FFoley's threat that, under cover of the strike, he was going to make Mr. Baxter suffer, was anything save empty bluster. But twenty years of fighting had made him something of a connoisseur of vengeance. He knew, for instance, that a moment usually presented itself when revenge was most effective and when it tasted sweetest. So he now waited for time to bring him that moment; and he waited all the more patiently because a month must elapse ere the beginning of the strike would afford him his chance.
Foley's threat that, under cover of the strike, he was going to make Mr. Baxter suffer, was anything save empty bluster. But twenty years of fighting had made him something of a connoisseur of vengeance. He knew, for instance, that a moment usually presented itself when revenge was most effective and when it tasted sweetest. So he now waited for time to bring him that moment; and he waited all the more patiently because a month must elapse ere the beginning of the strike would afford him his chance.
The month passed dully. Buck had spoken from certain knowledge when he had remarked to Mr. Baxter that the contractors would not yield without a fight. During April there were no less than half a dozen meetings between the union's committee and the Executive Committee of the employers' association in a formal attempt at peaceful settlement. The public attitude of Foley and Baxter toward each other for the past two years had been openly hostile. That attitude was not changed, but it was now sincere. In these meetings the unionists presented their case; the employers gave their side; every point, pro and con, was gone over again and again. On the thirtieth ofApril the situation was just as it had been on the first: "We're goin' to get all we're askin' for," said Foley; "We can concede nothing," said Mr. Baxter. On the first of May not a man was at work on an iron job in New York City.
During these four weeks Foley regained popularity with an astounding rapidity. He was again the Foley of four or five years ago, the Foley that had won the enthusiastic admiration of the union, fierce-tongued in his denunciation of the employers at union meetings, grimly impudent to members of the employers' Executive Committee and matching their every argument,—at all times witty, resourceful, terribly determined, fairly hurling into others a confidence in himself. He was feeling with almost its first freshness the joy of being in, and master of, a great fight. Men that for years had spoken of him only in hate, now cheered him. And even Tom himself had to yield to this new Foley a reluctant admiration, he was so tireless, so aggressive, so equal to the occasion.
Tom had become, by the first of May, a figure of no importance. True, he was a member of the strike committee, but Foley gave him no chance to speak; and, anyhow, the walking delegate said what there was to be said so pointedly, albeit with a virulence that antagonized the employers all the more, that there was no reason for his saying aught. And as for his position as president, that had become pathetically ludicrous. As though in opposite pans of a balance, the higher Foley went in the union's estimation, the lower went he. Even his own friends, whilenot abandoning him, fell in behind Foley. He was that pitiable anomaly, a leader without a following and without a cause. Foley had stolen both. He tried to console himself with the knowledge that the walking delegate was managing the strike for the union's good; but only the millionth man has so little personal ambition that he is content to see the work he would do being well done by another.... And yet, though fallen, he hung obstinately on and waited—blindly.
Tom was now in little danger from the entertainment committee, for Foley's disquiet over his influence had been dissipated by his rapid decline. And after the first of May Tom gave Foley even less concern, for he had finally secured work in the shipping department of a wholesale grocer, so could no longer show himself by day among the union men.
During April the contractors had prepared for the coming fight by locating non-union ironworkers, and during the first part of May they rushed these into the city and set them to work, guarded by Pinkerton detectives, upon the most pressing jobs. The union, in its turn, picketed every building on which there was an attempt to continue work, and against the scabs the pickets waged a more or less pacific warfare. Foley was of himself as much as all the pickets. He talked to the non-union men as they came up to their work, as they left their work, as they rode away on street cars, as they sat in saloons. Some he reached by his preachment of the principles of trade unionism. And some he reached by such brief speech as this: "This strike'll be settled soon. Our men'll all goback to work. What'll happen to youse about then? The bosses'll kick youse out. If youse're wise youse'll join the union and help us in the strike." This argument was made more effective by the temporary lifting of the initiation fee of twenty-five dollars, by which act scabs were made union men without price. There was also a third method, which Foley called "transmittin' unionism to the brain by the fist," and he reached many this way, for his fist was heavy and had a strong arm behind it.
The contractors, in order to retain the non-union men, raised their wages to fifty cents a day more than the union demanded, but even then they were able to hold only enough workers to keep a few jobs going in half-hearted fashion. There were many accidents and delays on these buildings, for the workers were boilermakers, and men who but half knew the trade, and men who did not know the trade at all. As Pete remarked, after watching, from a neighboring roof, the gang finishing up the work on the St. Etienne Hotel, "The shadder of an ironworker would do more'n three o' them snakes." The contractors themselves realized perfectly what poor work they were getting for so extravagant a price, and would have discharged their non-union gangs had this not been a tacit admission of partial defeat.
From the first of May there of course had been several hot-heads who favored violent handling of the scabs. Tom opposed these with the remnant of his influence, for he knew the sympathy of the public has its part in the settlement of strikes, and public sympathy goes not to the side guilty of outrage.The most rabid of all these advocates of violence was Johnson, who, after being summoned to Mr. Baxter's office, began diligently to preach this substance: "If we put a dozen or two o' them snakes out o' business, an' fix a job or two, the bosses'll come right to time."
"It strikes me, Johnson, that you change your ideas about as often as you ought to change your shirt," Pete remarked one day, after listening to Johnson's inflammatory words. "Not long ago you were all against a strike."
For a moment Johnson was disconcerted. Then he said: "But since there is a strike I'm for measures that'll settle it quick. What you got against smashin' a few scabs?"
"Oh, it's always right to smash a scab," Pete agreed. "But you ought to know that just now there's nothin' the bosses'd rather have us do. They'd pay good money to get us to give the hospitals a chance to practice up on a few snakes."
Johnson looked at Pete searchingly, fearing that Pete suspected. But Pete guessed nothing, and Johnson went about his duty.
