Kitabı oku: «Marching Men», sayfa 11
CHAPTER V
Edith Carson was six years older than McGregor and lived entirely within herself. Hers was one of those natures that do not express themselves in words. Although at his coming into the shop her heart beat high no colour came to her cheeks and her pale eyes did not flash back into his a message. Day after day she sat in her shop at work, quiet, strong in her own kind of faith, ready to give her money, her reputation, and if need be her life to the working out of her own dream of womanhood. She did not see in McGregor the making of a man of genius as did Margaret and did not hope to express through him a secret desire for power. She was a working woman and to her he represented all men. In her secret heart she thought of him merely as the man—her man.
And to McGregor Edith was companion and friend. He saw her sitting year after year in her shop, putting money into the savings bank, keeping a cheerful front before the world, never assertive, kindly, in her own way sure of herself. “We could go on forever as we are now and she be none the less pleased,” he told himself.
One afternoon after a particularly hard week of work he went out to her place to sit in her little workroom and think out the matter of marrying Margaret Ormsby. It was a quiet season in Edith’s trade and she was alone in the shop serving a customer. McGregor lay down upon the little couch in the workroom. For a week he had been speaking to gatherings of workmen night after night and later had sat in his own room thinking of Margaret. Now on the couch with the murmur of voices in his ears he fell asleep.
When he awoke it was late in the night and on the floor by the side of the couch sat Edith with her ringers in his hair.
McGregor opened his eyes quietly and looked at her. He could see a tear running down her cheek. She was staring straight ahead at the wall of the room and by the dim light that came through a window he could see the drawn cords of her little neck and the knot of mouse coloured hair on her head.
McGregor closed his eyes quickly. He felt like one who has been aroused out of sleep by a dash of cold water across his breast. It came over him with a rush that Edith Carson had been expecting something from him—something he was not prepared to give.
She got up after a time and crept quietly away into the shop and with a great clatter and bustle he arose also and began calling loudly. He demanded the time and complained about a missed appointment. Turning up the gas, Edith walked with him to the door. On her face sat the old placid smile. McGregor hurried away into the darkness and spent the rest of the night walking in the streets.
The next day he went to Margaret Ormsby at the settlement house. With her he used no art. Driving straight to the point he told her of the undertaker’s daughter sitting beside him on the eminence above Coal Creek, of the barber and his talk of women on the park bench and how that had led him to that other woman kneeling on the floor in the little frame house, his fists in her hair and of Edith Carson whose companionship had saved him from all of these.
“If you can’t hear all of this and still want life with me,” he said, “there is no future for us together. I want you. I’m afraid of you and afraid of my love for you but still I want you. I’ve been seeing your face floating above the audiences in the halls where I’ve been at work. I’ve looked at babies in the arms of workingmen’s wives and wanted to see my babe in your arms. I care more for what I am doing than I do for you but I love you.”
McGregor arose and stood over her. “I love you with my arms aching to close about you, with my brain planning the triumph of the workers, with all of the old perplexing human love that I had almost thought I would never want.
“I can’t bear this waiting. I can’t bear this not knowing so that I can tell Edith. I can’t have my mind filled with the need of you just as men are beginning to catch the infection of an idea and are looking to me for clear-headed leadership. Take me or let me go and live my life.”
Margaret Ormsby looked at McGregor. When she spoke her voice was as quiet as the voice of her father telling a workman in the shop what to do with a broken machine.
“I am going to marry you,” she said simply. “I am full of the thought of it. I want you, want you so blindly that I think you can’t understand.”
She stood up facing him and looked into his eyes.
“You must wait,” she said. “I must see Edith, I myself must do that. All these years she has served you—she has had that privilege.”
McGregor looked across the table into the beautiful eyes of the woman he loved.
“You belong to me even if I do belong to Edith,” he said.
“I will see Edith,” Margaret answered again.
CHAPTER VI
McGregor left the telling of the story of his love to Margaret. Edith Carson who knew defeat so well and who had in her the courage of defeat was to meet defeat at his hands through the undefeated woman and he let himself forget the whole matter. For a month he had been trying to get workingmen to take up the idea of the Marching Men without success and after the talk with Margaret he kept doggedly at the work.
