“I want you to understand that you can’t blackmail me, Sir!”
“Blackmail you? By the Lord Harry, youshall hear the truth from one man if you never hear it again. Don’t lay a hand on me or I’ll break you like this pencil! Blackmail you? To-night you’ve got to know that another man knows you through and through. To-night you have to go unmasked. Are you afraid of hearing me say who your client is? Are you afraid of having me name the politicians whose orders you execute and whose nod is your law? You have been ordered by the police to win this case. Thiscaseindeed! And you, the Assistant District Attorney, in the name of the People, will win it by fair means or foul. You have never investigated one fact, or asked one question, calculated to bring out the truth, but by trick and wile you stoop to serve your master’s purpose. And do you think I do not know why? You poor fool! Every honest man knows who cares to follow your dirty tracks, and the knaves whose gifts you buy know whom they sell to and for what. But remember this, the day you run for District Attorney will be the day I take these papers where they will do the most good, and we will see if the People want a perjurer to prosecute in their name!”
Gordon tore from his pocket the “affidavitof merits,” with the proofs of its falsity, and slapped them down upon the desk.
Willard glanced at the papers and then at his adversary. His answer was almost a whisper—hard and rasping.
“Gordon, I will convict your man if I never win another case in my life!”
“By God—you dare not!”
The study door slammed as with a threat—“You dare not!”
The front door echoed “You dare not!” as a challenge.
When Willard looked up again the clock was striking three. But it chimed “You dare not,” in the even tone of statement.
The second day of John Winter’s trial brought a series of reverses for the prosecution, and the prisoner was acquitted, to the utter disgust of the police.
About that time the Assistant District Attorney’s career suffered one of those sudden blights, the origin of which is the mystery of a city’s politics.
A few years after this Red Farrell was really found and convicted, but then Willard had been so long on the political shelf thatthose who put him there had completely forgotten his existence.
But I believe they were right in accusing him of bungling that case. Of course, he may have been intimidated, but the chances are he could never have been convicted of perjury. The crime has almost the sanction of custom. This he must have known. So why not credit him with worthy motives and say he was a good fellow at heart, even though Gordon, Indian-hater that he is, will never admit it?
There was a black-edged card on the bulletin board. That means a vacancy in the club membership until some one of the waiting-list steps into the dead man’s shoes.
The card bore the inscription:
JOHN FURMAN DELAFIELD.December 30, 1898.
Jack Delafield had been no chum of mine, but I never thought the Governors did right by him, and I was glad to remember my partisanship in the days when his mere name was sufficient to provoke instant debate among the Thespians. I liked him then for some of the enemies he made, and perhaps my enthusiasm was always more for the cause than the man. However, I was sorry—very sorry, to see his name on that card, and I said as much to the group of men among whom I took my accustomed seat in the club corner.
“Well, I’m sorry he’s gone, but I never knew him at all,” remarked Chandler.
“I never met him either,” said Paddock.
Hepburn had never heard of him, neither had Joline, and Grafton knew him not.
I looked at the speakers. Was it possible I was as old as they seemed to intimate?
“Delafield hasn’t been regular at the club for many a long day,” I said—clinging to a straw. “I doubt if he’s been inside the door for five years—so it isn’t very strange you haven’t met. But you all know of him. He was the Delafield of the Hawkins-Delafield affair.”
The blank look on the faces of my companions surprised and, I admit, shocked me. It was ridiculous, but Osborne’s laugh grated, and I welcomed Chandler’s interrupting question, even though it pronounced sentence on my senility.
“Yes—I’ll tell you the story,” I answered, “but after retailing to members of this club something that was absolutely discussed to death here, and labelling it a ‘story,’ I shall never address you again except as ‘my sons.’”
“Father, may I have a cigar?” asked Chandler, as he rang the bell.
I signed the check.
“Jack Delafield was a man of good family,”I began, “but to vary the conventional opening and adhere to the truth, I may as well say his parents were honest though not poor. He was a fellow of many talents, so many, in fact, that he became known as a ‘versatile genius.’ He never attained a more notable title. Not that he hid his talents under a napkin. He sealed their fate in a bottle—in many bottles. I’m afraid we didn’t do much to help him here. Everyone thought he’d come out all right in the long run, and when he lost his money and settled down seriously to the law, his friends supposed his wild oats had all been sown. But somebody left him more money, and back he went to literature and painting, and music. The old set welcomed him with open arms, but didn’t help him to write, or paint or practise. Then Miss—well, I won’t say what girl—put him on probation, and he wrote two really notable stories before the probation was declared unsatisfactory. After that he never seemed to care much about anything except art, and he took that out in dreaming of the things he didn’t do. Yet no one seemed to blame him much, perhaps everybody liked him too well, and nobody loved him enough. Anyway hewent from bad to worse, until ‘poor fellow’ used to be coupled with his name, and Delafield in various states of intoxication became a familiar sight in these rooms.
