Part 28

Among the notices of this dinner was one which termed it "Belshazzar's Feast," and as such it became known in the workingmen's quarter. Its scorching periods described the Babylonian splendor of the entertainment provided for the officials of millionairedom, and pictured with simple art the nakedness of a hovel not five blocks away, in which an old man and an old woman had been found that day frozen to death. I recognized in it the work of Wolffert's virile pen. John Marvel might forgive Dr. Capon, but not Wolffert Dr. Caiaphas. The proposed meeting, however, excited much interest in all circles of the city, especially in that underlying circle of the poor whose circumference circumscribed and enclosed all other circles whatsoever. What was, indeed, of mere interest to others was of vital necessity to them, that some arrangement should be arrived at by which work should once more be given to the ever-increasing body of the unemployed, whose sombre presence darkened the brightest day and tinged with melancholy the fairest expectation. In furtherance of Dr. Capon's plan a large hall was secured, and a general invitation was issued to the public, especially to the workingmen of the section where the strike existed, to attend a meeting set for the earliest possible moment, an evening in the beginning of the next week. The meeting took place as advertised and the attendance exceeded all expectation. The heart of the poor beat with renewed hope, though, like their wealthy neighbors, many of them felt that the hope was a desperate one. Still they worked toward the single ray of light which penetrated into the gloom of their situation.

The seats were filled long before the hour set for the meeting and every available foot of standing room was occupied, the corridors of the building were filled, and the streets outside were thronged with groups discussing the possibility of some settlement in low and earnest tones, broken now and then by some strident note of contention or sullen growl of hate. Knowing the interest in the movement throughout the quarter where I lived, and having some curiosity besides to hear what Coll McSheen and the Rev. Dr. Capon had to say, I went early in company with Wolffert and John Marvel, the former of whom was absolutely sceptical, the latter entirely hopeful of permanent results. Wolffert's eyes glowed with a deep but lambent flame as he spoke of "Dr. Caiaphas." On arrival at the hall he left us and moved to the front rows. The crowd on the platform represented the leaders in many departments of business in the city, among whom were a fair sprinkling of men noted for their particular interest in all public charities and good works, and in a little group to one side, a small body composed of the more conservative element among the leaders of the workingmen in the city. The whole affair had been well worked up and on the outside it gave a fair promise of success. A number of boxes were filled with ladies interested in the movement and I had not been in the hall five minutes before I discovered Eleanor Leigh in one of the boxes, her face grave, but her eyes full of eager expectation. It was with a sinking of the heart that I reflected on the breach between us, and I fear that I spent my time much more in considering how I should overcome it than in plans to relieve the distress of others.

The meeting opened with an invocation by the Rev. Dr. Capon, which appeared to strike some of the assemblage as somewhat too eloquent, rather too long, and tinged with an expression of compassion for the ignorance and facility for being misguided of the working class. When he began the assemblage was highly reverent, when he ended there were murmurs of criticism and discussion audible throughout the hall. The introductory statement of the reason for the call was made by the Hon. Collis McSheen, who, as mayor of the city, lent the dignity of his presence to the occasion. It was long, eloquent, and absolutely silent as to his views on any particular method of settlement of the question at issue, but it expressed his sympathy with all classes in terms highly general and concluded with an impartial expression of advice that they should get together, provided all could get what they wanted, which appeared to him the easiest thing in the world to do. Following him, one of the magnates of the city, Mr. James Canter, Sr., delivered a brief business statement of the loss to the city and the community at large, growing out of the strike, expressed in figures which had been carefully collated, and closed with the emphatic declaration that the working people did not know what they wanted. One other thing he made plain, that in a strike the working people suffered most, which was a proposition that few persons in the hall were prepared to deny. Then came the Rev. Dr. Capon, who was manifestly the chief speaker for the occasion. His manner was graceful and self-assured, his voice sonorous and well modulated, and his tone was sympathetic, if somewhat too patronizing. His first sentences were listened to with attention. He expressed his deep sympathy somewhat as the mayor had done, but in better English and more modulated tones, with all classes, especially with the working people. A slight cough appeared to have attacked one portion of the audience, but it stopped immediately, and silence once more fell on the assemblage as he proceeded.

"And now," he said, as he advanced a step nearer to the edge of the platform, and, having delivered himself of his preliminary expressions of condolence, threw up his head and assumed his best pulpit manner, "under a full sense of my responsibility to my people and my country I wish to counsel you as your friend, as the friend of the poor"--the slight cough I have mentioned became audible again--"as the friend of the workingman whose interests I have so deeply at heart."

At this moment a young man who had taken a seat well to the front on the main aisle, rose in his seat and politely asked if the doctor would allow him to ask him a question, the answer to which he believed would enable the audience to understand his position better. The pleasant tone of the young man led the doctor to give permission, and also the young man's appearance, for it was Wolffert.

"Certainly, my dear sir," he said.

Wolffert suddenly held up in his hand a newspaper.

"I wish," he said, "to ask you where you dined last Friday night; with whom?"

The question provoked a sudden outpour of shouts and cheers and cries of derision, and in a moment pandemonium had broken loose. The doctor attempted to speak again and again, but about all that could be heard was his vociferation that he was their friend. Wolffert, whose question had caused the commotion, was now mounted on a chair and waving his arms wildly about him, and presently, moved by curiosity, the tumult subsided and the audience sat with their faces turned toward the man on the chair. He turned, and with a sweep of his arm toward the stage, he cried:

"We don't want to hear you. What have you done that you should give us advice? What do you know of us? When have you ever hearkened to the cry of the destitute? When have you ever visited the fatherless and the widows in affliction, unless they were rich? When have you ever done anything but fawn on Herod and flatter Pontius? Whom are you here to help and set free to-day? These people? No! High-priest of wealth and power and usurpation, we know you and your friends--the Jesus you ask to free is not the Nazarene, but Barabbas, the robber, promoter of vice and patron of sin!"

His long arm pointed at the platform where sat McSheen, his face black with impotent rage. "If we are to have a priest to address us, let us have one that we can trust. Give us a man like John Marvel. We know him and he knows us." He turned and pointed to Marvel.

The effect was electrical. Shouts of "Marvel! Mr. Marvel! Marvel! Marvel! John Marvel!" rang from their throats, and suddenly, as with one impulse, the men turned to our corner where John Marvel had sunk in his seat to escape observation, and in an instant he was seized, drawn forth and lifted bodily on the shoulders of men and borne to the platform as if on the crest of a tidal wave. Coll McSheen and Dr. Capon were both shouting to the audience, but they might as well have addressed a tropical hurricane. The cries of "Marvel, Marvel" drowned every other sound, and presently those on the stage gathered about both McSheen and the rector, and after a moment one of them stepped forward and asked John Marvel to speak.

John Marvel turned, stepped forward to the edge of the platform, and reached out one long arm over the audience with an awkward but telling gesture that I had often seen him use, keeping it extended until, after one great outburst of applause, the tumult had died down.

"My friends," he began. Another tumult.

"That is it. Yes, we are your friends."

Still the arm outstretched commanded silence.

He began to speak quietly and slowly and his voice suddenly struck me as singularly sympathetic and clear, as it must have struck the entire assembly, for suddenly the tumult ceased and the hall became perfectly quiet. He spoke only a few minutes, declaring that he had not come to speak to them; but to be with them, and pray that God might give them (he said "us") peace and show some way out of the blackness which had settled down upon them. He bade them not despair, however dark the cloud might be which had overshadowed them. They might be sure that God was beyond it and that He would give light in His own time. He was leading them now, as always--the presence of that assembly, with so many of the leading men of the city asking a conference, was in itself a proof of the great advance their cause had made. That cause was not, as some thought, so much money a day, but was the claim to justice and consideration and brotherly kindness. He himself was not a business man. He knew nothing of such matters. His duty was to preach--to preach peace--to preach the love of God--to preach patience and long-suffering and forgiveness, the teaching of his Lord and master, who had lived in poverty all His life, without a place to lay His head, and had died calling on God to forgive His enemies.

This is a poor summary of what he said very simply but with a feeling and solemnity which touched the great audience, who suddenly crushed out every attempt to contradict his proposition. Something had transformed him so that I could scarcely recognize him. I asked myself, can this be John Marvel, this master of this great audience? What is the secret of his power? The only answer I could find was in his goodness, his sincerity, and sympathy.

"And now," he said in closing, "whatever happens, please God, I shall be with you and take my lot among you, and I ask you as a favor to me to listen to Dr. Capon."

There was a great uproar and shout; for Dr. Capon had, immediately after John Marvel got control of his audience, risen from his seat, seized his hat and coat and cane, and stalked with great majesty from the platform. There were, however, a number of other speeches, and although there was much noise and tumult, some advance was made; for a general, though by no means unanimous, opinion was shown in favor of something in the nature of a reconciliation.

As I glanced up after John Marvel returned amid the shouts to his seat, I saw Miss Leigh in one of the boxes leaning forward and looking with kindled eyes in our direction. Thinking that she was looking at me, and feeling very forgiving, I bowed to her, and it was only when she failed to return my bow that I apprehended that she was not looking at me but at John Marvel. If she saw me she gave no sign of it; and when I walked the streets that night, strikes and strikers occupied but little of my thoughts. Unless I could make up with Eleanor Leigh, the whole world might go on strike for me. I determined to consult John Marvel. He had somehow begun to appear to me the sanest of advisers. I began to feel that he was, as Wolffert had once said of him, "a sort of Ark of the Covenant."

