________________________________________________
_ In the year following the beginning of his acquaintanceship with Edith
Carson McGregor continued to work hard and steadily in the warehouse
and with his books at night. He was promoted to be foreman, replacing
the German, and he thought he had made progress with his studies. When
he did not go to the night school he went to Edith Carson's place and
sat reading a book and smoking his pipe by a little table in the back
room.
About the room and in and out of her shop moved Edith, going softly
and quietly. A light began to come into her eyes and colour into her
cheeks. She did not talk but new and daring thoughts visited her mind
and a thrill of reawakened life ran through her body. With gentle
insistence she did not let her dreams express themselves in words and
almost hoped that she might be able to go on forever thus, having this
strong man come into her presence and sit absorbed in his own affairs
within the walls of her house. Sometimes she wanted him to talk and
wished that she had the power to lead him into the telling of little
facts of his life. She wanted to be told of his mother and father, of
his boyhood in the Pennsylvania town, of his dreams and his desires
but for the most part she was content to wait and only hoped that
nothing would happen to bring an end to her waiting.
McGregor began to read books of history and became absorbed in the
figures of certain men, all soldiers and leaders of soldiers who
stalked across the pages wherein was written the story of man's life.
The figures of Sherman, Grant, Lee, Jackson, Alexander, Caesar,
Napoleon, and Wellington seemed to him to stand starkly up among the
other figures in the books and going to the Public Library at the noon
hour he got books concerning these men and for a time lost interest in
the study of law and devoted himself to contemplation of the breakers
of laws.
There was something beautiful about McGregor in those days. He was as
virginal and pure as a chunk of the hard black coal out of the hills
of his own state and like the coal ready to burn himself out into
power. Nature had been kind to him. He had the gift of silence and of
isolation. All about him were other men, perhaps as strong physically
as himself and with better trained minds who were being destroyed and
he was not being destroyed. For the others life let itself run out in
the endless doing of little tasks, the thinking of little thoughts and
the saying of groups of words over and over endlessly like parrots
that sit in cages and earn their bread by screaming two or three
sentences to passers by.
It is a terrible thing to speculate on how man has been defeated by
his ability to say words. The brown bear in the forest has no such
power and the lack of it has enabled him to retain a kind of nobility
of bearing sadly lacking in us. On and on through life we go,
socialists, dreamers, makers of laws, sellers of goods and believers
in suffrage for women and we continuously say words, worn-out words,
crooked words, words without power or pregnancy in them.
The matter is one to be thought of seriously by youths and maidens
inclined to garrulousness. Those who have the habit of it will never
change. The gods who lean over the rim of the world to laugh at us
have marked them for their barrenness.
And yet the word must run on. McGregor, the silent, wanted his word.
He wanted his true note as an individual to ring out above the hubbub
of voices and then he wanted to use the strength and the virility
within himself to carry his word far. What he did not want was that
his mouth become foul and his brain become numb with the saying of the
words and the thinking of the thoughts of other men and that he in his
turn become a mere toiling food-consuming chattering puppet to the
gods.
For a long time the miner's son wondered what power lay in the men
whose figures stood up so boldly in the pages of the books he read. He
tried to think the matter out as he sat in Edith's room or walked by
himself through the streets. In the warehouse he looked with new
curiosity at the men who worked in the great rooms piling and unpiling
apple barrels and the boxes of eggs and fruit When he came into one of
the rooms the men who had been standing in groups idly talking of
their own affairs began to run busily about. They no longer chattered
but as long as he remained worked desperately, furtively watching as
he stood staring at them.
McGregor wondered. He tried to fathom the mystery of the power that
made them willing to work until their bodies were bent and stooped,
that made them unashamed to be afraid and that left them in the end
mere slaves to words and formulas.
The perplexed young man who watched the men in the warehouse began to
think that the passion for reproduction might have something to do
with the matter. Perhaps his constant association with Edith awakened
the thought. His own loins were heavy with the seeds of children and
only his absorption in the thought of finding himself kept him from
devoting himself to the feeding of his lusts. One day he had a talk
concerning the matter with a at the warehouse. The talk came about in
this way.
In the warehouse the men came in at the door in the morning, drifting
in like flies that wander in at the open windows on a summer day. With
downcast eyes they shuffled across the long floor, white with lime.
Morning after morning they came in at the door and went silently to
their places looking at the floor and scowling. A slender bright-eyed
young man who acted as shipping clerk during the day sat in a little
coop and to him the men as they passed called out their numbers. From
time to time the shipping clerk who was an Irishman tried to joke with
one of them, tapping sharply upon his desk with a pencil as though to
compel attention. "They are no good," he said to himself, when in
response to his sallies they only smiled vaguely. "Although they get
but a dollar and a half a day they are overpaid!" Like McGregor he had
nothing but contempt for the men whose numbers he put in the book.
Their stupidity he took as a compliment to himself. "We are the kind
who get things done," he thought as he put the pencil back of his ear
and closed the book. In his mind the futile pride of the middle class
man flamed up. In his contempt for the workers he forgot also to have
contempt for himself.
One morning McGregor and the shipping clerk stood upon a board
platform facing the street and the shipping clerk talked of parentage.
"The wives of the workers here have children as cattle have calves,"
said the Irishman. Moved by some hidden sentiment within himself he
added heartily. "Oh well, what's a man for? It's nice to see kids
around the house. I've got four kids myself. You should see them play
about in the garden at my place in Oak Park when I come home in the
evening."
