"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 youFrom seasons such as these? O, I have ta'enToo 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.
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 endhedoes 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 knewhemust not know; the knowledge of the shadow must be kept fromhisdear brain until the very end, by smiles, and cheer, and merry jest from her. Who dare tellherthat 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 callheras 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 donotlove, 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.
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! WhatcanI 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, butright. 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 povertywith love!'she said. Then, passionately: 'If I did not love him so I could bear it, butI cannot, I cannot!And how willhebear 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 seequiteso 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.
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, youmust. 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 itallthen, 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.Naturalcauses! Yes." And I closed my office door and turned out the light.
"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.Allof 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———"
"Of course you will," my wife broke in, enthusiastically; "but that isn't all. I went to sleep after that, and later on was awakened by a loud—and as I thought at the time—a very angry voice. I went to the window again only to see a laughing scuffle between them over the potato-knife. She wanted to scrape them and he wanted to scrape them. Of course he got the knife, and it really did look too comical to see him work with those little bulbs. He put his whole mind on them, and he didn't catch her picking over the berries until she was nearly done. Then he scolded again. He said he did the potatoes to keep her from getting her thumb and forefinger black, and here she was with her whole hand covered with berry stain. He seemed really vexed, and I must say his voice doesn't carry this far as if he was half as nice as he is. I think there ought to be a chair of voices attached to every school-house—so to speak—and the result of the training made one of the tests of admission to the colleges of the country. Don't you?"
Again I was wholly unprepared for her sudden question, and was only slowly clambering around the idea she had suggested, so I said—somewhat irrelevantly, no doubt—"It may be."
She looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then said, as she got up and crossed the room: "You didn't hear a word I said, and you don't begin to appreciate that man anyway."
"I did hear you, dear," I protested; "I was listening as hard as I could—and awfully interested—but a fellow can't skip along at that rate and have well-matured views on tap without a moment's warning. You've got to be like the noble ladies in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' 'and give me heart and give me time.' Nowtheyunderstood men. We're slow."
She laughed and tied the last pink bow in the lace of a coquettish little white gown and dragged me out on the veranda.
Our new neighbors were out ahead of us.
"I don't think so at all, Margaret," we heard him say, as we took our chairs near the edge of the porch to catch any stray breeze that might be wandering our way.
"Sh—," we heard her say; "don't talk so loud. They will think you are going to scalp me."
"Oh, don't bother about the neighbors; let 'em hear," said he, "let 'em think. Who cares? If they haven't got anything better to do than sit around and think, they'd better move away from our neighborhood."
"Sh—said she again, looking at him with a good deal of emphasis in her eyes.
"Well, it is too bad, isn't it?" acquiesced he, in a much lower voice, and one from which every vestige of the tone of protest had vanished.
"Itistoo bad that these summer cottages are built so close together that you can't tie your shoes without being overheard by the folks next door? It makes me nervous. I feel as if I had to sit up straight all the time and smile like a crocodile, or else run the risk of being misunderstood."
"Itistrying, dear," she said, "and destroys a good deal of the comfort and ease of one's outing."
"Nothing of the kind," began he, so explosively as to make my wife jump.
"Sh—," whispered the lady next door, but he went on.
"Nothing of the kind. I don't let it bother me in the least. They can attend to their own affairs, and I——"
"Sh—," said his wife; "suppose we walk down to the beach." She began to adjust her wrap.
"It is a good deal more comfortable here," he protested, "and besides I'm tired."
"So you are, of course," she said, regretfully. "I forgot. Such unusual work for a man would tire him;" and she loosened the lace veil she had drawn over her head and reseated herself.
"Well, are you ready?" questioned he, clapping on his hat and suddenly starting down the steps.
"Ready for what?" asked she, in surprise.
"The deuce, Margaret. I thought you said that you were going to the beach!"
She got up, readjusted her veil, took her wrap on her arm, and ran lightly after him.
"I wonder if I shall need this wrap?" she said as she passed our gate.
"Heavens! no," he replied, "and it will heat you all up to carry it. Here, give it to me. I don't see what on earth you brought it for. I'm certainly hot enough without loading me up with this."
"I will carry it," she said, cheerfully; "I don't feel the heat on my arm as you do—or I'll run back and leave it on the porch. You walk slowly. I can easily catch up."
She started; but he took the shawl from her, threw it lightly over his shoulder, and, pulling her hand through his arm, said gayly, and in the most compliant tone: "It isn't very warm. I won't notice this little thing and, besides, you'll need it down there, as like as not."
When they were out of hearing my wife drew a long breath and said: "I wonder if we ever sound like that to other people?—and yet, they seem to be devoted to each other," she added hastily.
"They are, no doubt," said I, "only he appears to be a chronic kicker."
"A comic what?" said my wife, in so loud a tone that I involuntarily exclaimed "Sh—!"
