CHAPTER ELEVEN
After days of tentative discussion, Hilary Wainwright decided on Christmas Eve to have a Christmas tree at his office for the children of the striking stevedores who loaded his sugar fleet. When he announced the decision Roger almost flatly refused to have anything to do with it.
"The children really should not be made to pay for their fathers' obstinacy," Hilary said, and recalled to Roger the sanctimonious aunt who had brought him up, trying to force a cookie on him after she had unjustly spanked him.
"Why not settle the strike?" he suggested, without looking at Hilary. "The men are only asking ten cents an hour more, and the right to organize."
He felt Hilary's lips compress, exactly like that aunt's, and wanted to laugh, although he was angry and disgusted.
"The matter is being arbitrated, and, in the meantime, Christmas is here. I don't like to think of children unmerry on Christmas day."
"It would be uncomfortable," Roger said in a tone that made Hilary glance at him with the look of a financier considering an uncertain investment. But, whatever Hilary Wainwright's reaction to Roger's tone, he dismissed it and said pleasantly:
"I guess we'll have to deliver the invitations personally. There's not enough time for notes. Could you take half? I have the names and addresses. They all live rather close together."
For a moment Roger hesitated. Then he agreed.
"I can probably cover the lot. They all live in one section."
Hilary nodded. "That would be great, if you can."
Years afterwards, when Roger recalled the thing that had made him most ashamed of himself before men, it was this house-to-house canvass of Hilary Wainwright's stevedores.
They all lived in mean, dilapidated buildings, down close to the great wharves, on narrow side-streets, never free from the smell of tar and bilge water and refuse. The men were mostly physical giants, with badly shaped heads, small, close-set eyes, and brutal mouths. The women were worn and dull, although here and there, among those with fewer children, faint traces of an anemic, youthful prettiness were fading to shrewish angles and deep lines about the pale lips. The children were dirty and sharp-eyed, with the shifting look and the quick, darting movements of children who live in the streets, dodging policemen and irate parents and passing trucks.
The men glared sullenly at Roger, and, for the most part, made no comment. Some of the women reviled Hilary Wainwright in gutter speech; some were confused; none were grateful. But in the end, they all accepted. If the "kids" did not go to this tree, they would have none. The kids would like it.
On Christmas morning Anne went to the office and helped with the tree. It was the finest that Hilary could find and weighted under innumerable, if cheap, presents, and bags of candy and lights. It was finished a little before twelve, and the clerks and clerks' wives who had helped stood back and admired it.
"It's a lot better than my children are going to have," one woman whispered to Anne.
"It really is pretty, isn't it, Roger?" Anne had enjoyed hanging the thick, silver tinsel and concealing the colored electric globes in the most effective places.
"Yes. It's pretty." Roger had made up his mind to see the thing through decently, but it was difficult.
The lights were switched on for a trial view; every one exclaimed "O-h," and, after other appropriate remarks of appreciation for the beauty of the tree, and Hilary's generosity, left. Anne came close to Roger.
"Next year," she whispered, "we're going to have one exactly like this, only a teeny, weeny one, aren't we?"
Roger did not answer, but as Hilary called to him just then, Anne did not notice. In a moment Roger returned.
"He wants me to come back after lunch and start things going. His sister can't get here until half past three and the tree's scheduled for three."
"Half past three!" The Mitchell dinner was to be at four, to give Belle time to get back to her case at seven. Roger could not possibly be punctual and James Mitchell hated a meal to be delayed. But Roger could not refuse Hilary.
"It's one now. There's hardly time to go home for lunch and get back here."
"I tell you. I'll go round the corner and get a bite and then clear up a few reports I didn't have time for yesterday and stay right on until she arrives. I'll leave the minute she comes."
"Try not to be later than you can help, dear, won't you?"
"I'll try. But don't wait for me. I won't be much behind. I'll come right out."
"All right. I guess you've got to stay, but—I wanted us to go together. Don't be any later than you can help," Anne again warned Roger as he took her to the elevator.
