The Walking Delegate Part 35

He started home, and during the car ride posted himself upon his recent doings by reading the accounts of the trial and his part in the Avon outrage. On reaching the block in which he lived he hesitated long before he found the courage to go up to the ordeal of telling Maggie his last misfortune. When he entered his flat it was to find it empty. He sat down at the window, with its backyard view of clothes-lines and of fire-escape landings that were each an open-air pantry, and rehea.r.s.ed the sentences with which he should break the news to her, his suspense mounting as the minutes pa.s.sed. At length her key sounded in the lock, he heard her footsteps, then saw her dim shape come into the sitting-room.

In the same instant she saw him at the window. "What--Tom!" she cried, with the tremulous relief of one who ends a great suspense.

He had been nerving himself to face another mood than this. He was taken aback by the unexpected note in her voice--a sympathetic note he had not heard for such a time it seemed he had never heard it at all.

He rose, embarra.s.sed. "Yes," he said.

She had come quickly to his side, and now caught his arm. "You are here, Tom?"

"Why, yes," he answered, still dazed and at a loss. "Where have you been, Maggie?"

Had the invading twilight not half blindfolded him, Tom could have seen the rapid change that took place in Maggie's face--the relief at finding him safe yielding to the stronger emotion beneath it. When she answered her voice was as of old. "Been? Where haven't I been? To the jail the last place."

"To the jail?" He was again surprised. "Then ... you know all?"

"Know all?" She laughed harshly, a tremolo beneath the harshness. "How could I help knowing all? The newsboys yelling down in the street! The neighbors coming in with their sympathy!" She did not tell him how to these visitors she had hotly defended his innocence.

"I didn't know you were at the police station," he said weakly, still at a loss.

"Of course not. When I got there they told me you'd been let out." Her breath was coming rapidly, deeply. "What a time I had! I didn't know how to get to the jail! Dragging myself all over town! Those awful papers everywhere! Everybody looking at me and guessing who I was! Oh, the disgrace! The disgrace!"

"But, Maggie, I didn't do this!"

"The world don't know that!" The rage and despair that had been held in check all afternoon by her concern for him now completely mastered her.

"We're disgraced! You've been in jail! You're now only out on bail!

Fifteen thousand dollars bail! Why that boss, Mr. Driscoll, went on it, heaven only knows! You're going to be tried. Even if you get off we'll never hear the last of it. Hadn't we had trouble enough? Now it's disgrace! And why's this come on us? You tell me that!"

She was shaking all over, and for her to speak was a struggle with her sobs. She supported herself with arms on the table, and looked at him fiercely, wildly, through the dim light.

Tom took her arm. "Sit down, Maggie," he said, and tried to push her into a chair.

She repulsed him. "Answer me. Why has this trouble come on us?"

He was silent.

"Oh, you know! Because you wouldn't take a little advice from your wife!

Other men got along with Foley and held their jobs. But you wanted to be different; you wanted to fight Foley. Well, you've had your way; you've fought him. And what of it? We're ruined! Disgraced! You're working for less than half what you used to get. We're ashamed to show our faces in the street. All because you wouldn't pay any attention to me. And me--how I've got to suffer for it! Oh, my G.o.d! My G.o.d!"

Tom recognized the justice, from her point of view, in her wild phrases and did not try to dispute her. He again tried to push her into a chair.

She threw off his hand, and went hysterically on, now beating her knuckles upon the table. "Leave me alone! I've made up my mind about one thing. You won't listen to reason. I've given you good advice. I've been right every time. You've paid no attention to me and we're ruined! Well, I've made up my mind. If you do this sort of thing again, I'll lock you out of the house! D'you hear? I'll lock you out of the house!"

She fell of her own accord into a chair, and with her head in her hands abandoned herself to sobbing. Tom looked at her silently. In a narrow way, she was right. In a broad way, he knew he was right. But he could not make her understand, so there was nothing he could say. Presently he noticed that her hair had loosened and her hat had fallen over one cheek. With unaccustomed hands he took out the pins and laid the hat upon the table. She gave no sign that she had noted the act.... Her sobs became fewer and less violent.

Tom quietly lit the gas. "Where's Ferdinand?" he asked, in his ordinary voice.

"I left him with Mrs. Jones," she answered through her hands.

When Tom came back with the boy she was in the kitchen, a big ap.r.o.n over her street dress, beginning the dinner. Tom looked in upon her, then obeying an impulse long unstirred he began to set the table. She glanced furtively at this unusual service, but said nothing. She sat through the meal with hard face, but did not again refer to the day's happenings; and, since the day was Wednesday, as soon as he had eaten Tom hurried away to Potomac Hall.

