Brownell, hating him impotently, gave him a suave twinkle. “I must congratulate you, Jim. You always come to the point, logically. Yes, that is what we want, and that is what we are voting for.”
Stephen’s confusion and anguish increased. Somewhere, there was a mystery he could not see. What Purcell had said was unbelievable; he was not a man to agree to passing of dividends; he was not a man to flinch at strikes and violence. Why, then, was he demurring now?
“I think,” said Rufus gravely and with a look of sincere openness, “that Jim’s afraid that a strike would result in damage to our property.” He frowned, as if in distress. He spread out his hands. “Frankly, gentlemen, I am afraid I am not voting today. I cannot go against Steve; he is usually right. I am not prepared to say whether he is or not, at this time. Steve, you understand?” he added apologetically to his brother, and with a grieved smile.
“Yes, I understand,” said Stephen confusedly. “And I’m glad you are refraining from voting, Rufus.” He paused. Of course, Rufus was right: Purcell was anxious to avoid damage to Interstate property. He had no more magnanimous motive than this. Oh, God, Stephen thought, in his distraction: If only I had a lot of money! He stammered, “I’m sorry if I inadvertently offended any of the directors by not divulging to him that I borrowed on my stocks and bonds. I—I’m afraid I didn’t think it necessary. I’m paying the interest on my loan to Regan. I’m certain that I shall soon be able to redeem the stocks and bonds, as things improve. And do not be alarmed, gentlemen, that I shall pledge more of that collateral; I regard the Interstate as a trust—”
“A sacred trust,” said Purcell solemnly. He spat again.
Stephen ignored him. “The Interstate belongs to all of us,” said Stephen. He looked at them imploringly. “In many less tangible ways, it also belongs to our employees. We are not divisible. We can’t betray our men. I believe the Panic is passing. Let us not alienate the men who create our wealth and make it possible for us to have a company at all. They are hard-pressed enough as it is. To reduce their wages would be to reduce them to at least semistarvation. It would provoke a strike. You may be able to put down that strike, but the violence would leave its hatreds behind to boil up disastrously in the future. I am appealing to you as honorable and sensible men. …”
“Sorry,” said Brownell. “This is not of our own choosing. We have our stockholders to consider. You are pleading for what you believe to be ‘justice,’ Steve. But you are forgetting that the stockholders ought to be given ‘justice,’ too. What is the vote?” he asked his fellow directors.
“Reduce wages ten per cent,” said each man readily, with the exception of Stephen, Rufus, and Purcell.
The directors stood up and confronted the agonized Stephen. “That is all,” said Schwartz. Stephen dumbly interrogated each set face in turn, then he averted his head and walked slowly out of the room. Purcell watched him go, alternately thrusting out, then sucking in, his thick lips. Then he said to his associates, “There’ll be a strike, y’know. And we’ll put it down, someway. Yes.” He grinned somberly. “First act, first scene. I know what you’re all going to do—a little later. Can’t say I blame you; Red Rufe here’s the better man. Better for the company. We’ll get nowhere in the race a few years ahead, with Steve. Why didn’t you ax him right away? Save him a lot of misery in the long run.”
“Now, Jim,” said Brownell affectionately. “For the life of me I don’t understand you. We appreciate Steve’s leadership; we are grateful—”
Purcell casually uttered an obscenity. “A thing I can’t swallow’s talking out of the side of your mouth. But a knife pushed into your guts with a smile hurts just as much as a knife pushed in without one; more so, in fact. Why don’t you get it over with?” He turned to Rufus, whose florid face had become dark and fixed. He tapped Rufus on the chest. “Waitin’ for your next orders, eh? From Gunther?”
Rufus stepped back a little. But the other men laughed easily, shook their heads, and left the room in groups. Rufus began to follow them, but Purcell caught his arm. The two men regarded each other in silence, Rufus’s tawny eyes suddenly vivid with hatred, Purcell grinning sardonically. They stood that way for several moments, rigid and unspeaking. Then Rufus said, “Take your hand off me, Jim.”
“Have I got it on you?” asked Purcell, glancing down at his hand with surprise. “Now, think of that. Always thought I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.”
He leaned against the board table and began to scrape out his pipe, letting the refuse fall to the floor. “Got to sharpen this knife, one of these days,” he remarked. He peered at Rufus with his muddy slits of eyes. “Always best to keep a knife sharpened; never know when you might need to use it.”
“What do you want?” asked Rufus.
Purcell blew experimentally through his cleaned pipe. He nodded, as if satisfied. “Something you think you have, but never had. No mind. I’ll tell you about it someday. Maybe sooner than you think.”
“Your style of speaking is very literary,” said Rufus. His color had become congested, and he clenched his fists. He moved closer to Purcell, who was staring at him with interest. He started to speak; the veins swelled in his temples and his throat became swollen. “I congratulate you, though, on your subtlety.”
“Do you, now?” asked Purcell slowly. He snapped his knife closed, and put it in one of his bulging pockets. He dusted off his soiled hands—great and meaty hands—by rubbing them together. The bulging areas of flesh under his sparse eyebrows knotted.
Rufus did not reply to him, but his breath became loud and uneven in the renewed silence. He stood near Purcell, tall and wide, and handsome as a lion about to charge. Purcell still leaned negligently against the table, but his muscles tensed. What the hell, he thought. Does he know? And how? Has he got a spy out, or something?
“I’m not ready to deal with you yet, Purcell,” Rufus said, and he spoke almost inaudibly, as if he were strangling. “That can wait a little. First business first. And let us not be subtle. You were about to say—?”
Purcell shook his head as if in wonder. “Who is bein’ subtle now?” he asked, like a man speaking aloud to himself. He straightened, stood solidly on his feet. Rufus was tall, but not so tall as he. “And better watch out,” Purcell continued. “Men of your colorin’ are likely to get apoplexy. Shouldn’t wonder if you had a stroke one of these days. And that would be bad—for the company. Expect big things of you in the future, Rufe. And I aim to go along with you. Nothin’ can stop fellers like you, and I’d be the last to try. That’s what I wanted to say, until you went—literary on me.” He snapped his fingers in Rufus’s face, but Rufus, becoming more crimson and congested even than before, did not recoil. For an instant or two he seemed about to lunge at the other man, and Purcell watched him.
Then, slowly, moment by moment, Rufus forced himself to relax. His color receded; his muscles slackened. Purcell observed this with admiration. Got to give the devil his due, he thought. He’s smoothing himself out by will power, and that’s the kind of feller we need at the head of this business.
“You wanted to warn me about my health?” said Rufus, and now he was actually smiling a little.
Purcell nodded. “That’s right, Rufe. And Steve’s health, too. What you aim to do about him is all right. Better for all of us. But hurry about it. He can’t stand the strain too long. Let him down easy. Or look for a few surprises you won’t like. But then, I don’t have to warn you. You’re an expert at pushin’ in knives so that the other fellow hardly feels it. Just remember to do that to Steve. No gloatin’s, y’know.”
“You mystify me,” said Rufus.
Purcell sighed. “Well, now, Rufe, when you talk that way you kind of disappoint me. All I want of you is for you to keep on makin’ Steve believe you’re his friend.”
“And if I don’t?” asked Rufus.
Purcell lifted his mighty shoulders, then dropped them. “I hate to say this, Rufe, but you’d regret it. Yes, I think mayb
e you’d regret it to the last day you live.” He scratched one huge ear. “No flies on you, Rufe. You know exactly what I’m talkin’ about. Keep on rememberin’.”
Rufus rubbed his upper lip with the knuckles of his right hand. He regarded Purcell with narrowed consternation.
“Regan’s my friend,” Purcell continued. “I could step in any time, and he’d never sell the stocks and bonds Steve put up to him, except to me. I’d hate to have to step in; you can bank on that. I’d rather let you go your fine way, for my own convenience and profit.”
“I see,” said Rufus. Angry consternation came to him. He was to be robbed of his dramatic triumph, a triumph for which he had lived. Gunther might be puissant, but Regan was king. Gunther would never forgive him if Purcell got word to Regan. He thought of the nights, the endless nights, when he had rehearsed what he would say to his brother on the final day.
“I thought you’d see,” said Purcell approvingly. “Bright man.” He nodded at Rufus amiably, and humming hoarsely under his breath lumbered weightily out of the room.
When he was gone, Rufus sat down suddenly, for he was trembling. He pulled out his kerchief and mopped his face. You won’t get what you want, Purcell, he thought. And then he exclaimed aloud, with utter hatred and rage: “Lydia—Bitch!” He repeated the words over and over, and at each exclamation it seemed to him that something stabbed him viciously in the chest, and something pierced his head with violent pain. He put his hand to it. Apoplexy. He must remember.
On September 10th, the employees of the Interstate Railroad Company were notified of a ten per cent cut in wages. They struck at once. That night, by torchlight, they hanged Stephen deWitt in effigy. They carried placards bearing lewd caricatures of Stephen, disfigured with a long predatory nose which the strikers believed represented Jewishness. The people followed them through East Town, cheering, carrying thick clubs.
On September 14th the governor called out the state militia, at the request of the directors of the company. On September 18th the President sent Federal troops. The trains moved, manned by gaunt men who shamefacedly averted their faces from the furious mobs in the switchyards.
It was the beginning of terror. And intermingled with it was the dangerous rise of racial and religious hatred. The people, detesting Stephen, turned upon each other. Riots broke out in the dingy streets. Strikebreakers were beaten, their wives and children threatened. The trains moved, guarded by Federal troops armed with guns and bayonets. The turmoil and the frenzy grew in the city, and at least fourteen men were killed and scores more wounded. Miserable shacks were burned. The little Catholic church, standing humbly and shabbily on the edge of the city, was fired. The priest hid in the home of a friend.
On September 30th, the strike was broken, violently and bloodily. The men went back to work, and all was calm. But Portersville did not forget.
21
The late autumn evenings had become cold and sweet as a pear. But Lydia deWitt, as she forced her way through tall grass to the glade this September night, felt that all nature was overlaid with silent ominousness, abandonment, and desolation. The wedge-shaped moon, coppery and sinister, looked like the gleaming blade of an ax hurled into the heart of the black sky. A group of willows streamed with moonlight, appearing like great shrouded ghosts along the bank of the small stream. She saw Jim Purcell awaiting her on the mound. She saw the red coal of his pipe, and stopped near him, straight and tall and forbidding.
“I see you are here, finally,” she said, with a hard intonation. “Four weeks—”
“Sit down, Lydia,” he said, in his gravelly voice.
But she refused to sit down. “It’s true I have no claim on you, Jim,” she went on, without moving. “But things have been so frightful; I thought you’d be here at least once to tell me what is happening, and to give me some comfort.” Now she faltered, as if fighting tears. “No one came to—him. Not a single one of his ‘friends.’ Lying there, after his collapse, watching his door. I saw him. You might have come. …”
“Sit down,” Purcell repeated placidly. “Seems like we’ve got to have a talk.”
Lydia, wrapping her cloak about her, sat down on the mound, but at some distance from Purcell. “Rufus—went to Philadelphia at least twice, these past four weeks, and to New York once,” she said bitterly. “You must have known about it; you always do. But you never came. …”
He reached out and took her cold and inflexible hand. “Lydia, he didn’t. Yes, we got to have a talk. Red Rufe didn’t go out of town until last night. He was hiding out in the homes of some of his friends, overnight, every time he said he was leaving.”
The hand weakened in his, and Lydia turned her pale face in quick surprise. “Why should he? He knows I don’t care whether he comes or goes, or where he stays. If he wants to sleep overnight with—He has done that before, and it was a matter of complete indifference to me. Why should he try to deceive me now, or give me false explanations?”
“Because, old girl, he’s got on to us. Maybe he’s known about us for a long time. Me watchin’ him, and him watchin’ me! Seems I’m gettin’ slack as I grow older; I ought to have been suspicious about him, him bein’ like a red fox.”
“Oh, my God!” cried Lydia sharply.
“Now, now, don’t get excited. I’m having him watched real close now. He’s in New York all right, tonight. Wait a minute; I’ll tell you all about it.” Lydia listened and her face grew whiter, and she began to shiver.
She pressed her fingers over her face and bowed her head. “The children,” she said, weakly. “Cornelia. …”
“Now, you hush up, my girl. Think I’m a fool? When the time comes we’ll rock Red Rufe far back on his heels, and you’ll get what you want. Leave it to me; I’ve been around this world quite a while. Well, anyway, while he was waitin’ to pounce on us, up here, and havin’ his boys watchin’ us while he was supposed to be out of town, I couldn’t come.”
“Loathsome,” Lydia murmured, and shuddered.
“Most things in the world are, when you come up against them. Only way to have the world nice and sweet is not to be important, and live in back streets in a little house, and have no money. And maybe, too, Rufe thought he’d get a lever on me, to use for his brand of bluff and good-natured blackmail. Well, I fooled him. But let me tell you this: we aren’t goin’ to wait much longer. Maybe not more than a week.”
He pulled Lydia’s head down on his big shoulder with rough tenderness. “Things are movin’ fast. And we’re movin’ with ’em. Now, tell me all about Steve.”
“You knew he was ill,” said Lydia. “You know everything.” She tried to make her voice cold and forbidding again, though the strength of the arm about her shoulders comforted her wretched heart. “You never came.”
“Well, I couldn’t. Steve hates me now. Thinks I did him dirt” Purcell then told her of the coal acreage. Once or twice she stiffened, but the arm pulled her closer. “They’d have gotten that away from him, too, the way they’re goin’ to get everything else, except the trust funds for his kid. Thought I’d save somethin’ from the wreck for him. When the time comes, I’ll go right up to him and say: ‘Look here, Steve, I’m goin’ to develop that acreage damn fast. And you’re a partner. You’d never be able to develop it yourself. I’m puttin’ my money into it, and you’ll get fifty per cent. And maybe you’ll be able to buy back a good piece yourself.’”
Lydia said, “Jim! Why don’t you tell him now? It would comfort him so.”
Purcell shook his head. “That wouldn’t be sensible, Lydia. He never took care of himself. Know what he’d try to do? He’d use any money I advanced him—and he’d ask for an advance—for the railroad men. To help restore part of their reduced wages. I’ve told you what he’s been doin’ for years, for them.” Purcell made a repulsive sound of disgust. “And look how they treated him. But when Rufe does what he’s goin’ to do, real quick—maybe tomorrow or the next day—why, there I am, helpin’ to pick up the pieces. Now, wait a mi
nute, Lydia. I can’t stop Rufe. I haven’t that much money; couldn’t buy back Steve’s stocks and bonds. And wouldn’t, anyway. Steve just isn’t the man for this business.”
“The last blow will kill poor Stephen,” said Lydia brokenly.
“Maybe,” said Purcell, and now he was somber. “The world always kills men like Steve. Good old Christian world. Never knew a man who did things for people who didn’t get hanged for it, or burned for it, or hated for it. That’s human nature. Two thousand years of Christianity, and look at the world. No, sir. It don’t pay to help anyone, if you want to live in peace yourself.”
Lydia smiled sadly. “But you’ve helped Stephen, though he doesn’t know about it.”
“Well, yes, always did, though blamed if I know why. When we were kids, there were young fellers always plottin’ to make him look ridiculous, or pull tricks on him. Once, when Steve was about thirteen, I heard the nice lads makin’ up a plan to waylay him on the way home from school, and set some dogs on him, and beat him. Why? A lady like you wouldn’t know. But I knew. You see, I always understood about this damn world. It doesn’t bother me any, no more than the wind does, or the snow, or the rain. It’s just a fact, and you’ve got to deal with facts.” He grunted.