THE MAYOR’S DEATH
When the Mayor ordered out the 69th and 22d regiments, the sole
remnants of the large militia forces of the city, he enjoined their
commands to protect the properties at Carrara. At the same time,
even as his messages flew to their destinations, Bomber was awaiting
the influx of the men intended to effect its destruction. He had
made his headquarters in the Park on St. George’s Hill, and he was
not disappointed in the rapid concentration of an armed multitude.
They came from the east, approaching their improvised _rendez-vous_
over the Washington Bridge, and some moved southward from the north,
reaching their position, over the hills of Fordham by the Mosholu
Driveway, tramping in files or companies, all the way from the low
lands of West Farms. The riot at the Municipal Building and the City
Hall began at night-fall—about six o’clock,—and had been thwarted and
defeated somewhere between nine and ten. The refugees whose perils we
have recounted, had escaped to the roof of the Municipal Building at
six, had been taken off about eight-thirty, and had returned to the
north-central part of the city where this story has just left them,
seeking safety and refuge at—it may be stated—nine, for the dial
of the clock has some reference to the remaining incidents of this
narrative.
The Mayor, after the repulse of the mob, had sent in a call for the
ambulances, and essayed himself to help the wounded on both sides.
It was a sorrowful and bitter sight. This, he thought, had at last
been the outcome of the years of increasing class hatred. His heart
bled for it; the fame of the noble city vanished, grown so beautiful
and crowded too with manifold means of mercy! Was it just; was it
right; was he to blame! The accusation smote him with an insufferable
agony. He had worked hard to heal these social wounds, and the pride,
the joy, alleviating his forlorn sense of desertion, had been an
exulting realization that he had done so in these last months of
tireless effort. And now—this pitiful cheerless tragic sequel! Tears
started to his eyes, and sobs almost broke from his lips. He had
loved New York so well and all its people. Was everything he loved
to disappoint him?—and then the thought of the endangered Carrara
flashed through his mind. He stood up, rising from the task of
helping a poor wretch into an ambulance, with the young doctor that
accompanied it, and saw his secretary Mr. Briggs following him.
He turned towards him almost with a motion of anger; this man had
perhaps steeled his heart, blinded his sympathies, made him ruthless
in the use of power! He knew his worth but it was a worth caked into
a rigidity of cruel formalism by the prejudices of industrial needs,
the set phrases of an apprehensive Capitalism. Personally he—the
Mayor—had no faith, as faiths are counted, but he worshipped the
ideal of a social Brotherhood—whatever that might be called. Perhaps
he had allowed this man to obliterate this picture too easily with
his incessant lectures, his frigidism, his secularity. He let his
resentment flame out:
“Perhaps this Sir is your work—this slaughter—this fratricide. This
is the outcome of the discord you love to foment. Do you like it?”
He advanced towards him almost with a menace in his voice and action.
Mr. Briggs stopped suddenly and looked at the Mayor, just long enough
to let the shadow of something like contemptuous pity steal into his
eyes and then quietly answered:
“No Sir, it is not my work—nor YOURS; I have just put Tom Ratler in
an ambulance and sent him to the hospital. I found him unconscious
lying over there against the railing of the park.”
The Mayor was sincerely fond of Tom, and this information startled
him out of all his brooding misgivings; over the field the doctors
and nurses were working, lamps moved from place to place, groans
too issued from many quarters; the police from the Hall covered the
ground, and the outskirts of the park swarmed with crowds as the
police pushed backward the sullen or the indifferent or the curious.
The rioters had apparently vanished. Briggs told the Mayor he had
sent to the same hospital and in the same ambulance Tom’s bitter
enemy, Poniatowsky and with them had gone Jessie Longtinsky, though
he added:
“Her predicament is painful, they are both her lovers; she fears one
and loves the other; I need not say which is which,” and the speaker
looked oddly at the Mayor and smiled.
“How did it happen; was Tom in the fight?” asked the Mayor.
“Well, I think he _was_, and he was fighting his dearest foe—that
Poniatowsky—they are both near the end of things.”
Pain came into the Mayor’s face, and some reminiscent revery held
him for an instant. He looked over the workers gradually finishing
the gruesome duty of getting the dead together, and despatching the
wounded away to the hospitals. He turned again to Mr. Briggs:
“See that every one here—striker—” the word brought a sigh from his
lips—were these the men he had repulsed?—“Ah—rioter and policeman
alike are attended to. I shall take the machine and go north—to
Carrara—”
Mr. Briggs was inclined to resist this determination at first, but he
understood the Mayor’s feelings too well, and he really feared his
outbursts if he provoked them; they could be unpleasantly vindictive
and ugly; he would let nothing separate him from the Mayor. The man
had been his best friend and he almost adored certain qualities in
the Mayor, though he cherished a contempt for his dreams of social
rehabilitation.
“Everything shall be attended to as you wish. But Sir if I might be
permitted to offer one word of advice; it seems to me——”
“Not another word Briggs; the worst outbreak will be at Carrara—I
know it. The very sight of those white palaces will make the blood
boil in the veins of these unhappy, these misguided men. They will
feel there as if they were about to throttle their enemy, kill him in
his lair. If I can I will prevent it—whatever happens——”
He waved his hand and walked rapidly away; Briggs watched his
disappearing form sadly. He was not a man of psychic sensibility but
somehow he felt that a gulf of final separation was opening between
him and the Mayor, and in that gulf lay the prostrate body of his
master. A few moments later the Mayor shot from the City Hall park
moving through a lane made for him by the police. His vehicle passed
up Broadway which was streaming with crowds, restlessly surging
towards and from the City Hall. Except for the trolley cars that
occupied it, as they do to-day, there were no other carriages than
the Mayor’s and it swiftly sped on its way.
A few recognized the Mayor’s automobile, and a shout or some hurled
defiance, a cheer, a query, or simply the amazed gaze of the
spectators greeted him. The Mayor was buried in his own excited
thoughts. He felt the critical terror of this day, and he revolted
with his whole soul against the needlessness, the awful consequences
of it. It was not simply the pain of sympathy and bereavement, but
the more disturbing dread of a disordered state, with civil unrest
and embittered irreconcilable social elements, whose enmities would
corrode the foundations of government and infiltrate all the veins
and circulations of political life.
Sunk in the pillows of the Limousine he pondered over the action he
should now take. He was not unacquainted with previous threats made
against Carrara and he understood the hideous rage of the Longtinsky
people. That man’s hatred of Helen Lorimer possessed him like a
consuming fever. And now her home was to be destroyed, if it were
possible, and she—his heart almost stopped at the thought—herself
was in danger. And while the Mayor glided northward on the spinning
wheels of his noiseless carriage, at intervals bruising the silence
with its clamorous honk, and always sweeping the ground before it
with two broad brushes of light; while Helen Lorimer and Amato and
Mr. Moser were searching for a conveyance to the same destination as
the Mayor’s; while the militiamen were hurrying to their armories
expecting a sanguinary struggle at the same point, Bomber had
anticipated these contrasted forces of opposition, and—though much
later than he hoped—had moved down the Dyckman road and already was
filing in three columns through Nagle, Sherman and Post Avenues to
the marble terraces of Carrara, aiming especially to capture the home
and mistress of the Lorimer villa.
