Keeping the Peace

Front matter

By Gouverneur Morris

Keeping the Peace

Charles Scribner's Sons

Chapter 1

UPON the first day of January in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-six, just a hundread years after Thomas Jefferson's virile if erroneous statement of man's inalienable rights and equalities, there was born into this vale of tears and laughter and buncombe, and more particularly into the family of the Reverend Mr. Eaton, of Bartow-on-the-Sound, Westchester County, New York, a male child who was promptly christened Edward, in honor of the Confessor—from whom Mrs. Eaton, the child's mother, was able to trace her descent—with whose life, so far as it has been lived, this narrative will chiefly concern itself.

Generally speaking, the life of any man born in the year 1876 and surviving to the present day is a history of that man's relations to women; particular women, and woman in the mass. And it will be found that the history of Edward Eaton has been no exception to the rule.

In more than one way he owed the fact that he was born at all to his mother. For if she had not wanted another child to make a round half-dozen in all, she wouldn't have had one.

The first face which Edward learned to distinguish from other faces resembled the face of a horse. It was long, narrow and Roman. The upper teeth projected in a kind of shelf and gave the face an extraordinary air of command and self-satisfaction. The face surmounted a long, bony, awkward, strong, tireless body. And it was the dwelling place of a highly cultivated voice which, without being raised or forced in any way, could be made to penetrate into the most remote fastnesses of the house and grounds.

Though Mrs. Eaton would have called herself a Christian gentlewoman, it is probable that in her heart of hearts she took more pleasure and pride in her pedigree than in her religion. Oddly enough, she had swallowed both upon hearsay evidence; but she had caused the pedigree to be emblazoned and fine writ on parchment, and it was a thing of beauty and carried conviction in every leaf and twig of the design. Mrs. Eaton's pedigree—she had been Harriet Burton before her marriage—so far as it could be made visible, took the form of an extraordinarily gnarled, aged oak, and so im perishable that Edward used to wonder why, if the roots were not buried in loam, the top did not wither.

Tangled among the roots of the oak were lozenges—not the kind sold in drug stores to amend sore throats, but heraldic lozenges—on which were printed the names of remote ancestors. Ordinary ancestors were printed in black, more than ordinary ancestors were printed in black with the capital letter in red. But the lozenge of Edward the Confessor was red and larger than the others, and the lettering was gold. Almost every crest, motto and device known to heraldry was represented somewhere in or about the tree.

But there was one notable exception. There was not even one sniveling abortive example of the bar sinister.

Above religion and above pedigree, Mrs. Eaton maintained the sanctity and all the privileges of motherhood. She always spoke of her own mother as "dear mother," and even when speaking hurriedly she never failed to tremolo the words. As soon as her own children were old enough to speak at all, they were taught the "dear mother" formula. And they were taught to speak of their grandmother as "dearest" grandmother, and of their mother's many sisters, living and dead, as "dearest" Aunt So-and-so. They were taught not only the preciousness and sanctity of their own mother, but of everything in any way related to her or connected with her.

She seldom punished them. She didn't have to. Without lifting her voice to rage or her hand to strike, she could inspire unreasoning terror, almost instantaneously in almost anyone.

A day came when Edward's brother John—the oldest of the children—a brave, likable boy of eighteen, did not come home from Mr. Harrington's school in Westchester. He had, it seems, failed in a trivial examination and durst not bring the report of that failure home to his mother. So when he came to Westchester station with the Bartow, Pelham Manor and New Rochelle children, and saw that the up train and the down train were pulling in at the same time, he slipped around the rear end of the up train and boarded the other. When the down train got to Van Nest and nobody was looking, he flung his school-books out of an open window; while it stopped at West Farms he rose and marched boldly forward until he came to the smoker. Here he breathed deeply the perfume which is dearest to the persecuted American male—tobacco smoke.

It is curious that the boy John left his brothers and sisters, his father, his school and his schoolmates, but most especially his mother, with a passion of regret. He had a tender and sentimental nature; and as the train pulled into Harlem his world seemed to have contained an infinite number of things which it was going to be next to impossible to leave behind forever.

He was without a plan. He had less than fifty cents in his pocket. He was a country boy without any knowledge of city ways. There was only one thing certain. He could not go home and face his mother. He had to go on, on into that dusk which was so quickly turning into dark. But there was good breeding in John, and his face presented a fine calm.

There had come to him in his homesickness and desperation thoughts of ships and the sea. If he went to work in the city, big as it was, his mother was sure to have him found. And possibly she might have him committed to some institution for the wayward and incorrigible.

