Part 1

Chapter 14,211 wordsPublic domain

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: "Peccavi."]

Rebellion

Joseph Medill Patterson

_Author of "A Little Brother of the Rich," etc._

_Illustrated by Walter Dean Goldbeck_

Publishers The Reilly & Britton Co. Chicago

Entered At Stationers' Hall

First Printing, September 1911

_REBELLION_

Published October 2, 1911

Illustrations

"Peccavi" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

"He Doesn't Live Here Any More"

"Georgia Laughed"

Rebellion

List of Chapters

CHAPTER

I Jim Connor II One Flesh III An Economic Unit IV The Head of the House V For Idle Hands to Do VI Triangulation VII A Sentimental Journey VIII The Life Force IX The Pretenders X Moxey XI Fusion XII Moxey's Sister XIII Reenter Jim XIV The Palace of the Unborn XV Mr. Silverman XVI Georgia Leaves Home XVII The Light Flickers XVIII The Priest XIX Sacred Heart XX Surrender XXI Worship XXII Kansas City XXIII The Last of the Old Man XXIV The New King XXV Jim Reenlists XXVI Eve XXVII The Naphthaline River XXVIII Albert Talbot Connor XXIX The Doctor Talks XXX Frankland & Connor XXXI The Stodgy Man XXXII Rebellion XXXIII The Ape XXXIV Which Begins Another Story

_NOTE_

_I wish to thank Mr. Francis Hackett for reading the unrevised proofs of this story._

_J. M. Patterson._

JIM CONNOR

"Nope, promised to be home on time for supper."

"Get panned last night!"

"Yep."

The group of men turned to the clock which was ticking high up on the wall between the smudgy painting of Leda and The Swan and the framed group photograph of famous pugilists from Paddy Ryan to the present day.

"It's only nineteen past; plenty time for just one more."

Jim Connor compared his watch with the clock and found they tallied. The grave bartender took the dice and box from behind the cigar counter and courteously placed them upon the bar.

"Well," bargained Jim, "if it _is_ just one more."

"J.O.M." they chorused, and the dice rolled upon the polished oak.

"What'll it be, gents?"

"Beer."

"Scotch high."

"Bourbon."

"A small beer, Jack."

"Beer."

"Yours, Jim?" prompted the watchful bartender.

"Well--I guess you can give me a cigar this time, Jack."

The practiced bartender, standing by his beer pump, slid the whisky glasses along the slippery counter with a delicate touch, as a skillful dealer distributes cards. He set out the red and smoky whiskies, the charged water, the tumbler, with its cube of ice; drew two glasses of beer, scraped the top foam into the copper runway, and almost simultaneously, as if he had four hands, laid three open cigar boxes before Jim, who selected a dark "Joe Tinker."

"Join us, Jack," invited the loser of the dice game, hospitably waving his hand. The efficient bartender drew a small half-glass of lithia for himself. Five feet rested upon the comfortable rail before the bar, there was the little pause imposed by etiquette, six glasses were raised to eye-level.

"Here's whatever."

"Happy days."

"S'looking at you," ran the murmur.

"The big fellow!" exclaimed one.

Chorus: "Yes, the big fellow!"

"I'll sure have to come in on that," said Jim, pressing between two shoulders to the bar. "A little bourbon, Jack," he asked briskly.

The other glasses were lowered until Jim also received his.

Then all were again raised to eye-level. Unanimously, "The big fellow!"

Heads were thrown back and each ego there, except the bartender, received a charming little thrill.

The beer men wandered to the back of the saloon and dipped into a large pink hemisphere of cheese. The whisky men suppressed coughs. Jim tipped his head back about five degrees and inquired, "Is the big fellow coming 'round to-night?"

"He's due," replied Jack, wiping his bar dry again.

"How's things looking to you?"

"We--ell, there's always a lot of knockers about."

"Yes, 'pikers' like Ben Birch and Coffey Neal, that line up with the big fellow for ten years and then throw him overnight because he won't let 'em name the alderman this time. And he always treated 'em right. Better than me. An' jou ever hear me kicking?"

"Nary once, Jim."

"That's because I am a white man with my friends. But these other Indians--well," said Jim earnestly, "God knows ingratitude gets my goat."