“He must have been a handsome fellow before drink coarsened and aged him, for he was still good looking, though prematurely old, when I first met him, shortly after my election to the club. About that time Galloway gave his bachelor dinner in the private dining-room upstairs. I attended as one of the ushers, and there were perhaps a dozen other guests—among them Delafield. The dinner was as most such dinners are, a toast for every sentiment, and sentiments galore, so when we adjourned to the grill-room for coffee, Jack tipped his chair against the wall over there and fell asleep. We sat about the centre-table smoking, and testing some remarkable port sent to grace the occasion.
“I don’t recall what led up to the conversation, but I do remember that the general subject was women, and that Hawkins coupled the name of—well, a decent girl, with a remark so coarse that most of us stopped talking, though two or three laughed. It was a speech such as I suppose you’ve all heardmade at some time or another, and which always seems to receive the tribute of a laugh before being buried in the silence of self-respecting men.
“It was in the hush following this remark that Delafield’s chair fell sideways to the floor with a crash, making us start to our feet and setting the glasses tinkling. The roar of mirth that burst out at this mishap ceased instantly, as we saw Delafield’s ghastly face, down which the blood was running from a deep gash in his forehead.
“Someone hurried forward, offering help, but Delafield pushed him aside, staggered to his feet, closed the door and leaned his back against it—his arms spread out as though to bar an exit.
“We stood around the table in silence, watching him. Two or three minutes must have passed before he spoke.
“‘Is—Mi—Miss Smith en—gaged?’
“The question was asked slowly in a low tone, as though the man was struggling to control voice and speech.
“We looked at one another and at the swaying figure before the door, but no one answered.
“‘Is—Miss Smith’s—father here?’
“No answer.
“‘Is Miss Smith’s brother here?’
“It was difficult to see all the faces in the smoky half-light of the lamps, but those about me showed a pallor of apprehension.
“Was Miss Smith’s uncle there—or her guardian—or her cousin? Was anybody present who had a claim to represent her? No?
“The broadening trickle of blood on Delafield’s face dripped down the white shirt front, but no one stirred or spoke.
“‘Then I wa—want to say’—here he lurched forward from the door and stood rocking slightly at the end of the table. ‘I want to say that I—I’m drunk an’—and I know it. But I’m—I’m a gentleman. An’—and yonder’s nothing but a cur—a low-lived cur—drunk or sober. You—you’ve heard him—now see him!’
“Something flashed before his eyes, and then a wine-glass struck Hawkins square on the forehead, scattering in fragments over the table.
“And Hawkins stood there, his face dripping with the wine, and his clothes showing great stains of it—stood there without movingas Delafield leaned over the table and laughed—
“‘If—if you only had as much re—red blood in you—you—you——’
“And then he fell fainting across the table, crashing among the bottles.
“The Governing Board expelled Delafield, but the club sentiment was so strongly in his favour that they afterward rescinded the expulsion, and suspended him for three years. But that never satisfied his friends.”
“I should think not, indeed,” exclaimed Joline, “it was outrageous! I’ve always claimed you can’t be sure a man’s a thorough gentleman until you’ve seen him drunk. And that proves it.”
“Oh, the many times I’ve heard your theory debated in this place! The walls fairly ached with listening to the discussions.”
“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t know the chap,” interrupted Chandler. “Let’s drink to his memory!”
He struck the bell as he spoke. As the waiter filled the orders, I noticed one of the older members on the stairs bending close to the bulletin board and peering through his glasses at the notice of John Delafield’s death.
Chandler touched me on the shoulder.
“To the memory of a gentleman—Jack Delafield!” he cried. We rose to the toast.
The old man on the stairs turned quickly and saw the lifted glasses. His face was a study.
“Hush!” I whispered, “that’s Hawkins.”
“Some for the Glories of this World; and someSigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;Ah, take the Cash and let the Credit go,Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!”—Rubáiyát.
“Some for the Glories of this World; and someSigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;Ah, take the Cash and let the Credit go,Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!”
—Rubáiyát.
Almost everyone knows Governor Tilden’s residence in Gramercy Park, but those who don’t know it as such, may remember a big house with bas-reliefs over the door, on the south side of that quiet square. However, the house has nothing to do with this story, except that it was upon its door-steps I encountered Sandy McWhiffle, on my way to the club. I use the word “encountered” advisedly, for Sandy, finding the bottom step somewhat narrow for a couch, had allowed one of his legs the freedom of the sidewalk, and it was over this protruding member that I stumbled into the arms of the gentleman slumbering on the Governor’s steps.
