A more serious atmosphere pervaded Headquarters, where it was realized
that the issue hung in the balance. And more proclamations, a la
Napoleon, were issued to sustain and hearten those who were finding
bread and onions meagre fare, to shame the hesitating, the wavering. As
has been said, it was Rolfe who, because of his popular literary gift,
composed these appeals for the consideration of the Committee, dictating
them to Janet as he paced up and down the bibliotheque, inhaling
innumerable cigarettes and flinging down the ends on the floor. A famous
one was headed “Shall Wool and Cotton Kings Rule the Nation?” “We are
winning” it declared. “The World is with us! Forced by the unshaken
solidarity of tens of thousands, the manufacturers offer bribes to end
the reign of terror they have inaugurated.... Inhuman treatment and
oppressive toil have brought all nationalities together into one great
army to fight against a brutal system of exploitation. In years and
years of excessive labour we have produced millions for a class of idle
parasites, who enjoy all the luxuries of life while our wives have
to leave their firesides and our children their schools to eke out a
miserable existence.” And this for the militia: “The lowest aim of life
is to be a soldier! The 'good' soldier never tries to distinguish right
from wrong, he never thinks, he never reasons, he only obeys--”
“But,” Janet was tempted to say, “your syndicalism declares that none
of us should think or reason. We should only feel.” She was beginning to
detect Rolfe's inconsistencies, yet she refrained from interrupting the
inspirational flow.
“The soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine.” Rolfe
was fond of adjectives. “All that is human in him, all that is divine
has been sworn away when he took the enlistment oath. No man can fall
lower than a soldier. It is a depth beyond which we cannot go.”
“All that is human, all that is divine,” wrote Janet, and thrilled a
little at the words. Why was it that mere words, and their arrangement
in certain sequences, gave one a delicious, creepy feeling up and down
the spine? Her attitude toward him had become more and more critical,
she had avoided him when she could, but when he was in this ecstatic
mood she responded, forgot his red lips, his contradictions, lost
herself in a medium she did not comprehend. Perhaps it was because, in
his absorption in the task, he forgot her, forgot himself. She, too,
despised the soldiers, fervently believed they had sold themselves to
the oppressors of mankind. And Rolfe, when in the throes of creation,
had the manner of speaking to the soldiers themselves, as though these
were present in the lane just below the window; as though he were on the
tribune. At such times he spoke with such rapidity that, quick though
she was, she could scarcely keep up with him. “Most of you, Soldiers,
are workingmen!” he cried. “Yesterday you were slaving in the mills
yourselves. You will profit by our victory. Why should you wish to crush
us? Be human!”
Pale, excited, he sank down into the chair by her side and lit another
cigarette.
“They ought to listen to that!” he exclaimed. “It's the best one I've
done yet.”
Night had come. Czernowitz sat in the other room, talking to Jastro, a
buzz of voices came from the hall through the thin pine panels of the
door. All day long a sixty-mile gale had twisted the snow of the
lane into whirling, fantastic columns and rattled the windows of
Franco-Belgian Hall. But now the wind had fallen.... Presently, as his
self-made music ceased to vibrate within him, Rolfe began to watch the
girl as she sat motionless, with parted lips and eyes alight, staring at
the reflection of the lamp in the blue-black window.
“Is that the end?” she asked, at length.
“Yes,” he replied sensitively. “Can't you see it's a climax? Don't you
think it's a good one?”
She looked at him, puzzled.
“Why, yes,” she said, “I think it's fine. You see, I have to take it
down so fast I can't always follow it as I'd like to.”
“When you feel, you can do anything,” he exclaimed. “It is necessary to
feel.”
“It is necessary to know,” she told him.
“I do not understand you,” he cried, leaning toward her. “Sometimes you
are a flame--a wonderful, scarlet flame I can express it in no other
way. Or again, you are like the Madonna of our new faith, and I wish I
were a del Sarto to paint you. And then again you seem as cold as
your New England snow, you have no feeling, you are an Anglo-Saxon--a
Puritan.”
