Chapter 6

He felt little Jennie stiffen, and draw away from him; so quickly he had to set to work to patch up the damage. “I want you to get well,” he pleaded. “You’re so good to everybody--you treat everybody well but yourself!”

It had been something in his tone rather than his actual words that had frightened the girl. “Oh Peter!” she cried. “What does it matter about me, or about any other one person, when millions of young men are being shot to fragments, and millions of women and children are starving to death!”

So there they were, fighting the war again; Peter had to take up her burden, be a hero, and a martyr, and a “Red.” That same afternoon, as fate willed it, three “wobblies” out of a job came to call; and oh, how tired Peter was of these wandering agitators--insufferable “grouches!” Peter would want to say: “Oh, cut it out! What you call your `cause’ is nothing but your scheme to work with your tongues instead of with a pick and a shovel.” And this would start an imaginary quarrel in Peter’s mind. He would hear one of the fellows demanding, “How much pick and shovel work you ever done?” Another saying, “Looks to me like you been finding the easy jobs wherever you go!” The fact that this was true did not make Peter’s irritation any less, did not make it easier for him to meet with Comrade Smith, and Brother Jones, and Fellow-worker Brown just out of jail, and listen to their hard-luck stories, and watch them take from the table food that Peter wanted, and--the bitterest pill of all--let them think that they were fooling him with their patter!

The time came when Peter wasn’t able to stand it any longer. Shut up in the house all day, he was becoming as irritable as a chained dog. Unless he could get out in the world again, he would surely give himself away. He pleaded that the doctors had warned him that his health would not stand indoor life; he must get some fresh air. So he got away by himself, and after that he found things much easier. He could spend a little of his money; he could find a quiet corner in a restaurant and get himself a beefsteak, and eat all he wanted of it, without feeling the eyes of any “comrades” resting upon him reprovingly. Peter had lived in a jail, and in an orphan asylum, and in the home of Shoemaker Smithers, but nowhere had he fared so meagerly as in the home of the Todd sisters, who were contributing nearly everything they owned to the Goober defense, and to the “Clarion,” the Socialist paper of American City.

Section 24

Peter went to see Andrews, the lawyer, and asked for a job; he wanted to be active in the case, he said, so he was set to work in the offices of the Defense Committee, where he heard people talking about the case all day, and he could pick up no end of valuable tips. He made himself agreeable and gained friends; before long he was intimate with one of the best witnesses of the defense, and discovered that this man had once been named as co-respondent in a divorce case. Peter found out the name of the woman, and Guffey set to work to bring her to American City. The job was to be done cleverly, without the woman’s even knowing that she was being used. She would have a little holiday, and the spell of old love would reassert itself, and Guffey would have a half dozen men to spring the trap--and there would be a star witness of the Goober defense clean down and out! “There’s always something you can get them on!” said McGivney, and cheerfully paid Peter Gudge five hundred dollars for the information he had brought.

Peter would have been wildly happy, but just at this moment a dreadful calamity befell him. Jennie had been talking about marriage more and more, and now she revealed to him a reason which made marriage imperative. She revealed it with downcast eyes, with blushes and trembling; and Peter was so overcome with consternation that he could not play the part that was expected of him. Hitherto in these love crises he had caught Jennie in his arms and comforted her; but now for a moment he let her see his real emotions.

Jennie promptly had a fit. What was the matter with him? Didn’t he mean to marry her, as he had promised? Surely he must realize now that they could no longer delay! And Peter, who was not familiar with the symptoms of hysterics, lost his head completely and could think of nothing to do but rush out of the house and slam the door.

The more he considered it, the more clearly he realized that he was in the devil of a predicament. As a servant of the Traction Trust, he had taken it for granted that he was immune to all legal penalties and obligations; but here, he had a feeling, was a trouble from which the powerful ones of the city would be unable to shield their agent. Were they able to arrange it so that one could marry a girl, and then get out of it when one’s job was done?

