Part 20

The broken section of the crowd swayed, hesitated, attacked the car. For an instant, the arms of the chauffeur beat at the man that climbed to his seat, and then the chauffeur was pulled to the ground. Luke strained his eyes to see if the car were familiar to him. It was. There was a woman in it: its only occupant. It was the Forbes car, and the woman must be Betty.

Sec.5. Luke circled the center table and ran down the steps three at a time. He nearly fell upon the huge form of Breil, coatless, a revolver in his hand, hurtling from one group of his forces to another. Luke pushed him away.

"Where are you going?" cried Breil.

Luke did not answer. He was tugging at the door.

Breil's heavy hand fell on Luke's arm.

"Here! Stop that!" he bellowed. "Where d'you think you're goin'?"

"Get away!" shouted Luke. "I'm going out."

The door leaped open. The howls of the mob beat upon the two men's faces.

Breil thrust his lips against Luke's ear.

"Are you crazy?" he yelled.

"Yes!" said Luke.

He slipped through the door.

Facciolati was there, white-faced, standing behind his soldiers.

Luke made an egress through the ranks by shoving away a soldier with either hand.

"You're not going out _there_?" cried the Captain. "They'll kill you!"

Luke jumped to the curb.

"I don't care!" he answered.

He was crazy, and he didn't care whether he was killed or not. Of these two things he was certain. He was mad from the torments of his conflict between logic and desire, and death would be an easy solution--perhaps it was the only one. It flashed upon him that such a solution might be cowardly; but the next instant he had but one impulse; he was going to save Betty, and that was enough. A new madness, the madness of what seemed an absolutely unselfish act, of an act that intoxicated him with its unselfishness, gave him the strength of ten and fired a berserker rage in his breast, hurled him forward like a rock from a ballista. He was going to save Betty, and he was a hundred yards away from her in the midst of a mob that hated him.

The ocean of raging men closed over his head; its pandemonium smashed his ear-drums; but he was deep in the crowd before any of its members realized whence he had come. He was clearing a way, striking, kicking, biting, shouting he knew not what--shrill oaths and guttural threats--thrusting their heavy bodies from side to side. He felt their hot breath, encountered their resisting arms and legs, smelled the sweat of them.

"Stop him!" yelled somebody. "He came out of the factory!"

He saw a host of faces about him, dark with anger; eyes big with hunger and hate. He felt blows that could not hurt him, felt his own fists sink into flabby bellies, crack upon stout skulls.

"The scab!"

A hand fell across his mouth, and he used his teeth like a were-wolf; he tasted the smooth salt blood before it began to trickle down his jowl. A second hand snatched at his collar, another grabbed his arm. He pulled frenziedly, he struck out blindly, he threw all his weight far forward. He knew that his coat ripped; he twisted his arm free, lowered his head and dodged forward, men sprawling before him. He had gained the motor-car.

Betty was standing up in the tonneau. Her hands were clasped before her breast, her face was set. She saw him falling toward her.

Luke jumped beside her, his coat gone, his shirt torn, his face bleeding from a cut above the right eye, his hair matted over his forehead. She did not know him as he seized her roughly and picked her up in his arms; but, in the moment that he balanced on the edge of the car, with the light full in his face, the crowd knew him.

"That's him! That's Huber!" they shrieked.

He jumped with her directly back into the crowd.

While he was still in the air, he thought that was the worst thing to have done. Without him, she might have had some chance; with him she would have almost no chance at all. But it was too late now; he could only fight until he could fight no more, and then they must die together....

Sec.6. They did not die. Somebody, as the mob laid hold of them, broke through its ranks--somebody with still some shred of authority left him.

"Get back, you fools! Get back! Do you want to kill the woman?"

It was that organizer of the strikers whom Luke had seen in Forbes's office when the employees made their last appeal to Forbes. It was the man Forbes had ignored.

With infinite slowness, against infinite opposition, the rescuer made way for them. Grumbling, growling, threatening, the crowd fell back. It menaced, it cursed, it hurled ribald jokes; but it fell back before the leader that it no longer obeyed in anything else, until he, followed by Luke with Betty in his arms, came to the line of soldiers at the battered factory door.

