Читать книгу: «The Walking Delegate», страница 5

He started away. Those iron fingers locked about the prisoner's arm were a needless fetter. The Swede's despairing soul, glimpsed for a moment, had thrown a spell upon Tom, and he would have followed willingly.

Their long strides matched, and their heel-clicks coincided. Both were silent. At the end of ten minutes they were in a narrow street, clifted on its either side with tenements that reached up darkly. Presently the Swede turned down a stairway, sentineled by garbage cans. Tom thought they were entering a basement. But Petersen walked on, and in the solid blackness Tom was glad of the hand locked on his arm. They mounted a flight of stone steps, and came into a little stone-paved court. Far above there was a roof-framed square of stars. Petersen led the way across the court and into the doorway of a rear tenement. The air was rotting. They went up two flights of stairs, so old that the wood shivered under foot. Petersen opened a door. A coal oil lamp burned on an otherwise barren table, and beside the table sat a slight woman with a quilt drawn closely about her.

She rose, the quilt fell from her shoulders, and she stood forth in a faded calico wrapper. "Oh, Nels! You've come at last!" she said. Then she saw Tom, and drew back a step.

"Yah," said Petersen. He dragged Tom after him into the room and swept his left arm about. "See! – De union!"

The room was almost bare. The table, three wooden chairs, a few dishes, a cooking-stove without fire, – this was the furniture. Half the plastering was gone from the ceiling, the blue kalsomine was scaling leprously from the walls, in places the floor was worn almost through. In another room he saw a child asleep on a bed.

There was just one picture on the walls, a brown-framed photograph of a man in the dress and pose of a prize fighter – a big, tall, angular man, with a drooping mustache. Tom gave a quick glance at Petersen.

"See! – De union!" Petersen repeated fiercely.

The little woman came quickly forward and laid her hand on Petersen's arm. "Nels, Nels," she said gently.

"Yah, Anna. But he is de man vot drove me from ma yob."

"We must forgive them that despitefully use us, the Lord says."

Petersen quieted under her touch and dropped Tom's arm.

She turned her blue eyes upon Tom in gentle accusation. "How could you? Oh, how could you?"

Tom could only answer helplessly: "But why don't he join the union?"

"How can he?"

The words echoed within Tom. How could he? Everything Tom saw had not the value of half the union's initiation fee.

There was an awkward silence. "Won't you sit down, brother." Mrs. Petersen offered Tom one of the wooden chairs, and all three sat down. He noted that the resentment was passing from Petersen's eyes, and that, fastened on his wife, they were filling with submissive adoration.

"Nels has tried very hard," the little woman said. They had been in the West for three years, she went on; Nels had worked with a non-union crew on a bridge over the Missouri. When that job was finished they had spent their savings coming to New York, hearing there was plenty of work there. "We had but twenty dollars when we got here. How could Nels join the union? We had to live. An' since he couldn't join the union, the union wouldn't let him work. Brother, is that just? Is that the sort o' treatment you'd like to get?"

Tom was helpless against her charges. The union was right in principle, but what was mere correctness of principle in the presence of such a situation?

"Would you be willing to join the union?" he asked abruptly of Petersen.

It was Petersen's wife who answered. "O' course he would."

"Well, don't you worry any more then. He won't have any trouble getting a job."

"How?" asked the little woman.

"I'm going to get him in the union."

"But that costs twenty-five dollars."

"Yes."

"But, brother, we haven't got one!"

"I'll advance it. He can pay it back easy enough afterwards."

The little woman rose and stood before Tom. Her thin white face was touched up faintly with color, and tears glistened in her eyes. She took Tom's big red hand in her two frail ones.

"Brother, if you ain't a Christian, you've got a Christian heart!" she cried out, and the thin hands tightened fervently. She turned to her husband. "Nels, what did I say! The Lord would not forget them that remembered him."

Tom saw Petersen stand up, nothing in his eyes now but adoration, and open his arms. He turned his head.

