Chapter 11

Life, alas, is an intricate illusion. God is a pack of lies under which man staggers to his grave. And man--ah, here we have Nature's only mountebank; here we have Nature's humorous and ingenuous experiment in tragedy. And thought--ah, the tissue-paper chimera that seeks forever to devour life.

It is the cult of the pessimist, the gentle malice of disillusion. And, like all other cults, it sustains its advocates. Thus, the city has no more debonairly-mannered, smiling-souled citizen to offer than Clarence Darrow. For years and years Mr. Darrow has been gently disproving the intelligence of man, the importance of life, and the necessity of thought. For years and years Mr. Darrow has been whimsically deflating the illusions in which man hides from the purposelessness of the cosmos. God, heaven, politics, philosophies, ambition, love--Mr. Darrow has deflated them time and again--charging from $1 to $2 a seat for the spectacle.

This is nothing against Mr. Darrow--that he charges money sometimes. For years and years Mr. Darrow has been enlivening the intellectual purlieus of the city with his debates. And Mr. Darrow's debates have been always worth $1, $2 and even $5--for various reasons. It is worth at least $5 to observe at first hand what a cheering and invigorating effect Mr. Darrow's pessimism has had upon Mr. Darrow after these innumerable years.

* * * * *

The story concerns itself with a funeral Mr. Darrow attended a few years ago. It is at funerals that Mr. Darrow's gentle malice finds itself crowned by circumstances. For to this son of Schopenhauer death is a weary smile that is proof of all his arguments.

This time, however, Mr. Darrow was curiously stirred. For there lay dead in the coffin a man for whom he had held a deep affection. It was Prof. George B. Foster, the brilliant theologian of the University of Chicago.

During his life Prof. Foster had been a man worthy the steel of Mr. Darrow. Not that Prof. Foster was an unscrupulous optimist. He was merely an intellectual whose congenital tendencies were idealistic, just as Mr. Darrow's psychic and subconscious tendencies were anti-idealistic. And apart from this divergence of congenital tendencies Mr. Darrow and Prof. Foster had a great deal in common. They both loved argument. They both doted upon seizing an idea and energizing it with their egoism. They were, in short, ideal debaters.

Whenever Mr. Darrow and Prof. Foster debated on one of the major issues of reason a flutter made itself felt in the city--even among citizens indifferent to debate. Indifferent or not, one felt that a debate between Prof. Foster and Mr. Darrow was a matter of considerable importance. Things might be disproved or proved on such an occasion.

* * * * *

They were to have debated on "Is There Immortality?" when Prof. Foster's death canceled the engagement. This was one of the favorite differences of opinion between the two friends. Mr. Darrow, of course, bent all his efforts on disproving immortality. Prof. Foster bent all his on proving it. Considerable excitement had been stirred by the coming debate. The death of the brilliant theologian put an end to it.

Instead of the debate there was a funeral. Thousands of people who had admired the intellect, kindness and humanitarianism of Prof. Foster came to the memorial services held in one of the large theaters of the loop. Mr. Darrow came, his head bowed and grief in his heart. Friends like George Foster never replace themselves. Death becomes not a triumphant argument--an aloof clincher for pessimism, but a robber.

There were speakers who talked of the dead man's virtues, his love for people, scholarship and the arts, his keen brain and his genius. Mr. Darrow sat listening to the eulogy of his dead friend and tears filled his eyes. Poor George Foster--gone, in a coffin; to be buried out of sight in a few hours. Then some one whispered to Mr. Darrow that a few words were expected of him.

* * * * *

It was Mr. Darrow's good-bye to his dear friend. He stood up and his loose figure and slyly malicious face wore an unaccustomed seriousness. The audience waited, but the facile Mr. Darrow was having difficulty locating his voice, his words. His eyes, blurred with tears, were still staring at the coffin. Finally Mr. Darrow began. His dear friend. Dead. So charming a man. So brilliant a mind. Dead now. He had been so amazingly alive it seemed incredible that he should be dead. It was as if part of himself--Mr. Darrow--lay in the coffin.

