A PROFESSIONAL REFORMER.
Sleeny walked moodily down the street, engaged in that self-torture which is the chief recreation of unhappy lovers. He steeped his heart in gall by imagining Maud in love with another. His passion stimulated his slow wits into unwonted action, until his mind began to form exasperating pictures of intimacies which drove him half mad. His face grew pale, and his fists were tightly clinched as he walked. He hardly saw the familiar street before him; he had a far clearer vision of Maud and Farnham by the garden gate: her beautiful face was turned up to the young man's with the winning sweetness of a flower, and Sam's irritated fancy supplied the kisses he had watched for in the shadow of the pear-trees. "I 'most wish't he'd 'a' done it," he growled to himself. "I had my hammer in my hand, and I could 'a' finished him then and had no more bother."
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and, turning, saw a face grinning a friendly recognition. It was a face whose whole expression was oleaginous. It was surmounted by a low and shining forehead covered by reeking black hair, worn rather long, the ends being turned under by the brush. The mustache was long and drooping, dyed black and profusely oiled, the dye and the grease forming an inharmonious compound. The parted lips, which were coarse and thin, displayed an imperfect set of teeth, much discolored with tobacco. The eyes were light green, with the space which should have been white suffused with yellow and red. It was one of those gifted countenances which could change in a moment from a dog-like fawning to a snaky venomousness.
The man wore a black hat of soft felt; his clothes were black and glistening with use and grease. He was of medium height, not especially stout, but still strong and well knit; he moved too briskly for a tramp, and his eyes were too sly and furtive to belong to an honest man.
"Well, Samivel!" he began, with a jolly facetiousness, "what's your noble game this evenin'? You look like you was down on your luck. Is the fair one unkind?"
Sam turned upon him with an angry gesture.
"Hold your jaw, or I'll break it for you! Ever since I was fool enough to mention that thing to you, you've been cacklin' about it. I've had enough of it."
"Go slow, Quaker!" the man rejoined. "If you can't take a joke, I'll stop jokin'—that settles it. Come along and get a glass of beer, and you'll feel better."
They soon came to a garden near the lake, and sat down by a little table at their beer. The consumers were few and silent. The garden was dimly lighted, for the spring came slowly up that way, and the air was not yet conducive to out-door idling. The greasy young man laid a dirty hand on the arm of Sleeny, and said:
"Honor bright, now, old fellow, I didn't mean to rough, you when I said that. I don't want to hurt your feelings or lose your confidence. I want you to tell me how you are gettin' along. You ain't got no better friend than me nowhere."
"Oh," said Sam, sulkily, "I got nothin' to say. She don't no more care for me than that there mug."
The expression that came over his friend's face at these discouraged words was not one of sympathetic sorrow. But he put some sympathy into his voice as he said:
"Jest think of that! Such a fine young fellow as you are, too. Where can her eyes be? And I seen you walking this evenin' by the lake just like two robins. And yet you don't get ahead any!"
"Not a step," said Sam.
"Anybody in your light, you think? Hullo there, Dutchy, swei glass. Any other fellow takin' your wind?" and his furtive eyes darted a keen interrogation. Sam did not answer at once, and his friend went on: "Why, she don't hardly know anybody but me and you, and, he-he! I wouldn't stand no chance at all against you—hum?"
"Of course you wouldn't," said Sam, with slow contempt, which brought the muddy blood into the sallow cheek in front of him. "She wouldn't look at you. I'm not afraid of no man, Andy Offitt,—I'm afraid of money."
He flattered his jealous heart by these words. It was too intolerable to think that any mere man should take his sweetheart away from him; and though he felt how hopeless was any comparison between himself and Farnham, he tried to soothe himself by the lie that they were equal in all but money.
His words startled his friend Offitt. He exclaimed, "Why, who does she know that's got money?"
But Sleeny felt a momentary revolt against delivering to even his closest confidant the name of the woman he loved coupled with the degrading suspicions by which he had been tormented all day. He gruffly answered: "That's none of your business; you can't help me in this thing, and I ain't agoin' to chin about it any more."
