§3. "Luke," she whispered, "what was the matter this morning? Won't you tell me, dear?"He felt the blood mount hotly to his head. Her hair was sweet to his nostrils."Don't," he said sharply."But, Luke——"He drew her hands from his neck. He imprisoned her wrists in his grasp."I don't quite know what's the matter—yet," he said. "It's all come too suddenly. But, Betty—O, Betty, I don't believe I'm the man for you!"She asked him what he meant, and he could not tell her. She pressed him, and he could only repeat his conviction."Do you mean"—she drew her hands away—"that you like some other girl better?"He laughed rudely."No," he said, "not that.""But you don't care for me?" She recovered all her dignity. "If you don't care for me, why aren't you brave enough to say so?"The afternoon sun fell through the hall-window and showed her to him very fair."Betty," he said slowly, "there are only two kinds of marriages you understand: there is the Church, but I don't believe any more in any church; and there's the Law, but the Law can't make a marriage for me."At least the immediate purport of the words she understood. Her face burned red and then became white and still."You mean——" she began. Her hands clenched. "Oh!" she cried.She tried to pass him.Passion left him, but a great sorrow took its place as his master. He wanted to justify himself; he even so wanted to repair the hurt done her that he would have shut his eyes to the new light. He seized her hand."Betty!"She wrenched her hand."Let me go! I want to go to father! Let me go!""But, Betty, wait—listen——"She freed her hand."I shan't tell him. Don't be afraid. He has enough to worry him. Only don't let me ever see you again!"§4. All that night Luke walked the streets. It was breakfast-time when he returned to the Arapahoe. His letters and the morning papers were lying on the floor of his sitting-room where they had fallen when the bell-boy dropped them through the slit in the door.He read the letters first. There were not many, for his correspondence had of late declined to almost nothing. The only things of interest were a note from Porcellis, announcing that he would soon return to New York and a letter from Luke's mother, saying that she had written Betty to pay her a visit: "It is only right that your fiancée should do this," wrote Mrs. Huber, "and that I should have an early chance of knowing the girl that is to be my son's wife."Luke wondered how Betty would reply to the invitation. As he was thinking of this, his eye caught the heaviest headlines on the first page of the newspaper: during the night, a body of strikers at the Forbes factory had marched to the main entrance and battered down the door in an endeavor to drag out the Breil men who slept there as guards by night and worked there by day; the Breil men resisted; there was a general battle with at least two deaths; the attacking party were repulsed, but the police, summoned by a riot-call, gained what appeared to be no more than a preliminary skirmish, for the entire neighborhood was in arms and more bloodshed was expected to-day.Luke dropped the paper with an oath. He was more hungry than before for a part in this fight—in any fight. If Religion was a coward, he would make one more appeal to Government, to force. He called Albany on the long-distance telephone. He kept on calling until he had brought the Governor to the other end of the wire, and then he was astonished to hear that the proper civil authorities in New York had already asked for troops."It is always best," he was told, "not to drag local men into an affair of this sort, if it can be helped; so I'm having the Adjutant General send down a company from Poughkeepsie. That ought to be enough for the present, and they ought to get there by noon."Luke muttered his thanks and rang off."I know why that was done," he said to himself: "They think they'll make more trouble for us with the militia here than without it. Well, we'll see."He stripped off his clothes, went to the bathroom, and began to run the water for a cold plunge. He was talking to himself."The worst of the crowd's dead," he said. "That was Forbes's way of putting it. There he had a glimpse. Started down to rock-bottom. But he didn't arrive. I felt that way till only a little while ago. But I see I was wrong. I thought this was a one-man show; I believed in a sort of personal Devil. I wish I'd been right. It would have been all so simple, if I'd been right in that. But I wasn't. It isn't the men; it's the system. The man didn't make the system; the system made the man."He was wonderfully clear about that now. All his fight against evil had been directed toward one man, and the man was dead and the evil remained. He could almost pity that man in russet brown. That man who had sat at the fountain of forces reaching up and down through all the life of the world, seemed to originate the forces and use them for his own malign purpose; but now—and herein lay one of the reasons for Luke's present wonder at life—he perceived certainly that the man had been only a little better treated by the forces than the forces treated all the rest of mankind, was their creation and their slave just as wholly as the most obscure victim. Industrial evolution, working through the collective ignorance of the race, had devised the Great Evil. Here was a web that no spider wove, a web that killed spiders as well as flies, lived on with a life of its own, grew and spread of itself. So long as the web existed, there would always be a spider. The Web remained. It was the Web that must be broken.Yet he wanted to fight. He would fight. The Gospel of Negation had given him its light; it had yet to teach him to see.§5. Other forces vitally affecting Luke were at work that day, at first far distant from the factory. They were forces that had affected him imperfectly heretofore, but that now were set in motion in a manner no longer to be diverted.Ex-Judge Stein was summoned from his office almost at the moment of his appearance there. His motor-car took him into Wall Street, to a certain skyscraper, into which he went and was taken as far as the twentieth floor.He entered an unmarked door and passed an attendant who bowed to him respectfully. He passed another attendant. A third, at sight of him, got up and went through a second door, leaving the Judge to wait in dignified repose. Then the last attendant reappeared and nodded, and the Judge passed the second door.He remained inside for an hour. When he came out his mien was undisturbed, but his strong and kindly face was even graver than usual. He almost forgot to return the farewells of the attendants as he left them. He rang twice for the elevator, although the elevator was not long delayed."The office," he said to his chauffeur as he climbed again into the car.§6. Returned at his own quarters at half-past ten, he sent immediately for Irwin, to whom he talked for perhaps forty-five minutes. He spoke with a sad inevitability."No more excuses, no more extensions of time, no more delays," he concluded—"and no more failures."The twinkle left Irwin's eyes."I understand," he said.He could not fail to understand. His superior had been once and for all explicit. Judge Stein, during his service to the public on the bench, had never been called upon to pronounce a sentence of death, but, had he been so called upon, he would have spoken much as he now spoke to Irwin.§7. "I hate to have to tell you this," said Irwin to Quirk at noon in the latter's shabby law-office, "but if that job isn't done before to-morrow morning, those affidavits charging you with jury-fixing are going to be turned over to the District-Attorney, and the people that have them are now in a position to make Leighton act on them, too."Irwin also had become specific. The plump Mr. Quirk lost his habitual smile."It's a rotten business," he said."It is," Irwin agreed; "but your arrest would be a worse one—for you.""We may have to go the limit," said Quirk."Then," said Irwin, "you'd better go it. That's no affair of mine."§8. "This time," said Quirk, "you've got till to-night to make up your mind."He was talking to Police-Lieutenant Donovan. It was just after lunch-time."What about?" asked Donovan."Whether you want to bluff us again or lose your job.""We never did bluff you.""Well, then: whether you want to get those letters or get fired. Nottryto get them:getthem. It's get them or get out." All the kindliness and good-fellowship was missing from Quirk's voice. "It's one thing or the other. We got evidence to fire you on. You knew we had, last time I talked to you. Well, they were easy on you then, Hughie. This time they mean business."Donovan looked at Quirk."Suppose somebody gets hurt?" he said.Quirk shrugged his shoulders.§9. When Guth came in late in the afternoon, Donovan said:"I got a warrant in my desk for you, Guth. A friend o' mine swore it out. If I don't stop him, it means a criminal trial where you won't have the chance of a goat. You know what it's for: that little girl up in Fifty-second Street. The only way I can get him to hold off's for you to get Reddy Rawn to do what you'd ought t' got him to do long ago. If somebody gets hurt, it ain't our fault."