"When the men confront bayonets, you know, they'll give in quick enough. I have reason to believe that the President has already ordered United States troops to protect lives and property in Chicago. The general managers will get an injunction restraining Debs and his crew. When the courts take a hand—"
"So it's to be made into a civil war, is it?" Sommers interposed sarcastically. "I saw that the bankrupt roads had appealed to the government for protection. Like spendthrift sons, they run to their guardian in time of trouble."
"Oh! you know this thing can't go on. It's a disgrace. I was called to go to Detroit on an important case; it would mean two thousand dollars to me,—but I can't get out of the city."
Dr. Lindsay was in an ill humor, having spent three early morning hours in driving into town from Lake Forest. Sommers listened to his growling, patiently if not respectfully, and when the eminent physician had finished, he spoke to him about a certain operation that was on the office docket for the following week.
"You haven't asked my opinion, doctor," he said, in conclusion; "but I have been thinking over the case. I was present at General Horr's examination, and have seen a good deal of the case these last days while you were out of town." Lindsay stared, but the young man plunged on. "So I have ventured to remonstrate. It would do no good, and it might be serious."
The day was so hot that any feeling sent beads of perspiration to the face.Sommers paused when Lindsay began to mop his head.
"I may say to start with," Lindsay answered, with an irascible air, as if he intended to take this time to finish the young man's case, "that I am in the habit of consulting my attending physicians, and not having them dictate to me—"
"Who is dictating?" Sommers asked bluntly. "That old man can't possibly get any good from an operation—"
"It will do him no harm?" Lindsay retorted, with an interrogation in his tone that made the younger surgeon stare. What he might have said when he realized the full meaning of Lindsay's remark was not clear in his own mind. At that moment, however, one of the women employed in the office knocked at the door. She had a telephone message.
"Somebody, I think it was Mrs. Prestess or Preton, or something—"
"Preston," suggested Sommers.
"That's it. The message was she was in trouble and wanted you as soon as possible. But some one is at the wire now."
Sommers hastened out without making excuses. When he returned, Dr. Lindsay had dried his face and was calmer. But his aspect was sufficiently ominous; he was both pompous and severe.
"Sit down, doctor, will you. I have a few words—some things I have been meditating to say to you a long time, ever since our connection began, in fact."
Sommers did not sit down. He stood impatiently, twirling a stethoscope in his hand. He had passed the schoolboy age and was a bit overbearing himself.
"As a young man of good promise, well introduced, and vouched for by some of our best people, I have naturally looked for great things from you."
Sommers stopped the rotation of the stethoscope and squared about. His face was no longer flushed with irritation. Some swift purpose seemed to steady him. As Sommers made no reply to this exordium, Lindsay began again, in his diagnostic manner:
"But I have been disappointed. Not that you haven't done your work well enough, so far as I know. But you have more than a young man's self-assurance and self-assertion. I have noticed also a note of condescension, of criticism in your bearing to those about you. The critical attitude to society and individuals is a bad one for a successful practitioner of medicine to fall into. It is more than that—it is illiberal; it comes from a continued residence in a highly exotic society, in a narrow intellectual circle. Breadth of mind—"
Sommers made an impatient gesture. Every sentence led the florid practitioner farther and farther into the infinite. Another time the young surgeon would have derived a wicked satisfaction from driving the doctor around the field in his argument. To-day the world, life, was amove, and more important matters waited in the surcharged city. He must be gone. He said nothing, however, for another five minutes, waiting for some good opportunity to end the talk. But Lindsay had once lectured in a college; he did not easily finish his exposition. He vaguely sketched a social philosophy, and he preached the young specialist successful as he preached him on graduating days of the medical school. He was shrewd, eloquent, kind, and boresome. At last came the clause:
"If you are to continue your connection with this office—"
"I should like to talk that over with you some other day," Sommers interposed positively, "when I have more time. I am sorry that I shall have to leave at once." After a moment, he added, "And if you have any one in mind for my place, don't bother—"
Lindsay waved his hand.
"We never have to 'bother' about any member of our force."
"Oh! very well. I didn't want to leave you in a hole. Perhaps I was presumptuous to suppose I was of any importance in the office."
Sommers stepped briskly to the door, while Lindsay wheeled to his desk.Before he opened the door, he paused and called back pleasantly:
"But really I shouldn't operate on the General. Poor old man! And he hasn't much money—'the usual fee' would come hard on him."
Lindsay paid no attention to the remark. Sommers had passed from his world altogether; there would be a long, hard road for this young man in the practice of his profession in Chicago, if Dr. Lindsay, consulting surgeon at St. Isidore's, St. Martha's, the Home for Incurables, the Institute for Pulmonary Diseases, etc., could bring it about.
Sommers hastily rifled certain pigeonholes of his desk, tossing the letters into his little black bag, and seizing his hat hurried out. He stopped at the clerk's desk to leave a direction for forwarding his mail.
"Going away for a vacation?" Miss Clark queried.
"Yes, for a good long one," the young surgeon answered. As the door slammed behind him, the black-haired Miss Clark turned to the assistant stenographer with a yawn.
"He's got his travelling papers. I knew there was a fuss when I called him to the 'phone. I guess he wasn't tony enough for this office."
Sommers was now sinking down to the heated street, unmindful whether he was "tony" enough for the Athenian Building or not. Mrs. Ducharme had whispered over the telephone: "He's gone. Come quick. Mrs. Preston wants you bad."
For an instant he asked himself if he had made a mistake when he had given Preston the injection of morphine two days before. A glance at the little instrument reassured him. Perhaps the woman meant merely that he had got away again from the cottage. Why, then, such agitation over the creature's disappearance? Butshewanted him "bad." He hurried into the torrid street out of the cool, marble-lined hall, like a factory hand dismissed from his job. It was the first break with the order of things he had grown into. But he had no time for regrets.
He crossed the deserted streets where the women usually shop, and turned into the strip of park bordered by the Illinois Central tracks. Possibly a train might be going out, under a heavy guard of deputy sheriffs, and in that case he would save much time in reaching Ninety-first Street. Exhilarated by his new freedom, he walked briskly, threading his way among the groups of idle workmen who had gathered in the park. As he skirted a large group, he recognized Dresser, who was shouting a declamatory speech. The men received it apathetically, and Dresser got off the bench on which he had stood and pushed his way through the crowd.
