It did not take me long to reach a telephone. Benson had left the Teepee. As the detective was on the way with the warrant, I told Guiseppe to take Nina at once to the Café Boulevard – not to wait a minute! I luckily caught Norman at the club, just as he was calling for his mail. The fact that I was "compounding a felony," did not occur to me till hours afterwards.
I reached the café and transferred Guiseppe and Nina to a private room, before Norman arrived. He was certainly in a belligerent frame of mind when he did come. He had brought his family lawyer with him, a pompous old man, with gray mutton-chop whiskers and a tendency towards apoplexy. His dignity was sadly ruffled by having been drawn into a vulgar criminal case.
Norman and I went with him into another room for a council of war. He was of course ready, he told us, to act as his client directed, but he felt it his duty to point out that he was an older man than we, with some knowledge of worldly affairs. He hoped that I with my familiarity with the criminal courts might point out some more satisfactory solution than the marriage which his client in a nobly Quixotic spirit was contemplating. We must allow an older and more experienced man to say that marriage was a serious – if not actually a sacerdotal affair. It was a gamble under the best circumstances. And in this case, socially so inexpedient, financially so disproportionate, and personally – well – so unprecedented it would be… He hemmed and hawed, ruffled his scanty hair and patted his paunch – in short could not I offer a suggestion.
"Go ahead and talk," Norman growled. "Get it out of your system."
"They could skip to Canada, temporarily," I said. "If we drop the case against Blackie, they'll squash this warrant."
The lawyer nodded approval.
"Are you all through?" Norman asked. "Well, then, listen to me. I'm not going to skip. I'm not going to let up on that scoundrel. I'm not going to 'quit'! Not for a minute! I'd be on my way to the City Hall marriage bureau already, if old law-books here didn't say I needed the consent of Nina's mother. If you want to be helpful – produce a mother-in-law. Buy the old lady, kidnap her, club her – anything – but produce her in a consenting frame of mind. If you don't want to help – run along. I'll turn the trick myself. It's a cinch. We'll give ourselves up and be married in the Tombs."
The lawyer tried to say something, but Norman was looking at me.
"All right," I said. "I'll fix that. Don't take any chances by going out of this private room. As soon as I snare the old lady, I'll telephone. It may be a long hunt, but sit tight."
It was not a long hunt. The Old Man, never dreaming that a rich young man like Benson would cut the Gordian knot by marrying a prostitute, had not taken the precaution of hiding the mother. I found her dozing in front of her fruit store. She had not heard of Nina for several months, until the night before when they had made her sign the affidavit about her age. She would have consented to Nina's murder for fifty dollars, the marriage was arranged for ten.
When she had made her mark on a legal paper drawn up by the lawyer, we sent Guiseppe home to prepare lunch and entertain the police. He was not to tell them anything, except that we would be back soon. Norman and Nina, the lawyer and I, rode down to the City Hall in a closed carriage. It rather startled me, the speed with which they tied the knot. Back at the Teepee we found a detective and a policeman. There was a tableau.
"Good day, gentlemen," Norman said. "Allow me to present you to Mrs. Benson."
He handed the certificate to the detective.
"Now," he said, when the man had read it, "get out. And look here – you policeman. Tell your captain that my wife has been brutally attacked in his precinct. It's up to him to protect her. Tell him that if I have to commit murder, it will be his fault."
Half an hour later, while we were eating, the telephone rang. It was the Old Man.
"Hello," he said. "Give them my congratulations. Say. You beat me to it in great shape. Too bad you ain't in politics. I'd like to have you on my staff. And say – Blackie has gone on a railroad journey for his health. Now you fellows ain't going to be nasty are you and make me pay that five thousand dollars bail? The club's got a new president. He's just been round to see me, says the boys are sorer than hell over the job you put up on them. I told him to keep the lid on. I says to him, 'Those two young gentlemen are my friends.' You are, ain't you?"
"Well," I said, "when I've got what I want, I quit fighting. Forgotten all about that case. The only thing which might remind me of it, would be the sight of Blackie's face."
"Fine," he replied. "That's cleaned up. And say – they're taking on some more men in the dock department to-morrow – room for any of your friends. And – don't forget to give my best wishes to the bride – and groom. I like a fellow that's a real sport."