For the second time Tom took note of the brown-framed photograph, with "The Swedish Terror" in black letters at its bottom, and rose and stood staring at it. Presently, Mrs. Petersen drew to his side.

"We keep it before us to remind us what wonders the Lord can work, bless His holy name!" she explained. "Nels was a terrible fightin' man before we was married an' I left the Salvation Army. A terrible fightin' man!" Even in her awe of Petersen's one-time wickedness Tom could detect a lurking admiration of his prowess. "The Lord has saved him from all that. But he has a terrible temper. It flares up at times, an' the old carnal desire to fight gets hold o' him again. That's his great weakness. But we pray that God will keep him from fightin', an' God does!"

Tom looked at the little woman, a bundle of religious ardor, looked at Petersen with his big shoulders, thought of the incident of the morning. He blinked his eyes.

Tom stepped to the table and laid down a five-dollar bill. "You can pay that back later." He moved quickly to the door. "Good-night," he said, and tried to escape.

But Mrs. Petersen was upon him instantly. "Brother! Brother!" She seized his hands again in both hers, and looked at him with glowing eyes. "Brother, may God bless you!"

Tom blinked his eyes again. "Good-night," he said.

Petersen stepped forward and without a word took Tom's arm. The grasp was lighter than when they had come up. Again Tom was glad of the guidance of that hand as they felt their way down the shivering stairs, and out through the tunnel.

"Good-night," he said once more, when they had gained the street.

Petersen gripped his hand in awkward silence.

Chapter IX
RUTH ARNOLD

Ruth Arnold was known among her friends as a queer girl. Neither the new ones in New York nor the old ones of her birth town understood her "strange impulses." They were constantly being shocked by ideas and actions which they considered, to phrase it mildly, very unusual. The friends in her old home were horrified when she decided to become a stenographer. Friends in both places were horrified when, a little less than a year before, it became known she was going to leave the home of her aunt to become Mr. Driscoll's secretary. "What a fool!" they cried. "If she had stayed she might have married ever so well!" Mrs. Baxter had entreated, and with considerable elaboration had delivered practically these same opinions. But Ruth was obstinate in her queerness, and had left.

However, only a few weeks before, Mrs. Baxter had had a partial recompense for Ruth's disappointing conduct. She had noted the growing intimacy between Mr. Berman, who was frequently at her house, and Ruth, and by delicate questioning had drawn the calm statement from her niece that Mr. Berman had asked her in marriage.

"Of course you said 'yes,'" said Mrs. Baxter.

Ruth had not.

"My child! Why not?"

"I don't love him."

"What of that?" demanded her aunt, who loved her husband. "Love will come. He is educated, a thorough gentleman, and has money. What more do you want in a husband? And your uncle says he is very clever in business."

Thus brought to bay, Ruth had taken her aunt into the secret that her refusal had not been final and that Mr. Berman had given her six months in which to make up her mind. This statement was Mrs. Baxter's partial recompense. "Then you'll marry him, Ruth!" she declared, and kissed her lightly.

Ruth understood herself no better than did her friends. She was not conscious that she had in a measure that rare endowment – the clear vision which perceives the things of life in their true relation and at their true value, plus the instinct to act upon that vision. It was the manifestations of this instinct that made her friends call her queer. Her instinct, however, did not hold her in sole sway. Her training had fastened many governing conventions upon her, and she was not always as brave as her inward promptings. Her actions made upon impulse were usually in accord with this instinct. Her actions that were the result of thought were frequently in accord with convention.

It was her instinct that had impelled her to ask Tom to call. It was convention that, on Sunday afternoon, made her await his coming with trepidation. She was genuinely interested in the things for which Tom stood, and her recent-born admiration of him was sincere. Nevertheless his approaching visit was in the nature of an adventure to her. This workingman, transferred from the business world to the social world, might prove himself an embarrassing impossibility. Especially, she wondered, with more than a little apprehension, how he would be dressed. She feared a flaming necktie crawling up his collar, and perhaps in it a showy pin; or a pair of fancy shoes; or a vest of assertive pattern; or, perhaps, hair oil!

