The strike had been carried on with comparatively little disorder.
In some cities there had been rioting, but half-hearted and
easily controlled. Almost without exception it was the foreign and
unassimilated element that broke the peace. Alien women spat on the
state police, and flung stones at them. Here and there property
was destroyed. A few bomb outrages filled the newspapers with great
scare-heads, and sent troops and a small army of secret service men here
and there.
In the American Federation of Labor a stocky little man grimly fought to
oppose the Radical element, which was slowly gaining ground, and at the
same time to retain his leadership. The great steel companies, united
at last by a common danger and a common fate if they yielded, stood
doggedly and courageously together, waiting for a return of sanity to
the world. The world seemed to have gone mad. Everywhere in the country
production was reduced by the cessation of labor, and as a result the
cost of living was mounting.
And every strike lost in the end. Labor had yet to learn that to cease
to labor may express a grievance, but that in itself it righted no
wrongs. Rather, it turned that great weapon, public opinion, without
which no movement may succeed, against it. And that to stand behind
the country in war was not enough. It must stand behind the country in
peace.
It had to learn, too, that a chain is only as strong as its weakest
link. The weak link in the labor chain was its Radical element. Rioters
were arrested with union cards in their pockets. In vain the unions
protested their lack of sympathy with the unruly element. The vast
respectable family of union labor found itself accused of the sins of
the minority, and lost standing thereby.
At Friendship the unruly element was very strong. For a time it held its
meetings in a hall. When that was closed it resorted to the open air.
On the fifteenth of July it held an incendiary meeting on the unused
polo field, and the next day awakened to the sound of hammers, and
to find a high wooden fence, reenforced with barbed wire, being built
around the field, with the state police on guard over the carpenters. In
a few days the fence was finished, only to be partly demolished the next
night, secretly and noiselessly. But no further attempts were made to
hold meetings there. It was rumored that meetings were being secretly
held in the woods near the town, but the rendezvous was not located.
On the restored fence around the polo grounds a Red flag was found one
morning, and two nights later the guard at the padlocked gate was shot
through the heart, from ambush.
Then, about the first of August, out of a clear sky, sporadic riotings
began to occur. They seemed to originate without cause, and to end as
suddenly as they began. Usually they were in the outlying districts,
but one or two took place in the city itself. The rioters were not
all foreign strikers from the mills. They were garment workers, hotel
waiters, a rabble of the discontented from all trades. The riots were to
no end, apparently. They began with a chance word, fought their furious
way for an hour or so, and ended, leaving a trail of broken heads and
torn clothing behind them.
On toward the end of July one such disturbance grew to considerable
size. The police were badly outnumbered, and a surprising majority of
the rioters were armed, with revolvers, with wooden bludgeons, lengths
of pipe and short, wicked iron bars. Things were rather desperate until
the police found themselves suddenly and mysteriously reenforced by
a cool-headed number of citizens, led by a tall thin man who limped
slightly, and who disposed his heterogeneous support with a few words
and considerable skill.
The same thin young man, stopping later in an alley way to investigate
an arm badly bruised by an iron bar, overheard a conversation between
two roundsmen, met under a lamppost after the battle, for comfort and a
little conversation.
“Can you beat that, Henry?” said one. “Where the hell'd they come from?”
“Search me,” said Henry. “D'you see the skinny fellow? Limped, too.
D'you notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn't forgotten how
to fight, I'll tell the world.”
The outbreaks puzzled the leaders of the Vigilance Committee. Willy
Cameron was inclined to regard them as without direction or intention,
purely as manifestations of hate, and as such contrary to the plans of
their leaders. And Mr. Hendricks, nursing a black eye at home after the
recent outburst, sized up the situation shrewdly.
“You can boil a kettle too hard,” he said, “and then the lid pops off.
Doyle and that outfit of his have been burning the fire a little high,
that's all. They'll quit now, because they want to get us off guard
later. You and your committee can take a vacation, unless you can set
them to electioneering for me. They've had enough for a while, the
devils. They'll wait now for Akers to get in and make things easy for
them. Mind my words, boy. That's the game.”
And the game it seemed to be. Small violations of order still occurred,
but no big ones. To the headquarters in the Denslow Bank came an
increasing volume of information, to be duly docketed and filed. Some of
it was valueless. Now and then there came in something worth following
up. Thus one night Pink and a picked band, following a vague clew, went
in automobiles to the state borderline, and held up and captured two
trucks loaded with whiskey and destined for Friendship and Baxter. He
reported to Willy Cameron late that night.