"Well," Sommers said, as Dresser came by him. "How does the good work move? You've got the courts down on you, and pretty soon there'll be the troops to settle with. There's only one finish when the workingmen are led by a man like Debs, and the capitalists have an association of general managers as staff. Besides, your people have put the issue badly before the public. The public understands now that it is a question of whether it, every one of them, shall do what he wants to or not. And the general public says it won't be held up in this pistol-in-your-face fashion. So Pullman and the others get in behind the great public opinion, and there you are!"
"All that newspaper talk about riot and destruction of property is a mass of lies," Dresser exclaimed bitterly. "Which, way are you going? I will walk along with you."
As the two men proceeded in the direction of the big station, Dresser continued:
"Iknowthere isn't any violence from the strikers. It's the tough element and the railroads. They're burning cars themselves so as to rouse public opinion."
Sommers laughed.
"You don't believe it? I suppose you won't believe that the general managers are offering us, the leaders, money,—money down and a lot of it, to call the strike off."
"Yes, I'll believe that; but you won't get any one to believe the other thing. And you'd better take the money!"
"We'll have every laboring man in Chicago out on a strike in a week," Dresser added confidentially. "There hasn't been a car of beef shipped out of the stock yards, or of cattle shipped in. I guess when the country begins to feel hungry, it will know something's on here. The butchers haven't a three days' supply left for the city. We'llstarve'em out!"
Sommers knew there was some truth in this. The huge slaughter-houses that fed a good part of the world were silent and empty, for lack of animal material. The stock yards had nothing to fill their bloody maw, while trains of cars of hogs and steers stood unswitched on the hundreds of sidings about the city. The world would shortly feel this stoppage of its Chicago beef and Armour pork, and the world would grumble and know for once that Chicago fed it. Inside the city there was talk of a famine. The condition was like that of the beleaguered city of the Middle Ages, threatened with starvation while wheat and cattle rotted outside its grasp. But the enemy was within its walls, either rioting up and down the iron roadways, or sipping its cooling draughts and fanning itself with the garish pages of the morning paper at some comfortable club. It was a war of injunctions and court decrees. But the passions were the same as those that set Paris flaming a century before, and it was a war with but one end: the well-fed, well-equipped legions must always win.
"They're too strong for you," Sommers said at last. "You will save a good many people from a lot of misery, if you will sell out now quietly, and prevent the shooting."
"That's the cynicism ofyourcrowd."
"You can't say my crowd any longer; they never were my crowd, I guess."
"Have you been fired?" Dresser asked, with childish interest.
"Not exactly, but I fancy Lindsay and I won't find each other's society healthy in the future."
"It isn't the same thing, though. Professional men like you can never get very far from the rich. It isn't like losing your bread and butter."
"Pretty much that, at present. And I think I shall get some distance from the rich—perhaps go out farther west into some small town." Dresser did not reply; he kept on with Sommers, as if to express his sympathy over a misfortune. The court that led to the Park Row station was full of people. Men wearing white ribbons were thickly sprinkled in the crowd. The badge fluttered even from the broad breasts of the few apathetic policemen.
The crowd was kept off the tracks and the station premises by an iron fence, defended by a few railway police and cowed deputy sheriffs. Every now and then, however, a man climbed the ugly fence and dropped down on the other side. Then he ran for the shelter of the long lines of cars standing on the siding. A crew of men recruited from the office force of the railroad was trying to make up a train. The rabble that had gained entrance to the yards were blocking their movements by throwing switches at the critical moment. As Sommers came up to the fence, the switching engine had been thrown into the wrong siding, and had bunted up at full speed against a milk car, sending the latter down the siding to the main track. It took the switch at a sharp pace, was derailed, and blocked the track. The crowd in the court gave a shout of delight. The switching engine had to be abandoned.
At this moment Sommers was jostled against a stylishly dressed woman, who was trying to work her way through the seething mass that swayed up and down the narrow court. He turned to apologize, and was amazed to see that the young woman was Louise Hitchcock. She was frightened, but keeping her head she was doing her best to gain the vestibule of a neighboring store. She recognized Sommers and smiled in joyful relief. Then her glance passed over Sommers to Dresser, who was sullenly standing with his hands in his pockets, and ended in a polite stare, as if to say, 'Well, is that a specimen of the people you prefer to my friends?'
"You've got one of your crowd on your hands," Dresser muttered, and edged off into the mob.
"What are you doing here?" Sommers demanded, rather impatiently.
"I drove down to meet papa. He was to come by the Michigan Central, and Uncle Brome telephoned that the railroad people said the train would get through. But he didn't come. I waited and waited, and at last tried to get into the station to find out what had happened. I couldn't get through."
Sommers had edged her into a protected corner formed by a large telephone post. The jostling people stared impudently at the prettily dressed young woman. To their eyes she betrayed herself at a glance as one of the privileged, who used the banned Pullman cars.
"Whar's your kerridge?" a woman called out over Sommers's shoulder. A man pushed him rudely into his companion.
"Why don't you take your private kyar?"
"The road is good enough forme!"
"Come," Sommers shouted in her ear, "we must get out of this at once. Take my arm,—no, follow me,—that will attract less attention."
The girl was quite at ease, now that this welcome friend had appeared opportunely. Another prolonged shout, almost a howl of derision, went up by the fence at some new trick played upon the frantic railroad officials.
"What people!" the girl exclaimed scornfully. "Where are the police?"
"Don't speak so loud," Sommers answered impatiently, "if you wish to escape insult. There the police are, over there by the park. They don't seem especially interested."
The girl closed her lips tightly and followed Sommers. It was no easy task to penetrate the hot, sweating mob that was packing into the court, and bearing down toward the tracks where the fun was going on. Sommers made three feet, then lost two. The crowd seemed especially anxious to keep them back, and Miss Hitchcock was hustled and pushed roughly hither and thither until she grasped Sommers's coat with trembling hands. A fleshy man, with a dirty two weeks' beard on his tanned face, shoved Sommers back with a brutal laugh. Sommers pushed him off. In a moment fists were up, the young doctor's hat was knocked off, and some one threw a stone that he received on his cheek.