When word was brought her by a maid that Tom was below, she gave an order that he was to wait, and put on her hat and jacket. She did not know him well enough to ask him to her room. She could not receive him in the parlor common to all the boarding-house. Her instinctive self told her it would be an embarrassment to him to be set amid the gossiping crowd that gathered there on Sunday afternoon. Her conventional self told her that, if he were but a tenth as bad as was possible, it would be more than an embarrassment for her to sit beside him amid those curious eyes. The street was the best road out of the dilemma.

He was sitting in the high-backed hall chair when she came down. "Shall we not take a walk?" she asked. "The day is beautiful for February."

Tom acceded gratefully. He had glanced through the parted portières into the parlor, and his minutes of waiting had been minutes of consternation.

The first thing Ruth noted when they came out into the light of the street was that his clothes were all in modest taste, and she thrilled with relief. Mixed with this there was another feeling, a glow of pleasure that he was vindicating himself to her conventional part.

Ruth lived but a few doors from Central Park. As they started across Central Park West a big red automobile, speeding above the legal rate, came sweeping down upon them, tooting its arrogant warning. Tom jerked Ruth back upon the sidewalk. She glared at the bundled-up occupants of the scurrying car.

"Don't it make you feel like an anarchist when people do that?" she gasped.

"Not the bomb-throwing sort."

"Why not? When people do that, I've got just one desire, and that's to throw a bomb!"

"What good would a bomb here or there do? Or what harm?" Tom asked humorously. "What's the use trying to destroy people that're already doomed?"

Ruth was silent till they gained the other side of the street. "Doomed? What do you mean?" she then asked.

"Every dog has his day, you know. Them rich people are having theirs. It's a summer day, and I guess it's just about noon now. But it's passing."

Ruth had learned during her conversation with him on the previous Tuesday that a large figurative statement such as this was likely to have a great many ideas behind it, so she now proceeded to lead him to the ideas' expression. The sun, drawing good-humoredly from his summer's store, had brought thousands to the Park walks, and with genial presumption had unbuttoned their overcoats. The bare gray branches of bush and tree glinted dully in the warm light, as if dreamfully smiling over the budding days not far ahead. But Tom had attention for the joy of neither the sun nor his dependents. He thought only of what he was saying, for he had been led to speech upon one of his dearest subjects.

Though he had left school at thirteen to begin work, he had attended night school for a number of years, had belonged to a club whose chief aim was debating, had read a number of solid books and had done a great deal of thinking for himself. As a result of his reading, thinking and observation he had come into some large ideas concerning the future of the working class. In the past, he now said to Ruth, classes had risen to power, served their purpose, and been displaced by new classes stimulated by new ideas. The capitalist class was now in power, and was performing its mission – the development and centralization of industries. But its decline would be even more rapid than its rise. It would be succeeded by the working class. The working class was vast in numbers, and was filled with surging energy. Its future domination was certain.

"And you believe this?" Ruth queried when he came to a pause.

"I know it."

"Admitting that all these things are coming about – which I don't – don't you honestly think it would be disastrous to the general interest for the workingman to come into power?"

"You mean we would legislate solely in our own interests? What if we did? Hasn't every class that ever came into power done that? Anyhow, since we make up nine-tenths of the people we'd certainly be legislating in the interests of the majority – which can't always be said now. And as for our ability to run things, I'd rather have an honest fool than a grafter that knows it all. But if you mean we're a pretty rough lot, and haven't much education, I guess you're about right. How can we help it? We've never had a chance to be anything else. But think what the working class was a hundred years ago! Haven't we come up? Thousands of miles! That's because we've been getting more and more chances, like chances for an education, that used to belong only to the rich. And our chances are increasing. Another hundred years and we won't know ourselves. We'll be fit for anything!"

"I see you're very much of a dreamer."

"Dreamer? Not at all! If you were to look ahead and say in a hundred years from now it'll be 2000, would you call that a dream?"

"Hardly!" Ruth admitted with a smile.

