CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next day Roger went to Tom O'Connell. Through a cloud of tobacco smoke, Roger saw him at the end of the dusty loft, sprawled on the edge of a table behind a low railing and listening to two short, heavy men talking at once. Some maps and statistical charts hung from the rough, wooden walls; a magazine-stand stood close to the door, piled with papers and pamphlets, red-bound, or with glaring red splotches in their cover designs. Close to the bench on which Roger waited some one was pounding a typewriter behind a partition. The east end of the loft was enclosed as a separate office and from this enclosure came the voices of men and women talking loudly. The whole room vibrated to the feel of a rushing force, of many violent plans being made and driven through to execution in an incredibly short time. No restraint here, no polish, no modulation. Right or wrong, these people believed in themselves. Society was a wall through which, by brute force, they would drive the spike of their ideal. Roger's excitement grew. He felt like the unfortunate son of the leading citizen in a small town, watching a magnificent back-alley fight by "de gang."
Suddenly the typewriter beside him stopped, and Katya Orloff peered over the top of the partition. If she was surprised she did not show it.
"Come in. Tom will be through in a minute." She disappeared and Roger went round to the gate she opened. Katya's desk was piled with papers, carbons, and cigarette ashes. Teetering on one edge, the dregs of a cup of black coffee, into which Katya had dropped the crust of a ham sandwich, threatened to destroy a pile of clean copy, but didn't.
"Sit down." Katya motioned to an upturned apple box and Roger sat down. Then, for the first time, Katya smiled. A spark lit in the little brown eyes, but the heavy mouth remained unmoved. It was as if her power to smile was slowly dying. The eyes alone refused to petrify in the devastating seriousness of Katya's purpose. Roger smiled back.
"I thought you would come. I expected you sooner."
"Did you?" Roger withdrew his smile, resentful of her assurance. He felt that Katya caught his feeling, but she did not apologize. Instead she offered him one of her vile cigarettes. Roger refused.
"They are beastly, but I can't smoke anything else any more." She inhaled and the cigarette was gone in a few deep breaths. "But I'm really glad you didn't come any sooner. It means you've thought it out carefully. We're overloaded now with enthusiasm, twigs not strong enough to keep the pot boiling. Hear them crackling?" Her frowsy black head jerked toward the voices of the two men talking to Tom. "Poor Tom. He'll have to pour water on them and then—two more vanity-wounded enemies."
Katya's voice, husky from too much loud speech-making and the vile cigarettes, had unexpected soft spots, rest places, quiet corners of pity in the roar of her faith. Roger felt that the woman might have many of these hidden places, little corners of pity and gentleness, and forgot his resentment.
"I'll promise not to crackle."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-nine. Almost thirty."
"You're married, aren't you?"
"Yes."
Katya lit another cigarette. "Got any ideas?"
"No." Roger began to feel like a small boy again.
"That's good. You're too inexperienced to have any worth while; too obstinate to put up with having any rooted out. What do you know about the movement, anyway?"
"Practically nothing," Roger snapped. After all, Katya had not invented her Social Revolution. It was not her personal property.
"'Virgin Soil,'" Katya grinned. "Ever read it?"
"Yes."
"Like it?"
"Not much."
"Why?"
"It didn't get me."
"Russian literature is a fad with most Americans, only they won't own it. But some day you will like it."
She might as well have said: "Some day you will develop to the point of understanding Russian literature."
For the present, however, she had finished with him. She rose now above the fence and gave a long, clear whistle. Instantly the two men stopped talking.
"No more time to-day, boys." Black Tom answered the whistle with two short notes and Katya opened the gate.
"I say, you're not going to let the thing hang in mid-air, are you?" one of the men demanded belligerently. "You think you've got the whole thing in your own pocket. Well, you haven't. The rest of us——"
"Get out," Tom thundered. "Neither of you has a suggestion worth listening to. I tell you we're not ready yet. You're like a lot of kids with firecrackers, can't wait till the Fourth to make your little splutter. I'm not going to fight just for the sake of fighting."
