The Conflict Part 25

Victor paused, reflecting. "What?" asked Selma eagerly.

"I suspect that he thinks he has us." He rose, preparing to go out.

"Well--if he has--why, he has. And we shall have to begin all over again."

"How stupid they are!" exclaimed the girl. "To fight us who are simply trying to bring about peaceably and sensibly what's bound to come about anyhow."

"Yes--the rain is bound to come," said Victor. "And we say, 'Here's an umbrella and there's the way to shelter.' And they laugh at OUR umbrella and, with the first drops plashing on their foolish faces, deny that it's going to rain."

The Workingmen's League, always first in the field with its ticket, had been unusually early that year. Although it was only the first week in August and the election would not be until the third of October, the League had nominated. It was a ticket made up entirely of skilled workers who had lived all their lives in Remsen City and who had acquired an independence--Victor Dorn was careful not to expose to the falling fire of the opposition any of his men who could be ruined by the loss of a job or could be compelled to leave town in search of work. The League always went early into campaign because it pursued a much slower and less expensive method of electioneering than either of the old parties--or than any of the "upper cla.s.s" reform parties that sprang up from time to time and died away as they accomplished or failed of their purpose--securing recognition for certain personal ambitions not agreeable to the old established bosses. Besides, the League was, like the bosses and their henchmen, in politics every day in every year. The League theory was that politics was as much a part of a citizen's daily routine as his other work or his meals.

It was the night of the League's great ratification meeting. The next day the first campaign number--containing the biographical sketch of Tony Rivers, Kelly's right-hand man ... would go upon the press, and on the following day it would reach the public.

Market Square in Remsen City was on the edge of the power quarter, was surrounded by cheap hotels, boarding houses and saloons. A few years before, the most notable citizens, market basket on arm, could have been seen three mornings in the week, making the rounds of the stalls and stands, both those in the open and those within the Market House.

But customs had rapidly changed in Remsen City, and with the exception of a few old fogies only the poorer cla.s.ses went to market. The masters of houses were becoming gentlemen, and the housewives were elevating into ladies--and it goes without saying that no gentleman and no lady would descend to a menial task even in private, much less in public.

Market Square had even become too common for any but the inferior meetings of the two leading political parties. Only the Workingmen's League held to the old tradition that a political meeting of the first rank could be properly held nowhere but in the natural a.s.sembling place of the people--their market. So, their first great rally of the campaign was billed for Market Square. And at eight o'clock, headed by a large and vigorous drum corps, the Victor Dorn cohorts at their full strength marched into the centre of the Square, where one of the stands had been transformed with flags, bunting and torches into a speaker's platform. A crowd of many thousands accompanied and followed the procession. Workingmen's League meetings were popular, even among those who believed their interests lay elsewhere. At League meetings one heard the plain truth, sometimes extremely startling plain truth.

The League had no favors to ask of anybody, had nothing to conceal, was strongly opposed to any and all political concealments. Thus, its speakers enjoyed a freedom not usual in political speaking--and Dorn and his fellow-leaders were careful that no router, no exaggerator or well intentioned wild man of any kind should open his mouth under a league banner. THAT was what made the League so dangerous--and so steadily prosperous.

The chairman, Thomas Colman, the cooper, was opening the meeting in a speech which was an instance of how well a man of no platform talent can acquit himself when he believes something and believes it is his duty to convey it to his fellow-men. Victor Dorn, to be the fourth speaker and the orator of the evening, was standing at the rear of the platform partially concealed by the crowd of men and women leaders of the party grouped behind Colman. As always at the big formal demonstrations of the League, Victor was watching every move. This evening his anxiety was deeper than ever before. His trained political sagacity warned him that, as he had suggested to Selma, the time of his party's first great crisis was at hand. No movement could become formidable with out a life and death struggle, when its aim frankly was to s.n.a.t.c.h power from the dominant cla.s.s and to place it where that cla.s.s could not hope to prevail either by direct means of force or by its favorite indirect means of bribery. What would Kelly do? What would be his stroke at the very life of the League?--for Victor had measured Kelly and knew he was not one to strike until he could destroy.

