CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH SOME OF CHICAGO’S BEST PEOPLE
ESSAY A TASK TOO BIG FOR THEM
Lucas Randall inserted his key into the door and let himself into his Michigan boulevard residence. The butler, busy in one of the reception rooms, looked up merely to nod a welcome as he entered. Mr. Randall turned to the mirror in the hallway. He saw the reflection of a man sixty years of age, gray but well preserved, intelligent but not forceful.
As he turned from the glass he saw his wife descending the broad stairs. She was small and fragile. In her youth she had had a delicate pink and gold beauty. The years had worn away the pink and the gold but had left a spirituality that seemed even finer.
“I’m glad you’re home early, Luke dear,” he heard her saying. Then noticing his air of abstraction she added: “Did you forget after all, Luke?”
“Forget,” he repeated blankly, “forget what, Lucy?”
“Oh you man!” replied his wife as if man were a word of reproach. “The church committee is to be here this afternoon to formulate its report on vice conditions.”
“Oh, that!” Mr. Randall chuckled. “Yes, I had forgotten, but anyhow I made it, you see. How’s Mary?”
“Very well—” Mrs. Randall broke off suddenly. There was a troubled look in her eyes. Then she added lightly almost to herself: “What a queer child!”
“Queer?”
“Yes, Luke, queer,” returned Mrs. Randall. Again that troubled look. “Luke, dear, I want to make a confession. I don’t understand Mary. After your brother Henry died, when we insisted that Mary come and live with us, it seemed wicked to leave her in that great house alone—and we have no children. Now, there are times I am almost sorry we did it. It isn’t that I want to criticise Mary”—noticing her husband’s look of surprise—“I know she loves us both and yet—well, I have the feeling that we don’t really know her. The intimacy I had longed for hasn’t developed. She seems to live a part of her time in another world than ours.” She broke off again, laughing nervously. “Do you know,” she said, “I sometimes have the feeling that Mary lives a sort of double life—nothing evil, you know—but uncanny. She’s not unkind nor lacking in affection for either of us, but often when we are together it seems to me that her mind is miles away.”
“Queer, eh?” said Mr. Randall, sympathetically. “Well, her father was like that.”
“It’s not strange if she is like her father,” charged Mrs. Randall. “He brought her up like a boy. After her mother died she was more like a chum to him than a daughter.”
Lucas Randall became meditative.
“The church work, now,” he asked, “does she seem interested?”
“At first I think she was. I took her on some of my regular poor people calls. She seemed interested—too interested. Why, one day I lost her in a tenement on Kosciusko street. I had to come home without her, half wild with anxiety. She rushed in an hour later and when I questioned her as to where she had been she replied that she had found a poor Scotch family and had been so interested that she had forgotten me. ‘Forgotten’—that’s the very word she used. She said she had been ‘seeking the causes of poverty.’ I told her poverty came from people being poor, but that did not seem to satisfy her. She asked me why they were poor. I answered that often it was because they were shiftless. ‘Not always,’ she replied, ‘these Scotch people, aunt, dear, were strangely like you and me.’ She spoke as if I were the one who did not understand.”
“And since then?”
“Well, she has seemed to prefer going alone.” Mrs. Randall paused on the verge of a new confession. “Luke, dear,” she went on hurriedly, “Mary goes into sections of the city you have warned me not to visit!”
“Not the Levee?”
“Good Lord,” ejaculated Mr. Randall, “surely she doesn’t go alone?”
“Yes, except for her maid.”
“That girl she took from the Refuge?”
“Anna.”
“Where is Mary now?”
“In her room.”
“She’ll come down to the committee meeting, I suppose?”
“I asked her and she replied that of course she would come.”
“Has she been out today, Lucy?”
“Nearly all day.”
“Calls, I suppose.”
“No, she’s been attending the hearings of the vice commission.”
“In God’s name, why?” Mr. Randall was really disturbed.
“I asked her that very question. She replied that the proceedings interested her.”
