Chapter 11

It explains also the fact that so many lawyers in Congress, as well as in the country, although they must have seen the legal weakness of the case against Andrew Johnson, still labored so hard to find some point upon which he might be convicted. It was for political, not for legal reasons that they did so--not reasons of political partizanship, but the higher political reason that they thought the public interest made the removal of Andrew Johnson from his place of power eminently desirable. I have to confess that I leaned somewhat to that opinion myself--not that I believed in the sinister revolutionary designs of Mr. Johnson, but because I thought that the presence of Mr. Johnson in the presidential office encouraged among the white people of the South hopes and endeavors which, the longer they were indulged in, the more grievous the harm they would do to both races. It can indeed not be said that President Johnson failed to execute the reconstruction laws enacted by Congress by refusing to perform the duties imposed upon him, such as the appointment of the commanders of military divisions. He even effectively opposed, through his able and accomplished Attorney-General, Mr. Stanbery, the attempts of two Southern governors to stop the enforcement of the Reconstruction Act by the legal process of injunction. But the mere fact that he was believed to favor the reactionary element in the South and would do all in his power to let it have its way was in itself an influence constantly inflaming the passions kindled by mischievous hopes.

_The Fatal Bungling of Reconstruction_

The condition of things in the South had become deplorable in the extreme. Had the reconstruction measures enacted by Congress, harsh as they were, been imposed upon the Southern people immediately after the War, when the people were stunned by their overwhelming defeat, and when there was still some apprehension of bloody vengeance to be visited upon the leaders of the rebellion--as was the case, for instance, in Hungary in 1849 after the collapse of the great insurrection--those measures would have been accepted as an escape from something worse. Even negro suffrage in a qualified form, as General Lee's testimony before the Reconstruction Committee showed, might then have been accepted as a peace-offering.

But the propitious moment was lost. Instead of gently persuading the Southerners, as Lincoln would have done, that the full restoration of the States lately in rebellion would necessarily depend upon the readiness and good faith with which they accommodated themselves to the legitimate results of the War, and that there were certain things which the victorious Union government was bound to insist upon, not in a spirit of vindictiveness, but as a simple matter of honor and duty--instead of this President Johnson told them that their instant restoration to their old status in the Union, that is, to complete self-government and to participation in the National Government, on equal terms with the other States, had become their indefeasible constitutional right as soon as the insurgents laid down their arms and went through the form of taking an oath of allegiance, and that those who refused to recognize the immediate validity of that right were no better than traitors and public enemies. Nothing could have been more natural, under such circumstances, than that the master class in the South should have seen a chance to establish something like semi-slavery, and that, pressed by their economic perplexities, they should have eagerly grasped at that chance. No wonder that what should have been as gentle as possible a transition from one social state into another degenerated into an angry political brawl, which grew more and more furious as it went on. No wonder, finally, that when at last the Congressional reconstruction policy, which at first might have been quietly submitted to as something that might have been worse, and that could not be averted, came at last in the midst of that brawl, it was resented in the South as an act of diabolical malice and tyrannical oppression not to be endured. And the worst outcome of all was, that many white people of the South who had at first cherished a kindly feeling for the negroes on account of their "fidelity" during the War, now fell to hating the negroes as the cause of all their woes; that, on the other hand, the negroes, after all their troubles, raised to a position of power, now were tempted to a reckless use of that power; and that a selfish partizan spirit growing up among the Republican majority, instead of endeavoring to curb that tendency, encouraged, or, at least, tolerated it for party advantage.

I have to confess that I took a more hopeful view of the matter at the time, for I did not foresee the mischievous part which selfish partizan spirit would play in that precarious situation. I trusted that the statesmen of the Republican party would prove clear-sighted enough to perceive in time the danger of excesses which their reconstruction policy would bring to the South, and that they would be strong enough in influence to combat that danger. Nothing could have been farther from my mind than the expectation that before long it would be my lot to take an active part in that combat on the most conspicuous political stage in the country.

THE THIRTEENTH MOVE

BY ALBERTA BANCROFT

ILLUSTRATIONS BY M. J. SPERO

Ikey stood on the street corner and fingered her veil to keep passersby from seeing her lips tremble. She was sure that she was going to cry right there in the open, and she was furious about it, because she did not approve of weepy females.

"If you dare," she whispered fiercely, "if you dare, I'll--I'll--you shan't have that nickel's worth of peanut candy, or those currant buns, either."

This threat proving effective, she turned, head held high, and entered the bakery.

There was the usual Saturday afternoon crowd, jostling on the shoddy thoroughfare. To-day the jostling was intensified; for the car strike was on in full blast, feeling ran high, and demonstrations were being made against the company. Now and again a car passed slowly up or down the street, drays and express wagons blocking its progress wherever possible, scab conductor and motorman hooted at by San Francisco men and beplumed ladies for their pains.