Bomber was a man after Longtinsky’s own heart, and he had moulded
him to his purposes, inflaming a bitter and criminal nature with
the promise of gain, and filling his ears and mind with the murmurs
of envy. An inordinate conceit, a feeling of injury, that he was
the victim of a false social system, and a heart grown ruthless
from brooding over imaginary wrongs, made him a fit instrument to
accomplish Longtinsky’s designs. Bomber was the child of an Irish
mother and an American father, and he inherited the verbal fluency
of the first, with the undaunted self-confidence of the latter, and
he had wandered far from the moral fortitude of both. His vanity,
and the smoothness of his tongue had hurried him into foolish
enterprises, and credulity and lack of discretion had invariably
brought about his ruin. These disappointments had vexed his
self-esteem and soured him. He had not been saved the consequences of
an admired physical charm, and indulgences had perverted still more
the easy rules of his life. Yet the strangest circumstance of this
man’s life remains untold. HE TOO LOVED HELEN LORIMER.
At the death of his parents, Bomber inherited enough money to be able
to live much as he wished. He had received a fairly good education,
an education which might have been improved, if he had himself helped
more the opportunities accompanying it. The city’s pleasures he
understood, and his skill in talking, his dalliance with the brighter
novelties of living, had given him a sort of vogue in a fast set of
young men, among whom, occasionally, he met some belonging to the
acquaintances of the beautiful Helen Lorimer. This was of course
some years before. Bomber had often seen the famous lady at public
places of entertainment, the theatres, the opera, at concerts—Bomber
had some skill himself in playing, and much musical taste—and he had
actually spoken with her at her Settlement House, when he endeavored
to put himself in as good a light as possible, and thought that he
had succeeded. Contact with women had bred in him an infatuation, a
very great sense of his conquering personal charm. He felt pretty
sure that Helen Lorimer must have noted it too. At the time he stood
well, and the sharp reverses that later left him penniless had not
yet developed. He had just then no use for socialism and rather
sported his aristocratic prejudices.
He undertook to give the “young Portia of the city,” as he called
Miss Lorimer, advice in some well written letters, upon her various
projects, and assiduously set himself about getting into her graces
by an apparent interest in the poor—an hypocritical affectation
then. The letters had been answered by Miss Lorimer’s secretary
and a little curtly. Then he made a mistake, a most ill-considered
blunder. He told her in a letter, full of ridiculous tropes and
foolish imagery—a letter such as self-deluded men often write when
fate drives them to their ruin—that he loved her. The letter reached
Helen Lorimer. She blushed, laughed and carefully burned it up.
Bomber waited for an answer. So intolerable was his conceit that he
really deceived himself into believing that Miss Lorimer’s silence
was to be interpreted as a favorable sign of her favor, and—making
“his will lord of his reason”—wrote her another fatuous epistle. This
letter Miss Lorimer did not see; it fell into the hands of her uncle,
who, opening it by a mistake and catching its contents fell into a
tremendous rage, and in an answer told the incorrigible Bomber that
he was a jackass, that his effrontery deserved public exposure, that
Miss Lorimer was insulted by any association with his name.
Bomber writhed under this repulse, and then his fortune failed, his
plans went all wrong, his money vanished, the better sort of his
companions deserted him, and he fell from round to round in the
scale of decency, and he turned with an almost impious hatred upon
all he had once admired. Bitten by jealousy, his heart poisoned by
failure, his stupid pride affronted, almost to others a spectacle of
indigence, the ulcer of discontent wore into his soul and he handed
himself over to the forces of annihilation. He made a living by
conceiving vitriolic attacks upon property, upon reputations, and he
avenged himself for his repulse by insinuations, false, cruel and
repulsive, on the fair name of Helen Lorimer.
The man became furiously bestial. His strength, his youth,
carried him through trials of dissipation, that less stalwart or
inured natures would have crumbled or decayed under. The fever
of denunciation grew on him; Longtinsky’s plan, mad, impossible,
delirious, suited him precisely. He rushed into it and helped its
author to more completely arrange and perfect its details. He shared
with Longtinsky the overmastering control of the whole impudent
and hopeless scheme. But it was the chance to him for revenge! His
impatience overcame every scruple, and he revelled in the dream of
destroying the homes of Carrara, the villa of the Lorimers—even, in
some more atrocious moments of desire of capturing, enslaving the
queen of that proud society!
Thus, when Bomber led his little army to destruction, he found
himself where at last he might work out his long cherished hopes. And
it was a strange fact that in the notable uprising of this distant
day, the leaders were entirely selfish—most of them—while the devoted
believers in some sort of social upheaval, the men who formed the
rank and file of the movement, were more moved by ideas of justice,
and of readjustment, in which their rights would be restored and
their ills righted.
The shuffling lines of men came down the long hill of Fort George,
they turned from Dyckman Street into the three avenues which lead
southwesterly to the Kingsbridge Road. There was no uniform among
them; here and there a red ribbon, and an occasional show of brass
buttons in some frayed coat, hardly helped the physical homogeneity
of about twelve hundred men of all sizes and service. Bomber had been
disappointed at the numbers of his army, and he had a discouraged
feeling about their enthusiasm. They were the enrolled members of
an anarchistic society, and probably would fight well if it came to
fighting. Longtinsky had once insisted that with any show of force,
the Mayor would compromise—and then, on some favorable terms perhaps,
they would gain power and there would be an UPRISING.
It all seemed simple enough, planned in a guarded room. Out in the
open, beneath the stars the conquest of the city was more a matter of
daring than words. So Bomber thought. Yet his hopes blinded him to
fear. He did not expect any difficulties at Carrara. The place should
be destroyed. He almost laughed to think of it. The police would be
kept busy at the City Hall. Perhaps Helen Lorimer would have a little
more respect for him after that!—suppose he took her a prisoner—an
hostage of that sort, might make the stubborn necks and the dull
heads of the Plum-Puddings bend, and think just a little. Indeed he
was not averse to dwell upon the favorable chance of a conversation
with Miss Lorimer and the diabolical fancy entered his mind of making
some matrimonial agreement with her. So banal and ludicrous is a
depraved vanity!
Bomber’s tall frame had been moving among the men, as they slowly
assembled, painting in glowing colors the ease of their work,
and just what it was. They would be almost unopposed. Scouts had
brought in the news that Carrara was being deserted; whether the
Lorimer villa was empty was uncertain; lights were burning there,
and figures had been seen moving in the chambers. But that was of
no consequence—only some frightened women! Bomber naturally thought
that Miss Lorimer had returned home from the trial, which, it was
universally known, she had most punctually attended each day. He did
not know of the conflagration and disaster at the Municipal Building.
He told his gloating hearers that the Revolution had been started
at the City Hall—Putkof had set the shipping afire throughout
the East Side—all the prisoners would be liberated, the city was
panic-stricken—nerveless; the militia away—no regular troop anywhere
around—the garrisons at the forts, at the Narrows sent away, and
those at Throg’s Neck as well. They would win on their own terms.
This was their chance to wipe out Carrara—the luxurious homes of
their masters, the tyrants of wealth, the sleek vainglorious idlers
who fattened on the sweat and earnings and skill and daily risks of
the workers.
So he walked and so he talked—yet he had misgivings. One thing was
annoying; his guns, his ammunition, had not arrived. They were
concealed in an empty house at High Bridge, and the wagons drawing
them with muffled wheels had not appeared. Only a few of those that
pushed their way into the entrance of the park carried arms. However,
he had no doubt that the guns would come—it made things late—though,
and time counted for something. But a hollowness in the whole effort
suddenly struck him; for one instant the great reserves of defence
in the mammoth city were indeed abroad, but how long would it take
for the four quarters of the country to pour in their support—how
long before these reserves themselves would be storming his little
host with all the implements of death? Unless—Ah, he pinned some hope
on that—unless as Longtinsky told him, the Time EVERYWHERE was ripe
for Revolution. He half believed it. The thought gave him nerve and
confidence.
