A Man's World

Even the Father was bewildered. He came down to the gateway to meet me – a fine old figure, leaning on his ebony cane, his undimmed eyes shining from under his shaggy white eyebrows. He put his arm over my shoulder as we walked back to the house, as though he was glad of someone to lean upon. And all through supper he talked to me about my father and mother. He told me again how my father had died bravely at the head of a dare-devil sortie out of Nashville. And he told me with great charm about the time when they had been children. We sat out on the porch for a while and he went on with his reminiscencing. Then suddenly he stopped.

"Oh," he said, "how I ramble. You will be wanting to go and call on Margot."

It was like visiting the ghosts. Margot had aged more than any of my generation. We were still under forty but her hair was quite gray. Her face had lost its beauty – pinched out by her narrow, empty life. And yet as she stood on the porch to greet me, as I came up the walk to her house, there was much of the old charm about her. There are few women like her nowadays. I knew many in my childhood – the real heroes of the great war. The women who in the bitter days of reconstruction, bound up the wounds of defeat, bore almost all the burdens and laid the foundations of the new South. They were gracious women, in spite of their arrogant pride in their breed. They knew how to suffer and smile.

We sat side by side on the porch – leagues and leagues apart. I found it strangely hard to talk with her. She told, in her quiet colorless voice, all her news. Her mother had died several years before. Al was married and established in Memphis and so forth. Just as the supply of news ran out, a rooster awoke from some bad dream and crowed sleepily.

"Margot," I said, "do you still steal eggs?"

"O Arnold," she laughed, "haven't you forgotten that? I have – almost. A long time ago I paid mother back and I saved fifteen dollars out of my allowance and sent it to the Presbyterian church."

I had always considered myself a fairly honest man, but it had never occurred to me to make restitution for these childish thefts.

"It was awful," she went on, "why did we do it?"

"Margot," I said, "haven't you ever committed a worse sin than that?"

She fell suddenly serious. It was several minutes before she replied.

"Yes, Arnold, I've been discontented and rebellious."

I looked out at the village street, at the uninteresting houses, at the glare of the "general store" where liquor was sold and where doubtless Col. Jennings, illumined by the moonshine whiskey of our mountains, was recounting to a bored audience of loafers some details of one of Stonewall Jackson's charges. It was needless to ask what it was that made her discontented, against what she had been rebellious. And the deadly torpor of that village life seemed to settle about me like a cloud of suffocating smoke. There sat beside me this fine spirited woman – useless. Her glorious potentiality of motherhood unused. Defrauded of her birth-right – wasted! I had an impulse to jump up and shake my fist at it all. I wanted to tell her that her greatest sin had been not to revolt more efficiently. But that would have been cruel now that her hair was so gray.

"Do you know who has helped me most?" she asked. "Your uncle. He is a saint, Arnold. We are great friends now. He came here one time when father was sick. He has been a wonderful comfort to me. Sometimes I go and call on him. He's very lonely. And he's such a gallant old gentleman. When I see him drive by in his buckboard I always wave to him and as soon as he's out of sight I go over to the house and scold the niggers. They would never do any work if somebody did not fuss them. And you know it makes me more contented to watch him. I say to myself that if such a wonderful man, so wise and learned can find plenty to do to serve the Master in this little village there must be quite enough for just a woman like me. There's a heap of comfort in that thought. But sometimes I read some story or think about you all out in the big world and it seems very small here – and lonely."

There was nothing I could think to say, so again we were silent.

"Arnold," she said suddenly. "Do you ever read King Arthur stories any more?"

"Whenever I get five minutes," I replied. "The people I live with have a little girl – Marie. I'm teaching them to her."

"I'm so glad – and Froissart?"

She went into the house and brought out the old soiled volume. We looked through it together and then she said that perhaps I would want to take it East for Marie. But I had a feeling that she wished to keep it. So I said Marie was too young for Froissart yet. Once more we fell silent. I remember the open book on her thin knees, her thin aristocratic hand between the pages, the profile of her face. Lamp-light shone out through the window upon her and she looked almost beautiful again.

