Books: Lifted Masks
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Susan Glaspell >> Lifted Masks
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The man just sat there, staring.
"Well," the boy took it up defiantly, "why not?"
And then he moved, laid a not quite steady hand out upon the table.
"My boy, you're not well. You've studied too hard. Now brace
yourself up for to-night, and then we'll go down home and fix you
up. What you need, Fritz," he said, trying to laugh, "is the
hayfield."
"You're not _seeing_ it!" The boy pushed back his chair and
began moving about the room. "The only way I can brace myself up for
to-night is to get so mad--father, usually you see things so easily!
Don't you understand? It was my chance, my one moment, my time to
strike. It will be years before I get such a hearing again. You see,
father, the thing will be printed, and the men I want to have hear
it, the men who _own this State_, will be there. One of them is
to preside. And the story of it, the worth of it, to them, is that
I'm your son. You see, after all," he seized at this wildly, "I'm
getting my start on the fact that I'm your son."
"Go on," said the man; the brown of his wind-beaten face had yielded
to a tinge of grey. "Just what is it you are going to say?"
"I call it 'The New America,' a lot of this talk about doing things,
the glory of industrial America, the true Americans the men of
constructive genius, the patriotism of railroad and factory
building, a eulogy of railroad officials and corporation
presidents," he rushed on with a laugh. "Singing the song of
Capital. Father, can't you see _why?_"
The old man had risen. "Tell me this," he said. "None of it matters
much, if you just tell me this: You _believe_ these things?
You've thought it all out for yourself--and you _feel_ that
way? You're honest, aren't you, Fritz?" He put that last in a
whisper.
The boy made no reply; after a minute the man sank back to his
chair. The years seemed coming to him with the minutes.
Fred was leaning against the wall. "Father," he said at last, "I
hope you'll let me be a little roundabout. It's only fair to me to
let me ramble on a little. I've got to put it all right before you
or--or--You know, dad,"--he came back to his place by the table,
"the first thing I remember very clearly is those men, your party
managers, coming down to the farm one time and asking you to run for
Governor. How many times is it you've run for Governor, father?" He
put the question slowly.
"Five," said the man heavily.
"I don't know which time this was; but you didn't want to. You were
sorry when you saw them coming. I heard some of the talk. You talked
about your farm, what you wanted to do that summer, how you couldn't
afford the time or the money. They argued that you owed it to the
party--they always got you there; how no other man could hold down
majorities as you could--a man like you giving the best years of his
life to holding down majorities! They said you were the one man
against whom no personal attack could be made. And when there was so
much to fight, anyway--oh, I know that speech by heart! They've made
great capital of your honesty and your clean life. In fact, they've
held that up as a curtain behind which a great many things could go
on. Oh, _you_ didn't know about them; you were out in front of
the curtain, but I haven't lived in this town without finding out
that they needed your integrity and your clean record pretty bad!
"That was out on the side porch. Mother had brought out some
buttermilk, and they drank it while they talked. You put up a good
fight. Your time was money to you at that time of year; a man
shouldn't neglect his farm--but you never yet could hold out against
that 'needing-you' kind of talk. They knew there was no chance for
your election. You knew it. But it takes a man of just your grit to
put any snap into a hopeless campaign.
"Mother cried when you went to drive them back to town. You see, I
remember all those things. She told about how hard you would work,
and how it would do no good--that the State belonged to the other
party. She talked about the farm, too, and the addition she had
wanted for the house, and how now she wouldn't have it. Mother felt
pretty bad that night. She's gone through a lot of those times."
There was a silence.
"You were away a lot that summer, and all fall. You looked pretty
well used up when you came home, but you said that you had held down
majorities splendidly."
Again there was silence. It was the silences that seemed to be
saying the most.
"You had one term in Congress--that's the only thing you ever had.
Then you did so much that they concentrated in your district and saw
to it that you never got back. Julius Caesar couldn't have been
elected again," he laughed harshly.
