CHAPTER XII
THE BISHOP
It was after my marriage that I chanced upon Bishop Morehouse. But
I must give the events in their proper sequence. After his
outbreak at the I. P. H. Convention, the Bishop, being a gentle
soul, had yielded to the friendly pressure brought to bear upon
him, and had gone away on a vacation. But he returned more fixed
than ever in his determination to preach the message of the Church.
To the consternation of his congregation, his first sermon was
quite similar to the address he had given before the Convention.
Again he said, and at length and with distressing detail, that the
Church had wandered away from the Master's teaching, and that
Mammon had been instated in the place of Christ.
And the result was, willy-nilly, that he was led away to a private
sanitarium for mental disease, while in the newspapers appeared
pathetic accounts of his mental breakdown and of the saintliness of
his character. He was held a prisoner in the sanitarium. I called
repeatedly, but was denied access to him; and I was terribly
impressed by the tragedy of a sane, normal, saintly man being
crushed by the brutal will of society. For the Bishop was sane,
and pure, and noble. As Ernest said, all that was the matter with
him was that he had incorrect notions of biology and sociology, and
because of his incorrect notions he had not gone about it in the
right way to rectify matters.
What terrified me was the Bishop's helplessness. If he persisted
in the truth as he saw it, he was doomed to an insane ward. And he
could do nothing. His money, his position, his culture, could not
save him. His views were perilous to society, and society could
not conceive that such perilous views could be the product of a
sane mind. Or, at least, it seems to me that such was society's
attitude.
But the Bishop, in spite of the gentleness and purity of his
spirit, was possessed of guile. He apprehended clearly his danger.
He saw himself caught in the web, and he tried to escape from it.
Denied help from his friends, such as father and Ernest and I could
have given, he was left to battle for himself alone. And in the
enforced solitude of the sanitarium he recovered. He became again
sane. His eyes ceased to see visions; his brain was purged of the
fancy that it was the duty of society to feed the Master's lambs.
As I say, he became well, quite well, and the newspapers and the
church people hailed his return with joy. I went once to his
church. The sermon was of the same order as the ones he had
preached long before his eyes had seen visions. I was
disappointed, shocked. Had society then beaten him into
submission? Was he a coward? Had he been bulldozed into
recanting? Or had the strain been too great for him, and had he
meekly surrendered to the juggernaut of the established?
I called upon him in his beautiful home. He was woefully changed.
He was thinner, and there were lines on his face which I had never
seen before. He was manifestly distressed by my coming. He
plucked nervously at his sleeve as we talked; and his eyes were
restless, fluttering here, there, and everywhere, and refusing to
meet mine. His mind seemed preoccupied, and there were strange
pauses in his conversation, abrupt changes of topic, and an
inconsecutiveness that was bewildering. Could this, then, be the
firm-poised, Christ-like man I had known, with pure, limpid eyes
and a gaze steady and unfaltering as his soul? He had been man-
handled; he had been cowed into subjection. His spirit was too
gentle. It had not been mighty enough to face the organized wolf-
pack of society.
I felt sad, unutterably sad. He talked ambiguously, and was so
apprehensive of what I might say that I had not the heart to
catechise him. He spoke in a far-away manner of his illness, and
we talked disjointedly about the church, the alterations in the
organ, and about petty charities; and he saw me depart with such
evident relief that I should have laughed had not my heart been so
full of tears.
The poor little hero! If I had only known! He was battling like a
giant, and I did not guess it. Alone, all alone, in the midst of
millions of his fellow-men, he was fighting his fight. Torn by his
horror of the asylum and his fidelity to truth and the right, he
clung steadfastly to truth and the right; but so alone was he that
he did not dare to trust even me. He had learned his lesson well--
too well.
But I was soon to know. One day the Bishop disappeared. He had
told nobody that he was going away; and as the days went by and he
did not reappear, there was much gossip to the effect that he had
committed suicide while temporarily deranged. But this idea was
dispelled when it was learned that he had sold all his
possessions,--his city mansion, his country house at Menlo Park,
his paintings, and collections, and even his cherished library. It
was patent that he had made a clean and secret sweep of everything
before he disappeared.
This happened during the time when calamity had overtaken us in our
own affairs; and it was not till we were well settled in our new
home that we had opportunity really to wonder and speculate about
the Bishop's doings. And then, everything was suddenly made clear.