Sommers turned, grasped the girl with one arm, and threw himself and her upon the more yielding corner of the press. Then he dragged his companion for a few steps until the jam slackened at the open door of a saloon. Into this the two were pushed by the eddying mob, and escaped. For a moment they stood against the bar that protected the window. The saloon was full of men, foul with tobacco smoke, and the floor was filthy. Flies sluggishly buzzed about the pools of beer on the bar counter. The men were talking excitedly; a few thin, ragged hangers-on were looting the free-lunch dishes surreptitiously. Miss Hitchcock's face expressed her disgust, but she said nothing. She had learned her lesson.
"Wait here," Sommers ordered, "while I find out whether we can get out of this by a back door."
He spoke to the barkeeper, who lethargically jerked a thumb over his shoulder. They elbowed their way across the room, Miss Hitchcock rather ostentatiously drawing up her skirts and threading her way among the pools of the dirty floor. The occupants of the bar-room, however, gave the strangers only slight attention. The heavy atmosphere of smoke and beer, heated to the boiling point by the afternoon sun, seemed to have soddened their senses. Behind the bar the two found a passage to the alley in the rear, which led by a cross alley into a deserted street. Finally they emerged on the placid boulevard.
"Your face is bleeding!" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed. "Are you hurt?"
"No," Sommers answered, mopping his brow and settling his collar. "They were good enough to spare the eye."
"Brutes!"
"I wouldn't say that," her companion interrupted sharply. "We are all brutes each in our way," he added quietly.
The girl's face reddened, and she dropped his arm, which was no longer necessary for protection. She raised her crushed and soiled skirt, and looked at it ruefully.
"I wonder what has become of poor papa!" she exclaimed. "This strike has caused him so much worry. I came in from Lake Forest to open the house for him and stay with him until the trains begin to run again."
She seemed to expect sympathy for the disagreeable circumstances that persisted in upsetting the Hitchcock plans. But Sommers paid no attention to this social demand, and they walked on briskly. Finally Miss Hitchcock said coldly:
"I can go home alone, now, if you have anything to do. Of course I should like to have you come home and rest after this—"
"I shall have to return to my room for a hat," Sommers replied, in a matter-of-fact way. "I will leave you at your house."
Miss Hitchcock insensibly drew herself up and walked more quickly. The boulevard, usually gay with carriages in the late afternoon, was absolutely deserted except for an occasional shop-boy on a bicycle. Sommers, hatless, with a torn coat, walking beside a somewhat bedraggled young woman, could arouse no comment from the darkened windows of the large houses. As they passed Twenty-second Street, Miss Hitchcock slackened her pace and spoke again.
"You don't thinktheyare right, surely?"
"No," the doctor replied absent-mindedly. He was thinking how he had been delayed from going to Mrs. Preston's, and how strange was this promenade down the fashionable boulevard where he had so often walked with Miss Hitchcock on bright Sundays, bowing at every step to the gayly dressed groups of acquaintances. He was taking the stroll for the last time, something told him, on this hot, stifling July afternoon, between the rows of deserted houses. In twenty-four hours he should be a part ofthemin all practical ways—a part of the struggling mob, that lived from day to day, not knowing when the bread would give out, with no privileges, no pleasant vacations, no agreeable houses to frequent, no dinner parties at the close of a busy day. He was not sorry for the change, so far as he had thought of it. At least he should escape the feeling of irritation, of criticism, which Lindsay so much deplored, that had been growing ever since he had left hospital work. The body social was diseased, and he could not make any satisfactory diagnosis of the evil; but at least he should feel better to have done with the privileged assertive classes, to have taken up his part with the less Philistine, more pitiably blind mob.
With the absolute character of his nature and the finality of youth, he saw in a very decisive manner the plunge he was about to make. He was to leave one life and enter another, just as much as if he should leave Chicago and move to Calcutta—more so, indeed. He was to leave one set of people, and all their ways, and start with life on the simplest, crudest base. He should not call on his Chicago friends, who for the most part belonged to one set, and after a word from Lindsay they would cease to bother him. He would be out of place among the successful, and they would realize it as well as he. But he should be sorry to lose sight of certain parts of this life,—of this girl, for example, whom he had liked so much from the very first, who had been so good to him, who was so sincere and honest and personally attractive.
Yet it was strange, the change in his feelings toward her brought about in the few days that had elapsed since they had parted at Lake Forest. It was so obvious today that they could never have come together. While he had tried to do the things that she approved, he had been hot and restless, and had never, for one moment, had the calm certainty, the exquisite fulness of feeling that he had now—that the other woman had given him without a single outspoken word.
If things had gone differently these past months,—no, from his birth and from hers, too,—if every circumstance of society had not conspired to put them apart, who knows! They might have solved a riddle or two together and been happy. But it was all foolish speculation now, and it was well that their differences should be emphasized at this last chance meeting; that she should be hostile to him. He summed the matter up thus, and, as if answering her last remark, said:
"They, my dear Miss Hitchcock, are wrong, and you are wrong, if we can use pronouns so loosely. But I have come to feel that I had rather be wrong with them than wrong with you. From to-day, when you speak of 'them,' you can include me."
And to correct any vagueness in his declaration, he added,—
"I have left Lindsay's shop, and shall never go back."
He could feel that she caught her breath, but she said nothing.
"I should never be successful in that way, though it wasn't for that reason that I left."
"Do you think you can do more for people by putting yourself—away, holding off—"
Her voice sank.
"That is a subterfuge," Sommers answered hotly, "fit only for clergymen and beggars for charities. I am not sure, anyway, that I want 'to do for' people. I think no fine theories about social service and all that settlement stuff. I want to be a man, and have a man's right to start with the crowd at the scratch, not given a handicap. There are too many handicaps in the crowd I have seen!"
Miss Hitchcock pressed her lips together, as if to restrain a hot reply. She had grown white from the fatigue and excitement and heat. They were almost at her father's house, walking along the steaming asphalt of the quiet avenue. A few old trees had been allowed to remain on these blocks, and they drooped over the street, giving a pleasant shade to the broad houses and the little patches of sward. Just around the corner were some rickety wooden tenements, and a street so wretchedly paved that in the great holes where the blocks had rotted out stood pools of filthy, rankly smelling water.
