Front matter (continued 4)

For a while his mind played about this idea, then he ended the discussion abruptly.

"Why put your problem up to me? As far as solving the man and woman question goes, my life has been a miserable failure. No matter what you do, whether you quit or go ahead—unless you're lucky as hell—you'll wish you were a eunuch before you're through."

So I got little help from him in this matter. I never really settled it. More or less it settled itself. There were forces at work which were stronger than my scruples. Sometimes it seemed horribly wrong to me and I decided not to go back to Cromley. But as the days passed I began to think more and more of Ann. Sooner or later I telephoned. I did not surrender without many struggles. But gradually she became an accepted fact in my life and with the years an increasingly valued fact. I am not proud of the moral indecisions, not at all proud of my contentment with what seemed less than perfect. But so it was.

Nothing in my life has seemed to me of so uncertain ethical value. Of course it was a violation of our traditional morality, but there are very few who blindly accept the conventions as always binding. I cannot dismiss it offhand as simply right or wrong; my own judgment in the matter was swung back and forth with almost the regularity of a pendulum.

At first it seemed to me unfair to take so much more than I could give. But after all I think little is gained by trying to treat love like merchandise, by trying to measure and weigh it. Certainly Ann would have been glad if I had loved her more wholly. But she regarded that as a work of fate, which no amount of wishing—by either of us—could change. She would have run away if our intimacy had begun to interfere with her work. She threw herself into her specialty with a wholeheartedness I have never seen equalled. Once I asked her if she had no desire for children.

"Of course I have," she said, "but sometimes I've wanted the moon to wear in my hair. I'd like to live till I could see the triumph of medicine. I'd like to be a pall-bearer at the funeral of the last malignant germ. I'd like a yacht. I never went sailing but once—and it was very wonderful. But I don't want any of these things in the same way I want to work."

She was not entirely satisfied. Who is? She had been taught contempt for the cheap respectability we could have secured for a small fee from a justice of the peace. I think she got as much happiness out of our relationship as most women do from their home lives. I cannot picture her as getting any added pleasure out of sewing buttons onto my clothes or darning my hose. No doubt there were lonely evenings when she wished the fates had given her a more ordinary life and a husband who came home regularly. Although she never complained, I knew that it hurt her if the rush of other—to me more important—affairs kept me in town when she was expecting me. But she would have been more unhappy if she had been in love with a man who interfered in the least in her freedom. It does not seem so unfair to me now as it did at first. We were neither of us getting all we could dream of. But no more was either of us ready to give up the half loaf.

And "half loaf" seems a very inadequate term for my share. I find myself trying to "argue" about this—I am rather vexed by things I cannot call either black or white. But so much of it was utterly unarguable. If we are, as some say, to judge life by the pleasure it brings us, Ann was beyond question the biggest and best thing in my life. I remember one Sunday in the late fall, we were afoot with the first streak of dawn; all day long we tramped through the Jersey mountains. The autumn coloring of the maple groves was unutterably gorgeous. Just at sunset, all the western sky brilliant with red and a hundred shades of hot orange—even more brilliant than the frost nipped leaves had been—we reached a little railroad station and so came back to Cromley and the roaring wood fire and New England supper Mother Barton had prepared for us. I would feel sorry for anyone to whom such a day would not seem glorious. But to me, living six long days a week in the seething slums, in the even gloomier shadow of the Tombs, such outings were a renewal of life, a rebirth.

And besides the evident pleasure of these holidays, Ann brought me a feeling of mental and physical wellbeing and healthfulness I had never before known. My grip on life was surer, my vision clearer, my store of energy was better adjusted, more economically utilized, because of her. I believe that a man, who says he cannot live in celibacy, is lying. But with equal emphasis, I believe that the circumstances which make it wise for a man or woman to live out their lives alone are extremely rare. The hours I spent at Cromley were recreation in the deepest sense of the word.

The rides into town on the early train stick in my mind as a memory apart from all the rest of my life. I seemed at those times to be in a higher mood than usual. Speeding into the city, to my grim task in the Tombs, from the sweet solace of her home, I found inspiration and hope for my daily grind. There was an entirely special sensation, experienced at no other time, when I found myself aboard the ferry, leaning over the fore-rail, watching the sky-scrapers struggle up through the morning mist. Perhaps all of us know some such exhilarating environment, which makes us exult in life and work and purpose. Standing forward on the upper deck, my lungs full of the sweet salt air of the harbor, some foolish association always recalls the lines from the speech of William Tell and makes me want to shout aloud—"Ye rocks and crags, I am with you once again."

None of the obvious objections to such an irregular relationship seem to me to have much weight in the face of the very real good it brought me. And yet—I cannot accept it without qualifications any more than I can condemn it. I have come to feel that its unsatisfactoriness was due to its fragmentary character. I cannot agree with Ann in her theory of keeping work and love apart. A man who divorces his religion from his business finds both of them suffer. I think the same rule holds for our problem. I did not enter in any way into Ann's work, nor she into mine. She gave me new energy for it, rested me from its weariness, but never was a part of it.

I think the fact that I can, in writing of my life, make one section deal with her and another with my work and very seldom mention both in the same paragraph, is the severest criticism which can be brought against our relationship.

III

Benson persuaded an editorial friend to publish as articles some of the lectures on criminology which I had delivered out west. A supreme court justice attempted to answer my criticisms of the judicial system and carelessly denied some patent facts. The newspapers made a nine days sensation out of our controversy. One effect of the discussion was to awaken the Prisoner's Aid Society to a realization that something ought to be done. In order to relieve themselves of this responsibility they proposed to employ me as their secretary in the place of an elderly gentleman who had held that position gratuitously—and sleepily—for twenty odd years. The offer did not, at first, attract me. My work in the Tombs held all my interest. Until Baldwin came along, I did not see any chance of real service with the society.

He was assistant superintendent of the state industrial school—a sort of intermediary prison for those offenders who were too young for state prisons and too old for the house of refuge. He had started out as a "screw" in Sing Sing, had been transferred to the state hospital for insane criminals and from there to the industrial school, where he had worked his way up to the position he then held. He really seemed to like the details of institutional management; he knew convicts and he was filled with a great enthusiasm over the possibility of reforming youthful offenders.

He saw my name in the papers, as one interested in criminology and he wrote to me about this enthusiasm of his. After several letters had been exchanged he came to the city so we might talk it over. We put him up at the Teepee. He was getting close to forty-five, but was the youngest man of that age I have ever known. Benson and I went over his project in detail. For three solid days we talked of nothing else. Although my work dealt chiefly with accused persons who were waiting trial, still I was always being brought face to face with the horrors of our convict prisons. The unspeakable stupidity of treating young boys as we mistreat old offenders has always seemed to me the crowning outrage of our civilization.

It is hard to realize today how revolutionary Baldwin's scheme for a reformatory then sounded. Only the most feeble and timid experiments in such matters had been tried. We were still in those dark ages, when orphan and destitute children were sent to jail.

