Part 12
She curtsies and is gone. I go to my cabin to wait until we can land. There is a tiny knock. She comes in.
"Charlie, I couldn't kiss you out there in front of all those people. Good-bye, dear. Take care of yourself." This is real love. She kisses my cheek and then runs out on deck.
Easthope Martin is with us that night at Goldwyn's party. He plays one of his own compositions and holds us spellbound. He is very grateful for our sincere applause and quite retiring and unassuming, though he is the hit of the evening.
Following the dinner I carried the English movie folk on a sight-seeing trip, enjoying their amazement at the wonders of a New York night.
"What do you think of it?" I asked them.
"Thrilling," says Hepworth. "I like it. There is something electrical in the air. It is a driving force. You must do things."
We go to a café, where the élite of New York are gathered, and dance until midnight. I bid them good-bye, hoping to meet them later when they come to Los Angeles.
I dine at Max Eastman's the next night and meet McKay, the negro poet. He is quite handsome, a full-blooded Jamaican negro not more than twenty-five years of age. I can readily see why he has been termed an African prince. He has just that manner.
I have read a number of his poems. He is a true aristocrat with the sensitiveness of a poet and the humour of a philosopher, and quite shy. In fact, he is rather supersensitive, but with a dignity and manner that seem to hold him aloof.
There are many other friends there, and we discuss Max's new book on humour. There is a controversy whether to call it "Sense of Humour" or "Psychology of Humour." We talk about my trip. Claude McKay asks if I met Shaw. "Too bad," he says. "You would like him and he would have enjoyed you."
I am interested in Claude. "How do you write your poetry? Can you make yourself write? Do you prepare?" I try to discuss his race. "What is their future? Do they----"
He shrugs his shoulders. I realise he is a poet, an aristocrat.
I dine the next evening with Waldo Frank and Marguerite Naumberg and we discuss her new system. She has a school that develops children along the lines of personality. It is a study in individuality. She is struggling alone, but is getting wonderful results. We talk far into the morning on everything, including the fourth dimension.
Next day Frank Harris calls and we decide to take a trip to Sing Sing together. Frank is very sad and wistful. He is anxious to get away from New York and devote time to his autobiography before it is too late. He has so much to say that he wants to write it while it is keen.
I try to tell him that consciousness of age is a sign of keenness. That age doesn't bother the mind.
We discuss George Meredith and a wonderful book he had written. And then in his age Meredith had rewritten it. He said it was so much better rewritten, but he had taken from it all the red blood. It was old, withered like himself. You can't see things as they were. Meredith had become old. Harris says he doesn't want the same experience.
All this on the way to Sing Sing. Frank is a wonderful conversationalist. Like his friend Oscar Wilde. That same charm and brilliancy of wit, ever ready for argument. What a fund of knowledge he has. What a biography his should be. If it is just half as good as Wilde's, it will be sufficient.
Sing Sing. The big, grey stone buildings seem to me like an outcry against civilisation. This huge grey monster with its thousand staring eyes. We are in the visiting room. Young men in grey shirts. Thank God, the hideous stripes are gone. This is progress, humanity. It is not so stark.
There is a mite of a baby holding her daddy's hand and playing with his hair as he talks with her mamma, his wife. Another prisoner holding two withered hands of an old lady. Mother was written all over her, though neither said a word. I felt brutal at witnessing their emotion.
All of them old. Children, widows, mothers--youth crossed out of faces by lines of suffering and life's penalties. Tragedy and sadness, and always it is in the faces of the women that the suffering is more plainly written. The men suffer in body--the women in soul.
The men look resigned. Their spirit is gone. What is it that happens behind these grey walls that kills so completely?
The devotion of the prisoners is almost childish in its eagerness as they sit with their children, talking with their wives, here and there a lover with his sweetheart--all of them have written a compelling story in the book of life. But love is in this room, love unashamed. Why are sinners always loved? Why do sinners make such wonderful lovers? Perhaps it is compensation, as they call it. Love is paged by every eye here.
Children are playing around the floor. Their laughter is like a benediction. This is another improvement, this room. There are no longer bars to separate loved ones. Human nature improves, but the tragedy remains just as dramatic.
The cells where they sleep are old-fashioned, built by a monster or a maniac. No architect could do such a thing for human beings. They are built of hate, ignorance, and stupidity. I understand they are building a new prison, more sane, with far more understanding of human needs. Until then these poor wretches must endure these awful cells. I'd go mad there.
I notice quite a bit of freedom. A number of prisoners are strolling around the grounds while others are at work. The honour system is a great thing, gives a man a chance to hold self-respect.
They have heard that I am coming, and most of them seem to know me. I am embarrassed. What can I say? How can I approach them? I wave my hand merely. "Hello, folks!"
I decide to discard conversation. Be myself. Be comic. Cut up. I twist my cane and juggle my hat. I kick up my leg in back. I am on comic ground. That's the thing.
No sentiment, no slopping over, no morals--they are fed up with that. What is there in common between us? Our viewpoints are entirely different. They're in--I'm out.
They show me a cup presented by Sir Thomas Lipton, inscribed, "We have all made mistakes."