The attacks of the rioters at the City Hall, and on the East Side,
had summoned all the police to the southern districts of the city,
and Bomber, acquainted with the fact of the presence of the members
of the 22d and 69th regiments in the city, was convinced that they
would not be able to interfere with him. The Mayor’s warning and his
own fears as well were destined to frustrate these hopes.
Still no supplies. Bomber chafed and raged—already more than an
hour had been lost. He was general enough to realize the importance
of promptness. Messenger after messenger had been despatched to
High Bridge, and none had returned. Bomber was in a group of
his lieutenants at the brow of the hill overlooking the Inwood
depression, and the viaduct, to Kingsbridge, of the present subway.
His first move had been to interrupt the trains of the Subway, and a
detachment of his men had pushed their way up to the Dyckman Street
station, and into the opening of the long tunnel leading south to
155th street—but no trains were running, the company deeming it
too dangerous for one thing, and because orders from the armories
requisitioned them for the service of the troops.
Still Bomber’s men tore up the free rails of the tracks, for a short
distance.
“What in thunder holds those men—Here—” to a dozen staring
auditors who happened to carry guns on their shoulders, “Get down
to High Bridge, a pack of you—Perhaps help is needed—Wait—” the
men turned—“Let more of you go. There is a kit of tools up on the
balcony—” pointing to the pleasure house raised in soaring terraces
at the highest point of the park—“a few crowbars may help you—and for
that matter a bomb or so—” he added savagely, for it was Bomber who
gave these orders.
“Perhaps they can’t get at the guns and ammunition. Hammer everything
to Hell, and bring them up;” then turning aside to a man who
stood apart, watching the fitful signs of agitation across the
valley, on the Carrara Hills—“We’re running our heads into a noose
perhaps—Eh—but if we stand here and wait for sunrise it will be cold
bullets!—”
The man did not stir; the whispered fear did not seem to interest
him, it certainly failed to withdraw his scrutiny from the pale
white palaces, now growing more and more indistinct, as the lights
went out, or again illumined in a spectral glare as some white flash
flared in the courtyards, or the gleam of a descending rocket shone
on them. At length the man dropped his glass, and showed he was
not unconscious of the speaker—but he only muttered—almost as to
himself—pointing with his disengaged hand to the opposite rim of land.
“Win that and if the worst comes—there are ways out—Money provides.”
Bomber seized his arm, drew him around to face himself, and then
dropped his hands on the man’s shoulders and brought his face close
to his:
“Yes, I know it does—but will a few empty houses furnish it? Do you
know anything?”
“Know,” said the other returning the gaze fearlessly, and just
perceptibly shrinking backward, as if finding this menacing scrutiny
repugnant;—“I know that those money-bags have been storing coins and
greenbacks in their safes for months. They expected this—some of
them. Sly foxes, they knew the cry of the hounds long before they saw
their teeth—they’re ready to give us the slip—Trap ’em and you are
made. They’ve sold stocks, bonds everything and were getting their
plunder together to slip over to Canada, make a dash for Europe,
Mexico, anywhere—They’re too late. Bomber, if our hands close on that
treasure we can take the same trip. Canada or any place might be a
happier home for us than this city.”
Bomber looked nervously around. No one stood very close to them—the
occasional rockets rising languidly from point to point in Carrara
intimating some telegraphy between the houses, as if preparations or
alarm were keeping their occupants busy, had attracted every eye.
Bomber pulled his friend farther away from any chance interruption;
his voice sank to a whisper, and his mouth sought his companion’s ear:
“I’ve been thinking of the same thing—But can we do it?”
“Do it—I can. You know me, a bank-cracksman for years. I’ve not
learned my trade for nothing. Get me in those houses yonder and I’ll
find the bottoms of their long purses. Trust me.”
A cry startled them. They looked behind them, and they saw the flames
shooting upward in the park—The pleasure house was burning—It was
this blaze, then culminating into a vast pyre, that the frightened
travellers in the balloon saw a half hour or so later.
It caused almost as much consternation to Bomber and his advisers.
Their force was revealed—the increasing light brought out with
terrible distinctness the formless straggling groups—their
position—and in its discovering brilliancy, illumined the long slant
hill, on which a few companies of men were moving. It conveyed a
further terror to Carrara—the rockets ascended in sudden flight from
new points. Evidently it was interpreted as a signal for the opening
of the anticipated attack.
Bomber was quick to act on his part. He left the man whose sordid
selfishness and cynical opportunism were already shared by himself,
and ordering his subalterns to rush through the crowds, commanded
them to hurry down to the hillside and screen themselves in the
oblique avenues below—Nagle, Sherman, and Post Avenues—somewhat
further away from this unfavorable exposure.
The conflagration had been started by the men whom Bomber had
despatched to High Bridge. In rummaging about for the crowbars and
picks, as weapons of assault on the closed doors that perhaps yet
foiled the rioters’ plans they had upset an oil lamp, whose trailing
fringes of flame had ignited the woodwork of the well dried and
combustible pleasure house, and, as if responsive to the growing
alarm of the great city, that frail fabric burst into a sheet of
swerving and dazzling light. The men in companies and scattered
arrangements of files and groups ran down the hill, and it was a few
last individuals that Helen Lorimer and Amato saw as they passed
overhead later. The floating habitation caused a little consternation
to the men yet unequipped for the attack upon Carrara, and Bomber
watched it with misgivings, while to the anxious sentinels—both men
and women—on Carrara, it was hailed as an omen of rescue.
In Carrara, to which place we must now direct our inspection, all
was in confusion, and in the dismay, increased every moment by
new disquieting news brought in by scouts, or received over the
telephone and by messengers, mingled the baleful prognostications of
some special upheaval, and the long dreaded and often forewarned
condition of affairs in the city was soon understood, though all the
happenings at the City Hall were not reported, and when it became
apparent that an attack was to be made upon Carrara itself, the
householders hurried together and council was taken as to what was to
be done.
Some argued for instant evacuation, others believed that an
armed resistance was possible, but that bold decision was coolly
shown to be impossible, unless the united men—proprietors and
servants—garrisoned some one of the stronger houses and deserted
the rest. Julieta Lorimer was in despair over the continued absence
of her daughter, and no information could be secured from the
offices down town while the few who in some way had heard of the
incarceration of the inmates in the Municipal Building, and among
them Helen Lorimer, and its consequent burning, none dared to tell
the awful tale.
Perhaps in all three hundred men could be mustered, and these poorly
supplied with arms, and resistance seemed hopeless with this number
against the overwhelming odds. There had not been much time for
deliberation, but such time as was allowed was well employed. Very
helpful to the householders was the path of communication between
the villas. It ran along the crest of the ridge irregularly set with
alcoves, stone benches, and ascending and descending steps that gave
it a most pleasing variety. Over this, that evening, the neighbors
passed and their hurried conference was made at the home of Helen
Lorimer. Hither came the family heads, young and less prudent younger
members, and gathering with them a squad of the male dependents who
were not all disposed to encourage a resistance to the approaching
invasion.
