Chapter XV Did Not Touch Her
As Howard was going out he met Bradley coming up the stairs. “I have caught you in time,” said the preacher. “I want you to go to dinner with me—at a place off Van Buren Street, where they cater to the poor.”
“It is rather a tough neighborhood for a dinner,” Howard replied. “Wouldn’t you rather go to a better place?”
“No, I would rather like to see how the unfortunate dine.”
They went to a restaurant that opened into an alley. The long room was furnished with plain tables, without cloths, and not clean. There was sand on the floor, and on the whitewashed walls, together with Scriptural texts, against one of which some brute had thrown a quid of tobacco, were placards which read, “Lodging ten cents.” They took seats at a table and a girl came up and put down a piece of paper, scrawled upon with a pencil. It was a bill of fare. The price set opposite each dish was five cents, and at the bottom it was announced that any order included bread. The place was gradually filling up with a mottled crowd, negroes, a sprinkle of Chinamen, Greeks, Polish Jews, tramps—and off in a corner sat an American Indian. “The air is bad,” said the preacher.
“No worse than the bill of fare,” Howard replied. “Let us get out. Don’t you see how they are eyeing us?”
“Let us at least make a pretense of eating. I like to watch these odd pieces of driftwood.”
“Washed from the wreck of humanity,” said Howard.
The preacher looked at him with a sad smile. “Yes, and perhaps not all of them are responsible for the wreck. They couldn’t weather the storm.”
The crowd was noisy and profane. The preacher spoke to a waitress, a girl with a hard, unconcerned face. “I thought that this place was under the auspices of the gospel,” said he.
She did not look at him as she replied: “I believe some sort of a church duck did start it, but a feller named Smith runs it now.”
“Then services are not held here.”
She looked at him. “What sort of services?”
“Church services.”
“Well, I guess not. These guys don’t want services—they want grub.”
“I believe I will address them,” the preacher said to Howard.
“On the subject of foreign missions?” Howard asked.
“A merited sarcasm,” the minister replied. “Let us go.”
In the alley near the door a woman and a ruffian were quarreling. The woman held a piece of money in her hand and the ruffian was trying to take it from her. A policeman passed down the alley, but paid no attention. The ruffian demanded the money. The woman refused. He knocked her down, took it from her hand and was walking off when Bradley touched him on the shoulder. “Give her back that money,” he said. The man drew back his ponderous fist. At that moment Howard ran up. The ruffian looked at him and let his arm fall. Bradley called the policeman. He turned and came walking slowly back, swinging his club. “What’s wanted?” he asked. Bradley told him what had occurred. “It’s a lie!” exclaimed the woman, stepping forward. “You never hit me, did you, Jack?”
“Never touched her,” said Jack, and a group about the door of the restaurant roared with laughter. “Move on,” said the policeman, and Howard and the preacher moved on, the crowd jeering them.
“What put it into your head to go there?” Howard asked.
“I thought it was my duty.”
“A man’s duty lies mostly among his own people,” said the young lawyer.
“No, among stricken humanity.”
“A heroic idea, but fallacious. The Lord takes care of His own. These people are evidently not His own. Pardon my slang, but here is a genuine gospel shop. Let us go in.”
At the door of a room forbiddingly neat to the class which it intended to feed, they were met by a cool young woman and a ministerial man. It was a coffee house established to offset the influence of the saloon. At the rear end of the room a young fellow played upon a wheezing melodion. Girls were serving coffee. On the walls were pictures of the Prodigal’s Return, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, Jacob before Pharaoh, The Old Home, several cows, a horse with his head over a barred gate, and a child lamenting over a broken doll. Howard called attention to the fact that the sandwiches were thin and that the coffee looked pale. “It is charity,” said he, “and charity is pale. Now, let me take you to the enemy—the den against which these mild batters are directed.”
They went to a saloon. The place was ablaze with light. The walls were hung with paintings, some of them costly, some modest, others representing figures as nude as Lorado’s nymphs. On a side counter was a roast of beef, weighing at least a hundred pounds. “Look at that,” said Howard. “Vice sets us a great roast—and for five cents, a glass of beer, the vagabond may feast.”
“The devil pandering to the drunkard and the glutton,” replied the preacher.
“But the devil is not pale; he is not niggardly—he is bountiful. To cope with him, Virtue must be more liberal—give more beef and better coffee.”
“Good,” said the minister. “I am going to preach a sermon on the Virtue of Vice.”
“Red beef versus pale coffee,” Howard said, as they stepped out. “And now,” he added, “let us get something to eat and then go home.”
