Chapter 15

"My dear, he's in Chicago. I came over to read you a letter from him that I got to-night. That new postman left it at the Scovels', by mistake, and they never sent it over until a little while ago. There was a sentence in it," Mrs. Snow was fumbling with a paper, "that I thought you'd like to hear. Where is it? Let me see. 'Next month I hope to be able to send you more'--no, no, that's not it. 'When my socks get holes in them I throw them'--that's not it, either. Oh! he says, 'I caught a glimpse of Mr. Alexander last night, getting on a West Side car'--this was written yesterday morning. 'I called to him, but too late. I'm sorry, for I'd like to have seen him,' That's all; but Mr. Girard seemed so pleased with the letter, I promised that I would bring it around to you that very minute,--he had to run for the train,--but I was detained. He thought you'd like to hear that William had seen Mr. Alexander."

Like to hear! The relief for the moment turned Lois faint. Yet, after Mrs. Snow went, the torturing questions began to repeat themselves again. Justin was alive--Justin was alive on Tuesday night. Was he alive now? And why had he gone to Chicago at all? Why had he sent her no word? The wall between them seemed only the more opaque. Every fear that imagination could devise seemed to center around this new fact.

She and Dosia went around, straightening up the little drawing-room, making it ready for Girard's occupancy--pulling out a big chair for his use, and putting fresh books on the table. The maid had long ago gone to bed, and there was coffee to be made for him--he might get hungry in the night. When he came in at last, he brought all the brightness and courage of hope with him. He had wired to William; he had phoned to a dozen different places in Chicago.

"Oh, what should we do without you?" breathed Lois, her foot on the stairway.

"It doesn't seem to me I've helped you very much so far. Our one clue has been from Mrs. Snow. I want you to go to bed now, and to sleep, Mrs. Alexander; take all the rest you can. I'm here to do the watching. If there's anything really to tell, I'll call you. I promise faithfully. What is it, Miss Linden? Did you want to speak to me?"

"There was a message for you while you were gone," said Dosia in a low tone.

His eyes assented. "Yes, I know. I went there--to the place that they--but it wasn't Alexander, I'm glad to say, though I was afraid when I went in----"

"I know," said Dosia.

Another strange night had begun, with the master of the house away. Lois went to her room to lie down clothed, jumping up to come to the head of the stairs whenever the telephone-bell rang, and then going back again when she found that those who were consulting were asking for information instead of giving it; but by and by the messages ceased.

Suppose Justin never came back! She began to feel that he had been gone for years, and tried confusedly to plan out the future. There were the children--how should she support them? She must support them. It was hard to get work when you had a baby. If she hadn't the baby--no one should take the baby from her! She clasped him to her for a moment in terror, as if she were being hunted, before she grew calm and began planning again. There was only a little money left. To-morrow they must still eat. She must make the money last.

Dosia, on the bed by Redge's crib, went softly after a while into the other room, and saw that Lois at last slept, though she herself could not. Each time that she saw Girard he seemed more and more a stranger, so far removed was he from her dream of him. Through all his softness, his gentleness, she felt the streak of hardness, if nobody else did (though Mr. Cater, she remembered now, had spoken of it too), that the fires of adversity had molded. Perhaps no man could have worked up from the cruel circumstances of his early days without that hardening streak to uphold him. She divined, with some surprising new power of divination, that, for all his strong, capable dealing with actualities, his magnetic drawing of men, for the inner conduct of his own life he was shyly dependent on odd, deeply held theory--theory that he had solitarily woven for himself. She felt impersonally sorry for him, as for a boy who must be disappointed, though he was nothing to her.

Yet, as Dosia lay there in the dumb stretches of the night, her tired eyes wide open, close to Redge's crib, with his little hot hand clinging to hers, the mere fact of Girard's bodily presence in the house, down-stairs, seemed something overpoweringly insistent; she couldn't get away from it. It gave her, apparently, neither pleasure nor pain; it called forth no conscious excitement as had been the case with Lawson--unless this strange, rarefied sense was a higher excitement. This consciousness of his presence was, tiresomely enough, something not to be escaped from; it pulsed in every vein, keeping her awake. She tried to lose it in the thought of Lois' great trouble, of this weighting, pitiful mystery of Justin's absence--of what it meant to him and to the household. She tried to lose it in the thought of Lawson, with the prayer that always instinctively came at his name. Nothing availed; through everything was that wearing, persistent consciousness of Girard's bodily presence down-stairs. If it would only fade out, so that she might sleep, she was so tired! The clock struck two. A voice spoke from the other room, sending her to her feet instantly:

"Dosia?"

"Yes, Lois, dearest, I'm here."

"Has any word come from Justin?"

"No."