§10. At eight p.m. in the shadowy alley near Forty-third Street and Third Avenue, Patrolman Guth's twisted mouth was menacing the darkness."He's down at the Forbes factory now," said Guth. "There's sure to be a fight there to-night, an' anybody can get in. It's a cinch."The darkness did not reply."Anyhow, you got to," said Guth. "The old man's crazy mad. He says it's the chair for yours if you fall down this time. Crab Rotello's got worse. He can't live the night, an' the old man says he's goin' to have you railroaded soon as Crab cashes in, if you don't do what he says. He means it, too, Reddy."Out of the darkness came the answer:"I'll maybe have to croak this guy.""That's up to you," said Guth. "It'll look like some strikers done it. It's his own fault for bein' a fool. What in hell do you care, anyway? We'll look out for you.""All right," said the darkness."Mind you," Guth repeated, "no more stallin' this time. If you don't get the goods, an' get 'em to-night, you're a dead boy, Reddy."There was an instant of silence. Then the darkness spoke again:"It won't be me's the dead one."CHAPTER XVIII§1. The text of the newspaper article, which Luke read carefully while he dressed, added few facts to those marshaled in its headlines. To Luke it was evident that the past few days had brought the strikers to desperation. Their own funds were gone, and they had no help from outside. They were not strong in numbers, and many of them were women. The ranks of the men had, however, been swelled to a formidable figure by unsought additions from the hundreds of hooligans that, in every city, are attracted to seats of industrial war, and these provided an element which the leaders were unable to control. The affair had gone the usual way: a picket had jeered at a non-union worker; two policemen attacked the offending picket; the crowd ran to the rescue, and a general disturbance, with the assault on the mill, was the inevitable result. Now there was no telling to what extent the trouble might go.Luke was savagely glad that physical action was imperative. He wanted something that would stop thought. He wanted rest from thought: from the spiritual strain, from the yearning for Betty. Again and again, as he hurried through a breakfast forced upon himself only by the knowledge of his need, he found his mind playing with the childish idea of the carpenter that he wanted to be, tramping the country roads from casual job to job. He might well come to that. Meanwhile, it was good to have this chance for a fight.§2. Luke drove to the factory in a taxicab that he insisted should be open. As he neared his destination through rows of grimy buildings and vacant lots in which goats grazed among ash-heaps and tin cans and "For Sale" signs, the streets began to look as if a heavy skirmish had been fought through them. Knots of idle sightseers already lined the uneven sidewalks and pointed to the relics of the conflict; at corners the former workers were gathered in low-speaking groups—shrunken figures; slouching forms in poor clothing, whose business was the making of better clothes for luckier beings; faces angry and sullen, faces savage, debased, hungry; women's faces as sexless as the men's—and everywhere, furtive and sinister, those other faces, the faces most to be feared, of the gathered condors of the underworld, the feeders on economic carrion, who had slunk here from the darkest corners of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City, rising from a hundred alleys and pot-houses, and circling toward the factory as birds of prey come from the four quarters of the compass toward a battlefield; he saw them crouched at the shadowy thresholds of tumble-down dwellings, leering from fetid passageways, peering from the swinging doors of stinking saloons, stealthy, determined.Overhead the sky was clear sapphire. A strong breeze came in from the Sound, laden with health. It fanned the memories of yesterday out of his brain and for a moment made the present seem a picture from the remote past. It was unreal: he felt himself an unimportant spectator of some unconvincing play.Then, rising above rows of rickety houses, the mill came into sight, blocking the street-end, and restored his appreciation of the imminent. A wrecked coal-wagon lay horseless in the middle of the street opposite a bent lamp-post, the coal heaped where it had fallen. Battered hats were in the gutter, and on the pavement was a coat, torn and muddy. No smoke curled to-day from the chimney of the mill's engine-room, and in front of its shattered main-door, rudely repaired by unpainted planks of fresh pine, two policemen lounged, facing a string of mute pickets.Luke passed the door unmolested and entered the office. The superintendent, a whiskered man named Whitaker, was there, and one or two pasty and frightened clerks."Mr. Forbes down yet?" asked Luke briskly."No, sir," said Whitaker. "He just sent word he was sick.""Sick? What's the matter with him?""I don't know exactly, Mr. Huber. It was Miss Forbes telephoned, and she said he'd had a kind of fainting fit right after breakfast."Luke sat down at the desk and called up the Forbes house."Mr. Forbes there?" he asked of the maid that answered him."No, sir. Mr. Forbes is in bed.""Ill?""Not very well.""Ask Miss Forbes to come to the 'phone. This is Mr. Huber talking. I'm at the factory, and I must know something about Mr. Forbes' condition."The maid assented, but, after he had waited, it was again she that spoke to him."Miss Forbes asks you please to excuse her. She's very busy. She says to tell you Mr. Forbes was a little dizzy and had to lie down. He thinks he can get to his office late in the day."Luke felt the mortification that it was patently intended he should feel; but he lost no time over it. He turned at once to Whitaker and the clerks, and secured from them what verification he could of the newspaper's story. Then he sent for the brawny, flannel-shirted Breil and learned what remained for him to know."You think there'll be more trouble?" he asked, after he had sent Whitaker and his assistant from the room."Sure there will," said Breil cheerfully, "but not before to-night.""When'll the soldiers get here?""'Long about noon, I guess.""How many police have they given us?""Half a dozen. I couldn't beg more.""Better send some of them out to have that coal cleared away.""I tried to, but they said it wasn't their duty, an' I couldn't get any satisfaction at City Hall. You know how these cops are.""Couldn't you have a detail of your own men do it?""I'd like to first-rate; but it'd mean a fight, an' we don't want to put ourselves in the position, to the public, of courtin' that. Mr. Forbes said Saturday——""He was right. How many men have you in good shape?""Seventy-two. I'd send for more, but they're on a job at Hazleton.""Will City Hall send more police if there's trouble?""Not till they can't help doin' it."The hours passed slowly. Luke made the rounds of the mill as the commander of a fortress inspects it before an attack. He saw that the strike-breakers, an anxious lot of men, were stationed at the vulnerable places, and he talked again with Breil.Forbes did not appear, and Luke was too proud to try a second time to question Betty about him; but reporters came and sent in urgent requests for a statement from the company. Luke refused to see them. It was his turn to refuse the newspapers."Better feed 'em a little pap," Breil advised."I won't so much as look at them," said Luke."They'll knock us if you don't.""That can't hurt us. I won't see them and you're not to talk to them either, Breil."He began to chafe under the delay. He made the rounds of the mill again and smoked incessantly at cigars that he found in a box in Forbes's desk. He bolted a cold lunch sent in at noon, and he wondered why the soldiers were late.The soldiers came at two o'clock. Out in the street there were some derisive shouts, and then the regular tramp of marching feet. Luke hurried to an office above Forbes's, a room furnished with a small desk at one side, a large table in the center, and a few chairs, and there, from a window, saw the column of men in khaki, advancing four abreast, down the street."They're nothing but a lot of boys," he said as, when they drew nearer, he looked at their young faces. "It's a shame to send a lot of kids like that into—a mix-up of this kind."He received the Captain and the first-lieutenant in the main office. The Captain had taken off his broad-brimmed service hat and was mopping his face with a blue bandana handkerchief."Phew!" he said. "This looks as if it was goin' to be the real thing!""Itisthe real thing," said Luke."You haven't got a drink handy, have you?" asked the Captain. He was an olive-complexioned young man of twenty-two or -three with a girlish mouth and bright black eyes.Luke produced a bottle and glasses, and the Captain drank. He spoke in the high tone of excitement as he rattled on:"Somebody threw a brick at us just up here. Did you see 'em? It near cracked Sergeant Schmidt's coco. Poor old Schmidt; he was scared yellow, wasn't he, Terry?"Terry was the lieutenant, a raw Irish lad with the face of a