Part 42 (1/2)

Immediately its whole atmosphere changed. Sue was plainly excited. She, too, had dressed herself with care--or rather with a careful neglect.

She wore the oldest suit she had and a simple blouse with a gay red tie.

With one sharp glance at Eleanore, she took in the strained situation and set about to ease it.

”What a nice old fireplace,” she exclaimed. ”Let's turn down the lights and draw 'round the fire. You need more chairs, Joe; go down and get some.”

And soon with the lights turned low and the coals stirred into a ruddy glow, we were sitting in quite a dramatic place, the scene was set for ”revolution.” The curtainless windows were no longer bleak, for through them from the now darkened room we looked out on the lights of the harbor. Sue thought the view thrilling, and equally thrilling she found the last issue of Joe's weekly paper, _War Sure_, which lay on the table. It was called ”Our Special Sabotage Number,” and in it various stokers and dockers, in response to an appeal from Joe, had crudely written their ideas upon just how the engines of a s.h.i.+p or the hoisting winches on a dock could be most effectively put out of order in time of strike. ”So that the scabs,” wrote one contributor, ”can see how they like it.”

”Why not have blue-penciled some of this?” I asked, with a faint premonition of trouble ahead.

”Because Joe believes in free speech, I suppose,” Sue answered for him quickly.

”I'm not much of a lawyer, Joe,” I said. ”But this stuff looks to me a good deal like incitement to violence.”

”Possibly,” J. K replied.

”You don't look horribly frightened,” laughed Sue. And she wanted to hear all the latest strike news. The time was rapidly drawing near. It was now close to the end of March and the strike was expected in April.

When Marsh arrived about nine o'clock, there was an awkward moment. For behind him came his wife and their small daughter, both of whom were stiffly dressed, and with one glance at Eleanore they felt immediately out of place. Mrs. Marsh was even more hostile and curt than when I had seen her last. She was angry at having been dragged into this and took little pains to hide it.

”My husband would have me come,” she said. ”And I couldn't leave my little girl, so I had to bring her along.” And she stopped abruptly with a look that asked us plainly, ”Now that I'm here, what do you want?”

”How old is your little girl?” Eleanore inquired.

”Six last month.”

”Are you going to put her in school in New York?”

And in spite of short suspicious replies she soon had Mrs. Marsh and her child talking of kindergartens and parks and other parts of the town they must see. Sue was now eagerly talking to Marsh, Joe was beside her helping her out, and both seemed wholly to have forgotten the disturbing woman behind them. But by the quick looks that Eleanore gave them now and then, I could see she was only holding back until she should have Mrs. Marsh in a mood where she could be brought into the talk and made to tell about her life.

”Don't you ever want to settle down?” she asked when there had come a pause. Marsh turned abruptly to Eleanore.

”Of course she does,” he answered. ”Did you ever know a woman who didn't, the minute that she got a kid? But my wife can't, if she sticks to me. She has had to make up her mind to live in any old place that comes along, from a dollar room in a cheap hotel to a shanty in a mining camp.” And his look at Eleanore seemed to add, ”That's the kind she is, you little doll.”

Eleanore quickly made herself look as much like a doll as possible. She placidly folded her dainty gloved hands.

”I should think,” she murmured in ladylike tones, ”Mrs. Marsh would find that rather difficult.”

”She does,” said Marsh aggressively. ”But my wife has nerve enough to stand up to the rough side of life--as the wives of most workingmen have to--in this rich and glorious land.”

”Won't you tell us about it?” asked Eleanore sweetly. ”I should be so interested to hear. It's so different, you see, from all I've been accustomed to.”

”Yes,” Marsh answered grimly, ”I've no doubt it is. Go ahead, Sally, and tell them about it.”

And Sally did. Gladly taking her husband's aggressive tone, she started out almost with a sneer. Her remarks at first were disjointed and brief, but I told her I was writing the story of her husband's life, that I wanted her side of it from the start. I promised to show her what I wrote and let her cut anything she had told me if she did not want it in print. And so in scattered incidents, with bits thrown in now and then by Marsh, the lives of these two began to come out. And we understood her bitterness.

”Mr. Marsh was born,” she said, ”in one of the poorest little towns in Southern Iowa. It was nothing but a hole of a place about six miles from the county seat where my father was a lawyer. But even in that little hole his family was the poorest there. I've been all over the States since then, and I've seen poor people, the Lord knows--but I want to say I've never seen people anywhere that were any worse off than my husband was when he was a boy. And yet he got out of it all by himself. He didn't need any strikes to help him.”

”But of course,” Sue put in smoothly, ”your husband was an exceptional man.” Mrs. Marsh threw her a bitter glance.