"I won't." But coming back to the office, Roger wished that Miss Wainwright would not come at all. The Mitchell dinner, from a boring incident, had become in the last forty-eight hours, through Anne's constant reference to it, an ordeal not unlike the delivery of the invitations and the tree itself. He had wanted a quiet home dinner, with liberty of silence afterwards, a small space in the cluttered confusion of the last days, in which to take careful stock of his almost irrepressible scorn of Hilary Wainwright.
But Hilda Mitchell had never had a pleasant Christmas!
Roger frowned and tried to shrug off his unjust impatience. "I wish to the Lord they'd all go and live in China or somewhere. I suppose it will be worse after the baby comes. Roger Mitchell Barton!" he whispered. "Sabatini would be better." But at the impossible combination of Roger Sabatini Barton, Roger laughed.
At two the children began to arrive, surprisingly clean and well dressed; the girls with bright hair ribbons and white stockings and patent leather shoes and the boys with plastered hair and neat suits. A clerk, with no family ties, who had come from the shipping office to help, made a running line of comment aside to Roger on the extraordinary and warped viewpoint of men who could afford patent leather shoes for their children, striking for higher wages.
"If they came in the things they wear at home during the week, you'd be afraid of germs," Roger exploded.
The man looked at him suspiciously, but ceased his comments.
Anne waited for Roger until three and then left the house. By Hilda's concern at seeing her alone, Anne knew that her mother was not quite sure that Roger would come at all.
"He's coming, but yesterday Mr. Wainwright sprang a Christmas tree for the children of his striking stevedores, and his sister can't get there to help him entertain until after three. The children will begin coming long before that and he needed Roger. I would have stayed too except that I knew you wouldn't like us both to be late."
"Now, I think that's mighty kind of Mr. Wainwright. Not many rich people, men 'specially, would have thought of such a thing. Yes, dear, it would have made it a little awkward for you both to be late, but we'll wait a bit for Roger anyhow."
"No, please don't. He won't be much behind and he'd rather you didn't."
Anne and Hilda were in Anne's old room where she was taking off her things. In the front room, Belle and Dr. Stetson were talking. Hilda closed the door softly.
"I believe there is something doing," she whispered with raised eyebrows and quick nods. "He's one of those thin, decided-looking men and he's got Belle going. I heard him tell her not to smoke so much and she actually threw her cigarette away."
"They must be married."
"Anne! No, they're not married. I don't believe he's asked her yet, but I hope he will. Belle says he's a wonder at his line, cuts the queerest things out of you, and never makes a cut for less than a thousand dollars."
"Maybe he'll do it cheaper for the family. I couldn't afford a pin prick at that rate."
"I hope you'll never need it. But papa seems to like him. Listen. That's him laughing. I like his voice, don't you?"
Anne thought it was cold, rather like one of his wonderful knives, but she said it sounded pleasant and followed Hilda down the hall to the kitchen, where she gave her the black silk underskirt she had brought. Hilda's eyes filled with tears, and she touched the thick messaline lovingly.
"It's the first real silk petticoat I've ever had, Annie. It's almost too nice to wear."
"Now, mamma, you put it right on."
Hilda hesitated, then dropped the torn gingham she was wearing, made a face at it, slipped into the new skirt, and waltzed about the kitchen holding up her dress skirt like a ballet dancer.
"You're just a girl, yourself, mamma. I don't believe you'll ever grow up." Anne watched her mother with the deep tenderness and sense of protection. No piece of finery could ever make her as happy as this black silk petticoat made her mother. It was a shame that she had never been able to have pretty things. The old resentment against her father, somewhat allayed since her marriage, rose in Anne, and she was glad that Dr. Stetson's presence prevented her having to give him at that moment the box of good cigars she had brought. She had always resented giving her father presents, ever since, as a little girl of ten, she had discovered one Christmas morning, that the handkerchiefs with "papa's love" had really come from Hilda's manipulation of the tissue-wrapped allotments. She had succeeded in losing every one of the handkerchiefs before New Year, but she had gone on giving him gifts and thanking him for his.
Hilda had waltzed into the bedroom, and now returned with the family's remembrances to Anne and Roger, a silver cigarette case from Belle, a necktie from James and Hilda to Roger. Three pair of silk stockings from Belle to Anne, a hand-embroidered nightgown from Hilda and James.
And then, the matter of presents being over, they both felt a little freer. Hilda looked at the kitchen clock. It was five minutes after four.
"If you don't think Roger would really mind, Anne, we'll begin. I want a nice, long talky dinner, and a little evening after." Hilda gave her petticoat a last flirt, twirled about on her toes, and began dishing up the turkey. "Belle came early and made the salad, something extra fancy she's learned. The plates are ready in the pantry, Anne. If you'll just carry them in, then I'll introduce you."
Anne carried the salad into the dining-room, catching a side view of Dr. Stetson through the drawn portière. He looked as she imagined he would look from his voice; slim, and exceedingly well groomed. He was leaning back now in the rocker, his thin, strong white hands clasped behind his sleek, dark head. He was listening to an animated anecdote of Belle's and smiling. Anne thought he was the most collected, self-possessed being she had ever seen. He might have removed every nerve in his body by one of his own skillful operations.
"If Belle marries him, she'll toe the mark." Anne smiled and went back to the kitchen. When the turkey and cranberries and sprouts were dished and in the hotplate, Hilda took Anne into the parlor. Dr. Stetson rose instantly, gave her a penetrating glance as if she were a patient, dismissed her as much less interesting than Belle, and they all followed Hilda into the dining-room beyond.
"Why, where's Roger?" Belle demanded.
"He'll be along shortly. Hilary Wainwright's giving a party, a Christmas tree to some poor children, and Roger had to help get the thing going."
"If there were a few more Wainwrights in this country there wouldn't be any labor trouble," James explained, squinting and pursing up his lips as if he had private information of this certainty. Belle laughed.
"Well, I'm glad I'm not a philanthropic millionaire if he can't even take Christmas off. It must be worse than nursing or surgery, don't you think so, Doctor?"
"It must be if it keeps any one from a salad like this," Dr. Stetson smiled at Hilda, who was saved in the nick of time by Belle's look, from disclaiming the honor.
Roger's absence was not further commented upon and the talk became general. Dr. Stetson had traveled extensively before the war in Europe and he described people and places well, always picking out with the unerring accuracy of his famous thousand-dollar cuts, the weak or ridiculous spots in people and conditions. James Mitchell scarcely stopped smiling. Belle's ringing laugh interrupted every few moments. Anne, too, was interested. She felt the charm of the man's culture and experience. It would be nice to travel and meet interesting people, go to wonderful concerts and luxuriate for a little while in pleasant, easy places. To meet people concerned in creating beauty or enjoying it; not only those always striving to divide it up. Perhaps, some day, when Europe had settled again to a semblance of what it had been before, she and Roger and Rogie would go. Anne began in imagination to travel.
A loud peal of the doorbell brought her back from Rome, and stopped Dr. Stetson in the middle of a story.
Roger came up the stairs two at a time, explaining to Hilda as he came.
"I'm awfully sorry, but I couldn't make it sooner. Miss Wainwright was later even than she expected. The train was stalled or something."
"That's all right. We've only just about begun."
When Roger had said he would come straight on, Anne had not thought of his clothes, and now, as he followed Hilda, she saw that he was in his everyday suit, rumpled and covered with a fine powdering of dust from the tree. A bit of wool and a scrap of tinsel clung to his sleeve. He looked tired. She saw Dr. Stetson size him up and a touch of annoyance cloud Belle's eyes. She was annoyed herself. Roger took the vacant place and Hilda made a great to-do about getting him salad, although Roger said, more emphatically than one usually refuses a course at a special dinner, that he did not want any. And when it came, he ate it as indifferently as if it had been plain lettuce. Anne saw her mother watching him and tried to catch his eye, but Roger's head was bent and she gave it up. Dr. Stetson had caught again the thread of his interrupted story, but Anne heard little of the rest. She wished that Roger would not sit so, absorbed in his salad as if he were alone at a lunch counter.
The others, seeing that Roger was not entering the talk, abandoned their pretense of eating slowly until he caught up with them, took their second helping of turkey, and disregarded him. As Hilda removed his salad plate and passed him turkey, Anne managed at last to catch his eye. He looked puzzled, frowned slightly, and with a distinct effort banished his thoughts and turned to the doctor.
"It's the same in all countries," the doctor was saying, "there's just a small group of people who really care for what's beautiful. We hear a lot about the artistic French and Italians. The average Latin—the ordinary man—doesn't respond to beauty, pure beauty, in itself, any more than does the average Saxon. They grub along with their eyes in the dust in exactly the same dull way."
"What is pure beauty, in itself?" Roger demanded, as if he were heckling a witness on the stand. "What is impure beauty, or beauty out of itself?"
Dr. Stetson regarded him for a moment with a smile of forced amusement, as if this were a joke, in poor taste, but to be condoned in a family gathering.
"The Latin past," he elaborated, "was very closely tangled up with Art, and, as they have nothing to be proud of now, they fall back a few centuries and rave about their paintings and marbles, which never did interest more than a very few of them. And it's the same thing with other nations which have not much now to boast of. They go back to something centuries ago and find comfort in it. You can't talk ten minutes to an educated Portuguese before he's referring to the dead glories of the Portuguese fleet and dragging in Vasco da Gama as if he lived to-day. A Spaniard—at any rate up until the time of the Spanish-American War—would talk as if Mexico and all South America were still theirs. Nations, like people, the less they have as a whole to boast of now, the more they blind themselves with the dreams a few choice souls among them had generations ago."
"Just as we, in America, blind ourselves with the dream of liberty and equality that Washington and Lincoln had," Roger interposed so quietly that his inference was lost for a moment in the echo of Dr. Stetson's sweeping assertions. The doctor himself was the first to catch it, and turning to Roger with a look as if he were diagnosing an unexpected symptom said, with the same smug assurance with which Hilary Wainwright regretted the slow coming of the Average Man's ability to think:
"No, I don't think the cases are parallel. At least I, personally, am old fashioned enough to believe we have liberty and equality for all."
"You're right." James Mitchell threw out his narrow shoulders and glared at Roger. "Liberty and equality! There's too much of them now, allowing every dirty foreigner and crack-brained native to stir up any fool that will listen. Let me tell you," and James Mitchell cut the heart of the problem from the air before him with his knife, "if there isn't a little less 'liberty and equality' pretty soon, this country's going to be in the same rotten mess as Russia. The people are half asleep. If I didn't know that down at bottom, the great middle class of America is really sane——"
"——we might get somewhere," Roger spoke almost sadly, so that Belle and Dr. Stetson looked toward him, puzzled; but Anne, her face flushing, looked down. "It's the great, sane, middle class that's holding back liberty—killing it. The rich, to a certain extent, have it. The poor are struggling for it. It's only in the middle that they're dead, and safe. The middle class. There is no middle class, really. It is the dividing class. It's the blow-neither-hot-nor-cold. It's the lackey-souled. It's the misfortune of any country that has it, this great, sane, safe, middle class."
"From your point of view, whatever that is, it may be. Not from mine." Dr. Stetson now spoke in crisp, sharp tones; like tiny glittering knives they seemed to pare the emotion from Roger's words. "The lackey-souled are, on the whole, the clean bodied. Your struggling poor, battling for so-called liberty, are unfit, humanly below par. They can't function efficiently as humans where they are, much less direct matters. Perhaps you don't know the number of mental defectives there are in this country. The draft records showed a tremendous proportion of men with the mental capacity of children. They work at trades requiring little skill, they marry and raise others like themselves. It's ridiculous to talk about increasing the liberty of these people. It ought to be restricted, anyhow redirected. At the other end of the scale, we have, of course, the effect of over-license, but, it may surprise you to know that in school tests taken through all classes, it was the children of the rich who, on the whole, averaged highest."
"It doesn't surprise me at all," Roger said quietly, while Hilda fidgeted and made little clucking noises, as if trying to swallow the too large portions of mental food offered by Dr. Stetson. "It's exactly what I would expect under the present system."