Tom was surrounded by friends the minute he entered the hall. The ten o'clock edition of the evening papers, out before seven, had acquainted them with his release. The accounts in this edition played up the anomaly of this labor ruffian, shown by his act to be the arch-enemy of the employers, being bailed out by one of the very contractors with whom the union was at war. Two of the papers printed interviews with Mr.

Driscoll upon the question, why had he done it? One interview was, "I don't know"; the other, "None of your business."

Tom's friends had the curiosity of the papers, and put to him the question the news sheets had put to Mr. Driscoll. "If Mr. Driscoll don't know, how can I?" was all the answer he could give them. Their curiosity, however, was weak measured by their indignation over the turn events had taken in the court-room. They would stand by him at his trial, they declared, and show what his relations had been with Jake, Bill and Arkansas.

Before the meeting was opened there was talk among the Foleyites against Tom being allowed to preside, but he ended their muttering by marching to his table and pounding the union to order. He immediately took the floor and in a speech filled with charges against Foley gave to the union his side of the facts that had already been presented them from a different viewpoint in the papers. When he ended Foley's followers looked to their chief to make reply, but Foley kept his seat. Connelly, seeing it his duty to defend his leader, was rising to his feet when a glance from Foley made him sink back into his chair. The talk from Tom's side went hotly on for a time, but, meeting with no resistance, and having no immediate purpose, it dwindled away.

The union then turned to matters pertaining to the management of the strike. As the discussion went on followers of Foley slipped quietly about the hall whispering in the ears of their brethren. The talk became tedious. Tom's friends, wearied and uninterested, sat in silence.

Foleyites spoke at great length upon unimportant details. Foley himself made a long speech, the like of which had never before come from him, it was that dull and purposeless. At half-past ten, by which time the men usually were restless to be out of the hall and bound toward their beds, adjournment seemed as far off as at eight. Sleepy and bored by the stupid discussion, members began to go out, and most of those that left were followers of Tom. The pointless talk went on; men kept slipping out. At twelve o'clock not above two hundred were in the hall, and of these not two dozen were Tom's friends.

Tom saw Foley cast his eyes over the thinned crowd, and then give a short nod at Connelly. The secretary stood up and claimed Tom's recognition.

"Mr. President, I move we suspend the const.i.tution."

The motion was instantly seconded. Tom promptly ruled it out of order, on the ground that it was unconst.i.tutional to suspend the const.i.tution.

But he was over-ruled, only a score siding with him. The motion was put and was carried by the same big majority that had voted against his decision.

Connelly rose a second time. "I make a motion that we remove the president from office on the charge that he is the instigator of an outrage that has blackened the fair name of our union before all the world."

A hundred voices cried a second to the motion. Tom rose and looked with impotent wrath into the faces of the crowd from which Foley's cunning had removed his followers. Then he tossed the gavel upon the table.

"I refuse to put the motion!" he shouted; and picking up his hat he strode down the middle aisle. Half-way to the door he heard Connelly, in the absence of the vice-president, put the motion; and turning as he pa.s.sed out he glimpsed the whole crowd on its feet.

The next morning Tom saw by his newspaper that Connelly was the union's new president; also that he had been dropped from the strike committee, Hogan now being in his place. The reports in the papers intimated that the union had partially exonerated itself by its prompt discardure of the princ.i.p.al in the Avon explosion. The editorial pages expressed surprise that the notorious Foley bore no relation to an outrage that seemed a legitimate offspring of his character.

Tom had not been at work more than an hour when a boy brought him word that the superintendent of the shipping department desired to see him.

He hurried to his superior's office.

"You were not at work yesterday?" the superintendent said.

"No," Tom admitted.

The head of the department drew a morning paper from a pigeon-hole and pointed at a face on its first page. "Your likeness, I believe."

"It was intended for me."

He touched a b.u.t.ton, and a clerk appeared. "Phillips, make out Keating's time check." He turned sharply back upon Tom. "That's all. We've got no use for anarchists in our business."

Chapter XXI

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

When Ruth carried a handful of letters she had just finished into Mr.

Driscoll's office--this while he sat talking to Tom in the latter's cell--she saw staring luridly at her from the desk the newspaper that had sent her employer to the jail on his errand of gruff mercy. There was a great drawing of Tom's face, brutalized, yet easily recognizable, and over it the heavy crimson heading: