Chapter 16

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_ CHAPTER XVI

She had got another place--such was the explanation of her new activities Janet gave to Hannah, who received it passively. And the question dreaded about Ditmar was never asked. Hannah had become as a child, performing her tasks by the momentum of habituation, occasionally talking simply of trivial, every-day affairs, as though the old life were going on continuously. At times, indeed, she betrayed concern about Edward, wondering whether he were comfortable at the mill, and she washed and darned the clothes he sent home by messenger. She hoped he would not catch cold. Her suffering seemed to have relaxed. It was as though the tortured portion of her brain had at length been seared. To Janet, her mother's condition when she had time to think of it--was at once a relief and a new and terrible source of anxiety.

Mercifully, however, she had little leisure to reflect on that tragedy, else her own sanity might have been endangered. As soon as breakfast was over she hurried across the city to the Franco-Belgian Hall, and often did not return until nine o'clock at night, usually so tired that she sank into bed and fell asleep. For she threw herself into her new labours with the desperate energy that seeks forgetfulness, not daring to pause to think about herself, to reflect upon what the future might hold for her when the strike should be over. Nor did she confine herself to typewriting, but, as with Ditmar, constantly assumed a greater burden of duty, helping Czernowitz--who had the work of five men--with his accounts, with the distribution of the funds to the ever-increasing number of the needy who were facing starvation. The money was paid out to them in proportion to the size of their families; as the strike became more and more effective their number increased until many mills had closed; other mills, including the Chippering, were still making a desperate attempt to operate their looms, and sixteen thousand operatives were idle. She grew to know these operatives who poured all day long in a steady stream through Headquarters; she heard their stories, she entered into their lives, she made decisions. Some, even in those early days of the strike, were frauds; were hiding their savings; but for the most part investigation revealed an appalling destitution, a resolution to suffer for the worker's cause. A few complained, the majority were resigned; some indeed showed exaltation and fire, were undaunted by the task of picketing in the cold mornings, by the presence of the soldiery. In this work of dealing with the operatives Janet had the advice and help of Anna Mower, a young woman who herself had been a skilled operative in the Clarendon Mill, and who was giving evidence of unusual qualities of organization and leadership. Anna, with no previous practise in oratory, had suddenly developed the gift of making speeches, the more effective with her fellow workers because unstudied, because they flowed directly out of an experience she was learning to interpret and universalize. Janet, who heard her once or twice, admired and envied her. They became friends.

The atmosphere of excitement in which Janet now found herself was cumulative. Day by day one strange event followed another, and at times it seemed as if this extraordinary existence into which she had been plunged were all a feverish dream. Hither, to the absurd little solle de reunion of the Franco-Belgian Hall came notables from the great world, emissaries from an uneasy Governor, delegations from the Legislature, Members of the Congress of the United States and even Senators; students, investigators, men and women of prominence in the universities, magazine writers to consult with uncouth leaders of a rebellion that defied and upset the powers which hitherto had so serenely ruled, unchallenged. Rolfe identified these visitors, and one morning called her attention to one who he said was the nation's foremost authority on social science. Janet possessed all unconsciously the New England reverence for learning, she was stirred by the sight of this distinguished-looking person who sat on the painted stage, fingering his glasses and talking to Antonelli. The two men made a curious contrast. But her days were full of contrasts of which her mood exultingly approved. The politicians were received cavalierly. Toward these, who sought to act as go-betweens in the conflict, Antonelli was contemptuous; he behaved like the general of a conquering army, and his audacity was reflected in the other leaders, in Rolfe, in the Committee itself.

