FURTHER COST

I go to see May—A cottage on the West Side—May comes to the door—Pleading—Stiff-necked virtue—A discussion of patriotism—We wash dishes and dispute—Old times—One woman's character—Possibilities—Hard words—Rejected gifts—Even to the children—Who shall judge?—Another scale and a greater one

The cab drew up before a one-story frame house that stood back in the lot, squeezed between two high brick buildings. This was the number on Ann Street, over on the West Side, that Will had given me when I had pressed him for his address. The factories had pretty well surrounded this section of the city, leaving here and there some such rickety shanty as this one. There were several children playing in the strip of front yard, and as I opened the gate one of them called out, "Hello, Uncle Van!"

It was Will's second son, little Van. He said his mother was at home, and, taking my hand, he showed me around the cottage to the back door. The boy pounded on the door, and May came to see what was the matter.

"Is that you, Van?" she asked, as if she expected me. "Will said he saw you the other day."

She did not invite me in, but the little boy held open the door and I walked into the kitchen. The breakfast things were piled up in the sink, unwashed. A boiler of clothes was on the fire, and May had her sleeves rolled up, ready to begin the wash. Her arms were as thin as pipe-stems, and behind her glasses I saw deep circles of blue flesh. She had grown older and thinner in the three years since she and Will left my house for good.

"Will's gone to the city," May remarked.

"He don't look strong, May. It made me feel bad to see him so—changed, not a bit like himself."

She seemed to bridle a little at this.

"He hasn't been real well since he had the fever at Montauk. He was reinfected at the hospital, and nearly died. When he got out he tried farming down in Texas, but his strength didn't come back as we expected, and the climate was too hot for him. So we came North to see if he could get some easier work."

"How are the children?" I asked, seeing a strange baby face peep around the corner of the clothes-basket.

"We lost the baby boy while Will was at Montauk. Another little girl has come since then. We call her Sarah."

She waited a moment, and then asked hesitatingly:—

"How's your Sarah? She didn't look well when I saw her last."

"No—she's been delicate some time—since our boy died, last summer. She's gone to Europe with the girls for a change."

Then we were silent; there was not much more we could say without touching the quick. But at last I burst out:—

"May, why wouldn't you take that money I sent you while Will was away at the war?"

"We could manage without it. It was kind of you, though. You have always been kind, Van!"

"You might have known it would make us happy to have you take it. It was only what I owed to the country, too, seeing that I was so placed I couldn't go to Cuba. I wanted then to leave everything and enlist. But it wouldn't have been fair to others. I sent some men in my place, though."

Perhaps it sounded a little like apologizing. May listened with a smile on her lips that heated me.

"You are just like that preacher!" I exclaimed. "You can see no good in folks unless it's your kind of good. Don't you believe I have got some real patriotism in me?"

"It's hard to think of Van Harrington, the new Senator, as a patriot," she laughed back. "Those men you sent to the front must have come in handy for the election!"

I turned red at her little fling about the Senatorship: my managers had worked that company I equipped for all it was worth.

"I guess there are a good many worse citizens than I am. I wanted to fight for those fellows down in Cuba. And you wouldn't let me do the little I could—help Will to take my place."

"After all that happened, Van, we couldn't take it."

"And I suppose you don't want to touch anything from me now! See here, May, I came over this morning to do something for you and Will. Did he tell you about my wanting him to go down to my place in the country until he got well and strong?"

"He's much interested in this paper, and thinks he can't get away," she said evasively.

"Darn his paper! You don't believe Will was cut out to be a thinker? Anyhow, he ought to get his health back first, and give you an easier time, too."

"I am all right. Will is very much in earnest about his ideas. You can't get him to think about himself."

"Well, I don't mind his trying to reform the earth. If later on he wants a paper to whack the rich with, I'll buy him one. Come, that's fair, isn't it?"

May laughed at my offer, but made no reply.

"If you folks are so obstinate, if I can't get you to go down to my place, I'll have to turn it into a school or something. A fellow I was talking with on the train the other day gave me an idea of making it into a sort of reform school for boys. What would you think of that? Sarah is taken with the idea—she never liked the place and won't want to go back, now that the baby died there."

"That's a good plan—turning philanthropist, Van? That's the right way to get popular approval, Senator."

She mocked me, but her laugh rang out good-naturedly.

"Popular approval never worried me much. But, May, I want your good-will, and I mean to get it, too."

For the more obstinate she was, the more she made me eager to win my point, to bring her and Will back to me. She understood this, and a flash of her old will and malice came into her thin face. She got up to stir the clothes on the fire, and when the water began to run over I stripped off my coat and put my hand to the job. Then I stepped over to the sink.

"Do you remember how I used to wash while you wiped, when we wanted to get out buggy-riding, May?"

"Yes, and you were an awful shiftless worker, Senator," May retorted, fetching a dish-towel from the rack and beginning to wash, while I wiped. "And you had the same smooth way with you, though in those days you hadn't ten cents to your name. And now, how much is it?"

"Oh, say a quarter!"

"Then it must have cost you a sight of money to become Senator."

"It did some, but I kept back a little."

When we had finished the dishes we began on the clothes. A child's dress caught on the wringer and tore. It was marked in a fine embroidery with the initials, J.S. II., for Jaffrey Slocum Harrington—as we had thought to call the little chap. May saw me look at the initials.

"Sarah sent it to me along with a lot of baby things when my Jack came. Perhaps she might like to have them back now."

"She and the girls come home next week. Won't you come and see her? She'd care more for that than for anything."