Lois shivered. "I think, when Redge wakes up next, you'd better give him a drink of water; he sounds so hoarse. I've used all I brought up. Do you mind going down to get some more? I would go myself, but I can't slip my arm from under baby; he wakes when I move. Here is the pitcher."

"Yes," said Dosia, stopping for a moment to pull the coverlet tenderly over Lois, before stepping out into the lighted hall.

It seemed very silent; there was no sound from below. Dosia went down the low, wide stairs with that indescribable air of the watcher in the night. Her white cotton gown, the same that she had worn throughout the afternoon, had lost its freshness, and clung to her figure in twisted folds; the waist was slightly open at the throat, and the long white necktie hung half untied. One cheek was warm where it had pressed the pillow; the other was pale, and her hair, half loosened, hung against it. Her eyes, very blue, showed a rayed starriness, the pupils contracted from the sudden light--her expression, tired and half bewildered, had in it somewhat of the little lost look of a child, up in the unwonted middle of the night, who might go naturally and comfortably into any kind arms held out to her. The turn of the stairs brought her fronting the little drawing-room and the figure of Girard, who sat leaning forward, smoking, in the Morris chair, with his elbow resting on the arm of it and his head on his hand. The books and bric-a-brac on the table beside him had been pushed back to make room for the tray containing the coffee-pot, a cup and saucer, and a plate with some biscuits. A newspaper lay on the floor at his feet. Notwithstanding the light in the hallway and the room, there was that odd atmospheric effect which belongs only to the late and solitary hours of the night, when the very furniture itself seems to share in a chill detachment from the life of the day. Yet, in the midst of this night silence, this withdrawing of the ordinary vital forces, the figure of Bailey Girard seemed to be extraordinarily instinct with vitality, even in that second before he moved; his attitude, his eyes, his expression, were informed with such intense and eager thoughts that it was as startling, as instantly arresting, as the blast of a trumpet.

At the sound of Dosia's light oncoming step opposite the door, he rose at once--however, laying the cigar on the table--and with a quick stride stood beside her. He seemed tall and unexpectedly dazzling as he confronted her; his deep-set gray eyes were very brilliant.

"What is the matter? Is Mrs. Alexander ill?"

"No--oh, no; the children have been restless, that is all," said Dosia, recovering, with annoyed self-possession, from a momentary shock, and feeling disagreeably conscious of looking tumbled and forlorn. "I came down to get a pitcher of water."

"Can't I get it in the dining-room for you?" he asked, with formal politeness.

"Thank you. The water isn't running in the butler's pantry; I have to go in the kitchen for it. If you would light the gas there for me----"

"Yes, certainly," he responded promptly, pushing the portieres aside to make a passage for her, as he went ahead to scratch a match and light the long, one-armed flickering kitchen burner. The bare, deeply shadowed floor, the kitchen table, the blank windows, and the blackened range, in which the fire was out, came desolately into view. There was a sense as of deep darkness of the night outside around everything.

A large white cat lying on a red-striped cushion on a chair by the chilly hearth stretched itself and blinked its yellow eyes toward the two intruders.

"Let me fill this," said Girard, taking the pitcher from her--a rather large, clumsy majolica article with a twisted vine for a handle--and carrying it over to the faucet. The intimacy of the hour and the scene emphasized the more the punctilious aloofness of this enforced companionship.

Dosia leaned back against the table, while he let the water run, that it might grow cold. It sounded in the silence as if it were falling on a drumhead. The moment--it was hardly more--seemed interminable to Dosia. The white cat, jumping up on the table, put its paws on her shoulders, and she leaned back very absently, and curved her throat sideways, that her cheek might touch him in recognition. Some inner thought claimed her, to the exclusion of the present; her eyes, looking dreamily before her, took on that expression that was indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet.

Dosia has been ill described if it has not been made evident that to caress, to _touch_ her, seemed the involuntarily natural expression of any feeling toward her. Something in the bright, tendril-curling hair, the curve of her young cheek, the curve of her red lips, her light, yet round form, with its confiding, unconscious movements, made as inevitable an allure as the soft rosiness of a darling child, with always the suggestion of that illusive spirit that dared, and retreated, ever giving, ere it veiled itself, the promise of some lovelier glimpse to come.

The water had stopped running, and Dosia straightened herself. She raised her head, to meet his eyes upon her. What was in them? The color flamed in her face and left her white, although in a second there was nothing more to see in his but a deep and guarded gentleness as he came toward her with the pitcher.

"I'll take it now, please," she said hurriedly.

"Won't you let me carry it up for you?"

"Thank you, it isn't necessary. I'll go along, if you'll wait and turn out the light."

"Very well. You're sure it's not too heavy for you?" he asked anxiously, as her wrists bent a little with the weight.

