? Can't you get their stuff without making a comic opera out
of it?”
“No, you can't,” spoke relentless Virginia; “not unless you want them to
laugh and say 'Aren't Americans fools?' the minute the door is shut.”
“Fools--eh? I'll show them a thing or two!”
“Oh, please show them nothing here! Please just--sit.”
While employing her wiles to get for three hundred and fifty francs
a yoke and scarf aggregating four hundred, she chanced to look at her
American friend. Then she walked rapidly to the rear of the shop,
buried her face in her handkerchief, and seemed making heroic efforts
to sneeze. Once more he was following directions to the letter. Chin
resting on hands, hands resting on stick, the huge American had taken
on the beatific expression of a seventeen-year-old girl thinking of
something “very far away.” Virginia was long in mastering the sneeze.
On the sidewalk she presented him with the package of lace and also with
what she regarded the proper thing in the way of farewell speech. She
supposed it _was_ hard for a man to go shopping alone; she could see how
hard it would be for her own father; indeed it was seeing how difficult
it would be for her father had impelled her to go with him, a stranger.
She trusted his wife would like the lace; she thought it very nice, and
a bargain. She was glad to have been of service to a fellow countryman
who seemed in so difficult a position.
But he did not look as impressed as one to whom a farewell speech was
being made should look. In fact, he did not seem to be hearing it. Once
more, and in earnest this time, he appeared to be thinking of something
very far away. Then all at once he came back, and it was in anything but
a far-away voice he began, briskly: “Now look here, Young Lady, I don't
doubt but this lace is great stuff. You say so, and I haven't seen man,
woman or child on this side of the Atlantic knows as much as you do.
I'm mighty grateful for the lace--don't you forget that, but just the
same--well, now I'll tell you. I have a very special reason for wanting
something a little livelier than lace. Something that seems to have
Paris written on it in red letters--see? Now, where do you get the
kind of hats you see some folks wearing, and where do you get the
dresses--well, it's hard to describe 'em, but the kind they have in
pictures marked 'Breezes from Paris'? You see--_S-ay!_--_what_ do you
think of _that?_”
“That” was in a window across the street. It was an opera cloak. He
walked toward it, Virginia following. “Now _there_,” he turned to her,
his large round face all aglow, “is what I want.”
It was yellow; it was long; it was billowy; it was insistently and
recklessly regal.
“That's the ticket!” he gloated.
“Of course,” began Virginia, “I don't know anything about it. I am in a
very strange position, not knowing what your wife likes or--or has. This
is the kind of thing everything has to go _with_ or one wouldn't--one
couldn't--”
“Sure! Good idea. We'll just get everything to go with it.”
“It's the sort of thing one doesn't see worn much outside of Paris--or
New York. If one is--now my mother wouldn't care for that coat at all.”
Virginia took no little pride in that tactful finish.
“Can't sidetrack me!” he beamed. “I _want_ it. Very thing I'm after,
Young Lady.”
“Well, of course you will have no difficulty in buying the coat without
me,” said she, as a dignified version of “I wash my hands of you.” “You
can do here as you said you wished to do, simply go in and pay what they
ask. There would be no use trying to get it cheap. They would know that
anyone who wanted it would”--she wanted to say “have more money than
they knew what to do with,” but contented herself with, “be able to pay
for it.”
But when she had finished she looked at him; at first she thought she
wanted to laugh, and then it seemed that wasn't what she wanted to
do after all. It was like saying to a small boy who was one beam over
finding a tin horn: “Oh well, take the horn if you want to, but you
can't haul your little red waggon while you're blowing the horn.” There
seemed something peculiarly inhuman about taking the waggon just when he
had found the horn. Now if the waggon were broken, then to take away
the horn would leave the luxury of grief. But let not shadows fall upon
joyful moments.
With the full ardour of her femininity she entered into the purchasing
of the yellow opera cloak. They paid for that decorative garment the sum
of two thousand five hundred francs. It seemed it was embroidered, and
the lining was--anyway, they paid it.
And they took it with them. He was going to “take no chances on losing
it.” He was leaving Paris that night and held that during his stay
he had been none too impressed with either Parisian speed or Parisian
veracity.