Ikey looked at the mob in disgust. Then she hurried around the corner and away from the scene of commotion.

"And to think that it has come to this, that I can't ride up and down in those cars all day long--_just to show 'em_."

The beach was what she really wanted--one of those little sand hummocks with juicy plants sprawling over it, that protect one from the wind and yet reveal beyond ravishing glimpses of cliff and breaker and sapphire shining sea.

But the beach was not to be found in the heart of town. And she was too tired to walk there--not having had any lunch and being very angry besides. And she would lose her "job"--her miserable, wretched, disgusting, good-for-nothing job (Ikey loved adjectives), if she rode. For any and all women connected with any and all union men had been forbidden to use the company's cars. And business houses--who had anything to gain from it--had promised their employees instant dismissal for even one ride. And the firm that employed Ikey would lose three-fourths of its trade if the union boycotted it.

So the sand-dunes would have to wait. But there were some vacant lots, backed by a scraggle of rough, red rock, only half a dozen blocks away. If luck were with her, the loafers might be in temporary abeyance and the refugee tents not unduly prominent.

Luck was with her. And Ikey sat down on the lea of the little cliff, quite alone, spread out her buns,--you got three for ten cents these catastrophe days,--and faced the situation.

The landlady had raised the rent.

Ikey could have screamed with laughter over the situation--if only the matter were not so vital.

"This'll make the thirteenth move for you, Ikey, my love, since the eighteenth of April--and the thirteenth move is bound to be unlucky. But you'll have to go, sure as Fate; for you can't stand another raise. The Wandering Jew gentleman takes the road again."

She pursed her lips as she said it. She had invented the appelation for herself after nine moves in three months. "I don't know what his name really was," she confessed--there was no one else to talk to, no one she cared for, so she talked, sub voice, to herself--"but it must have been Ikey. I'm sure it was Ikey--and that I look just like him." And deriving much comfort from this witticism, she went on her way.

"Ikey, the Wandering Jew, on the move again," she repeated. "But where to move _to_, that is the question. It's funny what a difference money makes"--her eyebrows went up--"or rather, lack of it. I've never considered that until recently."

Then her eyes fell on her shoes.

They had been very swagger little shoes in the beginning--Ikey had made rather a specialty of footgear--but they were her "escape" shoes; and their looks told the tale of their wanderings. Also, she had had no others since.

She wriggled her toes.

"You'll be poking through before long, looking at the stars," she told them severely. "Imagine your excitement."

And her suit.

Ikey looked away so as not to see the perfect cut of it, the perfect fit of it, the utter shabbiness of it. It was her "escape" suit, too. She had slept on the hills in it to the tune of dynamiting and the flare of the burning city. She would never have another like it--never. For her job----

Her job.

She leaned back suddenly and closed her eyes. Her job. The rage of this noon was coming back again; rage, and with it a strange, new sensation--fear. She had never known fear before, not even during the earthquake days. "Only at the dentist's," she told herself, giggling half hysterically behind closed lids.

And back of it all--back of the landlady's unconcealed dislike and latest slap, back of the disintegration of a wardrobe that could not be replaced, and the question as to whether her "job" had not become an impossibility since to-day--and that job simply could not become an impossibility: one had to live--back of all this was the dull hurt, smothered and always coming again, that Bixler McFay had not taken the trouble to look her up when his regiment came through on the way to Manila.

"You may as well face that, too, while you're about it," Ikey observed sarcastically. She opened her eyes with a snap and bit into the first bun.

"The regiment was only here three days," a little voice inside of her whispered fearfully.

"Three days!" Ikey's scorn was unbounded. "If he had cared, he could have found you in three hours--and he always said he cared. It's a thing you've got to live with. It's nothing so unusual. It happens every day. Why can't you treat it like a poor relation?"

And her thoughts went back to Fort Leavenworth, and the gowns on gowns she had worn, all burned up at the St. Francis last spring, with the rest of her things, a week after she had reached the city; and Cousin Mary, suave and elegant and impressive as her chaperon; and herself, petted and made much of on all sides, and incidentally pointed out as the richest girl on the field, and an orphan; and Bixler McFay, handsome, brilliant, devoted, always on hand, always protesting----

A whimsical, sarcastic little smile curved her lips for a moment. The earthquake had certainly made a difference. A vision of Cousin Mary arose--not the suave and elegant chaperon of a wealthy young relative, but a frightened, self-centered, middle-aged woman, who had taken the earthquake as a personal affront put upon her by her young charge and insisted on being the first consideration in no matter what environment she found herself.

