The Hampton strike had reached the state of grim deadlock characteristic
of all stubborn wars. There were aggressions, retaliations on both
sides, the antagonism grew more intense. The older labour unions were
accused by the strikers of playing the employers' game, and thus grew
to be hated even more than the “capitalists.” These organizations of the
skilled had entered but half-heartedly into a struggle that now began to
threaten, indeed, their very existence, and when it was charged that the
Textile Workers had been attempting to secure recruits from the ranks of
the strikers, and had secretly offered the millowners a scale of demands
in the hope that a sufficient number of operatives would return to
work, and so break the strike; a serious riot was barely averted.
“Scab-hunting agencies,” the unions were called. One morning when it
was learned that the loom-fixers, almost to a man, had gone back to the
mills, a streetcar was stopped near the power house at the end of
Faber Street, and in a twinkling, before the militia or police could
interfere, motorman, conductor, and passengers were dragged from it and
the trolley pole removed. This and a number of similar aggressive acts
aroused the mill-owners and their agents to appeal with renewed vigour
to the public through the newspapers, which it was claimed they owned or
subsidized. Then followed a series of arraignments of the strike leaders
calculated to stir the wildest prejudices and fears of the citizens
of Hampton. Antonelli and Jastro--so rumour had it--in various nightly
speeches had advised their followers to “sleep in the daytime and prowl
like wild animals at night”; urged the power house employees to desert
and leave the city in darkness; made the declaration, “We will win if
we raise scaffolds on every street!” insisted that the strikers, too,
should have “gun permits,” since the police hirelings carried arms. And
the fact that the mill-owners replied with pamphlets whose object was
proclaimed to be one of discrediting their leaders in the eyes of the
public still further infuriated the strikers. Such charges, of course,
had to be vehemently refuted, the motives behind them made clear, and
counter-accusations laid at the door of the mill-owners.
The atmosphere at Headquarters daily grew more tense. At any moment the
spark might be supplied to precipitate an explosion that would shake the
earth. The hungry, made more desperate by their own sufferings or the
spectacle of starving families, were increasingly difficult to control:
many wished to return to work, others clamoured for violence, nor were
these wholly discouraged by a portion of the leaders. A riot seemed
imminent--a riot Antonelli feared and firmly opposed, since it would
alienate the sympathy of that wider public in the country on which the
success of the strike depended. Watchful, yet apparently unconcerned,
unmoved by the quarrels, the fierce demands for “action,” he sat on the
little stage, smoking his cigars and reading his newspapers.
Janet's nerves were taut. There had been times during the past weeks
when she had been aware of new and vaguely disquieting portents.
Inexperience had led her to belittle them, and the absorbing nature of
her work, the excitement due to the strange life of conflict, of new
ideas, into which she had so unreservedly flung herself, the resentment
that galvanized her--all these had diverted her from worry. At night,
hers had been the oblivious slumber of the weary.... And then, as a
desperate wayfarer, pressing on, feels a heavy drop of rain and glances
up to perceive the clouds that have long been gathering, she awoke in
the black morning hours, and fear descended upon her. Suddenly her
brain became hideously active as she lay, dry-upped, staring into the
darkness, striving to convince herself that it could not be. But the
thing had its advocate, also, to summon ingeniously, in cumulative
array, those omens she had ignored: to cause her to piece together, in
this moment of torture, portions of the knowledge of sexual facts that
prudery banishes from education, a smattering of which reaches the ears
of such young women as Janet in devious, roundabout ways. Several times,
in the month just past, she had had unwonted attacks of dizziness,
of faintness, and on one occasion Anna Mower, alarmed, had opened the
window of the bibliotheque and thrust her into the cold air. Now, with
a pang of fear she recalled what Anna had said:--“You're working too
hard--you hadn't ought to stay here nights. If it was some girls I've
met, I'd know what to think.”
Strange that the significance of this sentence had failed to penetrate
her consciousness until now! “If it was some girls I've met, I'd know
what to think!” It had come into her mind abruptly; and always, when she
sought to reassure herself, to declare her terror absurd, it returned to
confront her. Heat waves pulsed through her, she grew intolerably warm,
perspiration started from her pores, and she flung off the blankets. The
rain from the roofs was splashing on the bricks of the passage.... What
would Mr. Insall say, if he knew? and Mrs. Maturin? She could never
see them again. Now there was no one to whom to turn, she was cut off,
utterly, from humanity, an outcast. Like Lise! And only a little
while ago she and Lise had lain in that bed together! Was there not
somebody--God? Other people believed in God, prayed to him. She tried
to say, “Oh God, deliver me from this thing!” but the words seemed a
mockery. After all, it was mechanical, it had either happened or it
hadn't happened. A life-long experience in an environment where only
unpleasant things occurred, where miracles were unknown, had effaced a
fleeting, childhood belief in miracles. Cause and effect were the rule.
And if there were a God who did interfere, why hadn't he interfered
before this thing happened? Then would have been the logical time. Why
hadn't he informed her that in attempting to escape from the treadmill
in which he had placed her, in seeking happiness, she had been courting
destruction? Why had he destroyed Lise? And if there were a God, would
he comfort her now, convey to her some message of his sympathy and love?
No such message, alas, seemed to come to her through the darkness.
