100%: the Story of a Patriot Part 5

Also he had a bit of genuine anxiety. He had told the truth when he said to Guffey that he didn't know what a "Red" was; but since then he had been making in quiries, and now he knew. A "Red" was a fellow who sympathized with labor unions and with strikes; who wanted to murder the rich and divide their property, and believed that the quickest way to do the dividing was by means of dynamite. All "Reds"

made bombs, and carried concealed weapons, and perhaps secret poisons--who could tell? And now Peter was going among them, he was going to become one of them! It was almost too interesting, for a fellow who aimed above everything to be comfortable. Something in him whispered, "Why not skip; get out of town and be done with it?"

But then he thought of the rewards and honors that Guffey had promised him. Also there was the spirit of curiosity; he might skip at any time, but first he would like to know a bit more about being a "d.i.c.k."

He came to the number which had been given him, a tiny bungalow in a poor neighborhood, and rang the doorbell. It was answered by a girl, and at a glance Peter saw that it was the girl who had spoken to him. She did not wait for him to announce himself, but cried impulsively, "Mr. Gudge! Oh, I'm so glad you've come!" She added, "Comrade!"--just as if Peter were a well-known friend. And then, "But _are_ you a comrade?"

"How do you mean?" asked Peter.

"You're not a Socialist? Well, we'll make one of you." She brought him in and showed him to a chair, saying, "I know what they did to you; and you stood out against them! Oh, you were wonderful!

Wonderful!"

Peter was at a loss what to say. There was in this girl's voice a note of affection, as well as of admiration; and Peter in his hard life had had little experience with emotions of this sort. Peter had watched the gushings and excitements of girls who were seeking flirtations; but this girl's att.i.tude he felt at once was not flirtatious. Her voice tho soft, was just a trifle too solemn for a young girl; her deep-set, wistful grey eyes rested on Peter with the solicitude of a mother whose child has just escaped a danger.

She called: "Sadie, here's Mr. Gudge." And there entered another girl, older, taller, but thin and pale like her sister. Jennie and Sadie Todd were their names, Peter learned; the older was a stenographer, and supported the family. The two girls were in a state of intense concern. They started to question Peter about his experiences, but he had only talked for a minute or two before the elder went to the telephone. There were various people who must see Peter at once, important people who were to be notified as soon as he turned up. She spent some time at the phone, and the people she talked with must have phoned to others, because for the next hour or two there was a constant stream of visitors coming in, and Peter had to tell his story over and over again.

The first to come was a giant of a man with tight-set mouth and so powerful a voice that it frightened Peter. He was not surprised to learn that this man was the leader of one of the most radical of the city's big labor unions, the seamen's. Yes, he was a "Red," all right; he corresponded to Peter's imaginings--a grim, dangerous man, to be pictured like Samson, seizing the pillars of society and pulling them down upon his head. "They've got you scared, my boy,"

he said, noting Peter's hesitating answers to his questions. "Well, they've had me scared for forty-five years, but I've never let them know it yet." Then, in order to cheer Peter up and strengthen his nerves, he told how he, a runaway seaman, had been hunted thru the Everglades of Florida with bloodhounds, and tied to a tree and beaten into insensibility.

Then came David Andrews, whom Peter had heard of as one of the lawyers in the Goober case, a tall, distinguished-looking man with keen, alert features. What was such a man doing among these outcasts? Peter decided that he must be one of the shrewd ones who made money out of inciting the discontented. Then came a young girl, frail and sensitive, slightly crippled. As she crossed the room to shake his hand tears rolled down her cheeks, and Peter stood embarra.s.sed, wondering if she had just lost a near relative, and what was he to say about it. From her first words he gathered, to his great consternation, that she had been moved to tears by the story of what he himself had endured.

