Chapter VIII: A Sociological Interlude

DR. ZERNEKE had suggested that he would want to discuss this matter with his mother. But that was just what he did not want to do.

“I’ve something to attend to,” he said. “Would you mind going to dinner and to see the baby alone this evening?”

“Of course not. I’ll get myself a bite right here. Just run along.”

He hurried out, saying that he would be back late that evening.

He tried to get Dr. Zerneke on the telephone, but she was not in. Probably she would be, he reflected, at ten o’clock. He would go around to see her then.

He did not want to go back to his apartment. His mother would notice his nervous manner, and wonder what was the matter. (Though she never asked any questions--that was one comfort.)

He walked in Lincoln Park for an hour or two. What he felt like doing was to sit down and write Isabel a cold and decisive rejection of her proposal. He framed and re-framed that letter in his mind. In one of the versions it went like this:

“Dear Isabel--Thank you for your kind offer. You had your own reasons for rejecting mine, and I have mine for rejecting yours. I wish you success in your artistic career. Sincerely yours.”

Another version ran: “Dear Isabel--I have no desire to be made respectable. Your offer is declined.”

As a matter of fact, none of these versions were as epigrammatic as he could have wished, or did anything like justice to his feelings.

He was, of course, at a disadvantage. She had not addressed him directly. He might write an informal letter to Dr. Zerneke, and ask her to send it on. It might begin: “Dear Dr. Zerneke--You tell me that Isabel Drury has offered to marry me, in order to simplify matters in regard to my child. Well, a great deal of water has flowed under the bridge since I made a similar offer to her. In the meantime I have the child, and the marital farce seems quite unnecessary.” Something as casual and unemotional as that....

But he ought to talk to somebody before he wrote to her. Not his mother--no. And Dr. Zerneke was the only other person he could talk to about it.

Would she urge him--he wondered suddenly--to accept Isabel’s proposal? For the sake of the child? That had been her reason for everything so far. His own feelings were never considered in the least....

Of course, marriage with Isabel _would_ (along with his acknowledgment of paternity) legitimate his son, according to the laws of the State of Illinois. He knew that. He had looked it up at the Crerar library. In California, subsequent marriage of the parents wasn’t necessary for legitimation; the child would be legitimated simply by his taking it into his home and treating it as if it were legitimate. In New Mexico a process in court sufficed. In New York, on the other hand, under English common law, subsequent marriage did not legitimate the child--though perhaps the original relationship could be legally construed as a common-law marriage. It was all helter-skelter and ridiculous--like the divorce laws. But he happened to live in Illinois. It _would_ make a difference.

He wondered why his father hadn’t suggested it.... He had known, of course, that Isabel had refused. Had he taken that as final? It wasn’t like him, to let anybody’s wishes stand in the way of what he thought correct and proper. There must have been some other reason.... To be sure, now that the scandal was out, marriage with Isabel wouldn’t make the thing any more decent in the eyes of Vickley. But it would settle the legitimacy question. His son could never be called a---- Norman choked on the word even in his thoughts....

Irrelevantly and bitterly, he reflected that it might have been kinder to his son to let him be adopted in the first place by some married couple. He would never, then, have known the secret of his birth. He would have considered himself the son of Mr. and Mrs.----whoever they were....

But no, he would have found out, some time. And then he would always have wondered who his real father was.... Yes, and his mother, too, of course....

It occurred to Norman that he mustn’t let his son grow up with a resentment against his mother for deserting him. A story would have to be concocted that wouldn’t hurt his feelings.... Norman remembered what Gilbert had said that time--about hypocrisy. Yes, that was the way it started. Well, there was a good deal to be said for hypocrisy, after all. It made things so much simpler.

He looked at his watch. He hadn’t had any dinner, and it was nearly nine o’clock. That was silly. He would go and get something to eat.

But instead, he went to the Crerar library.

Some people, in their troubles, solace themselves with drink, others with statistics.

