Possibly I have extended his teachings!"
"Have His teachings had no part in deciding you as to your work?"
"His teachings? John Marvel's exposition of them in his life bore a part
and, thus, perhaps----"
"That is it."
"Why should I not participate in the benefit of the wisdom of a Jewish
rabbi?" said Wolffert, scornfully. "Did Jesus utter his divine
philosophy only for you who were then savages in Northern Europe or
half-civilized people in Greece, Italy, and Spain? Your claim that he
did so simply evinces the incurable insularity of your people."
"What is your remedy? Socialism?"
"Call it what you will. That is a name which some prefer and some
detest. The fact is, that the profit system on which all Modern
Capitalism rests is radically and fundamentally vicious and wrong. Men
work and strive, not to produce for use, for service, but for profit.
Profit becomes the aim of human endeavor--nothing higher or
better--Competition."
"'Competition,'" I quoted, "'is the soul of trade.'"
"Competition," he said, "may be the soul of trade, but that trade is the
trade in men's souls, as well as bodies--in the universal soul of the
people. It sets man against man, and brother against brother--Cain
against Abel--and is branded with the curse of Cain."
"What would you substitute for it?" I demanded.
"The remedy is always a problem. I should try co-operation--in this
age."
"Co-operation! It has been proved an absolute failure. It makes the
industrious and the thrifty the slave of the idle and spendthrift. Men
would not work."
"An idle and time-worn fallacy. The ambitious do not work for gold, the
high-minded do not--John Marvel does not--Miss Leigh does not. The poor
do not work for wealth, only for bread, for a crust, with starvation
ever grinning at them beside their door which cannot shut out its grisly
face. Look at your poor client McNeil. Did he work to accumulate gold?
He worked to feed his starving children."
"But, would they work--this great class?"
"Yes, they would have to work, all who are capable of it, but for higher
rewards. We would make all who are capable, work. We would give the
rewards to those who produce, to all who produce by intellect or labor.
We would do away with those who live on the producers--the leeches who
suck the life-blood. Work, intellectual or physical, should be the law
of society."
"They would not work," I insisted.
"Why do you go on drivelling that like a morning paper. Why would they
not work! Man is the most industrious animal on earth. Look at these
vast piles of useless buildings, look at the great edifices and works of
antiquity. Work is the law of his awakened intellect. There would still
be ambition, emulation, a higher and nobler ambition for something
better than the base reward they strive and rob and trample each other
in the mire for now. Men would then work for art, the old mechanic-arts
would revive in greater beauty and perfection than ever before. New and
loftier ideals would be set up. There would be more, vastly more men who
would have those ideals. What does the worker now know of ideals? He is
reduced to a machine, and a very poor machine at that. He does not know
where his work goes, or have an interest in it. Give him that. Give his
fellows that. It will uplift him, uplift his class, create a great
reservoir from which to draw a better class. The trouble with you, my
dear friend," said Wolffert, "is that you are assuming all the time that
your law is a fixed law, your condition of society a fixed condition.
They are not: There are few things fixed in the world. The universal
law is change--growth or decay. Of all the constellations and stars, the
Pole star alone is fixed, and that simply appears so. It really moves
like the rest, only in a vaster orbit with other stars moving about it."
I smiled, partly at his grandiose imagery and partly at his earnestness.
"You smile, but it is true. There are few fundamental laws. The survival
of the fittest is one of them in its larger sense. It is that under
which my people have survived."
"And that all men are by nature entitled to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness."
"Not at all, or, at least, only in the larger sense. If they were
entitled to life, neither nature nor the law would deprive them of
it--if to liberty, neither could interfere with it--if to the pursuit of
happiness, we should have to reconstruct their minds."
"Then, in Heaven's name, what are they entitled to?" I exclaimed.
"First, under certain conditions, to the best fruits of properly
organized society; to light--enlightenment--then to opportunity to have
an equal chance for what they are willing to work for."
"Among other things, to work?" I hazarded, feeling that he had delivered
himself into my hands. "Every man has a right to labor at whatever work
and for whatever prices he pleases," I said; "that you will admit is
fundamental?"
