THE NEW MOON
When Barry Malleson left the house of Mrs. Bradley he left it with his
head in a rose-cloud. The woman had fascinated him. Plainly and cheaply
garbed as he had seen her, plain and cheap as her environment was,
devoid, as she must be, of all social standing and of all the social
graces, she had, nevertheless, fascinated him. Not that he permitted
himself, under the circumstances, to think of making love to her; that
would have been incongruous and inexcusable. But she had surrounded him
with an atmosphere pervaded and enriched by her own personality, and
from that atmosphere he could not, nor did he try to, escape.
He did not overtake the Reverend Mr. Farrar on his way back to the
city, but he did overtake Miss Chichester. She was walking along
hurriedly in an unattractive suburb; she was alone, and dusk was
falling, and the only decent thing for him to do was to pull up to the
curb and ask her to ride into the city. She was not loath to accept
his invitation. It pleased her, not alone because the acceptance of it
would help her on her way, but because also it would give her, for a
brief time, the exclusive companionship of Barry Malleson. There was no
just reason why Miss Chichester should not desire the companionship of
Barry, nor why she was not entitled to it. They had known each other
from childhood. She was a member of his social set; she belonged to the
church which he attended; she was not far from his own age; she was
fairly prepossessing in appearance; and she was, so far as any romantic
connection was concerned, entirely unattached. Moreover, she admired
Barry. Perhaps Barry did not know it, but if he did not it was no fault
of Miss Chichester’s. While maidenly modesty would not permit her to
make open love to him, there are a thousand ways in which a young woman
may manifest her preference for a man with the utmost propriety. Miss
Chichester exercised all of them. But, so far, they had been without
avail. Easily impressed as Barry was with feminine charms, he had not
been impressed with those of Miss Chichester. Therefore he had been
unresponsive. Not that he was entirely unaware of her preference for
him――dull as he may have been, he could not have failed to understand
something of that――but he simply ignored it. The strenuousness of his
duties as vice-president of the Malleson Manufacturing Company left
him no time to bestow on a love affair in which he was not especially
interested. It was, therefore, with no great amount of enthusiasm that
he asked Miss Chichester to ride with him this day. Besides, he had
something to think about, and he would have preferred to be alone. But
he handed her into his car with as much courtesy as though she had been
his wife or his sweetheart.
“You’re a long way from home, Jane?” he said, inquiringly.
“Yes,” she replied, “I’ve been down on the south side to visit a poor
family in which the guild is interested, and it got late before I
realized it. I was hurrying along to get out of this section of the
city before dark. It was so good of you to pick me up.”
“It’s a pleasure to have the opportunity.”
“Thank you! Now that I’ve told you where I’ve been, it’s only fair that
you should tell me where you’ve been. Let’s exchange confidences.”
“By all means! I’ve been up to Factory Hill to call on a widow.”
“Mr. Pickwick was advised to beware of widows.”
“Well, I’m not Mr. Pickwick, and, besides, this one isn’t dangerous.”
“But is she fascinating, Barry? You know widows are usually described
as fascinating.”
“Fascinating! Well, now, why do you want to know?”
“Oh, just to find out if you were making love to her.”
“Making love to her! Good Lord! With her dead husband lying in the next
room!”
“Oh, Barry!”
“If he’d been a live one I might have done it. She was handsome enough
to provoke any man into it. But a dead one! Deliver me from dead
husbands!”
“That’s awfully interesting――and gruesome. Tell me about it, do!”
So Barry told her about his errand to Mrs. Bradley, the purport of it
and the result of it. They were rolling up the Main Street of the city.
Miss Chichester was not so absorbed in Barry’s story that she failed to
bow and smile to people on the pavement whom she knew. It was something
to be seen at dusk, alone with Barry Malleson, in his car.
“And are you going again to see her, and urge her to take the money?”
inquired Miss Chichester when Barry had completed the account of his
visit.
“Sure! I’m going again.”
“Let me go with you.”
“Eh? You go with me? What for?”
“Oh, just to see how such a remarkable woman acts and talks.”
“I――I’m afraid I couldn’t do as much with her if you were present.”
“I’d help you. I’d tell her it was her duty to take the money.”
“She doesn’t like to be dictated to.”
“Then I’d plead with her to take it.”
