The Walking Delegate

"Don't you remember me, Brother Keating?" she asked, with a glad note in her voice, shifting the child higher on her breast and holding out a hand.

"Mrs. Petersen!" he cried. "Come right in."

She entered, and Tom introduced her to Maggie, who drew a chair for her up beside the breakfast table.

"Thank you, sister." She sank exhausted into the chair, and turned immediately on Tom. "Have you seen Nels lately?" she asked eagerly.

"Not for more than two weeks."

The excitement died out of her face; Tom now saw, by the light of the gas that had to be burned in the dining-room even at midday, that the face was drawn and that there were dark rings under the eyes. "Is anything wrong?" he asked.

"He ain't been home for two nights," she returned tremulously. "I said to myself last night, if he don't come to-night I'll come over to see you early this morning. Mebbe you'd know something about him."

"Not a thing." He wanted to lighten that wan face, so he gave the best cheer that he could. "But I guess nothing's wrong with him."

"Yes, there is, or he'd never stay away like this," she returned quickly. Her voice sank with resignation. "I suppose all I can do is to pray."

"And look," Tom added. "I'll look."

She rose to go. Maggie pressed her to have breakfast, but she refused, a faint returning hope in her eyes. "Mebbe the Lord's brung him home while I've been here."

A half minute after the door had closed upon her Tom opened it and hurried down the three flights of stairs. He caught her just going into the street.

He fumbled awkwardly in his pocket. "Do you need anything?"

"No. Bless you, Brother Keating. Nels left me plenty o' money. You know he works reg'lar on the docks."

Two causes for Petersen's absence occurred as possible to Tom – arrest and death. He looked through the record of arrests for the last two days at police headquarters. Petersen's name was not there, and to give a false name would never have occurred to Petersen's slow mind. So Tom knew he was not in a cell. He visited the public morgues and followed attendants who turned back sheets from cold faces. But Petersen's face he did not see.

The end of the day brought also the end of Tom's search. He now had three explanations for Petersen's absence: The Swede was dead, and his body unrecovered; he had wandered off in a fit of mental aberration; he had deserted his wife. The first he did not want to believe. The third, remembering the looks that had passed between the two the night he had visited their home, he could not believe. He clung to the second; and that was the only one he mentioned to Mrs. Petersen when he called in the evening to report.

"He'll come to suddenly, and come back," he encouraged her. "That's the way with such cases."

"You think so?" She brightened visibly.

A fourth explanation flashed upon him. "Perhaps he got caught by accident on some boat he had been helping load, and got carried away."

She brightened a little more at this. "Just so he's alive!" she cried.

"He'll be certain to be back in a few days," Tom said positively. He left her greatly comforted by his words, though he himself did not half believe them.

There was nothing more he could do toward discovering the missing man. It must be admitted that, during the next few days, he thought of Petersen much less frequently than was the due of such a friend as the Swede had proved. The affairs of the union held his mind exclusively. Opinion was turning overwhelmingly toward giving up the strike, and giving it up immediately. Wherever there was a man who still held out, there were three or four men pouring words upon him. "Foley may not be so honest as to hurt him, but he's a fighter from 'way back, an' if he thinks we ought to stop fightin' now, then we ought to 'a' stopped weeks ago" – such was the substance of the reasoning in bar-room and street that converted many a man to yielding.

And also, Tom learned, a quick settlement was being urged at home. As long as the men had stood firm for the strike, the women had skimped at every point and supported that policy. But when they discovered that the men's courage was going, the women, who feel most the fierce economy of a strike, were for the straight resumption of work and income. Maggie, Tom knew, was beginning to look forward in silent eagerness to a settlement; he guessed that she hoped, the strike ended, he might go back to work untroubled by Foley.

Tom undertook to stand out against the proposal of submission, but he might as well have tried to shoulder back a Fundy tide. Men remembered it was he who had so hotly urged them into a strike that thus far had cost them seven weeks' wages. "I suppose you'd have us lose seven more weeks' money," they sneered at him. They said other things, and stronger, for your ironworker has studied English in many places.