"Provided you allow me to define what you mean--provided it does not
injure his neighbor. You, as a lawyer, quote your _Sic utere tuo ut
non_."
"If the laborer and his employer contract, no one else has a right to
interfere."
"Not the public--if they are injured by it?"
"Except by law."
"Who make the laws? The people in theory now, and some day they will do
it in fact. As the spirit of the time changes, the interpretation of the
law will change, and the spirit is changing all the time."
"Not in this particular."
"Yes, in all respects. Men are becoming more enlightened. The veil has
been torn away and the light has been let in. As soon as education came
the step was taken. We are in a new era already, and the truth is, you
and your like do not see it."
"What sort of era? How is it new?"
"An era of enlightenment. Men have been informed; they know their power;
'the tree of knowledge has been plucked.'"
"They don't appear to do much with the knowledge."
"You think not? It is true that they have not yet learned to apply the
knowledge fully, but they are learning. See how Democracy has ripened
over the earth, overthrowing tyranny and opening the door of opportunity
for all mankind--how the principles of Socialism have spread within the
last generation, in Germany, in England, now in America and Russia. Why,
it is now an active, practical force."
"Oh! not much," I insisted.
"A great deal, taking into account the opposition to it. It is contrary,
remember, to the established usage and belief of thousands of years. It
proposes to supplant what you have been trained to consider the
foundation of your life, of society, of order, and you have been trained
to believe that your most precious rights are bound up with that system.
Every force of modern life is arrayed against it, yet it advances
steadily; because, under your system, lies the fundamental error and sin
which enables one man to hold another down and live off of him. You do
not see that a new era is dawning, that man is developing, society
passing into a new phase. Democracy has come to stay; because it is
informed. More and more men are thinking, more and more men are learning
to think."
"But they will not be able to upset the established order."
"There is no established order. It is always upset in time, either for
good or ill. It never abides, for change is the law."
"Generally for ill. Content is lost."
"Generally for good," flashed Wolffert. "The content you speak of is
slavery--stagnation and death. When a man ceases to move, to change
consciously, he changes most, he dies. That is the law that for the
universal good underlies all growth. You cannot alter it."
He ceased speaking and I took my leave, feeling that somehow he had
grown away from me.
XXXIX
THE CONFLICT
Wolffert's book was never finished. When he got well, it was laid aside
for more imperative work. The misery in the city had increased till it
threatened the overthrow of everything. It was necessary to do his part
to ameliorate the wretchedness; for his word was a charm in the foreign
district where disturbance was most to be feared. He was the most talked
of man in the city. He worked night and day.
For a little time it looked as though the efforts of the peace-makers,
among whom were conspicuous in the poor section of the town John Marvel
and Wolffert, to bring about a better feeling and condition were going
to be successful. The men began to return to work. The cars were once
more being operated, though under heavy police protection, Collis
McSheen having had it made clear to him by his former friends like
Canter and others that he must act or take the consequences.
One evening not long afterward, under prompting of an impulse to go and
see how my poor woman and little Janet were coming on, and possibly not
without some thought of Eleanor Leigh, who had hallowed her doorstep the
last time I was there, I walked over to that part of the town. I took
Dix along, or he took himself, for he was my inseparable companion
these days. Eleanor Leigh had been there, but she had gone to the old
Drummer's to see Elsa, who was ill, and had taken Janet with her. The
mother said the child was afraid to go out on the street now, and Miss
Eleanor thought it would do her good. The poor woman's pitiful face
haunted me as I turned down the street. Though the men were returning to
work, the effect of the strike was still apparent all through this
section of the town. The streets were full of idlers, especially about
the bar-rooms; and their surly looks and glum air testified to the
general feeling.
Of all the gatherings of men that I have ever seen the most painful is
that of men on a strike. They are a forlorn hope. In most assemblies
there is enthusiasm, spirit, resolve: something that beams forth with
hope and sustains. Most of these exist in striking men; yet Hope is
absent. In other assemblages her radiant wings light up their faces; in
strikes, it seems to me that the sombre shadow of care is always
present. In this strike Wolffert had been one of the most interested
observers. While he thought it unwise to strike, he advocated the men's
right to strike and to picket, but not to employ violence. It was
passive resistance that he preached, and he deplored the death of McNeil
as much as I did, or John Marvel. Only he charged it to McSheen and
Wringman and even more to the hypocrisy of a society which tolerated
their operations.