That Committee, a never-ending source of wonder to Janet, with its nine or ten nationalities and interpreters, was indeed a triumph over the obstacles of race and language, a Babel made successful; in a community of Anglo-Saxon traditions, an amazing anomaly. The habiliments of the west, the sack coats and sweaters, the slouch hats and caps, the so-called Derbies pulled down over dark brows and flashing eyes lent to these peasant types an incongruity that had the air of ferocity. The faces of most of them were covered with a blue-black stubble of beard. Some slouched in their chairs, others stood and talked in groups, gesticulating with cigars and pipes; yet a keen spectator, after watching them awhile through the smoke, might have been able to pick out striking personalities among them. He would surely have noticed Froment, the stout, limping man under whose white eyebrows flashed a pair of livid blue and peculiarly Gallic eyes; he held the Belgians in his hand: Lindtzki, the Pole, with his zealot's face; Radeau, the big Canadian in the checked Mackinaw; and Findley, the young American-less by any arresting quality of feature than by an expression suggestive of practical wisdom.

Imagine then, on an afternoon in the middle phase of the strike, some half dozen of the law-makers of a sovereign state, top-hatted and conventionally garbed in black, accustomed to authority, to conferring favours instead of requesting them, climbing the steep stairs and pausing on the threshold of that hall, fingering their watch chains, awaiting recognition by the representatives of the new and bewildering force that had arisen in an historic commonwealth. A "debate" was in progress. Some of the debaters, indeed, looked over their shoulders, but the leader, who sat above them framed in the sylvan setting of the stage, never so much as deigned to glance up from his newspaper. A half-burned cigar rolled between his mobile lips, he sat on the back of his neck, and yet he had an air Napoleonic; Nietzschean, it might better be said--although it is safe to assert that these moulders of American institutions knew little about that terrible philosopher who had raised his voice against the "slave morals of Christianity." It was their first experience with the superman.... It remained for the Canadian, Radeau, when a lull arrived in the turmoil, to suggest that the gentlemen be given chairs.

"Sure, give them chairs," assented Antonelli in a voice hoarse from speech-making. Breath-taking audacity to certain spectators who had followed the delegation hither, some of whom could not refrain from speculating whether it heralded the final scrapping of the machinery of the state; amusing to cynical metropolitan reporters, who grinned at one another as they prepared to take down the proceedings; evoking a fierce approval in the breasts of all rebels among whom was Janet. The Legislative Chairman, a stout and suave gentleman of Irish birth, proceeded to explain how greatly concerned was the Legislature that the deplorable warfare within the state should cease; they had come, he declared, to aid in bringing about justice between labour and capital.

"We'll get justice without the help of the state," remarked Antonelli curtly, while a murmur of approval ran through the back of the hall.

That was scarcely the attitude, said the Chairman, he had expected. He knew that such a strike as this had engendered bitterness, there had been much suffering, sacrifice undoubtedly on both sides, but he was sure, if Mr. Antonelli and the Committee would accept their services here he was interrupted.

Had the mill owners accepted their services?

The Chairman cleared his throat.

The fact was that the mill owners were more difficult to get together in a body. A meeting would be arranged--"When you arrange a meeting, let me know," said Antonelli.

A laugh went around the room. It was undoubtedly very difficult to keep one's temper under such treatment. The Chairman looked it.

"A meeting would be arranged," he declared, with a long-suffering expression. He even smiled a little. "In the meantime--"

"What can your committee do?" demanded one of the strike leaders, passionately--it was Findley. "If you find one party wrong, can your state force it to do right? Can you legislators be impartial when you have not lived the bitter life of the workers? Would you arbitrate a question of life and death? And are the worst wages paid in these mills anything short of death? Do you investigate because conditions are bad? or because the workers broke loose and struck? Why did you not come before the strike?"

This drew more approval from the rear. Why, indeed? The Chairman was adroit, he had pulled himself out of many tight places in the Assembly Chamber, but now he began to perspire, to fumble in his coat tails for a handkerchief. The Legislature, he maintained, could not undertake to investigate such matters until called to its attention....

Later on a tall gentleman, whom heaven had not blessed with tact, saw fit to deplore the violence that had occurred; he had no doubt the leaders of the strike regretted it as much as he, he was confident it would be stopped, when public opinion would be wholly and unreservedly on the side of the strikers.