“I――I think I could do better with her alone.”
“Barry Malleson, I believe you’re on the verge of falling in love with
that woman. That’s why you don’t want me to go.”
“Preposterous!”
“Then take me along.”
“All right! You may go.”
Barry knew that she would have her own way about it eventually, and
that he might as well yield first as last.
They had left Main Street and were bowling along up the avenue toward
Fountain Park, the exclusive residence district in which they both
lived. It was a very mild and beautiful September evening. The balmy
air, the shadowy twilight, the moving car, the overhanging trees,
were all suggestive of romance. And Miss Chichester was not averse to
romance――under proper auspices.
“I think,” she said, “that I caught a glimpse of the new moon just
beyond the tower of Christ Church as we turned the corner. Did you see
it, Barry?”
“No.” Barry did not intend to be abrupt, but his mind was occupied just
then by the vision of another woman’s face.
“Don’t you want to look at it?” she asked. “It must be back of us
somewhere. We’re far enough up the hill now to see it plainly.”
“If I turn around I’ll have to stop the car.”
“Then stop it. It’s worth while.”
Barry stopped the car and started to turn his head.
“Don’t look yet!” exclaimed Miss Chichester. “Over which shoulder must
you see it in order to have good luck?”
“Blessed if I know!”
“Neither do I. I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Barry. You look at it over
your right shoulder, and I’ll look at it over my left; then one of us
two will have good luck anyway. It really doesn’t matter which one.”
“All right!”
Miss Chichester turned her head slowly to the left, while Barry turned
his slowly to the right, and so they faced each other. Now, when a
susceptible young man, and a like-minded young woman, sitting side
by side in a car, in the gloaming, turn toward each other to look
over their respective shoulders at a new moon, the tender light of
which falls on their upturned faces, the situation becomes such that
Cupid is more than likely to kick up his pudgy heels in glee. But
on this occasion he never moved a muscle. It was Barry’s fault. He
simply did not appreciate his privileges and opportunities. In the
most matter-of-fact way he turned back, after gazing for a moment on
the glimmering crescent, restored the power to his car, and as it shot
ahead he quietly remarked:
“I wonder if the moon is really made of green cheese.”
“Oh, Barry!” said Miss Chichester. “You impossible man!”
* * * * *
The funeral of John Bradley was conducted in accordance with the will
of his widow. There was no clergyman there. Nor did any one read
the service for the burial of the dead as authorized by any Church.
Religion had absolutely no part in this final chapter of the story of
a workingman’s life and death. It was Sunday afternoon, the dead man’s
fellow-workmen were free to come, and they gathered in large numbers
to pay their tribute to his memory. But this was not the only purpose
of their coming. They desired also by their presence to manifest
their sympathy with his widow, to emphasize their disapproval of the
treatment he had received from his corporate employer, and from the
court that had sent him away empty handed from the only tribunal that
was supposed to do justice between man and man. There were few toilers
in the city who had not heard of the misfortunes of the man now dead,
and few who did not believe him to have been a victim of corporate
greed and of a gross miscarriage of justice.
It was largely in demonstration of their belief that they came to
attend the funeral. One by one they passed by his coffin, men of his
own walk in life, and looked down on his dead face. They were sober,
sympathetic and silent as they looked. Some of them, who had known
him well in his lifetime, were moved to tears. Not that he had been
a leader among them, nor that he had been a favorite with them, nor
that they had respected or cared more for him than they had for a
hundred others who worked nine hours a day, smoked an ill-smelling
pipe, drank a few glasses of beer of an evening, and in general lived a
monotonous, unambitious, unintellectual life. So that whatever emotion
they manifested beyond that ordinarily caused by the mere fact of death
was due wholly to the injustice of which they believed he had been a
victim, and to the unusual manner of his taking off.
Bradley’s widow, sitting near the head of the coffin with veil thrown
back, watched them as they came and went. Whether or not others in the
gathering marked the significance of the outpouring, she, at least,
did not fail to do so. She sensed the spirit of the crowd. She saw in
it a complete justification of her attitude toward the social forces
that had kept her submissive and submerged, toward the power of wealth
that had overridden her, toward the courts that had failed to give her
justice.
