Occasionally the art of narrative may be improved by borrowing the
method of the movies. Another night has passed, and we are called upon
to imagine the watery sunlight of a mild winter afternoon filtering
through bare trees on the heads of a multitude. A large portion of
Hampton Common is black with the people of sixteen nationalities who
have gathered there, trampling down the snow, to listen wistfully and
eagerly to a new doctrine of salvation. In the centre of this throng on
the bandstand--reminiscent of concerts on sultry, summer nights--are the
itinerant apostles of the cult called Syndicalism, exhorting by turns
in divers tongues. Antonelli had spoken, and many others, when Janet,
impelled by a craving not to be denied, had managed to push her way
little by little from the outskirts of the crowd until now she stood
almost beneath the orator who poured forth passionate words in a
language she recognized as Italian. Her curiosity was aroused, she
was unable to classify this tall man whose long and narrow face was
accentuated by a pointed brown beard, whose lips gleamed red as he
spoke, whose slim hands were eloquent. The artist as propagandist--the
unsuccessful artist with more facility than will. The nose was classic,
and wanted strength; the restless eyes that at times seemed fixed on her
were smouldering windows of a burning house: the fire that stirred her
was also consuming him. Though he could have been little more than five
and thirty, his hair was thinned and greying at the temples. And
somehow emblematic of this physiognomy and physique, summing it up and
expressing it in terms of apparel, were the soft collar and black scarf
tied in a flowing bow. Janet longed to know what he was saying. His
phrases, like music, played on her emotions, and at last, when his voice
rose in crescendo at the climax of his speech, she felt like weeping.
“Un poeta!” a woman beside her exclaimed.
“Who is he?” Janet asked.
“Rolfe,” said the woman.
“But he's an Italian?”
The woman shrugged her shoulders. “It is his name that is all I know.”
He had begun to speak again, and now in English, with an enunciation,
a distinctive manner of turning his phrases new to such gatherings in
America, where labour intellectuals are little known; surprising to
Janet, diverting her attention, at first, from the meaning of his words.
“Labour,” she heard, “labour is the creator of all wealth, and wealth
belongs to the creator. The wage system must be abolished. You, the
creators, must do battle against these self-imposed masters until you
shall come into your own. You who toil miserably for nine hours and
produce, let us say, nine dollars of wealth--do you receive it? No, what
is given you is barely enough to keep the slave and the slave's family
alive! The master, the capitalist, seizes the rightful reward of your
labour and spends it on luxuries, on automobiles and fine houses and
women, on food he can't eat, while you are hungry. Yes, you are slaves,”
he cried, “because you submit like slaves.”
He waited, motionless and scornful, for the noise to die down. “Since I
have come here to Hampton, I have heard some speak of the state, others
of the unions. Yet the state is your enemy, it will not help you to
gain your freedom. The legislature has shortened your hours,--but why?
Because the politicians are afraid of you, and because they think you
will be content with a little. And now that the masters have cut your
wages, the state sends its soldiers to crush you. Only fifty cents,
they say--only fifty cents most of you miss from your envelopes. What
is fifty cents to them? But I who speak to you have been hungry, I know
that fifty cents will buy ten loaves of bread, or three pounds of the
neck of pork, or six quarts of milk for the babies. Fifty cents will
help pay the rent of the rat-holes where you live.” Once more he was
interrupted by angry shouts of approval. “And the labour unions, have
they aided you? Why not? I will tell you why--because they are the
servile instruments of the masters. The unions say that capital has
rights, bargain with it, but for us there can be only one bargain,
complete surrender of the tools to the workers. For the capitalists are
parasites who suck your blood and your children's blood. From now
on there can be no compromise, no truce, no peace until they are
exterminated. It is war.” War! In Janet's soul the word resounded like
a tocsin. And again, as when swept along East Street with the mob, that
sense of identity with these people and their wrongs, of submergence
with them in their cause possessed her. Despite her ancestry, her lot
was cast with them. She, too, had been precariously close to poverty,
had known the sordidness of life; she, too, and Lise and Hannah had been
duped and cheated of the fairer things. Eagerly she had drunk in the
vocabulary of that new and terrible philosophy. The master class must
be exterminated! Was it not true, if she had been of that class, that
Ditmar would not have dared to use and deceive her? Why had she never
thought of these things before?... The light was beginning to fade, the
great meeting was breaking up, and yet she lingered. At the foot of
the bandstand steps, conversing with a small group of operatives that
surrounded him, she perceived the man who had just spoken. And as she
stood hesitating, gazing at him, a desire to hear more, to hear all
of this creed he preached, that fed the fires in her soul, urged her
forward. Her need, had she known it, was even greater than that of these
toilers whom she now called comrades. Despite some qualifying reserve
she felt, and which had had to do with the redness of his lips, he
attracted her. He had a mind, an intellect, he must possess stores of
the knowledge for which she thirsted; he appeared to her as one who had
studied and travelled, who had ascended heights and gained the wider
view denied her. A cynical cosmopolitanism would have left her cold,
but here, apparently, was a cultivated man burning with a sense of the
world's wrongs. Ditmar, who was to have led her out of captivity,
had only thrust her the deeper into bondage.... She joined the group,
halting on the edge of it, listening. Rolfe was arguing with a man
about the labour unions, but almost at once she knew she had fixed his
attention. From time to time, as he talked, his eyes sought hers boldly,
and in their dark pupils were tiny points of light that stirred and
confused her, made her wonder what was behind them, in his soul. When he
had finished his argument, he singled her out.