"Well, what I'm telling you is just as certain as the passage of time. I'm anything but a dreamer. I believe in a present for the working class as well as a future. I believe that we, if we work hard, have the right, now, to-day, to a comfortable living, and with enough over to give our children as good an education as the children of the bosses; and with enough to buy a few books, see a little of the world, and to save a little so we'll not have ahead of us the terrible fear that we and our families may starve when we get too old to work. That's the least we ought to have. But we lack an almighty lot of having it, Miss Arnold.

"Take my own trade – and we're a lot better off than most workingmen – we get three seventy-five a day. That wouldn't be so bad if we made it three hundred days a year, but you know we don't average more than six months' work. Less than seven hundred dollars a year. What can a man with a family do in New York on seven hundred dollars a year? Two hundred for rent, three hundred for food, one hundred for clothes. There's six hundred gone in three lumps. Twenty-five cents a day left for heat, light, education, books, amusement, travel, street-car fare, – and to save for your old age!

"And then our trade's dangerous. I think half of our men are killed. If you saw the obituary list that's published monthly of all the branches of our union in the country, you'd think so, too! Every other name – crushed, or something broke and he fell. Only the other day on a steel bridge near Pittsburg a piece of rigging snapped and ten men dropped two hundred feet. They landed on steel beams in a barge anchored below – and were pulp. And after the other names, it's pneumonia or consumption. D'you know what that means? It means exposure at work. Killed by their work!.. Well, that's our work, – and we get seven hundred a year!

"And then our work takes the best part of our lives, and throws us away. So long as we're strong and active, we can be used. But the day we begin to get a little stiff – if we last that long! – we're out of it. It may be at forty. We've got to learn how to do something else, or just wait for the end. There's our families. And you know how much we've got in the bank!

"Well, that's how it is in our union. Is seven hundred a year enough? – when we risk our lives every day we work? – when we're fit for work only so long as we're young men? We're human beings, Miss Arnold. We're men. We want comfortable homes, we want to keep our children in school, we'd like to save something up for the time when we can't work. Seven hundred a year! How're we going to do it, Miss Arnold? How're we going to do it?"

Ruth looked up at his glowing set face, and for the moment forgot she was allied to the other side. "Demand higher wages!" her instinct answered promptly.

"That's the only thing! And that's what we're going to do! More money for the time we do work!"

He said no more. Now that the stimulant of his excited words was gone, Ruth felt her fatigue. Engrossed by his emotions he had swung along at a pace that had taxed her lesser stride.

"Shall we not sit down," she suggested; and they found a bench on a pinnacle of rock from whence they looked down through a criss-cross of bare branches upon a sun-polished lagoon, and upon the files of people curving along the paths. Tom removed his hat, and Ruth turning to face him took in anew the details of his head – the strong, square, smooth-shaven face, the broad forehead, moist and banded with pink where his hat had pressed, the hair that clung to his head in tight brown curls. Looked, – and felt herself growing small, and the men of her acquaintance growing small. And thought… Yes, that was it; it was his purpose that made him big.

"You have kept me so interested that I've not yet asked you about your fight against Mr. Foley," she said, after a moment.

Tom told her all that had been done.

"But is there no other way of getting at the men except by seeing them one by one?" she asked. "That seems such a laborious way of carrying on a campaign. Can't you have mass-meetings?"

Tom shook his head. "In the first place it would be hard to get the men out; they're tired when they come home from work, and then a lot of them don't want to openly identify themselves with us. And in the second place Foley'd be likely to fill the hall with his roughs and break the meeting up."

"But to see the men individually! And you say there are twenty-five hundred of them. Why, that's impossible!"

"Yes. A lot of the men we can't find. They're out when we call."

"Why not send a letter to every member?" asked Ruth, suggesting the plan to her most obvious.

"A letter?"

"A letter that would reach them a day or two before election! A short letter, that drove every point home!" She leaned toward him excitedly.

"Good!" Tom brought his fist down on his knee.