Jim Connor was a ward heeler and the big fellow was his ward boss. Jim was allowed to handle some of the money in his precinct at primaries and elections; he landed on the public pay-roll now and then; he was expected to attend funerals, bowling matches, saloons, picnics, cigar shops and secret society meetings throughout the year; his influence lay in his strength with the big fellow. Did a storekeeper want an awning over the sidewalk, or did he not want vigorous building inspection, if he lived in Jim's precinct, he told Jim, and Jim told the big fellow, and the big fellow told the alderman, and the alderman arranged it with his colleagues on a basis of friendship. In return, the storekeeper voted with the organization, which was the big fellow, who was thus enabled always to nominate and usually to elect candidates who would do what he told them. He told them to line up with the interests who had subscribed to the campaign fund--and he was the campaign fund. The entire process is pretty well known nowadays through the efforts of Mr. Lincoln Steffens and his associate muckrakers.

But there is no immediate cause for alarm; this is not a political novel.

The clock pointed nearly to seven and Jim, when he saw it, sighed. That meant unpleasantness. His supper certainly would be cold, but he wasn't thinking of that. He was thinking of his wife. She was sure to make him uncomfortable in some way or other, because he had broken his promise about being home on time. Probably she would be silent. If there was anything he hated, it was one of her silent spells. Just "No" and "Yes," and when he asked her what in hell was the matter, she would say "Nothing."

The trouble was, though, that he always knew what the matter was, even when she said "Nothing." What devil's power was there in wives, anyway, that enabled them to hurt by merely not speaking? He had tried silences on her a lot of times, but they never worked, not once. He liked the old days better, when she used to scold and plead and weep.

He remembered the first time he had come home drunk, half a dozen years ago, when he had barely turned from bridegroom to husband. She helped him that night to undress and to go to bed. And she had done other things for him, too, that even now he was ashamed to remember. And the next day she hadn't scolded once, but had fetched him a cup of coffee in bed as soon as he woke up. It surprised him; overwhelmed him. It had made him very humble. He had never been so repentant before or since.

She didn't reproach him that time--not a word. He didn't mean she had one of her silences--those didn't begin until much later; but she tried to talk about their usual affairs, as if nothing had happened. And everything had happened. They both knew that.

It wasn't until the next evening, thirty-six hours later, that he came home to find her a miserable heap upon the front room sofa, her face buried. He stood in the middle of the room looking at her helplessly, his words of greeting cut short. Every now and then her small shoulders heaved up and he heard her sob. She must have been crying a long time. He implored her, "Oh, don't, Georgia, don't; please don't; won't you please not?"

After a little while she stood up and put her arms about him and kissed him. He had never had such a feeling for her, it seemed to him, not even when they walked down the aisle together and she leaned on him so heavily. And then he kissed her solemnly, in a different way than ever before. He took the pledge that night, and he kept it, too, for a long time, nearly a year. That was the happy time of his life.

When he did begin again, it was gradually. She knew, after a time, he wasn't teetotal any more, and she didn't seem to mind so much. He remembered they talked about it. He explained that he could drink moderately, that she could trust him now, and mustn't ever be afraid of any more--accidents. And that very same night he came home drunk.

She cried again, but it wasn't as solemn and as terrible for either of them as the time before.

There had been other times since, many of them. And she had grown so cursedly contemptuous and cold. Well--he didn't know that it was altogether his fault. He had heard that alcoholism was a disease. But she had said it was a curable disease, and if he couldn't cure it, he had better die. His own wife had told him that. God knows he had tried to cure it. He had put every pound he had into the fight; not once, but a hundred times. He had gone to Father Hervey and taken the pledge last Easter Day, and--here he was with a whiskey glass in his hand.

He looked across into the high bar mirror. His eyes were yellow and his cheeks seemed to sag down. He put his hand to them to touch their flaccidity. His hair was thinning, there were red patches about his jaws where veins had broken, and his mouth seemed loose and ill-defined under the mustache which he wore to conceal it. He frowned fiercely, thrust his chin forward and gritted his teeth tightly to make of himself the reflection of a strong man--one who could domineer, like the big fellow. But it was no use--the mirror gave him back his lie.

