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THE CONFESSIONAL CLUB

In setting forth the happenings at Roberta Vallis' party (with their startling psychic consequences to Penelope Wells) it is necessary to say a word about the Greenwich Village poet Kendall Brown, since he originated the Confessional Club. This remarkable organization grew out of a tirade against American hypocrisy made by Kendall one night in a little Italian restaurant on Bleecker Street.

What was most needed in this country and in all countries, the one thing that alone could redeem mankind, declared Brown, soaring away on red wine enthusiasm, was truth. “Let us be honest and outspoken about things as they are, about men and women as they are,” he ran on in his charmingly plausible way. “We are none of us very important, there isn't much difference between saints and sinners—I'll argue that point with any man—but there is one immensely valuable contribution that we can all make to the general store of life-knowledge, we can speak the exact truth about ourselves and our experiences, instead of hiding it. That would be a real service to humanity, for this composite truth, assembled and studied, must lead to wisdom; but men and women are such pitiful cowards, such cringing toadies to convention. It makes me sick!”

He refilled his glass slowly and continued: “Why is our talk stupid—all talk, so stupid that we have to get drunk in order to endure life? Why are we bores—all of us? Because we are afraid to say the essential things—what we know. We talk about what we don't know, like monkeys, and call it civilized. By God, I'd like to start a society for the dissemination of the truth that everybody knows and nobody tells!”

This phrase caught the fancy of Roberta Vallis whose fluttering, frivolous soul was appealed to by any line of reasoning that tended to put saints and sinners on the same level. She made Kendall repeat his idea and then and there proposed that they adopt it. A society for the dissemination of the truth that everybody knows and nobody tells! Splendid! They must found this society—immediately. When should they have the first meeting?

In this casual way the Confessional Club came into being, with no fixed membership, no dues or constitution, no regular place or time of meeting, and added one more to those amusing (sometimes inspiring) little groups that have flourished in Greenwich Village. It certainly had a real idea behind it. “We are loaded with human dynamite. We tell the truth that is never told,” became the watchword of the society.

All of which bears upon the present narrative because Roberta Vallis had arranged to have one of these self-revealing sÉances as a feature of her party; and she insisted that Penelope contribute an emotional experience.

“You must confess something, Pen, my sweet one, in order to be in the spirit of the evening,” she explained with bubbling exuberance, “any little thing. We all do it. Only be careful you don't make that architect of yours jealous,” she teased. “Think up a classy confession, something weird—understand? Don't look so darned serious. It's only for fun. You can fake up something, dearie, if you're afraid to tell the truth. Why, what's the matter?”

Penelope's face had changed startlingly, and was now overcast by sombre memories—by fears. Why had those lightly spoken words moved her so strangely? Afraid to tell the truth! Was she afraid? With sinking heart she recalled that message of Seraphine's exalted spirit—Penelope must cleanse her soul of evil!

But—had she not cleansed her soul already? Had she not confessed the truth about her longing for a child? And written it down in her diary and prayed God to forgive her? Was not that enough? Why should this pressure to confess more be put upon her? Could it be that frivolous, selfish Roberta Vallis was the unconscious agent of some fateful power urging Penelope Wells to look into her soul again?

Suddenly, in a flash of new understanding, Mrs. Wells decided. This was no longer a trifling incident, but a happening of deep spiritual import. She was struggling desperately for health—for happiness. Perhaps this was her way of salvation, if she could only bring herself to say the one thing that—that ought to be said. After all, the opinion of these careless Bohemians mattered little—it was God's opinion that mattered.

“Do you mind if I bring Seraphine to the party?” Penelope asked with a far-away look in her eyes.

“Of course not—we'll be glad to have her.”

“All right, Bobby. I will make a confession. There is something I want to confess. I don't know just the details, but—yes I do, too, it's about—” she hesitated, but went on with strengthening resolve, “it's about a trip I made once on a Fall River steamboat.”

Roberta's eyes danced at this prospect.

“Splendid, Pen! We'll have yours last—just before the supper.”

And so it came about that it was Penelope herself who set into action forces of the mind or the soul, memories and fears that were to change her whole future.

We need take no account of the other confessions (except one), tinsel or tawdry fragments from the drift-wood of life, that were offered blithely by three or four members of the gay company. We are concerned with Penelope's confession, and with this only as it leads up to subsequent developments of the evening. There was an ominous significance in the fact that Mrs. Wells made this confession before the man she loved. Why did she do that? Why?

Penelope sat beside a Japanese screen of black and gold on which a red-tongued dragon coiled its embroidered length and, by the light of a yellow lantern just above (there was also a tiny blue lantern that flung down a caressing ray upon her smooth dark hair and adorable shoulders) she glanced at some loose leaves taken from an old diary. Then, nerving herself for the effort, she began in a low, appealing tone, but rather unsteadily:

“I am going to tell you something that—it's very hard for me to speak of this, but—I want to tell it. I have a feeling that if I tell it I may save myself and someone who is dear to me,” she looked down in embarrassment, “from—from a terrible danger. I feel more deeply about this because—some of you remember a strange thing that happened four years ago when I was present at a meeting of this club.”