fighter."You bet," said he.Luke drew the Captain aside."You may as well understand at once," said he, "that this isn't any picnic. You've been sent here to protect our property, and you may have a hot time doing it. We have seventy-two strike-breakers here under Mr. Breil; the superintendent; one or two clerks; and five foremen who've remained loyal to the company. That, with me, makes up the inside force. There's half a dozen police, too. What I want you to do is to draw a cordon of your men along the front of the building. Stand them on the pavement. Breil's men'll watch the back. Half your people had better go on duty now and be relieved by the other half at five o'clock. But from seven on, we'll need your whole company on the job."The Captain looked serious and worried."You think there'll be real trouble to-night?""I shouldn't be a bit surprised, especially as I see the Governor's sent us just enough of you fellows to excite a mob and yet be powerless against it. What were your instructions from up top?""I was to use my own discretion."Luke looked at the young man and smiled at the idea of intrusting men's lives to such discretion."Well, the main thing is not to lose your head," said Luke."They'll outnumber us?""If they attacked, yes—undoubtedly."The Captain returned to the whiskey bottle."And we'd be powerless, unless——" He hesitated."Unless you fired," Luke concluded for him.They looked at each other, the man and the boy."You mustn't fire," said Luke."No," said the boy."Unless you have to," said the man....The afternoon dragged by. Luke gave up all hope of Forbes and spent most of the time in the upper office, looking at the soldiers stationed in front of the building and at the groups of men staring at the soldiers. It seemed to Luke that the numbers of the staring men were increasing....§3. The night was dark. The purple arc-lamp that burned directly in front of the main entrance to the factory flared vividly upon a circle of the street beneath it, but beyond this circle, which was long empty, one could scarcely see, one could rather only feel, the presence of a slowly gathering, silent crowd. In the main office, Luke was again consulting with the Captain, Breil, and a policeman. The policeman, as if acting under instructions, had sneered at the idea of further trouble so long as the crowd was unmolested, and Luke would not ask again for aid from City Hall. His lieutenants were standing about the room in attitudes of uncertainty. All were agreed against precipitating a fight by attempts to disperse the enemy.The Captain drew up his boyish form."My men——" he began."Your kids," corrected Breil."We're all right, anyhow," the Captain lamely concluded, his cheeks hot under this indignity.Raucous cries came now and then from the street."You've got enough to take care of with your own affairs," said Luke. He turned to the policeman."Are there many in that crowd out there?" he asked."Not many," said the policeman, "but I think there's more comin'!"Still smarting under Breil's rebuke, the Captain felt some show of his bravery to be a duty to the organization to which he belonged."We can handle 'em all right," he said, "however many there are. They're mostly nothin' but foreigners, anyhow."Luke wanted above all to preserve harmony in his ranks, but an imp of perversity whipped his tongue."What's your name?" he asked the Captain."Antonio Facciolati," said the Captain, "but I'm a naturalized American citizen."Luke patted his shoulder."That's all right," he said reassuringly. "What have your men got in their guns, Captain? Blank cartridges?""Not much," said the Captain boldly: "ball.""Good," Luke smiled. "But don't use it. Butts are best for this work."He decided that Forbes, well or ill, ought to know how things were going. He bent to the telephone, placing the receiver to his ear.There was no answer. He rattled the hook impatiently."What's the matter with this 'phone?" he growled.He rattled the hook again, but could get no reply.Breil left the room. Presently he returned."I've tried the one in the hall," he said, "and the one in the cloth-room. The wires are cut."For a moment nobody spoke. Facciolati's hand crept to his sword-hilt, and the sword clattered. From somewhere far up the street came a choral murmur of voices:"Halleyloolyah, I'm a bum—bum!"Breil stepped to the window."That's them. That's the others. They're comin'," he said.§4. The men ran to their posts. Luke climbed to the upper office and went to its window.They were coming indeed. They were there, vividly from the circle of light beneath him, vaguely to the walls of the tumbledown dwellings across the street. At his feet was a line of khaki-clad militiamen, standing at ease beside their magazine-rifles, along the curb; beyond them a few yards of open street, and then what at first looked to Luke like a field of wheat under a high gale, gigantic wheat, black of stalk and white of head, tossing in the wind: the shoving, swaying bodies, the gesticulating arms, the threatening faces of the mob.They had come to complete the work of the previous night. His startled eyes could pick out no one individual, his ears could select no single word; but he could see leaders, who had lost their leadership, making gestures of despair; men, who had seized license, waving fists and shaking sticks; could hear a turmoil of cries and curses. The whole impression was blurred and general; yet, as he looked, the wheatfield changed to a roaring sea, the black pitching and tossing of a terrible tide ever mounting nearer, nearer to the soldiers drawn up in front of the broken factory door.The thought mastered him: this was his property which only that frail door separated from them—that frail door and those frightened boys in khaki. They were going to destroy his property—his!A second street-lamp, farther up the way, lighted the rear of the crowd, and into the circle of its illumination Luke saw running a motor-car. He saw the mob scatter, the car stop, the crowd close around it. He heard more distant shouts above the shouts that were nearer.The broken section of the crowd swayed, hesitated, attacked the car. For an instant, the arms of the chauffeur beat at the man that climbed to his seat, and then the chauffeur was pulled to the ground. Luke strained his eyes to see if the car were familiar to him. It was. There was a woman in it: its only occupant. It was the Forbes car, and the woman must be Betty.§5. Luke circled the center table and ran down the steps three at a time. He nearly fell upon the huge form of Breil, coatless, a revolver in his hand, hurtling from one group of his forces to another. Luke pushed him away."Where are you going?" cried Breil.Luke did not answer. He was tugging at the door.Breil's heavy hand fell on Luke's arm."Here! Stop that!" he bellowed. "Where d'you think you're goin'?""Get away!" shouted Luke. "I'm going out."The door leaped open. The howls of the mob beat upon the two men's faces.Breil thrust his lips against Luke's ear."Are you crazy?" he yelled."Yes!" said Luke.He slipped through the door.Facciolati was there, white-faced, standing behind his soldiers.Luke made an egress through the ranks by shoving away a soldier with either hand."You're not going outthere?" cried the Captain. "They'll kill you!"Luke jumped to the curb."I don't care!" he answered.He was crazy, and he didn't care whether he was killed or not. Of these two things he was certain. He was mad from the torments of his conflict between logic and desire, and death would be an easy solution—perhaps it was the only one. It flashed upon him that such a solution might be cowardly; but the next instant he had but one impulse; he was going to save Betty, and that was enough. A new madness, the madness of what seemed an absolutely unselfish act, of an act that intoxicated him with its unselfishness, gave him the strength of ten and fired a berserker rage in his breast, hurled him forward like a rock from a ballista. He was going to save Betty, and he was a hundred yards away from her in the midst of a mob that hated him.The ocean of raging men closed over his head; its pandemonium smashed his ear-drums; but he was deep in the crowd before any of its members realized whence he had come. He was clearing a way, striking, kicking, biting, shouting he knew not what—shrill oaths and guttural threats—thrusting their heavy bodies from side to side. He felt their hot breath, encountered their resisting arms and legs, smelled the sweat of them."Stop him!" yelled somebody. "He came out of the factory!"He saw a host of faces about him, dark with anger; eyes big with hunger and hate. He felt blows that could not hurt him, felt his own fists sink into flabby bellies, crack upon stout skulls."The scab!"A hand fell across his mouth, and he used his teeth like a were-wolf; he tasted the smooth salt blood before it began to trickle down his jowl. A second hand snatched at his collar, another grabbed his arm. He pulled frenziedly, he struck out blindly, he threw all his weight far forward. He knew that his coat ripped; he twisted his arm free, lowered his head and dodged forward, men sprawling before him. He had gained the motor-car.Betty was standing up in the tonneau. Her hands were clasped before her breast, her face was set. She saw him falling toward her.Luke jumped beside her, his coat gone, his shirt torn, his face bleeding from a cut above the right eye, his hair matted over his forehead. She did not know him as he seized her roughly and picked her up in his arms; but, in the moment that he balanced on the edge of the car, with the light full in his face, the crowd knew him."That's him! That's Huber!" they shrieked.He jumped with her directly back into the crowd.While he was still in the air, he thought that was the worst thing to have done. Without him, she might have had some chance; with him she would have almost no chance at all. But it was too late now; he could only fight until he could fight no more, and then they must die together....