This strike had succeeded to the extent of causing great loss to and,
rumor said, of financially embarrassing Mr. Leigh; but had failed so
far as the men were concerned, and it was known that it had failed. Its
only fruit for the working people was misery. The only persons who had
profited by it were men like McSheen and Wringman.
I held strong opinions about the rights of men in the abstract; under
the influence of John Marvel's and Wolffert's unselfish lives, and the
yet more potent influence of Eleanor Leigh, I had come to realize the
beauty of self-sacrifice, even if I had not yet risen to the loftiness
of its practice; but the difficulties which I saw in the application of
our theories and my experience that night at the meeting, followed by
the death of McNeil, had divided me from my old associates like
Wolffert. I could not but see that out of the movements instituted, as
Wolffert believed, for the general good of the working classes, the real
workingmen were become mere tools, and those who were glib of tongue,
forward in speech, and selfish and shrewd in method, like McSheen and
Wringman, used them and profited by them remorselessly, while the rest
of the community were ground between the upper and the nether
millstones. Even Wolffert, with his pure motives, had proved but an
instrument in their hands to further their designs. Their influence was
still at work, and under orders from these battening politicians many
poor men with families still stood idle, with aims often as unselfish
and as lofty as ever actuated patriots or martyrs, enduring hardship and
privation with the truest and most heroic courage; whilst their leaders,
like Wringman, who had been idle agitators during the time of
prosperity, now rose on the crest of the commotion they had created, and
blossomed into importance. The Nile courses through upper Egypt bearing
its flood to enrich the lower lands; but the desert creeps and hangs its
parched lips over the very brink.
I determined to go and inquire after Elsa myself. So, with Dix at my
heel, I passed through the foreign streets, crowded with the same
dark-hued elements I had observed before, only now lowering and
threatening as a cloud about to break, and walked over toward the little
street in which the Loewens lived, and presently I fell in with
Wolffert, who, like myself, appeared to have business in that direction.
Under the circumstances, I should have been glad to escape from him; but
as he joined me I could not well do so, and we walked along together. He
looked worn and appeared to be rather gloomy, which I set down to his
disappointment at the turn affairs connected with the strike had taken,
for I learned from him that, under the influence of Wringman, there was
danger of a renewal of hostilities; that his efforts at mediation had
failed, and he had at a meeting which he had attended, where he had
advocated conciliatory measures, been hooted down. There was danger, he
said, of the whole trouble breaking out again, and if so, the sympathy
of the public would now be on the other side. Thinking more of the girl
I was in pursuit of than of anything else, and having in mind the
announcement of Mr. Leigh's losses and reported embarrassment, I
expressed myself hotly. If they struck again they deserved all they
got--they deserved to fail for following such leaders as Wringman and
refusing to listen to their friends.
"Oh, no, they are just ignorant, that is all--they don't know. Give them
time--give them time."
"Well, I am tired of it all."
"Tired! Oh! don't get tired. That's not the way to work. Stand fast. Go
and see John Marvel and get new inspiration from him. See how he works."
"Wolffert, I am in love," I said, suddenly. He smiled--as I remembered
afterward, sadly.
"Yes, you are." There was that in his tone which rather miffed me. I
thought he was in love, too; but not, like myself, desperately.
"You are not--and you don't know what it is. So, it is easy for you."
He turned on me almost savagely, with a flame in his eyes.
"Not--! I not! You don't dream what it is to be in love. You cannot. You
are incapable--incapable!" He clutched at his heart. The whole truth
swept over me like a flood.
"Wolffert! Why--? Why have you never--?" I could not go on. But he
understood me.
"Because I am a Jew!" His eyes burned with deep fires.
"A Jew! Well, suppose you are. She is not one to allow that----"
He wheeled on me.
