CHAPTER LI
These Little Ones
It was a long but easy journey down south to the Union Pacific, andfinally east to Chicago. And when the young couple, whom the passengerswatched with much interest, arrived at the great city, they found half adozen men and women of importance awaiting them at the Union Station,with more servants to assist them than they had pieces of luggage. Mr.and Mrs. Hopkins, with their own carriage, were in attendance to offerthe hospitality of their house to the Rev. James Hartigan and his bride.It was a long drive to Englewood; but everything that kind friends,clear skies, and human forethought could do to make it pleasant wasfully done. For the time being, they were installed in the Hopkinsmansion--a veritable palace--and for the first time Jim had the chanceto learn how the rich folk really live. While it was intenselyinteresting, he was eager to see the field of his future work. Belle,however, agreed with their host and hostess that it would be worth whileto see a little of Chicago first.
The stockyards are either fascinating or intensely disgusting. TheHartigans had their fill of them in five minutes. The Art Institute hadnot yet been built, but there were museums and galleries and good musicin many places. Lincoln Park and the great rolling, gusty lake werepleasant to behold; but to Jim, the biggest thing of all--the thing ofwhich the buildings and the crowds were mere manifestations--was thevast concentration of human life, strife, and emotion--the throb andcompulsion of this, the one great heart of the West.
There was dirt in the street everywhere; there were hideous buildingsand disgusting vulgarities on every side, and crime in view on nearlyevery corner; but still one had to feel that this was the vital spot,this the great blood centre of a nation, young, but boiling with energy,boundless in promise--a city with a vital fire in its heart that wouldone day burn the filth and dross away and show the world the dream ofthe noblest dreamers all come true--established, gigantic, magnificent.There is thrill and inspiration--simple, natural, and earthy--in theCanyon where the Cheyenne cut the hills; but this was a different thrillthat slowly grew to a rumble in Jim's heart as he felt the currentfloods of mind, of life, of sin, of hope that flowed from a millionsprings in that deep Wabash Canyon that carved in twain the coming cityof ten million hopes that are sprung from the drifted ashes of a hundredmillion black and burnt despairs.
Hartigan had ever been a man of the saddle and the open field; butgazing from the top of that tall tower above the station, sensing theteeming life, the sullen roar, far below, he glimpsed another world--abetter thing, for it was bigger--which, in its folded mantle, held theunborn parent, the gentler-born parent, of the mighty change--theblessed cleanup that every wise man prays for and works to bring about.
What place were they to occupy in this maelstrom? Two ways wereopen--one, to dwell in the dungeons and the horrors as poor among thepoor; the other, to come as different beings--as frequent visitors--fromanother world. Jim, with his whole-souled abandon, was for the former;but Belle thought that all he would gain in that way would be more thanoffset by loss of touch with the other world. At that time those twoworlds were at war and she contended that his place was to stand betweenthe world of power and the world of need.
Their compromise was a little flat on the second floor of a house inEnglewood, near enough to the rolling Lake to afford a glimpse of it andconvenient to the open stretch that is now the famous Jackson Park.Here, with pretty rugs and curtains and pictures of horses and hills,they lined the home nest and gathered the best thoughts of the livesthey had lived. Here at all times they could come assured of peace andrest.
Then came the meeting with the Board of Deacons, the preliminary visitsto the field of work, where the streets were full of misery and the slumlife rampant. A few short blocks away was another world--a world ofpalaces. Jim had never before seen massed misery; he had never beforeseen profligate luxury, and the shock of contrast brought to him thesudden, overwhelming thought: "These people don't want preaching, theywant fair play. This is not a religious question, it is an economicquestion." And in a flash: "The religious questions _are_ economicquestions," and all the seemingly wild utterances of old Jack Shivescame back, like a sudden overwhelming flood at the breaking of a dam. Inan instant he was staggering among the ruins of all in religious thoughtthat he had held holy.
When he reached their apartment that evening he was in a distraughtcondition. For some time he paced up and down. At last he said: "I mustgo out, Belle. I must walk alone." He spoke with intense emotion. Helonged for his mountain; there was but one thing like it near--themighty, moving lake. He put on his hat and strode away. Belle wanted togo with him, but he had not asked her; her instinct also said "no";besides, there was the physical impossibility of walking with him whenhe went so striding. She sat down in the dusk to wonder--to wait.
He went to the lake shore. A heavy gale was blowing from the north andthe lake was a wild waste. It touched him as the sage plains did; andthe rough wind helped him by driving away all other folk afoot.Northward he went, feeling, but seeing nothing, of the rolling waters.Jack Shives with his caustic words came back to mind: "It's their'fore-God duty to steal if their babies are hungry and they can't feedthem any other way." Jim had never seen these things before; now theywere the whole world; he had seen nothing else these slumming days. Hisspiritual ferment was such that, one by one, all the texts he had readcame back as commentaries on this new world of terror. He recalled thewords of the Master: "Your Heavenly Father knoweth ye have need of thesethings"; the fearful doom of those that "offend these little ones"; thestrict injunction to divide with the needy and care for the helpless;and again, the words, "The Kingdom of heaven is within you"--not in avague, unplaced world after death, but here, now--and those who thoughtthat, by placating the custodians of costly edifices, they were layingup "treasure in heaven" were blindly going to destruction.
He strode in the night with his brain awhirl. The old texts held for himsome new power: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,and all these things shall be added into you"; and again, "The kingdomof heaven is within you"; "Sell all that thou hast and give to thepoor." In vain he sought for inspired words that would reestablish thehappy land beyond the grave that his teachers had ever pictured in setphrase. Yet every word of the Master pointed the other way. "_Here_";"_now_"; and "_first within_" was the kingdom. And the hollowness of allthe rich man's preachment--that the poor must suffer patiently in hopeof a reward beyond the grave--was more and more a hideous stratagem asin his mind arose together two portrait types: the pinched, sullen,suffering face of the slums and the bloated, evil face to be found onthe boulevard.
The mockery of it horrified as the immensity of it all swamped him. Hehad no mind, no equipment, for the subtleties of theology, and his headwas a whirl of maddening contradictions, till the memory of his mother'ssimple devotion came like a cooling drink in his fever: "Never mindtrying to reason it all out; you can't do it; no one can. Only ask whatwould the Master have done?" Yes, that was easy. "Feed the hungry,clothe the naked, visit the sick"; and turning, he wheeled homeward. Theupheaval of all foundations seemed less dreadful. He could not expect toreason it all out. It was enough to do as the Master would have done;and, whether it was the feeding of the multitude, the healing of thelepers, the gentleness to the woman taken in adultery, or the helping ofthe man who fell among thieves, there was no doctrine, nopreaching--only kindness shown as sympathy and physical help in theirtroubles, here and now. The words of another childhood friend came backto him--those of Fighting Bill Kenna. He used to say, "I don't care adom what he is, if he's a good neighbour." Yet the neighbour in questionwas a papist and they were kind and friendly every day of the year,except on those two set apart by the devil to breed hate. Kenna wasright where his heart led him and wrong where his creed was guide.
Hartigan could not have told why he went alone on that walk. He onlyknew that in this crisis something cried out in him to be alone with thesimple big things. Why should the worldly-wise companion he had chosenbe l
eft out? He didn't know; he only felt that he wanted no worldlywisdom now. He wished to face the judgment day in his soul all alone. Hewould not have done so a year before; but the Angel of Destiny had ledon an upward trail and now he was brought aside to the edge so that hemight look over, and down, and know that he was climbing.
* * * * *
Belle met him at the door. Her face was anxious. But his look reassuredher. He took her on his knees as one might lift a child and, sittingwith his arm around her and gazing far away, he said: "I had alandslide, Belle. All my church thought and training were swept away ina moment. I was floundering, overwhelmed in the ruin, when I found abig, solid, immovable rock on which I could build again. It was not theChurch, it was my mother gave it to me. She used to say: 'Don't try toreason it all out; no one can. Only try to do as the Master would do';what that is we are not always sure; but one who followed Him has toldus, 'Keep cool and kind and you won't go far astray.'"
She looked into his face and saw something that she had never seen therebefore. The thought that flashed through her mind was of Moses and howhis countenance showed that a little while before he had talked withGod. She was awed by this new something he had taken on; and herinstinct hushed the query that arose within her. She only gripped hishand a little and looking far away, said slowly: "There are times whenHe comes to talk with His own. I think he wanted to walk with you aloneby the lake and talk, as He one time walked with His men on the shore ofGalilee."
"My mind is clear now, Belle," he continued, "if these people want me tobegin here merely as orthodox pulpit preacher, I must give up the post.That is what I want to be, but this is not the time or place for it. If,on the other hand, they will let me try to help those who need help, andin the form in which they need it--well and good; I will do my best tounderstand and meet the problems. But we must at once have a clearunderstanding."
