A Man's World

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.

Last summer I took Nina and Marie and young Arnold, he is ten now, down on the Maine coast to an island where Billy and some of his artist friends have a camp. As I mingled with this colony of ardent young people, in spite of the sympathy, which real friendship with Billy has given me for them, I felt like a stranger. I am sure they think I am an old fogey. My mind kept jumping back to my own youth, comparing them with what I had been at their age. In so many ways they were better men than I was, better equipped for life.

I remember especially one conversation with Billy. He had just finished a canvas as the twilight was falling. I think it is the finest thing he has done yet. There is a stretch of surf in the foreground and beyond the islands rise higher and higher to the peak of Mount Desert. I cannot describe it beyond these barren details. Somehow he has accentuated the rising upward lines, by some magic of his color he has infused the thing with immense emotion.

"What are you going to call it?" I asked as he was putting up his tubes.

"It hasn't any name," he said. "It's just a feeling I get sometimes – up here with the sea and the mountains." He pondered it a moment, seeking words. He is not a ready talker. "I think it's one of the psalms," he said at last, "you know the one that begins: 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.' It's sort of religious – being all by one's self and looking up."

"What is your religion, Billy?" I asked.

He sat silent, stopped arranging his brushes and looked off at the last of the sunlight on the summit of the mountain.

"Have you got one?" I persisted.

"Oh, yes," he said quickly. "Yes – at least sometimes it comes to me. There are days on end when it doesn't come – barren days. And then again it comes very strong. I haven't any name for it. I think the trouble with most religions is that people try to define them. It doesn't seem to fit into words."

Again he was busy with his kit. But when everything was ready, instead of starting home, he sat down again.

"It's funny," he said, "I'm quite sure you can't talk about religion satisfactorily. But we all want to. And as soon as you try to put it into words some of it escapes – the best part of it. I think that's why painting appeals to me. You can say things with colors you can't with words.

"You remember those reproductions, I showed you, of Felicien Rops, the Belgium etcher. You didn't like them. I don't either. He's wonderfully clever – My God! I wish I could draw like that man – but I don't think it's art. I don't think he ever looked upward – lifted up his eyes to the hills. I guess my religion is just that indescribable something which changes craftsmanship into art. I want to draw well, I want my color to be right, I want technique – all I can get of it. But even if I was perfect in all these, I would have to lift up my eyes unto the hills for help before I could do the real thing – the thing I want to do."

"And when you lift up your eyes, Billy," I asked, "who is it that gives you help?"

He spoke rather reluctantly after a moment's pause.

"That's the trouble with talking religion. You get mixed up between the figurative and the literal. Does it really matter Who – or Where? I don't think of any person up there in the afterglow on the mountain top. There doesn't have to be any hills even. Sometimes I get 'help' in my studio – with nothing to look up to but the white-washed lights and the rafters.

"We all need 'help' and when we get it – we've 'got religion.' It's all so vague that we have to use symbols. One person has associated 'help' with high mass and choir boys and tawdry images. Another gets his connection by listening to a village quartet murder 'Nearer my God to Thee.' When Nelson was over illustrating that book on Egypt he learned the Mohammedan 'Call to Prayer.' It's a weird sing-song thing. There are millions of people who, when they hear that, get the feeling that they need 'help' and chase round to the Mosque. I haven't found anything more suggestive than those words of King David.

"Sometimes my pictures are rotten and I sign them 'William Barton.' Once in a long while I paint one that is better, – better than my brush tricks, better than my technique, better than just me – and I always put a little star after my name. It means 'this picture was painted by William Barton and God.' That's my religion."

"It's all summed up in that old Jewish song – 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.' Do you know it?"

Yes. I knew it. I sat in the Father's study, all one fine afternoon, when the other boys were playing ball, and learned that song by rote, in punishment for upsetting his inkwell. It seems very wonderful to me that the Bible should seem a thing of beauty to a youngster. It was at best an unpleasant piece of drudgery for me – more often a form of chastisement. What stirs the deepest emotions in Billy's heart, only reminds me of a blot of ink on the Father's desk and the shouts of the boys out in the street whom I might not join.

I had been suspecting for some time that although Billy and Marie both call me "Daddy," they were coming to realize that they are not brother and sister. My suspicions were confirmed the other day by Nina. She asked me solemnly what I thought of Billy. And when I declared that he was the straightest, cleanest, finest youngster I knew, she said.

"Perhaps. But he is not as fine as Norman was."

I said that God had apparently mislaid the mold in which He had cast Norman.

"I wish that Marie could have as good a husband as I did – she's a better girl."

Nina has immense respect for her daughter. And Marie deserves it. A habit of philosophizing forces me to realize that the greatest part of the world has failed to appreciate, has in fact utterly ignored the existence of, this marvelous foster daughter of mine. There are, doubtless, many parents who even if they had had the good fortune to know Marie would stubbornly prefer their own daughters. But if I were twenty years younger, I would certainly enter the race against Billy. She gets her looks from her mother – pure Lombard – but she has inherited Norman's irreverent, incisive vision and his tricks of speech. She decided to follow her father's chief interest and now, at nineteen, is attending a kindergarten normal school.

