The Walking Delegate

Her first impulse, when she had reached the story's end, was to go straight to him, and she went so far as to put on her hat. But reason stopped her at the door. She could do him no good, and her call would be but an embarrassment to them both. She removed her hat, and sat down to surging thoughts.

She was sitting at her desk, white and weak, reading anew the lurid story in the paper, when Mr. Driscoll passed through her room into his office with hat drawn over his eyes. She looked through his open door for several minutes – and then, obeying the desire for the relief of speech, she went in.

"Did you see this article about Mr. Keating?" she asked, trying to keep her personal interest in Tom from showing in her voice.

Mr. Driscoll's hat brim was still over his eyes. He did not look up. "Yes," he said gruffly.

"You remember him, don't you? – one of the foremen?"

The hat brim moved affirmatively.

She had to summon all her strength to put her next question with calmness. "What will be done with him?"

"I don't know. Blowing up buildings isn't a very innocent amusement."

"But he didn't do it!"

"He didn't? Hum!"

Ruth burned to make a hot defense. But instead she asked: "Do you think he's the sort of a man to do a thing of that sort? He says he didn't."

"What d'you suppose he'd say?"

She checked her rising wrath. "But what do you think will be done with him?"

"Hung," growled Mr. Driscoll.

She glared at him, but his hat brim shielded off her resentment; and without another word she swept indignantly out of the room.

Ruth went home in that weakening anxiety which is most felt by the helpless. On the way she bought an evening paper, but there was nothing new in it. After a dinner hardly touched she went into the street and got a ten o'clock edition. It had the story of Tom's release on bail.

"Why, the dear old bear!" she gasped, as she discovered that Mr. Driscoll had gone Tom's bond. She hurried to her room and in utter abandonment to her emotion wrote Tom a note asking him to call the following evening.

The next morning Tom, discharged but half an hour before, walked into Ruth's office. He had stood several minutes in front of the building before he had gained sufficient control to carry him through the certain meeting with her. She went red at sight of him, and rose in a throbbing confusion, but subdued herself to greet him with a friendly cordiality.

"It's been a long time since I've seen you," she said, giving him her hand. It was barely touched, then dropped.

"Yes. I've been – very – busy," Tom mumbled, his big chest heaving. It seemed that his mind, his will, were slipping away from him. He seized his only safety. "Is Mr. Driscoll in?"

"Yes." Suddenly chilled, she went into Mr. Driscoll's room. "He says he's too busy to see you," she said on her return; and then a little of her greeting smile came back: "But I think you'd better go in, anyhow."

As Tom entered Mr. Driscoll looked up with something that was meant to be a scowl. He had had one uncomfortable scene already that morning. "Didn't I say I was busy?" he asked sharply.

"I was told you were. But you didn't think I'd go away without thanking you?"

"It's a pity a man can't make a fool of himself without being slobbered over. Well, if you've got to, out with it! But cut it short."

Tom expressed his thanks warmly, and obediently made them brief. "But I don't know what you did it for?" he ended.

"About fifty reporters have been asking that same thing."

The telephone in Ruth's office began to ring. He waited expectantly.

"Mr. Bobbs wants to speak to you," said Ruth, appearing at the door.

"Tell him I'm out – or dead," he ordered, and went on to Tom: "And he's about the seventeenth contractor that's asked the same question, and tried to walk on my face. Maybe because I don't love Foley. I don't know myself. A man goes out of his head now and then, I suppose." His eyes snapped crossly.

"If you're sorry this morning, withdraw the bail and I'll – "

"Don't you try to be a fool, too! All I ask of you is, don't skip town, and don't blow up any more buildings."

Tom gave his word, smiling into the cross face; and was withdrawing, when Mr. Driscoll stood up. "When this strike you started is over come around to see me." He held out his hand; his grasp was warm and tight. "Good-by."

Tom, having none of that control and power of simulation which are given by social training, knew of but one way to pass safely by the danger beyond Mr. Driscoll's door. He hurried across Ruth's office straight for the door opening into the hallway. He had his hand on the knob, when he felt how brutal was his discourtesy. He turned his head. Ruth sat before the typewriter, her white face on him.