Early one evening, while it was yet twilight, I had run across the
street and into the butcher-shop to get some chops for Ernest's
supper. We called the last meal of the day "supper" in our new
environment.
Just at the moment I came out of the butcher-shop, a man emerged
from the corner grocery that stood alongside. A queer sense
familiarity made me look again. But the man had turned and was
walking rapidly away. There was something about the slope of the
shoulders and the fringe of silver hair between coat collar and
slouch hat that aroused vague memories. Instead of crossing the
street, I hurried after the man. I quickened my pace, trying not
to think the thoughts that formed unbidden in my brain. No, it was
impossible. It could not be--not in those faded overalls, too long
in the legs and frayed at the bottoms.
I paused, laughed at myself, and almost abandoned the chase. But
the haunting familiarity of those shoulders and that silver hair!
Again I hurried on. As I passed him, I shot a keen look at his
face; then I whirled around abruptly and confronted--the Bishop.
He halted with equal abruptness, and gasped. A large paper bag in
his right hand fell to the sidewalk. It burst, and about his feet
and mine bounced and rolled a flood of potatoes. He looked at me
with surprise and alarm, then he seemed to wilt away; the shoulders
drooped with dejection, and he uttered a deep sigh.
I held out my hand. He shook it, but his hand felt clammy. He
cleared his throat in embarrassment, and I could see the sweat
starting out on his forehead. It was evident that he was badly
frightened.
"The potatoes," he murmured faintly. "They are precious."
Between us we picked them up and replaced them in the broken bag,
which he now held carefully in the hollow of his arm. I tried to
tell him my gladness at meeting him and that he must come right
home with me.
"Father will be rejoiced to see you," I said. "We live only a
stone's throw away.
"I can't," he said, "I must be going. Good-by."
He looked apprehensively about him, as though dreading discovery,
and made an attempt to walk on.
"Tell me where you live, and I shall call later," he said, when he
saw that I walked beside him and that it was my intention to stick
to him now that he was found.
"No," I answered firmly. "You must come now."
He looked at the potatoes spilling on his arm, and at the small
parcels on his other arm.
"Really, it is impossible," he said. "Forgive me for my rudeness.
If you only knew."
He looked as if he were going to break down, but the next moment he
had himself in control.
"Besides, this food," he went on. "It is a sad case. It is
terrible. She is an old woman. I must take it to her at once.
She is suffering from want of it. I must go at once. You
understand. Then I will return. I promise you."
"Let me go with you," I volunteered. "Is it far?"
He sighed again, and surrendered.
"Only two blocks," he said. "Let us hasten."
Under the Bishop's guidance I learned something of my own
neighborhood. I had not dreamed such wretchedness and misery
existed in it. Of course, this was because I did not concern
myself with charity. I had become convinced that Ernest was right
when he sneered at charity as a poulticing of an ulcer. Remove the
ulcer, was his remedy; give to the worker his product; pension as
soldiers those who grow honorably old in their toil, and there will
be no need for charity. Convinced of this, I toiled with him at
the revolution, and did not exhaust my energy in alleviating the
social ills that continuously arose from the injustice of the
system.
I followed the Bishop into a small room, ten by twelve, in a rear
tenement. And there we found a little old German woman--sixty-four
years old, the Bishop said. She was surprised at seeing me, but
she nodded a pleasant greeting and went on sewing on the pair of
men's trousers in her lap. Beside her, on the floor, was a pile of
trousers. The Bishop discovered there was neither coal nor
kindling, and went out to buy some.
I took up a pair of trousers and examined her work.
"Six cents, lady," she said, nodding her head gently while she went
on stitching. She stitched slowly, but never did she cease from
stitching. She seemed mastered by the verb "to stitch."
"For all that work?" I asked. "Is that what they pay? How long
does it take you?"
"Yes," she answered, "that is what they pay. Six cents for
finishing. Two hours' sewing on each pair."
But the boss doesn't know that," she added quickly, betraying a
fear of getting him into trouble. "I'm slow. I've got the
rheumatism in my hands. Girls work much faster. They finish in
half that time. The boss is kind. He lets me take the work home,
now that I am old and the noise of the machine bothers my head. If
it wasn't for his kindness, I'd starve.
