________________________________________________
At the gate of the cemetery he fled from the little company. Dr. Leonard
wanted to return to the city with him, but he shook off the talkative
dentist. He must escape all sense of participation in the affair. So he
made the long journey in the cable train, thinking disconnectedly in unison
with the banging, jolting, grinding of the car. The panorama of his one
short year in Chicago rose bit by bit into his mind: the hospital, the
rich, bizarre town, the society of thirsty, struggling souls, always
rushing madly hither and thither, his love for the woman he had just left,
and this final distracting event.
What if she had doubled the dose of the anodyne? Probably the fellow was
abusive. It might have been some shameful extremity that had forced upon
her this act in self-defence. But such a situation would have called for
violence, some swift blow. The man had died in insidious calm. He had
counselled it, believed in it. But not that _she_--the woman he
loved--should be brave with that desperate courage. Yet it was over now,
beyond sight and thought, and he loved her--yes, loved her more than if it
had not been so.
Once in town, he felt intolerably lonely, as a busy man who has had his
round of little duties in a busy world soon comes to feel when any jar has
put him out of his usual course. As he sauntered among the strange faces of
the city streets, looking out for a familiar being, he began to realize how
completely he had cut himself off from the ordinary routine of life. He was
as much a stranger as if he had been dropped into the bustling crowd for
the first time. He had sat in judgment, and the world would give a fig for
his judgments. A week ago he might have taken refuge in a dozen houses.
To-night he stood upon street corners and wistfully eyed the passing
stream.
He walked to the river aimlessly, and then walked back, examining the blank
faces of the people. He spied through the lowered window of a carriage
Brome Porter and Carson, going in the direction of the Northwestern
station. The carriage skirted the curb near him, but the occupants were
looking the other way. He recalled that Carson had been induced to leave
the famous portrait on exhibition at the Art Institute. Whenever in the
future he might care to refresh his mind with the vision of this epitome of
success, he had but to drop into the dusky building on the lake front and
have it all--with the comment of the great artist.
As he moved on his restless course, he thought of Porter and Carson, of
Polot, and then of many others, whose faces came out of the memories of the
past year. How many of them were "good fellows," human and kind and strong!
They fought the world's fight, and fought it fairly. Could more be expected
of man? Could he be made to curb his passion for gain, to efface himself,
to refuse to take what his strong right hand had the power to grasp?
Perhaps the world was arranged merely to get the best out of strong
animals.
He turned into a restaurant, where usually he could find a dozen people of
his acquaintance in the prosperous world. The place was crowded, but he
spied no one he had ever seen. Evidently the people who knew how to make
themselves comfortable had contrived to get out of this besieged city. They
were at the various country clubs, at Wheaton, Lake Forest, Lake Geneva,
Oconomowoc, keeping cool, while the general managers, the strikers, and the
troops fought out their differences. The menu was curtailed this evening.
"'Twon't be long, sir," the waiter explained, "'fore we'll have to kill
them cab horses as they done in Paris. Game and fruit and milk can't be
had."
But for the present the food was not of the famine order, and the noisy
crowd eat joyously, as if sure of enough, somehow, as long as they needed
it and had the money to pay. As Sommers was idling over his coffee, Swift,
a young fellow whom he had seen at the University Club, a college man
connected with one of the papers, sat down at his table, and chatted
busily.
"They telephoned from the stock yards that there was a big mob down there,"
he told Sommers. "I thought I'd go over and see if I couldn't get an extra
story out of it. Want to come along? It's about the last round of the
fight. The managers have got five thousand new men here already or on the
way. That will be the knock-out," he chatted briskly.
Sommers drifted along to the scene of the riot with the reporter, happier
in finding himself with some one, no matter who he might be. Swift talked
about the prospects of ending the strike. He regarded it as a reportorial
feast, and had natural regrets that such good material for lurid paragraphs
was to be cut off. As they passed through the Levee, he nodded to the
proprietors of the "places," with ostentatious familiarity. From the Levee
they took an electric car, which was crowded with officers and deputies
bound for the stock yards. The long thoroughfare lined with rotting wooden
houses and squalid brick saloons was alive with people that swarmed over
the roadbed like insects. A sweltering, fetid air veiled the distances.
Like a filthy kettle, the place stewed in its heat and dirt. Here lived the
men who had engaged in the foolish fight!
At a cross street the officers dropped off the car, and Swift and Sommers
followed them.
"Where's the fun?" the reporter asked the sergeant.
The officer pointed languidly toward a tangle of railroad tracks at one end
of the vast enclosure of the stock yards. They trudged on among the lines
of deserted cars in the fading glare of the July heat. The broad sides of
the packing houses, the lofty chimneys surrounded by thin grayish clouds,
the great warehouses of this slaughter yard of the world, drew nearer. All
at once a roar burst on their ears, and they came out from behind a line of
cars upon a stretch of track where a handful of soldiers were engaged in
pressing back a rabble of boys, women, and men. The rabble were teasing the
soldiers, as a mob of boys might tease a cat. Suddenly, as the officers and
deputies appeared, some one hurled a stone. In a moment the air was thick
with missiles, revolver shots followed, and then the handful of soldiers
formed in line with fixed bayonets.