XXXIV

THE FLAG OF TRUCE

My acquaintance was now extending rapidly. I had discovered in the turgid tide that swept through the streets of the city other conditions and moods than those I first remarked: dark brooding shadows and rushing rapids catching the light, but fierce and deadly beneath; placid pools and sequestered eddies, far apart where the sunlight sifted in and lay soft on the drift that had escaped the flood, touching it with its magic and lending it its sweet radiance. I had found, indeed, that the city was an epitome of the world. It took a great many people to make it and there were other classes in it besides the rich and the poor. It was in one of these classes that I was beginning to find myself most at home.

I received one day an invitation to dine one evening the following week at the house of a gentleman whom I had met a week or two before and whom I had called on in response to an invitation unusually cordial. I had not been to a fashionable dinner since I had come to the West, and I looked forward with some curiosity to the company whom I should meet at Mr. Desport's, for I knew nothing about him except that I had met him in a law case and we had appeared to have a number of things in common, including objects of dislike, and further, that when I called on him he lived in a very handsome house, and I was received in one of the most charming libraries it was ever my good fortune to enter, and with a graciousness on the part of his wife which I had never known excelled. It was like stepping into another world to pass from the rush of the city into that atmosphere of refinement and culture.

My heart, however, was a little lower down than it should have been, for I could not but reflect with how much more pleasure I would have arrayed myself if it had been an invitation to Mr. Leigh's. In truth, the transition from my narrow quarters and the poverty of those among whom I had been living for some time, made this charming house appear to me the acme of luxury, and I was conscious of a sudden feeling, as I passed this evening through the ample and dignified hall into the sumptuous drawing-room, that somehow I was well fitted for such surroundings. Certainly I found them greatly to my taste. I was received again most graciously by Mrs. Desport, and as I had followed my provincial custom of coming a little ahead of time, I was the first visitor to arrive, a fact which I did not regret, as Mrs. Desport took occasion to tell me something of the guests whom she expected. After describing what I concluded to be a somewhat staid and elderly company, she added:

"I have given you a young lady whom I feel sure you will like. She is a little serious-minded, I think, and some people consider that she is simply posing; but however eccentric she may be, I believe that she is really in earnest, and so does my husband; and I have never seen a young girl improve so much as she has done since she took up this new work of hers."

What this work was I was prevented from inquiring by the arrival of a number of guests all at once.

A dinner where the guests are not presented to each other differs in no important sense from a table-d'hôte dinner. The soup is likely to be a trifle colder and the guests a trifle more reserved--that is all. Mrs. Desport, however, followed the old-fashioned custom of introducing her guests to each other, preferring to open the way for them to feel at home, rather than to leave them floundering among inanities about the weather and their taste for opera. And though a lady, whom I presently sat next to, informed me that they did not do it "in England or even in New York now," I was duly grateful.

Having been presented to the company, I found them gay and full of animation, even though their conversation was inclined to be mainly personal and related almost exclusively to people with whom, for the most part, I had no acquaintance. The name of young Canter figured rather more extensively in it than was pleasant to me, and Dr. Capon was handled with somewhat less dignity than the cloth might have been supposed to require. I was, however, just beginning to enjoy myself when my attention was suddenly diverted by the sound of a voice behind me, as another guest arrived. I did not even need to turn to recognize Eleanor Leigh, but when I moved around sufficiently to take a side glance at her, I was wholly unprepared for the vision before me. I seemed to have forgotten how charming she looked, and she broke on me like a fresh dawn after a storm. I do not know what I was thinking, or whether I was not merely just feeling, when my hostess came forward.

"Now we are all here. Mr. Glave, you are to take Miss Leigh in. You know her, I believe?"

I felt myself red and pale by turns and, glancing at Miss Leigh, saw that she, too, was embarrassed. I was about to stammer something when my hostess moved away, and as it appeared that the others had all paired off, there was nothing for me to do but accept the situation. As I walked over and bowed, I said in a low tone:

"I hope you will understand that I had no part in this. I did not know."

She evidently heard, for she made a slight bow and then drew herself up and took my arm.

"I should not have come," I added, "had I known of this. However, I suppose it is necessary that we should at least appear to be exchanging with ordinary interest the ordinary inanities of such an occasion."

She bowed, and then after a moment's silence added:

"I have nothing to say which could possibly interest you, and suggest that we do what I have heard has been done under similar circumstances, and simply count."