Ada Ruth was a poet, and this was a new type for Peter; after much groping in his mind he set her down for one of the dupes of the movement--a poor little sentimental child, with no idea of the wickedness by which she was surrounded. With her came a Quaker boy with pale, ascetic face and black locks which he had to shake back from his eyes every now and then; he wore a Windsor tie, and a black felt hat, and other marks of eccentricity and from his speeches Peter gathered that he was ready to blow up all the governments of the world in the interests of Pacificism. The same was true of McCormick, an I. W. W. leader who had just served sixty days in jail, a silent young Irishman with drawn lips and restless black eyes, who made Peter uneasy by watching him closely and saying scarcely a word.

Section 13

They continued to come, one at a time or in groups; old women and young women, old men and young men, fanatics and dreamers, agitators who could hardly open their mouths without some white-hot words escaping, revealing a blaze of pa.s.sion smouldering in the deeps of them. Peter became more and more uneasy, realizing that he was actually in the midst of all the most dangerous "Reds" of American City. They it was whom our law-abiding citizens dreaded, who were the objects of more concern to the police than all the plain, everyday burglars and bandits. Peter now could see the reason--he had not dreamed that such angry and hate-tormented people existed in the world. Such people would be capable of anything! He sat, with his restless eyes wandering from one face to another. Which one of this crowd had helped to set off the bomb? And would they boast about it to him this evening?

Peter half expected this; but then again, he wondered. They were such strange criminals! They called him "Comrade"; and they spoke with that same affection that had so bewildered him in little Jennie. Was this just a ruse to get his confidence, or did these people really think that they loved him--Peter Gudge, a stranger and a secret enemy? Peter had been at great pains to fool them; but they seemed to him so easy to fool that his pains were wasted. He despised them for this, and all the while he listened to them he was saying to himself, "The poor nuts!"

They had come to hear his story, and they plied him with questions, and made him tell over and over again every detail. Peter, of course, had been carefully instructed; he was not to mention the elaborate confession he had been made to sign; that would be giving too dangerous a weapon to these enemies of law and order. He must tell as brief a story as possible; how he had happened to be near the scene of the explosion, and how the police had tried to force him to admit that he knew something about the case. Peter told this, according to orders; but he had not been prepared for the minute questioning to which he was subjected by Andrews, the lawyer, aided by old John Durand, the leader of the seamen. They wanted to know everything that had been done to him, and who had done it, and how and when and where and why. Peter had a sense of the dramatic, and enjoyed being the center of attention and admiration, even tho it was from a roomful of criminal "Reds." So he told all the picturesque details of how Guffey had twisted his wrist and shut him in a dungeon; the memory of the pain was still poignant, and came out of him now, with a realism that would have moved a colder group.

So pretty soon here were all these women sobbing and raging. Little Ada Ruth became inspired, and began reciting a poem--or was she composing it right here, before his eyes? She seemed entranced with indignation. It was something about the workers arising--the outcry of a mob--

"No further patience with a heedless foe-- Get off our backs, or else to h.e.l.l you go!"

Peter listened, and thought to himself, "The poor nut!" And then Donald Gordon, the Quaker boy, took the floor, and began shaking his long black locks, and composing a speech, it seemed. And Peter listened, and thought again, "The poor nut!" Then another man, the editor of a labor journal, revealed the fact that he was composing an editorial; he knew Guffey, and was going to publish Guffey's picture, and brand him as an "Inquisitionist." He asked for Peter's picture, and Peter agreed to have one taken, and to be headlined as "The Inquisitionist's Victim." Peter had no idea what the long word meant; but he a.s.sented, and thought again, "The poor nut!" All of them were "nuts"--taking other people's troubles with such excitement!

But Peter was frightened, too; he couldn't altogether enjoy being a hero, in this vivid and startling fashion; having his name and fame spread from one end of the country to the other, so that organized labor might know the methods which the great traction interests of American City were employing to send a well-known labor leader to the gallows! The thing seemed to grow and grow before Peter's frightened eyes. Peter, the ant, felt the earth shaking, and got a sudden sense of the mountain size of the mighty giants who were stamping in combat over his head. Peter wondered, had Guffey realized what a stir his story would make, what a powerful weapon he was giving to his enemies? What could Guffey expect to get from Peter, to compensate for this damage to his own case? Peter, as he listened to the stormy oratory in the crowded little room, found himself thinking again and again of running away. He had never seen anything like the rage into which these people worked themselves, the terrible things they said, the denunciations, not merely of the police of American City, but of the courts and the newspapers, the churches and the colleges, everything that seemed respectable and sacred to law-abiding citizens like Peter Gudge.

