Chapter 7

The place was an empty warehouse, fitted with long tables, and benches made of planks that were old and full of splinters. Here in rows of twenty or thirty were seated men and women and children, mixed together; before each one a bowl of not very thick soup, and a hunk of bread, and a tin cup full of hot brown liquid, politely taken for coffee. It was a meal which would have been spurned by any of the “studio bums” of T-S's mob-scenes; but now T-S was going to be a good sport, and sit on a splintery plank and eat it!

Nor was that all. As we pushed our way into the place, Carpenter turned to the magnate, and without a trace of embarrassment, said: “You understand, Mr. T-S, I have no money. But we must pay--”

“Oh, sure!” said T-S, quickly. “I'll pay!”

“Thank you,” said the other; and he turned to an official of the union with whom he had got acquainted in the course of the morning. He introduced us all, not forgetting the secretary, and then said: “Mr. T-S is the moving picture producer, and wants to have lunch with you, if you will consent.”

“Oh, sure!” said the official, cordially.

“He will pay for it,” added Carpenter. “He has brought along a thousand dollars for that purpose.”

T-S started as if some one had struck him; and the official started too. “WHAT?”

“He will pay a thousand dollars,” declared Carpenter. “It is a fact, and you may tell the people, if you wish.”

“My Gawd, no!” cried T-S wildly.

But the official did not heed him. He faced the crowd and stretched out his arms. “Boys! Boys! This is Mr. T-S, the picture producer, and he's come to lunch with us, and he's going to pay a thousand dollars for it!”

There was a moment of amazed silence, then a roar from the company. Men leaped to their feet and yelled. And there stood poor T-S-not enjoying the ovation!

“Give it to them,” whispered Carpenter; and the magnate, thus held up, took out the roll of bills, and turned it over to the trembling official, who leaped onto a chair and waved the miracle before the crowd. “A thousand dollars! A thousand dollars!” He counted it over before their eyes and called, louder than ever, “A thousand dollars!”

Carpenter, followed by T-S and the secretary and myself, went down the line of tables, shaking hands with many on the way, and being patted on the back by others. Also T-S shook hands, and was patted. Seats were found for us, and food was brought--double portions of it, as if to make the plight of the poor magnate even more absurd! I watched him out of the corner of my eye; he enjoyed that costly meal just about as much as Carpenter had enjoyed the one at Prince's last night!

However, he was game, and spilled no tears into his soup; and Carpenter ate with honest appetite, having had no breakfast. The strikers about us ate as if they had missed both breakfast and supper; they laughed and chatted and made jokes with us--you would have thought they were celebrating the winning of the strike and the end of all their troubles. In the midst of the meal I noted two well-dressed young men by the door, asking questions; I chuckled to myself, seeing more head-lines--double ones, and extra size:

PROPHET OF GOD VAMPS MOVIE KING MAGNATE OF SCREEN PAYS THOUSAND FOR LUNCH

But I knew that T-S had never yet paid a thousand dollars without getting something for it, and I was not surprised when, after he had gulped down his meal, he turned to his host and, disregarding the company and the excitement, demanded, “Now, Mr. Carpenter, tell me, do I git de contract?”

Carpenter had had his jest, and was through with it. He answered, gravely: “You must understand me, Mr. T-S. You don't want a contract with me.”

“I don't?”

“If I were to sign it, it would not be a week before you would be sorry, and would be asking me to release you.”

“Vy is dat, Mr. Carpenter?”

“Because I am going to do things which will make me quite useless to you in a business way.”

“Dat can't be true, Mr. Carpenter!”

“It is true, and you will realize it soon. I assure you, it won't be a day before you will be ashamed of having known me.”

T-S was gazing at the speaker, not certain whether this was something very terrible, or only a polite evasion. “Mr. Carpenter,” he answered, “if all de vorld vas to give you up, I vouldn't!”

Said Carpenter: “I tell you, before the cock crows again, you will deny three times that you know me.” And then, without awaiting response from the amazed T-S, he turned to speak to the man on the other side of him.

