Twelve Men. Theodore Dreiser

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СКАЧАТЬ him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and sympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more than humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite a thousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, which contained no least thought of return or reward. I recall that once there was a boy who had been reared in one of the towns in which we had once lived who had never had a chance in his youth, educationally or in any other way, and, having turned out “bad” and sunk to the level of a bank robber, had been detected in connection with three other men in the act of robbing a bank, the watchman of which was subsequently killed in the mêlée and escape. Of all four criminals only this one had been caught. Somewhere in prison he had heard sung one of my brother’s sentimental ballads, “The Convict and the Bird,” and recollecting that he had known Paul wrote him, setting forth his life history and that now he had no money or friends.

      At once my good brother was alive to the pathos of it. He showed the letter to me and wanted to know what could bē done. I suggested a lawyer, of course, one of those brilliant legal friends of his—always he had enthusiastic admirers in all walks—who might take the case for little or nothing. There was the leader of Tammany Hall, Richard Croker, who could be reached, he being a friend of Paul’s. There was the Governor himself to whom a plain recitation of the boy’s unfortunate life might be addressed, and with some hope of profit.

      All of these things he did, and more. He went to the prison (Sing Sing), saw the warden and told him the story of the boy’s life, then went to the boy, or man, himself and gave him some money. He was introduced to the Governor through influential friends and permitted to tell the tale. There was much delay, a reprieve, a commutation of the death penalty to life imprisonment—the best that could be done. But he was so grateful for that, so pleased. You would have thought at the time that it was his own life that had been spared.

      “Good heavens!” I jested. “You’d think you’d done the man an inestimable service, getting him in the penitentiary for life!”

      “That’s right,” he grinned—an unbelievably provoking smile. “He’d better be dead, wouldn’t he? Well, I’ll write and ask him which he’d rather have.”

      I recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a “down and out” actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. But now being old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need of sympathy and aid. By some chance he knew Paul, or Paul had known him, and now because of the former’s obvious prosperity—he was much in the papers at the time—he had appealed to him. The man lived with a sister in a wretched little town far out on Long Island. On receiving his appeal Paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly to indulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment. At any rate he wanted me to go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary November afternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very much even in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatrical manners and insincerities, and as we were coming away I said, “Paul, why should you be the goat in every case?” for I had noted ever since I had been in New York, which was several years then, that he was a victim of many such importunities. If it was not the widow of a deceased friend who needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrong boy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or the reformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powers for clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress “down and out” and unable to “get back to New York” and requiring his or her railroad fare wired prepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffin and a decent form of burial.

      “Well, you know how it is, Thee” (he nearly always addressed me thus), “when you’re old and sick. As long as you’re up and around and have money, everybody’s your friend. But once you’re down and out no one wants to see you any more—see?” Almost amusingly he was always sad over those who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten. Some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much.

      “Quite so,” I complained, rather brashly, I suppose, “but why didn’t he save a little money when he had it? He made as much as you’ll ever make.” The man had been a star. “He had plenty of it, didn’t he? Why should he come to you?”

      “Well, you know how it is, Thee,” he explained in the kindliest and most apologetic way. “When you’re young and healthy like that you don’t think. I know how it is; I’m that way myself. We all have a little of it in us. I have; you have. And anyhow youth’s the time to spend money if you’re to get any good of it, isn’t it? Of course when you’re old you can’t expect much, but still I always feel as though I’d like to help some of these old people.” His eyes at such times always seemed more like those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than those of a man contemplating life.

      “But, Paul,” I insisted on another occasion when he had just wired twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him—why, I don’t know. I was by no means incompetent.) “Why don’t you save your money? Why should you give it to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks you? You’re not a charity organization, and you’re not called upon to feed and clothe and bury all the wasters who happen to cross your path. If you were down and out how many do you suppose would help you?”

      “Well, you know,” and his voice and manner were largely those of mother, the same wonder, the same wistfulness and sweetness, the same bubbling charity and tenderness of heart, “I can’t say I haven’t got it, can I?” He was at the height of his success at the time. “And anyhow, what’s the use being so hard on people? We’re all likely to get that way. You don’t know what pulls people down sometimes—not wasting always. It’s thoughtlessness, or trying to be happy. Remember how poor we were and how mamma and papa used to worry.” Often these references to mother or father or their difficulties would bring tears to his eyes. “I can’t stand to see people suffer, that’s all, not if I have anything,” and his eyes glowed sweetly. “And, after all,” he added apologetically, “the little I give isn’t much. They don’t get so much out of me. They don’t come to me every day.”

      Another time—one Christmas Eve it was, when I was comparatively new to New York (my second or third year), I was a little uncertain what to do, having no connections outside of Paul and two sisters, one of whom was then out of the city. The other, owing to various difficulties of her own and a temporary estrangement from us—more our fault than hers—was therefore not available. The rather drab state into which she had allowed her marital affections to lead her was the main reason that kept us apart. At any rate I felt that I could not, or rather would not, go there. At the same time, owing to some difficulty or irritation with the publishing house of which my brother was then part owner (it was publishing the magazine which I was editing), we twain were also estranged, nothing very deep really—a temporary feeling of distance and indifference.

      So I had no place to go except to my room, which was in a poor part of the town, or out to dine where best I might—some moderate-priced hotel, was my thought. I had not seen my brother in three or four days, but after I had strolled a block or two up Broadway I encountered him. I have always thought that he had kept an eye on me and had really followed me; was looking, in short, to see what I would do. As usual he was most smartly and comfortably dressed.

      “Where you going, Thee?” he called cheerfully.

      “Oh, no place in particular,” I replied rather suavely, I presume. “Just going up the street.”

      “Now, see here, sport,” he began—a СКАЧАТЬ