"Oh, no, indeed," said Dosia quickly, turning to go. At that moment the white cat, jumping down from the table in front of her, rubbed itself against her skirts, and she stumbled slightly.

"Take care!" cried Girard, grasping the shaking pitcher over her slight hold of it.

Their hands touched--for the first time since the night of disaster, the night of her trust and his protection. The next instant there was a crash; the fragments of the jug lay upon the kitchen floor, the water streaming over it in rivulets.

"Dosia!" called the frightened voice of Lois from above.

"Yes, I'm coming," Dosia called back. "There's nothing the matter!" She had run from the room without looking up at that figure beside her, snatching a glass of water automatically from the dining-table as she passed by it. Fast as her feet might carry her, they could not keep pace with her beating heart.

When the telephone-bell rang a moment after, it was to confirm the tidings given before. Justin was in Chicago.

TO BE CONCLUDED

THE PROBLEMS OF SUICIDE

BY GEORGE KENNAN

Few branches of sociological investigation have more practical importance, or present a greater number of problems, difficulties, and interesting speculative questions, than the branch that deals with the complex, varied, and often inexplicable phenomena of suicide. When we consider the fact that more than ten thousand persons take their own lives in the United States every year, that more than seventy thousand die annually by their own hands in Europe, and that the suicide rate is constantly and rapidly increasing throughout the greater part of the civilized world, we are forced to admit that, from the view-point of vital economy at least, the subject is one of the utmost gravity. In 1881 the annual suicide rate of the United States was only 12 per million of the population, and our total number of suicides was only 605; last year our suicide rate had risen to 126 per million, and our suicides numbered 10,782. If the present rate of increase be maintained, we shall lose by suicide, in the next five years, nearly as many lives as were lost by the Union armies in battle in the five years of the Civil War. We are already losing annually from this cause more men than were killed on the Union side in the three great battles of Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, and the Wilderness taken together.

Statisticians have estimated that, in the world as a whole, there is a suicide every three minutes, and we know, with an approximation to certainty, that there is a suicide every six minutes and a half in Europe and the United States alone. Suicide has cost France 274,000 lives since 1871, Germany 158,000 since 1893, and the United States 120,000 since 1890. I need hardly point out the practical importance of the questions that present themselves in connection with this abnormal and apparently unnecessary waste of human life. Among such questions are: Upon what general and world-wide conditions does suicide depend? Are any of its causes removable? What are the reasons for the steady and progressive increase of self-destruction in civilized countries? Is suicide controlled or affected by any natural laws, and, if so, by what laws? These are all questions of practical importance, because upon the answers to them depends the possibility of economizing human life and increasing the sum total of human happiness. But the subject is one of deep interest, entirely apart from its practical importance.

_Psychological Problems of Suicide_

In some of its aspects, suicide raises psychological questions which bristle with difficulties, but which, nevertheless, pique the curiosity and demand explanatory answers. Why, for example, is the rate of suicide strictly dependent everywhere upon season and weather? Why is the tendency to self-destruction lessened by war? What is the explanation of suicide in the face of impending death, when there is still a fair chance of escape, or when the natural death that is threatened would involve less suffering than the act of self-destruction? What is the mental state of the hundreds of persons who kill themselves every year upon what would seem to be absurdly inadequate provocation--of the man, for example, who commits suicide because his wife declines to get out his clean underclothes, or the woman who takes poison because she has received a comic valentine? In its religious aspect, why is the tendency to suicide greatest among Protestant Christians and least among Mohammedans and Jews? In its racial aspect, why is the suicide rate of Japan eight times that of Portugal, and the rate of American whites eight or ten times that of full-blooded American blacks? Why do the Slavs of Bohemia kill themselves at the rate of 158 per million, while the Slavs of Russia commit suicide at the rate of only 31 per million? Why do emigrants, going to a new country, carry their national suicide rates with them, and maintain such rates, with little or no alteration, long after their environment has completely changed? These questions may not have great practical importance, but, from the view-point of the psychologist and the sociologist, they are full of speculative interest.

When we study the phenomena of suicide as they appear in the light of statistics, we are struck by the fact that among the general and world-wide conditions that limit or control the suicidal impulse are weather and war. Other factors, such as education, religion, or economic status, may seem to be more influential, if observation be limited to a single nation or a single continent; but if a comprehensive survey be made of the whole world, weather and war will be seen to take a prominent place among the few agencies that affect uniformly the suicidal tendency.