“Heavens!” Mr. Randall paced the room. “‘Interested’ her! A girl with an income she can’t possibly spend, a girl who might have anything, do anything, go anywhere, marry any man—”
He broke off suddenly. “Lucy,” he demanded, “is there any man Mary might care for? That good looking young curate, for instance?”
Mrs. Randall shook her head emphatically. “No, Luke,” she said. “If you were to ask me to name the two things Mary never gives a thought to I’d say men and matrimony. And that’s another thing about her I cannot fathom.”
Further confidences were cut short by the entrance of the butler announcing the Rev. Thomas Brattle, a clergyman of sixty with an old fashioned flowing white beard, small white hands and shiny gold-bowed spectacles, and Marvin Lattimer, a business man with a turn for religious activities. Desultory conversation followed broken by the entrance of Mrs. Sumnet-Ives, a well preserved woman of forty and a social power, and Miss Emma Laforth, slender, dark, intelligent looking and gifted with a political acumen that had given her an unassailable position in women’s club circles. They were escorted by Grove Evans, plump, wealthy, well born, mildly interested in reform because reform was the proper thing, and Wyat Carp, a lawyer with literary tendencies.
Greetings and small talk; then Lucas Randall led the way to the library. There the Rev. Mr. Brattle, clearing his throat in an official manner, established himself before a priceless seventeenth century table of carved mahogany.
“The meeting will come to order,” he announced.
A circle of chairs had been drawn up before the table. The committee members occupied them with a subdued rustle of garments. The Rev. Mr. Brattle watched the circle benignly, waiting for a moment of total silence. When he spoke his voice was smooth, finely modulated, pitched in the right key. His manner, in fact, was perfect. Indeed, in the spacious luxury of Lucas Randall’s fine library no one could have appeared to better advantage.
“Dear friends,” he said, beaming about him, “we are gathered here, as you know, to formulate the report of our investigation into vice conditions. You have labored long and faithfully. Now the time has come to put forth the fruit of your labors in a form at once concrete and illuminating.”
He paused, then continued:
“The problem we are approaching is world-old. Mankind has struggled with it intermittently since civilization began. Apparently we have made no progress. The twentieth century, in fact, with its terrific congestion in cities, its vast consumption of nervous energy and its universal commercialism, has complicated our problem. But with these new complications have come new means for warring against the evil. Intelligence on the subject is more general. Fine minds everywhere are addressing themselves to the riddle. Thus it seems that humanity is at last coming to grips with the traffic in women. Who knows but that out of this little gathering may not be evolved some theory which, injected into the circulation of modern life, shall immunize us against this social malady.”
There was subdued applause.
“As my time has been somewhat occupied,” the clergyman went on, “I have asked Mr. Carp to employ his well known literary gift in formulating our report. Let me add that I have read our brother’s resumé of our investigations and endorse it fully as to the facts found.”
Meanwhile Wyat Carp, with his best poet’s air, had arisen and bowed to the little circle. He laid a terrifying number of manuscript sheets on the table and polished his glasses with his silk handkerchief. His was the subdued manner of a surgeon about to perform an operation and, it must be confessed, his audience felt some of the sensations of the patient.
“My friends,” began Wyat Carp, “in putting before you what I trust you may see fit to adopt as our united report I am naturally moved by a feeling of delicacy—”
He paused, for directly behind the little circle of hearers the heavy curtains had been pushed aside, and a girl stood framed there against the dull red of the draperies. She was rather above medium height, with a figure rounded by exercise, a face oval and lighted by deep blue eyes underneath masses of burnished, coppery hair. Her personality seemed to fill the room. She breathed wholesomeness, vigor, sincerity and purpose.
As Lucas Randall half started from his chair the girl put out her hand and checked him.
“No, Uncle Luke,” she said, “don’t disturb yourself. I’ve been standing just outside the door for several minutes waiting for a moment to slip in quietly.”