The weak point in his proposal—as is the case with almost every reform—was the expense. The state paid about ten cents a day for the maintenance of its convicts, the per capita for the reformatory would be three or four times as much. Baldwin had foreseen this criticism and had collected endless figures to prove that it was only an apparent extravagance. One of the biggest elements in the cost of crime is the expense of "habitual offenders." Baldwin had the life-story of one man who was serving his twelfth term in state prison and he had figured out just how much this man's various crimes and arrests and trials and imprisonments had cost the community and how much cheaper it would have been to have spent enough to reform him while he was young. It was an impressive document. By a number of such tables he made a conclusive case. The greater expense of the reformatory, would be a real economy if he could save one third of the boys. He believed that two-thirds could be reformed. With the help of a constitutional lawyer he had crystallized his ideas into a bill, which he hoped to have introduced into the legislature.

As I have said, Norman and I gave three days close attention to the project. Baldwin had had much practical experience in such matters and had prepared his case admirably. The scheme looked feasible to us—as indeed it has since proved. We were all unsophisticated enough to believe that a good plan once explained to the people would be immediately accepted.

I went before the executive committee of the Prisoner's Aid Society and offered to accept the secretaryship, if they would pledge their support to Baldwin's bill. They could find no precedent for such a measure in their books on European penology and I doubt if I could have swung them into line single-handed. But Benson was one of their board of directors and they relied on him to meet their annual deficit. He was able to bring more potent arguments to bear than I.

By this time I had become a sort of established institution in the Tombs. With the exception of O'Neil, I had won the confidence of the judges. They were, within certain limits, well-intentioned men and they did not like to condemn young boys to the contagion of state prison any more than you or I would. I got their signatures to a letter endorsing the reformatory idea, and through them arranged with the district attorney for such leaves of absence as I would need.

I find myself with very little enthusiasm for chronicling this campaign for a reformatory. It was so dolefully disheartening, so endlessly irritating—it dragged on so much longer than we had foreseen. But it is important not only to my own story, it influenced not only my way of thinking; it has also a broader and more compelling significance. There was hardly one of my friends, the people of my generation who were trying to make this world a more livable place, who were not at one time or another involved in a similar fight. One thing we all had experienced in common—the journey up to Albany to try and cajole our legislators into doing something, the value and wisdom of which no sane man could doubt. A new Acts of the Apostles might be written about the endless succession of delegations which gathered in the Grand Central Station, en route for the capital, fired with enthusiasm for some reform—a new tenement house law, some decent regulation of child labor, some protection against the crying evils of the fraudulent immigrant banks or the vicious employment agencies and so forth. It would take a fat book to even list all the good causes which have inspired such pilgrimages. And the ardor with which the delegations set out for Albany was only equalled by the black discouragement which, a few days later, they brought back.

After some trouble we found an assembly man who consented to introduce our bill. It was pigeon-holed at once. Then we went in for publicity. I wrote articles in magazines and newspapers. Benson and Baldwin got out and widely circulated a pamphlet. They were a strong combination, with the former's knowledge of advertising and the latter's familiarity with the subject. I took the stump.

Everyone, I suppose, who has done similar work, has made the same discovery. You cannot win your point with the ordinary audience by an appeal to reason. At first I treated my subject seriously—with dismal effect. But Norman came to one of my New York city meetings and cursed me roundly for a fool when it was over. I took his advice and went up and down and across the state telling "heart-interest" stories; yarns about the white haired mother whose only son was sent to Sing Sing for some trifling offense and was utterly corrupted by evil associates; about the orphan boy who stole a loaf of bread for his starving sister. How I came to hate those two! Once in my dreams I murdered that "white haired mother" with fierce glee. But I could always rely on them to start tears. If I tried to give my audiences our constructive ideal, what we meant by the word "reformatory," I lost my grip on them. They demanded thrills. Well—I gave them thrills. It was the only way, but it made me feel like a mountebank, like a charlatan selling blue pills.

By the end of the year we had worked up enough popular interest to force a discussion of the bill on the floor of the legislature. On the first reading it was referred to the Senate Committee on State Prisons. After several weeks of suspense the committee announced a date for a public hearing. I remember that at the time we thought this meant victory. At last we were to have an opportunity to present our case in a serious manner to serious men. Baldwin and Benson and I put in the preceding week preparing our briefs. On the day set for the hearing we marshalled our forces in the lobby of an Albany hotel. There was Allen, the president of the Prisoner's Aid Society; Van Kirk, a vice-president of the State Bar Association and the three of us. It was arranged that Baldwin and I should speak first, he was to deal with the financial side of the project and I with its broader human phases. Allen and Van Kirk were to add the endorsements of the organizations they represented. I recall how perfect our case looked to us, how utterly impossible it seemed to fail of convincing the committee.

The room in the old state house, where the hearing was held was a dingy place. There was the air of a court about it and the attendants. What seemed vitally important to us was dismal routine to them. When we arrived the committee was listening to a deputation of screws from Sing Sing who were asking for a revision of the rules in regard to vacations. The sight of the three committee men cooled my ardor. The chairman, Burton, was an upstate lawyer, who affected the appearance of a farmer to please his constituents. The other two, Clark and Reedy, were New Yorkers, one a Republican the other a Democrat, both fat and sleepy. At last the screws finished their plea. Burton rapped with his gavel.

"What is the next business?" he asked wearily.

"Hearing in the matter of a bill to establish a reformatory for juvenile offenders," the clerk drawled.

"Does the Commissioner of State Prisons endorse this bill?" Clark asked.

"No"—the Commissioner was on his feet at once. The charter of the Prisoner's Aid Society gave it authority to inspect the penal institutions of the state, to audit their accounts and so forth. It was a thorn in the flesh of all commissioners and they could always be counted on to oppose any suggestion of the society's.

"Well. What's the use of going into the matter, then?" Reedy asked. "It's not our custom to throw down the Commissioner."

"As it's on the calendar we'll have to listen to it," Burton ruled.

"How did it get on the calendar?" Clark growled.

"I was under the impression the Commissioner was in accord," the clerk apologized.

"Well, I want to know where you got that impression," Clark insisted with ill temper.

"Not from me," the Commissioner spoke up.

Burton rapped with his gavel.

"Order, gentlemen," he said. "We are wasting time. We will hear anyone who wishes to speak in favor of the bill."

Baldwin stood up and opened his notes.

"I have an important business matter I would like to attend to," Reedy said. "May I be excused?"

"Hold on," Clark protested, "It's my turn to get off early."

"I can't excuse both of you," Burton snapped. "This is the last business on the calendar. It will not detain us long. Proceed. What's your name? Baldwin? Proceed."

The two other senators scowled sullenly like children who were being kept in after school. Suddenly Reedy began to grin. He leaned back in his chair, so that he could attract Clark's attention behind the shoulders of the chairman who was writing a letter. He held out a coin. "Odd or even?" he whispered. It took Clark a moment to understand, then his scowl relaxed. "Even" he whispered back. Reedy looked at the coin and his face clouded up.