"I have merely decided to move around the corner," the young man remarked grimly.
Miss Hitchcock's lips trembled. She walked more slowly, and she tried to say something, to make some ill-defined appeal. As she had almost found the words, a carriage approached the Hitchcock house and drew up. Out of it Colonel Hitchcock stepped heavily. His silk hat was crushed, and his clothes were covered with dust.
"Papa!" his daughter exclaimed, running forward anxiously. "What has happened? Where have you been? Are you hurt?"
"No, yes, I guess not," the old man laughed good-naturedly. "Howdy do, doctor! They stopped the train out by Grand Crossing, and some fellows began firing stones. It was pretty lively for a time. I thought you and your mother would worry, so I got out of it the best way I could and came in on the street cars."
"Poor papa!" the girl exclaimed, seizing his arm. She glanced at Sommers defiantly. Here was her argument. Sommers looked on coolly, not accepting the challenge.
"Won't you come in, doctor?" Colonel Hitchcock asked. "Do come in and rest," his daughter added.
But the young doctor shook his head.
"I think I will go home and brush up—around the corner," he added with slight irony.
The girl turned to her father and took his arm, and they slowly walked up the path to the big darkened house.
Sommers did not go to his rooms, however. He could delay no longer reaching Mrs. Preston. From the quiet decorous boulevard, with its clean asphalt pavement and pleasant trees, he turned at once into the dirty cross street. The oasis of the prosperous in the expanse of cheap houses and tawdry flat-buildings was so small! It was easy, indeed, to step at least physically from the one world to the other.
At a little shop near the cable line he bought a hat and tie, and bathed his face. Then he took the cable car, which connected with lines of electric cars that radiated far out into the distant prairie. Along the interminable avenue the cable train slowly jerked its way, grinding, jarring, lurching, grating, shrieking—an infernal public chariot. Sommers wondered what influence years of using this hideous machine would have upon the nerves of the people. This car-load seemed quiescent and dull enough—with the languor of unexpectant animals, who were accustomed to being hauled mile by mile through the dirty avenues of life. His attention was caught by the ever repeated phenomena of the squalid street. Block after block, mile after mile, it was the same thing. No other city on the globe could present quite this combination of tawdriness, slackness, dirt, vulgarity, which was Cottage Grove Avenue. India, the Spanish-American countries, might show something fouler as far as mere filth, but nothing so incomparably mean and long. The brick blocks, of many shades of grimy red and fawn color, thin as paper, cheap as dishonest contractor and bad labor could make them, were bulging and lopping at every angle. Built by the half mile for a day's smartness, they were going to pieces rapidly. Here was no uniformity of cheapness, however, for every now and then little squat cottages with mouldy earth plots broke the line of more pretentious ugliness. The saloons, the shops, the sidewalks, were coated with soot and ancient grime. From the cross streets savage gusts of the fierce west wind dashed down the avenue and swirled the accumulated refuse into the car, choking the passengers, and covering every object with a cloud of filth. Once and again the car jolted across intersecting boulevards that presented some relief in the way of green grass and large, heavy-fronted houses. Except for these strips of parklike avenues, where the rich lived,—pieced into the cheaper stuff of the city, as it were,—all was alike, flat-building and house and store and wooden shanty,—a city of booths, of extemporized shifts.
Sommers picked up a newspaper that some passenger had thrown aside and endeavored to distract his mind from the forlorn sight. The sheets were gritty to the touch, and left a smutch upon the fingers. His clothes were sifted over with dust and fine particles of manure. The seat grated beneath his legs. The great headlines in the newspaper announced that the troops were arriving. Columns of childish, reportorial prattle followed, describing the martial bearing of the officers, the fierceness of the "bronzed Indian fighters." The city was under martial law. He read also the bickering telegrams exchanged between the state authorities and the federal government, and interviews with leading citizens, praising the much-vilified President for his firm act in upholding law and order. The general managers were clever fellows! Sommers threw the grimy sheet aside. It was right, this firm assertion of the law; but in what a cause, for what people!
He turned to the street once more.
This block, through which the car was grinding its way, had a freakish individuality in sidewalks. Each builder had had his own idea of what the proper street level should be, and had laid his sidewalk accordingly. There were at least six different levels in this one block. The same blunt expression of wilful individuality was evident in every line of every building. It was the apotheosis of democratic independence. This was not a squalid district, nor a tough one. Goose Island, the stock yards, the Bohemian district, the lumber yards, the factories,—all the aspects of the city monstrous by right, were miles away. But Halsted Street, with its picturesque mutations of poverty and its foreign air, was infinitely worthier than this. Sommers shuddered to think how many miles of Cottage Grove Avenue and its like Chicago contained,—not vicious, not squalid, merely desolate and unforgivably vulgar. If it were properly paved and cleaned, it would be bearable. But the selfish rich and the ignorant poor make bad housekeepers.
On, on they jolted and jarred, dropping along the cross streets a cargo of indifferent souls, and taking in a new cargo of white-ribboned men, who talked in loud voices or spat ruminatively over the floors. Sommers sank back listless. It was well that he had taken this way of entering the new life. To have galloped south through the cool parks would have been absurd, like playing at charity. This was the life of the people,—not the miserably poor, but the mean and small, the mass in this, our prosperous country. Through the dirty, common avenues, without one touch of beauty, they were destined to travel all their days, and he with them.
He shut his eyes and thought of the woman to whom he was journeying. Hers was the face he had seen in imagination in all his moods of revolt, of disgust with the privileged. She was the figure, paramount, of those who had soul enough to thirst for beauty, happiness, life, and to whom they were denied. The machine of society whirled some aloft—the woman he had just left—but it dragged her down. It was the machine that maddened him. He was taking himself away from those who governed the machine, who ran it and oiled it, and turned it to their own pleasures. He had chosen to be of the multitude whom the machine ground. The brutal axioms of the economists urged men to climb, to dominate, and held out as the noblest ideal of the great commonwealth the right of every man to triumph over his brother. If the world could not be run on any less brutal plan than this creed ofsuccess, success, then let there be anarchy—anything.