Then they bought some “Breezes from Paris,” a dress that would “go with”
the coat. It was violet velvet, and contributed to the sense of doing
one's uttermost; and hats--“the kind you see some folks wearing.” One
was the rainbow done into flowers, and the other the kind of black hat
to outdo any rainbow. “If you could just give me some idea what type
your wife is,” Virginia was saying, from beneath the willow plumes. “Now
you see this hat quite overpowers me. Do you think it will overpower
her?”
“Guess not. Anyway, if it don't look right on her head she may enjoy
having it around to look at.”
Virginia stared out at him. The _oddest_ man! As if a hat were any good
at all if it didn't look right on one's head!
Upon investigation--though yielding to his taste she was still vigilant
as to his interests--Virginia discovered a flaw in one of the plumes.
The sylph in the trailing gown held volubly that it did not _fait rien_;
the man with the open purse said he couldn't see that it figured much,
but the small American held firm. That must be replaced by a perfect
plume or they would not take the hat. And when she saw who was in
command the sylph as volubly acquiesced that _naturellement_ it must be
_tout a fait_ perfect. She would send out and get one that would be oh!
so, so, _so_ perfect. It would take half an hour.
“Tell you what we'll do,” Virginia's friend proposed, opera cloak
tight under one arm, velvet gown as tight under the other, “I'm
tired--hungry--thirsty; feel like a ham sandwich--and something. I'm
playing you out, too. Let's go out and get a bite and come back for the
so, so, _so_ perfect hat.”
She hesitated. But he had the door open, and if he stood holding it that
way much longer he was bound to drop the violet velvet gown. She did not
want him to drop the velvet gown and furthermore, she _would_ like a cup
of tea. There came into her mind a fortifying thought about the relative
deaths of sheep and lambs. If to be killed for the sheep were indeed no
worse than being killed for the lamb, and if a cup of tea went with the
sheep and nothing at all with the lamb--?
So she agreed. “There's a nice little tea-shop right round the corner.
We girls often go there.”
“Tea? Like tea? All right, then”--and he started manfully on.
But as she entered the tea-shop she was filled with keen sense of
the desirableness of being slain for the lesser animal. For, cosily
installed in their favourite corner, were “the girls.”
Virginia had explained to these friends some three hours before that she
could not go with them that afternoon as she must attend a musicale some
friends of her mother's were giving. Being friends of her mother's, she
expatiated, she would have to go.
Recollecting this, also for the first time remembering the musicale, she
bowed with the _hauteur_ of self-consciousness.
Right there her friend contributed to the tragedy of a sheep's death by
dropping the yellow opera cloak. While he was stooping to pick it up the
violet velvet gown slid backward and Virginia had to steady it until
he could regain position. The staring in the corner gave way to
tittering--and no dying sheep had ever held its head more haughtily.
The death of this particular sheep proved long and painful. The legs
of Virginia's friend and the legs of the tea-table did not seem well
adapted to each other. He towered like a human mountain over the dainty
thing, twisting now this way and now that. It seemed Providence--or
at least so much of it as was represented by the management of that
shop--had never meant fat people to drink tea. The table was rendered
further out of proportion by having a large box piled on either side of
it.
Expansively, and not softly, he discoursed of these things. What did
they think a fellow was to do with his _knees_? Didn't they sell tea
enough to afford any decent chairs? Did all these women pretend to
really _like_ tea?
Virginia's sense of humour rallied somewhat as she viewed him eating
the sandwiches. Once she had called them doll-baby sandwiches; now that
seemed literal: tea-cups, _petit gateau_, the whole service gave the
fancy of his sitting down to a tea-party given by a little girl for her
dollies.
But after a time he fell silent, looking around the room. And when he
broke that pause his voice was different.
“These women here, all dressed so fine, nothing to do but sit around and
eat this folderol, _they_ have it easy--don't they?”
The bitterness in it, and a faint note of wistfulness, puzzled her.
Certainly _he_ had money.
“And the husbands of these women,” he went on; “lots of 'em, I suppose,
didn't always have so much. Maybe some of these women helped out in the
early days when things weren't so easy. Wonder if the men ever think how
lucky they are to be able to get it back at 'em?”
