SOMEONE once suggested that Camilla was “a type,” and Miss Eunice found comfort in the suggestion. To most of her friends she seemed nothing else than Camilla, a term inclusive and select, meaning something radiant and surprising, valuable for the zest that came with her and lingered after her going. They said that, if she had been born to masculine destinies, she would have been another Henry Champ-ney, a Camillus with
“The fervent love Camillus bore
His native land.”
In that case she would not have been Camilla. Here speculation paused.
In general they agreed that she walked and talked harmoniously, and was lovely and lovable, with grey eyes and lifted brows, stature tall and shoulder carried martially, delicate and tender curves of mouth and throat. Camilla was no accumulation of details either.
At any rate, the world is not so old but a sweet-faced maiden still makes it lyrical. It is a fine question whether she is not more exhilarating than ever.
Camilla seemed to herself identified with her ideas, her energetic beliefs and sympathies. The terms in which she made an attempt to interpret herself came forth partly from cloistral studies in that hive of swarming energies, a girls' college in an old New England town, where ran a swift river, much cleaner and swifter than the Muscadine. She barely remembered when the family lived in the national capital, and Henry Champney was a noted and quoted man. She had but a dim mental picture of an invalid mother, fragile, be-laced, and be-ribboned. Her memories ran about Port Argent and the Muscadine, the Eastern seminary, the household rule of Miss Eunice. They included glimpses of her father's friend, the elder Hennion, a broad-shouldered man, who always had with him the slim youth, Dick; which slim youth was marvellously condescending, and once reconstructed her doll with wires, so that when you pulled a wire it would wave arms and legs in the manner in which Miss Eunice said no well-bred little girl ever waved her arms and legs. He seemed a beneficial person, this Dick. He taught her carpentry and carving. Magical things he used to do with hammer and saw, mallet and chisel, in that big unfurnished room over the mansards of the Champney house, so high up that one saw the Muscadine through the tops of the trees. The room was unchanged even now. It was still Camilla's hermitage. The ranges of trunks were still there, the tool-chest with Dick's old tools, old carvings, drawings, plans of bridges.
He was beneficial, but peculiar. He thought the Maple Street bridge the finest of objects on the earth. He did not care for fairy stories, because they were not true.
Henry Champney kept certain blocks of wood, whereon Camilla at the age of twelve had cut the semblances of faces, semblances of the vaguest, but all hinting at tragedy. Miss Eunice had disapproved of that pursuit.
On the morning after Aidee's visit Miss Eunice sat at the parlour window knitting. Beyond the lawn ran Lower Bank Street; beyond the street and underneath the bluff were the freight-yards, with piles of black coal and brown iron dust, and a travelling crane rattling to and fro, from ship to car. Beyond the yards were the river and the P. and N. railroad bridge; beyond the river the dark chimneys of factories, with long roofs, and black smoke streaming in the sky, and the brick and wood tenements of East Argent. Beyond these, hidden but influential, because one knew they were there, lay the rank, unsightly suburbs; beyond the suburbs, a flat, prosperous country of fields and woods, farm buildings, highways, and trestle pyramids of the oil wells.
Camilla was reading, with one hand plunged in her hair. The river and factories had lain some hours under the shadow of Miss Eunice's disapproval. She turned the shadow on Camilla, and remonstrated. Camilla came out of her absorption slowly. The remonstrance roused her to reminiscence.
“We used to keep our heads in wet towels at college,” she said.
Miss Eunice laid down her knitting. Camilla went on thoughtfully:
“Do you know, Aunty, a wet towel is a good thing?”
Miss Eunice sighed. Camilla lingered over her reminiscences. After a time she picked up the books that lay about her, laid them on her lap, and began running through the titlepages.
“They're Mr. Aidee's. Listen! 'The Problems of the Poor,' 'The Civic Disease,' 'If Christ Came to Chicago.'”
“Mr. Aidee lent you such books!”
“Yes, but you need a wet towel with them. 'Socialism and Anarchy,' 'The Inner Republic.' Oh! Why! How fine!” She had slipped beyond the titlepage of a fat grey volume. She was sunk fathoms deep, and soaked in a new impression, nested and covered and lost to conversation. Miss Eunice returned to her knitting, and spread gloom about her in a circle.
It is one of the penalties of stirring times that they open such gulfs between the generations. If the elders have been unplastic, the young have not taken it intimately to themselves that life was as keen to their predecessors as it is to them, that the present is not all the purport of the past. Our fathers did not live merely in order that we might live, but were worth something to themselves. Miss Eunice had had her heartbeats and flushed cheeks, no matter at this late day when or how. No matter what her romance was. It was a story of few events or peculiarities. She had grown somewhat over-rigid with time. That her melancholy—if melancholy it should be called, a certain dry severity—that it gave most people a slight impression of comedy, was perhaps one of the tragic elements in it. As to that long-past phenomenon of flushed cheeks, at least she could not remember ever having allowed herself any such folly over books entitled “Socialism and Anarchy,” or “The Civic Disease,” or “The Inner Republic.” She was glad to believe that Camilla was “a type,” because it was easier to condemn a type than to condemn Camilla, for having heartbeats and flushed cheeks over matters so unsuitable.
In the times when carefully constructed curls tapped against Miss Eunice's flushed cheeks, it has been supposed, there was more social emphasis on sex. At least there was a difference. Miss Eunice felt the difference, and looked across it in disapproval of Camilla's reading.
Camilla started, gathered the books in an armful, and flashed out of the room, across the hall to her father's library. She settled in a chair beside him.
“Now! What do you think?”
Several books fell on the floor. She spilled others in picking up the first.
“I think your books will lose their backs,” Champney rumbled mildly.
The fire leaped and snapped in the fireplace, and the sunlight streamed in at the tall side windows.
“Think of what, my dear?”
“Listen!”