“Home,” repeated the preacher. “I have no home—I have lodgings.
“I know, and I mean that you must go home with me.”
Bradley muttered a protest, but was delighted at the thought of seeing Agnes again so soon. He had spent the afternoon at the Judge’s house, had left to unite in marriage a servant girl and a hackman, and now wanted an excuse to return, not that he needed one, for the Judge had urged upon him the freedom of the house; but timid love must show cause, or rather must apologize to appearances. And, though the cause now was not strong, yet he argued that the fact of meeting Howard would make it valid enough. He felt that his secret was not known to the Judge, as if that would have made any difference; and he was sure that the girl did not more than suspect him. He wanted her to suspect him, for there was a sweetness in it, but he wanted it to be as yet only a suspicion. He did not acknowledge that he had quite made up his mind regarding her fitness as a wife; and when a man thus reasons he is hopelessly entangled. When a man decides that a woman is not fitted to be his wife he may have arrived at reason but has stopped short of love.
They went to a place that makes a specialty of crabs and sat down in the cool breath of an electric fan. “Quite a difference in our bill of fare,” said Bradley, taking up a long card framed in brass edged wood.
“And quite as much difference in our company,” Howard replied.
“The old saying, Howard: ‘One half the world doesn’t know how the other half lives.’”
“Doesn’t know how the other half dies,” said Howard.
“You are sententious tonight. I have led you into a place that has sharpened your wits.”
“But not into a place that sharpened my appetite. But it makes a meal all the more enjoyable afterward. Do you find anything that hits your fancy?”
During the meal the preacher talked of the vices of a great city. A truthful farmer could have told him that there are almost as many vices in the country, and an observant moralist could have assured him that the great mass of women parading the sidewalks at night were sent thither by the rural reprobate, proprietor of a horse and buggy.
“Vice is in man,” said Howard.
“Ah, but how are we to eradicate it?”
“By educating woman.”
“I don’t know that I fully comprehend you.”
“Were you ever in a place where women are shameless?”
“No,” said the preacher. “The only shameless women I ever met are those who accost me in the street.”
“And if,” said Howard, “you were to go into a thousand such places you would not meet a well-educated woman. Some of them are bright; some speak several languages, but I have yet to find one who speaks good English. But we are on a subject that is as old as the ocean. It is, however, always new to one in your profession, I suppose. You preach about it, and innocence wonders at your insight, but the young fellow who reports your sermon laughs in his sleeve.”
“But, my gracious, Howard, what must we do, ignore it all?”
“I give it up.”
“You are young to take so gloomy a view.”
“Oh, I don’t view it at all,” said Howard. “I shoulder my way through it.”
An elderly woman, handsomely dressed, came up and held out her hand to the preacher, who arose, bowed over it and declared his pleasure at meeting her. Then he introduced her to Howard, a woman noted for her work in the slums. A part of her labor was to talk morality to the girls in department stores, to make them pious and virtuous on three dollars a week. She kept a house of refuge which she visited once a day, to talk to the women who had been gathered in from the streets and the dens rented to vice by the rich. Her register showed that within the past ten years thousands of women had been reclaimed. But the register did not show how many had gone back to loud music and shame, preferring the glare of infamy, tired out with the simmer of the tea-kettle and the shadows of the kitchen. The preacher had visited her place and had complimented her upon the work she was doing.
“Oh, what has become of Margaret, the blonde girl?”
The matron shook her head. “She became dissatisfied and left us.”
“And the one called Fanny. Where is she?”
“Oh, she was too pretty and went away.”
“And Julia?”
“Didn’t you hear about her? Well, well. Why, the newspapers were full of it. She left us and shortly afterward married a rich man. He took her to his mansion and gave her everything that heart could wish, but it did not suffice. He returned home after an absence from the city to find a drunken crowd in his house, and he turned her out. I am so glad to have met you again. Good-bye.”
Bradley began to talk of something foreign, to lead Howard’s mind away, but the young man looked at him with a smile and said: “You see that a palace is not even sufficient.’
“Her moral nature had not been trained,” Bradley replied.
“It is not that, Mr. Bradley. Her miserable little head had not been trained. Morality without intellectual force is a weakness waiting for a temptation.”
“Don’t say that, Howard; it is a monstrous thought. Brain is not the whole force of this life. There is something stronger than brain. Love is stronger.”
“Yes, it overturns brain. And I will not argue against it, though it might be the cause of thousands of wretched feet on our thoroughfares tonight. It is a glory or a disgrace. But we have been moralists long enough. Let us go home.”