“Yes, Martin, I can see what you mean,” she replied softly. “But perhaps you are a little hasty—perhaps there are things you have overlooked—”
“How can you say that, Amy?” he exclaimed despairingly. “It’s as clear as day. We make munitions, guns, powder, cannon, explosives: and what are they made for? To kill! There’s no getting around that. They are made to kill! And now there’s a war in the Crimea, and men killing each other with our powder and our guns and our cannon. Fine phrases and what Ernest calls ‘common sense’ can’t get around that one simple fact. Facts are pure and fundamental, but men try to muddle them with phrases and long arguments and pleas for tolerance and patience, and all the time the facts are there, like earth under snow. We are wholesalers in death, and I can’t, for my peace and my sense of honor, have any part in it.
“For years I’ve wanted to get out. Then Pa was ill, and I felt that I—I had to protect Ma and the girls from Ernest—”
“But how silly!” cried Amy involuntarily.
Martin made a gesture almost fierce for him. “Amy! Let me go on. For years I’ve wanted to leave. I haven’t kept much of the money I received from the shops; I’ve given most of it away—I’ve told you how, and why. At the present time I have less than four thousand dollars altogether in actual cash. I refuse to take any part of the stock and money Pa left me, and I’ve already told Ma that it’s to be hers and the girls’ as soon as it can be arranged.”
Amy had turned white to the lips. She saw her children in their cribs, and something like sternness tightened the lines of her sweet face. “Martin, you shall not do that! The children! I cannot allow you to do this!”
He had never seen her like this before, so white and stern; there was anger in her brown eyes, also. He was moved by all this, and he took her cold hand and kissed it. But the white severity did not relax on her face, and her eyes commanded him.
“Amy, my darling, please try to understand,” he pleaded. “I am not robbing my children of anything but dishonor. We have enough, more than enough. Why, your bonds are giving us an income of more than two thousand a year. It is a fortune, love! An honorable fortune. We are rich.
“Amy, Amy! Please try to understand me! Don’t you love me? Would you have me go on in this unhappiness, hating myself, hating living, hating everything connected with the shops? You speak of the children—but how about me? Is my happiness nothing to you at all?”
Amy gazed at him steadily, seeing the bitterness and anguish in his eyes, hearing his despair. And her expression softened, saddened. She sighed.
“Yes, Martin, your happiness is everything to me. I can understand what you mean, and I sympathize with you. But I can’t feel that way, myself. Someone must make munitions; sometimes munitions are very necessary. Nations must defend themselves, and sometimes they must fight for the right, too. But I can see that you can find no justification in this business. So, whatever you wish, for the sake of your happiness, you must do, and I will do it, too. And I will try to feel that you are right.”
Nevertheless, she went quietly to her uncle and told him. Gregory was incredulous and aghast. Forgetting his niece’s sensibilities, he broke into a furious and contemptuous tirade against Martin. What a fool! What an imbecile! He was a snivelling brat in man’s breeches! He should be confined as a danger to society! Was there ever such monstrous senselessness, such stupidity? He had a wife and children, and he would beggar them in his folly. He overwhelmed Amy with expressions of compassion and promises that Martin should not be allowed to do this thing.
“I am so confused,” confessed Amy, in tears. “Uncle Gregory, you mustn’t attack him that way. He feels he is right, and that his happiness depends upon doing what’s right. I have come to you only because you are older and wiser than Martin and I, and because I thought you might persuade him to reconsider by offering him arguments I can’t think of, myself.”
“Damn these fools who will be heroes and martyrs!” ejaculated Gregory. “I can well understand ropes and stakes and wheels, now! Amy, my dear, go home, and I will talk to Martin tonight.”
But he found Martin encased in the fanatical obstinacy of the simple and unworldly man who is convinced of his righteousness. Gregory’s fury and arguments, pleading and ridicule, were only light winds blowing against a steadfast tree.
