The Open Question Part 115

"The dew is falling. You'll take cold."

"Oh no."

He urged the point.

"Don't drive me in this heavenly Indian-summer night!" she pleaded.

They all exclaimed against his barbarity, and he went to get her a shawl. There was nothing in the hall. He rang; no one answered. He went up-stairs.

In vain Val called after him: "I've got my scarf."

Scherer was teasing Julia for not being able to think of anything but the ball.

"You're just as bad."

He protested.

"You men were talking about it, I'll be bound," Julia said.

"No, we weren't, feather-brain," replied Scherer, with a patronizing air.

"Something very far removed from b.a.l.l.s," Harry Wilbur put in, with a laugh.

"What?"

"Oh, we were cheerfully considering the ethics of suicide," said Scherer, stretching himself comfortably in a long wicker-chair.

Val started, but no one observed her.

"Pleasant topic," said Julia.

"Quite, if looked at rightly," responded Scherer. "Gano was saying how curiously illogical people are. We've all heard Christian people who shudder at the word 'suicide'--tender women, mothers--who hasn't heard them say, looking back to the early death of a child, 'I've come to thank G.o.d for taking him unspotted from the world.'"

"Yes," remarked Julia, "I'm sick of hearing the saying that's always trotted out, 'Our loss, but his gain.'"

"Ah, but don't think it's insincere," said Scherer. "Even the simple-minded may appreciate the safety and dignity of death when the deliverer is introduced by cold, or fever, or ghastly accident, by inherited weakness, even by neglect--in _any_ way but by the calm and steadfast will of the one chiefly concerned."

Val sat up and stared. Ethan's very intonation had got into Scherer's voice.

"If a fellow's trapped into death," he went on, "it's a blessing; if he goes voluntarily, a disgrace."

"Disgrace or not, it's on the increase," said Wilbur, "and fellows like you had better be careful how you go about advocating--"

"No; I agree with Gano about that. Even when public opinion is more civilized, natural cowardice will keep the death-rate down. _Certain_ to, if social conditions are improved. But even if the number who go that way should be much greater, are you so certain that a voluntary exit is such a mistake? Isn't it the great question that each man should answer for himself?"

"No!" roared Wilbur, excitedly; "he should satisfy a public functionary that he's paid his debts and provided for those who are dependent on him."

"Accepted!" cried Scherer, delighted, "although we'd be establis.h.i.+ng an aristocracy of the dead. But, seriously, isn't it for social reformers first to make life less of an indecency for the ma.s.ses before they insist that each man should hold his life as sacred? Society degrades and brutalizes a man, and yet, forsooth, for the _sake_ of society he is to hold his insulted life as sacred."

Val leaned back in her chair, wondering if Julia was annoyed at Scherer's aping of Ethan. Was it conceivable that the others didn't see it--didn't hear it?

"Why, the world is overrun," he was saying, in a travesty of Ethan's manner--"overrun with superfluous myriads who are freely allowed to groan, travail, starve. Only, society insists, they must die slowly, and not shock our sensibilities. Or they may turn over a new leaf, and live prosperously by selling their bodies and their souls--_anything_ rather than reproach us and arraign life by taking themselves off. But cheer up, Wilbur; we can always bring in the usual verdict. Oh, more blessed than Mesopotamia are the words 'temporarily insane'!"

"That's what such people usually are," said Harry, unmoved.

"Of course; don't we read it in every paper?" jeered Scherer--"this woman, that man, starved to death, a paragraph of sentimentality. A suicide gets his column of calumny. The same society that cheerfully permits a man to starve, that supports the system under which he _must_ starve, is outraged if the victim doesn't die with decent slowness.

Starvation is 'a sad case,' suicide is 'punishable crime.'"

"I used to hear my father," said Val, in a low voice, "wondering at the great sums devoted to the use of hospitals full of idiots, cripples, incurables, and people who _want_ to die, while the streets of all the cities of the world are full of the young and strong and poverty-stricken who need bread, and are filled only with a pa.s.sionate desire for life on almost any terms."

Ethan came out with a shawl and a rug. As he was putting the wraps round his wife, he chanced to touch her hand.

"You are cold as ice!" he exclaimed.

"No, no; this is lovely!"

"You mustn't stay out another minute." As he saw she was about to protest again, he cut her short. "If you want to argue, come inside and argue. If you don't, I'll have to carry you."

After their friends had gone, Ethan said something half jocular about Scherer and his new political enthusiasms. "But Scherer will rise.

You'll see, he will help to accomplish some of the reforms I've only talked about."

"I dare say; still, I think I prefer your theories at first hand."

"What theories?"

"He kindly continued your conversation after you went to hunt for a shawl."

"d.a.m.n him!"

He d.a.m.ned him to his face the next morning.

"What!" said poor Scherer, with open mouth, "not a subject for conversation?"

"Certainly not; the world's not ready for it."

"No, no," said Scherer, rapidly reconstructing; "perhaps not. If the theory were widely accepted it would bring about many avoidable disasters."

"How so?" demanded Ethan, ready in a minute to defend his faith against all comers.

"It might," said Scherer--"might sap the energy and courage of people who, but for its teaching, would go on bravely to the end."

"It is itself 'the brave end.'"

Three days before the ball, Val, coming in from a drive with the Otways, found that Ethan had had a Mexican hammock put up between one of the locust-trees and the giant tulip.

"What a good plan! People who are tired dancing will be glad to find this."