It was late at night—and Sandy protested.His opening remarks served to advise me that the cop couldn’t get around the Square again for at least fifteen minutes—that he (Sandy) hadn’t slept five, and that I’d destroyed his night’s rest. It did seem unfair.—I certainly could have discovered his leg if I’d looked sharp, and twenty minutes’ rest is—well, it’s twenty minutes’ heaven when you need it—and Sandy needed it—there was no question about that. But the advent of the cop making slumber inexpedient, if not impracticable for the time being, we adjourned, at my suggestion, to the all-night restaurant on Fourth Avenue, near Twenty-fifth Street. You know food is a fair substitute for sleep at times, especially after one has experimented considerably with sleep as a substitute for food. Sandy had made quite thorough investigations along that line. But experiments were difficult, what with the grey Bastinado Brigade in the Squares and Park, and their blue accomplices in the side streets.
I agreed with my vis-à-vis over the poached eggs and ale at Gibson’s that it did seem queer the air wasn’t free, and that sleeping in public was a misdemeanour. Of course one does it when pressed, but while the Island givesthe needed respite, it lessens the chances of earning money to buy a sleeping privilege—and many trips over the river are apt to permanently impair claims to good citizenship. Sandy hadn’t been obliged to cross the upper East River yet, but he was getting very weary and careless about concealing it. Hadn’t he been able to get any work? Not for a long time. Didn’t he do anything at all? Yes—he looked for a job about four hours a day. Why only four hours? Because he tired easily and had to save his strength for the line at night. The line? Yes—the bread line at Fleischmann’s.
On the main artery of the chief city of this land of plenty—on Broadway under the shadow of Grace Church—there forms nightly a line of men that stretches for more than a block. Men with pale faces that show haggard under the white electric light, and haggard faces that show hideous,—shiveringly cold men who blink at you like dazed animals or glare at you like wild beasts;—hot, panting, almost pulseless men who gasp in the scorched atmosphere of the city’s streets—solemn, mournful creatures, with their filthy rags loosened for any breath of air, no matterhow fetid—miserables of every type, exhausted, wretched, but human beings all—stand every night at the edge of the curb on Broadway and Tenth Streets waiting for a baker’s over-baking.
It all flashed before my eyes in a moment.
You can see it any night, winter or summer—January or July—from ten o’clock till two, gentlemen. Look at it and pity it—you who have pity in your hearts. Look at it and fear it—you who have none!
Had he been there to-night? Yes, but there was a fellow near the end of the line whose wife and children were waiting for him, so he and Sandy exchanged places, and—well, the supply gave out about one o’clock, so of course—— Yes, he would take another egg. Was he married? No, thank God!
There was nothing romantic about Sandy McWhiffle, and nothing Scotch about him except his name. Neither was his face in any way remarkable, nor his speech, nor his story; but it struck me then that there were dramatic possibilities in him as a man—dramatic probabilities in him as a type.
I was in a hurry to have the position filled; it wasn’t much of a job, and I wanted to waste as little time as possible, so I advertised and gave my office address. Of course it was foolish, but I was pressed with work and did it without thought. However, I saw no reason why the janitor should lose his temper. Anyway, I can’t abide impertinence in an inferior, and I let him understand this before the elevator reached the top floor. Once there I admitted to myself he had reason for—well, for respectful annoyance. A pathway was forced for me through the crowd of men which choked the hallway and blocked the entrance to my office, but I couldn’t get in until a score or so were driven down the stairs. I locked myself in my private room and cursed my folly and the janitor’s impudence. But there was no time to lose—we had to be rid of those men—so I slipped a note under the door directing my clerk to send them in to me, one at a time, until further orders.
It didn’t take long to find the man I wanted. He was the third in line, I think—a respectable fellow—far above the position, I shouldhave said, but he told me he wasn’t, that he had a family to support, and all that sort of thing, so I engaged him and sent him out with a note to the superintendent. As he left the room I hastily tore open a letter which looked as though it needed an immediate answer. At the same moment my door opened again.
“Confound that ass Junkin, why the devil didn’t he give me time to ring the bell and tell him I’d engaged a man!—Why the devil doesn’t he——”
It was just as I expected. That letter was important to a degree, and during the next ten minutes I was so deeply absorbed that when I looked up from my reading and saw a man standing beside me, I started with a nervous exclamation which turned to a surprised greeting as I recognised Sandy McWhiffle. He had changed somewhat since I’d seen him last—six months before—and not for the better. His gaunt face was even more sallow than before, giving to the features a harder caste, chiselling the nose into more of a hook, and deepening the lines under the eyes. He looked ravenous, but not with the hunger of appetite, and I thought—yes, I was quite sure—he smelt rather strongly of liquor.
“Well, Sandy,” I began, “where did you come from?”
“From the hospital,” he answered.
“Ah,” I observed, “bad places—those—er—hospitals, Sandy. They breed a great deal of sickness. There are seventy-two in my district.”
“You think I’ve been in a saloon, drinking?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I answered, with a mental reservation favouring knowledge.
