A THOUGHTLESS YES
By Helen H. Gardener
Author Of
"Men, Women, and Gods;" "Sex in Brain;" "Pulpit, Pew, and Cradle;" "Is this Your Son, my Lord?" "Pushed by Unseen Hands," "Pray you, Sir, whose Daughter?" "An Unofficial Patriot," and "Facts and Fictions of Life."
Tenth Edition.
Copyright, 1890,
Dedication.
To the many strangers who, after reading such of these stories as have before been printed, have written me letters that were thoughtful or gay or sad, I dedicate this volume.
These letters have come from far and near; from rich and from poor; from Christian and from unbeliever; from a bishop's palace and from behind prison walls.
If this collection of stories shall give to my friends, known and unknown, as much pleasure and mental stimulus as their letters gave to me, I shall be content.
HELEN H. GARDENER.
Contents
[ PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION. ]
[ A SPLENDID JUDGE OF A WOMAN. ]
[ A RUSTY LINK IN THE CHAIN. ]
[ THE TIME LOCK OF OUR ANCESTORS. ]
PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION.
In issuing a new edition of this book, it has been thought wise to state that an unauthorized edition is now on the market, and it is desirable that the public shall know that all copies of this book not bearing the imprint of the Commonwealth Company are sold against the will and in violation of the rights of the author.
Since some persons have been puzzled to make the connection between the title of the book and the stories themselves, and to apply Colonel Ingersoll's exquisite autograph sentiment more clearly, a part of "An Open Letter," which was written in reply to an editorial review of the book when it first appeared, is here reprinted, in the hope that it may remove the difficulty for all.
AN OPEN LETTER.
I have, this morning, read your review of "A Thoughtless Yes." I wish to thank you for the pleasant things said and also to make the connection—which I am surprised to see did not present itself to your mind—between the title and the burden of the stories or sketches.
It is not so easy as you may suppose to get a title which shall be exactly and fully descriptive of a collection of tales or sketches, each one of which was written to suggest thoughts and questions on some particular topic or topics to which people usually pay the tribute of a thoughtless yes. With one—possibly two—exceptions each sketch means to suggest to the reader that there may be a very large question mark put after many of the social, religious, economic, medical, journalistic, or legal fiats of the present civilization.
You say that "in 'The Lady of the Club' she [meaning me] does not show how poverty results from a thoughtless yes. Perhaps she does not see that it does." I had in my mind exactly that point when I wrote the story and when I decided upon the title for the book. No, I do not attempt in such sketches to show how, but to show that, such and such conditions exist and that it is wrong. I want to suggest a question of the justice and the right of several things; but I want to leave each person free to think out, not my conclusion or remedy, but a conclusion and a remedy, and at all events to make him refuse, henceforth, the thoughtless yes of timid acquiescence to things as they are simply because they are. In the "Lady of the Club" I meant to attack the impudent authority that makes such a condition of poverty possible, by calling sympathetic attention to its workings. There are one or two other ideas sustained by authority, to which, to the readers of that tale, I wished to make a thoughtless yes henceforth impossible. At least I hoped to arouse a question. One is taxation of church property. I wished to point out that by shirking their honest debts churches heap still farther poverty and burden upon the poor. I hoped, too, to suggest that the idea of "charity," to which most people give a warmly thoughtless yes, must be an indignity or impossibility where, even they would say, it was most needed. I wanted to call attention to the fact that a physician and a man of tender heart and lofty soul were compelled to make themselves criminals, before the law, to even be kind to the dead. That conditions are so savage under the present system that such a case is absolutely hopeless while the victims live and outrageous after they are dead. To all of these dictates of impudent authority, to which most story readers pay the tribute of a thoughtless yes, I wanted to call attention in such a way that henceforth a question must arise in their minds. I hoped to show, too, that even so lofty a character as Roland Barker was tied hand and foot—until it made him almost a madman—by a system of economics and religion and law which so interlace as to sustain each other and combine to not only crush the poor but to prevent the rich from helping along even where they desire to do so.
These were the main points upon which that particular tale was intended to arouse a mental attitude of thoughtful protest There are other, minor ones, which I need not trouble you to recall. If you will notice, nearly all of the tales end (or stop without an end) with an open question for the reader to settle—to settle his way, not mine. Indeed, I am not yet convinced that my own ideas of the changes needed and the way to bring them about are infallible. I am still open to conviction. I have tried to grasp the Socialist, Communist, Anarchist, Single-tax, Free-land, and other ideas and to comprehend just what each could be fairly expected to accomplish if established—to see the pros and cons of these and other schemes for social improvement. These, and the varying cults ranged between, each seems to me to have certain strong points and certain weak ones. Each seems to me to overlook some essential feature; and yet I have no system to offer that I think would be better or would work better than some of these. Indeed, I do most earnestly believe that the inspired way is yet to be struck out, and I do not believe that I am the one to do it Meanwhile I can do some things. I can suggest questions, and, sometimes, answers. But I am not a god, and I do not want all people to answer my way. I do want to help prevent, now and henceforth, the tribute of a thoughtless yes from being given to a good many established wrongs.
Since such able thinkers as you are have—in the main—already refused such tribute, I am perfectly satisfied to let each of these answer the questions I have suggested or may suggest in my fiction in the way that seems most hopeful to him.
Meantime, the vast majority of story readers have not yet had their emotions touched by the dramatic presentation of "the other side." Fiction has—in the main—worked to make them accept without question all things as authority has presented them. Who knows but that a lofty discontent may be stirred in some soul who can solve the awful problems and at the same time reconcile the various cults of warring philosophers so that they may combine for humanity and cease to divide for revenue—or personal pique? I do not believe that the province of a story is to assume to give the solution of philosophical questions that have puzzled and proved too much for the best and ablest brains. I have no doubt that fiction may stir and arouse to thought many who cannot understand and will not heed essays or argument or preaching, while it may also present the same thoughts in a new light to those who do. Personally I do not believe in tacking on to fiction a "moral" or an "in conclusion" which shall switch all such aroused thoughts into one channel. Clear thinking and right feeling may lead some one, who is new to such protest, to solutions that I have not reached. So let us each question "impudent authority," whether it be in its stupid blindness to heredity or to environment; and I shall be content that you solve the new order by an appeal to Anarchism via free land; or that Matilda Joslyn Gage solve it by the ballot for women and hereditary freedom from slavish instincts stamped upon a race bom of superstitious and subject mothers.
Personally I do not believe that all the free land, free money or freedom in the world, which shall leave the mothers of the race (whether in or out of marriage) a subject class or in a position to transmit to their children the vices or weaknesses of a dominated dependent, will ever succeed in populating the world with self-reliant, self-respecting, honorable and capable people.
On the other hand, I do not see how the ballot in the hands of woman will do for her all that many believe it will. That it is her right and would go far is clear; but after that, your question of economics touches her in a way that it does not and cannot touch men, and I am free to confess that as yet I have heard of no economic or social plan that would not of necessity, in my opinion, bear heaviest upon those who are mothers. So you will see that when I suggested the desirability in "For the Prosecution" of having mothers on the bench and as jurors where a case touched points no man living does or can understand in all its phases, I do not think that would right all the wrong nor solve all the questions suggested by such a trial; but I thought it would help push the car of right and justice in the direction of light which we all hope is ahead.
You believe more in environment than in heredity; I believe in both, and that both are sadly and awfully awry, largely because too many people in too many ways pay to impudent authority the tribute of a thoughtless yes.