She put her arms about him and after a little silence said: "I am withyou to the finish, Jim. I know you have received a message and haveguidance as to how it should be delivered."
It was in the little flat, with sagebrush in the vases, that theythought it out, and reached a solution that was the middle of the road.The first presentation of his new understanding Jim made to the Board ofDeacons two days later. He said:
"When a man is swimming for his life, he does not want to discusspolitics. When a man's children are hungry, he can't be expected torespect the law that prevents him from feeding them. When a man has noproperty, you needn't look to him for a fine understanding of the lawsof property. When a man has no chance for lawful pleasures in life, hecannot be blamed much for taking any kind that comes within reach. Whena man's body is starved, cold, and tormented, he is not going to botherabout creeds that are supposed to guide his soul."
"All of which we freely admit," said Mr. Hopkins, with characteristicgravity. "The problems that you name are very real and grave, but theyare the problems of the nation. Rest assured that every man of force inAmerica to-day is aware of these things, and is doing all he can to meetthem squarely. Moreover, they are being met with success--slow, butcontinued success.
"Are you prepared to outline the plan by which you would contribute tothe local solution of these national problems?"
Yes, Hartigan had it there on paper. "I must approach these peoplethrough the things which they know they need. They don't feel any needof a church, but they do feel the need of a comfortable meeting placewhere the wholesome love of human society may be gratified. Their livesare devoid of pleasure, except of the worst kinds. This is not choice,but is forced on them; there is not a man, woman or child among themthat does not--sometimes, at least--hunger for better things--that wouldnot enjoy the things that you enjoy, if they had the chance. I wantharmless pleasures in abundance put within their reach.
"Man is an animal before he is a soul; so I would begin by providing thethings needful for a body. All men glory in physical prowess; thereforeI want a gymnasium, and with it, the natural accompaniments of bathhouse and swimming tank. In short, I don't want a church; I want anup-to-date People's Club, with a place for all and a welcome for all."
The deacons sat back and gazed at one another. "Well," said DeaconStarbuck, president of the Stock Bank, "you surely have a clear-thinkingbusiness head among your gifts."
There was a distinct split in the views of the Board. The older menobjected that this was an organization for propagating the Gospel ofChrist, not for solving economic problems, and proved with manyScripture texts that we must "first of all seek the Kingdom of God andHis righteousness," after having secured which, the rest would follow.
But the younger men took Hartigan's view that it was no time to talkpolitics to a man when he was swimming for his life. Fortunately,Hopkins was able to stave off action, pending a fuller discussion, andbrought that on at once.
"Let us understand. Is the club to be a charity, a benevolence, or abusiness proposition--that is, a free gift, a partly supportedinstitution, or a dollar-for-dollar bargain?"
The older men believed in charity. Jim opposed it as wrong in principle.As a business proposition it was hopeless, at present; so he definitelylabelled it a "benevolence."
"All right," said Hopkins, "now how much money do you want, and how longto make good?"
Again Jim referred to the paper in his hand.
"I want twenty-five thousand dollars cash to provide and equip atemporary building; I want five thousand a year to run it, and I wantone thousand dollars a year salary paid to my wife, who is with me inall things, and will give all her time to it. I want three years to makegood, that is to make a noticeable reduction in drink and crime, whichis the same thing, and this we shall gauge by the police records. Bythat time I shall have fifteen hundred families in touch with the club,paying dues to it. I shall stand or fall by the result. If I satisfyyou, I shall ask for a hundred-thousand-dollar building at the end ofthat time."
"You say nothing about street sermons," said a plaintive old gentlemanwith a long white beard and the liquid eyes of an exhorter.
"No, not one. I don't want them. I can work better indoors."
The president said, "Well, Mr. Hartigan, perhaps it would be well foryou to retire, in order that we may freely discuss your plan. As youseem to have it on paper, would you mind leaving the document?" Jimhesitated, glanced at it, then handed it to Mr. Hopkins. It was all in awoman's hand.
In fifteen minutes, Jim was summoned to learn the decision. Theyaccepted, not unanimously, but they accepted his entire proposition,with the exception of one item; they would not pay salary to orofficially recognize his wife. It was a bitter pill, and Jim's eyes werebrimming with tears and his face flushed at the injustice when he wenthome to tell her. Poor little woman! Her lips tightened a trifle, butshe said: "Never mind, I'll work for it just the same. I'm afraid theyare still in the Dark Ages; but the light will come."