The impending danger hastened the deliberations. There seemed to the
wiser ones but one thing to do. It was a partial retreat, taking
with them such conveniently removable articles of great value as
they could gather, and retire together to one of the strong Norman
keep-like erection on the Bolton Road, just over the Dyckman Street
pass to the Hudson River. If extremities, too serious, threatened
them there, escape could again be effected to the river itself
immediately behind, and finally embarkation in some steamboat to
be at once summoned and held in readiness. The season had so far
advanced that the many steam yachts that were familiar features on
the shore line of the river at Carrara were no longer to be seen.
They had retired to the winter station, as at present, near Gowanus
on the Long Island shores.
The last words of directions were spoken by a Duncan, the owner of
the picturesque mansion where they were to find refuge:
“Shut, lock and barricade all the entrances of your homes, the more
passive resistance of that sort we can devise the better. Remove all
valuables, the things you especially value of small size; concentrate
at my home and await relief. It must come! Should we be forced into
an extremity we can beat a retreat to the river and escape. This
seems the safest way. We are powerless against such odds.”
And so the hurried evacuation was made, while signal lights—the
rockets seen by Bomber—arose from point to point as a constant
warning for vigilance and for haste. There was much confusion. In
the short time possible to be employed before the invasion began,
it was out of the question to carry away the many things that each
householder dearly wished to save, and the bustle and struggle of
uncertainty was consequently frequent and prolonged. Doors banged,
improvised barricades were formed against the backs of the entrances,
windows were shut and fastened, the chasing of servants up and down
the stairs, the calls of the younger men and the impatient orders
of the older with many feminine sighs and exclamations were mingled
with the miscellaneous and confused murmurs and more violent noises,
proceeding from the opening and shutting of safe doors, the secreting
of objects of especial interest—and too large for removal—in closets
and cellars, while constantly mishaps, punctuated with cries and
recriminations, arose and added to the panic and disorder.
Amid it all Julieta Lorimer sat in her chamber bowed in prayer for
the safety of her daughter. She had quickly brought together the
jewelry of Helen, and her own, and packed the treasured trinkets
in a small agate-mosaic casket that now lay on the bed in front of
her. All sorts of dreadful possibilities crowded in her mind, racked
to the limit of endurance with fearful surmises, as happening to
her child. The thought of Amato kept up her courage. She knew his
readiness and courage, and she trusted his devotion.
How many wistful pictures of the past filled her mental vista of the
almost forgotten years—the years of Robert’s tempestuous courtship,
the birth of Helen, the increasing affection and chivalrous loyalty
of her husband, the periods of travel over the fair face of the
world, their mutual wonder of the beauty and promise of the girl
growing up in the revolving seasons, and gaining new charms of person
and mind, her splendid adoration of high ideals, and her rich and
embracing love of all human kind, her distinction, the patrician
courtesy, the austere ambition and her peculiar sweetness of thought
and word.
How Robert adored her; she saw them again and again walking together
in a very ecstacy of genial communion, and, as though breathed
upon her from the pregnant air, there came to her there, almost
audibly, the accents of his wonder and delight as he told her of
Helen’s unfolding excellence. She, whose respite from sorrow for
the death of her own loved one, had only come in the intervals of
her proud consciousness of the worth and buoyancy, of her daughter,
now with terrified questionings looked out in the darkening night,
and revolted against the sordid cruelty of circumstance if, in
this vulgar exigency of commotion, that daughter’s life became the
prey of accident. And as she gazed, half immersed in a praying
thoughtfulness, there suddenly came before her eyes in the night the
onrushing apparition of the lamp-lit balloon, in which that very
daughter glided above her to safety. She had tarried long. Carrara
was emptied and yet she remained. In the headlong flight her absence
had escaped attention, even among her own fleeing servants.
And yet she did not stir, for now she thought of Helen’s unhappiness,
the shocking discovery of her uncle’s perfidy, and the miserable
disappointment that had darkened her life. Julieta sighed—she could
not altogether regret it—Amato pleased her more; indeed, thus falling
into reveries, she married him to her, and then the strange fervency
of the desire of both to see the Pope placed in America and the new
missionizing plan rose before her, and she forgot her grief, almost
smiling over the Quixotic dream—for so it seemed to her. And yet no
movement; she saw the thickening clusters of rockets, the frightening
reminder of danger in the sheets of flame in the burning pleasure
house on the hill, and the black crowds of men gathered in slovenly
ranks for mischief. The lights yet burned in her room; she realized
that they prevented any certain view of the outside, and she rose
and extinguished them, and returned to the seat strangely oblivious
perhaps in the indulgence of the luxury of her reveries, wherein she
drew to her side the vanished dead, careless of remembering.
All had become still in Carrara, the shouts smothered in dull calls,
the movement, the sounds of running feet, the opening and shutting
of doors, the interrupted grating discords of shoved furniture and
reinforced bolts and locks—all was quiet, for the refugees had
crushed themselves into the Norman Duncan keep beyond the Dyckman
Road. Here some guns had been distributed, a sort of garrison
armament formed, scouts sent out, and a beleaguered attitude taken.
The precaution was looked after of getting a boat ready at the
water’s side behind them, and after some uncertainty and delay it was
decided, then and there, to remove the women. Under guard the latter
passed down the road to the Hudson in little companies, each with an
escort of armed men. In all this commotion and anxiety, the absence
of Julieta was somehow quite unnoticed.
Events were hurrying on to some fatal denouement among the rioters.
The obstacles, which had delayed the arrival of their stores of guns
and ammunition, and which were rightly explained by Bomber as due to
the desertion of his allies who had been watching them, thus leaving
them strongly locked up, inside barricades demanding destruction
before the agents of the rioters could reach them, had at length
arrived. The distribution of the arms to the men, the preparation
of an advance party with bombs, the slow infiltration of orders to
all the men and companies had consumed much time, and when at length
the host moved forward along the three avenues—Nagle, Post and
Sherman—the hour of nine had long passed.
Bomber had placed himself in the company of bomb-throwers, and the
man who had boasted of his skill in discovering the hiding place
of treasure was at his side. This little group headed the slow and
irregular entrance of the men on the Kingsbridge Road. Immediately
before them was the villa of the Lorimers, its marble terraces
shining spectrally, and the outlined palace above them on the
hillside, destitute of lights, inviting an easy assault. But Bomber
feared some ambush, and he ordered a company of younger men—who
had been acting as scouts for his army—to steal forward, and make
their way through the shrubbery to the top of the eminence, for an
observation of the measures of defence taken by the inmates. The
men returned and told their chief that apparently the house was
deserted. One man had broken in a window pane after forcing a shutter
open, and the sound, sharp and crackling, brought no response. Still
Bomber doubted, and he again ordered the men to push the examination
further, and see the other houses, spy out the gardens, and return.
The men dashed back, they were convinced that there was no danger in
the abandoned Carrara. After a longer absence they again came back,
and made their asseverations so strong that the place was deserted,
that Bomber gave orders for the whole body to ascend the terraces and
capture the ridge.
Julieta Lorimer raised her head; she had indeed fallen into a half
sleep wherein with half muttered prayers and clustering memories her
bewildered and exhausted body and mind had taken refuge. She rose
and moved to the windows again, almost as if in a dream, to see if
there was any sign of her returning daughter. It was the moment in
which Bomber’s spies were hurrying back with their reports about the
deserted Carrara, the moment when Bomber decided to rush forward and
take the houses.
The night was clear but there was no moon, the stars ruled the
skies with a soft and remote beauty, but their effects were less
apparent over the city of that coming day by reason of the spreading
pulsations of the upper light, artificially created and irregularly
distributed over the enormous commonwealth. This light, as Tom Ratler
noticed on the first evening of his arrival was more concentrated
in the lower parts of the city, but it now bathed the foreground
of the scene that Julieta looked out upon, though by it flushes
of brightness alternated, like shifting clouds, with intervals of
penumbral vagueness. Julieta pushed open the windowed door that led
to a balcony and stepped out into the ledge formed by its floor, just
at that instant when the light grew stronger.