"You were always awfully persistent in getting your own way, Van!"

"But I didn't always get it, I remember."

"It might have been just as well if you hadn't had it so much of the time since."

"Well, maybe—"

"There are a few other people in the world besides Van Harrington, and they have their rights, too."

"That's true enough, if they can get 'em."

"Maybe their consciences are a little stronger to hold them back from getting things. You never held off long when you wanted a thing, Van. You took the peaches, you remember?"

Her lips curled in the way that used to set me mad for her.

"I didn't eat a peach," I protested. "I gave them to your brothers, and Budd Haines."

"Yes, you gave them!"

"I don't believe you think me half as bad as you make me out!" I said, stopping the wringer and looking into her eyes.

"You don't know how bad I make you out," she challenged my look.

It was not hard to see why I had been crazy to marry her in the old days. There was a fire in her which no other woman I ever saw possessed. Jane was large-minded, keen as an eagle, and like steel. But there was a kind of will in this worn woman, a hanging to herself, which gave her a character all her own. Nevertheless, we two couldn't have travelled far hitched together. She would have tried her best to run me, and life would have been hell for us both.

"Well," I protested in my own defence, "there's no man and no woman living has the right to say he's the worse off on my account. I have treated the world fairly where it has treated me fairly."

"So that's your boast, Van Harrington! It's pretty hard when a man has to say a thing like that to defend his life. You don't know how many men you have ruined like that poor Hostetter. But that isn't the worst. The very sight of men like you is the worst evil in our country. You are successful, prosperous, and you have ridden over the laws that hindered you. You have hired your lawyers to find a way for you to do what you please. You think you are above the law—just the common laws for ordinary folks! You buy men as you buy wheat. And because you don't happen to have robbed your next-door neighbor or ruined his daughter, you make a boast of it to me. It's pretty mean, Van, don't you think so?"

We had sat down facing each other across the tub of clothes. As she spoke her hot words, I thought of others who had accused me in one way or another,—Parson, Will, Slocum,—most of all, Slocum. But I dismissed this sentimental reflection.

"Those are pretty serious charges you are making, May," I replied after a time. "And what do you know? What the newspapers say. There are thousands of newspaper men all over this country who get a dollar or two a column for that sort of mud. Then these same fellows come around to us and hold out their hands for tips or bribes. You take their lies for proved facts. I have never taken the trouble to answer their charges, and never shall. I will answer for what I have done."

"To whom?" May asked ironically. "To God? I should like to see Van Harrington's God! He must be different from the One I have prayed to all these years."

"Maybe he has more charity, May!"

"Are you asking for charity—my charity as well as God's?" she blazed.

"Well, let that go! I shall answer to the people now."

"Yes! And God help this country, now that men like you have taken to buying seats there at Washington!"

We said nothing for a while after this, and then I rose to go.

"We don't get anywhere this way, May. I came here wanting to be friends with you and Will—wanting to help my brother. You needn't take my money if you think it's tainted. But can't you feel friendly? You are throwing me off a second time when I come to you asking for your love."

She flushed at the meaning under my words, and replied in a lower voice:—

"It would do no good, Van. You are feeling humble just now, and remorseful, and full of old memories. But you don't want my love now, in real truth, more than you did before." Her face crimsoned slowly. "If you had wanted it then, you would have stayed and earned it."

"And I could have had it?"

Instead of answering she came up to me and took my arms in her two hands and pulled my head to her.

"Good-by, Van!" she said, kissing me.

As I stepped out of the door I turned for the last time:—

"Can't you let me do something for my brother, who is a sick man?"

Tears came to her eyes, but she shook her head.

"I know he's sick, and likely to fail in what he's doing. But it can't be helped!"

Outside little Van was sitting on the ground playing with a broken toy engine. I put my hand on his little tumbled head, and turned to his mother:—

"I suppose you wouldn't let him touch my money, either?"

She smiled back her defiance through her tears.

"You had rather he'd grow up in the alley here than let me give him an education and start him in life!"

I waited several moments for her answer.

"Yes!" she murmured at last, very faintly.

The little fellow looked from his mother to me curiously, trying to make out what we were saying.

So I went back to the city, having failed in my purpose. I couldn't get that woman to yield an inch. She had weighed me in her scales and found me badly wanting. I was Senator of these United States, from the great state of Illinois; but there was Hostetter, and the old banker Farson, and my best friend Slocum, and my brother Will, and May, and their little children, who stood to one side and turned away.

The smoke of the city I had known for so long drifted westward above my head. The tall chimneys of the factories in this district poured forth their stream to swell the canopy that covered the heavens. The whir of machinery from the doors and windows of the grimy buildings filled the air with a busy hum; the trucks ground along in the car tracks. Traffic, business, industry,—the work of the world was going forward. A huge lumber boat blocked the river at the bridge, and while the tugs pushed it slowly through the draw, I stood and gazed at the busy tracks in the railroad yards below me, at the line of high warehouses along the river. I, too, was a part of this. The thought of my brain, the labor of my body, the will within me, had gone to the making of this world. There were my plants, my car line, my railroads, my elevators, my lands—all good tools in the infinite work of the world. Conceived for good or for ill, brought into being by fraud or daring—what man could judge their worth? There they were, a part of God's great world. They were done; and mine was the hand. Let another, more perfect, turn them to a larger use; nevertheless, on my labor, on me, he must build.

Involuntarily my eyes rose from the ground and looked straight before me, to the vista of time. Surely there was another scale, a grander one, and by this I should not be found wholly wanting!