There were a number of encounters between the strikers and the strike-breakers, and several of these set-tos had an oral repetition in the police courts; but nothing occurred so serious as to estrange public sympathy till the explosion in the Avon, a small apartment house Mr. Baxter was erecting as a private investment. And with this neither Johnson nor the rank and file, on whose excitable feelings he tried to play, had anything to do.
Foley's patience mastered his desire for vengeanceeasily enough during April, but when May had reached its middle without offering the chance he wanted, his patience weakened and desire demanded its rights. At an utterly futile meeting between the committees of the union and the employers, toward the end of the month, arranged for by the Civic Federation, the desire for vengeance suddenly became the master. This was the first meeting since the strike began, and was the first time Foley had seen Mr. Baxter since then. The contractor did not once look at Foley, and did not once address speech to him; he sat with his back to the walking delegate, and put all his remarks to Brown, the least important member of the strikers' committee. Foley gave as good as he received, for he selected Isaacs, who was nothing more than a fifth man, and addressed him as head of the employers' committee; and rather better, for he made Mr. Baxter the object of a condescending affability that must have been as grateful as salt to raw and living flesh.
But Foley was not appeased. When he and Connelly were clear of the meeting he swore fiercely. "He won't be so cool to-morrow!" he said, and swore again. "An' the same trick'll help bring 'em all to time," he added.
Foley had already had vengeful eyes upon the Avon, which stood on a corner with a vacant lot on one side and an open space between its rear and the next building. Jake had carefully reconnoitered its premises, with the discovery that one of the two Pinkerton guards was an acquaintance belonging to the days when he himself had been in the service ofthe Pinkerton agency. That night Jake sauntered by the Avon, chatted awhile with the two guards, and suggested a visit to a nearby saloon. As soon as the three were safely around the corner Kaffir Bill and Arkansas Number Two slipped into the doorway of the Avon, leaving Smoky on watch without. Bill and Arkansas had their trouble: to find their way about in the darkness, to light the fuse—and then they had to cut off an unignitable portion of the fuse; and then in their nervous eagerness to get away their legs met a barrel of cement and they went sprawling behind a partition. Several moments passed ere they found the doorway, the while they could hear the sputtering of the shortened fuse, and during which they heard Smoky cry out, "Come on!" When they did come into the street it was to see the two Pinkertons not twenty paces away. Before their haste could take them to the opposite sidewalk the pavement jumped under their feet, and the building at their backs roared heavily. The guards, guessing the whole trick, began shooting at the two. A policeman appeared from around the corner with drawn pistol—and that night Jake, Bill, and Arkansas slept in a cell.
The next morning, after getting on the car that carried him to his work, Tom took up his paper with a leisure that straightway left him, for his eyes were instantly caught by the big headlines sketching the explosion in the Avon. He raced through the three columns. He could see Foley behind the whole outrage, and he thrilled with satisfaction as he foresaw the beginning of Foley's undoing in the police court.There was no work for him that morning. He leaped off the car and took another that brought him near the court where the three men were to have their preliminary hearing.
It was half-past eight when he reached the court. As he entered the almost empty court-room he saw Foley and a black-maned man of lego-theatric appearance standing before a police sergeant, and he heard Foley say: "This is their lawyer; we want to see 'em straight off." Tom preferred to avoid meeting Foley, so he turned quickly back and walked about for half an hour. When he returned the small court-room was crowded, the clerks were in place, the policemen and their prisoners stood in a long queue having its head at the judge's desk and its tail without the iron railing that fenced off the spectators.
Tom had been in the court-room but a few minutes when an officer motioned him within the railing. The court attorney stepped to his side. "You were pointed out to me as the president of the Iron Workers' Union," said the attorney.
"Yes."
"And I was told you didn't care particularly for the prisoners in this explosion case."
"Well?"
"Would you be willing to testify against them—not upon the explosion, which you didn't see, but upon their character?"
Tom looked at Jake, Arkansas, and Bill, standing at the head of the queue in charge of the two Pinkertons and a couple of policemen, and struggled a moment with his thoughts. Ordinarily it was a pointof honor with a union man not to aid the law against a fellow member; but this was not an ordinary case. The papers had thrown the whole blame for the outrage upon the union. The union's innocence could be proved only by fastening the blame upon Foley and the three prisoners.
"I will," he consented.
There was a tiresome wait for the judge. About ten o'clock he emerged from his chambers and took his place upon his platform. He was a cold-looking man, with an aristocratic face, deeply marked with lines of hard justice, and with a time-tonsured pate. His enemies, and they were many, declared his judgments ignored the law; his answer was that he administered the law according to common sense, and not according to its sometimes stupid letter.
The bailiff opened the court, and the case of Jake, Arkansas, and Bill was called. The two Pinkertons recited the details of the explosion and the two policemen added details of the arrest. Then Mr. Baxter, looking pale, but as much the self-controlled gentleman as ever, testified to the damage done by the dynamite. The Avon still stood, but its steel frame was so wrenched at the base that it was liable to fall at any moment. The building would have to be reconstructed entirely. Though much of the material could be used again, the loss, at a conservative estimate, would be seventy-five thousand dollars.
Tom came next before the judge's desk. Exclamations of surprise ran among the union men in the room when it was seen Tom was to be a witness, and the bailiff had to pound with his gavel and shout fororder. Tom testified that the three were known in the union as men ready for any villainy; and he managed to introduce in his answers to the questions enough to make it plain that the union was in no degree responsible for the outrage, that it abhorred such acts, that responsibility rested upon the three—"And someone else," he added meaningly.
"Who's that?" quickly demanded the court attorney.
"Buck Foley."
"I object!" shouted the prisoners' attorney. Foley, who sat back in the crowd with crossed legs, did not alter his half-interested expression by a wrinkle.
"Objection over-ruled," said the judge.
"Will you please tell what you know about Mr. Foley's connection with the case," continued the court attorney.