An hour later a messenger boy arrived with a great bunch of white roses for the bride. On the card, the Old Man had scrawled: "Good luck." So peace was reëstablished.
VII
The morning after the wedding, Norman found me in the library reading what the newspapers had to say about it. "Eccentric Millionaire Weds Street Walker." "Prominent Socialist Leader, to avoid state prison, married a little girl he had seduced." When my friend, the protector of children, found that we had beaten the warrant, he had taken this way of venting his spleen.
"I'm glad," Norman said, as he glanced at the headlines, "that Nina doesn't read newspapers. These might bother her."
But he made me read them aloud as he drank his coffee. And all the while his look of amused contentment deepened.
"God! That sounds good," he commented. "I never knew just how to do it. I've spent many a sleepless night trying to think out some effective way of telling the 'best people' to go to hell – some way of spitting in the eyes of the smug citizens – so they wouldn't think it was a joke. Every time I get mad – really open up – and tell the gang what I think of them how the stench of their hypocrisies offends my nostrils, it adds to my reputation as a wit. I guess this will fix them! You know that thing of Heine's…"
He jumped up and pulled the "Memoirs" from the shelf and read me the passage where Heine tells of his boyish encounter with "Red Safchen," the hangman's little daughter. Although the good people of the village where he went to school tolerated the office of public executioner, they would have no dealing with the officer. His family was mercilessly ostracised. Heinrich took pity on the daughter and once in a sudden exaltation he kissed her. In these words he ends his account: "I kissed her not only because of my tender feeling for her, but in scorn of society and all its dark prejudices."
"That's it," Norman said gleefully. "I've always wished I could find a hangman's daughter and kiss her somewhere in public – show the empty-headed, full-bellied gang how I despise them. Nina's done it for me."
Nina had taken a very passive part in all these proceedings. She had done what she was told to do, said what she was told to say, without question. How passive a part it had been none of us realized at the time. But that afternoon when I came back from the Tombs, I found her in earnest conversation with Guiseppe.
"Say," she said, after he had gone, "I want to talk to you."
But she found it hard to begin.
"What is it?" I encouraged her.
"The old man, Guiseppe, is a fool," she blurted out. "Says your friend married me."
"Well. That isn't foolish. He did marry you."
"Aw hell! Don't lie to me. Fine men like him don't marry girls they pick up in the street."
"Not very often," I admitted. "But Benson certainly married you."
She sighed profoundly, as though there was no hope of getting the truth in a world of men.
"You must think I'm easy," she persisted. "He won't never marry me. Of course it don't matter how poor you are. Sometimes rich men from uptown marry factory girls, like in 'From Rags to Riches' – but not girls like me. Not girls that have been bad."
I tried to translate into the lingo of the Bowery the old proposition that it is never too late to mend. And then I asked her, "Didn't you go to the City Hall with him?"
"Don't I know? Haven't I seen people get married?" she retorted half in discouragement, half in anger. "Don't I know you have to have a white dress and a priest? Wot's the game?"
I did my best to explain that in America, we have civil marriages which are just as binding as the ones in a church. But all I could get from her was a reluctant admission that there might be two varieties of marriage – a half way kind at the City Hall and a truly kind with a priest. She insisted that it was a sin to have children without a white dress and a ring.
When Norman came in, I took him to my room and, closing the door, told him about it. He rolled around on the bed and kicked his heels in the air.
"Think of it!" he howled. "Me – done up in orange blossoms! Me – going to a priest! Arnold, get out your white gloves – polish your silk hat – you'll have to see me through with this."
He dashed out to order Nina's dress. But he said nothing to her about it, pledged me to secrecy. It was a complete surprise to her when it came.
I have never seen anything in all my life so wonderful as her face, when she opened the package – the gradual melting away of doubt, the gradual awakening of certainty – and then the way she walked over to Norman, her eyes so wide with joy, and threw herself sobbing into his arms. I had to go to my room to hide my tears.
In a few minutes, Norman came in – his voice was also stiff and husky.
"What in hell do you think is the latest?" he asked. "She's gone off with Guiseppe – to confessional! Says it would be a sin to get married without it. My God! My God!"