Her father leaned his white-haired and heavy head on his hand, while she read from the grey volume, as follows:
“'You have remarked too often “I am as good as you.” It is probable that God only knows whether you are or not. You may be better. I think he knows that you are always either better or worse. If you had remarked “You are as good as I,” it would have represented a more genial frame of mind. It would have rendered your superiority more probable, since whichever remark you make gives, so far as it goes, its own evidence that it is not true. But indeed it is probable that neither your life nor your ideas are admirable, that your one hope of betterment is, not to become convinced that no one is better than you, but to find someone to whom you can honourably look up. I am asking you to look up, not back, nor away among the long dead years for any cause or ideal. I am asking you to search for your leader among your contemporaries, not satisfied until you find him, not limited in your devotion when you have found him, taking his cause to be yours. I am asking you to remember that evil is not social, but human; that good is not social, but human. You have heard that an honest man is the noblest work of God. You have heard of no institution which merits that finality of praise. You have heard that every institution is the lengthened shadow of a man. Is it then in shadows or by shadows that we live?'”
Camilla paused.
“I think your author is in a measure a disciple of Carlyle,” said Champney.
“Are you interested, daddy? See who wrote it!”
Champney took the volume, read, “Chapter Eighth. Whither My Master Went,” and turned back to the title page. “H'm—'The Inner Republic, by Alcott Aidee.' Another discovery, is it?” he asked. “We discover America every other day, my dear! What an extraordinary generation we are!”
Camilla's discovery of her father had been a happy surprise. Happy surprises are what maids in their Arcadian age are of all creatures most capable of receiving. She called him her “graduate course,” and he replied gallantly by calling her his “postponed education.” He had had his happy surprise as well. It was an especial, an unexpected reward for the efforts Champ-ney had made—not altogether painless—to realise the lapse of old conditions, and to pick up threads of interest in the new,—that his efforts had brought him to these relations with Camilla; so that the two were able to sit together of a morning, and talk friendly and long, without patronage or impatience.
To realise the lapse of old conditions, to realise that he was obsolete, that his effective days were over! It was a hard matter. Hard, but an old story now, this struggle to realise this change. The books on his shelves had grown to seem passive and lifeless, since they no longer had connection through himself with the stir of existence.
The Websterian periods had taken on a ghostly echo, and the slow ebbing of the war issues had left him with a sense of being stranded on dry sands. There seemed to be a flatness everywhere,—a silence, except for the noisy rattle of the street.
It is a pleasant saying, that “The evening of life comes bringing its own lamp,” but it seemed to him it was a drearily false one. The great men of a great time, he thought, were gone, or fast going. It was a stagnation period in his life, pictured in his mind afterward as an actual desert, dividing arable lands. Were the new men so small, so unuplifted, or was it only his own mind grown dry and nerveless? He was afraid it was the latter,—afraid life was dying away, or drying up in his still comfortable body.
He would prove to himself that it was not.
This was the beginning of the effort he had made,—a defiant, half-desperate rally. The struggle began at a definite date. One day he put away his old books. He bought new ones, and new periodicals, and determined to find the world still alive,—to find again that old sense of the importance of things that were going on. It was an intimate fight this time, unapplauded—against a shadow, a creeping numbness. He fought on, and at length had almost begun to lose hope.
When Camilla came back from college and Eastern friends she dawned upon him in a series of minute surprises. She brought him his victory, and the lamp for his evening. So it came about. The struggle was over, and the longed-for hope and cheer came back to him.
So it came that the relation between them was peculiar. New books had a meaning when Camilla read them to him, as she read from Alcott Aidee's book to-day, while the noise of the freight-yards, and the rattle of the travelling crane unloading a docked ship, sounded dull and distant. The sunlight came yellow and pleasant through tall windows, and the fire snapped briskly, and Alcott Aidee spoke through the medium of Camilla and the grey volume, making these singular remarks:
“Incarnation of divinity! Surely you have been unfortunate, if in going to and fro in this world you have nowhere observed any measure of divinity incarnated in a man, apparent in ordering or in obedience, in leading or in following, speaking from lips which said, 'Follow me,' as well as from those which said, 'Thy will, not mine be done,' speaking, for aught I know, as largely in one way as the other. I am not measuring divinity. I am showing you where to look for it. I am trying to persuade you that it does not speak from lips which say 'I am as good as you.'”
New books, ran Champney's thoughts, new men, new times, new waves foaming up the old slant shores. But only as they spoke with Camilla's voice, did they seem to him now to make the numbed cords vibrate again, or comfort his wintry age.
“Isn't it interesting, daddy? If you're going to be frivolous, I shan't read.”
Champney was looking at the volume with a grim smile.
“I was thinking that to read only in the middle of the gentleman's book was perhaps not doing him justice. It was perhaps why I did not understand where he began, or where he was going. It seems to be neither old democracy nor new socialism, but more like the divine rights of some kind of aristocracy. Shall we not read the book through in order, my dear? Having become convinced that Mr. Aidee himself contains a measure of this divinity, and having taken him for our leader, shall we not then induce our recalcitrant friend Dick to join us, and in that way induce him to become a politician?”
This was the Champney manner in the stately vein of irony.
“Oh!” Camilla pushed her hand through her hair, a Champney gesture, “Dick was horrid about that.”
“Recalcitrant, Hum! Horrid, horridus, bristling, Ha! Not inappropriate to the attitude on that occasion of the said Dick. Not usual for him, I should say. He is like his father, Camilla. A quiet man, but striking, the latter. You don't remember him?”
“Oh, yes! But you see, Dick didn't like it, because Mr. Aidee asked me to help him. But it isn't like him to be fussy. Anyway, I liked it, but Dick didn't. So!” Camilla pushed back her hair, another Champney gesture—the defiant one. “Now, what made him act like hornets?”
“I also took the liberty not to like it, Camilla,” with a rumble of thorough bass.
Camilla glanced up, half startled, and put a small warm hand into her father's hand, which was large, bony, and wrinkled. The two hands clasped instinctively hard, as if for assurance that no breach should come between them, no distance over which the old and the young hand could not clasp.