Like every competent man of action, Victor had measured his own abilities, and had found that they were to be relied upon. But the contest between him and Kelly--the contest in the last ditch--was so appallingly unequal. Kelly had the courts and the police, the moneyed cla.s.s, the employers of labor, had the clergy and well-dressed respectability, the newspapers, all the customary arbiters of public sentiment. Also, he had the criminal and the semi-criminal cla.s.ses.

And what had the League?

The letter of the law, guaranteeing freedom of innocent speech and action, guaranteeing the purity of the ballot--no, not guaranteeing, but simply a.s.serting those rights, and leaving the upholding of them to--Kelly's allies and henchmen! Also, the League had the power of between a thousand and fifteen hundred intelligent and devoted men and about the same number of women--a solid phalanx of great might, of might far beyond its numbers. Finally, it had Victor Dorn. He had no mean opinion of his value to the movement; but he far and most modestly underestimated it. The human way of rallying to an abstract principle is by way of a standard bearer--a man--personality--a real or fancied incarnation of the ideal to be struggled for. And to the Workingmen's League, to the movement for conquering Remsen City for the ma.s.s of its citizens, Victor Dorn was that incarnation.

Kelly could use violence--violence disguised as law, violence candidly and brutally lawless. Victor Dorn could only use lawful means--clearly and cautiously lawful means. He must at all costs prevent the use of force against him and his party--must give Kelly no pretext for using the law lawlessly. If Kelly used force against him, whether the perverted law of the courts or open lawlessness, he must meet it with peace. If Kelly smote him on the right cheek he must give him the left to be smitten.

When the League could outvote Kelly, then--another policy, still of calmness and peace and civilization, but not so meek. But until the League could outvote Kelly, nothing but patient endurance.

Every man in the League had been drilled in this strategy. Every man understood--and to be a member of the League meant that one was politically educated. Victor believed in his a.s.sociates as he believed in himself. Still, human nature was human nature. If Kelly should suddenly offer some adroit outrageous provocation--would the League be able to resist?

Victor, on guard, studied the crowd spreading out from the platform in a gigantic fan. Nothing there to arouse suspicion; ten or twelve thousand of working cla.s.s men and women. His glance pushed on out toward the edges of the crowd--toward the saloons and alleys of the disreputable south side of Market Square. His glance traveled slowly along, pausing upon each place where these loungers, too far away to hear, were gathered into larger groups. Why he did not know, but suddenly his glance wheeled to the right, and then as suddenly to the left--the west and the east ends of the square. There, on either side he recognized, in the farthest rim of the crowd, several of the men who did Kelly's lowest kinds of dirty work--the brawlers, the repeaters, the leaders of gangs, the false witnesses for petty corporation damage cases. A second glance, and he saw or, perhaps, divined--purpose in those sinister presences. He looked for the police--the detail of a dozen bluecoats always a.s.signed to large open-air meetings. Not a policeman was to be seen.

Victor pushed through the crowd on the platform, advanced to the side of Colman. "Just a minute, Tom," he said. "I've got to say a word--at once."

Colman had fallen back; Victor Dorn was facing the crowd--HIS crowd--the men and women who loved him. In the clear, friendly, natural voice that marked him for the leader born, the honest leader of an honest cause, he said:

"My friends, if there is an attempt to disturb this meeting, remember what we of the League stand for. No violence. Draw away from every disturber, and wait for the police to act. If the police stop our meeting, let them--and be ready to go to court and testify to the exact words of the speaker on which the meeting was stopped. Remember, we must be more lawful than the law itself!"

