The Case and Exceptions Part 27

I glanced towards the door, and saw a man standing with his hand on the door-k.n.o.b. His tall figure was so slight as to be almost emaciated, and his clean though threadbare clothing hung loosely, as if it had once fitted a far stouter frame. His face was refined, and had that look of calmness which now and again follows some great storm of mind and rack of body. The skin was drawn tightly over the cheek bones, making the eyes seem disproportionately large in their sunken sockets. His mouth and chin were strong, and the prominent, slightly hooked nose gave the clean-shaven face a sternness which contrasted rather oddly with his abundant light-yellow hair.

He closed the door, moved to the table, and seated himself at it near the centre of the room. Almost every eye had been fixed upon him as he entered, but no greetings were given, and the interest in the newcomer flagged the moment he opened a book and began to read.

"Who is he?" I ventured to ask my neighbour.

"Schrieber," he replied, and then in a bored tone, as though remembering my greenness--"the fellow who's been talkin' at the lodgin'-houses for the last two weeks or so--at the 'Crescent,' and the 'Owl,' and the 'American,' and all of 'em."

I desisted from asking the further questions that immediately suggested themselves, for my informant turned his back on me and rested his head on the table, as though to discourage further conversation.

"Here comes Bill Nevins," announced the man opposite, but just whom he addressed could not be gathered from the faces around me. His remark, however, referred to an individual who entered with a "Howdy!" directed to the room in general.

"Cold morning, boys!" he exclaimed, as he walked towards the stove rubbing his hands together.

No one responded, but this did not seem to affect the speaker, who stood smiling cheerfully at the crowd, with his back to the red-hot stove. A healthy, well-fed, kindly-looking man, with vigour in his limbs and character in his genial face, he looked like some good-natured priest or head-groom.

"What's the news, Bill?" called out a man with his chair tipped against the wall.

"Well, they strike to-morrow at noon, unless the companies concede something, but, as everybody knows they won't, I might just as well say--they strike to-morrow at noon."

The voice was clear and the tone cheery, though decisive. All the newspapers seemed to have been drained of their contents, for everyone was staring at the speaker--some with interest, others listlessly. But no answer or comment greeted the news.--The silence was solemn or absurd--one scarcely knew which.

"And as this strike's on," continued Nevins, "the question for us is--will we aid the men, or help to defeat 'em? If we want to beat 'em, we've just got to take the places they're givin' up. Things has got to be pretty bad when a working-man leaves his job these days--you know that--so there's no use discussin' why they strike. Of course you know the answer of these car companies, and all other companies--'supply and demand.' And I'll tell you what rules the 'supply and demand.'--It's the supply of stock and the demand for dividends. It's greed that makes this demand, and it's poverty and sickness, and many mouths to feed, that makes the supply. It's greed, and not decent compet.i.tion, that milks the companies and busts them, and drags men down to lower wages, or throws them out of work altogether. What we've got to do is to demonstrate which side we're on. If we're for the men, we must stand off and persuade others to do the like; and if we're for our children, we must do the same thing. But if we don't give a d.a.m.n either for our own people or anybody else, we'd better go and take the places until the companies decide on the next reduction!"

The determination in his voice would have been fierce but for the smile accompanying the words. Half-m.u.f.fled applause and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of approval could be heard from different parts of the room.

The man Schrieber looked up, his glance travelling from one face to another down the long room until it reached Bill Nevins and settled on him with an intensity that compelled an answering glance.

"You say, my friend," he began slowly, "we must demonstrate on which side we stand. So say I. We must demonstrate--but not by waiting. We must make a great spectacle--but not by idle tableaux. You think you will compel these rich corporations to give in to these men by withholding your services? It is an empty dream. There will come other men from other places--you cannot prevent them from coming or the companies from hiring them. The disease is body-spread--you cannot doctor it locally. The longer we sit idle the fiercer will the disease ravage, the deeper will it enter. Idle waiting will not do,--no, nor throwing stones. That will only make a holiday for the militia--stories for their armouries--child's play, forgotten by the children when the game is over. It does not turn the attention of prosperous humanity towards its suffering brothers, but it gives a pretext for 'man's inhumanity to man.' It only costs a little money--a very little money--easily saved by the corporations in the decreased wages, and made up to the State by increased taxation. It will not do, I tell you. We need a much bigger and a dearer demonstration."