"You tin Czar——"
"Get out."
The men banged out of the loft and Katya led Roger over to Black Tom.
"Roger Barton."
The big man stared at him, still concerned with the others, until Katya laid a hand on his arm and drew him back to the present.
"Hilary Wainwright's secretary. Sent out those invitations." They smiled at each other, and Roger bristled. The courtesy of these people was an extraordinary thing. "He's left and wants to talk to you." Like a nurse delivering her charge, Katya clumped away.
Black Tom glanced at the desk clock, frowned and said shortly:
"I suppose that means you want to look us over with a view to coming in?"
"I don't know whether I do or not," Roger flung at him.
Black Tom seemed to see him for the first time. He smiled and sat down.
"I beg your pardon, but we get pretty gruff in this thing. So you've left Wainwright? Consequential ass. What do you want to do?"
"Anything that will stop the output of more—consequential asses."
Black Tom leaned back in his chair and laughed, a laugh so deep and eternally young, that Roger knew the man could never seriously annoy him again.
"You've come to the right place. That's our specialty," and added, "any party affiliations?"
Roger shook his head. "Not yet."
"That's all right. Don't—till you're ready. When your faith needs to sign itself to some register, do it. Right Wing, Left Wing Socialist, Syndicalist, Communist, I. W. W., they're all headed right and there's something the matter with them all. It doesn't matter really; start a new party if you like. Names, names," he added, a little wearily, "all names for the same thing—the new world that's struggling to be born. Science, art, religion, politics, we're all fighting for the same end—to root out the dead old forms, give new growths a chance. We're all beating in our different ways toward the same thing—Understanding, Beauty, Unity. One fits in where he can." He looked across the dirty loft to a group of men waiting for him on the bench where Roger had sat a few moments before. "This is mine. I had no special training, nothing but physical strength and longing." His gaze came back to his own hands, broken and sparsely covered at the wrists and knuckles with stiff black hair. "I worked in a Pennsylvania coal mine when I was twelve. I read at night. When I was nineteen I went for a while to night-school with kids thirteen and fourteen. I never had three square meals a day until I was twenty-three. I lived in mines and shops and libraries."
He paused, and it seemed to Roger that he had gone away, back down the years, alone. In those crowded years, herded among men, he had learned to slip away, leave his gaunt, over-worked body to the crowd. Privacy was a spiritual possession, free to his will.
He jerked himself back with a motion of his bowed shoulders.
"Have you had any special training along any line?"
"Yes, I'm a lawyer."
"Great. We need——"
"But I'd rather not practice, anyhow not plead in court for a while. I don't feel that I understand enough about the thing as a whole. I want to soak in it, feel myself honestly a part before I undertake to defend men. Is that an out-of-the-way request?"
"It's an out-of-the-ordinary request. I wish more men felt as you do. There wouldn't be so many misunderstandings and shiftings around and party splits. I guess we can fit you in somewhere. How little can you work for?"
Roger did not answer instantly.
"Married?"
"Yes."
"Perhaps you'd better talk it over with your wife."
"It's not necessary. She—she's with me in this."
"We need lawyers, but we can't pay what the meanest scrub can't better in a very few years. What have you been getting?"
"Fifty a week."
"About ten beyond our possible limit—with expenses when you travel—but not fancy ones. You can take outside cases on the side—if you get them once you're known as one of us. That will have nothing to do with us."
"I don't want any 'cases on the side,' not for the present anyhow."
Black Tom smiled. "When do you want to begin?"
"Now."
Black Tom hesitated. Roger felt his first resentment returning. He leaned forward.
"This thing doesn't belong to any group," he began. "We all happen to be at the same point at the same time. I know what I'm doing. I——"
Black Tom laid a hand on his knee. "Boy, you'll have to excuse a lot of manner when you're one of us. Our material's men and we get to handle them sometimes as if they were—pig iron." He whistled and Katya popped above the fence. "Bring me the Anderson case."
