One evening, a week after Antoine’s departure for the hospital, Elsie
sat at the organ, idly picking out the melody of several of his favorite
airs and dreamily wishing the lad could be with them once again.
Margaret was busied over her books, and Lizzette, who was with them for
the night, was knitting the stocking that always grew but never seemed
finished, and Gilbert was putting some decorative touches upon a small
medicine cabinet. Suddenly Herbert Lynn appeared in the open doorway,
his arms filled with books and a violin case in one hand.
Elsie arose from her seat as the others greeted him, and stood with her
slight figure as erect and indignant as her mutinous spirit could make
it. Herbert turned toward her. “I am here by permission of high
authority,” he laughed, glancing at Margaret. “I have no apology to make
this time.”
“My sister’s guests are always welcome,” said Elsie icily, as she sank
upon the piano stool and industriously undertook to rearrange several
sheets of disordered music.
Herbert made no reply, but stood composedly watching the trembling
fingers and the swiftly-mounting blushes on the fair face.
“You are nervous,” he said at last. “Let me do that for you. I am
delightfully calm.”
Something in the exasperatingly cool tones made Elsie glance up, and
then as quickly glance down again.
“It is useless to keep on the defensive any longer,” Herbert resumed as
he coolly took the sheets of music from her. “I’ve come to beg a truce.”
“And have you forgotten all I said?”
“Not altogether; but I am of a forgiving disposition.”
“You forgive very easily, it seems to me,” said Elsie haughtily.
“Sometimes, and one of these times is when a spiteful little girl says
things she doesn’t mean.”
Elsie tried hard to keep a sober face, but Herbert’s good-nature was
irresistible, and the corners of her mouth relaxed in a smile as she
looked up and asked: “What occult wisdom taught you she didn’t mean
them?”
“The science of physiognomy, if there is such a science. A face that is
all sunshine for others cannot surely mean to keep all its
thunder-clouds for an inoffensive young man like me.”
“Some people attract lightning,” exclaimed Elsie mischievously.
“By reason of superior magnetism, it is to be presumed. Thanks!”
At this juncture Lizzette came up with the violin case in her hand.
“Herbeart, zis ees ze reminder de mon petit Antoine. Let me hear ze
fiddle speak again.”
“Willingly, if Miss Elsie will accompany me.”
Elsie looked up, mutinous still; but meeting Herbert’s eyes, defiance
gave its last gasp as she said under her breath: “You are an arch
conspirator. I suppose there is nothing left for me but submissiveness.”
Herbert’s blonde head bent low over the pile of music he was ostensibly
examining as he whispered: “You shall see how generously I can conspire.
Trust me to be magnanimous.”
Elsie’s nimble tongue was silent, and a sudden wave of intoxication
seemed to sway her back and forth in a rarefied atmosphere where
breathing was impossible. When at last she dared to glance again at
Herbert, he was tuning his violin with such a look of beatific
contentment on his face that pent-up feeling, on the perilous edge of a
tear, seized the other alternative and burst into laughter. With
instinctive quickness she dashed into a noisy jig on the organ, and by
the time she dared to glance apprehensively around, Herbert had selected
the piece of music and was striking its key-note on the violin. Elsie
played very badly that night, and Herbert was several times obliged to
point out little mistakes and make corrections with all the gravity of a
professional music master. But the tumult in her veins rose higher and
higher, and with a sudden crash on the keys the music came to a stop.
Glancing down at the perturbed face, Herbert turned to the others:
“My violin is evidently not Antoine’s and Miss Elsie looks tired. Have
you examined the new books, Miss Murchison? There is one on sociology,
by Sir Lyon Playfair, I thought might interest you. And there is
Henderson’s ‘History of Music,’ the ‘Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff,’
‘The Three Germanies,’ and two or three newly-issued volumes of poetry
by Meredith, Lover, and others. I thought before I dipped into them I
should like your opinion.”
While Margaret, Lizzette, Gilbert, and Herbert were discussing the new
books, Elsie slipped away, too perturbed to do anything but throw
herself on the bed and cry. Just why she cried it would have been
difficult for her to tell. But she did not try to tell; she only knew,
like all volcanic natures, that safety and reason lay in a copious burst
of tears. Half an hour later she presented herself in the sitting-room,
her old, calm, smiling self.
“Now that the ice is broken I shall hope I may come often,” said Herbert
as he bade them good-night. And saucy Elsie had no retort ready.
The summer wore into early autumn with busy days and brightening
prospects for our little circle. Antoine was making slow but evidently
sure progress at the hospital, and was hopeful and happy at the Sunday
receptions of the friends who clustered around him. Lizzette beamed with
joy and gratitude and seemed to have thrown discretion to the winds in
the praises of Herbert which she constantly chanted in Elsie’s ears. The
treaty of peace to which Elsie had so unwillingly committed herself had,
after all, been a very simple affair. Herbert had been generous, as he
promised, and beyond occasional evenings together over violin and organ,
at which Elsie was learning to acquit herself with greater credit than
on their first venture, they did not often meet. Contrary to her usual
custom, Helen Mason had not closed her city home for the summer.
Herbert, much to her chagrin, refused to seek the seashore, and with
wise forethought, as she fancied, she filled her house with gay company.
Among the guests was a certain Miss Alice Houghton, who, an orphan and
the sole possessor of great wealth, lived, together with a duenna aunt,
at one of the great family hotels in the city. She was a tall,
fine-looking, well-bred girl of twenty-three or twenty-four. Her
distinguishing characteristic was an air of pronounced weariness, that
reminded one vividly of Young’s “Languid Lady.” It was a difficult
matter to interest her in anything, yet her attention once caught, her
face would light up with unusual intelligence and animation. Herbert at
first regarded her simply as an exponent of the system of purposeless
education which is bestowed upon the average society girl; but after
several weeks of acquaintance he became convinced that a secret grief
was preying upon her. He was consequently not greatly surprised when he
found her one morning in late summer in the drawing-room, with a ghastly
look of horror on her face as she clutched a newspaper and read the
head-lines concerning a sensational suicide of a fast young man about
town in one of the gambling hells of the city.
“My husband!” she gasped, pointing to the head-lines and then lapsed
into insensibility.
Elsie was on her way to her morning conference with her mistress when
she encountered Herbert, pale and distracted, with the limp burden in
his arms, calling wildly for Helen. There was no time for explanations
as Helen Mason ran quickly down the stairs, and Elsie returned to her
work with a clouded face and defiant air that did not escape Herbert’s
notice. The story of Alice Houghton’s life was soon told to the two
sympathetic friends. A marriage, secret at first from mere caprice, but
afterward guarded because of shame, to a handsome but dissipated and
entirely characterless man of fashion, who, having spent his own and a
considerable portion of his wife’s fortune at the gambling table, had
deliberately shot himself rather than face the consequences of his evil
deeds. The story never became known beyond the three or four
sympathizers within the Mason household, and the death of a relative
furnished ample excuse for the deep mourning and grief-stricken air with
which the young widow again faced the world. Herbert was very kind and
attentive to her in the early days of her grief, and in consequence his
sister drew some exceedingly flattering pictures as to his future.
With Margaret the summer had been productive of much good. The little
leaven of her kindly nature and generous deeds had permeated the whole
tenement-house and extended even beyond it in sundry additions to her
Busy Fingers Club. She was idolized by the children of the neighborhood,
who hailed her as the patron saint of all their little schemes and
ambitions. Under her fostering care and that of the physician which
Herbert had ordered, the invalid, Mrs. Carson, was slowly gaining her
health and some slight encouragement in her literary ventures. There was
a cloud, however, hovering in Margaret’s sky. Gilbert, who had already
reached a man’s stature, had acquired as well a man’s independence, and
had taken to absenting himself from home evenings, much to the annoyance
of both sisters. It had been his custom during the spring and summer to
go for Elsie and bring her home for the night, and there had been a
substantial progress made in their studies in consequence. Of late,
however, Elsie had found herself dependent for escort upon the
good-natured William, who had shown himself only too happy to be of use
to her, and had grown alarmingly confidential as a result. This state of
William’s mind being duly imparted to Margaret, she had resolved to
forestall trouble by insisting upon Gilbert’s usual attendance on his
sister. But the lad was sullen and unresponsive when she broached the
subject, and when night came he put on his hat and went away without a
word. Margaret brooded for some time over Gilbert’s changed demeanor,
and with a feeling of impending trouble which it is so often impossible
to resist, she dressed herself for the street and went out, resolved to
discover the places he frequented most. Fortune favored her, for at Mrs.
