“If we needed any further proof of foreign machination,” Henry Mallows said looking about triumphantly, “here it is.”
Pierce looked back at him, and wished that he need not agree with him. He had disliked Henry Mallows increasingly throughout the evening. Mallows had grown more handsome and distinguished looking with the years. Worldliness became him. His smooth cheeks and well-cut mouth were still young. What had seemed timid and foreign in his youth had become hard and self-assured as he had become a native and a patriot in his own country. His foreign wife had grown into a silent and delicate creature, finicking and invalid. There had been no children.
Pierce turned away from this man of whom John MacBain had spoken so bitterly, and looked at the other listening, stubborn faces. “We must remember that the sympathies of the press and of the people, however, are with the workingmen,” he said. “If we act too severely or even too swiftly we may find ourselves condemned, though unjustly. We must distinguish between our own men and the communists.”
Silence fell about him as the directors digested this common sense.
“I move we adjourn,” Jim McCagney said abruptly.
“To meet again on Monday morning,” Henry Mallows amended.
Pierce seconded the amended motion and it was carried and the endless meeting was over.
Pierce slept deep in exhaustion through the night and was awakened just before dawn by a fire alarm. He got out of bed and without lighting the lamp he went to the window and looked down. The streets were swarming again with people. Trouble had begun again. Toward the west the sky blazed almost to the zenith.
The railroad shops!
He dressed himself hurriedly and went out bareheaded, fearing that his silk hat would betray him. The streets were so crowded that he could barely force his way westward. It was an hour before he reached the railroad shops and found that they had not yet caught fire. A train of oil cars was burning. The firemen had isolated the cars and so far had saved the shops. While they worked the mob turned to a lumberyard and planing mill a few blocks away and set it afire. In a few minutes the air was filled with smoke and the flames roared black-edged toward the sky.
Pierce stood back among the crowd, watching and helpless. He looked at the faces around him. Some were silent and grave, some were wild, some were drunken. He recognized no one and with a strange feeling that the whole world was burning to destruction he went back to the hotel. Downstairs the clerk gave him his door key and noted his return.
“Terrible, ain’t it, sir?” he murmured.
“Yes,” Pierce said.
He felt chilled although the night had been warm. But there was no hot water with which to warm himself. He was grimed with smoke and he washed himself in cold water and then put on his nightshirt again and got back into bed.
He lay shivering and strangely lonely, but for no one. He did not want Lucinda or the children. He was glad that they were not with him. His mood was old and he recognized it as the mood of many nights in the war when battle loomed in the morning. Then as though to carry the illusion to reality he heard the sudden sharpness of guns firing in the streets. He listened, lying tense and ready to spring out of bed. Then the sounds were stilled and he fell asleep at last for an hour.
All through the next day he came and went, restless and yet exhausted. The streets were milling with people again, the crowds falling back only before the marines who had arrived early in the morning. It was a war which he did not understand. What was the cause and what the end?
By afternoon eight marines and eight policemen were dead. How many other dead there were no one knew, for the mob hid their own dead. At midnight the mayor reported again. The armed men had won and the city was safe once more. Trains would run within the hour. Pierce went back to the hotel and found a telegram from John MacBain.
“Change in company policy absolutely necessary. Postpone meeting until I come. John.”
Pierce rang for a messenger and sent the telegram to Henry Mallows. Crisis in Baltimore was over, but would arms suffice for final victory? He sat down in his room, grimed and exhausted and this night too tired to go to sleep. Suddenly he knew what he wanted. He wanted to go and see Tom. Maybe Tom could tell him what the war was about.
Chapter Seven
PIERCE KNEW FBOM TOM’S letters that what he would see was a decent house on a quiet street in Philadelphia. He hired a hansom cab at the disordered railroad station and arrived at Tom’s house in the middle of the afternoon. The heat of the day had been ended by a sharp swift thunderstorm, which had beaten against the windows of the train. Now the sycamore trees that lined both sides of the street were wet and the air was clean. The cab drew up in front of a whitewashed stone house. He compared the number on the door with that of the figures set at the top of Tom’s last letter, got out and paid the driver. For a moment he had a strange feeling of isolation as the cab drove away. Then he crossed the street and knocked on the oak door. White marble steps shone beneath his feet and the knocker was polished brass. Bettina had always been a good worker.
Bettina herself opened the door. At the sight of him she stood rigid for a moment. Then a deep flush spread over her face. She controlled her surprise.
“Come in,” she said quietly. “We are glad to see you.”
He stepped into the hall. “Tom home?” he asked.
She made no move to take his hat and stick and he put them on a settee. “I expect him in a very few minutes,” she replied.
She avoided the use of his name. He noticed it and did not care. Had Lucinda been with him, he would have been uncomfortable at such namelessness, but Lucinda could not possibly have been with him.
“Come into the parlor, please,” Bettina said. She opened the door into a cool dim room.
He hesitated. “Now, Bettina, you know I don’t care much for parlors.” He gave her his frank smile. “Why don’t you take me into Tom’s study? I’d relish a good cold drink, too.”
Bettina dimpled suddenly. The dimples which became Georgia’s soft oval cheeks were odd in her handsome and angular face. “How good you are!” she exclaimed under her breath.
“Nonsense,” he said, but he was set at ease by his own goodness. He followed her into a large room whose three windows, placed side by side, faced upon a garden. It looked comfortable to him. He sank down in Tom’s big leather chair and gave a great sigh. “Bettina, I’m so tired — so damned tired and confused — I’ve got to rest.”
“Then rest here,” she replied. She stood before him and they looked at each other.
He smiled suddenly. “I know why you look different — you haven’t got an apron on.”
“Tom won’t let me wear aprons any more,” she told him.
“Sally staying at the hotel?” he asked abruptly.
“Yes,” Bettina said. Then after a second, she added, “This is a colored street.”
“It is? Looks mighty nice!”
“Nice people live here.”
“Where’s Georgia?”
“She’s with Miss Sally. They and Tom went to the museum with the school children. But she has a room here.”
“Tom doesn’t have school in summer, surely,” he said.
“No — but he does have some work going on in the building for the neighborhood children. The summer’s long and they get into mischief.”
“Where are yours?”
“Leslie has a summer job in the store down the street. Georgy went with Georgia, The other two are out there—” She lifted her eyes to the garden and he saw a girl playing with a little boy. The girl’s hair was softly curled down her back and it was a copper color. The sun shone on it. The little boy was very dark.