It is one of the saddest things in this world to see the brave and earnest men who fight so nobly for better and fairer economic conditions for "Labor," pay, much too often, the tribute of a thoughtless yes to the absolute pauper status of all womanhood They resent with spirit the idea that men should labor for a mere subsistence and always be dependent upon and at the financial mercy of the rich. They do not appear to see that to one-half of the race even that much economic independence would be a tremendous improvement upon her present status. How would Singletax or Free-land help this? You may reply that Anarchism would solve that problem. Would it? With maternity and physical disabilities in the scale? To my mind, all the various economic schemes yet put forward lack an essential feature. They provide for a free and better manhood, but they pay the tribute of a thoughtless yes to impudent authority in the case of womanhood, in many things. And so long as motherhood is serfhood, just so long will this world be populated with a race easy to subjugate, weak to resist oppression, criminal in its instincts of cruelty toward those in its power, and humble and subservient toward authority and domination. Character rises but little above its source. The mother molds the man. If she have the status, the instincts, and the spirit of a subordinate, she will transmit these, and the more enlightened she is the surer is this, because of her consciousness of her own degradation.
Look at the Kemmler horror. People all marvel at his "brutish nature and his desire to kill." No one says anything about the fact, which was merely mentioned at his trial, that his "father was a butcher and his mother helped in the business." Did you know that this is also true of Jesse Pomeroy; the boy who "from infancy tortured animals and killed whatever he could?"
Would all this sort of thing mean absolutely nothing to women of the same social and scientific status enjoyed by the men who assisted at the trials of these two and at the legal murder of one? In ordinary women, of course, it would not stir very deep thought But these were not ordinary men. They were far more than that, Almost all the women who have spoken or written to me of the Kemmler horror have touched that thought Have you heard a man discuss it? Is there a reason for this? Do we pay the tribute of a thoughtless yes to all that clusters about the present ideas on such subjects and about their criminal medicolegal aspects? But this letter grows too long.
With great respect and hearty good wishes,
I am sincerely,
Helen H. Gardener.
A SPLENDID JUDGE OF A WOMAN.
"We look at the one little woman's face we lovey as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings."—George Eliot.
"But after all it is not fair to blame her as you do, Cuthbert. She is what she must be. It is not at all strange. Midge—"
"I am quite out of patience with you, Nora;" exclaimed Cuthbert Wagner, vehemently. "How can you excuse her? Midge, as you call her, has been no friend to you. She was deceitful and designing all along. She even tried in every way she could think of to undermine you in my affections!" He tossed his head contemptuously and strode to the window where he stood glaring out into the moonlight in fierce and indignant protest. His wife had so often spoken well of Margaret Mintem. She did not appear to hold the least resentment toward the school-friend of her past years, while Cuthbert could see nothing whatever that was good or deserving of praise in the character of the young lady in question. He was bitterly resentful because Margaret Mintem had spoken ill of his wife while she was only his betrothed, and Cuthbert Wagner did not forgive easily.
Nora crossed the room with her swift, graceful tread, and the sweep of her lace gown over the thick rug had not reached her husband's ear as he stood thumping on the window pane. He started a little, therefore, when a soft hand was laid upon his arm and a softer face pressed itself close to his shoulder.
"It is very sweet of you, dear," she said in her low, gentle voice, "It is very sweet of you to feel so keenly any thrust made at me; but darling, you are unfair to Midge, poor girl! My heart used often to bleed for her. It must be terribly hard for her to fight her own nature, as she does,—as she must,—and lose the battle so often after all."
"Fight fiddle-sticks!" said Cuthbert, and then went on grumbling in inarticulate sounds, at which his wife laughed out merrily.
"Oh, boo, boo, boo," she said, pretending to imitate his unuttered words.
"I don't believe a word of it. I know Margaret Mintern. Did I not room with her for three long years? And do I not know that she is a good girl, and a very noble one, too, in spite of her little weakness of envy or jealousy?
"She can't help that. I am sure she must be terribly humiliated by it. Indeed, indeed, dear, I know that she is; but she cannot master it. It is a part of her. I do not know whether she was bom with it or not; but I do know that all of her life since she was a very little girl she has been so situated that just that particular defect in her character is the inevitable result. Don't you believe, Cuthbert, that all such things are natural productions? Why, dearie, it seems to me that you might as reasonably feel angry with me because my hair is brown as toward Midge because her envy sometimes overbears her better qualities. The real fault lies—"
"O Nora, suppose you take the stump! Lecture on 'Whatever is is right,' and have done with it."
"Aha, my dear," laughed his wife, "I have caught you napping again. I do not say that it is right; but I do say that it is natural for Margaret to be just what she is. That is just the point people always overlook, it seems to me. Nature is wrong about half of the time—even inanimate nature. Just look over there! See those splendid mountains and the lovely little valley all touched with moonlight; but, oh, how the eye longs for water! A lake, a splendid river, the ocean in the distance—something that is water—anything that is water! But no, it is valley and mountain and mountain and valley, until the most beautiful spot in the world, when first you see it, grows hateful and tiresome and lacking in the most important feature."
Cuthbert laughed. "A lake would look well just over there by McGuire's barn, now, wouldn't it? And, come to think of it, how a few mountains would improve things over at Newport or Long Beach." He stopped to thump a bug from his wife's shoulder.
"How pretty you look in that black lace, little woman. I don't believe nature needed any improver once in her life anyhow—when she made you."
Nora smiled. A pleased, gratified little dimple made itself visible at one corner of her mouth. Her husband stooped over and kissed it lightly, just as the portiere was drawn aside and a guest announced by James, the immaculate butler.
"We've just been having a quarrel, Bailey," said Mr. Wagner, as he advanced to greet the visitor, "and now I mean to leave it to you if—"
"Yes," drawled Mr. Bailey, "I noticed that as I came in. You were just punctuating your quarrel as James drew back the portiere. That is the reason I coughed so violently as I stepped inside. Don't be alarmed about my health. It isn't consumption. It is only assumption, I do assure you. I assumed that you assumed that you were alone—that there wasn't an interested spectator; but, great Scott! Bert, I don't blame you, so don't apologize;" and with a low bow of admiration to his friend's wife, he joined in the laugh.
"But what was the row? I'm consumed to hear it," he added, as they were seated. "I should be charmed to umpire the matter—so long as it ended that way. Now, go on; but I want to give you fair warning, old man, that I am on Mrs. Wagner's side to start with, so you fire off your biggest guns and don't attempt to roll any twisted balls."
"Curved balls," laughed Nora, "not twisted; and it seems to me you mixed your games just a wee bit. There isn't any game with guns and balls both, is there?"
"Oh, yes, yes indeed," replied Mr. Bailey, promptly. "The old, old game in which there is brought to bear a battery of eyes."
"Oh, don't," said Cuthbert. "I am not equal to it! But after all, I can't see that you are well out of this, Ned. Where do the balls come in?"
"What have you against eyeballs that roll in a fine frenzy when a battery of handsome eyes is trained upon a bashful fellow like me?" he asked quite gravely, and then all three laughed and Cuthbert pretended to faint.
"I shall really have to protest, myself, if you go any farther, Mr. Bailey," said Nora.
"You are getting into deep water, and if you are to be on my side in the coming contest, I want you to have a cool head and—"
"A clean heart;" put in Cuthbert.
"Mrs. Wagner never asks for impossibilities, I am sure," said Mr. Bailey, dryly.
"But she does. That is just it. She wants to make me believe that a girl who traduced her and acted like a little fiend generally, is an adorable creature—a natural production which couldn't help itself—had to behave that way. We—"
"I believe I started in by saying that I should be on your side, Mrs. Wagner," said their guest, assuming a judicial attitude and bracing himself behind an imaginary pile of accumulated evidence, "but I'm beginning to wobble already. If Bert makes another home run like that, I warn you, madam, that while I shall endeavor to be a fair and impartial judge, I shall decide against you."
Nora's eyes had a twinkle in their depths for an instant, but her face had grown grave.
"Wait. Let me tell you." she said. "Even Cuthbert does not know just how it was—what went to make my old school-friend's character precisely what it became. It was like this: When she was a very little girl her father died, and the poor little mother went back home with her four young children, and her crushed pride, to be an additional burden to the already overburdened father, who was growing old and who had small children of his own still to educate and pilot through society. He had lost his hold on business when he went into the army; and although he came home a general, quite covered with glory, a large family cannot live on glory, you know, and fame will not buy party dresses for three daughters and a grandchild."
