SUCH advantage as the bee may boast over the butterfly is proverbially
supposed to inhere in its industrious habits. But Miss Marcia Ames,
now adopting the schedule of the bee at its busiest, found her earlier
butterfly proclivities of advantage in that they had put her in touch
with certain flowers of Fenchester’s social world with which the
harder-worked honey-collector might not have been so familiar. Visiting
these upon her proselytizing errand, this enterprising flitter, still
trailing clouds of glory from her butterflyhood, left behind her the
fructifying pollen of the Great Idea. In one respect--to carry the
entomological metaphor a step farther--she was like a moth rather than
either the butterfly or the bee, since her good works, to be effective,
must needs be carried on in the dusk of a semi-secrecy.
Behold our bee, now, hovering about the garden of that ancient but still
lively wasp, Madam Dorothea Taylor, until bidden to alight and state
her errand, whereof the venerable one, having already received some hint
from her friend, Letitia Pritchard, is alertly suspicious. Accepting the
invitation, the visiting bee leads up diplomatically to the first point
of risk, the name of Jeremy Robson.
“A slanderer!” rasps the wasp. “A character-robber. A rag-tag and
bob-tail cheap-and-nasty politician!”
The bee goes on with her musical, conciliatory, and soothing song, and
presently mentions The Guardian.
“Don’t name the rag to me!” blares the enraged wasp. “A filthy sheet!
The poison of asps! A mud-slinger! A tool of that torch-and-scaffold,
anarchistic harlequin, Martin Embree.”
“Have you read it lately?” queries the bee. “God forbid! I would n’t
endure a copy in the house.”
“How fortunate,” hums the bee sweetly, “that I brought only small
portions of one or two copies.”
Cleverly stimulating the other’s curiosity, our cunning bee succeeds
in persuading her to look at the clipping wherein Martin Embree,
Emil Bausch, and the Kaiser stand forth wreathed in the olive of a
mock-pacifism. Now is the wasp’s angry voice hushed, as she peruses this
and follows it with the now famous “hyphen” editorial, and the political
quittance of Martin Embree.
“He appears to have lost none of his venom,” observes the reader,
“though he is now turning it against his own kind.”
“They are not his own kind!” The bee for the moment forgets that she
is committed to the soft footing of diplomacy. “I will not hear it said
that they are his own kind! We are his own kind: we Americans!”
“Hoity-toity and here’s a to-do!” cries the aged wasp. “Are we, indeed?
Not I, you minx! That gullible old fool, Selden Dana, has been preaching
from the same text. He wheedled me into withdrawing my libel suit
against the young backbiter. Why I was silly enough to do so, _I_ don’t
know. Now, what are you asking me to do?”
“Help,” answers the visiting bee, and sets forth a general outline of
her plan.
“Boycott,” observes the shrewd old wasp, after turning it over in her
mind.
“Oh, not in the least!” disclaims the bee. “That would be illegal.”
“Pooh! Who cares for laws! Boycott it is, against any merchant who won’t
support The Guardian. Is n’t it?”
“It might appear--”
“Appear! Don’t hem-and-haw with me, Miss Pert. I can hire Dana to do
that. You’re asking the women of this city to boycott the stores that
boycott The Guardian.”
“Dear me, no!” returns the bee demurely. “We are only suggesting a
practical method of showing appreciation of Mr. Rob--of The Guardian’s
patriotic course. And if you will join our little association and bring
your Red Cross work down with you for a few minutes each morning, that
is all we ask of you.”
“Of me! There’s the point. _Me!_ I’ve been libeled and slandered and
traduced and held up to public scorn,” sizzles the wasp (who had, since
the withdrawal of the suit, enjoyed one last reading of Judge Dana’s
comprehensive complaint with stimulating influence upon her style), “and
now you have the assurance to ask me to rush to the aid of this reckless
young muck-raker. It’s absurd! It’s outrageous! It’s an impudence! It’s
an imposition! It’s--it’s--I’ll do it.”