They sat for awhile in silence, drank their beer, and ordered more. Offitt at last spoke again:
"Well, I'll be hanged if you ain't the best grit of any fellow I know. If you don't want to talk, a team of Morgan horses couldn't make you. I like a man that can hold his tongue."
"Then I'm your huckleberry," said Sleeny, whose vanity was soothed by the compliment.
"That's so," said Offitt, with an admiring smile. "If I wanted a secret kept, I'd know where to come." Then changing his manner and tone to an expression of profound solemnity, and glancing about to guard against surprise, he said: "My dear boy, I've wanted to talk to you a long time,—to talk serious. You're not one of the common kind of cattle that think of nothin' but their fodder and stall—are you?"
Now, Sam was precisely of the breed described by his friend, but what man ever lived who knew he was altogether ordinary? He grinned uneasily and answered:
"I guess not."
"Exactly!" said Offitt. "There are some of us laboring men that don't propose to go on all our lives working our fingers off to please a lot of vampires; we propose to have a little fairer divide than heretofore; and if there is any advantage to be gained, we propose to have it on the side of the men who do the work. What do you think of that?"
"That's all solid," said Sleeny, who was indifferently interested in these abstractions. "But what you goin' to do about it?"
"Do!" cried Offitt. "We are goin' to make war on capital. We are goin' to scare the blood-suckers into terms. We are goin' to get our rights—peaceably, if we can't get them any other way. We are goin' to prove that a man is better than a moneybag." He rattled off these words as a listless child says its alphabet without thinking of a letter. But he was closely watching Sam to see if any of these stereotyped phrases attracted his attention. Sleeny smoked his cigar with the air of polite fatigue with which one listens to abstract statements of moral obligations.
"What are we, anyhow?" continued the greasy apostle of labor. "We are slaves; we are Roosian scurfs. We work as many hours as our owners like; we take what pay they choose to give us; we ask their permission to live and breathe."
"Oh, that's a lie!" Sleeny interrupted, with unbroken calmness. "Old Saul Matchin and me come to an agreement about time and pay, and both of us was suited. Ef he's got his heel onto me, I don't feel it"
Offitt darted a glance of scorn upon the ignoble soul who was content with his bondage; but the mention of Matchin reminded him that he had a final shot in reserve, and he let it off at once.
"Yes, Saul Matchin is a laborin' man himself; but look at his daughter. She would die before she would marry a workman. Why?" and his green eyes darted livid fire as they looked into the troubled ones of Sleeny.
"Well, why?" he asked, slowly.
"Because she loves money more than manhood. Because she puts up her beauty for a higher bidder than any———"
"Now, shet up, will you?" cried Sam, thoroughly aroused. "I won't set here and hear her abused by you or any other man. What business is it of yours, anyway?"
Offitt felt that his shot had gone home, and pursued his advantage.
"It's my business, Sam, because I'm your friend; because I hate to see a good fellow wronged; because I know that a man is better than a moneybag. Why, that girl would marry you in a minute if you was rich. But because you're not she will strike for one of them rose-water snobs on Algonquin Avenue." Sam writhed, and his wheedling tormentor continued, watching him like a ferret. "Perhaps she has struck for one of them already—perhaps—oh, I can't say what may have happened. I hate the world when I see such doin's. I hate the heartless shams that give labor and shame to the toilers and beauty and luxury to the drones. Who is the best man," he asked, with honest frankness, "you, or some high-steppin' snob whose daddy has left him the means to be a loafer all his days? And who would the prettiest girl in Buffland prefer, you or the loafer? And you intend to let Mr. Loafer have it all his own way?"
"No, I don't!" Sam roared, like a baited bull. "Ef any man crosses my path, he can find out which is the best man."
"There, that's more like you. But what can you do alone? That's where they get us foul. The erristocrats, the money power, all hang together. The laborin' men fight singly, and alwuz get whipped. Now, we are goin' to change that. We are goin' to organize. Look here, Sam, I am riskin' my head in tellin' you this—but I trust you, and I like you, and I'll tell you. We have organized. We've got a society in this town pledged to the cause of honest labor and against capital—for life or death. We want you. We want men of sand and men of sense, and you've got both. You must join."
