Book IV: Chapter V

by Sherwood Anderson

　　The trial of Andrew Brown was both an opportunity and a test forMcGregor. For a number of years he had lived a lonely life in Chicago.He had made no friends and his mind had not been confused by theendless babble of small talk on which most of us subsist. Eveningafter evening he had walked alone through the streets and had stood atthe door of the State Street restaurant a solitary figure aloof fromlife. Now he was to be drawn into the maelstrom. In the past he hadbeen let alone by life. The great blessing of isolation had been hisand in his isolation he had dreamed a big dream. Now the quality ofthe dream and the strength of its hold upon him was to be tested.

　　McGregor was not to escape the influence of the life of his day. Deephuman passion lay asleep in his big body. Before the time of hisMarching Men he had yet to stand the most confusing of all the moderntests of men, the beauty of meaningless women and the noisy clamour ofsuccess that is equally meaningless.

　　On the day of his conversation with Andrew Brown in the old CookCounty jail on Chicago's North Side we are therefore to think ofMcGregor as facing these tests. After the talk with Brown he walkedalong the street and came to the bridge that led over the river intothe loop district. In his heart he knew that he was facing a fight andthe thought thrilled him. With a new lift to his shoulders he walkedover the bridge. He looked at the people and again let his heart befilled with contempt for them.

　　He wished that the fight for Brown were a fight with fists. Boarding awest side car he sat looking out through the car window at the passingcrowd and imagined himself among them, striking right and left,gripping throats, demanding the truth that would save Brown and sethimself up before the eyes of men.

　　When McGregor got to the Monroe Street millinery store it was eveningand Edith was preparing to go out to the evening meal. He stoodlooking at her. In his voice rang a note of triumph. Out of hiscontempt for the men and women of the underworld came boastfulness."They have given me a job they think I can't do," he said. "I'm to beBrown's counsel in the big murder case." He put his hands on her frailshoulders and pulled her to the light. "I'm going to knock them overand show them," he boasted. "They think they're going to hang Brown--the oily snakes. Well they didn't count on me. Brown doesn't count onme. I'm going to show them." He laughed noisily in the empty shop.

　　At a little restaurant McGregor and Edith talked of the test he was togo through. As he talked she sat in silence and looked at his redhair.

　　"Find out if your man Brown has a sweetheart," she said, thinking ofherself.

　　* * * * *America is the land of murders. Day after day in cities and towns andon lonely country roads violent death creeps upon men. Undisciplinedand disorderly in their way of life the citizens can do nothing. Aftereach murder they cry out for new laws which, when they are writteninto the books of laws, the very lawmaker himself breaks. Harriedthrough life by clamouring demands, their days leave them no time forthe quietude in which thoughts grow. After days of meaningless hurryin the city they jump upon trains or street cars and hurry throughtheir favourite paper to the ball game, the comic pictures and themarket reports.

　　And then something happens. The moment arrives. A murder that mighthave got a single column on an inner page of yesterday's paper todayspreads its terrible details over everything.

　　Through the streets hurry the restless scurrying newsboys, stirringthe crowds with their cries. The men who have passed impatiently thetales of a city's shame snatch the papers and read eagerly andexhaustively the story of a crime.

　　And into the midst of such a maelstrom of rumours, hideous impossiblestories and well-laid plans to defeat the truth, McGregor hurledhimself. Day after day he wandered through the vice district south ofVan Buren Street. Prostitutes, pimps, thieves and saloon hangers-onlooked at him and smiled knowingly. As the days passed and he made noprogress he became desperate. One day an idea came to him. "I'll go tothe good looking woman at the settlement house," he told himself. "Shewon't know who killed the boy but she can find out. I'll make her findout."

　　* * * * *In Margaret Ormsby McGregor was to know what was to him a new kind ofwomanhood, something sure, reliant, hedged about and prepared as agood soldier is prepared, to have the best of it in the struggle forexistence. Something he had not known was yet to make its cry to theman.

