XIX
It was regarded as a triumph for the Humane Society,—the newspapers had printed accounts of the trial,—but it was a victory of which I felt pretty much ashamed; it all seemed so useless, so absurd, so barbarous, when you came to think of it, and what good it had done Maria, or anyone, it was difficult to determine. And so, before very long, I went to the workhouse board and had Rheinhold paroled, and he disappeared, vanished toward the West, and was never heard of more.
Meanwhile Maria lived on in her little house as best she could, and with what assistance we could provide her. The Humane Society helped a little, and my wife made some clothes for the baby, and a good-natured doctor in the neighborhood attended them when they were sick, which was a good deal of the time; and Maria seemed happy enough and contented, relying with such entire confidence on her friends that one cold night she sent for me in great urgency, and when I arrived she pointed to the stove, which was smoking and not doing its work in a satisfactory manner at all. I mended it and got the fire going, and they managed to survive the winter; and when spring came Maria appeared at the office and wished to apply to the courts for a divorce. It seemed as good a thing to do asany, and the evidence of Rheinhold’s cruel neglect was by this time so conclusive that it was not much trouble to obtain a decree, especially as the case came before a delightful old bachelor judge who felt that if people were not divorced they ought to be; and after listening to two of the five or six witnesses I had subpœnaed he granted Maria her freedom.
And the next day she got married again. The bridegroom was that very shoemaker who had testified in Rheinhold’s trial; he lived not far from Maria’s late residence, and the happy event, as I learned then, was the culmination of a romance which had disturbed Rheinhold to such a degree that he had preferred to be anywhere rather than at home; and it seemed now—it was now indeed quite clear—that what he had been trying to explain at the time of the trial was that his fate was involved in the eternal triangle.
I do not know where Rheinhold is now; as I said, he was never heard of more, but I should like to present my apologies to him and to inform him that as a result of that expedition into the jungle of the law in search of justice I discovered that whatever other men might do, I could never again prosecute anyone for anything; and I never did. And I think that most of the attempts men make to do justice in their criminal courts are about as mistaken, about as absurd, about as ridiculous, as that solemn and supremely silly effort we made to deal with such a human complication by means of calf-bound law-books, and wrangling lawyers, and twelve stupid jurors ranged behind twelve spittoons. Thewhole experience revealed to me the beauty and the truth in that wise passage in Mr. Howells’s charming book, “A Boy’s Town”:
“In fact, it seems best to be very careful how we try to do justice in this world, and mostly to leave retribution of all kinds to God, who really knows about things; and content ourselves as much as possible with mercy, whose mistakes are not so irreparable.”
That passage, I think, contains a whole and entirely adequate philosophy of life; but I suppose that those who shake their heads at such heresies will be equally shocked to learn that Maria’s second venture proved to be a remarkable success.
The shoemaker was a frugal chap,—the evidence discloses, I think, that he had been an unusually frugal lover,—and he had saved some money, which, it seems, he was determined not to spend on his fair one until he could develop some legal claim to her, but he treated her handsomely then, according to his taste and ability. He bought a house in another and better part of town, and he furnished it in a way that dazzled the eyes of those children who had been accustomed to bare floors and had never known the glories of golden oak and blue and yellow and red plush, ingrain carpets, and chenille hangings; and he clothed them all and sent them to school, and finally they all took his name, and, I think, forgot poor Rheinhold altogether. And so, in their new-found prosperity, they vanished out of my sight, and I heard of them no more for years. Then one day Maria’s little daughter, grown into atall young girl by that time, came to tell me that her mother was dead. Maria had started down town with her husband, on Christmas Eve, to buy the gifts for her children, and in the heavy snow that was falling a defective sidewalk was hidden, and Maria was thrown to the ground and so hurt that she died. Her last words to her daughter had been, so the girl said, “See Mr. Whitlock; he’ll do what should be done.” Her heirs had a clear case against the city, but I had just been elected mayor that autumn and could not prosecute such a claim. Another lawyer did so, and got damages for the children, and even for the husband, and with these funds in a trust company’s keeping the shoemaker educated all the children. And he wore about his hat the thickest hand of heavy crêpe that I ever saw.
It seemed to annoy, and in some cases even to anger, those whom I told of my resolution not to prosecute anyone any more. They would argue about it with me as if it made some real difference to them; if every lawyer and every man were so to decide, they said, who was to proceed against the criminals, who was to do the work of purifying and regenerating society? It has always been, of course, a most interesting and vital question as to who is to do the dirty work of all kinds in this world; but their apprehensions, as I could assure them, were all unfounded, since there are always plenty of lawyers, and always plenty of them who are not only willing but anxious to act as prosecutors, and to put into their work that energy and enthusiasm which the schools of efficiency urge upon the youthof the land, and to prosecute with a ferocity that could be no more intense if they had suffered some injury in their own persons from the accused. And there are even men who are willing, for the most meager salaries, to act as guards and wardens in prisons, and to do all manner of things, even to commit crimes, or at least moral wrongs, in order to put men into prison and keep them there, unless they can kill them, and there are plenty who are willing to do that, if only society provides them with a rope or a wire to do it with.