"Do you think--? Do you imagine I mean--? I would not allow myself--I
could never--never allow myself--It is impossible--for me."
I gazed on him with amazement. He was transformed. The pride of race,
the agony and subdued fury of centuries, flamed in him. I saw for the
first time the spirit of the chosen people: Israel in bondage, yet
arisen, with power to call down thunders from Heaven. I stood
abashed--abashed at my selfish blindness through all my association with
him. How often I had heedlessly driven the iron into his soul. With my
arm over his shoulder I stammered something of my remorse, and he
suddenly seized my hand and wrung it in speechless friendship.
As we turned into a street not far from the Loewens', we found ahead of
us quite a gathering, and it was increasing momentarily. Blue-coated
police, grim-looking or anxious, were standing about in squads, and
surlier-looking men were assembling at the corners. It was a strike. I
was surprised. I even doubted if it could be that. But my doubt was soon
dispelled. At that moment a car came around a corner a few blocks away
and turned into the street toward us. There was a movement in a group
near me; a shout went up from one of them and in a second the street was
pandemonium. That dark throng through which we had passed poured in like
a torrent. A bomb exploded a half block away, throwing up dirt and
stones.
With a cry, "God of Israel!" Wolffert sprang forward; but I lost him in
the throng. I found myself borne toward the car like a chip on a fierce
flood. The next instant I was a part of the current, and was struggling
like a demon. On the platform were a brawny driver and two policemen.
The motorman I recognized as Otto. As I was borne near the car, I saw
that in it, among others, were an old man, a woman, and a child, and as
I reached the car I recognized--I know not how--all three. They were the
old Drummer, Eleanor Leigh, and the little girl, Janet McNeil. I thought
I caught the eye of the young lady, but it may have been fancy; for the
air was full of missiles, the glass was crashing and tingling; the sound
of the mob was deafening. At any rate I saw her plainly. She had
gathered up the scared child in her arms, and with white face, but
blazing eyes, was shielding her from the flying stones and glass.
I was one of the first men on the car, and made my way into it, throwing
men right and left as I entered it. I shall never forget the look that
came into her eyes as she saw me. She rose with a cry and, stretching
out her hands, pushed the child into my arms with a single word: "Save
her." It was like an elixir; it gave me ten times the strength I had
before. The car was blocked, and we descended from it--I in front
protecting her--and fought our way through the mob to the outskirts, the
old Drummer, a squad of policemen, and myself; I with the child by the
hand to keep her near the ground and less exposed, and the old Drummer
shielding us both and roaring like a lion. It was a warm ten minutes;
the air was black with stones and missiles. The crowd seemed to have
gone mad and were like ravening wolves. The presence of a woman and
child had no effect on them but to increase their fury. They were mad
with the insanity of mobbism. But at last we got through, though I was
torn and bleeding. They were after the motorman and conductor. The
latter had escaped into a shop and the door was shut; but the mob was
not to be balked. Doors and windows were smashed in like paper. The mob
poured in and rummaged everywhere for its victim, up-stairs and down,
like terriers in a cellar after a rat. Fortunately for him, he had
escaped out the back way. They looted the shop and then turned back to
search for another victim. As we were near old Loewen's house we took
the refugees there, and when they were in that place of safety, I
returned to the scene of conflict. I had caught sight of several faces
in the crowd that roused me beyond measure, and I went back to fight. If
I had had a pistol that day, I should certainly have committed murder. I
had seen Wringman covertly urging the mob on and Pushkin enjoying it.
Just as I stepped from the car with the child, trying to shield her and
Eleanor Leigh, and with the old Drummer bulky and raging at my side,
trying to shield us all and sputtering oaths in two languages, my eye
reached across the mob and I had caught sight of McSheen's and Pushkin's
heads above the crowd on the far edge of the mob where it was safe.
McSheen wore his impervious mask; the other's face was wicked with
satisfaction, and he was laughing. A sudden desire to kill sprang into
my heart. If I had not had my charges to guard, I should have made my
way to him then. I came back for him now.