After a while--a seemingly interminable while--the siren shrieked, the
bells jangled loudly in the wet air, another day had come. Could she
face it--even the murky grey light of this that revealed the ashes and
litter of the back yard under the downpour? The act of dressing
brought a slight relief; and then, at breakfast, a numbness stole over
her--suggested and conveyed, perchance, by the apathy of her mother.
Something had killed suffering in Hannah; perhaps she herself would
mercifully lose the power to suffer! But the thought made her shudder.
She could not, like her mother, find a silly refuge in shining dishes,
in cleaning pots and pans, or sit idle, vacant-minded, for long hours in
a spotless kitchen. What would happen to her?... Howbeit, the ache that
had tortured her became a dull, leaden pain, like that she had known
at another time--how long ago--when the suffering caused by Ditmar's
deception had dulled, when she had sat in the train on her way back
to Hampton from Boston, after seeing Lise. The pain would throb again,
unsupportably, and she would wake, and this time it would drive her--she
knew not where.
She was certain, now, that the presage of the night was true....
She reached Franco-Belgian Hall to find it in an uproar. Anna Mower ran
up to her with the news that dynamite had been discovered by the police
in certain tenements of the Syrian quarter, that the tenants had
been arrested and taken to the police station where, bewildered and
terrified, they had denied any knowledge of the explosive. Dynamite had
also been found under the power house, and in the mills--the sources of
Hampton's prosperity. And Hampton believed, of course, that this was
the inevitable result of the anarchistic preaching of such enemies of
society as Jastro and Antonelli if these, indeed, had not incited
the Syrians to the deed. But it was a plot of the mill-owners, Anna
insisted--they themselves had planted the explosive, adroitly started
the rumours, told the police where the dynamite was to be found. Such
was the view that prevailed at Headquarters, pervaded the angrily
buzzing crowd that stood outside--heedless of the rain--and animated the
stormy conferences in the Salle de Reunion.
The day wore on. In the middle of the afternoon, as she was staring out
of the window, Anna Mower returned with more news. Dynamite had been
discovered in Hawthorne Street, and it was rumoured that Antonelli and
Jastro were to be arrested.
“You ought to go home and rest, Janet,” she said kindly.
Janet shook her head.
“Rolfe's back,” Anna informed her, after a moment. “He's talking to
Antonelli about another proclamation to let people know who's to blame
for this dynamite business. I guess he'll be in here in a minute to
dictate the draft. Say, hadn't you better let Minnie take it, and go
home?”
“I'm not sick,” Janet repeated, and Anna reluctantly left her.
Rolfe had been absent for a week, in New York, consulting with some of
the I.W.W. leaders; with Lockhart, the chief protagonist of Syndicalism
in America, just returned from Colorado, to whom he had given a detailed
account of the Hampton strike. And Lockhart, next week, was coming to
Hampton to make a great speech and look over the ground for himself. All
this Rolfe told Janet eagerly when he entered the bibliotheque. He was
glad to get back; he had missed her.
“But you are pale!” he exclaimed, as he seized her hand, “and how your
eyes burn! You do not take care of yourself when I am not here to watch
you.” His air of solicitude, his assumption of a peculiar right to ask,
might formerly have troubled and offended her. Now she was scarcely
aware of his presence. “You feel too much--that is it you are like a
torch that consumes itself in burning. But this will soon be over, we
shall have them on their knees, the capitalists, before very long,
when it is known what they have done to-day. It is too much--they have
overreached themselves with this plot of the dynamite.”
“You have missed me, a little?”
“I have been busy,” she said, releasing her hand and sitting down at her
desk and taking up her notebook.
“You are not well,” he insisted.
“I'm all right,” she replied.
He lit a cigarette and began to pace the room--his customary manner
of preparing himself for the creative mood. After a while he began to
dictate--but haltingly. He had come here from Antonelli all primed with
fervour and indignation, but it was evident that this feeling had ebbed,
that his mind refused to concentrate on what he was saying. Despite the
magnificent opportunity to flay the capitalists which their most recent
tactics afforded him, he paused, repeated himself, and began again,
glancing from time to time reproachfully, almost resentfully at Janet.
Usually, on these occasions, he was transported, almost inebriated by
his own eloquence; but now he chafed at her listlessness, he was at a
loss to account for the withdrawal of the enthusiasm he had formerly
been able to arouse. Lacking the feminine stimulus, his genius limped.
For Rolfe there had been a woman in every strike--sometimes two. What
had happened, during his absence, to alienate the most promising of all
neophytes he had ever encountered?
“The eyes of the world are fixed on the workers of Hampton! They must
be true to the trust their fellows have placed in them! To-day the
mill-owners, the masters, are at the end of their tether. Always
unscrupulous, they have descended to the most despicable of tactics
in order to deceive the public. But truth will prevail!...” Rolfe lit
another cigarette, began a new sentence and broke it off. Suddenly he
stood over her. “It's you!” he said. “You don't feel it, you don't help
me, you're not in sympathy.”
He bent over her, his red lips gleaming through his beard, a terrible
hunger in his lustrous eyes--the eyes of a soul to which self-denial
was unknown. His voice was thick with uncontrolled passion, his hand was
cold.
“Janet, what has happened? I love you, you must love me--I cannot
believe that you do not. Come with me. We shall work together for the
workers--it is all nothing without you.”
For a moment she sat still, and then a pain shot through her, a pain as
sharp as a dagger thrust. She drew her hand away.
