Part 3 (1/2)
The old and somewhat cynical saying, that philosophers and reformers can bear the griefs and woes of other people with a heroism and resignation worthy of their creeds, would have fitted the case of Roland Barker only when shorn of the intentional sting of sarcasm. It is, nevertheless, true that even his n.o.bly-gifted nature, his tender heart, and his alert brain sometimes failed to grasp the very pith and point of his own arguments.
He was a wealthy man whose sympathies were earnestly with the poor and unfortunate. He believed that he understood their sufferings, their ambitions, and their needs; and his voice and pen were no more truly on the side of charity and brotherly kindness than was his purse.
It was no unusual thing for him to attend a meeting, address a club, or take part in a memorial service, where his was the only hand unused to toil, and where he alone bore all expense, and then--after dressing himself in the most approved and faultless manner--become the guest of honor at some fas.h.i.+onable entertainment. Indeed, he was a leader in fas.h.i.+on as well as in philosophy, and at once a hero in Avenue A and on Murray Hill.
On the evening of which I am about to tell you he had addressed a club of workingmen in their little dingy hall, taking as his subject ”Realities of Life.” He had sought to show them that poverty and toil are not, after all, the worst that can befall a man, and that the most acute misery dwells in palaces and is robed in purple.
He spoke with the feeling of one who had himself suffered--as, indeed, he had--from the unsympathetic a.s.sociations of an uncongenial marriage.
He portrayed, with deep feeling, the chill atmosphere of a loveless home, whose wealth and glitter and l.u.s.tre could never thrill and enrapture the heart as might the loving hand-clasp in the bare, chill rooms where sympathy and affection were the companions of poverty.
I had admired his enthusiasm as he pictured the joy of sacrifice for the sake of those we love, and I had been deeply touched by his pathos--a pathos which I knew, alas, too well, sprang from a hungry heart--whether, as now, it beat beneath a simple coat of tweed or, as when hours later, it would still be the prisoner of its mighty longing, though clothed with elegance and seated at a banquet fit for princes.
The last words fell slowly from his lips, and his eyes were dimmed, as were the eyes of all about me. His voice, so full of feeling, had hardly ceased to throb when, far back in the little hall, arose a woman, thin and worn, and plainly clad, but showing traces of a beauty and refinement which had held their own and fought their way inch by inch in spite of poverty, anxiety, and tears. The chairman recognized her and asked her to the platform.
”No,” she said, in a low, tremulous tone which showed at once her feeling and her culture--”no, I do not wish to take the platform; but since you ask for criticism of the kind speech we have just listened to, it has seemed to me that I might offer one, although I am a stranger to you all.”
Her voice trembled, and she held firmly to the back of a chair in front of her. The chairman signified his willingness to extend to her the privilege of the floor, and there was slight applause. She bowed and began again slowly:
”I sometimes think that it is useless to ever try to make the suffering rich and the suffering poor understand each other. I do not question that the gentleman has tasted sorrow. All good men have. I do not question that his heart is warm and true and honest, and that he truly thinks what he has said; but”--and here her voice broke a little and her lip trembled--”but he does not know what real suffering is. He cannot.
No rich man can.” There was a movement of impatience in the room, and some one said, loud enough to be heard, ”If she thinks money can bring happiness she is badly left.”
There was a slight ripple of laughter at this, and even the serious face of Roland Barker grew almost merry for a moment. Then the woman went on, without appearing to have noticed the interruption:
”I do not want to seem ungracious, and heaven knows, no one could mean more kindly what I say; but he has said that money is not needed to make us happy--only love; and again he quotes that baseless old maxim, 'The love of money is the root of all evil.'” She paused, then went slowly on as if feeling her way and fearing to lose her hold upon herself: ”I know it is a sad and cruel world even to the more fortunate, if they have hearts to feel and brains to think. To the unloving or unloved there must be little worth; but they at least are spared the agony that sits where love and poverty have shaken hands with death”--her voice broke, and there was a painful silence in the room--”where those who love are wrung and torn by all the thousand fears and apprehensions of ills that are to come to wife and child and friend. The day has pa.s.sed when all this talk of poverty and love--that love makes want an easy thing to bear--the day has pa.s.sed, I say, when sane men ought to think, or wise men speak, such cruel, false, and harmful words. He truly says that money without love cannot bring happiness; but that is only half the truth, for love with poverty can bring, does bring, the keenest agony that mortals ever bore.”
There was a movement of dissent in the hall. She lifted her face a moment, contracted her lips, drew a long breath, and said:
”I will explain. Without the love, poverty were light enough to bear.
