The Web of Life Part 32

Sommers learned them unexpectedly after the Commission had taken itself to Washington to prepare its report.

It happened one evening at the Keystone Hotel. He had come in after dinner and found Miss M'Gann in his room, calling upon Alves. She had brought Dresser with her. He was well dressed, his hair was cut to a conventional length, and he carried a silk hat--altogether a different person from the slouchy, beery man who had grumbled at McNamara and Hills. Sommers's glance must have said something of this, for Dresser began to explain,

"I've given up agitating--doesn't go, what with the courts granting injunctions and the railroads throwing money about."

"Do you mean _that_ was why the strike collapsed?" Sommers asked eagerly.

"Sure!" Dresser thundered heartily. "_I_ KNOW IT. Do you know where the leaders are? Well, one of 'em has got the finest little ranch you ever saw out in Montana. And another," he winked slowly and put his hand to his pocket. "They were poor men when the strike began, and they aren't working now for any dollar and a half a day."

"I don't believe it," Sommers replied promptly. "The managers had the affair in hand, anyway."

Dresser protested loudly, and irritated by the doctor's scepticism began to leak, to tell things he had seen, to show a little of the inside of the labor counsels. He had evidently seen more than Sommers had believed possible, and his active, ferreting mind had imagined still more. The two women listened open-mouthed to his story of the strike, and feeling where the sympathy lay Dresser spoke largely to them.

"You seem to have found something to do?" Sommers remarked significantly at the close.

"I'm a.s.sistant editor of a paper," Dresser explained.

Sommers laughed. "Herr Most's old sheet?"

"_The Investor's Monthly_."

Sommers shrieked with laughter, and patted Dresser on the back. "Sammy, you're a great man! I have never done you justice."

"The management has been changed," Dresser said gruffly. "They wanted a man of education, not a mere reporter."

"Who owns it?"

"R. G. Carson has the controlling interest."

Sommers relapsed into laughter. "So this is your ranch in Montana?"

Dresser rose with an offended air.

"Oh! sit down, man. I am complimenting you. Haven't you a place as office boy, compositor, or something for a needy friend?"

"I don't see what you're so funny about, doctor," Miss M'Gann expostulated.

"Spoiling the Philistines, you see," Dresser added, making an effort to chime in with Sommers's irony.

They talked late. Webber, the stylish young clerk, dropped in, and the conversation roamed over the universal topics of the day,--the hard times, the position of the employee in a corporation, etc. The clerk in the Baking Powder Trust was inclined to philosophical acceptance of present conditions. Abstractly there might not be much justice for the poor, but here in the new part of the country every man had his chance to be on top, to become a capitalist. There was the manager of the B. P. T. He had begun on ten dollars a week, but he had bided his time, bought stock in the little mill where he started, and now that the consolidation was arranged, he was in a fair way to become a rich man. To be rich, to have put yourself outside the ranks of the precarious cla.s.ses--that was the clerk's ambition.

Dresser was doubtful whether the good, energetic young clerk could repeat in these days the experience of the manager of the B. P. T. The two women took part in the argument, and finally Alves summed the matter up:

"If we could, all of us would be rich, and then we should feel like the rich, and want to keep what we could. But as we have to labor hard for a little joy, it's best to get the joy, as much as you can, and not fret over the work."

Dresser found the Keystone so agreeable that he came there to live. The doctor and Alves and Miss M'Gann with Webber and Dresser had a table to themselves in the stuffy bas.e.m.e.nt dining room. Miss M'Gann accepted impartially the advances of both young men, attending church with one and the theatre with the other. The five spent many evenings in Sommers's room, discussing aimlessly social questions, while the doctor worked at the anatomy slides. Dresser's debauch of revolt seemed to have sobered him. He bought himself many new clothes, and as time went on, picked up social relations in different parts of the city. He still talked sentimental socialism, chiefly for the benefit of Alves, who regarded him as an authority on economic questions, and whose instinctive sympathies were touched by his theories. As the clothes became more numerous and better in quality, he talked less about socialism and more about society. _The Investor's Monthly_ interested him: he spoke of becoming its managing editor, hinting at his influence with Carson; and when the doctor jeered, Dresser offered him a position on the paper. Webber was openly envious of Dresser's prosperity, which he set down to the account of a superior education that had been denied him. When Dresser began to mention casually the names of people whom the Baking Powder clerk had read about in the newspapers, this envy increased. Dresser's evolution impressed Miss M'Gann also; Sommers noticed that she was readier to accept Dresser's condescending attentions than the devotion of the plodding clerk. Webber was simple and vulgar, but he was sincere and good-hearted. He was striving to get together a little money for a home. Sommers told Alves that she should influence Miss M'Gann to accept the clerk, instead of beguiling herself with the words of a talker.