"Good-by," he said.

She did not answer, and he went dazedly out.

Ruth sat in frozen stillness for long after he had gone. This new bearing of Tom toward her fitted her explanation for his long absence – and did not fit it. If he had renounced her, though loving her, he probably would have borne himself in the abrupt way he had just done. And he might have acted in just this same way had he come to be indifferent to her. This last was the chilling thought. If he had received her letter then his abrupt manner could mean only that this last thought struck the truth. When she had written him she had been certain of his feeling for her; that certainty now changed to uncertainty, she would have given half her life to have called the letter back with unbroken seal.

She told herself that he would not come, – told herself this as she automatically did her work, as she rode home in the car, as she made weak pretense of eating dinner. And yet, after dinner, she put on the white dress that his eyes had told her he liked so well. And later, when Mr. Berman's card was brought her, she sent down word that she was ill.

Presently … he came. He did not speak when she opened the door to him, nor did she. There was an unmastering fever burning in his throat and through all his body; and all her inner self was the prisoner of a climacteric paralysis. They held hands for a time, laxly, till one loosed, and then both swung limply back to their places.

"I just got your letter to-night – when I got home," he said, driving out the words. But he said nothing of his struggle: how he had fought back his longing and determined not to come; and how, the victory won, he had madly thrown wisdom aside and rushed to her.

They found seats, somehow, she in a chair, he on the green couch, and sat in a silence their heart-beats seemed to make sonant. She was the first to recover somewhat, and being society bred and so knowing the necessity of speech, she questioned him about his arrest.

He started out on the story haltingly. But little by little his fever lost its invalidating control, and little by little the madness in his blood, the madness that had forced him hither, possessed his brain and tongue, and the words came rapidly, with spirit. Finishing the story of his yesterday he harked back to the time he had last seen her, and told her what had happened in the second part of that evening in the hall over the Third Avenue saloon; told her how Foley had stolen the strike; how he had declined to his present insignificance. And as he talked he eagerly drank in her sympathy, and loosed himself more and more to the enjoyment of the mad pleasure of being with her. To her his words were not the account of the more or less sordid experiences of a workingman; they were the story of the reverses of the hero who, undaunted, has given battle to one whom all others have dared not, or cared not, fight.

"What will you do now?" she asked when he had ended.

"I don't know. Foley says he has me down and out – if you know what that means."

She nodded.

"I guess he's about right. Not many people want to hire men who blow up buildings. I had thought I'd work at whatever I could till October – our next election's then – and run against Foley again. But if he wins the strike he may be too strong to beat."

"But do you think he'll win the strike?"

"He'll be certain to win, though this explosion will injure us a lot. He's in for the strike for all he's worth, and when he fights his best he's hard to beat. The bosses can't get enough iron-men to keep their jobs going. That's already been proved. And in a little while all the other trades will catch up to where we left off; they'll have to stop then, for they can't do anything till our work's been done. That'll be equivalent to a general strike in all the building trades. We'll be losing money, of course, but so'll the bosses. The side'll win that can hold out longest, and we're fixed to hold out."

"According to all the talk I hear the victory is bound to go the opposite way."

"Well, you know some people then who'll be mighty disappointed!" Tom returned.

She did not take him up, and silence fell between them. Thus far their talk had been of the facts of their daily lives, and though it had been unnatural in that it was far from the matter in both their hearts, yet by help of its moderate distraction they had managed to keep their feelings under control. But now, that distraction ended, Tom's fever began to burn back upon him. He sat rigidly upright, his eyes avoiding her face, and the fever flamed higher and higher. Ruth gazed whitely at him, hands gripped in her lap, her faculties slipping from her, waiting she hardly knew what. Minutes passed, and the silence between them grew intenser and more intense.

Amid her throbbing dizziness Ruth's mind held steadily to just two thoughts: she was again certain of Tom's love, and certain that his pride would never allow him to speak. These two thoughts pointed her the one thing there was for her to do; the one thing that must be done for both their sakes – and finally she forced herself to say: "It has been a long time since you have been to see me. I had thought you had quite forgotten me."

