Anne put aside the tiny white nightgown she was hemstitching and drew
her chair closer. "I should hope so. I'd hate to think you were just
gazing blankly. You're getting awfully quiet, Roger."
"Am I? I suppose I am. There's so little time to really think in the
day. It's so cluttered up doing--nothing."
"I thought Mr. Wainwright used to overwork you at first. It's about
time he did a little more himself." Anne watched Roger's face, with
something of the same tense interest with which one waits for a stage
curtain to roll back.
"Oh, he gives me enough to do. It's not that. It's the kind of thing."
"What's he want now?" Anne was going to say: "Another Christmas tree?"
but the subject had closed itself naturally on Christmas night and
neither had again referred to it.
"He wants to call a meeting of the strike leaders; the heads of
the other unions he's afraid are going out in sympathy--a bunch of
charity buttinskies, Rockefeller Foundation people and Russell Sage
investigators, and--some of his own stock-holders. The thing's to be a
cross between a directors' meeting and a church social. He's going to
have refreshments served--after a friendly, informal talk, served by
his private butler, brought down from the house for the occasion!"
Anne laughed. Roger smiled, and then laughed with her. "If it wasn't
pitiful, wicked in a way, it's so dense and stupid, it would be
a scream. Black Tom O'Connell, and the Reverend Kenneth Peabody
Smythe--being buttled with expensive sandwiches."
Now that he had really started to talk about it, Roger felt the
enthusiasm of communication sweep him. It was nice to talk again
like this to Anne. The habit had dropped out lately, ever since the
Christmas dinner.
"He's obsessed with the idea that if he can persuade Capital and Labor
to eat a sandwich together, all will be harmony and brotherly love."
"The men will swallow their claims with their sandwich, as it were?"
"Exactly. And his directors will swallow their just grievances at the
men's obstinacy, and everything will be exactly as it was before."
"Did you try to dissuade him?"
"No. It would do no good. He cannot or will not see the thing as an
indicator. To him, each strike is a separate act of obstinacy, or
anger, or a monetary demand on the part of the men. He concedes some to
be just and some unjust, but the just ones are getting fewer, rapidly
fewer. He sees the whole labor situation as a kind of rising shriek on
the part of the workers, higher and higher, like angry and perverse
children who have found a way to terrify their nurses. He's looked
the shrieking baby over and can find no pins in its clothing and so
he's going to give it a lollypop and tell it to be good. If it doesn't
obey--he'll set it down with a thump and leave it to itself."
Under the grotesque figure of his speech, Anne felt Roger's anger. He
now hated Hilary Wainwright with a personal bitterness Anne had not
believed in him. After a little, she asked quietly:
"When's this meeting coming off?"
"To-morrow night. The invitations went out days ago; off-hand,
'comradely' notes to the labor people; beseeching little appeals to the
Russell Sagers, et al. 'to help out'; I didn't see those to the company
directors; he managed them himself."
Again there was a short silence, filled to Anne with cold little puffs
of anxiety blowing from beyond the warm security of their pretty rooms.
"Can outsiders go, Roger? There wouldn't be any real objection, would
there?"
"Why, no. I don't see that there would. Why?"
"I'd like to go."
"Really?" Roger turned to her, his eyes full of a pleased surprise that
hurt Anne a little.
"Of course I would. It sounds interesting."
"Interesting? Yes, it will be interesting as a psychological problem--a
kind of clinic for studying the blind stupidity of Hilary Wainwright
and his kind. It may be rough, too. I wouldn't answer for Black Tom
O'Connell--if he comes."
"I guess it won't be so rough that I can't stand it--if you can," Anne
added in an emphasis that escaped Roger, visioning again the absurd
sandwich that was to unite Labor and Capital.
But the next evening, as she followed Roger into the already
well-filled room, Anne forgot her personal interest in the feel of
suppressed antagonism that filled the very air. Almost abnormally
sensitive to hidden currents, as Anne passed down the empty space so
clearly separating the two factions of the audience, she felt the
currents playing across her.
