CHAPTER V.

When I awoke the next morning my mind was clear, and though the recollection of the fact that woman had forsaken man came back to me like the memory of a deeply painful blow, I was still enough like myself to assist Mr. Lister in the task of breakfast-getting with some show of cheerfulness. Breakfast was, however, with the exception of coffee, in the making of which Mr. Lister showed some skill, a repetition of the supper of the previous evening. That it was not again eaten from the original tin cans was, I remember, due to my calling Mr. Lister’s attention to the fact that it was said to be dangerous to eat food which had stood for even a brief period of time in open tin cans. This suggestion threw him back unwillingly upon the necessity of dish-washing, for he had to open fresh cans and empty the contents into dishes, which he procured from the pantry. I had observed before during my life that where men, under the stress of circumstances, had assumed the function of dish-washing their dish-cloths speedily took on a grotesque blackness that made them a positively fascinating study. Two or three times after this, in spite of the strange facts which were pressing upon my attention, I found myself absorbed in a kind of rapt contemplation of Mr. Lister’s dish-cloths.

While the meal was in progress I remember that I inquired of Mr. Lister how I could possibly pass the time till the ballots should be cast, for I was conscious of such a horror of home-sickness that I felt I must do something to divert my mind till the terrible suspense should be over. Among other things which I suggested at random, I spoke of visiting some club, as I presumed, without doubt, that there must be several in the town.

“My dear Mr. Carford,” said Mr. Lister looking at me sympathetically, “I fear you have only just begun to fathom the depth of the effect of this desolating and singular Strike, if you suppose that men’s clubs could possibly exist after woman had forsaken man as she has now done.”

“Clubs not exist!” I replied in astonishment. “I should suppose that they would be the only solace in this intolerable gloom.”

“I know,” said Mr. Lister, “that clubs drew men from their homes before the Strike began, and that they were therefore the source of some domestic trouble from woman’s natural jealousy of them. But this you must bear in mind was when the man who went to his club possessed a home made radiant by a patient, beautiful, subjugated woman who awaited his lordly pleasure. Man took the ownership of woman as a matter of course, a desirable and comforting thing to be sure, but still something that was always to be at his beck and call, and therefore a thing for which he was not called upon to make any sacrifice. But when all women, calling each other sisters, withdrew themselves utterly from men with the awful completeness which you now see, there was a fearful reaction. For days men shunned each other as if they were wild beasts, and the thought of assembling together for anything like social interchange, was simply intolerable. The club houses closed immediately.”

“But there are the theatres, are there not?”

“Unfortunately, no,” said Mr. Lister. “The theatres made a desperate effort to continue for a time, and even sought to carry on their dramas by having their male actors personate women. But all men fled from this hollow deceit as if it were a ghastly mockery, and the actors were soon stalking before empty seats. The theatres, too, closed.”

“But the churches,” I said, with a groan; “surely the churches are accessible?”

Mr. Lister shook his head. “I am sorry,” said he, “to have to deny you that last consolation. When the Strike began the churches were suddenly filled to overflowing by men who seldom or never went there before. They seemed to have an unreasoning instinct that the church might afford them some salutary consolation in their unexampled bereavement, but such did not prove to be the case. The truth was, that the ministers themselves felt as much as any class the deep reproach which woman’s action cast upon all mankind. They justly felt that teachers though they were, and exemplars though they were supposed to be, they had done even less than far less favoured men to lighten woman’s woes. Hence their perfunctory ministrations were without force, utterly inadequate, valueless, and comfortless. It was but a little while before they were feebly talking to empty pews. The churches closed. There are no assemblies of men of any kind except such as are for urging on the completion of the guarantee, and arranging for the casting of the ballots. This, as I told you, will take place the day after to-morrow. Till then I will spend as much time as possible with you, but I must now excuse myself as I have some clerical duties to perform in connection with the coming casting of the ballots.”