He left the elevated at the Battery and made his way by a kind of instinct to Front Street, which had upon one side ships tied to wharves and upon the other the offices of the ship companies, the stores of ship chandlers, and innumerable saloons and lodging houses for sailors.

Here under a lamp-post were two sailors in altercation. They were a little gone in liquor, and there was one who tempted and one who refused.

"I tell you," said the latter, "I'm going to sleep on board. She can't follow me past the guard, and we sail at daybreak . . ."

"She'd never think to look for you in Ratsey's, she wouldn't," said the other. "So come on."

But the refuser continued to refuse.

"Much obliged just the same," he said, "but enough's enough. She's wearing the same old hatpin she dipped into the Fleming's eyeball, and she's full of the same old juice. I'm through."

"Shore," said the tempter, "would be a 'eavenly place, Bill, if it weren't for the women. Whenever you see a man in a desperate hurry to get somewhere else, it's a ten to one shot he's running away from some woman or other."

The latter half of the phrase was lost to John Eaton, who had approached and passed as inconspicuously as possible. And of the snatches of loud spoken conversation which he had overheard he remembered only one succinct statement:

"Shore would be a 'eavenly place, Bill, if it weren't for the women."

That he remembered until his dying day; that and something about a hatpin that had been dipped into an eyeball.

Probably the first event which made a strong and unshatterable impression upon Edward Eaton was the fact that upon a certain afternoon in De- cember his brother John had not come home from school.

James had come home and Mark had come home. Ruth had come home, and so also had Sarah. Everybody and everything had come back home except John.

At the precise time that the other children came home, and John didn't, the Reverend Mr. Eaton was in his church setting the altar, as a clerk dresses a window, for a special Friday morning service. Mrs. Eaton had lighted a lamp and was making an elaborate pattern of red and purple cross-stitching upon a large rectangle of coarse hand-woven linen. This was to be a Christmas present for "dearest" grandmother.

At the precise time that John didn't come home and the door opened and the others did, Edward Eaton was going on six years of age. And he was sitting on a stool at Dear Mother's feet, practising self-control. A dozen times a day he would be told to stop whatever he was doing and to keep perfectly still for five or ten minutes. For Mrs. Eaton believed that in this way children are best taught poise and self-control. She began with them when they were nursing. So many minutes' milky indulgement, and then an enforced rest of one minute.

Edward's brothers and sisters came with an opening and a closing of the heavy front door—an arched door of thick oak, bound with iron and studded with nails—that was hardly seemly. The door had been flung open and it had been slammed shut. Following a blast of cold outdoor air appeared the comely faces of Ruth and Sarah, and behind them the less colorful and noticeable faces of James and Mark.

"Your train must have been a few minutes late, my darling," said Mrs. Eaton, whose eyebrows, threateningly raised upon the slamming of the front door, had settled to their normal position. "And perhaps that was why you were in such an indecorous hurry to get into the house."

"Dear Mother," said Ruth, who, now that John was gone, was the eldest, "it must have been very late, because we ran all the way from the station. We are all here except John. He was with us at Westchester in plenty of time to catch the train, but we think that somehow he must have missed it."

Mrs. Eaton continued her untroubled and rapid stitching.

"It is difficult to understand," she said, "how, if you were all at the station in plenty of time to catch the train, John could have missed it. But there is another train in half an hour, so that we shall not have to wait dinner for him. I shall speak to him about his carelessness, however, and the evils which carelessness leads to."

Ruth had been dying to interrupt this speech. But she knew better. She knew that dutiful, well brought up daughters never interrupt their dear mothers—"Unless, my dear, it should happen that the house had caught fire, or something like that." But now, since Dear Mother had finished, it was obviously Ruth's turn to speak. The turns of daughters always came before the turns of sons, and of elder daughters before younger daughters.

"But we don't think he missed the train," said Ruth. "Charlie Buck said that he saw John dodging around the end of our train and boarding the other."

"What other?" asked Mrs. Eaton.

"The down train."

"But what in the name of common sense!" exclaimed Mrs. Eaton, "would John be doing on board the down train?"

"We don't know, Dear Mother. We have no idea," said Ruth. "At least Sarah and I have no idea. But perhaps you had better question the boys. Mark has been acting mysteriously."

Ruth did not like to get Mark into trouble. But she had been taught that, when the brother of a dutiful daughter acts mysteriously, it is that daughter's duty to report the fact to her dear mother. And she had merely put her teachings into effect.