On the right, in little knots and groups about Hilary Wainwright's
desk, were the directors and their wives, the Russell Sagers, et al., a
few thin, rather pale young men and a woman with horn-rimmed glasses,
stringy hair and a note book. On the left, a fat man with a red face
and very black hair and two women, one scarcely more than a girl, with
bobbed chestnut curls, and great violet eyes, child-like eyes above
the scarlet lips of a woman.
As Roger led to seats just opposite this girl, Anne noticed that the
girl looked at them, and said something to the woman beside her, but
the latter did not answer, nor even turn to them. She was a squat,
heavily built woman, with a swarthy skin, and densely black, living
hair, without a thread of gray, although Anne judged her more than
forty.
She gripped Anne's attention and held it. She was so still. She looked
as if she could wait forever and, in the end, the thing she waited
would come. She was like the earth, silent, indifferent to all the
play of light and shadow in life. She lived for a purpose. Whatever it
was, Anne felt it like a thick, brown shell about her. Again the girl
with the bobbed hair spoke to her. This time she frowned and shrugged
aside the girl's remarks. It was like the motion of a tree disturbing
the poise of a bright insect lodged for a moment upon its leaves. The
girl laughed and the heavy woman lit a cigarette. She smoked in deep,
violent draws that obscured her face in a cloud of stinging blue smoke.
At the odor, a short, bald-headed man rose on the other side of the
room and opened a window. When he came back to his chair the woman
beside him bowed her thanks. She was a large, gray-haired woman,
conspicuous as the one bright spot amid the dark tailored suits of the
other women and the business clothes of the men. Her amber-colored
tunic, of soft silk, blended into the golden tint of her rounded,
unlined face. Her skirt of golden-brown broadcloth toned in perfect
harmony with her brown suede boots. When, through her gold lorgnette,
hung on an amber chain, her brown eyes smiled their thanks to the man
for his service, she seemed to come down from some height for the
special purpose. She was like a rich, perfectly-ripened apricot, hung
beyond reach. Next to her, on the left, the black-coated slimness of
the Reverend Kenneth Peabody Smythe stood out like an exclamation
point, calling attention to his presence in this extraordinary
gathering.
At his desk, Hilary Wainwright kept glancing anxiously from the door to
the group of men talking together in the third row. These men were all
beyond middle age, with well-brushed gray hair, white, well-kept hands
and tailored clothes. Two of them were lean, sharp-eyed men, their
bodies tightened like springs, perfect mechanisms for the gripping
and adjusting of any obstruction before them. The other was shorter,
with a heavy neck and predatory eyes, the cheap cartoonists' favorite
illustration of a capitalist.
Hilary Wainwright was just moving to join them, when the door opened
and a large, raw-boned man in an untidy overcoat entered hurriedly
and, without looking to the right or left, came straight to the seat
beside the bobbed-haired girl. His boots left a muddy trail across the
rug, and, as he shrugged himself out of his overcoat the ashes from
his cigar stub fell on the girl's lap. With a dainty flip of her white
fingers she brushed them aside, leaned close to the man, and whispered.
He nodded, and the girl patted his knee. With a tap of his gavel,
Hilary Wainwright called the meeting to order.
Under cover of the preliminary remarks on the present situation among
the longshoremen, Anne whispered to Roger:
"Who's that man?"
"Black Tom O'Connell. The idol of the laboring world."
"Who's that heavy woman this side?"
"That's Katya Orloff, the inevitable Russian Jew."
Anne looked beyond her to Black Tom. He, like Katya, was sitting
perfectly still, the unlit butt of the cigar hanging from his lips.
His long, thin face was badly shaven and grayish from overwork. His
worn clothes hung loosely on his large frame, bent and gnarled from a
childhood of work and the passions which Anne felt were always tearing
the man. Again and again, Anne tried to look away, to listen to the
smooth flow of Hilary Wainwright's studied periods, but her eyes always
came back to the still, slouching form next to the pretty girl. Their
physical proximity disturbed her. She felt an element in the girl
reaching to this man, scarred, untidy, old enough to be her father.
When the girl for the second time laid her soft, white hand on his
knee, Anne felt herself flush and looked quickly away to Hilary.
Whatever he had been saying, he had now reached the end of the first
period. With a distinct bracing of his shoulders, and a decided
hardening of his lips, he went on:
"And so it seemed the best thing for us all to get together and talk
the thing out frankly and honestly. The situation is serious and it
concerns us all, every one of us and the whole city," he added, to
impress the fact that it was not his peculiar position as main owner
in the sugar fleet, not the financial interest of the other keen
directors, that had brought them there, but their world interest in all
that touched humanity. "Until now, the strike has been fairly orderly,
but it will not continue so much longer. The city, the common people,
cannot be made to bear much longer the brunt of curtailed sugar supply,
or idle shipping. The boats have got to be run." He paused. Anne felt
Katya Orloff move for the first time, a slight movement toward them.
She turned slightly and saw that Katya was now looking with faint
amusement at Roger, the only one in the room listening intently to
Hilary.
The directors, bored by having to give up their evening to this
"hare-brained scheme of that idealist, Wainwright," but realizing the
importance of having every morning paper blazon the fact that they
had met with Labor and tried to reach a sane compromise, sat back in
noncommittal placidity. The Reverend Kenneth Peabody Smythe looked
worried, and the lady in apricot disgusted. The thin woman with the
notebook chewed her pencil while studying the severely plain and
expensive suit of the woman in front of her. It was impossible to tell
whether Black Tom even knew where he was, and the bobbed-haired girl
toyed with a string of jade beads and yawned. Anne moved a little and
so obstructed the view of the squat woman. Hilary continued:
"There was, of course, no written and official agreement that the men
would not strike, but it was understood, by the law of good will and
decency. The world has been through a period of bitter suffering and
now it is the duty of every one, from the top to the bottom, to pull
and pull together. That it is no longer possible to pay the war time
wage, when labor is scarce, is not the fault of any one individual. We,
those who happen to be the hirers of labor, regret this as much as any
one. The men ought to understand. They refuse to do so. Every method
has been tried, short--of strike-breakers." Hilary paused to let the
significance sink in. "But the country is full of men eager to work,
desperate for work, with a right to work. The mayor understands the
situation. He will protect the right of these men to sell their labor.
He----"
Black Tom was on his feet, his long, narrow head thrust forward, the
stinking ash of his cigar falling again on the bobbed-haired girl,
who again brushed it off with an exquisitely dainty fillip of a white
finger.
"He will, will he? How long does he think he's going to run this town?"
Hilary Wainwright tapped with his gavel, a little sound like a
woodpecker. Every one but Katya was looking at Tom now.
"Just--about--as--long as it will take to bring in those
strike-breakers." Black Tom's stained hand moved in a quick, drawing
motion, gathering the strike-breakers to him. "Just that long and no
longer. Bring them on," he commanded. "You can't bring them too soon.
Bring them, dozens, hundreds, thousands--you will need them all."
The heavy hands moved now in a low, undulating wave, the wave of
advancing thousands. Anne felt Roger rigid beside her and her own heart
was beating thickly. The force of the man was terrific. It rayed from
his gaunt body, burned in his deep-set, brown eyes. "Bring them, I tell
you, bring them, the poor, starving victims you'll fool with higher
wages than you're paying the present ones; hand out the promises you're
laughing in your sleeves to see them believe. But--they won't believe
them long. They'll take the jobs because they have to, with shame in
their hearts, the decent ones, and in the end they'll come to us." He
paused, and a smile, so sad, so understanding, so full of pity lit his
face that Anne saw Roger's hands grip the chair arms.
Instantly Hilary Wainwright seized the opening. "That's the spirit
that's doing so much harm. We came here to-night, each to take
advantage of the other's greater knowledge along certain lines, but we
can get nowhere unless----"
"Unless liars like you get out," Black Tom thundered, filling the room
with the fury of his anger, although he scarcely raised his voice. It
was the warning rumble of thunder, distant, rolling nearer. "You've
held the power, until the best of you have forgotten that God Almighty
didn't create the world for you. But he didn't and He's getting sick
of seeing the mess you've made of it. Not much longer, not so very
long now." In the pleasantly warmed air before him he seemed to see a
vision, a vision that suddenly quelled his anger. He smiled a slow,
understanding smile of love and forgiveness. "You can't do it; why do
you try? It's not you against us; can't you see that? It's the new
against the old, the worn out, the rotten. It's not this strike, or any
one strike; it's men, men beating their way up out of the dark below.
They're coming, coming." His head, bent now, seemed to hear them in
the stillness that filled the room. "Coming slowly, with bleeding feet,
the way your God marched on to Calvary, but--nothing will stop them.
Nothing." And then he laughed, so genuinely amused, that the terrible
silence shattered in little clicks of disgust. "Strike-breakers! Good
God, a bunch of starving boobs--to hold back the Social Revolution!"
The apricot-colored woman was the first to move. With a decisive
gesture she snapped her gold lorgnette and motioned the bald-headed man
to bring her cape. At his desk, Hilary Wainwright looked helplessly
about for a moment, then rose and walked down to the group of directors.
Katya Orloff drew on the jacket she had only partly loosed. The pretty
girl was already pulling a grass-green tam over the chestnut curls.
"Come on, Tom. Pete and Ikey are having a blowout. Let's beat it.
There's lots of time."
The man did not seem to hear, but he followed her. Too impatient for
the elevator, whose driver, expecting a protracted "row," had gone into
the pool parlor in the next basement, they ran down the stairs. Before
they turned the first flight, Anne heard the girl laughing gayly.
Katya stepped up to Roger with a look that Anne resented personally.
It was the smile of an older person to a small boy, not a precocious
annoying small boy, but the kind of boy one refers to as "an
exceedingly bright little chap."
"Your meeting was not a success." She spoke with a soft burr,
impossible to reproduce, a thick, throaty tone with an odor of
foreignness in it.
"No," Roger answered shortly. "It wasn't."
She seemed to be going to say something else, changed her mind and
clumped off alone.
The elevator man had come back to his post. In a few moments the room
was empty of all save Roger and Anne.
"I suppose you have to wait," Anne began, when a long, pale face,
apparently disconnected from any body, appeared at the door of Hilary's
private office.
"No need, Williams; they're gone."
"Gone, sir!"
"Gone. Slipped. Vamoosed," Roger added in an urge to shock the frozen
composure of that face. "Sandwiches all wasted unless--you eat them
yourself."
The face retreated in shocked but respectful silence. Roger laughed and
Hilary Wainwright entered. There was a short, awkward silence, and then
Hilary said hurriedly, as if, in the interval of his absence, he had
accumulated unforeseen but important duties:
"Would you mind locking up, Barton?" He took some papers from his desk,
his raincoat and umbrella, and, with a gracious smile to Anne, moved to
the door. "See you in the morning, Roger," he threw back and was gone.
Williams had already disappeared. The untouched sandwiches Roger put
into a box, switched off the lights and locked the doors. When he
presented the astounded elevator boy with at least a hundred very
delicately cut sandwiches, the boy grinned; but Roger did not smile in
return.
"Let's walk," Anne suggested.
"Do you feel like it? I'd like to."
They went on in silence.
"Who's that pretty girl with the bobbed hair that went out with Black
Tom?"
"Merle something. I don't know her last name. She lives with Black Tom."
Anne stopped. "Lives with him! Do you mean--that--that they live
together?"
"Yes. He has a wife somewhere who won't divorce him. He hasn't even
seen her for years, I believe. But I don't know much about it."
Anne shuddered. "She's so young and clean and pretty. He's all worn and
old enough to be her father."