She leaned far out, and her white dress formed a contrast with the
shadows on the wall behind her. She was seen by the watching men
in the roadway, and for an instant Bomber suspected treachery. And
then the thought arose with tempting plausibility that SHE—Helen
Lorimer—might have been left alone; this outstretched figure was
hers, and he might now be able, under less humiliating conditions,
than before, to ask for some consideration at her hands. The stupid
dream awoke in him a strange restlessness. He had not been altogether
thoughtless about his appearance either. He wore a khaki uniform
which became him; its contrast with the rude and often torn garments
around their commander had already awakened unfavorable comment.
It was regarded with some dissatisfaction. The broad unrolled soft
chapeau on his head added its theatrical touch, even gauntleted
hands and an unused sabre dangling picturesquely at his manly hip
contributed to an impression of dashing chivalry, which he had quite
serenely noticed himself. He now strode forward to the middle of
the highway, intercepting the movement that had begun to ascend the
terraces, and in a loud voice calling upon all to desist.
“He intended to reconnoitre the place himself. He would give a
signal for the charge as soon as he had convinced himself that
no rascally ambuscade awaited them. He prized their lives, and
rather than risk an unnecessary slaughter would first determine the
nature of the ground before them. One life,” he grandiloquently
concluded, “sacrificed, was better than the loss of many strong men
whose strength was now needed for the Renewal of Society, and the
establishment of the New Republic.”
The grotesque coxcombery of all this struck one man forcibly, and he
cursed the silly display, the bravado of an idiot.
“Why damn him,” he muttered hoarsely—and it was the man of the
lock-picking skill, the man who had plotted with Bomber for the
chance of interviewing the safes in the Carrara mansions—“Damn him;
what good will his maundering over there do. He’s losing time and
enough has been lost now to let those tin soldiers get here with
their pop guns and do us for ever. Bust the whole shee-bang, rip,
tear, and level it! That’s the way and then—GIT.”
Bomber was a mistake and for once the crafty Longtinsky had perhaps
miscalculated. But the element of mistake was in the unsuspected
fancy this apparently well chosen limb of mischief had for Miss
Lorimer, which entangled with his own preposterous personal conceit
made him the easy tool of circumstances and circumstances now most
ludicrously related to his stupid prepossessions. Nothing can be
more mischievous in unsettling a vain man’s sense of relations and
propriety, not to say his more important sense of his own position,
than the foolish imagination of his possible importance in the eyes
of a pretty woman.
Bomber turned his back to his astonished companions, and mounted the
steps with rapid strides, his own conviction growing that the white
figure above him was indeed Miss Lorimer the nearer he approached the
now excited and attending lady who began to awaken from the strange
coma of grief and recollection which had held her enchained in a half
unconsciousness.
Julieta Lorimer slowly recognized her situation, and something like
an intense keenness supervened to make it all plainer to her. She had
somehow failed—she now saw—to join the others when they had deserted
the Ridge, and she was entrapped in her villa, and stood in the face
of the storming rioters. She recalled the commotion of her fleeing
friends, and she remembered she had stolen to her room, and here she
had become isolated in her own sorrowful and oblivious thoughts. Her
faculties were now fully awake; the terror only served to sharpen
her appreciation of the predicament she was in. She did not become
useless in her fear, but her mind engaged quickly and sharply in
the preparation of some sort of defence. Who was this man—a figure
ascending in leaps the marble steps—and why did he come alone? Down
on the Kingsbridge Road she saw the massed men and women and seemed
to discern their faint prolongation back into the avenues. Was it
not strange—this immobile mob, voiceless, ominously still—while this
man—a leader perhaps advanced all alone?
What was to be done; should she escape and pursue her vanished
friends—the thought struck her suddenly that she would rush through
the mansion, and turn on all the lights—she perceived the darkness of
the place—it might create the appearance of relief or occupation. She
hesitated—and there below her under the window’s balcony, the figure
looked up to her, and she heard his voice: and noticed that his hat
was removed from his head, and something in his accents made her
stop, shocked with an incredible impression.
“Miss—Lorimer? I believe—I feel the awkwardness of
this—position—but—time presses—I must enter your home—it is
deserted—you are alone—you may trust yourself to me—it is an honor I
have asked for before, and which then you saw fit to repel—as leader
of a new Revolution—the revolution of the great heart of the people
you may condescend to treat me—less carelessly—” the words were
spoken with a mixture of impudence and menace.
Nothing had escaped Julieta’s ears and her mind worked with the
marvellous concentration of memory, acting under the impelling sense
of a real danger; she divined the situation; she recalled Bomber’s
declaration of love for her daughter—this man is doubtless he—his
name she had heard mentioned as the chief of the mob at her doors—she
knew that relief was under way—that too she had heard—could she delay
this aspirant for Helen’s hand?—keep him awhile—every moment might
help—was she equal to the dangerous ruse? At any rate the evident
delusion of the speaker must be encouraged.
Almost mechanically she asked—“Is this Mr. Bomber?” the question
answered would illuminate the situation, and as she asked it she half
turned away so that that gentleman might not discover his mistake.
“Yes I am Bomber, Miss Lorimer. Alaric Mitchess Bomber—I would be
happy to assist you in this extremity—there need be no alarm—but
the doors of this house must be opened at once—these men—” a
flourish of his scabbard indicated the waiting crowds at the foot
of the slope—“are in earnest—everywhere the forces of revolt are
in motion—the City must succumb—perhaps I could persuade you
to negotiate some sort of compromise with the Aristocracy of
Carrara—Excuse me, I dread violence but this parley cannot be kept up
too long—my men are impatient—”
There flew through Julieta’s mind several projects—and among them
was one of startling possibilities—almost too audacious too, full of
grave consequence to herself—and yet it tempted her by its amazing
daring and shrewdness. She would entrap the leader of the mob—put him
under lock and key—she, Julieta Lorimer!—he should be decoyed into
the house, and she would agree to meet him within, and then—a smile
crept into her face that was darkened the next instant with doubt;
the indecision had been noticed by Bomber, and had elicited his
threat. But the indecision was gone; Julieta committed herself to the
rash expedient—she would take Alaric Mitchess Bomber prisoner. Shades
of Longtinsky!!!
“Alaric”—in her sweetest tones—the figure started and stretched
itself upward—“I will see you in the house—it is possible we can
together do something to prevent mischief, and—if so—perhaps—we
may—” the last words were permitted intentionally to fade away
into nothingness—conveying thereby to the credulous hearer some
indiscreet concession, that made him bound with delight and desire.
“Yes—Yes, Miss Lorimer—may I say Helen?—” the stupidity and dull
conceit of the man made her project seem again very plausible to
Julieta—“but it must be done quickly—it may be necessary for me to
return to the men there”—pointing—“and make them understand—they
might suspect treachery—is there no one in the house? They expected
a fight and they are in the humour for destruction—you see—I will do
all you advise—but——”
“Alaric,” still insinuating and delicious to the ears of the
vanquished leader of revolution, “go tell them you are about to
confer with Helen Lorimer, who speaks for the whole colony of
Carrara—your own eloquence will convince them, or if they cannot be
controlled entirely, tell them to be patient a moment—surely you can
restrain them, and then come TO ME.” Bomber’s arms actually crossed
themselves upon his breast with the unction of an embrace. Julieta
saw it. “And we can at least devise some measure for my safety. That
is but just, is it not?”