§6. They did not die. Somebody, as the mob laid hold of them, broke through its ranks—somebody with still some shred of authority left him."Get back, you fools! Get back! Do you want to kill the woman?"It was that organizer of the strikers whom Luke had seen in Forbes's office when the employees made their last appeal to Forbes. It was the man Forbes had ignored.With infinite slowness, against infinite opposition, the rescuer made way for them. Grumbling, growling, threatening, the crowd fell back. It menaced, it cursed, it hurled ribald jokes; but it fell back before the leader that it no longer obeyed in anything else, until he, followed by Luke with Betty in his arms, came to the line of soldiers at the battered factory door.Luke swayed a little. Facciolati stepped up and tried to steady him, but he tossed Facciolati away. Luke turned to the organizer."Won't you come inside?" he panted.The man shook his head."I'm—I can't tell you how much I owe you for this," said Luke."Oh, you go to Hell," said the man.§7. Inside the factory, Luke would not waste a glance on the strike-breakers that gathered, open-mouthed, around him."Get away," he ordered. "I'm taking her to the upper office. Nobody is to disturb her there. You understand? Nobody."§8. During all that frightful progress back through the mob, she had lain in his arms silent, her eyes closed. Only now, when he brought her to the upper office, banged the door behind them and put her in an arm-chair, which he kicked the length of the room in order to place her as far as might be from the window, did she look at him."I didn't faint," she said. "I only pretended. I thought that was safest."He had dropped to his knees beside her and had begun to chafe her hands. He was unconscious of the renewed din outside. Thus alone with her, he was thinking only how much he wanted her.She was leaning far back in the chair. The rays of the street-lamp were the only light in the room, and they made her face seem as peaceful as the faces of the dead. When she opened her eyes, her eyes were luminous."You're safe," she continued. "You're safe, aren't you?"He kissed her hand hotly."You!" he said. "I'm all right. But you?"She stood up, smiling."Quite."He rose also."The brutes! the beasts! I'd like to—I'll do it, too!"He had stepped into the light. His shirt was torn, his hair dank. Blood caked over the cut on his forehead, and his jaws were red with the blood of the man whose hand he had bitten."Luke! Youarehurt!"She came toward him."No, I'm not," he persisted, but he let her fingers touch the wound on his head, and her fingers thrilled him."Luke," she said, when she had convinced herself that the cut was superficial, "I'm glad it was you.""That came for you?""Yes.""I didn't do much. I was nearly the death of you. For a minute I thought it was death. That other fellow's the one you have to thank.""Anyhow, I thank you." She pressed his hand.A shout came from the mob. It brought him back to material concerns."How did you come to this part of town?"She had complete command of herself."Can't you guess?" she asked.Her eyes were unafraid."Don't say you came on my account.""But I did; I did. Father's too ill to ask questions. It was a slight heart attack, the doctor said: he's been so worried lately, Father has, and so overworked. But I wanted to know, and I tried to telephone here, but they said the connection was broken. Then I was sorry for not answering that call you made before, and when they said you hadn't got back to the Arapahoe, I was afraid. So I told Father I was going to Mr. Nicholson's mission—he must have thought me dreadfully unkind to leave him for that—and I had James drive me—Oh!" she broke off: "I wonder ifhe'shurt?""The chauffeur?" Luke remembered. "I saw him just as I got to the car," he chuckled. "He'd reached the outskirts of the crowd and was running for dear life. I don't think they'll catch him."The noise of the mob would grow from a hoarse mutter to a loud howl and then sink to a low murmur."Luke," she said, "itwasyou rescued me."He listened to the noise."Then I've probably only rescued you from the frying-pan to dump you into the fire. I wish I'd had the sense to take you in the opposite direction. I don't know what I could have been thinking of. Of course, they'll simply have to send more police soon and attack these fellows from the rear: the soldiers haven't the right to drive away the crowd, and Breil's men daren't leave the building. But I do wish I hadn't brought you here!""You've brought me whereyouare," said Betty.Her eyes were wide, her lips parted. Luke's breath caught in his throat."Betty," he said, "do you mean——"She did not quail."I mean I love you.""What?" He drew back, afraid of her, afraid of himself."I know you weren't yourself," she said. "I know how all this trouble has upset you. I know you didn't mean those things."The reversal was too much for him. He leaned against the table and burst into laughter. An instant ago the roar of the crowd had seemed miles away, had seemed no more than any recurrent noise of city life. They two, Betty and he, had seemed to him set apart from it all, remote from it, together. Now——"Luke!" she was crying.A picture drifted into his mind. It was a picture of pine trees and the sun in a blue sky full of fleecy clouds and a long white road winding, dusty and carefree, to the end of the world."Luke——"He could not hear her now. He saw terror in her face, but the noise from the street rose, rattled at the window-pane, and engulfed her words.A new cry rang out from the mob—a cry so sharp and loud that both the persons in the room forgot themselves and ran to the window. They looked out upon the tossing faces below.The crowd had turned. It was elbowing, straining necks, rising on tiptoe, gazing backward.Far back there something dark fluttered in the night air. It was seized and passed from hand to hand. It reached the circle of light and waved high above the center of the crowd, a banner of crimson, tossing like a beacon over the swarm of black heads, defiant, audacious: the Red Flag.And then came a new sound. It began in the heart of the mob and spread outwards like circles in water broken by a dropped stone. It did not stop the other noises; it assimilated them. It was low, but strong; it seemed to contain all the history of past wrongs, all the arsenal of present determination; but it was touched with far hopes and freighted with tremendous dreams. It was a chant, a song, a hymn, and all the crowd was singing it with the strength of a thousand pair of lungs."What's that?" asked Luke, although he expected no answer.But the girl gave him one."It's a thing called 'The International,'" she said, her voice trembling. "I heard it once in Paris. It's a terrible song."Luke's eyes were caught by a movement at the window of one of the tumbledown dwellings across the street. He saw the window open and a frowsy woman lean out. She held something white in her hands. She raised it, then dashed its contents toward the nearest soldier. The shot fell short, and two men in the crowd were drenched.The hymn ended in a shriek. The mob believed that the insult had come from the factory and instantly resolved itself into a fuming whirlpool. Luke saw tossed aside people who were evidently strike-leaders frantically trying to quiet their one-time followers, but he did not guess the purport of the new commotion in the seething mass. Then he saw something that made him jerk Betty away from the window and fling her against the wall at its side.There was a crash—a pause—a tinkling. A gust of air, fresh and cool, invaded the room. A missile had broken the window. A whole volley followed, smashing more glass and battering at the factory walls. The mob was using the coals from the dismantled wagon that Luke had noticed in the street hours ago.
§3. "Luke," she whispered, "what was the matter this morning? Won't you tell me, dear?"
He felt the blood mount hotly to his head. Her hair was sweet to his nostrils.
"Don't," he said sharply.
"But, Luke——"
He drew her hands from his neck. He imprisoned her wrists in his grasp.
"I don't quite know what's the matter—yet," he said. "It's all come too suddenly. But, Betty—O, Betty, I don't believe I'm the man for you!"
She asked him what he meant, and he could not tell her. She pressed him, and he could only repeat his conviction.