“I can't love--I can only hate,” she said.
“But you do not hate me!” Rolfe repudiated so gross a fact. His voice
caught as in a sob. “I, who love you, who have taught you!”
She dismissed this--what he had taught her--with a gesture which, though
slight, was all-expressive. He drew back from her.
“Shall I tell you who has planned and carried out this plot?” he cried.
“It is Ditmar. He is the one, and he used Janes, the livery stable
keeper, the politician who brought the dynamite to Hampton, as his tool.
Half an hour before Janes got to the station in Boston he was seen by a
friend of ours talking to Ditmar in front of the Chippering offices, and
Janes had the satchel with him then. Ditmar walked to the corner with
him.”
Janet, too, had risen.
“I don't believe it,” she said.
“Ah, I thought you wouldn't! But we have the proof that dynamite was in
the satchel, we've found the contractor from whom it was bought. I was a
fool--I might have known that you loved Ditmar.”
“I hate him!” said Janet.
“It is the same thing,” said Rolfe.
She did not answer.... He watched her in silence as she put on her hat
and coat and left the room.
The early dusk was gathering when she left the hall and made her way
toward the city. The huge bottle-shaped chimneys of the power plant
injected heavy black smoke into the wet air. In Faber Street the once
brilliant signs above the “ten-foot” buildings seemed dulled, the
telegraph poles starker, nakeder than ever, their wires scarcely
discernible against the smeared sky. The pedestrians were sombrely
garbed, and went about in “rubbers”--the most depressing of all articles
worn by man. Sodden piles of snow still hid the curb and gutters, but
the pavements were trailed with mud that gleamed in the light from the
shop windows. And Janet, lingering unconsciously in front of that very
emporium where Lisehad been incarcerated, the Bagatelle, stared at the
finery displayed there, at the blue tulle dress that might be purchased,
she read, for $22.99. She found herself repeating, in meaningless,
subdued tones, the words, “twenty-two ninety-nine.” She even tried--just
to see if it were possible--to concentrate her mind on that dress, on
the fur muffs and tippets in the next window; to act as if this were
just an ordinary, sad February afternoon, and she herself once more just
an ordinary stenographer leading a monotonous, uneventful existence. But
she knew that this was not true, because, later on, she was going to do
something--to commit some act. She didn't know what this act would be.
Her head was hot, her temples throbbed....
Night had fallen, the electric arcs burned blue overhead, she was in
another street--was it Stanley? Sounds of music reached her, the rumble
of marching feet; dark, massed figures were in the distance swimming
toward her along the glistening line of the car tracks, and she heard
the shrill whistling of the doffer boys, who acted as a sort of fife
corps in these parades--which by this time had become familiar to the
citizens of Hampton. And Janet remembered when the little red book that
contained the songs had arrived at Headquarters from the west and had
been distributed by thousands among the strikers. She recalled the words
of this song, though the procession was as yet too far away for her to
distinguish them:--
“The People's flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their life-blood dyed its every fold.”
The song ceased, and she stood still, waiting for the procession to
reach her. A group of heavy Belgian women were marching together.
Suddenly, as by a simultaneous impulse, their voices rang out in the
Internationale--the terrible Marseillaise of the workers:--
“Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
Arise, ye wretched of the earth!”
And the refrain was taken up by hundreds of throats:--
“'Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place!”
The walls of the street flung it back. On the sidewalk, pressed against
the houses, men and women heard it with white faces. But Janet was
carried on.... The scene changed, now she was gazing at a mass of human
beings hemmed in by a line of soldiers. Behind the crowd was a row of
old-fashioned brick houses, on the walls of which were patterned, by
the cold electric light, the branches of the bare elms ranged along the
sidewalk. People leaned out of the windows, like theatregoers at a play.
The light illuminated the red and white bars of the ensign, upheld by
the standard bearer of the regiment, the smaller flags flaunted by the
strikers--each side clinging hardily to the emblem of human liberty. The
light fell, too, harshly and brilliantly, on the workers in the front
rank confronting the bayonets, and these seemed strangely indifferent,
as though waiting for the flash of a photograph. A little farther on a
group of boys, hands in pockets, stared at the soldiers with bravado.
From the rear came that indescribable “booing” which those who have
heard never forget, mingled with curses and cries:--“Vive la greve!”
“To hell with the Cossacks!”
“Kahm on--shoot!”
The backs of the soldiers, determined, unyielding, were covered with
heavy brown capes that fell below the waist. As Janet's glance wandered
down the line it was arrested by the face of a man in a visored woollen
cap--a face that was almost sepia, in which large white eyeballs struck
a note of hatred. And what she seemed to see in it, confronting her,
were the hatred and despair of her own soul! The man might have been a
Hungarian or a Pole; the breadth of his chin was accentuated by a wide,
black moustache, his attitude was tense,--that of a maddened beast ready
to spring at the soldier in front of him. He was plainly one of those
who had reached the mental limit of endurance.
In contrast with this foreigner, confronting him, a young lieutenant
stood motionless, his head cocked on one side, his hand grasping the
club held a little behind him, his glance meeting the other's squarely,
but with a different quality of defiance. All his faculties were on the
alert. He wore no overcoat, and the uniform fitting close to his figure,
the broad-brimmed campaign hat of felt served to bring into relief
the physical characteristics of the American Anglo-Saxon, of the
individualist who became the fighting pioneer. But Janet, save to
register the presence of the intense antagonism between the two,
scarcely noticed her fellow countryman.... Every moment she expected to
see the black man spring,--and yet movement would have marred the drama
of that consuming hatred....
