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The Web of Life, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part 1 - Chapter 24 |
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_ Part I Chapter XXIV 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. _ |
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