She had got another place--such was the explanation of her new activities
Janet gave to Hannah, who received it passively. And the question dreaded
about Ditmar was never asked. Hannah had become as a child, performing
her tasks by the momentum of habituation, occasionally talking simply of
trivial, every-day affairs, as though the old life were going on
continuously. At times, indeed, she betrayed concern about Edward,
wondering whether he were comfortable at the mill, and she washed and
darned the clothes he sent home by messenger. She hoped he would not
catch cold. Her suffering seemed to have relaxed. It was as though the
tortured portion of her brain had at length been seared. To Janet, her
mother's condition when she had time to think of it--was at once a relief
and a new and terrible source of anxiety.
Mercifully, however, she had little leisure to reflect on that tragedy,
else her own sanity might have been endangered. As soon as breakfast was
over she hurried across the city to the Franco-Belgian Hall, and often
did not return until nine o'clock at night, usually so tired that she
sank into bed and fell asleep. For she threw herself into her new labours
with the desperate energy that seeks forgetfulness, not daring to pause
to think about herself, to reflect upon what the future might hold for
her when the strike should be over. Nor did she confine herself to
typewriting, but, as with Ditmar, constantly assumed a greater burden of
duty, helping Czernowitz--who had the work of five men--with his
accounts, with the distribution of the funds to the ever-increasing
number of the needy who were facing starvation. The money was paid out to
them in proportion to the size of their families; as the strike became
more and more effective their number increased until many mills had
closed; other mills, including the Chippering, were still making a
desperate attempt to operate their looms, and sixteen thousand operatives
were idle. She grew to know these operatives who poured all day long in a
steady stream through Headquarters; she heard their stories, she entered
into their lives, she made decisions. Some, even in those early days of
the strike, were frauds; were hiding their savings; but for the most part
investigation revealed an appalling destitution, a resolution to suffer
for the worker's cause. A few complained, the majority were resigned;
some indeed showed exaltation and fire, were undaunted by the task of
picketing in the cold mornings, by the presence of the soldiery. In this
work of dealing with the operatives Janet had the advice and help of Anna
Mower, a young woman who herself had been a skilled operative in the
Clarendon Mill, and who was giving evidence of unusual qualities of
organization and leadership. Anna, with no previous practise in oratory,
had suddenly developed the gift of making speeches, the more effective
with her fellow workers because unstudied, because they flowed directly
out of an experience she was learning to interpret and universalize.
Janet, who heard her once or twice, admired and envied her. They became
friends.
The atmosphere of excitement in which Janet now found herself was
cumulative. Day by day one strange event followed another, and at times
it seemed as if this extraordinary existence into which she had been
plunged were all a feverish dream. Hither, to the absurd little solle de
reunion of the Franco-Belgian Hall came notables from the great world,
emissaries from an uneasy Governor, delegations from the Legislature,
Members of the Congress of the United States and even Senators; students,
investigators, men and women of prominence in the universities, magazine
writers to consult with uncouth leaders of a rebellion that defied and
upset the powers which hitherto had so serenely ruled, unchallenged.
Rolfe identified these visitors, and one morning called her attention to
one who he said was the nation's foremost authority on social science.
Janet possessed all unconsciously the New England reverence for learning,
she was stirred by the sight of this distinguished-looking person who sat
on the painted stage, fingering his glasses and talking to Antonelli. The
two men made a curious contrast. But her days were full of contrasts of
which her mood exultingly approved. The politicians were received
cavalierly. Toward these, who sought to act as go-betweens in the
conflict, Antonelli was contemptuous; he behaved like the general of a
conquering army, and his audacity was reflected in the other leaders, in
Rolfe, in the Committee itself.
That Committee, a never-ending source of wonder to Janet, with its nine
or ten nationalities and interpreters, was indeed a triumph over the
obstacles of race and language, a Babel made successful; in a community
of Anglo-Saxon traditions, an amazing anomaly. The habiliments of the
west, the sack coats and sweaters, the slouch hats and caps, the
so-called Derbies pulled down over dark brows and flashing eyes lent to
these peasant types an incongruity that had the air of ferocity. The
faces of most of them were covered with a blue-black stubble of beard.