Camilla turned back to Alcott Aidee's book, and read on. Champney found himself now listening in a personal, or what he might have described as a feminine, way; he found himself asking, not what meaning or truth there was in this writer, but asking what meaning it might have toward Camilla, at the Arcadian age when maids are fain of surprises. He thought of Dick Hennion, of the Hennions, father and son. One always wondered at them, their cross-lot logic, their brevities, their instinct as to where the fulcrum of a thing rested. One believed in them without asking reasons—character was a mysterious thing—a certain fibre or quality. Ah! Rick Hennion was dead now, and Henry Champney's fighting days were over. It was good to live, but a weariness to be too old. He thought of Alcott Aidee, of his gifts and temperament, his theory of devotion and divinity—an erratic star, a comet of a man, who had a great church—by the way, it was not a church—a building at least, with a tower full of clamouring bells, and a swarming congregation. It was called “The Seton Avenue Assembly.” So Aidee had written this solid volume on—something or other. One could see he was in earnest, but that Camilla should be over-earnest in the wake of his argument seemed a strong objection to the argument. A new man, an able writer—all very interesting—but—— In fact, he might prove resident divinities, or prove perpetual incarnations of the devil, if he chose, but what did the fellow mean by asking Camilla to—— In fact, it was an unwarranted liberty. Champney felt suddenly indignant. Camilla read on, and Champney disliked the doctrine, whatever it was, in a manner defined even by himself as “feminine.”
“'Not in vain,' she read, 'have men sought in nature the assurance of its large currents, of its calm and self-control, the knitting up of “the ravelled sleave of care,” “the breathing balm of mute insensate things,” “the sleep that is among the lonely hills.” It has been written,
“Into the woods my Master went
Clean foresprent,
and that “the little grey leaves were kind to him.” All these things have I found, and known them. Was it there my Master went? I found the balm, the slumber, and the peace. But I found no inspiration. This, wherever I found it, always spoke with human lips, always looked out of human eyes. The calm of nature is as the calm of the past. Green battlefields lie brooding, because the issue is over; deep woods and secluded valleys, because the issue is elsewhere. The apostle who met a vision of his Master on the Appian Way, and asked, “Whither goest thou?” was answered, “Into the city.” Do you ask again, whither he went? I answer that he went on with the vanguard of the fight; which vanguard is on the front wave and surf of these times; which front wave and surf is in the minds and moods of persons; not in creeds, customs, formulas, churches, governments, or anywhere else at all; for the key to all cramped and rusted locks lies in humanity, not in nature; in cities, not in solitudes; in sympathy, not in science; in men, not in institutions; not in laws, but in persons.'
“Aren't you interested, daddy?”
“Yes, my dear. Why do you ask?”
“You look so absent-minded. But it's a new chapter now, and it's called 'Constitutions.'” Camilla laughed triumphantly.
“Constitutions! Then the gentleman will be political. Go on.”
“'Chapter ninth,'” she read. “'Constitutions.'
“'Most men govern themselves as monarchies; some as despotisms that topple to anarchies, some as nearly absolute monarchies; but mainly, and on the whole, they govern themselves as partially restricted or constitutional monarchies; which constitutions are made up of customs, precedents, and compromises, British Constitutions of opportunism and common law. Indeed, they claim that the inner lifemustbe a monarchy by its nature, and every man's soul his castle. They are wrong. It must be a republic, and every man's soul an open house.
“'Now, it is nowhere stated in any Declaration or Constitution put forth of this Inner Republic that “all men are by nature free and equal.” If such a declaration occurred to the framers of this Constitution, they would seem to have thought it difficult to reconcile with observation, and not very pertinent either. As a special qualification for citizenship, it appears to be written there that a man must love his neighbour as himself—meaning as nearly as he can, his citizenship graded to his success; and as a general maxim of common law, it is written that he shall treat other men as he would like them to treat him, or words to that effect. However, although to apply and interpret this Constitution there are courts enough, and bewildering litigation, and counsel eager with their expert advice, yet the Supreme Court holds in every man's heart its separate session.”
To all of which Champney's thoughts made one singular comment. “Camilla,” they insisted, “Camilla.”
WHILE Camilla and Henry Champney bent a dark and a white head over Aidee's book, Miss Eunice in the parlour bent a grey head over her knitting, and thought of Camilla, and disapproved of the type of girls who neither knitted nor even embroidered; who had hot cheeks, not over such subjects, for instance, as “Richard,” but over such subjects as “Problems of the Poor,” and “Civic Diseases.”
Miss Eunice looked up from her knitting now and then, and through the window she saw across the river the huddle of East Argent's disordered roofs, and factories, and chimneys powerfully belching black smoke, and disapproved of what she saw.
There were others than Miss Eunice who disapproved of East Argent. Dwellers on Herbert and Seton Avenues, those quiet, shaded avenues, with their clean, broad lawns, were apt to do so.
Yet it was a corporate part of Port Argent and the nearest way to it was over the Maple Street bridge.
The P. and N. Railroad passed under the East Argent approach to the bridge, coming from its further freight yards on the right. At the first corner beyond, if there happened to be a street sign there, which was unlikely, the sign would read “Muscadine Street.”
Muscadine Street left ran down the river toward the belching factories; Muscadine Street right, up the river between the freight yards on one side and a row of houses on the other; depressing houses, of wood or brick, with false front elevations feebly decorated; ground floors mainly shops for meat, groceries, liquors, candies; upper floors overrun with inhabitants. There were slouching men on the sidewalk, children quarrelling in the muddy street, unkempt women in the windows, of whom those with dull faces were generally fat, those with clever faces generally drawn and thin. It was a street with iron clamours and triumphant smells. It was a street whose population objected to neither circumstance, and found existence on the whole interesting and more than endurable. It was a street unaware of Miss Eunice Champney's disapproval, and undisturbed by that of Herbert and Seton Avenues. It is singular how many people can be disapproved of by how many others, and neither be the better or worse on that account.
On the second corner was a grocery occupying the ground floor of a flat-roofed, clap-boarded house. Around the corner, on a side street leading east, a wooden stair ran up on the outside. At the top of the stair a sign in black letters on a yellow background implied that “James Shays, Shoemaker,” was able to mend all kinds of footwear, and would do so on request. Inside the hallway, the first door on the right was the shoemaker's door, and within were two small rooms, of which the first was the shop.
A wooden table stood in the middle of the room, with a smoky-chimneyed lamp thereon, some newspapers, and half of a book that had been ripped savagely in two. A double shoemaker's bench stood next the window, a cooking stove and a cupboard opposite. Clothes hung on wall-hooks, hides lay on the floor.
Shays sat on one end of the bench, a grey-haired, grey-moustached, watery-eyed man, pegging a shoe vaguely. A black-haired little man with a thin black beard sat on the other end, stitching a shoe fiercely. A redlipped, red-cheeked, thick-nosed, thick-necked man with prominent eyes, sat tilted back in one of the wooden chairs, stating his mind deliberately.