Then, by one of those bewildering, kaleidoscopic shifts to which crowds
are subject, the scene changed, more troops arrived, little by little
the people were dispersed to drift together again by chance--in smaller
numbers--several blocks away. Perhaps a hundred and fifty were scattered
over the space formed by the intersection of two streets, where three or
four special policemen with night sticks urged them on. Not a riot,
or anything approaching it. The police were jeered, but the groups,
apparently, had already begun to scatter, when from the triangular
vestibule of a saloon on the corner darted a flame followed by an
echoing report, a woman bundled up in a shawl screamed and sank on the
snow. For an instant the little French-Canadian policeman whom the shot
had missed gazed stupidly down at her....
As Janet ran along the dark pavements the sound of the shot and of the
woman's shriek continued to ring in her ears. At last she stopped
in front of the warehouse beyond Mr. Tiernan's shop, staring at the
darkened windows of the flat--of the front room in which her mother now
slept alone. For a minute she stood looking at these windows, as though
hypnotized by some message they conveyed--the answer to a question
suggested by the incident that had aroused and terrified her. They drew
her, as in a trance, across the street, she opened the glass-panelled
door, remembering mechanically the trick it had of not quite closing,
turned and pushed it to and climbed the stairs. In the diningroom the
metal lamp, brightly polished, was burning as usual, its light falling
on the chequered red table-cloth, on her father's empty chair, on that
somewhat battered heirloom, the horsehair sofa. All was so familiar, and
yet so amazingly unfamiliar, so silent! At this time Edward should be
reading the Banner, her mother bustling in and out, setting the table
for supper. But not a dish was set. The ticking of the ancient clock
only served to intensify the silence. Janet entered, almost on tiptoe,
made her way to the kitchen door, and looked in. The stove was polished,
the pans bright upon the wall, and Hannah was seated in a corner, her
hands folded across a spotless apron. Her scant hair was now pure white,
her dress seemed to have fallen away from her wasted neck, which was
like a trefoil column.
“Is that you, Janet? You hain't seen anything of your father?”
The night before Janet had heard this question, and she had been puzzled
as to its meaning--whether in the course of the day she had seen her
father, or whether Hannah thought he was coming home.
“He's at the mill, mother. You know he has to stay there.”
“I know,” replied Hannah, in a tone faintly reminiscent of the old
aspersion. “But I've got everything ready for him in case he should
come--any time--if the strikers hain't killed him.”
“But he's safe where he is.”
“I presume they will try to kill him, before they get through,” Hannah
continued evenly. “But in case he should come at any time, and I'm not
here, you tell him all those Bumpus papers are put away in the drawer of
that old chest, in the corner. I can't think what he'd do without those
papers. That is,” she added, “if you're here yourself.”
“Why shouldn't you be here?” asked Janet, rather sharply.
“I dunno, I seem to have got through.” She glanced helplessly around the
kitchen. “There don't seem to be much left to keep me alive.... I guess
you'll be wanting your supper, won't you? You hain't often home these
days--whatever it is you're doing. I didn't expect you.”
Janet did not answer at once.
“I--I have to go out again, mother,” she said.
Hannah accepted the answer as she had accepted every other negative in
life, great and small.
“Well, I guessed you would.”
Janet made a step toward her.
“Mother!” she said, but Hannah gazed at her uncomprehendingly. Janet
stooped convulsively, and kissed her. Straightening up, she stood
looking down at her mother for a few moments, and went out of the room,
pausing in the dining-room, to listen, but Hannah apparently had not
stirred. She took the box of matches from its accustomed place on the
shelf beside the clock, entered the dark bedroom in the front of the
flat, closing the door softly behind her. The ghostly blue light from a
distant arc came slanting in at the window, glinting on the brass knobs
of the chest of drawers-another Bumpus heirloom. She remembered that
chest from early childhood; it was one of the few pieces that, following
them in all their changes of residence, had been faithful to the end:
she knew everything in it, and the place for everything. Drawing a match
from the box, she was about to turn on the gas--but the light from the
arc would suffice. As she made her way around the walnut bed she had a
premonition of poignant anguish as yet unrealized, of anguish being held
at bay by a stronger, fiercer, more imperative emotion now demanding
expression, refusing at last to be denied. She opened the top drawer of
the chest, the drawer in which Hannah, breaking tradition, had put the
Bumpus genealogy. Edward had never kept it there. Would the other things
be in place? Groping with her hands in the left-hand corner, her fingers
clasped exultantly something heavy, something wrapped carefully in
layers of flannel. She had feared her father might have taken it to the
mill! She drew it out, unwound the flannel, and held to the light an
old-fashioned revolver, the grease glistening along its barrel. She
remembered, too, that the cartridges had lain beside it, and thrusting
her hand once more into the drawer found the box, extracting several,
and replacing the rest, closed the drawer, and crept through the
dining-room to her bedroom, where she lit the gas in order to examine
the weapon--finally contriving, more by accident than skill, to break
it. The cartridges, of course, fitted into the empty cylinder. But
before inserting them she closed the pistol once more, cocked it, and
held it out. Her arm trembled violently as she pulled the trigger. Could
she do it? As though to refute this doubt of her ability to carry out an
act determined upon, she broke the weapon once more, loaded and closed
it, and thrust it in the pocket of her coat. Then, washing the grease
from her hands, she put on her gloves, and was about to turn out the
light when she saw reflected in the glass the red button of the I.W.W.
still pinned on her coat. This she tore off, and flung on the bureau.