Having said this, Mr. Lister withdrew from the house, but before doing so he showed me into his well-filled library and promised to return at noon.

Left alone, I essayed to read a volume of new poems, but the face of a woman, not that of any particular woman whom I had known, but a typical face representing all women, hovered persistently, and with reproachful mien, between mine eyes and the page. I cast the book aside. I was strangely nervous. Presently the door-bell rang, and I sprang from my chair in unreasoning terror. For several moments I stood motionless in the centre of the room, muttering only, like Macbeth, “Silence that dreadful bell,” but at last arousing myself I went to the door. A boy stood there holding a bundle of papers under his arm, one of which he pertly extended toward me.

“Have a _Bitter Cry_, Mister?”

“A _Bitter Cry_!” said I petulantly, “what in Heaven’s name is that?”

The boy stared at me for a moment in great surprise, and then said:

“Why it is the paper which the women print every morning; just out, don’t yer know?”

“Yes, yes, to be sure,” said I, eagerly snatching at the paper which he held toward me. “Give me the _Bitter Cry_; it is the echo of my own soul.” The boy stared at me in irreverent wonder, but took the coin I gave him and dashed down the street, while I closed the door and sank into a chair to read. I absorbed rather than read the contents of this strange paper, and this was the first article upon which my eye fell in the _Bitter Cry_:

“TIMOTHY’S COMING.”

Considering the vast number of people who positively did not want little Timothy Totten, but who would have felt infinitely obliged to him if he had utterly stayed away, it is somewhat surprising that he should have ventured into this cold world.

In the first place, his once patient, much-enduring mother, on whose breast he lay alternately squalling and sleeping, cannot be said to have wanted him for she had already borne nine like him, and had long, long ago spent all of her beauty and most of her strength in bearing and caring for Timothy’s troublesome predecessors. On her part, then, it must be admitted at the outset, that the bearing of Timothy was simply a common example of the sublime and unsurpassable endurance of woman, combined with the stolid submission of a drudge who sees no escape from her lot. Indeed, the sentiments of Timothy’s mother in regard to having children had long ago come to be quite the reverse of those of the Bible Rachel. Instead of saying, “Give me children or I die,” the feelings of her heart on this subject, had they found any expression, through many wearisome years, would have taken this form: “Save me from undesired children or I die.” Certainly, whoever else in the wide world may have wanted Timothy, it was clear that his mother did not want him.

There is but little less doubt that Timothy’s coming was unwelcome to his father, although he observed it with his usual stolid indifference. He was a day-labourer, and already had so many children that he could not support them in anything like comfort or decency; and for Timothy to come and swell the number of gaping mouths, just when it was so difficult to get work, and labour was so cheap, was decidedly inconsiderate on his part and a downright piece of ill-luck. Then there would be some scanty clothing to be bought for Timothy, and possibly a doctor’s bill, and school taxes (provided Timothy had any schooling), and as all these things loomed up, in prospect, before Timothy’s father, he felt decidedly inhospitable toward Timothy, and as though, if it were possible, he would like to send him back where he came from with a surly note of rejection. Yes, nothing was plainer than that, so far as Timothy’s father was concerned, Timothy was not wanted. He was superfluous, or _de trop_, as the French say.

As Timothy’s parents clearly did not want him, neither can it be said that Timothy’s brothers and sisters wanted him. They always licked their plates and fingers very clean at their meagre table, and sighed ruefully for more, and had they in any way realized that their already too scanty rations were to be divided with this new-comer, they would have clamored louder than anybody against his coming. Timothy’s brothers and sisters, already poorly cared for, were evidently to gain nothing by his coming, therefore they could not possibly want him. He had better have stayed away so far as they were concerned.