When I arrived, the fight had somewhat changed. Shops were being looted,
wagons, trucks, and every sort of vehicle were being turned into the
street by drivers who sympathized with the strike, to impede the
restoration of order. The police, aroused at last and in deadly earnest,
had formed in order and, under their hammering, the mob was giving way.
Only at one point they were making a stand. It was the corner where
Pushkin had stood, and I made toward it. As I did so the crowd opened,
and a group stamped itself indelibly in my mind. In the front line of
the mob, Wolffert, tall and flaming, hatless, and with flying hair,
swinging arms, and wide-open mouth, by turns trying to pacify the wild
mob, by turns cursing and fighting a group of policemen--who, with
flying clubs and drawn pistols, were hammering them and driving them
slowly--was trying to make himself heard. Beyond these, away at the far
edge of the mob the face of Pushkin, his silk hat pulled over his eyes.
As I gazed at him, he became deadly pale, and then turned as if to get
away; but the crowd held him fast. I was making toward him, when a
figure taller than his shoved in between us, pushing his way toward him.
He was fighting for his life. His head was bare and his face was
bleeding. His back was to me; but I recognized the head and broad
shoulders of Otto. It was this sight that drove the blood from Pushkin's
face, and well it might; for the throng was being parted by the young
Swede as water is parted by a strong swimmer. There was a pistol shot,
then I saw the Swede's arm lifted with the lever in his hand, and the
next second Pushkin's head went down. The cry that went up and the
surging of the crowd told me what had happened, but I had no time to
act; for at this moment I saw a half-dozen men in the mob fall upon
Wolffert, who with bleeding face was still trying to hold them back, and
he disappeared in the rush. I shouted to some officers by me, "They are
killing a man there," and together we made our way through the crowd
toward the spot. It was as I supposed--the adventurer was down. The
young Swede had settled his account with him. He was unconscious, but he
was still breathing. Wolffert, too, was stretched on the ground,
battered almost beyond recognition. John Marvel, his own face bruised
and bleeding, was on his knees beside him, supporting his head, and the
police were beating the crowd back. As I drew near, Wolffert half rose.
"Don't beat them; they don't know." He sank back. The brawny young
Swede, with a pistol bullet through his clothes, was already on the
other side of the street, making his way out through the crowd.
Pushkin's and Wolffert's fall and the tremendous rush made by the police
caused the mob to give way finally, and they were driven from the spot,
leaving a half-dozen hatless and drunken leaders in the hands of the
police.
Pushkin was taken up and was carried to a hospital, and John Marvel
lifted Wolffert in his arms. Just as he was lifted, a stone struck me
on the head, and I went down and knew no more.
When I came to, I was in a hospital. John Marvel was sitting beside me,
his placid eyes looking down into mine with that mingled serenity and
kindness which gave such strength to others. I think they helped me to
live as they had helped so many other poor sufferers to die. I was
conscious only for a moment, and then went off into an illness which
lasted a long time, before I really knew anything. But I took him with
me into that misty border-land where I wandered so many weeks, before
returning to life, and when I emerged from it again, there he sat as
before, serene, confident, and inspiring. He wore a mourning band on his
sleeve.
"Where is Dix?" was the first thing I asked.
"He is all right--in good hands."
It was a long time before I could be talked to much; but when I was
strong enough, he told me many things that had taken place. The strike
was broken up. Its end was sad enough, as the end of all strikes is.
Wolffert was dead--killed in the final rush of the riot in which I was
hurt. And so perished all his high aims and inefficient, unselfish
methods. His father had come on and taken his body home: "A remarkable
old man," said John. "He was proud of Leo, but could not get over the
loss of the great merchant he would have been." Pushkin had recovered,
and had been discharged from the hospital, and had just married Collis
McSheen's daughter. "She would have him," said John. Wringman had
disappeared. On the collapse of the strike, it had been found that he
had sold out to Coll McSheen and the Argand companies, and furnished
them information. He had now gone away, Marvel did not know where.
Langton, when I saw him later, thought he had been afraid to stay longer
where so many men were who had lost their places through him.
"It is always the way--the innocent suffer, and the guilty escape," I
murmured.
I felt Marvel's hand gently placed over my lips.
"Inscrutable; but it must be right," he said: