A Man's World

III

It was when I was getting close to thirty-five that I first saw the name: Suzanne Trevier Martin – attorney and counsellor at law. We had heard rumors of women lawyers from the civil courts. But I think she was the first to invade the Tombs. It was Tim Leery, the doorman, of Part I, who called my attention to her.

"Say," he greeted me one morning about noon, "There's a fee-male lawyer here today – looking for you. And say – she's a peach!"

I do not know why I thought he was joking. I suppose I shared the comic paper idea that most professional women were pop-eyed and short-haired. Anyhow it was a definite surprise when I caught sight of her. Leery was pointing me out to her.

Yes. I am sure surprise was the chiefest element in the impression she made on me. Everything about her was different from what I expected of women. She was the most matter-of-fact looking person I have ever seen – and the most beautiful. I cannot describe her way of dressing, all that sticks in my mind is the crisp, white collar she wore. Somehow one's attention centered on that clean, orderly bit of linen. There was no suggestion of aping man-fashion about her, nor were there any frivolous tweedledees nor tweedledums. It was all as straightforward as that collar.

She had a mass of Titian red hair. A complexion so delicate that the sun had freckled it already in early spring. The lines of her face were altogether beautiful. Her mouth was firm and immobile. Her shifts of mood showed only in her eyes. They were always changing color, from deep tones of brown to a glowing chestnut almost as red as her hair. The way her head balanced on her neck, made me want to cheer. It seemed a victory for the race, that she – one of us – could carry her head so fearlessly.

"Here is an introduction," she said.

It was a letter from a young lawyer. The junior member of his firm, he was sometimes sent into the Tombs to defend the servants of their rich clients. I had often given him pointers on the practice of our courts, which differs materially from that of the civil courts. He asked the same courtesies for his friend, Miss Martin.

I felt with some embarrassment the amused stares of the crowded corridors.

"This isn't a very convenient place to talk," I said. "Let's go round to Philippe's and lunch."

As we walked downstairs, I sized her up as about twenty-five. I noted that the grace of her neck extended down her spine. I have never seen a straighter back. There was something definitely boyish in the way she walked, in her stride and the swing of her shoulders. This impression of boyishness was always coming and interfering with realization that she was a beautiful woman.

We found a quiet table at Philippe's and she explained her case. She was counsel for the Button-Hole Makers' Union. They were on strike and one of the girls had been arrested on the charge of assaulting a private policeman. The question at issue invoked the legality of picketing. If the girl had been within her rights in standing where she did, the watchman, who tried to drive her away, was guilty of assault. It was a case to fight out in the higher courts. The unions demanded a definite decision. Miss Martin wanted to have her client convicted, and still have grounds to take it up on appeal. It was simple and I had given her the necessary points before we had finished our coffee.

The very first sight of her in the Tombs had stirred me, as the first sight of no other woman had ever done. It was not so much a desire for personal possession as a vague feeling that the man to whom she gave her love would be happy above other men. In the back of my brain, as I sat talking to her, was a continual questioning. She had said she was a socialist. I saw that she had the fearless, open attitude to life, which is the hallmark of the revolutionists. I wondered if she had a lover. Was the friend, who had given her the introduction, the lucky man? What were her theories in such matters?

But if she made a more direct sensuous appeal to me than other women, to an even greater degree she seemed to ignore the possibility of such ideas being in my mind. I have never known even an ugly woman who was less coquettish. She was strangely aloof. She made the purely business side of our meeting dominate, did not seem to realize there might be a personal aspect. The way in which she made it quite impossible for me to suggest paying for her lunch was typical. She shook hands with me firmly, frankly, as a boy would with a man who had given him some slight help, and strode up the street to her office. I was surprised.

In and out of the Tombs, she walked for the next few weeks. Judge Ryan, before whom she tried her case, and who believed that all women should marry and keep indoors as soon after eighteen as a man would have them, was mightily exercised over her invasion.

"Damn her soul, Whitman," he said, "she isn't a woman – she's just brain and voice. She sits there before the court opens and looks like a woman – good-looking woman at that – then she gets up on her hind legs and talks. Hell! I forget she is a woman – forget she wears skirts. And, so help me God, there aren't a dozen men in the building who know as much law as she does. She's got the goods. That's the devil of it. You can't snub her. You can't treat her the way she deserves. You want to call her unwomanly and she won't let you remember she's a woman."

She had made Ryan, facing her from the bench, feel the same aloofness, she had impressed on me across the table at Philippe's. But if the judge found it impossible to snub her, it was just as impossible, I found, to be friendly with her. We had frequent encounters in the corridors. I frankly sought them, and she did so as frankly – when she wanted some information. Away from her, I thought of her as a desirable woman. Face to face, she forced me to consider her as a serious minded socialist.

Aside from the details of her case, we had only one talk. The second day she was at court she cross-questioned me on my politics. I had none. "Why not?" she demanded. She had all the narrow-minded prejudice which most socialists have towards the mere reformer, the believer in palliatives, the spreaders on of salve. Did I not realize the futility of such work as mine? I was more keenly aware of it than she. Well, why did not I go to the root of the matter? Why not attack the basic causes? I was not sure what they were. She was. Although she had not been in the Tombs as many days as I had years, she knew all about it. The whole problem of crime sprang from economic maladjustment. Socialism would cure it. It was all so beautifully simple! I have unspeakable admiration for such faith. It is the most wonderful thing in the world. But all I can do is to envy it. I cannot believe.

Her aloofness increased noticeably after she had sounded the depth of my unbelief. When the case was finished, she sought me out to thank me for the very real service I had rendered. Despite my intentions in the matter, her hand slipped out of mine quicker than I wished. I hoped to see her again. She was uncertain how soon, if ever, her work would bring her back to the Tombs. I suggested that I might call on her. She seemed really surprised.

"Why," she exclaimed; "thank you. But you know I'm very busy. I have five or six regular engagements a week – committees and all that. And this strike takes what time is left. I am too busy for the social game. I'm sorry. But we'll run into each other again some time. Goodbye. No end obliged."

It was the snub direct. Her friendship was only for those who saw the light. She had no time for outsiders, for "mere reformers."

She filled more of my mind after she was gone than in the few days of our intercourse. For the first time in my life romance laid hold on my imaginings. I am not sure whether it was real love or simply wounded amour propre. But I dreamed of all sorts of extravagant ways of winning her esteem and love – generally at the cost of my life. I was not nearly unhappy enough to want to die, but I got a keen, if somewhat lugubrious delight in picturing her kneeling at my bedside, realizing at last the mistake she had made in snubbing me – repenting it always through a barren, loveless life.

The memory I held of her was altogether admirable – the straight line of her back, the glorious poise of her head, the rich brown of eyes, her frank and boyish manner. But pride held me back from seeking her out. I knew a snub would be the result.

Once, a month or so later, I passed a street corner crowd, under a socialist banner. She was just getting up to speak. I walked a block out of my way for fear she would see me and think I was trying to renew our acquaintance. But I also was busy. Too busy to waste time over a phantom, gradually she sank back into a vaguer and vaguer might-have-been. A year later I ran across her name in the paper in connection with some strike. For a day or two her memory flared up again. That sentimental spasm I thought was the last of her. I was deep in proof-reading.

IV

That my book brought recognition from professional penologists was a surprise to me. I had written it with the intent of interesting laymen. But a German psychological journal gave it a long review. It was quickly translated into French and Italian. I was made contributing editor of "La revue penologique." Last of all the American Prison Society took notice of me and chose me as a delegate to the International Congress at Rome.

Europe never attracted me, and I doubt if I would have gone, except for the urgings of Norman and Ann. I was sea-sick for five days, and bored beyond words the rest of the way over. It rained so hard the day I spent in Naples that I got no good view of Vesuvius.

Arrived in Rome, I found that they had put down my name for the first day's program, and I spent the time, till the congress opened, in my room writing up my paper. I had chosen for my subject: "The Need of a New Terminology in the Study of Crime." More and more this reform seems imperative to me. The effort to express the modern attitude towards crime in the old phraseology is like putting new wine in old skins. Just as we no longer say that a man is "possessed of the devil," but use such newer words as "paranoia," "paresis" and so forth, we must give up such terms as "burglary in the second degree." It is a remnant of mediæval scholasticism and means nothing today. It is a dead concept of an act and gives no account of the live human being who is supposed to have committed it. "Murder," the code implies, "is always murder, just as oxygen is always oxygen." But while one atom of oxygen is exactly like every other, no two murderers are at all alike. Crime is infinitely complex. "Larceny" – a fixed and formal term – cannot describe the intricate reactions from the varied stimuli of environment, which lead a particular bunch of nerve cells to steal. We must turn our back on the abstract words of the ancient law books and develop a vocabulary which expresses actualities.

That first day of the congress, seemed to me the very apotheosis of absurd futility. Half a hundred delegates from all corners of the world assembled in one of the court rooms of the palace of justice. We were supposed to be serious, practical men, come together to devise means of improving the methods of combating crime. We sat for an hour and a half through tiresome, bombastic exchanges of international greetings. The election of a chairman, of honorary presidents and vice-presidents, of a real secretary and a host of honorary secretaries took up the rest of the morning. A nation's parliament could have organized in less time and we had only come together to exchange ideas, we had no power.

When we convened after lunch, I was called on. There were three delegates from England, one from Canada and another from the United States. The rest had only a long-distance knowledge of English. I have rarely felt more uncomfortably foolish than I did, reading my paper to that uncomprehending audience.

The first two to discuss my thesis were Germans. Neither had completely understood my argument, they attacked me with acrimony. The third speaker was an Italian, who shook his fist at me. I have not the faintest idea what he was talking about. Then one of the English delegation, a bishop, got up and said that it was well to have a note of humanism in our discussion, after all criminals were – or at least had been – men like us. As Archbishop Somebody had said on seeing a prisoner led out to execution – "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

Then a Frenchman, with carefully groomed beard and equally carefully groomed cynicism, said I was a sentimentalist. He told us that he was a "positivist." He referred frequently to Auguste Compte – a philosopher whom I had up till that moment always regarded very highly. My mawkishness he felt was a most regrettable incident in a scientific assembly. Criminology unless it could be reduced to an exact science like mineralogy or mathematics was no science at all. He ended up by telling us that he was glad to report that the sentimental objections to corporal punishment were rapidly dying out in France and that there was every prospect of the cat-o'-nine-tails being reintroduced into their prisons in the near future. What that had to do with my subject I could not see.

How to reply to such critics? It was not only the difficulty of language. Somehow I was oppressed with loneliness. I was a barbarian, an outlandish person among them. In their thoughts they were "officials," they were "pillars of society" – what Norman scornfully called "the best people." It was a stupid mistake which had brought me before them. They knew nothing about crime, except a jumble of words. They never would.

And so – being weary of soul – I said, that as far as I had understood, they were all against me except the gentleman from England. I wanted as far as possible to repudiate his attitude. I protested against the blasphemy of his archbishop. I was no churchman, but I could not find heart to blame the Deity for our outrageous human injustice. I was sorry that he believed in a God so immoral as to exercise special acts of grace to keep him and me out of prison. I felt that a better motto for prison reform would be – "There but for pure luck, go we."

This was taken as a witty sally by everyone but the English delegates who understood what I said and we adjourned to a state reception at the Quirinal; there was a dinner afterwards given by the Italian prison society. The congress reconvened the next day at two in the afternoon. The subject was "Prison Ventilation." I sneaked out and found my way to The Forum. There I encountered a congenial soul – a youthful guide who had learned to speak English in New York. We sat down on a piece of ancient Rome and he told me about his adventures in the new world.

"Ever arrested?" I asked.

"Twict."

"In the Tombs?"

"Sure," he said with a broad grin. "Fer a fight."

I engaged him for the rest of my stay in Rome. He led me to a little restaurant near-by and after supper we sat in the very top gallery of the Coliseum and talked about Mulberry Square. So I missed the dinner tendered us by the municipality.

The next day the great Lombroso was to discuss head measurements. Antonio and I visited the Vatican. He was an anti-clericalist and the indecent stories he told me about the dead popes, as he showed me their tombs in Saint Peter's were much more vivid than the sing-song guide book phrases he used in commenting on the wonder and the beauty of the place. He took me to supper with his family in a tenement district of Rome. So the "sights" I saw were not so much the pictures and the ruins as the souls of the down-trodden peasant folk bitter against church and state. I lost a chance – undoubtedly – to increase my meagre store of "culture," but I do not regret it.

My fellow delegate from America was shocked at my desertion of the congress. He thought I was in a pet over the reception given my paper and said it was not decent to stay away. So I went the next day and listened to a discussion on the advisability of introducing drugs into prison diet to reduce unpleasant nervous disorders among the inmates. Everyone seemed in favor of the proposition, the only opposition came from a realization of the expense involved. The chairman expressed the hope that some drug might yet be discovered which would be effective, and at the same time cheap.

When the congress was finished the delegates were taken as guests of the government to visit a model prison, recently opened in North Italy. Our inspection consisted of a hurried stroll through the cell-blocks and a banquet in the warden's palatial apartments. We drank several toasts to members of the royal family and then, someone proposed a bumper to the International Prison Congress. I noticed by chance that the bottle, from which a convict waiter filled my glass, was labelled, "Lacrimae Christi."

"Tears of Christ!" I said to my next neighbor. "It would be more fitting to drink this toast of the water in which Pilate washed his hands."

My neighbor was a Frenchman with a loud laugh – so the thoughtless jibe had to be repeated. The English delegate seized the opportunity to return my accusation of blasphemy. There was considerable angry comment. It was a regrettable incident, as it did no good.