Most of these phases of Muscadine Street might be found so arranged, on most mornings, by any visitor. Shays and the red-cheeked Coglan could not be depended on; but the men on the sidewalk, the women in the windows, the children in the street, the clamour and the smells would be there; also the grocer, the butcher, and Hicks, the stitcher of vehement stitches. If Coglan and Shays were there, Coglan would be found in the process of stating his mind.
Hicks' eyes were black, restless, and intense, his mouth a trifle on one side, his forehead high with a deep line down the middle. It was a painful line; when he smiled it seemed to point downward frowningly to the fact that the smile was onesided.
Coglan was Shays' associate in the pursuit of happiness. His value lay in this: that upon a certain amount of hard liquor purchased by Shays, and divided fairly and orderly between them, Shays became needy of help, and Coglan generally remained in good condition and able to take him home. Hicks was Shays' partner in the shop. His value lay in this: that he did twice as much work as Shays, and was satisfied with half the profits. Both men were valuable to Shays, and the shop supported the three.
The relations between them had grown settled with time. Nearly four years earlier Hicks had entered Shays' shop. There he learned to cobble footwear in some incredibly short time, and took his place in the apprehension of Muscadine Street. Hicks he called himself and nothing more. “Hicks” was a good enough name. It went some distance toward describing the brooding and restless little man, with his shaking, clawlike fingers, smouldering temper, and gift for fluent invective. Some said he was an anarchist. He denied it, and went into fiery definitions, at which the grocer and candy man shook their heads vaguely, and the butcher said, “Says he ain't, an' if he ain't, he ain't,” not as I see which seemed a conclusive piece of logic. At any rate he was Hicks.
The elderly Shays was a peaceful soul, a dusty mind, a ruined body. He was travelling through his life now at a pace that would be apt to bring him to the end of it at no distant date, enjoying himself, as he understood enjoyment, or as enjoyment was interpreted to him by the wise Coglan. Coglan maintained a solidly planted dislike of Hicks, whose attacks threatened his dominance, whose acrid contempt and unlimited vocabulary sometimes even threatened his complacence. Coglan's wisdom saw that the situation was preferable to searching for jobs, and that the situation depended on Hicks' acceptance of it. Hicks was a mystery to him, as well as to Shays, and something of a fear, but Coglan was not disturbed by the mystery. He could leave that alone and do very well. But Hicks was a poisoned needle. Hicks knew where to find Coglan's sensitive point and jab it. Coglan hated him solidly, but balancing his dislike against his interest and ease, Coglan wisely found that the latter were more solid still—beyond comparison solid.
All this could be learned by any visitor inquiring in Muscadine Street. The grocer underneath would add tersely that Shays was a soak, but good-hearted; that Hicks was a fool, and ought to set up shop for himself; that Coglan was a loafer, and had his bread buttered now about to suit him. Disapproval of each other was current in Muscadine Street. It was a part of their interest in life.
The same morning sunlight that slanted through Henry Champney's tall library and parlour widows was slanting through the small streaked window of Shays, the shoe-mender. Coglan was stating his mind.
“Jimmy Shays, yer a good man,” he was saying slowly; “an', Hicksy, yer an' industhrious man; but nayther of ye is a wise man; but Jimmy is the wisest man of ye two. For why? Ask that, an' I says this. For when Jimmy wants a bit of thinkin' done for him, he gets a sensible man to do it, an' a poor man, an' a workin' man like himself, an' a man that's a friend, and that stands by him in throuble. But what does ye do, Hicksy? Ye goes over the river. Ye goes up to Seton Avenue. Ye listens to a chin-waggin' preacher. An' what's his name? Aidee! He ain't a workin' man himself, but wears the clothes of the rich, an' ates his dinner wid the rich, an' says hard words of the friends of the poor. An' yer desaved, Hicksy.”
Hicks stopped work and shook a thin fist at Coglan. “If you're talkin' of him, you keep your manners.”
“Oi, the Preacher! Oi, he might be meanin' well, Hicksy. I ain't sayin' not.”
“What are you saying then?” jabbing viciously with his needle. “Damn! You're an Irishman, ain't you? Chin-wagging institution yourself. What! Who's the working man? You! Ain't you got a description of you that's vivider'n that?” breaking into a cackling laugh. “Then I'll ask you, what friends of the poor you're talking about so glib, like a greased wheel?”
“Oi! Yer askin' what I mean by a friend, Hicksy? Ye are! An' yer right, an' I'll show ye the point. I'll speak to ye of John Murphy, now, what I've had many a drink on him, an' a helpin' hand. A friend is a friend in need. That's him. Now, thin, Murphy's a friend of Wood's, for he says so. Now, thin, I'll show you Dick Hennion. For if I wants a job, I says the word to Murphy, an' he speaks the word maybe to Hennion an' he gets me a job, for he done it onct, an' I know, don't I? if so be it happen I wants a job. An' Hennion's a friend of Wood's, too, as anywan knows. Now! A friend of me, I says, is a man that acts friendly to me. That's him. So would ye say, Hicksy, if ye was a wise man an' a man of sense, instead of chasin' afther a chin-waggin' preacher, like a schnare-drum afther a thrombone. Haw, haw, haw! a brass throm-bone! But Wood's a friend of the poor, an' I've proved it. For why? For I say it's the rich that he bleeds, but the poor man he's friendly to. Now, thin! What does Aidee do but say the bad word of Wood. In consequence, in consequence, I says,”—and Coglan smote his knee,—“he ain't no friend of the poor.”
Hicks' black eyes glittered and focussed themselves, a concentrated stare at a minutely small spot between Coglan's eyes. His teeth clicked. Coglan's laugh died away. He turned his eyes aside and rubbed his red face uneasily.
“Coglan,” said Hicks, “I warned you before. You shake your mouth at the Preacher again and I'll stick a knife into your dirty throat. You hear that!”
Coglan's redness showed purple spots.
“Think I'm afraid of ye!”
“Yep, I think you are.”
“I'll break your little chick bones!”
“Yep. You're afraid, and you better stay so.”