"Do you mean"—she drew her hands away—"that you like some other girl better?"
He laughed rudely.
"No," he said, "not that."
"But you don't care for me?" She recovered all her dignity. "If you don't care for me, why aren't you brave enough to say so?"
The afternoon sun fell through the hall-window and showed her to him very fair.
"Betty," he said slowly, "there are only two kinds of marriages you understand: there is the Church, but I don't believe any more in any church; and there's the Law, but the Law can't make a marriage for me."
At least the immediate purport of the words she understood. Her face burned red and then became white and still.
"You mean——" she began. Her hands clenched. "Oh!" she cried.
She tried to pass him.
Passion left him, but a great sorrow took its place as his master. He wanted to justify himself; he even so wanted to repair the hurt done her that he would have shut his eyes to the new light. He seized her hand.
"Betty!"
She wrenched her hand.
"Let me go! I want to go to father! Let me go!"
"But, Betty, wait—listen——"
She freed her hand.
"I shan't tell him. Don't be afraid. He has enough to worry him. Only don't let me ever see you again!"
§4. All that night Luke walked the streets. It was breakfast-time when he returned to the Arapahoe. His letters and the morning papers were lying on the floor of his sitting-room where they had fallen when the bell-boy dropped them through the slit in the door.
He read the letters first. There were not many, for his correspondence had of late declined to almost nothing. The only things of interest were a note from Porcellis, announcing that he would soon return to New York and a letter from Luke's mother, saying that she had written Betty to pay her a visit: "It is only right that your fiancée should do this," wrote Mrs. Huber, "and that I should have an early chance of knowing the girl that is to be my son's wife."
Luke wondered how Betty would reply to the invitation. As he was thinking of this, his eye caught the heaviest headlines on the first page of the newspaper: during the night, a body of strikers at the Forbes factory had marched to the main entrance and battered down the door in an endeavor to drag out the Breil men who slept there as guards by night and worked there by day; the Breil men resisted; there was a general battle with at least two deaths; the attacking party were repulsed, but the police, summoned by a riot-call, gained what appeared to be no more than a preliminary skirmish, for the entire neighborhood was in arms and more bloodshed was expected to-day.
Luke dropped the paper with an oath. He was more hungry than before for a part in this fight—in any fight. If Religion was a coward, he would make one more appeal to Government, to force. He called Albany on the long-distance telephone. He kept on calling until he had brought the Governor to the other end of the wire, and then he was astonished to hear that the proper civil authorities in New York had already asked for troops.
"It is always best," he was told, "not to drag local men into an affair of this sort, if it can be helped; so I'm having the Adjutant General send down a company from Poughkeepsie. That ought to be enough for the present, and they ought to get there by noon."
Luke muttered his thanks and rang off.
"I know why that was done," he said to himself: "They think they'll make more trouble for us with the militia here than without it. Well, we'll see."
He stripped off his clothes, went to the bathroom, and began to run the water for a cold plunge. He was talking to himself.
"The worst of the crowd's dead," he said. "That was Forbes's way of putting it. There he had a glimpse. Started down to rock-bottom. But he didn't arrive. I felt that way till only a little while ago. But I see I was wrong. I thought this was a one-man show; I believed in a sort of personal Devil. I wish I'd been right. It would have been all so simple, if I'd been right in that. But I wasn't. It isn't the men; it's the system. The man didn't make the system; the system made the man."
He was wonderfully clear about that now. All his fight against evil had been directed toward one man, and the man was dead and the evil remained. He could almost pity that man in russet brown. That man who had sat at the fountain of forces reaching up and down through all the life of the world, seemed to originate the forces and use them for his own malign purpose; but now—and herein lay one of the reasons for Luke's present wonder at life—he perceived certainly that the man had been only a little better treated by the forces than the forces treated all the rest of mankind, was their creation and their slave just as wholly as the most obscure victim. Industrial evolution, working through the collective ignorance of the race, had devised the Great Evil. Here was a web that no spider wove, a web that killed spiders as well as flies, lived on with a life of its own, grew and spread of itself. So long as the web existed, there would always be a spider. The Web remained. It was the Web that must be broken.
Yet he wanted to fight. He would fight. The Gospel of Negation had given him its light; it had yet to teach him to see.
§5. Other forces vitally affecting Luke were at work that day, at first far distant from the factory. They were forces that had affected him imperfectly heretofore, but that now were set in motion in a manner no longer to be diverted.
Ex-Judge Stein was summoned from his office almost at the moment of his appearance there. His motor-car took him into Wall Street, to a certain skyscraper, into which he went and was taken as far as the twentieth floor.
He entered an unmarked door and passed an attendant who bowed to him respectfully. He passed another attendant. A third, at sight of him, got up and went through a second door, leaving the Judge to wait in dignified repose. Then the last attendant reappeared and nodded, and the Judge passed the second door.
He remained inside for an hour. When he came out his mien was undisturbed, but his strong and kindly face was even graver than usual. He almost forgot to return the farewells of the attendants as he left them. He rang twice for the elevator, although the elevator was not long delayed.
"The office," he said to his chauffeur as he climbed again into the car.
§6. Returned at his own quarters at half-past ten, he sent immediately for Irwin, to whom he talked for perhaps forty-five minutes. He spoke with a sad inevitability.
"No more excuses, no more extensions of time, no more delays," he concluded—"and no more failures."
The twinkle left Irwin's eyes.
"I understand," he said.
He could not fail to understand. His superior had been once and for all explicit. Judge Stein, during his service to the public on the bench, had never been called upon to pronounce a sentence of death, but, had he been so called upon, he would have spoken much as he now spoke to Irwin.
§7. "I hate to have to tell you this," said Irwin to Quirk at noon in the latter's shabby law-office, "but if that job isn't done before to-morrow morning, those affidavits charging you with jury-fixing are going to be turned over to the District-Attorney, and the people that have them are now in a position to make Leighton act on them, too."
Irwin also had become specific. The plump Mr. Quirk lost his habitual smile.
"It's a rotten business," he said.
"It is," Irwin agreed; "but your arrest would be a worse one—for you."
"We may have to go the limit," said Quirk.
"Then," said Irwin, "you'd better go it. That's no affair of mine."
§8. "This time," said Quirk, "you've got till to-night to make up your mind."
He was talking to Police-Lieutenant Donovan. It was just after lunch-time.
"What about?" asked Donovan.
"Whether you want to bluff us again or lose your job."
"We never did bluff you."
"Well, then: whether you want to get those letters or get fired. Nottryto get them:getthem. It's get them or get out." All the kindliness and good-fellowship was missing from Quirk's voice. "It's one thing or the other. We got evidence to fire you on. You knew we had, last time I talked to you. Well, they were easy on you then, Hughie. This time they mean business."
Donovan looked at Quirk.
"Suppose somebody gets hurt?" he said.
Quirk shrugged his shoulders.
§9. When Guth came in late in the afternoon, Donovan said:
"I got a warrant in my desk for you, Guth. A friend o' mine swore it out. If I don't stop him, it means a criminal trial where you won't have the chance of a goat. You know what it's for: that little girl up in Fifty-second Street. The only way I can get him to hold off's for you to get Reddy Rawn to do what you'd ought t' got him to do long ago. If somebody gets hurt, it ain't our fault."
§10. At eight p.m. in the shadowy alley near Forty-third Street and Third Avenue, Patrolman Guth's twisted mouth was menacing the darkness.
"He's down at the Forbes factory now," said Guth. "There's sure to be a fight there to-night, an' anybody can get in. It's a cinch."
The darkness did not reply.
"Anyhow, you got to," said Guth. "The old man's crazy mad. He says it's the chair for yours if you fall down this time. Crab Rotello's got worse. He can't live the night, an' the old man says he's goin' to have you railroaded soon as Crab cashes in, if you don't do what he says. He means it, too, Reddy."
