________________________________________________
_ The matter of McGregor's attitude toward women and the call of sex was
not of course settled by the fight in the house in Lake Street. He was
a man who, even in the days of his great crudeness, appealed strongly
to the mating instinct in women and more than once his purpose was to
be shaken and his mind disturbed by the forms, the faces and the eyes
of women.
McGregor thought he had settled the matter. He forgot the black-eyed
girl in the hallway and thought only of advancement in the warehouse
and of study in his room at night. Now and then he took an evening off
and went for a walk through the streets or in one of the parks.
In the streets of Chicago, under the night lights, among the restless
moving people he was a figure to be remembered. Sometimes he did not
see the people at all but went swinging along in the same spirit in
which he had walked in the Pennsylvania hills. He was striving to get
a hold of some elusive quality in life that seemed to be forever out
of reach. He did not want to be a lawyer or a warehouseman. What did
he want? Along the street he went trying to make up his mind and
because his was not a gentle nature his perplexity drove him to anger
and he swore.
Up and down Madison Street he went striding along, his lips muttering
words. In a corner saloon some one played a piano. Groups of girls
passed laughing and talking. He came to the bridge that led over the
river into the loop district and then turned restlessly back. On the
sidewalks along Canal Street he saw strong-bodied men loitering before
cheap lodging houses. Their clothing was filthy with long wear and
there was no light of determination in their faces. In the little fine
interstices of the cloth of which their clothes were made was gathered
the filth of the city in which they lived and in the stuff of their
natures the filth and disorder of modern civilisation had also found
lodging.
On walked McGregor looking at man-made things and the flame of anger
within burned stronger and stronger. He saw the drifting clouds of
people of all nations that wander at night in Halstead Street and
turning into a side street saw also the Italians, Poles and Russians
that at evening gather on the sidewalks before tenements in that
district.
The desire in McGregor for some kind of activity became a madness. His
body shook with the strength of his desire to end the vast disorder of
life. With all the ardour of youth he wanted to see if with the
strength of his arm he could shake mankind out of its sloth. A drunken
man passed and following him came a large man with a pipe in his
mouth. The large man did not walk with any suggestion of power in his
legs. He shambled along. He was like a huge child with fat cheeks and
great untrained body, a child without muscles and hardness, clinging
to the skirts of life.
McGregor could not bear the sight of the big ungainly figure. The man
seemed to personify all of the things against which his soul was in
revolt and he stopped and stood crouched, a ferocious light burning in
his eyes.
Into the gutter rolled the man stunned by the force of the blow dealt
him by the miner's son. He crawled on his hands and knees and cried
for help. His pipe had rolled away into the darkness. McGregor stood
on the sidewalk and waited. A crowd of men standing before a tenement
house started to run toward him. Again he crouched. He prayed that
they would come on and let him fight them also. In anticipation of a
great struggle joy shone in his eyes and his muscles twitched.
And then the man in the gutter got to his feet and ran away. The men
who had started to run toward him stopped and turned back. McGregor
walked on, his heart heavy with the sense of defeat. He was a little
sorry for the man he had struck and who had made so ridiculous a
figure crawling about on his hands and knees and he was more perplexed
than ever.
* * * * *
McGregor tried again to solve the problem of women. He had been much
pleased by the outcome of the affair in the little frame house and the
next day bought law books with the twenty-seven dollars thrust into
his hand by the frightened woman. Later he stood in his room
stretching his great body like a lion returned from the kill and
thought of the little black-bearded barber in the room at the end of
the hall stooping over his violin, his mind busy with the attempt to
justify himself because he would not face one of life's problems. The
feeling of resentment against the man had gone. He thought of the
course laid out for himself by that philosopher and laughed. "There is
something about it to avoid, like giving yourself up to digging in the
dirt under the ground," he told himself.
McGregor's second adventure began on a Saturday night and again he let
himself be led into it by the barber. The night was hot and the
younger man sat in his room filled with a desire to go forth and
explore the city. The quiet of the house, the distant rumble of street
cars, the sound of a band playing far down the street disturbed and
diverted his mind. He wished that he might take a stick in his hands
and go forth to prowl among the hills as he had gone on such nights in
his youth in the Pennsylvania town.
The door to his room opened and the barber came in. In his hand he
held two tickets. He sat on the window sill to explain.
"There is a dance in a hall on Monroe Street," said the barber
excitedly. "I have two tickets here. A politician sold them to the
boss in the shop where I work." The barber threw back his head and
laughed. To his mind there was something delicious in the thought of
the boss barber being forced by the politicians to buy dance tickets.
"They cost two dollars each," he cried and shook with laughter "You
should have seen my boss squirm. He didn't want the tickets but was
afraid not to take them. The politician could make trouble for him and
he knew it. You see we make a hand-book on the races in the shop and
that is against the law. The politician could make trouble for us. The
boss paid out the four dollars swearing under his breath and when the
politician had gone out he threw them at me. 'There, take them,' he
shouted, 'I don't want the rotten things. Is a man a horse trough at
which every beast can stop to drink?'"
McGregor and the barber sat in the room laughing at the boss barber
who had smilingly bought the tickets while consumed with inward wrath.
The barber urged McGregor to go with him to the dance. "We will make a
night of it," he said. "We will see women there--two that I know. They
live upstairs over a grocery store. I have been with them. They will
open your eyes. They are a kind of women you haven't known, bold and
clever and good fellows too."
McGregor got up and pulled his shirt over his head. A wave of feverish
excitement ran over his body. "We shall see about this," he said, "we
shall see if this is another wrong trail you are starting me on. You
go to your room and get ready. I am going to fix myself up."
In the dance hall McGregor sat on a seat by the wall with one of the
two women lauded by the barber and a third one who was frail and
bloodless. To him the adventure had been a failure. The swing of the
dance music struck no answering chord in him. He saw the couples on
the floor clasped in each other's arms, writhing and turning, swaying
back and forth, looking into each other's eyes and turned aside
wishing himself back in his room among the law books.
The barber talked to two of the women, bantering them. McGregor
thought the conversation inane and trivial. It skirted the edge of
things and ran off into vague references to other times and adventures
of which he knew nothing.
The barber danced away with one of the women. She was tall and the
head of the barber barely Passed her shoulder. His black beard shone
against her white dress. The two women sat beside him and talked.
McGregor gathered that the frail woman was a maker of hats. Something
about her attracted him and he leaned against the wall and looked at
her, not hearing the talk.
A youth came up and took the other woman away. From across the hall
the barber beckoned to him.
A thought flashed into his mind. This woman beside him was frail and
thin and bloodless like the women of Coal Creek. A feeling of intimacy
with her came over him. He felt as he had felt concerning the tall
pale girl of Coal Creek when they together gether had climbed the hill
to the eminence that looked down into the valley of farms. _
Read next: BOOK II: CHAPTER VI
Read previous: BOOK II: CHAPTER IV
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