The magnate of the pictures sat silent, evidently frightened. At last he turned to me and asked, “Vot you tink he meant by dat, Billy?”

I answered: “I think he meant that you are to play the part of Peter.”

“Peter? Peter Pan?”

“No; St. Peter, who denied his master.”

“Vell,” said T-S, patiently, “you know, I ain't vun o' dese litry fellers.”

“I'll tell it to you some time,” I continued. “It's kind of funny. If he's right, you are going to be the first pope, and sit at the golden gate, holding the keys of heaven.”

“My Gawd!” said T-S.

“And you've made a record in the movies.” I added. “You've played Satan and St. Peter, both on the same day! That is 'doubling' with a vengeance!”

XXXI

When I got back to the Labor Temple, I learned that there was to be a mass-meeting of the strikers this Saturday evening. It had been planned some days ago, and now was to be turned into a protest against police violence and “government by injunction.” There was a cheap afternoon paper which professed sympathy with the workers, and this published a manifesto, signed by a number of labor leaders, summoning their followers to make clear that they would no longer submit to “Cossack rule.”

It appeared now that these leaders were considering inviting Carpenter to become one of the speakers at their meeting. Two of them came up to me. I had heard this stranger speak, and did I think he could hold an audience? I gave assurance; he was a man of dignity, and would do them credit. They were afraid the newspapers would represent him as a freak, but of course their meeting would hardly fare very well in the papers anyhow. One of them asked, cautiously, how much of an extremist was he? Labor leaders were having a hard time these days to hold down the “reds,” and the employers were not giving them any help. Did I think Carpenter would support the “reds”? I answered that I didn't know the labor movement well enough to judge, but one thing they could be sure of, he was a man of peace, and would not preach any sort of violence.

The matter was settled a little later, when Mary Magna drove up to the Labor Temple in her big limousine. Mary, for the first time in the memory of anyone who knew her, was without her war-paint; dressed like a Quakeress--a most uncanny phenomenon! She had not a single jewel on; and before long I learned why--she had taken all she owned to a jeweler that morning, and sold them for something over six thousand dollars. She brought the money to the fund for the babies of the strikers; nor did she ask anyone else to hand it in for her. It was Mary's fashion to look the world in the eye and say what she was doing.

T-S was still hanging about, and at first he tried to check this insane extravagance, but then he thought it over and grinned, saying, “I git my tousand dollars back in advertising!” When I pointed out to him what would be the interpretation placed by newspaper gossip on Mary's intervention in the affairs of Carpenter, he grinned still more widely. “Ain't he got a right to be in love vit Mary? All de vorld's in love vit Mary!” And of course, there was a newspaper reporter standing by his side, so that this remark went out to the world as semi-official comment!

You understand that by this time the second edition of the papers was on the streets, and it was known that the new prophet was at the Labor Temple. Curiosity seekers came filtering in, among them half a dozen more reporters, and as many camera men. After that, poor Carpenter could get no peace at all. Would he please say if he was going to do any more healing? Would he turn a little more to the light--just one second, thank you. Would he mind making a group with Miss Magna and Mr. T-S and the “wealthy young scion”? Would he consent to step outside for some moving pictures, before the light got too dim? It was a new kind of mob--a ravening one, making all dignity and thought impossible. In the end I had to mount guard and fight the publicity-hounds away. Was it likely this man would go out and pose for cameras, when he had just refused fifteen hundred dollars a week from Mr. T-S to do that very thing? And then more excitement! Had he really refused such an offer? The king of the movies admitted that he had!

We live in an age of communication; we can send a bit of news half way round the world in a few seconds, we can make it known to a whole city in a few hours. And so it was with this “prophet fresh from God”; in spite of himself, he was seized by the scruff of the neck and flung up to the pinnacle of fame! He had all the marvels of a lifetime crowded into one day--enough to fill a whole newspaper with headlines!