The Hungarian government had also invited us to visit some of their blue-ribbon prisons. But in the railroad station at Milan, where we were waiting to take train for Trieste and Budapest, I heard the Chef de Gare call the Paris express. It came over me with a rush. I could get home a week earlier. Why waste more time with these barren old gentlemen? I bolted, had just time to rescue my baggage.

Arrived in Paris in the early morning, I drove at once to Cook's and reserved passage on the first boat home. As I was turning away from the steamship desk, I had to walk past the window where mail is distributed. I do not think I was consciously looking at the crowd of men and women who were waiting for letters, in fact I remember quite well that I was losing my temper over an effort to put a too large envelope into my pocket, but suddenly I saw Suzanne Martin's back. It was impossible to mistake it, or the glorious pile of hair above her slender neck.

I walked on, intending to hurry away. But I stopped at the door. I picked up one of those highly colored tourist pamphlets – I think it was an advertisement of a "Tour to Versailles in motor cars" – and over the top of it I watched Suzanne gradually approach the window, get her handful of letters, and sit down in one of the easy chairs to read them.

At last she finished with them and started towards the door. I wished that I had not waited, but was ashamed to let her see me run away. I became deeply interested in the little book. She would have to walk right past me but if she did not care to recognize well – she should not know that I had seen her.

V

"Why – hello – Mr. Whitman."

It was not till I heard her voice that I realized how much it mattered to me, whether she spoke or not. Somehow or other we got out of the door onto the Avenue de l'Opera.

"Which way are you going?" she asked.

"Nowhere in particular. May I walk along with you?"

So here I was in Paris walking beside Suzanne. I suppose it had been a beautiful day before – it was early June, but it had suddenly become resplendent. The day had begun to laugh. I found out that she was intending to spend several weeks in Paris, so I lied and said I also was there for a month. With selfish glee I learned that Suzanne was lonely. She was evidently glad to have some one to talk to. Afraid that if I did not keep busy some other way, I might shout, I launched into a whimsical account of the prison congress. This carried us as far as a bench in the garden of the Tuileries. And there some chance word showed her that this was my first visit to Paris, that I had arrived hardly an hour before we met.

"Oh!" she said, jumping up, "Then, the very first thing you must do, is to climb the tower of Notre Dame. That's the place to get your first look at Paris."

"Allons donc," I cried. I would have said the same if she had suggested the morgue.

I remember that, as we rode along, Suzanne pointed out various places of interest, but I doubt if my eyes went further afield than the gracious hand with which she pointed. Then suddenly we turned a corner and came out into the place before the cathedral. The charm of youth beside me was broken for a moment by the wonder of antiquity. How alive the old building seems with the spirits of the long dead men who built it! They say that Milan Cathedral is also Gothic. But my fellow delegate must have stood in my way. I had not seen it as for the first time I saw Notre Dame.

"You can look at the façade afterwards," Suzanne said – her voice breaking the spell. "The important thing is to get the view from the top first."

The twisting, worn stairs of the North Tower was one of the treasures of my memory. A strange impression – the thick masonry, our twinkling little tapers in the darkness, stray wisps of Hugo's romance and of even older stories, the beads of moisture on the stones, the chill dank breath of very-long-ago and dominating it all, Suzanne's two tiny and very modern tan shoes and little glimpses of her stockings. I remember the sudden glare of the first balcony. I caught a quick view down the river and wanted to stop. But Suzanne, who was "personally conducting" this tour, said we could climb higher. So we entered the darkness again and came at last to the top.

I could not tell you how Paris looks from the tower of Notre Dame. I only remember how Suzanne looked. The stiff climb had shortened her breath and heightened her color. The breeze caught a stray wisp of her hair and played delightful tricks with it. And how her eyes glowed with enthusiasm.

"This is my favorite spot on earth," she said. "It's the very center of civilization. From here you can see the birthplace of almost every idea which has benefited the race, the battle-fields where every human victory was won. See! Over there on the Mont Ste. Genevieve is where Abelard shattered mediævalism and commenced the reformation. And over there in the Latin Quarter is the oldest faculty of medicine in the world. It was in one of those houses on the hillside that men dared for the first time to study anatomy with a knife. And there – further to the west – is where Voltaire lived. Nearby is the house of Diderot, where the encyclopedists met to free the human mind. And here – on the other side of the river – is the Palais Royal. See the green clump of trees. Under one of them Camille Desmoulins jumped upon a chair and made the speech which overthrew the Bastille. And there – see the gold statue of victory above the housetops – that's all there is left of the grim old fortress. And so it goes. All the history of man's emancipation spread out before you in brick and mortar."