sovereign" of _Bill Walker_ for beating up a Salvation lassie. Not so _Mrs. Baines_, the Army Commissioner. She is dyed in the wool in the profession of begging and will take money from the devil himself "for the Glory of God,"--the Glory of God which consists in "taking out the anger and bitterness against the rich from the hearts of the poor," a service "gratifying and convenient for all large employers." No wonder the whisky distiller _Bodger_ makes the generous contribution of 5000 pounds and _Undershaft_ adds his own little mite of another 5000.
_Barbara_ is indeed ignorant or she would not protest against a fact so notorious: _Barbara._ Do you know what my father is? Have you forgotten that Lord Saxmundham is Bodger the whisky man? Do you remember how we implored the County Council to stop him from writing Bodger's Whisky in letters of fire against the sky; so that the poor drink-ruined creatures on the embankment could not wake up from their snatches of sleep without being reminded of their deadly thirst by that wicked sky sign? Do you know that the worst thing that I have had to fight here is not the devil, but Bodger, Bodger, Bodger with his whisky, his distilleries, and his tied houses? Are you going to make our shelter another tied house for him, and ask me to keep it?
_Undershaft._ My dear Barbara: alcohol is a very necessary article.
It heals the sick--...It assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
_Mrs. Baines._ Barbara: Lord Saxmundham gives us the money to stop drinking--to take his own business from him.
_Undershaft._ I also, Mrs. Baines, may claim a little disinterestedness. Think of my business! think of the widows and orphans! the men and lads torn to pieces with shrapnel and poisoned with lyddite! the oceans of blood, not one drop of which is shed in a really just cause! the ravaged crops! the peaceful peasants forced, women and men, to till their fields under the fire of opposing armies on pain of starvation! the bad blood of the fierce cowards at home who egg on others to fight for the gratification of national vanity! All this makes money for me: I am never richer, never busier than when the papers are full of it. Well, it is your work to preach peace on earth and good will to men. Every convert you make is a vote against war. Yet I give you this money to hasten my own commercial ruin.
_Barbara._ Drunkenness and Murder! My God, why hast thou forsaked me?
However, _Barbara's_ indignation does not last very long, any more than that of her aristocratic mother, _Lady Britomart_, who has no use for her plebeian husband except when she needs his money. Similarly _Stephen_, her son, has become converted, like _Barbara_, not to the Glory Hallelujah of the Salvation Army but to the power of money and cannon. Likewise the rest of the family, including the Greek Scholar During the visit to their father's factory the Undershaft family makes several discoveries. They learn that the best modern method of accumulating a large fortune consists in organizing industries in such a manner as to make the workers content with their slavery. It's a model factory.
_Undershaft._ It is a spotlessly clean and beautiful hillside town.
There are two chapels: a Primitive one and a sophisticated one.
There's even an ethical society; but it is not much patronized, as my men are all strongly religious. In the high explosives sheds they object to the presence of agnostics as unsafe.
The family further learns that it is not high moral precepts, patriotic love of country, or similar sentiments that are the backbone of the life of the nation. It is _Undershaft_ again who enlightens them of the power of money and its rôle in dictating governmental policies, making war or peace, and shaping the destinies of man.
_Undershaft._ The government of your country. I am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and a half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays us. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it doesn't. You will find out that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on those measures. When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a national need. When either people want something to keep my dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman. Government of your country! Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. I am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune...To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles: to Aristocrat and Republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man, white man, and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes...I will take an order from a good man as cheerfully as from a bad one. If you good people prefer preaching and shirking to buying my weapons and fighting the rascals, don't blame me. I can make cannons: I cannot make courage and conviction.
That is just it. The Undershafts cannot make conviction and courage; yet both are indispensable if one is to see that, in the words of _Undershaft_: "Cleanliness and respectability do not need justification: they justify themselves. There are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty. I had rather be a thief than a pauper. I had rather be a murderer than a slave, I don't want to be either; but if you force the alternative on me, then, by Heaven, I'll choose the braver and more moral one. I hate poverty and slavery worse than any other crimes whatsoever."
_Cusins_, the scientist, realizes the force of _Undershaft's_ argument.
Long enough have the people been preached at, and intellectual power used to enslave them.
_Cusins._ As a teacher of Greek I gave the intellectual man weapons against the common man. I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man. I love the common people. I want to arm them against the lawyer, the doctor, the priest, the literary man, the professor, the artist, and the politician, who, once in authority, are the most dangerous, disastrous, and tyrannical of all the fools, rascals, and impostors.