Peter's fright became apparent. But why shouldn't he be frightened?

Andrews, the lawyer, offered to take him away and hide him, lest the opposition should try to make way with him. Peter would be a most important witness for the Goober defense, and they must take good care of him. But Peter recovered his self-possession, and took up his n.o.ble role. No, he would take his chances with the rest of them, he was not too much afraid.

Sadie Todd, the stenographer, rewarded him for his heroism. They had a spare bedroom in their little home, and if Peter cared to stay with them for a while, they would try to make him comfortable. Peter accepted this invitation, and at a late hour in the evening the gathering broke up. The various groups of "Reds" went their way, their hands clenched and their faces portraying a grim resolve to make out of Peter's story a means of lashing discontented labor to new frenzies of excitement. The men clasped Peter's hand cordially; the ladies gazed at him with soulful eyes, and whispered their admiration for his brave course, their hope, indeed their conviction, that he would stand by the truth to the end, and would study their ideas and join their "movement." All the while Peter watched them, and continued saying to himself: "The poor nuts!"

Section 14

The respectable newspapers of American City of course did not waste their s.p.a.ce upon fantastic accusations brought by radicals, charging the police authorities with using torture upon witnesses. But there was a Socialist paper published every week in American City, and this paper had a long account of Peter's experiences on the front page, together with his picture. Also there were three labor papers which carried the story, and the Goober Defense Committee prepared a circular about it and mailed out thousands of copies all over the country. This circular was written by Donald Gordon, the Quaker boy.

He brought Peter a proof of it, to make sure that he had got all the details right, and Peter read it, and really could not help being thrilled to discover what a hero he was. Peter had not said anything about his early career, and whoever among the Goober Defense Committee had learned those details chose to be diplomatically silent. Peter smiled to himself as he thought about that. They were foxy, these people! They were playing their hand for all it was worth--and Peter admired them for that. In Donald Gordon's narrative Peter appeared as a poor workingman; and Peter grinned. He was used to the word "working," but when he talked about "working people," he meant something different from what these Socialists meant.

The story went out, and of course all sorts of people wanted to meet Peter, and came to the home of the Todd girls. So Peter settled down to his job of finding out all he could about these visitors, their names and occupations, their relations to the radical movement.

Guffey had advised him not to make notes, for fear of detection, but Peter could not carry all this in his head, so he would retire to his room and make minute notes on slips of paper, and carefully sew these up in the lining of his coat, with a thrill of mystery.

Except for this note-taking, however, Peter's sleuthing was easy work, for these people all seemed eager to talk about what they were doing; sometimes it frightened Peter--they were so open and defiant!

Not merely did they express their ideas to one another and to him, they were expressing them on public platforms, and in their publications, in pamphlets and in leaflets--what they called "literature." Peter had had no idea their "movement" was so widespread or so powerful. He had expected to unearth a secret conspiracy, and perhaps a dynamite-bomb or two; instead of which, apparently, he was unearthing a volcano!

However, Peter did the best he could. He got the names and details about some forty or fifty people of all cla.s.ses; obscure workingmen and women, Jewish tailors, Russian and Italian cigar-workers, American-born machinists and printers; also some "parlor Reds"--large, immaculate and shining ladies who came rolling up to the little bungalow in large, immaculate and shining automobiles, and left their uniformed chauffeurs outside for hours at a time while they listened to Peter's story of his "third degree." One benevolent lady with a flowing gray veil, who wafted a sweet perfume about the room, suggested that Peter might be in need, and pressed a twenty dollar bill into his hand. Peter, thrilled, but also bewildered, got a new sense of the wonders of this thing called "the movement," and decided that when Guffey got thru with him he might turn into a "Red" in earnest for a while.