And the end was not yet. Suddenly there was a commotion in the crowd, and a man pushed his way through--Korwsky, the secretary of the tailor's union, who, learning of Carpenter's miracles, had rushed all the way home, and got a friend with a delivery wagon, and brought his half-grown son post-haste. He bore him now in his arms, and poured out to Carpenter the pitiful tale of his paralyzed limbs. Such a gentle, good child he was; no one ever heard a complaint; but he had not been able to stand up for five years.

So, of course, Carpenter put his hands upon the child, and closed his eyes in prayer; and suddenly he put him down to the ground and cried: “Walk!” The lad stared at him, for one wild moment, while people caught their breath; then, with a little choking cry, he took a step. There came a shout from the spectators, and then--Bang!--a puff as if a gun had gone off, and a flash of light, and clouds of white smoke rolling to the ceiling.

Women screamed, and one or two threatened to faint; but it was nothing more dangerous than the cameraman of the Independent Press Service, who had hired a step-ladder, and got it set up in a corner of the room, ready for any climax! A fine piece of stage management, said his jealous rivals; others in the crowd were sure it was a put up job between Carpenter and Korwsky. But the labor leaders knew the little tailor, and they believed. After that there was no doubt about Carpenter's being a speaker at the mass-meeting!

XXXII

It came time when the rest of us were ready for dinner, but Carpenter said that he wanted to pray. Apparently, whenever he was tired, and had work to do he prayed. He told me that he would find his own way to Grant Hall, the place of the mass-meeting; but somehow, I didn't like the idea of his walking through the streets alone. I said I would call for him at seven-thirty and made him promise not to leave the Labor Temple until that hour.

I cast about in my mind for a body-guard, and bethought me of old Joe. His name is Joseph Camper, and he played centre-rush with my elder brother in the days before they opened up the game, and when beef was what counted. Old Joe has shoulders like the biggest hams in a butcher shop, and you can trust him like a Newfoundland dog. I knew that if I asked him not to let anybody hurt my friend, he wouldn't--and this regardless of the circumstance of my friend's not wearing pants. Old Joe knows nothing about religion or sociology--only wrestling and motor-cars, and the price of wholesale stationery.

So I phoned him to meet me, and we had dinner, and at seven-thirty sharp our taxi crew drew up at the Labor Temple. Half a minute later, who should come walking down the street but Everett, T-S's secretary! “I thought I'd take the liberty,” he said, apologetically. “I thought Mr. Carpenter might say something worth while, and you'd be glad to have a transcript of his speech.”

“Why, that's very kind of you,” I answered, “I didn't know you were interested in him.”

“Well, I didn't know it myself, but I seem to be; and besides, he told me to follow him.”

I went upstairs, and found the stranger waiting in the room where I had left him. I put myself on one side of him, and the ex-centre-rush on the other, with Everett respectfully bringing up the rear, and so we walked to Grant Hall. Many people stared at us, and a few followed, but no one said anything--and thank God, there was nothing resembling a mob! I took my prophet to the stage entrance of the hall, and got him into the wings; and there was a pathetically earnest lady waiting to give him a tract on the horrors of vivisection, and an old gentleman with a white beard and palsied hands, inviting him to a spiritualistic seance. Funniest of all, there was Aunt Caroline's prophet, the author of the “Eternal Bible,” with his white robes and his permanent wave, and his little tribute of carrots and onions wrapped in a newspaper. I decided that these were Carpenter's own kind of troubles, and I left him to attend to them, and strolled out to have a look at the audience.

The hall was packed, both the floor and the galleries; there must have been three thousand people. I noted a big squad of police, and wondered what was coming; for in these days you can never tell whether any public meeting is to be allowed to start, and still less if it is to be allowed to finish. However, the crowd was orderly, the only disturber being some kind of a Socialist trying to sell literature.

I saw Mary Magna come in, with Laura Lee, another picture actress, and Mrs. T-S. They found seats; and I looked for the magnate, and saw him talking to some one near the door. I strolled back to speak to him, and recognized the other man as Westerly, secretary of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association. I knew what he was there for--to size up this new disturber Of the city's peace, and perhaps to give the police their orders.