I am never sure of what is in a woman's heart. But I could not explain the constraint upon us except that perhaps she had always been waiting for my homecoming, still nourishing in her heart our childish love – still hoping. But there was nothing to hope. It was not in her power to conceive what I was. I was battered and scarred by fights she had never imagined, disillusioned of dreams she had never dreamed. I had left the village years ago – irrevocably. She would have been utterly lost in my world. At last, rather mournfully, I said "good night."

The next day the Father was on the porch when I came down. He greeted me with a sort of wistful expectancy in his eyes. And my cordial "good morning" did not seem to satisfy him. I did not understand until at breakfast.

"My son," he said, "I have often wished – it would have made me very happy – if you had married Margot." So he at least had hoped that this would be the result of my home-coming.

"She's a rare girl," he said, "a fine spirit. A good wife is a great help to a man in leading an upright life. A pillar of strength."

"The fates have denied me that help," I said. And I did not realize till too late the pagan form I had given my words.

But the match had been lighted. The Father did not believe that any good could come to a man except from the religion of Christ. Try as hard as I might I could not prevent the conversation from taking that turn. If he had loved me less we might have been better friends. But the only thing which mattered to him was the salvation of souls. And in proportion to his love for me he must needs seek my conversion. On the one point where we could not agree, his very affection made him insistent.

We both tried very hard to be sweet tempered about it. But I was in a difficult position. If I did not try to answer his arguments he thought I was convinced but unwilling to admit it. If I argued, it angered him. He would lose his temper and then be very apologetic about it. For an hour or so we would talk pleasantly of other things. Then inevitably the conversation would swing back to the subject he cared most about. After supper he at last brought things to a pass from which there was but one escape.

"My son," he said, "the day after to-morrow is the first Sunday in the month – Communion Sunday. You are still a member of my church, you have never asked to be relieved of the solemn responsibilities you took when you united with us. Will you join the rest of the members at the communion table?"

"I'm sorry, Father," I said, my heart suddenly hardening at the memory of the way I had been pushed into church membership. "I'll have to leave to-morrow night. I must be back at work early next week."

I had expected to stay longer. But for me to have gone to church and refused communion, would have been almost an insult to him. To have pretended to a faith I did not have, seemed to me a worse sort of a lie than the one I used. And so – having been home but two nights – I returned to the city and work.

IX

Except for my vacations, I have missed very few working days in the Tombs since. And as the months have slipped along I have added steadily to my writings on criminology. To some it might seem a dreary life. It has not been so. There have been compensations.

The chief one has been the pleasant home in the Teepee. It would be easy to fill pages about it. But those who have been part of a loving family will know what I mean without my writing it. And it is past my power to paint it for those who have not shared it.

I recall especially the Christmas Eve when Marie was nine years old. Norman was at work at the table. Marie sat on my knee telling me some wonderful story. Nina came in from the kitchen where she and Guiseppe were concocting the morrow's feast. She sat down on the arm of my chair and said she had a secret to whisper in my ear. Norman looked up from his work and smiled.

"It's the one thing which has troubled her," he said. "Not having done her duty by the birth-rate but once."

The startled wonder came back again to Nina's eyes in those days. Even little Marie felt the "presence" among us and was awed.

But the fates had one more blow reserved for me. The year was just turning into spring when it fell. One morning at the Tombs, a court attendant called me to the telephone. It was Nina. Norman, she said in a frightened voice, was very sick. He had complained the day before of a cold and had gone to bed in the afternoon. I had not seen him that morning. When I reached the Teepee, he was delirious, in a high fever. We had no regular doctor, so I called up Ann on the telephone.

"It looks to me like pneumonia," I told her. "Can you send us a good doctor and a nurse?"

Within half an hour Ann had come herself with one of the city's most famous doctors.

Nina would not leave the bed-side. I waited for news in the library. It reminded me of the time, years before, when I had waited for a verdict on my eyes. I do not suppose that there are many friendships as ours had been. It is hard to believe that such relationships can be anything but permanent. It seemed impossible that I could lose Norman. But Ann made no pretense of hope. There was almost no chance she said. She telephoned out to her mother that she would be kept in town, and went back to the sickroom.