“Smashed it all up and spilled it in the road,” he said. “Hurt like
sin to do it, though. Felt like the fellow who shot the last passenger
pigeon.”
But if the situation in the city was that of armed neutrality, in the
Boyd house things were rapidly approaching a climax, and that through
Dan. He was on edge, constantly to be placated and watched. The strike
was on his nerves; he felt his position keenly, resented Willy Cameron
supporting the family, and had developed a curious jealousy of his
mother's affection for him.
Toward Edith his suspicions had now become certainty, and an open break
came on an evening when she said that she felt able to go to work again.
They were at the table, and Ellen was moving to and from the kitchen,
carrying in the meal. Her utmost thrift could not make it other than
scanty, and finally Dan pushed his plate away.
“Going back to work, are you?” he sneered. “And how long do you think
you'll be able to work?”
“You keep quiet,” Edith flared at him. “I'm going to work. That's all
you need to know. I can't sit here and let a man who doesn't belong
to us provide every bite we eat, if you can.” Willy Cameron got up and
closed the door, for Mrs. Boyd an uncanny ability to hear much that went
on below.
“Now,” he said when he came back, “we might as well have this out. Dan
has a right to be told, Edith, and he can help us plan something.” He
turned to Dan. “It must be kept from your mother, Dan.”
“Plan something!” Dan snarled. “I know what to plan, all right. I'll
find the--” he broke into foul, furious language, but suddenly Willy
Cameron rose, and there was something threatening in his eyes.
“I know who it is,” Dan said, more quietly, “and he's got to marry her,
or I'll kill him.”
“You know, do you? Well, you don't,” Edith said, “and I won't marry him
anyhow.”
“You will marry him. Do you think I'm going to see mother disgraced,
sick as she is, and let you get away with it? Where does Akers live? You
know, don't you? You've been there, haven't you?”
All Edith's caution was forgotten in her shame and anger.
“Yes, I know,” she said, hysterically, “but I won't tell you. And I
won't marry him. I hate him. If you go to him he'll beat you to death.”
Suddenly the horrible picture of Dan in Akers' brutal hands overwhelmed
her. “Dan, you won't go?” she begged. “He'll kill you.”
“A lot you'd care,” he said, coldly. “As if we didn't have enough
already! As if you couldn't have married Joe Wilkinson, next door, and
been a decent woman. And instead, you're a--”
“Be quiet, Dan,” Willy Cameron interrupted him. “That sort of talk
doesn't help any. Edith is right. If you go to Akers there will be a
fight. And that's no way to protect her.”
“God!” Dan muttered. “With all the men in the world, to choose that
rotten anarchist!”
It was sordid, terribly tragic, the three of them sitting there in the
badly lighted little room around the disordered table, with Ellen grimly
listening in the doorway, and the odors of cooking still heavy in
the air. Edith sat there, her hands on the table, staring ahead, and
recounted her wrongs. She had never had a chance. Home had always been a
place to get away from. Nobody had cared what became of her. And hadn't
she tried to get out of the way? Only they all did their best to make
her live. She wished she had died.
Dan, huddled low in his chair, his legs sprawling, stared at nothing
with hopeless eyes.
Afterwards Willy Cameron could remember nothing of the scene in detail.
He remembered its setting, but of all the argument and quarreling only
one thing stood out distinctly, and that was Edith's acceptance of Dan's
accusation. It was Akers, then. And Lily Cardew was going to marry him.
Was in love with him.
“Does he know how things are?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Does he offer to do anything?”
“Him? He does not. And don't you go to him and try to get him to marry
me. I tell you I'd die first.”
He left them there, sitting in the half light, and going out into the
hall picked up his hat. Mrs. Boyd heard him and called to him, and
before he went out he ran upstairs to her room. It seemed to him, as he
bent over her, that her lips were bluer than ever, her breath a little
shallower and more difficult. Her untouched supper tray was beside her.
“I wasn't hungry,” she explained. “Seems to me, Willy, if you'd let
me go downstairs so I could get some of my own cooking I'd eat better.
Ellen's all right, but I kind o' crave sweet stuff, and she don't like
making desserts.”
“You'll be down before long,” he assured her. “And making me pies.
Remember those pies you used to bake?”
“You always were a great one for my pies,” she said, complacently.
He kissed her when he left. He had always marveled at the strange lack
of demonstrativeness in the household, and he knew that she valued his
small tendernesses.
“Now remember,” he said, “light out at ten o'clock, and no going
downstairs in the middle of the night because you smell smoke. When you
do, it's my pipe.”
