The Web of Life Part 24

Sommers laughed.

"You don't believe it? I suppose you won't believe that the general managers are offering us, the leaders, money,--money down and a lot of it, to call the strike off."

"Yes, I'll believe that; but you won't get any one to believe the other thing. And you'd better take the money!"

"We'll have every laboring man in Chicago out on a strike in a week,"

Dresser added confidentially. "There hasn't been a car of beef s.h.i.+pped out of the stock yards, or of cattle s.h.i.+pped in. I guess when the country begins to feel hungry, it will know something's on here. The butchers haven't a three days' supply left for the city. We'll _starve_ 'em out!"

Sommers knew there was some truth in this. The huge slaughter-houses that fed a good part of the world were silent and empty, for lack of animal material. The stock yards had nothing to fill their b.l.o.o.d.y maw, while trains of cars of hogs and steers stood unswitched on the hundreds of sidings about the city. The world would shortly feel this stoppage of its Chicago beef and Armour pork, and the world would grumble and know for once that Chicago fed it. Inside the city there was talk of a famine. The condition was like that of the beleaguered city of the Middle Ages, threatened with starvation while wheat and cattle rotted outside its grasp.

But the enemy was within its walls, either rioting up and down the iron roadways, or sipping its cooling draughts and fanning itself with the garish pages of the morning paper at some comfortable club. It was a war of injunctions and court decrees. But the pa.s.sions were the same as those that set Paris flaming a century before, and it was a war with but one end: the well-fed, well-equipped legions must always win.

"They're too strong for you," Sommers said at last. "You will save a good many people from a lot of misery, if you will sell out now quietly, and prevent the shooting."

"That's the cynicism of _your_ crowd."

"You can't say my crowd any longer; they never were my crowd, I guess."

"Have you been fired?" Dresser asked, with childish interest.

"Not exactly, but I fancy Lindsay and I won't find each other's society healthy in the future."

"It isn't the same thing, though. Professional men like you can never get very far from the rich. It isn't like losing your bread and b.u.t.ter."

"Pretty much that, at present. And I think I shall get some distance from the rich--perhaps go out farther west into some small town."

Dresser did not reply; he kept on with Sommers, as if to express his sympathy over a misfortune. The court that led to the Park Row station was full of people. Men wearing white ribbons were thickly sprinkled in the crowd. The badge fluttered even from the broad b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the few apathetic policemen.

The crowd was kept off the tracks and the station premises by an iron fence, defended by a few railway police and cowed deputy sheriffs. Every now and then, however, a man climbed the ugly fence and dropped down on the other side. Then he ran for the shelter of the long lines of cars standing on the siding. A crew of men recruited from the office force of the railroad was trying to make up a train. The rabble that had gained entrance to the yards were blocking their movements by throwing switches at the critical moment. As Sommers came up to the fence, the switching engine had been thrown into the wrong siding, and had bunted up at full speed against a milk car, sending the latter down the siding to the main track. It took the switch at a sharp pace, was derailed, and blocked the track. The crowd in the court gave a shout of delight. The switching engine had to be abandoned.

At this moment Sommers was jostled against a stylishly dressed woman, who was trying to work her way through the seething ma.s.s that swayed up and down the narrow court. He turned to apologize, and was amazed to see that the young woman was Louise Hitchc.o.c.k. She was frightened, but keeping her head she was doing her best to gain the vestibule of a neighboring store.

She recognized Sommers and smiled in joyful relief. Then her glance pa.s.sed over Sommers to Dresser, who was sullenly standing with his hands in his pockets, and ended in a polite stare, as if to say, 'Well, is that a specimen of the people you prefer to my friends?'

"You've got one of your crowd on your hands," Dresser muttered, and edged off into the mob.

"What are you doing here?" Sommers demanded, rather impatiently.

"I drove down to meet papa. He was to come by the Michigan Central, and Uncle Brome telephoned that the railroad people said the train would get through. But he didn't come. I waited and waited, and at last tried to get into the station to find out what had happened. I couldn't get through."

Sommers had edged her into a protected corner formed by a large telephone post. The jostling people stared impudently at the prettily dressed young woman. To their eyes she betrayed herself at a glance as one of the privileged, who used the banned Pullman cars.

"Whar's your kerridge?" a woman called out over Sommers's shoulder. A man pushed him rudely into his companion.

"Why don't you take your private kyar?"

"The road is good enough for _me_!"

"Come," Sommers shouted in her ear, "we must get out of this at once. Take my arm,--no, follow me,--that will attract less attention."

The girl was quite at ease, now that this welcome friend had appeared opportunely. Another prolonged shout, almost a howl of derision, went up by the fence at some new trick played upon the frantic railroad officials.

"What people!" the girl exclaimed scornfully. "Where are the police?"

"Don't speak so loud," Sommers answered impatiently, "if you wish to escape insult. There the police are, over there by the park. They don't seem especially interested."

The girl closed her lips tightly and followed Sommers. It was no easy task to penetrate the hot, sweating mob that was packing into the court, and bearing down toward the tracks where the fun was going on. Sommers made three feet, then lost two. The crowd seemed especially anxious to keep them back, and Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k was hustled and pushed roughly hither and thither until she grasped Sommers's coat with trembling hands. A fleshy man, with a dirty two weeks' beard on his tanned face, shoved Sommers back with a brutal laugh. Sommers pushed him off. In a moment fists were up, the young doctor's hat was knocked off, and some one threw a stone that he received on his cheek.