“Well, I haven’t been, anyway. You smell whisky on me. They gave it to me at the hospital so’s I could get down here. I ain’t discharged yet, but I was bound to come when I saw your name in the papers and knew I’d get the job if I could only see you. I’ve been here since six this morning. Will you give me a try at it?”
“Well, no, I can’t, McWhiffle,” I said, with a good deal more ease than I could have felt if I hadn’t smelt the liquor and heard that hospital story. “The fact is, I’ve taken a man on, and so the job’s gone.”
Sandy gazed at me with a bewildered, frightened look, but his answer was only a mumble about his being sure of a steady job this time, seeing how he knew me and all.
Mechanically I made a memorandum of the hospital at which he was allegedly a patient, but my mail was awaiting me, and he must have gone while I was intent upon its contents. Anyway, he’d disappeared when I looked up, but the odour of whisky in the room was strong enough to destroy any interest I might have felt in my late supper companion.
Whisky and “that tired feeling” are mainly responsible for the army of the “unemployed.” They talk about there not being enough work to go around! One good job’d last the whole shiftless lot a year. They don’t want work, they want help—permanent and increasing help.
Some such thoughts occupied me until I happened to see a telegram protruding from the bundle of unopened letters on my desk.
“Gods and powers! Will that triple idiot never learn to separate the telegrams from the letters? What the devil—Junkin! Junkin!” I crashed the bell with each repetition of the fool’s name, at the same time tearing open the yellow envelope.
“For God’s sake, Junkin, how many times must you be told to keep these things separate? Half an hour gone, and here’s this cipher stilluntranslated. Do you think you’ve nothing to do but draw your salary——”
“I’m sorry, Sir, but you see these men came——”
“Quick, get the code and translate—don’t stand around arguing! Here, give me the book!”
I rushed into the outer office, but stopped almost at the threshold of my door. The room was completely encircled by a line of men, and every eye in the crowd was turned upon me. What a motley throng it was—shabbily dressed and unshaven for the most part—untidy to the point of dirtiness. Hardly a bright, healthy face among the lot—surly and ill-tempered looking many of them. Bah! I don’t like humanity in the abstract, and loathe it in the concrete of crowds. My disgust must have been apparent, and my thought audible as I said:
“Now, my men, the place is filled. You’d better all clear out.”
But my words, forbidding as they were, did not free me.
“No, I haven’t any other job. No, I don’t expect to have any.... Yes, well, I can’t help it, can I?... Of course, I know—don’tbother me! I tell you the place is gone.... No, we never have any places in this office.... Charity Organisation, Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue.... Yes, yes, yes, I don’t doubt it, but I tell you I’ve filled the job—Junkin—get the janitor and clear the room—they’ll drive me mad!”
Almost frenzied, I rushed back to my private office.
How I was worked that day! The Section Traction Company almost caught us napping, and they’d have done it surely if we hadn’t obtained the Judge’s signature to the injunction by four o’clock that afternoon. They not only laid two miles of track inside of eighteen hours, and came within four blocks of crossing our main line, but they sold our stock on the market, thousands and thousands of shares—poured it in from ten o’clock till three, pounding and hammering every supporting bid we made, and the only thing that saved us was the Exchange closing at three o’clock. As it was, our Board man, Reynolds, became hysterical as the gong struck, and he’s never been up to much since.
Well, it was a shrewd, ably-planned move, and, executed earlier, would have succeeded inwrecking us. But it cost them, as we figured it, two millions, and sent them higher than a kite. I didn’t know they were so big—employed three thousand men, they say.
The name on a passing ambulance directed my steps to Roosevelt Hospital at the close of business, a few nights later. I don’t think I wanted to nail that very poor lie of Sandy’s but I knew Waldron, the Superintendent, and thought I’d invite him to dinner and joke him a bit about his new whisky ward.
Waldron was in, but could not go to dinner. Worst time in the day for him to get off, he said.
“By the way,” he continued, “too bad you couldn’t give Sandy McWhiffle a job—he would have it you’d take him, so we let him go, with a dose of whisky to carry him through. But you lazy devils get down so late it didn’t last him, and he fainted in the street on the way back. Queer fellow, but I liked him—his sense of humour hasn’t disappeared as it has with most of his class.”
Perhaps my sense of humour had disappeared,but I saw no fun in my rehearsed jokes of a few minutes previous.
“Is he here now?” I asked.
“No, we discharged him yesterday.—Hope he’ll get a job, but there’s an awful lot of men looking for work.”
It was probably because I was out of temper with myself, but the city seemed hideously cruel to me as I walked down Broadway from the Hospital. The clang of the car gongs sounded like fierce commands—the electric lights snapped and glittered like cunning, wicked eyes—the hot air from the shops offended like venomous breath—the rattle of the carts and cabs sounded reckless—the crowds seemed to jostle and grapple. The gaily-lighted windows mocked me with their glitter, and the darkened ones had a menace in their black indifference. In every elbow touching me I seemed to feel some threat—in every eye looking at me I seemed to read some impatient question asked in brutal scorn. These masses of men rushing by me this way and that—they hated me—longed to trample me down and crush me into the dirt beneath their feet!—No, they didn’t.—And wouldn’t?—Unless they found me in theirpath, and then they’d wipe me from it with scarce a thought—yes, and rush on without a sign, without knowledge of my obliteration.—Well, it wasn’t worth struggling against—the odds were too great.—And anyway, what difference did it make?
I felt a touch on my shoulder, and almost screamed. It was St. Clair Mowbray. I don’t like him much, but any companion was a friend just then, so we walked along together, he chatting and I silent.
As we passed the Metropolitan Opera House a line of people stretched from the box-office out into the street.
“What fools,” said Mowbray, “they must want tickets damned badly to do that. Don’t they look like a chain gang?”
“More like the bread line at Fleischmann’s,” I answered gloomily.
“Yes—but better bred.”
Mowbray chuckled approvingly at his sally.
I parted with him at the next corner feeling his wit would not appeal to me that evening.
The Club disappointed me. I thought companionship would relieve, but it only served to aggravate my loneliness. Everything talked about seemed local and trivial, and everybody appeared to sail under a different flag of interest. So after enduring this as long as possible I wandered out, walking down town for no other reason than to be among people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me—a hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you cure for loneliness.
A conservative investor once told me there was no better or safer property than a cheap lodging-house on the Bowery. Possibly my informant imparted his discovery to others, for the number of these establishments has increased tremendously during the last few years. But when many Conservative Investors undertake to walk the same road, the result is usually the elimination of some of them—only those, of course, who are not really entitled to be termed conservative. This sorting of the just from the unjust does not occur, however, until the Malthusian Doctrine needs a business illustration. As Iwalked along the east-side thoroughfare and noted the lodging-houses packed to their utmost capacity, I concluded that the number of applicants for such accommodation must have increased in a manner at once flattering to the judgment of the Conservative Investor, and satisfactory to his highest interest.
Who inhabit these houses? Well, men who have no better homes—drunken, idle and shiftless men—strangers in this somewhat inhospitable town—men looking for work and men looking for mischief—great, hulking, ignorant brutes whose hope lies in their muscle, and well-formed fellows with intelligent faces—all sorts and conditions of men—a great tide of humanity that flows in at night and ebbs out in the morning, never and yet ever the same. A steadily rising tide? O, yes, perhaps,—but look at the embankments!
It was curiosity and not a desire to educate myself for the day when I might become a Conservative Investor that led me to enter No. 99½ Bowery.
Its sign offered attractions suited to almost any purse, the management apparently catering to every taste in the scale of social refinement.It read
ROOMS BY THE WEEK $1.25ROOMS BY THE NIGHT 25c.BEDS BY THE WEEK 60c.BEDS BY THE NIGHT 10c.
ROOMS BY THE WEEK $1.25ROOMS BY THE NIGHT 25c.BEDS BY THE WEEK 60c.BEDS BY THE NIGHT 10c.
There were several similar houses in the immediate vicinity, but this one seemed to secure most of the stragglers who came by during the ten or fifteen minutes I watched it from the opposite side of the street. The reasons for its popularity were not to be spelled out of the sign, so I crossed over and climbed the ladder-like stairs upon which the street door opened.
I knew just about what was inside before I mounted a step. Everybody knows who’s travelled on the Third Avenue L at night and looked out of the windows of the train anywhere below Ninth Street.
It was one o’clock in the morning when I left the Club, so it must have been quite two when I entered the “Columbian,” but even at that hour the smoking-room was more than comfortably filled.
A cloud of malodorous smoke so loweredthe ceiling that one involuntarily stooped to avoid contact with it. Occasionally some current of air would draw a funnel-shaped drift from this cloud and whirl it like an inverted sea-spout toward the steam-screened windows and out of the cracks at their top, and occasionally the draught in the red-hot stove sucked down a whiff of it. Otherwise it hung motionless like some heavy, breathless canopy.
A long, narrow table filled the centre of the room, reaching almost from the windows in the front to the stove in the rear. Around this sat or lounged a score of men, and perhaps as many more occupied chairs about the stove and along the wall. Half a dozen were reading newspapers, tattered and greasy through constant handling, but the rest of the company stared idly at each other, or at nothing, talking little, but smoking almost to a man.
An artist could have found a study for almost every emotion in the figures and faces of that dimly-lighted room. Excitement in the expression of the fair-haired lad following with his finger the closely-printed “ads.,” and quickly noting the promising ones on a scrap of paper by his side.—Anxiety onthe face of the handsome fellow with the pointed beard, turning the pages of the long-coveted newspaper to find his particular “want column.”—Indifference in the attitude of the strong but unhealthy looking man with hands in pockets, his outstretched legs forming a V, as he lolled back in his chair, pipe in mouth, his eyes on vacancy.—Despair in the huddled bit of humanity at the head of the table, with head on arms—his hair showing very white against the black coat-sleeve.
I walked into the room and took a seat at the long table, near the front windows. My entrance attracted no attention, either owing to the smoke in the room or the indifference of its occupants. But I viewed the neglect with complacency, whatever the cause.
“What are they waiting for—why don’t they go to bed?” I asked in a low tone of my neighbour at the table—a rough but shrewd looking fellow.
“Who’sthey?” he replied surlily—“What’s yer waiting for yourself?”
“Nothing,” I answered—“not sleepy, that’s all.”
“Well, that’s what the rest’s waiting for—for nothing—not sleepy nor—nor anything.”He gave a sharp glance at my face, and then, appearing to see a puzzled look on it, added, “Say, d’yer mean ter tell me yer don’t know what’s bitin’ this crowd?”
“No,” I replied, and my voice must have demonstrated my ignorance, for he exclaimed:
“Then yer must be a jay, sure. Why, they’re waiting for the morning papers, of course. Do yer think yer’ll ever get a job if yer wait till the noospapers gets on the stands? Well, yer will—I guess not! Where in hell did yer drift from, anyway?”
“Hist—there he comes,” exclaimed a man opposite.
I glanced towards the door, and saw a man standing with his hand on the door-knob. His tall figure was so slight as to be almost emaciated, and his clean though threadbare clothing hung loosely, as if it had once fitted a far stouter frame. His face was refined, and had that look of calmness which now and again follows some great storm of mind and rack of body. The skin was drawn tightly over the cheek bones, making the eyes seem disproportionately large in their sunken sockets. His mouth and chin were strong, and the prominent, slightly hooked nose gavethe clean-shaven face a sternness which contrasted rather oddly with his abundant light-yellow hair.
He closed the door, moved to the table, and seated himself at it near the centre of the room. Almost every eye had been fixed upon him as he entered, but no greetings were given, and the interest in the newcomer flagged the moment he opened a book and began to read.
“Who is he?” I ventured to ask my neighbour.
“Schrieber,” he replied, and then in a bored tone, as though remembering my greenness—“the fellow who’s been talkin’ at the lodgin’-houses for the last two weeks or so—at the ‘Crescent,’ and the ‘Owl,’ and the ‘American,’ and all of ’em.”
I desisted from asking the further questions that immediately suggested themselves, for my informant turned his back on me and rested his head on the table, as though to discourage further conversation.
“Here comes Bill Nevins,” announced the man opposite, but just whom he addressed could not be gathered from the faces around me. His remark, however, referred to anindividual who entered with a “Howdy!” directed to the room in general.
“Cold morning, boys!” he exclaimed, as he walked towards the stove rubbing his hands together.
No one responded, but this did not seem to affect the speaker, who stood smiling cheerfully at the crowd, with his back to the red-hot stove. A healthy, well-fed, kindly-looking man, with vigour in his limbs and character in his genial face, he looked like some good-natured priest or head-groom.
“What’s the news, Bill?” called out a man with his chair tipped against the wall.
“Well, they strike to-morrow at noon, unless the companies concede something, but, as everybody knows they won’t, I might just as well say—they strike to-morrow at noon.”
The voice was clear and the tone cheery, though decisive. All the newspapers seemed to have been drained of their contents, for everyone was staring at the speaker—some with interest, others listlessly. But no answer or comment greeted the news.—The silence was solemn or absurd—one scarcely knew which.
“And as this strike’s on,” continued Nevins, “the question for us is—will we aid the men, or help to defeat ’em? If we want to beat ’em, we’ve just got to take the places they’re givin’ up. Things has got to be pretty bad when a working-man leaves his job these days—you know that—so there’s no use discussin’ why they strike. Of course you know the answer of these car companies, and all other companies—‘supply and demand.’ And I’ll tell you what rules the ‘supply and demand.’—It’s the supply of stock and the demand for dividends. It’s greed that makes this demand, and it’s poverty and sickness, and many mouths to feed, that makes the supply. It’s greed, and not decent competition, that milks the companies and busts them, and drags men down to lower wages, or throws them out of work altogether. What we’ve got to do is to demonstrate which side we’re on. If we’re for the men, we must stand off and persuade others to do the like; and if we’re for our children, we must do the same thing. But if we don’t give a damn either for our own people or anybody else, we’d better go and take the places until the companies decide on the next reduction!”
The determination in his voice would havebeen fierce but for the smile accompanying the words. Half-muffled applause and ejaculations of approval could be heard from different parts of the room.
The man Schrieber looked up, his glance travelling from one face to another down the long room until it reached Bill Nevins and settled on him with an intensity that compelled an answering glance.
“You say, my friend,” he began slowly, “we must demonstrate on which side we stand. So say I. We must demonstrate—but not by waiting. We must make a great spectacle—but not by idle tableaux. You think you will compel these rich corporations to give in to these men by withholding your services? It is an empty dream. There will come other men from other places—you cannot prevent them from coming or the companies from hiring them. The disease is body-spread—you cannot doctor it locally. The longer we sit idle the fiercer will the disease ravage, the deeper will it enter. Idle waiting will not do,—no, nor throwing stones. That will only make a holiday for the militia—stories for their armouries—child’s play, forgotten by the children when the game is over.It does not turn the attention of prosperous humanity towards its suffering brothers, but it gives a pretext for ‘man’s inhumanity to man.’ It only costs a little money—a very little money—easily saved by the corporations in the decreased wages, and made up to the State by increased taxation. It will not do, I tell you. We need a much bigger and a dearer demonstration.”
The speaker had risen, and was gazing into the faces of his auditors. As he paused and brushed the light hair away from his eyes, the air disturbed by the movement sent the smoke cloud blowing about his head.
“Now, that’s just what we don’t want, Schrieber!” broke in Nevins impatiently. “You go ’round raisin’ a row and gettin’ up a riot, and you’ll turn all the sympathy of the press and the public against the people we’re tryin’ to help.”
The man did not reply at once, but stood gazing at the labour leader as though struggling to keep back some retort.
“You do not understand me,” he said at length—“I counsel no violence—I do not advocate riot. But not because I fear to lose the sympathy of the press and the public. Youhave had that, and with what result? Aren’t wages lower than ever, and isn’t work more difficult to get every day we live? And who is your ‘public’? The few well-to-do who never think unless their comfort’s disturbed? I tell you the real public is the many poor, the constantly increasing poor, and not the few rich! Your demonstration must teach the rich to think—it must redeem the poor from themselves!”
His glance turned from the faces before him, and seemed to centre beyond and above them. The listening men drew closer to the speaker. The room was so still I could hear the empty cable rattling in the street below.
“It is an awful disease—a disease of the blood—to be cured by blood—the only price the rich cannot afford to pay—blood, the redemption of the world throughout all generations—the blood of the Lamb.”
He spoke the words dreamily, as though to himself. Then, with gathering energy and rapidity—
“Wait as you have waited, and you will see the disease spread—the public you are trying to reach grow blind to your affliction, deaf to your cries. Riot, and you will only lendvirtue to oppression and injustice. The hour is at hand for a great sacrifice—the time is ripe for redemption. The public you would propitiate fears death—loathes blood. For these alone will it stop and think—all else touches only what money can cure. But death arrests—blood you cannot buy. Make them take what they cannot return—make them shed blood they cannot wash out. No, not with their tears!”
He paused again and gazed into the faces half hid by the smoky atmosphere. Mystic, dreamer, lunatic—what you will,—he held the men in weird fascination. They crouched, rather than sat before him. Had he spoken in whispers, not a word would have been lost. His eyes shone with a new light, and his voice softened as he continued:
“We are on the verge of another battle in the great conflict over the right to live. Battles without number have been fought in this conflict—blood without stint has been poured upon its fields.—With what result? Here, in this land of plenty, the hosts are gathering for a contest of such magnitude that, compared to it, all former conflicts will seem mere skirmishes. Why? Because the sword neverhas touched, and never can touch, the soul of man—because blood not shed in consecration cannot heal. The eyes of the world must look upon a blameless death-devotion to a cause. If I am mad, it is a madness learned of Christ. Are your lives so valuable that you fear to lose them? Is death a terror to you who die daily? Humanity bleeds from every pore—do you shudder at blood? Civilisation calls upon you, her outcasts, for salvation. Will you answer her—you who, here in the City of New York, see the rich digging a gulf between themselves and the poor—a gulf that may be a grave for countless thousands—a trench for oceans of blood that a few drops shed now may save? We must demonstrate which side we are on—we must make a great spectacle! I want volunteers for death—volunteers for the death that redeems!”
With hands spread out in appeal—the fine head thrown back—he stood like the shade of some great Being encircled by the mists of unreality.
From out of the smoke there staggered and stumbled toward him a man who grasped the outstretched hand—
“I volunteer!” he cried.
Schrieber’s calm face bespoke a benediction.
“My brother,” he answered, simply.
The recruit was Sandy McWhiffle.
I started to my feet with a cry of protest on my lips, but the great smoke bank above seemed suddenly to descend and envelop me, choking and stifling me. For a moment I fought it, gasping for breath, but only drawing the foul air deeper down into my lungs. Then I remembered nothing more. They said at the hospital it was nicotine poisoning.
