The Walking Delegate Part 45

"Yes, there is, or he'd never stay away like this," she returned quickly. Her voice sank with resignation. "I suppose all I can do is to pray."

"And look," Tom added. "I'll look."

She rose to go. Maggie pressed her to have breakfast, but she refused, a faint returning hope in her eyes. "Mebbe the Lord's brung him home while I've been here."

A half minute after the door had closed upon her Tom opened it and hurried down the three flights of stairs. He caught her just going into the street.

He fumbled awkwardly in his pocket. "Do you need anything?"

"No. Bless you, Brother Keating. Nels left me plenty o' money. You know he works reg'lar on the docks."

Two causes for Petersen's absence occurred as possible to Tom--arrest and death. He looked through the record of arrests for the last two days at police headquarters. Petersen's name was not there, and to give a false name would never have occurred to Petersen's slow mind. So Tom knew he was not in a cell. He visited the public morgues and followed attendants who turned back sheets from cold faces. But Petersen's face he did not see.

The end of the day brought also the end of Tom's search. He now had three explanations for Petersen's absence: The Swede was dead, and his body unrecovered; he had wandered off in a fit of mental aberration; he had deserted his wife. The first he did not want to believe. The third, remembering the looks that had pa.s.sed between the two the night he had visited their home, he could not believe. He clung to the second; and that was the only one he mentioned to Mrs. Petersen when he called in the evening to report.

"He'll come to suddenly, and come back," he encouraged her. "That's the way with such cases."

"You think so?" She brightened visibly.

A fourth explanation flashed upon him. "Perhaps he got caught by accident on some boat he had been helping load, and got carried away."

She brightened a little more at this. "Just so he's alive!" she cried.

"He'll be certain to be back in a few days," Tom said positively. He left her greatly comforted by his words, though he himself did not half believe them.

There was nothing more he could do toward discovering the missing man.

It must be admitted that, during the next few days, he thought of Petersen much less frequently than was the due of such a friend as the Swede had proved. The affairs of the union held his mind exclusively.

Opinion was turning overwhelmingly toward giving up the strike, and giving it up immediately. Wherever there was a man who still held out, there were three or four men pouring words upon him. "Foley may not be so honest as to hurt him, but he's a fighter from 'way back, an' if he thinks we ought to stop fightin' now, then we ought to 'a' stopped weeks ago"--such was the substance of the reasoning in bar-room and street that converted many a man to yielding.

And also, Tom learned, a quick settlement was being urged at home. As long as the men had stood firm for the strike, the women had skimped at every point and supported that policy. But when they discovered that the men's courage was going, the women, who feel most the fierce economy of a strike, were for the straight resumption of work and income. Maggie, Tom knew, was beginning to look forward in silent eagerness to a settlement; he guessed that she hoped, the strike ended, he might go back to work untroubled by Foley.

Tom undertook to stand out against the proposal of submission, but he might as well have tried to shoulder back a Fundy tide. Men remembered it was he who had so hotly urged them into a strike that thus far had cost them seven weeks' wages. "I suppose you'd have us lose seven more weeks' money," they sneered at him. They said other things, and stronger, for your ironworker has studied English in many places.

Monday evening found Tom in a chair at one of the open windows of his sitting-room, staring out at nothing at all, hardly conscious of Maggie, who was reading, or of Ferdinand, who lay dozing on the couch. He was completely discouraged--at the uttermost end of things. He had searched his mind frantically for flaws in the negotiations and in Foley's conduct, flaws which, if followed up, clue by clue, would reveal Foley's suspected treachery. But he found none. There seemed nothing more he could do. The vote would come on Wednesday evening, and its result was as certain as if the count had already been made.

And so he sat staring into the line of back yards with their rows and rows of lighted windows. His mind moved over the past five months. They had held nothing for him but failure and pain. He had fought for honor in the management of the union's affairs, staking his place in his trade on the result--and honor in the contest with dishonesty had gone down in defeat. He had urged the union to strike for better wages, and now the strike was on the eve of being lost. He would have to begin life over anew, and he did not know where he could begin. Moreover, he had lost all but a few friends; and he had lost all influence. This was what his fight for right had brought him, and in five months.