The eulogy continued, quiet, sincere, stirring tears in the audience and filling their hearts with a realization of the grief that lay in Mr. Darrow's heart. Then slowly the phrases grew clearer.

"We were old friends and we fought many battles of the mind," said Mr. Darrow. "And we were to have debated once more next week--on 'Is There Immortality?' It was his contention," whispered Mr. Darrow, "that there is immortality. He is gone now, but he speaks more eloquently on the subject than if he were still with us. There lies all that remains of my friend George Burman Foster--in a coffin. And had he lived he would have argued with me on the subject. But he is dead and he knows now, in the negation and darkness of death, that he was wrong--that there is no immortality--"

Mr. Darrow paused. He had after many years won his argument with Prof. Foster. But the victory brought no elation. Mr. Darrow's eyes filled again and he turned to walk from the stage. But before he left the mourners sitting around him heard him murmur:

"I wish poor George Foster had been right. There would be nobody happier than I to realize that his soul had survived--that there was still a George Foster. But--if he could come back now after the proof of death he would admit--yes, admit that--that there is no immortality."

And Mr. Darrow with his head bowed yielded the platform to his inarticulate and vanquished friend and debater.

WORLD CONQUERORS

The hall is upstairs. A non-committal sign has been tacked over the street entrance. It discloses that there is to be a discussion this night on the subject of the world revolution. The disclosure is made in English, Yiddish and Russian.

A thousand people have arrived. They are mostly west siders, with a sprinkling of north and south side residents. There seem to be two types. Shop workers and a type that classifies as the intelligentsia. The workers sit calmly and smoke. The intelligentsia are nervous. Dark-eyed women, bearded men, vivacious, exchanging greetings, cracking jokes.

The first speaker is a very bad orator. He is a working-man. An intensity of manner holds the audience in lieu of phrases. He says nothing. Yet every one listens. He says that workingmen have been slaves long enough. That there is injustice in the world. That the light of freedom has appeared on the horizon.

This, to the audience, is old stuff. Yet they watch the talker. He has something they one and all treasured in their own hearts. A faith in something. The workingmen in the audience have stopped smoking. They listen with a faint skepticism in their eyes. The intelligentsia, however, are warming up. For the moment old emotions are stirring in them. Sincerity in others--the martyr spirit in others--is something which thrills the insincerity of all intelligentsia.

Suddenly there is a change in the hall. Our stuttering orator with the forceful manner has made a few startling remarks. He has said, "And what we must do, comrades, is to use force. We can get nowhere without force. We must uproot, overthrow and seize the government."

Scandal! A murmur races around the hall. The residents from the north and south sides who have favored this discussion of world revolution with their uplifting presence are uneasy. Somebody should stop the man. It's one thing to be sincere, and another thing to be too sincere and tell them that they should use force.

Now, what's the matter? The orator has grown violent.

It is somebody in the back of the hall. Heads turn. A policeman! The orator swings his arms, and in his foreign tongue, goes on. "They are stopping us. The bourgeoisie! They have sent the polizei! But we stand firm. The police are powerless against us. Even though they drive us from this hall."

The orator is all alone in his excitement. The audience has, despite his valorous pronouncements, grown nervous. And the policeman walking down the aisle seems embarrassed. He arrives at the platform finally. He hands a card to the orator. The orator glances at the card and then waves it in the air. Then he reads it slowly, his lips moving as he spells the words out. The audience is shifting around, acting as if it wanted to rise and bolt for the door.

"Ah," exclaims the orator, "the policeman says that an enemy of the revolution has smashed an automobile belonging to one of the audience that was standing in front of the hall. The number of the automobile is as follows." He recites the number slowly. And then: "If anybody has an automobile by that number standing downstairs he better go and look after it."

A substantial looking north sider arises and walks hurriedly through the hall. The orator decides to subside. There is a wait for the chief speaker, who has not yet arrived. During the wait an incident develops. There are two lights burning at the rear of the stage. A young woman calls one of the officials of the meeting.