"I have no objection to excusing Senator Clark," he said, interrupting Baldwin in the midst of a sentence.

Burton looked up from his letter in surprise. Clark chuckled audibly as he left the room. Reedy slouched sullenly in his chair. "Proceed," Burton said and turned back to his letter. Baldwin did admirably in the face of his levity, but no one was listening. Just as he was on the point of closing, Burton interrupted him again.

"You have had fifteen minutes. I will give the other side ten and adjourn."

Van Kirk tried to argue with him, but Burton ignored his existence. "Mr. Commissioner," he said, and turned once more to his letter. It was a relief to me that he cut me off. I was too furious to have spoken coherently. The Commissioner, sure of success, took the matter flippantly.

"Mr. Chairman, Senators. The Department of State Prisons is opposed to this bill on the ground that it is a visionary piece of nonsense. The whole talk of a reformatory was started by this Mr. Baldwin, an employee of my department, who is discontented because we have not sufficiently recognized his abilities. I understand that he wishes to be made superintendent of the State Industrial School, in which institution he is now employed in a subordinate position. He has secured the support of the undoubtedly sincere, but visionary theorists of the Prisoner's Aid Society. As far as I know there are no other advocates of this bill. I could not recommend so large an appropriation of the people's money to satisfy the ambition of Mr. Baldwin—nor to please the gentlemen of the Prisoner's Aid Society!"

He had hardly regained his seat when Burton's gavel fell.

"Adjourned."

Baldwin was one of the steadfast kind who do not know the meaning of discouragement. And Benson was so angry that he threw himself into the fight with redoubled ardor. Between them they carried me along.

We started again at the bottom—trying to make an effective demand reach the legislators from the voters. I went again through the state, but stayed longer in each place, until I had formed a permanent committee. That year's work persuaded me that I could have earned my living as a book-agent or by buncoing farmers into buying lightning rods.

I remember especially New Lemberg, a sleepy town on one of the smaller lakes. I was the guest of the Episcopalian clergyman and stayed at the rectory. It took me three days to land him, and he gave in at last from sheer boredom. He had been willing enough to let me come and speak to his congregation after morning prayer, and he had called a conference of the ministers and leading citizens in his parlor on Sunday afternoon. But when I asked him to act as chairman of the county committee he held back. His life was full to overflowing already with his parish work, he was fond of the open country and of books. His hobby was translating Horace. I was asking him to give up some of this recreation for a cause which had never come close to him. I was sorry for him, but I needed him to give "tone," the fashionable stamp, to the committee. On Monday afternoon—I had been harassing him all morning, he proposed to teach me golf. A general discussion of literature carried us as far as the third hole and he had been happy. But as he was teeing for the next drive, I began on him again. He pulled his stroke horribly, and sat down in a pet. I remember those links as the most beautiful spot in all the state. There was softly rolling farm lands, woods and fields in a rich brocade of brown and green, and below us the lake. Here and there a fitful breeze turned its surface a darker blue.

"I'm so busy as it is," the rector pleaded, "I can't take on this. Really—you know all my time is taken up already. I don't get out like this more than once a week. You must—really it's asking too much of me—I'm getting old."

It was his last spurt of resistance. I hung on desperately and in a few minutes he gave in. He was a valuable acquisition, no one worked on any of our committees harder than he. But somehow I was ashamed of my conquest. I am sure he shudders whenever he thinks of me. If he should meet me on the street even now, I would expect him to run away.

After a solid year of this work—I groan still when I think of it—we had committees in almost every assembly district. They called on the various candidates and secured their promises to support the bill. We circulated immense petitions and sent formidable lists of signatures to the successful candidates. We had also stirred the women's clubs to action. The newspapers made considerable comment on the "Petition of the Hundred Thousand Mothers." When the new legislature convened, we had the signatures of over two-thirds of the assemblymen, and a good majority of the senators to pledges to vote for the reformatory.

Instead they gave their attention to the routine jobbery of their trade and just before they adjourned they elected a joint commission, three members from each house, to consider the matter.

I am quite sure, and having travelled so much through the state, I was in a position to know, that if we could have had a referendum, eighty per cent of the votes would have been for our bill. Fifteen of the twenty per cent of hostile votes would have come from the most ignorant and debased districts of the big cities. I doubt if a measure has ever gone before the state legislature with the more certain sanction of the electorate. Democracy is a very fine Fourth of July sentiment. But in those days it had nothing to do with "practical politics."

The new commission did not begin work for six months. As the members received ten dollars a day for each session, they sat for an hour or two a day for several weeks. But at last we had our chance to present our case in a thorough and serious manner. The opposition to the bill was based on the testimony of half a dozen wardens who had been ordered to the stand by the Department of State Prisons. They had nothing to offer but prejudice and ignorance. Van Kirk, his fighting spirit stirred by the snub he had received from the senate committee, acted as our attorney and did it ably. Benson took hold of the press campaign and the newspapers were full of favorable comments. I am sure that when they adjourned after hearing our arguments, every commissioner was convinced of the wisdom of our project.

But our opponents were better politicians than we. We let our case rest on the evidence. Just what wires the Department of State Prisons pulled during the recess, I do not know. But when the commission reconvened, a sub-committee introduced a substitute bill, which was accepted without discussion and unanimously recommended to the legislature. It was a travesty on Baldwin's scheme. The age-limit was raised to admit men of thirty. Instead of being for first offenders, the new bill read for persons "convicted for the first time of a felony"—which opened the door to a large class who have become almost hopelessly hardened by a life of petty crime. Ordinary cellular confinement was substituted for the original plan of cottages. It was not at all what we had been fighting for.

As soon as I read the new bill, I went before the Prisoner's Aid Society and begged them to repudiate it, to stand for the original project or nothing. But in the first place they were not sufficiently informed in the matter to recognize the difference between the two bills and in the second place the four years of unwonted activity had overstrained them. They wanted to rest. Ever since they have boasted of their enterprise in getting this mutilated reformatory established.

I would have given it up in disgust except for personal loyalty for Baldwin. He felt that the reformatory, even in its emasculated condition, was an opening wedge and that as superintendent he might gradually be able to persuade the legislature to amend the charter back to his original design. Certainly he deserved the position, the institution would not have been established at all except for his persistent efforts. Norman and I went into the fight again to bring pressure to bear on the governor to appoint Baldwin. We got no help from the Prisoner's Aid Society; it had fallen hopelessly asleep. A few of our county committees came to life again and circulated petitions. My rector at New Lemberg was the most active. I think he was afraid I would visit him again. But the public was tired of the issue. The governor appointed a political friend.

I resigned from the Prisoner's Aid Society and went back to my work in the Tombs. I felt that I had wasted four years.

