They Call Me Carpenter Part 27

You would meet a man with a bottle in his hand, and the effects of other bottles in his face, who would embrace you and offer you a drink; in the same block you would meet another man who would invite you to buy drinks for everybody in sight. The town had apparently agreed that no invitation should be declined. If the great Republic of Mobland had been unable to make for its returned war-heroes the new world which it had promised them--if it could not even give them back the jobs they had had before they left--surely the least it could do was to get them drunk!

And several times in each block you would have to get off the sidewalk for a group of ten or twenty flushed, dishevelled men, playing the great national game of c.r.a.ps. "Roll the bones!" they would shout, completely ignoring the throngs which surged about them. Each had his pile of bills and silver laid out on the pavement, and his bottle of "white lightnin';" now and then one would take a swig, and now and then one would start singing:

All we do is sign the pay-roll-- And we don't get a G.o.ddam cent.

You would go a little farther, and find a couple of automobiles trying to get past, and a merry crowd amusing itself throwing large waste cans in front of them. Some one would shout: "Who won the war?" And the answer would come booming: "The G.o.ddam slackers;" or maybe it would be, "The G.o.ddam officers." The crowd would move along, starting to chant the favorite refrain:

You're in the army now, You're not behind the plow--; You son-of-a---, You'll never get rich-- You're in the army now!

And from farther down the street would come a chorus from another crowd of marchers:

I got a girl in Baltimore, The street-car runs right by her door.

Every now and then you would come on a fist-fight, or maybe a fight with bottles, and a crowd, laughing and whooping, engaged in pulling the warriors apart and sitting on them. Through a mile or two of this kind of thing I made my way, my heart sinking deeper with misgiving. I got within a couple of blocks of the City Hall, and then suddenly I came upon the thing I dreaded--my friend Carpenter in the hands of the mob!

LXI

They had got hold of a canvas-covered wagon, of the type of the old "prairie-schooner." You still find these camped by our roadsides now and then, with nomad families in them; and evidently one of these families had been so ill advised as to come to town for the convention. The rioters had hoisted their victim on top of the wagon, having first dumped a gallon of red paint over his head, so that everyone might know him for the Red Prophet they had been reading about in the papers. They had tied a long rope to the shaft of the wagon, and one or two hundred men had hold of it, and were hauling it through the streets, dancing and singing, shouting murder-threats against the "reds." Some ran ahead, to clear the traffic; and then came the wagon, lumbering and rocking, so that the prophet was thrown from side to side. Fortunately there was a hole in the canvas, and he could hold to one of the wooden ribs.

The cortege came opposite to me. On each side was a guard of honor, a line of men walking in lock-step, each with his hands on the shoulders of the one in front; they had got up a sort of chant: "Hi!

Hi! The Bolsheviki prophet! Hi! Hi! The Bolsheviki prophet!" And others would yell, "I won't work! I won't work!"--this being our Mobland nickname for the I.W.W. Some one had daubed the letters on the sides of the wagon, using the red paint; and a drunken fellow standing near me shook his clenched fist at the wretch on top and bellowed in a fog-horn voice: "Hey, there, you G.o.ddam Arnychist, if you're a prophet, come down from that there wagon and cure my venereal disease!" There was a roar of laughter from the throng, and the drunken fellow liked the sensation so well that he walked alongside, shouting his challenge again and again.

Then I heard a crash behind me, and a clatter of falling gla.s.s; I turned to see a soldier, inside the Royal Hotel, engaged in chopping out the plate-gla.s.s window of the lobby with a chair. There were twenty or thirty uniformed men behind him, who wanted to get out and see the fun; but the door of the hotel was blocked by the crowd, so they were seeking a direct route to the goal of their desires.

I knew, of course, there was nothing I could do; one might as well have tried to stop a hurricane by blowing one's breath. Carpenter had wanted martyrdom, and now he was going to get it--of the peculiar kind and in the peculiar fashion of our free and independent and happy-go-lucky land. We have had many agitators and disturbers of our self-satisfaction, and they have all "got theirs,"

in one form or another; but there had never been one who had done quite so much to make himself odious as this "Bolsheviki prophet,"

who was now "getting his." "Treat 'em rough!" runs the formula of the army; and I fell in step, watching, and thinking that later I might serve as one of the stretcher-bearers.