And then one evening something happened that aroused him. The Marching Men idea that had become more than half intellectualised became again a burning passion and the matter of his life with women got itself cleared up swiftly and finally.
It was night and McGregor stood upon the platform of the Elevated Railroad at State and Van Buren Streets. He had been feeling guilty concerning Edith and had been intending to go out to her place but the scene in the street below fascinated him and he remained standing, looking along the lighted thoroughfare.
For a week there had been a strike of teamsters in the city and that afternoon there had been a riot. Windows had been smashed and several men injured. Now the evening crowds gathered and speakers climbed upon boxes to talk. Everywhere there was a great wagging of jaws and waving of arms. McGregor grew reminiscent. Into his mind came the little mining town and he saw himself again a boy sitting in the darkness on the steps before his mother’s bake shop and trying to think. Again in fancy he saw the disorganised miners tumbling out of the saloon to stand on the street swearing and threatening and again he was filled with contempt for them.
And then in the heart of the great western city the same thing happened that had happened when he was a boy in Pennsylvania. The officials of the city, having decided to startle the striking teamsters by a display of force, sent a regiment of state troops marching through the streets. The soldiers were dressed in brown uniforms. They were silent. As McGregor looked down they turned out of Polk Street and came with swinging measured tread up State Street past the disorderly mobs on the sidewalk and the equally disorderly speakers on the curb.
McGregor’s heart beat so that he nearly choked. The men in the uniforms, each in himself meaning nothing, had become by their marching together all alive with meaning. Again he wanted to shout, to run down into the street and embrace them. The strength in them seemed to kiss, as with the kiss of a lover, the strength within himself and when they had passed and the disorderly jangle of voices broke out again he got on a car and went out to Edith’s with his heart afire with resolution.
Edith Carson’s millinery shop was in the hands of a new owner. She had sold out and fled. McGregor stood in the show room looking about him at the cases filled with their feathery finery and at the hats along the wall. The light from a street lamp that came in at the window started millions of tiny motes dancing before his eyes.
Out of the room at the back of the shop—the room where he had seen the tears of suffering in Edith’s eyes—came a woman who told him of Edith’s having sold the business. She was excited by the message she had to deliver and walked past the waiting man, going to the screen door to stand with her back to him and look up the street.
Out of the corners of her eyes the woman looked at him. She was a small black-haired woman with two gleaming gold teeth and with glasses on her nose. “There has been a lovers’ quarrel here,” she told herself.
“I have bought the store,” she said aloud. “She told me to tell you that she had gone.”
McGregor did not wait for more but hurried past the woman into the street. In his heart was a feeling of dumb aching loss. On an impulse he turned and ran back.
Standing in the street by the screen door he shouted hoarsely. “Where did she go?” he demanded.
The woman laughed merrily. She felt that she was getting with the shop a flavour of romance and adventure very attractive to her. Then she walked to the door and smiled through the screen. “She has only just left,” she said. “She went to the Burlington station. I think she has gone West. I heard her tell the man about her trunk. She has been around here for two days since I bought the shop. I think she has been waiting for you to come. You did not come and now she has gone and perhaps you won’t find her. She did not look like one who would quarrel with a lover.”
The woman in the shop laughed softly as McGregor hurried away. “Now who would think that quiet little woman would have such a lover?” she asked herself.
Down the street ran McGregor and raising his hand stopped a passing automobile. The woman saw him seated in the automobile talking to a grey-haired man at the wheel and then the machine turned and disappeared up the street at a law-breaking pace.
McGregor had again a new light on the character of Edith Carson. “I can see her doing it,” he told himself—“cheerfully telling Margaret that it didn’t matter and all the time planning this in the back of her head. Here all of these years she has been leading a life of her own. The secret longings, the desires and the old human hunger for love and happiness and expression have been going on under her placid exterior as they have under my own.”
