For some days--just how many I don't remember--I had been in the
condition which often follows sudden illness, when the mind is groping
about to connect things one with another, and to adjust relative values.
But I was not delirious. I want to state that distinctly, because when,
like a fool, I told the stripling hospital doctor what I am now about to
relate, he smiled in sickly imitation of the veteran practitioner, and
soothingly patted my counterpane. It makes me wild, even now, to recall
that superior youth pretending to humour me--a grown man with a clear
head and more experience than will be his in many a long year. The
nurses are all right--God bless them, I say--but, good Lord, what do the
sick in the hospitals not suffer from the tactless wisdom of the embryo
physicians!
However, that's neither here nor there, so I simply repeat I never was
delirious, and when I say I saw these things, I know what I am talking
about.
I lay perfectly still because I was tired. I don't remember ever to have
been so tired before or since.--Occasionally I dozed, but for the most
part I gazed steadily, hour after hour, at the brass setting of the
push-bell in the wall, too weary even to avert my gaze. I knew the room
was a ward of some hospital, but I was too indifferent to ask which one.
I could see the nurses passing back and forth. I felt one of them
resettle my pillow, which allowed me to observe a screen placed around
the adjoining bed. I knew what that meant. It was not cheerful, so I
turned again to the brass disk and watched it in sunlight, shadow,
twilight and darkness.
I was conscious too of all the different sounds about me--the stopping
and starting of the elevator--the sliding and locking of its iron
door--the rolling of the rubber-tire trucks about the halls--the
creaking of a bed--the tinkle of a glass--the rattle and clatter of
vehicles and horses in the street--even the peculiar rumble, rumble,
rumble of the cart that passed the hospital and which I took to
following through street after street, twisting and turning with it past
towering tenements and squatting rookeries, plodding along under the
broken roofs of the hissing elevated roads and over the singing trenches
of the cables--through wide avenues and narrow alleys, until I found
myself fairly launched into the sea of faces which spread out before me.
What a crowd that was! It is impossible to imagine such a scene. All the
descriptions they've written fail to picture it, for the flaring lights
with their play of shadows changed it every instant, darkening one
group, illuminating another, running up and down lines of faces,
flashing some individual into prominence for an instant, blotting him
into the surging mass the next. And then the hum and mutter, rising to a
babel of voices,--swelling into a shout, bursting with the shock of a
world-tongued roar ending in a single piercing shriek, and the hush--the
awful hush as Schrieber spoke his wondrous words--they're all part of
this tableau utterly beyond the power of pen or brush.
I stood there pinioned and upheld by the press about me which silently
surged and swung with the motion of some sluggish sea. I felt the human
steam hot upon my face--I breathed the fearful reek of that matted
throng, but not for my life would I have missed one word of that which
hushed those thousands. Pale and impassive I could see Sandy as he stood
beside Schrieber on the tail-board of the cart. Once I thought he
recognised me, but wedged in I could not signal, and the words I drank
in held me speechless. What words!--If I could only remember them! But
I cannot--and all the papers lie.
I heard them above the roar of the maddened crowd as it parted behind
me, crushing some and trampling others under foot in its wild stampede.
I saw the rush of uniformed men clearing the triangle back of Cooper
Union and was hurled with the throng to Third Avenue. Then I heard
Schrieber calling on us to form a procession and march to the Mayor's
house with our petition--heard him tell the Chief of Police that all
should be orderly--heard the official warn the people not to cross
Third Avenue at the peril of their lives.--I saw the dead-line formed
and felt the onward surge of the crowd as it swept the thin sentry-line
away and moved toward Broadway. I saw the glitter of levelled rifles as
we neared the Cox statue, felt the mass hesitate and recoil. Then from
out the ranks I saw Schrieber and Sandy emerge and start to cross the
open space alone. I caught the sharp summons to halt, and even as I
leaped toward them heard the crash of the volley before which they
staggered and fell.
"Sandy!" I shrieked....
... "Sandy. Yes--that's the name.--Who said that?--Sandy McWhiffle
and the fellow Schrieber--they're under arrest, you know, Mr.
Superintendent,--and the Inspector orders me to take their
statements,--me and my side partner here."
A strange voice was speaking quite near me.
"Well, you can't do it, Officer. Neither patient can be seen to-night."
Was that Waldron's voice?
"Can't do it? What's that mean? Me tell the Old Man that? Step one side
please!--I guess you don't know who I'm from!"
"Then you guess wrong, my man. They're your prisoners, but they're my
patients, and, by God Almighty, so long as they are, it makes no
difference whom you come from!"
I raised myself on my elbow and gazed at the speaker. Yes, there was
Waldron. A nurse stepped up to him and whispered in his ear. He turned
quickly on his heel.
"Officer, tell the Inspector you came too late," he said.
I must have called out, for I remember the orderly hushed me, whispering
that it was "nothing but a couple of rioting strikers, who'd just died
of their wounds--which ought to stop such folly and teach the other
fools a lesson."
But I made no answer, recollecting something about "wise folly" and
"foolish wisdom." Then too I was wondering, quite as calmly as I am now,
just how high and strong those embankments are which a restless, rising
tide is ever lapping--lapping.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors;
otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's
words and intent.