Monday evening found Tom in a chair at one of the open windows of his sitting-room, staring out at nothing at all, hardly conscious of Maggie, who was reading, or of Ferdinand, who lay dozing on the couch. He was completely discouraged – at the uttermost end of things. He had searched his mind frantically for flaws in the negotiations and in Foley's conduct, flaws which, if followed up, clue by clue, would reveal Foley's suspected treachery. But he found none. There seemed nothing more he could do. The vote would come on Wednesday evening, and its result was as certain as if the count had already been made.

And so he sat staring into the line of back yards with their rows and rows of lighted windows. His mind moved over the past five months. They had held nothing for him but failure and pain. He had fought for honor in the management of the union's affairs, staking his place in his trade on the result – and honor in the contest with dishonesty had gone down in defeat. He had urged the union to strike for better wages, and now the strike was on the eve of being lost. He would have to begin life over anew, and he did not know where he could begin. Moreover, he had lost all but a few friends; and he had lost all influence. This was what his fight for right had brought him, and in five months.

And this was not the sum of the bitterness the five months had brought him – no, nor its greater part. He had learned how mighty real love can be – and how hopeless!

He had been sitting so, dreaming darkly, for an hour or more when Maggie asked him if he had heard whether Petersen had come back. The question brought to his mind that he had neglected Mrs. Petersen for four days. He rose, conscience-smitten, told Maggie he would be back presently, and set forth for the tenement in which the Petersens had their home. He found Mrs. Petersen, her child asleep in her lap, reading the Bible. She appeared to be even slighter and paler than when he had last seen her, but her spirit seemed to burn even higher through the lessened obscuration of her thinning flesh.

No, Petersen had not yet come back. "But I fetched my trouble to God in prayer," she said. "An' He helped me, glory to His name! He told me Nels is comin' back."

Tom had nothing to give to one so fired by hope, and he slipped away as soon as he could and returned home. On entering his flat, his eyes going straight through the dining-room into the sitting-room, he saw Maggie gazing in uncomfortable silence at a man – a lean, brown man, with knobby face, and wing-like mustache, who sat with bony hands in his lap and eyes fastened on his knees.

Tom crossed the dining-room with long strides. Maggie, glad of the chance to escape, passed into the bedroom.

"Petersen!" he cried. "Where on earth've you been?"

Petersen rose with a glad light in his face and grasped the hand Tom offered. Immediately he disengaged his hand to slip it into a trousers pocket. Tom now noted that Petersen's face was slightly discolored, – dim yellows, and greens, and blues – and that his left thumb was brown, as though stained with arnica.

"I come to pay vot I loan," Petersen mumbled. His hand came forth from the pocket grasping a roll of bills as big as his wrist. He unwrapped three tens and silently held them out.

Tom, who had watched this action through with dumb amazement, now broke out: "Where d'you get all that money? Where've you been?"

The three tens were still in Petersen's outstretched hand. "For vot you give de union, and vot you give me."

"But where've you been?" Tom demanded, taking the money.

Fear, shame, and contrition struggled for control of Petersen's face. But he answered doggedly: "I vorked at de docks."

"You know that's not so, Petersen. You haven't been home for a week. And your wife's scared half to death."

"Anna scared? Vy?" He started, and his brown face paled.

"Why shouldn't she be?" Tom returned wrathfully. "You went off without a word to her, and not a word from you for a week! Now see here, Petersen, where've you been?"

"Vorkin' at de docks," he repeated, but weakly.

"And got that wad of money for it! Hardly." He pushed Petersen firmly back into his chair. "Now you've got to tell me all about it."

All the dogged resistance faded from Petersen's manner, and he sat trembling, with face down. For a moment Tom was in consternation lest he break into tears. But he controlled himself and in shame told his story, aided by questions from Tom. Tom heard him without comment, breathing rapidly and gulping at parts of the brokenly-told story.

When the account was ended Tom gripped Petersen's hand. "You're all right, Petersen!" he said huskily.

Tears trickled down from Petersen's eyes, and his simple face twitched with remorse.

Tom fell into thought. He understood Petersen's fear to face his wife. He, too, was uncertain how Mrs. Petersen, in her religious fervor, would regard what Petersen had done. He had to tell her, of course, since Petersen had shown he could not. But how should he tell her – how, so that the woman, and not the religious enthusiast, would be reached?