IV

Early in this campaign for the reformatory our peaceful life in the Teepee was shaken up by the advent of Nina.

Norman and I were coming home from the Annual Ball of The Arbeiter Studenten Verein. It was near one o'clock Sunday morning as we turned into the Bowery. At the corner of Stanton Street a girl flagged us.

"Hello, boys. Ain't you lonesome?"

An arc-light sputtered and fumed overhead. I will never forget its harsh glare on her face. It was a north Italian face, wonderfully like a Bellini Madonna. But on it was painted a ghastly leer. Above all she looked too young.

"Aren't you afraid the Gerry Society will get you?" Norman asked good naturedly.

There was elemental tragedy in the foul words with which she answered him. But with a sudden change of mood—as unexpected as her appearance, as bewildering as her blasphemy—she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him.

The look of horror on Norman's face changed slowly to another expression. It was not wholly incomprehensible. There was something exotic—something tantalizing to over-civilized nerves—in her youthful viciousness. Baudelaire would have found her a "fleur de mal." He would have written immortal verses to her. Norman was stern with himself in such matters. He had steeled himself against the usual appeals of vice. It was the novelty of the attack that got through his armor. He pulled her hands apart, pushed her away from him and looked at her, his face drawn and rigid. A south-bound elevated roared past us overhead. With a sharp intake of breath he turned to me.

"I've half a mind to take her home."

"It would be a great treat for her," I said, "compared to how she'll spend the night if you don't. I suppose it's you or a drunken sailor."

"Will you come home with me?" he asked with sudden resolution.

"Sure. You don't look like a cheap-skate."

So we started on along the Bowery, arm-in-arm. At first we were all silent. But intent on the business of amusing her clients, she suddenly jerked her feet off the ground, and hanging to our elbows, swung her soiled little red slippers in the air before us.

"Gee!" she said, when we had recovered our balance, "You're solemn guys."

"You're in line with the best traditions of philosophy, kid," Norman admitted. "There's no virtue in sinning sadly. We might as well laugh."

The rest of our progress home was a noisy scramble. A hideous nightmare to me—out of the vague impressions of which, I remember most clearly the complaisant grin of the policeman on the beat; who twirled his stick as we passed.

Guiseppe was dumb-founded at the addition to our number. Norman told him curtly to set a third cover for our supper.

Once seated at the table Nina—that we discovered was her name—did not let anything interfere with the business in hand. Norman ate little. I had no appetite. So she did duty for all of us. Norman made a few remarks about the ball, but always he was watching her. I was unresponsive and conversation died.

When Nina had made way with the last edible thing, the flood gates opened and she began to talk and play. She had an immense animal vivacity, which kept not only her tongue, but her whole body in action. She was full of a spirit of fun entirely foreign to both of us. We were rather serious minded, sombre men. Her love of horseplay was a novelty.

It is hard to characterize her talk. Much of it was utterly unprintable. There were words, words—words! But somehow she seemed innocent of it all, wholly ignorant of any better manner of conversation, any better form of life. She grew immensely in my regard during those few minutes. I have seldom listened to more depraved language and yet a sort of intrinsic virtue—the light of unsulliable youth—shone through.

I left them as soon as might be and went to my room. I passed Guiseppe in the hall, he was muttering to himself strange oaths: "Dios"—"Corpo de Bacco"—"Sapristi"—"Nom de nom." I silently echoed his multilingual profanity. My passions had not been stirred and, looking at it in cold blood, I could only disapprove. Norman followed me to my room. Conversation did not start easily. But when at last I took my pipe out of my mouth, he cut me off.

"Oh, don't say it. What's the use? I'm saying it myself. I wish I had long ears to wave, so I could bray. There's only one thing to discuss. These diggings are as much yours as mine. I'll take her to a hotel, if you prefer."

"Here or elsewhere. What difference does the place make?" I growled. "I haven't any geographical interest in the case."

He thrust his hands deep in his pockets, paced up and down a minute, then turned with an abrupt "good-night" and went out. It was a troubled night for me. The brutal strength of the sex-pull had never seemed so malignant before. That I had begun to see something lovable in Nina, only made it worse.

I got up early and although it was Sunday and I had no work at court, I breakfasted in haste, hoping to get out before they appeared. But Norman caught me just as I was leaving.

"Come here," he said, with his fingers on his lips.

He led me on tiptoe down the hall. Through his open door I could see her sleeping. The coil of her black hair and one white arm showed above the sheet. There was an ugly, half-healed bruise near the elbow. The painted leer had been washed from her face. A smile came and went—flickered—on her lips, a wonderful smile of peaceful happiness.

"Am I clean crazy?" Norman whispered fiercely, "or is she beautiful?"

We tiptoed back to the library.

"Can you keep an eye on her for a while?" he said. "I had to have Guiseppe throw away her clothes—they were too dirty. I must get her some new ones. It won't take me long."

But he stopped at the door and came back.

"It's the way she smiles in her sleep, Arnold, that gets me." He hesitated a moment, trying to find words to fit his thought. He, who was usually so glib, had to search now. "You know, they say dreams are just a re-hash of waking experience. But—well—it isn't the kind of smile you'd expect from her. God! I'd like to know what she dreams about! It almost makes me feel religious. Reminds me of 'Intimations of Immortality!'"

Then he gave up trying to say it and rushed out to buy the clothes. I laid out my note-books and tried to work. Half an hour later she appeared in the doorway, sleepy-eyed, arrayed in a suit of Norman's pajamas.

"Where's he gone?" she yawned.

"He had to go out for a few minutes."—I did not tell her why, as I thought he might enjoy surprising her with the new outfit. "He'll be back pretty soon. If you ring the bell, Guiseppe will bring you some breakfast."

"Where's the bell?" she asked, looking on the table.

"It's on the wall. Press the button."

"Oh, it's a door be-e-e-l-l." It ended in a yawn.

"If you wash your face, you may wake up enough to be hungry."

"Aw! Go to hell."

She thumbed her nose at me and departed. She had evidently entirely forgotten the dream which had brought the smile to her lips and troubled Norman. When Guiseppe brought in her breakfast, she came back and sat down. She had no greeting for me and I, thinking of nothing worth saying, went on with my writing. When there was nothing more to eat she began to talk with Guiseppe in rapid Italian. After a while he turned to me.

"It's very sad, Mr. Arnold. She comes from the same district in Lombardy where I was born."

My nerves were on edge. I grunted that I did not see how that made it any sadder. He was surprised at my tone, and was, I think, on the point of reminding me that it was also in the same district that the Great Liberator had been born. But he thought better of it and went off to the kitchen in a huff.

Nina wandered about the room, examining the bric-a-brac with what seemed to me a stupid interest. Her inspection finished, she helped herself to a cigarette and sat down cross-legged on the divan. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that she was minutely studying her pajamas. She would gently stroke the soft fabric, where it was drawn tight across the knee. The tassels on the belt string held her attention for several minutes.