When she had kissed her mother, when she had stood hesitatingly in the
darkness of the familiar front bedroom in the presence of unsummoned
memories of a home she had believed herself to resent and despise, she
had nearly faltered. But once in the street, this weakness suddenly
vanished, was replaced by a sense of wrong that now took complete and
furious possession of her, driving her like a gale at her back. She
scarcely felt on her face the fine rain that had begun to fall once
more. Her feet were accustomed to the way. When she had turned down West
Street and almost gained the canal, it was with a shock of surprise that
she found herself confronted by a man in a long cape who held a rifle
and barred her path. She stared at him as at an apparition.
“You can't get by here,” he said. “Don't you know that?”
She did not reply. He continued to look at her, and presently asked, in
a gentler tone:--“Where did you wish to go, lady?”
“Into the mill,” she replied, “to the offices.”
“But there can't anybody go through here unless they have a pass. I'm
sorry, but that's the order.”
Her answer came so readily as to surprise her.
“I was Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer. I have to see him.”
The sentry hesitated, and then addressed another soldier, who was near
the bridge.
“Hi, sergeant!” he called. The sergeant came up--a conscientious Boston
clerk who had joined the militia from a sense of duty and a need for
exercise. While the sentry explained the matter he gazed at Janet. Then
he said politely:--“I'm sorry, Miss, but I can't disobey orders.”
“But can't you send word to Mr. Ditmar, and tell him I want to see him?”
she asked.
“Why, I guess so,” he answered, after a moment. “What name shall I say?”
“Miss Bumpus.”
“Bumpus,” he repeated. “That's the gatekeeper's name.”
“I'm his daughter--but I want to see Mr. Ditmar.”
“Well,” said the sergeant, “I'm sure it's all right, but I'll have to
send in anyway. Orders are orders. You understand?”
She nodded as he departed. She saw him cross the bridge like a ghost
through the white mist rising from the canal. And through the mist
she could make out the fortress-like mass of the mill itself, and the
blurred, distorted lights in the paymaster's offices smeared on the
white curtain of the vapour.
“Nasty weather,” the sentry remarked, in friendly fashion. He appeared
now, despite his uniform, as a good-natured, ungainly youth.
Janet nodded.
“You'd ought to have brought an umbrella,” he said. “I guess it'll rain
harder, before it gets through. But it's better than ten below zero,
anyhow.”
She nodded again, but he did not seem to resent her silence. He talked
about the hardship of patrolling in winter, until the sergeant came
back.
“It's all right, Miss Bumpus,” he said, and touched his hat as he
escorted her to the bridge. She crossed the canal and went through the
vestibule without replying to the greeting of the night-watchman, or
noticing his curious glance; she climbed the steel-clad stairway, passed
the paymaster's offices and Mr. Orcutt's, and gained the outer office
where she had worked as a stenographer. It was dark, but sufficient
light came through Ditmar's open door to guide her beside the rail. He
had heard her step, and as she entered his room he had put his hands
heavily on his desk, in the act of rising from his chair.
“Janet!” he said, and started toward her, but got no farther than the
corner of the desk. The sight of her heaving breast, of the peculiar
light that flashed from beneath her lashes stopped him suddenly. Her
hands were in her pockets. “What is it?” he demanded stupidly.
But she continued to stand there, breathing so heavily that she could
not speak. It was then that he became aware of an acute danger. He did
not flinch.
“What is it?” he repeated.
Still she was silent. One hand was thrust deeper into its pocket, he
saw a shudder run through her, and suddenly she burst into hysterical
weeping, sinking into a chair. He stood for some moments helplessly
regarding her before he gained the presence of mind to go to the door
and lock it, returning to bend over her.
“Don't touch me!” she said, shrinking from him.
“For God's sake tell me what's the matter,” he begged.
She looked up at him and tried to speak, struggling against the sobs
that shook her.
“I--I came here to--to kill you--only I can't do it.”
“To kill me!” he said, after a pause. In spite of the fact that he had
half divined her intention, the words shocked him. Whatever else may be
said of him, he did not lack courage, his alarm was not of a physical
nature. Mingled with it were emotions he himself did not understand,
caused by the unwonted sight of her loss of self-control, of her anger,
and despair. “Why did you want to kill me?”
And again he had to wait for an answer.
“Because you've spoiled my life--because I'm going to have a child!”
“What do you mean? Are you?... it can't be possible.”
“It is possible, it's true--it's true. I've waited and waited, I've
suffered, I've almost gone crazy--and now I know. And I said I'd kill
you if it were so, I'd kill myself--only I can't. I'm a coward.” Her
voice was drowned again by weeping.
A child! He had never imagined such a contingency! And as he leaned back
against the desk, his emotions became chaotic. The sight of her, even
as she appeared crazed by anger, had set his passion aflame--for the
intensity and fierceness of her nature had always made a strong appeal
to dominant qualities in Ditmar's nature. And then--this announcement!
