Part 34 (2/2)

There was another silence. Then she came over behind my chair and I felt the cool quiet of her hand as she slowly stroked my forehead.

”You look tired, dear,” she said.

Just before daylight the next morning I rose and dressed, swallowed some coffee and set out. I took a surface car downtown.

I had not been out at this hour in years. And as in my present mood, troubled and expectant, I watched the streets in the raw half-light, they looked as utterly changed to me as though they were streets of a different world. The department store windows looked unreal. Their soft rich lights had been put out, and in this cold hard light of dawn all their blandis.h.i.+ng ladies of wax appeared like so many buxom ghosts. Men were was.h.i.+ng the windows. Women and girls were hurrying by, and as some of them stopped for a moment to peer in at these phantoms of fas.h.i.+on, their own faces looked equally waxen to me. A long, luxurious motor pa.s.sed with a man and a woman in evening clothes half asleep in each other's arms. An old man with a huge pack of rags turned slowly and stared after them. The day's work was beginning. Peddlers trundled push-carts along, newspaper vendors opened their stands, milk wagons and trucks from the markets came by, some on the gallop. Our car had filled with people now. Men and boys clung to the steps behind and women and girls were packed inside, most of them hanging to the straps. How badly and foolishly dressed were these girls. There must be thousands of them out. Two kept t.i.ttering inanely. All the rest were silent.

By the time that I reached the docksheds the day was breaking over their roofs. It was freezing cold, and the chill was worse in the dock that I entered. I b.u.t.toned my ulster tighter. The big place was dark and empty.

The dockers, I learned from the watchman, had quit work at three o'clock, for a few tons of fruit was all the freight that remained to be loaded. The s.h.i.+p was to sail at nine o'clock.

The stokers had not yet gone aboard. I found about a hundred of them huddled along the steel wall of the shed. Some of them had old leather grips or canvas bags, but many had no luggage at all. A few wore seedy overcoats, but the greater part had none, they stood with their hands in their ragged pockets, s.h.i.+vering and stamping. Most of them were undersized, some tough, some rather sickly. A dull-eyed, wretched, sodden lot. I got the liquor on their breaths. A fat old Irish stoker came drifting half-drunk up the pier with a serene and waggish smile.

”h.e.l.lo,” said Joe at my elbow.

He looked more f.a.gged than the day before. I noticed that his lips were blue and that his teeth were chattering.

”Joe,” I said abruptly, ”you're not fit to be here. Let's get out of this, you belong in bed.” He glanced at me impatiently.

”I'm fit enough,” he muttered. ”We'll stay right here and see this show--unless you feel you want to quit----”

”Did I say I did? I'm ready enough----”

”All right, then wait a minute. They're about ready to go on board.”

But as we stood and watched them, I still felt the chattering teeth by my side, and a wave of pity and anger and of disgust swept over me. Joe wouldn't last long at this kind of thing!

”What do you think of my friends?” he asked.

”I think you're throwing your life away!”

”Do you? How do you make it out?”

”Because they're an utterly hopeless crowd! Look at 'em--poor devils--they look like a lot of Bowery b.u.ms!”

”Yes--they look like a lot of b.u.ms. And they feed all the fires at sea.”

”Are they all like these?” I demanded.

”No better dressed,” he answered. ”A million lousy brothers of Christ.”

”And you think you can build a new world _with them_?”

”No--I think they can do it themselves.”

”Do you know what I think they'll do themselves? If they ever do win in any strike and get a raise in wages--they'll simply blow it in on drink!”

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