Peter was so uneasy that he had to call up the office of Guffey and get hold of McGivney. This was dangerous, because the prosecution was tapping telephone wires, and they feared the defense might be doing the same. But Peter took a chance; he told McGivney to come and meet him at the usual place; and there they argued the matter out, and Peter’s worst fears were confirmed. When he put the proposition up to McGivney, the rat-faced man guffawed in his face. He found it so funny that he did not stop laughing until he saw that he was putting his spy into a rage.

“What’s the joke?” demanded Peter. “If I’m ruined, where’ll you get any more information?”

“But, my God!” said McGivney. “What did you have to go and get that kind of a girl for?”

“I had to take what I could,” answered Peter. “Besides, they’re all alike--they get into trouble, and you can’t help it.”

“Sure, you can help it!” said McGivney. “Why didn’t you ask long ago? Now if you’ve got yourself tied up with a marrying proposition, it’s your own lookout; you can’t put it off on me.”

They argued back and forth. The rat-faced man was positive that there was no way Peter could pretend to marry Jennie and not have the marriage count. He might get himself into no end of trouble and certainly he would be ruined as a spy. What he must do was to pay the girl some money and send her somewhere to get fixed up. McGivney would find out the name of a doctor to do the job.

“Yes, but what excuse can I give her?” cried Peter. “I mean, why I don’t marry her!”

“Make something up,” said McGivney. “Why not have a wife already?” Then, seeing Peter’s look of dismay: “Sure, you can fix that. I’ll get you one, if you need her. But you won’t have to take that trouble--just tell your girl a hard luck story. You’ve got a wife, you thought you could get free from her, but now you find you can’t; your wife’s got wind of what you’re doing here, and she’s trying to blackmail you. Fix it up so your girl can’t do anything on account of hurting the Goober defense. If she’s really sincere about it, she won’t disgrace you; maybe she won’t even tell her sister.”

Peter hated to do anything like that. He had a vision of little Jennie lying on the sofa in hysterics as he had left her, and he dreaded the long emotional scene that would be necessary. However, it seemed that he must go thru with it; there was no better way that he could think of. Also, he must be quick, because in a couple of hours Sadie would be coming home from work, and it might be too late.

Section 25

Peter hurried back to the Todd home, and there was white-faced little Jennie lying on the bed, still sobbing. One would think she might have used up her surplus stock of emotions; but no, there is never any limit to the emotions a woman can pour out. As soon as Peter had got fairly started on the humiliating confession that he had a wife, little Jennie sprang up from the bed with a terrified shriek, and confronted him with a face like the ghost of an escaped lunatic. Peter tried to explain that it wasn’t his fault, he had really expected to be free any day. But Jennie only clasped her hands to her forehead and screamed: “You have deceived me! You have betrayed me!” It was just like a scene in the movies, the bored little devil inside Peter was whispering.

He tried to take her hand and reason with her, but she sprang away from him, she rushed to the other side of the room and stood there, staring at him as if she were some wild thing that he had in a corner and was threatening to kill. She made so much noise that he was afraid that she would bring the neighbors in; he had to point out to her that if this matter became public he would be ruined forever as a witness, and thus she might be the means of sending Jim Goober to the gallows.

Thereupon Jennie fell silent, and it was possible for Peter to get in a word. He told her of the intrigues against him; the other side had sent somebody to him and offered him ten thousand dollars if he would sell out the Goober defense. Now, since he had refused, they were trying to blackmail him, using his wife. They had somehow come to suspect that he was involved in a love affair, and this was to be the means of ruining him.

Jennie still would not let Peter touch, her, but she consented to sit down quietly in a chair, and figure out what they were going to do. Whatever happened, she said, they must do no harm to the Goober case. Peter had done her a monstrous wrong in keeping the truth from her, but she would suffer the penalty, whatever it might be; she would never involve him.