Luke swayed a little. Facciolati stepped up and tried to steady him, but he tossed Facciolati away. Luke turned to the organizer.

"Won't you come inside?" he panted.

The man shook his head.

"I'm--I can't tell you how much I owe you for this," said Luke.

"Oh, you go to Hell," said the man.

Sec.7. Inside the factory, Luke would not waste a glance on the strike-breakers that gathered, open-mouthed, around him.

"Get away," he ordered. "I'm taking her to the upper office. Nobody is to disturb her there. You understand? Nobody."

Sec.8. During all that frightful progress back through the mob, she had lain in his arms silent, her eyes closed. Only now, when he brought her to the upper office, banged the door behind them and put her in an arm-chair, which he kicked the length of the room in order to place her as far as might be from the window, did she look at him.

"I didn't faint," she said. "I only pretended. I thought that was safest."

He had dropped to his knees beside her and had begun to chafe her hands. He was unconscious of the renewed din outside. Thus alone with her, he was thinking only how much he wanted her.

She was leaning far back in the chair. The rays of the street-lamp were the only light in the room, and they made her face seem as peaceful as the faces of the dead. When she opened her eyes, her eyes were luminous.

"You're safe," she continued. "You're safe, aren't you?"

He kissed her hand hotly.

"You!" he said. "I'm all right. But you?"

She stood up, smiling.

"Quite."

He rose also.

"The brutes! the beasts! I'd like to--I'll do it, too!"

He had stepped into the light. His shirt was torn, his hair dank. Blood caked over the cut on his forehead, and his jaws were red with the blood of the man whose hand he had bitten.

"Luke! You _are_ hurt!"

She came toward him.

"No, I'm not," he persisted, but he let her fingers touch the wound on his head, and her fingers thrilled him.

"Luke," she said, when she had convinced herself that the cut was superficial, "I'm glad it was you."

"That came for you?"

"Yes."

"I didn't do much. I was nearly the death of you. For a minute I thought it was death. That other fellow's the one you have to thank."

"Anyhow, I thank you." She pressed his hand.

A shout came from the mob. It brought him back to material concerns.

"How did you come to this part of town?"

She had complete command of herself.

"Can't you guess?" she asked.

Her eyes were unafraid.

"Don't say you came on my account."

"But I did; I did. Father's too ill to ask questions. It was a slight heart attack, the doctor said: he's been so worried lately, Father has, and so overworked. But I wanted to know, and I tried to telephone here, but they said the connection was broken. Then I was sorry for not answering that call you made before, and when they said you hadn't got back to the Arapahoe, I was afraid. So I told Father I was going to Mr. Nicholson's mission--he must have thought me dreadfully unkind to leave him for that--and I had James drive me--Oh!" she broke off: "I wonder if _he's_ hurt?"

"The chauffeur?" Luke remembered. "I saw him just as I got to the car," he chuckled. "He'd reached the outskirts of the crowd and was running for dear life. I don't think they'll catch him."

The noise of the mob would grow from a hoarse mutter to a loud howl and then sink to a low murmur.

"Luke," she said, "it _was_ you rescued me."

He listened to the noise.

"Then I've probably only rescued you from the frying-pan to dump you into the fire. I wish I'd had the sense to take you in the opposite direction. I don't know what I could have been thinking of. Of course, they'll simply have to send more police soon and attack these fellows from the rear: the soldiers haven't the right to drive away the crowd, and Breil's men daren't leave the building. But I do wish I hadn't brought you here!"

"You've brought me where _you_ are," said Betty.

Her eyes were wide, her lips parted. Luke's breath caught in his throat.

"Betty," he said, "do you mean----"

She did not quail.

"I mean I love you."

"What?" He drew back, afraid of her, afraid of himself.

"I know you weren't yourself," she said. "I know how all this trouble has upset you. I know you didn't mean those things."