Out of the darkness came the answer:
"I'll maybe have to croak this guy."
"That's up to you," said Guth. "It'll look like some strikers done it. It's his own fault for bein' a fool. What in hell do you care, anyway? We'll look out for you."
"All right," said the darkness.
"Mind you," Guth repeated, "no more stallin' this time. If you don't get the goods, an' get 'em to-night, you're a dead boy, Reddy."
There was an instant of silence. Then the darkness spoke again:
"It won't be me's the dead one."
CHAPTER XVIII
§1. The text of the newspaper article, which Luke read carefully while he dressed, added few facts to those marshaled in its headlines. To Luke it was evident that the past few days had brought the strikers to desperation. Their own funds were gone, and they had no help from outside. They were not strong in numbers, and many of them were women. The ranks of the men had, however, been swelled to a formidable figure by unsought additions from the hundreds of hooligans that, in every city, are attracted to seats of industrial war, and these provided an element which the leaders were unable to control. The affair had gone the usual way: a picket had jeered at a non-union worker; two policemen attacked the offending picket; the crowd ran to the rescue, and a general disturbance, with the assault on the mill, was the inevitable result. Now there was no telling to what extent the trouble might go.
Luke was savagely glad that physical action was imperative. He wanted something that would stop thought. He wanted rest from thought: from the spiritual strain, from the yearning for Betty. Again and again, as he hurried through a breakfast forced upon himself only by the knowledge of his need, he found his mind playing with the childish idea of the carpenter that he wanted to be, tramping the country roads from casual job to job. He might well come to that. Meanwhile, it was good to have this chance for a fight.
§2. Luke drove to the factory in a taxicab that he insisted should be open. As he neared his destination through rows of grimy buildings and vacant lots in which goats grazed among ash-heaps and tin cans and "For Sale" signs, the streets began to look as if a heavy skirmish had been fought through them. Knots of idle sightseers already lined the uneven sidewalks and pointed to the relics of the conflict; at corners the former workers were gathered in low-speaking groups—shrunken figures; slouching forms in poor clothing, whose business was the making of better clothes for luckier beings; faces angry and sullen, faces savage, debased, hungry; women's faces as sexless as the men's—and everywhere, furtive and sinister, those other faces, the faces most to be feared, of the gathered condors of the underworld, the feeders on economic carrion, who had slunk here from the darkest corners of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City, rising from a hundred alleys and pot-houses, and circling toward the factory as birds of prey come from the four quarters of the compass toward a battlefield; he saw them crouched at the shadowy thresholds of tumble-down dwellings, leering from fetid passageways, peering from the swinging doors of stinking saloons, stealthy, determined.
Overhead the sky was clear sapphire. A strong breeze came in from the Sound, laden with health. It fanned the memories of yesterday out of his brain and for a moment made the present seem a picture from the remote past. It was unreal: he felt himself an unimportant spectator of some unconvincing play.
Then, rising above rows of rickety houses, the mill came into sight, blocking the street-end, and restored his appreciation of the imminent. A wrecked coal-wagon lay horseless in the middle of the street opposite a bent lamp-post, the coal heaped where it had fallen. Battered hats were in the gutter, and on the pavement was a coat, torn and muddy. No smoke curled to-day from the chimney of the mill's engine-room, and in front of its shattered main-door, rudely repaired by unpainted planks of fresh pine, two policemen lounged, facing a string of mute pickets.
Luke passed the door unmolested and entered the office. The superintendent, a whiskered man named Whitaker, was there, and one or two pasty and frightened clerks.
"Mr. Forbes down yet?" asked Luke briskly.
"No, sir," said Whitaker. "He just sent word he was sick."
"Sick? What's the matter with him?"
"I don't know exactly, Mr. Huber. It was Miss Forbes telephoned, and she said he'd had a kind of fainting fit right after breakfast."
Luke sat down at the desk and called up the Forbes house.
"Mr. Forbes there?" he asked of the maid that answered him.
"No, sir. Mr. Forbes is in bed."
"Ill?"
"Not very well."
"Ask Miss Forbes to come to the 'phone. This is Mr. Huber talking. I'm at the factory, and I must know something about Mr. Forbes' condition."
The maid assented, but, after he had waited, it was again she that spoke to him.
"Miss Forbes asks you please to excuse her. She's very busy. She says to tell you Mr. Forbes was a little dizzy and had to lie down. He thinks he can get to his office late in the day."
Luke felt the mortification that it was patently intended he should feel; but he lost no time over it. He turned at once to Whitaker and the clerks, and secured from them what verification he could of the newspaper's story. Then he sent for the brawny, flannel-shirted Breil and learned what remained for him to know.
"You think there'll be more trouble?" he asked, after he had sent Whitaker and his assistant from the room.
"Sure there will," said Breil cheerfully, "but not before to-night."
"When'll the soldiers get here?"
"'Long about noon, I guess."
"How many police have they given us?"
"Half a dozen. I couldn't beg more."
"Better send some of them out to have that coal cleared away."
"I tried to, but they said it wasn't their duty, an' I couldn't get any satisfaction at City Hall. You know how these cops are."
"Couldn't you have a detail of your own men do it?"
"I'd like to first-rate; but it'd mean a fight, an' we don't want to put ourselves in the position, to the public, of courtin' that. Mr. Forbes said Saturday——"
"He was right. How many men have you in good shape?"
"Seventy-two. I'd send for more, but they're on a job at Hazleton."
"Will City Hall send more police if there's trouble?"
"Not till they can't help doin' it."
The hours passed slowly. Luke made the rounds of the mill as the commander of a fortress inspects it before an attack. He saw that the strike-breakers, an anxious lot of men, were stationed at the vulnerable places, and he talked again with Breil.
Forbes did not appear, and Luke was too proud to try a second time to question Betty about him; but reporters came and sent in urgent requests for a statement from the company. Luke refused to see them. It was his turn to refuse the newspapers.
"Better feed 'em a little pap," Breil advised.
"I won't so much as look at them," said Luke.
"They'll knock us if you don't."
"That can't hurt us. I won't see them and you're not to talk to them either, Breil."
He began to chafe under the delay. He made the rounds of the mill again and smoked incessantly at cigars that he found in a box in Forbes's desk. He bolted a cold lunch sent in at noon, and he wondered why the soldiers were late.
The soldiers came at two o'clock. Out in the street there were some derisive shouts, and then the regular tramp of marching feet. Luke hurried to an office above Forbes's, a room furnished with a small desk at one side, a large table in the center, and a few chairs, and there, from a window, saw the column of men in khaki, advancing four abreast, down the street.
"They're nothing but a lot of boys," he said as, when they drew nearer, he looked at their young faces. "It's a shame to send a lot of kids like that into—a mix-up of this kind."
He received the Captain and the first-lieutenant in the main office. The Captain had taken off his broad-brimmed service hat and was mopping his face with a blue bandana handkerchief.
"Phew!" he said. "This looks as if it was goin' to be the real thing!"
"Itisthe real thing," said Luke.
"You haven't got a drink handy, have you?" asked the Captain. He was an olive-complexioned young man of twenty-two or -three with a girlish mouth and bright black eyes.
Luke produced a bottle and glasses, and the Captain drank. He spoke in the high tone of excitement as he rattled on:
"Somebody threw a brick at us just up here. Did you see 'em? It near cracked Sergeant Schmidt's coco. Poor old Schmidt; he was scared yellow, wasn't he, Terry?"
Terry was the lieutenant, a raw Irish lad with the face of a fighter.
"You bet," said he.
Luke drew the Captain aside.