Carson’s door she learned that Gilbert and Mr. Carson had held a
discussion about a meeting of some kind which they were to attend that
evening at Harmonie Hall. The nature of the meeting the invalid did not
know, but she imagined it was semi-political in character, as she had
found that her husband had become interested of late in municipal
politics. There had been strange mutterings in the air for some time
among the inmates of the tenement-house, and Margaret’s heart instantly
took the alarm. What had Gilbert, a minor, to do with municipal politics
and this spirit of discontent that she could but notice among the
laborers with whom she lived? The great strife between labor and capital
had never come actively home to Margaret. Indeed, so simple had seemed
its solution to her upon the broad basis of brotherly love and active
Christianity, that she had worked on quietly, hopefully, in the firm
faith that she was only one of millions of like factors in once more
establishing the kingdom of Christ. Like one who watches the battle from
the hill-top, she believed the contending forces were only seeking their
way up to the clear sunshine. It was, therefore, with something like
consternation that she found herself among the disorderly crowd in the
hall. Here and there little groups of men and women were noisily
discussing various topics and paying only occasional attention to the
speaker, a swarthy, wild-eyed woman, who was shouting in a shrill,
rasping voice the most astounding ideas that had ever greeted Margaret’s
ears. Drawn by curiosity as well as interest, she quietly worked her way
up to a position near the platform and sank into a seat to listen.
“Talk about freedom,” yelled the speaker, waving her long thin arms like
a revolving windmill. “I tell you we are slaves—handcuffed, manacled,
abject slaves.” This assertion brought a round of applause. “Talk about
the great American eagle—it is only a superannuated old crow that lets
its blind followers go where the witches dance on the point of a
needle.” This witticism provoked a loud guffaw of approval from the
crowd. “I tell you, men, what we want is to preach the gospel of
discontent. We want every one of you, all thinking people, to be
anarchists. We don’t believe in statutory law; we don’t want any law but
natural law.”
“Hear! Hear!” came in shrill calls from various parts of the room.
“But you say,” resumed the speaker, “that anarchy is disreputable. That
is just what we want it to be. We want to find the gospel of discontent
in the gutters. We don’t want to be reputable, and I thank God that I am
absolutely disreputable. We leave respectability for the Christian
capitalist, the slave-driver, the monopolist. Why, a man cannot be a
Christian anarchist, because anarchy is only of the earth. The only
class of people who can regulate this dismal condition of society, at
which so many are just now trying their hands, are the anarchists. Think
of it: the telegraphs in this country are owned by one man, the
railroads by sixty families, and into the hands of the few is fast being
gathered the country’s wealth. Impracticable dreamers propose to remedy
this evil by making the state or nation responsible, but the anarchist
says no, he doesn’t want any interference, for he has had too much of
it. The state resorts to armed force. If we want liberty, there is no
other way to get it but to do as the state does and resort to armed
force.”
The speaker sat down amid a great wave of applause, and Margaret shrank
back in her seat with her cheeks burning and eyes flashing with
indignation. A man with long black hair and ragged beard next occupied
the platform, and held forth on the cruelty of the bloated capitalists
and a monopolistic press.
“Why, all attempts at pacification,” he cried, “are dead failures.
Monopolists are more arrogant, trades unions more bitter than ever.
‘Give us more wages,’ we cry; ‘We’ll give you less,’ they say. ‘We don’t
want to work so many hours a day,’ we respond; ‘You shall have more,’
they answer. ‘We won’t work under such conditions,’ we declare; ‘Then
starve,’ they hiss. Do you know there are over three millions of
workingmen who are crying all this? And the capitalists ask: ‘What are
you going to do about it?’ We’ll show them what we’ll do about it. Let
them beware! Let them remember the dark days of the French Revolution,
and note how many patrician heads went under the axe because the rabble
like us—the sans culottes like us, if you please—went crying for bread,
and when they couldn’t have bread they cried for blood and had it. Why,
men, this is the greatest war of history. It is a war not of countries,
but of the globe, and the two great forces, the very rich and the very
poor, those bonded slaves of an arrogant aristocracy, are closing in
upon each other. As yet it is a bloodless strife; but let them beware, I
say, let them beware! This trouble will never cry itself to sleep. There
are too many mighty passions surging through the bosoms of outraged and
insulted beings. There are too many hungry wives and freezing children.