"Say," she broke out suddenly. "The old man says he burned up my clothes. Is it a lie?"

"No. They are burnt. Your friend thought they were too dirty to wear."

"What sort of a game is this?" she demanded, after blowing out a cloud of smoke. "This here suit of clothes is all right—it's real silk, I guess. But—say—I don't like parlor clothes. See? I won't stand for...."

I interrupted her, seeing at once what was in her mind. "Parlor clothes" are an old device—it was doubtless invented by some pander of ancient Nineveh. The proprietors of "disorderly houses" often keep their girls in bondage by withholding all decent clothes. The "parlor" costume, is one in which no woman would dare to go on the street. They are more effective means of guarding slaves than chains. I tried to reassure Nina, telling her why Norman had gone out.

"Honest?" she asked. "He'll let me go? I'd raise hell—sooner than be in a house. It's the sidewalk for mine—every time. He'd better not try any fancy games on me. I sure would raise hell!"

"You wait and see," I said. "He's on the square."

I began writing again, she lit another cigarette and smoked awhile in silence. But presently she came over and sat on the table.

"Say. He'll give me some money, besides the clothes, won't he?"

"You'll have to arrange that with him."

"I've got to have two dollars, by ten o'clock."

"Wouldn't you rather have some good clothes than two dollars?"

"No. Real money."

I leaned back in my chair and looked her over. At last I ventured what was in my mind.

"I suppose women's clothes wouldn't suit your man. But wouldn't some red neckties please him as well as money?"

"Say"—her eyes narrowed threateningly—"You're a wise guy, ain't you? Think you know it all?"

"Well," I said, "I know some."

I turned back the flap of my coat and showed her the badge of a county detective. She whistled with surprise, but did not seem dismayed. In fact she became suddenly friendly. Everything about her recent experiences, the bath, Norman's attitude towards her, the meals, the rooms, had been strange and confusing. But a policeman! That came within the circle of familiar. She knew dozens of them.

"Gee! I never would have thought you was a cop. Plain clothes man?"

I nodded assent and then asked her.

"Who are you hustling for?"

For a moment she seemed to consider the advisability of answering. But what was the use of trying to hide things from a "cop"? What I did not know, I could easily find out. Her cadet's nom-de-guerre was "Blackie." She spoke of him without enthusiasm, without marked revulsion—much as we speak of the unavoidable discomforts of life, such as the bad air in the subway, or the tipping system. With a few questions, I got her story—quite a different one from what she had told Norman.

Ever since they had come to America, her mother had been scraping out a bare living for herself and her daughter by means of a small fruit business, and by letting rooms behind the store to boarders. One of these men had seduced Nina under promise of taking her to the marionette show. This had happened—"Oh, a very long time ago"—at too remote a date to be definitely remembered. She spoke of this man with foul-worded bitterness. It was not on account of the evil he had done her, but because he had not taken her to the show. "Men always cheat us," she said. "It don't matter how foxy you are, they beat you to it." She had not burdened her memory with any precise record of her childish amours. They had been without pleasure—for an ice-cream cone, a few pennies, a chance to go to a show. She was a devotee of Bowery drama. "From Rags to Riches" was her favorite. "That," she said, "was something grand!"

The first person who had come anywhere near making love to her was this cadet "Blackie." She had left her mother, without any regret, to live with him. That also had been "something grand"—at first. As near as she could remember, it was about a month before he drove her out on the street to "hustle" for him. Was he good to her, I asked. She shrugged her shoulders. Was he not a man? Then she showed her first enthusiasm. He had a great "pull," he was a friend of the "Old Man on Fourteenth Street." She gave "Blackie" this sincere tribute, the cops never troubled her. But he did have a temper. "It sure is hell, when he's mad." She rolled up the sleeve of her pajamas and showed me the bruise on her arm. It had been a kick. What for? She had forgotten.

Then Benson came in, his arms full of bundles. I don't suppose he had spent more than fifteen dollars—things are cheap in that neighborhood. But it was an imposing assortment. I could not have bought so complete a trousseau without minute written instructions.

Nina forgot her troubles in an instant, they never troubled her long. She pulled the bundles to pieces and scattered the garments everywhere. Guiseppe came in on some errand, but one glimpse of those feminine frivolities, strewn about our formerly sedate bachelor chairs finished him. With a wild Garibaldian oath, he rushed back to his kitchen.

It was not in Nina's nature to allow anything to intervene between her and her immediate desire. The things once seen, had to be tried on.

"Come, come," Norman protested. "You'd better do your dressing in the other room."

Nina seemed surprised at his scruples, but, gathering up the garments, followed him docilely down the hall. Shrieks of glee came through the open door, beat against my ears—distressingly. I seemed to hear the bones of some ghastly danse maccabre, rattling behind her mirth. But as if to drive away my gloom, she soon dashed into the room, fully booted and spurred. She was very pretty. And how she laughed! She seemed a sort of care-free and very young bacchante—the daughter of some goddess of gayety. She jumped on the table and, imitating a music hall artiste, danced a mild mixture of fandango and cancan. And as she danced, she sang—a ribald, barroom song. But the words meant nothing to her, she was just seeking an outlet for her high feelings, expressing her childish joy in her new possessions.

Our neighboring church bell began to strike the hour. Nina brought down the foot which was in the air and, in a strained attitude, listened.

"Gee!" she said, jumping down to the floor. "It's ten o'clock."

For a moment she stood irresolute, and then her face hardening, she walked up to Norman.

"Gim'me two dollars."

The sudden demand hit him like a blow.

"Won't you stay to lunch with us?" he asked lamely.

"No. I've got to go—now! I want two dollars."

Such bargaining is unbearable to me, I fled to my room. In a few minutes, Norman came to my door.

"What can I do about this, Arnold?"

"Oh pay her her wages, and let her go," I said, "what else is there to do?"

"My God," he swore and stamped into my room. His face was white, his lip was bleeding a little where he had bitten it. "Somehow I can't! What rotten creatures we all are! Of course I've known all about this—but we have to touch it—to realize it.... Why did I ever let her come into my life? I can't send her back to it. She's such a kid. And—Good God!—those damned, drunken Bowery sailors!"

"Look here, Norman, you're only making matters worse for her. She'll get a beating if she don't have the money to give her cadet. He's...."

"Cadet?" Norman interrupted me, as though he had never heard the word before. He threw himself down on my bed. I had never seen him so moved.

"Isn't there any way out of it?" he groaned.

I hate to plead absolute despair, but I could see no way out. So I tried to talk reasonably.

"Don't take it so hard. She's bred to it. It isn't half as bad to her as you think. It's all she knows. She doesn't despise this cur of a cadet, she hustles for—the way we do. He's her man—the pivot of her existence." And I told him what she had said about Blackie. "He doesn't beat her as often as he might. She feels rather fortunate, because he's not worse. There isn't any way out. They call it the most ancient profession. Her hard times haven't begun yet,—she's young. She's living on the fat of the only land she ever knew. It isn't exactly a bed of roses—but she's never known a softer one."

"You're a sophist!" he cried, jumping up. "Lies. Damn lies! She has known something better. My God—you should see her smile when she's asleep! I can't stop prostitution, but I can keep her out of the worst of it. She's too young for these Bowery dens. I won't let her go back to that damn pimp."

"Go slow," I said. "What have you got to offer in exchange—for this cadet? I tell you, he's the big factor of her life. Are you willing to take the time and trouble to fill his place? Money won't do it. She can't count above fifty. How are you going to amuse her? She's used to excitement, to street life, the buzz of the Bowery. You're going to offer her a gilded cage, an upholstered cell. It won't work. And suppose you do succeed in giving her a taste for a finer life—what then? After you get through, she'll only find the old life harder. What's to become of her when you're tired?"

"You're the devil's advocate," he said vehemently.

"Perhaps. But are you a God? It would take all of a pretty lively God's time to help—to really help—the lady."

"We'll see what a man can do," he said and stamped out, back to the library. In a few minutes he called me.

"It's beyond me," he said. "It looks like fright. She seems to like me and the place. I think she'd stay, if she wasn't afraid of her old gang. See if you can reassure her."

"Nina," I asked, "are you in love with Blackie?"

She did not seem to be sure what the term meant.

"He ain't so bad."

"Well, if he were dead," I tried again, "would you stay here with Mr. Benson?"

"Sure," she said. "Sure!"

"You're afraid of Blackie?"

She nodded.

"Well. Cheer up. He can't hurt you here."

"He'd have me pinched," she insisted, doggedly. "He's got a pull with the cops. He'd sure have me sent to the Island, if I tried to shake him."

"Look here,"—again I flashed my badge—"It's gold. That means I'm the same as a captain. I've got ten times more pull than Blackie. If he gets gay, I'll lock him up. I'll plant a gun in his pocket and send him up the river for concealed weapons. You don't need to be afraid of him."

"Gee," she said, "I'd like to stay. But he'd sure get me. He's a bad one."

"He'll be a dead one," I said. "If he starts anything with a friend of mine."

I talked a few minutes more, but not till I showed her a pair of hand-cuffs, which I kept in my room by way of a curiosity, did she really believe she was safe and begin to smile again.

Having established the family, I made an excuse to go out. I came back late at night and found Benson sitting alone in front of the fire.

"She's asleep," he said.

"Must have had a lot of excitement," I replied, "to be sleepy at this hour."

Having spent all the day outdoors, tramping in the open air, my brain had cleared a little. The thing had lost its distorted proportions, had fallen into focus. I could not understand how the affair had seemed so momentous to me. Such things, I knew very well, were happening on all sides, all the time. I was sorry for Norman. He would take it seriously and that, I felt, meant days of stress and sadness. My work in the Tombs had made me realize more certainly than he could the immense chances against his helping the girl. How many futile efforts I had made at first to lend a hand to some of these unfortunate women! I had given it up in defeat. For her, even if the powers of darkness pulled her back at last, it would mean at least a little oasis of comfort and consideration in the barren desert life the gods had mapped out for her.

"There's one thing, I must say for my soul's good," Norman said. "It's a hard business, this analyzing of our motives. I'm sure I do want to save her, if I can, from being a public prostitute. But it's equally true I want her for myself. I certainly despise this cadet, Blackie—but it's also true that I'm suddenly become just ordinarily, humanly jealous of him. I don't want to pretend that I'm wholly occupied in trying to be God-like."

"Well—I suppose I'm a cynic," I said. "But I don't expect any wonderful reformation—in either of you. Only don't be unfair to her—don't expect too much of her."

And so Nina became an accepted member of our household.

V

Norman certainly set earnestly about the work of filling the place in Nina's life previously held by Blackie.

A few nights later I joined them in the middle of the performance at Koster and Bials. Nina looked away from the stage only long enough to say "Hello." She was vibrant with excitement. Norman and I sat back in the box much more interested in her than in the commonplaces of the stage. We were both rather ill at ease in so senseless and light-minded a place.

"This experience," he said and I thought I caught a tone of apology in his voice, "is bringing me a closer understanding of the life of the poor. Of course they'd resent my saying that Nina helped me to understand them. The poor are the worst of all snobs. We 'reformers' believe in the working-class a lot more than they do in themselves. It's hard to get at them—we only meet the kind who know how to talk and most of them are mute. The chaps in my Studenten Verein long for education. They envy us who had it forced on us—and, of course, pose before us. You can't really get to people who envy you.

"But Nina never studied—barely reads—don't want to. This sort of thing is her summum bonum. I haven't found anything that makes her happier than for me to put on evening clothes and take her to a flashy up-town restaurant. And she can't help talking. She has no self-consciousness—no pose. What she says is reality. It's the wisdom of the tenements she babbles out—the venerable philosophy of the poor. I'm learning a lot from her."

"You needn't apologize to me," I said.

"I wasn't apologizing," he retorted. "Why should I?"

"I said you needn't."

"But you meant that I ought to—not to you, but to somebody. To whom? To God? To Mrs. Grundy? No—why should I apologize?"—He threw his arm back so that his hand lay on my shoulder, it was the nearest our great love for each other ever came to the expression of a caress—"I know you don't approve, Arnold. But after all whom am I harming? You and I have been leading a pretty glum sort of a life...."

"You have," I interrupted. "I'm in no position to chuck any self-righteous stones."

"Oh," he said. "That's what you meant when you said I need not apologize to you."

"I suppose so."

"Well, to whom then? Tell me," he went on when I did not reply at once. "I'm really glad to have the opinion of a disinterested onlooker. It always helps. Tell me."

"Good God," I replied to his challenge, "I'm no oracle—no omniscient voice of conscience. But it looks to me as though apologies were coming to Nina."

"Nina?" he said in surprise.

"Yes. Don't you see what's happening? She's falling in love with you. The real thing. She never saw anybody like you before. You're like the shining white hero of the Bowery melodrama, who rescues the distressed heroine at the last minute—and marries her. Of course you and I know that the young millionaires with tenor voices don't marry the distressed damsels. But remember the kind of dope her mind is filled with. The wedding march always starts up, just before the curtain goes down."

The slap-stick comedians had finished their turn, the lights flared up and for the first time I noticed Nina's resplendent gown. It was really a beautiful dress. If her hair had been done up with a little more skill and if Norman had not set all his authority against an excess of powder and paint she would have looked quite like an uptown lady, of the Holland Houses or Rector's, like those who go up Fifth Avenue to a ball or like those who turn over to Broadway and strut about in the theater lobbies to attract the attention of some gentleman from out of town.