With a final groan the cable train came to a halt, and the hypnotic sleep of the pilgrimage through Cottage Grove Avenue ended. Sommers started up—alert, anxious, eager to seeheronce more, the glow of enchantment, of love renewed in his soul. Yet at the very end of his journey he was fearful for the first time. How could they meet, after the foul scene with Preston?
Mrs. Ducharme opened the cottage door, and recognizing the young doctor in the twilight sighed with relief. Her placid countenance was ruffled.
"Where is Mrs. Preston?" he demanded hastily.
"She's gone out for a moment. I made her take a turn."
"How is Mr. Preston?"
Mrs. Ducharme's face assumed a frightened expression. She spoke in low tones, as if the patient might still overhear.
"He's rested for good, poor man! He won't want no more liquor this life, I guess." Then more solemnly she ended, "He's at peace."
Without further words Sommers went upstairs. The outer door was unbarred, and the door into the room open. Preston was lying, clean and quiet, in a clean bed with a fresh counterpane. His face was turned to one side, as if he were sleeping. His eyes were suspiciously reddened under the lids, and his cheeks had rather more bloat than the doctor remembered. He was dead, sure enough, at peace at last, and the special cause for the ending was of little importance. Sommers proceeded to make an examination, however; he would have to sign a certificate for the health officers. As he bent over the inert form, he had a feeling of commiseration rather than of relief. Worthless clay that the man was, it seemed petty now to have been so disturbed over his living on, for such satisfactions as his poor fragment of life gave him. Like the insignificant insect which preyed on its own petty world, he had, maybe, his rights to his prey. At all events, now that he had ceased to trouble, it was foolish to have any feeling of disgust, of reproach, of hatred. God and life had made him so, as God and life had made the mighty….
Suddenly the doctor's eye detected something that arrested his attention, and he proceeded to look at the dead man more carefully. Then he started back and called out to the woman below. When she came panting up the stairs, he asked sternly:
"Was he given anything?"
"What?" she asked, retreating from the room.
"Any medicine?" the doctor pursued, eying her sharply.
"He was took bad last night, and Mrs. Preston went to see what was the matter. She might have given him somethin' to rest him. I dunno."
The doctor went back to the dead man and examined him again; the woman crawled away. Again Sommers abandoned his task, nervously twitching the bedclothes over the cold form. He went to the window and opened it, and stood breathing the night air. There was another step upon the stair, and Sommers turned. It was Mrs. Preston. She started on seeing the doctor, and he noticed how pale her face appeared, even in the darkening room. He was also conscious of the start she had given.
"I have looked for you so long!" she exclaimed eagerly, hastening toward him, and then stopping in embarrassment.
"I was detained, hindered in every possible way," the doctor replied. His tone was chilling, preoccupied.
"He was ill last night, but I thought nothing of it. When I returned from an errand this noon, he had fallen into a kind of stupor—last night he was so excited—and I was alarmed. I had Mrs. Ducharme telephone for you then. He did not come out of his stupor," she added in a low tone.
Sommers stepped back to the bedside. "Did you—" he began involuntarily, but he left his sentence unfinished, and turned away again.
"I have completed my examination," he said at last. "Let us go downstairs."
When they had reached the sitting room, Mrs. Preston lighted a lamp and placed it on the table beside the doctor. The strong light increased the pallor of her face. Sommers noticed that the eyes were sunken and had black circles. His glance rested on her hands, as she leaned with folded arms on the table. They were white and wan like the face. The blood seemed to have left her body.
Sommers raised his eyes and looked at her face. She returned his glance for a moment, then flushes of color spread over her face and died down, and she dropped her face. He laid his hand softly upon hers, and spoke her name for the first time, "Alves." A tear dropped on his hand beneath the lamp, then another and another. He started up from his seat and strode to the window, keeping his back turned to the quiescent woman. It was terrible! He knew that he was a fool, but none the less something awesome, cruel, forbidding, tainted the atmosphere.
At last he said in a dull voice:
"Mrs. Preston, will you get me pen and ink. I must fill out the usual certificate, stating the disease that caused death," he added meaningly, wheeling about.
She started, stung by his formal words, and fetched writing materials. As he wrote out the certificate, she went into the next room. When she returned, Sommers got up and crossed toward her, impelled by an irresistible desireto know.
"I have said that death was due to congestion of the brain, indirectly resulting from illness and operation for the removal of a bullet."
Mrs. Preston stared at him, her face curiously blank, as though to say,'Why are you so cruel?' He offered her the wisp of paper.
"Put it there!" she cried, motioning to the mantelpiece.
The doctor placed the certificate on the mantel, and then returned to his chair by the lamp.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" he asked abruptly.
"I have done—the necessary things—he will be buried to-morrow afternoon."
Her words came with an effort, as if every voluntary act caused her pain.
"I am sorry that I did not come earlier, to save you these tasks," the doctor answered more gently. "Isn't there some one you would like to send for, some relative or friend?"
She shook her head, looking at him with beseeching eyes. Then they were silent, until the silence was too much to be borne. Sommers rose hastily to take leave.
"I can do nothing more to-night," he said hastily. "I shall come to-morrow."
She made no reply and did not rise. Outside, the place seemed so deadly still! The house was dark; the neighboring avenue, unusually deserted. Sommers shivered. After he had reached the end of the lane, he turned back, and walked swiftly to the cottage. At the corner he looked into the room where they had been sitting. She was still in the same place where he had left her, by the lamp, her white, almost stern face, with its large, severe lines, staring fiercely into space. It made him uneasy, this long, tense look that betrayed a mind fixed upon one idea, and that idea! He crept away into the lane to flee from it, and walked swiftly down the cross street toward the lake.
"It could not be!" he muttered, as he stumbled on in the dark. He was oversuspicious. But how else could the facts be explained? Such deaths, he knew, did not occur to men in Preston's condition,—calm, easy deaths, without the agony of convulsion.No, itmust be. Science was stronger than desire, than character, than human imagination. To disbelieve his scientific knowledge would be to deny the axioms of life.
