The Web of Life Part 31

Decidedly, Sommers thought, this simple society had its own social habits.

If he did not take this well-meant advice, he must justify himself by his own method. He made up his mind to go to the next meeting of the medical society. His clothes were a trifle shabby, but as the meeting was in the evening, he could go in his evening dress--drop in casually, as it were, from an evening entertainment. That silly bit of pride, however, angered him with himself. He went in his shabby everyday suit. The experience was the most uncomfortable one he had had. The little groups of young doctors did not open to him. They had almost forgotten him. Even his old colleagues at the hospital scarcely recognized him, and when they did stop to chat after the meeting, they examined him indifferently, as if they were making notes. Lindsay had probably spread his story, with some imaginative details. According to the popular tale Sommers had been "thrown down" by Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k because he had mixed himself up with a married woman. Then he had been discharged by Lindsay for the same reason, and had sunk, had run away with the woman, and had come back to Chicago penniless. The woman was supporting him, some one said. Enough of this pretty tale could be read in the bearing of the men to make Sommers sorry that he had come, and sorrier that he had come in the hope of bettering his condition. He slipped out un.o.bserved and walked the six miles back to the Keystone.

The fight was on; he was placed, as he had wished, without handicap; he closed his jaws and summoned all his will to take the consequences. The pity was that he had brought himself to make any concessions to the obsequiousness of the world. As he pa.s.sed down Michigan Avenue he overtook a shabby laboring man, who begged of him. Sommers found out that he was a striker, a fireman on the Illinois Central, who had lost his job by being blacklisted after the strike. He had walked the streets since the middle of July.

"You were a fool," Sommers remarked calmly, "to think that you and yours could make any impression on the General Managers' a.s.sociation. You have had your lesson, and the next time you find yourself hanging on to the world, no matter how, don't kick over the traces. There's a quarter. It's more than I can afford to give, and I think you're a fool."

The man hesitated.

"I don't want none of your money," he growled at last. "If you had to work for a living, you silk stocking--"

"Come, don't call me names. I am a fool, too. I am in the same boat. I'd give a good deal for a job, any job to earn my living. I didn't say it wasn't natural what you did, but it's against the facts, against the facts."

The man stared, took the quarter, and dived into a cross street.

"I have lost twenty cents by walking home," Sommers reported to Alves, "but I have realized--a few facts."

The following day, as Sommers was pa.s.sing the drug store, the clerk beckoned to him. A messenger had just come, asking for immediate help. A woman was very ill--third house north on Parkside Avenue.

"There's your chance," the clerk grinned. "They're rich and Jelly's people.

He won't be back before two. Just show Dr. Sommers the way," he added, to the servant who had brought the message.

Sommers had his doubts about going, for Jelly was an "eclectic" and probably would refuse to consult with him. The matter seemed urgent, however, and he followed the servant. The case, he found on examination, was serious and at a critical stage. It was an affair of mismanaged confinement. Jelly, Sommers could see, was brutally ignorant. The woman, if she survived, would probably be an invalid for life. He did what he could and remained in the house, waiting for Jelly, who would be sure to come.

About three the black-whiskered doctor arrived and hurried upstairs, his sallow face scowling. Sommers explained what he had done, and suggested that a certain operation was necessary at once to save matters at all.

Jelly interrupted him.

"See here, young feller, this is my case, and you're not wanted, nor your advice. You can send your bill to me."

Sommers knew that he should bow and withdraw. Jelly was within his professional rights, but the man's brutal ignorance maddened him, and he spoke recklessly.

"A first-year interne could tell you the same thing. The woman has been nearly killed, if you want to know the truth. And I don't know that I shall leave you to complete the job."

"What are you going to do about it?" Jelly asked insolently.

Sommers paused. He was clearly in the wrong, professionally. There was not a well-trained doctor in Chicago who would abet him in his act. But it mattered little; his own desperate situation gave him a kind of freedom.

"I shall present the facts to her husband." He found the husband in the room below and stated the case.

"What I am doing," he concluded, "is entirely unprofessional, but it's the thing I should want any man to do for me. You needn't take my word, but call up either Dr. Fitz or Dr. Sloper by telephone, and ask one of them to come out at once. They are the best surgeons in the city. As to Dr. Jelly, I prefer not to say anything, and I don't expect you to take my advice."

The husband was anxious and worried. All doctors seemed to him a game of chance.

"She's always hankered after the Science people; but she kind of took to Jelly, and our friends think an awful sight of him," he remarked doubtfully.

"You are taking tremendous risks," Sommers urged.

"Well, I'll see Jelly."

Sommers waited until the man returned.

"Well, I guess it isn't so bad as you think. We'll wait a day or two, I guess. I am obliged to you for your kindness."

Sommers made no reply and left the house. The only result of this affair was that he found it disagreeable to call at the drug store. Besides, it was useless; no practice had come from his a.s.siduous attendance. Finally, he saw one morning that his modest sign no longer waved from the pendent ladder. He did not take the trouble to inquire why it had been removed.