McGregor thought of Edith Carson and a faint hunger began to grow
within him. A desire that was later to come near to upsetting the
purpose of his life began to make itself felt. With a growl he fought
against the desire and confused the Irishman by making an attack upon
him. "Well how are you any better?" he asked bluntly. "Do you think
your children any more important than theirs? You may have a better
mind but their bodies are better and your mind hasn't made you a very
striking figure as far as I can see."
Turning away from the Irishman who had begun to sputter with wrath
McGregor went up an elevator to a distant part of the building to
think of the Irishman's words. From time to time he spoke sharply to a
workman who loitered in one of the passages between the piles of boxes
and barrels. Under his hand the work in the warehouse had begun to
take on order and the little grey-haired superintendent who had
employed him rubbed his hands with delight.
In a corner by a window stood McGregor wondering why he also did not
want to devote his life to being the father of children. In the dim
light across the face of the window a fat old spider crawled slowly.
In the hideous body of the insect there was something that suggested
to the mind of the struggling thinker the sloth of the world. Vaguely
his mind groped about trying to get hold of words and ideas to express
what was in his brain. "Ugly crawling things that look at the floor,"
he muttered. "If they have children it is without order or orderly
purpose. It is an accident like the accident of the fly that falls
into the net built by the insect here. The coming of the children is
like the coming of the flies, it feeds a kind of cowardice in men. In
the children men hope vainly to see done what they have not the
courage to try to do."
With an oath McGregor smashed with his heavy leather glove the fat
thing wandering aimlessly across the light. "I must not be confused by
little things. There is still going on the attempt to force me into
the hole in the ground. There is a hole here in which men live and
work just as there is in the mining town from which I came."
* * * * *
Hurrying out of his room that evening McGregor went to see Edith. He
wanted to look at her and to think. In the little room at the back he
sat for an hour trying to read a book and then for the first time
shared his thoughts with her. "I am trying to discover why men are of
so little importance," he said suddenly. "Are they mere tools for
women? Tell me that. Tell me what women think and what they want?"
Without waiting for an answer he turned again to the reading of the
book. "Oh well," he added "it doesn't need to bother me. I won't let
any women lead me into being a reproductive tool for her."
Edith was alarmed. She took McGregor's outburst as a declaration of
war against herself and her influence and her hands began to tremble.
Then a new thought came to her. "He needs money to get on in the
world," she told herself and a little thrill of joy ran through her as
she thought of her own carefully guarded hoard. She wondered how she
could offer it to him so that there would be no danger of a refusal.
"You're all right," said McGregor, preparing to depart. "You do not
interfere with a man's thoughts."
Edith blushed and like the workmen in the warehouse looked at the
floor. Something in his words startled her and when he was gone she
went to her desk and taking out her bankbook turned its pages with new
pleasure. Without hesitation she who indulged herself in nothing would
have given all to McGregor.
And out into the street went the man, thinking of his own affairs. He
dismissed from his mind the thoughts of women and children and began
again to think of the stirring figures of history that had made so
strong an appeal to him. As he passed over one of the bridges he
stopped and stood leaning over the rail to look at the black water
below. "Why has thought never succeeded in replacing action?" he asked
himself. "Why are the men who write books in some way less full of
meaning than the men who do things?"
McGregor was staggered by the thought that had come to him and
wondered if he had started on a wrong trail by coming to the city and
trying to educate himself. For an hour he stood in the darkness and
tried to think things out. It began to rain but he did not mind. Into
his brain began to creep a dream of a vast order coming out of
disorder. He was like one standing in the presence of some gigantic
machine with many intricate parts that had begun to run crazily, each
part without regard to the purpose of the whole. "There is danger in
thinking too," he muttered vaguely. "Everywhere there is danger, in
labour, in love and in thinking. What shall I do with myself?"
McGregor turned about and threw up his hands. A new thought swept like
a broad path of light across the darkness of his mind. He began to see
that the soldiers who had led thousands of men into battle had
appealed to him because in the working out of their purposes they had
used human lives with the recklessness of gods. They had found the
courage to do that and their courage was magnificent. Away down deep
in the hearts of men lay sleeping a love of order and they had taken
hold of that love. If they had used it badly did that matter? Had they
not pointed the way?
Back into McGregor's mind came a night scene in his home town. Vividly
he saw in fancy the poor unkempt little street facing the railroad
tracks and the groups of striking miners huddled in the light before
the door of a saloon while in the road a body of soldiers marched
past, their uniforms looking grey and their faces grim in the
uncertain light. "They marched," whispered McGregor. "That's what made
them seem so powerful. They were just ordinary men but they went
swinging along, all as one man. Something in that fact ennobled them.
That's what Grant knew and what Caesar knew. That's what made Grant
and Caesar seem so big. They knew and they were not afraid to use
their knowledge. Perhaps they did not bother to think how it would all
come out. They hoped for another kind of man to do the thinking.
Perhaps they did not think of anything at all but just went ahead and
tried to do each his own part.
"I will do my part here," shouted McGregor. "I will find the way." His
body shook and his voice roared along the footpath of the bridge. Men
stopped to look back at the big shouting figure. Two women walking
past screamed and ran into the roadway. McGregor walked rapidly away
toward his own room and his books. He did not know how he would be
able to use the new impulse that had come to him but as he swung along
through dark streets and past rows of dark buildings he thought again
of the great machine running crazily and without purpose and was glad
he was not a part of it. "I will keep myself to myself and be ready
for what happens," he said, burning with new courage. _
Read next: BOOK III: CHAPTER I
Read previous: BOOK II: CHAPTER VI
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