Some slouched in their chairs, others stood and talked in groups,
gesticulating with cigars and pipes; yet a keen spectator, after watching
them awhile through the smoke, might have been able to pick out striking
personalities among them. He would surely have noticed Froment, the
stout, limping man under whose white eyebrows flashed a pair of livid
blue and peculiarly Gallic eyes; he held the Belgians in his hand:
Lindtzki, the Pole, with his zealot's face; Radeau, the big Canadian in
the checked Mackinaw; and Findley, the young American-less by any
arresting quality of feature than by an expression suggestive of
practical wisdom.
Imagine then, on an afternoon in the middle phase of the strike, some
half dozen of the law-makers of a sovereign state, top-hatted and
conventionally garbed in black, accustomed to authority, to conferring
favours instead of requesting them, climbing the steep stairs and pausing
on the threshold of that hall, fingering their watch chains, awaiting
recognition by the representatives of the new and bewildering force that
had arisen in an historic commonwealth. A "debate" was in progress. Some
of the debaters, indeed, looked over their shoulders, but the leader, who
sat above them framed in the sylvan setting of the stage, never so much
as deigned to glance up from his newspaper. A half-burned cigar rolled
between his mobile lips, he sat on the back of his neck, and yet he had
an air Napoleonic; Nietzschean, it might better be said--although it is
safe to assert that these moulders of American institutions knew little
about that terrible philosopher who had raised his voice against the
"slave morals of Christianity." It was their first experience with the
superman.... It remained for the Canadian, Radeau, when a lull arrived in
the turmoil, to suggest that the gentlemen be given chairs.
"Sure, give them chairs," assented Antonelli in a voice hoarse from
speech-making. Breath-taking audacity to certain spectators who had
followed the delegation hither, some of whom could not refrain from
speculating whether it heralded the final scrapping of the machinery of
the state; amusing to cynical metropolitan reporters, who grinned at one
another as they prepared to take down the proceedings; evoking a fierce
approval in the breasts of all rebels among whom was Janet. The
Legislative Chairman, a stout and suave gentleman of Irish birth,
proceeded to explain how greatly concerned was the Legislature that the
deplorable warfare within the state should cease; they had come, he
declared, to aid in bringing about justice between labour and capital.
"We'll get justice without the help of the state," remarked Antonelli
curtly, while a murmur of approval ran through the back of the hall.
That was scarcely the attitude, said the Chairman, he had expected. He
knew that such a strike as this had engendered bitterness, there had been
much suffering, sacrifice undoubtedly on both sides, but he was sure, if
Mr. Antonelli and the Committee would accept their services here he was
interrupted.
Had the mill owners accepted their services?
The Chairman cleared his throat.
The fact was that the mill owners were more difficult to get together in
a body. A meeting would be arranged--"When you arrange a meeting, let me
know," said Antonelli.
A laugh went around the room. It was undoubtedly very difficult to keep
one's temper under such treatment. The Chairman looked it.
"A meeting would be arranged," he declared, with a long-suffering
expression. He even smiled a little. "In the meantime--"
"What can your committee do?" demanded one of the strike leaders,
passionately--it was Findley. "If you find one party wrong, can your
state force it to do right? Can you legislators be impartial when you
have not lived the bitter life of the workers? Would you arbitrate a
question of life and death? And are the worst wages paid in these mills
anything short of death? Do you investigate because conditions are bad?
or because the workers broke loose and struck? Why did you not come
before the strike?"
This drew more approval from the rear. Why, indeed? The Chairman was
adroit, he had pulled himself out of many tight places in the Assembly
Chamber, but now he began to perspire, to fumble in his coat tails for a
handkerchief. The Legislature, he maintained, could not undertake to
investigate such matters until called to its attention....
Later on a tall gentleman, whom heaven had not blessed with tact, saw fit
to deplore the violence that had occurred; he had no doubt the leaders of
the strike regretted it as much as he, he was confident it would be
stopped, when public opinion would be wholly and unreservedly on the side
of the strikers.