"I've noticed that," remarked Mr. Bailey, dryly.
"The added importance of his position and the consequent publicity made the handsome party gowns all the more necessary, however," said Nora, not heeding the interruption, "and so the family had to do a great many things that were not pleasant to make even one end meet, as poor Midge used to say. The General loved brains and his granddaughter was very bright."
Cuthbert gave a low whistle. He would not compromise. If he found one thing wrong in an acquaintance all things were wrong. It followed, therefore, in his mind, that since Margaret Min-tern had been guilty of envy, she was altogether unlikely to possess fine mental capabilities. He would not even allow that she was stylish and sang well.
His wife took no notice of his outburst, but her color deepened a little as she went on.
"She was the most clever girl mentally that I have ever known and she was a vast deal of service to me in the years we were together. She sharpened my wits and stimulated my thoughts in a thousand ways, for which I am her debtor still. But I am getting ahead of my story. As I say, the old General worshipped brains, but he also adored beauty; and, alas, his granddaughter was quite plain—"
"Ugly as a hedge-fence, and I never could see that she was so superhumanly brilliant or stylish, as you claim, either," put in Cuthbert Wagner, as he leaned back in his deep chair with his eyes drawn to a narrow line.
"She was almost exactly the same age of her Aunt Julia, the General's youngest daughter; but Julia was a dream of beauty and of stupidity."
"Situation is now quite plain," said Mr. Bailey. "The lovely Julie got there. She always does, and—"
"Ah, but you must remember that in this case 'there' was the heart of the father of one and the grandfather of the other," said Nora, smiling.
Her husband laughed outright and faced Mr. Bailey.
"I rather think she has got you now, old man. In a case like that I'm hanged if I know how it would turn out—who would get there. The elements won't mix. It is not the usual thing.
"The beautiful stupid and the brilliant but plain are all right,—regular stage properties, so to speak,—but the grandfather! I'll wager if we tossed up for it, and you got heads and I got tails we'd both be wrong.
"There is something actually uncanny in the aged grandparent ingredient in a conundrum like that. Now if it were a young fellow,—only the average donkey,—why of course the lovely Julia would bear off the palm and leave Midge, as Nora calls her, to pine away. But if it were a level-headed, middle-aged chap like me, brains would take precedence." He waved his hand lightly toward his wife, who parted her lips over a set of little white teeth and a radiant smile burst forth.
"You are a bold hypocrite, Bert," said Mr. Bailey. "You did not have to make any such choice, and you are not entitled to the least credit in the premises. You got both."
"This is really quite overwhelming," laughed Nora; "but—"
"Why on earth did you call her attention to it, Ned," exclaimed Mr. Wagner, with great pretence of annoyance. "She would have swallowed it whole. I wonder why it is a woman so loves to be told that you married her for her intellect, when in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of eight hundred and forty you did nothing of the kind, and she knows it perfectly well. You married her because you loved her, brains or no brains, beauty or no beauty, and that's an end of it. Isn't that so, Ned?"
"Well, I'm not prepared to say, yet. I am umpire. I have not made up my mind which I shall marry—the lovely Julia, or the brilliant niece; but I think I shall in the long run."
"God help you if you do!" said Cuthbert, dramatically. "I don't know Julia, the beautiful; but I'd hate to see you married to a cat with uncut claws, Ned, much as I think you need dressing down from time to time."
"Mrs. Wagner," said Mr. Bailey, turning to her, gravely, "I'm not paying the least attention to him, and I am eager to hear how the grandfather got out of it."
"The grandfather!" exclaimed Nora, "why I had no idea of telling his story. It was the two girls I was interested in—or at least, in one of them; but that is just like a man. He—"
She allowed her feather fan to fall in her lap and looked up helplessly. "But come to think of the other side, his story would be worth telling, wouldn't it? It must have been a rather trying situation for him, too."
She took the fan up again, and waved it before her, thoughtfully. "I wonder why I never thought of that before. I have always rather blamed him for developing his granddaughter's one sad defect. I thought he should have guarded her against it. And—I do wonder if it is because I am a woman that I never before thought how very difficult it must have been for him?"
"No doubt, no doubt," said her husband, dryly. "But now that we have shed a few tears over our mental shortcomings and lack of breadth of sympathy in overlooking the sad predicament of the doughty General, proceed. The umpire sleepeth apace, and I've got to have my shy at the charming Midge before we've done with her," and he shut his paper-knife with a wicked little click.
"You can see how it would be," Nora began again, quite gravely, and the gentlemen both smiled. "You can see how it would be. The granddaughter was made to feel that she was in the way—was a burden. Her mother would urge her to become indispensable to the old General. To read to him, talk brightly to him, sing and play for him, watch his moods and meet them cleverly. It was all done as a race for his affections. Julia raced with her, setting her beauty and the other great fact that she was the child of his old age over against the entertaining qualities of her rival."
Mr. Bailey drew his handkerchief across his brow and looked helplessly perplexed, while Cuthbert responded with a dreary shake of the head.
"It is a clear case of 'The Lady or the Tiger,' yet, so far as I can see," said he. "Who got there, Bailey?"
Mr. Bailey smiled despairingly, and shook his head, but said nothing.
"It went on like that day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year," continued Nora, looking steadily in front of her and shivering a little, "until they were both young ladies. The General gave a party to present them both to society at the same time. His granddaughter tried to make him feel that he was repaid for the expense and trouble by the display of her exceptional powers as a conversationalist—Julia, by the display of her neck and shoulders, her exquisite rose-leaf face, and her childishly pretty manners. This sort of rivalry would have been well enough, no doubt, if it had not been for the fact that from childhood up to this culmination there had been a dash of bitterness in it, an un-der-current of antagonism; and poor Midge had always been the main sufferer, because she was very sensitive and she was made to feel that all she received was taken from her aunt Julia. To stand first with her father, Julia would do almost anything; and the ingenuity with which she devised cruel little stabs at Midge was simply phenomenal. To be absolutely necessary to him became almost a mania with his granddaughter."
"If this thing goes on much longer, I am going to have a fit," Cuthbert announced, placidly.
"The girl you judge so harshly, poor child, had a great many of them," said Nora, with an inflection in her voice that checked a laugh on Mr. Bailey's lips. "Fits of depression, fits of anger, fits of sorrow, fits of shame and of indignation with herself and with others. For there were times when she stooped to little meannesses which her sensitive soul abhorred. If intense effort resulted, after all, in failure, envy of her successful rival grew up in her heart; and, sometimes, if it were carefully cultivated by the pruning hook of sarcasm or an unkind look of triumph, she would say or do a mean or underhand thing, and then regret it passionately when it was too late."
Cuthbert gave a grunt of utter incredulity.
"Regretted it so little she'd do it again next day," he grumbled. Nora went steadily on.
"It grew to be the one spring and impulse of her whole nature—the necessity of her existence—to stand first with the ruling spirit wherever she was, whoever it might be. At school I have known her to sit up all night to make sure that she would be letter-perfect in her lessons the following morning. Not because she cared for her studies so much as because she must feel that she stood first in the estimation of her teachers. And then, too, her grandfather would know and be proud of her. It got to be nature with her (I do not know how much of the tendency may have been born in her) to need to stand on the top wherever she was. (It has always seemed to me that the conditions surrounding her were quite enough to explain this characteristic without an appeal to a possible heredity of which I can know nothing.) Even where we boarded, although she disliked the women and looked down upon the young men, she made them all like her, and even went the length of allowing one young fellow to ask her to marry him simply because she saw that he was interested in me."
"Humph! She—" began Cuthbert, but his wife held up her hand to check him, and did not pause in her story.
"Up to that time she had not given him a thought, and she was very angry when he finally asked the great question. She thought that he should have known that such a girl as she was could not be for a man of his limitations. She felt insulted. She flew up stairs and cried with indignation. 'The mere idea!' she said to me. 'How dared he! The common little biped!' I told her that she had encouraged him, and had brought unnecessary pain upon him as well as regret upon herself. Then she was angry with me. By and by she put her hand out in the darkness and took mine and pressed it. Then she said, 'Nora, it was my fault; but—but—' and then she began to sob again. 'But, Nora, I don't—know—why—I—did—it—and,' there was a long pause. 'And, beside, I thought he was in love with you,'" she sobbed out.