“I knew you would,” softly says the bee (who had n’t known anything of
the sort, and has, indeed, dreaded this visit above all others). “I do
not think you will ever be sorry.”
“I hope _you_ won’t,” retorts the wasp vigorously and significantly.
“That’s a dangerous character, that young Robson. Have a care of him!”
Having made captive her most difficult subject, the missionary bee now
descends upon one hardly less difficult, Mrs. Vemam Merserole,
wife (and, if rumor be correct, head of the house) of the
“nickel-in-the-slot” corner. Mrs. Merserole, looking meek, according to
her practice, but stubborn, according to her character, harks back to
past injuries, and talks darkly of defamers of character as one might
say “persecutors of the saints.”
“That was before we were at war, Mrs. Merserole,” her caller reminds
her.
Mrs. Merserole looks up quickly from her clasped hands. “You think that
to-day Mr. Robson would not make an unprincipled attack upon--upon a
clergyman who did nothing more than his duty?”
Diplomatic though her errand be, Marcia will not pass this challenge to
her truthfulness. “I do not say that. Nor do I admit that what he wrote
was unprincipled. He wrote what he believed. He would do that again
to-morrow. But I do know that he is a broader and more charitable man
than he was then.”
“War does not change men’s characters, Miss Ames,” says the rector’s
wife austerely.
“Then God help the men!” bursts out Marcia. “And God help the country!”
“Why, my dear!” says the older woman, shaken by the girl’s vehemence.
“You think it does? Perhaps you’re right. Yes; I think you’re right. But
Mr. Robson--”
“Mrs. Merserole,” breaks in Marcia with apparent irrelevance, “I have
heard that your boy picked out the aviation service because it is the
most dangerous, and that you told him that he had done what you would
choose him to do.”
The other does not reply. But her lips quiver, and her tightly clasped
fingers press in on each other. Marcia lays her warm, strong little hand
over them.
“You have done a great thing like that. And now I ask you to do a little
thing. To forget an old injury.”
“But Mr. Merserole--he feels toward The Guardian--I cannot express it to
you,” falters the other.
“The Guardian is a forlorn hope,” returns Marcia. “Mr. Robson is
sacrificing it and with it all his ambitions and his future for the sake
of a principle. That is his part in the war; the only part he can play.”
“Is it? I had heard otherwise.”
“What have you heard?”
“That he persuaded a doctor to declare him unfit.”
“That is a lie,” declares Marcia calmly, and gives the facts. “Who told
you the lie?” she asks, at the close of the recital.
The other hesitates. “Mrs. Robert Wanser,” she says, at length. “I will
speak to the rector about your plan,” she adds, and, by her tone, Marcia
knows that she has won another recruit.
So from house to house flits the busy bee, arguing here, pleading
there, feeling her way cautiously in doubtful places and always imposing
secrecy until the organization shall be completed; enlisting trustworthy
lieutenants,--Miss Pritchard; little Anne Serviss, vice-president of the
senior class at Old Central; Magnus Laurens’s daughter, who comes
down from the country to hot and dusty Fenchester to help; Miss Abbie
Rappelje, sister of the Professor of Economics; Mrs. Montrose Clark;
and, chiefest of all, the wary and wily Judge Selden Dana,... who, by
the way, is working out a little scheme of his own all the time, in
which Marcia is no more than a pawn, and without saying a word to her
about it. Trust Dana for that!
*****
While these processes were moving more or less bumpily on their
appointed course outside The Guardian office, those wheels within
wheels, upon which Andrew Galpin had philosophically animadverted, were
whirling at an accelerated pace inside. The postponement of The Fair
Dealer’s publication day had been a blow to certain developing plans in
The Guardian’s press-room. When a labor leader has sedulously fomented
ill-feeling, worked it almost to the point of explosion, promised the
malcontents another job at increased pay if they strike to order on a
certain date, and then had that date unavoidably postponed, his position
becomes difficult and his next step doubtful. Such was the situation in
the press-room of The Guardian. It was accentuated by the fact that The
Guardian’s editor had taken to editorializing quite frankly upon certain
developments in the labor world outside, thereby furnishing extra
incentive to the waiting strikers, for, radical though he was, Jeremy
held himself as free to criticize labor as capital when he deemed it in
the wrong. In fact he was in the midst of a mid-afternoon editorial for
the morrow on “Labor and the War,” when he came out of the fog of mental
toil into a sensation of something wrong, something lacking. The presses
had stopped. Surely it was n’t time for the run to be over! No; his
watch marked four-ten.
