A Speckled Bird

In silence they walked some distance, and rather suddenly she exclaimed:

"I must have been rude indeed, when you, so generous and kind, will not forgive me. Mr. Noel, I am not quite my old self, and to-day have felt at odds with the world. Father's incomprehensible retirement from public life grieves and perplexes me, because his health is perfect, and I cannot patiently accept the forfeiture of all my hopes for his political future. Without his knowledge, I wrote early in the new Administration to two prominent officials, close personal friends of the President, and asked their influence in securing a foreign ministerial position for my father. With elaborate circumlocution they expressed regrets, and 'tendered kindest remembrance and best wishes.' I presume it is wise to wage no war with the inevitable, but I simply cannot reconcile myself to the most bitter disappointment of my life. You see, I trust you so entirely I am opening my heart to you, that you may quite understand I did not intend to show any lack of cordiality to you."

He laughed, and tapped her shoulder twice with the acanthus spray.

"With all my heart I absolve you. Rude you could not be, and I trust the time will never come when I deserve to be treated less cordially than in the past. When do you go back to America?"

"In May or June. Ma-Lila will stay away no longer; she is so anxious to look after her little fifty-acre farm."

"In the South, of course?"

"Yes; it is a corner of one of the 'bend plantations,' and with a new, pretty cottage, well furnished, grandmother gave it to her as a bridal present. None of us can ever forget that her father was killed while bringing my dying grandfather off the battle-field."

"Has Judge Kent decided where he will live?"

"He has sold the old homestead in New England, and we expect to settle down in the only remaining home, Nutwood, which, in accordance with grandmother's will, we now have the right to occupy. Until this year the trustees controlled and closed it."

"Do not forget that whenever you and your father wish to visit New York the house in Thirty-eighth Street will be entirely at your disposal – at least for a couple of years. A telegram to my old butler Hawkins will always insure a comfortable reception. Here comes the Judge. How remarkably well he looks."

Very late that night, when adieux had been spoken and only father and daughter remained in the small salon, Eglah rose, and they looked steadily at each other. In her dark brown eyes two defiant stars glowed, but the clear, sweet voice was low and tender.

"Father, after what was said this morning, I of course can only wish you good-night. Your conditions make it impossible for me to attempt to kiss you, and until you choose to remove the embargo, I certainly shall observe it, in accordance with your orders. Good-night, dear father."

He bowed as if to a duchess.

"Good-night, Eglah."

When Mr. Herriott went down the steps leading from the Kent apartments to the street, Mrs. Mitchell beckoned him into a niche between two stone pillars, and said, almost in a whisper:

"Excuse me, sir, but will you tell me what is behind this trouble between Eglah and her father?"

"She says it is the result of his refusal to re-enter politics."

"Exactly; but what is behind his refusal? She is fretting herself ill, because she cannot find out. Ever since our last day at Greyledge they have been estranged. This morning, when your letter arrived, something very unpleasant occurred; and you see Eglah is not like herself."

"My letter was a most innocent paper bomb – the mere announcement that I intended to stop here a few hours on my way to Messina. It contained absolutely nothing more, and you must have mistaken the cause of her annoyance. Perhaps you wish to intimate that you think my presence enhances the trouble, whatever it may be? I shall be glad to have you speak frankly."

For a moment she was silent, but she patted his coat sleeve approvingly.

"Mr. Herriott, she is all I have in this world, and I can't see the child breaking her heart over Judge Kent's selfish secretiveness. There is something about him I do not understand, and I thought you might be able to explain it to me."

"As you have known him so much longer and more intimately than I, it seems probable that you can estimate him accurately without my assistance. Mrs. Mitchell, it will be a long time before I see any of you again, and going so far away, I shall remember with great pleasure that our dear Eglah will have you always at her side, in dark and stormy as well as sunny hours. Good-bye; my very best wishes for you all."

He understood most thoroughly. Eglah's struggle to receive cordially an evidently unwelcome visitor had pained him inexpressibly, wounding his pride even more than his heart, and since his absence contributed to her peace, he resolved that henceforth she should know no disquietude. If, despite his efforts to surrender, he had cherished a faint, unacknowledged hope, he strangled it effectually now, and in after years he thought of Ætna only as a monument whose shadow lay ever across the acanthus-covered grave of his last beautiful illusion.