Presently Tom handed Petersen his hat, and picked up his own. "Come on," he said; and to Maggie he called through the bedroom door: "I'll be back in an hour."

As they passed through the tunnel Tom, who had slipped his hand through Petersen's arm for guidance, felt the Swede begin to tremble; and it was so across the little stone-paved court, with the square of stars above, and up the nervous stairway, whose February odors had been multiplied by the June warmth. Before his own door Petersen held back.

Tom understood. "Wait here for me, then," he said, and knocked upon the door.

"Who's there?" an eager voice questioned.

"Keating."

When she answered, the eagerness in the voice had turned to disappointment. "All right, Brother Keating. In just a minute."

Tom heard the sounds of rapid dressing, and then a hand upon the knob. Petersen shrank back into the darkness of a corner.

The door opened. "Come in, Brother Keating," she said, not quite able to hide her surprise at this second visit in one evening.

A coal oil lamp on the kitchen table revealed the utter barrenness and the utter cleanness – so far as unmonied effort could make clean those scaling walls and that foot-hollowed floor – which he had seen on his first visit five months before. He was hardly within the door when her quick eyes caught the strain in his manner. One thin hand seized his arm excitedly. "What is it, brother? Have you heard from Nels?"

"Ye-es," Tom admitted hesitatingly. He had not planned to begin the story so.

"And he's alive? Quick! He's alive?"

"Yes."

She sank into a chair, clasped both hands over her heart, and turned her eyes upward. "Praise the Lord! I thank Thee, Lord! I knew Thou wouldst keep him."

Immediately her wide, burning eyes were back on Tom. "Where is he?"

"He's been very wicked," said Tom, shaking his head sadly, and lowering himself into the only other chair. "So wicked he's afraid you can never forgive him. And I don't see how you can. He's afraid to come home."

"God forgives everything to the penitent, an' I try to follow after God," she said, trembling. A sickening fear was on her face. "Tell me, brother! What's he done? Don't try to spare me! God will help me to bear it. Not – not – murder?"

"No. He's fallen in another way," Tom returned, with the sad shake of his head again. "Shall I tell you all?"

"All, brother! An' quickly!" She leaned toward him, hands gripped in the lap of her calico wrapper, with such a staring, fearing attention as seemed to stand out from her gray face and be of itself a separate presence.

"I'll have to tell you some things you know already, and know better than I do," Tom said, watching to see how his words worked upon her. "After Petersen got in the union he held a job for two weeks. Then Foley knocked him out, and then came the strike. It's been eleven weeks since he earned a cent at his trade. The money he'd made in the two weeks he worked soon gave out. He tried to find work and couldn't. Days passed, and weeks. They had little to eat at home. I guess they had a pretty hard time of it. He – "

"We did, brother!"

"He saw his wife and kid falling off – getting weaker and weaker," Tom went on, not heeding the interruption. "He got desperate; he couldn't see 'em starve. Now the devil always has temptation ready for a desperate man. About four weeks ago when his wife was so weak she could hardly move, and there wasn't a bite in the house, the devil tempted Petersen. He happened to meet a man who had been his partner in his old wicked days, his manager when he was a prize fighter. The manager said it was too bad Petersen had left the ring; he was arranging a heavy-weight bout to come off before a swell athletic club in Philadelphia, a nice purse for the loser and a big fat one for the winner. They walked along the street together for awhile, and all the time the devil was tempting Petersen, saying to him: 'Go in and fight – this once. It's right for a man to do anything rather than let his wife and kid starve.' But Petersen held out, getting weaker all the time, though. Then the devil said to him: 'He's a pretty poor sort of a man that loves his promise not to fight more than he loves his wife and kid.' Petersen fell. He decided to commit the sin."

Tom paused an instant, then added in a hard voice: "But because a man loves his wife so much he's willing to do anything for her, that don't excuse the sin, does it?"

"Go on!" she entreated, leaning yet further toward him.

"Well, he said to the manager he'd fight. They settled it, and the man advanced some money. Petersen went into training. But he was afraid to tell us what an awful thing he was doing, – doing because he didn't want his wife to starve, – and so he told us he was working at the docks. So it was for three weeks, and his wife and kid had things to eat. The fight came off last Wednesday night – "

"And who won? Who?"