“You do not work in the mills?” he asked.
“No, I'm a stenographer--or I was one.”
“And now?”
“I've given up my place.”
“You want to join us?”
“I was interested in what you said. I never heard anything like it
before.”
He looked at her intently.
“Come, let us walk a little way,” he said. And she went along by
his side, through the Common, feeling a neophyte's excitement in the
freemasonry, the contempt for petty conventions of this newly achieved
doctrine of brotherhood. “I will give you things to read, you shall be
one of us.”
“I'm afraid I shouldn't understand them,” Janet replied. “I've read so
little.”
“Oh, you will understand,” he assured her, easily. “There is too much
learning, too much reason and intelligence in the world, too little
impulse and feeling, intuition. Where do reason and intelligence lead
us? To selfishness, to thirst for power-straight into the master class.
They separate us from the mass of humanity. No, our fight is against
those who claim more enlightenment than their fellowmen, who control the
public schools and impose reason on our children, because reason leads
to submission, makes us content with our station in life. The true
syndicalist is an artist, a revolutionist!” he cried.
Janet found this bewildering and yet through it seemed to shine for her
a gleam of light. Her excitement grew. Never before had she been in the
presence of one who talked like this, with such assurance and ease. And
the fact that he despised knowledge, yet possessed it, lent him glamour.
“But you have studied!” she exclaimed.
“Oh yes, I have studied,” he replied, with a touch of weariness, “only
to learn that life is simple, after all, and that what is needed for the
social order is simple. We have only to take what belongs to us, we who
work, to follow our feelings, our inclinations.”
“You would take possession of the mills?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said quickly, “of all wealth, and of the government. There
would be no government--we should not need it. A little courage is all
that is necessary, and we come into our own. You are a stenographer, you
say. But you--you are not content, I can see it in your face, in your
eyes. You have cause to hate them, too, these masters, or you would not
have been herein this place, to-day. Is it not so?”
She shivered, but was silent.
“Is it not so?” he repeated. “They have wronged you, too, perhaps,--they
have wronged us all, but some are too stupid, too cowardly to fight and
crush them. Christians and slaves submit. The old religion teaches that
the world is cruel for most of us, but if we are obedient and humble
we shall be rewarded in heaven.” Rolfe laughed. “The masters approve
of that teaching. They would not have it changed. But for us it is war.
We'll strike and keep on striking, we'll break their machinery, spoil
their mills and factories, and drive them out. And even if we do not win
at once, it is better to suffer and die fighting than to have the life
ground out of us--is it not?”
“Yes, it is better!” she agreed. The passion in her voice did not escape
him.
“Some day, perhaps sooner than we think, we shall have the true
Armageddon, the general strike, when the last sleeping toiler shall
have aroused himself from his lethargy to rise up and come into his
inheritance.” He seemed to detach himself from her, his eyes became more
luminous.
“'Like unseen music in the night,'--so Sorel writes about it. They may
scoff at it, the wise ones, but it will come. 'Like music in the night!'
You respond to that!”
Again she was silent. They had walked on, through familiar streets that
now seemed strange.
“You respond--I can tell,” he said. “And yet, you are not like these
others, like me, even. You are an American. And yet you are not like
most of your countrywomen.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I will tell you. Because they are cold, most of them, and trivial, they
do not feel. But you--you can feel, you can love and hate. You look calm
and cold, but you are not--I knew it when I looked at you, when you came
up to me.”
She did not know whether to resent or welcome his clairvoyance, his
assumption of intimacy, his air of appropriation. But her curiosity was
tingling.
“And you?” she asked. “Your name is Rolfe, isn't it?”
He assented. “And yours?”
She told him.
“You have been in America long--your family?”
“Very long,” she said. “But you speak Italian, and Rolfe isn't an
Italian name.”
“My father was an Englishman, an artist, who lived in Italy--my mother
a peasant woman from Lombardy, such as these who come to work in the
mills. When she was young she was beautiful--like a Madonna by an old
master.”
“An old master?”
“The old masters are the great painters who lived in Italy four hundred
years ago. I was named after one of them--the greatest. I am called
Leonard. He was Leonardo da Vinci.”
The name, as Rolfe pronounced it, stirred her. And art, painting! It
was a realm unknown to her, and yet the very suggestion of it evoked
yearnings. And she recalled a picture in the window of Hartmann's
book-store, a coloured print before which she used to stop on her way to
and from the office, the copy of a landscape by a California artist.