Mrs. Eaton dropped her embroidery in her lap and gave the uncomfortable Mark a look which seemed to draw him toward her. He came forward until he stood in the middle of the room.

"And so, my son," said Mrs. Eaton, "you have been acting mysteriously. What am I to understand by that? . . . And don't twiddle your hat." There was nothing mysterious about Mark at that moment. He was at the most awkward period of mental and vocal adolescence, and he was badly frightened. "And what light, my son, are you going to throw for us upon the extraordinary conduct of your brother John?"

Mark sincerely hoped that he wasn't going to throw any light on anything. He didn't feel up to it, and he didn't know what would happen to him if he did.

"I don't know what you mean, D-D-Dear Mother," he said, with a piteous mixture of bass and falsetto sounds.

Mrs. Eaton raised her eyebrows. And shot a question at the young ruin before her. "Did John say anything to you?"

Mark swallowed hard and nodded.

"What did John say to you?"

The girls came forward a little so as not to miss any gasp, gurgle or octave leaps of Mark's possible answer. "He flunked in geometry, Dear M-M-Mother. And he said he didn't dare come home a-a—and f-f-face the music."

"Do you mean to tell me that my son John has Tun away from home? Ruth? James? Sarah?"

"Dear Mother," said Ruth, "that is what we are afraid of."

"Children," said Mrs. Eaton, and anger was getting the better of her, "I call Heaven to witness that I have done nothing to deserve this . . . Your father! What will your father say? James, Tun to the church as fast as your legs will carry you. But don't breathe a word of what has happened. Tell your father that I must speak with him at once. Tell him that it is upon a matter which will not brook delay . . . What are you staring at, Edward? Don't sit shake like a ninny with your mouth wide open."

Edward recalls that he was able to close his mouth, and that if he had known just how a ninny sits he would have tried to stop sitting like one. He knew that something terrible had happened to his brother John and that his Dear Mother was going to do something about it.

The Reverend Mr. Eaton was slender and clearly featured. He had an intellectual head and was swift and graceful. Physically the children resembled him. Their mother's long horse face and protruding teeth would perish with her.

Having received James's message just as he was giving the final touch to the altar, the Reverend Mr. Eaton had come home at once. The faithful indeed might have seen their pastor flitting through the dusk at a gait which strongly resembled running. The Reverend Mr. Eaton would, as a matter of fact, have run his legs off at any time for the sake of peace.

Presently then, alert, quick stepping, unaffected and accompanied in an easy familiarity by his son James, the Reverend Mr. Eaton entered the room and perceived upon the instant that something peculiarly awful had happened and that he was going to be blamed for it.

He had a pair of very black and tragic eyes. In the lamplight, contrasting with his extraordinary white and smooth chin, they resembled pools of ink. His perceptions were very quick and from the group he missed, almost instantly, his son John.

Then Mr. Eaton said simply and quietly, "Where's John?" And the storm broke.

"Where indeed?" said Mrs. Eaton. "You may well ask. He has run away. He has run away from a mother who would have given her life for his, who would have worked her hands to the bone forhim. And that is your work. You were weak with him. Weak as you are with the other children, as you are with the servants and with your parishioners. You are spoken of as that easy-going, tolerant Mr. Eaton, you who would always rather procrastinate, temporize and beat about the bush than face a duty which seems in any way unpleasant to you. You who have been known to side with your own children in their occasional rebellions against what is known the world over to be best for children. You who let them pull you and maul you and romp with you, as if you had no respect for your cloth, and the eyes of Him Who sees all were not upon you. So that "now your son, profiting by the example you have set him, fails in the face of duty, turns tail and Tuns away. What have you to say? What are you going to do?"

"Try to find him," said Mr. Eaton simply.

"You had better find him," said Mrs. Eaton ominously; "you had better find him, Mr. Eaton. And when you have found him you had better talk to him, for once in your life, as a priest and a father ought to talk to a sinful and erring son. There institutions for the wayward and incorrigible; let us hope that no one of our children, owing to bad example, shall ever live to see the inside of one. And when you find him, Mr. Eaton, if you do find him, don't baby him, don't spare him. The making or the breaking of my boy's character is in your hands. I have done my duty to him. My whole duty. Now do yours."

"Does anybody know?" asked Mr. Eaton miserably, "which way John ran?"

"He boarded the train for New York."

"I'll catch the next train," said Mr. Eaton. "I had best put some things in a valise. I may be gone all night. New York is a big city. I wonder where the boy would go."

And he kept on wondering until far into the night.