She grew more bewildered. Wasn't he “getting it back?” The money he had
been spending that day!
“Young Lady,” he said abruptly, “you must think I'm a queer one.”
She murmured feeble protest.
“Yes, you must. Must wonder what I want with all this stuff, don't you?”
“Why, it's for your wife, isn't it?” she asked, startled.
“Oh yes, but you must wonder. You're a shrewd one, Young Lady; judging
the thing by me, you must wonder.”
Virginia was glad she was not compelled to state her theory. Loud and
common and impossible were terms which had presented themselves, terms
which she had fought with kind and good-natured and generous. Their
purchases she had decided were to be used, not for a knock, but as a
crashing pound at the door of the society of his town. For her part,
Virginia hoped the door would come down.
“And if you knew that probably this stuff would never be worn at all,
that ten to one it would never do anything more than lie round on
chairs--then you _would_ think I was queer, wouldn't you?”
She was forced to admit that that would seem rather strange.
“Young Lady, I believe I'll tell you about it. Never do talk about it
to hardly anybody, but I feel as if you and I were pretty well
acquainted--we've been through so much together.”
She smiled at him warmly; there was something so real about him when he
talked that way.
But his look then frightened her. It seemed for an instant as though he
would brush the tiny table aside and seize some invisible thing by the
throat. Then he said, cutting off each word short: “Young Lady, what
do you think of this? I'm worth more 'an a million dollars--and my wife
gets up at five o'clock every morning to do washing and scrubbing.”
“Oh, it's not that she _has_ to,” he answered her look, “but she
_thinks_ she has to. See? Once we were poor. For twenty years we were
poor as dirt. Then she did have to do things like that. Then I struck
it. Or rather, it struck me. Oil. Oil on a bit of land I had. I had just
sense enough to make the most of it; one thing led to another--well,
you're not interested in that end of it. But the fact is that now we're
rich. Now she could have all the things that these women have--Lord
A'mighty she could lay abed every day till noon if she wanted to!
But--you see?--it _got_ her--those hard, lonely, grinding years _took_
her. She's”--he shrunk from the terrible word and faltered out--“her
mind's not--”
There was a sobbing little flutter in Virginia's throat. In a dim way
she was glad to see that the girls were going. She _could_ not have them
laughing at him--now.
“Well, you can about figure out how it makes me feel,” he continued,
and looking into his face now it was as though the spirit redeemed the
flesh. “You're smart. You can see it without my callin' your attention
to it. Last time I went to see her I had just made fifty thousand on a
deal. And I found her down on her knees thinking she was scrubbing the
floor!”
Unconsciously Virginia's hand went out, following the rush of sympathy
and understanding. “But can't they--restrain her?” she murmured.
“Makes her worse. Says she's got it to do--frets her to think she's not
getting it done.”
“But isn't there some _way_?” she whispered. “Some way to make her
_know_?”
He pointed to the large boxes. “That,” he said simply, “is the meaning
of those. It's been seven years--but I keep on trying.”
She was silent, the tears too close for words. And she had thought it
cheap ambition!--vulgar aspiration--silly show--vanity!
“Suppose you thought I was a queer one, talking about lively looking
things. But you see now? Thought it might attract her attention, thought
something real gorgeous like this might impress money on her. Though I
don't know,”--he seemed to grow weary as he told it; “I got her a lot of
diamonds, thinking they might interest her, and she thought she'd stolen
'em, and they had to take them away.”
Still the girl did not speak. Her hand was shading her eyes.
“But there's nothing like trying. Nothing like keeping right on trying.
And anyhow--a fellow likes to think he's taking his wife something from
Paris.”
They passed before her in their heartbreaking folly, their tragic
uselessness, their lovable absurdity and stinging irony--those
things they had bought that afternoon: an _opera cloak_--a _velvet
dress_--_those hats_--_red silk stockings_.
The mockery of them wrung her heart. Right there in the tea-shop
Virginia was softly crying.
“Oh, now that's too bad,” he expostulated clumsily. “Why, look here,
Young Lady, I didn't mean you to take it so hard.”