"Look," she says, "those lights make it impossible for us to see the speaker who stands in front of them. They shine in our eyes."

The official wears a red sash across the front of his coat. He is one of the minor leaders among the west side soviet radicals. He blinks. "What do you want of me?" he inquires with indignation. "I should go and turn the lights out? You think I'm the janitor?"

"But can't you just turn the lights off?" persists the young woman.

"The janitor," announces our official with dignity, "turns the lights on and he will turn them off." Wherewith the Tarquin of the proletaire marches off. Two minutes later a man in his short sleeves appears, following him. This man is the janitor. The audience which has observed this little comedy begins to laugh as the janitor turns off the offending lights.

The chief speaker of the evening has arrived. He is a good orator. He is also cynical of his audience. A short wiry man with a pugnacious face and a cocksure mustache. He begins by asking what they are all afraid of. He accuses them of being more social than revolutionary. As long as revolution was the thing of the hour they were revolutionists. But now that it is no longer the thing of the hour, they have taken up other hobbies.

This appears to be rather the truth from the way the intelligentsia take it. They nod approval. Self-indictment is one thing which distinguishes the intelligentsia. They are able to recognize their faults, their shortcomings.

Now the speaker is on his real subject. Revolution. What we want, he cries, is for the same terrible misfortune to happen in this country that happened in Russia. Yes, the same marvelous misfortune. And he is ready. He is working toward that end. And he wishes in all sincerity that the audience would work with him. Start a reign of terror. Put the spirit of the masses into the day. The unconquerable will to overthrow the tyrant and govern themselves. He continues--an apostle of force. Of fighting. Of shooting, stabbing and barricades that fly the red flag. He is sardonic and sarcastic and everything else. And the audience is disturbed.

There are whispers of scandal. And half the faces of the intelligentsia frown in disapproval. They came to hear economic argument, not a call to arms. The other half is stirred.

It is almost eleven. The hall empties. The streets are alive. People hurry, saunter, stand laughing. Street cars, store fronts, mean houses, shadows and a friendly moon. These are part of the system. Three hours ago they seemed a powerful, impregnable symbol. Now they can be overthrown.

The security that pervades the street is an illusion. Force can knock it out. A strange force that lies in the masses who live in this street.

The audience moves away. The intelligentsia will discuss the possibility of a sudden uprising of the proletaire and gradually they will grow cynical about it and say, "Well, he was a good talker."

The orator finally emerges from the building. He is surrounded by friends, questioners. For two blocks he has company. Then he is alone. He stands waiting for a street car. Some of the audience pass by without recognizing him.

The street car comes and the orator gets on. He finds a seat. His head drops against the window and his eyes close. And the car sweeps away, taking with it its load of sleepy men and women who have stayed up too late--including a messiah of the proletaire who dreams of leading the masses out of bondage.

THE MAN FROM YESTERDAY

"You'll not use my name," he said, "because my family would be exceedingly grieved over the notoriety the thing would bring them."

Fifty or sixty or seventy--it was hard to tell how old he was. He looked like a panhandler and talked like a scholar. Life had knocked him out and walked over him. There was no money in his pocket, no food in his stomach, no hope in his heart. He was asking for a job--some kind of writing job. His hands were trembling and his face twitched. Despair underlay his words, but he kept it under. Hunger made his body jerked and his eyes shine with an unmannerly eagerness. But his words remained suave. He removed a pair of cracked nose-glasses and held them between his thumb and forefinger and gestured politely with them. Hungry, dirty, hopeless, his linen gone, his shoes torn, something inside his beaten frame remained still intact. There was no future. But he had a past to live up to.

He was asking for a job. What kind of job he didn't know. But he could write. He had been around the world. He was a cosmopolite and a rhymester and a press agent and a journalist. He pulled himself together and his eyes struggled hard to forget the hunger of his stomach.