“But how are you going to live?” he cried at last. “On your wife’s money? On the dowry I gave her when you married her? On my money?” His fine and elegant face twisted in a sneer. “Of course, Martin, an American would understand that no honorable gentleman lives on his wife’s money. But you, being an Englishman, might not understand that!”
He saw, to his surprise, that he had at last found his Achilles’ heel, for Martin winced and colored. “Perhaps Englishmen, Mr. Gregory, do not distinguish between a man’s money and his wife’s money. Perhaps Englishmen believe that what is one is the other’s. You, apparently, do not believe that. However, I have four thousand dollars of my own, and I’ll buy a small farm with it, and Amy may keep her money for herself and her children. I promise you I will not touch a penny of it.”
Gregory was shocked. “Do you mean to say that you would subject my niece and her young children to the rigors and hardships of a small, poor farm, without comforts and decencies? My niece, who is a gentlewoman, a lady, and has always had the best of everything?”
“My wife and my children,” replied Martin coldly, “will share whatever life I choose to live. If Amy wishes to have a servant or two on my farm to assist her, I shall have no objection, seeing that she will be paying for it with the money you have pointed out to me is not mine.”
Gregory turned to his niece, who had been listening in pale silence.
“Amy, I cannot allow you to live such a life. You must come home, with your children. There is always a place and a welcome there for you.”
And Martin turned to his wife, also, and waited. He said nothing, but looked at her steadily and gravely.
Amy bent her head and wiped her eyes. Then she rose and going to her husband, she stood at his side, and looked at her uncle. “Wherever Martin goes, Uncle Gregory, I must go too,” she whispered. “He may be wrong—I don’t know. But he believes he is right, and he has a right to happiness, too, and wherever he goes I shall go.”
Gregory stared at them bitterly, his face wrinkling and pulling.
“Very well, then, Amy, you have made your bed and I suppose you want to sleep in it. But listen to me,” and he shook his finger almost under Martin’s nose, “you could not have chosen a better way to play into your brother’s hands. Oh!” he exclaimed in a livid fury, “I can tell you that there will be one who will not try to dissuade you! He will offer you no arguments, nor urge you to use some intelligence! Go to him; tell him what you have told me, and leave your mother and sisters at his mercy! Turn back your money to him, the money your father left you, the money belonging to your wife and your children, and see if Ernest refuses it!”
He had not counted much on this last appeal to fear and distrust, to simplicity and unworldliness and lack of understanding, but he saw, from Martin’s changed expression that he had struck home. It did not take him long to capture this advantage, to advance the most vehement and absurd of arguments, to appeal, again and again, to Martin’s fear and suspicions and sense of duty. When Gregory, at midnight, finally went home, he left Martin in a pathetic state of irresolution, despair, confusion and anxiety.
The next day the poor young man, in a quite dreadful state of mind, went to see Father Dominick. For a full hour, in that dark, musty little parlor, he talked, argued, pleaded for understanding and advice. And Father Dominick listened, half incredulous, half sad, and wholly ironical. He saw that Martin was in the deplorable condition of the idealist caught in a world of realism, that for such an idealist there would never be peace except in flight into himself, into fantasy and mysticism and gentleness. The world, to this idealist, bristled with swords, on which he would continuallly impale himsel
f. He had no armor, no shield, for the faith he had adopted was full of earthly realism and tolerance. In mediæval times he would have found his place, but in this civilization he had no place. He was no builder of Utopias; he was merely naked in a society that went masked and armed, and his plight was exceedingly piteous, if not absurd. Father Dominick had extolled and prayed to the saints; he had taught their lives to thousands of men and women and children. He had wept over them, dwelling tenderly on their patience and sweetness, their steadfastness and faith, their idealism that fire and sword could not shake. He had urged his parishioners to emulate them. But now, face to face with such a character, he was helpless, and a little inclined to smile, not too sadly. For some moments he indulged in silent irony at his own expense.