"Public opinion!" savagely cried Lindtzki, who spoke English with only a
slight accent. "If your little boy, if your little girl come to you and
ask for shoes, for bread, and you say, `I have no shoes, I have no bread,
but public opinion is with us,' would that satisfy you?"
This drew so much applause that the tall law-maker sat down again with a
look of disgust on his face.... The Committee withdrew, and for many
weeks thereafter the state they represented continued to pay some four
thousand dollars daily to keep its soldiers on the streets of Hampton....
In the meanwhile Janet saw much of Rolfe. Owing to his facile command of
language he was peculiarly fitted to draft those proclamations,
bombastically worded in the French style, issued and circulated by the
Strike Committee--appeals to the polyglot army to withstand the pangs of
hunger, to hold out for the terms laid down, assurances that victory was
at hand. Walking up and down the bibliotheque, his hands behind his
back, his red lips gleaming as he spoke, he dictated these documents to
Janet. In the ecstasy of this composition he had a way of shaking his
head slowly from side to side, and when she looked up she saw his eyes
burning, down at her. A dozen times a day, while she was at her other
work, he would come in and talk to her. He excited her, she was divided
between attraction and fear of him, and often she resented his easy
assumption that a tie existed between them--the more so because this
seemed to be taken for granted among certain of his associates. In their
eyes, apparently, she was Rolfe's recruit in more senses than one. It was
indeed a strange society in which she found herself, and Rolfe typified
it. He lived on the plane of the impulses and intellect, discarded as
inhibiting factors what are called moral standards, decried individual
discipline and restraint. And while she had never considered these
things, the spectacle of a philosophy--embodied in him--that frankly and
cynically threw them overboard was disconcerting. He regarded her as his
proselyte, he called her a Puritan, and he seemed more concerned that she
should shed these relics of an ancestral code than acquire the doctrines
of Sorel and Pouget. And yet association with him presented the
allurement of a dangerous adventure. Intellectually he fascinated her;
and still another motive--which she partially disguised from
herself--prevented her from repelling him. That motive had to do with
Ditmar. She tried to put Ditmar from her mind; she sought in desperation,
not only to keep busy, but to steep and lose herself in this fierce creed
as an antidote to the insistent, throbbing pain that lay ambushed against
her moments of idleness. The second evening of her installation at
Headquarters she had worked beyond the supper hour, helping Sanders with
his accounts. She was loath to go home. And when at last she put on her
hat and coat and entered the hall Rolfe, who had been talking to Jastro,
immediately approached her. His liquid eyes regarded her solicitously.
"You must be hungry," he said. "Come out with me and have some supper."
But she was not hungry; what she needed was air. Then he would walk a
little way with her--he wanted to talk to her. She hesitated, and then
consented. A fierce hope had again taken possession of her, and when they
came to Warren Street she turned into it.
"Where are you going?" Rolfe demanded.
"For a walk," she said. "Aren't you coming?"
"Will you have supper afterwards?"
"Perhaps."
He followed her, puzzled, yet piqued and excited by her manner, as with
rapid steps she hurried along the pavement. He tried to tell her what her
friendship meant to him; they were, he declared, kindred spirits--from
the first time he had seen her, on the Common, he had known this. She
scarcely heard him, she was thinking of Ditmar; and this was why she had
led Rolfe into Warren Street they might meet Ditmar! It was possible that
he would be going to the mill at this time, after his dinner! She
scrutinized every distant figure, and when they reached the block in
which he lived she walked more slowly. From within the house came to her,
faintly, the notes of a piano--his daughter Amy was practising. It was
the music, a hackneyed theme of Schubert's played heavily, that seemed to
arouse the composite emotion of anger and hatred, yet of sustained
attraction and wild regret she had felt before, but never so poignantly
as now. And she lingered, perversely resolved to steep herself in the
agony.
"Who lives here" Rolfe asked.
"Mr. Ditmar," she answered.
"The agent of the Chippering Mill?"
She nodded.
"He's the worst of the lot," Rolfe said angrily. "If it weren't for him,
we'd have this strike won to-day. He owns this town, he's run it to suit
himself, He stiffens up the owners and holds the other mills in line.