"I object, your Honor! Mr. Foley is not on trial."
"It's the duty of this court to get at all the facts," returned the judge. "Does the witness speak from his own knowledge, or what he surmises?"
"I'm absolutely certain he's at the bottom of this."
"But is your evidence first-hand information?"
"It is not," Tom had to confess. "But I couldn't be more certain if I had seen him——"
"Guess-work isn't evidence," cut in the judge.
Tom, however, had attached Foley to the case—he had seen the reporters start at his words as at a fresh sensation—and he gave a look of satisfaction at Foley as he stepped away from the judge's desk. Foleygave back a half-covered sneer, as if to say, "Just youse wait!"
Arkansas was the first of the prisoners to be called—the reason for which priority, as Tom afterwards guessed, being his anomalous face that would not have ill-suited a vest that buttoned to the chin and a collar that buttoned at the back. Arkansas, replying to the questions of his long-haired attorney, corroborated the testimony of the policemen and the Pinkertons in every detail. When Arkansas had answered the last query the lawyer allowed several seconds to pass, his figure drawn up impressively, his right hand in the breast of his frock coat.
The judge bent over his docket and began to write. "This seems a perfectly plain case. I hold the three prisoners for the grand jury, each in ten thousand——"
The attorney's right hand raised itself theatrically. "Hold!" he cried.
The judge looked up with a start. Tom's eyes, wandering to Foley's face, met there a malign grin.
"The case is not ended, your Honor. The case is just begun." The attorney brushed back his mane with a stagy movement of his hand, and turned upon Arkansas. "You and the other prisoners did this. You do not deny it. But now tell his Honor why you did it."
Arkansas, with honesty fairly obtruding from his every feature, looked nervously at Tom, and then said hesitantly: "Because we had to."
"And why did you have to?"
Again Arkansas showed hesitation.
"Speak out," encouraged the attorney. "You're in no danger. The court will protect you."
"We was ordered to. If we hadn't done it we'd been thrown out o' the union, an' been done up."
"Explain to the court what you mean by 'done up'."
"Slugged an' kicked—half killed."
"In other words, what you did was done in fear of your life. Now who ordered you to blow up the Avon, and threatened to have you 'done up' if you didn't?"
"Mr. Keating, the president o' the union."
The judge, who had been leaning forward with kindling eyes, breathed a prolonged "A-a-ah!"
For a moment Tom was astounded. Then he sprang to Arkansas's side. "You infernal liar!" he shouted, his eyes blazing.
The judge's hammer thundered down. "Silence!" he roared.
"But, your Honor, he's lying!"
"Five dollars for contempt of court! Another word and I'll give you the full penalty."
Two officers jerked Tom back, and surging with indignant wrath he had to listen in silence to the romance that had been spun for Arkansas's lips and which he was now respinning for the court's ears; and he quickly became aware that newspaper artists had set their pencils busy over his face. Once, glancing at Jake, he was treated with a leer of triumph.
Arkansas plausibly related what had passed between Tom and himself and his two companions; andthen Bill took the stand, and then Jake. Each repeated the story Arkansas, with the help of his face, had made so convincing.
"And now, your Honor," the prisoners' attorney began when his evidence was all in, "I think I have made plain my clients' part in this most nefarious outrage. They are guilty—yes. But they were but the all too weak instruments of another's will, who galvanized them by mortal fear to do his dastardly bidding. He, he alone——"
"Save your eloquence, councilor," the judge broke in. "The case speaks best for itself. You here." He crooked his forefinger at Tom.
Tom was pushed by policemen up before the judge.
"Now what have you to say for yourself?" the judge demanded.
"It's one string of infernal lies!" Tom exploded. And he launched into a hot denial, strong in phrasing but weak in comparison with the inter-corroborative stones of the three, which had the further verisimilitude gained by tallying in every detail with the officers' account of the explosion.
"What you say is merely denial, the denial we hear from every criminal," his Honor began when Tom had finished. "I do not say I believe every word of the testimony of the three prisoners. But it is more credible than your statements.
"What has been brought out here to-day—the supreme officer of a union compelling members to commit an act of violence by threat of economic disablement and of physical injury, perhaps death—is in perfect accord with the many diabolical practicesthat have recently been revealed as existing among trade unions. It is such things as this that force all right-minded men to regard trade unionism as the most menacing danger which our nation now confronts." And for five minutes he continued in his arraignment of trade unions.
"In the present circumstances," he ended, "it is my duty to order the arrest of this man who appears to be the chief conspirator—this president of a union who has had the supreme hardihood to appear as a witness against his own tools, doubtless hoping thereby to gain the end of the thief who cried 'stop thief.' I hold him in fifteen thousand dollars bond to await the action of the grand jury. The three prisoners are held in five thousand dollars bail each."
Jake, Bill, and Arkansas were led away by their captors, and Tom, utterly dazed by this new disaster that had overtaken him when he had thought there was nothing more that could befall, was shoved over to the warrant clerk. And again he caught Foley's eyes; they were full of malicious satisfaction.
As he waited before the warrant clerk's desk he saw Mr. Baxter, on his way to the door, brush by Foley, and in the moment of passing he saw Foley's lips move. He did not hear Foley's words. They were two, and were: "First round!"
A few minutes later Tom was led down a stairway, through a corridor and locked in a cell.
TOM HAS A CALLER
LLate in the afternoon, as Tom lay stretched in glowering melancholy on the greasy, dirt-browned board that did service as chair and bed to the transitory tenants of the cell, steps paused in the corridor without and a key rattled in his door. He rose dully out of his dejection. A scowling officer admitted a man, round and short and with side whiskers, and locked the door upon his back.
Late in the afternoon, as Tom lay stretched in glowering melancholy on the greasy, dirt-browned board that did service as chair and bed to the transitory tenants of the cell, steps paused in the corridor without and a key rattled in his door. He rose dully out of his dejection. A scowling officer admitted a man, round and short and with side whiskers, and locked the door upon his back.