The steep hillside in the foreground was spread with the misty green of
olive trees, and beyond--far beyond--a snow-covered peak, like some high
altar, flamed red in the sunset. She had not been able to express her
feeling for this picture, it had filled her with joy and sadness. Once
she had ventured to enter and ask its price--ten dollars. And then came
a morning when she had looked for it, and it was gone.
“And your father--did he paint beautiful pictures, too?”
“Ah, he was too much of a socialist. He was always away whey I was a
child, and after my mother's death he used to take me with him. When
I was seventeen we went to Milan to take part in the great strike, and
there I saw the soldiers shooting down the workers by the hundreds,
putting them in prison by the thousands. Then I went to live in England,
among the socialists there, and I learned the printer's trade. When I
first came to this country I was on a labour paper in New York, I set up
type, I wrote articles, and once in a while I addressed meetings on
the East Side. But even before I left London I had read a book on
Syndicalism by one of the great Frenchmen, and after a while I began
to realize that the proletariat would never get anywhere through
socialism.”
“The proletariat?” The word was new to Janet's ear.
“The great mass of the workers, the oppressed, the people you saw
here to-day. Socialism is not for them. Socialism--political
socialism--betrays them into the hands of the master class. Direct
action is the thing, the general strike, war,--the new creed, the new
religion that will bring salvation. I joined the Industrial Workers of
the World that is the American organization of Syndicalism. I went
west, to Colorado and California and Oregon, I preached to the workers
wherever there was an uprising, I met the leaders, Ritter and Borkum and
Antonelli and Jastro and Nellie Bond, I was useful to them, I understand
Syndicalism as they do not. And now we are here, to sow the seed in the
East. Come,” he said, slipping his arm through hers, “I will take you
to Headquarters, I will enlist you, you shall be my recruit. I will give
you the cause, the religion you need.”
She longed to go, and yet she drew back, puzzled. The man fired and
fascinated her, but there were reservations, apprehensions concerning
him, felt rather than reasoned. Because of her state of rebellion, of
her intense desire to satisfy in action the emotion aroused by a sense
of wrong, his creed had made a violent appeal, but in his voice, in his
eyes, in his manner she had been quick to detect a personal, sexual note
that disturbed and alarmed her, that implied in him a lack of unity.
“I can't, to-night,” she said. “I must go home--my mother is all alone.
But I want to help, I want to do something.”
They were standing on a corner, under a street lamp. And she averted her
eyes from his glance.
“Then come to-morrow,” he said eagerly. “You know where Headquarters is,
in the Franco-Belgian Hall?”
“What could I do?” she asked.
“You? You could help in many ways--among the women. Do you know what
picketing is?”
“You mean keeping the operatives out of the mills?”
“Yes, in the morning, when they go to work. And out of the Chippering
Mill, especially. Ditmar, the agent of that mill, is the ablest of the
lot, I'm told. He's the man we want to cripple.”
“Cripple!” exclaimed Janet.
“Oh, I don't mean to harm him personally.” Rolfe did not seem to notice
her tone. “But he intends to crush the strike, and I understand he's
importing scabs here to finish out an order--a big order. If it weren't
for him, we'd have an easier fight; he stiffens up the others. There's
always one man like that, in every place. And what we want to do is to
make him shut down, especially.”
“I see,” said Janet.
“You'll come to Headquarters?” Rolfe repeated.
“Yes, I'll come, to-morrow,” she promised.
After she had left him she walked rapidly through several streets, not
heeding her direction--such was the driving power of the new ideas he
had given her. Certain words and phrases he had spoken rang in her head,
and like martial music kept pace with her steps. She strove to remember
all that he had said, to grasp its purport; and because it seemed
recondite, cosmic, it appealed to her and excited her the more. And he,
the man himself, had exerted a kind of hypnotic force that partially
had paralyzed her faculties and aroused her fears while still in his
presence: her first feeling in escaping had been one of relief--and then
she began to regret not having gone to Headquarters. Hadn't she been
foolish? In the retrospect, the elements in him that had disturbed her
were less disquieting, his intellectual fascination was enhanced: and in
that very emancipation from cant and convention, characteristic of
the Order to which he belonged, had lain much of his charm. She had
attracted him as a woman, there was no denying that. He, who had studied
and travelled and known life in many lands, had discerned in her,
Janet Bumpus, some quality to make him desire her, acknowledge her as
a comrade! Tremblingly she exulted in the possession of that
quality--whatever it might be. Ditmar, too, had perceived it! He had
not known how to value it. With this thought came a flaming
suggestion--Ditmar should see her with this man Rolfe, she would make
him scorch with the fires of jealousy. Ditmar should know that she had
joined his enemies, the Industrial Workers of the World. Of the world!
Her shackles had been cast off at last!... And then, suddenly, she
felt tired. The prospect of returning to Fillmore Street, to the silent
flat--made the more silent by her mother's tragic presence--overwhelmed
her. The ache in her heart began to throb again. How could she wait
until the dawn of another day?...