She was not overwhelmed by grief. Why should she be? Bradley had never
been a man to be ardently loved by any woman, much less by a woman of
her mental capacity and attainments. Why she had married him was still
a mystery among those who knew her. With her education, her quality
of mind, her exceptional beauty, she might have had in marriage the
most promising man in her circle who worked in any capacity for wages;
she might, indeed, have had one of still higher social and business
grade. But she chose to marry John Bradley. The reasons that govern the
matrimonial choice are often inscrutable, and women are protected, by
the very fact of their sex, from ever being called upon to make them
known. But if Mary Bradley had, at any time, repented her choice of
a husband, no one had ever heard her express such a thought. She had
remained absolutely faithful and helpful to him from the beginning to
the end. And, in a crude, undemonstrative way, he had appreciated her
and had been good to her. He had never abused her by word or deed, not
even on those infrequent occasions when he had come home in his cups.
He had turned over to her his weekly wages; he had never crossed her
will; he had given her of his unimportant best. What more could she
have asked? So, dispassionately, superficially perhaps, she sorrowed at
his death. She felt no such pangs of grief as tore her heart when her
girl baby died. That death had cut into the core of her being. But the
passing of any soul that one has seen familiarly, illuminating a living
body however dimly, cannot fail to arouse at least some semblance of
sorrow in the normal human heart. And the demonstration made by her
husband’s fellow-workers touched her also. Glancing out through the
open doorway she saw that the street in front of her house was full of
them. Stephen Lamar came to her and asked her permission to address
the people from her porch. She gave her consent willingly. Lamar was
the protagonist of the workingmen of the city. He was their leader in
the social revolt which was eventually to free them from the chains
of capitalism, and restore to them their natural rights. Somewhere,
somehow, he had become learned in the things that pertained to the
struggle between the classes, he was gifted with a crude eloquence that
made his speeches popular, and whenever he spoke to them, the workers
heard him gladly. Now, as they saw him come out onto the porch and
stand, with bared head, facing them, a murmur of approval ran through
the crowd. He addressed them as “Comrades in Toil.” No one remembered
ever to have seen Lamar engaged in any kind of manual labor; but,
doubtless, he was doing vastly more for the workingmen by the activity
of his brain and the eloquence of his tongue than he could possibly
do by the labor of his hands. Moreover, as he himself reminded them
occasionally, he had at one time been a day-laborer in a mill. So he
had a right to address them as “Comrades in Toil.”
He said: “I have just stood by the coffin of our departed fellow-worker;
and I have been permitted by his widow to express to you a thought that
came to me while looking on his dead face. As he lies there to-day, so
any one of you may lie to-morrow, crushed and killed by the power of
capitalism and the tyranny of the courts. But, you know, in the eyes of
the capitalist, toil is nothing if it is you who toil, suffering is
nothing if it is you who suffer, death is nothing if it is you who die.
Why should the workingman have only toil and suffering and death, while
his employers may treat themselves to all the soft comforts and luxuries
that money can buy, and burden their women with silks and laces and
jewels beyond price? It’s wrong, my friends. How many diamonds did John
Bradley’s wife ever have? How many silks? How many jewelled ornaments?
Was she not as much entitled to them, let me ask you, as the pampered
wives of millionaires? Would not her beauty set them off as well? Has
not she, by her woman’s work, earned them a thousand times more than
have the idle daughters of the rich? Did not John Bradley do his share
of the world’s work as well and faithfully as any plutocrat that ever
breathed? and was he not therefore entitled to a just reward for his
labor――a fair share of the profits of the world’s business? And what did
he receive? I’ll tell you what. He received the right to work nine hours
a day at paltry wages, in order that his capitalist employer might roll
in wealth. He received, before he had reached his prime, a crushed body
and a darkened mind. Those responsible for his awful injuries refused
him just compensation, and his faithful wife had the privilege of
hearing the honorable court declare that the law provides no recompense
for the poor. My friends, John Bradley lies there to-day, the victim of
capitalist greed. Look on his dead face and ask yourselves how long
you, who have the power to change this brutal system of exploitation of
the toiler, will suffer yourselves to remain the passive instruments of
your own undoing.”