I complimented her on her appearance and, she, pleased as a child, told me how they had bought the dress that afternoon at a second-hand place on Sixth Avenue. The most glorious experience of her life, before she had met Norman, was a short acquaintance with the woman who played the "lady villain" at "Miner's." They had had rooms in the same house for a while. And this tragedienne had confided to Nina where she bought her second-hand clothes. Norman in a dinner jacket and Nina in a shirtwaist had attracted a good deal of attention, so he had decided that she must have a more suitable outfit for evening wear. She had led the way. And she told me with great animation—and frequent profanity—of the long and complicated dickering which had preceded the final purchase. The shop woman had asked $27.50 and Nina had stuck out for $17.50. At one stage of the wrangle the woman had led Nina aside and called her a little fool.

"'He's rich,' she says to me. 'He'll pay. Don't you know enough to stick him. I'll knock off fifty cents, you say all right. He'll pay it. And tomorrow you come round and I'll give you three dollars.' Now wot do you think of that? Say. Do you know wot I did?"

I could not guess.

"I spit at her. I said 'You ....'" (Among the other epithets were "cross-eyed" and "hook-nosed.")

"Well—how much did you pay at last?" I asked.

"I think," said Norman, "she could have got it for the seventeen...."

"Sure, I could," Nina interrupted. "But he was in a hurry and gave the ... thief twenty. It...."

The lights went down, the curtain up and a woman, whom I would not have trusted to be kind to her own children, brought on a troupe of pitiable dogs. Nina turned back to watch the stage.

"So you think," Norman reverted to the former subject, "that I ought to marry her?"

"Of course not."

"If you have any reasons why I shouldn't that are not pure snobbishness, I'd like to hear them."

"Good God," I said. "You're not seriously thinking of that, are you?"

"Hardly. But the idea has occurred to me. Why are you so frightened by it?"

It is strange what illogical creatures we are! Up to that moment I had been sorry for Nina. Every day I liked her more. And I saw with a sore heart the wondering, dazed admiration grow within her for her new master. Love is one of the most primeval passions of the race. It is likely to be stronger—grander or more devastating—with primitive people than with those of us who have been civilized away from the parent type. I knew that Nina was falling in love with Norman in a way no woman of our class ever could. He had taken her into a fairy land and she could not, I felt, help expecting the fairy denouement.

But the hint of the possibility of his really acting the part of the fairy prince, switched me about entirely. Nina became a negligible quantity. I worried only for him. It is needless to repeat the arguments against such a marriage which flooded me. They will occur to anyone. But to oppose it—I knew Norman too well—to try that.

"Perhaps that would be the best solution of the matter—for her."

"And for me?" he insisted.

"Well. You're in a better position than I to decide that."

He laughed and leaned forward and pinched her ear. Suddenly she forgot the stage and getting up—reckless of all observers,—came back and kissed him.

"Nina," I asked, "if I pinched your ear, would you kiss me?"

"No," she said, convincingly. "I'd slap your face."

"There's only one thing I know about this, Arnold," he said when she had returned to her seat. "It's bringing me to life again. I don't think I had really laughed for months. I'd forgotten there was such a thing as amusement in the world. I never was very strong on play. Of one thing I'm sure. It's giving me a new insight—a new point of view—into lots of things. Only God knows how it will turn out."

VI

I can only guess how it would have turned out, if Nina had not fallen among thieves. The most insoluble mystery of life is the way in which the very highest human values sometimes spring out of the coarsest, most brutal wrongs.

Although to Nina, I had spoken of Blackie in a flippant tone, I knew that he might cause trouble. I had spoken seriously about it to Norman, advising him to avoid as much as possible, and especially after dark, those parts of town, where Blackie's gang was likely to be encountered. And together we had impressed on Nina and Guiseppe that she was never to go out alone. But as nothing was heard from him for some time, we all began to worry less.

Nina had been with us about three weeks when the storm broke. I came home from my work about five one afternoon—and found bedlam. Guiseppe's head was wrapped in a bloody bandage, Nina was sobbing wildly on the divan.

It took some minutes before I could get a connected explanation from them. After lunch they had gone out to pay the butcher's bill. Nina, having come from "his district" had won Giuseppe's heart and he allowed her the pleasure of playing at housewife. It pleased her especially to pay the bills, so she was carrying the money—about thirty dollars. At the corner of Second Avenue and First Street, they had been surrounded by Blackie's gang. Guiseppe had fought like a true Garibaldian until his head had been laid open with a knife and he had been thrown to the ground by the young toughs. As quickly as they had come, they ran away. When he picked himself up, Nina was nowhere to be seen. He had asked the aid of a policeman, but had been laughed at. Then he had come to the Teepee, not finding either Benson or me, he had bound up his head, and rallying some Garibaldian comrades, had set out on a search. This about three o'clock. A little after four they had found her sobbing desperately behind an ash can in an alley-way. He had had some trouble in persuading her to come back. She was afraid of Blackie's wrath—but more afraid that Norman would be angry on account of the money.

Her story came out brokenly between spells of crying. At the first attack, Blackie and another cadet had hustled her around the corner and up some stairs to a rented room. There they took away the money and beat her at leisure. The three who had manhandled Guiseppe came in shortly and kicked her about some more. There was nothing unusual in this—it is the well-established custom, by which the cadets keep their girls in slavery. I doubt if a day ever passes in this great metropolis of ours when the same scene is not enacted. They would probably have beaten her worse, if the windfall of money had not tempted them out to other pleasures. One after another the five men swore, emphasizing their words with blows, that if she ever threw down Blackie again, they would kill her. Their parting advice to her was that if she had not earned five dollars by ten o'clock next morning, she could expect a fresh beating.

Such stories had come to my knowledge before, they are the commonplaces of the police courts. But as Norman had said the first morning, such things must happen to someone near us, before we realize them. I took the handcuffs out of my desk, put fresh cartridges in my revolver. I had never set out after a man before in a like frame of mind....

When I think back to that evening's work, the Tombs and our convict prisons and all the bitter horror of our penal system, is no longer inexplicable. It is only crystallized anger. The electric chair is only a formal symbol of collective hate. I am not at all proud of that man-hunt. A friend of mine had been hurt. "A friend of mine"—how many of man's and nature's laws have been broken with that preface! The political bosses look after their "friends." More corrupt legislation has been passed because of "friendship" than for bribes. Well. A friend of mine had been touched. Everything by which I like to recognize myself as a civilized man dropped away. Suddenly I became an ally of the thing I was fighting against. As I rushed downstairs, with handcuffs in one pocket and a revolver in the other and murder in my heart, I was just adding my contribution to the maintenance of the system which seems to me—when not angry—the most despicable element in our civilization.

I left word for Benson to stay in when he came home, so that I could reach him by telephone. I had no definite plan when I left the Teepee—only somehow I was going to "get" Blackie. It was about an hour before I was able to locate him. The first fury of my anger had passed, it had had time to become cold and to harden.

Pinning my badge on the outside of my coat, I kicked open the door of the "Tim O'Healy Social and Civic Club," and covered the crowd of twenty young toughs who were in the room.