“Hicksy!” broke in Shays with quavering voice. “Tom! we're all friends, ain't we? Now, then, Tom, Hicksy makes a point you leave out the Preacher, don't he? He'll argue peaceful. Jus' leave out the Preacher. Won't you, Hicksy? Hey? You'll argue peaceful.”
“I said I would.”
“Leave out the Preacher,” said Shays. “All friens'. Hey?”
Coglan wiped his perspiring face. “I'm a sensible man,” he said. “When Jimmy Shays asks a favour, I say, sure! I'm a sensible man.” He looked resentfully and uneasily at Hicks, but seemed relieved to withdraw from his aggressive position without losing his dominance.
“Oi! I told ye what I meant by a friend. I said Marve Wood was a friend of the poor, an' I proved it. I'll be fair an' square. I'll ask ye, what'syourmeanin'?”
Hicks dropped his eyes, and fell to his jabbing needlework.
“Friend!” he said. “You mean a man that's useful to you.Yousay so!Yousay so! That's your meaning. Good's what's good for me. Sense is what agrees with me. Nothing's got any value that ain't valuable to that God-forsaken, whiskey-soaked 'me,' named Coglan, that's got no more value than to fertilise a patch of potatoes. Friend! You get another word. I got nothing to say to you. But I'll tell you this. I'll tell you what I think of Wood. He's got a reckoning coming. What is Wood? I'll tell you that he's the meeting point of two enemies—the corporations and the people, the rich and the poor. His job's to keep in with both. That's what his friendliness amounts to. His job's to sell the corporations what belongs to the people. And he'll grin at the people on one side, so! And he'll wink at the corporations on the other, so! And he'll say: 'How do, Johnny, and Billy, and Sammy?' So! And he'll say to the corporations, 'What'll you give for Johnny's hat?' So! Then he gives Johnny half what he gets for the hat, so! Then he's got Sammy and Billy to back the deal, so! Well, what's Wood! I've told you what he is. Friend of the poor! What do you know about it?” He dropped the shoe, shook his loose fingers in the air, and cried. “He's a cancer! Cut him out! He's an obstruction! Blow him up! What, then? Then I say this, Tom Coglan, and I say it's a good thing when damn rascals are afraid!”
“Quotin' the Preacher?” said Coglan complacently.
Hicks narrowed his black eyes again, and focussed them on Coglan, who turned away uneasily. Hicks went on:
“What you'd ask, if you were quick enough with your point, is whether Wood ever did you a bad turn? No, he didn't. Nor said a word to me in his life, nor I to him, nor want to. Will you ask me what I got against him, then, or won't you, or are you too fat-headed to know what I'm talking about?”
“Oi!” said Coglan. “Yer right. I'll ask ye that.”
“And I'll say that so long as this 'me' of mine”—tapping his narrow chest—“ain't fertilising a patch of potatoes, a friend ain't going to mean any man that does me a good turn, nor an enemy mean anybody that does me a bad turn. A man that means no more'n that, ain't fit to fertilise turnips. That's my meaning, Tom Coglan.”
“Oi! Quotin' the Preacher.”
“Yes, I am, some of it.”
He went back to his stitching sullenly. Coglan and Shays looked at each other and then stealthily at Hicks.
“I hear no talk against the Preacher,” Hicks went on, after a time; “I won't, and why not is my business. He ain't for you to understand, nor the like of you, nor the like of Jimmy Shays,—neither him, nor his talk, nor his book. What of it? There ain't another man in Port Argent but me that understands that book. But the Preacher don't do all my thinking for me, and you're wrong there, Coglan. What do you know about him, or me? What's the use of my talking to you? But if you did know, and then if you said, 'The Preacher holds a man back till he's like to go crazy, and always did'; or if you said, 'The Preacher's for setting you on fire and then smothering it, till he's burnt your bowels out'; and if you talked like that, as understanding him and me, maybe I'd talk to you. I'd talk so, too, for his way ain't my way.”
He pointed a crooked finger at the torn book on the table.
“See that book! It's called 'Communism.' Half of it's right and half of it's not. That's my way.”
His two-handed gesture of ripping the book in two was so sudden and savage that Coglan dropped his chair and turned to look at the book in a startled way, as if he expected to see something ghastly.
“But it ain't the Preacher's way. But I ain't the man to be held back,” said Hicks, “and patted and cooed over. Not me. Show me a snake and I stamp on it! Show me the spot and I hit it! Damn!”
He twisted his mouth. His teeth clicked again, and his crooked fingers drove the glittering needles swiftly back and forth through the leather. Coglan stared at him with prominent eyeballs and mouth open. Shays wiped his glasses, and then his red-lidded eyes with his coat sleeve.
“All frien's, Hicksy! Ain't we?” he murmured uneasily.
Coglan recovered. “An' that's right, too. Jimmy Shays is a kind man and a peaceable man, an' I'm a sensible man, an' yer an industhrious man, but yer not a wise man, Hicksy, an'”—with sudden severity—“I'll thank ye not to stomp on Tom Coglan.”
He got up. Shays rose, too, and put on his coat, and both went out of the door. Hicks gave a cackling laugh, but did not look after them.
Presently he finished the shoe, laid it down, rubbed his hands, and straightened his back. Then he went and got the torn book, sat down, and read in it half an hour or more, intent and motionless.
The factory whistles blew for twelve o'clock. He rose and went to a side cupboard, took out a leathern rifle case, put a handful of cartridges in his pockets, and left the shop.
The grocer's children in the side doorway fled inward to the darkness of the hall as he passed. The grocer's wife also saw him, and drew back behind the door. He did not notice any of them.
The long eastward-leading street grew more and more dusty and unpaved. He passed empty lots and then open fields, cornfields, clumps of woods, and many trestles of the oil wells. He climbed a rail fence and entered a large piece of woods, wet and cool. The new leaves were just starting from their buds.
It was a mild April day, with a silvery, misty atmosphere over the green mass of the woods. A few of the oil wells were at work, thudding in the distance. Cattle were feeding in the wet green fields. Birds, brown and blue, red-breasted and grey-breasted, twittered and hopped in tree and shrub. A ploughman in a far-off field shouted to his team. Crows flapped slowly overhead, dropping now and then a dignified, contented croak. The only other sound was the frequent and sharp crack of a rifle from deep in the centre of the woods.