Ruth knew the money would have to come from his pocket. "Let's see. It would cost, for stamps, twenty-five dollars; for the letters – they could be printed – about fifteen dollars; for the envelopes six or seven dollars. Say forty-five or fifty dollars."

Fifty dollars was a great deal to Tom – saved little by little. But he hesitated only a moment. "All right. If we can influence a hundred men, one in twenty-five, it'll be worth the money."

A thoughtful look came over his face.

"What is it?" Ruth asked quickly.

"I was thinking about the printing and other things. Wondering how I could get away from work to see to it."

"Won't you let me look after that for you?" Ruth asked eagerly. "I look after all our printing. I can leave the office whenever I'm not busy, you know. It would take only a few minutes of my time."

"It really wouldn't?" Tom asked hesitantly.

"It wouldn't be any trouble at all. And I'd be glad to do it."

Tom thanked her. "I wouldn't know how to go about a thing of that sort, anyhow, even if I could get away from work," he admitted.

"And I could see to the addressing, too," Ruth pursued.

He sat up straight. "There's the trouble! The addresses!"

"The addresses? Why?"

"There's only one list of the men and where they live. That's the book of the secretary and treasurer."

"Won't he lend it to you?"

Tom had to laugh. "Connelly lend it to me! Connelly's one of the best friends Foley's got."

"Then there's no way of getting it?"

"He keeps it in his office, and when he's not there the office is locked. But we'll get it somehow."

"Well, then if you'll write out the letter and send it to me in a day or two, I'll see to having it printed right away."

It flashed upon Tom what a strong concluding statement to the letter the guarantee from Mr. Baxter would make. He told Ruth of his idea, of his attempts to get the guarantee, and of the influence it would have on the men.

"He's probably forgotten all about it," she said. "I think I may be able to help you to get it. I can speak to Aunt Elizabeth and have her speak to him."

But her quick second thought was that she could not do this without revealing to her aunt a relation Mrs. Baxter could not understand. "No, after all I can't be of any use there. You might try to see him again, and if you fail then you might write him."

Tom gave her a quick puzzled glance, as he had done a few days before when she had mentioned her relation to Mr. Baxter. She caught the look.

"You are wondering how it is Mr. Baxter is my uncle," she guessed.

"Yes," he admitted.

"It's very simple. All rich people have their poor relatives, I suppose? Mrs. Baxter and my mother were sisters. Mr. Baxter made money. My father died before he had a chance. After mamma died, I decided to go to work. There was only enough money to live a shabby-genteel, pottering life – and I was sick of that. I have no talents, and I wanted to be out in the world, in contact with people who are doing real things. So I learned stenography. A little over a year ago I came to New York. I lived for awhile with my uncle and aunt; they were kind, but the part of a poor relation didn't suit me, and I made up my mind to go to work again. They were not pleased very well; they wanted me to stay with them. But my mind was made up. I offered to go to work for my uncle, but he had no place for me, and got me the position with Mr. Driscoll. And that's all."

A little later she asked him for the time. His watch showed a quarter of five. On starting out she had told him that she must be home by five, so she now remarked: "Perhaps we'd better be going. It'll take us about fifteen minutes to walk back."

They started homeward across the level sunbeams that were stretching themselves out beneath barren trees and over brown lawns for their night's sleep. As they drew near to Ruth's boarding-house they saw a perfectly-tailored man in a high hat go up the steps. He was on the point of ringing the bell when he sighted them, and he stood waiting their coming. A surprised look passed over his face when he recognized Ruth's companion.

As they came up the steps he raised his hat to Ruth. "Good-afternoon, Miss Arnold." And to Tom he said carelessly: "Hello, Keating."

Tom looked him squarely in the eyes. "Hello, Berman," he returned.

Mr. Berman started at the omission of the "Mr." Tom lifted his hat to Ruth, bade her good-afternoon, and turned away, not understanding a sudden pang that shot into his heart.

Mr. Berman's eyes followed Tom for a dozen paces. "A very decent sort – for a workingman," he remarked.

"For any sort of a man," said Ruth, with an emphasis that surprised her. She took out her latch-key, and they entered.