McGregor thought of the busy days behind him and realised with shame how little Edith had seen of him. It was in the days when his big movement of The Marching Men was just coming into the light and on the night before he had been in a conference of labour men who had wanted him to make a public demonstration of the power he had secretly been building up. Every day his office was filled with newspaper men who asked questions and demanded explanations. And in the meantime Edith had been selling her shop to that woman and getting ready to disappear.
In the railroad station McGregor found Edith sitting in a corner with her face buried in the crook of her arm. Gone was the placid exterior. Her shoulders seemed narrower. Her hand, hanging over the back of the seat in front of her, was white and lifeless.
McGregor said nothing but snatched up the brown leather bag that sat beside her on the floor and taking her by the arm led her up a flight of stone steps to the street.
CHAPTER VII
In the Ormsby household father and daughter sat in the darkness on the veranda. After Laura Ormsby’s encounter with McGregor there had been another talk between her and David. Now she had gone on a visit to her home-town in Wisconsin and father and daughter sat together.
To his wife David had talked pointedly of Margaret’s affair. “It is not a matter of good sense,” he had said; “one can not pretend there is a prospect of happiness in such an affair. The man is no fool and may some day be a big man but it will not be the kind of bigness that will bring either happiness or contentment to a woman like Margaret. He may end his life in jail.”
McGregor and Edith walked up the gravel walk and stood by the front door of the Ormsby house. From the darkness on the veranda came the hearty voice of David. “Come and sit out here,” he said.
McGregor stood silently waiting. Edith clung to his arm. Margaret got up and coming forward stood looking at them. With a jump at her heart she sensed the crisis suggested by the presence of these two people. Her voice trembled with alarm. “Come in,” she said, turning and leading the way into the house.
The man and woman followed Margaret. At the door McGregor stopped and called to David. “We want you in here with us,” he said harshly.
In the drawing room the four people waited. The great chandelier threw its light down upon them. In her chair Edith sat and looked at the floor.
“I’ve made a mistake,” said McGregor. “I’ve been going on and on making a mistake.” He turned to Margaret. “We didn’t count on something here. There is Edith. She isn’t what we thought.”
Edith said nothing. The weary stoop stayed in her shoulders. She felt that if McGregor had brought her to the house and to this woman he loved to seal their parting she would sit quietly until that was over and then go on to the loneliness she believed must be her portion.
To Margaret the coming of the man and woman was a portent of evil. She also was silent, expecting a shock. When her lover spoke she also looked at the floor. To herself she was saying, “He is going to take himself away and marry this other woman. I must be prepared to hear him say that.” In the doorway stood David. “He is going to give me back Margaret,” he thought, and his heart danced with happiness.
McGregor walked across the room and stood looking at the two women. His blue eyes were cold and filled with intense curiosity concerning them and himself. He wanted to test them and to test himself. “If I am clear-headed now I shall go on with the dream,” he thought. “If I fail in this I shall fail in everything.” Turning he took hold of the sleeve of David’s coat and pulled him across the room so that the two men stood together. Then he looked hard at Margaret. As he talked to her he continued to stand thus with his hand on her father’s arm. The action caught David’s fancy and a thrill of admiration ran through him. “Here is a man,” he told himself.
“You thought Edith was ready to see us get married. Well she was. She is now and you see what it has done to her,” said McGregor.
The daughter of the ploughmaker started to speak. Her face was chalky white. McGregor threw up his hands.
“Wait,” he said, “a man and woman can’t live together for years and then part like two men friends. Something gets into them to prevent. They find they love each other. I’ve found out that though I want you, I love Edith. She loves me. Look at her.”
Margaret half arose from her chair. McGregor went on. Into his voice came the harsh quality that made men fear and follow him. “Oh, we’ll be married, Margaret and I,” he said; “her beauty has won me. I follow beauty. I want beautiful children. That is my right.”
He turned to Edith and stood staring at her.
“You and I could never have the feeling Margaret and I had when we looked into each other’s eyes. We ached with it—each wanting the other. You are made to endure. You would get over anything and be cheerful after a while. You know that—don’t you?”
The eyes of Edith came up level with his own.