From the Bastile to the portals of this hall stalks a long line of
menacing ghosts, who with pointing fingers demand that the cause for
which they died shall yet be made triumphant. Blind is he who cannot see
that the edicts of society are crushing to the wall the helpless
toilers, the unfortunate women and innocent children of this world.
Blind is he who looks upon the cruelties indorsed by capital without
rising in righteous indignation to echo the cry that rings along the
line, ‘Down with the aristocracy!’ It is a lie that all men have an
equal chance in this world; I tell you the competition is unequal and
capital forces the issue. Success! success! is the Moloch of the world’s
worship, and into its ravenous maw you and I and every one of the
toilers feed daily the writhing bodies of wives and children. It is
feasting on the putrid carcasses that are crushed under its triumphal
car. And all the while there is wealth enough in this world for every
man to have and to spare. I tell you, fellow-mortals, the torch and the
shotgun, the bomb and the bludgeon, are as much for the toiler as the
blue-coated minions of the law.”
The man took his seat on the rear of the platform amid the wildest
cheers, and Margaret watched the eagle-like face and the trembling,
attenuated form with more than usual interest. There had been many
grains of truth in his wild harangue, and they had inspired her
conservative breast with an enthusiastic desire to behold the wide gulf,
between the two great opposing forces of the world, narrowed down to the
line of arbitration and adjustment, to which all such questions must
finally come. But she shuddered with horror at the sanguinary battle
which the speaker’s inflammatory words had conjured. A second French
revolution, intolerably bitterer, bloodier, more wide-spread than its
prototype! God forbid! There was just then a call from the chairman for
volunteer speakers, and Margaret’s eyes became stony in their wonder and
terror, as she saw Gilbert rise from his seat and advance to the front
of the platform. Tall, lithe, like a young sapling, with a wealth of
dark hair pushed back from a high, straight brow, piercing dark eyes, a
square, firmly-set mouth and chin, and fine thin nostrils expanding with
the fire of enthusiasm, he stood before them all. For the first time in
her life Margaret realized the singular beauty and magnetism of the
boy’s presence. To her he had been always only Gilbert, to be watched
over and taken care of with a mother’s unfailing forethought. Now she
saw, with a bitter wrenching of her heart-strings, that the chrysalis
had burst and her lad had gone away forever. Before her stood the man
Gilbert, on whose utterances she hung in breathless apprehension. There
was something almost wonderful in the boy’s self-possession as he stood
and gazed the noisy crowd into curious silence.
“Friends and brother toilers,” he began in a rich, sonorous voice that
filled the hall. “You have called for volunteer talks, and although I am
not yet fully come to man’s estate, the impulse to speak is too strong
to be resisted. It is time that something was done to lift this burden
under which we are groaning, and yet it is the old, old question that
for thousands of years before Christ oppressed the bondsmen of the
earth. How long, O Lord, how long, before this world shall see the
fruition of the mighty labors of the millions who have gone down to
death for the good of their brothers? How long before vengeance shall
overtake the insatiable greed of capital, which has no more care for the
toiler in its grasp than the tiger in the jungle for the man he has
smitten with his paw? What is it to capital that labor goes unshod, to
the well-fed gourmand that the slave who serves him is starving for the
crust he despises? What does the capitalist care for the wails of woe
that go up from thousands of infantile throats, for the shiverings of
the naked wretches at his door, so that piled higher and higher in his
safes he sees the gold these wretched toilers have wrested from the
mighty bowels of the earth? Who cares for the wretched twenty-four
thousand souls that live in one precinct in this great and
wealth-rolling city, within a compass of two small blocks? Who cares for
the nobodies that live in hovels where the water from the street pours
in on the floors, and where sixty or seventy people live in eight or ten
rooms and exhibit the morality of the dogs they represent? What
millionaire philanthropist goes down into his pocket to pay his men
living wages, so that the poverty which shames old-country degradation
need not be re-enacted here? Where is the churchman who, giving largely
to conspicuous charities, would be willing to turn that charity into
specific help in business to the man or men who do his bidding? It is
only a few years back that the ‘boss’ worked at the same bench with his
men. Now this is all changed. Now he has his elegant office, his
carriage, his fine attire; but the workmen show no such advance in
prosperity. They work for even less wages, wear the same cheap clothing,
and toil just as many hours as when they and the ‘boss’ were co-workers.