Then came another vision. She recalled her parting with Bixler McFay in the late winter, when she had left Leavenworth for the Coast, saying it wasn't decent not to know anything about the place where all your income came from, and he had left Leavenworth to rejoin his regiment in Arizona. How his voice had trembled that morning as he bade her good-bye, declaring he should always consider himself engaged to her, even if she did not consider herself engaged to him; begging that she wear his class pin, or at least keep it for him if she would not wear it, because the thought of its being in her possession would comfort him in his loneliness.

It had comforted her in those first dreadful days after the fire to think that he was alive and on his way to her. It never entered her head but what he would come at once: when friends were looking for friends and enemies were succoring one another, how should he fail her?

And then--not one word. Not even an inquiry in the paper; when that was about all the papers were made up of for days after--column after column of addresses and inquiries, along with the death notices.

And afterwards--not one word----

II

"I won't pretend this is accidental, Miss Stanton."

Ikey looked up startled, began to curl her feet up under her skirt, decided that it was not worth while,--he was only one of the boarders,--and offered buns and candy with indifferent promptness.

"There's a gang of toughs coming down over the hill. Strikers, maybe. I thought they might startle you."

He seated himself unceremoniously on a rock near by.

Ikey settled back with a little comfortable movement against her own rock and raised her eyebrows.

"The proper thing for me to do at this stage is to inquire in a haughty voice how you happened to know I was here."

"I followed you."

There was no hint of apology, and she looked at him more closely. She had sat opposite him at the unesthetic boarding-house dining-table for the past six weeks now. He ate enormously,--but in cultured wise,--never said anything, was something over six feet tall, wore ready-made, dust-colored clothes, and was utterly inconspicuous. "Like a big gray wall." Just now it was the expression of his face, intangibly different--or had she never taken the trouble to notice him before?--that fixed her attention.

He was looking straight at her.

"I've been following you ever since you left your office," he said after a deliberate pause; and Ikey's eyes grew large and frightened as she took in his meaning.

"Then you saw----"

"I did." There was another pause. "It won't happen again." His tone was quite final. "Why do you lay yourself open to that sort of thing? Don't you know that the burnt district is no place for any woman at all these days--not even one block of it? Why don't you ride?"

His voice was quite cross, and Ikey could have laughed aloud. This, to her, who had the burnt district on her nerves to such an extent that she dreamed of the brick-and-twisted-iron chaos by night--the miles of desolation, punctuated by crumbling chimneys and tottering walls--dreamed of it by night and turned sick at the sight of it by day. Did this stupid hulk of a person think she _liked_ the burnt district--and to walk there?

After all, his attitude was less funny than impertinent. She would be angry. It was better. She would respond icily and put him in his place.

At least, such was her intention. But she discovered to her amazement that she was trembling--her encounter of the noon was responsible for that--and her teeth seemed inclined to hit against each other rapidly with a little clicking noise. So it seemed on the whole more expedient to blurt out her remarks without any attempt at frills or amplification.

"Why don't you ride?"

Ikey gathered herself together.

"My dear Mr. Hammond, there is a street car strike on here in San Francisco. No union wagons run out this way--and I lose my position if I use the cars."

He was welcome to that. She looked off into the distance while he assimilated it.

"I had not thought of that," he said at last slowly. "In that case there is but one thing to do. You must stop that work at once."

"And stand in the bread line? Now? Along with--those others?" A little smile twisted her lips. "I should look handsome doing that."

"But surely----"

His tone was beginning to be puzzled. So was his expression. Ikey ascertained this by allowing a glance to brush past him.

Suddenly he had changed his position. He was beside her on the ground, facing her, staring her out of countenance.

"We may as well get the clear of this right now----"

"It is needlessly clear to me, Mr. Hammond."

"But not to me. In the first place----"

"I will not trouble you----"

"It is no trouble. In the first place, has that fellow followed you, spoken to you before?"

"Never--never like that."

She wondered whether he had noticed her unsuccessful effort to rise and put an end to the interview.

"Do you know who he is?"

"He is the junior member of the firm I work for."

"_What!_ Well, I _am_ glad I smashed him." Then he added quickly, "This, of course, puts an end to your going there, at once. You've been at it too long anyway. It's stopped being a joke, and as a pose----"

"'Pose.'"

The intonation was subtle. A moment's bewilderment, and he burst out, "You're not doing this because you--_have_ to?"

"That--or something."

"But--but--Good Lord, child! Where is your money?"

With pomp and ceremony--but languidly withal, for her head was beginning to ache, and she wanted desperately to cry--she laid her purse in his hand. But she did not look at him.

The big hand closed over the flat little thing impatiently.

"I am referring to your bank account."

"And by what right----"

"We'll settle that later. The banks have opened up again----"

"That's all I have."

"But what has become--You're not going to faint?"

"No."