When she had recovered herself he told her much of the story. And the
thing which revealed him--glorified him--was less the grief he gave
to it than the way he saw it. “It's the cursed unfairness of it,”
he concluded. “When you consider it's all because she did those
things--when you think of her bein' bound to 'em for life just because
she was _too faithful doin' 'em_--when you think that now--when I could
give her everything these women have got!--she's got to go right on
worrying about baking the bread and washing the dishes--did it for me
when I was poor--and now with me rich she can't get _out_ of it--and
I _can't reach_ her--oh, it's _rotten!_ I tell you it's _rotten!_
Sometimes I can just hear my money _laugh_ at me! Sometimes I get to
going round and round in a circle about it till it seems I'm going crazy
myself.”
“I think you are a--a noble man,” choked Virginia.
That disconcerted him. “Oh Lord--don't think that. No, Young Lady, don't
try to make any plaster saint out of _me_. My life goes on. I've got to
eat, drink and be merry. I'm built that way. But just the same my heart
on the inside's pretty sore, Young Lady. I want to tell you that the
whole inside of my heart is _sore as a boil_!”
They were returning for the hats. Suddenly Virginia stopped, and it
was a soft-eyed and gentle Virginia who turned to him after the pause.
“There are lovely things to be bought in Paris for women who aren't
well. Such soft, lovely things to wear in your room. Not but what I
think these other things are all right. As you say, they may--interest
her. But they aren't things she can use just now, and wouldn't you like
her to have some of those soft lovely things she could actually wear?
They might help most of all. To wake in the morning and find herself in
something so beautiful--”
“Where do you get 'em?” he demanded promptly.
And so they went to one of those shops which have, more than all the
others, enshrined Paris in feminine hearts. And never was lingerie
selected with more loving care than that which Virginia picked out that
afternoon. A tear fell on one particularly lovely _robe de nuit_--so
soothingly soft, so caressingly luxurious, it seemed that surely it
might help bring release from the bondage of those crushing years.
As they were leaving they were given two packages. “Just the kimona
thing you liked,” he said, “and a trinket or two. Now that we're such
good friends, you won't feel like you did this morning.”
“And if I don't want them myself, I might send them to my mother,”
Virginia replied, a quiver in her laugh at her own little joke.
He had put her in her cab; he had tried to tell her how much he thanked
her; they had said good-bye and the _cocher_ had cracked his whip when
he came running after her. “Why, Young Lady,” he called out, “we don't
know each other's _names_.”
She laughed and gave hers. “Mine's William P. Johnson,” he said. “Part
French and part Italian. But now look here, Young Lady--or I mean, Miss
Clayton. A fellow at the hotel was telling me something last night that
made me _sick_. He said American girls sometimes got awfully up against
it here. He said one actually starved last year. Now, I don't like that
kind of business. Look here, Young Lady, I want you to promise that if
you--you or any of your gang--get up against it you'll cable William P.
Johnson, of Cincinnati, Ohio.”
The twilight grey had stolen upon Paris. And there was a mist which the
street lights only penetrated a little way--as sometimes one's knowledge
of life may only penetrate life a very little way. Her cab stopped by a
blockade, she watched the burly back of William P. Johnson disappearing
into the mist. The red box which held the yellow opera cloak she could
see longer than all else.
“You never can tell,” murmured Virginia. “It just goes to show that you
never can tell.”
And whatever it was you never could tell had brought to Virginia's
girlish face the tender knowingness of the face of a woman.
II
THE PLEA
Senator Harrison concluded his argument and sat down. There was no
applause, but he had expected none. Senator Dorman was already saying
“Mr. President?” and there was a stir in the crowded galleries, and an
anticipatory moving of chairs among the Senators. In the press gallery
the reporters bunched together their scattered papers and inspected
their pencil-points with earnestness. Dorman was the best speaker of
the Senate, and he was on the popular side of it. It would be the great
speech of the session, and the prospect was cheering after a deluge of
railroad and insurance bills.
“I want to tell you,” he began, “why I have worked for this resolution
recommending the pardon of Alfred Williams. It is one of the great laws
of the universe that every living thing be given a chance. In the case
before us that law has been violated. This does not resolve itself into
a question of second chances. The boy of whom we are speaking has never
had his first.”
