The Common Lot

by Robert Welch Herrick

Chapter XXX

The next day and the next went by in the peace of the old house. Now that the event which had so wholly occupied the man's mind since the night when the Glenmore burned had come about; now that he was here in the old place, and had his wife and children once more, he began to consider personally the wreck of his affairs which had been left behind in Chicago. And he began to ask himself whether, after all, it was necessary for him to return to the city and make public his shame at the hearing before the coroner. He was not clear what service to justice or to the dead who had been sacrificed, as much through the corruption of civic government as by his own wrong-doing, his testimony would accomplish. That it would surely ruin him professionally was beyond the shadow of a doubt. He could picture to himself well enough the ferocious glee with which the Thunderer would receive his evidence! Was it necessary to give his wife and his children into the merciless hands of the malicious newspapers?

The evening mail of the second day brought a letter from Wheeler. The coroner's inquest, the lawyer wrote, was likely to drag on for a week or more. The coroner was a Republican, and "had it in for the city administration." He was trying, also, to make all the personal and political capital that he could out of the affair. At present, as Jackson could see from the newspapers, they were engaged in examining minor witnesses,—the servants and employees of the Glenmore, the police and the firemen,—trying to account for the origin of the fire. So the architect could be of no use now, at any rate, and had better stay quietly where he was until the matter took more definite shape. As far as the coroner's inquest was concerned, it was a public farce,—trial by newspaper,—and it would be well to wait and see whether the affair was to reach a responsible court. In the meantime it was understood that he was ill at his summer home. Graves, so Wheeler added, had been in to see him again before he left the city. It was foolish to irritate the contractor and make the matter worse than it was already, etc.

Then Hart opened the bundle of newspapers, and glanced through their padded pages. His eye was caught immediately by an editorial caption:—

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLENMORE TRAGEDY?

The article was a sarcastic summary of the results thus far from the inquest, done in the Thunderer's best manner. So far, the editorial writer pointed out, the inquiry had been confined to examining chambermaids, bell-boys, and the police, and to quarrelling about the exact location of the fire when it started. The Thunderer hoped that before closing the inquest the coroner would have the courage to go higher, and to probe the building department, and to ascertain what Mr. Bloom's connection with the matter was, and whether his inspectors had ever made a report on the Glenmore. Further, the coroner might to advantage summon the officers of the hotel company, who had erected this fire-trap, and the architect whose plans for a fire-proof structure had been so lamentably inadequate. The Thunderer understood that the Glenmore Hotel Corporation was one of those paper corporations, officered by clerks, behind which unscrupulous capitalists so often shielded themselves. Of the officers whose names appeared in the papers of incorporation, three were clerks in the employ of a contractor named Graves, who had built the hotel, and a fourth was a prominent young architect, who had prepared the plans for the building. The people of Chicago wanted to hear what these men had to say about the Glenmore hotel, especially Bloom, Graves, and Hart. "Look higher, Mr. Coroner!" the Thunderer concluded solemnly.

When Helen came into the room a little later, she found her husband plunged in thought, the sheets of the newspaper scattered about him.

"What is it?" she asked quickly.

He picked up the paper and handed it to her. She read the article in the Thunderer, her brow wrinkling in puzzle as she went on. When she had finished it, she let it fall from her hands, and looked at her husband inquiringly.

"They want you to go out there and tell about the building of the hotel?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered dully. "I knew it would come sooner or later. You see I was not only the architect, but Graves made me the treasurer of the corporation. I was only a dummy like the others," he explained. "The corporation was just Graves! But I told Everett that I should go back and tell what I knew. Only he doesn't think it necessary, now!"

"What would happen? What does it all mean?"

He explained to her what the legal results might be in case the coroner's jury held him and others to the Grand Jury, as criminally liable for the disaster. Then, if the Grand Jury found a true bill against him, whenever he returned to Chicago he could be tried for manslaughter. But even if in his absence he should be held to the Grand Jury, there were many steps in the complex machinery of legal justice, and he could probably escape without trial. Evidently Wheeler, who knew the involutions of the district attorney's office, was counting on the probability that no one would be brought to trial in this hotel case,—that the disaster would be buried in that gulf of abortive justice where crimes against the people at large are smothered.

"And in that case," Hart concluded, "there would be no use in letting them tear me to pieces in the papers!"

"But you must go back!" she exclaimed, brushing aside his reasoning. "You must tell them all you know!"

"Everett doesn't think so," he protested, "and I can't see the good of it, either. They won't do anything, probably. It's just politics, the whole investigation. But the newspapers are full of it just now, and they would hound me to a finish. It would be impossible for me to get work in Chicago for a long time, if ever again. And it would cover you and the boys with disgrace—that's the worst! I have paid enough!"

"But it must be done," she repeated in a low voice.

She was not clear what good might come of his testimony: she was ignorant of the legal conditions. But she had a fundamental sense of justice: men must pay for the evil they do,—pay fully and pay publicly. A private repentance and a private penance were to her incomplete and trivial.

"I've got to earn our living," he urged. "You must think of that! If I am shut out of Chicago, we must begin somewhere else at the bottom."

She was not ready yet to consider that question.

"You mustn't think of us," she answered. "Francis, you can't really pay for all the wrong that has been done. But perhaps the truth will do some good. And unless you are ready to face the open disgrace,—why, you have done nothing! The money you gave back to the trustees was nothing. This is the only way!"

It was the only way for him, at least. With his buoyant, pliant nature, as she understood it, some final act, definite, done in the eyes of the world that knew him, was needed to strengthen the fibre of his being, to record in his own soul its best resolve. For already he had begun to waver, to quibble with his repentance.