"You may as well understand at once," said he, "that this isn't any picnic. You've been sent here to protect our property, and you may have a hot time doing it. We have seventy-two strike-breakers here under Mr. Breil; the superintendent; one or two clerks; and five foremen who've remained loyal to the company. That, with me, makes up the inside force. There's half a dozen police, too. What I want you to do is to draw a cordon of your men along the front of the building. Stand them on the pavement. Breil's men'll watch the back. Half your people had better go on duty now and be relieved by the other half at five o'clock. But from seven on, we'll need your whole company on the job."
The Captain looked serious and worried.
"You think there'll be real trouble to-night?"
"I shouldn't be a bit surprised, especially as I see the Governor's sent us just enough of you fellows to excite a mob and yet be powerless against it. What were your instructions from up top?"
"I was to use my own discretion."
Luke looked at the young man and smiled at the idea of intrusting men's lives to such discretion.
"Well, the main thing is not to lose your head," said Luke.
"They'll outnumber us?"
"If they attacked, yes—undoubtedly."
The Captain returned to the whiskey bottle.
"And we'd be powerless, unless——" He hesitated.
"Unless you fired," Luke concluded for him.
They looked at each other, the man and the boy.
"You mustn't fire," said Luke.
"No," said the boy.
"Unless you have to," said the man....
The afternoon dragged by. Luke gave up all hope of Forbes and spent most of the time in the upper office, looking at the soldiers stationed in front of the building and at the groups of men staring at the soldiers. It seemed to Luke that the numbers of the staring men were increasing....
§3. The night was dark. The purple arc-lamp that burned directly in front of the main entrance to the factory flared vividly upon a circle of the street beneath it, but beyond this circle, which was long empty, one could scarcely see, one could rather only feel, the presence of a slowly gathering, silent crowd. In the main office, Luke was again consulting with the Captain, Breil, and a policeman. The policeman, as if acting under instructions, had sneered at the idea of further trouble so long as the crowd was unmolested, and Luke would not ask again for aid from City Hall. His lieutenants were standing about the room in attitudes of uncertainty. All were agreed against precipitating a fight by attempts to disperse the enemy.
The Captain drew up his boyish form.
"My men——" he began.
"Your kids," corrected Breil.
"We're all right, anyhow," the Captain lamely concluded, his cheeks hot under this indignity.
Raucous cries came now and then from the street.
"You've got enough to take care of with your own affairs," said Luke. He turned to the policeman.
"Are there many in that crowd out there?" he asked.
"Not many," said the policeman, "but I think there's more comin'!"
Still smarting under Breil's rebuke, the Captain felt some show of his bravery to be a duty to the organization to which he belonged.
"We can handle 'em all right," he said, "however many there are. They're mostly nothin' but foreigners, anyhow."
Luke wanted above all to preserve harmony in his ranks, but an imp of perversity whipped his tongue.
"What's your name?" he asked the Captain.
"Antonio Facciolati," said the Captain, "but I'm a naturalized American citizen."
Luke patted his shoulder.
"That's all right," he said reassuringly. "What have your men got in their guns, Captain? Blank cartridges?"
"Not much," said the Captain boldly: "ball."
"Good," Luke smiled. "But don't use it. Butts are best for this work."
He decided that Forbes, well or ill, ought to know how things were going. He bent to the telephone, placing the receiver to his ear.
There was no answer. He rattled the hook impatiently.
"What's the matter with this 'phone?" he growled.
He rattled the hook again, but could get no reply.
Breil left the room. Presently he returned.
"I've tried the one in the hall," he said, "and the one in the cloth-room. The wires are cut."
For a moment nobody spoke. Facciolati's hand crept to his sword-hilt, and the sword clattered. From somewhere far up the street came a choral murmur of voices:
"Halleyloolyah, I'm a bum—bum!"
"Halleyloolyah, I'm a bum—bum!"
"Halleyloolyah, I'm a bum—bum!"
Breil stepped to the window.
"That's them. That's the others. They're comin'," he said.
§4. The men ran to their posts. Luke climbed to the upper office and went to its window.
They were coming indeed. They were there, vividly from the circle of light beneath him, vaguely to the walls of the tumbledown dwellings across the street. At his feet was a line of khaki-clad militiamen, standing at ease beside their magazine-rifles, along the curb; beyond them a few yards of open street, and then what at first looked to Luke like a field of wheat under a high gale, gigantic wheat, black of stalk and white of head, tossing in the wind: the shoving, swaying bodies, the gesticulating arms, the threatening faces of the mob.
They had come to complete the work of the previous night. His startled eyes could pick out no one individual, his ears could select no single word; but he could see leaders, who had lost their leadership, making gestures of despair; men, who had seized license, waving fists and shaking sticks; could hear a turmoil of cries and curses. The whole impression was blurred and general; yet, as he looked, the wheatfield changed to a roaring sea, the black pitching and tossing of a terrible tide ever mounting nearer, nearer to the soldiers drawn up in front of the broken factory door.
The thought mastered him: this was his property which only that frail door separated from them—that frail door and those frightened boys in khaki. They were going to destroy his property—his!
A second street-lamp, farther up the way, lighted the rear of the crowd, and into the circle of its illumination Luke saw running a motor-car. He saw the mob scatter, the car stop, the crowd close around it. He heard more distant shouts above the shouts that were nearer.
The broken section of the crowd swayed, hesitated, attacked the car. For an instant, the arms of the chauffeur beat at the man that climbed to his seat, and then the chauffeur was pulled to the ground. Luke strained his eyes to see if the car were familiar to him. It was. There was a woman in it: its only occupant. It was the Forbes car, and the woman must be Betty.
§5. Luke circled the center table and ran down the steps three at a time. He nearly fell upon the huge form of Breil, coatless, a revolver in his hand, hurtling from one group of his forces to another. Luke pushed him away.
"Where are you going?" cried Breil.
Luke did not answer. He was tugging at the door.
Breil's heavy hand fell on Luke's arm.
"Here! Stop that!" he bellowed. "Where d'you think you're goin'?"
"Get away!" shouted Luke. "I'm going out."
The door leaped open. The howls of the mob beat upon the two men's faces.
Breil thrust his lips against Luke's ear.
"Are you crazy?" he yelled.
"Yes!" said Luke.
He slipped through the door.
Facciolati was there, white-faced, standing behind his soldiers.
Luke made an egress through the ranks by shoving away a soldier with either hand.
"You're not going outthere?" cried the Captain. "They'll kill you!"
Luke jumped to the curb.
"I don't care!" he answered.
He was crazy, and he didn't care whether he was killed or not. Of these two things he was certain. He was mad from the torments of his conflict between logic and desire, and death would be an easy solution—perhaps it was the only one. It flashed upon him that such a solution might be cowardly; but the next instant he had but one impulse; he was going to save Betty, and that was enough. A new madness, the madness of what seemed an absolutely unselfish act, of an act that intoxicated him with its unselfishness, gave him the strength of ten and fired a berserker rage in his breast, hurled him forward like a rock from a ballista. He was going to save Betty, and he was a hundred yards away from her in the midst of a mob that hated him.
The ocean of raging men closed over his head; its pandemonium smashed his ear-drums; but he was deep in the crowd before any of its members realized whence he had come. He was clearing a way, striking, kicking, biting, shouting he knew not what—shrill oaths and guttural threats—thrusting their heavy bodies from side to side. He felt their hot breath, encountered their resisting arms and legs, smelled the sweat of them.
"Stop him!" yelled somebody. "He came out of the factory!"
He saw a host of faces about him, dark with anger; eyes big with hunger and hate. He felt blows that could not hurt him, felt his own fists sink into flabby bellies, crack upon stout skulls.
"The scab!"