Longer than usual Eglah knelt beside her bed that night, and when she rose, Mrs. Mitchell, waiting to brush out and braid her hair, noted in the pale young face traces of mental wrestling.

"Little mother, does God answer your prayers?"

"Not always in the way I may have wished, but when they are denied I seem to receive instead an increased assurance that He knows best; and as to a child crying for sharp-edged tools, His refusal springs from omniscient mercy."

"Do you think Mr. Noel is really a Christian? Father believes him a mere rationalist."

"His is such a fine character, only Christianity could have moulded him."

"I wish I knew whether he prays every night."

"Why?"

"If he does, his prayers and mine must clash like crossed swords before the Lord, and Mr. Noel is better than I, and deserves to receive that which he wants most; but he will not – he shall not!"

"Eglah, dearie! The Lord alone will decide."

"No. If we are free agents, human will can not be coerced by Him who gave it. Even our great, dear, good God cannot give him what I pray he will be denied. Never – never!"

"For what is he praying?"

"A razor – that would cut his fingers – so he must not have it. Now, lest you should 'imagine vain things,' I wish you to know that Mr. Noel has not renewed his proposal of marriage, and I hope never will. It is only just to him that you should fully understand he is now no suitor. He is simply my loyal, noble friend, in whom I trust implicitly. Good-night, Madrecita."

CHAPTER XVI

It had been a cold, cloudy January day in one of the great northern cities, and with night came flurries of snow that powdered telegraph wires and danced like thistledown around the corners. Two and a half years had elapsed since the angel of death stooped to swing his sickle in the daisy meadow on Long Island, and in a low, wide basement room, fronting the street, Mrs. Dane sat at her sewing machine, hemming a child's check aprons piled on a chair. The apartment was plainly but comfortably furnished, and filled now with the pungent odor of ginger, cloves, and cinnamon from a pan of small cakes on the top of an oil stove. The gas jet above her heightened the metallic lustre of her abundant hair, and deepened fringy shadows cast by her thick, dusky lashes. Upon the beautiful face time had softly pressed its velvet palm, smoothing the angles of bitterness and wrath that had been intensified by the struggle with her husband, whom she now believed she had eluded forever by removing to another city. On the broad windowsill at her right stood an oval, brass filigree frame holding a photograph of Leighton in his chorister vestments, and in front of the picture a dozen violets filled a wine-glass. As she finished and folded an apron, leaning forward to place it on the chair, her glance fell on the photograph, rested there, and the ocean of the past moaned, surged, broke over her. Despite her persistent scoffing moods, she had found it impossible to forget the few lines Father Temple had repeated with a faltering voice after the grave closed over the sweet young singer of St. Hyacinth's. They haunted some chamber of her defiant soul, and when she gazed at the holy face of her boy they stole out and whispered:

"Another lamb, O Lamb of God, beholdWithin this quiet fold,Among Thy Father's sheepI lay to sleep!A heart that never for a night did restBeyond its mother's breast.Lord, keep it close to Thee,Lest waking it should bleat and pine for me."

A rap on her door recalled her, and she swept one hand across her misty eyes.

"Come in."

A man of middle age, low in stature, and muffled to the chin in a handsome overcoat, stood, hat in hand, at the door.

"Mr. Coolidge, I am surprised to see you, and you have made a mistake in coming to my lodgings. I will not ask you to be seated, because I do not wish to receive you."

"But, madam, no other way of communicating with you seems possible, as correspondence has certainly proved disastrous. That note of Mr. Cathcart's, which you saw fit to send to his wife, ploughed up more trouble than a ton of dynamite, and his few remaining grey hairs will disappear before the end of this fracas. Talk about savage wild beasts, and claws, and paws, and fangs, but you women can trump them every time when the game is cruelty, and you want to get even with some man. Poor Mr. Cathcart! I don't hold him a saint, but I must say you misread his note and misjudged him."

"Did you see the note?"

"After his wife received it? No, but he told me exactly what it contained, and why he was obliged to have the meeting secret."

"Written by a millionaire to his poor typewriter, it was an insult, and as such you would have hotly resented it if your sister stood in my dependent position."

