Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent
Shut us Out
from Eden
THE numerous quarrels in which my foster parents indulged, and during which my aunt was not averse to proclaiming loudly from the open windows insulting comments on her neighbors, finally brought a lawyer’s letter to the house in which we were living, summarily ordering us to remove ourselves from the neighborhood. Aunt flew into a passion when the letter was read, and had all manner of sharp criticism for “neighbors who don’t tend to their own faults.” Uncle bowed his head for shame, while I went to my study, shut the door, and prayed through tears that God would, in some way, give me a good home like many another boy, and that He might make aunt and uncle more respectable.
Under the shock of this notice my uncle gave up his work, and said that he was determined to make a new start in some other place.
“I’m going to see, Millie,” he said, “if I can’t get somewhere to work, in God’s world, where there aren’t saloons to tempt us. I’ll send for you as soon as I find a place like that.”
Word soon came from him telling me to give up my work; that he had secured a place in a Connecticut cotton-mill. His letter also stated that we should live in a quiet little village where there were no saloons permitted by the corporation, and that our home would be in a little brick cottage with a flower bed and lawn inside the front gate!
“What a god-send this will prove,” said Aunt Millie, “to get away from the saloons. Maybe Stanwood’ll keep sober now. Let us hope so!”
So at seventeen years of age I went with my aunt and uncle to the village, a strange, quiet place after the rumble and confusion of the city. It was well into spring when we arrived, and we found the village beautiful with restful green grass and the fruit-tree blossoms.
As soon as we arrived my uncle took us to the corporation boarding-house, a dismal brick structure, like a mill, with a yellow verandah on its face. “We’ll have to put up here till the furniture comes,” announced uncle.
The next morning I took my overalls with me and began work in the mule-room. It was a pleasant place when contrasted with the places I had worked in in the city. The overseer did not urge us on so strenuously. There was not that terrible line of unemployed in the alley every morning, waiting to take our places.
I was given a place with my uncle, and, when I had my work in hand, that first day, he would call me into the mule alley and chat with me about our new prospects.
“We’ll begin all over, Al, and see if we can’t do better by you. Maybe we’ll be able to send you to school, if we can get some money laid by. This is our chance. We’re away from drink. The corporation owns the village and won’t allow a saloon in it. Now I can straighten up and be a man at last, something I’ve shamefully missed being the last few years, lad!”
Those first few days of our life in the village, uncle’s face seemed to lose some of its former sad tenseness.
“Wait till the furniture gets here, lad,” he said, repeatedly. “Then we’ll settle down to be somebody, as we used to be.”
Then the day that a postal came from the freight office saying that the furniture had arrived, the superintendent of the mill called my uncle away from his mules for a long consultation. Then he came back in company, with my uncle, and mentioned to me that he would like to see and speak with me in the elevator room. I had only time to note that uncle’s face was that of a man who has just seen a tragedy. It was bloodless, and aged, as if he had lost hope.
What could all this mean? A mill superintendent did not usually consult with his hands except on very grave matters.
I found the superintendent waiting for me, with a very sober face. We had strict privacy. When he had shut the door, he said: “Al Priddy, I want to ask you what will seem, at first, a very impertinent and delicate question. You must give me a frank answer, even though it is very hard.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, wondering what it was to be.
“Al,” he said, sternly, like a judge, “is your aunt a regular drinker—of intoxicants?”
So that was the question! I gasped, choked, and with my eyes on the floor, confessed, “She is, sir.”
“Well,” said the superintendent, “I am very sorry for you, my boy! I am sorry that you have to suffer because of other people. We cannot allow women who drink to live in our houses. We will not allow it if we know about it.”
“But my aunt won’t drink here,” I said. “She said so, and there aren’t any saloons, sir. That is the reason we came out this way!”
“Your aunt has been seen drunk in the village already!” announced the superintendent. “What do you think about that?”
The bottom went out of the fairy world we had hoped to live in, with that news. I could only stand there, dazed, shocked, wild with the sense of our loss.
“You cannot have the house I promised,” said the superintendent. “I have told your uncle that. The furniture is not unloaded yet, and it must return. We will cover the expenses. We cannot permit the other women to suffer because of your aunt. She obtained liquor in some way and I shall look into it. You must go back. You cannot have any of our rents.”
“But, sir,” I pleaded, “won’t you give us a chance. My uncle wants to do well, and we will try and see that my aunt keeps straight too. When we get settled, she’ll change. It’s our only chance. If we go back to the city it will be as bad as before, and that was bad enough. Give us one more chance!”
“But your aunt has managed to get drunk already, after having been in town only a few days. What will it be later?”
“Oh, sir,” I went on, desperate at the chance that was slipping from us, “you are a member of the church and believe in forgiving as Christ did. Won’t you give us a chance to straighten out? It might take time, but it means so much to aunt and uncle and—and me!”
“I shall have to refuse,” said the superintendent finally. “I have to think of the welfare of more families than one. Go back to your work now, and talk things over with your uncle. I will see him again.”
I went back to my uncle and found him doing his work in a dreamy, discouraged way. The miserable hours of the morning wore on, and by noon there was no change in the unfortunate and gloomy situation in which we found ourselves.
When we had had dinner at the boarding-house, uncle went to his room and informed Aunt Millie of what had transpired. Then he upbraided her, scolded her, and called her all manner of brutal names, because he was crazed with shame. My aunt did not cry out, but merely hurried from the room and did not return while we were there.
In the afternoon the superintendent came and had a conference with uncle, the upshot of which was that uncle persuaded him to allow us to retain our work if we could find a house to rent that was not owned by the corporation. The overseer, consulted, said that there was a tenement of three rooms on the outskirts of the village which we might get, and with this prospect, uncle and I found the tragedy of our situation decreasing.
“We’ll go right after supper and look up that place,” agreed Uncle Stanwood. “We might be lucky enough to get it, Al.”
We did not find Aunt Millie at the boarding-house when we arrived, so we ate our meal together, wondering where she could be and fretting about her. But after supper we took an electric car that went past the tenement we were thinking of examining. The car was crowded with mill-workers going to the city for the evening. Uncle and I had to stand on the rear platform.
The village had been left, and the car was humming along a level stretch of state highway bordered with cheerful fields, when our ears were startled by screams, and when uncle and I looked, as did the other passengers, we beheld a woman wildly fleeing through the field toward the river. She was screaming and waving her hands wildly in the air.
“My God!” shouted uncle, “it’s Millie!” He shouted to the conductor, “Stop, quick, I’ll look after her!” and when the car slowed down we both leaped to earth and ran, a race of death, after the crazed woman.
We caught her almost near the brink of the river, and found it difficult to keep her from running forward to hurl herself in it. She was bent on suicide. But finally we calmed her, and found that she had been drinking whisky, which always so affected her, that the prospect of having to return to the city, the thought of having shamed us, had made her determine on suicide.
She did up her hair, straightened her clothes, and we three went further down the road, as far as the house we were seeking, examined the three rooms, and were fortunate enough to rent them. I came away with a light heart, for we would not have to leave the village after all.