And what of Artie’s father? I asked.
He was a man entirely occupied with his affairs. On festive occasions he would put in an appearance, at Artie’s birthday parties.
I asked, was Mr. Straus a cold person? No, Myra said, not really, and indeed the Straus household hadn’t been cold at all. Mrs. Straus had given it such a warm, open atmosphere. Everyone felt free at the Strauses; it was that kind of a house, with culture, good music. Of course, Mrs. Straus was quite busy – she was the leader of so many activities.
“I always thought,” Myra confessed, “I would have liked her for my own mother; she’s so much more up on things-” And Myra crumpled against me. “I was with Artie on every birthday,” she sobbed. “I wrote a poem for him every year.” She had written one today. She tried to recite it to me, in her gaspy hoarse whisper.
Oh, angry boy
Life’s a broken toy
Which you’d destroy,
No! angry boy -
Her voice choked. “It’s doggerel,” she cried desperately. “Oh, Sid, why can’t I-” I held her until she stopped trembling, and then I walked her home.
In my primitive way I was following the path of the psychiatrists, who began their work with family interviews. Dr. Allwin made a hasty trip to Charlevoix. Artie’s father was still in a state of shock, silent, withdrawn. The mother had begun somehow to encompass the blow. She could sit with Dr. Allwin and attempt to recall…
Of course Artie had been from infancy exceptionally wilful, mischievous, and for that very reason she had felt that a strong personality like Miss Newsome was a good choice as governess. Miss Newsome had her faults, and toward the end there had been quite a struggle with the poor woman who had no other avenue of affection and had become over-attached to Artie, seeking to replace his mother – but such situations frequently arose with governesses, didn’t they?
Then there had been the escapades. Yes, the times he had taken things from stores, they had been quite disturbed… and the dreadful accident here in Charlevoix, when he had taken the car to a dance. An old woman had been in the wagon Artie had run into, and she had lingered in the hospital for several months. Artie himself had suffered a concussion.
Had he changed markedly at that time?
She strengthened herself, to be unflinchingly honest. It had to be admitted that Artie had always been wild. And deceitful. Yes – but how could anyone have imagined…?
No, no, the doctor reassured her, it would have been virtually impossible to suspect homicidal tendencies. And he never confided in anyone?
She had always thought that possibly with James he… Her eyes wavered.
Perhaps, in other ways, Artie might have shown his true feelings? Sudden angers? Hatred? Jealousy within the family?
She recalled one time when his father had been going on a trip East, taking his brother James along, and Artie had wanted so badly to go to New York. He had been fifteen then, and he had screamed, even producing a tantrum quite like he used to have when he was a very little boy.
Tantrums?
Oh, very frequently. Childish tantrums, to get what he wanted. But all children did that, and she usually tried the method of letting the child scream itself out, shutting him in his room, as neither she nor his father of course believed in capital – she caught herself – in corporal punishment.
She had tried to make things always stimulating and agreeable for him around the house. She had always encouraged young people to congregate, though it did seem that Artie wore out his friends rather rapidly. For this reason, perhaps, she had tolerated too long his unhealthy relationship with Judd Steiner.
Mementoes, snapshots were brought out, and Dr. Allwin studied them absorbedly: the white-clad tennis youth, the smiling boy in the class photograph, the collegiate Artie in a roadster. And then, further back, among the childhood pictures, one snapshot halted the alienist: Artie in a cowboy suit, holding a toy pistol, stalking his teddy bear.
Did she remember when it was taken?
Of course she remembered it! Artie was four, yes. A Sunday afternoon – Artie was so cute, so darling that day, and Mr. Straus himself had been unusually relaxed and had taken the pictures. Why? Was there something about the picture?
No, nothing unusual, the doctor said. But yet – in the expression…
And he so loved his teddy bear, the mother said.
But still, the doctor mused, a kid would be grinning, or making faces, or looking toward his parents. But here, the boy was so intent, lost in his masquerade, really living the hunt. He asked, This was shortly after the governess, Miss Newsome, came into the household? Why, yes, the mother said, her brows contracted. But why?
He himself didn’t know, he was only feeling his way. Was this a moment that became fixed, frozen, a boy for ever masquerading, for ever a hunter with a pistol? “It’s just that he seems so concentrated,” the doctor said. Could he take this picture with him? he asked. But of course! And he pocketed the snapshot.
In the Steiner house, too, there were mementoes. The elaborate Baby’s Book that the mother had filled with such exalted pride – the photographs of the tiny, alert infant with his curiously brilliant black eyes. And Aunt Bertha talking all the while of the marvels of the precocious child, and how his father and mother would do anything, anything for him.
The alienist nodded, and meanwhile thumbed through the Mark Twain School Annual, bound in elaborately embossed leather. “He was the highest in his class,” the aunt said, “and the youngest.” And Dr. Allwin halted at a page of verse, one stanza devoted to each member of the junior class. The very end of it had caught his eye:
Now there’s our Junior list
And surely there’s no finer.
But wait! we nearly missed
The mighty Judah Steiner!
Turning the page, Dr. Allwin came upon a photograph of Artie Straus – “Most Popular Twainite, and Youngest Student Ever to Enter the University of Chicago.”
From the brothers, there was little to be learned. Max said he had honestly tried to help the kid, but they just never had been interested in the same things. With the Straus men, brother James said maybe he had covered up too much for Artie, and Uncle Gerald said there was that incident four years ago – maybe the family should have paid more attention. James told of the incident. Going through his desk he had found a hundred-dollar Liberty Bond missing. “Artie got all excited and told some cock-and-bull story about seeing the chauffeur hanging around my room. But when Artie was out, I took a look in his desk and found the bond.” James had called him a lousy little thieving liar. And now James remembered how Artie had turned on him in bitter screaming anger, crying, “All right! So I swiped it! So what the hell is it to you!”
What the hell is it to you! It echoed now. Was that the kind of thing the doctor meant? “Maybe we should have done something about things like that, taken him to a doctor; maybe it was a sign.”
But Uncle Gerald said, “You should have beat the stuffings out of him.”
“Your father must have known something of his delinquencies?” the doctor asked of James.
“I guess he had an idea, but you see Dad was – well, off by himself. I’m afraid no one in the family was as close as we should have been to Artie.”
The doctor took a deep breath. Artie had apparently never learned to give anyone his confidence, he observed. Perhaps it would be best to prepare him for the study that was to be made. Since time was short, he should be made to understand that the doctors wished only to help him, but that they could do so only if he were entirely frank, and held nothing back. And as James and Uncle Gerald seemed after all to have most influence with him, perhaps they could suggest… They nodded, solemnly.