A hand fell across his mouth, and he used his teeth like a were-wolf; he tasted the smooth salt blood before it began to trickle down his jowl. A second hand snatched at his collar, another grabbed his arm. He pulled frenziedly, he struck out blindly, he threw all his weight far forward. He knew that his coat ripped; he twisted his arm free, lowered his head and dodged forward, men sprawling before him. He had gained the motor-car.
Betty was standing up in the tonneau. Her hands were clasped before her breast, her face was set. She saw him falling toward her.
Luke jumped beside her, his coat gone, his shirt torn, his face bleeding from a cut above the right eye, his hair matted over his forehead. She did not know him as he seized her roughly and picked her up in his arms; but, in the moment that he balanced on the edge of the car, with the light full in his face, the crowd knew him.
"That's him! That's Huber!" they shrieked.
He jumped with her directly back into the crowd.
While he was still in the air, he thought that was the worst thing to have done. Without him, she might have had some chance; with him she would have almost no chance at all. But it was too late now; he could only fight until he could fight no more, and then they must die together....
§6. They did not die. Somebody, as the mob laid hold of them, broke through its ranks—somebody with still some shred of authority left him.
"Get back, you fools! Get back! Do you want to kill the woman?"
It was that organizer of the strikers whom Luke had seen in Forbes's office when the employees made their last appeal to Forbes. It was the man Forbes had ignored.
With infinite slowness, against infinite opposition, the rescuer made way for them. Grumbling, growling, threatening, the crowd fell back. It menaced, it cursed, it hurled ribald jokes; but it fell back before the leader that it no longer obeyed in anything else, until he, followed by Luke with Betty in his arms, came to the line of soldiers at the battered factory door.
Luke swayed a little. Facciolati stepped up and tried to steady him, but he tossed Facciolati away. Luke turned to the organizer.
"Won't you come inside?" he panted.
The man shook his head.
"I'm—I can't tell you how much I owe you for this," said Luke.
"Oh, you go to Hell," said the man.
§7. Inside the factory, Luke would not waste a glance on the strike-breakers that gathered, open-mouthed, around him.
"Get away," he ordered. "I'm taking her to the upper office. Nobody is to disturb her there. You understand? Nobody."
§8. During all that frightful progress back through the mob, she had lain in his arms silent, her eyes closed. Only now, when he brought her to the upper office, banged the door behind them and put her in an arm-chair, which he kicked the length of the room in order to place her as far as might be from the window, did she look at him.
"I didn't faint," she said. "I only pretended. I thought that was safest."
He had dropped to his knees beside her and had begun to chafe her hands. He was unconscious of the renewed din outside. Thus alone with her, he was thinking only how much he wanted her.
She was leaning far back in the chair. The rays of the street-lamp were the only light in the room, and they made her face seem as peaceful as the faces of the dead. When she opened her eyes, her eyes were luminous.
"You're safe," she continued. "You're safe, aren't you?"
He kissed her hand hotly.
"You!" he said. "I'm all right. But you?"
She stood up, smiling.
"Quite."
He rose also.
"The brutes! the beasts! I'd like to—I'll do it, too!"
He had stepped into the light. His shirt was torn, his hair dank. Blood caked over the cut on his forehead, and his jaws were red with the blood of the man whose hand he had bitten.
"Luke! Youarehurt!"
She came toward him.
"No, I'm not," he persisted, but he let her fingers touch the wound on his head, and her fingers thrilled him.
"Luke," she said, when she had convinced herself that the cut was superficial, "I'm glad it was you."
"That came for you?"
"Yes."
"I didn't do much. I was nearly the death of you. For a minute I thought it was death. That other fellow's the one you have to thank."
"Anyhow, I thank you." She pressed his hand.
A shout came from the mob. It brought him back to material concerns.
"How did you come to this part of town?"
She had complete command of herself.
"Can't you guess?" she asked.
Her eyes were unafraid.
"Don't say you came on my account."
"But I did; I did. Father's too ill to ask questions. It was a slight heart attack, the doctor said: he's been so worried lately, Father has, and so overworked. But I wanted to know, and I tried to telephone here, but they said the connection was broken. Then I was sorry for not answering that call you made before, and when they said you hadn't got back to the Arapahoe, I was afraid. So I told Father I was going to Mr. Nicholson's mission—he must have thought me dreadfully unkind to leave him for that—and I had James drive me—Oh!" she broke off: "I wonder ifhe'shurt?"
"The chauffeur?" Luke remembered. "I saw him just as I got to the car," he chuckled. "He'd reached the outskirts of the crowd and was running for dear life. I don't think they'll catch him."
The noise of the mob would grow from a hoarse mutter to a loud howl and then sink to a low murmur.
"Luke," she said, "itwasyou rescued me."
He listened to the noise.
"Then I've probably only rescued you from the frying-pan to dump you into the fire. I wish I'd had the sense to take you in the opposite direction. I don't know what I could have been thinking of. Of course, they'll simply have to send more police soon and attack these fellows from the rear: the soldiers haven't the right to drive away the crowd, and Breil's men daren't leave the building. But I do wish I hadn't brought you here!"
"You've brought me whereyouare," said Betty.
Her eyes were wide, her lips parted. Luke's breath caught in his throat.
"Betty," he said, "do you mean——"
She did not quail.
"I mean I love you."
"What?" He drew back, afraid of her, afraid of himself.
"I know you weren't yourself," she said. "I know how all this trouble has upset you. I know you didn't mean those things."
The reversal was too much for him. He leaned against the table and burst into laughter. An instant ago the roar of the crowd had seemed miles away, had seemed no more than any recurrent noise of city life. They two, Betty and he, had seemed to him set apart from it all, remote from it, together. Now——
"Luke!" she was crying.
A picture drifted into his mind. It was a picture of pine trees and the sun in a blue sky full of fleecy clouds and a long white road winding, dusty and carefree, to the end of the world.
"Luke——"
He could not hear her now. He saw terror in her face, but the noise from the street rose, rattled at the window-pane, and engulfed her words.
A new cry rang out from the mob—a cry so sharp and loud that both the persons in the room forgot themselves and ran to the window. They looked out upon the tossing faces below.
The crowd had turned. It was elbowing, straining necks, rising on tiptoe, gazing backward.
Far back there something dark fluttered in the night air. It was seized and passed from hand to hand. It reached the circle of light and waved high above the center of the crowd, a banner of crimson, tossing like a beacon over the swarm of black heads, defiant, audacious: the Red Flag.
And then came a new sound. It began in the heart of the mob and spread outwards like circles in water broken by a dropped stone. It did not stop the other noises; it assimilated them. It was low, but strong; it seemed to contain all the history of past wrongs, all the arsenal of present determination; but it was touched with far hopes and freighted with tremendous dreams. It was a chant, a song, a hymn, and all the crowd was singing it with the strength of a thousand pair of lungs.
"What's that?" asked Luke, although he expected no answer.
But the girl gave him one.
"It's a thing called 'The International,'" she said, her voice trembling. "I heard it once in Paris. It's a terrible song."
Luke's eyes were caught by a movement at the window of one of the tumbledown dwellings across the street. He saw the window open and a frowsy woman lean out. She held something white in her hands. She raised it, then dashed its contents toward the nearest soldier. The shot fell short, and two men in the crowd were drenched.
The hymn ended in a shriek. The mob believed that the insult had come from the factory and instantly resolved itself into a fuming whirlpool. Luke saw tossed aside people who were evidently strike-leaders frantically trying to quiet their one-time followers, but he did not guess the purport of the new commotion in the seething mass. Then he saw something that made him jerk Betty away from the window and fling her against the wall at its side.
There was a crash—a pause—a tinkling. A gust of air, fresh and cool, invaded the room. A missile had broken the window. A whole volley followed, smashing more glass and battering at the factory walls. The mob was using the coals from the dismantled wagon that Luke had noticed in the street hours ago.