From above sounded the scuffling of feet; a door opened and a furious,
hard-breathing voice shouted an oath. Now there was a hubbub of voices,
dull in the distance, and the floor shook lightly under some impact.
Jeremy got to his feet, shaking and sweating. To such a condition of
nerves had the overwork and overstrain of the last few weeks reduced
him. He forced himself toward the door--when, with a roar and a clack,
the presses took up their rhythm again, making sweet music for the
relief of his beleaguered mind.
He returned to his editorial. But the savor of the work had gone. He
was too deeply preoccupied with what had happened upstairs. That was
Galpin’s department; he made it a practice not to interfere. Yet, until
the last run was off the presses and the machinery was silenced, he sat,
intent and speculating.
The clang of a gong sounded outside. From his window he caught a glimpse
of a departing ambulance. Was there some connection between that and the
turmoil above? The men had not come down, though it was past time. He
decided to go to the press-room and investigate.
On the top step he stopped short. Somebody was making a speech. Surely
that was Nick Milliken’s voice--Milliken, who had been threatened with
arrest if he returned! Milliken’s voice and Milliken’s propaganda, for
he was saying:
“Some day we’ll own this stick-in-the-mud old plant, all of us together.
We’ll own it and run it for the common good and the common profit. Some
day we’ll own all production, and run it for the common good and the
common profit! That’ll come. But that ain’t our job now, comrades. We’ve
got something else on hand, first.”
The editor and owner of the plant, thus cavalierly committed to common
control, laid his hand on the knob of the door, but paused to hear the
speaker’s next words:
“Now about this strike: I’m for the strike. I’m for any strike--at the
right time. But this ain’t the time. Lemme give you a little parable,
comrades.”
Jeremy sat upon the top step and listened to the parable of Milliken,
the Socialist. When it was over he tiptoed quietly down the stairs and
into his own office. There he lay in wait until he heard the meeting
break up and the tramp of descending feet. Standing sentry, he
intercepted the speaker and called him into the sanctum.
“Will you come back to the job?” said Jeremy.
“Sure!” returned the other. He was spent and haggard, but his eyes were
alight with triumph. “I was never off it.”
“I heard your speech--part of it--enough so I knew I had you wrong.”
“It did the business. The strike’s spoiled.”
“Off?”
“Might as well be. There’ll be six or seven Germans quit. But they can’t
do much without Girdner. He’s the one that’s been playing merry hell
with the whole show.”
“Where’s Girdner?”
“Hospital.”
“What happened to him?”
“He fell downstairs,” said Milliken casually but happily.
“Oh! Unassisted?”
“He threw me out of the meeting. Easy picking for him. You’d be
surprised to see how quick he hustled me through the door,” said the
other regretfully. “He might have hurt me bad; I would n’t be surprised.
He was real rough with me. Then, just as we got to the top of the
stairs, one of my arms took to flopping round kind of general, and he
got hit on the jaw. Queer how things come back to you!” observed the
white-haired Socialist, with surpassing innocence. “It never came into
my mind till then that I once spent two years in a fighters’ stable.”
“I see,” said. Jeremy thoughtfully. “No--I don’t know. I thought you
Socialists--”
“I thought you capitalists--” interrupted the other with instant retort.
Jeremy laughed.
“I guess you were an American before you were a Socialist.”
“When I can’t be both I’ll quit being either,” answered the other
fiercely.
“I do see!” said the other. “You’re in that same trench with Judge Dana,
where it makes no difference who or what a man is so long as he fights
on the level and to a finish.”
“I guess I am--comrade!” said Milliken, the Socialist.