"Which system is the result of these conditions, not the other way round. The upper class, using it in a broad sense as the directors of the world, are there because they are most fit."
"Exactly," James Mitchell interpolated like a stinging wasp. "Look at the directors of any corporation, quiet, clean, sharp-eyed men. Look at the soap-boxers, the I. W. W.'s, the union organizers—all shifty-looking, as if they'd never had enough baths or enough to eat."
"Maybe they haven't," Roger said slowly, while Anne's face flamed and with difficulty she kept back the tears.
Why did Roger persist? What did it matter anyhow who was right or who wrong, at this first real Christmas of her mother's?
"Perhaps they haven't," Dr. Stetson conceded, "but that doesn't alter the fact that, socially, they are not fit to function as directors. They are mentally below par," he repeated in clean, crisp finality. "They are to be classed roughly, to the layman, in the same general division as idiots."
"Idiots!" Hilda murmured with a shiver.
"Nonsense, mamma." Belle's hand pushed away Hilda's excited, intruding interest. "They're not idiots. That's just the point. Idiots, real ones that everybody recognizes, get locked up. These people—why you meet them every day. You wouldn't know them, very likely. You——"
"Why, Belle! I certainly would know an idiot when I see one."
"They're not idiots, not driveling idiots, Mrs. Mitchell," the doctor hastened to her aid; "they are—well, just the average unskilled worker, the laborer, the migratory worker, the seasonal worker. Many stevedores and longshoremen, fruit pickers, the simplest work in machine shops—an appalling percentage of these men aren't over ten or twelve years of age really. From these sub-normals or variants, come the criminals. Criminology is only just beginning to associate itself with psychology, but I could tell you some apparent miracles worked in prisons by small, minor operations. Which proves," he turned now, including Roger, "that it is not a question of opportunity or will—Nature isn't romantic or emotional—it's a scientific question. Deficiencies, variations, do exist. Perhaps, in time, all this may be correctable, but only by scientific methods—not by talk." He allowed himself the last thrust, covering it by a genial smile. "A clinic is enough to make one doubt the right of the democratic principle."
"Not unless you refuse to look below the surface. Nature may be scientific, but she's not insane. She doesn't turn out millions upon millions of human beings that a few may scramble to themselves all the beauty of the universe. I grant you all the mentally inefficient you claim, but, what started it, what caused it? Why?"
"A thousand things, many too intricate, too subtle to explain. And remember we know very little about it. The field is new. There are a thousand threads tangled in the problem, pre-natal influences, going back for generations, malnutrition of mothers, early environment of the baby, nervous stimuli—dozens of influences. A psychopathic clinic in any of the big, free institutions, a ward in a baby hospital, a maternity ward—it's enough to make one doubt the right of the democratic principle," he repeated as if he found the phrase so exact he needed no other.
Roger looked at him. "It would be very hopeless, if it were true: I mean if nothing preventive could be done." Hilda moved uneasily and James Mitchell cleared his throat. Anne's flaming face was still lowered. "But since, according to science, malnutrition, pre-natal conditions, unhealthy nerve conditions, do play a part, it seems to me there is a chance. As you say, the children of the rich, under the best physical and educational conditions, do average higher; if these conditions, or even approximately these, were extended, it ought to help some, don't you think?"
Dr. Stetson saw where Roger was leading and looked at him coldly. "Really, Mr. Barton, it's such an intricate subject, and, on the whole, so impossible to discuss with a layman, that"—he beamed round, his charming smile of culture and advantage—"I think we'd have to give more time to it, and more seriousness, than I, at least, am able to give under these conditions." A gracious gesture laid the responsibility for this upon the well-cooked turkey.
Hilda got up to remove the dishes and Anne rose quickly to help. Out in the kitchen, Hilda closed the door and whispered:
"What on earth is the matter with Roger?"
Anne shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. He simply can't take those things lightly. He gets all wrought up about the state of the world."
"Do you think he's dropped it now?" Hilda said hurriedly, detaining Anne as she was about to pass back to the dining-room.
