Part 28 (1/2)
Rosie worked in a paper-box factory, and next evening Peter took her out to dinner, and their eager flirtation went on. But Rosie showed a tendency to retreat, and when Peter pressed her, she told him the reason. She had no use for Reds; she was sick of the jargon of the Reds, she would never love a Red. Look at Miriam Yankovich--what a wreck she had made of her life! She had been a handsome girl, she might have got a rich husband, but now she had had to be cut to pieces! And look at Sadie Todd, slaving herself to death, and Ada Ruth with her poems that made you tired. Rosie jeered at them all, and riddled them with the arrows of her wit, and of course Peter in his heart agreed with everything she said; yet Peter had to pretend to disagree, and that made Rosie cross and spoiled their fun, and they almost quarreled.
Under these circ.u.mstances, naturally it was hard for Peter not to give some hint of his true feeling. After he had spent all of his money on Rosie and a lot of his time and hadn't got anywhere, he decided to make some concession to her--he told her he would give up trying to make a Red out of her. Whereupon Rosie made a face at him.
”Very kind indeed of you, Mr. Gudge! But how about my making a 'White' out of you?” And she went on to inform him that she wanted a fellow that could make money and take care of a girl. Peter answered that he was making money all right. Well, how was he making money, asked Rosie. Peter wouldn't tell, but he was making it, and he would prove it by taking her to the theater every night.
So the little duel went on, evening after evening. Peter got more and more crazy about this black-eyed beauty, and she got more and more coquettish, and more and more impatient with his radical leanings. Rosie's father had brought her as a baby from Kisheneff, but she was 100% American all the same, so she told him; those boys in khaki who were over there walloping the Huns were the boys for her, and she was waiting for one of them to come back. What was the matter with Peter that he wasn't doing his part? Was he a draft-dodger? Rosie had never had anything to do with slackers, and wasn't keen for the company of a man who couldn't give an account of himself. Only that day she had been reading in the paper about the atrocities committed by the Huns. How could any man with red blood in his veins sympathize with these pacifists and traitors? And if Peter didn't sympathize with them, why did he travel round with them and give them his moral support? When Peter made a feeble effort at repeating some of the pacifists' arguments, Rosie just said, ”Oh, fudge! You've got too much sense to talk that kind of stuff to me.”
And Peter knew, of course, that he _had_ too much sense, and it was hard to keep from letting Rosie see it. He had just lost one girl because of his Red entanglements. Was it up to him to lose another?
For a couple of weeks they sparred and fought. Rosie would let Peter kiss her, and Peter's head would be quite turned with desire. He decided that she was the most wonderful girl he had ever known; even Nell Doolin had nothing on her. But then once more she would pin Peter down on this business of his Redness, and would spurn him, and refuse to see him any more. At last Peter admitted to her that he had lost his sympathy with the Reds, she had converted him, and he despised them. So Rosie replied that she was delighted; they would go at once to see Miriam Yankovich, and Peter would tell her, and try to convert her also. Peter was then in a bad dilemma; he had to insist that Rosie should keep his conversion a secret. But Rosie became indignant, she set her lips and declared that a conversion that had to be kept secret was no conversion at all, it was simply a low sham, and Peter Gudge was a coward, and she was sick of him! So poor Peter went away, heartbroken and bewildered.
Section 72
There was only one way out of this plight for Peter, and that was for him to tell Rosie the truth. And why should he not do it? He was wild about her, and he knew that she was wild about him, and only one thing--his great secret--stood in the way of their perfect bliss. If he told her that great secret, he would be a hero of heroes in her eyes; he would be more wonderful even than the men who were driving back the Germans from the Marne and writing their names upon history's most imperishable pages! So why should he not tell?
He was in her room one evening, and his arms were about her, and she had almost but not quite yielded. ”Please, please, Peter,” she pleaded, ”stop being one of those horrid Reds!” And Peter could stand it no longer. He told her that he really wasn't a Red, but a secret agent employed by the very biggest business men of American City to keep track of the Reds and bring their activities to naught.
And when he told this, Rosie stared at him in consternation. She refused to believe him; when he insisted, she laughed at him, and finally became angry. It was a silly yarn, and did he imagine he could string her along like that?