TECUMSEH STREET was the fourth street back from the river. Tradition said that the father and Certain aunts of the man who laid out the street had been scalped by Tecumseh, the Indian. It was the only distinguished event in his family, and he wished to commemorate it.
The street was paved with undressed Medina. The newspaper offices were all there, and the smash and scream of undressed Medina under traffic was in the columns. It was satisfactory to Port Argent. The proper paving of streets in front of newspaper offices was never petitioned in the Council. Opposite the offices was a half block of vacant lots, a high board fence of advertisements around it.
The space between was packed with a jostling crowd. A street lamp lit a small section of it. Lights from the office windows fell in patches on faces, hats, and shoulders. A round moon floated above the tower ofThe ChronicleBuilding with a look of mild speculation, like a “Thrice Blessed Buddha,” leading in the sky his disciple stars, who all endeavoured to look mildly speculative, and saying, “Yonder, oh, mendicants! is a dense mass of foolish desires, which indeed squirm as vermin in a pit, and are unpleasant to the eye of meditation. Because the mind of each individual is there full of squirming desires, even as the individual squirms in the mass.” No doubt it looks so when one floats so far over it.
Opposite the windows ofThe Chronicle(Independent-Reform) andThe Press(Republican) the advertising boards were covered with white cloth, and two blinding circles shone there of rival stereopticons. There was no board fence oppositeThe Western Advocate(Democratic), and no stereopticon in the windows. This was deplored. It showed a lack of public spirit—a want of understanding of the people's needs. If there could be no stereopticon without a board fence, there should be a brass band.
The proprietor ofThe Advocatesent out for a bushel of Roman candles, and discharged them from his windows by threes, of red, white, and blue. This was poetic and sufficient.
The stereopticons flashed on the white circles the figures of returns, when there were any, pictures and slurs when there were no figures,—a picture of a cage full of riotous monkeys onThe Chroniclecircle, underwritten, “The Council,”—a picture of an elderly lady with a poke bonnet and lifted hands of reprehension, on thePresscircle, underwritten, “Independent Reform.”
“Auction of the City of Port Argent!” flashedThe Chronicle. “Office of M. Wood. Cash on Delivery of Goods.”
“All citizens must go to Sunday School or be fined,” fromThe Press.
“6th Ward. Rep. Plurality, 300.”
“1st Ward. Ind. Ref. Plurality, 28.”
Whish! a rocket from the windows ofThe Western Advocate. And the crowd roared and shuffled.
The last ofThe Presswindows to the left belonged to a little room off the press-room, containing a desk, a board table, and several chairs. The desk seemed only to be used as an object at which to throw articles, in order that, they might roll to the floor. There were crude piles of newspapers on it and about it, hats, a section of a stove pipe, and a backgammon board. The table looked as if it sometimes might be used to write on.
The room was supposed to be the editor's, but no one in Port Argent believed Charlie Carroll ever stayed in the same place long enough to pre-empt it. He editedThe Pressfrom all over the city, and wrote the editorials wherever he stopped to catch breath.The Presseditorials were sometimes single sentences, sometimes a paragraph. More than a paragraph was supposed to mean that Carroll had ridden on a street car, and relieved the tedium of his long imprisonment.
A number of men stood at the window or stood grouped back, and watched the canvas across the street. The only light came through the door from the press-room.
Carroll put his curly head through the door, shouted something and vanished.The Pressstereopticon withdrew a view of Yosmite Valley and threw on the canvas:
“Recount in the 1st Ward announced.”
The Chroniclecleared its canvas promptly and flung across the street:
“Fraud!”
Only two men sat still by the window of the darkened room. The rest rushed out.
The street was in an uproar, hats crushed over heads, fists shaken in the air to the instructive comment of the moon.
“How foolish, oh, mendicants! How do men make for themselves troubles, as though one should stir quiet waters with his hand, saying, 'It is a storm. The gods have afflicted me.'”
“How foolish!” said one of the men at the darkened window. “Those boys are terribly anxious to carry that Ward, and no point in it, Dick!”
“Suppose I'd been out canvassing for Reform, Wood? Think you'd have lost?”
Wood peered curiously at Hennion in the half-lit dusk. “Like enough! Well—want anything in particular? I admit the bill, if it ain't too big.”
“I don't want anything.”
Wood tilted his chair and was silent a moment.
“Look what comes of making rows,” he went on. “I wouldn't have that Ward now for a gift.The Chronicle's red in the face with wrath and happiness. Everybody's hair on end as it is. Disgusting, ain't it? Well—down east, where the land's tilted up so you can turn a section over bottom upwards by heaving one end with a rail, well—there was a man there had a farm at the bottom of a long hill, and his neighbour's punkins up above used to roll down on him. But he didn't make any row, because his yard was littered with punkins, no. He ate the punkins. Well, now, take the neighbour above, he might have gone down and called somebody a thief for not returning strayed punkins, and two pillars of the church might have disliked each other. But he didn't. He built a board fence along the lower edge of his cornfield and caught his own punkins. And there was mutual respect, mutual respect. Well—the boys, they always want to fight. They go round saying, 'The old man's level-headed,' but they ain't satisfied with building that fence to catch those punkins without heaving a rock down an aggravating man's chimney, or else it makes 'em mad to have punkins rolled at 'em, and moreover they don't roll fast enough. Disgusting, ain't it?”
“Wood! Wood! Wherein——” Carroll rushed in and turned up the electric light impatiently. “Wh-what you going to do about the First Ward?”
He had thin bright curly hair, the slimmest of bodies, and moved like a restless insect.
“Tell'em to count it twenty-eight Reform plurality, no more and no less! And turn off that light! And clear out! Well—now—that Charlie Carroll, he's a living fidget. Well—when they used to race steamboats on the Mississippi, they'd put a nigger on the safety valve, so it wouldn't get nervous. I've heard so. I've seen 'em tie it up with a string. Well—winning the race depended some on the size and serenity of the nigger, that'd see it wasn't his place to worry, for he'd get blown off all right in the natural course of things. For sitting on a safety valve you want a nigger that won't wriggle. Well—Charlie's a good man. Keeps people thinking about odds and ends of things. If one thing out of forty is going to happen, his mind's going to be a sort of composite picture of the whole forty. Sees eight or ten dimensions to a straight line. Yes—folks are pretty liberal. They'll allow there's another side to 'most anything, and a straight line's got no business to be so gone particular. It's the liberal-mindedness of the public that lets us win out, of course. But—you've got to sit still sometimes, and wait for the earth to turn round.”