Half way down the block we came to the Palace Hotel, and uniformed men came pouring out of that. I heard the shrieks of a woman, and put my foot on the edge of a store-window, and raised myself up by an awning, to see over the heads of the crowd. Half a dozen rowdies had got hold of a girl; I don't know what she had done--maybe her skirts were too short, or maybe she had been saucy to one of the gang; anyhow, they were tearing her clothes to shreds, and having done this gaily, they took her on their shoulders, and ran her out to the wagon, and tossed her up beside the Red Prophet. "There's a girl for you!" they yelled; and the drunken fellow who wanted Carpenter to cure him, suddenly thought of a new witticism: "Hey, you G.o.ddam Bolsheviki, why don't you nationalize her?" Men laughed and whooped over that; some of them were so tickled that they danced about and waved their arms in the air. For, you see, they knew all the details concerning the "nationalization of women in Russia," and also they had read in the papers about Mary Magna, and Carpenter's fondness for picture-actresses and other gay ladies. He stretched out his hand to the girl, to save her from falling off; and at this there went up such a roar from the mob, that it made me think of wild beasts in the arena. So to my whirling brain came back the words that Carpenter had spoken: "It is Rome! It is Rome! Rome that never dies!"

The cortege came to the "Hippodrome," which is our biggest theatre, and which, like everything else, had declared open house for Brigade members during the convention. Some one in the crowd evidently knew the building, and guided the procession down a side street, to the stage-entrance. They have all kinds of shows in the "Hippodrome,"

and have a driveway by which they bring in automobiles, or war-chariots, or wild animals in cages, or whatever they will. Now the mob stormed the entrance, and brushed the door-keepers to one side, and unbolted and swung back the big gates, and a swarm of yelling maniacs rushed the lumbering prairie-schooner up the slope into the building.

The unlucky girl rolled off at this point, and somebody caught her, and mercifully carried her to one side. The wagon rolled on; the advance guard swept everything out of the way, scenery as well as stage-hands and actors, and to the vast astonishment of an audience of a couple of thousand people, the long string of rope-pullers marched across the stage, and after them came the canvas-covered vehicle with the red-painted letters, and the red-painted victim clinging to the top. The khaki-clad swarm gathered about him, raising their deafening chant: "Hi! Hi! The Bolsheviki prophet. Hi!

Hi! The Bolsheviki prophet!"

I had got near enough so that I could see what happened. I don't know whether Carpenter fainted; anyhow, he slipped from his perch, and a score of upraised hands caught him. Some one tore down a hanging from the walls of the stage set, and twenty or thirty men formed a cirfcle about it, and put the prophet in the middle of it, and began to toss him ten feet up into the air and catch him and throw him again.

And that was all I could stand--I turned and went out by the rear entrance of the theatre. The street in back was deserted; I stood there, with my hands clasped to my head, sick with disgust; I found myself repeating out loud, over and over again, those words of Carpenter: "It is Rome! It is Rome! Rome that never dies!"

A moment later I heard a crash of gla.s.s up above me; I ducked, just in time to avoid a shower of it. Then I looked up, and to my consternation saw the red-painted head and the red and white shoulders of Carpenter suddenly emerging. The shoulders were quickly followed by the rest of him; but fortunately there was a narrow shed between him and the ground. He struck the shed, and rolled, and as he fell, I caught him, and let him down without harm.

LXII

I expected to find my prophet nearly dead; I made ready to get him onto my shoulders and find some place to hide him. But to my surprise he started to his feet. I could not see much of him, because of the streams of paint; but I could see enough to realize that his face was contorted with fury. I remembered that gentle, compa.s.sionate countenance; never had I dreamed to see it like this!