"This is a pretty how-to-do!" growled the man, coming forward.
Tom stared at his visitor. "Why, Mr. Driscoll!" he cried.
"That's who the most of my friends say I am," the contractor admitted gruffly.
He deposited himself upon the bench that had seated and bedded so much unwashed misfortune, and, his back against the cement wall, turned his sour face about the bare room. "This is what I call a pretty poor sort of hospitality to offer a visitor," he commented, in his surly voice. "Not even a chair to sit on."
"There is also the floor; you may take your choice," Tom returned, nettled by the other's manner. He himself took the bench.
Mr. Driscoll stared at him with blinking eyes, and he stared back defiantly. In Tom's present mood of wrath and depression his temper was tinder waiting another man's spark.
"Huh!" Mr. Driscoll ran his pudgy forefinger easefully about between his collar and his neck, and removing his spectacles mopped his purple face. "What's this funny business you've been up to now?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" Tom demanded, his irritation mounting.
"You ought to read the papers and keep posted on what you do. I just saw aStar. There's half a page of your face, and about a pint of red ink."
Tom groaned, and his jaws clamped ragefully.
"What I read gave me the impression you'd been having a sort of private Fourth of July celebration," Mr. Driscoll pursued.
Tom turned on the contractor half savagely. "See here! I don't know what you came here for, but if it was for this kind of talk—well, you can guess how welcome you are!"
Mr. Driscoll emitted a little chuckling sound, or Tom thought for an instant he did. But a glance at that sour face, with its straight pouting mouth, corrected Tom's ears.
"Now, what was your fool idea in blowing up the Avon?"
Tom uprose wrathfully. "Do you mean to say you believe the lies those blackguards told this morning?"
"I only know what I read in the papers."
"If you swallow everything you see in the papers, you must have an awful maw!"
"Yes, I suppose you have got some sort of a story you put up."
Tom glared at his pudgy visitor who questioned with such an exasperating presumption. "Did I ask you here?" he demanded.
The contractor's eyes snapped, and Tom expected hot words. But none came. "Don't get hot under the collar," Mr. Driscoll advised, running his comforting finger under his own. "Come, what's your side of the story?"
Tom was of half a mind to give a curt refusal. But his wrong was too great, too burning, for him to keep silent upon it. He would have talked of it to any one—to his very walls. He took a turn in the cell, then paused before his old employer and hotly explained his innocence and Foley's guilt.
While Tom spoke Mr. Driscoll's head nodded excitedly.
"Just what I said!" he cried when Tom ended, and brought his fist down on his knee. "Well, we'll show him!"
"Show him what?" Tom asked.
Mr. Driscoll stopped his fist midway in another excited descent. He stood up, for he saw the officer's scowling face at the grated front of the cell. "Oh, a lot of things before he dies. As for you, keep your courage up. What else's it for?"
He held out his hand. Tom took it with bewildered perfunctoriness.
Mr. Driscoll passed through the door, held openby the officer. Outside he turned about and growled through the bars: "Now don't be blowing up any more buildings!"
Tom, stung anew, would have retorted in kind, but Mr. Driscoll's footsteps had died away down the corridor before adequate words came to him.
It was about an hour later that the officer appeared before his cell again and unlocked his door. "Come on," he said shortly.
Tom, supposing he was at length to be removed to the county jail, put on his hat and stepped outside the cell. He had expected to find policemen in the corridor, and to be handcuffed. But the officer was alone.
Two cells away he saw Jake's malignant face peering at him through the bars. "I guess this puts us about even!" Jake called out.
Tom shook his fist. "Wait till the trial! We'll see!" he cried vengefully.
"Shut up, youse!" shouted the surly watchman. He pushed Tom through the corridor and up a stairway. At its head Tom was guided through a door, and found himself in the general hall of the police station.
"Here youse are," said the officer, starting for the sergeant's desk. "Come on and sign the bail bond."
Tom caught his arm. "What's this mean?" he cried.
"Don't youse know? Youse're bailed out."
"Bailed out! Who by?"
"Didn't he tell youse?" Surprise showed in thecrabbed face of the officer. "Why, before he done anything he went down to talk it over with youse."
"Not Mr. Driscoll?"
"I don't know his name. That red-faced old geezer in the glasses. Huh!—his coin comes easier'n mine."
Tom put his name to the bond, already signed by Mr. Driscoll, and stumbled out into the street, half blinded by the rush of sunlight into his cell-darkened eyes, and struck through with bewilderment at his unexpected liberation. He threw off a number of quizzing reporters, who had got quick news of his release, and walked several aimless blocks before he came back to his senses. Then he set out for Mr. Driscoll's office, almost choking with emotion at the prospect of meeting Ruth again. But he reached it too late to spend his thanks or to test his self-control. It was past six and the office was locked.
He started home, and during the car ride posted himself upon his recent doings by reading the accounts of the trial and his part in the Avon outrage. On reaching the block in which he lived he hesitated long before he found the courage to go up to the ordeal of telling Maggie his last misfortune. When he entered his flat it was to find it empty. He sat down at the window, with its backyard view of clothes-lines and of fire-escape landings that were each an open-air pantry, and rehearsed the sentences with which he should break the news to her, his suspense mounting as the minutes passed. At length her key sounded in the lock, he heard her footsteps, then saw her dim shape come into the sitting-room.
In the same instant she saw him at the window. "What—Tom!" she cried, with the tremulous relief of one who ends a great suspense.
He had been nerving himself to face another mood than this. He was taken aback by the unexpected note in her voice—a sympathetic note he had not heard for such a time it seemed he had never heard it at all.
He rose, embarrassed. "Yes," he said.
She had come quickly to his side, and now caught his arm. "You are here, Tom?"
"Why, yes," he answered, still dazed and at a loss. "Where have you been, Maggie?"