"Public opinion!" savagely cried Lindtzki, who spoke English with only a slight accent. "If your little boy, if your little girl come to you and ask for shoes, for bread, and you say, 'I have no shoes, I have no bread, but public opinion is with us,' would that satisfy you?"

This drew so much applause that the tall law-maker sat down again with a look of disgust on his face.... The Committee withdrew, and for many weeks thereafter the state they represented continued to pay some four thousand dollars daily to keep its soldiers on the streets of Hampton....

In the meanwhile Janet saw much of Rolfe. Owing to his facile command of language he was peculiarly fitted to draft those proclamations, bombastically worded in the French style, issued and circulated by the Strike Committee--appeals to the polyglot army to withstand the pangs of hunger, to hold out for the terms laid down, assurances that victory was at hand. Walking up and down the bibliotheque, his hands behind his back, his red lips gleaming as he spoke, he dictated these documents to Janet. In the ecstasy of this composition he had a way of shaking his head slowly from side to side, and when she looked up she saw his eyes burning, down at her. A dozen times a day, while she was at her other work, he would come in and talk to her. He excited her, she was divided between attraction and fear of him, and often she resented his easy assumption that a tie existed between them--the more so because this seemed to be taken for granted among certain of his associates. In their eyes, apparently, she was Rolfe's recruit in more senses than one. It was indeed a strange society in which she found herself, and Rolfe typified it. He lived on the plane of the impulses and intellect, discarded as inhibiting factors what are called moral standards, decried individual discipline and restraint. And while she had never considered these things, the spectacle of a philosophy--embodied in him--that frankly and cynically threw them overboard was disconcerting. He regarded her as his proselyte, he called her a Puritan, and he seemed more concerned that she should shed these relics of an ancestral code than acquire the doctrines of Sorel and Pouget. And yet association with him presented the allurement of a dangerous adventure. Intellectually he fascinated her; and still another motive--which she partially disguised from herself--prevented her from repelling him. That motive had to do with Ditmar. She tried to put Ditmar from her mind; she sought in desperation, not only to keep busy, but to steep and lose herself in this fierce creed as an antidote to the insistent, throbbing pain that lay ambushed against her moments of idleness. The second evening of her installation at Headquarters she had worked beyond the supper hour, helping Sanders with his accounts. She was loath to go home. And when at last she put on her hat and coat and entered the hall Rolfe, who had been talking to Jastro, immediately approached her. His liquid eyes regarded her solicitously.

"You must be hungry," he said. "Come out with me and have some supper."

But she was not hungry; what she needed was air. Then he would walk a little way with her--he wanted to talk to her. She hesitated, and then consented. A fierce hope had again taken possession of her, and when they came to Warren Street she turned into it.

"Where are you going?" Rolfe demanded.

"For a walk," she said. "Aren't you coming?"

"Will you have supper afterwards?"

"Perhaps."

He followed her, puzzled, yet piqued and excited by her manner, as with rapid steps she hurried along the pavement. He tried to tell her what her friendship meant to him; they were, he declared, kindred spirits--from the first time he had seen her, on the Common, he had known this. She scarcely heard him, she was thinking of Ditmar; and this was why she had led Rolfe into Warren Street they might meet Ditmar! It was possible that he would be going to the mill at this time, after his dinner! She scrutinized every distant figure, and when they reached the block in which he lived she walked more slowly. From within the house came to her, faintly, the notes of a piano--his daughter Amy was practising. It was the music, a hackneyed theme of Schubert's played heavily, that seemed to arouse the composite emotion of anger and hatred, yet of sustained attraction and wild regret she had felt before, but never so poignantly as now. And she lingered, perversely resolved to steep herself in the agony.

"Who lives here" Rolfe asked.

"Mr. Ditmar," she answered.

"The agent of the Chippering Mill?"

She nodded.

"He's the worst of the lot," Rolfe said angrily. "If it weren't for him, we'd have this strike won to-day. He owns this town, he's run it to suit himself, He stiffens up the owners and holds the other mills in line. He's a type, a driver, the kind of man we must get rid of. Look at him--he lives in luxury while his people are starving."

"Get rid of!" repeated Janet, in an odd voice.

"Oh, I don't mean to shoot him," Rolfe declared. "But he may get shot, for all I know, by some of these slaves he's made desperate."

"They wouldn't dare shoot him," Janet said. "And whatever he is, he isn't a coward. He's stronger than the others, he's more of a man."

Rolfe looked at her curiously.

"What do you know about him?" he asked.

"I--I know all about him. I was his stenographer."

"You! His stenographer! Then why are you herewith us?"

"Because I hate him!" she cried vehemently. "Because I've learned that it's true--what you say about the masters--they only think of themselves and their kind, and not of us. They use us."

"He tried to use you! You loved him!"

"How dare you say that!"

He fell back before her anger.

"I didn't mean to offend you," he exclaimed. "I was jealous--I'm jealous of every man you've known. I want you. I've never met a woman like you."

They were the very words Ditmar had used! She did not answer, and for a while they walked along in silence, leaving Warren Street and cutting across the city until they canoe in sight of the Common. Rolfe drew nearer to her.

"Forgive me!" he pleaded. "You know I would not offend you. Come, we'll have supper together, and I will teach you more of what you have to know."

"Where?" she asked.

"At the Hampton--it is a little cafe where we all go. Perhaps you've been there."

"No," said Janet.

"It doesn't compare with the cafes of Europe--or of New York. Perhaps we shall go to them sometime, together. But it is cosy, and warm, and all the leaders will be there. You'll come--yes?"

"Yes, I'll come," she said....

The Hampton was one of the city's second-class hotels, but sufficiently pretentious to have, in its basement, a "cafe" furnished in the "mission" style of brass tacks and dull red leather. In the warm, food-scented air fantastic wisps of smoke hung over the groups; among them Janet made out several of the itinerant leaders of Syndicalism, loose-tied, debonnair, giving a tremendous impression of freedom as they laughed and chatted with the women. For there were women, ranging from the redoubtable Nellie Bond herself down to those who may be designated as camp-followers. Rolfe, as he led Janet to a table in a corner of the room, greeted his associates with easy camaraderie. From Miss Bond he received an illuminating smile. Janet wondered at her striking good looks, at the boldness and abandon with which she talked to Jastro or exchanged sallies across the room. The atmosphere of this tawdry resort, formerly frequented by shop girls and travelling salesmen, was magically transformed by the presence of this company, made bohemian, cosmopolitan, exhilarating. And Janet, her face flushed, sat gazing at the scene, while Rolfe consulted the bill of fare and chose a beefsteak and French fried potatoes. The apathetic waiter in the soiled linen jacket he addressed as "comrade." Janet protested when he ordered cocktails.

"You must learn to live, to relax, to enjoy yourself," he declared.

But a horror of liquor held her firm in her refusal. Rolfe drank his, and while they awaited the beefsteak she was silent, the prey of certain misgivings that suddenly assailed her. Lise, she remembered, had sometimes mentioned this place, though preferring Gruber's: and she was struck by the contrast between this spectacle and the grimness of the strike these people had come to encourage and sustain, the conflict in the streets, the suffering in the tenements. She glanced at Rolfe, noting the manner in which he smoked cigarettes, sensually, as though seeking to wring out of each all there was to be got before flinging it down and lighting another. Again she was struck by the anomaly of a religion that had indeed enthusiasms, sacrifices perhaps, but no disciplines. He threw it out in snatches, this religion, while relating the histories of certain persons in the room: of Jastro, for instance, letting fall a hint to the effect that this evangelist and bliss Bond were dwelling together in more than amity.

"Then you don't believe in marriage?" she demanded, suddenly.

Rolfe laughed.