"Father," the boy went on, after a pause, "you asked me if I were
honest. There are two kinds of honesty. The primitive kind--like
yours--and then the kind you develop for yourself. Do I believe the
things I'm going to say to-night? No--not now. But I'll believe them
more after I've heard the applause I'm sure to get. I'll believe
them still more after I've had my first case thrown to me by our
railroad friends who own this State. More and more after I've said
them over in campaigning next fall, and pretty soon I'll be so sure
I believe them that I really will believe them--and that," he
concluded, flippantly, "is the new brand of American honesty. Why,
any smart man can persuade himself he's not a hypocrite!"
"My _God!_" it wrenched from the man. "_This?_ If you'd
stolen money--killed a man--but hypocrisy, cant--the very thing I've
fought hardest, hated most! You lived all your life with me to learn
_this?_"
"I lived all my life with you to learn what pays, and what doesn't.
I lived all my life with you to learn from failure the value of
success."
"I never was sure I was a failure until this hour."
"Father! Can't you see--"
"Oh, don't _talk_ to me!" cried the old man, rising, reaching
out his fist as though he would strike him. "Son of mine sitting
there telling me he is fixing up a brand of honesty for himself!"
The boy grew quieter as self-restraint left his father. "I mean
that--just that," he said at last. "Let a man either give or get. If
he gives, let it be to the real thing. There are two Americas. The
America of you dreamers--and then the real America. Yours is an
idea--an idea quite as much as an ideal. I don't think you have the
slightest comprehension of how far apart it is from the real
America. The people who dream of it over in Europe are a great deal
nearer it than you people who work for it here. Father, the spirit
of this country flows in a strong, swift, resistless current. You
never got into it at all. Your kind of idealists influence it about
as much--about as much as red lights burned on the banks of the
great river would influence the current of that river. You're not
_of_ it. You came here, throbbing with the love for America;
and with your ideal America you've fought the real, and you've
worked and you've believed and you've sacrificed. Father, _what's
the use?_ In this State, anyway, it's hopeless. It has been so
through your lifetime; it will be through mine."
The man sat looking at him. He felt that he should say something,
but the words did not come--held back, perhaps, by a sense of their
uselessness. It was not so much what Fred said as it was the look in
his eyes as he said it. There was nothing impetuous or youthful
about that look, nothing to be laughed at or argued away. He had
always felt that Fred had a mind which saw things straight, saw them
in their right relations, and at that moment he had no words to
plead for what Fred called the America of the dreamers.
"I'm of the second generation, dad," the boy went on, at length,
"and the second generation has an ideal of its own, and that ideal
is Success. It took us these forty years to come to understand the
spirit of America. You were a dreamer who loved America. I'm an
American. We've translated democracy and brotherhood and equality
into enterprise and opportunity and success--and that's getting
Americanised. Now, father," he sought refuge in the tone of
every-day things, "you'll get used to it--won't you? I don't expect
you to feel very good about it, but you aren't going to be broken up
about it--are you? After all, father," laughing and moving about as
if to break the seriousness of things, "there's nothing criminal
about being one of the other fellows--is there? Just remember that
there _are_ folks who even think it's respectable!" The father
had risen and picked up his hat. "No, Fred," he said, with a sadness
in which there was great dignity, "there is nothing criminal in it
if a man's conviction sends him that way. But to me there is
something--something too sad for words in a man's selling his own
soul."
"Father! How extravagant! _Why_ is it selling one's soul to sit
down and figure out what's the best thing to do?" He hesitated,
hating to add hurt to hurt, not wanting to say that his father's
fight should have been with the revolutionists, that his life was
ineffective because, seeing his dream from within a dream, his
thinking had been muddled. He only said: "As I say, father, it's a
question of giving or getting. I couldn't even give in your way. And
I've seen enough of giving to want a taste of getting. I want to
make things go--and I see my chance. Why father," he laughed, trying
to turn it, "there's nothing so American as wanting to make things
_go_."
He looked at him for a long minute. "My boy," he said, "I fear you
are becoming so American that I am losing you."
