American Tragedy 美国悲剧 chapter 1

Dusk -- of a summer night.

 

And the tall walls of the commercial heart of an American city of perhaps 400,000 inhabitants -- such walls as intime may linger as a mere¹ fable².

 

And up the broad street, now comparatively hushed, a little band of six, -- a man of about fifty, short, stout³, withbushy hair protruding⁴ from under a round black felt hat, a most unimportant- looking person, who carried a small portable organ such as is customarily used by street preachers and singers. And with him a woman perhaps fiveyears his junior, taller, not so broad, but solid of frame and vigorous, very plain in face and dress, and yet nothomely, leading with one hand a small boy of seven and in the other carrying a Bible and several hymn⁵ books.

 

With these three, but walking independently behind, was a girl of fifteen, a boy of twelve and another girl ofnine, all following obediently, but not too enthusiastically, in the wake of the others.

 

It was hot, yet with a sweet languor⁶ about it all.

 

Crossing at right angles the great thoroughfare on which they walked, was a second canyon-like way, threadedby throngs⁸ and vehicles and various lines of cars which clanged their bells and made such progress as they mightamid swiftly moving streams of traffic. Yet the little group seemed unconscious of anything save a set purpose tomake its way between the contending lines of traffic and pedestrians⁹ which flowed by them.

 

Having reached an intersection¹⁰ this side of the second principal thoroughfare -- really just an alley¹¹ between twotall structures -- now quite bare of life of any kind, the man put down the organ, which the woman immediatelyopened, setting up a music rack upon which she placed a wide flat hymn book. Then handing the Bible to theman, she fell back in line with him, while the twelve-year-old boy put down a small camp-stool in front of theorgan. The man -- the father, as he chanced to be -- looked about him with seeming wide-eyed assurance, andannounced, without appearing to care whether he had any auditors¹² or not:

 

"We will first sing a hymn of praise, so that any who may wish to acknowledge the Lord may join us. Will youoblige, Hester?"At this the eldest¹³ girl, who until now had attempted to appear as unconscious and unaffected as possible,bestowed her rather slim and as yet undeveloped figure upon the camp chair and turned the leaves of the hymnbook, pumping the organ while her mother observed:

 

"I should think it might be nice to sing twenty-seven tonight -- 'How Sweet the Balm of Jesus' Love.'"By this time various homeward-bound individuals of diverse grades and walks of life, noticing the small groupdisposing itself in this fashion, hesitated for a moment to eye them askance or paused to ascertain¹⁴ the character oftheir work. This hesitancy, construed¹⁵ by the man apparently¹⁶ to constitute attention, however mobile, was seizedupon by him and he began addressing them as though they were specifically here to hear him.

 

"Let us all sing twenty-seven, then -- 'How Sweet the Balm of Jesus' Love.'"At this the young girl began to interpret the melody upon the organ, emitting a thin though correct strain, at thesame time joining her rather high soprano with that of her mother, together with the rather dubious¹⁷ baritone ofthe father. The other children piped weakly along, the boy and girl having taken hymn books from the small pilestacked upon the organ. As they sang, this nondescript and indifferent street audience gazed, held by thepeculiarity of such an unimportant-looking family publicly raising its collective voice against the vast skepticismand apathy¹⁹ of life. Some were interested or moved sympathetically by the rather tame and inadequate²⁰ figure ofthe girl at the organ, others by the impractical²¹ and materially inefficient²² texture²³ of the father, whose weak blueeyes and rather flabby but poorly-clothed figure bespoke²⁴ more of failure than anything else. Of the group the mother alone stood out as having that force and determination which, however blind or erroneous, makes forself-preservation, if not success in life. She, more than any of the others, stood up with an ignorant, yet somehowrespectable air of conviction. If you had watched her, her hymn book dropped to her side, her glance directedstraight before her into space, you would have said: "Well, here is one who, whatever her defects, probably doeswhat she believes as nearly as possible." A kind of hard, fighting faith in the wisdom and mercy of that definiteoverruling and watchful²⁵ power which she proclaimed, was written in her every feature and gesture.

 

"The love of Jesus saves me whole, The love of God my steps control,"she sang resonantly²⁶, if slightly nasally, between the towering walls of the adjacent buildings.

 

The boy moved restlessly from one foot to the other, keeping his eyes down, and for the most part only halfsinging. A tall and as yet slight figure, surmounted²⁷ by an interesting head and face -- white skin, dark hair -- heseemed more keenly observant and decidedly more sensitive than most of the others -- appeared indeed to resentand even to suffer from the position in which he found himself. Plainly pagan rather than religious, life interestedhim, although as yet he was not fully²⁸ aware of this. All that could be truly said of him now was that there was nodefinite appeal in all this for him. He was too young, his mind much too responsive to phases of beauty andpleasure which had little, if anything, to do with the remote and cloudy romance which swayed the minds of hismother and father.

 

Indeed the home life of which this boy found himself a part and the various contacts, material and psychic²⁹, whichthus far had been his, did not tend to convince him of the reality and force of all that his mother and fatherseemed so certainly to believe and say. Rather, they seemed more or less troubled in their lives, at leastmaterially. His father was always reading the Bible and speaking in meeting at different places, especially in the"mission," which he and his mother conducted not so far from this corner. At the same time, as he understood it,they collected money from various interested or charitably inclined business men here and there who appeared tobelieve in such philanthropic work. Yet the family was always "hard up," never very well clothed, and deprivedof many comforts and pleasures which seemed common enough to others. And his father and mother wereconstantly proclaiming the love and mercy and care of God for him and for all. Plainly there was somethingwrong somewhere. He could not get it all straight, but still he could not help respecting his mother, a womanwhose force and earnestness, as well as her sweetness, appealed to him. Despite much mission work and familycares, she managed to be fairly cheerful, or at least sustaining, often declaring most emphatically "God willprovide" or "God will show the way," especially in times of too great stress about food or clothes. Yetapparently, in spite of this, as he and all the other children could see, God did not show any very clear way, eventhough there was always an extreme necessity for His favorable intervention³⁰ in their affairs.

 

To-night, walking up the great street with his sisters and brother, he wished that they need not do this any more,or at least that he need not be a part of it. Other boys did not do such things, and besides, somehow it seemedshabby and even degrading. On more than one occasion, before he had been taken on the street in this fashion,other boys had called to him and made fun of his father, because he was always publicly emphasizing hisreligious beliefs or convictions. Thus in one neighborhood in which they had lived, when he was but a child ofseven, his father, having always preluded³¹ every conversation with "Praise the Lord," he heard boys call "Herecomes old Praise-the-Lord Griffiths." Or they would call out after him "Hey, you're the fellow whose sister playsthe organ. Is there anything else she can play?" "What does he always want to go around saying, 'Praise the Lord' for? Other people don't do it."It was that old mass yearning³² for a likeness³³ in all things that troubled them, and him. Neither his father nor hismother was like other people, because they were always making so much of religion, and now at last they weremaking a business of it.

 

On this night in this great street with its cars and crowds and tall buildings, he felt ashamed, dragged out ofnormal life, to be made a show and jest of. The handsome automobiles³⁴ that sped by, the loitering pedestriansmoving off to what interests and comforts he could only surmise³⁵; the gay pairs of young people, laughing andjesting and the "kids" staring, all troubled him with a sense of something different, better, more beautiful thanhis, or rather their life.

 

And now units of this vagrom and unstable³⁶ street throng⁷, which was forever shifting and changing about them,seemed to sense the psychologic error of all this in so far as these children were concerned, for they would nudgeone another, the more sophisticated and indifferent lifting an eyebrow³⁷ and smiling contemptuously, the moresympathetic or experienced commenting on the useless presence of these children.

 

"I see these people around here nearly every night now -- two or three times a week, anyhow," this from a youngclerk who had just met his girl and was escorting her toward a restaurant. "They're just working some religiousdodge or other, I guess." "That oldest boy don't wanta be here. He feels outa place, I can see that. It ain't right to make a kid like that comeout unless he wants to. He can't understand all this stuff, anyhow." This from an idler and loafer of about forty,one of those odd hangers-on about the commercial heart of a city, addressing a pausing and seemingly amiablestranger.

 

"Yeh, I guess that's so," the other assented³⁸, taking in the peculiar¹⁸ cast of the boy's head and face. In view of theuneasy and self-conscious expression upon the face whenever it was lifted, one might have intelligentlysuggested that it was a little unkind as well as idle to thus publicly force upon a temperament³⁹ as yet unfitted toabsorb their import, religious and psychic services best suited to reflective temperaments⁴⁰ of maturer years.

 

Yet so it was.