In the black hours of the morning, with the siren dinning in her ears a
hoarse call to war, Janet leaped from her bed and began to dress. There
is a degree of cold so sharp that it seems actually to smell, and as she
stole down the stairs and out of the door she shivered, assailed by
a sense of loneliness and fear. Yet an insistent voice urged her on,
whispering that to remain at home, inactive, was to go mad; salvation
and relief lay in plunging into the struggle, in contributing her share
toward retribution and victory. Victory! In Faber Street the light
of the electric arcs tinged the snow with blue, and the flamboyant
advertisements of breakfast foods, cigarettes and ales seemed but
the mockery of an activity now unrealizable. The groups and figures
scattered here and there farther down the street served only to
exaggerate its wide emptiness. What could these do, what could she
accomplish against the mighty power of the mills? Gradually, as she
stood gazing, she became aware of a beating of feet upon the snow; over
her shoulder she caught the gleam of steel. A squad of soldiers muffled
in heavy capes and woolen caps was marching along the car-tracks. She
followed them. At the corner of West Street, in obedience to a sharp
command she saw them halt, turn, and advance toward a small crowd
gathered there. It scattered, only to collect again when the soldiers
had passed on. Janet joined them. She heard men cursing the soldiers.
The women stood a little aside; some were stamping to keep warm, and
one, with a bundle in her arms which Janet presently perceived to be
a child, sank down on a stone step and remained there, crouching,
resigned.
“We gotta right to stay here, in the street. We gotta right to live,
I guess.” The girl's teeth were chattering, but she spoke with such
vehemence and spirit as to attract Janet's attention. “You worked in the
Chippering, like me--yes?” she asked.
Janet nodded. The faded, lemon-coloured shawl the girl had wrapped about
her head emphasized the dark beauty of her oval face. She smiled, and
her white teeth were fairly dazzling. Impulsively she thrust her arm
through Janet's.
“You American--you comrade, you come to help?” she asked.
“I've never done any picketing.”
“I showa you.”
The dawn had begun to break, revealing little by little the outlines of
cruel, ugly buildings, the great mill looming darkly at the end of the
street, and Janet found it scarcely believable that only a little while
ago she had hurried thither in the mornings with anticipation and joy
in her heart, eager to see Ditmar, to be near him! The sight of two
policemen hurrying toward them from the direction of the canal aroused
her. With sullen murmurs the group started to disperse, but the woman
with the baby, numb with cold, was slow in rising, and one of the
policemen thrust out his club threateningly.
“Move on, you can't sit here,” he said.
With a lithe movement like the spring of a cat the Italian girl
flung herself between them--a remarkable exhibition of spontaneous
inflammability; her eyes glittered like the points of daggers, and, as
though they had been dagger points, the policeman recoiled a little. The
act, which was absolutely natural, superb, electrified Janet, restored
in an instant her own fierceness of spirit. The girl said something
swiftly, in Italian, and helped the woman to rise, paying no more
attention to the policeman. Janet walked on, but she had not covered
half the block before she was overtaken by the girl; her anger had come
and gone in a flash, her vivacity had returned, her vitality again found
expression in an abundant good nature and good will. She asked Janet's
name, volunteering the information that her own was Gemma, that she was
a “fine speeder” in the Chippering Mill, where she had received nearly
seven dollars a week. She had been among the first to walk out.
“Why did you walk out?” asked Janet curiously.
“Why? I get mad when I know that my wages is cut. I want the money--I
get married.”
“Is that why you are striking?” asked Janet curiously.
“That is why--of course.”
“Then you haven't heard any of the speakers? They say it is for a
cause--the workers are striking for freedom, some day they will own the
mills. I heard a man named Rolfe yesterday--”
The girl gave her a radiant smile.
“Rolfe! It is beautiful, what Rolfe said. You think so? I think so. I am
for the cause, I hate the capitalist. We will win, and get more money,
until we have all the money. We will be rich. And you, why do you
strike?”
“I was mad, too,” Janet replied simply.
“Revenge!” exclaimed the girl, glittering again. “I understan'. Here
come the scabs! Now I show you.”
The light had grown, but the stores were still closed and barred. Along
Faber Street, singly or in little groups, anxiously glancing around
them, behind them, came the workers who still clung desperately to
their jobs. Gemma fairly darted at two girls who sought the edge of the
sidewalk, seizing them by the sleeves, and with piteous expressions they
listened while she poured forth on them a stream of Italian. After a
moment one tore herself away, but the other remained and began to ask
questions. Presently she turned and walked slowly away in the direction
from which she had come.
“I get her,” exclaimed Gemma, triumphantly.
“What did you say?” asked Janet.
“Listen--that she take the bread from our mouths, she is
traditore--scab. We strike for them, too, is it not so?”
“It is no use for them to work for wages that starve. We win the strike,
we get good wages for all. Here comes another--she is a Jewess--you try,
you spik.”
