Chapter IV: Speech to the Jury

“AND now,” said Norman, “what about this alleged moral victory? You didn’t by any chance tell people the real truth about me?”

Gilbert put his feet up on a chair. He, at any rate, was enjoying these reminiscences.

“Yes. This business of telling the truth is like any other drug habit. It grows on you. That same Monday night, after I left your house, I dropped in at Sam’s place for a drink. There were half a dozen men there--and Sam, behind the bar. One of the men was Davis of the Herald and another was Quinn of the Whig. I won’t name the others, but they are pillars of Vickley society. Well, Quinn came up to me and asked if I had heard the rumor that you were in financial difficulties when you left town--not that they would print anything about it, unless something came up so that they would be obliged to. Well, I had an inspiration. ‘Boys,’ I said, ‘I’m going to tell you the truth about the disappearance of Norman Overbeck. You can decide for yourself whether it can be printed.’--And not a word has been in the papers since. They couldn’t have printed the story anyway--not in Vickley. But it was a magnificent gesture. ‘This is for all of you to hear,’ I said. And so I made my speech to the jury right there at Sam’s bar. The doors were locked--Sam saw to that--so there wouldn’t be any interruptions. I’d had two or three rehearsals of my speech already, between your family and Madge, but this time it was for a different audience. These men were hard-boiled guys, and not in love with you....”

“You--you didn’t--I mean--all that stuff about it’s being somebody else--some other man--you didn’t suggest that?” Norman asked painfully.

“I cast no doubts on the paternity of your son, Norman, if that’s what you mean. I wasn’t out to make a fool of you. On the contrary. A scoundrel. It came to me in a flash. A saint--that was all very well for the women. But men don’t like saints. I had to make you out a villain--but a magnificent villain, such as men secretly envy. And I had learned something, Norman. I had learned that the paternal passion is repressed in our polite species--repressed, I believe, is the word--but not extinct. I was depending on that. I looked at my jury, and I said: ‘It isn’t embezzlement, gentlemen. It’s a baby.’ One fellow snickered. I thought: ‘All right--I’ll have _you_ crying before I’ve finished!’ And I did, too....”

“What in God’s name did you tell them, Gilbert?”

“The story of a respectable man and his illegitimate son. I must admit that I embroidered it a little. You know you dropped that hint about St. Louis--and several people saw you get on that train. Which shows the value of evidence. Well, I followed up that hint--saying that it was only a guess of mine. I said you had been talking to me about South America. I said I thought you had gone there. And why South America? Because it’s a Man’s Country. I’d been reading a story about it in Mencken’s Mercury, and I laid in on thick. There a man begets his children by all the girls he takes a fancy to. And he doesn’t have to sneak out of his responsibilities--the country isn’t run by a lot of old-maid Sunday-school teachers. When he gets tired of a girl he gives her a present and tells her to get out. But she leaves her baby behind. A South American gentleman, I gave them to understand, has a dozen bright and happy illegitimate children, and a big house in the country where he raises them, and visits them, and plays with them--and everybody, including the lawful wife, knows all about it. I pictured you, Norman, as a fellow that wasn’t going to be bluffed out of his natural feelings by our hypocritical civilization. If you couldn’t have your son with you in Vickley, you were going to South America, where such things are understood. Mind you, I said, I’m not defending the young man, I’m only trying to explain him. But I could see that the idea appealed to the crowd. There’s something of the Turk and the Mormon in us all. The truth is, we’d like not only to go to bed with all the pretty girls we take a fancy to, but we’d like to have them go right ahead and have their babies. And you needn’t tell me the girls don’t feel the same way about it. If polygamy wasn’t so damned expensive, that’s the way we’d do it, too. The aristocracy has always had its bastards without shame and apparently to the satisfaction of all concerned. It’s only our middle-class economy that has made us a race of hypocrites.”

Norman looked at old Gilbert in astonishment. “I hope you don’t expect me to live up to your romantic stories!”

“But, Norman--don’t go back on me now. You’re planning to adopt the boy, aren’t you? I made sure of that when Dr. Zerneke said you were calling up every day about him.”

Norman flushed. “Of course I’m going to adopt him. But I don’t feel in the least like a Mormon or a Turk. Or a saint either.”

“Well, you’ve made a good start in both directions. Norman, my boy”-- Gilbert emptied the bottle into his tumbler--“you’ve done what every man at some time in his life wishes he dared to do--and what every woman feels instinctively that a real man ought to do.”

“Gilbert--all this excitement has gone to your head. You’re talking bosh. Every man in America doesn’t beget a child out of wedlock. You see, I happen to know the statistics. It comes to only about--I’ve figured it out for Vickley: let me think. If Vickley runs true to statistical averages, there are only about twenty new illegitimate fathers there per year. And there are nearly twelve thousand males in Vickley between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five. So you see it’s really quite the exception, Gilbert.”

“Your statistics, my boy, apply only to the illegitimate children that are actually born. I’m talking of the others. There may be men in Vickley who have never in all their lives sent a girl to the abortionist--but I’d not bet on any of them being there at Sam’s bar that night. And that’s what they were all thinking of--the girls who had cried because they couldn’t go ahead and have their babies--the girls whose abortions they had paid for--the girls who, as they damn well knew, despised them for being the dirty cowards that we respectable men have to be!”

Norman looked at him curiously--wonderingly.... What did old Gilbert know about such things?

The telephone rang. Gilbert took up the receiver.

“A telegram? Yes, send it up.”

He turned to Norman. “That will be from your father. I wired him that the lost was found and in good shape.”

They waited. There was a knock at the door, and the boy with the telegram. Gilbert read it and handed it to Norman.

In the stiff, reticent phrases that were so like his father, it read:

PLEASED AND GRATEFUL WILL ARRIVE CHICAGO SUNDAY MORNING AS PLANNED

OVERBECK

Ten words.