“Overcome by a sudden impulse I once more caught her in my arms, clasping her close to my breast. I pressed a last kiss upon her lips, then putting the half-fainting form from me I rushed out into the cold night air. I surely need say no more. You now can understand what drove me to the verge of desperation. To find the woman who had driven me to the verge of ruin, untrue, was more than I could bear. A day or two and I would stand before the world exposed. The shame, the disgrace and the walls of Sing Sing loomed up before my mind’s eye. I had been a slave all my life to adverse conditions. And now to lose the one boon that I prized above all others—my liberty! No, I would die first! And yet I had it not in my heart to wish any ill to those two. True, I felt bitter towards my brother, but for some reason the fact of his actual helplessness was more clear in my mind than ever before. Have there not been countless cases wherein this very defect has appealed to the hearts of strong, healthy women?—and her pitiful ‘I cannot help it’ kept ringing in my ears. I knew I never loved her more dearly than in the moment I gave her up, or ever felt more tenderly towards him.
“Many conflicting thoughts surged through my brain; while constantly I questioned, ‘Why? why?’ And you may think me mad, sir, but the more I thought the more I blamed not them, the chief actors in this life tragedy, but the system from which such abnormal conditions could arise, and in one day make criminals of us all.”
Owen listened as if entranced. The excited man had arisen and was pacing the room with hurried strides, wildly tossing the masses of dark curling locks. After a few moments he continued:
“Often and often I had gnashed my teeth in helpless fury when the few paltry dollars were laid in my hands that constituted the remuneration for work which I knew was worth more than fourfold that which I received. I knew if justice could be done I had only taken my own. But that was not law.
“Now my mind wandered in another direction. I knew Annie and Robert had been thrown long hours together in my absence. His weak, delicate condition first awoke her sympathy, and ‘pity is akin to love.’ The frequent squabbling during the life time of my mother helped develop these feelings in her heart. So the weakling, who all his life had been scorned and shunned by health-and-strength-loving maidens, suddenly found himself the object of tender and sympathetic glances, and what wonder that his starved heart became inflamed? I could see the whole proceeding was but natural. But oh, the shame of it. No one else in all New York would look at the matter as I did, when it became known. But then the thought struck me, ‘Was it necessary?’ and must I fill a convict’s cell? I answered: ‘No! No! No! Never!’ Thus for many hours I walked the streets, thinking, thinking, thinking, until I found myself at the water’s edge about to end all the maddening perplexities, when your hand stayed my movements. So now you are in possession of facts which I had expected to take with me into my watery grave.”
The strange recital was at an end. Wearily the narrator flung himself into his chair and leaned back, white and exhausted. The bitter but musical voice was hushed while Owen Hunter sat with his head resting on his hand, lost in thought. Was the life of every good man a wreck? For that the man who sat before him was a good man he had not a single doubt. Aside from the bitter experience of his own life he had never thought of the struggling, suffering masses of humanity. Ten thousand dollars! He had no doubt that the sum seemed an enormous fortune to the man before him, while to Owen it seemed scarce worth mentioning.
“What salary,” he asked, “did you receive?”
A bitter smile curved the lips of the other.
“Fifty dollars per month.”
Fifty dollars! How often had Owen thoughtlessly squandered as much and more in a single evening; and here was a man who with his family had to live a whole month on it. For the first time in his life the question arose why it was that those who were the producers of all wealth should have so little of it to enjoy; for the first time he asked himself. “Have you a right to control so much money, while so many others are suffering for the actual necessaries of life?” What had he ever done to alleviate human suffering? In memory he saw large figures heading long lists of charity. “Charity!” Suddenly the word seemed to him the most cold and heartless in the English language. To offer charity where justice was due! In that instant he resolved that the sons and daughters of humanity, the many poverty stricken little children, should reap the benefit of the money he controlled. He did not yet see his way clear, and for the moment very wisely left the selection of methods to the future. The present hour belonged to the deeply stricken man who had permitted him to read the pages of his sad history.