This thought is perhaps the most revolutionary sentiment in the whole play, in view of the fact that the people everywhere are enslaved by the awe of the lawyer, the professor, and the politician, even more than by the club and gun. It is the lawyer and the politician who poison the people with "the germ of briefs and politics," thereby unfitting them for the only effective course in the great social struggle--action, resultant from the realization that poverty and inequality never have been, never can be, preached or voted out of existence.
_Undershaft._ Poverty and slavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leading articles: they will not stand up to my machine guns. Don't preach at them; don't reason with them. Kill them.
_Barbara._ Killing. Is that your remedy for everything?
_Undershaft._ It is the final test of conviction, the only lever strong enough to overturn a social system, the only way of saying Must. Let six hundred and seventy fools loose in the street; and three policemen can scatter them. But huddle them together in a certain house in Westminster; and let them go through certain ceremonies and call themselves certain names until at last they get the courage to kill; and your six hundred and seventy fools become a government. Your pious mob fills up ballot papers and imagines it is governing its masters; but the ballot paper that really governs is the paper that has a bullet wrapped up in it...Vote! Bah! When you vote you only change the names of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new. Is that historically true, Mr. Learned Man, or is it not?
_Cusins._ It is historically true. I loathe having to admit it. I repudiate your sentiments. I abhor your nature. I defy you in every possible way. Still, it is true. But it ought not to be true.
_Undershaft._ Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought! Are you going to spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists? Turn your oughts into shells, man. Come and make explosives with me. The history of the world is the history of those who had the courage to embrace this truth.
"Major Barbara" is one of the most revolutionary plays. In any other but dramatic form the sentiments uttered therein would have condemned the author to long imprisonment for inciting to sedition and violence.
Shaw the Fabian would be the first to repudiate such utterances as rank Anarchy, "impractical, brain cracked and criminal." But Shaw the dramatist is closer to life--closer to reality, closer to the historic truth that the people wrest only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
JOHN GALSWORTHY The power of the modern drama as an interpreter of the pressing questions of our time is perhaps nowhere evident as clearly as it is in England to-day.
Indeed, while other countries have come almost to a standstill in dramatic art, England is the most productive at the present time. Nor can it be said that quantity has been achieved at the expense of quality, which is only too often the case.
The most prolific English dramatist, John Galsworthy, is at the same time a great artist whose dramatic quality can be compared with that of only one other living writer, namely, Gerhart Hauptmann. Galsworthy, even as Hauptmann, is neither a propagandist nor a moralist. His background is life, "that palpitating life," which is the root of all sorrow and joy.
His attitude toward dramatic art is given in the following words: "I look upon the stage as the great beacon light of civilization, but the drama should lead the social thought of the time and not direct or dictate it.
"The great duty of the dramatist is to present life as it really is. A true story, if told sincerely, is the strongest moral argument that can be put on the stage. It is the business of the dramatist so to present the characters in his picture of life that the inherent moral is brought to light without any lecturing on his part.
"Moral codes in themselves are, after all, not lasting, but a true picture of life is. A man may preach a strong lesson in a play which may exist for a day, but if he succeeds in presenting real life itself in such a manner as to carry with it a certain moral inspiration, the force of the message need never be lost, for a new interpretation to fit the spirit of the time can renew its vigor and power."
John Galsworthy has undoubtedly succeeded in presenting real life. It is this that makes him so thoroughly human and universal.
STRIFE Not since Hauptmann's "Weavers" was placed before the thoughtful public, has there appeared anything more stirring than "Strife."
Its theme is a strike in the Trenartha Tin Plate Works, on the borders of England and Wales. The play largely centers about the two dominant figures: _John Anthony_, the President of the Company, rigid, autocratic and uncompromising; he is unwilling to make the slightest concession, although the men have been out for six months and are in a condition of semi-starvation. On the other hand there is _David Roberts_, an uncompromising revolutionist, whose devotion to the workers and the cause of freedom is at red-white heat. Between them are the strikers, worn and weary with the terrible struggle, driven and tortured by the awful sight of poverty at home.
At a directors' meeting, attended by the Company's representatives from London, _Edgar Anthony_, the President's son and a man of kindly feeling, pleads in behalf of the strikers.
_Edgar._ I don't see how we can get over it that to go on like this means starvation to the men's wives and families...It won't kill the shareholders to miss a dividend or two; I don't see that _that's_ reason enough for knuckling under.