Meantime he settled down to make himself comfortable with the Todd sisters. Sadie went off to her work before eight o'clock every morning, and that was before Peter got up; but Jennie stayed at home, and fixed his breakfast, and opened the door for his visitors, and in general played the hostess for him. She was a confirmed invalid; twice a week she went off to a doctor to have something done to her spine, and the balance of the time she was supposed to be resting, but Peter very seldom saw her doing this. She was always addressing circulars, or writing letters for the "cause," or going off to sell literature and take up collections at meetings. When she was not so employed, she was arguing with somebody--frequently with Peter--trying to make him think as she did.

Poor kid, she was all wrought up over the notions she had got about the wrongs of the working cla.s.ses. She gave herself no peace about it, day or night, and this, of course, was a bore to Peter, who wanted peace above all things. Over in Europe millions of men were organized in armies, engaged in slaughtering one another. That, of course, was, very terrible, but what was the good of thinking about it? There was no way to stop it, and it certainly wasn't Peter's fault. But this poor, deluded child was acting all the time as if she were to blame for this European conflict, and had the job of bringing it to a close. The tears would come into her deep-set grey eyes, and her soft chin would quiver with pain whenever she talked about it; and it seemed to Peter she was talking about it all the time. It was her idea that the war must be stopped by uprisings on the part of the working people in Europe. Apparently she thought this might be hastened if the working people of American City would rise up and set an example!

Section 15

Jennie talked about this plan quite openly; she would put a red ribbon in her hair, and pin a red badge on her bosom, and go into meeting-places and sell little pamphlets with red covers. So, of course, it would be Peter's duty to report her to the head of the secret service of the Traction Trust. Peter regretted this, and was ashamed of having to do it; she was a nice little girl, and pretty, too, and a fellow might have had some fun with her if she had not been in such a hysterical state. He would sit and look at her, as she sat bent over her typewriter. She had soft, fluffy hair, the color of twilight, and even white teeth, and a faint flush that came and went in her cheeks--yes, she would not be bad looking at all, if only she would straighten up, and spend a little time on her looks, as other girls did.

But no, she was always in a tension, and the devil of it was, she was trying to get Peter into the same state. She was absolutely determined that Peter must get wrought up over the wrongs of the working cla.s.ses. She took it for granted that he would, when he was instructed. She would tell him harrowing stories, and it was his duty to be duly harrowed; he must be continually acting an emotional part. She would give him some of her "literature" to read, and then she would pin him down and make sure that he had read it. He knew how to read--Pericles Priam had seen to that, because he wanted him to attend to the printing of his circulars and his advertis.e.m.e.nts in the country newspapers where he was traveling. So now Peter was penned in a corner and compelled to fix his attention upon "The A.

B. C. of Socialism," or "Capital and Proletariat," or "The Path to Power."

Peter told himself that it was part of his job to acquire this information. He was going to be a "Red," and he must learn their lingo; but he found it awfully tiresome, full of long technical words which he had never heard before. Why couldn't these fellows at least talk American? He had known that there were Socialists, and also "Arnychists," as he called them, and he thought they were all alike. But now he learned, not merely about Socialists and "Arnychists," but about State Socialists and Communist Anarchists, and Communist Syndicalists and Syndicalist Anarchists and Socialist Syndicalists, and Reformist Socialists and Guild Socialists, to say nothing about Single Taxers and Liberals and Progressives and numerous other varieties, whom he had to meet and cla.s.sify and listen to respectfully and sympathetically. Each particular group insisted upon the distinctions which made it different, and each insisted that it had the really, truly truth; and Peter became desperately bored with their everlasting talk--how much more simple to lump them all together, as did Guffey and McGivney, calling them all "Reds!"