“Helen”—the voice was deep with passion and obedience as well—“let it
be so. I will return and speak to them, and _then_ admit—me.”
Julieta hid her face in the silken scarf about her shoulders and
leaned down, whispering. “No one is here. I am alone. Come in at
the front, the iron gateway through the peristyle, through the
front doors. There is a great hall. Ascend the stairway to the
dining-room, and then pass into a side room and await me. The side
room is a butler’s pantry—you can tell it by the one light that will
be alight there. Adieu, Alaric.” The old star of Robert Lorimer’s
improvised show retained her skill, and her Italian hand still showed
a delightful fineness. But then she had such plastic stuff to treat!
Bomber waved his hat, his gauntleted hand touched his lips. He turned
and jumped down the terraces with really splendid youthfulness. His
youthfulness did not desert him in the emergency of getting to the
top of the gate post of the Lorimer estate; he clambered up somehow,
and there in full view, with his hat removed, a few assisting
gestures, he delivered his oration.
“Patriots of the New Order, we are about to accept the capitulation
of the Aristocrats”—a long rising hiss, culminating in a yell
of derision—“Miss Helen Lorimer, of whom we can all admit she
possesses the virtues of her class, with none of their faults”—a
mixed reception of cheers and hisses greeted this admission—“has
agreed to see me in her own palace of art and beauty, and there I
shall be permitted to dictate the terms of surrender. Miss Lorimer
has had the courage to remain, while all her BRAVE”—uttered with
impressive sarcasm—“defenders have fled. I only ask you, my noble
comrades——” Bomber was a traitor; while he spoke these words he was
secretly turning over in his mind the chances of freeing himself
from these now unnecessary associates, and turning body and soul
over to the abhorrent aristocrats. Here was the goal of his fondest
dreams—becoming with Helen Lorimer rehabilitated, and an ornament of
the class he affected to despise.
“I only ask you now to await the results of this interview; when
it is finished you shall enter Carrara and POSSESS it.” He paused,
and a cheer arose; he interpreted it as his permission—he was too
impatient himself to return—he jumped off his elevated rostrum, and
as he turned and ran again backward a voice—loud, soaring, he _knew_
it—shouted in the silence, “Al Bomber you’re a LIAR.”
But Bomber had no desire to refute the statement, his heart burned
with the strangest hopes, and his self inflation, his fatal aptitude
for gallantry approached, as he thought, a new and marvellous
satisfaction. He kept on his way unchallenged.
Julieta left the balcony; her heart beat tumultuously; the trick
was bold, and desperate—it almost seemed. Would she be successful?
There was danger—plenty of it—too; if he suspected; if he brought
men back with him; if his hearers were not affected with the reasons
for gullibility he succumbed to; if she herself could escape—and
WHERE? Certainly the butler’s pantry was a well chosen place for
the incarceration of the dashing leader of the New Order. It was
practically a strong box—literally a safe—with iron walls and
iron doors, where the silver of the family was also kept. Besides
entrance from the dining-room, it possessed but one other egress,
a back door, fastened on the inside. That she believed was already
secured; locked, with the key removed; it was the practice so to do
at night. It was to be her hands that would shove the bolts, upon the
imprisoned Bomber, from the outside, of the very entrance he would
use. Her limbs trembled with the agitation of thinking of the work
before her, but the instant she had groped her way down to the spot,
turned on the single lamp that would announce the rendez-vous and
then secreted herself in an alcove of the dining-room, with her dress
covered by a voluminous black overskirt she felt a singular firmness,
almost a jubilant expectation. She had concluded to rush from the
room at once when the deed was done, and make her way to the Duncan
keep.
Suddenly she bethought her that the doors below, the great gate of
the entrance also were yet shut. Gathering her dress about her, she
descended the stairs, and unlocked and unbolted all. It took time,
some strength was required, and her nervous excitement alone made it
possible to accomplish it. Of course she became visible to one near
at hand, when she pushed her way out into the peristyle, to open the
iron gate of the courtyard. She shivered as she crossed the yard;
her confidence almost deserted her as she saw through the trellis of
the gate the returning figure of the man she was about to capture.
It was indeed only by a superhuman effort she pulled down the huge
bolt for he was close upon her. Bomber had detected the woman form
moving behind the trellis, as he ascended; he knew it was SHE and he
hastened his steps. Julieta felt her heart fail her; she staggered—in
another second, before she could possibly return, he would be at
her side, and the revelation would be made—she turned irresolutely
to run, when an oath almost at her side, as she thought, came to
her ears, and the sound of a falling body. Instinctively she turned
again, and she saw Bomber sprawling on the outer steps—that unlucky
emblem of authority, his sword, had twisted between his legs and
tripped him. It was Julieta’s chance.
She raced up the inner steps—those leading to the dining-room—the
superb banquet-chamber where we have seen Helen Lorimer dispensing
the hospitality of the Lorimers—she crouched in the selected
alcove, not far from the open door of the butler’s pantry, where
the seductive little light gleamed secretively. She stiffened her
resolution, though the mounting beats of her heart warned her of the
terrific strain. She heard the rising footsteps—perhaps a little more
careful since their proud owner had learned the wisdom of caution—and
then something darkened the door of the dining-room. It was he. He
stopped; her shuddering heart shrank within her at the suspicion that
he saw her. No; he passed on, his eye had seen the interior light of
the pantry, and he stood at its entrance. Why did he not enter? The
strain was insupportable, the pale light shone on him, though dimly,
and he seemed to be examining the place as if fearing a surprise. If
he waited longer his accustomed eyes would find her out; there was a
little light diffusing from the lamp in the pantry; her hammering
heart, it felt so, was itself audible in the dead silence.
Julieta had run a serious risk in assigning the butler’s pantry for a
meeting with Bomber. She knew only its peculiar strength and adequacy
for service as a prison; she did not know how it had been left by her
fleeing servants. The great key which locked both the inner and outer
doors was always removed at night by the housekeeper and given to
Julieta. She had not received it that night; it was not in her room;
she concluded it still remained in the door of the pantry, but had
the INNER DOOR BEEN LOCKED? When she descended to the dining-room her
first anxiety was to assure herself of the position of the key. Her
heart leaped when she found it in the keyhole of the outer door, the
door leading from the dining-room. A moment later the lamp was turned
on in the pantry, and she tried the inner door. It had been locked.
Both locks were identical: one key fitted both. They were large
constructions, the key itself ponderous, and it threw three heavy
steel bolts when turned.
So far the trap was ready. One imprudence was committed. She left the
key in the outer door, but in order to execute her design she took
the risk willingly. To insert the key in the dark, to shut the door
and turn the lock would be an involved process, and in the delay,
and possible bungling, her quarry might have more than enough time
to break its net and escape. So the key was left; if Bomber took the
precaution to remove the key before entering the ambuscade and to
pocket it! Julieta would have been thwarted, and only headlong flight
would have saved her.
Bomber still stood at the door of the pantry, almost as if
suspicious; it was thus impossible to close it upon him. He even
stepped back again, possibly puzzled that the figure which, a minute
before had been in the courtyard, should now have so completely
vanished. If he struck a match! If he fumbled around and attempted
to turn on the lights! Julieta grew dizzy at the thought. She cowered
together, her knees trembling, and her hands abjectly pressed
upon her face. He looked again into the pantry and—walked in. His
unmeasured personal conceit had saved her.