"Yes, those who work in the shop get eight cents. But what can you
do? There is not enough work for the young. The old have no
chance. Often one pair is all I can get. Sometimes, like to-day,
I am given eight pair to finish before night."
I asked her the hours she worked, and she said it depended on the
season.
"In the summer, when there is a rush order, I work from five in the
morning to nine at night. But in the winter it is too cold. The
hands do not early get over the stiffness. Then you must work
later--till after midnight sometimes.
"Yes, it has been a bad summer. The hard times. God must be
angry. This is the first work the boss has given me in a week. It
is true, one cannot eat much when there is no work. I am used to
it. I have sewed all my life, in the old country and here in San
Francisco--thirty-three years.
"If you are sure of the rent, it is all right. The houseman is
very kind, but he must have his rent. It is fair. He only charges
three dollars for this room. That is cheap. But it is not easy
for you to find all of three dollars every month."
She ceased talking, and, nodding her head, went on stitching.
"You have to be very careful as to how you spend your earnings," I
suggested.
She nodded emphatically.
"After the rent it's not so bad. Of course you can't buy meat.
And there is no milk for the coffee. But always there is one meal
a day, and often two."
She said this last proudly. There was a smack of success in her
words. But as she stitched on in silence, I noticed the sadness in
her pleasant eyes and the droop of her mouth. The look in her eyes
became far away. She rubbed the dimness hastily out of them; it
interfered with her stitching.
No, it is not the hunger that makes the heart ache," she explained.
"You get used to being hungry. It is for my child that I cry. It
was the machine that killed her. It is true she worked hard, but I
cannot understand. She was strong. And she was young--only forty;
and she worked only thirty years. She began young, it is true; but
my man died. The boiler exploded down at the works. And what were
we to do? She was ten, but she was very strong. But the machine
killed her. Yes, it did. It killed her, and she was the fastest
worker in the shop. I have thought about it often, and I know.
That is why I cannot work in the shop. The machine bothers my
head. Always I hear it saying, "I did it, I did it." And it says
that all day long. And then I think of my daughter, and I cannot
work."
The moistness was in her old eyes again, and she had to wipe it
away before she could go on stitching.
I heard the Bishop stumbling up the stairs, and I opened the door.
What a spectacle he was. On his back he carried half a sack of
coal, with kindling on top. Some of the coal dust had coated his
face, and the sweat from his exertions was running in streaks. He
dropped his burden in the corner by the stove and wiped his face on
a coarse bandana handkerchief. I could scarcely accept the verdict
of my senses. The Bishop, black as a coal-heaver, in a
workingman's cheap cotton shirt (one button was missing from the
throat), and in overalls! That was the most incongruous of all--
the overalls, frayed at the bottoms, dragged down at the heels, and
held up by a narrow leather belt around the hips such as laborers
wear.
Though the Bishop was warm, the poor swollen hands of the old woman
were already cramping with the cold; and before we left her, the
Bishop had built the fire, while I had peeled the potatoes and put
them on to boil. I was to learn, as time went by, that there were
many cases similar to hers, and many worse, hidden away in the
monstrous depths of the tenements in my neighborhood.
We got back to find Ernest alarmed by my absence. After the first
surprise of greeting was over, the Bishop leaned back in his chair,
stretched out his overall-covered legs, and actually sighed a
comfortable sigh. We were the first of his old friends he had met
since his disappearance, he told us; and during the intervening
weeks he must have suffered greatly from loneliness. He told us
much, though he told us more of the joy he had experienced in doing
the Master's bidding.
"For truly now," he said, "I am feeding his lambs. And I have
learned a great lesson. The soul cannot be ministered to till the
stomach is appeased. His lambs must be fed bread and butter and
potatoes and meat; after that, and only after that, are their
spirits ready for more refined nourishment."
He ate heartily of the supper I cooked. Never had he had such an
appetite at our table in the old days. We spoke of it, and he said
that he had never been so healthy in his life.
"I walk always now," he said, and a blush was on his cheek at the
thought of the time when he rode in his carriage, as though it were
a sin not lightly to be laid.
"My health is better for it," he added hastily. "And I am very
happy--indeed, most happy. At last I am a consecrated spirit."
And yet there was in his face a permanent pain, the pain of the
world that he was now taking to himself. He was seeing life in the
raw, and it was a different life from what he had known within the
printed books of his library.
