SEEN FROM A BARRICADED WINDOW.
SHE was in the parlour when Holyoke returned. The loungers and her
fellow-guests had been wandering through the room to inspect her--“the
lady writer from New York.” She herself was absorbed in the view of the
mills rising above a stockade fence not five hundred feet away, across
a flagged public square. There were three entrances, and up and down in
front of each marched a soldier with a musket at shoulder-arms. In each
entrance Emily saw queer-looking little guns on wheels. Their tubes and
mountings flashed in the sunlight.
“What kind of cannon are those?” she asked.
“They’re machine-guns,” explained Holyoke. “You put in a belt full of
cartridges, aim the muzzle at the height of a man’s middle or calves as
the case may be. Then you turn the crank and the muzzle waggles to and
fro across the line of the mob and begins to sputter out bullets--about
fifteen hundred a minute. And down go the rioters like wheat before a
scythe. They’re beauties--those guns.”
Emily looked from Holyoke to the guns, but she could not conceive his
picture. It seemed impossible that this scene of peace, of languor,
could be shifted to a scene of such terror as some of the elements in
it ought to suggest. How could these men think of killing each other?
Why should that soldier from the other end of the State leave his home
to come and threaten to shoot his fellow citizen whom he did not know,
whose town he had not seen until yesterday, and in whose grievance,
real or fancied, he had no interest or part? She felt that this was
the sentimental, unreasoning, narrow view to take. But now that she
was face to face with the possibility of bloodshed, broad principles
grew vague, unreal; and the actualities before her eyes and filling her
horizon seemed all-important.
She and Holyoke wandered about the town, he helping her quickly to
gather the materials for her first “special,” her impression of the
town and its people and their feelings and of the stockaded mills with
the soldiers and guns--her supplement to the strictly news account
Holyoke would send. Camp accompanied them, making sketches. He went
back to the hotel in advance of them to draw several large pictures
to be sent by the night mail that they might reach New York in time
for the paper of the next day but one. Toward four o’clock Emily shut
herself in her room, and began her first article.
An hour of toil passed and she had not yet made a beginning. She was
wrought to a high pitch of nervous terror. “Suppose I should fail
utterly? Can it be possible that I shall be unable to write anything
at all?” The floor was strewn with sheets of paper, a sentence, a few
sentences--failed beginnings--written on each. Her hands were grimed
with lead dust from sharpened and resharpened pencils. There was a
streak of black on her left cheek. Her hair was coming down--as it
seemed to her, the forewarning of complete mental collapse. She rose
and paced the floor in what was very nearly an agony of despair.
There was a knock and she opened the door to take in a telegram. It was
from the Managing Editor:
If there should be trouble to-night, please help Holyoke all you can.
Do not be afraid of duplicating his stuff.
_The Democrat._
This put her in a panic. She began to sob hysterically. “What possessed
Marlowe to drag me into this scrape? And they expect me to do a man’s
work! Oh, how could I have been such a fool as to undertake this? I
can’t do it! I shall be disgraced!”
She washed her face and hands and put her hair in order. She was so
desperate that her sense of humour was not aroused by the sight of her
absurdly tragic expression. She sat at the table and began again. She
had just written:
“The shining muzzles of six machine-guns and the spotless new
uniforms of the three soldiers that march up and down on guard at the
mill stockade are the most conspicuous----”
when there was a knock and her door was flung open. She started up, her
eyes wide with alarm, her cheeks blanched, her lips apart, her throat
ready to release a scream. It was only Holyoke.
“Beg pardon,” he gasped out. “No time for ceremony. The company is
bringing a gang of ‘scabs’ through the mountains on foot. The strikers
are on to it. There’ll be a fight sure. Don’t stir out of your room, no
matter what you hear. If the hotel’s in any danger, I’ll let you know.
Camp’ll be looking out for you too--and the other newspaper boys. As
soon as it’s over, I’ll come. Sit tight--remember!”
He rushed away. Emily looked at her chaos of failures. Of what use to
go on now--now, when real events were impending? From her window she
could see several backyards. In one, three children were making mud
pies and a woman was hanging out the wash--blue overalls, red flannel,
and cheap muslin underclothes, polkadot cotton slips and dresses in
many sizes, yarn stockings and socks, white and gray.
Crack!
The woman paused with one leg of a pair of overalls unpinned. The
children straightened up, feeling for each other with mud-bedaubed
hands. Emily felt as if her ears were about to burst with the strain of
the silence.
Crack! Crack! Crack! An answering volley of oaths. A scream of derision
and rage from a mob.