Momentarily it turned his heart to water. Now that he was confronted
by an exigency that had once vicariously yet deeply disturbed him in
a similar affair of a friend of his, the code and habit of a lifetime
gained an immediate ascendency--since then he had insisted that this
particular situation was to be avoided above all others. And his mind
leaped to possibilities. She had wished to kill him--would she remain
desperate enough to ruin him? Even though he were not at a crisis in his
affairs, a scandal of this kind would be fatal.
“I didn't know,” he said desperately, “I couldn't guess. Do you think
I would have had this thing happen to you? I was carried away--we were
both carried away--”
“You planned it!” she replied vehemently, without looking up. “You
didn't care for me, you only--wanted me.”
“That isn't so--I swear that isn't so. I loved you I love you.”
“Oh, do you think I believe that?” she exclaimed.
“I swear it--I'll prove it!” he protested. Still under the influence
of an acute anxiety, he was finding it difficult to gather his wits, to
present his case. “When you left me that day the strike began--when you
left me without giving me a chance--you'll never know how that hurt me.”
“You'll never know how it hurt me!” she interrupted.
“Then why, in God's name, did you do it? I wasn't myself, then, you
ought to have seen that. And when I heard from Caldwell here that you'd
joined those anarchists--”
“They're no worse than you are--they only want what you've got,” she
said.
He waved this aside. “I couldn't believe it--I wouldn't believe it until
somebody saw you walking with one of them to their Headquarters. Why did
you do it?”
“Because I know how they feel, I sympathize with the strikers, I want
them to win--against you!” She lifted her head and looked at him, and in
spite of the state of his feelings he felt a twinge of admiration at her
defiance.
“Because you love me!” he said.
“Because I hate you,” she answered.
And yet a spark of exultation leaped within him at the thought that love
had caused this apostasy. He had had that suspicion before, though it
was a poor consolation when he could not reach her. Now she had made it
vivid. A woman's logic, or lack of logic--her logic.
“Listen!” he pleaded. “I tried to forget you--I tried to keep myself
going all the time that I mightn't think of you, but I couldn't help
thinking of you, wanting you, longing for you. I never knew why you
left me, except that you seemed to believe I was unkind to you, and
that something had happened. It wasn't my fault--” he pulled himself up
abruptly.
“I found out what men were like,” she said. “A man made my sister a
woman of the streets--that's what you've done to me.”
He winced. And the calmness she had regained, which was so
characteristic of her, struck him with a new fear.
“I'm not that kind of a man,” he said.
But she did not answer. His predicament became more trying.
“I'll take care of you,” he assured her, after a moment. “If you'll only
trust me, if you'll only come to me I'll see that no harm comes to you.”
She regarded him with a sort of wonder--a look that put a fine edge of
dignity and scorn to her words when they came.
“I told you I didn't want to be taken care of--I wanted to kill you, and
kill myself. I don't know why I can't what prevents me.” She rose. “But
I'm not going to trouble you any more--you'll never hear of me again.”
She would not trouble him, she was going away, he would never hear of
her again! Suddenly, with the surge of relief he experienced, came a
pang. He could not let her go--it was impossible. It seemed that he had
never understood his need of her, his love for her, until now that he
had brought her to this supreme test of self-revelation. She had wanted
to kill him, yes, to kill herself--but how could he ever have believed
that she would stoop to another method of retaliation? As she stood
before him the light in her eyes still wet with tears--transfigured her.
“I love you, Janet,” he said. “I want you to marry me.”
“You don't understand,” she answered. “You never did. If I had married
you, I'd feel just the same--but it isn't really as bad as if we had
been married.”
“Not as bad!” he exclaimed.
“If we were married, you'd think you had rights over me,” she explained,
slowly. “Now you haven't any, I can go away. I couldn't live with you. I
know what happened to me, I've thought it all out, I wanted to get
away from the life I was leading--I hated it so, I was crazy to have a
chance, to see the world, to get nearer some of the beautiful things I
knew were there, but couldn't reach.... And you came along. I did love
you, I would have done anything for you--it was only when I saw that
you didn't really love me that I began to hate you, that I wanted to get
away from you, when I saw that you only wanted me until you should get
tired of me. That's your nature, you can't help it. And it would have
been the same if we were married, only worse, I couldn't have stood it
any more than I can now--I'd have left you. You say you'll marry me now,
but that's because you're sorry for me--since I've said I'm not going
to trouble you any more. You'll be glad I've gone. You may--want me now,
but that isn't love. When you say you love me, I can't believe you.”
“You must believe me! And the child, Janet,--our child--”
“If the world was right,” she said, “I could have this child and nobody
would say anything. I could support it--I guess I can anyway. And when
I'm not half crazy I want it. Maybe that's the reason I couldn't do
what I tried to do just now. It's natural for a woman to want a
child--especially a woman like me, who hasn't anybody or anything.”
Ditmar's state of mind was too complicated to be wholly described. As
the fact had been gradually brought home to him that she had not come
as a supplicant, that even in her misery she was free, and he helpless,
there revived in him wild memories of her body, of the kisses he had
wrung from her--and yet this physical desire was accompanied by a
realization of her personality never before achieved. And because he
had hitherto failed to achieve it, she had escaped him. This belated,
surpassing glimpse of what she essentially was, and the thought of the
child their child--permeating his passion, transformed it into a feeling
hitherto unexperienced and unimagined. He hovered over her, pitifully,
his hands feeling for her, yet not daring to touch her.