"What is it," he exclaimed, "but the survival of the system of property? It's slavery, taboo, a device upheld by the master class to keep women in bondage, in superstition, by inducing them to accept it as a decree of God."

"Did the masters themselves ever respect it, or any other decrees of God they preached to the slaves? Read history, and you will see. They had their loves, their mistresses. Read the newspapers, and you will find out whether they respect it to-day. But they are very anxious to have you and me respect it and all the other Christian commandments, because they will prevent us from being discontented. They say that we must be satisfied with the situation in this world in which God has placed us, and we shall have our reward in the next."

She shivered slightly, not only at the ideas thus abruptly enunciated, but because it occurred to her that those others must be taking for granted a certain relationship between herself and Rolfe.... But presently, when the supper arrived, these feelings changed. She was very hungry, and the effect of the food, of the hot coffee was to dispel her doubt and repugnance, to throw a glamour over the adventure, to restore to Rolfe's arguments an exciting and alluring appeal. And with renewed physical energy she began to experience once more a sense of fellowship with these free and daring spirits who sought to avenge her wrongs and theirs.

"For us who create there are no rules of conduct, no conventions," Rolfe was saying, "we do not care for the opinions of the middle class, of the bourgeois. With us men and women are on an equality. It is fear that has kept the workers down, and now we have cast that off--we know our strength. As they say in Italy, il mondo e a chi se lo piglia, the world belongs to him who is bold."

"Italian is a beautiful language," she exclaimed.

"I will teach you Italian," he said.

"I want to learn--so much!" she sighed.

"Your soul is parched," he said, in a commiserating tone. "I will water it, I will teach you everything." His words aroused a faint, derisive echo: Ditmar had wish to teach her, too! But now she was strongly under the spell of the new ideas hovering like shining, gossamer spirits just beyond her reach, that she sought to grasp and correlate. Unlike the code which Rolfe condemned, they seemed not to be separate from life, opposed to it, but entered even into that most important of its elements, sex. In deference to that other code Ditmar had made her his mistress, and because he was concerned for his position and the security of the ruling class had sought to hide the fact.... Rolfe, with a cigarette between his red lips, sat back in his chair, regarding with sensuous enjoyment the evident effect of his arguments.

"But love?" she interrupted, when presently he had begun to talk again. She strove inarticulately to express an innate feminine objection to relationships that were made and broken at pleasure.

"Love is nothing but attraction between the sexes, the life-force working in us. And when that attraction ceases, what is left? Bondage. The hideous bondage of Christian marriage, in which women promise to love and obey forever."

"But women--women are not like men. When once they give themselves they do not so easily cease to love. They--they suffer."

He did not seem to observe the bitterness in her voice.

"Ah, that is sentiment," he declared, "something that will not trouble women when they have work to do, inspiring work. It takes time to change our ideas, to learn to see things as they are." He leaned forward eagerly. "But you will learn, you are like some of those rare women in history who have had the courage to cast off traditions. You were not made to be a drudge...."

But now her own words, not his, were ringing in her head--women do not so easily cease to love, they suffer. In spite of the new creed she had so eagerly and fiercely embraced, in which she had sought deliverance and retribution, did she still love Ditmar, and suffer because of him? She repudiated the suggestion, yet it persisted as she glanced at Rolfe's red lips and compared him with Ditmar. Love! Rolfe might call it what he would--the life-force, attraction between the sexes, but it was proving stronger than causes and beliefs. He too was making love to her; like Ditmar, he wanted her to use and fling away when he should grow weary. Was he not pleading for himself rather than for the human cause he professed? taking advantage of her ignorance and desperation, of her craving for new experience and knowledge? The suspicion sickened her. Were all men like that? Suddenly, without apparent premeditation or connection, the thought of the stranger from Silliston entered her mind. Was he like that?... Rolfe was bending toward her across the table, solicitously. "What's the matter?" he asked.

Her reply was listless.

"Nothing--except that I'm tired. I want to go home."

"Not now," he begged. "It's early yet."

But she insisted.... _

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