"You have not an idea what he wanted to say to you when he asked you to return to the office after every one had gone. He has found out that you have great influence with Max Harlberg, and that you belong to several 'Unions,' and he wished to pay you handsomely if you would persuade Max to agree to arbitration and not call a strike. Since he learned you are a power among these men who are causing us so much trouble, he is anxious to conciliate you, and fears your resignation will increase the difficulty of a settlement."

"He sent you here to offer this explanation?"

"Yes, Mrs. Dane, and I can vouch for its truth."

"Mr. Coolidge, you have always treated me with respect and courtesy, and I have no desire to be rude to you, but I am sorry you came to offer so shameful a bargain. I believe in 'unions'; they became necessary when vast consolidations of capital began to strangle small corporations, and laborers learned that only by a united front could they expect living wages. You magnates of 'trusts' are responsible for 'unions'; you set us the example: when capital bands, labor is forced to organize in self-defence. You of the caste of Dives sowed dragon's teeth, and now the abundance of your crop appalls you? We of the Lazarus caste see hope ahead; the day is coming when we shall have an honest and fair and permanent adjustment on the Karl Marx basis of 'plus value,' and then every mechanic in your shops will own an interest in the car he builds in the ratio of the hours he worked on it. Heart and soul I am with your motormen and conductors, your carpenters and machinists. Their cause is just, and, if I can help them, all the bonds and all the gold your company hoards in its vaults cannot buy me."

"At least you might persuade Harlberg to consent to arbitrate the differences. The men would have an equal chance with the company."

"Arbitration wolves have left no lambs silly enough to bleat their grievances. Two years ago the strike was settled on a basis almost fair to your employees, and in six months the provisions were nullified by changes made possible when non-union motormen were brought here. Max cut his eye teeth then, and now he has a winning hand."

"You think a strike inevitable?"

"I know it, and rejoice that the company will smart for its grinding, inhuman treatment of men who have endured it for the sake of wives and children looking to them for bread. Because you and Mr. Cathcart and Mr. Hazleton and your board of directors have ample fortunes, you see no enormity in requiring men with large families to work twelve hours, exposed to rain, sleet, sun, and if, overcome with fatigue, they fail to awake in time to report for duty at the exact minute your schedule demands, they are 'laid off for three days' as punishment. No day of rest to spend at home; nothing to anticipate but the ceaseless grind, grind – worse than that of driving wheels and pistons in machinery, which are allowed to stop and cool on Sunday."

"If you return to your desk to-morrow Mr. Cathcart says he will double your salary."

"Tell him to divide the extra pay among the needy grey-beards limping around the cars and shops. I will never work in his office again."

"You are very unwise, Mrs. Dane, and since you sympathize with the men, you ought not to lose the opportunity to prove yourself their friend at court. Moreover, in rejecting a larger salary you are laying up a store of regrets."

"Make no mistake, Mr. Coolidge. You rich often force us poor to suffer severely, but we seldom 'regret,' because that implies error on our part. We are bitter under the pain, but we do not regret the course of duty to ourselves that brought down the lash."

"Is it true that if the railroad men's strike is declared the telegraphers' and typewriters' unions will order a sympathetic strike? You seem to have begun in advance."

"I think not. Two nights ago, at our meeting, I urged the members to abandon the idea, though Harlberg was present to insist upon it. A 'sympathetic strike' is only sentiment running riot, and special class suffering alone justifies revolt. Altruistic theories of reform and abstract justice ought not to tie up public systems and precipitate armed conflicts. I have learned that for us 'strikes' are fearful catastrophes – social earthquakes so far-reaching in consequences that you opulent dwellers on a serene plateau, immune from disaster, can form no adequate estimate of the ghastly wreck wrought in substrata of the laboring class. Especially ruinous is the strain on our women. The men are excited, goaded, kept on the qui vive, held to the front by magnetic leaders – but the waiting women and children! Cold, hungry, terrified, huddled in helpless idleness, expecting any moment to see husband and father brought in on a shutter – buried in the 'potter's field' if he dies, sent to prison as a 'riotous lawbreaker' if he lives – these are the saddest features of bloody struggles that the outside world never sees. Instead of 'sympathetic strikes,' far more useful sympathy should be shown by other unions working full time steadily and sharing their wages with those fighting for violated rights against the encroachments of combined capital. That is what I intend to do."