"How do we know but what some of you haven't?" I ask, humorously. It makes a hit. They want me to talk.
"Brother criminals and fellow sinners: Christ said, 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.' I cannot cast the stone, though I have compromised and thrown many a pie. But I cannot cast the first stone." Some got it. Others never will.
We must be sensible. I am not a hero worshipper of criminals and bad men. Society must be protected. We are greater in number than the criminals and have the upper hand. We must keep it; but we can at least treat them intelligently, for, after all, crime is the outcome of society.
The doctor tells me that but a few of them are criminals from heredity, that the majority had been forced into crime by circumstances or had committed it in passion. I notice a lot of evil-looking men, but also some splendid ones. I earnestly believe that society can protect itself intelligently, humanly. I would abolish prisons. Call them hospitals and treat the prisoners as patients.
It is a problem that I make no pretence of solving.
The death house. It is hideous. A plain, bare room, rather large and with a white door, not green, as I have been told. The chair--a plain wooden armchair and a single wire coming down over it. This is an instrument to snuff out life. It is too simple. It is not even dramatic. Just cold-blooded and matter of fact.
Some one is telling me how they watch the prisoner after he is strapped in the chair. Good God! How can they calmly plan with such exactness? And they have killed as many as seven in one day. I must get out.
Two men were walking up and down in a bare yard, one a short man with a pipe in his mouth, walking briskly, and at his side a warden. The keeper announces, shortly, "The next for the chair."
How awful! Looking straight in front of him and coming toward us, I saw his face. Tragic and appalling. I will see it for a long time.
We visit the industries. There is something ironical about their location with the mountains for a background, but the effect is good, they can get a sense of freedom. A good system here, with the wardens tolerant. They seem to understand. I whisper to one.
"Is Jim Larkin here?" He is in the boot department, and we go to see him for a moment. There is a rule against it, but on this occasion the rule is waived.
Larkin struts up. Large, about six feet two inches, a fine, strapping Irishman. Introduced, he talks timidly.
He can't stay, mustn't leave his work. Is happy. Only worried about his wife and children in Ireland. Anxious about them, otherwise fit.
There are four more years for him. He seems deserted even by his party, though there is an effort being made to have his sentence repealed. After all, he is no ordinary criminal. Just a political one.
He asks about my reception in England. "Glad to meet you, but I must get back."
Frank tells him he will help to get his release. He smiles, grips Frank's hand hard. "Thanks." Harris tells me he is a cultured man and a fine writer.
But the prison marked him. The buoyancy and spirit that must have gone with those Irish eyes are no more. Those same eyes are now wistful, where they once were gay. He hasn't been forgotten. Our visit has helped. There may be a bit of hope left to him.
We go to the solitary-confinement cell, where trouble makers are kept.
"This young man tried to escape, got out on the roof. We went after him," says the warden.
"Yes, it was quite a movie stunt," said the youngster. He is embarrassed. We try to relieve it.
"Whatever he's done, he's darn handsome," I tell the warden. It helps. "Better luck next time," I tell him. He laughs. "Thanks. Pleased to meet you, Charlie."
He is just nineteen, handsome and healthy. What a pity! The greatest tragedy of all. He is a forger, here with murderers.
We leave and I look back at the prison just once. Why are prisons and graveyards built in such beautiful places?
Next day everything is bustling, getting ready for the trip back to Los Angeles. I sneak out in the excitement and go to a matinée to see Marie Doro in "Lilies of the Field," and that night to "The Hero," a splendid play. A young actor, Robert Ames, I believe, gives the finest performance I have ever seen in America.
We are on the way. I am rushing back with the swiftness of the Twentieth Century Limited. There is a wire from my studio manager. "When will I be back for work?" I wire him that I am rushing and anxious to get there. There is a brief stop in Chicago and then we are on again.
And as the train rushes me back I am living again this vacation of mine. Its every moment now seems wonderful. The petty annoyances were but seasoning. I even begin to like reporters. They are regular fellows, intent on their job.
And going over it all, it has been so worth while and the job ahead of me looks worth while. If I can bring smiles to the tired eyes in Kennington and Whitechapel, if I have absorbed and understood the virtues and problems of those simpler people I have met, and if I have gathered the least bit of inspiration from those greater personages who were kind to me, then this has been a wonderful trip, and somehow I am eager to get back to work and begin paying for it.
I notice a newspaper headline as I write. It tells of the Conference for Disarmament. Is it prophetic? Does it mean that War will never stride through the world again? Is it a gleam of intelligence coming into the world?
We are arriving at Ogden, Utah, as I write. There is a telegram asking me to dine with Clare Sheridan on my arrival in Los Angeles. The prospect is most alluring. And that wire, with several others, convinces me that I am getting home.
I turn again to the newspaper. My holiday is over. I reflect on disarmament. I wonder what will be the answer? I hope and am inclined to believe that it will be for good. Was it Tennyson who wrote:
When shall all men's good Be each man's rule, and universal peace Shine like a shaft of light across the lane, And like a layer of beams athwart the sea?
What a beautiful thought! Can those who go to Washington make it more than a thought?
The conductor is calling:
"Los Angeles."
"Bye."
THE END.
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