I was the "best man" and Guiseppe gave her away in the crypt of the Jesuit Church. We came home and dressed – all four of us – and went up to Delmonico's to dinner.
We made something of a sensation as we threaded our way between the tables to our place. Guiseppe, in evening clothes, with all his campaign medals, looked like the veriest nobleman. Nina was wonderful. Usually she was gay beyond words when taken to a restaurant, but this evening she was very solemn and a little pale. Of course a number of people recognized Norman and gossip started in vigorously. But of this Nina was unconscious. Her solemnity went deeper than that. When the cocktails were brought, she refused hers.
"Why not?" Norman asked.
A little blush started in her cheeks, fought its way to her temples and down her throat.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"I'm married now," she stammered. "Good women don't drink cocktails."
We both glanced about and saw that if Nina's statement had been audible, it would have caused a protest:
"Why – there's Mrs. Blythe over there," Norman said. "She built a church. She's drinking a cocktail – she's awfully good."
"No, she ain't," Nina insisted doggedly. "She's painted herself. She's a sporting girl."
Norman looked very solemn. It was several seconds before he spoke.
"All right, little wife. I'll never ask you to drink any more cocktails."
The problem of what to do with Nina's mother troubled us somewhat for a time, but it solved itself with rather dizzying simplicity. She told Norman that with five hundred dollars for capital she could buy a larger fruit store and live in comfort. He investigated the matter carefully and, as it seemed to him a sound business proposition, he gave her the money. That was the last we saw of her. The gossips of the neighborhood said that one of her boarders, attracted by this magnificent dowry, had married her and that they had returned to Italy. I could not discover the man's name. And we never heard of her again.
It was a joyous thing to watch Nina in the weeks and months that followed her marriage. Always I had a sort of impatience with Norman. It did not seem to me that he realized what was going on within her, how her soul under the strains and stresses of her new surroundings, was being shaped to beauty.
There was much discussion in the scientific circles of those days over the relative force of heredity and environment in the formation of character. Most of the pundits were inclined to the belief that the congenital element, the abilities and tendencies with which we are born, is the greatest part of us. Watching Nina, kept me from this error. It may be that she was unusually plastic, peculiarly adaptable. But the change was amazing. It was not only that she left off swearing, learned to handle a fork as we did, came to wash her face without being urged. It went much deeper than this.
I thought that Norman was giving small account of the change. I did not realize I was unjust to him for a good many months. But one day I went to the station to see him off on a western trip. Just before the train started, he laid hold of my arm.
"We – Nina is expecting a baby."
He swung aboard the train and waved his hand to me. The news meant that he was not afraid of Nina's heredity. That he had not told me until there was no chance of discussing it, gave me a sudden pang of jealousy. Without my noticing it, a new element had come into my friend's life, which was too holy for him to talk over with me. It made me feel very lonely for awhile.
In the months which were left to her time, Nina went about the Teepee – singing. The wonder grew in her eyes, as did also the certainty of her high calling. To me – an outsider – there was something uncomfortable in the sight of their happiness those last weeks before the baby came. I felt like a trespasser, a profaner of some high mystery. But Norman begged me not to leave.
BOOK VI
I
Of course Ann was immensely interested in Nina's adventure. From the first she was sure it would turn out well. Ignoring the shell, as she always did, the kernel of the matter did not seem at all strange to her. She went much further than the Professor in "Sartor Resartus," who thought of people without clothes. She stripped them of their vocations as well. For her there existed no such categories as "street car conductors," "actresses," "bank presidents," "seamstresses." She saw only men and women. The way they earned their living was as unimportant to her as the mode of their garments. It was not what people did, but the way they did it, which mattered. A man, who had chosen cooking as a career and cooked passionately, threw all his energy into soups and soufflés ranked higher with her than a listless, perfunctory poet. The doing heartily of any job whatsoever would sanctify it in her eyes. Of course she knew that working at the match trade or with white lead poisons a person, that some of the "dusty trades" ruin the lungs. But it would have been hard to get her to admit that pleasant, stimulating work might make a person more moral or that a vile job can damn a man. Nina's success in her new rôle, seemed to Ann, to depend entirely upon the intensity with which she entered it. It mattered not at all whether she had been previously a street walker or a queen. This point of view – utterly different from mine – I found very common among the people I met at Cromley.