"That was the whole story," said Cuthbert, resentfully. "She simply wanted to supplant you and—"
"Yes, that was the whole story, as you say, dear," said his wife, gently; "but the poor girl could not help it. And—and she did not understand it herself at all."
"You make me provoked, Nora," said Cuthbert, almost sharply. "She wasn't a fool. She tried the same game on me a year or two later; but that time it didn't work. She even went the length of talking ill of you to me—saying little cutting things—when she found I had utterly succumbed to your attractions. I have to laugh yet when I think of it,—that is, when it don't make me too angry to laugh,—how I gave her a good round talking to." He laughed now at the recollection.
"She must have taken me for her delightful old grandparent the way I lectured her. But when I remembered how loyal you were to her, it just made my blood boil and I told her so."
Mr. Bailey shifted his position and began to contemplate giving a verdict emphatically against the absent lady, when Nora checked him by a wave of her fan.
"Yes, I know she did, Cuthbert, and I know everything you said to her. You were very cruel—if you had understood, as you did not and do not yet. She came and told me all about it." Cuthbert Wagner gave a low, incredulous whistle, and even Mr. Bailey looked sceptical.
"She came back from that drive with you the most wretched girl you ever saw. Her humiliation was pitiful to see. Her self-reproach was touching and real. I believe she would have killed herself if I had seemed to blame her."
Cuthbert snapped out:
"Humph! Very likely; and gone and done the same thing again the next day."
"Possibly that is true—if there had been a next day with a new temptation that was too strong for her on the shore where she landed after death If—"
"If the Almighty had shown a preference for some one else, hey?" asked Mr. Bailey, flippantly.
"No doubt, no doubt," acquiesced Nora. "But suppose you had a weak leg and it gave way at a critical moment—say just when you were entering an opera box to greet a lady. Suppose it dropped you in a ridiculous or humiliating manner. You would rage and be distressed, and make up your mind not to let it occur again, except in the seclusion of your own apartments; but—well, it would be quite as likely to serve you the same trick the following week, in church."
"The illustration does not strike me as quite fair," said Mr. Bailey, judicially.
"Good, Ned! Don't let her argue you into an interest in that little cat. She was simply a malicious little—"
"Wait, then," said Nora, ignoring her husband's outburst and looking steadily at Margaret Mintem's new judge, who was showing signs of passing a sentence no less severe than if it were delivered by Cuthbert Wagner himself.
"Suppose we take your memory. Are there not some names or dates that will drop out at times and leave you awkwardly in the lurch?"
"Well, rather," said Mr. Bailey, disgustedly. This was his weak spot.
"Now, don't you see that a person who has a perfect memory might be as unfair to you as you are to my old school friend in her little moral weakness—if we may call it by so harsh a term as that? That was her one vulnerable spot. It may have been born in her. That I do not know; but I insist that it was trained and drilled into her as much as her arithmetic or her catechism were, and with a result as inevitable. She loathed her fault, but it was too strong for her. Her resolution to conquer it dropped just short of success very often, indeed; and oh! how it did hurt her when she realized it and thought it all over, for her motives were unusually pure, and her moral sense was really very high indeed."
"Moral sense was a little frayed at the edges, I think."
"Don't, Cuthbert. You are such a cruelly severe judge. I know Mr. Bailey is on my side, now, and will think you very unfair. He does not mean to be, I assure you, Mr. Bailey, and if she had not spoken ill of me he would see the case fairly. But what are you thinking?"
"That it is a rather big question. That I—that I have overstayed my time. I just came over to ask you to dine with us next Thursday. My mother has some friends and wants you to meet them. May I leave my judicial decision open until then?"
"Certainly. Pray over it," said Cuthbert, rising; "and if you don't come out on my side, openly,—as I know you are in your mind,—buy a wire mask. I won't have any dodging."
"Come early. There is a secret to tell," laughed Mr. Bailey as he withdrew, and then he blushed furiously. "Mother's secret," he added, as he closed the door behind him.
The evening of the dinner the Wagners were later than they had intended to be, and Mrs. Bailey took Nora aside and said quite abruptly:
"I've got to pop it at you rather suddenly. Why didn't you come earlier? The lady whom Ned is to marry is here, and it is for her I have given the dinner. Ned went to your house to tell you last week, but his heart failed him. He said you were all in such a gale of nonsense that he concluded to wait. It is a very tender subject with him, I assure you. His case is quite hopeless. He is madly in love, and I am very much pleased with his choice. She seems as nearly perfect as they ever are, and she is unusually talented. But here is Ned now. I have told her all about it, my son, come and be congratulated."
He came forward shyly enough for a man of his years and experience, and took Nora's hand in a helpless way. But Cuthbert relieved matters at once by a hearty "Well, it is splendid, old fellow. I'm delighted. I—"
"But before the others come down," broke in Mr. Bailey, as if to get away from the subject, "I want to get my discharge papers in that case you plead before me last week. It lies heavy on my soul, for I am very sorry to say, Mrs. Wagner, that I am compelled to give judgment against you and your client. I think she was—I'm with Cuthbert this time. She impresses me as almost without redeeming qualities. I do not wish to make her acquaintance. I am sure that I could never force myself to take even a passing interest in that sort of a moral acrobat. Really, the lovely but selfish Julia would be my choice in a team of vicious little pacers like that. I'm sure I should detect your friend's fatal weakness in her every action. I should be unable to see anything but the hideous green-eyed monster even in the folds of her lace gowns or the coils of her shining hair. He would appear to me, ghost-like, peering over her shoulder in the midst of her most fascinating conversation. I should feel his fangs and see the glitter of his wicked eyes while I tried to say small nothings to her, and—"
"Oh, not at all," protested Nora. "You would never detect it at all unless she happened to be fighting for your esteem or admiration where she felt that odds were against her. She—"
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Wagner, but I am quite sure that I should. Envy is to me the very worst trait in the human character. I could more easily excuse or be blinded to anything else. I know that I should detect it at once. I always do—especially in a woman."
"Certainly. Anybody could. You know very well, Nora, that I saw—" began Cuthbert quite gleefully; but as a salve to her wounded feelings Mr. Bailey added in a tone of conciliation to Nora:
"However, I shall agree to let you test me some day. Present your friend to me, incog., and I'll wager—oh, anything that I shall read her like a book on sight. I'm a splendid judge of a woman. Always was from childhood. I'm sure that I should feel creepy the moment I saw the brilliant but envious granddaughter of the unfortunate old warrior. And by the way, he continues to be the one for whom you have enlisted my sympathy. I wonder that he was able to live two weeks in the same house with such a—"
"Cat," said Cuthbert, with a vicious jab at a paper-weight which represented a solemn-looking Chinese god in brocade trousers. He was just turning to enter into a cheerful and elaborate statement of his side of the controversy, as Mrs. Bailey swept down the room with her son's betrothed upon her arm, smiling and happy.
"Margaret Mintern!" exclaimed Nora, in dismay, and then—
"I am so glad to see you again, dear, and to be able to congratulate you, instead of some fair unknown, upon the fact that you are to have so dear a friend of ours for a husband. We think everything of Mr. Bailey. He is Bert's best friend and—"
Cuthbert had turned half away in utter confusion when he saw the ladies coming down the room, and feigned an absorption in the rotund Chinese deity which he had never displayed for the one of his own nation. But he bowed now, and mumbled some inarticulate sounds as he looked, not at the future Mrs. Bailey, but at the ridiculously happy face of her lover, whose usually ready tongue was silent as he hung upon the lightest tone of the brilliant woman beside him. As they passed into the dining-room, Nora managed to say to her husband:
"Thank heaven we did not mention her name to him, and he evidently does not suspect. Pull yourself together and stumble through your part the best you can, dear, without attracting his attention. And then you know that he and you agree perfectly about the—cat," she added wickedly, and then she smiled quietly as she took her seat next to the blissful lover and the relentless judge of the school friend of her youth.