It was not the most miserable night that the Reverend Mr. Eaton had ever spent. To begin with, he was not in the least worried about John's personal safety, and in the second place it was one of the few nights since his marriage which he had been allowed to spend anywhere by himself. Whatever feelings had impelled John to run away from home were understandingly shared by his father. He would have liked to run away himself.

And if he had been a son instead of a husband and father he would have run away. For the Reverend Mr. Eaton had pretty well concluded—and this would have shaken his congregation to the soul—that he had at best one life to live, and knew beyond peradventure that he was not being allowed to live it in any way but miserably.

Having the heart of a runaway, it was not difficult for the Reverend Mr. Eaton to think with the mind of one, and by two o'clock in the morning he had pretty well decided what course he himself would have undertaken if he had been actually instead of imaginatively wearing his runaway son's shoes.

Seven o'clock found the Reverend Mr. Eaton stamping his cold feet in front of the recruiting station which was just outside the gates of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. At eight o'clock the recruiting station opened for the day, and the Reverend Mr. Eaton went in. He stated his business to the recruiting officer and helped this hard-boiled seafarer to establish a fire in a little sheet-iron stove. Thereafter he sat on a wooden bench and waited. He had not long to wait. For the very first applicant to appear in the recruiting station on that cold December morning was John Eaton himself.

"Hello, John," said his father.

"Hello, father," said John.

"Had breakfast?"

"Yes, sir."

"So have I."

John was uncertain what he should do or say next. So was his father. They had always been on easy and pleasant terms with each other. John had always seemed a very satisfactory kind of son to the Reverend Mr. Eaton, and to John the Reverend Mr. Eaton had always seemed a satisfactory kind of father. But to meet as runaway and pursuer was a situation for which neither had a precedent in actual experience. Presently Mr. Eaton said:

"It seems best for you to be in communication with some one member of the family. You wouldn't want us not to know where you were or how you were getting on."

John drew closer to his father and spoke in a lowered, anxious voice. "Then you aren't going to order me back home?"

"Would you go if I did order you to?" The Reverend Mr. Eaton was smiling a little tremulously.

"I don't know," said John.

"Well," said his father, "I don't believe I ever ordered anybody to do anything, and I'm not likely to begin now. It may be that you are planning to do what is best for you. Travel and the companionship of men wouldn't have hurt me any at your age. But it is better for you to go to sea with my consent and approval than without it."

"Of course it is," said John. "It—it's wonder- ful. But mother won't consent and approve, will she?"

"Your mother has yet to approve of anything which she did not herself originate."

"That's just it," said John, nodding his head. "I couldn't have put it that way, but that's just where all the trouble is. If I'm ever going to amount to a row of pins, father, I've simply got to do my own thinking, and do what I think is right—even if it isn't always just what mother would think was right . . . And I couldn't go home now, could I? You know how it would be. I'd never be allowed to forget that I'd failed in an examination and that I had run away. I've never been allowed to forget any of the wrong things I've ever done. They are all held up against me, and of course there gets to be more of them, and—and what's the use of being sorry when you've done wrong if it don't get you a new start and if you are never allowed to forget? I'll bet that after God has forgiven sinners and let 'em into Paradise, He don't keep on nagging them."

"Let's not criticize your mother," said the Reverend Mr. Eaton. "After all, she's your mother. And if she weren't, you wouldn't be in a position to complain about her. Write to her; write to her whenever you get a chance."

"You know the kind of letter she'd write back," said John. "I'll write to you. After all, you are the head of the family . . ."

"I don't like to see you so bitter, my boy. I don't like it."

"Who made me bitter?"

"Don't you love your mother, John?"

The Reverend Mr. Eaton received a reply which he did not expect.

"Do you?" said John. And he added, "If you do you're the biggest saint since Christ."

"S-s-sh! S-s-sh!" said his father, in an agony of embarrassment.

John turned to the recruiting officer.

"I want to be in the navy," he said. "What do I do?"

"Fill out this blank," said the officer, and in about half an hour John was a servant of the Government and could not have gone back home if he had wanted to.

"John," said the Reverend Mr. Eaton, "when you write, don't say that you had my consent and approval to the step you are taking. Don't mention that you even saw me. But write, write now, so that I will get the letter in the morning."

With his enlistment there seemed to have come over John a kind of aging and ripening. He had sworn allegiance to his Government. And this had made him feel that his allegiance was wanted and that he himself was no longer a schoolboy, but a man grown.

"What," said he, "are you going to tell mother?"

"I shall tell her that I was too late," said the Reverend Mr. Eaton. "I shall tell her that you had already enlisted. If I told her the truth, there would be no living with her . . . You are going to find that, in this world, a great many honest men have to tell a great many little lies for the sake of peace. I hate lies, John. I hope I do. But I hate some things worse."

Edward remembers that the telegraph agent himself paid them a visit, that he came in a buggy drawn by a white horse, and that he brought a yellow envelope for Dear Mother, and that that was how she got the word that brother John had become a sailor.

Then father came, and with him the first real snowfall of the year. He was not allowed to come into the house until Martha, the housemaid, had brushed the snow from his hat and shoulders and from his shoes. He submitted very patiently to this process. He looked tired, and it didn't seem as if he wanted to come into the house.

There wasn't much said about John in Edward's hearing. Only this:

Edward's father: "They'll make a man of him in the navy."

Edward's mother: "We could have made a man of him in his own home if you hadn't been so weak."

Edward's father: "Yes, my dear, you are probably right, and if you wish me to admit that it's all my fault I do admit it here and now."

That was all that was said at that time in Edward's hearing. And it did not make a strong impression on him. Father was always admitting that he was at fault about something or other, and Edward himself often had to do the same thing, because when Dear Mother began to find fault it was the only way to stop her.

And it was the only way to stop Ruth and Sarah when, acting as their mother's duly accredited agents, they found fault with him, or when Martha the parlormaid did, or Ann the cook.

Fortunately for the boys, and for the Reverend Mr. Eaton himself, Mrs. Eaton was a great visitor. She believed it to be her duty to call on every one of her husband's parishioners at least once a month. The sight of the surrey at the door with the two long-tailed and long-maned black horses, Darkness and Shadow, George, the coachman, in the front seat holding the whip and reins, and Mrs. Eaton, with her long horse face, her protruding teeth, her immense bustle and her large tortoiseshell card-case, about to disappear for an entire afternoon, was a pleasant sight for all the persons at the rectory who loved a little freedom of speech and action. Usually Mrs. Eaton took her two dear, beautiful daughters with her. To the very moment of departure her mouth was filled with directions and admonitions.

Poor Mr. Eaton had long since come to the conclusion that a man's hell is not hereafter, but here, and that some woman, or a combination of them, make it for him. His own mother had hounded him into Holy Orders. His marriage had been another case of special pleading. He loved beauty, music, colors, flowers, and it had not been his natural instinct to marry a woman with a face like a horse and a shelf of projecting teeth. But politeness and courtesy and consideration were natural to him. These'he had exhibited to her, and they had been magnified into marked and even compromising attentions. The first thing that he knew he was going to be married to a woman whom he did not love. He tried to make her a good husband.

Well, when the Reverend Mrs. Eaton and her two handsome daughters went visiting, the males of the family were free from care and happier than at any other time.

So that there should be more time for play, Mr. Eaton would energetically help those who had lessons to do, would get his own sermon finished, and then be ready to go on expeditions with his boys to the shores of Pelham Bay or into the heart of Pelham Wood.

But one day that was damp under foot, Edward had a cold and had been forbidden to go out of the house and was left to his own devices. He was a good little boy and trustworthy. Mischief was comparatively unknown in the Eaton family. Nobody anticipated that he would set the house on fire, or do anything that he shouldn't do. And he didn't. Nevertheless, he got into a great trouble, which was to affect his character and his future life.

While he sat curled in a great chair before the library fire with an illustrated history of the world in his lap, he happened to look up and notice that one of the Dresden china urns which graced the mantelpiece had been cracked.

A curious sense of unrest and foreboding filled him. Presently he climbed down out of his chair and went into the servants' part of the house and asked the cook and the parlormaid if either of them had broken the Dresden china urn. They said that they had not, but that if by any chance he, Edward, had, he would certainly catch it when his mother came home.

His mother was always boasting about those urns, and showing them off to visitors. She could not possibly have known that it had been cracked, or there would have been an uproar. Edward was so filled with dubiety and vague forebodings that he could by no means return to a perusal of the pictures in the history.

He set up a watch at one of the front windows, and when toward dark the family surrey hove in view with one dear sister on the front seat and the other dear sister on the back seat alongside Dear Mother, he became frightened and ran back into the library.

Then he became more frightened. If Dear Mother found him in the same room with the broken urn she would at once suspect him of having broken it. So he ran out into the hall. Then it occurred to him that if he were not found in the same room with the broken urn the fact would be remembered against him when at length the break was discovered.