Sooner or later I made the acquaintance of most of the leading anarchists of this country and many from abroad. They were sure of a welcome from the Bartons, sure of a meal and of any bed or sofa in the house which chanced to be vacant. They were an interesting and in many ways an attractive group. Like Ann, they were little interested in the outward accidents of a person's life, but very intense in regard to a rather indefinite inner life. They were, of course, vehemently opposed to the police. But I was accepted without question. I remember old Herr Most said, one time, his long gaunt forefinger tapping my badge.
"It's not that which makes a policeman. It's not the symbol we're fighting but the habit of mind."
The anarchists are beginning to take the place in our fiction which was formerly held by the gypsy. Half a dozen novels of the last few years have had such types as their heroes. It is hard to resist the romantic charm of a person who is utterly unattached. The vagabond who, in a land of conventional dwelling houses, sleeps out under the stars, casts a spell over us. These anarchists are intellectual nomads. In order that they may be free to wander according to their fancy in the realm of thought, to stroll at will in the pleasant valleys of poesy, to climb at times up onto the great white peaks of dreams, that in the winter days they may trek south to meet their friend, the sun, they have foresworn the clumsier impedimenta of our traditional ideas. As the Beduoin and the tramp despise the "Cit" who is kept at home by his business engagements, by the cares of his family and of his lands and goods, so these anarchists look down on us who are held stationary in the world of thought.
I remember a young Russian exile, who spoke English so faultlessly, after the manner of Macaulay's Essays, that it seemed queer, saying that he was "a cynic of the material." It struck me as a wonderfully apt phrase to distinguish their way of thinking from the more usual. Of all the "kitchenside of life," – the meals we eat, the clothes we wear, the beds we sleep in, bankbooks, and property deeds, of vested rights and established institutions, of the applause and approbation of the mob – which most of us consider important, they were cynical. I, for instance, must admit to a certain unreasoning respect for clean linen. It is hard for me, even in the face of ocular demonstration, to separate it from clean straight thinking. But this group which gathered at Mrs. Barton's was certainly indifferent in the matter. Ann's bacteriological training had made her a fervent apostle of cleanliness. "Germs," she would say, "are only filth." But as often as not, some of the guests were evidently unafraid of microbes. Some of the dirtiest of them were the cleanest, straightest thinkers.
I have never met any other group of people who so sympathetically understood how I felt about life. In one way or another they had come to see life as I did – as I believe anyone, having the energy to avoid hardening, would see it, if they worked long in the Tombs. Try it yourself. Go into the Tombs – there is one in every town – if you have any love of justice and rectitude in your being you will come out in violent revolt against the smug complacency of our social machine. You will find anarchists pleasant people to talk with.
But when they tried to convert me, I was cold. I could go with them all the way in their criticism of and contempt for things as they are. Much of what they said and wrote seemed to me platitudes – I had seen it also keenly myself. I knew the things of which our civilization can boast, its universities, and culture, its music and painting, the triumphs of its sciences, its marvelous subjugation of nature, its telegraphs and transcontinental trains, and all this seemed very small return for the frightful price we pay. For years I had been living in the slums. I knew the debit side of the ledger also – the tuberculosis laden tenements, the sweat-shops, the children who never grow up, the poverty, the crime. The time they spent in trying to convince me that society was bankrupt, was wasted. And the dream of communism they offered in its place was enticing. I do not see how anyone can object to the ideals of anarchism, unless they are of the turn of mind which enjoys the kind of arrangements we now have – where one can steal and murder and still be respectable. Of course a scamp would have a pretty bad time in a communist society. But the means by which they hoped to realize their dream – well – that was a different affair.
It is possible to believe in all the miracles of Jesus – from his birth to his resurrection – but it takes "faith." It is possible to believe that, if by some miracle we were all made free we would be very much better than we are. The anarchists hold that our vices come from our manifold slavery. That is their creed. But it also takes "faith." I have not been able to believe anything in that way, since I was sixteen.
But I was quite ready to agree with them that much work such as mine was pitifully futile.