"Have you accepted another position as typewriter?"

"Not yet; but many ways of earning my bread lie open before me. I never resign from my sewing machine, and I learned embroidery at a convent where royal orders have been filled."

"Making check aprons will not pay room rent."

Gathering the little garments in her arms, she rose, her tall, graceful figure clearly outlined by her mourning dress, and her eyes sparkled.

"Do you remember old Silas Bowen?"

"I do not."

"Your corporation memories, like your consciences, are sieves. One day, while arranging a trolleywire, a tall post behind him, decayed at its base, fell, and crippled him. He lost a leg, and all the fingers of one hand. Your company paid the surgeon's bill, and Bowen was sent adrift without a cent. He sued for damages, and the jury gave him what he asked for. You appealed the case, and a Hungarian pedler, who hated him vindictively, swore that Bowen was so drunk he could not understand warning shouts that the pole was shaking, and that he was falling when the post toppled and struck him. You won, and he lost by perjury. He is able to do little, and has nine children. His wife and oldest daughter launder laces and fine muslins, and these aprons are for the youngest – twins, one of whom has spinal disease and will never walk. Mr. Coolidge, I have rather liked you, because I found you always a gentleman, but my patience is exhausted, and, as I shall never work again for your company, there is no reason why you should prolong your visit."

"Nothing can change your mind in our favor?"

"Nothing."

"I wish the whole confounded, sickening business could be ended. Of course the company will win. New men will be at the barns and power-houses early to-morrow, prepared to run the cars, and the court will enjoin strikers from active interference. At the first shot the militia will be called out to take a hand, and then the poor devils running around like blind adders will be slaughtered. You women ought to stop it. Some of you firebrands will land in jail."

"Jail sounds dreadful, but after all it is not so bad; has its perquisites that wealth furnishes. I tried it once. The rich, old Jew who arrested me for stealing a Satsuma vase was so terrified when it was found where a negro porter had pawned it, that he sent his superb carriage and horses and liveried coachman to carry me from jail to my lodgings. It was my first and last ride on satin cushions. Good-night, Mr. Coolidge."

When the door closed behind him, she counted the spice cakes into a paper bag, placed it in the bundle of aprons, and wrapped the whole in a square of oil cloth. Pushing her hair back from her brow, she drew a black veil closely around her face, tied the ends under her chin, and put on her long waterproof cloak, lifting the cape over her head, where she fastened it with a safety pin. Under the grey overhanging folds of the cape the fair, cold face looked serene as a nun's. Extinguishing the flame of the oil stove, her eyes rested a moment on the picture of Leighton, then she lowered the gas jet at the machine, picked up the bundle, locked the door, and dropped the key in her pocket as she went out to the street.

The snow fall was light and intermittent, but now and then the crystal facets glittered in the vivid bluish glare of quivering electric globes.

Three hours later Father Temple, passing through the city on his way south, stood, valise in hand, on a street corner, waiting for a downtown car, and fearful he might miss the train where his sleeping berth had been engaged. No car came from any quarter, and he walked on, hoping to be overtaken. Soon a steady, rapid tread of many feet sounded from the rear, and a squad of police dashed past him.

"What is the matter with the cars?" he shouted to the hurrying column.

One man looked over his shoulder.

"The strike is on. Street car track torn up."

In a marvellously short time the crowded pavement became a dense mass of men and women struggling slowly forward; then a dull, deep, sullen roar, that shook windows and doors, rolled up to the starless sky where snow feathers fluttered. A woman screamed:

"The brutes are firing cannon into the poor strikers!"

"Not much! Some devilish striker throwing a bomb," answered her husband.