She smiled, though she felt a pang of reminiscence at the word. Ditmar
had called her so, too.
“I can't help what I am,” she said.
“It is that which inhibits you,” he declared. “That Puritanism. It must
be eradicated before you can develop, and then--and then you will be
completely wonderful. When this strike is over, when we have time, I
will teach you many things--develop you. We will read Sorel together he
is beautiful, like poetry--and the great poets, Dante and Petrarch and
Tasso--yes, and d'Annunzio. We shall live.”
“We are living, now,” she answered. The look with which she surveyed
him he found enigmatic. And then, abruptly, she rose and went to her
typewriter.
“You don't believe what I say!” he reproached her.
But she was cool. “I'm not sure that I believe all of it. I want to
think it out for myself--to talk to others, too.”
“What others?”
“Nobody in particular--everybody,” she replied, as she set her notebook
on the rack.
“There is some one else!” he exclaimed, rising.
“There is every one else,” she said.
As was his habit when agitated, he began to smoke feverishly, glancing
at her from time to time as she fingered the keys. Experience had led
him to believe that he who finds a woman in revolt and gives her a
religion inevitably becomes her possessor. But more than a month had
passed, he had not become her possessor--and now for the first time
there entered his mind a doubt as to having given her a religion! The
obvious inference was that of another man, of another influence in
opposition to his own; characteristically, however, he shrank from
accepting this, since he was of those who believe what they wish to
believe. The sudden fear of losing her--intruding itself immediately
upon an ecstatic, creative mood--unnerved him, yet he strove to appear
confident as he stood over her.
“When you've finished typewriting that, we'll go out to supper,” he told
her.
But she shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I don't want to,” she replied--and then, to soften her refusal, she
added, “I can't, to-night.”
“But you never will come with me anymore. Why is it?”
“I'm very tired at night. I don't feel like going out.” She sought to
temporize.
“You've changed!” he accused her. “You're not the same as you were at
first--you avoid me.”
The swift gesture with which she flung over the carriage of her machine
might have warned him.
“I don't like that Hampton Hotel,” she flashed back. “I'm--I'm not a
vagabond--yet.”
“A vagabond!” he repeated.
She went on savagely with her work..
“You have two natures,” he exclaimed. “You are still a bourgeoise, a
Puritan. You will not be yourself, you will not be free until you get
over that.”
“I'm not sure I want to get over it.”
He leaned nearer to her.
“But now that I have found you, Janet, I will not let you go.”
“You've no rights over me,” she cried, in sudden alarm and anger. “I'm
not doing this work, I'm not wearing myself out here for you.”
“Then--why are you doing it?” His suspicions rose again, and made him
reckless.
“To help the strikers,” she said.... He could get no more out of her,
and presently, when Anna Mower entered the room, he left it....
More than once since her first visit to the soup kitchen in Dey Street
Janet had returned to it. The universe rocked, but here was equilibrium.
The streets were filled with soldiers, with marching strikers, terrible
things were constantly happening; the tension at Headquarters never
seemed to relax. Out in the world and within her own soul were strife
and suffering, and sometimes fear; the work in which she sought to
lose herself no longer sufficed to keep her from thinking, and the
spectacle--when she returned home--of her mother's increasing apathy
grew more and more appalling. But in Dey Street she gained calmness, was
able to renew something of that sense of proportion the lack of which,
in the chaos in which she was engulfed, often brought her to the verge
of madness. At first she had had a certain hesitation about going back,
and on the occasion of her second visit had walked twice around the
block before venturing to enter. She had no claim on this man. He was
merely a chance acquaintance, a stranger--and yet he seemed nearer to
her, to understand her better than any one else she knew in the world.