"I have thought of you often?" he managed to return, eyes still fixed above her, his self-control tottering.

"But in a friendly way? – No. – Or you would not have been silent through two months."

His eyes came down and fastened upon that noble face, and the words escaped by the guard he tried to keep at his lips: "I have never had a friend like you."

She waited.

"You are my best friend," the words continued.

She waited again, but he said nothing more.

She drove herself on. "And yet you could – stay away two months? – till I sent for you?"

He stood up, and walked to the window and stood as if looking through it – though the shade was drawn. She saw the fingers at his back writhing and knotting themselves. She waited, unwinking, hardly breathing, all her life in the tumultuous beating of her heart.

He turned about. His face was almost wild. "I stayed away – because I love you – " His last word was a gasp, and he did not have the strength to say the rest.

It had come! Her great strain over, she fairly collapsed in a swooning happiness. Her head drooped, and she swayed forward till her elbows were on her knees. For a moment she existed only in her great, vague, reeling joy. Then she heard a spasmodic gasp, and heard his hoarse words add:

"And because – I am married."

Her head uprose slowly, and she looked at him, looked at him, with a deadly stupefaction in her eyes. A sickening minute passed. "Married?" she whispered.

"Yes – married."

A terrified pallor overspread her face, but the face held fixedly to his own. He stood rigid, looking at her. Her strange silence began to alarm him.

"What is it?" he cried.

Her face did not change, and seconds passed. Suddenly a gasp, then a little groan, broke from her.

"Married!" she cried.

For a moment he was astounded; then he began dimly to understand. "What, you don't mean – " he commenced, with dry lips. He moved, with uncertain steps, up before her. "You don't – care for me?"

The head bowed a trifle.

"Oh, my God!" He half staggered backward into a chair, and his face fell into his hands. He saw, in an agonizing vision, what might have been his, and what never could be his; and he saw the wide desert of his future.

"You!" He heard her voice, and he looked up.

She was on her feet, and was standing directly in front of him. Her hands were clenched upon folds of her skirt. Her breath was coming rapidly. Her eyes were flashing.

"You! How could you come to see me as you have, and you married?" She spoke tremulously, fiercely, and at the last her voice broke into a sob. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she did not heed them.

Tom's face dropped back into his hands; he could not stand the awful accusation of that gaze. She was another victim of his tragedy, an innocent victim – and his victim. He saw in a flash the whole ghastly part he, in ignorance, had played. A groan burst from his lips, and he writhed in his self-abasement.

"How could you do it?" he heard her fiercely demand again. "Oh, you! you!" He heard her sweep across the little room, and then sweep back; and he knew she was standing before him, gazing down at him in anguish, anger, contempt.

He groaned again. "What can I say to you – what?"

There was silence. He could feel her eyes, unchanging, still on him. Presently he began to speak into his hands, in a low, broken voice. "I can make no excuse. I don't know that I can explain. But I never intended to do this. Never! Never!

"You know how we met, how we came to be together the first two or three times. Afterwards … I said awhile ago that you were my best friend. I have had few real friends – none but you who sympathized with me, who seemed to understand me. Well, afterwards I came because – I never stopped to think why I came. I guess because you understood, and I liked you. And so I came. As a man might come to see a good man friend. And I never once thought I was doing wrong. And I never thought of my wife – that is, you understand, that she made it wrong for me to see you. I never thought – If you believe in me at all, you must believe this. You must! And then – one day – I saw you with another man, and I knew I loved you. I awoke. I saw what I ought to do. I tried to do it – but it was very hard – and I came to see you again – the last time. I said once more I would not see you again. It was still hard, very hard – but I did not. And then – your letter – came – "

His words dwindled away. Then, after a moment, he said very humbly: "Perhaps I don't just understand how to be a gentleman."

Again silence. Presently he felt a light touch on his shoulder. He raised his eyes. She was still gazing at him, her face very white, but no anger in it.

"I understand," she said.

He rose – weak. "I can't ask that you forgive me."

"No. Not now."