“I don't think you hardly ever go to bed, Willy.”
“Me? Get too much sleep. I'm getting fat with it.”
The stale little joke was never stale with her. He left her smiling, and
went down the stairs and out into the street.
He had no plan in his mind except to see Louis Akers, and to find out
from him if he could what truth there was in Edith Boyd's accusation.
He believed Edith, but he must have absolute certainty before he did
anything. Girls in trouble sometimes shielded men. If he could get the
facts from Louis Akers--but he had no idea of what he would do then. He
couldn't very well tell Lily, but her people might do something. Or Mrs.
Doyle.
He knew Lily well enough to know that she would far rather die than
marry Akers, under the circumstances. That her failure to marry Louis
Akers would mean anything as to his own relationship with her he never
even considered. All that had been settled long ago, when she said she
did not love him.
At the Benedict he found that his man had not come home, and for an hour
or two he walked the streets. The city seemed less majestic to him than
usual; its quiet by-streets were lined with homes, it is true, but those
very streets hid also vice and degradation, and ugly passions. They
sheltered, but also they concealed.
At eleven o'clock he went back to the Benedict, and was told that Mr.
Akers had come in.
It was Akers himself who opened the door. Because the night was hot he
had shed coat and shirt, and his fine torso, bare to the shoulders and
at the neck, gleamed in the electric light. Willy Cameron had not seen
him since those spring days when he had made his casual, bold-eyed
visits to Edith at the pharmacy, and he had a swift insight into the
power this man must have over women. He himself was tall; but Akers was
taller, fully muscled, his head strongly set on a neck like a column.
But he surmised that the man was soft, out of condition. And he had lost
the first elasticity of youth.
Akers' expression had changed from one of annoyance to watchfulness when
he opened the door.
“Well!” he said. “Making a late call, aren't you?”
“What I had to say wouldn't wait.”
Akers had, rather unwillingly, thrown the door wide, and he went in.
The room was very hot, for a small fire, littered as to its edges with
papers, burned in the grate. Although he knew that Akers had guessed the
meaning of his visit at once and was on guard, there was a moment or two
when each sparred for an opening.
“Sit down. Have a cigarette?”
“No, thanks.” He remained standing.
“Or a high-ball? I still have some fairly good whiskey.”
“No. I came to ask you a question, Mr. Akers.”
“Well, answering questions is one of the best little things I do.”
“You know about Edith Boyd's condition. She says you are responsible. Is
that true?”
Louis Akers was not unprepared. Sooner or later he had known that Edith
would tell. But what he had not counted on was that she would tell
any one who knew Lily. He had felt that her leaving the pharmacy had
eliminated that chance. “What do you mean, her condition?”
“You know. She says she has told you.”
“You're pretty thick with her yourself, aren't you?”
“I happen to live at the Boyd house.”
He was keeping himself well under control, but Akers saw his hand
clench, and resorted to other tactics. He was not angry himself, but he
was wary now; he considered that life was unnecessarily complicated, and
that he had a distinct grievance.
“I have asked you a question, Mr. Akers.”
“You don't expect me to answer it, do you?”
“I do.”
“If you have come here to talk to me about marrying her--”
“She won't marry you,” Willy Cameron said steadily. “That's not the
point I want your own acknowledgment of responsibility, that's all.”
Akers was puzzled, suspicious, and yet relieved. He lighted a cigarette
and over the match stared at the other man's quiet face.
“No!” he said suddenly. “I'm damned if I'll take the responsibility. She
knew her way around long before I ever saw her. Ask her. She can't lie
about it. I can produce other men to prove what I say. I played around
with her, but I don't know whose child that is, and I don't believe she
does.”
“I think you are lying.”
“All right. But I can produce the goods.”
Willy Cameron went very pale. His hands were clenched again, and Akers
eyed him warily.
“None of that,” he cautioned. “I don't know what interest you've got in
this, and I don't give a God-damn. But you'd better not try any funny
business with me.”
Willy Cameron smiled. Much the sort of smile he had worn during the
rioting.
“I don't like to soil my hands on you,” he said, “but I don't mind
telling you that any man who ruins a girl's life and then tries to get
out of it by defaming her, is a skunk.”
Akers lunged at him.
Some time later Mr. William Wallace Cameron descended to the street.
He wore his coat collar turned up to conceal the absence of certain
articles of wearing apparel which he had mysteriously lost. And he wore,
too, a somewhat distorted, grim and entirely complacent smile.