He paused, flung back a lock of his dark hair, and then, like a true
Marc Antony, with deprecatory gesture and pleading tone he went on:
“Pardon me, my friends! I did not intend, in this solemn hour, to rouse
your passions or stir up hatred for your masters. But the contemplation
of such a crime as has been committed here leads me into speech that,
however unwise it may be, is the true expression of the feeling of my
heart. I have but one word more to say. You have observed that there is
no religious service here to-day. This is as it should be. It is not
fitting that the body of our dead comrade should be committed to the
earth under the forms and auspices of a Church controlled by capitalism
and made pompous by wealth. Do not misunderstand me. With true piety
I have no quarrel. Worship God if you want to; but not the God set
up by the plutocrat in his costly temple into which the proletariat
may hardly dare to set their feet. I tell you that when this social
house of cards that the money kings have built up shall topple――as
it will――to its fall, their soulless, bloodless, godless Church will
join it in the wreck. That is all, my friends. I beg you to hold these
things in your hearts as you fight for liberty, and some glorious
morning you shall wake up free.”
With the plaudits of his hearers ringing in his ears, he stepped back
into the room where Mary Bradley sat.
“I heard you,” she exclaimed, “and it was well said. I wish I could
have said it myself.”
Her commendation was sweeter to him than the crowd’s applause.
“I’m glad you liked it,” he replied. “I had a chance to stir those
fellows up, and I took it. I know John would have been willing, and I’m
sure you were.”
“I’m willing to have anything done that will tend to bring this
capitalistic crowd to their knees.”
“Good! And what are you willing to do yourself?”
“Anything that I can.”
“Good again! I have a little plan in mind by which you can be of vast
help to us.”
“I have my living to earn.”
“You shall earn it. We will give you the opportunity. We need the
assistance of a woman of your ability, in strong sympathy with the
working classes.”
“I am in sympathy; but, frankly, the strongest feeling in my mind at
present is a desire for revenge.”
He smiled and held out his hand to her. “You shall have it,” he said.
“I promise you.”
“Then you may depend on me.”
“When shall I come and talk it over with you?”
“Any day you choose.”
“To-morrow?”
“Yes.”
He released her hand and went back among the bearers.
But he did not cease to look on her. Few women are beautiful when
dressed in deep mourning. Nor would Mary Bradley have been beautiful
had she not stood erect, with veil thrown back, with white teeth
gleaming at her parted lips, with flashing dark eyes showing forth her
woman’s determination. As it was, Lamar thought that he had never seen
a picture more fascinating. And if his plan did not fail, she would
work every day, side by side with him, in the interest of labor. If
his deeper plan did not fail―――― Lamar was not so fastidious as Barry
Malleson had been about shutting out from his mind and contemplation
the idea of making love to a woman who was at that moment sitting on
one side of the coffined body of her husband while he sat on the other.
* * * * *
That afternoon, as the rector of Christ Church was returning from a
service held by him in a mission chapel maintained by his church, he
saw a funeral procession winding up a hill toward a suburban cemetery.
The rest of his party had driven back to the city, but he had preferred
to walk home alone. Of a man who stood at the curb he inquired whose
funeral it was, and he was told that it was the funeral of John Bradley.
“The man that got smashed up in the Malleson mill,” added his informant,
“and they wouldn’t give him no damages.”
“Yes, I know about the case.”
“And his wife went into court with a suit and got throwed out.”
“I was in court at the time.”
“That so? You’re a preacher, ain’t you?” looking at the clerical cut of
his garments.
“Yes, I’m a preacher.”
“Well, now, do you think that was a square deal?”
“No, frankly, I do not.”
The man, he was evidently a laborer, reached out a hard hand and
grasped the hand of the rector.
“You’re all right!” he exclaimed. “But you’re the first preacher I ever
heard say as much as that. Most of ’em side the other way; or else they
hedge, and won’t say nothin’. Where do you preach?”
“At Christ Church.”
“Oh, I’ve heard about you. I don’t go to church much myself, but I’m
comin’ some Sunday to hear you preach. They say you ain’t a bit afraid
to give the devil his due, so far as the rich is concerned.”
“I try to preach a straight gospel, whether it affects the rich or the
poor.”
“That’s right. If more of ’em would do that the laborin’ men might git
their rights some day, and a little religion besides.”
“You think more of them would come to church?”
“Sure they would. All they want is to have the Church take as much
account of the poor as it does of the rich. I’m comin’ to hear you
preach though, anyway; and I’ll bring some of the boys along. Good-bye!