Senator Harrison swung his chair half-way around and looked out at the
green things which were again coming into their own on the State-house
grounds. He knew--in substance--what Senator Dorman would say without
hearing it, and he was a little tired of the whole affair. He hoped that
one way or other they would finish it up that night, and go ahead with
something else. He had done what he could, and now the responsibility
was with the rest of them. He thought they were shouldering a great deal
to advocate the pardon in the face of the united opposition of Johnson
County, where the crime had been committed. It seemed a community
should be the best judge of its own crimes, and that was what he, as the
Senator from Johnson, had tried to impress upon them.
He knew that his argument against the boy had been a strong one. He
rather liked the attitude in which he stood. It seemed as if he were
the incarnation of outraged justice attempting to hold its own at the
floodgates of emotion. He liked to think he was looking far beyond the
present and the specific and acting as guardian of the future--and the
whole. In summing it up that night the reporters would tell in highly
wrought fashion of the moving appeal made by Senator Dorman, and then
they would speak dispassionately of the logical argument of the leader
of the opposition. There was more satisfaction to self in logic than
in mere eloquence. He was even a little proud of his unpopularity. It
seemed sacrificial.
He wondered why it was Senator Dorman had thrown himself into it so
whole-heartedly. All during the session the Senator from Maxwell had
neglected personal interests in behalf of this boy, who was nothing to
him in the world. He supposed it was as a sociological and psychological
experiment. Senator Dorman had promised the Governor to assume
guardianship of the boy if he were let out. The Senator from Johnson
inferred that as a student of social science his eloquent colleague
wanted to see what he could make of him. To suppose the interest merely
personal and sympathetic would seem discreditable.
“I need not dwell upon the story,” the Senator from Maxwell was saying,
“for you all are familiar with it already. It is said to have been the
most awful crime ever committed in the State. I grant you that it was,
and then I ask you to look for a minute into the conditions leading up
to it.
“When the boy was born, his mother was instituting divorce proceedings
against his father. She obtained the divorce, and remarried when Alfred
was three months old. From the time he was a mere baby she taught him
to hate his father. Everything that went wrong with him she told him was
his father's fault. His first vivid impression was that his father was
responsible for all the wrong of the universe.
“For seven years that went on, and then his mother died. His stepfather
did not want him. He was going to Missouri, and the boy would be a
useless expense and a bother. He made no attempt to find a home for him;
he did not even explain--he merely went away and left him. At the age of
seven the boy was turned out on the world, after having been taught one
thing--to hate his father. He stayed a few days in the barren house,
and then new tenants came and closed the doors against him. It may have
occurred to him as a little strange that he had been sent into a world
where there was no place for him.
“When he asked the neighbours for shelter, they told him to go to his
own father and not bother strangers. He said he did not know where his
father was. They told him, and he started to walk--a distance of fifty
miles. I ask you to bear in mind, gentlemen, that he was only seven
years of age. It is the age when the average boy is beginning the third
reader, and when he is shooting marbles and spinning tops.
“When he reached his father's house he was told at once that he was not
wanted there. The man had remarried, there were other children, and
he had no place for Alfred. He turned him away; but the neighbours
protested, and he was compelled to take him back. For four years he
lived in this home, to which he had come unbidden, and where he was
never made welcome.
“The whole family rebelled against him. The father satisfied his
resentment against the boy's dead mother by beating her son, by
encouraging his wife to abuse him, and inspiring the other children to
despise him. It seems impossible such conditions should exist. The only
proof of their possibility lies in the fact of their existence.
“I need not go into the details of the crime. He had been beaten by his
father that evening after a quarrel with his stepmother about spilling
the milk. He went, as usual, to his bed in the barn; but the hay was
suffocating, his head ached, and he could not sleep. He arose in the
middle of the night, went to the house, and killed both his father and
stepmother.
“I shall not pretend to say what thoughts surged through the boy's brain
as he lay there in the stifling hay with the hot blood pounding against
his temples. I shall not pretend to say whether he was sane or insane as
he walked to the house for the perpetration of the awful crime. I do not
even affirm it would not have happened had there been some human being
there to lay a cooling hand on his hot forehead, and say a few soothing,
loving words to take the sting from the loneliness, and ease the
suffering. I ask you to consider only one thing: he was eleven years old
at the time, and he had no friend in all the world. He knew nothing of
sympathy; he knew only injustice.”
Senator Harrison was still looking out at the budding things on the
State-house grounds, but in a vague way he was following the story. He
knew when the Senator from Maxwell completed the recital of facts and
entered upon his plea. He was conscious that it was stronger than he had
anticipated--more logic and less empty exhortation. He was telling of
the boy's life in reformatory and penitentiary since the commission
of the crime,--of how he had expanded under kindness, of his mental
attainments, the letters he could write, the books he had read, the
hopes he cherished. In the twelve years he had spent there he had been
known to do no unkind nor mean thing; he responded to affection--craved
it. It was not the record of a degenerate, the Senator from Maxwell was
saying.
A great many things were passing through the mind of the Senator from
Johnson. He was trying to think who it was that wrote that book, “Put
Yourself in His Place.” He had read it once, and it bothered him to
forget names. Then he was wondering why it was the philosophers had
not more to say about the incongruity of people who had never had any
trouble of their own sitting in judgment upon people who had known
nothing but trouble. He was thinking also that abstract rules did not
always fit smoothly over concrete cases, and that it was hard to make
life a matter of rules, anyway.
Next he was wondering how it would have been with the boy Alfred
Williams if he had been born in Charles Harrison's place; and then he
was working it out the other way and wondering how it would have been
with Charles Harrison had he been born in Alfred Williams's place.
He wondered whether the idea of murder would have grown in Alfred
Williams's heart had he been born to the things to which Charles
Harrison was born, and whether it would have come within the range of
possibility for Charles Harrison to murder his father if he had been
born to Alfred Williams's lot. Putting it that way, it was hard to
estimate how much of it was the boy himself, and how much the place the
world had prepared for him. And if it was the place prepared for him
more than the boy, why was the fault not more with the preparers of the
place than with the occupant of it? The whole thing was very confusing.
“This page,” the Senator from Maxwell was saying, lifting the little
fellow to the desk, “is just eleven years of age, and he is within three
pounds of Alfred Williams's weight when he committed the murder. I ask
you, gentlemen, if this little fellow should be guilty of a like crime
to-night, to what extent would you, in reading of it in the morning,
charge him with the moral discernment which is the first condition of
moral responsibility? If Alfred Williams's story were this boy's story,
would you deplore that there had been no one to check the childish
passion, or would you say it was the inborn instinct of the murderer?
And suppose again this were Alfred Williams at the age of eleven, would
you not be willing to look into the future and say if he spent twelve
years in penitentiary and reformatory, in which time he developed the
qualities of useful and honourable citizenship, that the ends of justice
would then have been met, and the time at hand for the world to begin
the payment of her debt?”
Senator Harrison's eyes were fixed upon the page standing on the
opposite desk. Eleven was a younger age than he had supposed. As he
looked back upon it and recalled himself when eleven years of age--his
irresponsibility, his dependence--he was unwilling to say what would
have happened if the world had turned upon him as it had upon Alfred
Williams. At eleven his greatest grievance was that the boys at school
called him “yellow-top.” He remembered throwing a rock at one of them
for doing it. He wondered if it was criminal instinct prompted the
throwing of the rock. He wondered how high the percentage of children's
crimes would go were it not for countermanding influences. It seemed the
great difference between Alfred Williams and a number of other children
of eleven had been the absence of the countermanding influence.
There came to him of a sudden a new and moving thought. Alfred Williams
had been cheated of his boyhood. The chances were he had never gone
swimming, nor to a ball game, or maybe never to a circus. It might even
be that he had never owned a dog. The Senator from Maxwell was right
when he said the boy had never been given his chance, had been defrauded
of that which has been a boy's heritage since the world itself was
young.
And the later years--how were they making it up to him? He recalled
what to him was the most awful thing he had ever heard about the State
penitentiary: they never saw the sun rise down there, and they never saw
it set. They saw it at its meridian, when it climbed above the stockade,
but as it rose into the day, and as it sank into the night, it was
denied them. And there, at the penitentiary, they could not even look up
at the stars. It had been years since Alfred Williams raised his face
to God's heaven and knew he was part of it all. The voices of the night
could not penetrate the little cell in the heart of the mammoth stone
building where he spent his evenings over those masterpieces with which,
they said, he was more familiar than the average member of the Senate.
When he read those things Victor Hugo said of the vastness of the night,
he could only look around at the walls that enclosed him and try to
reach back over the twelve years for some satisfying conception of what
night really was.
The Senator from Johnson shuddered: they had taken from a living
creature the things of life, and all because in the crucial hour there
had been no one to say a staying word. Man had cheated him of the things
that were man's, and then shut him away from the world that was God's.
They had made for him a life barren of compensations.
There swept over the Senator a great feeling of self-pity. As
representative of Johnson County, it was he who must deny this boy the
whole great world without, the people who wanted to help him, and what
the Senator from Maxwell called “his chance.” If Johnson County carried
the day, there would be something unpleasant for him to consider all the
remainder of his life. As he grew to be an older man he would think of
it more and more--what the boy would have done for himself in the world
if the Senator from Johnson had not been more logical and more powerful
than the Senator from Maxwell.
Senator Dorman was nearing the end of his argument. “In spite of the
undying prejudice of the people of Johnson County,” he was saying, “I
can stand before you today and say that after an unsparing investigation
of this case I do not believe I am asking you to do anything in
violation of justice when I beg of you to give this boy his chance.”
It was going to a vote at once, and the Senator from Johnson County
looked out at the budding things and wondered whether the boy down
at the penitentiary knew the Senate was considering his case that
afternoon. It was without vanity he wondered whether what he had been
trained to think of as an all-wise providence would not have preferred
that Johnson County be represented that session by a less able man.
A great hush fell over the Chamber, for ayes and noes followed almost in
alternation. After a long minute of waiting the secretary called, in a
tense voice:
“Ayes, 30; Noes, 32.”
The Senator from Johnson had proven too faithful a servant of his
constituents. The boy in the penitentiary was denied his chance.
The usual things happened: some women in the galleries, who had boys
at home, cried aloud; the reporters were fighting for occupancy of the
telephone booths, and most of the Senators began the perusal of the
previous day's Journal with elaborate interest. Senator Dorman indulged
in none of these feints. A full look at his face just then told how much
of his soul had gone into the fight for the boy's chance, and the
look about his eyes was a little hard on the theory of psychological
experiment.
Senator Harrison was looking out at the budding trees, but his face too
had grown strange, and he seemed to be looking miles beyond and years
ahead. It seemed that he himself was surrendering the voices of the
night, and the comings and goings of the sun. He would never look at
them--feel them--again without remembering he was keeping one of his
fellow creatures away from them. He wondered at his own presumption
in denying any living thing participation in the universe. And all the
while there were before him visions of the boy who sat in the cramped
cell with the volume of a favourite poet before him, trying to think how
it would seem to be out under the stars.
The stillness in the Senate-Chamber was breaking; they were going ahead
with something else. It seemed to the Senator from Johnson that sun,
moon, and stars were wailing out protest for the boy who wanted to know
them better. And yet it was not sun, moon, and stars so much as the
unused swimming hole and the uncaught fish, the unattended ball game,
the never-seen circus, and, above all, the unowned dog, that brought
Senator Harrison to his feet.
They looked at him in astonishment, their faces seeming to say it would
have been in better taste for him to have remained seated just then.
“Mr. President,” he said, pulling at his collar and looking straight
ahead, “I rise to move a reconsideration.”
There was a gasp, a moment of supreme quiet, and then a mighty burst
of applause. To men of all parties and factions there came a single
thought. Johnson was the leading county of its Congressional district.
There was an election that fall, and Harrison was in the race. Those
eight words meant to a surety he would not go to Washington, for the
Senator from Maxwell had chosen the right word when he referred to the
prejudice of Johnson County on the Williams case as “undying.” The
world throbs with such things at the moment of their doing--even though
condemning them later, and the part of the world then packed within the
Senate-Chamber shared the universal disposition.