This was queer, because she had not explained herself; nor had he asked
her for any confidences. She would have liked to confide in him--some
things: he gave her the impression of comprehending life; of having, as
his specialty, humanity itself; he should, she reflected, have been a
minister, and smiled at the thought: ministers, at any rate, ought to be
like him, and then one might embrace Christianity--the religion of her
forefathers that Rolfe ridiculed. But there was about Insall nothing of
religion as she had grown up to apprehend the term.
Now that she had taken her courage in her hands and renewed her visits,
they seemed to be the most natural proceedings in the world. On that
second occasion, when she had opened the door and palpitatingly climbed
to the loft, the second batch of children were finishing their midday
meal,--rather more joyously, she thought, than before,--and Insall
himself was stooping over a small boy whom he had taken away from the
table. He did not notice her at once, and Janet watched them. The child
had a cough, his extreme thinness was emphasized by the coat he wore,
several sizes too large for him.
“You come along with me, Marcus, I guess I can fit you out,” Insall was
saying, when he looked up and saw Janet.
“Why, if it isn't Miss Bumpus! I thought you'd forgotten us.”
“Oh no,” she protested. “I wanted to come.”
“Then why didn't you?”
“Well, I have come,” she said, with a little sigh, and he did not press
her further. And she refrained from offering any conventional excuse,
such as that of being interested in the children. She had come to see
him, and such was the faith with which he inspired her--now that she was
once more in his presence--that she made no attempt to hide the fact.
“You've never seen my clothing store, have you?” he asked. And with the
child's hand in his he led the way into a room at the rear of the loft.
A kit of carpenter's tools was on the floor, and one wall was lined
with box-like compartments made of new wood, each with its label in
neat lettering indicating the articles contained therein. “Shoes?”
he repeated, as he ran his eye down the labels and suddenly opened a
drawer. “Here we are, Marcus. Sit down there on the bench, and take off
the shoes you have on.”
The boy had one of those long faces of the higher Jewish type,
intelligent, wistful. He seemed dazed by Insall's kindness. The shoes he
wore were those of an adult, but cracked and split, revealing the cotton
stocking and here and there the skin. His little blue hands fumbled with
the knotted strings that served for facings until Insall, producing a
pocket knife, deftly cut the strings.
“Those are summer shoes, Marcus--well ventilated.”
“They're by me since August,” said the boy.
“And now the stockings,” prompted Insall. The old ones, wet,
discoloured, and torn, were stripped off, and thick, woollen ones
substituted. Insall, casting his eye over the open drawer, chose a pair
of shoes that had been worn, but which were stout and serviceable, and
taking one in his hand knelt down before the child. “Let's see how good
a guesser I am,” he said, loosening the strings and turning back the
tongue, imitating good-humouredly the deferential manner of a salesman
of footwear as he slipped on the shoe. “Why, it fits as if it were made
for you! Now for the other one. Yes, your feet are mates--I know a man
who wears a whole size larger on his left foot.” The dazed expression
remained on the boy's face. The experience was beyond him. “That's
better,” said Insall, as he finished the lacing. “Keep out of the snow,
Marcus, all you can. Wet feet aren't good for a cough, you know. And
when you come in to supper a nice doctor will be here, and we'll see if
we can't get rid of the cough.”
The boy nodded. He got to his feet, stared down at the shoes, and walked
slowly toward the door, where he turned.
“Thank you, Mister Insall,” he said.
And Insall, still sitting on his heels, waved his hand.
“It is not to mention it,” he replied. “Perhaps you may have a clothing
store of your own some day--who knows!” He looked up at Janet amusedly
and then, with a spring, stood upright, his easy, unconscious pose
betokening command of soul and body. “I ought to have kept a store,” he
observed. “I missed my vocation.”
“It seems to me that you missed a great many vocations,” she replied.
Commonplaces alone seemed possible, adequate. “I suppose you made all
those drawers yourself.”