So Peter, irritated, set out to convince her. He told her about Guffey and the American City Land & Investment Company; he told her about McGivney, and how he met McGivney regularly at Room 427 of the American House. He told her about his thirty dollars a week, and how it was soon to be increased to forty, and he would spend it all on her. And perhaps she might pretend to be converted by him, and become a Red also, and if she could satisfy McGivney that she was straight, he would pay her too, and it would be a lot better than working ten and a half hours a day in Isaac & Goldstein's paper box factory.
At last Peter succeeded in convincing the girl. She was subdued and frightened; she hadn't been prepared for anything like that, she said, and would have to have a little time to think it over. Peter then became worried in turn. He hoped she wouldn't mind, he said, and set to work to explain to her how important his work was, how it had the sanction of all the very best people in the city--not merely the great bankers and business men, but mayors and public officials and newspaper editors and college presidents, and great Park Avenue clergymen like the Rev. de Willoughby Stotterbridge of the Church of the Divine Compa.s.sion. And Rosie said that was all right, of course, but she was a little scared and would have to think it over. She brought the evening to an abrupt end, and Peter went home much disconcerted.
Perhaps an hour later there came a sharp tap on the door of his lodging-house room, and he went to the door, and found himself confronted by David Andrews, the lawyer, Donald Gordon, and John Durand, the labor giant, president of the Seamen's Union. They never even said, ”Howdy do,” but stalked into the room, and Durand shut the door behind him, and stood with his back to it, folded his arms and glared at Peter like the stone image of an Aztec chieftain. So before they said a word Peter knew what had happened. He knew that the jig was up for good this time; his career as savior of the nation was at an end. And again it was all on account of a woman--all because he hadn't taken Guffey's advice about winking!
But all other thoughts were driven from Peter's mind by one emotion, which was terror. His teeth began giving their imitation of an angry woodchuck, and his knees refused to hold him; he sat down on the edge of the bed, staring from one to another of these three stone Aztec faces. ”Well, Gudge,” said Andrews, at last, ”so you're the spy we've been looking for all this time!”
Peter remembered Nell's injunction, ”Stick it out, Peter! Stick it out!”
”Wh-wh-what do you mean, Mr. Andrews?”
”Forget it, Gudge,” said Andrews. ”We've just been talking with Rosie, and Rosie was our spy.”
”She's been lying to you!” Peter cried.
But Andrews said: ”Oh rubbis.h.!.+ We're not that easy! Miriam Yankovich was listening behind the door, and heard your talk.”
So then Peter knew that the case was hopeless, and there was nothing left but to ascertain his fate. Had they come just to scold him and appeal to his conscience? Or did they plan to carry him away and strangle him and torture him to death? The latter was the terror that had been haunting Peter from the beginning of his career, and when gradually be made out that the three Aztecs did not intend violence, and that all they hoped for was to get him to admit how much he had told to his employers--then there was laughter inside Peter, and he broke down and wept tears of scalding shame, and said that it had all been because McCormick had told that cruel lie about him and little Jennie Todd. He had resisted the temptation for a year, but then he had been out of a job, and the Goober Defense Committee had refused him any work; he had actually been starving, and so at last he had accepted McGivney's offer to let him know about the seditious activities of the extreme Reds. But he had never reported anybody who hadn't really broken the law, and he had never told McGivney anything but the truth.
Then Andrews proceeded to examine him. Peter denied that he had ever reported anything about the Goober case. He denied most strenuously that he had ever had anything to do with the McCormick ”frame-up.”
When they tried to pin him down on this case and that, he suddenly summoned his dignity and declared that Andrews had no right to cross-question him, he was a 100%, red-blooded American patriot, and had been saving his country and his G.o.d from German agents and Bolshevik traitors.
Donald Gordon almost went wild at that. ”What you've been doing was to slip stuff into our pamphlet about conscientious objectors, so as to get us all indicted!”
”That's a lie!” cried Peter. ”I never done nothing of the kind!”
”You know perfectly well you rubbed out those pencil marks that I drew through that sentence in the pamphlet.”