I’m goin’ up the hill now, with the funeral.”
“I’ll go with you if I may.”
“Glad to have you. Come on.”
A sudden desire had seized the clergyman to see the end of this grim,
industrial tragedy that had stirred his heart.
The hearse was already half-way up the hill. It was followed by two
coaches. Behind the coaches, in orderly procession, marched two hundred
toilers; men who had been present at the Bradley house and had heard
Lamar’s speech, and who, in the exercise of class consciousness, had
been glad, on their day of rest, to march two miles to the cemetery to
see the body of their fellow-laborer consigned to earth.
Mr. Farrar and his newly-found friend fell in at the end of the
procession, and followed it to the grave.
When Mary Bradley descended from the coach to take her place near the
head of the coffin, where it lay, supported by cross-sticks, over the
open pit, her eyes fell upon the rector of Christ Church.
One of those sudden impulses that overtake most women in times of
stress, regardless of their walk in life, came upon her in that moment,
and she acted upon it without further thought.
She turned to one of the bearers, standing near, and requested him to
ask the Reverend Mr. Farrar to come to her. The man looked at her in
astonishment and did not move.
“Did you hear me?” she said. “I want that preacher to come here.”
This time there was no mistaking the meaning of her request. The man
went at once upon his errand, and the clergyman responded promptly to
the summons.
She put aside her veil that he might see her face and know that she was
in earnest. The bearers, waiting to perform their final service for
John Bradley, looked at her in amazement. Others stared and wondered.
Stephen Lamar, standing at the side of the grave, scowled in open
disapproval.
Was she, after all, to belie his eloquent defense of a churchless
funeral, yield to unreasoning custom, and have a preacher commit her
husband’s body to the earth? It was unbelievable.
“I have changed my mind,” she said to the minister. “I wish you to
speak at this burial, not as a preacher, but as a friend of John
Bradley’s and mine. I don’t want anything said that’s religious; just
something that’s comforting, that I can take home with me.”
It was a strange request. How could a minister of the Church, with the
inheritance of nineteen centuries upon him, stand by an open grave
and commit the body of a human being to its shelter, and avoid all
reference to that which alone had power to rob death of its sting and
the grave of its victory? But the rector of Christ Church was quick in
emergencies. He did not hesitate now, in either thought or deed. He
directed the bearers to proceed with their task, and, as the coffin
descended, he gathered up a handful of fresh earth from the mound at
his side and scattered it into the open pit.
“Earth to earth――ashes to ashes――dust to dust.”
As the last word left his lips the coffin found its resting place on
the bed of the grave. He held up his hand while the people around him
stood awed and expectant. His voice was clear and resonant as he spoke:
“In that day when the earth shall give up its dead, and when the
spirits of those that were in prison shall be free, may we know that
the unfettered soul of this our brother has attained the fulfilment of
the joys that were denied him here, but which, through all the ages,
have awaited his coming into that sweet and blessed country where labor
and patience and a conscience void of offense shall have their just and
reasonable reward. Amen!”
He stepped aside, the lowering straps were pulled harshly up, and the
first spadeful of earth fell, with that hollow and gruesome sound which
is like none other, on the narrow house in which the body of John
Bradley lay.
Up to this moment, whatever her sorrow at her husband’s death may have
been, no one had seen Mary Bradley weep. But she was weeping now.
Something in the preacher’s words, or in his voice or manner, had
touched the well-spring of her emotion, and had brought to her eyes
tears which she made no effort to restrain.
She reached out her hand to the clergyman in a grateful clasp, but
she said nothing, and, before he could speak to her a single word of
comfort or consolation, she entered her coach and was driven away.
“It was a decent funeral,” commented one of the toilers, as he shuffled
slowly down the path leading to the cemetery gate.
“It was that,” responded the fellow-worker at his side. “A labor-leader
at the house and a preacher at the grave. What more could the man ask?”
“An’ not too much religion in it either. Religion don’t fit the workin’
man; an’ this priest seemed to sense it an’ cut it out, more credit to
him. They say he’s a devilish good preacher, too, an’ stands up great
for labor. I’ve a mind I’ll go hear him next Sunday.”
“I’ll go with ye, Thomas.”
“Come along. We’ll go together.”