"Of course. I have meant to you only grief – pain. And can mean only that to you, always."

She did not deny his words.

"Of course," he agreed. Then he stood, without words, unmoving.

"You had better go," she said at length.

He took his hat mechanically. "The future?"

"You were right."

"You mean – we should not meet again?"

"This is the last time."

Again he stood silent, unmoving.

"You had better go," she said. "Good-night."

"Good-night."

He moved sideways to the door, his eyes never leaving her. He paused. She stood just as she had since she had touched his shoulder. He moved back to her, as in a trance.

"No." She held up a hand, as if to ward him off.

He took the hand – and the other hand. They were all a-tremble. And he bent down, slowly, toward her face that he saw as in a mist. The face did not recede. Their cold lips met. At the touch she collapsed, and the next instant she was sobbing convulsively in his arms.

And all that night she lay dressed on her couch… And all that night he walked the streets.

Chapter XXII

THE PROGRESS OF THE STRIKE

When morning began to creep into the streets, and while it was yet only a dingy mist, Tom slipped quietly into his flat and stretched his wearied length upon the couch, his anguish subdued to an aching numbness by his lone walk. He lay for a time, his eyes turned dully into the back yard, watching the dirty light grow cleaner; and presently he sank into a light sleep. After a little his eyes opened and he saw Maggie looking intently at him from their bedroom door.

For a moment the two of them maintained a silent gaze. Then she asked: "You were out all night?"

"Yes," he answered passively.

"Why?"

He hesitated. "I was walking about – thinking."

"I should think you would be thinking! After what happened to you Wednesday, and after losing your job yesterday!"

He did not correct her misinterpretation of his answer, and as he said nothing more she turned back into the bedroom, and soon emerged dressed. As she moved about preparing breakfast his eyes rested on her now and then, and in a not unnatural selfishness he dully wondered why they two were married. Her feeling for him, he knew, was of no higher sort than that attachment which dependence upon a man and the sense of being linked to him for life may engender in an unspiritual woman. There was no love between them; they had no ideas in common; she was not this, and not this, and not this. And all the things that she was not, the other was. And it was always to be Maggie that he was to see thus intimately.

He had bowed to the situation as the ancients bowed to fate – accepted it as a fact as unchangeable as death that has fallen. And yet, as he lay watching her, thinking it was to be always so, – always! – his soul was filled with agonizing rebellion; and so it was to be through many a day to come. But later, as his first pain began to settle into an aching sense of irreparable loss, his less selfish vision showed him that Maggie was no more to blame for their terrible mistake than he, and not so much; and that she, in a less painful degree, was also a pitiable victim of their error. He became consciously considerate of her. For her part, she at first marveled at this gentler manner, then slowly yielded to it.

But this is running ahead. The first days were all the harder to Tom because he had no work to share his time with his pain. He did not seek another position; as he had told Ruth, he knew it would be useless to ask for work so long as the charge of being a dynamiter rested upon him. He walked about the streets, trying to forget his pain in mixing among his old friends, with no better financial hope than to wait till the court had cleared his name. Several times he met Pig Iron Pete, who, knowing only the public cause for Tom's dejection, prescribed a few drinks as the best cure for such sorrow, and showed his faith in his remedy by offering to take the same medicine. And one evening he brought his cheerless presence to the Barrys'. "Poor fellow!" sighed Mrs. Barry after he had gone. "He takes his thumps hard."

One day as he walked about the streets he met Petersen, and with the Swede was a stocky, red-faced, red-necked man wearing a red necktie whose brilliance came to a focus in a great diamond pin. Petersen had continued to call frequently after nightly attendance had become unnecessary. Two weeks before Tom had gleaned from him by hard questioning that the monthly rent of twelve dollars was overdue, the landlord was raging, there was nothing with which to pay, and also nothing in the house to eat. The next day Tom had drawn fifteen dollars from his little bank account, and held it by him to give to Petersen when he next called. But he had not come again. Now on seeing him Tom's first feeling was of guilt that he had not carried the needed money to Petersen's home.

The stocky man, when he saw the two were friends, withdrew himself to the curb and began to clean his nails with his pocket knife. "How are you, Petersen?" Tom asked.

