Part 30 (1/2)
She stiffened a little at this rather tame ending. She was stirred, uneasy, dissatisfied. She felt as if something had been offered and withdrawn; something was lacking.
”It seems such a funny business--for a man,” she said.
”Any funnier than Delmonico's?” he asked. ”It's a business that takes some ability--witness the many failures. It is certainly useful. And it pays--amazingly.”
”I thought it was real estate,” she insisted.
”It is. I'm in a real estate office. I buy and sell houses--that's how I came to take this up!”
He rose up, calmly and methodically, walked over to the fire, and laid his notebook on it. ”There wasn't any strength in any of those objections, my dear,” said he. ”Especially the first one. Previous marriage, indeed! You have never been married before. You are going to be--now.”
It was some weeks after that marriage that she suddenly turned upon him--as suddenly as one can turn upon a person whose arms are about one--demanding.
”And why don't you smoke?--You never told me!”
”I shouldn't like to kiss you so well if you smoked!”--said he.
”I never had any idea,” she ventured after a while, ”that it could be--like this.”
LOCKED INSIDE
She beats upon her bolted door, With faint weak hands; Drearily walks the narrow floor; Sullenly sits, blank walls before; Despairing stands.
Life calls her, Duty, Pleasure, Gain-- Her dreams respond; But the blank daylights wax and wane, Dull peace, sharp agony, slow pain-- No hope beyond.
Till she comes a thought! She lifts her head, The world grows wide!
A voice--as if clear words were said-- ”Your door, o long imprisoned, Is locked inside!”
PRIVATE MORALITY AND PUBLIC IMMORALITY
There is more sense in that convenient trick of blaming ”the old Adam”
for our misbehavior than some of us have thought. That most culpable sinner we no longer see as a white-souled adult baby, living on uncooked food in a newmade garden, but as a husky, hairy, highly carnivorous and bloodthirsty biped, just learning his giant strength, and exercising it like a giant.
Growing self-conscious and intelligent, he developed an ethical sense, and built up system after system of morals, all closely calculated to advance his interests in this world or the next. The morals of the early Hebrews, for instance, with which we are most familiar, were strictly adjusted to their personal profit; their conception of Diety definitely engaging to furnish protection and reward in return for specified virtuous conduct.
This is all reasonable and right in its way. If good conduct were not ultimately advantageous it would not be good. The difficulty with the ancient scheme of morality lies in its narrow range. ”The soul that sinneth it shall die,” is the definite statement; the individual is the one taken to task, threatened, promised, exhorted and punished. Our whole race-habit of thought on questions of morality is personal. When goodness is considered it is ”my” goodness or ”your” goodness--not ours; and sins are supposed to be promptly traceable to sinners; visible, catchable, hangable sinners in the flesh. We have no mental machinery capable of grasping the commonest instances of collective sin; large, public continuing sin, to which thousands contribute, for generations upon generations; and under the consequences of which more thousands suffer for succeeding centuries. Yet public evils are what society suffer from most to-day, and must suffer from most in increasing ratio, as years pa.s.s.
In concrete instance, we are most definitely clear as to the verb ”to steal.” This is wrong. It says so in the Bible. It if a very simple commandment. If a man steals he is a thief. And our law following slowly along after our moral sense, punishes stealing. But it is one man stealing from one other man who is a thief. It is the personal attack upon personal property, done all at once, which we can see, feel, and understand. Let a number of men in combination gradually alienate the property of a number of other men--a very large number of other men, and our moral sense makes no remark. This is not intended in any ironic sense--it is a plain fact, a physiological, or psychological fact.
The racial mind, long accustomed to attach moral values to personal acts only, cannot, without definite effort, learn to attach them to collective acts. We can do it, in crude instances, when mere numbers are in question and the offence is a plain one. If a number of men in a visible moving group commit murder or arson before our eyes, we had as lief hang a dozen as one: but when it comes to tracing complicity and responsibility in the deaths of a few screaming tenants of firetrap tenements, a death unnecessary perhaps, but for the bursting of the fire hose--then we are at fault. The cringing wretch who lit the oilsoaked rags in the cellar we seize in triumph. He did it. Him we can hang.
”The soul that sinneth it shall die.” But if the fire is ”an accident,”
owing to ”a defective flue,” if the fire-escape breaks, the stairs give away under a little extra weight, or ill-built walls crumble prematurely--who can we lay hands on? Where is the soul that sinneth?