 

As for the remainder of the family, both the youngest girl and boy were too small to really understand much ofwhat it was all about or to care. The eldest girl at the organ appeared not so much to mind, as to enjoy theattention and comment her presence and singing evoked⁴¹, for more than once, not only strangers, but her motherand father, had assured her that she had an appealing and compelling voice, which was only partially⁴² true. It wasnot a good voice. They did not really understand music. Physically⁴³, she was of a pale, emasculate andunimportant structure, with no real mental force or depth, and was easily made to feel that this was an excellentfield in which to distinguish herself and attract a little attention. As for the parents, they were determined⁴⁴ uponspiritualizing the world as much as possible, and, once the hymn was concluded, the father launched into one ofthose hackneyed descriptions of the delights of a release, via self-realization⁴⁵ of the mercy of God and the love ofChrist and the will of God toward sinners, from the burdensome cares of an evil conscience.

 

"All men are sinners in the light of the Lord," he declared. "Unless they repent⁴⁶, unless they accept Christ, Hislove and forgiveness of them, they can never know the happiness of being spiritually whole and clean. Oh, myfriends! If you could but know the peace and content that comes with the knowledge, the inward understanding,that Christ lived and died for you and that He walks with you every day and hour, by light and by dark, at dawnand at dusk, to keep and strengthen you for the tasks and cares of the world that are ever before you. Oh, thesnares and pitfalls⁴⁷ that beset⁴⁸ us all! And then the soothing⁴⁹ realization that Christ is ever with us, to counsel, toaid, to hearten, to bind⁵⁰ up our wounds and make us whole! Oh, the peace, the satisfaction, the comfort, the gloryof that!" "Amen!" asseverated⁵¹ his wife, and the daughter, Hester, or Esta, as she was called by the family, moved by theneed of as much public support as possible for all of them -- echoed it after her.

 

Clyde, the eldest boy, and the two younger children merely gazed at the ground, or occasionally at their father,with a feeling that possibly it was all true and important, yet somehow not as significant or inviting⁵² as some ofthe other things which life held. They heard so much of this, and to their young and eager minds life was madefor something more than street and mission hall protestations of this sort.

 

Finally, after a second hymn and an address by Mrs. Griffiths, during which she took occasion to refer to themission work jointly⁵³ conducted by them in a near-by street, and their services to the cause of Christ in general, athird hymn was indulged in, and then some tracts⁵⁴ describing the mission rescue work being distributed, suchvoluntary gifts as were forthcoming were taken up by Asa -- the father. The small organ was closed, the campchair folded up and given to Clyde, the Bible and hymn books picked up by Mrs. Griffiths, and with the organsupported by a leather strap⁵⁵ passed over the shoulder of Griffiths, senior, the missionward march was taken up.

 

During all this time Clyde was saying to himself that he did not wish to do this any more, that he and his parentslooked foolish and less than normal -- "cheap" was the word he would have used if he could have brought himselfto express his full measure of resentment⁵⁶ at being compelled to participate in this way -- and that he would not doit any more if he could help. What good did it do them to have him along? His life should not be like this. Otherboys did not have to do as he did. He meditated⁵⁷ now more determinedly⁵⁸ than ever a rebellion by which he wouldrid himself of the need of going out in this way. Let his elder sister go if she chose; she liked it. His youngersister and brother might be too young to care. But he-"They seemed a little more attentive⁵⁹ than usual to-night, I thought," commented Griffiths to his wife as theywalked along, the seductive quality of the summer evening air softening⁶⁰ him into a more generous interpretationof the customary indifferent spirit of the passer-by.

 

"Yes; twenty-seven took tracts to-night as against eighteen on Thursday." "The love of Christ must eventually prevail," comforted the father, as much to hearten himself as his wife. "Thepleasures and cares of the world hold a very great many, but when sorrow overtakes them, then some of theseseeds will take root." "I am sure of it. That is the thought which always keeps me up. Sorrow and the weight of sin eventually bring some of them to see the error of their way."They now entered into the narrow side street from which they had emerged and walking as many as a dozendoors from the corner, entered the door of a yellow single-story wooden building, the large window and the twoglass panes⁶¹ in the central door of which had been painted a gray-white. Across both windows and the smallerpanels in the double door had been painted: "The Door of Hope. Bethel Independent Mission. Meetings EveryWednesday and Saturday night, 8 to 10. Sundays at 11, 3 and 8. Everybody Welcome." Under this legend oneach window were printed the words: "God is Love," and below this again, in smaller type: "How Long SinceYou Wrote to Mother?" The small company entered the yellow unprepossessing door and disappeared.

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