The speaker had risen, and was gazing into the faces of his auditors.

As he paused and brushed the light hair away from his eyes, the air disturbed by the movement sent the smoke cloud blowing about his head.

"Now, that's just what we don't want, Schrieber!" broke in Nevins impatiently. "You go 'round raisin' a row and gettin' up a riot, and you'll turn all the sympathy of the press and the public against the people we're tryin' to help."

The man did not reply at once, but stood gazing at the labour leader as though struggling to keep back some retort.

"You do not understand me," he said at length--"I counsel no violence--I do not advocate riot. But not because I fear to lose the sympathy of the press and the public. You have had that, and with what result? Aren't wages lower than ever, and isn't work more difficult to get every day we live? And who is your 'public'? The few well-to-do who never think unless their comfort's disturbed? I tell you the real public is the many poor, the constantly increasing poor, and not the few rich! Your demonstration must teach the rich to think--it must redeem the poor from themselves!"

His glance turned from the faces before him, and seemed to centre beyond and above them. The listening men drew closer to the speaker. The room was so still I could hear the empty cable rattling in the street below.

"It is an awful disease--a disease of the blood--to be cured by blood--the only price the rich cannot afford to pay--blood, the redemption of the world throughout all generations--the blood of the Lamb."

He spoke the words dreamily, as though to himself. Then, with gathering energy and rapidity--

"Wait as you have waited, and you will see the disease spread--the public you are trying to reach grow blind to your affliction, deaf to your cries. Riot, and you will only lend virtue to oppression and injustice. The hour is at hand for a great sacrifice--the time is ripe for redemption. The public you would propitiate fears death--loathes blood. For these alone will it stop and think--all else touches only what money can cure. But death arrests--blood you cannot buy. Make them take what they cannot return--make them shed blood they cannot wash out.

No, not with their tears!"

He paused again and gazed into the faces half hid by the smoky atmosphere. Mystic, dreamer, lunatic--what you will,--he held the men in weird fascination. They crouched, rather than sat before him. Had he spoken in whispers, not a word would have been lost. His eyes shone with a new light, and his voice softened as he continued:

"We are on the verge of another battle in the great conflict over the right to live. Battles without number have been fought in this conflict--blood without stint has been poured upon its fields.--With what result? Here, in this land of plenty, the hosts are gathering for a contest of such magnitude that, compared to it, all former conflicts will seem mere skirmishes. Why? Because the sword never has touched, and never can touch, the soul of man--because blood not shed in consecration cannot heal. The eyes of the world must look upon a blameless death-devotion to a cause. If I am mad, it is a madness learned of Christ. Are your lives so valuable that you fear to lose them? Is death a terror to you who die daily? Humanity bleeds from every pore--do you shudder at blood? Civilisation calls upon you, her outcasts, for salvation. Will you answer her--you who, here in the City of New York, see the rich digging a gulf between themselves and the poor--a gulf that may be a grave for countless thousands--a trench for oceans of blood that a few drops shed now may save? We must demonstrate which side we are on--we must make a great spectacle! I want volunteers for death--volunteers for the death that redeems!"

With hands spread out in appeal--the fine head thrown back--he stood like the shade of some great Being encircled by the mists of unreality.

From out of the smoke there staggered and stumbled toward him a man who grasped the outstretched hand--

"I volunteer!" he cried.

Schrieber's calm face bespoke a benediction.

"My brother," he answered, simply.

The recruit was Sandy McWhiffle.

I started to my feet with a cry of protest on my lips, but the great smoke bank above seemed suddenly to descend and envelop me, choking and stifling me. For a moment I fought it, gasping for breath, but only drawing the foul air deeper down into my lungs. Then I remembered nothing more. They said at the hospital it was nicotine poisoning.

V.

For some days--just how many I don't remember--I had been in the condition which often follows sudden illness, when the mind is groping about to connect things one with another, and to adjust relative values.