THE LADY OF THE CLUB.
"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
Your loop'd, and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel;
That thou may'st shake the super flux to them,
Show the heavens more just."
Shakespeare.
I.
The old and somewhat cynical saying, that philosophers and reformers can bear the griefs and woes of other people with a heroism and resignation worthy of their creeds, would have fitted the case of Roland Barker only when shorn of the intentional sting of sarcasm. It is, nevertheless, true that even his nobly-gifted nature, his tender heart, and his alert brain sometimes failed to grasp the very pith and point of his own arguments.
He was a wealthy man whose sympathies were earnestly with the poor and unfortunate. He believed that he understood their sufferings, their ambitions, and their needs; and his voice and pen were no more truly on the side of charity and brotherly kindness than was his purse.
It was no unusual thing for him to attend a meeting, address a club, or take part in a memorial service, where his was the only hand unused to toil, and where he alone bore all expense, and then—after dressing himself in the most approved and faultless manner—become the guest of honor at some fashionable entertainment. Indeed, he was a leader in fashion as well as in philosophy, and at once a hero in Avenue A and on Murray Hill.
On the evening of which I am about to tell you he had addressed a club of workingmen in their little dingy hall, taking as his subject "Realities of Life." He had sought to show them that poverty and toil are not, after all, the worst that can befall a man, and that the most acute misery dwells in palaces and is robed in purple.
He spoke with the feeling of one who had himself suffered—as, indeed, he had—from the unsympathetic associations of an uncongenial marriage. He portrayed, with deep feeling, the chill atmosphere of a loveless home, whose wealth and glitter and lustre could never thrill and enrapture the heart as might the loving hand-clasp in the bare, chill rooms where sympathy and affection were the companions of poverty.
I had admired his enthusiasm as he pictured the joy of sacrifice for the sake of those we love, and I had been deeply touched by his pathos—a pathos which I knew, alas, too well, sprang from a hungry heart—whether, as now, it beat beneath a simple coat of tweed or, as when hours later, it would still be the prisoner of its mighty longing, though clothed with elegance and seated at a banquet fit for princes.
The last words fell slowly from his lips, and his eyes were dimmed, as were the eyes of all about me. His voice, so full of feeling, had hardly ceased to throb when, far back in the little hall, arose a woman, thin and worn, and plainly clad, but showing traces of a beauty and refinement which had held their own and fought their way inch by inch in spite of poverty, anxiety, and tears. The chairman recognized her and asked her to the platform.
"No," she said, in a low, tremulous tone which showed at once her feeling and her culture—"no, I do not wish to take the platform; but since you ask for criticism of the kind speech we have just listened to, it has seemed to me that I might offer one, although I am a stranger to you all."
Her voice trembled, and she held firmly to the back of a chair in front of her. The chairman signified his willingness to extend to her the privilege of the floor, and there was slight applause. She bowed and began again slowly:
"I sometimes think that it is useless to ever try to make the suffering rich and the suffering poor understand each other. I do not question that the gentleman has tasted sorrow. All good men have. I do not question that his heart is warm and true and honest, and that he truly thinks what he has said; but"—and here her voice broke a little and her lip trembled—"but he does not know what real suffering is. He cannot. No rich man can." There was a movement of impatience in the room, and some one said, loud enough to be heard, "If she thinks money can bring happiness she is badly left."
There was a slight ripple of laughter at this, and even the serious face of Roland Barker grew almost merry for a moment. Then the woman went on, without appearing to have noticed the interruption:
"I do not want to seem ungracious, and heaven knows, no one could mean more kindly what I say; but he has said that money is not needed to make us happy—only love; and again he quotes that baseless old maxim, 'The love of money is the root of all evil.'" She paused, then went slowly on as if feeling her way and fearing to lose her hold upon herself: "I know it is a sad and cruel world even to the more fortunate, if they have hearts to feel and brains to think. To the unloving or unloved there must be little worth; but they at least are spared the agony that sits where love and poverty have shaken hands with death"—her voice broke, and there was a painful silence in the room—"where those who love are wrung and torn by all the thousand fears and apprehensions of ills that are to come to wife and child and friend. The day has passed when all this talk of poverty and love—that love makes want an easy thing to bear—the day has passed, I say, when sane men ought to think, or wise men speak, such cruel, false, and harmful words. He truly says that money without love cannot bring happiness; but that is only half the truth, for love with poverty can bring, does bring, the keenest agony that mortals ever bore."
There was a movement of dissent in the hall. She lifted her face a moment, contracted her lips, drew a long breath, and said:
"I will explain. Without the love, poverty were light enough to bear. What does it matter for one's self? It is the love that gives the awful sting to want, and makes its cruel fingers grip the throat as never vise or grappling-hook took hold, and torture with a keener zest than fiends their victims! Love and Poverty! It is the combination that devils invented to make a hell on earth."
All eyes were fastened on her white face now, and she was rushing on, her words, hot and impassioned, striking firm on every point she made.
"Let me give you a case. In a home where comfort is—or wealth—a mother sits, watching by night and day the awful hand of Death reach nearer, closer to her precious babe, and nothing that skill or science can suggest will stay the hand or heal the aching heart; and yet there is comfort in the thought that all was done that love and wealth and skill could do, and that it was Nature's way. But take from her the comfort of that thought. She watches with the same poor, breaking heart, but with the knowledge, now, to keep her company, that science might, ah! could, push back the end, could even cure her babe if but the means to pay for skill and change and wholesome food and air were hers. Is that no added pang? Is poverty no curse to her?—a curse the deeper for her depth of love? The rich know naught of this. It gives to life its wildest agony, to love its deepest hurt."
She paused. There was a slight stir as if some one had thought to offer applause, and then the silence fell again, and she began anew, with shining eyes and cheeks aflame. She swayed a little as she spoke and clutched the chair as for support. Her voice grew hoarse, and trembled, and she fixed her gaze upon a vacant chair:
"But let me tell you of another case. A stone's throw from this hall, where pretty things are said week after week—and kindly meant, I know—of poverty and love—of the blessedness of these—there is a living illustration, worth more than all the theories ever spun, to tell you what 'realities of life' must be where love is great and poverty holds sway. Picture, with me, the torture and despair of a refined and cultured woman who watches hour by hour the long months through, and sees the creeping feet of mental wreck, and physical decay, and knows the mortal need of care and calm for him who is the whole of life to her, and for the want of that which others waste and hold as dross he must work on and on, hastening each day the end he does not see, which shall deprive him of all of life except the power for ill.... She will be worse than widowed and alone, for ever by her side sits Want, for him, tearing at every chord of heart and soul—not for herself—but for that dearer one, wrecked in the prime of life and left a clod endowed only with strength for cruel wrong, whose hand would sheath a knife in her dear heart and laugh with maniac glee at his mad deeds. She saw the end. She knew long months ago what was to be, if he must toil and strain his nerve and brain for need of that which goes from knave to knave, and hoards itself within cathedral walls, where wise men meet to teach the poor contentment with their lot! She knew he must not know; the knowledge of the shadow must be kept from his dear brain until the very end, by smiles, and cheer, and merry jest from her. Who dare tell her that riches are a curse? and prate of 'dross' and call on heaven to witness that its loss is only gain of joy and harbinger of higher, holier things? Who dare call her as witness for the bliss of poverty with love?"
She slowly raised her hand and, with a quick-drawn breath, pressed it against her side, and with her eyes still fastened on the vacant chair, and tears upon her cheeks, falling unchecked upon her heaving bosom, she held each listener silent and intent on every word she spoke. The time allotted anyone was long since overrun; but no one thought of that, and she went on:
"'With love!' Ah, there is where the iron can burn and scar and open every wound afresh each day, make poverty a curse, a blight, a scourge, a vulture, iron-beaked, with claws of burning steel, that leave no nerve untouched, no drop of blood unshed.
"'With love!' 'Tis there the hand of Poverty can deal the deadliest blows, and show, as nowhere else on earth, the value of that slandered, hoarded thing called wealth."
There blazed into her face a fierce, indignant light, her voice swelled out and struck upon the ear like fire-bells in the dead of night:
"'The root of evil!'—'poverty with love!' Hypocrisy, in purple velvet robed, behind stained glass, with strains of music falling on its ears, with table spread in banquet-hall below, bethought itself to argue thus to those itself had robbed; while, thoughtless of its meaning and its birth, the echo of its lying, treacherous words comes from the pallid lips of many a wretch whose life has been a failure and an agony because of that which he himself extols. A lie once born contains a thousand lives, and holds at bay the struggling, feeble truth, if but that lie be fathered by a priest and mothered by a throne—as this one was! 'The root of evil' is the spring of joy. Decry it those who will. And those who do not love, perchance, may laugh at all its need can mean; but to the loving, suffering poor bring no more cant, and cease to voice the hollow words of Ignorance and Hypocrisy. It is too cruel, and its deadly breath has long enough polluted sympathy and frozen up the springs of healthy thought, while sheathing venomed fangs in breaking hearts. Recast your heartless creeds! Your theories for the poor are built on these."
She sank back into her chair white and exhausted.
There was a wild burst of applause. A part of the audience, with that ear for sound and that lack of sense to be found in all such gatherings, had forgotten that it was not listening to a burst of eloquence which had been duly written out and committed to memory for the occasion.
But Roland Barker sprang to his feet, held both his hands up, to command silence, and said, in a scarcely audible voice, as he trembled from head to foot: "Hush, hush! She has told the truth! She has told the awful truth! I never saw it all before. Heaven help you to bear it. It seems to me I cannot!"
Several were pale and weeping. I turned to speak to the woman who had changed an evening's entertainment into a tragic scene; but she had slipped out during the excitement. I took Barker's arm and we walked towards the Avenue together. Neither of us spoke until we reached Madison Square. Here the poor fellow sank into a seat and pulled me down beside him.
"Don't talk to me about theories after that," he said. "Great God! I am more dead than alive. I feel fifty years older than when I went to that little hall to teach those people how to live by my fine philosophy, and I truly thought that I had tasted sorrow and found the key to resignation. Ye gods!"
"Perhaps you have," I said.
"Yes, yes," he replied, impatiently; "but suppose I had to face life day by day, hour by hour, as that woman pictured it—and she was a lady with as keen a sense of pain as I—what do you suppose my philosophy would do for me then? Do you think I could endure it? And I went there to teach those people how to suffer and be strong!"
"Look here, Barker," I said, "you'd better go home now and go to bed. You are cold and tired, and this won't help matters any."
"What will?" he asked.
I made no reply. When we reached his door he asked again:
"What will?"
I shook my head and left him standing in the brilliant hall of his beautiful home, dazed and puzzled and alone.
II.
The next time I met Roland Barker he grasped my hand and said excitedly: "I have found that woman! What she said is all true. My God! what is to be done? I feel like a strong man tied hand and foot, while devilish vultures feed on the flesh of living babes before my eyes!"
"Stop, Barker," I said; "stop, and go away for a while, or you will go mad. What have you been doing? Look at your hands; they tremble like the hands of a palsied man; and your face; why, Barker, your face is haggard and set, and your hair is actually turning gray! What in the name of all that's holy have you been doing?"
"Nothing, absolutely nothing!" he exclaimed "That is the trouble! What can I do? I tell you something is wrong, Gordon, something is desperately wrong in this world. Look at that pile of stone over there: millions of dollars are built into that. It is opened once each week, aired, cleaned, and put in order for a fashionable audience dressed in silk and broadcloth. They call it a church, but it is simply a popular club house, which, unlike other club houses, hasn't the grace to pay its own taxes. They use that club house, let us say, three hours in all, each week, for what? To listen to elaborate music and fine-spun theories about another world. They are asked to, and they give money to send these same theories to nations far away, who—to put it mildly—are quite as well off without them. Then that house is closed for a week, and those who sat there really believe that they have done what is right by their fellow-men! Their natural consciences, their sense of right and justice, have been given an anaesthetic. 'The poor ye have with you always,' they are taught to believe, is not only true, but right. I tell you, Gordon, it is all perfectly damnable, and it seems to me that I cannot bear it when I remember that woman."
"She is only one of a great many," I suggested.
Roland Barker groaned: "My God! that is the trouble—so many that the thing seems hopeless. And to think that on every one of even these poor souls is laid another burden that that stone spire may go untaxed!"
"Barker," I said, laying my hand on his arm, "tell me what has forced all this upon you with such a terrible weight just now."
"Not here, not now," he said. "I have written it down just as she told it to me—you know I learned stenography when I began taking an interest in public meetings. Well, I've just been copying those notes out. They are in my pocket," he said, laying his hand on his breast. "They seem to burn my very soul. I would not dare to trust myself to read them to you here. Come home with me."
When we were seated in his magnificent library, he glanced about him, and with a wave of his hand said, with infinite satire: "You will notice the striking appropriateness of the surroundings and the subject."
"No doubt," I said. "I have often noticed that before, especially the last time I heard a sermon preached to three of the Vanderbilts, two Astors, five other millionaires, and about sixty more consistent Christians, all of whom were wealthy. The subject was Christ's advice to the rich young man, 'Sell all thou hast and give to the poor.' But never mind; go on; the day has passed when deed and creed are supposed to hold the slightest relation to each other; and what is a $20,000 salary for if not to buy sufficient ability to explain it all sweetly away and administer, at the same time, an anæsthetic to the natural consciences of men?"
I settled myself in a large Turkish chair on one side of the splendidly carved table; he stood on the other side sorting a manuscript. Presently he began reading it. "'When I married Frank Melville he was strong and grand and brave; a truer man never lived. He had been educated for the law. His practice was small, but we were able to live very well on what he made, and the prospect for the future was bright. We loved each other—but, ah! there are no words to tell that. We worshipped each other as only two who have been happily mated can ever understand. We lived up to his salary. Perhaps you will say that that was not wise. We thought it was. A good appearance, a fairly good appearance at least, was all that we could make, and to hold his own in his profession, this was necessary. You know how that is. A shabby-looking man soon loses his hold on paying clients. Of course he would not dress well and allow me to be ill-clad. He—he loved me. We were never able to lay by anything; but we were young and strong and hopeful—and we loved each other.'" Barker's voice trembled. He looked at me a moment and then said very low: "If you could have seen her poor, tired, beautiful eyes when she said that."
"I can imagine how she looked," I said. "She had a face one remembers."
After a little he went on: "We had both been brought up to live well. Our friends were people of culture, and we—it will sound strange to you for me to say that our love and devotion were the admiration and talk of all of them.
"'By-and-by I was taken ill. My husband could not bear to think of me as at home alone, suffering He stayed with me a great deal. I did not know that he was neglecting his business; I think he did not realize it then; he thought he could make it all up; he was strong and—he loved me. At last the doctors told him that I should die if he did not take me away; I ought to have an ocean voyage. It almost killed him that he could not give me that. We had not the money. He took me away a little while where I could breathe the salt air, and the good it did me made his heart only the sadder when he saw that it was true that all I needed was an ocean voyage. The climate of his home was slowly killing me. We bore it as long as we dared, and I got so weak that he almost went mad. Then we moved here, where my health was good. But it was a terrible task to get business; there were so many others like him, all fighting, as if for life, for money enough to live on from day to day. The strain was too much for him, and just as he began to gain a footing he fell ill, and—and if we had had money enough for him to take a rest then, and have proper care, good doctors, and be relieved from immediate anxiety, he would have gotten well, with my care—I loved him so! But as it was—' Shall I show you the end?" Barker stopped, he was trembling violently, his eyes were full of tears. I waited. Presently he said, huskily: "Shall I tell you, Gordon, what I saw? I have not gotten over it yet. She laid her finger on her lips and motioned me to follow. The room where we had been was poor and bare. She took a key from her bosom, opened a door, and went in. I followed. Sitting in the only comfortable chair—which had been handsome once—was a magnificent-looking man, so far as mere physical proportions can make one that.
"'Darling,' she said tenderly, as if talking to a little child. 'Darling, I have brought you a present. Are you glad?'
"She handed him a withered rose that I had carelessly dropped as I went in.
"He arose, bowed to me when she presented me, waved me to his chair, took the flower, looked at her with infinite love, and said: 'To-morrow, little wife; wait till to-morrow.'
"Then he sat down, evidently unconscious of my presence, and gazed steadily at her for a moment, seeming to forget all else and to struggle with some thought that constantly eluded him. She patted his hand as if he were a child, smiling through her heart-break all the while, kissed him, and motioned me to precede her from the room.
"When she came out she locked the door carefully behind her, sank into a chair, covered her face with her hands, and sobbed as if her heart would break. After a while she said: 'A little money would have saved, him and now it is too late, too late. Sometimes he is violent, sometimes like that. The doctors say the end is not far off, and that any moment he may kill me, and afterwards awake to know it! It is all the result of poverty with love!' she said. Then, passionately: 'If I did not love him so I could bear it, but I cannot, I cannot! And how will he bear it if he ever harms me—and I not there to help him?'"
Barker stepped to the window to hide his emotion. Presently he said, in a voice that trembled: "If she did not love him so she could let him go to some—asylum; but she knows the end is sure, and not far off, and that the gleams of light he has are when he sees her face. She has parted with everything that made life attractive to keep food and warmth for him. She is simply existing now from day to day—one constant agony of soul and sense—waiting for the end. She allowed me to take a doctor to see him; I would have come for you, but you were out of town. He only confirmed what others had told her a year ago. He advised her to have him put in a safe place before he did some violence; but she refused, and made us promise not to interfere. She said he would be able to harm no one but her, if he became violent at the last, and she was ready for that. It was easier far to live that way and wait for that each day than to have him taken away where he would be unhappy and perhaps ill-treated. He needed her care and love beside him every hour, and she —she needed nothing."
Here Barker flung himself into a chair and let his head fall on his folded arms on the table.
"That is the way love makes poverty easy to bear," he said, bitterly, after a time, and his trembling hands clinched tight together.
"Did you give her any money?" I asked.
He groaned. "Yes, yes, I—that is, I left some on the table under her sewing. She isn't the kind of woman one can offer charity. She—"
"No," I said, "she isn't, and beside, for the pain that tortures her it is too late now for money to help. Only it may relieve her somewhat to feel sure that she can get what he needs to eat and wear and to keep him warm and allow her to be free from the necessity of outside work. I am glad you left the money. But—but—Barker, do you think she will use it, coming that way and from a stranger?"
He looked up forlornly. "No, I don't," he said; "and yet she may. I will hope so; but if she does, what then? The terrible question will still remain just where it was. That is no way to solve it; we can't bail out the ocean with a thimble. And what an infamous imposition all this talk is of 'resignation' to such as she; for her terrible calm, as she talked to me, had no hint of resignation in it. She is simply, calmly, quietly desperate now—and she is one of many." He groaned aloud.
"Will you take me there the next time you go?" I asked.
"She said I must not come back; she could not be an object of curiosity—nor allow him to be. She said that she allowed me to come this time because on the night we first saw her she had stepped into that little hall to keep herself from freezing in her thin clothes as she was making her way home, and she saw that I was earnest in what I said, and she stayed to listen—" his voice broke again.
Just then the drapery was drawn back, and his wife, superbly robed, swept in, bringing a bevy of girls.
"Oh, Mr. Barker," said one, gayly, "you don't know what you missed to-night by deserting our theatre party; it was all so real—love in rags, you know, and all that sort of thing; only I really don't like to see quite so much attention paid to the 'Suffering poor,' with a big S, and the lower classes generally. I think the stage can do far better than that, don't you? But it is the new fad, I suppose, and after all I fancy it doesn't do much harm, only as it makes that sort of people more insufferably obtrusive about putting their ill-clad, bad-smelling woes before the rest of us. What a beautiful vase this is, Mrs. Barker! May I take it to the light?"
"Certainly, my dear," laughed Mrs. Barker; "and I agree with you, as usual. I think it is an exquisite vase—and that the stage is becoming demoralized. It is pandering to the low taste for representations of low life. I confess I don't like it. That sort of people do not have the feelings to be hurt—the fine sensibilities and emotions attributed to them. Those grow up in refined and delicate surroundings. That is what I often tell Roland when he insists upon making himself unhappy over some new 'case' of destitution. I tell him to send them five dollars by mail and not to worry himself, and I won't allow him to worry me with his Christie-street emotions."
Barker winced, and I excused myself and withdrew, speculating on certain phases of delicacy of feeling and fine sensibility.
III.
I did not see Barker again for nearly three weeks, when one night my bell was rung with unusual violence, and I heard an excited voice in my hall. "Be quick, John; hurry," it said, "and tell the doctor I must see him at once. Tell him it is Roland Barker."
John had evidently demurred at calling me at so late an hour.
"All right, Barker; I'll be down in a moment," I called from above. "No, come up. You can tell me what is the matter while I dress. Is it for yourself? There, go in that side room, I can hear you, and I'll be dressed in a moment."
"Hurry, hurry," he said, excitedly, "I'll tell you on the way. I have my carriage. Don't wait to order yours, only hurry, hurry, hurry."
Once in the carriage, I said: "Barker, you are going to use yourself up, this way. You can't keep this sort of thing up much longer. You'd better go abroad."
"Drive faster," he called, to the man on top. Then to me, "If you are not the first doctor there? there will be a dreadful scene. They will most likely arrest her for murder."
"Whom?" said I. "You have told me nothing, and how can I prevent that if a murder has been committed?"
"By giving her a regular death certificate," said he, coolly, "saying that you attended the case, and that it was a natural death. I depend upon you, Gordon; it would be simply infamous to make her suffer any more. I cannot help her now, but you can, you must. No one will know the truth but us, and afterwards we can help her—to forget. She is not an old woman; there may be something in life for her yet."
"Is it the Lady of the Club?" I asked. We had always called her that "What has she done?"
"Yes," he said, "it is the 'Lady of the Club.' and she has poisoned her husband."
"Good God!" exclaimed I; "and you want me to give her a regular death certificate and say I attended the case?"
"You must," he said; "it would be infamous not to. She could not bear it any longer. She found herself breaking down, and she would not leave him alive without her care and love. He had become almost helpless, except when short violent spells came on. These left him exhausted. He almost killed her in the last one. Her terror was that he would do so and then regain his reason—that he would know it afterwards and perhaps be dragged through the courts. She had been working in a chemist's office, it seems, when she was able to do anything. She took some aconitine, and to-night she put everything in perfect order, gave him the best supper she could, got him to bed, and then—gave him that. She sent for me and told me as calmly as—God! it was the calm of absolute desperation. She sat there when I went in, holding his poor dead hand and kissing it reverently. She laid it down and told me what I tell you. There was not a tear, a moan, a sigh. She said: 'Here is the money you left—all except what I paid for his supper to-night. We had gotten down to that before I had the chance to steal the poison or the courage to give it to him. I had not meant to use any of the money; the rest is here. I would like it used—if you are willing—to bury him decently, not in the Potter's Field, and I would like—if you will take the trouble—to have it done absolutely privately. We have borne enough. I cannot bear for even his ashes to be subjected to any further humiliation.'"
Roland Barker paused to command himself. "Of course I promised her," he went on, after a time. "She does not realize that she may be arrested and have his poor body desecrated to find the cause of death. That would make her insane—even if— Drive faster!" he called out again to the man outside. When we reached the house he said: "Be prepared to see her perfectly calm. It is frightful to witness, and I tremble for the result later on."