Peter started to explain; perhaps it wasn’t so serious as she feared. He had been thinking things over; he knew where Pericles Priam, his old employer, was living, and Pericles was rich now, and Peter felt sure that he could borrow two hundred dollars, and there were places where little Jennie could go--there were ways to get out of this trouble--

But little Jennie stopped him. She was only a child in some ways, but in others she was a mature woman. She had strange fixed ideas, and when you ran into them it was like running into a stone wall. She would not hear of the idea Peter suggested; it would be murder.

“Nonsense,” said Peter, echoing McGivney. “It’s nothing; everybody does it.” But Jennie was apparently not listening. She sat staring with her wild, terrified eyes, and pulling at her dress with her fingers. Peter got to watching these fingers, and they got on his nerves. They behaved like insane fingers; they manifested all the emotions which the rest of little Jennie was choking back and repressing.

“If you would only not take it so seriously!” Peter pleaded. “It’s a miserable accident, but it’s happened, and now we’ve got to make the best of it. Some day I’ll get free; some day I’ll marry you.”

“Stop, Peter!” the girl whispered, in her tense voice. “I don’t want to talk to you any more, if that’s all you have to say. I don’t know that I’d be willing to marry you--now that I know you could deceive me--that you could go on deceiving me day after day for months.”

Peter thought she was going to break out into hysterics again, and he was frightened. He tried to plead with her, but suddenly she sprang up. “Go away!” she exclaimed. “Please go away and let me alone. I’ll think it over and decide what to do myself. Whatever I do, I won’t disgrace you, so leave me alone, go quickly!”

Section 26

She drove him out of the house, and Peter went, though with many misgivings. He wandered about the streets, not knowing what to do with himself, looking back over the blunders he had made and tormenting himself with that most tormenting of all thoughts: how different my life might have been, if only I had had sense enough to do this, or not to do that! Dinner time came, and Peter blew himself to a square meal, but even that did not comfort him entirely. He pictured Sadie coming home at this hour. Was Jennie telling her or not?

There was a big mass meeting called by the Goober Defense Committee that evening, and Peter attended, and it proved to be the worst thing he could have done. His mind was in no condition to encounter the fierce passions of this crowded assemblage. Peter had the picture of himself being exposed and denounced; he wasn’t sure yet that it mightn’t happen to him. And here was this meeting--thousands of workingmen, horny handed blacksmiths, longshoremen with shoulders like barns and truckmen with fists like battering rams, long-haired radicals of a hundred dangerous varieties, women who waved red handkerchiefs and shrieked until to Peter they seemed like gorgons with snakes instead of hair.

Such were the mob-frenzies engendered by the Goober case; and Peter knew, of course, that to all these people he was a traitor, a poisonous worm, a snake in the grass. If ever they were to find out what he was doing--if for instance, someone were to rise up and expose him to this crowd--they would seize him and tear him to pieces. And maybe, right now, little Jennie was telling Sadie; and Sadie would tell Andrews, and Andrews would become suspicious, and set spies on Peter Gudge! Maybe they had spies on him already, and knew of his meetings with McGivney!

Haunted by such terrors, Peter had to listen to the tirades of Donald Gordon, of John Durand, and of Sorensen, the longshoremen’s leader. He had to listen to exposure after exposure of the tricks which Guffey had played; he had to hear the district attorney of the county denounced as a suborner of perjury, and his agents as blackmailers and forgers. Peter couldn’t understand why such things should be permitted--why these speakers were not all clapped into jail. But instead, he had to sit there and listen; he even had to applaud and pretend to approve! All the other secret operatives of the Traction Trust and of the district attorney’s office had to listen and pretend to approve! In the hall Peter had met Miriam Yankovich, and was sitting next to her. “Look,” she said, “there’s a couple of dicks over there. Look at the mugs on them!”

“Which?” said Peter.

And she answered: “That fellow that looks like a bruiser, and that one next to him, with the face of a rat.” Peter looked, and saw that it was McGivney; and McGivney looked at Peter, but gave no sign.