What has wrought this change? What has made these conditions possible? I
will tell you. It is governmental aid. It is because the government has
fostered the schemes of the rich man and made him a ward of the nation.
But it is unjust, and a relic of the old feudality that the government
should recognize one son to the exclusion of the others equally
well-born, and equally deserving. On this principle, therefore, we
demand that we be made wards of the nation. We demand a distributive
justice, by pacific means if possible, and if not, then by a retributive
justice, by force of arms——”
“Gilbert! Gilbert!”
A hand laid on the lad’s shoulder caused him to turn in wonder and
confusion to meet Margaret’s pleading face and terror-stricken eyes.
“You are wrong, Gilbert,” she cried earnestly. “Wrong! wrong! You must
not incite to violence. Just see what turbulent elements are before
you!”
There had come an instant hush with her appearance on the platform; men
and women had risen to their feet and were peering curiously at the two.
Flushed, trembling, intoxicated with enthusiasm, Gilbert cried: “But the
terrible wrongs of the poor! You know what they are—you who toil for a
daily pittance! They must be avenged!”
“But not in the way you indicate. Not by bloodshed or violence. See! we
are attracting attention! Will you let me speak for you?”
For a moment resentment gleamed in Gilbert’s eyes, and then, as he
glanced at Margaret’s uplifted earnest face, he answered: “Yes, correct
me if I am wrong. God speed you!”
Gilbert sank back into a chair, his eyes intently fixed upon his
sister’s face as she advanced to the front of the platform and stood
looking out upon the sea of wondering faces.
“Friends,” she began in a low voice, “I have a story to tell you. The
lad who has just addressed you is my brother. For seven years I have
been mother, counsellor, friend to him. I promised his dying father to
watch over him with unremitting vigilance until his feet should be
firmly set in the paths of upright manhood. That father was a man who
believed in and practiced the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of
man. He recognized not that all men are created equal mentally and
physically, for that is a manifest absurdity, but that there is a
principle underneath all conditions of society calling for the respect,
veneration, and love of man as man. We must respect humanity in all its
phases, and there is no right, divine or earthly, that permits us to
cripple it, enslave it, or destroy it. This idea was one of his ardent
beliefs; but it would have cut his gentle heart to the quick to know
that his son would ever be misled into uttering words that could in any
way incite to violence or wrong-doing. I have listened to-night to words
that made my heart bleed; not only for the evils afflicting labor, not
only for the misguided ideas of the so-called upper classes, but for the
deeper wrongs you are inflicting on yourselves.”
A stir among the audience and a few hisses for a moment disturbed
Margaret’s equanimity, but gathering heart again she went on in a voice
of deep and commanding earnestness: “Nay! hear me out. I premise here
that I am not against you; indeed, I am one of you. I toil for my daily
bread, and I receive but a pittance for my work. I take slop-work from
the factories, and make men’s shirts for forty-five cents per dozen, and
men’s overalls for fifty cents per dozen pairs. So you see I know what
labor has to contend with.”
Shouts of “You’re a good one!” “Go on!” encouraged the increasing tide
of thought that surged to her lips. She stood before them pale, earnest,
like a prophet, and forgetting time, self, place, she swept the now
listening throng with the full force of the unselfish convictions which
had made her mistress of herself and untoward circumstance.