And this was not the sum of the bitterness the five months had brought him--no, nor its greater part. He had learned how mighty real love can be--and how hopeless!

He had been sitting so, dreaming darkly, for an hour or more when Maggie asked him if he had heard whether Petersen had come back. The question brought to his mind that he had neglected Mrs. Petersen for four days.

He rose, conscience-smitten, told Maggie he would be back presently, and set forth for the tenement in which the Petersens had their home. He found Mrs. Petersen, her child asleep in her lap, reading the Bible. She appeared to be even slighter and paler than when he had last seen her, but her spirit seemed to burn even higher through the lessened obscuration of her thinning flesh.

No, Petersen had not yet come back. "But I fetched my trouble to G.o.d in prayer," she said. "An' He helped me, glory to His name! He told me Nels is comin' back."

Tom had nothing to give to one so fired by hope, and he slipped away as soon as he could and returned home. On entering his flat, his eyes going straight through the dining-room into the sitting-room, he saw Maggie gazing in uncomfortable silence at a man--a lean, brown man, with k.n.o.bby face, and wing-like mustache, who sat with bony hands in his lap and eyes fastened on his knees.

Tom crossed the dining-room with long strides. Maggie, glad of the chance to escape, pa.s.sed into the bedroom.

"Petersen!" he cried. "Where on earth've you been?"

Petersen rose with a glad light in his face and grasped the hand Tom offered. Immediately he disengaged his hand to slip it into a trousers pocket. Tom now noted that Petersen's face was slightly discolored,--dim yellows, and greens, and blues--and that his left thumb was brown, as though stained with arnica.

"I come to pay vot I loan," Petersen mumbled. His hand came forth from the pocket grasping a roll of bills as big as his wrist. He unwrapped three tens and silently held them out.

Tom, who had watched this action through with dumb amazement, now broke out: "Where d'you get all that money? Where've you been?"

The three tens were still in Petersen's outstretched hand. "For vot you give de union, and vot you give me."

"But where've you been?" Tom demanded, taking the money.

Fear, shame, and contrition struggled for control of Petersen's face.

But he answered doggedly: "I vorked at de docks."

"You know that's not so, Petersen. You haven't been home for a week. And your wife's scared half to death."

"Anna scared? Vy?" He started, and his brown face paled.

"Why shouldn't she be?" Tom returned wrathfully. "You went off without a word to her, and not a word from you for a week! Now see here, Petersen, where've you been?"

"Vorkin' at de docks," he repeated, but weakly.

"And got that wad of money for it! Hardly." He pushed Petersen firmly back into his chair. "Now you've got to tell me all about it."

All the dogged resistance faded from Petersen's manner, and he sat trembling, with face down. For a moment Tom was in consternation lest he break into tears. But he controlled himself and in shame told his story, aided by questions from Tom. Tom heard him without comment, breathing rapidly and gulping at parts of the brokenly-told story.

When the account was ended Tom gripped Petersen's hand. "You're all right, Petersen!" he said huskily.

Tears trickled down from Petersen's eyes, and his simple face twitched with remorse.

Tom fell into thought. He understood Petersen's fear to face his wife.

He, too, was uncertain how Mrs. Petersen, in her religious fervor, would regard what Petersen had done. He had to tell her, of course, since Petersen had shown he could not. But how should he tell her--how, so that the woman, and not the religious enthusiast, would be reached?

Presently Tom handed Petersen his hat, and picked up his own. "Come on,"

he said; and to Maggie he called through the bedroom door: "I'll be back in an hour."

As they pa.s.sed through the tunnel Tom, who had slipped his hand through Petersen's arm for guidance, felt the Swede begin to tremble; and it was so across the little stone-paved court, with the square of stars above, and up the nervous stairway, whose February odors had been multiplied by the June warmth. Before his own door Petersen held back.

Tom understood. "Wait here for me, then," he said, and knocked upon the door.

"Who's there?" an eager voice questioned.

"Keating."

When she answered, the eagerness in the voice had turned to disappointment. "All right, Brother Keating. In just a minute."

Tom heard the sounds of rapid dressing, and then a hand upon the k.n.o.b.

Petersen shrank back into the darkness of a corner.