Bomber’s eye had fallen upon the lustrous expanse of a superb silver
service-tray; in the half light this immense and beautiful work of
the silversmith, hanging on the wall of the pantry, shone softly,
and displayed invitingly a damasked surface, and its high decorative
borders. It tempted the eye irresistibly. Bomber had actually in his
delight with its richness and, in a feverish anticipation of a great
success, walked to it, and caught his own reflection in the polished
mirror of a central oval of smooth silver. He stooped and observed
that his hair had become artistically disarranged, that his cheeks
glowed, his eyes—yes, he was sure of it—emitted an unusual light, and
his mouth—ah! he smiled, he leaned over to the beguiling picture,
when—what was it?—a sluggish thud, and the click of a shot lock!
He turned like a shot animal, his face convulsed with terror;
the door was shut; he sprang to it with his strength—and it was
considerable—he wrenched at the knob, but though it flew to and fro,
nothing yielded. HE WAS A PRISONER. He looked around him; he leaped
at the inner door and attempted to open it. Locked! No window, no
crevice, no loophole of escape.
“My God,” he groaned aloud, “the she-devil, the tiger, witch, curse
her. Am I trapped here like a rat?”
His face grew almost livid; he raised his voice shouting, yelling,
shriek after shriek in the bootless effort to call help. He hurled
the silver tray at the walls, he searched them with knives but only a
steel wall met his fury. And then he sank back on the only chair in
the room, in a convulsion of sheer rage and agony.
And Julieta, like a flying cloud, her black skirt lost from her in
her flight, sped out of the house, and on the well-known pathway,
down and up steps, in front of and behind low shrubs, through
archways, quicker and quicker she ran on, stumbling now, even
falling, regaining her feet, and yet running on in a vertigo of
excitement, the first stages of a terrible reaction.
But while this half ludicrous _intre-acte_ was taking place, events
outside of them were rushing on to a tragic end. The waiting army
enormously enlarged by the running concourse of sightseers, the
various accessions of the idle and vicious, was waiting the return
of their fatuous leader. A growing discontent, with an increasing
fear that some one had blundered, that time was being lost, that
the police or the soldiers would soon confront them, made itself
apparent. A hubbub of voices was now heard where all, an hour
before, had been silent, and the presage of dangerous work before
them had kept the men grave and dumb. Disintegration was evident.
The disgusted safe-robber felt that, and sneered at the futile idiot
chosen for this work.
Suddenly a distant honk announced an approaching automobile, another
and another—it was coming on fast—the coarse grating alarm sounded
now almost among them. The foremost drew back from the roadway, a
few wandering in the Lorimer grounds, looking up the shining stairs,
slashing at the plants and grumbling aloud, turned back, so that
the vehicle passed between two solid files. It stopped; the door
of the limousine swung open—a tall, thin man alighted. He ordered
the chauffeur to assist him, as he mounted the puffed tire of the
wheel, and was pushed upon the roof of the car. He stood up, and by
the lucky incidence of light from a distant electric lamp he was
revealed. It was the MAYOR.
A long roll of subdued imprecations greeted him, rising with a
sudden access of noise into a clamor of shouts, oaths, and yells.
It increased, the suppressed impatience and their inaction, the
confusion of mind produced by the disappearance of Bomber, some
doubt as to their position, and the disquietude of a sense of
impending failure, all intensified by their hostility to the man
who had vanquished them in an industrial war, merged into an awful
expression of hatred. An abstract alarm sharpened into a real rage
at a concrete personality, and they stormed forward, filling the
highway, surging upon the automobile, while the cries of “Kill him,
kill him,” maddened them to violence. They crushed about the wagon,
and guns came to their shoulders. Not a missile had been thrown; the
passion of the mob vented itself in execrations.
“The Scab,” “He took our bread,” “The Carrara Stool-pigeon,” “Have
him down and tear him to bits,” “Rip his glib tongue out,” “To Hell
with him: He belongs there.”
The seething tide, in another instant would have overturned the
machine. It could not advance. It was wedged in a matrix of solid
humanity; that alone saved it from an ignominious upset.
The Mayor had been silent and held his place; his arms were folded,
and not a word of expostulation as yet. His attitude both vexed and
puzzled the insane mob. For one instant the voices were silenced—it
was the prelude to a murderous design—and then came the clear
startling words, strangely almost weirdly penetrating; “Yes! You
can kill me if you like. The thing is easily done—but you will lose
a friend—I beg to tell you you will lose your fight—” The silence
continued, the Mayor jumped at the chance and his voice rose higher
with that peculiar musical distinctness and charm that Helen Lorimer
had noticed when she first saw him in the City Hall.
“What have you got against me? One thing. I did my duty as the Law
commanded. I put down your Lawlessness. Could I do anything else?
Could you? But is that all I have done? Have I not also restrained
the men who would have destroyed you so far as they could? What is
your grievance? Are you starved? Are you naked? Are you unsheltered?
I know that you are _not_. Labor conditions are not bad here. You
are misled. You have been listening to foolish promises, you have
followed false leaders. You have let envy take the place of sense.
You dream of some sort of a new State. It is called The New Era; no
New Era can be well considered that begins with WAR. Unnecessary,
cruel, careless, brutal WAR! Any Economic idea that starts with WAR
will end with it! It cannot abide. Civil disorder, Civil strife,
means one thing—ANARCHY; and anarchy is not a thinkable civil state.
You might as well—you who are builders—think that a house can stand
which is built out of plumb, out of line—you who are plumbers that
you can have health with broken pipes, and empty reservoirs, you who
are cloth-makers or hat-makers or workers of any sort, that you can
do your labor without tools. You preach SOCIALISM but _society_ comes
first, and society is superior to any theory as to how society shall
be conducted. I think I understand as well as you do much that can be
said for the aims of Socialism, but I understand a great deal better
than you do, much that can be said against it. I too have learned
things. Are you above learning also? These people,” waving his arm
towards the houses of Carrara—“have done you no harm by living.
Would you care to live as they do? Hardly. Cannot we take a lesson
from Nature—a flat world would be an uninhabitable world—a flat
Society—all alike—would be impossible. I will talk this over with
you, but not here. IF YOU WILL ARGUE THIS MATTER WITH GUNS, YOU SHALL
BE ANSWERED WITH GUNS.”
His voice ceased and the silence was for an instant broken by cries
and questions. He had made an impression. The Mayor felt that, and
he was eager to take advantage of the favorable opening. He leaned
forward—when suddenly the Gun Argument, he had invoked, began
somewhere back in the streets toward the Saint George Hill. There was
firing—sharp unmistakable firing. All again was disorder, tumult,
panic. A terrible cry smote his ears.
“Clear out!—the SOLDIERS—make off!” It was true. The two
regiments—the 22d and the 69th—had been partially mustered, and
they were forcing their way down the three avenues towards the
Kingsbridge Road. And thus unexpectedly, shamelessly, this silver
voiced flatterer became to the men in front of him a deceiver—the
traitor had kept them there while the troops gathered; his very words
“_answered with guns_”, was the signal for this assault. The Mayor
realized the awful accusation of this coincidence. He recoiled from
it, his face darkened with suffering. Curses reached his ears, and
then the whistle of a bullet, and he fell backward on the roof of the
car.
An avalanche of men hurled out of the avenues. They were in flight.