There were murmurs and nods of understanding from several of the guests who settled themselves into positions of expectant attention.

“Are we to have a second prophecy, Mrs. Walters?” inquired Kendall Brown briskly of Seraphine, whose haunting eyes kept Penelope in loving watchfulness; but the medium made no reply.

“The second prophecy has already been made, Kendall,” Mrs. Wells answered gravely. “I have come here tonight knowing that a disaster may result from my presence. Seraphine says that a disaster will result, but—I don't believe it. I can't believe it. What harm is there in my coming to this party?”

She spoke vehemently with increasing agitation and the guests watched her with fascinated interest.

“A disaster? Tonight? Extraordinary! What kind of a disaster?”

Such were the questions and exclamations called forth by this startling announcement, and incredulous glances were addressed to the psychic; but Seraphine offered no enlightenment. She merely rocked placidly in her chair.

“Go on, dear,” she said.

And Penelope continued:

“You know I have been ill since I came back from France. There are symptoms in my illness that are—peculiar—distressing. I have horrible fears that I have to fight all the time. Horrible dreams, one dream in particular lately of a thing that happened on a Fall River steamboat.”

“A thing that really happened?” questioned a little gray-haired woman.

“Yes, it really happened to me during a trip that I made on this boat; and now, years later, it continues to happen in my dreams. It terrifies me, tortures me, for the thing was—it was something wrong that I did. I—I suppose it was a sin.”

A sin!

There was a tremor in her voice, a pathetic catch in her breath, almost a sob, as she forced herself to speak these words; then bravely, pleadingly, she lifted her eyes to her beloved.

Over the gay company there came a surprised and sympathetic hush. Herrick straightened awkwardly, but never flinched in his loyalty or fondness—what an ordeal for a lover!—while Penelope paused as if gathering strength to go on.

“May I ask if this was before you were married?” queried the poet.

“No.”

“After you were married?”

“Yes. My husband was with me.”

Penelope's voice sank almost to a whisper, and the unconscious twining together of her fingers bore witness to her increasing distress. Everyone in the room felt the poignancy of the moment. If the operation of soul cleansing involved such stress as this, then even these heedless members of the Confessional Club drew back disapprovingly.

“Hold on, Pen!” interposed Roberta Vallis good-naturedly, wishing to relieve this embarrassment. “You're getting all fussed up. I guess you'd better cut out this story. I don't believe it's much good anyway. If you think there are any sentimental variations on a Fall River steamboat theme that we are not fully conversant with, why you've got another guess coming.”

Penelope wavered and again her dark eyes yearned towards Christopher. It was cruelly hard to go on with her story, yet it was almost impossible now not to tell it.

“I want to make this confession,” she insisted, strong in her purpose, yet breaking under womanly weakness. “I must cleanse my soul of—of evil—mustn't I?” her anguished eyes begged comfort of Seraphine.

“You are right, dear child,” the medium answered gently, “but wait a little. Sit over here by me. We have plenty of time.” She took her friend's icy hand in hers and drew her protectingly to a place beside her on the sofa.

“To cheer you up, Pen,” laughed Bobby, “and create a general diversion, I'll tell a story myself—you'll see the kind of confession stuff we generally put over in our little group of unconventional thinkers. Attention, folks! Harken to the Tale of Dora the Dressmaker! Which proves that the way of the transgressor, as observed on Manhattan Island, is not always so darned hard.”

Then she told her story in the most approved Greenwich Village style, with slangy and cynical comments, all of which were received with chortles of satisfaction by the men and with no very severe disapproval by the ladies—except Seraphine.

“Dora was a pretty, frail looking girl—but really as strong as a horse,” began Bobby gleefully, “one of those tall blondes who can pass off for aristocrats without being the real thing. She came from a small Southern town and had married a man who was no good. He drank and chased after women; and, in one of his drunken fits, he was run over on a dark night at the railroad crossing—fortunately.”

Penelope stirred uneasily at the memories in her own life conjured up by this picture.

“Dora had the usual small town collection of wedding cut glass and doilies, which she put away in the attic, after husband's decease; and, with them, she also put away all respect and desire for the married state. She was through with domesticity and all that it represented, and made up her mind to devote the rest of her life to earning as big a salary as she could and having the best time possible.”

The rest of the story was a sordid account of this girl's effort to combine business with pleasure, as men do, and of her startled discovery one day, just at the moment of her greatest success—she had been offered the position of head designer in a wholesale dress house with coveted trips to Europe—that she was about to become a mother.

Penelope sighed wearily as she listened. Could she never escape from this eternal sex theme?

“You see,” Bobby rattled on, “Dora knew she couldn't go to roof gardens and supper parties alone, and she couldn't keep a chap on a string without paying—so she paid. Of course she camouflaged this part of her life very daintily, as she did everything else, but going out evenings was as important to her as her business ambition was.”

Mrs. Wells smiled faintly at the word camouflaged, for she knew better than anyone else that this supposed story of a dressmaker was really the story of Roberta Vallis herself, thinly disguised.