I thought of the molten metal pourable down an offender's throat. And with the thought came another: Did it mean that she was going to marry that young Canter? It was as if one who had entered Eden and discovered Eve, had suddenly found the serpent coiling himself between them.

"Very well." I was now really angry. I had hoped up to this time that some means for reconciliation might be found, but this dashed my hope. I felt that I was the aggrieved person, and I determined to prove to her that I would make no concession. I was not her slave. "Very well, then--one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight--nine, ten, eleven, twelve--thirteen," I said, looking straight ahead of me and dropping every syllable as if it were an oath. She gave me a barely perceptible side glance. I think I had taken her aback by my prompt compliance. She hesitated a moment.

"Or, as that is not very amusing, suppose we cap verses? I hear you know a great deal of poetry--Mr. Wolffert told me. I never knew any one with such a memory as his." I recognized the suggestion as a flag of truce.

I bowed, and as, of course, "Mary had a little lamb," was the first thing that popped into my head with its hint of personal application, I foolishly quoted the first verse, intending her to make the personal application.

She was prompt to continue it, with, I thought, a little sub-tone of mischief in her voice:

"It followed her to school one day, Which was against the rule,"

she said demurely. There she stopped, so I took up the challenge.

"Which made the children laugh and say 'A lamb's a little fool.'"

It was a silly and inept ending, I knew as soon as I had finished--still, it conveyed my meaning.

She paused a moment and evidently started to look at me, but as evidently she thought better of it. She, however, murmured, "I thought we would quote verses, not make them."

I took this to be a confession that she was not able to make them, and I determined to show how much cleverer I was; so, without noticing the cut of the eye which told of her wavering, I launched out:

"There was a young lady of fashion, Who, finding she'd made quite a mash on A certain young swain, Who built castles in Spain, Fell straight in a terrible passion."

To this she responded with a promptness which surprised me:

"A certain young lady of fashion, Had very good grounds for her passion, It sprang from the pain Of a terrible strain On her friendship, and thus laid the lash on."

I felt that I must be equal to the situation, so I began rapidly:

"I'm sure the young man was as guiltless As infant unborn and would wilt less If thrown in the fire Than under her ire----"

"Than under her ire," I repeated to myself. "Than under the ire"--what the dickens will rhyme with "wilt less"? We had reached the dining-room by this time and I could see that she was waiting with a provoking expression of satisfaction on her face over my having stalled in my attempt at a rhyme. I placed her in her chair and, as I took my own seat, a rhyme came to me--a poor one, but yet a rhyme:

"And since, Spanish castles he's built less,"

I said calmly as I seated myself, quite as if it had come easily.

"I was wondering how you'd get out of that," she said with a little smile which dimpled her cheek beguilingly. "You know you might have said,

"'And since, milk to weep o'er he's spilt less';

or even,

"'And since, striped mosquitoes he's kilt less.'

Either would have made quite as good a rhyme and sense, too."

I did not dare let her see how true I thought this. It would never do to let her make fun of me. So I kept my serious air.

I determined to try a new tack and surprise her. I had a few shreds of Italian left from a time when I had studied the poets as a refuge from the desert dulness of my college course, and now having, in a pause, recalled the lines, I dropped, as though quite naturally, Dante's immortal wail:

'Nessun maggior dolore Che recordarci del tempo felice Nella miseria.'

I felt sure that this would at least impress her with my culture, while if by any chance she knew the lines, which I did not apprehend, it would impress her all the more and might prove a step toward a reconciliation.

For a moment she said nothing, then she asked quietly, "How does the rest of it go?"

She had me there, for I did not know the rest of the quotation.

"'E ciò sa il tuo dottore,'"

she said with a cut of her eye, and a liquid tone that satisfied me I had, as the saying runs, "stepped from the frying-pan into the fire."

She glanced at me with a smile in her eyes that reminded me, through I know not what subtle influence, of Spring, but as I was unresponsive she could not tell whether I was in earnest or was jesting.

I relapsed into silence and took my soup, feeling that I was getting decidedly the worst of it, when I heard her murmuring so softly as almost to appear speaking to herself:

"'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'To talk of other things-- Of ships and shoes and sealing-wax, And cabbages and Kings.'"

I glanced at her to find her eyes downcast, but a beguiling little dimple was flickering near the corners of her mouth and her long lashes caught me all anew. My heart gave a leap. It happened that I knew my Alice much better than my Dante, so when she said, "You can talk, can't you?" I answered quietly, and quite as if it were natural to speak in verse:

"'In my youth,' said his father, 'I took to the Law, And argued each case with my wife, And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw Has lasted the rest of my life.'"

She gave a little subdued gurgle of laughter as she took up the next verse:

"'You are old,' said the youth. 'One would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever, Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose-- What made you so awfully clever?'"