_Wilder._ H'm! Shouldn't be a bit surprised if that brute Roberts hadn't got us down here with the very same idea. I hate a man with a grievance.
_Edgar._ We didn't pay him enough for his discovery. I always said that at the time.
_Wilder._ We paid him five hundred and a bonus of two hundred three years later. If that's not enough! What does he want, for goodness' sake?
_Tench._ Company made a hundred thousand out of his brains, and paid him seven hundred--that's the way he goes on, sir.
_Wilder._ The man's a rank agitator! Look here, I hate the Unions.
But now we've got Harness here let's get him to settle the whole thing.
_Harness_, the trade union official, speaks in favor of compromise. In the beginning of the strike the union had withdrawn its support, because the workers had used their own judgment in deciding to strike.
_Harness._ I'm quite frank with you. We were forced to withhold our support from your men because some of their demands are in excess of current rates. I expect to make them withdraw those demands to-day...Now, I want to see something fixed upon before I go back tonight. Can't we have done with this old-fashioned tug-of-war business? What good's it doing you? Why don't you recognize once for all that these people are men like yourselves, and want what's good for them just as you want what's good for you...There's just one very simple question I'd like to put to you. Will you pay your men one penny more than they force you to pay them?
Of course not. With trade unionism lacking in true solidarity, and the workers not conscious of their power, why should the Company pay one penny more? _David Roberts_ is the only one who fully understands the situation.
_Roberts._ Justice from London? What are you talking about, Henry Thomas? Have you gone silly? We know very well what we are--discontented dogs--never satisfied. What did the Chairman tell me up in London? That I didn't know what I was talking about. I was a foolish, uneducated man, that knew nothing of the wants of the men I spoke for...I have this to say--and first as to their condition...Ye can't squeeze them any more. Every man of us is well nigh starving. Ye wonder why I tell ye that? Every man of us is going short. We can't be no worse off than we've been these weeks past. Ye needn't think that by waiting ye'll drive us to come in.
We'll die first, the whole lot of us. The men have sent for ye to know, once and for all, whether ye are going to grant them their demands...Ye know best whether ye can afford your tyranny--but this I tell ye: If ye think the men will give way the least part of an inch, ye're making the worst mistake ye ever made. Ye think because the Union is not supporting us--more shame to it!--that we'll be coming on our knees to you one fine morning. Ye think because the men have got their wives an' families to think of--that it's just a question of a week or two-- The appalling state of the strikers is demonstrated by the women: _Anna Roberts_, sick with heart trouble and slowly dying for want of warmth and nourishment; _Mrs. Rous_, so accustomed to privation that her present poverty seems easy compared with the misery of her whole life.
Into this dismal environment comes _Enid_, the President's daughter, with delicacies and jams for _Annie_. Like many women of her station she imagines that a little sympathy will bridge the chasm between the classes, or as her father says, "You think with your gloved hands you can cure the troubles of the century."
_Enid_ does not know the life of _Annie Roberts'_ class: that it is all a gamble from the "time 'e's born to the time 'e dies."
_Mrs. Roberts._ Roberts says workin' folk have always lived from hand to mouth. Sixpence to-day is worth more than a shillin' to-morrow, that's what they say...He says that when a working man's baby is born, it's a toss-up from breath to breath whether it ever draws another, and so on all 'is life; an' when he comes to be old, it's the workhouse or the grave. He says that without a man is very near, and pinches and stints 'imself and 'is children to save, there can be neither surplus nor security. That's why he wouldn't have no children, not though I wanted them.
The strikers' meeting is a masterly study of mass psychology,--the men swayed hither and thither by the different speakers and not knowing whither to go. It is the smooth-tongued _Harness_ who first weakens their determination to hold out.
_Harness._ Cut your demands to the right pattern, and we'll see you through; refuse, and don't expect me to waste my time coming down here again. I'm not the sort that speaks at random, as you ought to know by this time. If you're the sound men I take you for--no matter who advises you against it--you'll make up your minds to come in, and trust to us to get your terms. Which is it to be? Hands together, and victory--or--the starvation you've got now?
Then _Old Thomas_ appeals to their religious sentiments: _Thomas._ It iss not London; it iss not the Union--it iss Nature. It iss no disgrace whateffer to a potty to give in to Nature. For this Nature iss a fery pig thing; it is pigger than what a man is. There is more years to my hett than to the hett of anyone here. It is a man's pisness to pe pure, honest, just, and merciful. That's what Chapel tells you...We're going the roat to tamnation. An' so I say to all of you. If ye co against Chapel I will not pe with you, nor will any other Got-fearing man.