And why should it not be? Was it not what he had reproached himself for not doing, and reproached his medical brethren as cowards for not daring to do in so many cases? The horror of it, the uncanniness of it, thus stopping the human animal's course as one would stop an ill-regulated watch, had never appealed to him before. "Prejudice!" he cried aloud. His involuntary drawing back was but an unconscious result of the false training of centuries. As a doctor, familiar with death, cherishing no illusions about the value of the human body, he should not act like a nervous woman, and run away! How brutal he had been to her!
His mind passed on, traversing vast areas of speculation by a kind of cerebral shorthand. What would be the result upon humanity if all doctors took this liberty of decision? Where could you draw the distinction between murder and medicine? Was science advanced enough as yet to say any certain thing about the human body and mind? There were always mysterious exceptions which might well make any doctor doubtful of drastic measures. And the value of human life, so cheap here in this thirsty million of souls, cheap in the hospitals; but really, essentially, at the bottom of things, who knew how cheap it was?
Thus for an hour or more his mind was let loose among the tenebra of life, while his feet pushed on mechanically over the dusty roads that skirted the lake. He had nowhere to go, now that he had broken with the routine of life, and he gave himself up to the unaccustomed debauch of willess thinking. He was conscious at length of traversing the vacant waste where the service-buildings of the Fair had stood. Beyond were the shattered walls of the little convent, wrapped in the soft summer night. There they had sat together and watched the fire die out, while she told her story, and he listened in love.
The real thing—was the woman. This thought stung him like a reproach of cowardice. He had forgotten her! And she was but the instrument in the deed, for he had taught her that this care of a worthless life was sentimental, hysterical. He had urged her to put it away in some easy fashion, to hide it at least, in some sort of an asylum. That she had steadfastly refused to do. Better death outright, she had said. And that which he had feared to undertake, she had done, fearlessly. He had recoiled; it made him tremble to think of her in that act. What cowardice! These were the consequences of his teaching, of his belief.
What had made her take this resolution so suddenly? There was time, all the time in the world, and having once neglected the thing at the very start, it was curious that she should now, at this late date, make her desperate resolve. Preston had not been worse, more difficult to handle. In fact, when the two women had grown used to his case, the management had been simple enough. He had thought she was inured to the disgust and the horror—placid almost, and taking the thing like one accustomed to pain. What was the cause of her revolt from her burden? Those filthy words the night they had come back late, when the fellow had stolen downstairs and spied upon them at their coffee. Had the shame of it before him stung her past enduring? Had it eaten into her mind and inflamed her?
But his feverish imagination was not content with this illumination of the facts. Something more lay behind it all. He sat down beside a prostrate column to penetrate the gloom. As he gazed before him into the dark heavens, the blast furnace winked like an evil eye, then silently belched flame and smoke, then relapsed into its seething self. The monster's breath illumined the dusky sky for a few moments. Blackness then fell over all for two minutes, and again the beast reappeared. Far away to the west came through the night a faint roar, like the raving of men. There was a line of light against the horizon: the mob was burning freight cars. Soon the bonfire died down. The cries sounded more and more faintly, and more distinctly came the sharp reports of revolvers or military rifles. The law had taken a hand in the game.
It was a night like this when the first glow of joy had suffused his life; and then had come that night, that wonderful night, which began, in the lurid fire, and ended foully with Preston's words. Here was the key: she too loved, as he had, and this feeling which had drawn them together from the very moment when he had looked from the helpless form on the hospital chair to her had grown, surging up in her heart as in his—until, until she had taken this last stern step, and had—
He had begun to walk once more, heading south, retracing his steps by the most direct line. To leave her thus, with all the horror; thus when she had reached out to him—oh, the shame, the brutality of it! He hastened his steps almost to a run. Perhaps it was already too late; his cold, hard manner had killed her love, crushed her, and she had gone on to the next step. The night was cold now, but his hands were damp with a feverish sweat. How blind, not to have read at once, as she would have done, the whole deed! What she had done, she had done for him, for both, and he had left her to carry the full burden alone. Like a boy, he had wavered at the sight of what she had accomplished so swiftly, so competently, fortheirsake. To love shamefully, that was not in her, and she had put the cause of shame away. As he hurried on southwards, his thoughts flew out on this new track. She had made the way clear; he must go to her, take her, accept her acts with her love. They were one now.
It was late, past midnight, when he reached the long cross street that led to the lane of the cottage, and the buzz of the passing cars no longer disturbed the hoarse chorus of frogs. Sommers crept up the lane stealthily to the dark cottage, afraid for what he might find, chilled by the forbidding aspect of the place. Instead of entering the door, he paused by the open window and peered in. Within the gloom of the room he could make out her bent figure, her head fallen forward over her arms. She was sitting where he had left her, but the spell of her tense gaze had broken. She had laid her head upon the table to weep, and had not raised it all these hours. The night wind soughed into the room through the open window, drifting a piece of paper about the floor, poking into the gloom of the interior beyond.
Sommers noiselessly pushed open the door and entered the room. The bent figure did not heed the tread of his steps. He stood over her, knelt down, and wrapped her in his arms.
"Alves!" he whispered.
She roused herself as from a dream and turned her face to his, wonderingly.
"Alves," he stammered, reading eagerly the sombre lines of her face, "I have come back—for always."
Then she spoke, and her voice had a mechanical ring, as if for a long time it had not been used.
"But you left me—why did you come back?"
"You know," he answered, his feverish face close to her white forehead. "You know!" The face was so cold, so large and sombre, that it seemed to chill his fever.
"I have come to share—to have you, because I love, because we loved—from the first, all through."
At his slow, trembling words, the woman's face filled with the warm blood of returning life. Her flesh paled and flushed, and her eyes lit slowly with passion; her arms that had rested limply on the table took life once more and grasped him. The feeling sweeping into her lifeless body thrilled him like fire. She was another woman—he had never known her until this communicating clasp.
"You love me?" she asked, with a moan of inarticulate abandonment.
"Love you, love you, love you, Alves," he repeated in savage iteration. "Now,—" he kissed her lips. They were no longer cold. "You are mine, mine, do you understand? Nothing shall touch you.Thathas passed!"
For a moment she looked at him in question. But instantly her face smiled in content, and she flashed back his passion. She kissed him, drawing him down closer and closer into her warm self.