"Father," the boy pleaded, affectionately, "now don't--"
The old man held up his hand. "You've tried to make me understand
it," he said, "and succeeded. You can't complain of the way you've
succeeded. I don't know why I don't argue with you--plead; there are
things I could say--should say, perhaps--but something assures me it
would be useless. I feel a good many years older than I did when I
came into this room, but the reason for it is not that you're
joining the other party. You know what I think of the men who
control this State, the men with whom you desire to cast your lot,
but I trust the years I've spent fighting them haven't made a bigot
of me. It's not joining their party--it's _using_ it--makes
this the hardest thing I've been called upon to meet."
"Father, don't look like that! How do you think I am going to get up
and speak tonight with _that_ face before me?"
"You didn't think, did you," the man laughed bitterly, "that I would
inspire you to your effort?"
The boy stood looking at his father, a strange new fire in his eyes.
"Yes," he said, quietly, tenderly, "you will inspire me. When I get
up before those men tonight I'm going to see the picture of that boy
straining for his first glimpse of New York Harbour. I'm going to
think for just a minute of the things that boy brought with
him--things he has never lost. And then I'll see you as you stand
here now---it will be enough. What I need to do is to get mad. If I
falter I'll just think of some of those times when you came home
from your campaigns--how you looked--what you said. It will bring
the inspiration. Father, I figure it out like this. We're going to
get it back. We're going to get what's coming to us. There's another
America than the America of you dreamers. To yours you have given;
from mine I will get. And the irony of it--don't think I don't see
the irony of it--is that I will be called the real American. Do you
know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make the railroads of this
State--oh, it sounds like schoolboy talk, but just give me a little
time--I'm going to make the railroads of this State pay off every
cent of that mortgage on your farm! Father," he finished,
impetuously, in a last appeal, "you're broken up now, disappointed,
but would you honestly want me to travel the road you've traveled?"
"My boy," answered the old man, and the tears came with it, "I
wanted you to travel the road of an honest man."
Herman Beckman did not go to the commencement exercises that night.
There was no train home until morning, so he had the night to spend
in town. He was alone, for his friends assumed that he would be out
at the university. But he preferred being alone.
He sat in his room at the hotel, reading. And he could read. Years
of discipline stood him in good stead now. His life had taught him
to read anywhere, at any time. He had never permitted himself the
luxury of not being "in the mood." It was only the men who had gone
to college who could do that. He _had_ to read. He always
carried some little book with him, for how did a man know that he
might not have to wait an hour for a train somewhere? The man had a
simple-minded veneration for knowledge. He wanted to know about
things. And he had never learned to pretend that he didn't want to
know. He quite lacked the modern art of flippancy. He believed in
great books.
And so on the night that his son was being graduated from college he
sat in his room at the hotel--cheap room in a mediocre hotel; he had
never learned to feel at home in the rich ones--reading Marcus
Aurelius. But his hand as he turned the pages trembled as the hand
of a very old man. At midnight some reporters came in to ask him
what he thought of his son's oration. They wanted a statement from
him.
He told them that he had never believed the sins of a parent should
be visited on a child, and that it was even so with the thought. He
had always contended that a man should do his own thinking. The
contention applied to his son.
"Gamey old brute!" was what one of the reporters said in the
elevator.
He could not read Marcus Aurelius after that. He went to bed, but he
did not sleep. Many things passed before him. His anticipations, his
dreams for Fritz, had brought the warmest pleasure of his stern,
unrelaxing life. There was a great emptiness tonight. What was a man
to turn to, think about, when he seemed stripped, not only of the
future, but of the past? He seemed called upon to readjust the whole
of his life, giving up that which he had held dearest. What was
left? Daylight found him turning it over and over.
In the morning he went home. He got away without seeing any of his
friends.
He did not try to read this morning; somehow it seemed there was no
use in trying to read any more. He watched the country through which
they were passing, thinking of the hundreds of times he had ridden
over it in campaigning. He wondered, vaguely, just how much money he
had spent on railroad fare--he had never accepted mileage. Fred's
"What's the use?" kept ringing in his ears. There was something
about that phrase which made one feel very tired and old. It even
seemed there was no use looking out to see how the crops were
getting on. _What's the use? What's the use?_ Was that a phrase
one learned in college?
There had been two things to tell "mother" that night. The first was
that he had stopped in town and told Claus Hansen he could have that
south hundred and sixty he had been wanting for two years.
It was not easy to tell the woman who had worked shoulder to
shoulder with him for thirty years, the woman who during those years
had risen with him in the early morning and worked with him until
darkness rescued the weary bodies, that in their old age they must
surrender the fruit of their toil. They would have left just what
they had started with. They had just held their own.
Coming down on the train he had made up his mind that if Hansen were
in town he would tell him that he could have the land. He felt so
very tired and old, so bowed down with Fred's "What's the use?" that
he saw that he himself would never get the mortgage paid off. And
Fred had said something about making the railroads pay it. He did
not know just how the boy figured that out--indeed, he was getting a
little dazed about the whole thing--but if Fritz had any idea of
having the railroads pay off the mortgage on _his_ farm--he
couldn't forget how the boy looked when he said it, face white, eyes
burning--he would see to it right now that there was no chance of
that.
He tried not to look at the land as he drove past it on the way
home. He wondered just how much campaign literature it had paid for.
He wondered if he would ever get used to seeing Claus Hansen putting
up his hay over there in that field.
He had felt so badly about telling mother that he told it very
bluntly. And because he felt so sorry for her he said not one kind
word, but just sat quiet, looking the other way.
She was clearing off the table. He heard her scraping out the potato
dish with great care. Then she was coming over to him. She came
awkwardly, hesitatingly--her life had not schooled her in meeting
emotional moments beautifully--but she laid her hand upon him,
patted him on the shoulder as one would a child. "Never mind,
papa--never you mind. It will make it easier for us. There's enough
left--and it will make it easier. We're getting on--we're--" There
she broke off abruptly into a vigorous scolding of the dog, who was
lifting covetous nostrils to a piece of meat.
That was all. And there was no woman in the country had worked
harder. And Martha was ambitious; she liked land, and she did not
like Claus Hansen's wife.
Yes, he had had a good wife.
Then there was that other thing to tell her--about Fritz. That was
harder.
Mother had not gone up to the city to hear Fritz "speak" because her
feet were bothering her, and she could not wear her shoes. He had
had a vague idea of how disappointed she was, though she had said
very little about it. Martha never had been one to say much about
things. When he came back, of course she had wanted to know all
about it, and he had put her off. Now he had to tell her.
It was much harder; and in the telling of it he broke down.
This time she did not come over and pat his shoulder. Perhaps Martha
knew--likely she had never heard the word intuition, but, anyway,
she knew--that it was beyond that.
It seemed difficult for her to comprehend. She was bewildered to
find that Fritz could change parties all in a minute. She seemed to
grasp, first of all, that it was disrespectful to his father. Some
boys at school had been putting notions into his head.
But gradually she began to see it. Fritz wanted to make money. Fritz
wanted to have it easier. And the other people did "have it easier."
It divided her feeling: sorry and indignant for the father, secretly
glad and relieved for the boy. "He will have it easier than we had
it, papa," she said at the last. "But it was not right of Fritz,"
she concluded, vaguely but severely.
As she washed the dishes Martha was thinking that likely Fritz's
wife would have a hired girl.
Then Martha went up to bed. He said that he would come in a few
minutes, but many minutes went by while he sat out on the side porch
trying to think it out.
The moon was shining brightly down on that hundred and sixty which
Claus Hansen was to have. And the moon, too, seemed to be saying:
"What's the use?"
Well, what _was_ the use? Perhaps, after all, the boy was
right. What had it all amounted to? What was there left? What had he
done?
Two Americas, Fred had said, and his but the America of the
dreamers. He had always thought that he was fighting for the real.
And now Fred said that he had never become an American at all.
From the time he was twelve years old he had wanted to be an
American. A queer old man back in the German village--an old man, he
recalled strangely now, who had never been in America--told him
about it. He told how all men were brothers in America, how the poor
and the rich loved each other--indeed, how there were no poor and
rich at all, but the same chance for every man who would work. He
told about the marvellous resources of that distant America--gold in
the earth, which men were free to go and get, hundreds upon hundreds
of miles of untouched forests and great rivers--all for men to use,
great cities no older than the men who were in them, which men at
that present moment were _making_--every man his equal chance.
He told of rich land which a man could have for nothing, which would
be _his_, if he would but go and work upon it. In the heart of
the little German boy there was kindled then a fire which the years
had never put out. His cheeks grew red, his eyes bright and very
deep as he listened to the story. He went home that night and
dreamed of going to America. And through the years of his boyhood,
penny by penny, he saved his money for America. It was his dream. It
was the passion of his life. More plainly than the events of
yesterday, he remembered his first glimpse of those wonderful
shores--the lump in his throat, the passionate excitement, the
uplift. Leaning over the railing of his boat, staring, searching,
penetrating, worshipping, he lifted up his heart and sent out his
pledge of allegiance to the new land. How he would love America,
work for it, be true to it!
He had three dollars and sixty cents in his pocket when he stepped
upon American soil. He wondered if any man had ever felt richer. For
had he not reached the land where there was an equal chance for
every man who would work, where men loved each other as brothers,
and where the earth itself was so rich and so gracious in its
offerings?
The old man crossed one leg over the other--slowly, stiffly. It made
him tired and stiff now just to think of the work he had done
between that day and this.
But there was something which he had always had--that something was
_his_ America. That had never wavered, though he soon learned
that between it and realities were many things which were wrong and
unfortunate. With the whole force and passion of his nature, with
all his single mindedness--would some call it simple mindedness?--he
threw himself into the fight against those things which were
blurring men's vision of his America. No work, no sacrifice was too
great, for America had enemies who called themselves friends, men
who were striking heavy blows at that equal chance for every man.
When he failed, it was because he did not know enough; he must work,
he must study, he must think, in order to make more real to other
men the America which was in his heart. He must fight for it because
it was his.
And now it seemed that the end had come; he was old, he was tired,
he was not sure. Claus Hansen would have his land and his son would
join hands with the things which he had spent his life in fighting.
And far deeper and sadder and more bitter than that, he had not
transmitted the America of his heart even to his own son. He was not
leaving someone to fight for it in his stead, to win where he had
failed. Fred saw in it but a place for gain. "I lived all my life
with you to learn from failure the value of success." That was what
he had given to his boy. Yes, that was what he had bequeathed to
America. Could the failure, the futility of his life be more clearly
revealed?
Twice Martha had called to him, but still he sat, smoking, thinking.
There was much to think about to-night.
Finally, it was not thought, but visions. Too tired for conscious
thinking, he gave himself up to what came--Fred's America, his
America, the America of the dreamers--and the things which stood
between. The America of the future---what would that America be?
At the last, taking form from many things which came and went,
shaping itself slowly, form giving place to new form, he seemed to
see it grow. Out beyond that land Claus Hansen was to have, a long
way off, there rose the vision of the America of the future--an
America of realities, and yet an America of dreams; for the dreamers
had become the realists---or was it that the realists had become
dreamers? In the manifold forms taken on and cast aside destroying
dualism had made way for the strength and the dignity and harmony of
unity. He watched it as breathlessly, as yearningly, as the
nineteen-year-old boy had watched the other America taking shape in
the distance some forty years before. "How did you come?" he
whispered. "What are you?"
And the voice of that real America seemed to answer: "I came because
for a long-enough time there were enough men who held me in their
hearts. I came because there were men who never gave me up. I was
won by men who believed that they had failed."
Again there was a lump in his throat--once more an exultation
flooded all his being. For to the old man--tired, stiff, smitten
though he had been, there came again that same uplift which long
before had come to the boy. Was there not here an answer to "What's
the use?" For he would leave America as he came to it--loving it,
believing in it. What were the work and the failure of a lifetime
when there was something in his heart which was his? Should he say
that he had fought in vain when he had kept it for himself? It was
as real, as wonderful--yes as inevitable, as it had been forty years
before. Realities had taken his land, his career, his hopes for the
boy. But realities had not stripped him of his dream. The futility
of the years could not harm the things which were in his heart. Even
in America he had not lost His America.
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