“The point is that after years of living exactly like a man,” Miss Vallis became a shade more serious here and a note of defiance crept into her discourse, “with work and pleasure travelling along side by side, Dora was called upon to face a situation that would have brought her gay and prosperous career to a sad and shameful end in any well-constructed Sunday School book; but please notice that it did nothing of the sort in real life. Did she lose her job? She did not. Or her health or reputation? Nothing like that. After she got over the first shock of surprise Dora decided to go through with the thing, and, being tall and thin, got away with it successfully. No one suspected that the illness which kept her away from her work was anything but influenza, and—well, the child didn't live,” she concluded abruptly as she caught Seraphine's disapproving glance. “The point is that Dora is today one of the most successful business women in Boston.”

A challenge to outraged virtue was in her tone, and all eyes turned instinctively to the psychic who was still rocking placidly.

“Poor woman!” Seraphine said simply, which seemed to annoy Miss Vallis.

“Why do you say that? Why is she a poor woman? She has everything she wants.”

“No! No indeed,” was the grave reply. “She has nothing that she really wants. She has cut herself off from the operation of God's love. She is surrounded by forces that—Oh!” the medium's eyes closed for a moment and she drew a long breath, “my control tells me these forces of evil—they will destroy this girl.”

Roberta essayed to answer mockingly, but the words died on her lips, and there fell a moment of shivery silence until Kendall Brown broke the spell.

“That story of Dora is a precious human document,” was the poet's ponderous pronouncement. “It is unpleasant, painful, but—what is the lesson? The lesson is that infinite trouble grows out of our rotten squeamishness about sex facts. This girl craved a reasonable amount of pleasure after her work, and she got it. She refused to spend her evenings alone in her room reading a book. She wanted to dance, to enjoy the society of men—their intimate society. That brings us to the oldest and most resistless force in the world, a blessed force, a God-given force upon which all life depends—you know what I mean. And how do we deal with this most formidable of forces? Are we grateful for it? Do we acknowledge its irresistible supremacy? No! We deal with it by pretending that it doesn't exist. We say to Friend Dora that, being unmarried, she has nothing whatever to do with sex attraction, except to forget it. Does she forget it? She does not. Do the men allow her to forget it? They do not. And one fine day Friend Dora has a baby and everybody says horrible, disgraceful! Rubbish! I maintain that the state should provide homes and proper care for the children we call illegitimate! What a word! I say all children are legitimate, all mothers should be honored, yes, and financially protected. A woman who gives a child to the nation, regardless of who the father is, renders a distinguished service. She is a public benefactor.”

“Hear, hear!” approved several, but the little grey-haired woman objected that this meant free love, whereupon Kendall was off again on his hobby.

“Love is free, it always has been and always will be free. If you chain love down under smug rules you only kill it or distort it. I am not arguing against marriage, but against hypocrisy. We may as well recognize that sex desire is so strong a force in the world—that—”

To all of this Penelope had listened with ill-concealed aversion, now she could no longer restrain her impatience. “Ridiculous!” she interrupted. “You exasperate me with your talk about the compelling claims of oversexed individuals. Let them learn to behave themselves and control themselves.”

“Mrs. Wells is absolutely right,” agreed Captain Herrick quietly, his eyes challenging Brown. “If certain men insist on behaving like orang-outangs in the jungle, then society should treat them as orang-outangs.”

This incisive statement somewhat jarred the poet's self-sufficiency and he subsided for the moment, but jealousy is a cunning adversary and the rival awaited his opportunity for counter-attack.

As the discussion proceeded Kendall noticed that one of the loose pages from Penelope's diary had fluttered to the floor and, recovering this, he glanced at it carelessly, then smiled as he plucked at his yellow beard.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Wells,” he said. “I could not help reading a few words. Won't you go on with your confession—please do. It sounds so wonderfully interesting. See—there—at the bottom!” He pointed to the lines.

“Oh!” she murmured as she saw the writing, and two spots of color burned in her cheeks. “Let me have it—I insist!”

“Certainly. But do read it to us. This is a real human interest story. 'Let me bow my head in shame and humble my spirit in the dust'—wasn't that it?” laughed Kendall maliciously.

At this, seeing the frightened look in Penelope's eyes, Captain Herrick stormed in: “You had no right to read those words or repeat them.”

“I am sorry, Mrs. Wells. I meant no offense,” apologized the poet, realizing that he had gone too far, but the harm was done. Something unaccountably serious had happened to Penelope Wells. Her face had gone deathly white, and Roberta, suddenly sympathetic, hastened to her.

“It's a shame to tease you, dearie. No more confession stuff. Now, folks, we'll have supper—down in the restaurant. Then we'll dance. Come on! Feeling better, Pen? What you need is a cocktail and some champagne.”

But Penelope lay like a stricken creature, her beautiful head limp against the pillow of her chair, her eyes filled with pain.

“I—I'll be all right in a minute, Bobby,” she whispered. “Please go down now—all of you except Captain Herrick. We'll join you—a little later. You don't mind?” she turned to Herrick who was bending over her anxiously. Then she said softly: “Don't leave me, Chris. I don't feel quite like myself. I'm a little frightened.”