Read Ebook: Mother Earth Vol. 1 No. 3 May 1906 Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature by Various Goldman Emma Editor

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Ebook has 298 lines and 24533 words, and 6 pages

"What is there to find out?" demanded Sarah, aghast.

"Well, you know he insists that she is his wife. Maybe she is by Russian law or custom."

"Perfectly absurd! His own wife and he separated because they couldn't be happy together. Was ever anything more ridiculous?"

"As if happiness had anything to do with marriage!" said the voice from the corner.

Everybody laughed and applauded as if something very funny had been said.

"Well, anyhow," I insisted, for I can be obstinate when a thing isn't clear to me, "if they both thought they were justified in calling themselves man and wife, and if the people in Russia thought so, too, why should we make any fuss about it?"

"Pardon me, Mrs. Grant," said Mrs. Blanderocks, suavely, "if I say that your words are very silly. In the first place, the Russians are barbarians, as we all know; and, in the next place, the law is the law, and the law says that a man may not have two wives. A man who does is a bigamist. A man who has a wife and yet lives with another woman is an adulterer. Pardon me for using such a word, but it was forced from me. Now, this man Gorky, who may be a very great genius for all I know--I never read any of his stuff--but he isn't above the law: not above the moral law anyhow, and the moral law is the same all over the world. He says he and his wife parted because they were unhappy together, which is a very flimsy excuse for immorality. Then he says that his wife is living now with a man she loves and is happy with."

"Which makes a bad matter worse," interposed Sarah Warner. "No one has any business to be happy in immorality."

"What is morality for," demanded the voice from the corner, "if it isn't to make people unhappy?"

Everybody screamed with laughter over that, and Mrs. Blanderocks went so far as to raise her eyebrows at Sarah Warner, who bit her lip to keep from smiling.

"But," said I, for I had been reading the papers, too, "he says the reason they were not divorced was because the Church would not permit it."

"If the laws of his country were opposed to this divorce," said Mrs. Blanderocks, triumphantly, "all the more reason why he should be ashamed of living with this actress in such an open, defiant way."

"The Church has nothing to do with divorces in this country," I said, "yet many of our best people are divorced."

"The law permits it," said Mrs. Blanderocks curtly.

"Who makes the law?" I asked, determined to get at the bottom of the thing if I could.

"The people through the Legislature," was the prompt answer.

"Well," I said, very timidly, not knowing but I was quite in the wrong, "it seems that the people of Russia not being able to make laws nevertheless recognize the separation of a man and his wife as proper, and permit them to take other husbands and wives without loss of standing."

"A law's a law," said Sarah, sternly; "and a law should be sacred. The very idea of anybody pretending to be above the law like this man Gorky! I would like to know what would become of the holy institution of matrimony if it could be trifled with in such a fashion?"

"You want Russia to be free from the rule of the Tsar, don't you?" I asked.

"Certainly, he is a tyrant and an irresponsible weakling, unfit to govern a great people. Of course, we want Russia to be free. The people of Russia are entitled to be free, to govern themselves."

"Do you think they ought to be allowed to make their own laws?" I asked.

"Of course."

"Then, why do you say that Gorky is not properly divorced from his first wife and married to his second? The people of Russia approve."

"Margaret Grant!" cried Sarah, outraged and voicing the horror of the other members, "I sometimes wonder if you have any respect at all for the law. How can you speak as you do? If men and women could dispense with the law in that way what would become of society?"

"But this state used to permit men and women to live together without any ceremony and so become man and wife," I said.

"Well, we don't permit it now," retorted Sarah, grimly.

"If they want to live together now," cried the voice from the corner, "they must pretend they don't, even if everybody knows they do."

Some of the members laughed at that, but Mrs. Blanderocks thought that was going too far and said so in her coldest manner.

"I see nothing funny in that. We cannot change the natures of men, but we can insist upon their hiding their baser conduct and the degraded portions of their lives from our view."

"But," said I, "Gorky evidently considers this woman his wife, and had no idea that anybody would think otherwise."

"The point is," said Sarah Warner, in exasperation, "and I think I voice the sentiments of this organization, that he was not legally divorced from his first wife and that, therefore, he cannot be legally married to this woman. A law is a law, no matter who makes it. The law is sacred and must not be tampered with."

"How about the Supreme Court on divorces in Dakota?" demanded the voice from the corner.

A dead silence fell on the meeting. Some of the members looked at each other and showed signs of hysterics. Mrs. Blanderocks flashed a withering glance at the corner, but rose to the occasion.

"Ladies," she said in a solemn tone, "I deeply regret that this subject has been touched upon in a spirit of levity. It was my intention, at the proper time, to introduce a resolution of sympathy for those ladies who have been so summarily and I may say brutally unmarried by the unfeeling wretches who sit upon the bench of the Supreme Court. It is awful to think that our highly respected sisters, whose wealth alone should have protected them, have been told by the highest court in the land that they have been living in shame all this time, and that their children are not legitimate. Ladies, I call your attention to the fact that many of our own members are thus branded by those judges. It is infamous. It is more than infamous--it is a reason why women should sit on the judicial bench."