"Yes," Anne said shortly. "He won't say any more."
"Really, it's enough to scare one to death," Hilda went on in her hurried whisper, as she slipped the mince pies from their pans to the serving plates. "Idiots and criminals lurking round and you can't tell them from sane people! Sometimes I think Christian Science must be an awful comfort. Look at Charlotte Welles, she never gets all stewed up. She just goes round saying—All is Love—and she doesn't have to bother about fixing it. What with Dr. Stetson saying you can almost cut wickedness out of people, and Roger wanting to feed it out of them, and Charlotte saying there is none in them—one doesn't know what to believe."
Belle's laughter drifted from the dining-room. Hilda heaved a sigh of real relief. "That's nice. I guess everything'll be all right now. Belle has a lot of tact."
The rest of the meal went off pleasantly. Although Roger made no definite contribution, he no longer sat frowning and crumbling his bread. It was after six when they rose from the table, and, according to a prearranged scheme of Belle's, had black coffee in the other room before the gas log. But Anne saw that Belle did not quite trust Roger yet, because she so evidently kept the conversation in her own hands.
"It's a shame," Anne decided. "He couldn't change them, and this is the first time Belle has ever brought any of her friends home and had things pleasant."
As soon after the black coffee as she could, she let her eye catch Roger's and, at the question in his, nodded faintly. The others would have a better time when he had gone, and they would all be going soon anyhow. She slipped out as Hilda took the empty coffee things.
"I think we'll have to go now, mamma. Roger has had a tiring day and there may be reports to do yet. This is Mr. Wainwright's busy season."
"Do you have to go, dear, really?" Hilda could not keep every atom of relief out of her voice, for neither was she sure of Roger. Perhaps James would let the dinner pass, but not if Roger annoyed him any more.
"I think so. It was a lovely dinner. I'd like to help you with the dishes, but I suppose you'll leave them till morning."
Hilda laughed. "I'm not going to do them at all. Mrs. Welles' Jap schoolboy's coming at half past eight for an hour."
"Good for you!"
"It's papa's present," Hilda said proudly. "Really, Anne, papa's changing quite a bit."
Anne put her arms about her mother. "You dear, patient thing. I wish I were more like you."
"Go on, you flatterer. There's Roger coming to look you up."
"They're going to play bridge for a while. Do you want to play, dear?" he asked.
"No. We'll just slip out the back way. They won't notice."
"Why, Anne, that's awfully rude. Of course they'll notice."
"Is it?" Anne asked coldly, as Hilda disappeared for a moment into the pantry. "Well, I don't think it matters if it is now."
She got her things quietly and joined Roger again in the kitchen. Hilda leaned over the porch railing and waved as they disappeared into the covered tunnel that led to the street. On the sidewalk, Roger slipped his hand under Anne's arm, but Anne drew violently away.
"Why, honey, what's the matter? Surely you don't——"
"Surely I do care for common decency and politeness. Mamma got up a lovely dinner; every one was having a good time, until you got one of those excited streaks on. You might know they wouldn't agree with you. What sense was there in insisting? Besides, Dr. Stetson is an authority and you don't know anything about subnormal psychology or criminology."
Under the stream of Anne's anger, Roger's nerves quivered. Like fork lightning, fears cut across his mind, phrases of Anne's, moods, likes and dislikes, resemblances to the Mitchells. He had been longing to get away from the house, now he wanted to get away from the stream of Anne's invective. But, once started, Anne clung to her hurt.
"Please, Anne, quit it," Roger said as they reached the corner where they had to take the car. "I don't want to hear any more about it."
The car was just coming into sight. "No," Anne said hurriedly, "you never do, after you've had your say."
Side by side, hurt and angry, they sat through the long ride home. But, as they climbed the hill, quiet at this hour, the earth sweet with long rain, the stars clean and shining from a densely blue-black sky, Roger took Anne's hand.
"I'm sorry I hurt you, dear. I really never meant to."
"I don't see how you could have helped meaning it," Anne said coldly, and then, because she too was afraid of this their first real disagreement, pressed his fingers faintly.