When Katya brought it he said briefly, "Barton's going to work with us."
Roger noticed that he did not say Comrade Barton and wondered whether Black Tom did not quite trust him yet. But he found later that Black Tom tagged no man with artificial distinction, except in addressing a meeting whose sympathy he was not quite sure of. In a few moments he had explained the case to Roger, and turned him back to Katya.
"You can work here if you like. It's noisy at times, but we can fix you up with a kind of office down in the corner. Or you can work elsewhere."
"Here. I don't mind noise."
"Tell Jim to fix up the office Philips used to have," he ordered Katya, took his hat, and was gone.
"Let's go and have lunch," Katya suggested. "Tom's probably forgotten a lot of details you ought to know."
But Anne was expecting him and anxious to hear. "Suppose you come home and have lunch with us?"
Roger thought that Katya smiled, but was not quite sure. One never was sure whether Katya smiled unless her eyes actually twinkled, her face was so swarthy and still.
On the way home Roger listened with interest to Katya's history of the Anderson case, but, as they came to the bottom of the long flight, he wished he could run ahead and prepare Anne. He led and Katya followed, still talking. At the door they met Anne. For a moment she looked disturbed and then greeted Katya with such ease that Roger felt all responsibility for the lunch drop from him. While she skilfully reset the table and twisted the menu to include three instead of two, Katya talked on.
Nor did she stop when Anne summoned them, and only for short periods during lunch. From the Anderson case and the Labor Movement, she drifted to Russia, to her native village, to the Jewish pogroms, her struggles for an education, her imprisonment under the Czarist system, her escape and flight from Siberia through Sweden to Finland and the United States; her gradual migration westward, from an eastside tenement in New York, through New Jersey, to Chicago, to San Francisco. She talked vehemently but without bitterness. In her long fight for an idea, she had become impersonal.
She ate almost greedily, but neither Anne nor Roger felt that she knew what she ate. She smoked cigarette after cigarette, lighting one from the other, and drank cup after cup of black coffee without noticing that Anne refilled her cup. Anne was considering making more coffee, when at last Katya broke off.
"You're a perfect hostess, Mrs. Barton. I don't believe you've said a word."
Anne flushed. Evidently this woman had not expected her interest.
"It's fascinating," she said, with just a touch of primness that brought an odd look to Katya's eyes. Roger felt uncomfortable.
"We've never had a chance before to get it first-hand," he said quietly, and saw Katya's eyes twinkle. She rose and, to Roger's embarrassment, ran her hand over his thick, wavy hair.
"You're a nice boy."
She put on her things, waited a moment for Roger to join her, but when he made no motion, shook hands with both and went clumsily down the stairs without looking back.
"Almost as conceited as Hilary Wainwright, in her own way, isn't she?" Anne said demurely.
Roger laughed. "You're a wiz. I hope you never take a dislike to me."
"Not much of a wiz to get that slam about a perfect hostess. As if one couldn't believe in Man and fruit salad at the same time."
Roger put his arm about her. "We can, but then, you know, we are exceptional people."
"Because, really, I should loathe beet soup and pickled fish and those Russian foods."
"Honey and violet stems for ours." Roger bent to kiss her and Anne ran her fingers through his hair, stopped abruptly and said:
"She's really a terribly lonely soul, for all her world interests."
"I shouldn't wonder. She didn't mention any relatives, after her childhood, did she?"
When they came again into the house Roger picked up the Anderson case and went over to the couch. Anne began clearing the table. As she gathered up the doilies, she asked carelessly:
"What's the salary?"
"Forty. And expenses," Roger answered, making notes on the margin of a sheet. "Outside cases if I want to. But I shall not take any for a while—anyhow."
Anne went into the kitchen without comment.