Had the invading twilight not half blindfolded him, Tom could have seen the rapid change that took place in Maggie's face—the relief at finding him safe yielding to the stronger emotion beneath it. When she answered her voice was as of old. "Been? Where haven't I been? To the jail the last place."
"To the jail?" He was again surprised. "Then ... you know all?"
"Know all?" She laughed harshly, a tremolo beneath the harshness. "How could I help knowing all? The newsboys yelling down in the street! The neighbors coming in with their sympathy!" She did not tell him how to these visitors she had hotly defended his innocence.
"I didn't know you were at the police station," he said weakly, still at a loss.
"Of course not. When I got there they told me you'd been let out." Her breath was coming rapidly, deeply. "What a time I had! I didn't know howto get to the jail! Dragging myself all over town! Those awful papers everywhere! Everybody looking at me and guessing who I was! Oh, the disgrace! The disgrace!"
"But, Maggie, I didn't do this!"
"The world don't know that!" The rage and despair that had been held in check all afternoon by her concern for him now completely mastered her. "We're disgraced! You've been in jail! You're now only out on bail! Fifteen thousand dollars bail! Why that boss, Mr. Driscoll, went on it, heaven only knows! You're going to be tried. Even if you get off we'll never hear the last of it. Hadn't we had trouble enough? Now it's disgrace! And why's this come on us? You tell me that!"
She was shaking all over, and for her to speak was a struggle with her sobs. She supported herself with arms on the table, and looked at him fiercely, wildly, through the dim light.
Tom took her arm. "Sit down, Maggie," he said, and tried to push her into a chair.
She repulsed him. "Answer me. Why has this trouble come on us?"
He was silent.
"Oh, you know! Because you wouldn't take a little advice from your wife! Other men got along with Foley and held their jobs. But you wanted to be different; you wanted to fight Foley. Well, you've had your way; you've fought him. And what of it? We're ruined! Disgraced! You're working for less than half what you used to get. We're ashamed to show our faces in the street. All because youwouldn't pay any attention to me. And me—how I've got to suffer for it! Oh, my God! My God!"
Tom recognized the justice, from her point of view, in her wild phrases and did not try to dispute her. He again tried to push her into a chair.
She threw off his hand, and went hysterically on, now beating her knuckles upon the table. "Leave me alone! I've made up my mind about one thing. You won't listen to reason. I've given you good advice. I've been right every time. You've paid no attention to me and we're ruined! Well, I've made up my mind. If you do this sort of thing again, I'll lock you out of the house! D'you hear? I'll lock you out of the house!"
She fell of her own accord into a chair, and with her head in her hands abandoned herself to sobbing. Tom looked at her silently. In a narrow way, she was right. In a broad way, he knew he was right. But he could not make her understand, so there was nothing he could say. Presently he noticed that her hair had loosened and her hat had fallen over one cheek. With unaccustomed hands he took out the pins and laid the hat upon the table. She gave no sign that she had noted the act.... Her sobs became fewer and less violent.
Tom quietly lit the gas. "Where's Ferdinand?" he asked, in his ordinary voice.
"I left him with Mrs. Jones," she answered through her hands.
When Tom came back with the boy she was in the kitchen, a big apron over her street dress, beginning the dinner. Tom looked in upon her, then obeyingan impulse long unstirred he began to set the table. She glanced furtively at this unusual service, but said nothing. She sat through the meal with hard face, but did not again refer to the day's happenings; and, since the day was Wednesday, as soon as he had eaten Tom hurried away to Potomac Hall.
Tom was surrounded by friends the minute he entered the hall. The ten o'clock edition of the evening papers, out before seven, had acquainted them with his release. The accounts in this edition played up the anomaly of this labor ruffian, shown by his act to be the arch-enemy of the employers, being bailed out by one of the very contractors with whom the union was at war. Two of the papers printed interviews with Mr. Driscoll upon the question, why had he done it? One interview was, "I don't know"; the other, "None of your business."
Tom's friends had the curiosity of the papers, and put to him the question the news sheets had put to Mr. Driscoll. "If Mr. Driscoll don't know, how can I?" was all the answer he could give them. Their curiosity, however, was weak measured by their indignation over the turn events had taken in the court-room. They would stand by him at his trial, they declared, and show what his relations had been with Jake, Bill and Arkansas.
Before the meeting was opened there was talk among the Foleyites against Tom being allowed to preside, but he ended their muttering by marching to his table and pounding the union to order. He immediately took the floor and in a speech filled with charges against Foley gave to the union his side ofthe facts that had already been presented them from a different viewpoint in the papers. When he ended Foley's followers looked to their chief to make reply, but Foley kept his seat. Connelly, seeing it his duty to defend his leader, was rising to his feet when a glance from Foley made him sink back into his chair. The talk from Tom's side went hotly on for a time, but, meeting with no resistance, and having no immediate purpose, it dwindled away.
The union then turned to matters pertaining to the management of the strike. As the discussion went on followers of Foley slipped quietly about the hall whispering in the ears of their brethren. The talk became tedious. Tom's friends, wearied and uninterested, sat in silence. Foleyites spoke at great length upon unimportant details. Foley himself made a long speech, the like of which had never before come from him, it was that dull and purposeless. At half-past ten, by which time the men usually were restless to be out of the hall and bound toward their beds, adjournment seemed as far off as at eight. Sleepy and bored by the stupid discussion, members began to go out, and most of those that left were followers of Tom. The pointless talk went on; men kept slipping out. At twelve o'clock not above two hundred were in the hall, and of these not two dozen were Tom's friends.
Tom saw Foley cast his eyes over the thinned crowd, and then give a short nod at Connelly. The secretary stood up and claimed Tom's recognition.
"Mr. President, I move we suspend the constitution."