The winter was wearing on,--the slow, penurious winter of exhaustion after the acute fury of the spring and summer. These were hard times in earnest, not with the excitement of failures and bankruptcies, but with the steady grind of low wages, no employment, and general depression. The papers said things would be better in the fall, when the republican candidates would be elected. But it was a long time to wait for activity. Meanwhile the streets down town were filled with hungry forms, the remnant of the World's Fair mob swelled by the unemployed strikers. The city was poor, too. The school funds were inadequate. The usual increase in salary could not be paid.

Instead, the board resolved to reduce the pay of the grade teachers, who had the lowest wages. Alves received but forty dollars a month now, and had been refused a night school for which she had applied.

When Alves timidly suggested that it would be cheaper for them to rent one of the many empty cottages in the vast region south of the parks, he put her off. That would be too much like the experience in the Ninety-first Street cottage, and he fought against the idea. There were a few dollars still left from the sale of his horse, his microscope, and other possessions. A few dollars each week came in from some work he had found in preparing plates for a professor of anatomy in the new university. Some weeks he could almost pay his board without drawing from his capital. They would hang on in this way.

Not that the Keystone Hotel was in itself very attractive. In spite of Webber's advice, he and Alves found it hard to mix with the other "guests."

After they had been in the house several months, he fancied that the people avoided them. The harmless trio left their table, and in place of them came a succession of transient boarders. For a time he thought he was oversensitive, inclined to suspect his neighbors of avoiding him. But one evening Alves came into their room, where he was working at the anatomy plates, her face flushed with an unusual distress.

"What reason have they?" Sommers asked, going directly to the heart of the matter.

"None--unless Miss M'Gann has been talking carelessly. And she knows nothing--"

"No, she knows nothing," the doctor replied, looking at Alves intently.

"And there is nothing to be known."

"We think not!" she exclaimed. "I am not so sure that an unpleasant story couldn't be made."

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.

"Why, the--my husband's condition--the death, our going away so quickly afterward. There are elements there of a good-sized boarding-house scandal."

"Yes, there are elements!" Sommers admitted, putting away his work. "We may as well leave as soon as we can. You are right; we had better fight it out alone."

"Yes, _alone_," she responded, with a glad note in her voice.

The next afternoon they looked at the cheap, flimsy cottages they pa.s.sed in their walk with more interest than ever. The only places they could afford were far removed from the populous districts where patients live. They would have to pay for heat, too, and though they could starve the body, they could not freeze. So the matter was put off for the present, and they drew into themselves more and more, leaving the Keystone people to chatter as they willed.

CHAPTER IV

The great strike was fast being forgotten, as a cause argued and lost or won as you looked at it. A commission was holding many meetings these months, and going over the debris, taking voluminous testimony. It was said to be prejudiced in favor of the strikers, but the victors cared little.

Its findings in the shape of a report would lie on the table in the halls of Congress, neither house being so const.i.tuted that it could make any political capital by taking the matter up. The a.s.sociation of General Managers had lapsed. It had been the banded a.s.sociation of power against the banded a.s.sociation of labor. It had fought successfully. The issue was proved: the strike was crushed, with the help of marshals, city police, and troops. And with it the victors prophesied was crushed the sympathetic strike forever. It had cost, to be sure, many millions in all, but it paid.

It was such a tremendous example!

The statistical side of pa.s.sion was interesting and ironical. It gave the matter the air of a family row: the next day the heads of the factions were sitting down to make the inventory of broken gla.s.s, ruined furniture and provisions. A principle had been preserved, people said, talking largely and superficially, but the principle seemed elusive. The laborers, too, had lost, more heavily in proportion to their ability to bear--millions in wages, not to reckon the loss of manhood to those who were blacklisted for partic.i.p.ation in the fracas.

The Commission went into the Pullman affair, quite unwarrantedly, according to the corporation, which was comfortably out of the mess. And there were minor disputes over the injunctions against Debs, and a languid stirring of dead bones in the newspapers. Every one was tired of the affair and willing to let it drop, with its lesson for this party or that. Sommers, having nothing more urgent to do, attended the meetings of the Commission and listened eagerly to get some final truth about the matter. But it seemed to him that both sides merely scratched the surface of the argument, and were content with the superficial "lessons" thereby gained. What good could come of the hearings? The country would get out of its doldrums sooner or later; employment would be easy to find; wages would rise, a little; every one would have his bellyful; and then, some years later, another wave of depression would set in, the bitter strife would be repeated, both parties unlessoned by this or any other experience. The world, at least this civilization, belonged to the strong; the poor would remain weak and foolish and treacherous.

It was whispered about on the first days of the hearing that an official of the American Railway Union would take the stand and make disclosures. He would show how the strike was finally ended, not by the law and the sword, but by money. The official's name was Dresser, Sommers heard, and every day he looked for him to take the stand. But the rumor pa.s.sed away, and no "revelations" by Dresser or any one else who knew the inner facts appeared.