"Well – Petersen."

"Yes! Of course!" she cried, exultation for the moment possessing her face. "He is a terrible fighter! He – "

She broke off and bowed her head with sudden shame; when it came up the next instant she wore again the tense look that seemed the focus of her being.

Tom had gone right on. "It was a hard fight. He was up against a fast hard hitter. But he fought better than he ever did before. I suppose he was thinking of his wife and kid. He won, and got the big purse. But after the fight was over, he didn't dare come home. His face was so bruised his wife would have known he'd been fighting, – and he knew it would break her heart for her to know he'd been at it again. And so he thought he'd stay away till his face got well. She needn't ever have the pain then of knowing how he'd sinned. He never even thought how worried she'd be at not hearing from him. So he stayed away till his face got well, almost – till to-night. Then he came back, and slipped up to his door. He wanted to come in, but he was still afraid. He listened at the door. His wife was praying for him, and one thing he heard was, she asked God to keep him wherever he was from wrong-doing. He knew then he'd have to tell her all about it, and he knew how terrible his sin would seem to her. He knew she could never forgive him. So he slipped down the stairs, and went away. Of course he was right about what his wife would think," Tom drove himself on with implacable voice. "I didn't come here to plead for him. I don't blame you. It was a terrible sin, a sin – "

She rose tremblingly from her chair, and raised a thin authoritative hand. "Stop right there, brother!" she cried, her voice sob-broken. "It wasn't a sin. It – it was glorious!"

Tom sprang toward the door. "Petersen!" he shouted. He flung it open, and the next instant dragged Petersen, shrinking and eager, fearful, shamefaced, and yet glowing, into the room.

"Oh, Nels!" She rushed into his arms, and their mighty length tightened about the frail body. "It – was – glorious – Nels! It – "

But Tom heard no more. He closed the door and groped down the shivering stairway.

Chapter XXVII

THE THOUSANDTH CHANCE

Mr. Driscoll was the chairman of the building committee of a little independent church whose membership was inclined to regard him somewhat dubiously, notwithstanding the open liking of the pastor. The church was planning a new home, and of late the committee had been holding frequent meetings. In the afternoon of this same Monday there had been a session of the committee; and on leaving the pastor's study Mr. Driscoll had hurried to his office, but Ruth, whom he had pressed into service as the committee's secretary, had stopped to perform a number of errands. When she reached the office she walked through the open hall door – the weather was warm, so it had been wide all day – over the noiseless rug to her desk, and began to remove her hat. Voices came to her from Mr. Driscoll's room, Mr. Driscoll's voice and Mr. Berman's; but their first few sentences, on business matters, passed her ears unheeded, like the thousand noises of the street. But presently, after a little pause, Mr. Berman remarked upon a new topic: "Well, it's the same as settled that the strike will be over in two days."

Almost unconsciously Ruth's ears began to take in the words, though she continued tearing the sheets of stamps, one of her purchases, into strips, preparatory to putting them away.

"Another case in which right prevails," said Mr. Driscoll, a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

"Why, yes. We are altogether in the right."

"And so we win." Silence. Then, abruptly, and with more sarcasm: "But how much are we paying Foley?"

Ruth started, as when amid the street's thousand noises one's own name is called out. She gazed intently at the door, which was slightly ajar.

Silence. "What? You know that?"

"Why do you suppose I left the committee?"

"I believed what you said, that you were tired of it."

"Um! So they never told you. Since you're a member of the committee I'm breaking no pledge in telling you where I stand. I left when they proposed buying Foley – "

Mr. Berman made a hushing sound.

"Nobody'll hear. Miss Arnold's out. Besides, I wouldn't mind much if somebody did hear, and give the whole scheme away. How you men can stand for it is more than I know."

"Oh, it's all right," Mr. Berman returned easily.

The talk went on, but Ruth listened for no more. She hastily pinned on her hat, passed quietly into the hall, and caught a descending elevator. After a walk about the block she came back to the office and moved around with all the legitimate noise she could make. Mr. Driscoll's door softly closed.