Sommers heard in the midst of all the roar the piteous bellowing of cattle,
penned up in the cars. He saw a dark form stealing around the end of a car;
in a moment a light spurted out as if a match had been touched to kerosene;
there was a gleam of light, and the stock-car with its load of cattle was
wrapped in flames. The dark figure disappeared among the cars; Sommers
followed it. The chase was long and hot. From time to time the fleeing man
dodged behind a car, applied his torch, and hurried on. At last Sommers
overtook him, kneeling down beside a box car, and pouring oil upon a bunch
of rags. Sommers kicked the can out of reach and seized the man by the
collar. They struggled in the dark for a few moments. Then the man put his
hand to his pocket, saying,--
"I suppose you're a damned, sneaking deputy."
"Hold on, you drunken fool!" Sommers exclaimed. "It's lucky for you I am
not a deputy."
He could hear the mob as it came down the yards in the direction of the
burning cars.
"If you don't want to be locked up, come on with me."
The fellow obeyed, and they walked down through the lane of cars until they
reached a fence. Sommers forced his companion through a gap, and followed
him. Then the man began to run, and at the corner ran into a file of
soldiers, who were coming into the yards. Sommers turned up the street and
walked rapidly in the direction of the city. The first drops of a
thunder-shower that had been lowering over the city for hours were falling,
and they brought a pleasant coolness into the sultry atmosphere. That was
the end! The "riot" would be drowned out in half an hour.
The sense of overwhelming loneliness came back, and instinctively he turned
south in the direction of the cottage. From the loneliness of life, the
sultry squalor of the city, the abortive folly of the mob, he fled to the
one place that was still sweet in all this wilderness of men.
* * * * *
The cottage windows were dark when he arrived an hour later, but Alves met
him at the door.
"I have been waiting for you," she said calmly. "I knew you would come as
soon as you could."
"Didn't Miss M'Gann stay?" he asked remorsefully.
"I sent her away with Dr. Leonard. And our old Ducharme has gone out to one
of her doctor's services. She is getting queerer and queerer, but such a
good soul! What should I have done without her! You sent her to me," she
added tenderly.
They sat down by the open window within sound of the gentle, healing rain.
Sommers noticed that Alves had changed her dress from the black gown she
had worn in the afternoon to a colored summer dress. The room had been
rearranged, and all signs of the afternoon scene removed. It was as if she
willed to obliterate the past at once. How fast she lived!
Her manner was peaceful. She sat resting her head against a high-backed
chair, and her arms, bare from the elbow, fell limply by her side. She
seemed tired, merely, and content to rest in the sense of sweet relief.
"Alves," he cried, taking one of her hands and pressing the soft flesh in
his grip, "I could not stay away. I meant to--I did not mean to meet you
again here--but it was too lonely, too desolate everywhere."
"Why not here and at once?" she asked, with a shade of wonder in her voice.
"Haven't we had all the sorrow here? And why should we put off our joy? It
is so great to be happy to the full for once."
The very words seemed to have a savor for her.
"Are you happy?" he asked curiously.
"Why not! It's as if all that I could ever dream while I walked the hot
streets had come to me. It has come so fast that I cannot quite feel it
all. Some joy is standing outside, waiting its turn."
Smilingly she turned her face to his for response.
"What shall you do?" he asked.
"Do? I can't think _now_. There is so much time to think of that."
"But you can't stay here!" he exclaimed, with undue agitation.
"Not if you dislike it. But I feel differently. I found this refuge, and it
served me well. I have no need to leave it."
Sommers let her hand fall from his clasp, and rose to his feet.
"You must! You cannot stay here after--"
"As you wish. We will go away."
"But until we are married?"
"Married?" she repeated questioningly. "I hadn't thought of that."
After a moment she said hesitatingly:
"Do we have to be married? I mean have the ceremony, the oath, the rest of
it? I have been married. Now I want--love."
"Why, it is only natural--" the man protested.
"No, no, it is not natural. It may kill all this precious love. You may
come to hate me as I hated him, and then, then? No," she continued
passionately. "Let us not make a ceremony of this. It would be like the
other, and I should feel it so always. We will have love, just love, and
live so that it makes no difference. You cannot understand!"
Sommers knelt beside her chair.
"Love, love," he repeated. "You shall have it, Alves, as you will--the
delirium of love!"
"That is right," she whispered, trembling at his touch. "Talk to me like
that. Only more, more. Make my ears ring with it. Your words are so weak!"
"There are no words."
"No, there is not one perfect one in all the thousands!" she uttered, with
a low cry. "And they are all alike--all used and common. But this,"--she
kissed him, drawing him closer to her beating heart. "This is you and all!"
Thus she taught him the fire of love--so quickly, so surely! From the vague
boyish beatitude had sprung this passion, like the opulent blossom out of
the infolding bosom of the plant. Her kiss had dissipated his horrid
suspicions. Her lips were bond and oath and sacrament.
That night they escaped the world with its fierce cross-purposes, its
checker-board scheme. The brutality of human success, the anguish of
strife,--what is it when man is shut within the chamber of his joy! Outside
the peaceful rain fell ceaselessly, quenching the flame and the smoke and
the passion of the city.
Read next: PART II#CHAPTER I
Read previous: PART I#CHAPTER XXIII
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