When we knocked on her door there was no response. I pushed it open and entered first. The room was empty. We went to the inner doer and rapped gently, then louder. There was no sound. Barker opened the door, and then stepped quickly back and closed it. "She is kneeling there by his bed," he said; "write the certificate here and give it to me. Then I will bring an undertaker and—he and I can attend to everything else. I did want you to see her. I think you should give her something to make her sleep. That forced calm will make her lose her mind. She is so shattered you would not recognize her."
"Stay here, Barker," I said; "I want to see her alone for a moment. I will tell her who I am and that you brought me—if I need to."
He eyed me sharply, but I stepped hastily into the inner room. I touched the shoulder and then the forehead of the kneeling form. It did not move. "Just as I expected," I muttered, and lifting the lifeless body in my arms I laid it gently beside her husband. In one hand she held the vial from which she had taken the last drop of the deadly drug, and clasped in the other her husband's fingers. She had been dead but a few moments, and both she and her husband were robed for the grave.
When I returned to the outer room I found Barker with a note in his hand, and a shocked and horrified look on his face. He glanced up at me through his tears.
"We were too late," he said. "She left this note for me. I found it here on the table. She meant to do it all along, and that is why she was so calm and had no fears for herself."
"I thought so when you told me what she had done," said I.
"Did you? I did not for a moment, or I would have stayed and tried to reason her out of it."
"It is best as it is," said I, "and you could not have reasoned her out of it. It was inevitable—after the rest. Take this certificate too; you will need both."
When all was safely over, as we drove home from the new graves two days later, Barker said: "Is this the solution?"
I did not reply.
Presently he said: "To the dead, who cannot suffer, we can be kind and shield them even from themselves. Is there no way to help the living? A few hundred dollars, two short years ago, would have saved all this, and there was no way for her to get it. She knew it all then, and there was no help!"
"Why did she not, in such a case as that, push back her pride and go to some one? There must be thousands who would have gladly responded to such a call as that," I argued.
He buried his face in his hands for a moment and shuddered. At last he said: "She did—she went to three good men, men who had known, been friendly with, admired her and her husband. Two of them are worth their millions, the other one is rich. She only asked to borrow, and promised to repay it herself if she had to live and work after he were dead to do it!"
He paused.
"You do not mean to tell me that they refused—and they old friends and rich?" I asked, amazed.
"I mean to say just this: they one and all made some excuse; they did not let her have it."
"She told them what the doctors said, and of her fears?"
"She did," he answered, sadly.
"And yet you say they are good men!" I exclaimed, indignantly.
"Good, benevolent, charitable, every one of them," he answered.
"Were you one of them, Barker?" I asked, after a moment's pause.
"Thank God, no!" he replied. "But perhaps in some other case I have done the same, if I only knew the whole story. Those men do not know this last, you must remember."
"And the worst of it is, we dare not tell them," said I, as we parted.
"No, we dare not," he replied, and left me standing with the copy of the burial certificate in my hand.
"Natural causes?" I said to myself, looking at it. "Died of natural causes—the brutality and selfishness of man—and poverty with love. Natural causes! Yes." And I closed my office door and turned out the light.
UNDER PROTEST.
"This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I assure you.
"Much more, perchance, might be said; but I hold him, of all men, most lightly Who swerves from the truth in his tale."
Bret Harte.
When the new family moved into, and we were told had bought, the cottage nearest our own, we were naturally interested in finding out what kind of people they were, and whether we had gained or lost by the change of neighbors.
In a summer place like this it makes a good deal of difference just what kind of people live so near to you that when you are sitting on your veranda and they are swinging in hammocks on theirs, the most of the conversation is common property, unless you whisper, and one does not want to spend three or four months of each year mentally and verbally tiptoeing about one's own premises. Then, on the other hand, there are few less agreeable situations to be placed in than to be forced to listen to confidences or quarrels with which you have nothing whatever to do, or else be deprived of the comforts and pleasures of out-door life, to secure which you endure so many other annoyances.
Our new neighbors were, therefore, as you will admit, of the utmost interest and importance to us, and I was naturally very much pleased, at the end of the first week, when I returned one day from a fishing party, from which my wife's headache had detained her, by the report she gave me of their attitude toward each other. (From her glowing estimate, I drew rose-colored pictures of their probable kindliness and generosity toward others.) Up to this time they had been but seldom outside of their house, and we had not gathered much information of their doings, except the fact that a good deal of nice furniture had come, and they appeared to be greatly taken up in beautifying and arranging their cottage. This much promised well, so far as it went; but we had not lived to our time of life not to find out, long ago, that the most exquisitely appointed houses sometimes lack the one essential feature; that is, ladies and gentlemen to occupy them.
"They are lovely!" said my wife, the moment I entered the door, before I had been able to deposit my fishing-tackle and ask after her headache. "They are lovely; at least he is," she amended. "I am sure we shall be pleased with them; or, at least, with him. A man as careful of, and attentive to, his wife as he is can't help being an agreeable neighbor."
"Good!" said I. "How did you find out? And how is your headache?—Had a disgusting time fishing. Glad you did not go. Sun was hot; breeze was hot; boatman's temper was a hundred and twenty in the shade; bait wouldn't stay on the hooks, and there weren't any fish any way. But how did you say your head is?"
"My head?" said my wife, with that retrospective tone women have, which seemed to indicate that if she had ever had a head, and if her head had ever ached, and if headache was a matter of sufficient importance to remember, in all human probability it had recovered in due time. "My head? Oh, yes—Oh, it is all right; but you really never did see any one so tractable as that man. And adaptable! Why, it is a perfect wonder. Of course I had no business to look or listen; but I did. I just couldn't help it. The fact is, I thought they were quarrelling at first, and I almost fainted. I said to myself, 'If they are that kind of people we will sell out. I will not live under the constant drippings of ill-temper.' Quarrelling ought to be a penitentiary offence; that is, I mean the bickerings and naggings most people dignify by that name. I could endure a good, square, stand-up and knock down quarrel, that had some character to it; but the eternal differences, often expressed by the tones of voice only, I can't stand." I smiled an emphatic assent, and my wife went on.
"Well, I must confess his tones of voice are, at times, against him; but I'm not sure that it is not due to the distance. All of his tones may not carry this far. I'm sure they don't, for when I first heard him, and made up my mind that it was a horrid, common, plebeian little row, I went to the west bedroom window—you know it looks directly into their kitchen—and what do you suppose I saw?"
The question was so sudden and wholly unexpected, and my mental apparatus was so taken up with the story that I found myself with no ideas whatever on the subject Indeed I do not believe that my wife wanted me to guess what she saw, half so much as she wanted breath; but I gave the only reply which the circumstances appeared to admit of, and which, I was pleased to see, in spite of its seeming inadequacy, was as perfectly satisfactory to the blessed little woman as if it had been made to order and proven a perfect fit.
"I can't imagine," said I.
"Of course you can't," she replied, pushing my crossed legs into position, and seating herself on my knees.
"Of course you can't. A man couldn't. Well, it seems their servant left last night, and that blessed man was washing the dishes this morning. The difference of opinion had been over which one of them should do it."
"Why, the confounded brute!" said I. "He is a good deal better able to do it than she is. She looks sick, and so long as he has no business to attend to down here, he has as much time as she and a good deal more strength to do that kind of work."
"Well, I just knew you'd look at it that way," said my wife, with an inflection of pride and admiration which indicated that I had made a ten strike of some kind, of which few men—and not many women—would be capable.
"But that was not it at all," continued she.
I began laboriously to readjust my mental moorings to this seemingly complicated situation, and was on the verge of wondering why my wife was so pleased with me for simply making a mistake, when she began again, after giving me a little pat of unqualified satisfaction and sympathy.
"They both wanted to do it. She said she wasn't a bit tired and could do it alone just as well as not, and he'd break the glasses with his funny, great, big fingers; and he said he'd be careful not to break anything, and that the dish-water would spoil her hands."
"Good," said I, "I shall like the fellow. I———"