At last _Roberts_ makes his plea, _Roberts_ who has given his all--brain, heart and blood--aye, sacrificed even his wife to the cause.
By sheer force of eloquence and sincerity he stays his fickle comrades long enough at least to listen to him, though they are too broken to rise to his great dignity and courage.
_Roberts._ You don't want to hear me then? You'll listen to Rous and to that old man, but not to me. You'll listen to Sim Harness of the Union that's treated you so _fair_; maybe you'll listen to those men from London...You love their feet on your necks, don't you?...Am I a liar, a coward, a traitor? If only I were, ye'd listen to me, I'm sure. Is there a man of you here who has less to gain by striking? Is there a man of you that had more to lose? Is there a man among you who has given up eight hundred pounds since this trouble began? Come, now, is there? How much has Thomas given up--ten pounds or five or what? You listened to him, and what had he to say? "None can pretend," he said, "that I'm not a believer in principle--but when Nature says: 'No further,' 'tes going against Nature!" I tell you if a man cannot say to Nature: "Budge me from this if ye can!"--his principles are but his belly. "Oh, but," Thomas says, "a man can be pure and honest, just and merciful, and take off his hat to Nature." I tell you Nature's neither pure nor honest, just nor merciful. You chaps that live over the hill, an' go home dead beat in the dark on a snowy night--don't ye fight your way every inch of it? Do ye go lyin' down an' trustin' to the tender mercies of this merciful Nature? Try it and you'll soon know with what ye've got to deal. 'Tes only by that (_he strikes a blow with his clenched fist_) in Nature's face that a man can be a man. "Give in," says Thomas; "go down on your knees; throw up your foolish fight, an' perhaps," he said, "perhaps your enemy will chuck you down a crust."...And what did he say about Chapel? "Chapel's against it," he said. "She's against it." Well, if Chapel and Nature go hand in hand, it's the first I've ever heard of it.
Surrendering's the work of cowards and traitors...You've felt the pinch o't in your bellies. You've forgotten what that fight 'as been; many times I have told you; I will tell you now this once again. The fight o' the country's body and blood against a blood-sucker. The fight of those that spend themselves with every blow they strike and every breath they draw, against a thing that fattens on them, and grows and grows by the law of _merciful_ Nature. That thing is Capital! A thing that buys the sweat o' men's brows, and the tortures o' their brains, at its own price. Don't I know that? Wasn't the work o' my brains bought for seven hundred pounds, and hasn't one hundred thousand pounds been gained them by that seven hundred without the stirring of a finger. It is a thing that will take as much and give you as little as it can. That's Capital! A thing that will say--"I'm very sorry for you, poor fellows--you have a cruel time of it, I know," but will not give one sixpence of its dividends to help you have a better time. That's Capital! Tell me, for all their talk, is there one of them that will consent to another penny on the Income Tax to help the poor? That's Capital! A white-faced, stony-hearted monster! Ye have got it on its knees; are ye to give up at the last minute to save your miserable bodies pain? When I went this morning to those old men from London, I looked into their very 'earts. One of them was sitting there--Mr.
Scantlebury, a mass of flesh nourished on us: sittin' there for all the world like the shareholders in this Company, that sit not moving tongue nor finger, takin' dividends--a great dumb ox that can only be roused when its food is threatened. I looked into his eyes and I saw _he was afraid_--afraid for himself and his dividends, afraid for his fees, afraid of the very shareholders he stands for; and all but one of them's afraid--like children that get into a wood at night, and start at every rustle of the leaves. I ask you, men--give me a free hand to tell them: "Go you back to London. The men have nothing for you!" Give, me that, and I swear to you, within a week you shall have from London all you want. 'Tis not for this little moment of time we're fighting, not for _ourselves_, our own little bodies, and their wants, 'tis for all those that come after throughout all time. Oh! men--for the love o' them, don't roll up another stone upon their heads, don't help to blacken the sky, an' let the bitter sea in over them. They're welcome to the worst that can happen to me, to the worst that can happen to us all, aren't they--aren't they? If we can shake the white-faced monster with the bloody lips, that has sucked the life out of ourselves, our wives, and children, since the world began. If we have not the hearts of men to stand against it breast to breast, and eye to eye, and force it backward till it cry for mercy, it will go on sucking life; and we shall stay forever what we are, less than the very dogs.
