The newspaper man told the story apropos of nothing at all. There was a
pause in the talk among the well-dressed dinner guests. A very
satisfied-looking man said:
"Well, thank God, this radical excitement is over."
Every one agreed it was fortunate and the newspaper man, an insufferably
garrulous person, interjected: "That reminds me of Bill Haywood."
"Oh, yes," said the hostess, "he was the leader of all that terrible
thing, wasn't he?"
"He was," said the newspaper man. "I knew him fairly well. I covered the
I.W.W. trial in Judge Landis' court, where he and a hundred or so others
were sent to prison."
"What was the charge against them?" inquired the satisfied one.
"I forget," said the newspaper man, "but I remember Haywood. The trial, of
course, had something to do with the war. The war was going on then, you
remember."
"Oh, yes, indeed," exclaimed the hostess. "It will take a long time to
forget the war." And her eyes brightened.
* * * * *
"You were going to tell us about the I.W.W. trial," pursued the hostess a
few minutes later.
"Oh, there's nothing much about that," said the newspaper man. "I was
principally interested in Bill Haywood for a moment. You know they sent
him to jail for twenty years or so. Anyway, that was his sentence."
"The scoundrel ran away," said the very satisfied one. "Funny they should
let a man as unprincipled and dangerous as Haywood slip through their
hands after sending him to jail."
"Yes, they let him escape to Russia, of all places," declared the hostess
with indignation. "Where he could do the most harm. Oh, the government is
so stupid at times it simply drives one furious. Or makes you laugh.
Doesn't it?"
"Yes, he skipped his bond or something," said the newspaper man, "and
became an exile."
The satisfied one snorted.
"Exile!" he derided. "You don't call a man an exile who runs away from a
country he has always despised and fought against?"
"The last time I saw him," went on the newspaper man, as if he were
unruffled, "was about four or five days before he disappeared. I was
surprised to see him. I thought he was serving his time in jail. I hadn't
been following the ins and outs and I wasn't aware he had got appeals and
things and was still at large."
"Yes," said the satisfied one, "that's the trouble with this country. Too
lenient toward these scoundrels. As if they were entitled to--"
"Justice," murmured the newspaper man. "Quite so. Our enemies are not
entitled to justice. It is one of my oldest notions."
"But tell us about what this Haywood said," pursued the hostess. "It must
have been funny meeting him."
"It was," said the newspaper man. "It was at the Columbia theater between
acts in the evening. I had gone to see a burlesque show there. And between
acts I was on the mezzanine floor. I went out to get a glass of water.
"As I was coming back whom do I see leaning against the railing but old
Bill Haywood. I hadn't seen him for about two years, I guess. But he
hadn't changed an iota. The same crooked-lipped smile. And his one eye
staring ahead of him with a mildly amused light in it. A rather striking
person was Bill. I suppose it was because he always seemed so calm
outside.
"He remembered me and when I said hello to him he called me by name and I
walked to his side. I started talking and said: 'Well, what are you doing
here? I thought you were serving time in six jails.'
"'Not yet,' said Haywood, 'but in a few days. The sentence starts next
week.'
"'Twenty years?'
"'Oh, something like that.'
* * * * *
"Well," said the newspaper man, "I suddenly remembered that he was in a
theater and I got kind of curious. I asked what he was doing in the
theater and he looked at me and grinned.
"'I'm all in," he said. 'Been going the pace for about a month now. Out
every night. Taking in all the glad spots and high spots.'
"This was so curious coming from Big Bill that I looked surprised. And he
went on talking. Yes, sir, this Big Bill Haywood, the terror of organized
society, was saying goodbye to his native land as if he were a sentimental
playboy. He wasn't going to jail because by that time he had all his plans
matured for his escape to Russia.
"But he knew he was going to leave the country and perhaps never come back
again. So he was making the rounds.
"'I've been to almost every show in town,' he went on talking, 'all the
musical comedies, all the dramas, all the west side melodramas. I've been
to almost all the cafés, the swell ones with the monkey-suit waiters and
the old ones I've known myself for years. I drew up a list of all these
places in town about a month ago and I've been following a schedule ever
since.'
* * * * *
"I asked him," said the newspaper man, "if he liked the plays he'd seen.
Bill grinned at that.
"'It ain't that,' said Bill. 'No, it ain't that. It's only seeing them.
You know, there's nothing like these kind of things anywhere else in the
world.'
"And then the theater got dark and we said good-bye casually and went to
our different seats. I didn't see Haywood again. About a week or so later
I read the headline that he had fled the country. Nobody knew where he
was, but people suspected. And then two weeks after that there was the
story that he had reached Russia and was in Moscow.
"Well, when I read that," said the newspaper man, "I remembered all of a
sudden how he had stood leaning against the railing at the Columbia
theater saying good-bye to something. Making the rounds for a month saying
good-bye in his own way to all the places he would never see again. Kind
of odd, I thought, for Bill Haywood to do that. That isn't the way
Nietzsche would have written a radical. But Dickens might have written it
that way, like Bill.
"That's why whenever I see his name in print now," pursued the newspaper
man, "I always think of the burlesque chorus on the stage kicking their
legs and yodeling jazzily and Big Bill Haywood staring with his one eye,
saying good-bye with his one eye.
"Tell me he's not an exile!" laughed the newspaper man suddenly.