"And you are responsible for all this, young man," he said directly
to Ernest.
Ernest was embarrassed and awkward.
"I--I warned you," he faltered.
"No, you misunderstand," the Bishop answered. "I speak not in
reproach, but in gratitude. I have you to thank for showing me my
path. You led me from theories about life to life itself. You
pulled aside the veils from the social shams. You were light in my
darkness, but now I, too, see the light. And I am very happy,
only . . ." he hesitated painfully, and in his eyes fear leaped large.
"Only the persecution. I harm no one. Why will they not let me
alone? But it is not that. It is the nature of the persecution.
I shouldn't mind if they cut my flesh with stripes, or burned me at
the stake, or crucified me head--downward. But it is the asylum
that frightens me. Think of it! Of me--in an asylum for the
insane! It is revolting. I saw some of the cases at the
sanitarium. They were violent. My blood chills when I think of
it. And to be imprisoned for the rest of my life amid scenes of
screaming madness! No! no! Not that! Not that!"
It was pitiful. His hands shook, his whole body quivered and
shrank away from the picture he had conjured. But the next moment
he was calm.
"Forgive me," he said simply. "It is my wretched nerves. And if
the Master's work leads there, so be it. Who am I to complain?"
I felt like crying aloud as I looked at him: "Great Bishop! O
hero! God's hero!"
As the evening wore on we learned more of his doings.
"I sold my house--my houses, rather," he said, all my other
possessions. I knew I must do it secretly, else they would have
taken everything away from me. That would have been terrible. I
often marvel these days at the immense quantity of potatoes two or
three hundred thousand dollars will buy, or bread, or meat, or coal
and kindling." He turned to Ernest. "You are right, young man.
Labor is dreadfully underpaid. I never did a bit of work in my
life, except to appeal aesthetically to Pharisees--I thought I was
preaching the message--and yet I was worth half a million dollars.
I never knew what half a million dollars meant until I realized how
much potatoes and bread and butter and meat it could buy. And then
I realized something more. I realized that all those potatoes and
that bread and butter and meat were mine, and that I had not worked
to make them. Then it was clear to me, some one else had worked
and made them and been robbed of them. And when I came down
amongst the poor I found those who had been robbed and who were
hungry and wretched because they had been robbed."
We drew him back to his narrative.
"The money? I have it deposited in many different banks under
different names. It can never be taken away from me, because it
can never be found. And it is so good, that money. It buys so
much food. I never knew before what money was good for."
"I wish we could get some of it for the propaganda," Ernest said
wistfully. "It would do immense good."
"Do you think so?" the Bishop said. "I do not have much faith in
politics. In fact, I am afraid I do not understand politics."
Ernest was delicate in such matters. He did not repeat his
suggestion, though he knew only too well the sore straits the
Socialist Party was in through lack of money.
"I sleep in cheap lodging houses," the Bishop went on. "But I am
afraid, and never stay long in one place. Also, I rent two rooms
in workingmen's houses in different quarters of the city. It is a
great extravagance, I know, but it is necessary. I make up for it
in part by doing my own cooking, though sometimes I get something
to eat in cheap coffee-houses. And I have made a discovery.
Tamales* are very good when the air grows chilly late at night.
Only they are so expensive. But I have discovered a place where I
can get three for ten cents. They are not so good as the others,
but they are very warming.
* A Mexican dish, referred to occasionally in the literature of the
times. It is supposed that it was warmly seasoned. No recipe of
it has come down to us.
"And so I have at last found my work in the world, thanks to you,
young man. It is the Master's work." He looked at me, and his
eyes twinkled. "You caught me feeding his lambs, you know. And of
course you will all keep my secret."
He spoke carelessly enough, but there was real fear behind the
speech. He promised to call upon us again. But a week later we
read in the newspaper of the sad case of Bishop Morehouse, who had
been committed to the Napa Asylum and for whom there were still
hopes held out. In vain we tried to see him, to have his case
reconsidered or investigated. Nor could we learn anything about
him except the reiterated statements that slight hopes were still
held for his recovery.
"Christ told the rich young man to sell all he had," Ernest said
bitterly. "The Bishop obeyed Christ's injunction and got locked up
in a madhouse. Times have changed since Christ's day. A rich man
to-day who gives all he has to the poor is crazy. There is no
discussion. Society has spoken."