What does it matter for one's self? It is the love that gives the awful sting to want, and makes its cruel fingers grip the throat as never vise or grappling-hook took hold, and torture with a keener zest than fiends their victims! Love and Poverty! _It is the combination that devils invented to make a h.e.l.l on earth._”
All eyes were fastened on her white face now, and she was rus.h.i.+ng on, her words, hot and impa.s.sioned, striking firm on every point she made.
”Let me give you a case. In a home where comfort is--or wealth--a mother sits, watching by night and day the awful hand of Death reach nearer, closer to her precious babe, and nothing that skill or science can suggest will stay the hand or heal the aching heart; and yet there is comfort in the thought that all was done that love and wealth and skill could do, and that it was Nature's way. But take from her the comfort of that thought. She watches with the same poor, breaking heart, but with the knowledge, now, to keep her company, that science might, ah!
_could_, push back the end, could even cure her babe if but the means to pay for skill and change and wholesome food and air were hers. Is that no added pang? Is poverty no curse to her?--a curse the deeper for her depth of love? The rich know naught of this. It gives to life its wildest agony, to love its deepest hurt.”
She paused. There was a slight stir as if some one had thought to offer applause, and then the silence fell again, and she began anew, with s.h.i.+ning eyes and cheeks aflame. She swayed a little as she spoke and clutched the chair as for support. Her voice grew hoa.r.s.e, and trembled, and she fixed her gaze upon a vacant chair:
”But let me tell you of another case. A stone's throw from this hall, where pretty things are said week after week--and kindly meant, I know--of poverty and love--of the blessedness of these--there is a living ill.u.s.tration, worth more than all the theories ever spun, to tell you what 'realities of life' must be where love is great and poverty holds sway. Picture, with me, the torture and despair of a refined and cultured woman who watches hour by hour the long months through, and sees the creeping feet of mental wreck, and physical decay, and knows the mortal need of care and calm for him who is the whole of life to her, and for the want of that which others waste and hold as dross he must work on and on, hastening each day the end _he_ does not see, which shall deprive him of all of life except the power for ill.... She will be worse than widowed and alone, for ever by her side sits Want, for him, tearing at every chord of heart and soul--not for herself--but for that dearer one, wrecked in the prime of life and left a clod endowed only with strength for cruel wrong, whose hand would sheath a knife in her dear heart and laugh with maniac glee at his mad deeds. She saw the end. She knew long months ago what was to be, if he must toil and strain his nerve and brain for need of that which goes from knave to knave, and h.o.a.rds itself within cathedral walls, where wise men meet to teach the poor contentment with their lot! She knew _he_ must not know; the knowledge of the shadow must be kept from _his_ dear brain until the very end, by smiles, and cheer, and merry jest from her. Who dare tell _her_ that riches are a curse? and prate of 'dross' and call on heaven to witness that its loss is only gain of joy and harbinger of higher, holier things? Who dare call _her_ as witness for the bliss of poverty with love?”
She slowly raised her hand and, with a quick-drawn breath, pressed it against her side, and with her eyes still fastened on the vacant chair, and tears upon her cheeks, falling unchecked upon her heaving bosom, she held each listener silent and intent on every word she spoke. The time allotted anyone was long since overrun; but no one thought of that, and she went on:
”'With love!' Ah, there is where the iron can burn and scar and open every wound afresh each day, make poverty a curse, a blight, a scourge, a vulture, iron-beaked, with claws of burning steel, that leave no nerve untouched, no drop of blood unshed.
”'With love!' 'Tis there the hand of Poverty can deal the deadliest blows, and show, as nowhere else on earth, the value of that slandered, h.o.a.rded thing called wealth.”
There blazed into her face a fierce, indignant light, her voice swelled out and struck upon the ear like fire-bells in the dead of night:
”'The root of evil!'--'poverty with love!' Hypocrisy, in purple velvet robed, behind stained gla.s.s, with strains of music falling on its ears, with table spread in banquet-hall below, bethought itself to argue thus to those itself had robbed; while, thoughtless of its meaning and its birth, the echo of its lying, treacherous words comes from the pallid lips of many a wretch whose life has been a failure and an agony because of that which he himself extols. A lie once born contains a thousand lives, and holds at bay the struggling, feeble truth, if but that lie be fathered by a priest and mothered by a throne--_as this one was!_ 'The root of evil' is the spring of joy. Decry it those who will. And those who do _not_ love, perchance, may laugh at all its need can mean; but to the loving, suffering poor bring no more cant, and cease to voice the hollow words of Ignorance and Hypocrisy. It is too cruel, and its deadly breath has long enough polluted sympathy and frozen up the springs of healthy thought, while sheathing venomed fangs in breaking hearts.