But I was not delirious. I want to state that distinctly, because when, like a fool, I told the stripling hospital doctor what I am now about to relate, he smiled in sickly imitation of the veteran pract.i.tioner, and soothingly patted my counterpane. It makes me wild, even now, to recall that superior youth pretending to humour me--a grown man with a clear head and more experience than will be his in many a long year. The nurses are all right--G.o.d bless them, I say--but, good Lord, what do the sick in the hospitals not suffer from the tactless wisdom of the embryo physicians!

However, that's neither here nor there, so I simply repeat I never was delirious, and when I say I saw these things, I know what I am talking about.

I lay perfectly still because I was tired. I don't remember ever to have been so tired before or since.--Occasionally I dozed, but for the most part I gazed steadily, hour after hour, at the bra.s.s setting of the push-bell in the wall, too weary even to avert my gaze. I knew the room was a ward of some hospital, but I was too indifferent to ask which one.

I could see the nurses pa.s.sing back and forth. I felt one of them resettle my pillow, which allowed me to observe a screen placed around the adjoining bed. I knew what that meant. It was not cheerful, so I turned again to the bra.s.s disk and watched it in sunlight, shadow, twilight and darkness.

I was conscious too of all the different sounds about me--the stopping and starting of the elevator--the sliding and locking of its iron door--the rolling of the rubber-tire trucks about the halls--the creaking of a bed--the tinkle of a gla.s.s--the rattle and clatter of vehicles and horses in the street--even the peculiar rumble, rumble, rumble of the cart that pa.s.sed the hospital and which I took to following through street after street, twisting and turning with it past towering tenements and squatting rookeries, plodding along under the broken roofs of the hissing elevated roads and over the singing trenches of the cables--through wide avenues and narrow alleys, until I found myself fairly launched into the sea of faces which spread out before me.

What a crowd that was! It is impossible to imagine such a scene. All the descriptions they've written fail to picture it, for the flaring lights with their play of shadows changed it every instant, darkening one group, illuminating another, running up and down lines of faces, flashing some individual into prominence for an instant, blotting him into the surging ma.s.s the next. And then the hum and mutter, rising to a babel of voices,--swelling into a shout, bursting with the shock of a world-tongued roar ending in a single piercing shriek, and the hush--the awful hush as Schrieber spoke his wondrous words--they're all part of this tableau utterly beyond the power of pen or brush.

I stood there pinioned and upheld by the press about me which silently surged and swung with the motion of some sluggish sea. I felt the human steam hot upon my face--I breathed the fearful reek of that matted throng, but not for my life would I have missed one word of that which hushed those thousands. Pale and impa.s.sive I could see Sandy as he stood beside Schrieber on the tail-board of the cart. Once I thought he recognised me, but wedged in I could not signal, and the words I drank in held me speechless. What words!--If I could only remember them! But I cannot--and all the papers lie.

I heard them above the roar of the maddened crowd as it parted behind me, crushing some and trampling others under foot in its wild stampede.

I saw the rush of uniformed men clearing the triangle back of Cooper Union and was hurled with the throng to Third Avenue. Then I heard Schrieber calling on us to form a procession and march to the Mayor's house with our pet.i.tion--heard him tell the Chief of Police that all should be orderly--heard the official warn the people not to cross Third Avenue at the peril of their lives.--I saw the dead-line formed and felt the onward surge of the crowd as it swept the thin sentry-line away and moved toward Broadway. I saw the glitter of levelled rifles as we neared the c.o.x statue, felt the ma.s.s hesitate and recoil. Then from out the ranks I saw Schrieber and Sandy emerge and start to cross the open s.p.a.ce alone. I caught the sharp summons to halt, and even as I leaped toward them heard the crash of the volley before which they staggered and fell.

"Sandy!" I shrieked....

... "Sandy. Yes--that's the name.--Who said that?--Sandy McWhiffle and the fellow Schrieber--they're under arrest, you know, Mr.

Superintendent,--and the Inspector orders me to take their statements,--me and my side partner here."

A strange voice was speaking quite near me.

"Well, you can't do it, Officer. Neither patient can be seen to-night."

Was that Waldron's voice?

"Can't do it? What's that mean? Me tell the Old Man that? Step one side please!--I guess you don't know who I'm from!"

"Then you guess wrong, my man. They're your prisoners, but they're my patients, and, by G.o.d Almighty, so long as they are, it makes no difference whom you come from!"