The children fled into the house. The woman gathered in a great armful
of clothes from the line as if a rain storm had suddenly come. She ran,
entangled in her burden, her thick legs in drab stockings interfering
one with the other. Emily jumped to her feet.
“I cannot stay here,” she exclaimed. “I must _see_!”
She flew down the hall to the front of the house. There was a parlour
and Camp’s paper and drawing materials were scattered about. He was
barricading a window with the bedding from a room to the rear. He
glanced at her. “Go back!” he said in a loud, harsh voice. “This is no
place for a woman.”
“But it’s just the place for a reporter,” she replied. “I’ll help you.”
They arranged the mattresses so that, sheltered by them and the thick
brick wall, they could peer out of the window from either side.
The square was empty. The gates in the stockade were closed. In each
of the barricaded upper windows of the mill appeared the glittering
barrels of several rifles at different heights.
“See that long, low building away off there to the left?” said Camp.
“The ‘scabs’ and their militia guard are behind it. The strikers are in
the houses along this side of the street.”
Crack! A bullet crashed into the mirror hanging on the rear wall of
their parlour. It had cut a clean hole through the window pane without
shivering it and had penetrated the mattresses as if they had been a
single thickness of paper.
“Now will you go back to your room?” angrily shouted Camp, although he
was not three feet from her.
“Why are they firing at the hotel?” was Emily’s reply.
“Bad aim--that’s all. The strikers aren’t here. That must have been
an answer to a bullet from next door. The soldiers shoot whenever a
striker shows himself to aim.”
Crack! There was a howl of derision in reply. “That’s the way they let
the soldiers know it was a close shot but a miss,” said Camp.
A man ran from behind a building to the right and in front of the
stockade, and started across the open toward where the strikers were
entrenched. He was a big, rough-looking fellow. As he came, Emily could
see his face--dark, scowling, set.
Crack!
The man ran more swiftly. There was a howl of delight from the
strikers. But, a few more leaps and he stumbled, flung up his hands,
pitched forward, fell, squirmed over so that he lay face upward.
His legs and arms were drawing convulsively up against his body and
shooting out to their full length again. His face was twisting and grew
shiny with sweat and froth. A stream of blood oozed from under him and
crawled in a thin, dark rivulet across the flagging to a crack, then
went no further. He turned his face, a wild appeal for help in it,
toward the house whence he had come.
At once from behind that shelter ran a second man, younger than the
first. He had a revolver in his right hand. Emily could plainly see his
clinched jaws, his features distorted with fury. His lips were drawn
back from his teeth like an angry bulldog’s.
“He’s a madman!” shrieked Camp. “He can do nothing!”
“He’s a hero,” panted Emily.
Crack!
He stopped short. Emily saw his face change in expression--from fury to
wonder, from wonder to fear, from fear to a ghastly, green-white pallor
of pain and hate. He tossed his arms high above his head. The revolver
flew from his hand. Then, within a few feet of the still-twitching
body of the other, he crashed down. The blood spurted from his mouth,
drenching his face. He worked himself over and around, half rose, wiped
his face with his sleeve, fell back. Emily saw that he was looking
toward the shelter, his features calm--a look of love and longing, a
look of farewell for some one concealed there.
And now a third figure ran from the shelter into that zone of death--a
boyish figure, lithe and swift. As it came nearer she saw that it was a
youth, a mere lad, smooth faced, with delicate features. He too carried
a revolver, but the look in his face was love and anguish.
Crack!
The boy flung the revolver from him and ran on. One arm was swinging
limp. Now he was at the side of the second man. He was just kneeling,
just stretching out his hand toward the dear dead--
Crack!
He fell forward, his arm convulsively circling the head of his beloved.
As he fell, his hat slipped away and a mass of brown hair uncoiled and
showered down, hiding both their faces.
“Oh!” Emily drew back, sick and trembling. She glanced at Camp. He
looked like a maniac. His eyes bulged, bloodshot. His nostrils stood
out stiff. His long yellow teeth were grinding and snapping.
“God damn them!” he shrieked. “God damn the hell-hounds of the
capitalists! Murderers! Murderers! killing honest workingmen and women!”
And as Emily crouched there, too weak to lift herself, yet longing to
see those corpse-strewn, bloodstained stones--the stage of that triple
tragedy of courage, self-sacrifice, love and death--Camp raved on,
poured out curses upon capitalists and militia. Camp!--who that very
morning had been trying to impress Emily with his superiority to his
origin, his contempt of these “mere machines for the use of men of
brains.”