With this long kiss a new love put forth its strength, not the pale beatitude of his dream, with its sweet wistfulness, its shy desires. That was large and vague and insubstantial, permeating like an odor the humdrum purlieus of the day. This was savage, triumphant, that leaped like flame from his heart to his mouth, that burned blood-red on the black night. It swept away hesitation, a sick man's nicety and doubts, all the prejudices of all times! This was love, unchained, that came like waters from the mountains to quench the thirst of blazing deserts: parched, dry, in dust; now slaked and yet ever thirsty.
"How could it have been otherwise," he murmured, more to himself than to her.
"What?" she asked, startled, withdrawing herself.
"Don't think, don't think!" he exclaimed, in fear of the ebbing of the waters.
Her doubts were calmed, and she yielded to his insistence, slipping into his arms with an unintelligible cry, the satisfied note of desire. For all the waiting of the empty years came this rich payment—love that satisfied, that could never be satisfied.
* * * * *
In the first light of the morning the Ducharme woman, creeping from her room in the rear, caught sight of them. Mrs. Preston's head was lying on the doctor's arm, while he knelt beside the table, watching her pale face in its undisturbed sleep. At the footfall, he roused her gently. Mrs. Ducharme hastily drew back. She, too, did not seem to have passed a peaceful night. Her flabby fat face was sickly white, and she trembled as she opened the side door to the hot morning sun. She threw some small thing into the waste by the door; then looking around to see that she was not observed, she hurled with all her strength a long bottle toward the swamp across the fence. The bottle fell short of the swamp, but it sank among the reeds and the fleurs-de-lys of the margin. Then the woman closed the door softly.
That morning Sommers returned to the city. Mrs. Preston had asked him to notify Dr. Leonard and Miss M'Gann, the only friends she had in Chicago, that the funeral would take place late in the afternoon. In the elevator of the Athenian Building, Sommers met Dr. Lindsay with Dr. Rupert, the oldest member of the office staff. The two men bowed and edged their backs toward Sommers. He was already being forgotten. When the elevator cage discharged its load on the top floor, Rupert, who was popularly held to be a genial man, lingered behind his colleague, and tried to say something to the young doctor.
"Private practice?" he asked sympathetically, "or will you try hospital work again?"
"I haven't thought anything about it," Sommers replied truthfully.
Rupert, a man of useful, mediocre ability, eyed the younger man with curiosity, thinking that doubtless he had private means; that it was a pity he and Lindsay had fallen out, for he was a good fellow and clever.
"Well—glad to see you. Drop in occasionally—if you stay in Chicago."
The last phrase stung Sommers. It seemed to take for granted that there could be nothing professionally to keep him in Chicago after the fiasco of his introduction. He would have to learn how much a man's future depended upon the opinion of men whose opinion he despised.
Dr. Leonard came out of his den, where he was filling a tooth. His spectacles were pushed up over his shaggy brows, and little particles of gold and of ground bone clung untidily to the folds of his crumpled linen jacket. His patients did not belong to the class that is exacting about small things.
"So the feller has taken himself off for good," he observed, after listening to the doctor's brief statement. "That's first-rate, couldn't be better for Alves."
Sommers started at the familiar use of the first name. "She's never had a show. Preston wasn't much except as a looker. The first time she came in here I could see how things stood. But you couldn't budge her from him—jest like a woman—she loved him."
Sommers must have shown some irritation, for Dr. Leonard, watching him closely, repeated:
"Yes! she lovedhim, would have him back, though I argued with her against it. Well, I'm glad it's settled up now so clever. Of course I'll be out to the funeral. Alves ain't got any folks near connected, and Preston—well, it's no use harboring hard thoughts about dead folks. They'll have to settle with some one else, won't they?"
From the Athenian Building Sommers went to an ambitious boarding-house that called itself a hotel, where Miss M'Gann boarded. A dirty negro boy opened the door, and with his duster indicated the reception room. Miss M'Gann came down, wearing a costume of early morning relaxation. She listened to the news with the usual feminine feeling for decorum, compounded of curiosity, conventional respect for the dead, and speculation for the future.
"Poor Mrs. Preston! I'll go right down and see her. I've been thinking for a week that I'd take a run on my bike down that way. But things have been so queer, you know, that I didn't feel—you understand?"
The doctor nodded and rose to go. Miss M'Gann's note was more jarring than the kindly old dentist's.
"Oh, you aren't going!" Miss M'Gann protested regretfully. "I want to ask so many questions. I amsoglad to see you. I feel that I know youverywell. Mr. Dresser, your intimate friend, has spoken to me about you. Such an interesting man, a little erratic, like a genius, you know."
As Sommers remained stiffly mute, Miss M'Gann's remarks died away.
"There is nothing more to tell," he said, getting up. "Of course Mrs. Preston has had a very serious strain, and I,—her friends,—must see that she has rest."
"Sure," Miss M'Gann broke in warmly; "now a lot of us girls are going up to Plum Lake, Michigan, for four weeks. It would be good for her to be with a nice party—"
"We will see," the doctor said coldly.
Later Miss M'Gann said to one of her friends: "Talkin' to him is like rubbing noses with an iceberg. He's one of your regular freeze-you-up, top-notchy eastern swells."
"Perhaps it would be well if Mrs. Preston came here to stay with you for a few days. I will ask her," Sommers suggested, as he shook hands.
"Certainly," Miss M'Gann replied warmly, "first-class house, good society, reasonable rates, and all that."
But the doctor was bowing himself out.
'He's taking some interest in the fair widow's welfare,' Miss M'Gann commented, as she watched him from behind the hall-door curtain. 'I hope he won't get the d. t.'s like number one, and live off her. Think she'd have had warning to wait a reasonable time.'
Meantime Sommers was musing over the "breezy" and "lively" Miss M'Gann, who, he judged, contributed much to the gayety of the Keystone Hotel. He had been hasty in suggesting that Alves might find a refuge in the Keystone. It would be for a few days, however, for he planned—he was rather vague about what he had planned. He wondered if there would be much of Miss M'Gann in the future, their future, and he longed to get away, to take Alves and fly.