The motion was instantly seconded. Tom promptly ruled it out of order, on the ground that it was unconstitutional to suspend the constitution. But he was over-ruled, only a score siding with him. The motion was put and was carried by the same big majority that had voted against his decision.
Connelly rose a second time. "I make a motion that we remove the president from office on the charge that he is the instigator of an outrage that has blackened the fair name of our union before all the world."
A hundred voices cried a second to the motion. Tom rose and looked with impotent wrath into the faces of the crowd from which Foley's cunning had removed his followers. Then he tossed the gavel upon the table.
"I refuse to put the motion!" he shouted; and picking up his hat he strode down the middle aisle. Half-way to the door he heard Connelly, in the absence of the vice-president, put the motion; and turning as he passed out he glimpsed the whole crowd on its feet.
The next morning Tom saw by his newspaper that Connelly was the union's new president; also that he had been dropped from the strike committee, Hogan now being in his place. The reports in the papers intimated that the union had partially exonerated itself by its prompt discardure of the principal in the Avon explosion. The editorial pages expressed surprise that the notorious Foley bore no relation to an outrage that seemed a legitimate offspring of his character.
Tom had not been at work more than an hour whena boy brought him word that the superintendent of the shipping department desired to see him. He hurried to his superior's office.
"You were not at work yesterday?" the superintendent said.
"No," Tom admitted.
The head of the department drew a morning paper from a pigeon-hole and pointed at a face on its first page. "Your likeness, I believe."
"It was intended for me."
He touched a button, and a clerk appeared. "Phillips, make out Keating's time check." He turned sharply back upon Tom. "That's all. We've got no use for anarchists in our business."
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
WWhen Ruth carried a handful of letters she had just finished into Mr. Driscoll's office—this while he sat talking to Tom in the latter's cell—she saw staring luridly at her from the desk the newspaper that had sent her employer to the jail on his errand of gruff mercy. There was a great drawing of Tom's face, brutalized, yet easily recognizable, and over it the heavy crimson heading:
When Ruth carried a handful of letters she had just finished into Mr. Driscoll's office—this while he sat talking to Tom in the latter's cell—she saw staring luridly at her from the desk the newspaper that had sent her employer to the jail on his errand of gruff mercy. There was a great drawing of Tom's face, brutalized, yet easily recognizable, and over it the heavy crimson heading:
The stare of that brutal face and of those red words sent her sinking into Mr. Driscoll's chair, and the letters fluttered to the floor. After a moment she reached in eager revulsion for the paper, and her eyes reeled through the high-colored account of the court scene. What was printed there was the newest of news to her; she had lunched early, and the paper she had bought to learn the latest developments in the Avon case had carried her only to the beginning of the trial. As she read, a dizzy sickness ran through all her body. The case against Tom, as the papersmade it out, was certainly strong; and the fact that he, the instigator of the outrage, had attempted to escape blame by seeking to help convict his own tools was emphasized as the most blackening phase of the whole black affair. But strong as the case appeared, within her sickened, bewildered self there was something that protested the story could not possibly be true.
During the weeks that had passed since she had last seen Tom she had wondered much that he had not come again, guessing every reason but the right one. When ten days had passed without a visit from him she had concluded that he must be too busy in the management of the strike to spare an evening; she did not know how completely Tom had been crowded off the stage by Foley. When more days had passed, and still no call from him, her subtle woman's nature had supplied another reason, and one that was a sufficient explanation to her even to the present. She knew what Tom's feelings were toward her; a woman needs precious little insight to discover when a man loves her. For all her instinctive democracy, she was perfectly conscious of the social difference between herself and him, and with not unnatural egotism she endowed Tom with the same consciousness. He loved her, but felt their social inequality, and felt it with such keenness that he deemed it hopeless to try to win her, and so had decided to see her no more.
Such was her explanation of his absence. She pitied him with a warm romantic pity for his renunciation. Held away by such a reason, she knew that if ever he came it must be at her bidding. At times she had been impelled to send for him to come. To her thiswas not an impulse of prohibitive unmaidenliness; she could bend to a man who thought himself beneath her as she never could to a man on her own level. But she had not sent. To do so without being prepared to give him what he desired would be to do him a great wrong, and to give him this she was neither able nor ready. She admired all that was good in him; but she could not blind her eyes to his shortcomings, and to go into his world, with its easily imagined coarseness, with its ignorance of books and music and painting, and all the little refinements that were dear to her, she could not. And yet her heart had ached that he had not come.
But now as she read the story of his disgrace, and as the reflux of wits and strength began, all her heart was one protest of his innocence, and she forgot all the little differences that had before halted her desire to see him; and this desire, freed of its checks, suddenly expanded till it filled the uttermost recesses of her soul.
Her first impulse, when she had reached the story's end, was to go straight to him, and she went so far as to put on her hat. But reason stopped her at the door. She could do him no good, and her call would be but an embarrassment to them both. She removed her hat, and sat down to surging thoughts.
She was sitting at her desk, white and weak, reading anew the lurid story in the paper, when Mr. Driscoll passed through her room into his office with hat drawn over his eyes. She looked through his open door for several minutes—and then, obeying the desire for the relief of speech, she went in.
"Did you see this article about Mr. Keating?" she asked, trying to keep her personal interest in Tom from showing in her voice.
Mr. Driscoll's hat brim was still over his eyes. He did not look up. "Yes," he said gruffly.
"You remember him, don't you?—one of the foremen?"
The hat brim moved affirmatively.
She had to summon all her strength to put her next question with calmness. "What will be done with him?"
"I don't know. Blowing up buildings isn't a very innocent amusement."
"But he didn't do it!"
"He didn't? Hum!"
Ruth burned to make a hot defense. But instead she asked: "Do you think he's the sort of a man to do a thing of that sort? He says he didn't."
"What d'you suppose he'd say?"
She checked her rising wrath. "But what do you think will be done with him?"
"Hung," growled Mr. Driscoll.