As soon as accurate and trustworthy statistics of self-destruction became available in Europe, sociologists began to study the question whether suicide is controlled or regulated in any way by natural laws, and, if so, whether cosmical causes, such as climate, temperature, season, and weather, have any perceptible influence upon the suicide rate. It was soon discovered that the tendency to self-destruction is greatest in the zone lying between the fiftieth and fifty-fifth parallels of north latitude. South of forty-three degrees the annual suicide rate is only 21 per million, and north of fifty-five degrees it is only 88 per million; but between the parallels of forty-three and fifty it rises to 93 per million, and between fifty and fifty-five it reaches its maximum of 172 per million. The suicide belt, therefore, lies in the north temperate zone, where the climate is most favorable to human development and happiness. This fact, however, does not prove that a moderate and equable climate predisposes to suicide. Things may coexist without being in any way related to each other, and the frequency of suicide in the north temperate zone may be due wholly to the fact that the zone in question is the home of the most cultivated races and the seat of the highest and most complicated civilization. In this zone the struggle for life is fiercest, the interference with natural laws is most extensive, and the physical and emotional wear and tear of the economic contest is most acutely felt. It is more than probable, therefore, that the high rate of suicide in the north temperate zone is due to the civilization, rather than to the climate, of that region. This phase of the subject need not be discussed at length, because all competent authorities agree that climate, in its relation to suicide, is not a controlling or determining factor.

A very different state of affairs appears, however, when we bring the suicide rate into correlation with season and weather. Long ago, before accurate statistics made a scientific investigation of the subject possible, there was a widely prevalent popular belief that dark and dismal months of the year, and gloomy, rainy, or uncomfortable weather, predisposed mankind to self-destruction, and that the suicide rate was highest in November or December, and lowest in spring or early summer.

_Spring and Summer the Suicide Seasons_

The French philosopher Montesquieu went so far as to explain the supposed frequency of suicide in London by connecting it with English rains and fogs. It was only natural, he argued, that unhappy people should kill themselves in a country where the autumnal and winter months were so dark, and where there was so much gloomy, depressing weather. When, however, investigators began to study the subject in the light of accurate statistics, when they grouped suicides by months and compared one month with another, they were surprised to find that the tendency to suicide was greatest, not in the gloomy and depressing months of November and December, but in the bright and cheerful month of June. In 1898 Dr. Oscar Geck, of Strasburg, published statistics of about 100,000 suicides that took place in Prussia in the twenty-year period between 1876 and 1896. They showed that, so far at least as Prussia was concerned, suicides invariably attained their maximum in June and their minimum in December. There was a constant rise in the suicide curve from January to the end of June, and a constant decline from June to the end of the first winter month.

Durkheim, of Paris, and Dr. Gubski, of St. Petersburg, who are among the most recent investigators of the subject, assert that, so far as the seasonal distribution of suicides is concerned, the figures for Prussia hold good throughout Europe. June is everywhere the suicide month, and December is everywhere the month in which self-destruction is least frequent. Durkheim gives tabulated statistics for seven of the principal countries of Europe, which show conclusively that, in point of predisposing tendency to suicide, the four seasons stand in the following order: summer first, spring second, autumn third, and winter last.[17] Even in Russia, which differs most from the rest of Europe in ethnology and economic status, the seasonal distribution of suicides is the same. Dr. Gubski's statistics show that of every thousand Russian suicides, 328 take place in summer, 272 in spring, 215 in autumn, and 185 in winter. If we divide the year into halves, and group the suicides in semi-annual periods, we find that 600 occur in the pleasant spring and summer months and only 400 in the gloomy months of winter and fall.

A study of American statistics brings us to almost exactly the same result. In September, 1895, Dr. Forbes Winslow, of New York, read a paper before the medico-legal congress which was then in session in that city upon the subject of "Suicide as a Mental Epidemic." The statistics which he submitted showed that in the United States, as in Europe, suicide reaches its maximum in June and falls to its minimum in December. The average annual number of American suicides in June is 336 and in December 217. If we divide the year into halves and compare the figures of the semi-annual periods with those of Russia, the correspondence is almost startling.

Notwithstanding the immense difference between the population of Russia and that of the United States, in environment, in education, in religion, in inherited character, in temperament, and in civilization generally, the mysterious law that controls the seasonal distribution of suicides operates in America exactly as it operates in the great empire of the Slavs. In Russia, out of every thousand suicides, the number who kill themselves in the fall-and-winter half of the year is precisely 400; in America it is 386. In Russia, the proportion per thousand in the spring-and-summer half of the year is 600; in America it is 614. There is a slightly greater tendency to spring-and-summer suicide in the United States than in Russia, but the variation is only a little more than one per cent., and taking into consideration the great difference between the oppressed and ignorant peasants of Russia, and the free, well-educated citizens of our own country, the practical identity of their seasonal suicide rates seems to me a most extraordinary social and psychological fact.