"Yes," I said, "it seems impossible for men to comprehend the mental or emotional processes of women."

"True, too true," murmured our President, giving me a look of gratitude. "I remember how the men of this country cried out against us a few years ago because they could not understand why we send flowers and tender letters to a poor, handsome negro who had first outraged and then murdered a woman."

"Yes," I said, "and no doubt they will pretend not to understand our indignation against this man Gorky, who thinks the customs of his own country justify him his terrible conduct. But we must be careful how we word our condemnation of this man lest he should somehow learn of what our Supreme Court has so wickedly done and retort on us that these, our wealthiest and most respected citizens, not being legally divorced and hence not being legally married again, are no better than he and his so-called wife."

"Speaking for myself as well as for some of the other ladies, members of this organization, who are temporarily d?class?e, so to speak, by this decree of the Supreme Court, I beg that you will do nothing to call undue attention to us, until we have arranged matters so that our wealth will enable us to have that legislation which is necessary to make us respectable women again."

"Is it true," I asked, "that you have sent an invitation to Madame Andreieva to meet you to discuss the steps to be taken to reinstate yourselves?"

"It is true, but the extraordinary creature returned word that as a lady of good standing in her own country she did not feel that she could afford to associate with women whom the courts of this country held to be living in shame."

"Did you ever!" cried Mrs. Blanderocks. "But it shows us that we must be careful. Mrs. Grant, you have had experience in such matters, suppose you retire and draw up a set of resolutions that will not expose us to the ribald and unseemly comments of the light-minded."

Of course I accepted the task, fully realizing its gravity, and following is the resolution I brought back with me:

The resolution was not passed.

I have been expelled from the association.

COMRADE.

ALL in that city was strange, incomprehensible. Churches in great number pointed their many-tinted steeples toward the sky, in gleaming colors; but the walls and the chimneys of the factories rose still higher, and the temples were crushed between the massive fa?ades of commercial houses, like marvelous flowers sprung up among the ruins, out of the dust. And when the bells called the faithful to prayer, their brazen sounds, sliding along the iron roofs, vanished, leaving no traces in the narrow gaps which separated the houses.

They were always large, and sometimes beautiful, these dwellings. Deformed people, ciphers, ran about like gray mice in the tortuous streets from morning till evening; and their eyes, full of covetousness, looked for bread or for some distraction; other men placed at the crossways watched with a vigilant and ferocious air, that the weak should, without murmuring, submit themselves to the strong. The strong were the rich: everyone believed that money alone gives power and liberty. All wanted power because all were slaves. The luxury of the rich begot the envy and hate of the poor; no one knew any finer music than the ring of gold; that is why each was the enemy of his neighbor, and cruelty reigned mistress.

Sometimes the sun shone over the city, but life therein was always wan, and the people like shadows. At night they lit a mass of joyous lights; and then famishing women went out into the streets to sell their caresses to the highest bidder. Everywhere floated an odor of victuals, and the sullen and voracious look of the people grew. Over the city hovered a groan of misery, stifled, without strength to make itself heard.

Every one led an irksome, unquiet life; a general hostility was the rule. A few citizens only considered themselves just, but these were the most cruel, and their ferocity provoked that of the herd. All wanted to live; and no one knew or could follow freely the pathway of his desires; like an insatiable monster, the Present enveloped in its powerful and vigorous arms the man who marched toward the future, and in that slimy embrace sapped away his strength. Full of anguish and perplexity, the man paused, powerless before the hideous aspect of this life: with its thousands of eyes, infinitely sad in their expression, it looked into his heart, asking him for it knew not what,--and then the radiant images of the future died in his soul; a groan out of the powerlessness of the man mingled in the discordant chorus of lamentations and tears from poor human creatures tormented by life.

Tedium and inquietude reigned everywhere, and sometimes terror. And the dull and somber city, the stone buildings atrociously lined one against the other, shutting in the temples, were for men a prison, rebuffing the rays of the sun. And the music of life was smothered by the cry of suffering and rage, by the whisper of dissimulated hate, by the threatening bark of cruelty, by the voluptuous cry of violence.

In the sullen agitation caused by trial and suffering, in the feverish struggle of misery, in the vile slime of egoism, in the subsoils of the houses wherein vegetated Poverty, the creator of Riches, solitary dreamers full of faith in Man, strangers to all, prophets of seditions, moved about like sparks issued from some far-off hearthstone of justice. Secretly they brought into these wretched holes tiny fertile seeds of a doctrine simple and grand;--and sometimes rudely, with lightnings in their eyes, and sometimes mild and tender, they sowed this clear and burning truth in the sombre hearts of these slaves, transformed into mute, blind instruments by the strength of the rapacious, by the will of the cruel. And these sullen beings, these oppressed ones, listened without much belief to the music of the new words,--the music for which their hearts had long been waiting. Little by little they lifted up their heads, and tore the meshes of the web of lies wherewith their oppressors had enwound them. In their existence, made up of silent and contained rage, in their hearts envenomed by numberless wrongs, in their consciences encumbered by the dupings of the wisdom of the strong, in this dark and laborious life, all penetrated with the bitterness of humiliation, had resounded a simple word:

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