"Hands up," I ordered. They obeyed sullenly.

"I want Blackie," I said, "and no funny work from the rest of you."

For a moment they were irresolute.

"Say. You're making a damn fool of yourself," one of them protested, "Blackie's president of this club—he's right next to the Old Man. You'll get broke sure."

"Shut up. The Old Man sent me," I lied. "Blackie's been getting too fly."

"Hell!" another piped up. "I seen the Old Man shake hands wid him an hour ago."

"Cut it out, kid," I replied. "You talk too much. How long's the Old Man been in the habit of warning guys he's going to light on?"

My lie worked—and saved bloodshed. It was the old tragedy of Cardinal Wolsey acted over again. None of the gang was really afraid of my revolver. One rush would have finished me. But they were all afraid of the Old Man's ire. They drew away from Blackie.

"It's a lie," he growled. "Me and the Old Man's friends."

"You can talk that over with him in the morning. Come on."

He grew suddenly pale, half believing my story. He was such an ill-visaged, rat-eyed scoundrel, I regretted that they had not made a rush—at least I could have stopped his career. Single handed now, he submitted sullenly.

"Wot's the charge?" he asked, holding out his hands for the irons.

"Murder in the first."

From the way he wilted, I think he must have had a murder on his conscience.

"Now," I said to the gang, "I don't need any help from you. You'd better go right on with your game. You can call on him later on in the station house and bail him out—if you want to get in wrong with the Old Man."

But instead of taking him to the nearby station house, I rushed him down town to the Tombs. The sergeant at the desk did not know him, so I entered him under a false name. A search revealed quite an arsenal on his person, a short barreled revolver, a knife and some brass-knuckles. I plastered him with all the charges I could think of—disorderly conduct, concealed weapons, robbery in the first degree, felonious assault. Nina might be too frightened to testify to the robbery, but Guiseppe would swear to the assault.

As soon as I had him in a cell, I telephoned to Norman that all was going well and rushed uptown to the home of the district attorney. The fates were playing into my hands, for at that time—as is usual between elections—there was civil war within the organization. The district attorney was a machine man, but was one of the leaders of the rebellious faction. He heard my story with great glee, a serious criminal charge against one of the Old Man's lieutenants was fine gist for his mill. He promised to push the case and put it on before O'Neil, whom the Old Man could not reach.

Then I went to the "Old Man." I have already written of my encounters with him. In general I had established friendly relations with the machine politicians. Some of them, especially the judges, liked me personally. Ryan's friendship for me was, I think, real. But of what was back of the Old Man's easy going familiarity, I was less certain. I could not count on his friendship. But he was sure to find out what I had done. And there was nothing to be gained by letting some one else tell him.

That night I found him in the back room of his brother-in-law's saloon. He looked up at me, his eyes, usually cordial, decidedly hostile.

"Say, young man, haven't you been getting pretty gay?"

"I sure have," I admitted. "And I've come round to tell you what I did and why I did it." I gave him the story from beginning to end, even my talk with the district attorney.

"Well," he said, when I was through, "you've played it pretty slick—so far. But how are you going to keep that gang from shooting you up, when they find out what you put over on them?"

"It'll be a poor friend of Blackie," I said, "who takes a shot at me. I've got too many friends on the bench. And the district attorney would sure hand him a dirty deal."

He nodded assent. According to his lights the Old Man fought fairly. He had no mean personal animosity. He handed me a cigar. I smoked it silently while he was thinking things out.

I had put a knife into a vulnerable spot—had thrown the apple of discord where it was most likely to cause trouble. Tammany Hall is a latter-day feudalism. Ability to protect one's vassals is the keynote of the organization. The "ward heeler" is a petty count, the "district leaders" are the great dukes. And the kingship of this realm is not hereditary—it is not even a life-tenure. I do not think it has ever happened, certainly not in my time, that a boss has held his position till death. And there have been very few voluntary abdications.

The Old Man was facing a determined rebellion. Not to be able to save Blackie would be a great blow to his prestige. Many a district leadership has been lost on a lesser issue. He knew he could get no help from the district attorney's office, without patching up a humiliating peace. I could see only one outlet for him—to repudiate Blackie. He could easily have found some excuse for backing up my lie. I am sure this thought was in his mind, written all over with the word "discretion." But in expecting him to take this easy way out, I misjudged him. He loved a fight. These factional struggles were what made life interesting within the organization and attractive to men of his type. He had never been defeated. He did not like to lie down before me, who in his eyes was not even a regular warrior—just a sort of banditti.

"I've sent a man down to bail him out," he said abruptly. "I guess there is going to be a fight. You'll get my answer in the morning. Good night."

I found Norman in a Berserker fury. He was inclined to quarrel with me for not having shot Blackie on sight. A doctor had sewed up the gash in Guiseppe's head. Beyond some angry black and blue blotches, Nina had sustained no injuries. As soon as she had been reassured about the lost money, she had recovered her spirits.

The Old Man's answer would have caught us unawares—as he intended it should—if it had not been for a fortunate enmity of mine. I suppose there were many people in the Tombs who disliked me, but no one hated me so cordially as Steger, the agent of the society for the Protection of Childhood. Our feud was of long standing. He was an insignificant little man, to whom no one ever paid any attention. He was employed by the society to push the charges against everyone accused of violating the laws for the protection of childhood and to urge the heaviest penalties against all who were found guilty. My business was to persuade the court to temper justice with mercy. Inevitably we came into conflict. He would urge the judge to impose the maximum sentence, and I would plead for leniency. My personal standing was better than his and I invariably won out in these frequent tilts. His rancor against me had always made me smile. I met him as I entered the court house.

"Seems to be a nice sort of fellow—that room-mate of yours," he sneered.

"What's up?"

"You'll know quick enough. Take my advice and disappear. It will be hard for you to disprove complicity."

It was enough to give me the tip. Within five minutes I had the whole story from one of my fellow "county detectives," who had seen the warrant. Blackie and the Old Man had got Nina's mother to make an affidavit that her daughter was only seventeen years old. Steger had joyfully sworn out a warrant against Benson, charging him with rape in the second degree—states prison, ten years.

In the language of the Tombs, they "had the goods on him." There is no getting away from this charge if the girl is under eighteen. The question of whether or not she has "led a previously chaste life," has no bearing in rape cases.

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.

II

There were two incidents in my work which grew to great proportions in my mind. They happened close together, when I had been about seven years in the Tombs.

Walking one day along a corridor of the prison, past the cells, my attention was caught by an old man. He sat on a low stool, close to the grated door, his face pressed against the bars. On it was written appalling, abject despair.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

He glared at me sullenly. It was some time before he replied.

"They've got me wrong," he said.

The date on the door of his cell gave the history of the case. His name was Jerry Barnes. Arrested three weeks ago, without bail, he had pled guilty the day before to burglary in the third degree, and was awaiting sentence before Justice Ryan.