Janet failed with the Jewess, who obstinately refused to listen or reply
as the two walked along with her, one on either side. Near West
Street they spied a policeman, and desisted. Up and down Faber Street,
everywhere, the game went on: but the police were watchful, and once a
detachment of militia passed. The picketing had to be done quickly,
in the few minutes that were to elapse before the gates should close.
Janet's blood ran faster, she grew excited, absorbed, bolder as she
perceived the apologetic attitude of the “scabs” and she began to
despise them with Gemma's heartiness; and soon she had lost all sense
of surprise at finding herself arguing, pleading, appealing to several
women in turn, fluently, in the language of the industrial revolution.
Some--because she was an American--examined her with furtive curiosity;
others pretended not to understand, accelerating their pace. She gained
no converts that morning, but one girl, pale, anemic with high cheek
bones evidently a Slav--listened to her intently.
“I gotta right to work,” she said.
“Not if others will starve because you work,” objected Janet.
“If I don't work I starve,” said the girl.
“No, the Committee will take care of you--there will be food for all.
How much do you get now?”
“Four dollar and a half.”
“You starve now,” Janet declared contemptuously. “The quicker you join
us, the sooner you'll get a living wage.”
The girl was not quite convinced. She stood for a while undecided, and
then ran abruptly off in the direction of West Street. Janet sought
for others, but they had ceased coming; only the scattered, prowling
picketers remained.
Over the black rim of the Clarendon Mill to the eastward the sky had
caught fire. The sun had risen, the bells were ringing riotously,
resonantly in the clear, cold air. Another working day had begun.
Janet, benumbed with cold, yet agitated and trembling because of her
unwonted experience of the morning, made her way back to Fillmore
Street. She was prepared to answer any questions her mother might ask;
as they ate their dismal breakfast, and Hannah asked no questions, she
longed to blurt out where she had been, to announce that she had cast
her lot with the strikers, the foreigners, to defend them and declare
that these were not to blame for the misfortunes of the family, but men
like Ditmar and the owners of the mills, the capitalists. Her mother,
she reflected bitterly, had never once betrayed any concern as to her
shattered happiness. But gradually, as from time to time she glanced
covertly at Hannah's face, her resentment gave way to apprehension.
Hannah did not seem now even to be aware of her presence; this
persistent apathy filled her with a dread she did not dare to
acknowledge.
“Mother!” she cried at last.
Hannah started. “Have you finished?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You've b'en out in the cold, and you haven't eaten much.” Janet fought
back her tears. “Oh yes, I have,” she managed to reply, convinced of
the futility of speech, of all attempts to arouse her mother to a
realization of the situation. Perhaps--though her heart contracted at
the thought perhaps it was a merciful thing! But to live, day after day,
in the presence of that comfortless apathy!... Later in the morning she
went out, to walk the streets, and again in the afternoon; and twice she
turned her face eastward, in the direction of the Franco-Belgian Hall.
Her courage failed her. How would these foreigners and the strange
leaders who had come to organize them receive her, Ditmar's
stenographer? She would have to tell them she was Ditmar's stenographer;
they would find it out. And now she was filled with doubts about Rolfe.
Had he really thought she could be of use to them! Around the Common, in
front of the City Hall men went about their affairs alertly, or stopped
one another to talk about the strike. In Faber Street, indeed, an air of
suppressed excitement prevailed, newsboys were shouting out extras; but
business went on as though nothing had happened to disturb it. There
was, however, the spectacle, unusual at this time of day, of operatives
mingling with the crowd, while policemen stood watchfully at the
corners; a company of soldiers marched by, drawing the people in silence
to the curb. Janet scanned the faces of these idle operatives; they
seemed for the most part either calm or sullen, wanting the fire and
passion of the enthusiasts who had come out to picket in the early hours
of the day; she sought vainly for the Italian girl with whom she had
made friends. Despondency grew in her, a sense of isolation, of
lacking any one, now, to whom she might turn, and these feelings were
intensified by the air of confidence prevailing here. The strike was
crushed, injustice and wrong had triumphed--would always triumph. In
front of the Banner office she heard a man say to an acquaintance who
had evidently just arrived in town:--“The Chippering? Sure, that's
running. By to-morrow Ditmar'll have a full force there. Now that the
militia has come, I guess we've got this thing scotched...”