　　Margaret Ormsby like McGregor himself had not been defeated by life.She was the daughter of David Ormsby, head of the great plough trustwith headquarters in Chicago, a man who because of a certain fineassurance in his attitude toward life had been called "Ormsby thePrince" by his associates. Her mother Laura Ormsby was small nervousand intense.

　　With a self-conscious abandonment, lacking just a shade of uttersecurity, Margaret Ormsby, beautiful in body and beautifully clad,went here and there among the outcasts of the First Ward. She like allwomen was waiting for an opportunity of which she did not talk even toherself. She was something for the single-minded and primitiveMcGregor to approach with caution.

　　Hurrying along a narrow street lined with cheap saloons McGregor wentin at the door of the settlement house and sat in a chair at a deskfacing Margaret Ormsby. He knew something of her work in the FirstWard and that she was beautiful and self-possessed. He was determinedthat she should help him. Sitting in the chair and looking at heracross the flat-top desk he choked back into her throat the tersesentences with which she was wont to greet visitors.

　　"It is all very well for you to sit there dressed up and telling mewhat women in your position can do and can't do," he said, "but I'vecome here to tell you what you will do if you are of the kind thatwant to be useful."

　　The speech of McGregor was a challenge which Margaret, the moderndaughter of one of our modern great men, could not well let pass. Hadshe not brazened out her timidity to go calmly among prostitutes andsordid muttering drunkards, serene in her consciousness of business-like purpose? "What is it you want?" she asked sharply.

　　"You have just two things that will help me," said McGregor; "yourbeauty and your virginity. These things are a kind of magnet, drawingthe women of the street to you. I know. I've heard them talk.

　　"There are women who come in here who know who it was killed that boyin the passageway and why it was done," McGregor went on. "You're afetish with these women. They are children and they come in here tolook at you as children peep around curtains at guests sitting in theparlour of their houses.

　　"Well I want you to call these children into the room and let themtell you family secrets. The whole ward here knows the story of thatkilling. The air is filled with it. The men and women keep trying totell me, but they're afraid. The police have them scared and theyhalf-tell me and then run away like frightened animals.

　　"I want them to tell you. You don't count with the police down here.They think you're too beautiful and too good to touch the real life ofthese people. None of them--the bosses or the police--are watchingyou. I'll keep kicking up dust and you get the information I want. Youcan do the job if you're any good."

　　After McGregor's speech the woman sat in silence and looked at him.For the first time she had met a man who overwhelmed her and was in noway diverted by her beauty nor her self--possession. A hot wave, halfanger, half admiration, swept over her.

　　McGregor stared at the woman and waited. "I've got to have facts," hesaid. "Give me the story and the names of those who know the story andI'll make them tell. I have some facts now--got them by bullying agirl and by choking a bartender in an alley. Now I want you in yourway to put me in the way of getting more facts. You make the womentalk and tell you and then you tell me."

　　When McGregor had gone Margaret Ormsby got up from her desk in thesettlement house and walked across the city toward her father'soffice. She was startled and frightened. In a moment and by the speechand manner of this brutal young lawyer she had been made to realisethat she was but a child in the hands of the forces that played abouther in the First Ward. Her self--possession was shaken. "If they arechildren--these women of the town--then I am a child, a child swimmingwith them in a sea of hate and ugliness."

　　A new thought came into her mind. "But he is no child--that McGregor.He is a child of nothing. He stands on a rock unshaken."

　　She tried to become indignant because of the blunt frankness of theman's speech. "He talked to me as he would have talked to a woman ofthe streets," she thought. "He was not afraid to assume that at bottomwe are alike, just playthings in the hands of the man who dares."

　　In the street she stopped and looked about. Her body trembled and sherealised that the forces about her had become living things ready topounce upon her. "Anyway, I will do what I can. I will help him. Iwill have to do that," she whispered to herself.