All the afternoon and all night long they fought it out. Sometimes when the suspense was too great I would go to the door. Nina sat with staring eyes at the head of the bed. Ann and the doctor were busy with ice-presses. At night-fall I gave Marie her supper and put her to bed in my room. She had become suddenly frightened and I sat beside her a long time, comforting her with stories of the Round Table, until at last she fell asleep.

Norman slept a little, but most of the time, tossed about deliriously – calling out to someone who was not there. "Oh Louise!" he would moan, "How can you believe that about me? I'm not spotless – but that isn't true. Don't think that of me. It's too cruel." But he got no comfort. The woman of his delirium was obdurate.

The dawn was just breaking when Ann came and told me he was conscious. It was the end. Nina was kneeling beside him weeping silently. He smiled at me and tried to hold out his hand, but he was too weak.

"It's as though they had let me come back to say 'goodbye,'" he whispered. "Be good to them, Arnold – to Nina and Marie and the one that's coming. She's a good girl…" A look of wonder came into his eyes, with his last strength he stroked her hair.

"It's funny. I thought she was – just a toy – but she's got a soul, Arnold. Don't forget that, old man. Promise me" – I gripped his hand – "Oh yes. I know you'll be good to her. I know – that's all right. Poor little girl. I wish she wouldn't cry so. – I'd like to kiss her once more" – Ann lifted her up so that he might kiss her. "There! There! Little one. You mustn't cry. It's not so bad as all that. Arnold'll take care of you. Good luck – all of you. Don't be afraid… I'm…"

It was a queer funeral. Some of his relatives, who had cut him since his marriage, came. It was on a Sunday so the Studenten Verein could turn out. Mrs. O'Hara, whose coal he had bought for seven years, came with her eight children. So did our washerwoman, Frau Zimmer, with her epileptic son. Guiseppe rode in the front carriage with Nina, Marie and I, and cried more than any of us. The Studenten Männer Chor sang a dirge. In the motley crowd I saw a man in the costume of an Episcopalian clergyman. As they were dispersing, he came up to me.

"I am unknown to you, sir," he said, "I want to tell you that I believe in immortality – and that I am sure your friend is sitting on the right-hand of our Heavenly Father. I hope to be worthy to meet him again. He was so good that I am surprised that he escaped crucifixion. I am only one of many whom he pulled out of hell. I can not…"

He burst into tears and disappeared into the crowd. Somehow, out of all the tributes to Norman which poured in on me in those days, the incoherent words of this unknown clergyman touched me most. What his story was, how Norman had helped him, I have no idea.

When we got back to the Teepee, we found Ann there, she had put things in order for us. She took Nina to bed and gave her something to make her sleep. Then she joined me in the library. She picked up her hat to go away, but I detained her. And so we sat together through the afternoon. As I remember we talked very little – except for some directions she gave me about Nina's health. At twilight Guiseppe came in with Marie, whom he had taken for a walk in the park. We all had supper together. Ann helped me put Marie to bed and then she went away.

It was very comforting, having just lost one friend, to refind another. There has been no ripple of estrangement between us since. Our love relation has been the anchor – the steadfast thing – of my later life.

Norman's will left a comfortable annuity to Nina and the children, the rest went into his educational endowment. I am a trustee of both sums. I think they have both been administered as he would have wished.

The baby was a boy. Nina told me that long before its father died, they had arranged, if it was a boy, to name it after me. I would have preferred to have called it Norman. One evening, as I was writing in the library, I glanced up from my paper. Nina was nursing the youngster, there were tears on her cheeks.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Oh! I wish he could have lived to see the man-child. Sometimes I was afraid he might grow tired of me. But he would have loved his son – always. I wish he could have seen him."

But I wish that Norman could have lived to see Nina. I had always a feeling that he did not entirely appreciate her. She has developed greatly since his death. Not long afterwards I began to notice long and serious Italian conversations between her and Guiseppe. And I asked him one day, jokingly, what they found to talk about so earnestly.