"Then what has become----"

Quite against her will she was beginning to find herself faintly amused. Of all pigheaded, impertinent people, this individual with whom she had hardly had more than five minutes' conversation, except at meal times during the past six weeks, was certainly the worst.

"I really must know, Miss Stanton, what has become----"

"I gave it away."

"You--gave it--_away_!" Italics could never do justice to his intonation. He was staring at her as though he considered her demented. "To whom?" came his indignant question.

After all, why not tell him? It was none of his business; and he was desperately impertinent; but she was desperately forlorn; and, though it could not better the situation to talk about it, it might better her feelings.

She slipped farther down against her rock; and he bent forward, listening intently.

"I gave it to--a relative. She was living with me at the time of the fire. We had only just come up from Los Angeles--because I wanted to--I had some property here; all my income came from it; and I felt I ought to know more about it--in case anything happened. And after the earthquake she acted as though I had led her up to the--jaws of death--and pushed her in--and later she was so afraid of typhoid--and everything. And so--at last, when the banks opened up again--I gave her all the money I had in the bank--and she went East right away--and I stayed here."

"With nothing?"

"I had fifty dollars. I was doing relief work at the Presidio, waiting for the vaults to cool off--I had a lot of paper money in a box there--and for the insurance companies to pay--and for the man who looked after my affairs to get well: he'd been hurt in the earthquake. But he didn't get well: he had a stroke, instead, and died. And his partner--they were lawyers--went away; all their books and papers and everything had been burnt up, and he didn't seem to think he could ever straighten things out; and when the vaults were opened, the paper money I had in the box was all dust--and the insurance companies haven't paid."

She shrugged her shoulders delicately over the situation, already disgusted with herself at having descended to disclosing her private affairs to a stranger.

Meanwhile, "So that's it," the stranger was saying. "I've wondered a lot."

"You needn't have troubled."

"No trouble," he blandly assured her. "Houghton always was an ass"--(Houghton was the younger lawyer. How had he known? the girl wondered)--"lighting out for Goldfield when he ought to be here, straightening out his clients' business. And so you went to work on some beggarly salary, instead of seeing about having your property put in shape again. Why didn't you lease, or----"

"I couldn't find out where it was," she retorted, furious. "I'd only been here a week when the fire came; and not for years before that."

----"and not put yourself in a position where you get insulted by some little scrub who isn't fit for you to walk on.--Are you going to faint?"

"No."

"Then what's the matter?" inquired the clod at her side.

"Nothing," she fibbed promptly. How different this creature was from Bixler McFay! Bixler had never pried into her private affairs, or evinced an interest in her possessions, or insisted on answers she did not wish to give, or pursued topics she did not care for. Bixler had none of the bluntness, the pigheadedness, the brutality of this--but then, there was no comparing the two. Only, she had vowed not to think of Bixler any more. He was not worth it.

"Nothing's the matter with me," she said. "Only, when I got back to the boarding-house after--after downtown to-day, the landlady said I'd have to pay sixty a month or leave at once, and--and she hadn't saved any lunch for me, and----"

"And you've been eating----"

He looked at the candy-bag and the morsel of bun with horror.

"I thought they'd cheer me up," Ikey murmured meekly, "but they've made me feel--kind of queer."

"That settles it." The big hand came down forcefully upon his knee. "We'll get the thickest steak you ever laid your eyes on in about two minutes. But first--we'll get married."

"What!"

III

What happened after that Ikey could never clearly remember. Bits of the ensuing conversation came back to her, memories of the sickening rage, the stupefying bewilderment that possessed her, and the exhaustion that followed. But order there was none. And she was sure she never got the whole of it.

At one stage in the proceedings she had observed in a haughty voice that she did not care to have his sympathy--or pity--take that form.

"Oh, it's not that," he assured her pleasantly; "but I'm tired of knocking around the world alone. I need an anchor. I think you"--he looked at her impersonally, but politely--"would make a good anchor."

"You mean you want me to reform you!"

He smiled a careful smile.

"No-o. I don't feel the need of reforming. There's nothing the matter with me----"

"How lovely to have such a high opinion of oneself."

"Yes. Isn't it? But as I was saying----"

At another stage she tried to take refuge behind the usual platitude: she did not love him.

He considered this--at ease before her, his hands in his pockets.

"Well, when it comes to that, I don't love you, either"--Ikey gasped--"but I don't consider that that makes any difference."

Another break.

Then, "What'll you do, if you don't?" he had asked her in a businesslike manner. "You're just on the verge of a breakdown"--She knew it; and his tone of conviction did not add to her sense of security--"Another scene like to-day's would upset you completely. You say you have no friends or relatives here; and there's no one you want to go to away from here. And besides, I can look after you a great deal better than you can look after yourself."