The reversal was too much for him. He leaned against the table and burst into laughter. An instant ago the roar of the crowd had seemed miles away, had seemed no more than any recurrent noise of city life. They two, Betty and he, had seemed to him set apart from it all, remote from it, together. Now----

"Luke!" she was crying.

A picture drifted into his mind. It was a picture of pine trees and the sun in a blue sky full of fleecy clouds and a long white road winding, dusty and carefree, to the end of the world.

"Luke----"

He could not hear her now. He saw terror in her face, but the noise from the street rose, rattled at the window-pane, and engulfed her words.

A new cry rang out from the mob--a cry so sharp and loud that both the persons in the room forgot themselves and ran to the window. They looked out upon the tossing faces below.

The crowd had turned. It was elbowing, straining necks, rising on tiptoe, gazing backward.

Far back there something dark fluttered in the night air. It was seized and passed from hand to hand. It reached the circle of light and waved high above the center of the crowd, a banner of crimson, tossing like a beacon over the swarm of black heads, defiant, audacious: the Red Flag.

And then came a new sound. It began in the heart of the mob and spread outwards like circles in water broken by a dropped stone. It did not stop the other noises; it assimilated them. It was low, but strong; it seemed to contain all the history of past wrongs, all the arsenal of present determination; but it was touched with far hopes and freighted with tremendous dreams. It was a chant, a song, a hymn, and all the crowd was singing it with the strength of a thousand pair of lungs.

"What's that?" asked Luke, although he expected no answer.

But the girl gave him one.

"It's a thing called 'The International,'" she said, her voice trembling. "I heard it once in Paris. It's a terrible song."

Luke's eyes were caught by a movement at the window of one of the tumbledown dwellings across the street. He saw the window open and a frowsy woman lean out. She held something white in her hands. She raised it, then dashed its contents toward the nearest soldier. The shot fell short, and two men in the crowd were drenched.

The hymn ended in a shriek. The mob believed that the insult had come from the factory and instantly resolved itself into a fuming whirlpool. Luke saw tossed aside people who were evidently strike-leaders frantically trying to quiet their one-time followers, but he did not guess the purport of the new commotion in the seething mass. Then he saw something that made him jerk Betty away from the window and fling her against the wall at its side.

There was a crash--a pause--a tinkling. A gust of air, fresh and cool, invaded the room. A missile had broken the window. A whole volley followed, smashing more glass and battering at the factory walls. The mob was using the coals from the dismantled wagon that Luke had noticed in the street hours ago.

Somebody had been pounding unheard at the office-door. Luke saw the door bend and ran to it. He flung it wide.

Breil stood there, his revolver in his hand.

"I've got to disturb you----" he began, and, though he shouted, his voice did not reach to where Betty stood against the wall.

"That's all right," called Luke. "I've been a fool and a coward to stay here. Give me that gun."

He wrenched the weapon from Breil's resisting hand. He leaped to Betty and slipped the revolver to her.

"Got to go downstairs," he cried to her, for the broken window let in a roar that made ordinary speaking tones futile. "Bolt the door after us! You'll be safe! We'll fall back to the stairs, if we have to fall back. Good-bye!"

He would not look back. His last sight of her was of a woman standing erect, alert, comprehending, the revolver shining in her hand. Then, with the following Breil calling out that he must go to his own men at the rear, Luke ran down the stairs, opened the main door and, leaving it gaping behind him, plunged outside.

Sec.9. Coherent purpose he had none. All that he realized was this: here was a struggle; here was a final endeavor to destroy his property, which, however endangered by the trust, was almost his sole means of support. There would be no more chance given him for delay; there would be no further help from the police--the half-dozen sent that morning had disappeared--until help was too late; there was only the boyish soldiery. He would go to them, and he would fight.

As he emerged upon the street, he saw the circle of light empty of the human mass that had lately swirled there. A resounding cacophony from the darkness, and dimly perceived objects moving a hundred yards and more away, told him that the rioters had withdrawn to the upturned coal wagon. At the moment of understanding this, he heard a rending staccato noise.

The frightened Facciolati heard it, too. He was standing on the pavement by the door and had drawn up his men in a closer column before him. His bared sword was in his right hand.