Sommers turned, grasped the girl with one arm, and threw himself and her upon the more yielding corner of the press. Then he dragged his companion for a few steps until the jam slackened at the open door of a saloon. Into this the two were pushed by the eddying mob, and escaped. For a moment they stood against the bar that protected the window. The saloon was full of men, foul with tobacco smoke, and the floor was filthy. Flies sluggishly buzzed about the pools of beer on the bar counter. The men were talking excitedly; a few thin, ragged hangers-on were looting the free-lunch dishes surrept.i.tiously. Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k's face expressed her disgust, but she said nothing. She had learned her lesson.

"Wait here," Sommers ordered, "while I find out whether we can get out of this by a back door."

He spoke to the barkeeper, who lethargically jerked a thumb over his shoulder. They elbowed their way across the room, Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k rather ostentatiously drawing up her skirts and threading her way among the pools of the dirty floor. The occupants of the bar-room, however, gave the strangers only slight attention. The heavy atmosphere of smoke and beer, heated to the boiling point by the afternoon sun, seemed to have soddened their senses. Behind the bar the two found a pa.s.sage to the alley in the rear, which led by a cross alley into a deserted street. Finally they emerged on the placid boulevard.

"Your face is bleeding!" Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k exclaimed. "Are you hurt?"

"No," Sommers answered, mopping his brow and settling his collar. "They were good enough to spare the eye."

"Brutes!"

"I wouldn't say that," her companion interrupted sharply. "We are all brutes each in our way," he added quietly.

The girl's face reddened, and she dropped his arm, which was no longer necessary for protection. She raised her crushed and soiled skirt, and looked at it ruefully.

"I wonder what has become of poor papa!" she exclaimed. "This strike has caused him so much worry. I came in from Lake Forest to open the house for him and stay with him until the trains begin to run again."

She seemed to expect sympathy for the disagreeable circ.u.mstances that persisted in upsetting the Hitchc.o.c.k plans. But Sommers paid no attention to this social demand, and they walked on briskly. Finally Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k said coldly:

"I can go home alone, now, if you have anything to do. Of course I should like to have you come home and rest after this--"

"I shall have to return to my room for a hat," Sommers replied, in a matter-of-fact way. "I will leave you at your house."

Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k insensibly drew herself up and walked more quickly. The boulevard, usually gay with carriages in the late afternoon, was absolutely deserted except for an occasional shop-boy on a bicycle. Sommers, hatless, with a torn coat, walking beside a somewhat bedraggled young woman, could arouse no comment from the darkened windows of the large houses. As they pa.s.sed Twenty-second Street, Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k slackened her pace and spoke again.

"You don't think _they_ are right, surely?"

"No," the doctor replied absent-mindedly. He was thinking how he had been delayed from going to Mrs. Preston's, and how strange was this promenade down the fas.h.i.+onable boulevard where he had so often walked with Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k on bright Sundays, bowing at every step to the gayly dressed groups of acquaintances. He was taking the stroll for the last time, something told him, on this hot, stifling July afternoon, between the rows of deserted houses. In twenty-four hours he should be a part of _them_ in all practical ways--a part of the struggling mob, that lived from day to day, not knowing when the bread would give out, with no privileges, no pleasant vacations, no agreeable houses to frequent, no dinner parties at the close of a busy day. He was not sorry for the change, so far as he had thought of it. At least he should escape the feeling of irritation, of criticism, which Lindsay so much deplored, that had been growing ever since he had left hospital work. The body social was diseased, and he could not make any satisfactory diagnosis of the evil; but at least he should feel better to have done with the privileged a.s.sertive cla.s.ses, to have taken up his part with the less Philistine, more pitiably blind mob.

With the absolute character of his nature and the finality of youth, he saw in a very decisive manner the plunge he was about to make. He was to leave one life and enter another, just as much as if he should leave Chicago and move to Calcutta--more so, indeed. He was to leave one set of people, and all their ways, and start with life on the simplest, crudest base. He should not call on his Chicago friends, who for the most part belonged to one set, and after a word from Lindsay they would cease to bother him. He would be out of place among the successful, and they would realize it as well as he. But he should be sorry to lose sight of certain parts of this life,--of this girl, for example, whom he had liked so much from the very first, who had been so good to him, who was so sincere and honest and personally attractive.

Yet it was strange, the change in his feelings toward her brought about in the few days that had elapsed since they had parted at Lake Forest. It was so obvious today that they could never have come together. While he had tried to do the things that she approved, he had been hot and restless, and had never, for one moment, had the calm certainty, the exquisite fulness of feeling that he had now--that the other woman had given him without a single outspoken word.

If things had gone differently these past months,--no, from his birth and from hers, too,--if every circ.u.mstance of society had not conspired to put them apart, who knows! They might have solved a riddle or two together and been happy. But it was all foolish speculation now, and it was well that their differences should be emphasized at this last chance meeting; that she should be hostile to him. He summed the matter up thus, and, as if answering her last remark, said:

"_They_, my dear Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k, are wrong, and you are wrong, if we can use p.r.o.nouns so loosely. But I have come to feel that I had rather be wrong with them than wrong with you. From to-day, when you speak of 'them,'

you can include me."

And to correct any vagueness in his declaration, he added,--

"I have left Lindsay's shop, and shall never go back."