Part 32 (2/2)

”Don't be a fool, Kitty,” the Major remarked abruptly.

Kathleen looked at him, bewildered and aggrieved. Formerly he had been her champion when in this same room she had been attacked by bourgeois guests armed with conventional arguments. Then he had spoken more bitterly than she and had been placed by her among her revolutionists.

For him to turn upon her now was not only unkind but treacherous. What did she know about him after all, she thought? Only the common talk of this place where he was accounted one familiar with strange lands who could speak in any tongue that sounded over Madame's tables.

”You're an old man, Major,” she said a little stiffly, ”and I was counting you a good comrade. Maybe you'll show me the folly in saying that you get your rights by standing out for them.”

”You didn't get your rights,” was the blunt answer. ”When you led the children out you merely exchanged one foreman for another a little less brutal. You did not win the suns.h.i.+ne and the fresh air for every day.”

”But that has come now,” Applebaum said.

Leaning back in his chair, smoking a good cigar, the younger man had listened tolerantly to the talk. He spoke now, not to defend Kathleen who, he knew, was a captain in dialectics where he was a cabin boy, but to sound his note of confident optimism.

”The good time has come to more children than formerly,” the Major answered, ”but those who can really bask in the suns.h.i.+ne are few.”

”They are very many.” The young man spoke in a cheerful, a.s.sertive manner. ”And the others will later receive their due. We must wait for the slow processes of evolution.”

He looked about the company, his pleasant mouth smiling, his eyes s.h.i.+ning good-will; but when his glance encountered the Major his countenance dropped. That former soldier eyed him as he might in the old days have eyed a sentry caught asleep at his post.

”The slow processes of evolution,” the Major said, contempt in every drawling word. ”Did man wait for the slow processes of evolution that you are so glib about, when he invented the machinery that sucked up and still sucks up the life of the child? If you're not incredibly ignorant you know that man does not leave nature to go her slow way, but makes changes with the rapidity of lightning. Two things, though, never change,” lifting up two long fingers, ”poverty and greed.”

Applebaum put down his cigar, his face flushed with anger; but, looking across at Hertha, his brow cleared. She was smiling at him--a grateful smile--as though to thank him for drawing the fire from her quarter.

Kathleen, too, had a relieved expression upon her face. Girding up his loins, he decided to continue the discussion though he might later be forced to retreat. It was scarcely a fair fight when one of the contestants had the handicap of venerable age.

”Surely,” he said augmentatively, ”times have improved with some rapidity. There are fewer of the poor and oppressed than there were one hundred years ago.”

”How do you know?” the Major asked.

While Applebaum drew breath to summon his facts in proof of progress, the Major answered his own question as though his opponent were already disposed of.

”Small thievery is controlled,” he said; ”held in check better than formerly. St.u.r.dy beggars are not so often seen in the market-place. But these men rarely stole from the poor. Your powerful thief, however, never had so good a chance as to-day. There's no government he cannot buy, and our rapid means of transportation make it possible for him to gather a harvest from more fields than were gleaned by his cleverest and most rapacious predecessors.”

”But, granting for the sake of argument that he may not always get his money honestly, doesn't he give a fair share of all he gathers to the poor?” Applebaum asked.

”To the producers, you mean, the men who made his wealth? Not such a n.o.ble portion as you might think. I was in India once, during a famine.

Children lay dead by the wayside, their thin little arms stiff at their sides. At night when you went by a native hut you heard a baby sobbing as it pulled at an empty breast, or you listened to that saddest cry in the world, a mother wailing for her dead child.”

”Bad crops?” Billy questioned.

”Thievery!” the Major answered in a tone that made Madame jump at her distant table, while the three immediate listeners felt as though a bomb had exploded. Then in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice, as though narrating a commonplace: ”Down at the coast I saw s.h.i.+ps laden with grain for England, loaded by those people who you feel give a fair share of what they gather to the poor.”

”That's like the Englis.h.!.+” Kathleen cried, her Irish blood a.s.serting itself. ”They're the oppressors of the world!”

”Nonsense,” the Major retorted, ”you don't know what you're talking about. When the English conquered India the natives exchanged one master for another, that was all. If the native princes and rajahs stole less than the British, and I don't know that this was the case, it was stupidity not kindliness that kept them from making a complete job.”

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