He raised his clenched hands. "I meant to die for this people! But now--let them die for themselves!" And suddenly he reached out to me in a gesture of frenzy. "Let me get away from them! Anywhere, anyway! Let me go back where I was--where I do not see, where I do not hear, where I do not think! Let me go back to the church!"

With these words he started to run down the street; hauling up his long robes--never would I have dreamed that a prophet's bare legs could flash so quickly, that he could cover the ground at such amazing speed! I set out after him; I had stuck to him thus far, and meant to be in at the finish, whatever it was. We came out on Broadway again, and there were more crowds of soldier boys; the prophet sped past them, like a dog with a tin-can tied to its tail.

He came to a cross-street, and dodged the crowded traffic, and I also got through, knocking pedestrians this way and that. People shouted, automobiles tooted; the soldiers whooped on the trail. I began to get short of breath, a little dizzy; the buildings seemed to rock before me, there were mobs everywhere, and hands clutching at me, nearly upsetting me. But still I followed my prophet with the bare flying legs; we swept around another corner, and I saw the goal to which the tormented soul was racing--St. Bartholomew's!

He went up the steps three at a time, and I went up four at a time behind him. He flung open the door and vanished inside; when I got in, he was half way up the aisle. I saw people in the church start up with cries of amazement; some grabbed me, but I broke away--and saw my prophet give three tremendous leaps. The first took him up the altar-steps; the second took him onto the altar; the third took him up into the stained-gla.s.s window.

And there he turned and faced me. His paint-smeared robes fell down about his bare legs, his convulsed and angry face became as gentle and compa.s.sionate as the paint would permit. With a wave of his hand, he signalled me to stand back and let him alone. Then the hand sank to his side, and he stood motionless. Exhausted, dizzy, I fell against one of the pews, and then into a seat, and bowed my head in my arms.

LXIII

I don't know just how much time pa.s.sed after that. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and realized that some one was shaking me. I had a horror of hands reaching out for me, so I tried to get away from this one; but it persisted, and there was a voice, saying, "You must get up, my friend. It's time we closed. Are you ill?"

I raised my head; and first I glanced at the figure above the altar.

It was perfectly motionless; and--incredible as it may seem--there was no trace of red paint upon either the face or the robes! The figure was dignified and serene, with a halo of light about its head--in short, it was the regulation stained gla.s.s figure that I had gazed at through all my childhood.

"What is the matter?" asked the voice at my side; and I looked up, and discovered the Reverend Mr. Simpkinson. He recognized me, and cried: "Why, Billy! For heaven sake, what has happened?"

I was dazed, and put my hand to my jaw. I realized that my head was aching, and that the place I touched was sore. "I--I---" I stammered. "Wait a minute." And then, "I think I was hurt." I tried to get my thoughts together. Had I been dreaming; and if so, how much was dream and how much was reality? "Tell me," I said, "is there a moving picture theatre near this church?"

"Why, yes," said he. "The Excelsior."

"And--was there some sort of riot?"

"Yes. Some ex-soldiers have been trying to keep people from going in there. They are still at it. You can hear them."

I listened. Yes, there was a murmur of voices outside. So I realized what had happened to me. I said: "I was in that mob, and I got beaten up. I was knocked pretty nearly silly, and fled in here."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the clergyman, his amiable face full of concern. He took me by my shoulders and helped me to my feet.

"I'm all right now," I said--"except that my jaw is swollen. Tell me, what time is it?"

"About six o'clock."

"For goodness sake!" I exclaimed. "I dreamed all that in an hour! I had the strangest dream--even now I can't make up my mind what was dream and what really happened." I thought for a moment. "Tell me, is there a convention of the Brigade--that is, I mean, of the American Legion in Western City now?"

"No," said the other; "at least, not that I've heard of. They've just held their big convention in Kansas City."

"Oh, I see! I remember--I read about it in the 'Nation.' They were pretty riotous--made a drunken orgy of it."

"Yes," said the clergyman. "I've heard that. It seems too bad."

"One thing more. Tell me, is there a picture of Mr. de Wiggs in the vestry-room?"