“Yes I know,” she said.
Margaret Ormsby jumped up from her chair, her eyes swimming.
“Stop,” she cried. “I do not want you. I would never marry you now. You belong to her. You are Edith’s.”
McGregor’s voice became soft and quiet.
“Oh, I know,” he said; “I know! I know! But I want children. Look at Edith. Do you think she could bear children to me?”
A change came over Edith Carson. Her eyes hardened and her shoulders straightened.
“That’s for me to say,” she cried, springing forward and clutching his arm. “That is between me and God. If you intend to marry me come now and do it. I was not afraid to give you up and I’m not afraid that I shall die bearing children.”
Dropping McGregor’s arm Edith ran across the room and stood before Margaret. “How do you know you are more beautiful or can bear more beautiful children?” she demanded. “What do you mean by beauty anyway? I deny your beauty.” She turned to McGregor. “Look,” she cried, “she does not stand the test.”
Pride swept over the woman that had come to life within the body of the little milliner. With calm eyes she stared at the people in the room and when she looked again toward Margaret there was a challenge in her voice.
“Beauty has to endure,” she said swiftly. “It has to be daring. It has to outlive long years of life and many defeats.” A hard look came into her eyes as she challenged the daughter of wealth. “I had the courage to be defeated and I have the courage to take what I want,” she said. “Have you that courage? If you have take this man. You want him and so do I. Take his arm and walk away with him. Do it now, here before my eyes.”
Margaret shook her head. Her body trembled and her eyes looked wildly about. She turned to David Ormsby. “I did not know that life could be like this,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me? She is right. I am afraid.”
A light came into McGregor’s eyes and he turned quickly about. “I see,” he said, looking sharply at Edith, “you have also your purpose.” Turning again he looked into the eyes of David.
“There is something to be decided here. It is perhaps the supreme test of a man’s life. One struggles to keep a thought in mind, to be impersonal, to see that life has a purpose outside his own purpose. You have perhaps made that struggle. You see I’m making it now. I’m going to take Edith and go back to work.”
At the door McGregor stopped and put out his hand to David who took it and looked at the big lawyer respectfully.
“I’m glad to see you go,” said the ploughmaker briefly.
“I’m glad to be going,” said McGregor, understanding that there was nothing but relief and honest antagonism in the voice and in the mind of David Ormsby.
BOOK VI
CHAPTER I
The Marching Men Movement was never a thing to intellectualise. For years McGregor tried to get it under way by talking. He did not succeed. The rhythm and swing that was at the heart of the movement hung fire. The man passed through long periods of depression and had to drive himself forward. And then after the scene with Margaret and Edith in the Ormsby house came action.
There was a man named Mosby about whose figure the action for a time revolved. He was bartender for Neil Hunt, a notorious character of South State Street, and had once been a lieutenant in the army. Mosby was what in modern society is called a rascal. After West Point and a few years at some isolated army post he began to drink and one night during a debauch and when half crazed by the dullness of his life he shot a private through the shoulder. He was arrested and put on his honour not to escape but did escape. For years he drifted about the world a haggard cynical figure who got drunk whenever money came his way and who would do anything to break the monotony of existence.
Mosby was enthusiastic about the Marching Men idea. He saw in it an opportunity to worry and alarm his fellow men. He talked a union of bartenders and waiters to which he belonged into giving the idea a trial and in the morning they began to march up and down in the strip of parkland that faced the lake at the edge of the First Ward. “Keep your mouths shut,” commanded Mosby. “We can worry the officials of this town like the devil if we work this right. When you are asked questions say nothing. If the police try to arrest us we will swear we are only doing it for the sake of exercise.”
Mosby’s plan worked. Within a week crowds began to gather in the morning to watch the Marching Men and the police started to make inquiry. Mosby was delighted. He threw up his job as bartender and recruited a motley company of young roughs whom he induced to practise the march step during the afternoons. When he was arrested and dragged into court McGregor acted as his lawyer and he was discharged. “I want to get these men out into the open,” Mosby declared, looking very innocent and guileless. “You can see for yourself that waiters and bartenders get pale and stoop-shouldered at their work and as for these young roughs isn’t it better for society to have them out there marching about than idling in bar rooms and planning God knows what mischief?”
A grin appeared over the face of the First Ward. McGregor and Mosby organised another company of marchers and a young man who had been a sergeant in a company of regulars was induced to help with the drilling. To the men themselves it was all a joke, a game that appealed to the mischievous boy in them. Everybody was curious and that gave the thing tang. They grinned as they marched up and down. For a while they exchanged gibes with the spectators but McGregor put a stop to that. “Be silent,” he said, going about among the men during the rest periods. “That’s the best thing to do. Be silent and attend to business and your marching will be ten times as effective.”
The Marching Men Movement grew. A young Jewish newspaper man, half rascal, half poet, wrote a scare-head story for one of the Sunday papers announcing the birth of the Republic of Labour. The story was illustrated by a drawing showing McGregor leading a vast horde of men across an open plain toward a city whose tall chimneys belched forth clouds of smoke. Beside McGregor in the picture and arrayed in a gaudy uniform was Mosby the ex-army officer. In the article he was called the war lord of “The secret republic growing up within a great capitalistic empire.”
It had begun to take form—the movement of the Marching Men. Rumours began to run here and there. There was a question in men’s eyes. Slowly at first it began to rumble through their minds. There was the tap of feet clicking sharply on pavements. Groups formed, men laughed, the groups disappeared only to again reappear. In the sun before factory doors men stood talking, half understanding, beginning to sense the fact that there was something big in the wind.
At first the movement did not get anywhere with the ranks of labour. There would be a meeting, perhaps a series of meetings in one of the little halls where labourers gather to attend to the affairs of their unions. McGregor would speak. His voice harsh and commanding could be heard in the streets below. Merchants came out of the stores and stood in the doorways listening. Young fellows who smoked cigarettes stopped looking at passing girls and gathered in crowds below the open windows. The slow working brain of labour was being aroused.
After a time a few young men, fellows who worked at the saws in a box factory and others who ran machines in a factory where bicycles were made, volunteered to follow the lead of the men of the First Ward. On summer evenings they gathered in vacant lots and marched back and forth looking at their feet and laughing.
McGregor insisted upon the training. He never had any intention of letting his Marching Men Movement become merely a disorganised band of walkers such as we have all seen in many a labour parade. He meant that they should learn to march rhythmically, swinging along like veterans. He was determined that the thresh of feet should come finally to sing a great song, carrying the message of a powerful brotherhood into the hearts and brains of the marchers.
McGregor gave all of his time to the movement. He made a scant living by the practice of his profession but gave it no thought. The murder case had brought him other cases and he had taken a partner, a ferret-eyed little man who worked out the details of what cases came to the firm and collected the fees, half of which he gave to the partner who was intent upon something else. Day after day, week after week, month after month, McGregor went up and down the city, talking to workers, learning to talk, striving to make his idea understood.
One evening in September he stood in the shadow of a factory wall watching a group of men who marched in a vacant lot. The movement had become by that time really big. A flame burned in his heart at the thought of what it might become. It was growing dark and the clouds of dust raised by the feet of the men swept across the face of the departing sun. In the field before him marched some two hundred men, the largest company he had been able to get together. For a week they had stayed at the marching evening after evening and were beginning a little to understand the spirit of it. Their leader on the field, a tall square shouldered man, had once been a captain in the State Militia and now worked as engineer in a factory where soap was made. His commands rang out sharp and crisp on the evening air. “Fours right into line,” he cried. The words were barked forth. The men straightened their shoulders and swung out vigorously. They had begun to enjoy the marching.
In the shadow of the factory wall McGregor moved uneasily about. He felt that this was the beginning, the real birth of his movement, that these men had really come out of the ranks of labour and that in the breasts of the marching figures there in the open space understanding was growing.
He muttered and walked back and forth. A young man, a reporter on one of the city’s great daily papers, leaped from a passing street car and came to stand near him. “What’s up here? What’s this going on? What’s it all about? You better tell me,” he said.