The afternoon rush was over, the evening trade had not begun, and the saloon was empty, save for a group of scat-players at the farther end.

Jim's friends had gone, but he remained behind, in gloomy self-commiseration, his shoulders propped against the partition which marked off the cigar stand. He was thinking over his troubles, which was his commonest way of handling them.

Whoever it was that invented the saying, "Life is just one damned thing after another"--he knew, he knew. Jim had bought three or four post-cards variously framing the sentiment and placed them upon his bureau, side by side, for Georgia to see. It was his criticism of life.

You politicians and publicists, if you want to know what the public wants, linger at the rack in your corner drug store and look over the saws and sayings on the post-cards.

Jim hoped that the ones he had picked out would subtly convey to his wife that all were adrift together upon a most perplexing journey and that it ill-behooved any of them to--well there was a post-card poem that just about hit it off--and he put it on the bureau with the others:

"THERE IS SO MUCH BAD IN THE BEST OF US AND SO MUCH GOOD IN THE WORST OF US, THAT IT HARDLY BEHOOVES ANY OF US TO TALK ABOUT THE REST OF US."

But she hadn't taken the least notice. She didn't seem to understand him at all. Oh, well--women were light creatures of clothes and moods and two-edged swords for tongues--or deadly silence. What could they know about the deep springs of life--about how a man felt when in trouble?

Jim shifted his position slightly, for the hinge was beginning to trouble his shoulder blade, and fetched a sigh that was almost a moan. Such had been his life, merely that, and the future looked as bad or worse. The shilling bar grew a bit misty before him and he knew it wouldn't take much to make his eyes run over.

"Anything wrong, Jim?" inquired the sympathetic bartender.

"Just a little blue to-night, Jack, that's all."

"Sometimes I get into those spells myself. Hell, ain't they?"

Jim nodded. "I suppose they come from nervousness."

The bartender nodded back. "Or liver," said he, setting out the red bottle. "Have a smile."

"No, I don't want any more of that damned stuff. A man's a fool to let it get away with him, and sometimes I figure I better watch out--not but what I can't control myself, y'understand." There was the slightest interrogation in his tone.

"Sure y'can, Jim; I know that. Still," dubiously, "like you say, a fellow ought to watch out. It'll land the K.O. on the stoutest lad in shoes, if he keeps a-fightin' it."

"It's for use and not abuse. Ain't I right?"

The bartender conspicuously helped himself to a swallow of lithia. "Yep, sure," he said. "D'you know, Jim, I'm kind of sorry you didn't go home to supper to-night."

"So'm I, but I got to talking----"

"Why don't you go now?"

"Too blue, Jack, and home is fierce when I get there with a breath."

"Remember the time the little woman come here after you?"

"Oh, it's no use bringing that up now," said Jim sadly. "She liked me then. Give me a ginger ale."

Jim took his glass and sat alone at a round table by the wall, under the painting of Pasiphae and The Shower of Gold. This saloon, like many others, in Chicago, ran to classical subjects.

Jim relit his cigar and slowly turned the pages of a Fliegende Blätter, looking at the pictures and habitually picking out those letters in the text which resembled English letters. It was a frayed copy which had inhabited the saloon for many months, and showed it. Jim had thumbed it twenty times before, but he was doing it again to appease his subconsciousness, to give himself the appearance of activity of some sort.

But he was looking through the German pages to the years behind him. Politics--maybe that was the trouble. Politicians, at least little fellows like him, got more feathers than chicken out of it. If he hadn't quit that job with the railroad--but no, they were drivers, and there was no future in the railroad business for a fellow like him, a bookkeeper. He might have stayed there all his life and not thirty men in the entire offices have been the wiser, or have ever heard of him.

In fact, he had bettered himself by going with the publishing firm. He seemed to have prospects there. It wasn't his fault they blew up and he was out on the street again. That was how he got into politics--sort of drifted in after meeting the big fellow canvassing the saloons one night, when he, Jim, had nothing else to do.

The big fellow was so attractive, so sure of himself, and Jim would have seemed a fool if he had refused the offer to clerk in an election precinct that fall. There was a little money in it, and a little importance.