Just how and when that order and confidence of Faber Street began to be
permeated by disquietude and alarm, Janet could not have said. Something
was happening, somewhere--or about to happen. An obscure, apparently
telepathic process was at work. People began to hurry westward, a few
had abandoned the sidewalk and were running; while other pedestrians,
more timid, were equally concerned to turn and hasten in the opposite
direction. At the corner of West Street was gathering a crowd that each
moment grew larger and larger, despite the efforts of the police to
disperse it. These were strikers, angry strikers. They blocked the
traffic, halted the clanging trolleys, surged into the mouth of West
Street, booing and cursing at the soldiers whose threatening line of
bayonets stretched across that thoroughfare half-way down toward the
canal, guarding the detested Chippering Mill. Bordering West Street,
behind the company's lodging-houses on the canal, were certain low
buildings, warehouses, and on their roofs tense figures could be seen
standing out against the sky. The vanguard of the mob, thrust on by
increasing pressure from behind, tumbled backward the thin cordon of
police, drew nearer and nearer the bayonets, while the soldiers grimly
held their ground. A voice was heard on the roof, a woman in the front
rank of the mob gave a warning shriek, and two swift streams of icy
water burst forth from the warehouse parapet, tearing the snow from the
cobbles, flying in heavy, stinging spray as it advanced and mowed the
strikers down and drove them like flies toward Faber Street. Screams
of fright, curses of defiance and hate mingled with the hissing of the
water and the noise of its impact with the ground--like the tearing of
heavy sail-cloth. Then, from somewhere near the edge of the mob, came
a single, sharp detonation, quickly followed by another--below the
watchmen on the roof a window crashed. The nozzles on the roof were
raised, their streams, sweeping around in a great semi-circle, bowled
down the rioters below the tell-tale wisps of smoke, and no sooner had
the avalanche of water passed than the policemen who, forewarned, had
sought refuge along the walls, rushed forward and seized a man who lay
gasping on the snow. Dazed, half drowned, he had dropped his pistol.
They handcuffed him and dragged him away through the ranks of the
soldiers, which opened for him to pass. The mob, including those who
had been flung down, bruised and drenched, and who had painfully got to
their feet again, had backed beyond the reach of the water, and for
a while held that ground, until above its hoarse, defiant curses was
heard, from behind, the throbbing of drums.
“Cossacks! More Cossacks!”
The cry was taken up by Canadians, Italians, Belgians, Poles, Slovaks,
Jews, and Syrians. The drums grew louder, the pressure from the rear was
relaxed, the throng in Faber Street began a retreat in the direction
of the power plant. Down that street, now in double time, came three
companies of Boston militia, newly arrived in Hampton, blue-taped,
gaitered, slouch-hatted. From columns of fours they wheeled into line,
and with bayonets at charge slowly advanced. Then the boldest of the
mob, who still lingered, sullenly gave way, West Street was cleared,
and on the wider thoroughfare the long line of traffic, the imprisoned
trolleys began to move again....
Janet had wedged herself into the press far enough to gain a view down
West Street of the warehouse roofs, to see the water turned on, to hear
the screams and the curses and then the shots. Once more she caught the
contagious rage of the mob; the spectacle had aroused her to fury; it
seemed ignominious, revolting that human beings, already sufficiently
miserable, should be used thus. As she retreated reluctantly across the
car tracks her attention was drawn to a man at her side, a Slovak. His
face was white and pinched, his clothes were wet. Suddenly he stopped,
turned and shook his fist at the line of soldiers.
“The Cossack, the politzman belong to the boss, the capitalist!” he
cried. “We ain't got no right to live. I say, kill the capitalist--kill
Ditmar!”
A man with a deputy's shield ran toward them.
“Move on!” he said brutally. “Move on, or I'll roil you in.” And Janet,
once clear of the people, fled westward, the words the foreigner had
spoken ringing in her ears. She found herself repeating them aloud,
“Kill Ditmar!” as she hurried through the gathering dusk past the power
house with its bottle-shaped chimneys, and crossed the little bridge
over the stream beside the chocolate factory. She gained the avenue
she had trod with Eda on that summer day of the circus. Here was
the ragpicker's shop, the fence covered with bedraggled posters, the
deserted grand-stand of the base-ball park spread with a milky-blue
mantle of snow; and beyond, the monotonous frame cottages all built from
one model. Now she descried looming above her the outline of Torrey's
Hill blurred and melting into a darkening sky, and turned into the bleak
lane where stood the Franco-Belgian Hall--Hampton Headquarters of the
Industrial Workers of the World. She halted a moment at sight of the
crowd of strikers loitering in front of it, then went on again, mingling
with them excitedly beside the little building. Its lines were simple
and unpretentious, and yet it had an exotic character all its own,
differing strongly from the surrounding houses: it might have been
transported from a foreign country and set down here. As the home of
that odd, cooperative society of thrifty and gregarious Belgians it
had stimulated her imagination, and once before she had gazed, as now,
through the yellowed, lantern-like windows of the little store at
the women and children waiting to fill their baskets with the day's
provisions. In the middle of the building was an entrance leading up to
the second floor. Presently she gathered the courage to enter. Her heart
was pounding as she climbed the dark stairs and thrust open the door,
and she stood a moment on the threshold almost choked by the fumes of
tobacco, bewildered by the scene within, confused by the noise. Through
a haze of smoke she beheld groups of swarthy foreigners fiercely
disputing among themselves--apparently on the verge of actual combat,
while a sprinkling of silent spectators of both sexes stood at the back
of the hall. At the far end was a stage, still set with painted, sylvan
scenery, and seated there, alone, above the confusion and the strife,
with a calmness, a detachment almost disconcerting, was a stout man with
long hair and a loose black tie. He was smoking a cigar and reading a
newspaper which he presently flung down, taking up another from a
pile on the table beside him. Suddenly one of the groups, shouting
and gesticulating, surged toward him and made an appeal through their
interpreter. He did not appear to be listening; without so much as
lowering his newspaper he spoke a few words in reply, and the group
retired, satisfied. By some incomprehensible power he dominated.