"I am teaching her, Mister Arnold, how to be a lady. Now that their father, who was a gentleman, is dead, it is necessary that the mother of the children should be a lady."

Guiseppe is too much of a Republican and Nina too little of a snob for these words to have anything but the noblest meanings.

"It is difficult for a simple man like me," he went on. "But have I not been a soldier of liberty on two continents? I have seen many fine ladies and I tell her about them. And also I have read books."

Nina as well has taken to reading. Painfully she has recalled the lessons of her brief school days. Of course I have helped her all I could. She has taken the responsibilities of motherhood in a way she would scarcely have done if Norman had lived.

It was perhaps a year after his death, that I came home one evening and found Nina in a great flurry. On tiptoe, her finger on her lips, she led me into the library and closed the door.

"Oh! my friend," she said, "you will not be angry? There's a woman in my room. Such a sad old woman. She is very drunk. I found her downstairs – in the hallway. There were boys teasing her. At first I was frightened and ran upstairs. Then I remembered how he would never leave anyone so. I brought her up to my room. You will not be angry?"

She has turned the Teepee into an informal sort of a rescue mission. I never know whom I will find in my favorite chair. Sometimes they have delirium tremens and shriek all night. At first I was worried about the effect on the children. But Nina and Ann said it would do them no harm. I cannot see that it has. One thing about it has impressed me immensely. It has often happened in my work that I have brought home a boy or a man from the Tombs and let them sleep on the divan till some better place was found for them. Not infrequently these guests have departed without formalities, taking as mementoes any silver spoons they found at hand. Not one of Nina's women have stolen anything. It passes my understanding.

Nina has a great admiration for Ann, but does not understand her at all. She cannot conceive of the reasons why Ann refuses to get married. It is a thing to philosophize about, the attitude of these two women towards matrimony. They are both good women, yet to one marriage seems a degradation and serfdom, to the other marriage meant escape from the mire, emancipation from the most abysmal slavery the world has ever known. Watching them has helped me understand many of life's endless paradoxes.

The only new thing which has come into my life since Norman's death has been the children. I am legal guardian for Nina's two. And several years ago, when Billy – Ann's nephew – grew to high school age, she turned him over to me, fearing that all-woman household might not be the best place for a growing boy. So he came to the Teepee, going to school in the city, spending only his week-ends at Cromley.

My work in the Tombs goes on as ever. A new prison has been built, with cleaner corridors, roomier cells, sanitary plumbing and so forth. But the old tragedy goes on just the same. My title has been changed from county detective to probation officer, and I have been given some assistants. Certainly there has been improvement. The rougher edges of justice have been worn off. But the bandage is still over the eyes of the goddess. The names of the judges have changed, but the inherent viciousness of their situation is unaltered. There is now, just as when I started, ten times as much work as I can do to even alleviate the manifold cruelties of the place. It is still – in spite of the new building – called the Tombs.

And Suzanne? If anyone should ask me what has become of her, I would have to reply by a question – "Which Suzanne?" I have seen very little of the one who came back to America. Once or twice I have encountered her in public meetings. Three years after I came back from Europe, I received her wedding cards – an architect named Stone. I knew him slightly. He seems to be very much in love with his wife. One comes across their names in the papers quite frequently. They are active socialists. But Mrs. Stone is a strange and rather unreal personality to me.

But there is the other Suzanne, her of the slim, boyish form, who tried to learn to throw stones like a man and was vexed when I laughed at her, the Suzanne who loved the poppies, the Suzanne of our earnest discussions, the Suzanne who was a prophetess, the enthusiastic apostle of the new faith, who like Deborah of old, sang songs of the great awakening to come, and the Suzanne of Moret – whom I loved. She still lives. I cannot see that the passing years have in any way dimmed the vision. Mrs. Stone is getting matronly, her hair is losing its luster. Suzanne is still straight and slender. There are moments when she comes to me out of the mystery of dreams and, sitting on the floor, rests her head – her fearless head – on my knees. I run my fingers through her amazing hair and try to capture the fitful light of the fire, which glows there, now so golden, now so red… And as the dream is sweet, so is the awakening bitter.