We both laughed. Then she said: "But really, dear, I didn't understand what you said he was. There doesn't seem to me to be anything comic about him, though. And——"
"Comic! Well, I should think not," said I. "I should think it would be anything but comic to that little woman to go through that sort of thing every time she opened her mouth. What I said was that he seems to be a chronic kicker, and I might add—with some show of fairness—that he impresses me as the champion of Kicktown at that."
"Sh—," laughed my wife, "they're coming back."
"I don't agree with you at all. There is no need to do anything of the kind," were the first words we heard from a somewhat distant couple, and my wife concluded that our new neighbors were not very far off. "It would be no end of trouble for you. You'd get all tired out; and besides, what do we owe to the Joneses that makes it necessary for you to disturb all our little comforts to ask them down here?" he continued. We could not hear her reply; but his protest and evident deep dissatisfaction with the whole scheme went bravely on.
She passed into the house and left him on the steps. When she came out a few moments later he said, sweetly: "As I was just saying, it will be quite a diversion for you to see the girls, and I'd enjoy the old man hugely. He's a jolly old coon; and then we owe it to them after all they did for you."
"What girls? What old man is a jolly coon?" asked she, in an utterly bewildered tone.
"Margaret! The Joneses, of course. Whom have we been talking about for the last half-hour?" exploded he.
"Oh," said she, having evidently quite given over asking the Joneses, and become occupied with other thoughts, "I thought the idea did not please you. But I'm so glad. It will do you good to have him here, and I shall be delighted."
"Do me good!" exploded he. "Do me good! Tiresome old bore, if there ever was one. Women are queer fish to deal with, but I'm sure I don't care whom you invite here."
Our neighbors withdrew for the night and we sighed with relief. About two o'clock my wife touched me to find if I was asleep. The movement was so stealthy that I inferred at once that there were burglars in the house. I was wide awake in an instant.
"What is it?" I whispered.
"Well, I'm glad you're awake. I want to know what that was you called the man next door. I forgot what it was, and I couldn't sleep for trying to remember."
I laughed. "I believe I said that he impressed me as one so addicted to the reprehensible habit of protest—on general principles, as it were—that it had now become the normal condition of his mental constitution."
"You didn't say any such thing," said she. "You—"
"I believe that at the time of which you speak I allowed myself to be guilty of a habit you do not wholly admire; but I really had no idea it would keep you awake. I used slang. I said that he was a chronic kicker, and—"
"That's it! That's it!" exclaimed she, with deep satisfaction. "He's a 'chronic kicker.' Well, if you'll believe me, he hasn't stopped kicking long enough to say his prayers decently since we went to bed. First about what time it was; then about which room they'd sleep in; then there was too much cover; then the windows were wrong; then—oh, heavens!—I wonder if he kicks in his sleep? He always comes around to reason in time; but if there was ever anything more maddening to meet than that constant wall of protest—for the sake of protest—I don't know what it could be."
"Nor—I," said I, half asleep.
Presently her hand grasped mine vigorously, and I sprang up startled, for I had been sound asleep again. "What's the matter?" I said, in a loud tone.
"Sh—," whispered my wife. "Don't speak in that tone. I'd rather people would think you stayed out nights, than to suppose you stayed at home and nagged me. He's at it again. I'd most gone to sleep and his voice nearly scared the life out of me. She wanted to close the window. He objected, of course; said he'd smother—sh—"
Just then we heard our neighbor's wife ask sleepily: "What are you doing, dear?"
"Closing this detestable window. Lets in too much salt air. 'Fraid you'll get chilled. I am. Where's another blanket?"
The window went down with a bang, and we heard no more of our neighbors that night. But the next morning the same thing began again, and I do not believe that during that entire summer he ever agreed with his wife the first time she spoke, nor failed to come around to her view after he took time to think it over. I remember when I was introduced to him, a week later, his wife said: "This is our nearest neighbor, you know, Thomas, and—"
"No, he isn't, Margaret; the people back of us are nearer," he said. Then to me: "Pleased to meet you. I believe our wives have become quite good friends. I'm very glad for Margaret's sake, too. It's dull for her with only an old fellow like me to entertain her, and she not very well. And then, as she says, you are our nearest neighbor, and we really ought not to be too ceremonious at such a place as this."
"I thought, Thomas," suggested his wife, "that you said one could not be too particular. Why, you quite blustered when I first told you I had made advances to some of the other—"
"Nonsense! I did nothing of the kind," broke in he. "What on earth ever put such an idea into your head, Margaret? You know I always say that without pleasant neighbors, and friendly relations with them, a summer cottage is no place for a white man to live."
My wife hastened to change the subject. Nothing on earth is more distasteful to her than a family contest, of even a very mild type, especially when the tones of voice seem to express more of indignation and a desire to override, than a mere difference of opinion. She thought the surf a safe subject.
"Was not the water lovely to-day? You were in, I suppose?" she inquired of our neighbor's wife.
"Yes, we were in," she began, enthusiastically. "It was perfect and—"
"I don't know what you call perfect," broke in he, "I called it beastly. It was so cold I felt like a frog when I got out, and you looked half frozen. The fact is, this is too far north to bathe for pleasure in the surf. It may be good for one's health, but it is anything but pleasant. Now at Old Point Comfort it is different. I like it there."
"Why, James," said his wife, "I thought you preferred this because of the more bracing and exhilarating effect."
After a little more objection, which he seemed to think firmly established his independence, he ended his remarks thus:
"Of course, as you say, it is more bracing. Yes, that's a fact, Margaret. I couldn't help noticing when I came out this morning that I felt like a new man, and you—why, 'pon my word, you looked as bright and rosy as a girl of sixteen. Oh, the surf here is great. It really is. I like it; don't you?"
This last he had addressed to me. I was so occupied in a study of, and so astonished by, the facility with which he took his mental flops, after enjoying his little "kick," that I was taken off my feet by his sudden appeal to me, and was quite at a loss for a reply which would do justice to the occasion, and at the same time put a stop to the contest between husband and wife.
But, as usual, my wife hastened to my rescue and covered my confusion by her gay little laugh and explanation.
"Ha, ha, ha," she laughed, "you have caught my husband napping already. I know exactly where he was. He was lumbering along through an elaborate speculation on, and a comparison of, the relative merits of—" here she began telling them off on her fingers to the great amusement of our neighbors—"first, fresh and salt water bathing; second, the method, time, place, and condition of each as affected by the moon, stars, and Gulf Stream. He was, most likely, climbing over Norway with a thermometer, or poking a test-tube of some kind into the semi-liquefaction which passes itself off as water to those unfortunates who are stranded along the shores of the Mississippi. Just wait; one of these days he will get down to our discussion and he'll agree with us when he gets there. But don't hurry him."
We all joined in the laugh at my expense; and I remarked that I had served so long as a target for my wife's fun that even if I could skip around, mentally, at as lively a rate as she seemed to expect, I would pretend that I couldn't, in order not to deprive her of her chief source of amusement. At this point our neighbor's new cook came to the edge of their porch and asked her mistress if she might speak to her for a moment. She arose to go.
"Oh, thunder, Margaret, I hope you don't intend to allow that worthless girl to call you home every time you go any place. Tell her to wait. It can't be much she wants," said our neighbor.
"Jane," said his wife sweetly, reseating herself, "you can wait until I come home. It won't be long."
"I wonder if you'd better do that, Margaret," said he, just as our wives had begun to discuss something relative to housekeeping. "Jane is a good girl, and she wouldn't call you if it were not something important, Don't you think we had better go at once?"
"I did think so," said she, and bidding us goodnight our neighbors crossed the lawn and re-entered their own door and closed it for the night.
After a long pause my wife said, in a stage whisper: "I suppose it is his way of showing that he is 'boss,' as the boys say—the final appeal in his own household—his idea of the dignity of the masculine prerogative."
A sudden stop. I thought she expected me to say something, so I began:
"I don't know. I doubt it. It looks to me like a case of—"
"Don't! don't!" exclaimed my wife, in tragic accents "oh,don'tcatch it. I really couldn't live with a chronic objector. Anything else. I really believe I could stand any other phase of bullying better than that—to feel that at any minute I am liable to run against a solid wall of 'I don't agree with you!' If it wererealI wouldn't mind it so much; but to hear that man 'kick,' as you say, just for the sake of asserting himself, and then come around as he does, is perfectly maddening. The very first symptom I see in you I shall look upon it as a danger signal—I'll move."
At that moment, before our quiet little laugh, at their expense, had died away, there floated out from the bedroom window of our neighbors' cottage, this refrain:
"Well, goodness knows, Margaret,Ididn't want to come home. I knew it was all perfect nonsense. If you—"
My wife suddenly arose, took me by the hand and said quite seriously: "Come in the house, dear. This atmosphere is too unwholesome to endure any longer."
The next day she said to me, "Let's go to Old Point Comfort next year."
"All right," said I; "but what shall we do with the cottage? You know we hold the lease for another year, with the 'refusal' to buy."
"Rent it to your worst enemy, or, better still, get him to buy it. Just think of the exquisite revenge you could take that way. Twenty-four hours every day, for four long months each year, to know that you had him planted next door to a 'chronic kicker.' Or don't you hate anybody bad enough for that?" and my wife actually shuddered.
"I don't believe I do, dear," said I; "but I'll do my level best torentit to him for one season. You know I wouldn't care to murder him; if he's hopelessly maimed I'll be satisfied."
We both laughed; but the next day I advertised the lease of a cottage for sale very cheap, and gave as a reason my desire to go where there were fewer people. I think this will catch my enemy. He likes a crowd, and he'd enjoy nothing better than to feel that I was forced to pay half of his rent. So I marked the paper and sent it to him, and confidently await the result.