Consistency is the greatest crime of our commercial age. No matter how intense the spirit or how important the man, the moment he will not allow himself to be used or sell his principles, he is thrown on the dust heap. Such is the fate of _Anthony_, the President of the Company, and of _David Roberts_. To be sure they represent opposite poles--poles antagonistic to each other, poles divided by a terrible gap that can never be bridged over. Yet they share a common fate. _Anthony_ is the embodiment of conservatism, of old ideas, of iron methods: _Anthony._ I have been Chairman of this Company since its inception two and thirty years ago...I have had to do with "men" for fifty years; I've always stood up to them; I have never been beaten yet. I have fought the men of this Company four times, and four times I have beaten them...The men have been treated justly, they have had fair wages, we have always been ready to listen to complaints. It has been said that times have changed; if they have, I have not changed with them. Neither will I. It has been said that masters and men are equal! Cant! There can only be one master in a house! Where two men meet the better man will rule. It has been said that Capital and Labor have the same interests. Cant! Their interests are as wide asunder as the poles. It has been said that the Board is only part of a machine. Cant! We _are_ the machine; its brains and sinews; it is for us to lead and to determine what is to be done; and to do it without fear or favor. Fear of the men! Fear of the shareholders!
Fear of our own shadows! Before I am like that, I hope to die. There is only one way of treating "men"--with the iron hand. This half-and-half business, the half-and-half manners of this generation, has brought all this upon us. Sentiments and softness and what this young man, no doubt, would call his social policy. You can't eat cake and have it! This middle-class sentiment, or socialism, or whatever it may be, is rotten. Masters are masters, men are men! Yield one demand, and they will make it six. They are like Oliver Twist, asking for more. If I were in _their_ place I should be the same. But I am not in their place...I have been accused of being a domineering tyrant, thinking only of my pride--I am thinking of the future of this country, threatened with the black waters of confusion, threatened with mob government, threatened with what I cannot say. If by any conduct of mine I help to bring this on us, I shall be ashamed to look my fellows in the face. Before I put this amendment to the Board, I have one more word to say. If it is carried, it means that we shall fail in what we set ourselves to do.
It means that we shall fail in the duty that we owe to all Capital.
It means that we shall fail in the duty that we owe ourselves.
We may not like this adherence to old, reactionary notions, and yet there is something admirable in the courage and consistency of this man; nor is he half as dangerous to the interests of the oppressed as our sentimental and soft reformers who rob with nine fingers, and give libraries with the tenth; who grind human beings and spend millions of dollars in social research work. _Anthony_ is a worthy foe; to fight such a foe, one must learn to meet him in open battle.
_David Roberts_ has all the mental and moral attributes of his adversary, coupled with the spirit of revolt and the inspiration of modern ideas. He, too, is consistent: he wants nothing for his class short of complete victory.
It is inevitable that compromise and petty interest should triumph until the masses become imbued with the spirit of a _David Roberts_. Will they ever? Prophecy is not the vocation of the dramatist, yet the moral lesson is evident. One cannot help realizing that the workingmen will have to use methods hitherto unfamiliar to them; that they will have to discard the elements in their midst that are forever seeking to reconcile the irreconcilable--Capital and Labor. They will have to learn that men like _David Roberts_ are the very forces that have revolutionized the world and thus paved the way for emancipation out of the clutches of the "white-faced monster with bloody lips," toward a brighter horizon, a freer life, and a truer recognition of human values.
JUSTICE No subject of equal social import has received such thoughtful consideration in recent years as the question of Crime and Punishment. A number of books by able writers, both in Europe and this country--preëminently among them "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist," by Alexander Berkman--discuss this topic from the historic, psychologic, and social standpoint, the consensus of opinion being that present penal institutions and our methods of coping with crime have in every respect proved inadequate as well as wasteful. This new attitude toward one of the gravest social wrongs has now also found dramatic interpretation in Galsworthy's "Justice."
The play opens in the office of _James How & Sons_, solicitors. The senior clerk, _Robert Cokeson_, discovers that a check he had issued for nine pounds has been forged to ninety. By elimination, suspicion falls upon _William Falder_, the junior office clerk. The latter is in love with a married woman, the abused and ill-treated wife of a brutal drunkard. Pressed by his employer, a severe yet not unkindly man, _Falder_ confesses the forgery, pleading the dire necessity of his sweetheart, _Ruth Honeywill_, with whom he had planned to escape to save her from the unbearable brutality of her husband.
