Part 32 (2/2)

I a radical? No chance!

While they chattered on excitedly, I thought of my trip uptown on the ”El” that afternoon, a trip that I had made hundreds of times. Coming as I usually was from some big man or other, whose busy office and whose mind was a clean, brilliant ill.u.s.tration of what efficiency can be, I would sit in the car and idly watch the upper story windows we pa.s.sed, with yellow gas jets flaring in the cave-like rooms behind them. There I had glimpses of men and girls at long crowded tables making coats, pants, vests, paper flowers, chewing-gum, five-cent cigars. I saw countless tenement kitchens, dirty cooking, unmade beds. These glimpses followed one on the other in such a dizzying torrent they merged into one moving picture for me. And that picture was of crowds, crowds, crowds--of people living frowzily.

This was poverty. And it was like some prodigious swamp. What could you do about it? You could pull out individuals here and there, as Eleanore did. I considered that a mighty fine job--for a woman or a clergyman.

But to go at it and drain the swamp was a very different matter. You couldn't do it by easy preaching of patent cure-alls, nor by stirring up cla.s.s hatred through rabid attacks upon big men. No, this was a job for the big men themselves, men who would go at this human swamp as Eleanore's father had gone at the harbor--quietly and slowly, with an engineer's precision. He had been at it six solid years, but he still remarked humbly, ”We've only begun.”

Then from thinking of big men I thought of the one I had seen that day, and of my story about him. It was just in the stage I liked, where I could feel it all coming together. Incidents, bits of character and neat little turns of speech rose temptingly before my mind.

Presently, through the clamor around me, I heard ”the Indian” crying.

All this chatter had waked him up. I saw Eleanore go in to him and soon I heard the crying stop, and I knew she was telling him a story, a nice sleepy one to quiet him down.

What an infernal racket these people were making about the world. I went on thinking about my work.

CHAPTER III

”You two,” said Sue, when at last her friends had gone away, ”have built up a wall of contentment around you a person couldn't break through with an axe.”

”Have a little,” I suggested.

”Stay all night,” said Eleanore.

”No, thanks,” said Sue. ”I promised Dad that I'd be home.”

And then instead of going home she sprawled lazily on the sofa with her head upon one elbow, and settled in for some more talk. But her talk was different to-night. She usually talked about herself, but to-night she talked of us instead, of our contemptible content. And presently through her talk I felt that she had some surprise to spring. In a few moments Eleanore felt it too, I could tell that by the vigilant way she kept glancing up from her knitting.

”I think,” I was remarking, ”we're a pretty liberal-minded pair.”

”That's it,” said Sue. ”You're liberals!” What utter disdain she threw into the word. ”And what's more you're citizens. In all these movements,” she went on, ”you always find two cla.s.ses--citizens and criminals. You two are both born citizens.”

”What's the difference?” I inquired.

”Citizens,” said Sue impressively, ”are ready to _vote_ for what they believe in. Criminals are ready to get arrested and go to jail.”

Eleanore looked up at her.

”Who gave you that?” she asked. Sue looked a little taken back, but only for a moment.

”One of the criminals,” she said. Her voice was carefully casual now but her eyes were a little excited. ”He's a man who made up his mind that he wanted to get way down to the bottom, and see how it feels to be down there. So he took the very worst job he could find. For two years he was a stoker--on s.h.i.+ps of all kinds all over the world. And now that he knows just how it feels, he has an office down on the docks where he's getting the stokers and dockers together--getting them ready for a strike--on your beloved harbor.”

”Joe Kramer,” said Eleanore quietly. Sue gave a sudden, nervous start.

”Eleanore,” she severely rejoined, ”sometimes you're simply uncanny--the way you quietly jump at a thing!”

Eleanore had gone on with her knitting. I rose and lit a cigarette. I could feel Sue's eyes upon me. So _this_ was her infernal surprise! J.

K. banging into my life again!

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