The meeting lasted until nearly midnight. It subscribed several thousand dollars to the Goober defense fund, and adopted ferocious resolutions which it ordered printed and sent to every local of every labor union in the country. Peter got out before it was over, because he could no longer stand the strain of his own fears and anxieties. He pushed his way thru the crowd, and in the lobby he ran into Pat McCormick, the I. W. W. leader.

There was more excitement in this boy’s grim face than Peter had ever seen there before. Peter thought it was the meeting, but the other rushed up to him, exclaiming: “Have you heard the news?”

“What news?”

“Little Jennie Todd has killed herself!”

“My God!” gasped Peter, starting back.

“Ada Ruth just told me. Sadie found a note when she got home. Jennie had left--she was going to drown herself.”

“But what--why?” cried Peter, in horror.

“She was suffering so, her health was so wretched, she begs Sadie not to look for her body, not to make a fuss--they’ll never find her.”

And horrified and stunned as Peter was, there was something inside him that drew a deep breath of relief. Little Jennie had kept her promise! Peter was, safe!

Section 27

Yes, Peter was safe, but it had been a close call, and he still had painful scenes to play his part in. He had to go back to the Todd home and meet the frantic Sadie, and weep and be horrified with the rest of them. It would have been suspicious if he had not done this; the “comrades” would never have forgiven him. Then to his dismay, he found that Sadie had somehow come to a positive conviction as to Jennie’s trouble. She penned Peter up in a corner and accused him of being responsible; and there was poor Peter, protesting vehemently that he was innocent, and wishing that the floor would open up and swallow him.

In the midst of his protestations a clever scheme occurred to him. He lowered his voice in shame. There was a man, a young man, who used to come to see Jennie off and on. “Jennie asked me not to tell.” Peter hesitated a moment, and added his master-stroke. “Jennie explained to me that she was a free-lover; she told me all about free love. I told her I didn’t believe in it, but you know, Sadie, when Jennie believed in anything, she would stand by it and act on it. So I felt certain it wouldn’t do any good for me to butt in.”

Sadie almost went out of her mind at this. She glared at Peter. “Slanderer! Devil!” she cried. “Who was this man?”

Peter answered, “He went by the name of Ned. That’s what Jennie called him. It wasn’t my business to pin her down about him.”

“It wasn’t your business to look out for an innocent child?”

“Jennie herself said she wasn’t an innocent child, she knew exactly what she was doing--all Socialists did it.” And to this parting shot he added that he hadn’t thought it was decent, when he was a guest in a home, to spy on the morals of the people in it. When Sadie persisted in doubting him, and even in calling him names, he took the easiest way out of the difficulty--fell into a rage and stormed out of the house.

Peter felt pretty certain that Sadie would not spread the story very far; it was too disgraceful to her sister and to herself; and maybe when she had thought it over she might come to believe Peter’s story; maybe she herself was a “free lover.” McGivney had certainly said that all Socialists were, and he had been studying them a lot. Anyhow, Sadie would have to think first of the Goober case, just as little Jennie had done. Peter had them there all right, and realized that he could afford to be forgiving, so he went to the telephone and called up Sadie and said: “I want you to know that I’m not going to say anything about this story; it won’t become known except thru you.”

There were half a dozen people whom Sadie must have told. Miss Nebbins was icy-cold to Peter the next time he came in to see Mr. Andrews; also Miriam Yankovich lost her former cordiality, and several other women treated him with studied reserve. But the only person who spoke about the matter was Pat McCormick, the I. W. W. boy who had given Peter the news of little Jennie’s suicide. Perhaps Peter hadn’t been able to act satisfactorily on that occasion; or perhaps the young fellow had observed something for himself, some love-glances between Peter and Jennie. Peter had never felt comfortable in the presence of this silent Irish boy, whose dark eyes would roam from one person to another in the room, and seemed to be probing your most secret thoughts.