He bowed in acknowledgment of her implied tribute. With his fine
nose and keen eyes--set at a slightly downward angle, creased at the
corners--with his thick, greying hair, despite his comparative youth
he had the look one associates with portraits of earlier, patriarchal
Americans.... These calls of Janet's were never of long duration. She
had fallen into the habit of taking her lunch between one and two, and
usually arrived when the last installment of youngsters were finishing
their meal; sometimes they were filing out, stopping to form a group
around Insall, who always managed to say something amusing--something
pertinent and good-naturedly personal. For he knew most of them by name,
and had acquired a knowledge of certain individual propensities and
idiosyncrasies that delighted their companions.
“What's the trouble, Stepan--swallowed your spoon?” Stepan was known
to be greedy. Or he would suddenly seize an unusually solemn boy from
behind and tickle him until the child screamed with laughter. It was,
indeed, something of an achievement to get on terms of confidence with
these alien children of the tenements and the streets who from their
earliest years had been forced to shift for themselves, and many of
whom had acquired a precocious suspicion of Greeks bearing gifts. Insall
himself had used the phrase, and explained it to Janet. That sense of
caveat donor was perhaps their most pathetic characteristic. But he
broke it down; broke down, too, the shyness accompanying it, the shyness
and solemnity emphasized in them by contact with hardship and poverty,
with the stark side of life they faced at home. He had made them--Mrs.
Maturin once illuminatingly remarked--more like children. Sometimes he
went to see their parents,--as in the case of Marcus--to suggest certain
hygienic precautions in his humorous way; and his accounts of these
visits, too, were always humorous. Yet through that humour ran a strain
of pathos that clutched--despite her smile--at Janet's heartstrings.
This gift of emphasizing and heightening tragedy while apparently
dealing in comedy she never ceased to wonder at. She, too, knew that
tragedy of the tenements, of the poor, its sordidness and cruelty. All
her days she had lived precariously near it, and lately she had visited
these people, had been torn by the sight of what they endured. But
Insall's jokes, while they stripped it of sentimentality of which she
had an instinctive dislike--made it for her even more poignant. One
would have thought, to have such an insight into it, that he too must
have lived it, must have been brought up in some dirty alley of a
street. That gift, of course, must be a writer's gift.
When she saw the waifs trooping after him down the stairs, Mrs. Maturin
called him the Pied Piper of Hampton.
As time went on, Janet sometimes wondered over the quiet manner in which
these two people, Insall and Mrs. Maturin, took her visits as though
they were matters of course, and gave her their friendship. There was,
really, no obvious excuse for her coming, not even that of the waifs
for food--and yet she came to be fed. The sustenance they gave her would
have been hard to define; it flowed not so much from what they said,
as from what they were; it was in the atmosphere surrounding them.
Sometimes she looked at Mrs. Maturin to ask herself what this lady would
say if she knew her history, her relationship with Ditmar--which had
been her real reason for entering the ranks of the strikers. And was
it fair for her, Janet, to permit Mrs. Maturin to bestow her friendship
without revealing this? She could not make up her mind as to what this
lady would say. Janet had had no difficulty in placing Ditmar; not much
trouble, after her first surprise was over, in classifying Rolfe and
the itinerant band of syndicalists who had descended upon her restricted
world. But Insall and Mrs. Maturin were not to be ticketed. What chiefly
surprised her, in addition to their kindliness, to their taking her on
faith without the formality of any recommendation or introduction,
was their lack of intellectual narrowness. She did not, of course, so
express it. But she sensed, in their presence, from references casually
let fall in their conversation, a wider culture of which they were
in possession, a culture at once puzzling and exciting, one that she
despaired of acquiring for herself. Though it came from reading, it did
not seem “literary,” according to the notion she had conceived of the
term. Her speculations concerning it must be focussed and interpreted.
It was a culture, in the first place, not harnessed to an obvious
Cause: something like that struck her. It was a culture that contained
tolerance and charity, that did not label a portion of mankind as its
enemy, but seemed, by understanding all, to forgive all. It had no
prejudices; nor did it boast, as the Syndicalists boasted, of its
absence of convention. And little by little Janet connected it with
Silliston.
“It must be wonderful to live in such a place as that,” she exclaimed,
when the Academy was mentioned. On this occasion Insall had left for a
moment, and she was in the little room he called his “store,” alone with
Mrs. Maturin, helping to sort out a batch of garments just received.
“It was there you first met Brooks, wasn't it?” She always spoke of him
as Brooks. “He told me about it, how you walked out there and asked him
about a place to lunch.” Mrs. Maturin laughed. “You didn't know what to
make of him, did you?”
“I thought he was a carpenter!” said Janet. “I--I never should have
taken him for an author. But of course I don't know any other authors.”
“Well, he's not like any of them, he's just like himself. You can't put
a tag on people who are really big.”
Janet considered this. “I never thought of that. I suppose not,” she
agreed.
Mrs. Maturin glanced at her. “So you liked Sflliston,” she said.
“I liked it better than any place I ever saw. I haven't seen many
places, but I'm sure that few can be nicer.”
“What did you like about it, Janet?” Mrs. Maturin was interested.
“It's hard to say,” Janet replied, after a moment. “It gave me such a
feeling of peace--of having come home, although I lived in Hampton. I
can't express it.”
“I think you're expressing it rather well,” said Mrs. Maturin.
“It was so beautiful in the spring,” Janet continued, dropping the coat
she held into the drawer. “And it wasn't just the trees and the grass
with the yellow dandelions, it was the houses, too--I've often wondered
why those houses pleased me so much. I wanted to live in every one of
them. Do you know that feeling?” Mrs. Maturin nodded. “They didn't hurt
your eyes when you looked at them, and they seemed to be so much at home
there, even the new ones. The new ones were like the children of the
old.”
“I'll tell the architect. He'll be pleased,” said Mrs. Maturin.
Janet flushed.
“Am I being silly?” she asked.
“No; my dear,” Mrs. Maturin replied. “You've expressed what I feel about
Silliston. What do you intend to do when the strike is over?”
“I hadn't thought.” Janet started at the question, but Mrs. Maturin
did not seem to notice the dismay in her tone. “You don't intend to--to
travel around with the I. W. W. people, do you?”
“I--I hadn't thought,” Janet faltered. It was the first time Mrs.
Maturin had spoken of her connection with Syndicalism. And she surprised
herself by adding: “I don't see how I could. They can get stenographers
anywhere, and that's all I'm good for.” And the question occurred to
her--did she really wish to?
“What I was going to suggest,” continued Mrs. Maturin, quietly, “was
that you might try Silliston. There's a chance for a good stenographer
there, and I'm sure you are a good one. So many of the professors send
to Boston.”
Janet stood stock still. Then she said: “But you don't know anything
about me, Mrs. Maturin.”
Kindliness burned in the lady's eyes as she replied: “I know more
now--since you've told me I know nothing. Of course there's much I don't
know, how you, a stenographer, became involved in this strike and joined
the I. W. W. But you shall tell me or not, as you wish, when we become
better friends.”
Janet felt the blood beating in her throat, and an impulse to confess
everything almost mastered her. From the first she had felt drawn toward
Mrs. Maturin, who seemed to hold out to her the promise of a woman's
friendship--for which she had felt a life-long need: a woman friend who
would understand the insatiate yearning in her that gave her no rest in
her search for a glittering essence never found, that had led her only
to new depths of bitterness and despair. It would destroy her, if indeed
it had not already done so. Mrs. Maturin, Insall, seemed to possess the
secret that would bring her peace--and yet, in spite of something urging
her to speak, she feared the risk of losing them. Perhaps, after all,
they would not understand! perhaps it was too late!
“You do not believe in the Industrial Workers of the World,” was what
she said.