"You are unfair to Sammy," Alves had replied, with some warmth. "She would do very well to marry him; he is her superior."

Sommers gave Alves a look that troubled her, and said:

"Because the fellow is settling into an amiable Philistine? He will never marry Jane M'Gann; it would hurt his prospects."

A few days later Dresser mentioned that he had met Miss Laura Lindsay, "the daughter of your former partner, I believe."

"My former boss," Sommers corrected, looking at Alves with an amused smile.

He listened in ironical glee to Dresser's description of little Laura Lindsay. Dresser thought her "a very advanced young woman, who had ideas, a wide reader." She had asked him about Dr. Sommers and Alves.

"You had better not appear too intimate with us," Sommers advised. "Her papa doesn't exactly approve of me."

When he had left the room, Sommers added: "He will marry Laura Lindsay. An ideal match. He won't remain long in the Keystone, and I am glad of it. The converted Philistine is the worst type!"

Alves held her own opinion. She should be sorry to lose Dresser from their little circle. She permitted herself one remark,--"He is so much of a gentleman."

"A gentleman!" Sommers exclaimed scornfully. "Are any of us gentlemen in the American sense?"

It seemed probable, however, that Sommers and Alves would be the first to leave the Keystone. Although the sultry June weather made them think longingly of the idyllic days at Perota Lake, the journey to Wisconsin was out of the question. Struggle as he might, Sommers was being forced to realize that they must give up their modest position in the Keystone. And one day the proprietor hinted broadly that she had other uses for their room. They had been tolerated up to this point; but society, even the Keystone form of society, found them too irregular for permanent acceptance. And now it was impossible to move away from Chicago. They had no money for the venture.

CHAPTER V

A change, even so small a change as from one boarding-house to another, is caused by some definite force, some shock that overcomes the power of inertia. The eleventh of June Sommers had gone to meet Alves at their usual rendezvous in the thicket at the rear of Blue Gra.s.s Avenue. The sultry afternoon had made him drowse, and when he awoke Alves was standing over him, her hands tightening nervously.

"They have dropped you," he said, reading the news in her face.

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, until they had plodded down the avenue for several blocks.

"Why did they do it!" she murmured rebelliously. "They gave me no reason.

It isn't because I teach badly. It isn't because of the married teachers'

talk: there are hundreds of married women in the schools who haven't been dismissed."

"Well," Sommers responded soothingly, "I shouldn't hunt for a rational reason for their act. They have merely hastened the step we were going to take some day."

"What shall we do!" she gasped, overpowered by the visions her practical mind conjured up. "We could just get along with my forty dollars, and now--Oh! I've been like a weight about your neck. I have cut you off from your world, the big world where successes are made!"

Her large eyes filled with pleading tears. She was generously minded to take the burden of their fate upon herself.

"You seem to have been making most of the success," he responded lightly.

"The big world where Dresser is succeeding doesn't call me very hard. And it's a pretty bad thing if a sound-bodied, well-educated doctor can't support himself and a woman in this world," he added more gloomily. "I _will_, if I have to get a job over there."

He jerked his head in the direction of the South Chicago steel works. But the heavens seemed to repel his boast, for the usual cloud of smoke and flame that hung night and day above the blast furnaces was replaced by a brilliant, hard blue sky. The works were shut down. They had reached the end of Blue Gra.s.s Avenue at the south line of the park. It was a spot of semi-sylvan wildness that they were fond of. The carefully platted avenues and streets were mere lines in the rough turf. A little runnel of water, half ditch, half sewer, flowed beside the old plank walk.

They sat down to plan, to contrive in some way to get a shelter over their heads. From the plank walk where they sat nothing was visible for blocks around except a little stucco Grecian temple, one of those decorative contrivances that served as ticket booths or soda-water booths at the World's Fair. This one, larger and more pretentious than its fellows, had been bought by some speculator, wheeled outside the park, and dumped on a sandy knoll in this empty lot. It had an ambitious little portico with a cl.u.s.ter of columns. One of them was torn open, revealing the simple anatomy of its construction. The temple looked as if it might contain two rooms of generous size. Strange little product of some western architect's remembering pencil, it brought an air of distant sh.o.r.es and times, standing here in the waste of the prairie, above the bright blue waters of the lake!