"In the old days," he said, enunciating in the oracular manner of a day gone by--"ah, I was talking with Jack London about it before he died. Dear Jack! A great soul. A marvelous spirit. We were in the south seas together. Yes, the old days were different. Erudition counted for something. I was Buffalo Bill's first press agent. Also I worked for dear P. T. Barnum. I was his publicity man.

"Doesn't the world seem to have changed, to you?" he asked. "I was talking to George Ade about this very thing. Strange, isn't it? George and I are old friends. Who? Dickie Davis of the Sun? Certainly--a charming fellow. Stephen Crane? Genius, my friend, genius was his. That was the day when O. Henry was in New York. There was quite a crowd of us. We used to foregather in some comfortable grog shop and discuss. Ah, life and letters were talked about a great deal in those days."

* * * * *

His voice had the sound of a man casually relating incidents of his past. But his eyes continued to shine eagerly. And between sentences there were curious pauses. The pauses asked something.

"A most curious thing occurred the other evening," he smiled. "I had to pay for my oysters by writing a rhyme for the waiter." An anecdote by a dilettante, a gracefully turned plea worthy of M'sieur Bruinrmell. "You know, it grows more and more difficult to obtain employment. My wardrobe is practically gone." He glanced with apparent amusement at his weary-willie makeup. His hand moved tremblingly to his neck. "My collar is soiled," he murmured, apologizing with eyes that managed to smile, "and the other evening I lost my stick."

Then the hunger and the hopelessness of the man broke through the shell of his manner. He needed a job, a job, a job! Something to do to get him food and shelter. His fingers tried to place the cracked nose-glasses back in position.

"I would--pardon me for mentioning this--I would much rather sit with a man like you and discuss the phases of life and literature of interest to both of us. But I would write almost anything. I have written a great deal. And I have managed money. There was a time--" A look of pain came into his eyes. This was being vulgar and not in line with the tradition that his enunciation boasted.

"I have known a great many people. I don't desire to bore you with talk of celebrities and all that. But I assure you, I have been somebody. Oh, nothing important or perhaps very worth while. I dislike this sort of thing, you know." Another smile twisted his lips. "But, when one is down to the last--er--to the last farthing, so to speak, one swallows a bit of his pride. That's more than an aphorism with me. To go on, I have handled great sums of money. I have traveled all over the world, I have eaten and spoken with men of genius all my life. My youth was a very interesting one and--and perhaps we could go somewhere for dinner and--and I could tell you things of writing men of the past that--that might appeal to you. Marvelous fellows. There was O. Henry and London and Davis and Phillips and Stevie Crane. I dislike imposing myself on you this way, but--if I didn't think you would be interested in a discussion with a man who--who admires the beautiful things of life and who has lived a rather varied existence I would not--"

* * * * *

The cracked nose-glasses were back in place and he had stopped short. Despair and hunger now were talking out of his eyes. They had come too close to his words. They must never come into his words. That would be the one defeat that would drive too deeply into him. Of the past, of the easygoing, charmingly garrulous past, all that was left to this nomad of letters was its manner. He could still sit in his rags as if he were lounging in the salon of an ocean liner, still gesture with his nose-glasses as if he were fixing the attention of a Richard Harding Davis across a bottle of Chateau Yquem.

So he remained silent. Let his eyes and the twitching of his face betray him. His words never would. His words would always be the well-groomed, carefully modulated, nicely considerate words of a gentleman. He resumed:

"So you have nothing. Ah, that's rather--rather disturbing. Just a moment--please. I don't mean to impose on you. Won't you sit down--so I will feel more at ease? Thank you, sir. Perhaps there is something in the way of a--of another kind of job. Anything about a theater, a newspaper office, a magazine, a circus, an hotel. I know them all. And if you could only keep an eye open for me. Thank you, sir. I am glad to see that men of letters are still considerate of their fellow craftsmen. Ah, you would have liked Jack London. Did you know him? You know, we live in an age of jazz. Yes, sir, the tempo is fast. Life has lost its andante. Materialism has triumphed. There is no longer room for the spirit to expand. Machines are in the way. Noises invade the sanctity of meditative hours."

* * * * *

It was cold outside the cigar store. The man from yesterday stepped into the street. He stood smiling for a moment and for the moment in the courteous friendliness of his rheumy eyes, in the mannerly tilt of his head there was the picture of a sophisticated gentleman of the world nodding an adieu outside his favorite chophouse. Then he turned. The mannerly tilt vanished. There was to be seen a man--fifty, sixty or seventy, it was hard to tell how old--shuffling tiredly down the street, his body huddled together and his shoulders shivering.

THUMBNAIL LOTHARIOS

Here's the low down, gentlemen. The Miserere of the manicurist. Peewee, the Titian-haired Aphrodite of the Thousand Nails has been inveigled into submitting her lipstick memoirs to the public eye.

Peewee is the melting little lady with the vermilion mouth and the cooing eyes who manicures in a Rialto hotel barber shop. She is the one whose touch is like the cool caress of a snowflake, whose face is as void of guile as the face of the Blessed Damosel.

There are others, scissor-Salomes and nail-file Dryads. Mr. Flo Ziegfeld has nothing on George, the head barber, when it comes to an eye for color and a sense for curve. But they are busy at the moment. The hair-tonic Dons and the mud-pack Romeos are giving the girls a heavy play. Peewee alone is at leisure. Therefore let us gallop quickly to the memoirs.

* * * * *

"H'm," says Peewee, "I'll tell you about men. Of course what I say doesn't include all men. There may be exceptions to the rule. I say may be. I hope there are. I'd hate to think there weren't. I'd get sad."

Steady, gentlemen. Peewee's doll face has lost guilelessness. Peewee's face has taken on a derisive and ominous air.

"I'll give you the low down," says she with a sniff. "Men? They're all alike. I don't care who they are or what their wives and pastors think of them or what their mothers think of them. I got them pegged regardless. Young and old, and some of them so old they've gone back to the milk diet, they all make the same play when they come in here.

"And they're all cheap. Yes, sir, some are cheaper than others, of course. There's the patent-leather hair lounge-lizard. I hand him the fur-lined medal for cheapness. But I got a lot of other medals and I give them all away, too.

"Well, sir, they come in here and you take hold of their hand and start in doing honest work and, blooey! they're off. They're strangers in town. And lonesome! My God, how lonesome they are! And they don't know no place to go. That's the way they begin. And they give your hand a squeeze and roll a soft-boiled eye at you.

"Say, it gets kind of tiring, you can imagine. Particularly after you've been through what I have and know their middle names, which are all alike, they all answering to the name of cheap sport. Sometimes I give them the baby stare and pretend I don't know what's on their so-called minds. And sometimes when my nerves are a little ragged I freeze them. Then sometimes I take them up. I let them put it over.

"You'd be surprised. Liars! They're all rich. The young ones are all bond salesmen with wealthy fathers and going to inherit soon. The middle-aged ones are great manufacturers. The old ones are retired financiers. You should ought to hear the lads when they're hitting on all six."

* * * * *

Peewee wagged a wise old head and her vermilion mouth registered scorn at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. A very cold light, however, kindled in her beautiful eyes.

"Yes, yes, I've taken them up," she went on. "I've let them stake me to the swell time. Say, ten dollars to one that these manicured millionaires don't mean any more than the Governor's pardon does to Carl Wanderer. Not a bit. I don't want to get personal, but, take it from me, they're all after one thing. And they're a pack of selfish, mushy-headed tin horns with fishhook pockets, the kind you can't pull anything out of.

"Well, to get back. About the first minute you get the big, come-on squeeze. Then next the big talk about being strangers in your town. Then next they open with the big, hearty invitations. Will you be their little guide? And ain't you the most beautiful thing they ever set eyes on! And say, if they'd only met you before they wouldn't be living around hotels now, lonesome bachelors without a friend. I forgot to tell you, they're all single. No, never married. Even some of the most humpbacked married men you ever saw, who come in here dragging leg irons and looking a picture of the Common People, they're single, too. I've seen them slip wedding rings off their fingers to make their racket stand up.