But the thing, for which I give Marie my highest reverence is her attitude to her mother. She knows the truth. I found that they had talked this over before Norman died. It was his wish that she should not be told by strangers. And so nothing was hidden from her, no questions were evaded and she grew into the knowledge of her mother's story, with as little shock as she learned the multiplication table. It is very sweet to watch them together, this quiet, sad eyed old woman, who can write with difficulty and this superbly modern girl, who has had every advantage of education. Marie has sense enough to know that very, very few people have been blest with finer mothers.

A few nights after this talk with Nina, I found Marie alone in the library reading a red paper covered book by Earl Krautsky – "The Road to Power." Across the corner, in his big, boyish handwriting, was scrawled, "William Barton."

"Marionette," I said, thinking of what her mother had said, "Do you believe in free love?"

"Not for a minute," she snapped, "it's just another of your man tricks to get the better of your superiors."

Marie is a suffragette. But her jibe at me did not satisfy her. The thing was evidently on her mind. She came over and sat on the arm of my chair.

"Don't laugh at me, Daddy. It's so serious. I think it's all wrapped up in the big woman question. How can there be any real freedom except among equals? In the bottom of my heart I think it is a beautiful ideal. If I were in love with a man, I'd just want to be with him. It seems a little degrading to take a justice of the peace into one's confidence in so private a matter. I would feel ashamed to tell a stranger I was going to love my sweetheart. And in a sense I like the idea of freedom. It would be horrible to have my husband kiss me because it was the law; because he'd promised to – if he didn't really want to.

"But that's only a private personal view of it. It doesn't seem to me the important thing, what the politicians call 'the main issue.' This trying to be individually free, this fussing over individual rights, seems sort of early Victorian…"

"What," I interrupted, "you wouldn't call Ann – one of the first women to win distinction in a profession – you wouldn't call her Early Victorian?"

"Well. I don't mean Ann. She's an exception. No, she isn't either. I mean her, too. Nowadays we think of things socially. It doesn't matter so much whether I'm free, whether I get justice, it's the others – the race – we must work for. Ann's wonderful. You know how much I love her. But she don't look at things the way we do.

"We must think not only of the few women, here and there, the giants like Ann, who are strong enough to stand alone, but of all the women – and the children. That's just the point. We're trying to learn how not to stand alone – how to stand together. We've got to ignore our own preferences and rights and learn to fight for woman's rights.

"Doesn't most of the prostitution come from the free love of weak girls? Even when the cadets go after them just to make money, isn't it love on the girl's part? What they think is love? We must fight and fight and fight to make women realize that they mustn't love just for themselves. That it isn't right towards the race for them to love blindly – that it's a sin, a social sin, for us to love until we're sure of ourselves, sure of the man, sure for the children. It's a sin for a woman to sacrifice herself to a man just because she loves him – a sin even to take risks.

"Somehow, until we've won freedom and equality and independence, we've got to insist on guarantees. I don't see how we can get them except through laws, through old-fashioned marriages. We women who are stronger, and better educated and able to support ourselves and children, we must always think of the others who are less fortunate. And as long as you men take advantage of any of our sisters, we won't listen to your free love talk. So there!"

"Daddy," she said after she had rested her cheek against mine for a while. "I'll tell you a secret. Ssh! Don't you ever breathe it! Do you know whom we suffragists have to fight? It's women! If it was only you men, we'd have won long ago. It isn't the men who enslave us. It's tradition and habit. Long training had made us selfish – divided – weak.

"Just take the worst case. It's mother's story all over again – all the time. She tried to get away. Half a dozen men, instinctively, acted together, for their common interest – and were strong. They didn't reason it out. Blackie did not have to say to them, you help me beat my girl, and I'll help you beat yours and so we'll keep them all scared. It's a long inherited tradition with men to act together like that, second nature – almost an instinct. But when a cadet beats a girl, do the other girls rush together like that and fight for their common interest? No. Each one for herself sneaks off and tries to placate her man. It's just the same with 'respectable' people. If a woman tries to be free, the men are all against her with their legislatures and courts and all that. Do the other women stand together to help her? Oh, no. They cut her. Just like the prostitutes, they try to ingratiate themselves with their husbands by spitting at the one who tried to be free.

"If we women were only civilized enough really to co-operate, to stick together, shoulder to shoulder – oh, we'd put you men in your place quick enough. Individualism, trying to stand alone, is the worst enemy women can have to-day. We've got to learn how to use our united strength.

"And we are learning – too. Remember that big shirtwaist strike? It was wonderful the way the girls stuck together. I don't believe that any time before in the history of this old world women have stood by each other like that – with such loyalty. A lot of your stupid men-papers, had editorials wondering why up-town society women took so much interest in the strike. Why, even the rich suffragists have sense enough to know that solidarity is ten times more important than the vote. If you men only give us a long, hard fight for it, make us throw stones and slap policemen and go to jail and all that, we'll learn this lesson of standing together and then we'll know how to use the franchise when we get it. Oh! The time is coming, Daddy. Watch out."

"I'm not frightened." I said, "If I was as near to thirty as I am to fifty, I guess I would be an enthusiastic suffragetter. Anything you wanted would look good to me. Do you think I would have had any chance if I had encountered you when I was young enough to be your lover?"

"I wonder what you were like, Daddy, twenty years ago – just when I WAS beginning. Oh, I guess I would have liked you. But even if I did, I would have sent a lawyer to you with a long contract, specifying my various and sundry privileges and your corresponding duties. Then I would have led you down to the City Hall and made you sign each and every article with a big oath. How would you have liked that?"