The Common Lot

by Robert Herrick

That evening when Helen sat down to dinner with her husband in their little apartment, she recounted the events of her day, among them the visit to Dr. Coburn's office. Jackson, who had brought home with him a roll of plans to work at in the evening, remarked casually: "Isn't Venetia going there a good deal? Her mother won't like that sort of intimacy."

"I don't think there is any harm in it. Dr. Coburn interests her, opens her eyes to things she never realized before. I think he must have a good deal of ability, though he is boastful and rough."

"That kind usually are conceited," the architect replied indifferently. "He had better show a little of his ability in getting some paying patients. He can't be doing much, judging by the boots and hat he had on the last time I saw him."

"No, he is very poor," Helen admitted. She disliked to have her husband judge any man by his "boots and hat." These necessary articles of clothing seemed to her rather accidental aspects of humanity in the confusing fortunes of life.

"Would you mind very much," she ventured after a time, "calling on him? I want to ask him to dine with us some Sunday. I want to have Venetia, and Pete, too."

Jackson looked at his wife in surprise.

"If you wish it, of course. I don't see much point to it. Why do you want him? He isn't our kind."

She was becoming gradually conscious that her husband liked only the society of his kind—those people who had the same tastes and habits, whose views and pleasures he shared. When she thought of it, she realized that they had rapidly severed themselves from any other kind during the first few months of their married life. She had given up going to the River settlement before her marriage, partly because Jackson disapproved of settlements. They were "socialistic" and "cranky," and business men told him that they helped to stir up that discontent among the laboring classes which was so rife in Chicago. They encouraged the unions, and with people of his class trade-unionism was considered to be the next worst thing to anarchy. So in the desire to have no shadow of difference between them, Helen had given up her classes in the settlement and rarely returned to the friends she had made in that part of the city.

There was growing in her, however, something almost of revolt against this attitude on the part of her husband. There came back to her these days with singular insistence some earnest words which once had thrilled her: "We are bound to one another inseparably in this life of ours; we make a society that is a composite. Whatever we may do to weaken the sense of that common bond disintegrates society. Whatever we can do to deepen the sense of that bond makes life stronger, better for all!" This idea fed an inner hunger of spirit which her husband had not appeased. For she had in large measure that rare instinct for democracy, the love of being like others in joy and sorrow.

Jackson believed in charitable effort, and had urged her to accept an invitation to join the committee of women who managed St. Isidore's hospital. It was almost a fashionable club, this committee, and it was a flattering thing for a young married woman to be made a member of it. The hospital was under the special patronage of the Crawfords and the Fosters and other well-known people in the city. And when after a visit to the bookbinder's sickly wife, she wished to do something for Hussey, Jackson interested himself in her effort to get together a class of young married women to learn the art of bookbinding, which happened to be a part of the current enthusiasm over craftsmanship. This class met at various houses once a week and spent a morning trying to bind paper-covered literature under Hussey's direction. Jackson, who was a bit of a dilettante by nature, was much interested in the work of the class. He would like to have Helen try her hand in metal-work or design jewellery or wall-paper or model. Once he talked to the class on the minor arts, talked with great enthusiasm and charm, exhorting these young women of the leisure class to cultivate intensively some one artistic interest in life.