He's a type, a driver, the kind of man we must get rid of. Look at him
--he lives in luxury while his people are starving."
"Get rid of!" repeated Janet, in an odd voice.
"Oh, I don't mean to shoot him," Rolfe declared. "But he may get shot,
for all I know, by some of these slaves he's made desperate."
"They wouldn't dare shoot him," Janet said. "And whatever he is, he isn't
a coward. He's stronger than the others, he's more of a man."
Rolfe looked at her curiously.
"What do you know about him?" he asked.
"I--I know all about him. I was his stenographer."
"You! His stenographer! Then why are you herewith us?"
"Because I hate him!" she cried vehemently. "Because I've learned that
it's true--what you say about the masters--they only think of themselves
and their kind, and not of us. They use us."
"He tried to use you! You loved him!"
"How dare you say that!"
He fell back before her anger.
"I didn't mean to offend you," he exclaimed. "I was jealous--I'm jealous
of every man you've known. I want you. I've never met a woman like you."
They were the very words Ditmar had used! She did not answer, and for a
while they walked along in silence, leaving Warren Street and cutting
across the city until they canoe in sight of the Common. Rolfe drew
nearer to her.
"Forgive me!" he pleaded. "You know I would not offend you. Come, we'll
have supper together, and I will teach you more of what you have to
know."
"Where?" she asked.
"At the Hampton--it is a little cafe where we all go. Perhaps you've been
there."
"No," said Janet.
"It doesn't compare with the cafes of Europe--or of New York. Perhaps we
shall go to them sometime, together. But it is cosy, and warm, and all
the leaders will be there. You'll come--yes?"
"Yes, I'll come," she said....
The Hampton was one of the city's second-class hotels, but sufficiently
pretentious to have, in its basement, a "cafe" furnished in the "mission"
style of brass tacks and dull red leather. In the warm, food-scented air
fantastic wisps of smoke hung over the groups; among them Janet made out
several of the itinerant leaders of Syndicalism, loose-tied, debonnair,
giving a tremendous impression of freedom as they laughed and chatted
with the women. For there were women, ranging from the redoubtable Nellie
Bond herself down to those who may be designated as camp-followers. Rolfe,
as he led Janet to a table in a corner of the room, greeted his
associates with easy camaraderie. From Miss Bond he received an
illuminating smile. Janet wondered at her striking good looks, at the
boldness and abandon with which she talked to Jastro or exchanged sallies
across the room. The atmosphere of this tawdry resort, formerly
frequented by shop girls and travelling salesmen, was magically
transformed by the presence of this company, made bohemian, cosmopolitan,
exhilarating. And Janet, her face flushed, sat gazing at the scene, while
Rolfe consulted the bill of fare and chose a beefsteak and French fried
potatoes. The apathetic waiter in the soiled linen jacket he addressed as
"comrade." Janet protested when he ordered cocktails.
"You must learn to live, to relax, to enjoy yourself," he declared.
But a horror of liquor held her firm in her refusal. Rolfe drank his, and
while they awaited the beefsteak she was silent, the prey of certain
misgivings that suddenly assailed her. Lise, she remembered, had
sometimes mentioned this place, though preferring Gruber's: and she was
struck by the contrast between this spectacle and the grimness of the
strike these people had come to encourage and sustain, the conflict in
the streets, the suffering in the tenements. She glanced at Rolfe, noting
the manner in which he smoked cigarettes, sensually, as though seeking to
wring out of each all there was to be got before flinging it down and
lighting another. Again she was struck by the anomaly of a religion that
had indeed enthusiasms, sacrifices perhaps, but no disciplines. He threw
it out in snatches, this religion, while relating the histories of
certain persons in the room: of Jastro, for instance, letting fall a hint
to the effect that this evangelist and bliss Bond were dwelling together
in more than amity.
"Then you don't believe in marriage?" she demanded, suddenly.
Rolfe laughed.
"What is it," he exclaimed, "but the survival of the system of property?