BOOK VII

I come now to the last section of my book. There can be no doubt that it must be about the children.

As I get older, in spite of my best intentions, the work in the Tombs grows mechanical. Each new prisoner has of course his individual peculiarities, but I find myself frequently saying: "It's like a case I had back in 1900." And it is the same with my writing. It is mostly a re-statement – I hope a continually better and more forceful statement – of conclusions I have held for many years.

The light of these later yeans has been my vicarious parentage – these three young adventurers who call me, "Daddy." I suppose I look at them with an indulgent eye, magnifying their virtues, ignoring their limitations. But they seem very wonderful to me. Thinking of them, watching them, make me sympathize with Moses on Nebo's lonely mountain. Through them I catch glimpses of a fairer land than I have known, which I win never enter.

On his eighteenth birthday, Billy asked me why I was not a socialist. I knew he was leaning that way. He is an artist. Ann wanted him to go to college, but he broke away to the classes at Cooper Union. Now at twenty-four he is bringing home prizes and gold medals which he pretends to despise. Many of his artist chums are socialists. I tried to get him into an argument on the subject, but, as is his way, he would not argue. He would only ask me questions. What did I think about this? What did I think about that?

About a week later at breakfast; he handed me a little red card, which was his certificate of membership in the party.

"You can't join till you're eighteen," he said. "You see, Daddy, I don't think a chap can ever paint anything, do anything worth while in art, unless he believes in something besides himself – something bigger. I don't know anything bigger than this faith in the people."

He had a pretty bad time of it the next Sunday at Cromley. His grandmother is such a seasoned warrior for anarchism, that she has as little tolerance for socialists as our "best people" would have for her. Ann was neutral, for she holds that what one believes matters not half so much as the way one believes it. And I would do nothing to dampen the youngster's ardor. It is amazing to me. He has the faith to look at our state legislature and believe in democracy, to look at the Tombs and believe in justice.

In fact I have sometimes thought of joining his party. I would like to enter as closely into his life as possible. But all this talk of revolution repulses me. It is the impatience of youth. The world does not move fast enough for them – they forget that it moves at all. But it has spun a long, long way even in my life.

I recall our fight for a reformatory. It ended in fiasco. But it was only the beginning of a movement. Baldwin was a man who held on. Before long he had persuaded a western state to try his scheme. To-day there are more than thirty of our states with reformatories for boys. The later ones, better than Baldwin's dream. And then this probation system. It is the biggest blow ever dealt to the old idea of the Tombs. Of course it is having growing pains. The special advocates of the system are distressed because of the hundreds of probation officers only a few are efficient. Give it time.

And of broader import is the awakening of democracy in the land. It will take a generation or more before historians can properly adjudge this movement. To-day we see only sporadic demonstrations of it, speeches here and there, in favor of referendum and so forth. The real issue often veiled by the personalities of candidates. The noise is only the effervescence of a great idea, a great aspiration, which is taking form in the mind of the nation.

The country is ten times as thoughtful about social problems as it was when my generation began. Recently the legislature made an appropriation to give me a new assistant in the Tombs. I wrote to several colleges and a dozen men applied for the job. I could take my pick. Twelve men out of one year's college crop! I was a pioneer.

And young Fletcher, the man I chose, asked me the other day, what I thought of Devine's book, "The Causes of Misery." He is beginning work on the basis of that book. And Devine speaks of "The Abolition of Poverty" as if it was a commonplace. No one dared to dream that poverty could be abolished when I was a young man. We thought it was an indivisible part of civilization. I remember when I first heard Jacob Riis talk of abolishing the slums! I thought he was a dreamer. The tenement house department reports that a million new homes have been built in the city – under the new law – with no dark rooms. And the abolition of tuberculosis! Why I can remember a cholera epidemic! These young socialists do not realize what we have done.