“Once more I say to you, O my brothers and sisters, you are wrong, and I
repeat it with the facts of history as a bulwark of defence. Let us go
back a little to the dim days of which we catch but faint shadows, two
thousand years and more before the Christian era, when there were but
two classes of men, feudal lords and bondsmen. Let us trace up through
the freedom given the slaves under Moses, fourteen hundred years before
Christ, and through all the struggles of the toiler up to the present
day, the results of violent uprisings of brute force. History gives but
two evidences where such uprisings on the part of labor’s slaves were
not terribly disastrous to the insurgents. Thousands of years have
passed away, men have fought with the desperation of tigers for their
rights, and still these rights are in a measure denied, and the
millennium of labor is not yet in sight. You may strike the torch to the
factory, aim the shotgun at your fellow-workman because he refuses to
listen to your dictation, put your bombs on railroad tracks before the
midnight express, leave the ship without sailors or the printing press
without workers, because any or all of these are not conducted with a
true regard for mutual welfare, and you will only find yourselves still
deeper in the mire of dissatisfaction and wrong. You cripple your own
resources and injure your own prospects when you preach the doctrine of
physical force. Leave the development of that doctrine to the brute
whose only resource it is, and lift yourselves up to the higher plane
where exists the reason of man. But you are no doubt asking where that
reason must begin. Back of all sophistries, back of all calculation, on
that primitive plane of the newly awakened—the conscience! This, in the
age of intricate reasoning and perplexing sophistries, may seem to you
but the utterance of a simple-minded woman; but history proves, through
experience, that the great and seemingly complex problems of the day
never can be and never will be solved on any other basis. It was not
indeed until the gentle Nazarene walked the earth that its toilers began
to grope upward toward the light of reason and conscience. He it was who
first took the taint from the grimy hand of the worker; He it is who
ought to-day to be the sole advocate and mediator in all your wrongs and
suffering. I am not talking to you of the religion that the occupants of
velvet pulpits preach to the occupants of velvet pews, nor of the
Christianity, so called, that is reserved for the rich man who builds
churches where he and his class may worship in unsullied seclusion; but
of that fundamental principle which led the Carpenter of Nazareth to
render absolute justice to all men and which prompted the good Samaritan
to do a generous deed to his fallen neighbor. Yes, you say all this
would do very well if men could be made over on a higher basis; but they
are greedy, avaricious, and prompted more by self-interest than
brotherly love. True; but there is always the acorn before there is the
oak. Social reforms must begin with the individual. In order to have an
upright community it must be largely composed of upright individuals,
and if every man reformed himself the proposition of a reformed society
would be of very simple solution. It is wonderful indeed how the little
leaven leavens the whole lump. Wonderful how the gulf between classes is
already being widened by these injudicious threats of violence. Let us
beware, then, of incendiary words! We are all of us, Dives and Lazarus
alike, striving for the same goal; we would all be rich, prosperous,
happy if we could. We are indignant because Dives gets in our way and
hinders our advancement, when he ought, by all the laws of
good-fellowship, to give us fair play and equal chances. But when we as
Lazarus, by a fortunate conjunction of circumstances, come at last to
Dives’ importance, how is it that we take the same mean advantage of
some less capable or lucky mortal? Ah, my friends, until we learn that
all these great problems lie partially at least within ourselves, and,
like Atlas, are willing to bear the world on our shoulders, we shall
never gain the object we are seeking. In the conscience of every
individual lies the hope of the world’s progress. Let us seek,
therefore, to cultivate that light within our own breasts, so that,
feeble ray though it may be, it shall illumine the pathway of some
weaker brother and help him toward the diviner light of the gentle
Nazarene. I protest against the indiscriminate and wordy assaults upon
rich men. Not alone in the poor man’s breast are all the virtues. Much
of the poverty of the world is the fault of the individual. Natural
thrift and industry have their reward even in the present untoward
industrial conditions. You cannot smoke away, and drink up your income,
and justly blame the bloated capitalist who employs you if your children
are shoeless and the table stands empty. But you can use your reason,
you can be thrifty, careful, and educate yourselves on the side of
conscience and humanity. I look upon this talk of reform which is in the
air as excellent for the great cause of universal brotherhood. This is
the tendency of the times; the cardinal truth underlying the welfare of
the world. Capital is identical in interest with us, and must recognize
sooner or later the trite truth that we are only the fulfilment and
complement of each other. Let us beware, then, my friends, how we
antagonize those whose help we need. Let us make capital feel, by reason
of our foresight, our fidelity, our judgment, our generosity, that it
cannot afford to ignore our rights and must open wide the doors to human
progress or fall a victim to its own inertia. With you I believe in
organization; organization upheld by, and upholding, the rights of the
people, irrespective of class; organization prompted by the still small
voice of conscience, which abridges no man’s freedom while seeking its
own. In this way only can your wrongs and mine be righted. But before we
mend the steps of those who oppress us, let us as individuals sweep the
inner chambers of the heart, and garnish them anew for the long-waited
guest of universal justice.”