He was tired; the sun was relentless. But he must make arrangements to sell his horse as soon as possible, and to give up his rooms. For the first time in his life he was conscious that he wanted to talk with a man, to see some friend. But of all the young professional men he had met in Chicago, there was not one he could think of approaching. On his way to his rooms he passed the Lake Front Park, where some companies of troops were encamped. Tents were flapping in the breeze, a Gatling gun had been placed, and sentries mounted. The bronzed young soldiers brought in from the plains were lounging about, watching the boulevard, and peering up at the massive walls of the Auditorium. The street was choked with curious spectators, among whom were many strikers. The crowd gaped and commented.
"They'llshoot," one of the onlookers said almost proudly. "There ain't no use in foolin' with the reg'lars. Those fellows'd pop you or me as soon as a jack-rabbit or a greasy Injun."
The sinewy sentry shifted his gun and tramped off, his blue eyes marvelling at the unaccustomed sights of the great city, all the panoply of the civilization that he was hired to protect.
The city was under martial law, but it did not seem to mind it. The soldiers had had a few scuffles with rowdies at Blue Island and the stock yards. They had chased the toughs in and out among the long lines of freight cars, and fired a few shots. Even the newspapers couldn't magnify the desultory lawlessness into organized rebellion. It was becoming a matter of the courts now. The general managers had imported workmen from the East. The leaders of the strike—especially Debs and Howard—were giving out more and more incendiary, hysterical utterances. All workingmen were to be called out on a general strike; every man that had a trade was to take part in a "death struggle." But Sommers could see the signs of a speedy collapse. In a few days the strong would master the situation; then would follow a wrangle in the courts, and the fatal "black list" would appear. The revenge of the railroads would be long and sure.
Sommers went to his rooms and sought to get some rest before the time set for the funeral. The driving west wind, heated as by a furnace in its mad rush over the parched prairies, fevered rather than cooled him. His mind began to revolve about the dead man, lying with heavy, red-lidded eyes in the cottage. Was it,—was it murder? He put the thought aside laboriously, only to be besieged afresh, to wonder, to argue, to protest. After three hours of this he dressed and took the cable car for the cottage. He might find some pretext to examine the dead man again before the others came.
At the cottage gate, however, he overtook the good dentist, bearing a large florist's box. Miss M'Gann was already within the little front room, and Alves was talking in low tones with a sallow youth in a clerical coat. At the sight of the newcomers the clergyman withdrew to put on his robes. Dr. Leonard, having surrendered the pasteboard box to Miss M'Gann, grasped Mrs. Preston's hand.
"Alves," he began, and stopped. Even he could feel that the commonplaces of the occasion were not in order. "Alves, you know how mighty fond of you I am."
She smiled tranquilly. Her air of calm reserve mystified the watchful young doctor. The clergyman returned, followed by Mrs. Ducharme and Anna Svenson. The Ducharme woman's black dress intensified the pallor of her flabby face. Her hands twitched nervously over the prayer-book that she held. Subject to apoplexy, Sommers judged; but his thoughts passed over her as well as Miss M'Gann, who stood with downcast eyes ostentatiously close to Mrs. Preston, and the grave old dentist standing at the foot of the coffin, and the clergyman whose young voice had not lost its thrill of awe in the presence of death. He had no eyes for aught but the woman, who was bound to him by firmer ties than those whose dissolution the clergyman was recording. She stood serene, with head raised above theirs, revealing a face that sadness had made serious, grave, mature, but not sad. She displayed no affected sorrow, no nervous tremor, no stress of a reproachful mind. Unconscious of the others, even of the minister's solemn phrases, she seemed to be revolving truths of her own, dismissing a problem private to her own heart. To the man who tried to pierce beneath that calm gaze, the woman's complete control was terrible.
The minister's grave voice went on, pronouncing the grave sentences of the service. The ceremonial words sounded all the more fateful said over this poor body. The little of life that he had had,—the eating and drinking in restaurants and hotels, the chaffing and trading with his own kind, the crude appeasements of crude desires,—all these were taken away, and thus stripped it was easy to see how small was his responsibility in the matter of life. He had crushed and injured this other human being, his wife, to whom he had come nearest, just as a dirty hand might soil and crumple a fine fabric. But she no longer reproached him, if she ever had; she understood the sad complexity of a fate that had brought into the hand the fabric to be tarnished. And what she could accept, others must, the world must, to whom the Prestons are but annoyances and removable blemishes.
Sommers felt the deaconlike attitude of the dentist, the conventional solemnity of the schoolteacher and of the immobile Swede, the shaking, quavering terror of Mrs. Ducharme, mumbling to herself the words of the service. Why should the old woman be so upset, he wondered. But his vagrant thoughts always came back to the woman near the coffin, the woman he loved. How could she summon up such peace! Was hers one of those mighty souls that never doubted? That steadfast gaze chilled his heart.
"The resurrection of the dead." Her glance fell, and for one swift moment rested on the dead man. She was debating those noble words, and denying their hope tohim, to such as were dead in this life. Then once more her glance rose and fell upon Sommers, and swiftly it effaced his doubts.
She was so beautiful, a woman in the full tide of human experience! And the night before she had been so simple and tender and passionate. He felt her arms about his heart, teaching him how to live. This moment, this careful putting away of the past must be over soon, in a few hours; whereupon he and she would cast it out of their hearts as they would leave this gloomy cottage and waste marshes. He would not think of the body there and its death, of anything but her. How exquisite would be this triumph, over her baulked, defeated past! 'Alves, Alves,' he murmured in his heart, 'only you who have suffered can love.' It seemed that an answering wave of color swept over her pale face.
* * * * *
There was a movement. The service was ended. The burial was the only thing that remained to be done. Sommers went to the cemetery with the minister and Dr. Leonard. He did not wish to be with Alves until they could be alone. The grave was in the half-finished cemetery beside the Cottage Grove cable line, among the newest lots. It was a fit place for Preston, this bit of sandy prairie in the incomplete city. The man who came and went from town to town, knowing chiefly the hotel and the railroad station, might well rest here, within call of the hoarse locomotives gliding restlessly to and fro.
As the little company retraced their steps from the grave, Alves spoke toSommers for the first time.
"You will come back with me?" she asked.
"Not now," he answered hastily, instinctively. "I must go back to town. The others will be there. Not to-day."