Peter had got it clearly fixed in his mind that what these "Reds"

wanted was to divide up the property of the rich. Everyone he had questioned about them had said this. But now he learned that this wasn't it exactly. What they wanted was to have the State take over the industries, or to have the labor unions do it, or to have the working people in general do it. They pointed to the post office and the army and the navy, as examples of how the State could run things. Wasn't that all right? demanded Jennie. And Peter said Yes, that was all right; but hidden back in Peter's soul all the time was a whisper that it wouldn't make a d.a.m.n bit of difference. There was a sucker born every minute, and you might be sure that no matter how they fixed it up, there would always be some that would find it easy to live off the rest. This poor kid, for example, who was ready to throw herself away for any fool notion, or for anybody that came along and told her a hard-luck story--would there ever be a state of society in which she wouldn't be a juicy morsel to be gobbled up by some fellow with a normal appet.i.te?

She was alone in the house all day with Peter, and she got to seem more and more pretty as he got to know her better. Also it was evident that she liked Peter more and more as Peter played his game.

Peter revealed himself as deeply sympathetic, and a quick convert to the cause; he saw everything that Jennie explained to him, he was horrified at the horrible stories, he was ready to help her end the European war by starting a revolution among the working people of American City. Also, he told her about himself, and awakened her sympathy for his harsh life, his twenty years of privation and servitude; and when she wept over this, Peter liked it. It was fine, somehow, to have her so sorry for him; it helped to compensate him for the boredom of hearing her be sorry for the whole working cla.s.s.

Peter didn't know whether Jennie had learned about his bad record, but he took no chances--he told her everything, and thus took the sting out of it. Yes, he had been trapped into evil ways, but it wasn't his fault, he hadn't known any better, he had been a pitiful victim of circ.u.mstances. He told how he had been starved and driven about and beaten by "Old Man" Drubb, and the tears glistened in Jennie's grey eyes and stole down her cheeks. He told about loneliness and heartsickness and misery in the orphan asylum. And how could he, poor lad, realize that it was wrong to help Pericles Priam sell his Peerless Pain Paralyzer? How could he know whether the medicine was any good or not--he didn't even know now, as a matter of fact. As for the Temple of Jimjambo, all that Peter had done was to wash dishes and work as a kitchen slave, as in any hotel or restaurant.

It was a story easy to fix up, and especially easy because the first article in the creed of Socialist Jennie was that economic circ.u.mstances were to blame for human frailties. That opened the door for all varieties of grafters, and made the child such an easy mark that Peter would have been ashamed to make a victim of her, had it not been that she happened to stand in the path of his higher purposes--and also that she happened to be young, only seventeen, with tender grey eyes, and tempting, sweet lips, alone there in the house all day.

Section 16

Peter's adventures in love had so far been pretty much of a piece with the rest of his life experiences; there had been hopes, and wonderful dreams, but very few realizations. Peter knew a lot about such matters; in the orphan asylum there were few vicious practices which he did not witness, few obscene imaginings with which he was not made familiar. Also, Pericles Priam had been a man like the traditional sailor, with a girl in every port; and generally in these towns and villages there had been no place for Peter to go save where Pericles went, so Peter had been the witness of many of his master's amours and the recipient of his confidences. But none of these girls and women had paid any attention to Peter. Peter was only a "kid"; and when he grew up and was no longer a kid, but a youth tormented with sharp desires, they still paid no attention to him--why should they? Peter was nothing; he had no position, no money, no charms; he was frail and undersized, his teeth were crooked, and one shoulder higher than the other. What could he expect from women and girls but laughter and rebuffs?

Then Peter moved on to the Temple of Jimjambo, and there a devastating experience befell him--he tumbled head over heels and agonizingly in love. There was a chambermaid in the inst.i.tution, a radiant creature from the Emerald Isles with hair like sunrise and cheeks like apples, and a laugh that shook the dish-pans on the kitchen walls. She laughed at Peter, she laughed at the major-domo, she laughed at all the men in the place who tried to catch her round the waist. Once or twice a month perhaps she would let them succeed, just to keep them interested, and to keep herself in practice.