Then there was a silent but general conviction on the part of the inhabitants of the town in which Timothy was born, that there were Tottens enough. Although they might not have held a town-meeting to take any steps to prevent the coming of Timothy, if they had had a foreknowledge of it, there is none the less doubt that they regarded his coming as something of a public calamity. They could not expect that Timothy, with his slender chances for education and moral training, would be any improvement on the other nine Tottens, and these had long been looked upon as a grievous infliction. All of the boys had been in the Reform School (the only schooling they ever had) and they were generally accredited with all the hen-roost robbing, watermelon thieving, and miscellaneous trouble-making which took place in the village. The overseer of the poor regarded them as a future inheritance, and even the Census Taker (although a stranger), when he visited the house, looked as though he thought there were too many of them. But perhaps his prejudice may have been owing to the fact that when he got up to wipe his pen Bill Totten moved his chair back a little, and when he sat down again it was not there.

In this swelling tide of remonstrance against the coming of Timothy, it cannot in justice be omitted that even the dogs and cats of his native village, as well as an ancient donkey who grazed upon the Common, would have loudly joined could they have had any intelligent sense of it. Nor would the very frogs in the adjacent marshes, already sorely stoned by Timothy’s brothers, have failed to add their dismal, croaking protest to the universal cry. To all these helpless creatures the coming of Timothy simply meant the advent of another tormentor. It was of course utterly impossible that they should want him.

Finally to add to this cloud of objectors to Timothy’s coming, a dry and hard-headed and terrible old man by the name of Malthus, had written a book on Population, in which he had proved by many stony facts and immutable figures, that Timothy was not wanted; that, in fact, the world would be greatly better off without him, and that he ought, by every reasonable means, to be discouraged from coming.

All scientific people had great respect for this book, so that if all the conditions had been understood, and a vote had been taken throughout the whole world as to whether Timothy should come or not, there is no doubt that there would have been an overwhelming, universal negative.

But in spite of this general, though silent protest, beginning with his own father and mother, and extending in larger and larger circles to society and the great public, and even including the mute sufferers among the beasts and birds and fishes, Timothy has come, and, as he has thus audaciously braved the public, and defied the very universe, as it were, he must smart for it. Of course he ought to smart for it, and happily his worst enemy could not wish him a greater punishment than that which will befall him. Indeed, we doubt not that if Timothy himself could see the stony path which lies before him, he would bitterly repent of having come, and would cry out as Cain did: “My punishment is greater than I can bear!”

In the first place, though the milk which he draws from his mother’s breast may taste sweet to him, there will be no love in his mother’s heart for him, but in its stead a dull sense of hopeless bitterness and abuse, of which, in spite of herself, Timothy will be the scape-goat. Her motherly nature, long deadened to patience and gentleness, will have left only harsh words for Timothy’s baby-fretfulness, and rude blows for his baby-mischievousness. Kisses and caresses, a mother’s yearning tenderness toward him, a mother’s guiding influence over him, a mother’s aspirations for him, these Timothy will never know. He will simply be sullenly and peevishly endured, so long as it would be a flagrant crime to expel him, and will be left to his own harmful devices as soon as possible. But then what business had Timothy to come? He was not wanted.

To his father, little, curious Timothy will simply be as one of the hens or pigs with which he plays around the back door, though of course of nothing like the same importance to the Totten household. Rough words, and blows unalternated by anything kindlier, rags and dirt, cold and hunger, will be his home associations, and his education will be gotten in the street. Brought up to no habits of settled industry, yet impelled to in some way feed fierce passions which have been trained to no other restraint than that of cruel want, what wonder that Timothy becomes the little wild beast which society so much dreaded, and which it was so fearfully interested to have kept back!

But Timothy grows up a predaceous, devouring creature, with life before him which he must get through in some way.

Happily for society, he may be fenced in by jails for a part of the time, and thus gotten rid of, but reappearing again at intervals with accumulated terrors, he pursues his predatory career until, his constitution too broken for active violence, he becomes an unsightly, malodorous, pestiferous tramp, and thus ends his short, eventful history,--a mournful example of retributive justice for coming where he was not wanted.

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