The Dwelling Place of Light Part 36

"Why do you say that?"

"I will tell you. Because they are cold, most of them, and trivial, they do not feel. But you--you can feel, you can love and hate. You look calm and cold, but you are not--I knew it when I looked at you, when you came up to me."

She did not know whether to resent or welcome his clairvoyance, his a.s.sumption of intimacy, his air of appropriation. But her curiosity was tingling.

"And you?" she asked. "Your name is Rolfe, isn't it?"

He a.s.sented. "And yours?"

She told him.

"You have been in America long--your family?"

"Very long," she said. "But you speak Italian, and Rolfe isn't an Italian name."

"My father was an Englishman, an artist, who lived in Italy--my mother a peasant woman from Lombardy, such as these who come to work in the mills. When she was young she was beautiful--like a Madonna by an old master."

"An old master?"

"The old masters are the great painters who lived in Italy four hundred years ago. I was named after one of them--the greatest. I am called Leonard. He was Leonardo da Vinci."

The name, as Rolfe p.r.o.nounced it, stirred her. And art, painting! It was a realm unknown to her, and yet the very suggestion of it evoked yearnings. And she recalled a picture in the window of Hartmann's book-store, a coloured print before which she used to stop on her way to and from the office, the copy of a landscape by a California artist.

The steep hillside in the foreground was spread with the misty green of olive trees, and beyond--far beyond--a snow-covered peak, like some high altar, flamed red in the sunset. She had not been able to express her feeling for this picture, it had filled her with joy and sadness. Once she had ventured to enter and ask its price--ten dollars. And then came a morning when she had looked for it, and it was gone.

"And your father--did he paint beautiful pictures, too?"

"Ah, he was too much of a socialist. He was always away whey I was a child, and after my mother's death he used to take me with him. When I was seventeen we went to Milan to take part in the great strike, and there I saw the soldiers shooting down the workers by the hundreds, putting them in prison by the thousands. Then I went to live in England, among the socialists there, and I learned the printer's trade. When I first came to this country I was on a labour paper in New York, I set up type, I wrote articles, and once in a while I addressed meetings on the East Side. But even before I left London I had read a book on Syndicalism by one of the great Frenchmen, and after a while I began to realize that the proletariat would never get anywhere through socialism."

"The proletariat?" The word was new to Janet's ear.

"The great ma.s.s of the workers, the oppressed, the people you saw here to-day. Socialism is not for them. Socialism--political socialism--betrays them into the hands of the master cla.s.s. Direct action is the thing, the general strike, war,--the new creed, the new religion that will bring salvation. I joined the Industrial Workers of the World that is the American organization of Syndicalism. I went west, to Colorado and California and Oregon, I preached to the workers wherever there was an uprising, I met the leaders, Ritter and Bork.u.m and Antonelli and Jastro and Nellie Bond, I was useful to them, I understand Syndicalism as they do not. And now we are here, to sow the seed in the East. Come," he said, slipping his arm through hers, "I will take you to Headquarters, I will enlist you, you shall be my recruit. I will give you the cause, the religion you need."

She longed to go, and yet she drew back, puzzled. The man fired and fascinated her, but there were reservations, apprehensions concerning him, felt rather than reasoned. Because of her state of rebellion, of her intense desire to satisfy in action the emotion aroused by a sense of wrong, his creed had made a violent appeal, but in his voice, in his eyes, in his manner she had been quick to detect a personal, s.e.xual note that disturbed and alarmed her, that implied in him a lack of unity.

"I can't, to-night," she said. "I must go home--my mother is all alone.

But I want to help, I want to do something."

They were standing on a corner, under a street lamp. And she averted her eyes from his glance.

"Then come to-morrow," he said eagerly. "You know where Headquarters is, in the Franco-Belgian Hall?"

"What could I do?" she asked.

"You? You could help in many ways--among the women. Do you know what picketing is?"

"You mean keeping the operatives out of the mills?"

"Yes, in the morning, when they go to work. And out of the Chippering Mill, especially. Ditmar, the agent of that mill, is the ablest of the lot, I'm told. He's the man we want to cripple."

"Cripple!" exclaimed Janet.

"Oh, I don't mean to harm him personally." Rolfe did not seem to notice her tone. "But he intends to crush the strike, and I understand he's importing scabs here to finish out an order--a big order. If it weren't for him, we'd have an easier fight; he stiffens up the others. There's always one man like that, in every place. And what we want to do is to make him shut down, especially."

"I see," said Janet.

"You'll come to Headquarters?" Rolfe repeated.

"Yes, I'll come, to-morrow," she promised.