Panting, fascinated, loath to leave yet fearful, Janet watched him,
breathing now deeply this atmosphere of smoke, of strife, and turmoil.
She found it grateful, for the strike, the battle was in her own soul as
well. Momentarily she had forgotten Rolfe, who had been in her mind as
she had come hither, and then she caught sight of him in a group in the
centre of the hall. He saw her, he was making his way toward her, he
was holding her hands, looking down into her face with that air of
appropriation, of possession she remembered. But she felt no resentment
now, only a fierce exultation at having dared.
“You've come to join us!” he exclaimed. “I thought I'd lost you.”
He bent closer to her that she might hear.
“We are having a meeting of the Committee,” he said, and she smiled.
Despite her agitation, this struck her as humorous. And Rolfe smiled
back at her. “You wouldn't think so, but Antonelli knows how to
manage them. He is a general. Come, I will enlist you, you shall be my
recruit.”
“But what can I do?” she asked.
“I have been thinking. You said you were a stenographer--we need
stenographers, clerks. You will not be wasted. Come in here.”
Behind her two box-like rooms occupying the width of the building had
been turned into offices, and into one of these Rolfe led her. Men and
women were passing in and out, while in a corner a man behind a desk sat
opening envelopes, deftly extracting bills and post-office orders and
laying them in a drawer. On the wall of this same room was a bookcase
half filled with nondescript volumes.
“The Bibliotheque--that's French for the library of the Franco-Belgian
Cooperative Association,” explained Rolfe. “And this is Comrade Sanders.
Sanders is easier to say than Czernowitz. Here is the young lady I told
you about, who wishes to help us--Miss Bumpus.”
Mr. Sanders stopped counting his money long enough to grin at her.
“You will be welcome,” he said, in good English. “Stenographers are
scarce here. When can you come?”
“To-morrow morning,” answered Janet.
“Good,” he said. “I'll have a machine for you. What kind do you use?”
She told him. Instinctively she took a fancy to this little man, whose
flannel shirt and faded purple necktie, whose blue, unshaven face and
tousled black hair seemed incongruous with an alert, business-like, and
efficient manner. His nose, though not markedly Jewish, betrayed in him
the blood of that vital race which has triumphantly survived so many
centuries of bondage and oppression.
“He was a find, Czernowitz--he calls himself Sanders,” Rolfe explained,
as they entered the hall once more. “An Operative in the Patuxent,
educated himself, went to night school--might have been a capitalist
like so many of his tribe if he hadn't loved humanity. You'll get along
with him.”
“I'm sure I shall,” she replied.
Rolfe took from his pocket a little red button with the letters I.W.W.
printed across it. He pinned it, caressingly, on her coat.
“Now you are one of us!” he exclaimed. “You'll come to-morrow?”
“I'll come to-morrow,” she repeated, drawing away from him a little.
“And--we shall be friends?”
She nodded. “I must go now, I think.”
“Addio!” he said. “I shall look for you. For the present I must remain
here, with the Committee.”
When Janet reached Faber Street she halted on the corner of Stanley to
stare into the window of the glorified drugstore. But she gave no heed
to the stationery, the cameras and candy displayed there, being in the
emotional state that reduces to unreality objects of the commonplace,
everyday world. Presently, however, she became aware of a man standing
beside her.
“Haven't we met before?” he asked. “Or--can I be mistaken?”
Some oddly familiar quizzical note in his voice stirred, as she turned
to him, a lapsed memory. The hawklike yet benevolent and illuminating
look he gave her recalled the man at Silliston whom she had thought a
carpenter though he was dressed now in a warm suit of gray wool, and
wore a white, low collar.
“In Silliston!” she exclaimed. “Why--what are you doing here?”
“Well--this instant I was just looking at those notepapers, wondering
which I should choose if I really had good taste. But it's very
puzzling--isn't it?--when one comes from the country. Now that saffron
with the rough edges is very--artistic. Don't you think so?”
She looked at him and smiled, though his face was serious.
“You don't really like it, yourself,” she informed him.
“Now you're reflecting on my taste,” he declared.
“Oh no--it's because I saw the fence you were making. Is it finished
yet?”
“I put the last pineapple in place the day before Christmas. Do you
remember the pineapples?”
She nodded. “And the house? and the garden?”
“Oh, those will never be finished. I shouldn't have anything more to
do.”
“Is that--all you do?” she asked.
“It's more important than anything else. But you have you been back to
Silliston since I saw you? I've been waiting for another call.”
“You haven't even thought of me since,” she was moved to reply in the
same spirit.
“Haven't I?” he exclaimed. “I wondered, when I came up here to Hampton,
whether I mightn't meet you--and here you are! Doesn't that prove it?”
