V.

Conrad looked confusedly around, and the same voice said again, "Mr.

Dryfoos!" and he saw that it was a lady speaking to him from a coupe

beside the curbing, and then he saw that it was Miss Vance.

She smiled when he gave signs of having discovered her, and came up to

the door of her carriage. "I am so glad to meet you. I have been longing

to talk to somebody; nobody seems to feel about it as I do. Oh, isn't it

horrible? Must they fail? I saw cars running on all the lines as I came

across; it made me sick at heart. Must those brave fellows give in? And

everybody seems to hate them so--I can't bear it." Her face was estranged

with excitement, and there were traces of tears on it. "You must think me

almost crazy to stop you in the street this way; but when I caught sight

of you I had to speak. I knew you would sympathize--I knew you would feel

as I do. Oh, how can anybody help honoring those poor men for standing by

one another as they do? They are risking all they have in the world for

the sake of justice! Oh, they are true heroes! They are staking the bread

of their wives and children on the dreadful chance they've taken! But no

one seems to understand it. No one seems to see that they are willing to

suffer more now that other poor men may suffer less hereafter. And those

wretched creatures that are coming in to take their places--those

traitors--"

"We can't blame them for wanting to earn a living, Miss Vance," said

Conrad.

"No, no! I don't blame them. Who am I, to do such a thing? It's

we--people like me, of my class--who make the poor betray one another.

But this dreadful fighting--this hideous paper is full of it!" She held

up an extra, crumpled with her nervous reading. "Can't something be done

to stop it? Don't you think that if some one went among them, and tried

to make them see how perfectly hopeless it was to resist the companies

and drive off the new men, he might do some good? I have wanted to go and

try; but I am a woman, and I mustn't! I shouldn't be afraid of the

strikers, but I'm afraid of what people would say!" Conrad kept pressing

his handkerchief to the cut in his temple, which he thought might be

bleeding, and now she noticed this. "Are you hurt, Mr. Dryfoos? You look

so pale."

"No, it's nothing--a little scratch I've got."

"Indeed, you look pale. Have you a carriage? How will you get home? Will

you get in here with me and let me drive you?"

"No, no," said Conrad, smiling at her excitement. "I'm perfectly well--"

"And you don't think I'm foolish and wicked for stopping you here and

talking in this way? But I know you feel as I do!"

"Yes, I feel as you do. You are right--right in every way--I mustn't keep

you--Good-bye." He stepped back to bow, but she put her beautiful hand

out of the window, and when he took it she wrung his hand hard.

"Thank you, thank you! You are good and you are just! But no one can do

anything. It's useless!"

The type of irreproachable coachman on the box whose respectability had

suffered through the strange behavior of his mistress in this interview

drove quickly off at her signal, and Conrad stood a moment looking after

the carriage. His heart was full of joy; it leaped; he thought it would

burst. As he turned to walk away it seemed to him as if he mounted upon

the air. The trust she had shown him, the praise she had given him, that

crush of the hand: he hoped nothing, he formed no idea from it, but it

all filled him with love that cast out the pain and shame he had been

suffering. He believed that he could never be unhappy any more; the

hardness that was in his mind toward his father went out of it; he saw

how sorely he had tried him; he grieved that he had done it, but the

means, the difference of his feeling about the cause of their quarrel, he

was solemnly glad of that since she shared it. He was only sorry for his

father. "Poor father!" he said under his breath as he went along. He

explained to her about his father in his reverie, and she pitied his

father, too.

He was walking over toward the West Side, aimlessly at first, and then at

times with the longing to do something to save those mistaken men from

themselves forming itself into a purpose. Was not that what she meant

when she bewailed her woman's helplessness? She must have wished him to

try if he, being a man, could not do something; or if she did not, still

he would try, and if she heard of it she would recall what she had said

and would be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of her pleasure in

what he was going to do, he forgot almost what it was; but when he came

to a street-car track he remembered it, and looked up and down to see if

there were any turbulent gathering of men whom he might mingle with and

help to keep from violence. He saw none anywhere; and then suddenly, as

if at the same moment, for in his exalted mood all events had a

dream-like simultaneity, he stood at the corner of an avenue, and in the

middle of it, a little way off, was a street-car, and around the car a

tumult of shouting, cursing, struggling men. The driver was lashing his

horses forward, and a policeman was at their heads, with the conductor,

pulling them; stones, clubs, brickbats hailed upon the car, the horses,

the men trying to move them. The mob closed upon them in a body, and then

a patrol-wagon whirled up from the other side, and a squad of policemen

leaped out and began to club the rioters. Conrad could see how they

struck them under the rims of their hats; the blows on their skulls

sounded as if they had fallen on stone; the rioters ran in all

directions.

One of the officers rushed up toward the corner where Conrad stood, and

then he saw at his side a tall, old man, with a long, white beard, who

was calling out at the policemen: "Ah, yes! Glup the strikerss--gif it to

them! Why don't you co and glup the bresidents that insoalt your lawss,

and gick your Boart of Arpidration out-of-toors? Glup the strikerss--they

cot no friendts! They cot no money to pribe you, to dreat you!"

The officer lifted his club, and the old man threw his left arm up to

shield his head. Conrad recognized Lindau, and now he saw the empty

sleeve dangle in the air over the stump of his wrist. He heard a shot in

that turmoil beside the car, and something seemed to strike him in the

breast. He was going to say to the policeman: "Don't strike him! He's an

old soldier! You see he has no hand!" but he could not speak, he could

not move his tongue. The policeman stood there; he saw his face: it was

not bad, not cruel; it was like the face of a statue, fixed,

perdurable--a mere image of irresponsible and involuntary authority. Then

Conrad fell forward, pierced through the heart by that shot fired from

the car.

March heard the shot as he scrambled out of his car, and at the same

moment he saw Lindau drop under the club of the policeman, who left him

where he fell and joined the rest of the squad in pursuing the rioters.

The fighting round the car in the avenue ceased; the driver whipped his

horses into a gallop, and the place was left empty.

March would have liked to run; he thought how his wife had implored him

to keep away from the rioting; but he could not have left Lindau lying

there if he would. Something stronger than his will drew him to the spot,

and there he saw Conrad, dead beside the old man.