Father Temple, finding progress impeded, stepped down into the street and hurried on. At the end of the next square the hospital ambulance clattered by at emergency speed, and behind it another detachment of police at double-quick step. The street was bare as mid-desert of vehicles, save those from hospitals, and down the double railway track flowed a human stream, panting to reach the fray, eager to witness the struggle as old Romans who fought for places under the velarium, and shrieked "Habet!" Two officers on horseback galloped by, and then came reports of shots, followed by the wild, thousand-throated whoop and hoot of maddened men drunk with hate and fury. At the intersection of three streets, where a small park lay, the strikers had massed the cars from every direction, shut off the current, cut the wires, and taken their stand. Expecting trouble next day, the company had prepared guards and provided extra police protection for their barns and power-houses, where a few non-union men had been secured, but the strikers frustrated these plans by refusing to run as directed to the defended terminus. Where the line of clustered cars ended on both tracks, iron rails had been torn up and piled across the road bed, and here, in front and rear, motormen, conductors, carpenters, machinists, and linemen were massed, stubbornly defying all attempts to repair the tracks or move the cars.

A half hour before Father Temple reached the outskirts of the crowd at the square, a woman had elbowed her way to the front car and sprung upon the platform. Just below her Max Harlberg was distributing pistols to a group of men, all gesticulating angrily.

Clapping her hands to arrest attention, Mrs. Dane called:

"Silas Bowen, if you are here, answer. Silas Bowen!"

"Aye, aye! Silas Bowen is here to hurry up Judgment day for the hounds that have dodged it too long."

"You must go to your wife; she needs you. The tenement where you live burned down to-night."

"Let it burn! I hope the old rat hole isn't insured."

"But your wife is frantic, and wants you at once; and one of your children is hurt. Silas, do go to them, I beg of you. I have the helpless boy and the burned girl at my room, and your wife is there."

"I have waited too long for this picnic to turn my back just as the music begins. I am in for my share of the fun to-night, and kindling wood will be cheap to-morrow. When the devil's pay day comes for the boss, I mean to see the count."

Leaning over the dashboard of the car, Mrs. Dane watched for an opportunity, and snatched from Harlberg's hand the pistol reserved for his own use. Holding it above her head, she cried:

"Friends, fellow-workers, listen a moment! You are striking for the right to live like human beings, not beasts of burden; but be careful, be sure you do not put yourselves in the wrong by rash violence. If strife comes, let your oppressors start it. Personal attack is not your privilege, but defence is your right. Stand here quietly, shoulder to shoulder, cool, steady, and keep non-union traitors at arm's length. We who are working will see that the pot boils for your families; but, men, I beg of you, attempt no violence; because, if the first shot comes from us, the end will be we shall all drop from the frying pan into the fire. The police are bloodhounds wearing the collar of rich corporations, and the courts are butcher pens, where 'fighting strikers' are slaughtered. When rifles are fired into your ranks and bayonets thrust into your bodies, then – only then – must you remember 'blood washes blood.' Oh, men, be patient! Max Harlberg, don't forget that you are responsible for what may happen now. These men have obeyed you – have followed you like sheep to the edge of a precipice. Don't drive them with the butt of a pistol to leap to ruin. Counsel no bloodshed, no rashness, no wreckage."

A feeble cheer rose, smothered by a grumbling growl.

The wind had blown the cape back to her shoulders, and the folds of black veil banding her head slipped down, restraining no longer the ripples of hair curling above her temples. Leaning over the dashboard, one hand clutching the collar of Harlberg's overcoat as she talked rapidly to him, she resembled some gilt-headed figure carved at the prow of a vessel, always first to front tempests.

Just then a solid column of policemen charged the strikers, forcing them back almost upon the pile of rails near the foremost car, and following the line of lifted and revolving clubs, Mr. Cathcart and his superintendent, Hazleton appeared. Hisses, jeers, oaths, and a prolonged howl greeted them, amid which paving stones smote the heavy clubs that swung right and left like flails, and Harlberg sprang to the iron controller, leaped thence to the roof of the car, and shouted his orders to the strikers on the ground. Wounded, bleeding men were trampled by the swaying mass as it surged forward, staggered back, panting, cursing, hooting; then, in quick succession, three shots rang out.

A moment later Mrs. Dane laid Harlberg's pistol on top of the controller stand, and, as she stepped down from the platform to make her way home, something hurtled through the air and struck between the spot where Mr. Cathcart stood and the iron dashboard of the car. In the blinding glare of the explosion two strikers and a policeman were seen to fall, and when the roar and sharp shivering of crashed windows ended, a sudden hush fell upon the multitude.