"What's that?" asked Luke.

"It's the tongue of that coal wagon," gasped the Captain, "they're rippin' it off."

"What? For a battering-ram? For this door?"

The Italian nodded.

"Yes. I heard someone yell for them to do it. Then they all ran over there."

A terrible stillness fell. Behind the curtain of the night, the mob only hummed and shuffled its feet.

"Well?" asked Luke.

His eyes pierced Facciolati's. His voice was pregnant with meaning.

"What had I better do?" faltered the Captain.

Before Luke could reply, a strident yell came from the invisible ranks of the mob:

"Now then: come on! Burn their damned shop!"

A thousand voices echoed:

"Burn it! Burn it down!"

The Captain turned to Luke.

"You've got to stop them," said Luke.

The din increased.

"O my God!" said Facciolati.

In Luke blazed up all the furnace of battle. He gripped the Captain's collar and shook the man as if he were a frightened, disobedient child.

"Give the order!" he commanded. He hated this boy.

In a shrill, hysterical voice that cut the rising noise of the mob, Facciolati gave the preliminary order, and the rows of lads in khaki, standing on the curb, raised their black-blue rifles to their shoulders.

"We won't shoot!" he called into Luke's ear. "We'll only frighten 'em!"

"Burn it----" From the street the cries were merged into a wordless roar. There was the wild rush of two thousand feet, and into the light burst the mob again: a long trotting column with the Red Flag swaying overhead, and in the midst five or six men bearing the wagon-tongue leveled like a lance.

A veil of crimson seemed to flutter before Luke's eyes--the eyes of the man that had counseled caution and the use of only the butts of rifles. He did not think, he could only feel--only feel that here at last was the chance, here the unavoidable need of action that had the splendid conclusiveness of brutality. This was man's work. This was no rescuing of a girl: it was war. The world had meshed him in a net of intellectual doubts and quibbles: here was his moment to cut the net, and to cut his way to freedom, to take vengeance on the world.

That and something more. Betty was in danger and the property that was partly his, that in part he owned and had bought. But above all this, riding it all, goading it, spurning it, mad with its mastery, the blood-lust, the Sense of Power, the dizzy knowledge that he could kill.

The mob was almost upon them. It was a tidal wave.

"Now!" shouted Luke to the Italian.

But the Captain caught his hand. He gabbled the nothings of panic. Luke threw the boy to the pavement. With all the breath in his body he vociferated:

"_Fire!_"

Sec.10. Hell belched its flames: a thunder-clap, a thunder-cloud knifed by red flashes of lightning.

Luke felt his head bashed against the wall of the factory. He was choking in a cloud of smoke. He could see nothing, but once he thought he heard the crack of other shots from somewhere above.

Then he felt his knees clutched. He felt a pawing at his elbow; and presently he heard the chattering voice of Facciolati screaming against his cheek:

"Why in Hell did you do that? How in Hell did you dare?--Don't you know what you might have done? Who's in command here?"

"Shut up," bellowed Luke, "or I'll show you who's in command." He tried vainly to see through the smoke. "Take your hands off me!"

It was as if he were in the crater of an erupting volcano. The reverberation split his head, and through it came shrieks, groans, curses, and then, as the smoke slowly lifted, the pound of two thousand feet on the paving-stones, while, with the Red Flag sagging to and fro like a wounded eagle above it, the mob fled pell-mell up the street.

But the Captain had not heeded Luke's warning.

"Now they'll be back!" he was wailing. "We'll all be goners now. Why did you give that order? Why didn't you let me change it?--I'd instructed the men to fire over their heads--An' you didn't let me change it--An' of course they _did_ fire over their heads--an' nobody's hurt--Do you know what that means? They'll be back and kill all of us!"

It was impossible for Luke to believe. Then, not fear, but the rage of thwarted blood-lust sent out his clawing hands.

"You did that?"

He caught Facciolati under the arm-pits and raised him clear of the ground.