The firing came closer. Only the rush of feet was heard. Still
firing, and the despairing race of men past the motionless Mayor
there on the top of the limousine, that, like some slight pebble in a
stream, sufficed to divide the tearing unguided current. And yet none
of those who passed, bore any evidence of wounds. There were none.
The Mayor, in ordering the soldiers had commanded that _dispersal_
not _slaughter_ should first be tried with the rioters. Fear did
its perfect work. It was as the Mayor wished, but he had fallen the
victim of his own imprudence; in a manner, of his own forbearance.
Soon it was all over; the troops emerged from the streets into
the roadway, and the vast throngs, the little army of Bomber, the
idle gazers, the haunting lines of free-booters, had EVAPORATED as
completely as the patch of water on the flagging succumbs to the dry
summer wind that sweeps it into space.
The Mayor was carried into the Lorimer mansion; the soldiers
patrolled the streets; the dispossessed returned, lights spread
over the deserted ridge, doctors hurried to the side of the City’s
executive, Briggs arrived, and, under orders from the Lieutenant
Governor, the surplus of the soldiers marched to the east side to
assist the police and the firemen, who still fought an uncertain
contest with the wily incendiary Putkoff. And in the midst of the
mingling confusion of renewed confidence, the bustle of return,
the flashing telegrams from all parts of the city, the news of the
speeding armaments from Chicago, the resumption of the whirling life
of the huge metropolis, stifled into inaction for a few short hours
by this flurry of insurrection, Helen Lorimer and Amato and Mr. Moser
arrived, and Helen learned all.
Julieta had made her way to the Duncan Keep after her successful
encounter with Bomber, and there became incoherent and dizzy with
fever. She managed to tell her story, and almost the first thing
done when the rehabilitation of the houses began and the colonel of
the regiments came on the scene was to open the now famous Butler’s
pantry. There indeed sat the raving Bomber. He was pale with frenzy.
He leaped at the first man who entered, and only a sharp struggle
overcame him. As he passed down the steps of the mansion, handcuffed,
he encountered Amato and Helen hurrying upward, but he averted
his eyes, and the bitterness of his defeat, the confession of his
shallowness and vanity made him writhe with anguish.
Helen had asked for her mother. Julieta had been very carefully
conducted back to her home, and lay in her bed yielding to the first
vagaries of a disordered mind. Helen stood at her side and leaning
over the changed flushed face of the beautiful woman whispered her
name, and pressed her lips upon her own. Julieta opened her eyes and
her hands feebly closed over the head of her child, holding her in a
delirium of joy. But the strained nerves gave way, and she relapsed
into a kind of inanition awaking at times to beckon from the air some
shape appearing there to her, as she called softly, “Robert, Robert.”
Then Helen herself surrendered. The ordeal had been a long one, and
this climax of anxiety, with the strange vicissitude of the Mayor’s
extremity in her own home, completed the breakdown. Still it was not
serious, and nourishment and rest would restore the strong nature to
its natural estate.
The Mayor’s condition was critical; life ebbed and returned; the
doctors camped at his bedside; skill and art and experience worked
hard together to keep him alive, yet sensibly the flagging heart
released its control, and the solemn end grew more and more certain.
Then it was—the next day in the afternoon—that the dying man asked
for Miss Lorimer. He knew where he was, from time to time in the
brief intervals, when pain left him, his eyes reviewed the decorated
and charming room, dwelling with such a depth of tender interest on
all these things that recalled—how pathetically who shall say—the ONE
love of his life.
Helen came. The Mayor lay in the room of her uncle—the man who had
separated them. It was a luxurious apartment, with every appointment
perfect, and its windows opening to the west, in the sinking
November day caught the last lights over the russet and gold of the
Palisades. The Mayor lay on the bed, with his face turned to the
flushing western sky, rent as it were, with seams of gold, as though
the purple tapestry of the clouds were torn, and the gateway of the
sun’s descent disclosed. Helen stood at the doorway; she had come
noiselessly, and waited for her own heart to beat less wildly. A
doctor held the Mayor’s wrist, timing the sullenly retreating tide of
blood from his young heart; a nurse bent over him. Both happened to
hide Miss Lorimer from him.
The doctor turned, the nurse moved away, the Mayor’s eyes fell on
the face of the woman who there awaited his summons. It came from
those blue eyes whose mystery had first enchanted her. And her own
answered them. Slowly she came forward, and sank into the chair the
doctor had just deserted. The Mayor looked past her for one moment
at his attendants, and a mute entreaty they read in his face, caused
them both to withdraw.
“Pardon me, Miss Lorimer,” said the doctor, “I must soon return.”
Helen bowed her head, a gesture of the doctor’s summoned the nurse
and the two went out together. Helen had taken the dying man’s hand;
she held back the struggling tears; his own eyes were strangely soft
and winning, the effort of this interview brought again some color
to his face—but so very little!—the pitiful remnant of his wasting
life—and his voice, that appealing musical voice just retained or
recovered its former note. She bent her face close to his as he spake.
“Miss Lorimer,” he began, but this noble girl whispered, “let it be
Helen please,” and he smiled, “Helen,—you recall that talk we had in
the museum,—your new museum—?”
“Yes,” she quietly responded.
“Well, here in my wandering dreams I have gone over it for hours. You
have always been near me, and your voice has sounded to me almost as
if it bore to me the music of another World”—his face darkened with
the overwhelming torrent of his sadness, but no sobs broke from his
lips. The spasm of grief passed, she pressed his hands, she wiped the
stricken eyes, she slid softly from her chair, she knelt at his side.
“Helen, I go too with the setting sun—my day is finished—I thank the
Everlasting that it passes thus. But let me be clear in your eyes.
Your uncle drove me from this house. My pride could not brook his
insult. Helen, my love has never ceased, never changed. Death only
takes away its earthly dwelling place, and IF—If, as you began to
teach me, there is still life THERE”—he pointed feebly to the blazing
west—“if there is, there too my love will stay unchanged. Ah! the
long day’s task is done, and I must sleep. But Helen you forgive
me”—then with an ardor that made the girl before him pale with
apprehension that the untoward passion would put out the fluttering
flame of life, he added—“Helen have I still your Love?”
The woman bent her face to his; their lips met—a golden light entered
the windows, it filled the room; it was so intense and brilliant
that objects seemed lost in it; it dazzled as though an etherialized
substance suffused the space, blotting out all definite shape, and
enthralling all the senses in the captivity of one. It was so for
the interval of half a minute, and then again the depleted room was
established in the commonplaces of its utilities.
The doctor and the nurse had returned, and behind them came the
bowed form of the Mayor’s mother, led by Mr. Briggs. Helen rose and
passed to the window, her eyes straining at the spectacle of glory in
the clouds. To her catholic heart and nurture it seemed appallingly
cold and ruthless, this passage of a soul into the awful futurity,
unattended by prayers, unaccompanied by the offices of devotion, with
no sensible presentation, still to hold the dissolving corporeal
powers fixed in adoration that the soul might more purely, more
wisely, pass on to its new appointments, rising on the wings of
aspiration.
The strength of a tremendous religious faith was hers, and in that
strength her lips repeated the Orison of Help for the dying.
A half-stifled cry, a movement behind her, caused her to turn. The
doctor was taking away the stunned mother of the man who had already
just made his confession to her ears. Helen passed quickly to her
side, took her in her arms, and brought her out of the room, passing
through a crowd of men, officers of the city,—state and citizens, and
gently made her way to her own chamber, with a tenderness that was
itself a ministration of healing to the crushed heart, the hopeless
spirit of a Mother.
THE MAYOR WAS DEAD.