Besides, Norman was a lawyer--or had been. What he had so far seen of the legal attempts to deal with the problems of illegitimacy only reënforced his secret contempt for Law. But in his recent reading he had come across approving references to recent legislation in Norway and Sweden, by which children born out of wedlock were given, entirely or almost, the same rights as others. He was thumbing over the card catalogue looking for information on this Scandinavian Utopia, when he came upon the title: “Marriage Laws in Soviet Russia.”

“Well, let’s see how the Bolsheviks handle this thing,” he said to himself, and turned in a slip for the pamphlet.

He glanced through its pages rapidly. Ah! Section 133. Note I. “Children descending from parents who are not married have equal rights with those descending from parents living in registered marriage.” He read on. Section 140 required an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant to give notice to the Bureau of Vital Statistics “not later than three months before the birth of her child,” together with the name and address of the father. Section 141 provided that upon receipt of the notice, the Bureau should issue a citation upon the man named, who would have two weeks in which to deny paternity. Further sections dealt with the court inquiry by which paternity should be established. The man held liable as father was to be held responsible for his share in the expenses of gestation, delivery, and maintenance of the child....

Norman felt a little disappointed. This did not seem so frightfully revolutionary. A court process to determine paternity was no new thing in the history of the world. He remembered one in Vickley last winter--he had gone to Magistrate Cooley’s court out of curiosity. A girl had charged a neighboring storekeeper with being the father of her child. Under cross-examination she broke down and confessed that it was really not he but a young fellow out of a job. She wanted a father for her child who could support it properly.... Norman wondered if things like that happened in Soviet Russia. Human nature being what it was, he didn’t see why not!

He turned the pages of the pamphlet idly, and his glance rested on this passage: “160. Children have no right to the property of their parents, nor parents to the property of their children. 161. Parents shall be bound to provide board and maintenance for their minor children and for children who are indigent and unable to work.” That reminded him--in Soviet Russia, he had heard, there was a different kind of economic system, which left nothing much for anybody to inherit. That, of course, would simplify this whole matter of legitimacy. It was in order to protect the inheritance rights of the legal family that illegitimate children had been so cruelly penalized the world over. He remembered a lecture to that effect at law school. And these Bolsheviks weren’t concerned with defending property rights. That was the real difference between Moscow and Vickley. If there weren’t any inheritance rights involved, there wasn’t any reason to deny their human rights to children born out of wedlock--nothing to make a fuss about at all!

But he wasn’t living in poverty-stricken and revolutionary Russia. He was living in prosperous America, where the legal family had property rights to be defended against the claims of bastards. That was, it occurred to him, the real reason why he was now an outcast from Vickley respectability. If men were permitted to do what he had done, what would become of the Family, in its legal, sacred, property-inheriting sense? It would mean red ruin and the breaking up of close-corporation homes, to be sure.... And his father--Norman could appreciate now the old man’s grim idealism--he was battling stubbornly against his own respectable Vickley world, attempting to bring his grandson into that close corporation in spite of a bar sinister....

“Board and maintenance”--that was all that Norman himself, set adrift from family protection, could seriously hope to offer his son: that, and his mere paternal love and companionship. He had no longer any illusions about the possibility of any great success in the advertising business--he would do well if he hung on to his job. And that was all he really wanted to give the boy, if the truth were told--an upbringing, and then freedom to make what he wanted to of his life! But J. J. Overbeck could offer his grandson the prospect not merely of a legal career, but of lordship in the small town of Vickley: a snug income from rents, mortgages, government bonds, and steel securities--and, with these, pride and power.

Which would the boy choose?

But at two months of age, the boy had no choice. Norman had to choose for him.... He might make it easy for his father, by marrying Isabel before she sailed for France. That, of course, was what Dr. Zerneke would want him to do. For the child’s sake.

No!

He would be damned if he would marry that girl--to make his son one of the little lords of Vickley.

He looked up at the library clock.

Five minutes of ten.

He would tell Dr. Zerneke that there were limits to what a father should be asked to do.