She bowed to them all, and seated herself near the window overlooking the boulevard.
“Just go on with the report, Mr. Carp,” she said, “I assure you I am most eager to hear it.”
Wyat Carp coughed gently and picked up his manuscript.
“Thank you, Miss Randall,” he began gravely, “I—I—”
“You were saying that you were moved by a feeling of delicacy,” prompted the girl.
“Thank you, Miss Randall.” Mr. Carp bowed. “I—er—am experiencing a feeling of embarrassment because this is a meeting of both sexes and the subject is one which, only recently, has been discussed in mixed company. When one so young as yourself is present—”
“Oh,” replied the girl, a shade of amusement in her voice, “please don’t let my youth interfere with our deliberations. I assure you that, young as I may appear to be, I am quite familiar with the matter we have under consideration.”
This remarkable declaration caused something of a real sensation. Mrs. Sumnet-Ives mentally put the speaker down as “a pert little chit.” Grove Evans was amused, for he disliked Carp. Mrs. Randall catalogued it as another ebullition of Mary’s queerness; even her uncle, despite an affection that accepted everything Mary did as right and proper, felt himself a little shocked. As for Miss Laforth, she favored Miss Randall with a long, inventorying inspection. Here, she reflected, might be a future political rival.
Mr. Carp began to read slowly with here and there a pause to enable his audience to catch a subtle turn of phrase or the flowing rhythm of his periods. He read while the light grew fainter and the fire glowed more brightly, read until Lucas Randall leaned across the table and switched on the light in the great brass lamp.
Mary Randall, deep in her easy chair beside the window and lulled by the soporific monotone of Mr. Carp’s voice, saw the afternoon darken into dusk and the dusk deepen into night. Before her half-closed eyes the city, slowly but purposefully, began to throw off the habiliments of day and don the tinsel of evening. One by one, from far down the spacious avenue, the street lamps glowed into bulbs of color which the wet asphalt, like a winding black mirror, caught up and flung against the polished finishings of a swift and silent train of automobiles and the windows of the nearby mansions.
And still Wyat Carp read on and on, skirting the outer circle of forbidden subjects, leading up to closed doors he made no attempt to open, expatiating voluminously on conditions that all the world knew, elucidating the obvious, ranging from one platitude to another—and avoiding the vital and concrete as though it were poisonous. And as Mr. Carp read Mary became oppressed with his total futility.
Mrs. Ives risked a hasty glance at her jeweled wrist watch.
“Doesn’t the man know it’s nearly time to dine?” she wondered.
Grove Evans, with a dinner engagement at the club and a place bespoken in a quiet poker game afterward, squirmed in his chair and cursed Wyat Carp silently. Finally, with a last rhetorical flourish, Mr. Carp quite suddenly ended. He sat down amid a murmur of applause.
“Wonderful,” exclaimed Mrs. Ives. She was agreeably astonished that Mr. Carp should ever have finished.
“Very full, concise and to the point,” was Miss Laforth’s verdict.
“Great!” announced Grove Evans, really delighted, for he would be in time for dinner at the club after all.
The Rev. Thomas Brattle gazed about the circle with a bland smile. “I am glad,” he said, “to have my judgment indorsed by such excellent critics.”
Then, rapping gently on the table, he glanced about him. “A motion is in order before we adjourn, my friends,” he stated, expectantly.
“I move Mr. Carp’s report be adopted as it stands,” said Marvin Lattimer breathlessly. He had waited patiently all afternoon to speak just those words. His business judgment, as applied to social affairs, had taught him the wisdom of getting into the record. He was only a recent confidant of this inner circle of All Souls and he aspired to remain where he was. Besides, it would be something to tell the socially ambitious Mrs. Lattimer when he got home. There was a second from Miss Laforth.
“You hear the motion,” breathed the reverend chairman. “Those in favor will please say ‘aye.’” As they all responded he beamed upon them. He turned with a deprecatory glance to Carp. “And as a matter of form, those contrary minded will please signify by saying ‘no.’”
He waited a moment. Quite clearly and distinctly Mary Randall spoke:
“No!”
The tiny monosyllable seemed to echo and reecho through the high-ceiled room. There was a most embarrassing silence.
“Mary,” faltered Mrs. Randall.
Mary came over and pressed her hand against her aunt’s shoulder. “Believe me,” she said, “I don’t mean to wound you. You don’t understand.” Then turning to the Rev. Mr. Brattle, she went on: “But I must insist that my vote in the negative be recorded in the minutes of this meeting.”
“May I inquire the cause of your—er—peculiar attitude?” asked the clergyman.
“Do you think that fair, Dr. Brattle?”
“Possibly not fair, but perhaps our curiosity is pardonable.” There was suppressed sarcasm in his retort.
“In your little speech of introduction, my dear doctor,” said the girl, “you advanced the suggestion that this meeting might evolve some theory that would rid society of the social evil. The great trouble with this report is that it is all theory. I have no quarrel with the facts that Mr. Carp has given us, except that they are old—‘world old,’ as I think you said. Weeks have been spent on this investigation and yet there is not one word—not a single word—that answers the appeal going up in this city day after day from thousands of unfortunate women. We sit here, after weeks of investigation, and listen to a homily. The time is past in Chicago for homilies. The question is: What are we going to do about it? Helpless thousands are asking us that question and we answer it with a treatise full of ‘world-old’ truth and full of ‘theory.’ Mr. Carp speaks of the resorts on Dunkirk street being ‘questionable’—”
“They are questionable,” defended Mr. Carp stoutly.
“Questionable, Mr. Carp,” replied Mary, “is a gentle word. These resorts are a shrieking infamy. They are markets in which young girls are sold like cattle.”
“How do you know that?” demanded Grove Evans, almost rudely. He felt his club appointment slipping away from him and the poker game owed him two hundred dollars.
Mary looked from her aunt to her uncle.
“I know,” she replied, “because I have been there. I know because I myself bought four girls there!”
The company gasped its surprise.
“I told them I was ‘in the business’ in Seattle,” the speaker continued. “I told them I wanted to buy. I asked for four girls—four young girls. They sold me four for one hundred dollars each.”
There was a silence for a long moment. It was broken by Marvin Lattimer.
“Impossible!” he exclaimed.
Mary looked at him sadly. “There is one fact more impossible than that, Mr. Lattimer,” she said. “It is that men of the world like you—men who, above all others, should make it their business to know these things,—cry out ‘Impossible!’ when such a fact is exhibited before you in all its hideousness.”
“You should have had the man who sold those girls arrested,” blurted Grove Evans.
“I did,” replied Mary quietly, “and The Reporter, in which you are a part owner, suppressed publication of the fact. I had the man arrested and Jim Edwards, the politician who holds the district in the hollow of his hand, prevented the case from going to trial. That man walks the streets of Chicago free and without bond.”
The girl turned to Dr. Brattle again.
“Doctor,” she said, “you are a clergyman. You are the shepherd of the flock. Are you, too, deaf to the appeal that goes up daily from the sinks of this city,—from hundreds of ruined girls? Do you, too, stand by while wolves rend the lambs? Do you deny the existence of the wolf?”
“We can only strive to educate these women, to teach them the error of their way,” pleaded the shepherd.
“But, doctor, while you are educating one, the wolves are tearing down twenty. They ‘educate,’ too, and their facilities are better than yours.”
The girl stopped breathlessly and, stooping swiftly, kissed her aunt. There were tears in her eyes.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said.
Then suddenly she crossed the room and threw open the door. The maid, Anna, stood there with a satchel at her feet and Mary’s cloak upon her arm. Mary picked up the satchel and turned toward the street door.
“The time for theory alone is over,” she said, addressing the company. “Someone has got to go into action against the wolves.”
The door swung behind her and she stepped out into the boulevard.