But he had little to offer Martin except vagueness and sympathy, kindness and patience. Martin, he said, must be very careful that he was doing the right thing. Of course, he added in a melancholy voice, a man must always follow his conscience, for that was something he had between himself and God. Money, he said, was all things to all men. To the fool it was an executioner, to the good man it was ability to alleviate suffering, to the tyrant it was a sword, to the miser it was a prison, to a king it was an army, to the wise man it was power, to the slave it was freedom, to the avaricious it was heaven and earth and hell. Money was not to be despised. One should be very careful. So Father Dominick, with a large gesture, left it entirely to Martin’s conscience. And the young man left the priest’s houses in a state of worse confusion than ever. Facts, which had seemed to him so simple and unshakable, became tenuous.
He had nowhere to turn, no firm hand to grasp no understandable voice to hear. The two natural fortresses of men, wife and priest, could not help him. One had given sympathy and tenderness, and the other had advised patience. But they would not stand beside him, fighting; they left the battle entirely up to him. Never had he felt so lonely. He even tried, in his desperation, to make his mother understand, but her horror, her bewilderment, her utter inability to grasp what he meant, left him more despairing than ever. Once, when alone at the cribs of his children, he whispered to them: “If I do this, will you blame me some day for robbing you?” He could hardly make himself believe that they were his children, for he felt as helpless and as unsure as they.
His old suspicions and distrust of Ernest returned with renewed force. Gregory, he decided, was quite right: Ernest would seize upon this chance to enrich himself. He found himself watching Ernest, as the brothers worked together in their new and larger offices, and among their four new clerks, and he began to wonder if Ernest knew anything about it. And more and more he convinced himself that without himself in this place his mother and sisters might indeed be robbed of their inheritance. His handsome face thinned and his blue eyes began to look haggard and sleepless. He no longer spoke of it to Amy; between him and his wife had always been great gentleness, love and sympathy, and he still felt these things in Amy. But he also felt that she was helpless, and could only wait in silence for what he must decide himself.
One summer evening he went down to the river. He sat down on one of the flat stones along the bank, where he and Jacques Bouchard had sat so many times. It was very quiet down here, in the coming twilight, with the white willows mysterious pale shadows behind and about him, the wide river before him, running with long, thin glimmers on it like quicksilver, the far shore a dim blur and the sky a clear high arch of mauve light, shading, toward the west, into a heliotrope-rose. A few lights began to glimmer like small lamps of gold on the farther shore, the river darkened and its voice quickened, and a couple of black flatboats floated lazily down with the current. There were few houses near by, and Martin felt isolated and quite alone.
The stones were still warm from the sun, and the air was still as clear warm water. Martin had come here to think, but he found he could not think. His mind became quiet and almost numb. The heliotrope sky, the single song of a robin behind him in the trees, the stillness and peace, filled him with nostalgia. All at once he was back in his great-aunt’s enchanted garden among the wet lilacs and the scented mist and the song of the thrush, and the memory twisted in him like pain. He thought: Why, I’ve never really left that garden! I’m still there. That’s why I can’t understand what they all mean, here. That is why everything is so confused and hot and full of enemies. If I could only go through that gate again! Even sound was softened there. It’s across the ocean, and I’ll probably never see it again, but my mind is still there, and my soul, too. I’ve never been able to face what they call “life,” and perhaps it’s my fault. But what they call reality seems stupid and harsh to me, and without reason or mercy.
He looked at the silent sky and he prayed simply: “Father, help me. I don’t know where to turn, or what to do. I thought I knew what the right was, but I’ve been deafened by arguments. Perhaps I am a fool, as they say. Perhaps I’ve always been a fool, and not a man. If I have been, show me. If what I have wanted has been good, help me to achieve it.”
When he went home, in the darkness, he was not exactly comforted, but the heat of confusion had abated in his mind.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Martin sent a large check to the Society for the Abolition of Slavery.
“Please apply it to your funds in the fight for the liberty of the negro,” he wrote. “God bless you in your great work, especially in your effort to keep the Territories free, particularly Kansas.”
He was fanatical about John Brown, whom Gregory had called a “bloody villain.” “I thought,” he said sarcastically to Martin, “that you believed all blood-letting vile, and the means of blood-letting viler, yet here you are praising a man who shoots down other unarmed men for nothing more than that they differ from him in opinion. But, perhaps, you find what he does excusable because he prays both before and after doing it.”
“He does that in order to keep new Territories free,” answered Martin. But he was now more confused than ever. Could murder ever be holy? Could wars ever be just? And if murder could be holy and wars just, then the arms whereby the first was committed and the second waged could not be unholy, nor the making of them reprehensible. His confusion increased, and he could do nothing.
One day, when he was more confused than ever, and could hardly keep his mind on the work of supervising the two clerks assigned to him, he had a visitor.
His office was beyond Ernest’s, and to reach his office any caller had to pass through the larger, outer room. A clerk came to Ernest and announced that one of the men from the shops wished to speak to Mr. Martin. The workman was admitted, and as he timidly sidled toward Martin’s door, Ernest halted him.
“Just a moment, please. Aren’t you old Hans Heckl’s son?”
The young man stopped, scarlet-faced and more than a little frightened.’
“Yes, sir, I am,” stammered Carl, twisting a length of waste cloth in his oily hands, and coloring still more deeply. Ernest regarded him curiously.
“Is something wrong in the shops? You’re in charge of the barrel loading, aren’t you? Is it necessary to disturb Mr. Martin about anything?”
The young man was too simple to be wary. “It—it isn’t about the shops, sir. It—it’s something else.”
“Mr. Martin,” said Ernest, “is too busy to be bothered about small personal matters. Besides, I handle everything dealing with the men. You had better tell me what it is.”
“It’s personal, sir.” Carl’s agitation had become terrified misery. He even took a step or two, backwards. “If Mr. Martin is so busy, I’ll see him some other time.” He turned and fled toward the door. Ernest raised his voice. He was smiling.
“Don’t run away.” Carl stopped on the threshold like a young bull halted in flight, and irresolute. “I want to talk to you. Don’t you and your father live down by the river? Haven’t you a number of boats you hire out on Sundays and holidays?”
“Yes, sir.” Ernest’s smile had reassured him, for it seemed amused and pleasant. Er
nest was a bogey to the hundreds of men who worked for him, and had he been the devil, himself, his appearance could not have agitated them more. But Carl felt his courage coming back before that smile, which made his employer’s face assume a certain boyishness and charm. He tried to smile back and as he did so he looked directly into Ernest’s pale relentless eyes, which had no smile in them whatsoever. A cold thrill ran along Carl’s nerves.
“Aren’t you the young man who is always taking two or three weeks off, about every two months?” asked Ernest. He looked good humored. “I remember, now, that your father keeps coming in to see me and asking me to take you back. It’s against my principles, of course, but you have a good record, so I always oblige him.” He waited. But Carl said nothing; the color had gone from his face, and Ernest watched him intently. The young man’s sudden and curious pallor interested him; he saw that his hands were shaking, also. He saw that his eyes had filled with terror and suspicion.
“Well, now, Mr. Armand Bouchard is in charge of the shops. Why don’t you see him? No, wait a moment. I suppose you may see Mr. Martin. But you must remember that all matters pertaining to the shops must be taken up with Mr. Bouchard or myself.” He waved his hand dismissingly, and Carl fled past his desk into Martin’s room. When the door closed behind him, Ernest sat and stared into the middle distance, frowningly.
One of the clerks, who had a small desk near the outer door, cleared his throat timidly until Ernest glanced at him in annoyance. “If it may please you, sir,” he stuttered, “I’d like to say something about that man and his father. There’s stories about them—”
“What?” asked Ernest with affected impatience.
“The young fellow, there, sir, goes on long journeys down the river, in a boat. My brother, he has a house near the river, and one night, late, he heard oarlocks, and it was a bright night so he went out, curious-like—”
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