The big fellow had asked him to please see what he could do for the ticket that fall, and of course he had. It was agreeable to be consulted by the famous Ed Miles about plans and all that. He had never been consulted in the railroad office, or even by those publishers.

After election, without solicitation, Miles had Jim appointed a deputy sheriff for the State of Illinois, County of Cook, ss. Of course, he took it. There was nothing else in sight just then. The pay was fair, the hours good, and besides, there was no time-clock to punch and no superintendent always hovering about.

After a time the big fellow told Jim pleasantly, but firmly, that his job had to be passed around to some of the other boys, and Jim resigned. But the big fellow let it be known that Jim was still a trusted scout. That was an asset. The landlord knocked something off the rent of his flat, the street car company gave him a book of tickets, one of the bill-board companies sent him a nice check for Christmas; but he had done some rather particular work for them. He had respectable charge accounts in several places and wasn't pressed.

But, after all, one cannot get rich on that sort of thing; so when the child died, his wife went back downtown as a stenographer in a life insurance office. She had been a stenographer before their marriage.

ONE FLESH

The short swinging doors opened briskly and five tall men entered quietly. Jim tipped his chair forward upon its four legs. The scat game delayed itself.

The five lined up at the bar. "Beer," said the one with the boiled shirt. The skillful bartender drew five glasses of foam.

Jim sat still in his chair, hesitating to glance even obliquely toward the proceedings. What was one against five?

The tall man with the boiled shirt pointed to his glass, but did not touch it. Nor did any of his companions touch theirs. The saloon knighthood has not abandoned symbolism.

"Does that go?"

"It goes, Coffey Neal."

"And we don't get a lithograph in the front window?"

"You don't."

The five men withdrew a little for conference. Then Coffey Neal paid his reckoning with a quarter and a nickel.

The bartender rang up twenty-five cents on the register. Neal pointed to the five-cent piece upon the bar.

"That's for yourself, Jack."

The sardonic bartender placed it between his teeth. "It's phony," said he. "Take it back and put it in your campaign fund." He smiled, keeping his right hand below the bar.

"After election," Coffey Neal remarked through his nose, "your old man (he meant Jack's father-in-law) can't sell this place for the fixtures in it."

Jack concealed a yawn with his left hand.

"You're the twenty-second wop since the first of the year was going to put us out of business, and we're signing a lease for our new place next Monday. It's where your brother used to be located."

One of the enemy, a stocky fellow with a brakeman's black shirt, was constructing sandwiches of sliced bologna and rye at the lunch counter.

"I know you're not eating much lately, old boy, since you begun stringing with Coffey," smiled Jack from the corner of his mouth, "but those is for our customers."

Blackshirt turned quickly about, sweeping the pink hemisphere of cheese upon the floor and shivering it.

"Oh, dreadful!" he protested, falsetto. "My word, how sad!"

He trod some of the cheese into the sawdust. "Mr. Barman, ah, Mr. Barman, you may charge the damages to me--at the Blackstone."

There was a roar of laughter from the others. It looked like rough-housing, and damage to fixtures. The scat players had vanished, in their naïve Teutonic way, through the side door. Jack began to hope he wouldn't have to draw, for a shooting always black-eyes a saloon's good name and quiet scat custom shies at it.

Neal delivered Jim a tremendous thump on the shoulder. "Why, if it isn't my dear old college chump." Another thump. "Maybe you can buy us a drink with the collar off." A third thump.

"Now, can the comedy stuff, Coffey," Jim snarled, smilingly. If only he could steer Coffey away from the fight he seemed bent on picking. "I'll buy--sure. Why not?"

"Then you'll go across the street to do it," Jack inserted. "This ain't a barrel house."

Neal seized Jim's ear and lifted him to his feet. "You'll buy here, and now." Three of the men gathered about Jim. The other two, standing well apart, were watching Jack. There would be three pistols out, or none.

Jim was being slowly propelled to the bar, when the straw doors swung briskly and the big fellow entered. His shoulders, hands, legs and jaw were thick, and his eyes were amazingly alert.

Unspeakable peace spread through Jim. He knew that somehow or other the big fellow was going to get him out of this.

Indeed, that was what the boss had come for. News of the foray on this citadel of his had been grapevined to him up the block and around a corner.