For some days—just how many I don’t remember—I had been in the condition which often follows sudden illness, when the mind is groping about to connect things one with another, and to adjust relative values. But I was not delirious. I want to state that distinctly, because when, like a fool, I told the stripling hospital doctor what I am now about to relate, he smiled in sickly imitation of the veteran practitioner, and soothingly patted my counterpane. It makes me wild, even now, to recall that superior youth pretending to humour me—a grown man with a clear headand more experience than will be his in many a long year. The nurses are all right—God bless them, I say—but, good Lord, what do the sick in the hospitals not suffer from the tactless wisdom of the embryo physicians!
However, that’s neither here nor there, so I simply repeat I never was delirious, and when I say I saw these things, I know what I am talking about.
I lay perfectly still because I was tired. I don’t remember ever to have been so tired before or since.—Occasionally I dozed, but for the most part I gazed steadily, hour after hour, at the brass setting of the push-bell in the wall, too weary even to avert my gaze. I knew the room was a ward of some hospital, but I was too indifferent to ask which one. I could see the nurses passing back and forth. I felt one of them resettle my pillow, which allowed me to observe a screen placed around the adjoining bed. I knew what that meant. It was not cheerful, so I turned again to the brass disk and watched it in sunlight, shadow, twilight and darkness.
I was conscious too of all the different sounds about me—the stopping and starting of the elevator—the sliding and locking of its irondoor—the rolling of the rubber-tire trucks about the halls—the creaking of a bed—the tinkle of a glass—the rattle and clatter of vehicles and horses in the street—even the peculiar rumble, rumble, rumble of the cart that passed the hospital and which I took to following through street after street, twisting and turning with it past towering tenements and squatting rookeries, plodding along under the broken roofs of the hissing elevated roads and over the singing trenches of the cables—through wide avenues and narrow alleys, until I found myself fairly launched into the sea of faces which spread out before me.
What a crowd that was! It is impossible to imagine such a scene. All the descriptions they’ve written fail to picture it, for the flaring lights with their play of shadows changed it every instant, darkening one group, illuminating another, running up and down lines of faces, flashing some individual into prominence for an instant, blotting him into the surging mass the next. And then the hum and mutter, rising to a babel of voices,—swelling into a shout, bursting with the shock of a world-tongued roar ending in a single piercing shriek, and the hush—theawful hush as Schrieber spoke his wondrous words—they’re all part of this tableau utterly beyond the power of pen or brush.
I stood there pinioned and upheld by the press about me which silently surged and swung with the motion of some sluggish sea. I felt the human steam hot upon my face—I breathed the fearful reek of that matted throng, but not for my life would I have missed one word of that which hushed those thousands. Pale and impassive I could see Sandy as he stood beside Schrieber on the tail-board of the cart. Once I thought he recognised me, but wedged in I could not signal, and the words I drank in held me speechless. What words!—If I could only remember them! But I cannot—and all the papers lie.
I heard them above the roar of the maddened crowd as it parted behind me, crushing some and trampling others under foot in its wild stampede. I saw the rush of uniformed men clearing the triangle back of Cooper Union and was hurled with the throng to Third Avenue. Then I heard Schrieber calling on us to form a procession and march to the Mayor’s house with our petition—heard him tell the Chief of Police that all should be orderly—heardthe official warn the people not to cross Third Avenue at the peril of their lives.—I saw the dead-line formed and felt the onward surge of the crowd as it swept the thin sentry-line away and moved toward Broadway. I saw the glitter of levelled rifles as we neared the Cox statue, felt the mass hesitate and recoil. Then from out the ranks I saw Schrieber and Sandy emerge and start to cross the open space alone. I caught the sharp summons to halt, and even as I leaped toward them heard the crash of the volley before which they staggered and fell.
“Sandy!” I shrieked....
... “Sandy. Yes—that’s the name.—Who said that?—Sandy McWhiffle and the fellow Schrieber—they’re under arrest, you know, Mr. Superintendent,—and the Inspector orders me to take their statements,—me and my side partner here.”
A strange voice was speaking quite near me.
“Well, you can’t do it, Officer. Neither patient can be seen to-night.”
Was that Waldron’s voice?
“Can’t do it? What’s that mean? Me tell the Old Man that? Step one side please!—I guess you don’t know who I’m from!”
“Then you guess wrong, my man. They’re your prisoners, but they’re my patients, and, by God Almighty, so long as they are, it makes no difference whom you come from!”
I raised myself on my elbow and gazed at the speaker. Yes, there was Waldron. A nurse stepped up to him and whispered in his ear. He turned quickly on his heel.
“Officer, tell the Inspector you came too late,” he said.
I must have called out, for I remember the orderly hushed me, whispering that it was “nothing but a couple of rioting strikers, who’d just died of their wounds—which ought to stop such folly and teach the other fools a lesson.”
But I made no answer, recollecting something about “wise folly” and “foolish wisdom.” Then too I was wondering, quite as calmly as I am now, just how high and strong those embankments are which a restless, rising tide is ever lapping—lapping.