In a few minutes Mr. Berman came out and, door knob in hand, regarded her a moment as she sat at her desk making a pretense of being at work. Then he crossed the room with a rare masculine grace and bent above her.

"Miss Arnold," he said.

Ruth rarely took dictation from Mr. Berman, but she now reached for her note-book in instinctive defense against conversation. "Some work for me?" She did not look up.

"Something for you to make a note of, but no work," he returned in his low, well-modulated voice that had seemed to her the very vocalization of gentlemanliness. "I remember the promise you made me give – during business hours, only business. But I have been looking for a chance all day to break it. I want to remind you again that the six months are up to-morrow night."

"Yes. My answer will be ready."

He waited for her to say something more, but she did not; and he passed on to his own room.

Ruth had two revelations to ponder; but it was to the sudden insight she had been given into the real cause of the contractors' approaching victory that she gave her first thought, and not to the sudden insight into the character of Mr. Berman. From the first minute there was no doubt as to what she should do, and yet there was a long debate in her mind. If she were to give Tom the bare fact that had been revealed to her, and, using it as a clue, he were to uncover the whole plan, there would come a disgraceful exposure involving her uncle, her employers, and, to a degree, all the steel contractors. And another sentiment threw its influence against disclosing her information: her natural shrinking from opening communication with Tom; and mixed with this was a remnant of her resentment that he had treated her so. She had instinctively placed him beside Mr. Berman, and had been compelled to admit with pain: "Mr. Berman would never have done it."

But her sense of right was of itself enough to have forced her to make the one proper use of the information chance had given her; and besides this sense of right there was her love, ready for any sacrifice. So she covertly scribbled the following note to Tom:

MY DEAR MR. KEATING:

Are you sure Mr. Foley is not playing the union false?

RUTH ARNOLD.

He is.

With curious femininity she had, at the last moment, tried to compromise, suggesting enough by her question to furnish a clue to Tom, and yet saying so little that she could tell herself she had really not betrayed her friends; and then, in two words, she had impulsively flung him all her knowledge.

The note written, she thought of the second revelation; of the Mr. Berman she had really liked so well for his æsthetic taste, for his irreproachable gentlemanliness, for all the things Tom was not. "Oh, it's all right," he had said easily. And she placed him beside Tom, and admitted with pain-adulterated happiness: "Mr. Keating would never have done that."

When her work for the day was over she hurried to the postoffice in Park Row and dropped the letter into the slot marked "Special Delivery." And when Tom came back from his second call at the Petersen home Maggie was awaiting him with it. At sight of the handwriting on the envelope the color left his face. He tore open the envelope with an eagerness he tried to conceal in an assumed carelessness, and read the score of words.

When he looked up from the note, Maggie's eyes were fastened on his face. A special delivery letter had never come to their home before. "What is it?" she asked.

"Just a note about the strike," he answered, and put the letter into his pocket.

The explanation did not satisfy Maggie, but, as it was far past their bedtime, she turned slowly and went into the bedroom.

"I'm not coming to bed for a little while," he called to her.

The next minute he was lost in the excitement begotten by the letter. It was true, then, what he had suspected. Ruth, he knew, would never have written the note unless she had been certain. His head filled with a turmoil of thoughts – every third one about Ruth; but these he tried to force aside, for he was face to face with a crisis and needed all his brain. And some of his thoughts were appalling ones that the union was so perilously near its betrayal; and some were exultant, that he was right after all. But amid this mental turmoil one thought, larger than any of the others, with wild steadfastness held the central place of his brain: there was a chance that, even yet, he could circumvent Foley and save the union – that, fallen as low as he was, he might yet triumph.

But by what plan? He was more certain than ever of Foley's guilt, but he could not base a denunciation of Foley upon mere certitude, unsupported by a single fact. He had to have facts. And how to get them? One wild plan after another acted itself out as a play in his excited brain, in which he had such theatric parts as descending accusingly upon Mr. Baxter and demanding a confession, or cunningly trapping Foley into an admission of the truth, or gaining it at point of pistol. As the hours passed his brain quieted somewhat, and he more quickly saw the absurdity of schemes of this sort. But he could find no practicable plan, and a frantic fear began to possess him: the meeting was less than two days off, and as yet he saw no effective way of balking the sale of the strike.