She glared at him, but his hat brim shielded off her resentment; and without another word she swept indignantly out of the room.
Ruth went home in that weakening anxiety which is most felt by the helpless. On the way she bought an evening paper, but there was nothing new in it. After a dinner hardly touched she went into the street and got a ten o'clock edition. It had the story of Tom's release on bail.
"Why, the dear old bear!" she gasped, as she discovered that Mr. Driscoll had gone Tom's bond. She hurried to her room and in utter abandonment to her emotion wrote Tom a note asking him to call the following evening.
The next morning Tom, discharged but half an hour before, walked into Ruth's office. He had stood several minutes in front of the building before he had gained sufficient control to carry him through the certain meeting with her. She went red at sight of him, and rose in a throbbing confusion, but subdued herself to greet him with a friendly cordiality.
"It's been a long time since I've seen you," she said, giving him her hand. It was barely touched, then dropped.
"Yes. I've been—very—busy," Tom mumbled, his big chest heaving. It seemed that his mind, his will, were slipping away from him. He seized his only safety. "Is Mr. Driscoll in?"
"Yes." Suddenly chilled, she went into Mr. Driscoll's room. "He says he's too busy to see you," she said on her return; and then a little of her greeting smile came back: "But I think you'd better go in, anyhow."
As Tom entered Mr. Driscoll looked up with something that was meant to be a scowl. He had had one uncomfortable scene already that morning. "Didn't I say I was busy?" he asked sharply.
"I was told you were. But you didn't think I'd go away without thanking you?"
"It's a pity a man can't make a fool of himself without being slobbered over. Well, if you've got to, out with it! But cut it short."
Tom expressed his thanks warmly, and obediently made them brief. "But I don't know what you did it for?" he ended.
"About fifty reporters have been asking that same thing."
The telephone in Ruth's office began to ring. He waited expectantly.
"Mr. Bobbs wants to speak to you," said Ruth, appearing at the door.
"Tell him I'm out—or dead," he ordered, and went on to Tom: "And he's about the seventeenth contractor that's asked the same question, and tried to walk on my face. Maybe because I don't love Foley. I don't know myself. A man goes out of his head now and then, I suppose." His eyes snapped crossly.
"If you're sorry this morning, withdraw the bail and I'll——"
"Don't you try to be a fool, too! All I ask of you is, don't skip town, and don't blow up any more buildings."
Tom gave his word, smiling into the cross face; and was withdrawing, when Mr. Driscoll stood up. "When this strike you started is over come around to see me." He held out his hand; his grasp was warm and tight. "Good-by."
Tom, having none of that control and power of simulation which are given by social training, knew of but one way to pass safely by the danger beyond Mr. Driscoll's door. He hurried across Ruth's office straight for the door opening into the hallway. He had his hand on the knob, when he felt how brutalwas his discourtesy. He turned his head. Ruth sat before the typewriter, her white face on him.
"Good-by," he said.
She did not answer, and he went dazedly out.
Ruth sat in frozen stillness for long after he had gone. This new bearing of Tom toward her fitted her explanation for his long absence—and did not fit it. If he had renounced her, though loving her, he probably would have borne himself in the abrupt way he had just done. And he might have acted in just this same way had he come to be indifferent to her. This last was the chilling thought. If he had received her letter then his abrupt manner could mean only that this last thought struck the truth. When she had written him she had been certain of his feeling for her; that certainty now changed to uncertainty, she would have given half her life to have called the letter back with unbroken seal.
She told herself that he would not come,—told herself this as she automatically did her work, as she rode home in the car, as she made weak pretense of eating dinner. And yet, after dinner, she put on the white dress that his eyes had told her he liked so well. And later, when Mr. Berman's card was brought her, she sent down word that she was ill.
Presently ... he came. He did not speak when she opened the door to him, nor did she. There was an unmastering fever burning in his throat and through all his body; and all her inner self was the prisoner of a climacteric paralysis. They held hands for a time, laxly, till one loosed, and then both swung limply back to their places.
"I just got your letter to-night—when I got home," he said, driving out the words. But he said nothing of his struggle: how he had fought back his longing and determined not to come; and how, the victory won, he had madly thrown wisdom aside and rushed to her.
They found seats, somehow, she in a chair, he on the green couch, and sat in a silence their heart-beats seemed to make sonant. She was the first to recover somewhat, and being society bred and so knowing the necessity of speech, she questioned him about his arrest.
He started out on the story haltingly. But little by little his fever lost its invalidating control, and little by little the madness in his blood, the madness that had forced him hither, possessed his brain and tongue, and the words came rapidly, with spirit. Finishing the story of his yesterday he harked back to the time he had last seen her, and told her what had happened in the second part of that evening in the hall over the Third Avenue saloon; told her how Foley had stolen the strike; how he had declined to his present insignificance. And as he talked he eagerly drank in her sympathy, and loosed himself more and more to the enjoyment of the mad pleasure of being with her. To her his words were not the account of the more or less sordid experiences of a workingman; they were the story of the reverses of the hero who, undaunted, has given battle to one whom all others have dared not, or cared not, fight.
"What will you do now?" she asked when he had ended.
"I don't know. Foley says he has me down and out—if you know what that means."
She nodded.
"I guess he's about right. Not many people want to hire men who blow up buildings. I had thought I'd work at whatever I could till October—our next election's then—and run against Foley again. But if he wins the strike he may be too strong to beat."
"But do you think he'll win the strike?"
"He'll be certain to win, though this explosion will injure us a lot. He's in for the strike for all he's worth, and when he fights his best he's hard to beat. The bosses can't get enough iron-men to keep their jobs going. That's already been proved. And in a little while all the other trades will catch up to where we left off; they'll have to stop then, for they can't do anything till our work's been done. That'll be equivalent to a general strike in all the building trades. We'll be losing money, of course, but so'll the bosses. The side'll win that can hold out longest, and we're fixed to hold out."