“Can't you see that I love you?” he cried, “that I'm ready to marry
you now, to-night. You must love me, I won't believe that you don't
after--after all we have been to each other.”
But even then she could not believe. Something in her, made hard by the
intensity of her suffering, refused to melt. And her head was throbbing,
and she scarcely heard him.
“I can't stay any longer,” she said, getting to her feet. “I can't bear
it.”
“Janet, I swear I'll care for you as no woman was ever cared for. For
God's sake listen to me, give me a chance, forgive me!” He seized her
arm; she struggled, gently but persistently, to free herself from his
hold.
“Let me go, please.” All the passionate anger had gone out of her,
and she spoke in a monotone, as one under hypnosis, dominated by a
resolution which, for the present at least, he was powerless to shake.
“But to-morrow?” he pleaded. “You'll let me see you to-morrow, when
you've had time to think it over, when you realize that I love you
and want you, that I haven't meant to be cruel--that you've misjudged
me--thought I was a different kind of a man. I don't blame you for that,
I guess something happened to make you believe it. I've got enemies. For
the sake of the child, Janet, if for nothing else, you'll come back to
me! You're--you're tired tonight, you're not yourself. I don't wonder,
after all you've been through. If you'd only come to me before! God
knows what I've suffered, too!”
“Let me go, please,” she repeated, and this time, despairingly, he
obeyed her, a conviction of her incommunicability overwhelming him.
He turned and, fumbling with the key, unlocked the door and opened it.
“I'll see you to-morrow,” he faltered once more, and watched her as
she went through the darkened outer room until she gained the lighted
hallway beyond and disappeared. Her footsteps died away into silence.
He was trembling. For several minutes he stood where she had left him,
tortured by a sense of his inability to act, to cope with this, the
great crisis of his life, when suddenly the real significance of that
strange last look in her eyes was borne home to him. And he had allowed
her to go out into the streets alone! Seizing his hat and coat, he
fairly ran out of the office and down the stairs and across the bridge.
“Which way did that young lady go?” he demanders of the sergeant.
“Why--uh, West Street, Mr. Ditmar.”
He remembered where Fillmore Street was; he had, indeed, sought it out
one evening in the hope of meeting her. He hurried toward it now, his
glance strained ahead to catch sight of her figure under a lamp. But he
reached Fillmore Street without overtaking her, and in the rain he stood
gazing at the mean houses there, wondering in which of them she lived,
and whether she had as yet come home....
After leaving Ditmar Janet, probably from force of habit, had indeed
gone through West Street, and after that she walked on aimlessly. It was
better to walk than to sit alone in torment, to be gnawed by that Thing
from which she had so desperately attempted to escape, and failed.
She tried to think why she had failed.... Though the rain fell on her
cheeks, her mouth was parched; and this dryness of her palate, this
physical sense of lightness, almost of dizziness, were intimately yet
incomprehensibly part and parcel of the fantastic moods into which she
floated. It was as though, in trying to solve a problem, she caught
herself from time to time falling off to sleep. In her waking moments
she was terror-stricken. Scarce an hour had passed since, in a terrible
exaltation at having found a solution, she had gone to Ditmar's office
in the mill. What had happened to stay her? It was when she tried to
find the cause of the weakness that so abruptly had overtaken her, or
to cast about for a plan to fit the new predicament to which her
failure had sentenced her, that the fantasies intruded. She heard Ditmar
speaking, the arguments were curiously familiar--but they were not
Ditmar's! They were her father's, and now it was Edward's voice to which
she listened, he was telling her how eminently proper it was that she
should marry Ditmar, because of her Bumpus blood. And this made her
laugh.... Again, Ditmar was kissing her hair. He had often praised it.
She had taken it down and combed it out for him; it was like a cloud,
he said--so fine; its odour made him faint--and then the odour changed,
became that of the detested perfume of Miss Lottie Myers! Even that made
Janet smile! But Ditmar was strong, he was powerful, he was a Fact, why
not go back to him and let him absorb and destroy her? That annihilation
would be joy....
It could not have been much later than seven o'clock when she found
herself opposite the familiar, mulberry-shingled Protestant church. The
light from its vestibule made a gleaming square on the wet sidewalk, and
into this area, from the surrounding darkness, came silhouetted figures
of men and women holding up umbrellas; some paused for a moment's chat,
their voices subdued by an awareness of the tabernacle. At the sight of
this tiny congregation something stirred within her. She experienced a
twinge of surprise at the discovery that other people in the world, in
Hampton, were still leading tranquil, untormented existences. They were
contented, prosperous, stupid, beyond any need of help from God, and yet
they were going to prayer-meeting to ask something! He refused to find
her in the dark streets. Would she find Him if she went in there? and
would He help her?