_Falder._ Oh! sir, look over it! I'll pay the money back--I will, I promise.
Notwithstanding the entreaties of young _Walter How_, who holds modern ideas, his father, a moral and law-respecting citizen, turns _Falder_ over to the police.
The second act, in the court room, shows Justice in the very process of manufacture. The scene equals in dramatic power and psychologic verity the great court scene in "Resurrection." Young _Falder_, a nervous and rather weakly youth of twenty-three, stands before the bar. _Ruth_, his faithful sweetheart, full of love and devotion, burns with anxiety to save the young man, whose affection for her has brought about his present predicament. _Falder_ is defended by _Lawyer Frome_, whose speech to the jury is a masterpiece of social philosophy. He does not attempt to dispute the mere fact that his client had altered the check; and though he pleads temporary aberration in his defense, the argument is based on a social consciousness as fundamental and all-embracing as the roots of our social ills--"the background of life, that palpitating life which always lies behind the commission of a crime." He shows _Falder_ to have faced the alternative of seeing the beloved woman murdered by her brutal husband whom she cannot divorce, or of taking the law into his own hands. He pleads with the jury not to turn the weak young man into a criminal by condemning him to prison.
_Frome._ Men like the prisoner are destroyed daily under our law for want of that human insight which sees them as they are, patients, and not criminals...Justice is a machine that, when someone has given it a starting push, rolls on of itself...Is this young man to be ground to pieces under this machine for an act which, at the worst, was one of weakness? Is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons?...I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man. For as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable, stares him in the face...The rolling of the chariot wheels of Justice over this boy began when it was decided to prosecute him.
But the chariot of Justice rolls mercilessly on, for--as the learned Judge says-- "Your counsel has made an attempt to trace your offense back to what he seems to suggest is a defect in the marriage law; he has made an attempt also to show that to punish you with further imprisonment would be unjust. I do not follow him in these flights. _The Law is what it is_--a majestic edifice, sheltering all of us, each stone of which rests on another. I am concerned only with its administration.
The crime you have committed is a very serious one. I cannot feel it in accordance with my duty to Society to exercise the powers I have in your favor. You will go to penal servitude for three years."
In prison the young, inexperienced convict soon finds himself the victim of the terrible "system." The authorities admit that young _Falder_ is mentally and physically "in bad shape," but nothing can be done in the matter: many others are in a similar position, and "the quarters are inadequate."
The third scene of the third act is heart-gripping in its silent force.
The whole scene is a pantomime, taking place in _Falder's_ prison cell.
"In fast-falling daylight, _Falder_, in his stockings, is seen standing motionless, with his head inclined towards the door, listening. He moves a little closer to the door, his stockinged feet making no noise.
He stops at the door. He is trying harder and harder to hear something, any little thing that is going on outside. He springs suddenly upright--as if at a sound--and remains perfectly motionless. Then, with a heavy sigh, he moves to his work, and stands looking at it, with his head down; he does a stitch or two, having the air of a man so lost in sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to life. Then, turning abruptly, he begins pacing his cell, moving his head, like an animal pacing its cage. He stops again at the door, listens, and, placing the palms of his hands against it, with his fingers spread out, leans his forehead against the iron. Turning from it, presently, he moves slowly back towards the window, tracing his way with his finger along the top line of the distemper that runs round the wall. He stops under the window, and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into it. It has grown very nearly dark. Suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with a clatter--the only sound that has broken the silence--and he stands staring intently at the wall where the stuff of the shirt is hanging rather white in the darkness--he seems to be seeing somebody or something there. There is a sharp tap and click; the cell light behind the glass screen has been turned up. The cell is brightly lighted.
_Falder_ is seen gasping for breath.
"A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on thick metal, is suddenly audible. _Falder_ shrinks back, not able to bear this sudden clamor. But the sound grows, as though some great tumbril were rolling towards the cell. And gradually it seems to hypnotize him. He begins creeping inch by inch nearer to the door. The banging sound, travelling from cell to cell, draws closer and closer; _Falder's_ hands are seen moving as if his spirit had already joined in this beating; and the sound swells until it seems to have entered the very cell. He suddenly raises his clenched fists.
"Panting violently, he flings himself at his door, and beats on it."
* * * * * _Falder_ leaves the prison, a broken ticket-of-leave man, the stamp of