He sized up the situation very quickly. There was Coffey Neal, the trouble-maker, the Judas who had refused to take his orders any longer. He was the one to be done for. The other four were merely Hessians, torsos, not headpieces. They slugged for a living, on either side of industrial disputes, according to the price--sometimes on both sides in the same strike.

"Have a drink, boys," said the great Ed Miles.

It surprised every man in the room. Jim's heart sank down again. Could it be that the big fellow was going to take water? Then it was the end of his reign and the end of Jim's days at court. There was a pause, a whispering. Ed, standing sidewise to the bar, held his open right hand, palm upwards, behind his coat so that only Jack could see it.

"And what if we wouldn't!" Coffey spoke with slow bravado.

"This." The big fellow flashed at him, and dropped the bung-starter heavily behind his ear. Coffey crumpled upon the floor. The sluggers hesitated half a second, then piled on Ed so quickly that Jack didn't dare use his gun. Instead, he ran around the bar and twisted his arm under the chin of blackshirt, pulling him away from the heap. He thrust him up in the air, using his own knee for a lever, then dropped him heavily on his back on the floor and kicked his head. There was no time for niceties.

Meanwhile, Jim had taken futile hold of another slugger's foot, who easily shook him off. He was cautiously planning for another hold--very cautiously indeed, not being anxious to become too completely immersed in the proceedings, when all at once the place became full of people.

Strong and willing arms eagerly and quickly unraveled the tangle.

"This is a hell of a game for eight o'clock in the evenin'." It was the bass voice of public peace. "Oh!" concernedly, "is it you, Mr. Miles? Are you hurted?"

The big fellow felt his shaven skull where, in the melee, a brass knuckle had struck him a glancing blow. He looked at his red fingers. "Just a scrape, Sarje, not cracked," he laughed.

"What's the charge?" asked the detective sergeant, solicitously.

"Tell 'em the facts," enjoined the big fellow.

"Well," began the efficient bartender, "Mr. Miles and me was talking quietly together here; he was standing just there with his back to the door, and I heard an awful yelling going up and down in the street. I knew it was Coffey Neal, hunting trouble, and drunk. They come in the cigar stand, swearing and cursing, saying they were looking for Ed Miles--to cut his heart out. But Ed says to me he didn't want any trouble in the place, so's he'd walk out, and he started out the side door, when Coffey and this blackshirt fellow come running in and threw that bowl of cheese at him--see it there--and jumped him. Then these other bad actors began kicking him, too, and I went in to separate 'em--and I guess that's all. Lucky you came in or there might have been trouble."

"What charge will I put agin 'em?"

"Drunk and disorderly; assault; assault and battery; assault with intent to kill; unprovoked assault; mayhem; assault with a deadly weapon--and I guess they ain't got no visible means of support," suggested the big fellow. "Oh! yes, and conspiracy."

"Let it go at that," said Jack.

The sergeant wrote it down. The sluggers were silent. The case had become one for lawyers' fees. Their own talking couldn't do any good.

"Any witnesses?" asked the sergeant.

"Me," said Jim. "It was the way Jack says."

"Put 'em in the wagon," commanded law and order.

Coffey Neal was picking up his threads again at the place he had dropped them.

"And what if we won't drink with you, Ed Miles!" he muttered, somewhat scattered.

"Likely the Bridewell, Coffey," laughed the big fellow.

The vanquished were escorted out into the night.

The victor and his vassals, perhaps a dozen of them by this time, remained in possession of the field.

"Good thing I had those coppers planted before I started anything," commented the big fellow. "Those strong-arm guys like to got me going at the end."

"They certainly handled themselves very useful," Jack acknowledged.

"They gotta be with us after this, or get out of town." The big fellow turned suddenly on Jim. "And you, you yellow pup," he roared, seizing him by the collar, "what were you doing while they was pounding me up? D'you think you were at a ball game, hey?" He shook him back and forth until his jaws cracked.

"I--I was trying--I got one of 'em by the leg, and he----"

"Yes, like you'd pick flowers in the spring--sweet and pretty--that's the way you grabbed his leg." He lifted Jim from the ground and flung him on the floor. "Yellow pup!" he repeated passionately, over and over again.