The bell in the tower began to clang, with heavy, relentless
strokes--like physical blows from which she flinched--each stirring
her reluctant, drowsy soul to a quicker agony. From the outer blackness
through which she fled she gazed into bright rooms of homes whose blinds
were left undrawn, as though to taunt and mock the wanderer. She was an
outcast! Who henceforth would receive her save those, unconformed and
unconformable, sentenced to sin in this realm of blackness? Henceforth
from all warmth and love she was banished.... In the middle of the
Stanley Street bridge she stopped to lean against the wet rail; the mill
lights were scattered, dancing points of fire over the invisible swift
waters, and she raised her eyes presently to the lights themselves,
seeking one unconsciously--Ditmar's! Yes, it was his she sought; though
it was so distant, sometimes it seemed to burn like a red star, and then
to flicker and disappear. She could not be sure.... Something chill
and steely was in the pocket of her coat--it made a heavy splash in
the water when she dropped it. The river could not be so very cold!
She wished she could go down like that into forgetfulness. But she
couldn't.... Where was Lise now?... It would be so easy just to drop
over that parapet and be whirled away, and down and down. Why couldn't
she? Well, it was because--because--she was going to have a child. Well,
if she had a child to take care of, she would not be so lonely--she
would have something to love. She loved it now, as though she felt it
quickening within her, she wanted it, to lavish on it all of a starved
affection. She seemed actually to feel in her arms its soft little body
pressed against her. Claude Ditmar's child! And she suddenly recalled,
as an incident of the remote past, that she had told him she wanted it!
This tense craving for it she felt now was somehow the answer to an
expressed wish which had astonished her. Perhaps that was the reason
why she had failed to do what she had tried to do, to shoot Ditmar and
herself! It was Ditmar's child, Ditmar's and hers! He had loved her,
long ago, and just now--was it just now?--he had said he loved her
still, he had wanted to marry her. Then why had she run away from him?
Why had she taken the child into outer darkness, to be born without a
father,--when she loved Ditmar? Wasn't that one reason why she wanted
the child? why, even in her moments of passionate hatred she recalled
having been surprised by some such yearning as now came over her?
And for an interval, a brief interval, she viewed him with startling
clarity. Not because he embodied any ideal did she love him, but because
he was what he was, because he had overcome her will, dominated and
possessed her, left his mark upon her indelibly. He had been cruel to
her, willing to sacrifice her to his way of life, to his own desires,
but he loved her, for she had seen, if not heeded in his eyes the look
that a woman never mistakes! She remembered it now, and the light in
his window glowed again, like a star to guide her back to him. It was
drawing her, irresistibly....
The sentry recognized her as she came along the canal.
“Mr. Ditmar's gone,” he told her.
“Gone!” she repeated. “Gone!”
“Why, yes, about five minutes after you left he was looking for you--he
asked the sergeant about you.”
“And--he won't be back?”
“I guess not,” answered the man, sympathetically. “He said good-night.”
She turned away dully. The strength and hope with which she had been
so unexpectedly infused while gazing from the bridge at his window had
suddenly ebbed; her legs ached, her feet were wet, and she shivered,
though her forehead burned. The world became distorted, people flitted
past her like weird figures of a dream, the myriad lights of Faber
Street were blurred and whirled in company with the electric signs.
Seeking to escape from their confusion she entered a side street leading
north, only to be forcibly seized by some one who darted after her from
the sidewalk.
“Excuse me, but you didn't see that automobile,” he said, as he released
her.
Shaken, she went on through several streets to find herself at length
confronted by a pair of shabby doors that looked familiar, and pushing
one of them open, baited at the bottom of a stairway to listen.
The sound of cheerful voices camp to her from above; she started to
climb--even with the help of the rail it seemed as if she would never
reach the top of that stairway. But at last she stood in a loft where
long tables were set, and at the end of one of these, sorting out spoons
and dishes, three women and a man were chatting and laughing together.
Janet was troubled because she could not remember who the man was,
although she recognized his bold profile, his voice and gestures....
At length one of the women said something in a low tone, and he looked
around quickly and crossed the room.
“Why, it's you!” he said, and suddenly she recalled his name.
“Mr. Insall!”
But his swift glance had noticed the expression in her eyes, the sagged
condition of her clothes, the attitude that proclaimed exhaustion. He
took her by the arm and led her to the little storeroom, turning on the
light and placing her in a chair. Darkness descended on her....
Mrs. Maturin, returning from an errand, paused for an instant in the
doorway, and ran forward and bent over Janet.
“Oh, Brooks, what is it--what's happened to her?”
“I don't know,” he replied, “I didn't have a chance to ask her. I'm
going for a doctor.”
“Leave her to me, and call Miss Hay.” Mrs. Maturin was instantly
competent .... And when Insall came back from the drug store where
he had telephoned she met him at the head of the stairs. “We've done
everything we can, Edith Hay has given her brandy, and gone off for dry
clothes, and we've taken all the children's things out of the drawers
and laid her on the floor, but she hasn't come to. Poor child,--what can
have happened to her? Is the doctor coming?”
“Right away,” said Insall, and Mrs. Maturin went back into the
storeroom. Miss Hay brought the dry clothes before the physician
arrived.
“It's probably pneumonia,” he explained to Insall a little later. “She
must go to the hospital--but the trouble is all our hospitals are pretty
full, owing to the sickness caused by the strike.” He hesitated. “Of
course, if she has friends, she could have better care in a private
institution just now.”
“Oh, she has friends,” said Mrs. Maturin. “Couldn't we take her to our
little hospital at Silliston, doctor? It's only four miles--that isn't
much in an automobile, and the roads are good now.”
“Well, the risk isn't much greater, if you have a closed car, and she
would, of course, be better looked after,” the physician consented.
“I'll see to it at once,” said Insall....