He was turning away. A cheer was rising--a belated cheer, because his words had set them all to thinking and to observing. From the left of the crowd, a dozen yards away from the platform, came a stone heavily rather than swiftly flung, as from an impeded hand. In full view of all it curved across the front of the platform and struck Victor Dorn full in the side of the head.

He threw up his hands.

"Boys--remember!" he shouted with a terrible energy--then, he staggered forward and fell from the platform into the crowd.

The stone was a signal. As it flew, into the crowd from every direction the Beech Hollow gangs tore their way, yelling and cursing and striking out right and left--trampling children, knocking down women, pouring out the foulest insults. The street lamps all round Market Square went out, the torches on the platform were torn down and extinguished. And in a dimness almost pitch dark a riot that involved that whole ma.s.s of people raged hideously. Yells and screams and groans, the shrieks of women, the piteous appeals of children--benches torn up for weapons--mad slashing about--snarls and singings of pain-stricken groups--then police whistles, revolvers fired in the air, and the quick, regular tramp of disciplined forces. The police--strangely ready, strangely inactive until the mischief had all been done entered the square from the north and, forming a double line across it from east to west, swept it slowly clean. The fighting ended as abruptly as it had begun. Twenty minutes after the flight of that stone, the square was empty save a group of perhaps fifty men and women formed about Victor Dorn's body in the shelter of the platform.

Selma Gordon was holding his head. Jane Hastings and Ellen Clearwater were kneeling beside him, and Jane was wiping his face with a handkerchief wet with whisky from the flask of the man who had escorted them there.

"He is only stunned," said Selma. "I can feel the beat of his blood.

He is only stunned."

A doctor came, got down on his knees, made a rapid examination with expert hands. As he felt, one of the relighted torches suddenly lit up Victor's face and the faces of those bending over him.

"He is only stunned, Doctor," said Selma.

"I think so," replied the doctor.

"We left our carriage in the side street just over there," said Jane Hastings. "It will take him to the hospital."

"No--home," said Selma, who was calm. "He must be taken home."

"The hospital is the place for him," said the doctor.

"No--home," repeated Selma. She glanced at the men standing round.

"Tom--Henry--and you, Ed--help me lift him."

"Please, Selma," whispered Jane. "Let him be taken to the hospital."

"Among our enemies?" said Selma with a strange and terrible little laugh. "Oh, no. After this, we trust no one. They may have arranged to finish this night's work there. He goes home--doesn't he, boys?"

"That's right, Miss Gordon," replied one of them.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Here's where I drop the case,"

said he.

"Nothing of the kind," cried Jane imperiously. "I am Jane Hastings--Martin Hastings' daughter. You will come with us, please--or I shall see to it that you are not let off easily for such a shameful neglect of duty."

"Let him go, Jane," said Selma. "There will be a doctor waiting. And he is only stunned. Come, boys--lift him up."

They laid him on a bench top, softened with the coats of his followers.

At the carriage, standing in Farwell Street, they laid him across the two seats. Selma got in with him. Tom Colman climbed to the box beside the coachman. Jane and Miss Clearwater, their escorts and about a score of the Leaguers followed on foot. As the little procession turned into Warner Street it was stopped by a policeman.

"Can't go down this way," he said.

"It's Mr. Dorn. We're taking him home. He was hurt," explained Colman.

"Fire lines. Street's closed," said the policeman gruffly.

Selma thrust her head out. "We must get him home----"

"House across the street burning--and probably his house, too," cut in the policeman. "He's been raising h.e.l.l--he has. But it's coming home to him at last. Take him to the hospital."

"Jane," cried Selma, "make this man pa.s.s us!"

Jane faced the policeman, explained who she was. He became humbly civil at once. "I've just told her, ma'am," said he, "that his house is burning. The mob's gutting the New Day office and setting fire to everything."

"My house is in the next street," said Colman. "Drive there. Some of you people get Dr. Charlton--and everything. Get busy. Whip up, driver. Here, give me the lines!"