"I'm purty good," Petersen returned, glancing restlessly at the stocky man.

"You don't need a little money, do you?" Tom queried anxiously.

"No. I'm vorkin'." He again looked restlessly at his manicuring friend.

"You don't say! That's good. What at?"

Petersen's restlessness became painful. "At de docks."

Tom saw plainly that Petersen was anxious to get away, so he said good-by and walked on, puzzled by the Swede's strange manner, by his rather unusual companion, and puzzled also as to how his work as longshoreman permitted him to roam the streets in the middle of the afternoon.

When Tom met friends in his restless wanderings and stopped to talk to them, the subject was usually the injustice he had suffered or the situation regarding the strike. Up to the day of the Avon explosion the union as a whole had been satisfied with the strike's progress. That event, of course, had weakened the strikers' cause before the public. But the promptness with which the union was credited to have renounced the instigator of the outrage partially restored the ironworkers to their position. They were completely restored three days after the explosion, when Mr. Baxter, smarting under his recent loss and not being able to retaliate directly upon Foley, permitted himself to be induced by a newspaper to express his sentiments upon labor unions. The interview was an elaboration of the views which are already partly known to the reader. By reason of the rights which naturally belong to property, he said, by reason of capital's greatly superior intelligence, it was the privilege of capital, nay even its duty, to arrange the uttermost detail of its affairs without any consultation whatever with labor, whose views were always selfish and necessarily always unintelligent. The high assumption of superiority in Mr. Baxter's interview, its paternalistic, even monarchical, character, did not appeal to his more democratic and less capitalized readers, and they drew nearer in sympathy to the men he was fighting.

As the last days of May passed one by one, Tom's predictions to Ruth began to have their fulfillment. By the first of June a great part of the building in the city was practically at a standstill; the other building trades had caught up with the ironworkers on many of the jobs, and so had to lay down their tools. The contractors in these trades were all checked more or less in their work. Their daily loss quickly overcame their natural sympathy with the iron contractors and Mr. Baxter was beset by them. "We haven't any trouble with our men," ran the gist of their complaint. "Why should we be losing money just because you and your men can't agree? For God's sake, settle it up so we can get to work!"

Owners of buildings in process of construction, with big sums tied up in them, began to grow frantic. Their agreements with the contractors placed upon the latter a heavy fine for every day the completion of the buildings was delayed beyond the specified time; but the contracts contained a "strike clause" which exempted the bosses from penalties for delays caused by strikes. And so the loss incurred by the present delay fell solely upon the owners. "Settle this up somehow," they were constantly demanding of Mr. Baxter. "You've delayed my building a month. There's a month's interest on my money, and my natural profits for a month, both gone to blazes!"

To all of these Mr. Baxter's answer was in substance the same: "The day the union gives up, on that day the strike is settled." And this he said with unchangeable resolution showing through his voice. The bosses and owners went away cursing and looking hopelessly upon an immediate future whose only view to them was a desert of loss.

But Mr. Baxter did not have in his heart the same steely decision he had in his manner. Events had not taken just the course he had foreseen. The division in the union, on which he had counted for its fall, had been mended by the subsidence of Tom. The union's resources were almost exhausted, true, but it was receiving some financial assistance from its national organization, and its fighting spirit was as strong as ever. If the aid of the national organization continued to be given, and if the spirit of the men remained high, Mr. Baxter realized that the union could hold out indefinitely. The attempt to replace the strikers by non-union men had been a failure; Mr. Driscoll and himself were the only contractors who still maintained the expensive farce of keeping a few scabs at work. And despite his surface indifference to it, the pressure of the owners of buildings and of the bosses in other trades had a little effect upon Mr. Baxter, and more than a little upon some other members of the Executive Committee. A few of the employers were already eager to yield to the strikers' demand, preferring decreased profits to a long period of none at all; but when Mr. Isaacs attempted to voice the sentiments of these gentlemen in a meeting of the Executive Committee, a look from Mr. Baxter's steady gray eyes was enough to close him up disconcerted.