It's slavery, taboo, a device upheld by the master class to keep women in
bondage, in superstition, by inducing them to accept it as a decree of
God."
"Did the masters themselves ever respect it, or any other decrees of God
they preached to the slaves? Read history, and you will see. They had
their loves, their mistresses. Read the newspapers, and you will find out
whether they respect it to-day. But they are very anxious to have you and
me respect it and all the other Christian commandments, because they will
prevent us from being discontented. They say that we must be satisfied
with the situation in this world in which God has placed us, and we shall
have our reward in the next."
She shivered slightly, not only at the ideas thus abruptly enunciated,
but because it occurred to her that those others must be taking for
granted a certain relationship between herself and Rolfe.... But
presently, when the supper arrived, these feelings changed. She was very
hungry, and the effect of the food, of the hot coffee was to dispel her
doubt and repugnance, to throw a glamour over the adventure, to restore
to Rolfe's arguments an exciting and alluring appeal. And with renewed
physical energy she began to experience once more a sense of fellowship
with these free and daring spirits who sought to avenge her wrongs and
theirs.
"For us who create there are no rules of conduct, no conventions," Rolfe
was saying, "we do not care for the opinions of the middle class, of the
bourgeois. With us men and women are on an equality. It is fear that has
kept the workers down, and now we have cast that off--we know our
strength. As they say in Italy, il mondo e a chi se lo piglia, the world
belongs to him who is bold."
"Italian is a beautiful language," she exclaimed.
"I will teach you Italian," he said.
"I want to learn--so much!" she sighed.
"Your soul is parched," he said, in a commiserating tone. "I will water
it, I will teach you everything." His words aroused a faint, derisive
echo: Ditmar had wish to teach her, too! But now she was strongly under
the spell of the new ideas hovering like shining, gossamer spirits just
beyond her reach, that she sought to grasp and correlate. Unlike the code
which Rolfe condemned, they seemed not to be separate from life, opposed
to it, but entered even into that most important of its elements, sex. In
deference to that other code Ditmar had made her his mistress, and
because he was concerned for his position and the security of the ruling
class had sought to hide the fact.... Rolfe, with a cigarette between his
red lips, sat back in his chair, regarding with sensuous enjoyment the
evident effect of his arguments.
"But love?" she interrupted, when presently he had begun to talk again.
She strove inarticulately to express an innate feminine objection to
relationships that were made and broken at pleasure.
"Love is nothing but attraction between the sexes, the life-force working
in us. And when that attraction ceases, what is left? Bondage. The
hideous bondage of Christian marriage, in which women promise to love and
obey forever."
"But women--women are not like men. When once they give themselves they
do not so easily cease to love. They--they suffer."
He did not seem to observe the bitterness in her voice.
"Ah, that is sentiment," he declared, "something that will not trouble
women when they have work to do, inspiring work. It takes time to change
our ideas, to learn to see things as they are." He leaned forward
eagerly. "But you will learn, you are like some of those rare women in
history who have had the courage to cast off traditions. You were not
made to be a drudge...."
But now her own words, not his, were ringing in her head--women do not so
easily cease to love, they suffer. In spite of the new creed she had so
eagerly and fiercely embraced, in which she had sought deliverance and
retribution, did she still love Ditmar, and suffer because of him? She
repudiated the suggestion, yet it persisted as she glanced at Rolfe's red
lips and compared him with Ditmar. Love! Rolfe might call it what he
would--the life-force, attraction between the sexes, but it was proving
stronger than causes and beliefs. He too was making love to her; like
Ditmar, he wanted her to use and fling away when he should grow weary.
Was he not pleading for himself rather than for the human cause he
professed? taking advantage of her ignorance and desperation, of her
craving for new experience and knowledge? The suspicion sickened her.
Were all men like that? Suddenly, without apparent premeditation or
connection, the thought of the stranger from Silliston entered her mind.
Was he like that?... Rolfe was bending toward her across the table,
solicitously. "What's the matter?" he asked.
Her reply was listless.
"Nothing--except that I'm tired. I want to go home."
"Not now," he begged. "It's early yet."
But she insisted....