“I suppose you have. It'll turn round.”
“Yes, it'll turn round.”
The tumult outside had subsided in a dull, unsettled rumble. The moon went into retreat among silver-grey clouds. Tecumseh Street muttered in the darkness of its pit. The stereopticons continued.
“The Chroniclesuspects the U. S. Census,” fromThe Press.
“Census O. K. Wood didn't make it,” fromThe Chronicle.
“Port Argent stands by the G. O. P.”
“Did Wood mention his Candidate's Name?”
ThePressthrew defiantly the portrait of its candidate for mayor.
“Pull the String and See it Jump!” fromThe Chronicle.
BehindThe Pressstereopticon a telephone jingled, telegraph instruments clicked, men wrote busily at a long table under a row of pendent electric lights that swayed in the draught.
A large man came in, panting. His short coat swung back under his arm-pits, away from the vast curve of his waistcoat. He had a falling moustache and a round face.
“Vere iss Vood? So!” He peered curiously into the darker room. “Vere.”
“Come along, Freiburger,” said Wood. “Pull up a chair. Well—how's your Ward? All quiet?”
Freiburger settled into a chair with the same caution.
“Oh, yes, quviet. Not shtill, but quviet.”
“What's the difference between 'still' and 'quiet'?” asked Hennion.
“Veil, it vass drunk, und someone vass punch Cahn der barber's nose, but not me.”
“You call it quiet till somebody hits you?”
“Vy should he hit me?” cried Freiburger indignantly.
“He shouldn't,” said Hennion.
“No! Veil, it vass not shtill, but quviet. Ach!” sadly, “ven a man iss drunk, vy don't he shleep?”
“He wants to stay awake and enjoy it.”
Freiburger shook his head slowly and felt of his nose, as if to be quite sure before taking the responsibility of repeating the statement.
“It vass Cahn. It vass not me.”
Wood sat silently, looking through the window to where the stereopticons flashed over the crowd's changing emotions, half listening to the conversation near him. Freiburger peered anxiously at him in the dusk. His mind was trembling with the thrill and tumult of the day, longing that Wood might say something, utter some sentence that it might cling to, clasp about with comprehension, and be safe from wandering, unguaranteed ideas. Hennion seemed interested in examining Freiburger's soul.
“Freiburger, you're as honest a man as I know.”
“Veil, yes, I'm honest. I don't know who you know.”
“You never owed a dollar you didn't pay.”
“Oh, no, I don' do it.”
“Business fair?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, what did you want to get on the Council for?”
“Oh! Veil! It vass goot for business.” He seemed pleased to talk about this, but expression was a matter of labour and excitement. “Veil! You see! Die boys sie come at Freiburger's saloon, und I know 'em all on Maple Street und der Fourt Vard. Und nights at Freiburger's I hear von der shobs und der Union und der prices. Und sie tell me vy der carriage factory strike. Und sie tell me Hennion iss a shquvare man, und Vood vill do as he say he vill do, und Shamieson in der freight yards iss a hog, und Ranald Cam iss make money, und Fater Harra iss teach lil' boys fight mit gloves in St. Catherine's parochial school und bleed der badness out of der kleine noses. Und sie say, 'I loss my shob, Freiburger!' 'My lil' boy sick, Freiburger.' Ach, so! All dings in der Vard iss tell me. Veil now, aber, look here! I am a Councilman. Der iss no man so big on Maple Street as Fater Harra und me, und Freiburger's iss head-quaverters of der Vard, und das iss goot for business.”
“That's all right. I see your point. But the Council isn't supposed to be an adjunct to the different councilmen's business, is it? I suppose the Ward understood itself to be trusting its interests in your hands, don't you? and you're a sort of guardian and trustee for the city, aren't you? Seems as if that would take a good deal of time and worry, because you'd want to be sure you were doing right by the city and the Ward, and it's a complicated affair you have to look after, and a lot of people's interests at stake.”
Wood stirred slightly in his chair, partly with pleasure at the humour of it, partly with uneasiness. It was all right for Hennion to examine the Freiburger soul, if he liked, but to cast on its smooth seas such wide-stirring, windy ideas seemed unkind to Freiburger.
Freiburger puffed heavily in the darkness.
The excitement of expressing himself subsided, and Hennion's idea opened before him, a black gulf into which he could for a while only stare dubiously. His mind reached out vaguely for something familiar to cling to.
“Veil—I don' know—die boys and Fater Harra und—Mein Gott! I ask Vood!” He puffed heavily again after the struggle and triumph.
“Couldn't do better. It's what your boys expect of you anyhow.”
And Hennion returned to his silence. Freiburger's soul glowed peacefully once more.
“It iss Vood's business, hein?”
He looked from one to the other of the impassive, self-controlled men. He wanted Wood to say something that he could carry away for law and wisdom and conviction, something to which other ideas might be fitted and referred. He had the invertebrate instinct of a mollusk to cling to something not itself, something rooted and undriven, in the sea.
“You've done well, Freiburger,” said Wood, rousing himself. “Tell the boys they've done well. Stay by your beer and don't worry till the keg's dry.”
Freiburger rolled away, murmuring his message loyally. “Stay by mein—a—mein keg's dry.”
“Freiburger won't cost you much,” Hen-nion murmured after a while. Wood swung softly in his chair.
“Got something on your mind, ain't you, Dick?”
“Oh, yes. Of course. But I don't know what it is. I've fished for it till I'm tired. I've analysed Freiburger, and didn't get much. Now I'd like to examine your soul in a strong chemical solution. Maybe I'm a bit embarrassed.”
Wood chuckled. “Go ahead. Most men 'll lie, if you give 'em time to rearrange their ideas. Well—it won't take me so long.” His manner became genial. “You've got a good head, Dick. Well—I'll tell what I'm thinking. It's this. The old man 'll have to drop his job one of these days, and—if you're feeling for pointers—I don't say you are, but supposing you are—I don't mind saying I shall back you to head the organization. Maybe—well,—in fact, I don't suppose there's much money in it you'd care to touch—maybe there ain't any—but there's a place for the right man. I like you. I liked your father. He was built something your way. The boys want somebody over 'em that won't wriggle off the safety valve, and knows how to pick up punkins peacefully as they come. This First Ward business—well, you've got a pretty good grip through the crowd to begin with.”