It was not my wish to overhear the conversation, but it worked out that way, partly because it is hard not to overhear T-S, and partly because I stopped in surprise at the first words: “Good Gawd, Mr. Vesterly, vy should I vant to give money to strikers? Dat's nuttin' but fool newspaper talk. I vent to see de man, because Mary Magna told me he vas a vunderful type, and I said I'd pay him a tousand dollars on de contract. You know vot de newspapers do vit such tings!”

“Then the man isn't a friend of yours?” said the other.

“My Gawd, do I make friends vit every feller vot I hire because he looks like a character part?”

At this point there came up Rankin, one of T-S's directors. “Hello!” said he. “I thought I'd come to hear your friend the prophet.”

“Friend?” said T-S. “Who told you he's a friend o' mine?”

“Why, the papers said--”

“Vell, de papers 're nutty!”

And then came one of the strikers who had been in the soup-kitchen--a fresh young fellow, proud to know a great man. “How dy'do, Mr. T-S? I hear our friend, Mr. Carpenter, is going--”

“Cut out dis friend stuff!” cried T-S, irritably. “He may be yours--he ain't mine!”

I strolled up. “Hello, T-S!” I said.

“Oh, Billy! Hello!”

“So you've denied him three times!”

“Vot you mean?”

“Three times--and the cock hasn't crowed yet! That man's a prophet for sure, T-S!”

The magnate pretended not to understand, but the deep flush on his features gave him away.

“How dy'do, Mr. Westerly,” I said. “What do you think of Mr. T-S in the role of the first pope?”

“You mean he's going to act?” inquired the other, puzzled.

“Come off!” exclaimed Rankin, who knew better, of course.

“He's going to be St. Peter,” I insisted, “and hold the keys to the golden gate. He's planning a religious play, you know, for this fellow Carpenter. Maybe he might cast Mr. Westerly for a part--say Pontius Pilate.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” said the secretary of our “M. and M.” “Pretty good! Ha, ha, ha! Gimme a chance at these bunk-shooters--I'll shut 'em up, you bet!”

XXXIII

The chairman of the meeting was a man named Brown, the president of the city's labor council. He was certainly respectable enough, prosy and solemn. But he was deeply moved on this question of clubbing strikers' heads; and you could see that the crowd was only waiting for a chance to shout its indignation. The chairman introduced the president of the Restaurant Workers, a solid citizen whom you would have taken for a successful grocer. He told about what had happened last night at Prince's; and then he told about the causes of the strike, and the things that go on behind the scenes in big restaurants. I had been to Prince's many times in my life, but I had never been behind the scenes, nor had I ever before been to a labor-meeting. I must admit that I was startled. The things they put into the hashes! And the distressing habit of unorganized waiters, when robbed of their tips or otherwise ill-treated, to take it out by spitting into the soup!

A couple of other labor men spoke, and then came James, the carpenter with a religious streak. He had a harsh, rasping voice, and a way of poking a long bony finger at the people he was impressing. He was desperately in earnest, and it caused him to swallow a great deal, and each time his Adam's apple would jump up. “I'm going to read you a newspaper clipping,” he began; and I thought it was Judge Wollcott's injunction again, but it was a story about one of our social leaders, Mrs. Alinson Pakenham, who has four famous Pekinese spaniels, worth six thousand dollars each, and weighing only eight ounces--or is it eighty ounces?--I'm not sure, for I never was trusted to lift one of the wretched little brutes. Anyhow, their names are Fe, Fi, Fo, and Fum, and they have each their own attendant, and the four have a private limousine in which to travel, and they dine off a service of gold plate. And here were hundreds of starving strikers, with their wives, also starving; and a couple of thousand other workers in factories and on ranches who were in process of having their wages “deflated.” The orator quoted a speech of Algernon de Wiggs before the Chamber of Commerce, declaring that the restoration of prosperity, especially in agriculture, depended upon “deflation,” and this alone; and suddenly James, the carpenter with a religious streak, launched forth:

“Go to now, you rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten! Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust on it shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as if it were fire. You have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold the hire of the laborers, who have reaped your fields; you have kept it back by fraud, and the cries of the reapers have entered into the ears of the Lord! You have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; you have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and killed the just--”

At this point in the tirade, my old friend the ex-centre-rush, who was standing in the wings with me, turned and whispered: “For God's sake, Billy, what kind of a Goddamn Bolshevik stunt is this, anyhow?”

I answered: “Hush, you dub! He's quoting from the Bible!”

XXXIV

President Brown of the Western City Labor Council arose to perform his next duty as chairman. Said he:

“The next speaker is a stranger to most of you, and he is also a stranger to me. I do not know what his doctrine is, and I assume no responsibility for it. But he is a man who has proven his friendship for labor, not by words, but by very unusual deeds. He is a man of remarkable personality, and we have asked him to make what suggestions he can as to our problems. I have pleasure in introducing Mr. Carpenter.”

Whereupon the prophet fresh from God arose from his chair, and come slowly to the front of the platform. There was no applause, but a silence made part of curiosity and part of amazement. His figure, standing thus apart, was majestic; and I noted a curious thing--a shining as of light about his head. It was so clear and so beautiful that I whispered to Old Joe: “Do you see that halo?”

“Go on, Billy!” said the ex-centre-rush. “You're getting nutty!”

“But it's plain as day, man!”

I felt some one touch my arm, and saw the little lady of the anti-vivisection tracts peering past me. “Do you see his aura?” she whispered, excitedly.

“Is that what it is?”

“Yes. It's purple. That denotes spirituality.”

I thought to myself, “Good Lord, am I getting to be that sort?”

Carpenter began to speak, quietly, in his grave, measured voice. “My brothers!” He waited for some time, as if that were enough; as if all the problems of life would be solved, if only men would understand those two words. “My brothers: I am, as your chairman says, a stranger to this world of yours. I do not understand your vast machines and your complex arts. But I know the souls of men and women; when I meet greed, and pride, and cruelty, the enslavements of the flesh, they cannot lie to me. And I have walked about the streets of your city, and I know myself in the presence of a people wandering in a wilderness. My children!--broken-hearted, desolate, and betrayed--poorest when you are rich, loneliest when you throng together, proudest when you are most ignorant--my people, I call you into the way of salvation!”

He stretched out his arms to them, and on his face and in his whole look was such anguish, that I think there was no man in that whole great throng so rooted in self-esteem that he was not shaken with sudden awe. The prophet raised his hands in invocation: “Let us pray!” He bowed his head, and many in the audience did the same. Others stared at him in bewilderment, having long ago forgotten how to pray. Here and there some one snickered.

“Oh, God, Our Father, we, Thy lost children, return to Thee, the Giver of Life. We bring our follies and our greeds, and cast them at Thy feet. We do not like the life we have lived. We wish to be those things which for long ages we have dreamed in vain. Wilt Thou show the way?”

His hands sank to his sides, and he raised his head. “Such is the prayer. What is the answer? It has been made known: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.--These are ancient words, by many forgotten. What do they mean? They mean that we are children of our Father, and not slaves of earthly masters. Would a man make a slave of his own child? And shall man be more righteous than his Creator?

“My brothers: You are hungry, and in need, and your children cry for bread; do I bid you feed them upon words? Not so; but the life of men is made by the will of men, and that which exists in steel and stone existed first in thought. If your thought is mean and base, your world is a place of torment; if your thought is true and generous, your world is free.

“There was once a man who owned much land, and upon it he built great factories, and many thousand men toiled for him, and he grew fat upon the product of their labor, and his heart was high. And it came to pass that his workers rebelled; and he hired others, and they shot down the workers, so that the rest returned to their labor. And the master said: The world is mine, and none can oppose me. But one day there arose among the workers a man who laughed. And his laughter spread, until all the thousands were laughing; they said, We are laughing at the thought that we should work and you take the fruit of our labor. He ordered his troops to shoot them, but his troops were also laughing, and he could not withstand the laughter of so many men; he laughed also, and said, let us end this foolish thing.