The Golden House

by Charles Dudley Warner

The one fact in which men universally agree is that we come into the world alone and we go out of the world alone; and although we travel in company, make our pilgrimage to Canterbury or to Vanity Fair in a great show of fellowship, and of bearing one another's burdens, we carry our deepest troubles alone. When we think of it, it is an awful lonesomeness in this animated and moving crowd. Each one either must or will carry his own burden, which he commonly cannot, or by pride or shame will not, ask help in carrying.

Henderson drew more and more apart from confidences, and was alone in building up the colossal structure of his wealth. Father Damon was carrying his renewed temptation alone, after all his brave confession and attempt at renunciation. Ruth Leigh plodded along alone, with her secret which was the joy and the despair of her life—the opening of a gate into the paradise which she could never enter. Jack Delancy, the confiding, open-hearted good fellow, had come to a stage in his journey where he also was alone. Not even to Carmen could he confess the extent of his embarrassments, nor even in her company, nor in the distraction of his increasingly dissipated life, could he forget them. Not only had his investments been all transferred to his speculations, but his home had been mortgaged, and he did not dare tell Edith of the lowering cloud that hung over it; and that his sole dependence was the confidence of the Street, which any rumor might shatter, in that one of Henderson's schemes to which he had committed himself. Edith, the one person who could have comforted him, was the last person to whom he could have told this, for he had the most elementary, and the common conception of what marriage is.

But Edith's lot was the most pitiful of all. She was not only alone, but compelled to inaction. She saw the fair fabric of her life dissolving, and neither by cries nor tears, by appeals nor protest, by show of anger nor by show of suffering, could she hinder the dissolution. Strong in herself and full of courage, day by day and week by week she felt her powerlessness. Heaven knows what it cost her—what it costs all women in like circumstances—to be always cheerful, never to show distrust. If her love were not enough, if her attractions were not enough, there was no human help to which she could appeal.

And what, pray, was there to appeal? There was no visible neglect, no sufficient alienation for gossip to take hold of. If there was a little talk about Jack's intimacy elsewhere, was there anything uncommon in that? Affairs went on as usual. Was it reasonable to suppose that society should notice that one woman's heart was full of foreboding, heavy with a sense of loss and defeat, and with the ruin of two lives? Could simple misery like this rise to the dignity of tragedy in a world that has its share of tragedies, shocking and violent, but is on the whole going on decorously and prosperously?

The season wore on. It was the latter part of May. Jack had taken Edith and the boy down to the Long Island house, and had returned to the city and was living at his club, feverishly waiting for some change in his affairs. It was a sufficient explanation of his anxiety that money was “tight,” that failures were daily announced, and that there was a general fear of worse times. It was fortunate for Jack and other speculators that they could attribute their ill-luck to the general financial condition. There were reasons enough for this condition. Some attributed it to want of confidence, others to the tariff, others to the action of this or that political party, others to over-production, others to silver, others to the action of English capitalists in withdrawing their investments. It could all be accounted for without referring to the fact that most of the individual sufferers, like Jack, owed more than they could pay.

Henderson was much of the time absent—at the West and at the South. His every move was watched, his least sayings were reported as significant, and the Street was hopeful or depressed as he seemed to be cheerful or unusually taciturn. Uncle Jerry was the calmest man in town, and his observation that Henderson knew what he was about was reassuring. His serenity was well founded. The fact was that he had been pulling in and lowering canvas for months. Or, as he put it, he hadn't much hay out... “It's never a good plan,” said Uncle Jerry, “to put off raking up till the shower begins.”

It seems absurd to speak of the East Side in connection with the financial situation. But that was where the pinch was felt, and felt first. Work was slack, and that meant actual hunger for many families. The monetary solidarity of the town is remarkable. No one flies a kite in Wall Street that somebody in Rivington Street does not in consequence have to go without his dinner. As Dr. Leigh went her daily rounds she encountered painful evidence of the financial disturbance. Increased number of cases for the doctor followed want of sufficient food and the eating of cheap, unwholesome food. She was often obliged to draw upon the Margaret Fund, and to invoke the aid of Father Damon when the responsibility was too great for her. And Father Damon found that his ministry was daily diverted from the cure of souls to the care of bodies. Among all those who came to the mission as a place of refuge and rest, and to whom the priest sought to offer the consolations of religion and of his personal sympathy, there were few who did not have a tale of suffering to tell that wrung his heart. Some of them were actually ill, or had at home a sick husband or a sick daughter. And such cases had to be reported to Dr. Leigh.

It became necessary, therefore, that these two, who had shunned each other for months, should meet as often as they had done formerly. This was very hard for both, for it meant only the renewal of heart-break, regret, and despair. And yet it had been almost worse when they did not see each other. They met; they talked of nothing but their work; they tried to forget themselves in their devotion to humanity. But the human heart will not be thus disposed of. It was impossible that some show of personal interest, some tenderness, should not appear. They were walking towards Fourth Avenue one evening—the priest could not resist the impulse to accompany her a little way towards her home—after a day of unusual labor and anxiety.