In the dim light McGregor raised his fists above his head and talked aloud. “It’s creeping in among them,” he said. “The thing that can’t be put into words is getting itself expressed. Something is being done here in this field. A new force is coming into the world.”
Half beside himself McGregor ran up and down swinging his arms. Again turning to the reporter who stood by a factory wall—a rather dandified figure he was with a tiny moustache—he shouted:
“Don’t you see?” he cried. His voice was harsh. “See how they march! They are finding out what I mean. They have caught the spirit of it!”
McGregor began to explain. He talked hurriedly, his words coming forth in short broken sentences. “For ages there has been talk of brotherhood. Always men have babbled of brotherhood. The words have meant nothing. The words and the talking have but bred a loose-jawed race. The jaws of men wabble about but the legs of these men do not wabble.”
He again walked up and down, dragging the half-frightened man along the deepening shadow of the factory wall.
“You see it begins—now in this field it begins. The legs and the feet of men, hundreds of legs and feet make a kind of music. Presently there will be thousands, hundreds of thousands. For a time men will cease to be individuals. They will become a mass, a moving all-powerful mass. They will not put their thoughts into words but nevertheless there will be a thought growing up in them. They will of a sudden begin to realise that they are a part of something vast and mighty, a thing that moves, that is seeking new expression. They have been told of the power of labour but now, you see, they will become the power of labour.”
Swept along by his own words and perhaps by something rhythmical in the moving mass of men McGregor became feverishly anxious that the dapper young man should understand. “Do you remember—when you were a boy—some man who had been a soldier telling you that the men who marched had to break step and go in a disorderly mob across a bridge because their orderly stride would have shaken the bridge to pieces?”
A shiver ran over the body of the young man. In his off hours he was a writer of plays and stories and his trained dramatic sense caught quickly the import of McGregor’s words. Into his mind came a scene on a village street of his own place in Ohio. In fancy he saw the village fife and drum corps marching past. His mind recalled the swing and the cadence of the tune and again as when he was a boy his legs ached to run out among the men and go marching away.
Filled with excitement he began also to talk. “I see,” he cried; “you think there is a thought in that, a big thought that men have not understood?”
On the field the men, becoming bolder as they became less self-conscious, came sweeping by, their bodies falling into a long swinging stride.
The young man pondered. “I see. I see. Every one who stood watching as I did when the fife and drum corps went past felt what I felt. They were hiding behind a mask. Their legs also tingled and the same wild militant thumping went on in their hearts. You have found that out, eh? You mean to lead labour that way?”
With open mouth the young man stared at the field and at the moving mass of men. He became oratorical in his thoughts. “Here is a big man,” he muttered. “Here is a Napoleon, a Caesar of labour come to Chicago. He is not like the little leaders. His mind is not sicklied over with the pale cast of thought. He does not think that the big natural impulses of men are foolish and absurd. He has got hold of something here that will work. The world had better watch this man.”
Half beside himself he walked up and down at the edge of the field, his body trembling.
Out of the ranks of the marching men came a workman. In the field words arose. A petulant quality came into the voice of the captain who gave commands. The newspaper man listened anxiously. “That’s what will spoil everything. The men will begin to lose heart and will quit,” he thought, leaning forward and waiting.
“I’ve worked all day and I can’t march up and down here all night,” complained the voice of the workman.
Past the shoulder of the young man went a shadow. Before his eyes on the field, fronting the waiting ranks of men, stood McGregor. His fist shot out and the complaining workman crumpled to the ground.
“This is no time for words,” said the harsh voice. “Get back in there. This is not a game. It’s the beginning of men’s realisation of themselves. Get in there and say nothing. If you can’t march with us get out. The movement we have started can pay no attention to whimperers.”
Among the ranks of men a cheer arose. By the factory wall the excited newspaper man danced up and down. At a word of command from the captain the line of marching men again swept down the field and he watched them with tears standing in his eyes. “It’s going to work,” he cried. “It’s bound to work. At last a man has come to lead the men of labor.”