He had been ready enough in the stress of his first feeling after the catastrophe to stand before the world and confess his share in the wrong that had been done. Then he was eager to free his mind of its intolerable burden. But now that the excitement had faded, leaving him to face the difficulties of his future, he saw in all its fatal detail what public disgrace would mean, and he drew back. It was folly to invite ruin!

Yet in the end the woman held him to her ideal. Late that night he consented to telegraph Wheeler of his immediate return, and to take the first train on the morrow for the west, there to await the coroner's summons.

"I shall go on with you, of course," she said. "We will all go,—the boys, too. Mamma will stay and close the house. Perhaps you can't get away very soon after it is over. And I want to be there with you," she answered to all his objections.

"You know what it will mean!" he exclaimed warningly, as the last log burst into ashes on the hearth. "Nell, it's worst for you and the boys. It means ruin, nothing less!"

"Never!" she protested with flashing eyes. "Other people, the newspapers, can't make ruin. Ruin is in ourselves. It merely means that we shall have to do without friends, and society, and things, especially things. And I have come to hate things. They make one small and mean. I never thought we should have them, when we were married. And I don't want them for the boys, either. There is work! the best thing in life,—work for itself, without pay in things, without bribes! We'll have that and bread, Francis!"

"But the public disgrace," he objected, still sensitive to the opinion of the world in which he had lived.

"Better even that than the disgrace between us," she whispered. "No, no! There is no other way."

At least there was no other way to her love, and that love he could not live without, cost him what it might.

"You are strong, Nell!" he confessed his admiration.

"And you, too!" she whispered back, her face illumined with the courage of her nature.

Little Powers, the younger boy, had not been well, and the next morning, when he was no better, Jackson urged that it would be unwise to take him, that he had best go back alone. But Helen would not consent, knowing that he made the most of the child's illness to spare her the trial which was to come.

"It is nothing," she said. "Mother thinks it will do no harm to take him. And if he is going to be really sick, it would be better for us to be there in the city than here."

So they drove over to Verulam and took the train. After the boys had been put to bed for the night, Helen came back to the section where the architect was sitting, looking dully into the blank fields.

"What do you think of this?" she exclaimed, putting a letter into his hands. "I got it just as we were leaving. It's from Venetia,—read it!"

He took the thick envelope from her hands, remembering suddenly the girl as he had last seen her, when she had summed him up in one bitter, opprobrious word. The sting of that word had gone, however, effaced by the experience which he had suffered since, and he opened the letter listlessly.

MY DEAR MOTHER SUPERIOR,—Do you recognize the Forest Park postmark? I am not going abroad after all. At least not just yet. Mother's gone, sails this week with Mrs. Ollie B. Now listen, and I'll make your hair stand on end.

First, mother! She's had a grievous disappointment lately. Colonel Raymond,—you know him of course,—the little gray-whiskered railroad man, mother's pet indulgence for I can't say how long,—has at last been freed from the legal attachment of one wife and is about to take another at once. Whom do you think? The youngest Stewart girl!!! The wedding is for the 3d of June. We are not going, naturally. Of course, it was a crushing blow to poor mamma,—she put her sailing forward a whole week to escape from her friends. She was positively growing old under it.

I know you don't like this, so I cut it very short. Now, prepare! I am going to embrace the serious life, at last,—I mean matrimony. Really and truly, this time. You know the man, but you'd never guess: he's our doctor. Dr. Coburn. Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!

Mother threw a fit when I told her, and then, of course, I knew I was quite right. We are to be married any time, when he finishes up the work he has on hand, so that he can give me some attention. We might look in on you in your convent retirement, if sufficiently urged. Then I'll tell you all about it, and make him show you all the little tricks I have taught him. Mamma still calls him "that fellow," but he's by way of being a very distinguished man on account of some bug he's discovered. The medical journals are taking off their hats to him. I read the notices,—don't you believe I am fast enough in love?

Well, I have had to send mamma abroad to recover her nerves, and I am out here putting the place in order as it is to be rented to some awful people, whom you never heard of. By the way, the doctor isn't going to let me use my money,—mother ought to thank him for that!—and he won't promise to earn much money, either. He has no idea of keeping me in the state to which the Lord called me. He says if I want that, I can marry Stephen Lane or any other man. He means to earn enough for a sensible woman to live on, he says, and if I am not content with what he chooses to do for me I can go out and learn how to earn some more for myself! Did you ever hear of a man who had the nerve to talk that way to the woman he wants to marry? ...

We are going to have a laboratory on the West Side,—that gave Mrs. P. another fit,—and over it we'll have our rooms. Then when he's made enough rabbits dotty with his bug, and has written his papers, maybe we'll go abroad....

There are lots of other things, your things, I want to talk over, but I am afraid my pen is too blunt for them. Only, I hope, oh, so much, dear, that you are to be happy again. Mr. Wheeler told me that Jack was with you now. My love to the Prodigal Man. Good-by, dear...

"Isn't it good!" Helen exclaimed, with the readiness of good women to welcome a newcomer to that state which has brought them such doubtful happiness.

"I shouldn't think he would have been the man to satisfy her," Jackson answered slowly.

"I think Dr. Coburn has changed a good deal since you knew him. He had fine things in him, and Venetia could see them."

"I always thought she was ambitious, and the reason she didn't marry was because she couldn't find any one out there to give her everything she was after."

"Perhaps Venetia has seen enough already of that kind of thing!"