After she had left him she walked rapidly through several streets, not heeding her direction--such was the driving power of the new ideas he had given her. Certain words and phrases he had spoken rang in her head, and like martial music kept pace with her steps. She strove to remember all that he had said, to grasp its purport; and because it seemed recondite, cosmic, it appealed to her and excited her the more. And he, the man himself, had exerted a kind of hypnotic force that partially had paralyzed her faculties and aroused her fears while still in his presence: her first feeling in escaping had been one of relief--and then she began to regret not having gone to Headquarters. Hadn't she been foolish? In the retrospect, the elements in him that had disturbed her were less disquieting, his intellectual fascination was enhanced: and in that very emanc.i.p.ation from cant and convention, characteristic of the Order to which he belonged, had lain much of his charm. She had attracted him as a woman, there was no denying that. He, who had studied and travelled and known life in many lands, had discerned in her, Janet b.u.mpus, some quality to make him desire her, acknowledge her as a comrade! Tremblingly she exulted in the possession of that quality--whatever it might be. Ditmar, too, had perceived it! He had not known how to value it. With this thought came a flaming suggestion--Ditmar should see her with this man Rolfe, she would make him scorch with the fires of jealousy. Ditmar should know that she had joined his enemies, the Industrial Workers of the World. Of the world!

Her shackles had been cast off at last!... And then, suddenly, she felt tired. The prospect of returning to Fillmore Street, to the silent flat--made the more silent by her mother's tragic presence--overwhelmed her. The ache in her heart began to throb again. How could she wait until the dawn of another day?...

In the black hours of the morning, with the siren dinning in her ears a hoa.r.s.e call to war, Janet leaped from her bed and began to dress. There is a degree of cold so sharp that it seems actually to smell, and as she stole down the stairs and out of the door she shivered, a.s.sailed by a sense of loneliness and fear. Yet an insistent voice urged her on, whispering that to remain at home, inactive, was to go mad; salvation and relief lay in plunging into the struggle, in contributing her share toward retribution and victory. Victory! In Faber Street the light of the electric arcs tinged the snow with blue, and the flamboyant advertis.e.m.e.nts of breakfast foods, cigarettes and ales seemed but the mockery of an activity now unrealizable. The groups and figures scattered here and there farther down the street served only to exaggerate its wide emptiness. What could these do, what could she accomplish against the mighty power of the mills? Gradually, as she stood gazing, she became aware of a beating of feet upon the snow; over her shoulder she caught the gleam of steel. A squad of soldiers m.u.f.fled in heavy capes and woolen caps was marching along the car-tracks. She followed them. At the corner of West Street, in obedience to a sharp command she saw them halt, turn, and advance toward a small crowd gathered there. It scattered, only to collect again when the soldiers had pa.s.sed on. Janet joined them. She heard men cursing the soldiers.

The women stood a little aside; some were stamping to keep warm, and one, with a bundle in her arms which Janet presently perceived to be a child, sank down on a stone step and remained there, crouching, resigned.

"We gotta right to stay here, in the street. We gotta right to live, I guess." The girl's teeth were chattering, but she spoke with such vehemence and spirit as to attract Janet's attention. "You worked in the Chippering, like me--yes?" she asked.

Janet nodded. The faded, lemon-coloured shawl the girl had wrapped about her head emphasized the dark beauty of her oval face. She smiled, and her white teeth were fairly dazzling. Impulsively she thrust her arm through Janet's.

"You American--you comrade, you come to help?" she asked.

"I've never done any picketing."

"I showa you."

The dawn had begun to break, revealing little by little the outlines of cruel, ugly buildings, the great mill looming darkly at the end of the street, and Janet found it scarcely believable that only a little while ago she had hurried thither in the mornings with antic.i.p.ation and joy in her heart, eager to see Ditmar, to be near him! The sight of two policemen hurrying toward them from the direction of the ca.n.a.l aroused her. With sullen murmurs the group started to disperse, but the woman with the baby, numb with cold, was slow in rising, and one of the policemen thrust out his club threateningly.

"Move on, you can't sit here," he said.

With a lithe movement like the spring of a cat the Italian girl flung herself between them--a remarkable exhibition of spontaneous inflammability; her eyes glittered like the points of daggers, and, as though they had been dagger points, the policeman recoiled a little. The act, which was absolutely natural, superb, electrified Janet, restored in an instant her own fierceness of spirit. The girl said something swiftly, in Italian, and helped the woman to rise, paying no more attention to the policeman. Janet walked on, but she had not covered half the block before she was overtaken by the girl; her anger had come and gone in a flash, her vivacity had returned, her vitality again found expression in an abundant good nature and good will. She asked Janet's name, volunteering the information that her own was Gemma, that she was a "fine speeder" in the Chippering Mill, where she had received nearly seven dollars a week. She had been among the first to walk out.

"Why did you walk out?" asked Janet curiously.

"Why? I get mad when I know that my wages is cut. I want the money--I get married."

"Is that why you are striking?" asked Janet curiously.

"That is why--of course."

"Then you haven't heard any of the speakers? They say it is for a cause--the workers are striking for freedom, some day they will own the mills. I heard a man named Rolfe yesterday--"

The girl gave her a radiant smile.

"Rolfe! It is beautiful, what Rolfe said. You think so? I think so. I am for the cause, I hate the capitalist. We will win, and get more money, until we have all the money. We will be rich. And you, why do you strike?"

"I was mad, too," Janet replied simply.

"Revenge!" exclaimed the girl, glittering again. "I understan'. Here come the scabs! Now I show you."