Chapter V: The Older Generation

LATE that evening they were talking in Norman’s new room.... They had dined together, going over the whole situation. Gilbert wasted no time in vain regrets. He accepted the new state of Norman’s affairs, and was anxious to help him make the best of his Chicago career. He took Norman’s job seriously, and discussed its future possibilities. And Gilbert had readily come with him to see the baby. He remarked upon its resemblance to Norman. They met Mrs. Czermak’s mother, whose name was Mrs. Case, and another daughter named Monica, a young stenographer. Also Mr. Victor, an elderly violinist, one of the boarders, just then out of a job.... Everybody, it seemed, was interested in the baby....

“You know,” said Norman awkwardly, “he was named for me--by his mother.”

Gilbert nodded. “Queer girl!” he said.

They talked of Isabel. She had left town, said Norman; had probably gone to Michigan, he thought. It was just as well, he said coldly. He hadn’t wanted to see her again....

Then they talked of Norman’s father--of whom Norman had been secretly and painfully thinking all the while....

It was all very well to have gained what old Gilbert called a moral victory over the hard-boiled reprobates at Sam’s bar; over romantic Vickley matrons who wished to believe in a remarkable young male saint engaged in expiating his youthful sin by self-sacrifice; over a sensation-loving younger generation: over even that girl whose love and pride his destiny had driven him to trample upon so cruelly: but there remained J. J. Overbeck. No moral victory was possible over him!

His father simply would not be able to understand what had happened. How could he? A man like that! No, this sort of thing might be comprehensible to a cynical philosopher like old Gilbert. But it would be outside the range of his father’s imaginative sympathy. That was what was going to make this meeting so hard. He couldn’t help wanting to make his father understand. And that would be impossible.

“Still afraid of the old man?” asked Gilbert, smiling, as he read Norman’s thoughts, so plain to see in his troubled face.

“I can’t help it,” said Norman. “No, it’s not exactly that I’m afraid of him. But I know that he won’t be able to understand this at all.”

“No?” said Gilbert. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about that, if I were you.”

“His whole life,” said Norman, “has gone to building up his family. He thinks in terms of the family. You say he loves me--but it’s just because I’m part of the family. I was to take his place in Vickley. I’ve hurt him in a way he never can forgive.”

“Norman,” said Gilbert, “maybe I know your father better than you do. We were in Cuba together, you know. Before you were born.”

“Are you hinting at something, Gilbert?” Norman asked in astonishment.

“I never hint, Norman. I’m going to tell you a story. Because I think you ought to know it before your father comes. He won’t say a word to you about it. But he’ll know I’ve told you. He couldn’t do it. Just as I couldn’t tell my own son. But I know he’d like you to know.”

“My--father!” Norman whispered incredulously.

“Listen, Norman. That Sunday night, after midnight, when your father and I sat in his office--after I’d told him about your baby--he broke down. And ... well, you see I’ve known something about your father for a long time. He didn’t know I knew it. I’d never have told you, but it’s all right now. So I’ll begin with that.--You think of your father as an old man, don’t you? Just as you think of me as ‘old Gilbert.’ Yes, it’s true he’s fifty-five and wears side-whiskers.... It’s hard to go on, Norman, with you looking at me like that. I know how you feel. But he’s not _my_ father--so it didn’t so much shock me to learn, as I did a good many years ago by accident, that he had--well, a secret life. Don’t look so God-damn’ solemn. It all happened before you were born. A rather plain woman in her thirties. A widow. I knew her name, but that meant nothing to me at the time. She is dead, now. This is all ancient history. She left Vickley about the time you were born, went out West to visit some relatives; and, as I learned the other night, came back to Vickley some years later--but it was all over then--and died.... Well, are you wishing I wouldn’t tell you?”

“I--it does upset me, rather,” Norman confessed. “I’ve no right to feel like that, I know. But--”

“Of course. One’s own father. And that’s the true origin of our conventional morality, my boy. I hear stuff about the hypocrisy of the older generation. It’s true enough--but whose fault is it? Who puts us up on a pedestal? Who refuses to believe that we are merely human? You wait! You’ve a son now. He’ll have an ideal of you--and you won’t dare shatter it. You’ll lie, like all the rest of us. You’ll be a hypocrite, too. Oh, it’s a joke!...

“Well, I knew this thing about your father. And I smiled a little. But I didn’t know the real story till that night.... It goes back to the time we were in Cuba together, in the Spanish war. I don’t know why your father enlisted. He was married, and had a child. I guess your mother was all taken up with the child--your sister Lucinda. I know that I went for fun. I was married, too. Anyway, we were both old enough to know better, but there we were.

“Well, there was another Vickley boy in our company, named Tom. Tom had never been any good at making money. Some new scheme he had put his hopes in went to smash--I guess he couldn’t bear to face his wife. He thought he was a failure, so he enlisted. And Tom and Jim--your father--got to be great friends in the army. Chums was the word in those days. I knew about their friendship. But I hadn’t thought of poor Tom in all these years....

“Your father, that night, began to talk about Tom. And he began to cry. Then I remembered about their being chums. But all the rest was new to me, as your father told it. I never had known about Tom’s wife....

“Jim and Tom were both wounded at El Caney--Tom badly. He was going to die, and he knew it. And there on the battlefield where they lay together he talked to Jim about Sally. Would Jim look after Sally when he got back? And Jim promised his chum that he would. And Tom died in the hospital, and Jim came home to Vickley.

“That was twenty-eight years ago, Norman. Sally must have been about thirty, then. Tom had written her a lot about Jim, and she was prepared to like him. And of course she must have been terribly grateful for the help he gave her. But Jim didn’t tell his wife about it. And he went to see Sally in the evenings when he was supposed to be working at the office. He would bring something for a late supper. She was a jolly little woman, and her house was comfortable. He got to be more at ease there than at home. And so it began.

“And so it went on. As such things do. Till you were born, and then he sent Sally out West, and that was the end of it. She came back later, and died.

“That’s all. Except ... You belong to a hard, unsentimental generation, Norman. It will seem silly to you.... But there’s her grave, in a Vickley cemetery. He sometimes visits it alone. He goes at night. Do you--do you get the picture, Norman?”

Norman saw, in the moonlight, a cemetery with its marble memorials of Vickley’s respectable dead. And over in an unkempt corner, a place that meant nothing except to the one who kept its secret tight-locked in his breast. And thither he saw that old man come, stealthily, with a posy--an old man, looking down at his lost youth, buried there in that secret grave. And Norman saw him slink away furtively in the moonlight, back to his home, his family, his career, his respectability, home from that secret, ridiculous, pitiful tryst. Symbol of an age that passes....

“Yes--I get the picture,” said Norman.

“He’ll know I’ve told you,” said Gilbert. “He wants you to know. But he’ll not want anything said about it--not a word.”

“Of course not,” said Norman.