"According to all the talk I hear the victory is bound to go the opposite way."
"Well, you know some people then who'll be mighty disappointed!" Tom returned.
She did not take him up, and silence fell between them. Thus far their talk had been of the facts of their daily lives, and though it had been unnatural in that it was far from the matter in both their hearts, yet by help of its moderate distraction they had managed to keep their feelings under control. But now, that distraction ended, Tom's fever began to burnback upon him. He sat rigidly upright, his eyes avoiding her face, and the fever flamed higher and higher. Ruth gazed whitely at him, hands gripped in her lap, her faculties slipping from her, waiting she hardly knew what. Minutes passed, and the silence between them grew intenser and more intense.
Amid her throbbing dizziness Ruth's mind held steadily to just two thoughts: she was again certain of Tom's love, and certain that his pride would never allow him to speak. These two thoughts pointed her the one thing there was for her to do; the one thing that must be done for both their sakes—and finally she forced herself to say: "It has been a long time since you have been to see me. I had thought you had quite forgotten me."
"I have thought of you often?" he managed to return, eyes still fixed above her, his self-control tottering.
"But in a friendly way?—No.—Or you would not have been silent through two months."
His eyes came down and fastened upon that noble face, and the words escaped by the guard he tried to keep at his lips: "I have never had a friend like you."
She waited.
"You are my best friend," the words continued.
She waited again, but he said nothing more.
She drove herself on. "And yet you could—stay away two months?—till I sent for you?"
He stood up, and walked to the window and stood as if looking through it—though the shade was drawn. She saw the fingers at his back writhing andknotting themselves. She waited, unwinking, hardly breathing, all her life in the tumultuous beating of her heart.
He turned about. His face was almost wild. "I stayed away—because I love you——" His last word was a gasp, and he did not have the strength to say the rest.
It had come! Her great strain over, she fairly collapsed in a swooning happiness. Her head drooped, and she swayed forward till her elbows were on her knees. For a moment she existed only in her great, vague, reeling joy. Then she heard a spasmodic gasp, and heard his hoarse words add:
"And because—I am married."
Her head uprose slowly, and she looked at him, looked at him, with a deadly stupefaction in her eyes. A sickening minute passed. "Married?" she whispered.
"Yes—married."
A terrified pallor overspread her face, but the face held fixedly to his own. He stood rigid, looking at her. Her strange silence began to alarm him.
"What is it?" he cried.
Her face did not change, and seconds passed. Suddenly a gasp, then a little groan, broke from her.
"Married!" she cried.
For a moment he was astounded; then he began dimly to understand. "What, you don't mean——" he commenced, with dry lips. He moved, with uncertain steps, up before her. "You don't—care for me?"
The head bowed a trifle.
"Oh, my God!" He half staggered backward into a chair, and his face fell into his hands. He saw, in an agonizing vision, what might have been his, and what never could be his; and he saw the wide desert of his future.
"You!" He heard her voice, and he looked up.
She was on her feet, and was standing directly in front of him. Her hands were clenched upon folds of her skirt. Her breath was coming rapidly. Her eyes were flashing.
"You! How could you come to see me as you have, and you married?" She spoke tremulously, fiercely, and at the last her voice broke into a sob. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she did not heed them.
Tom's face dropped back into his hands; he could not stand the awful accusation of that gaze. She was another victim of his tragedy, an innocent victim—andhisvictim. He saw in a flash the whole ghastly part he, in ignorance, had played. A groan burst from his lips, and he writhed in his self-abasement.
"How could you do it?" he heard her fiercely demand again. "Oh, you! you!" He heard her sweep across the little room, and then sweep back; and he knew she was standing before him, gazing down at him in anguish, anger, contempt.
He groaned again. "What can I say to you—what?"
There was silence. He could feel her eyes, unchanging, still on him. Presently he began to speak into his hands, in a low, broken voice. "I can make no excuse. I don't know that I can explain. But I never intended to do this. Never! Never!
"You know how we met, how we came to be together the first two or three times. Afterwards ... I said awhile ago that you were my best friend. I have had few real friends—none but you who sympathized with me, who seemed to understand me. Well, afterwards I came because—I never stopped to think why I came. I guess because you understood, and I liked you. And so I came. As a man might come to see a good man friend. And I never once thought I was doing wrong. And I never thought of my wife—that is, you understand, that she made it wrong for me to see you. I never thought——If you believe in me at all, you must believe this. You must! And then—one day—I saw you with another man, and I knew I loved you. I awoke. I saw what I ought to do. I tried to do it—but it was very hard—and I came to see you again—the last time. I said once more I would not see you again. It was still hard, very hard—but I did not. And then—your letter—came——"
His words dwindled away. Then, after a moment, he said very humbly: "Perhaps I don't just understand how to be a gentleman."
Again silence. Presently he felt a light touch on his shoulder. He raised his eyes. She was still gazing at him, her face very white, but no anger in it.
"I understand," she said.
He rose—weak. "I can't ask that you forgive me."
"No. Not now."
"Of course. I have meant to you only grief—pain. And can mean only that to you, always."
She did not deny his words.
"Of course," he agreed. Then he stood, without words, unmoving.
"You had better go," she said at length.
He took his hat mechanically. "The future?"
"You were right."
"You mean—we should not meet again?"
"This is the last time."
Again he stood silent, unmoving.
"You had better go," she said. "Good-night."
"Good-night."
He moved sideways to the door, his eyes never leaving her. He paused. She stood just as she had since she had touched his shoulder. He moved back to her, as in a trance.
"No." She held up a hand, as if to ward him off.
He took the hand—and the other hand. They were all a-tremble. And he bent down, slowly, toward her face that he saw as in a mist. The face did not recede. Their cold lips met. At the touch she collapsed, and the next instant she was sobbing convulsively in his arms.
And all that night she lay dressed on her couch.... And all that night he walked the streets.