Mrs. Maturin herself, who had been moved and excited as she gazed at
Janet, was taken by surprise. A few moments elapsed before she could
gather herself to reply, and then she managed to smile.
“I do not believe that wisdom will die with them, my dear. Their--their
doctrine is too simple, it does not seem as if life, the social order is
to be so easily solved.”
“But you must sympathize with them, with the strikers.” Janet's gesture
implied that the soup kitchen was proof of this.
“Ah,” replied Mrs. Maturin, gently, “that is different to understand
them. There is one philosophy for the lamb, and another for the wolf.”
“You mean,” said Janet, trembling, “that what happens to us makes us
inclined to believe certain things?”
“Precisely,” agreed Mrs. Maturin, in admiration. “But I must be honest
with you, it was Brooks who made me see it.”
“But--he never said that to me. And I asked him once, almost the same
question.”
“He never said it to me, either,” Mrs. Maturin confessed. “He doesn't
tell you what he believes; I simply gathered that this is his idea. And
apparently the workers can only improve their condition by strikes, by
suffering--it seems to be the only manner in which they can convince the
employers that the conditions are bad. It isn't the employers' fault.”
“Not their fault!” Janet repeated.
“Not in a large sense,” said Mrs. Maturin. “When people grow up to look
at life in a certain way, from a certain viewpoint, it is difficult,
almost impossible to change them. It's--it's their religion. They are
convinced that if the world doesn't go on in their way, according to
their principles, everything will be destroyed. They aren't inhuman.
Within limits everybody is more than willing to help the world along, if
only they can be convinced that what they are asked to do will help.”
Janet breathed deeply. She was thinking of Ditmar.
And Mrs. Maturin, regarding her, tactfully changed the subject.
“I didn't intend to give you a lecture on sociology or psychology,
my dear,” she said. “I know nothing about them, although we have a
professor who does. Think over what I've said about coming to Silliston.
It will do you good--you are working too hard here. I know you would
enjoy Silliston. And Brooks takes such an interest in you,” she added
impulsively. “It is quite a compliment.”
“But why?” Janet demanded, bewildered.
“Perhaps it's because you have--possibilities. You may be typewriting
his manuscripts. And then, I am a widow, and often rather lonely--you
could come in and read to me occasionally.”
“But--I've never read anything.”
“How fortunate!” said Insall, who had entered the doorway in time to
hear Janet's exclamation. “More than half of modern culture depends on
what one shouldn't read.”
Mrs. Maturin laughed. But Insall waved his hand deprecatingly.
“That isn't my own,” he confessed. “I cribbed it from a clever
Englishman. But I believe it's true.”
“I think I'll adopt her,” said Mrs. Maturin to Insall, when she had
repeated to him the conversation. “I know you are always convicting me
of enthusiasms, Brooks, and I suppose I do get enthusiastic.”
“Well, you adopt her--and I'll marry her,” replied Insall, with a smile,
as he cut the string from the last bundle of clothing.
“You might do worse. It would be a joke if you did--!”
His friend paused to consider this preposterous possibility. “One never
can tell whom a man like you, an artist, will marry.”
“We've no business to marry at all,” said Insall, laughing. “I often
wonder where that romantic streak will land you, Augusta. But you do
have a delightful time!”
“Don't begrudge it me, it makes life so much more interesting,” Mrs.
Maturin begged, returning his smile. “I haven't the faintest idea that
you will marry her or any one else. But I insist on saying she's your
type--she's the kind of a person artists do dig up and marry--only
better than most of them, far better.”
“Dig up?” said Insall.
“Well, you know I'm not a snob--I only mean that she seems to be one of
the surprising anomalies that sometimes occur in--what shall I say?--in
the working-classes. I do feel like a snob when I say that. But what
is it? Where does that spark come from? Is it in our modern air,
that discontent, that desire, that thrusting forth toward a new
light--something as yet unformulated, but which we all feel, even at
small institutions of learning like Silliston?”