“Now there!” broke in Hennion.
“You and Aidee are both trying to do the same thing. You want to get me into politics. I don't care for your primaries and committees. I don't see ten cents' difference to the city which party runs it. I dare say whoever runs it expects to make a living out of it. Why do you both come to me?”
“I guess we've both got an idea you're useful.”
Hennion thought a moment and then spoke more quietly.
“Henry Champney used to boss this section. He did it from the platform instead of the committee room. And my father handled bigger contracts than I've touched yet. But Champney didn't ask him to run his canal into the next caucus, or furnish stray batches of constituents with jobs. Understand, I'm not grumbling about the last. Champney stayed on his platform, and my father stayed in his big ditch and dug. The proper thing now seems to be for everybody to get into the street and row around together. Here's Aidee too thinks he's got to jump into it now, and take with him—take with him everything he can' reach.”
“That's straight,” murmured Wood. “So they do.”
“Yes, and I call off, myself.”
“All right. I was only guessing what you had in your mind. Well—it's business sets the pace nowadays. 'Most everything else has to catch its gait or be left. I remember Champney forty years gone. He was a fine picture, when he got up and spread himself. He didn't do anything that's here now, unless it's a volume of his speeches, congressional and occasional. Not much. He kept us all whooping for Harry Clay. Well—Clay's dead, Whig Party and Compromises and all burnt up. Your father built sixty miles of canal. Canal stock's pretty dead now, but that's not his fault. He laid a few thousand miles of railroad, went around this place and that, cleaning up the country. Several million people travel his railroads and walk his bridges. Anybody ever call him a great man like Henry Champney? Gone little he cared if they did or didn't. He and his like were a sight more important. Well—no; Champney didn't ask favours of anybody in those days. And he didn't ask votes. They shovelled 'em at him, and he went on telling 'em the Constitution was the foundation of America, and Harry Clay the steeple. They weren't. Rick Hennion and his like were the foundation, and there wasn't any steeple. If you ask what they're all rowing round in the street for now, why, I don't know. I guess they've all found out the point's got to be fought out there or nowhere. Well—better think over what I was telling you, Dick. You're Rick Hennion's son. Well—it's none of my business—but—I'd gone like to see you old Champney's son-in-law—if that's it. I believed in Champney once, and shouted for Clay, and thought there was something in it. I did, that's a fact. I'd lock horns with any other bull then, and swear my name was Righteouashess and his was Sin.”
“Well, but Champney——”
“Yes—Champney!”
“When he turned a vote, it meant he'd persuaded a man, didn't it?”
“Yes—Champney! His best argument was a particular chest tone. If I tell a man, 'Hullo, Jimmy!' and give him a cigar, it's as reasonable as a chest tone.”
“It's not in my line, Wood,” said Hen-nion after a silence. “What makes you so down? You're not old.”
“Going on seventy, Dick.” Wood's mood seemed more than usually frank and talkative. He seemed to be smoothing out the creases in his mind, hunting into corners that he hardly knew himself, showing a certain wistfulness to explain his conception of things, complex and crumpled by the wear and pressures of a long life, possibly taking Hennion to represent some remembrance that he would like to be friends with after long estrangement, and in that way pleading with his own youth to think kindly of him. Or it might have been he was thinking of “Rick” Hennion, who helped him forty years before, and stayed with him longest of worn-out ideals.
There was a rush of feet and clamour of voices in the press-room.
“Wood! Wood!”
“First Ward.”
“Thrown out forty votes.”
“Wouldn't do what you told 'em.”
The little room was jammed with men, thinned out, and jammed again. The electric light flashed up.
“What's to pay now?”
The Chronicleflung its bold cone of light and glaring challenge across the street. It seemed to strike the canvas with a slap.
“Forty Reform votes thrown out in 1st Ward. Fraud!”
A hush fell on Tecumseh Street. Then a roar went up that seemed to shake the buildings. Tecumseh Street thundered below, monstrous and elemental, and trembled above like a resonant drum. The mob rolled against the brick front of the block like a surf that might be expected to splash any moment up the flat perpendicular. Grey helmets of policemen tossed on the surface. Faces were yellow and greenish-white in the mingled electric-light and moonlight. Fists and spread hands were shaken atThe Presswindows. Five or six heads were in the window of the little room. Wood's face was plain to make out by his grey shovel-beard. They shouted comments in each other's ears.
“It's a riot.”
“No!”
“Looks like the bottom of hell, don't it?” Then a little spit of smoke and flame darted like a snake's tongue between the advertising boards, seven feet above the sidewalk. There was a sharp crack that only the nearest heard.
Wood flung up his hand, pitched forward, and hung half over the window sill.
Someone directly beneath, looking up, saw a head hanging, felt a drop splash on his face, and drew back wincing.
The thrill and hush spread from the centre. It ran whisperingly over the mass. The roar died away in the distance to right and left. Tecumseh Street was still, except for the crash where a policeman tore a board from the advertisements with a heave of burly shoulders, and plunged through into the darkness of empty lots.
The little room above was now crowded and silent, like the street. They laid Wood on the table with a coat under his head. He coughed and blinked his eyes at the familiar faces, leaning over him, strained and staring.
“You boys are foolish. Charlie Carroll—I want—take Hennion—Ranald Cam, you hear me! Becket—Tuttle.”
It was like a Roman emperor dispensing the succession, some worn Augustus leaving historic counsel out of his experience of good and evil and the cross-breeds of expediency—meaning by good, good for something, and by evil, good for nothing.
“Seems queer to be plugged at my time of life. Take Hennion. You ain't got any heads. Dick!”
Hennion stood over him. Wood looked up wistfully, as if there were something he would like to explain.
“The game's up to you, Dick. I played it the only way I knew how.”
The moon floated clear above the street, and mild and speculative. Ten minutes passed, twenty, thirty. The mass began to sway and murmur, then caught sight of Carroll in the window, lifting his hand, and was quiet.
“Gentlemen, Mr. Wood is dead.”
For a moment there was hardly a motion. Then the crowd melted away, shuffling and murmuring, into half a score of dim streets.