She laughed, somewhat surprised at the ease with which he had diverted
her, drawn her out of the tense, emotional mood in which he had
discovered her. As before, he puzzled her, but the absence of any
flirtatious suggestion in his talk gave her confidence. He was just
friendly.
“Sometimes I hoped I might see you in Hampton,” she ventured.
“Well, here I am. I heard the explosion, and came.”
“The explosion! The strike!” she exclaimed; suddenly enlightened. “Now I
remember! You said something about Hampton being nitro-glycerine--human
nitro-glycerine. You predicted this strike.”
“Did I? perhaps I did,” he assented. “Maybe you suggested the idea.”
“I suggested it! Oh no, I didn't--it was new to me, it frightened me
at the time, but it started me thinking about a lot of things that had
never occurred to me.”
“You might have suggested the idea without intending to, you know. There
are certain people who inspire prophecies--perhaps you are one.”
His tone was playful, but she was quick to grasp at an inference--since
his glance was fixed on the red button she wore.
“You meant that I would explode, too!”
“Oh no--nothing so terrible as that,” he disclaimed. “And yet most of
us have explosives stored away inside of us--instincts, impulses and all
that sort of thing that won't stand too much bottling-up.”
“Yes, I've joined the strike.” She spoke somewhat challengingly, though
she had an uneasy feeling that defiance was somewhat out of place with
him. “I suppose you think it strange, since I'm not a foreigner and
haven't worked in the mills. But I don't see why that should make any
difference if you believe that the workers haven't had a chance.”
“No difference,” he agreed, pleasantly, “no difference at all.”
“Don't you sympathize with the strikers?” she insisted. “Or--are you on
the other side, the side of the capitalists?”
“I? I'm a spectator--an innocent bystander.”
“You don't sympathize with the workers?” she cried.
“Indeed I do. I sympathize with everybody.”
“With the capitalists?”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Because they've had everything their own way, they've
exploited the workers, deceived and oppressed them, taken all the
profits.” She was using glibly her newly acquired labour terminology.
“Isn't that a pretty good reason for sympathizing with them?” he
inquired.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I should think it might be difficult to be happy and have done
all that. At any rate, it isn't my notion of happiness. Is it yours?”
For a moment she considered this.
“No--not exactly,” she admitted. “But they seem happy,” she insisted
vehemently, “they have everything they want and they do exactly as they
please without considering anybody except themselves. What do they care
how many they starve and make miserable? You--you don't know, you can't
know what it is to be driven and used and flung away!”
Almost in tears, she did not notice his puzzled yet sympathetic glance.
“The operatives, the workers create all the wealth, and the capitalists
take it from them, from their wives and children.”
“Now I know what you've been doing,” he said accusingly. “You've been
studying economics.”
Her brow puckered.
“Studying what?”
“Economics--the distribution of wealth. It's enough to upset anybody.”
“But I'm not upset,” she insisted, smiling in spite of herself at his
comical concern.
“It's very exciting. I remember reading a book once on economics
and such things, and I couldn't sleep for a week. It was called 'The
Organization of Happiness,' I believe, and it described just how the
world ought to be arranged--and isn't. I thought seriously of going to
Washington and telling the President and Congress about it.”
“It wouldn't have done any good,” said Janet.
“No, I realized that.”
“The only thing that will do any good is to strike and keep on
striking until the workers own the mills--take everything away from the
capitalists.”
“It's very simple,” he agreed, “much simpler than the book I read.
That's what they call syndicalism, isn't it?”
“Yes.” She was conscious of his friendliness, of the fact that his
skepticism was not cynical, yet she felt a strong desire to convince
him, to vindicate her new creed. “There's a man named Rolfe, an educated
man who's lived in Italy and England, who explains it wonderfully. He's
one of the I.W.W. leaders--you ought to hear him.”
“Rolfe converted you? I'll go to hear him.”
“Yes--but you have to feel it, you have to know what it is to be kept
down and crushed. If you'd only stay here awhile.”
“Oh, I intend to,” he replied.
She could not have said why, but she felt a certain relief on hearing
this.
“Then you'll see for yourself!” she cried. “I guess that's what you've
come for, isn't it?”
“Well, partly. To tell the truth, I've come to open a restaurant.”
“To open a restaurant!” Somehow she was unable to imagine him as the
proprietor of a restaurant. “But isn't it rather a bad time?” she
gasped.
“I don't look as if I had an eye for business--do I? But I have. No,
it's a good time--so many people will be hungry, especially children.
I'm going to open a restaurant for children. Oh, it will be very modest,
of course--I suppose I ought to call it a soup kitchen.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, staring at him. “Then you really--” the sentence
remained unfinished. “I'm sorry,” she said simply. “You made me think--”
“Oh, you mustn't pay any attention to what I say. Come 'round and see
my establishment, Number 77 Dey Street, one flight up, no elevator. Will
you?”
She laughed tremulously as he took her hand.
“Yes indeed, I will,” she promised. And she stood awhile staring after
him. She was glad he had come to Hampton, and yet she did not even know
his name.