“Now you're getting beyond me.”
“Oh no, I'm not,” Mrs. Maturin retorted confidently. “If you won't talk
about it, I will, I have no shame. And this girl has it--this thing
I'm trying to express. She's modern to her finger tips, and yet she's
extraordinarily American--in spite of her modernity, she embodies
in some queer way our tradition. She loves our old houses at
Silliston--they make her feel at home--that's her own expression.”
“Did she say that?”
“Exactly. And I know she's of New England ancestry, she told me so.
What I can't make out is, why she joined the I.W.W. That seems so
contradictory.”
“Perhaps she was searching for light there,” Insall hazarded. “Why don't
you ask her?”
“I don't know,” replied Mrs. Maturin, thoughtfully. “I want to, my
curiosity almost burns me alive, and yet I don't. She isn't the kind
you can ask personal questions of--that's part of her charm, part of
her individuality. One is a little afraid to intrude. And yet she keeps
coming here--of course you are a sufficient attraction, Brooks. But I
must give her the credit of not flirting with you.”
“I've noticed that, too,” said Insall, comically.
“She's searching for light,” Mrs. Maturin went on, struck by the phrase.
“She has an instinct we can give it to her, because we come from an
institution of learning. I felt something of the kind when I suggested
her establishing herself in Silliston. Well, she's more than worth while
experimenting on, she must have lived and breathed what you call the
'movie atmosphere' all her life, and yet she never seems to have read
and absorbed any sentimental literature or cheap religion. She doesn't
suggest the tawdry. That part of her, the intellectual part, is a clear
page to be written upon.”
“There's my chance,” said Insall.
“No, it's my chance--since you're so cynical.”
“I'm not cynical,” he protested.
“I don't believe you really are. And if you are, there may be a judgment
upon you,” she added playfully. “I tell you she's the kind of woman
artists go mad about. She has what sentimentalists call temperament, and
after all we haven't any better word to express dynamic desires. She'd
keep you stirred up, stimulated, and you could educate her.”
“No, thanks, I'll leave that to you. He who educates a woman is lost.
But how about Syndicalism and all the mysticism that goes with it?
There's an intellectual over at Headquarters who's been talking to her
about Bergson, the life-force, and the World-We-Ourselves-Create.”
Mrs. Maturin laughed.
“Well, we go wrong when we don't go right. That's just it, we must
go some way. And I'm sure, from what I gather, that she isn't wholly
satisfied with Syndicalism.”
“What is right?” demanded Insall.
“Oh, I don't intend to turn her over to Mr. Worrall and make a
sociologist and a militant suffragette out of her. She isn't that
kind, anyhow. But I could give her good literature to read--yours, for
instance,” she added maliciously.
“You're preposterous, Augusta,” Insall exclaimed.
“I may be, but you've got to indulge me. I've taken this fancy to
her--of course I mean to see more of her. But--you know how hard it is
for me, sometimes, since I've been left alone.”
Insall laid his hand affectionately on her shoulder.
“I remember what you said the first day I saw her, that the strike was
in her,” Mrs. Maturin continued. “Well, I see now that she does express
and typify it--and I don't mean the 'labour movement' alone, or this
strike in Rampton, which is symptomatic, but crude. I mean something
bigger--and I suppose you do--the protest, the revolt, the struggle for
self-realization that is beginning to be felt all over the nation, all
over the world today, that is not yet focussed and self-conscious, but
groping its way, clothing itself in any philosophy that seems to fit it.
I can imagine myself how such a strike as this might appeal to a
girl with a sense of rebellion against sordidness and lack of
opportunity--especially if she has had a tragic experience. And
sometimes I suspect she has had one.”
“Well, it's an interesting theory,” Insall admitted indulgently.
“I'm merely amplifying your suggestions, only you won't admit that they
are yours. And she was your protegee.” “And you are going to take her
off my hands.” “I'm not so sure,” said Mrs. Maturin.