Now Peter’s worst fears were justified. “Mac” got him off in a corner, and put his fist under his nose, and told him that he was “a dirty hound,” and if it hadn’t been for the Goober case, he, “Mac,” would kill him without a moment’s concern.

And Peter did not dare open his mouth; the look on the Irishman’s face was so fierce that he was really afraid for his life. God, what a hateful lot these Reds were! And now here was Peter with the worst one of all against him! From now on his life would be in danger from this maniac Irishman! Peter hated him--so heartily and genuinely that it served to divert his thoughts from little Jennie, and to make him regard himself as a victim.

Yes, in the midnight hours when Jennie’s gentle little face haunted him and his conscience attacked him, Peter looked back upon the tangled web of events, and saw quite clearly how inevitable this tragedy had been, how naturally it had grown out of circumstances beyond his control. The fearful labor struggle in American City was surely not Peter’s fault; nor was it his fault that he had been drawn into it, and forced to act first as an unwilling witness, and then as a secret agent. Peter read the American City “Times” every morning, and knew that the cause of Goober was the cause of anarchy and riot, while the cause of the district attorney and of Guffey’s secret service was the cause of law and order. Peter was doing his best in this great cause, he was following the instructions of those above him, and how could he be blamed because one poor weakling of a girl had got in the way of the great chariot of the law?

Peter knew that it wasn’t his fault; and yet grief and terror gnawed at him. For one thing, he missed little Jennie, he missed her by day and he missed her by night. He missed her gentle voice, her fluffy soft hair, her body in his empty arms. She was his first love, and she was gone, and it is human weakness to appreciate things most when they have been lost.

Peter aspired to be a strong man, a “he-man,” according to the slang that was coming into fashion; he now tried to live up to that role. He didn’t want to go mooning about over this accident; yet Jennie’s face stayed with him--sometimes wild, as he had seen it at their last meeting, sometimes gentle and reproachful. Peter would remember how good she had been, how tender, how never-failing in instant response to an advance of love on his part. Where would he ever find another girl like that?

Another thing troubled him especially--a strange, inexplicable thing, for which Peter had no words, and about which he found himself frequently thinking. This weak, frail slip of a girl had deliberately given her life for her convictions; she had died, in order that he might be saved as a witness for the Goobers! Of course Peter had known all along that little Jennie was doomed, that she was throwing herself away, that nothing could save her. But somehow, it does frighten the strongest heart when people are so fanatical as to throw away their very lives for a cause. Peter found himself regarding the ideas of these Reds from a new angle; before this they had been just a bunch of “nuts,” but now they seemed to him creatures of monstrous deformity, products of the devil, or of a God gone insane.

Section 28

There was only one person whom Peter could take into his confidence, and that was McGivney. Peter could not conceal from McGivney the fact that he was troubled over his bereavement; and so McGivney took him in hand and gave him a “jacking up.” It was dangerous work, this of holding down the Reds; dangerous, because their doctrines were so insidious, they were so devilishly cunning in their working upon people’s minds. McGivney had seen more than one fellow start fooling with their ideas and turn into one himself. Peter must guard against that danger.

“It ain’t that,” Peter explained. “It ain’t their ideas. It’s just that I was soft on that kid.”

“Well, it comes to the same thing,” said McGivney. “You get sorry for them, and the first thing you know, you’re listening to their arguments. Now, Peter, you’re one of the best men I’ve got on this case--and that’s saying a good deal, because I’ve got charge of seventeen.” The rat-faced man was watching Peter, and saw Peter flush with pleasure. Yes, he continued, Peter had a future before him, he would make all kinds of money, he would be given responsibility, a permanent position. But he might throw it all away if he got to fooling with these Red doctrines. And also, he ought to understand, he could never fool McGivney; because McGivney had spies on him!

So Peter clenched his hands and braced himself up. Peter was a real “he-man,” and wasn’t going to waste himself. “It’s just that I can’t help missing the girl!” he explained; to which the other answered: “Well, that’s only natural. What you want to do is to get yourself another one.”