"You----"

A new sound interrupted him. At first he thought that the mob had wheeled a machine-gun into the street and turned it on the factory. Then the sound became a clatter and, looking through the ranks of soldiers, Luke saw, far ahead, a tangle of rearing horses and falling men: even City Hall had been unable longer to hold its hand; one of the patrolmen who had fled to the factory must have telephoned a final word to headquarters; the mounted police were charging the crowd; the riot was ended.

Sec.11. Luke ran up the stairs to the upper office and found the door unbolted. He did not know what he went for. He was not glad that the riot was ended; he was raging like a man-eating tiger foiled of its quarry.

Betty stood at the window in the full light of the street-lamp. He scarcely knew her face. He had never seen her look like this. He had never dreamed that she could look like this. Her hat had fallen to the floor; her golden hair tossed above her head like licking tongues of flame; her eyes were bright coals; her cheeks were scarlet; her white upper teeth bit deep into the vermilion of her lower lip. As if to give freer play to a breast that panted, she had torn open her dress at the base of her splendid throat. The revolver was in her hand. It was cocked and smoking. She looked like Bellona invoked and materialized from the fire and smoke of that roaring inferno of the street.

"How many?" she gasped. "How many have we killed?"

Luke stopped at the door. He knew now that he had indeed heard shots from overhead. He knew that the same primaeval passion which had made him a tiger--and still maintained its sway--had worked this metamorphosis also, had changed this gentle girl into what he saw. At another time, in another mood, he would have loathed it; but in his present mood he gloried in it. He thought that he had never seen her so beautiful or imagined her so splendid; her madness matched his own.

He came toward her, circling the table that stood between them.

"None!" he cried. "That fool Captain told the men to shoot high."

He put out his arms. He wrenched her to him. His right arm clutched her about the supple shoulders, the fingers of his right hand sinking into her firm left breast. With his left hand he shoved her face upwards. Brown from the caked blood of the man he had bitten, his opened mouth closed upon hers.

He heard the revolver clatter to the floor. She writhed in his embrace. He had expected the perfect response. Meeting an abrupt refusal, he was taken off his guard, and she escaped from him.

She staggered into a corner. The devil that possessed him had lost its power over her. She had reverted to her natural being. She did not cry, but she stood there with her hands pressed tight against her breast, the fingers mechanically busied with repairing the opened blouse, her face all horror at the thing she had been.

"What must you think of me?" she was moaning--"I don't know what came over me!--What must you think of me?"

He thought nothing. He could think nothing. He could realize only that he was again to be robbed. Twice to-night the cheat that played with men at the game of life had given him the winning hand, only to sweep the stakes from the board just as Luke reached for what he had won. The blood-lust changed its form; it assumed an ungovernable fury. Something crackled in his brain as he had seen imperfect feed-wires at the touch of a trolley-wheel. The crimson veil fluttered again before his eyes.

He turned and bolted the door. He turned again and ran to her. His face was wet with sweat, black with powder, terrible.

She understood. She lowered her head and tried to dodge past him. She cried out.

His strong fingers caught her hair. The hair streamed down. Her forward lurch brought it taut. He jerked at it; she fell toward him. His free hand caught her throat and stopped her fall. He tossed her against the table; her feet brushed the floor, but he pressed her shoulders tight to the table's top. He bent over her, one hand at her throat, the other raised to stop her mouth, his beating breath on her face.

She was wholly in his power now. The outside world was impotent because the outside world could not have heeded her appeal; the woman herself was helpless because her captor's was the strongest body. Again came to Luke the frightful sense of Power, again the dizzy knowledge that he could do whatever he chose.

At that instant the madness fell from him.

A physical motive there of course was, since the more intense the passion the briefer is its duration; but even if it originated in the physical, this reaction transcended things material and wheeled about to crush them. It was the second and fuller phase of that revelation which had come to him in the Sunday quiet of the Brooklyn streets. Burning, blinding, transfiguring, the Marvel and the Miracle, elemental and tremendous, returned, and what they had once done from the flesh to the spirit, they now did from the spirit to the flesh. They returned to remain. They completed the revolution, the new birth.