The Walking Delegate Part 27

"Yes."

"Very well. Then I'll want you to leave to-morrow."

Tom started. "Leave?"

"Yes. Didn't I mention that the job is in Chicago?"

Mr. Baxter watched Tom closely out of his steely gray eyes. He saw the flush die out of Tom's face, saw Tom's clasped hands suddenly tighten--and knew his answer before he spoke.

"I can't do it," he said with an effort. "I can't leave New York."

Mr. Baxter studied Tom's face an instant longer.... But it was too honest.

He turned toward his desk with a gentle abruptness. "I am very sorry, Mr. Keating. Good-day."

With Mr. Baxter there was small s.p.a.ce between actions. He had already decided upon his course in case this plan should fail. Tom was scarcely out of his office before he was writing a note to Buck Foley.

Foley sauntered in the next morning, hands in overcoat pockets, a cigar in one corner of his mouth. "What's this I hear about a strike?" Mr.

Baxter asked, as soon as the walking delegate was seated.

"Don't youse waste none o' the thinks in your brain-box on no strike,"

returned Foley. He had early discovered Mr. Baxter's dislike of uncouth expressions.

"But there's a great deal of serious talk."

"There's always wind comin' out o' men's mouths."

Mr. Baxter showed not a trace of the irritation he felt.

"Is there going to be a strike?"

"Not if I know myself. And I think I do." He blew out a great cloud of smoke.

"But one of your men--a Mr. Keating--is stirring one up."

"He thinks he is," Foley corrected. "But he's got another think comin'.

He's a fellow youse ought to know, Baxter. Nice an' cultivated; G.o.d-fearin' an' otherwise harmless."

Mr. Baxter's face tightened. "I know, Mr. Foley, that this situation is much more serious than you pretend," he said sharply.

Foley tilted back in his chair. "If youse seen a lion comin' at youse with a yard or so of open mouth youse'd think things was gettin' a little serious. But if youse knew the lion'd never make its last jump, youse wouldn't go into the occupation o' throwin' fits, now would youse?"

"What do you mean?"

"Nothin'. Only there'll be no last jump for Keating."

"How's that?"

"How? That's my business." He stood up, relit his cigar, striking the match on the sole of his shoe. "Results is what youse's after. The how belongs to me."

At the door he paused, half closed one eye, and slowly blew forth the smoke of his cigar. "Now don't get brain-f.a.g," he said.

Chapter XVI

BLOWS

It was about half past twelve when Tom left Mr. Baxter's office. As he came purposeless into the street it occurred to him that he was but a few blocks from the office of Mr. Driscoll, and in the same instant his chance meeting with Ruth three weeks before as she came out to lunch flashed across his memory. He turned his steps in the direction of Mr.

Driscoll's office, and on gaining the block it was in walked slowly back and forth on the opposite side of the street, eagerly watching the revolving door of the great building. At length she appeared. Tom started quickly toward her. Another quarter revolution of the door and a man was discharged at her side. The man was Mr. Berman; and they walked off together, he turning upon her glances whose meaning Tom's quickened instinct divined at once.

The sight of these two together, Mr. Berman's eyes upon her with an unmistakable look, struck him through with jagged pain. He was as a man whose sealed vision an oculist's knife has just released. Amid startled anguish his eyes suddenly opened to things he, in his blindness, had never guessed. He saw what she had come to mean to him. This was so great that, at first, it well-nigh obscured all else. She filled him,--her sympathy, her intelligence, her high womanliness. And she, she that filled him, was ... only a great pain.

And then (he had mechanically followed them, and now stood watching the door within which they had disappeared--the door through which he had gone with her three weeks before) he saw, his pain writhing within him the while, the double hopelessness of his love: she was educated, cultured--she could care nothing for a mere workman; and even if she could care, he was bound.

And then (he was now moving slowly through the Broadway crowd, scarcely conscious of it) he saw how poor he was in his loveless married life.

Since his first liking for Maggie had run its so brief course, he had lapsed by such slow degrees to his present relations with her that he had been hardly more conscious of his life's lacking than if he had been living with an unsympathetic sister. But now that a real love had discovered itself to him, with the suddenness of lightning that rips open the night, he saw, almost gaspingly, how glorious life with love could be; and, by contrast, he saw how sordid and commonplace his own life was; and he saw this life without love stretching away its flat monotony, year after year.

And there were things he did not see, for he had not been made aware by the unwritten laws prevailing in a more self-conscious social stratum.

And one of these things was, he did not see that perhaps in his social ignorance he had done Ruth some great injury.

That night Maggie kept his dinner warm on the back of the kitchen range, to no purpose; and that night Petersen waited vainly on the tenement steps. It was after twelve when Tom came into the flat, his face drawn, his heart chilled. He had seen his course vaguely almost from the first moment of his vision's release; he had seen it clearer and more clear as hour after hour of walking had pa.s.sed; and he felt himself strong enough to hold to that course.

The next morning at breakfast he was gentler with Maggie than he had been in many a day; so that once, when she had gone into the kitchen to refill her coffee cup, she looked in at him for a moment in a kind of resentful surprise. Not being accustomed to peering inward upon the workings of his soul, Tom himself understood this slight change in his att.i.tude no better than did his wife. He did not realize that the coming of the knowledge of love, and the coming of sorrow, were together beginning to soften and refine his nature.

The work Tom had marked out for himself permitted him little time to brood over his new unhappiness. After breakfast he set out once more upon his twofold purpose: to find a job, if one could be found; to talk strike to as many members of the union as he could see. In seeking work he was limited to such occupations as had not yet been unionized. He walked along the docks, thinking to find something to do as a longsh.o.r.eman, but the work was heavy and irregular, the hours long, the pay small; and he left the river front without asking for employment. He looked at the men in the tunnel of the underground railway; but he could not bring himself to ask employment among the low-waged Italians he saw there. He did go into three big stores and make blind requests for anything, but at none was there work for him.

As he went about Tom visited the jobs near which he pa.s.sed, on which members of his union were at work. One of these was a small residence hotel just west of Fifth Avenue, whose walls were up, but which was as yet unfinished on the inside. He climbed to the top in search of members employed on the iron stairways and the elevator shafts, but did not find a man. He reached the bottom of the stairway just in time to see three men enter the doorway. One of the three he recognized as Jake Henderson, and he knew the entertainment committee had him cornered. He grimly changed his revolver from his vest pocket to his left coat pocket, and filling his right coat pocket from a heap of sand beside him, quietly awaited their coming.

The three paused a moment inside the door, evidently to accustom their eyes to the half darkness, for all the windows were boarded up. At length they sighted him, standing before the servants' staircase in the further corner. They came cautiously across the great room, as yet unpart.i.tioned, Jake slightly in the lead. At ten paces away they came to a halt.

"I guess we got youse good an' proper at last," said Jake gloatingly.

"It won't do youse no good to yell. We'll give youse all the more if youse do. An' we can give it to youse, anyhow, before the men can get down."

Tom did not answer. He had no mind to cry for help. He stood alertly watching them, his hands in his coat pockets.

Jake laid off his hat and coat--there was leisure, and it enlarged his pleasure to take his time--and moved forward in advance of his two companions.

"Good-by," he said leering. He was on the point of lunging at his victim, when Tom's right hand came out and a fistful of sand went stinging full into his face. He gave a cry, but before he could so much as make a move to brush away the sand Tom's fist caught him on the ear.

He dropped limply.

The two men sprang forward, to be met in the face by Tom's revolver.

"If you fellows want b.u.t.ton-holes put into you, just move another step!"

he said.