Sam Sleeny was by this time pretty well filled with beer and wrath. He felt himself in a certain sense bound by the weighty secret which Offitt had imparted to him and flattered by his invitation. A few touches more of adroit flattery, and the agitator's victory was complete. Sleeny felt sore and tired to the very heart. He had behaved like a brute to the girl he loved; he had been put clearly in the wrong in his quarrel with her, and yet he was certain that all was not well with either of them. The tormenting syllogism ran continually through his head: "She is the prettiest woman in the world—rich fellows like pretty women,—therefore—death and curses on him!" Or sometimes the form of it would change to this: "He is rich and handsome—girls like men who are rich and handsome,—therefore———," the same rage and imprecations, and the same sense of powerless fury. He knew and cared nothing about Offitt's Labor Reform. He could earn a good living by his trade no matter who went to Congress, and he hated these "chinny bummers," as he called them, who talked about "State help and self-help" over their beer. But to-night he was tormented and badgered to such a point that he was ready for anything which his tempter might suggest. The words of Offitt, alternately wheedling and excoriating, had turned his foolish head. His hatred of Farnham was easily extended to the class to which he belonged, and even to the money which made him formidable.
He walked away from the garden with Offitt, and turned down a filthy alley to a squalid tenement house,—called by its proprietor Perry Place, and by the neighbors Rook's Ranch,—to the lodge-room of the Brotherhood of Bread-winners, which proved to be Offitt's lodging. They found there a half dozen men lounging about the entrance, who scowled and swore at Offitt for being late, and then followed him sulkily up two flights of ill-smelling stairs to his room. He turned away their wrath by soft answers, and hastily lighting a pair of coal-oil lamps, which gave forth odor more liberally than illumination, said briskly:
"Gentlemen, I have brought you a recruit this evenin' that you will all be glad to welcome to our brotherhood."
The brothers, who had taken seats where they could find them, on a dirty bed, a wooden trunk, and two or three chairs of doubtful integrity, grunted a questionable welcome to the new-comer. As he looked about him, he was not particularly proud of the company in which he found himself. The faces he recognized were those of the laziest and most incapable workmen in the town—men whose weekly wages were habitually docked for drunkenness, late hours, and botchy work. As the room gradually filled, it seemed like a roll-call of shirks. Among them came also a spiritual medium named Bott, as yet imperfectly developed, whose efforts at making a living by dark séances too frequently resulted in the laughter of skeptics and the confusion of his friends. His forehead and cheek were even then purple with an aniline dye, which some cold-blooded investigator had squirted in his face a few nights before while he was gliding through a twilight room impersonating the troubled shade of Pocahontas. This occurrence gave, for the moment, a peculiarly sanguinary and sinister character to his features, and filled his heart with a thirst for vengeance against an unbelieving world.
After the meeting had been called to order, and Sam had taken an oath of a hot and lurid nature, in which he renounced a good many things he had never possessed, and promised to do a lot of things of which he had no idea, Mr. Offitt asked "if any brother had anything to offer for the good of the order." This called Mr. Bott to his feet, and he made a speech, on which he had been brooding all day, against the pride of so-called science, the arrogance of unrighteous wealth, and the grovelling superstition of Christianity. The light of the kerosene lamp shone full on the decorated side of his visage, and touched it to a ferocious purpose. But the brotherhood soon wearied of his oratory, in which the blasphemy of thought and phrase was strangely contrasted with the ecclesiastical whine which he had caught from the exhorters who were the terror of his youth. The brothers began to guy him without mercy. They requested him to "cheese it"; they assisted him with uncalled-for and inappropriate applause, and one of the party got behind him and went through the motion of turning a hurdy-gurdy. But he persevered. He had joined the club to practise public speaking, and he got a good half hour out of the brothers before they coughed him down.
When he had brought his speech to a close, and sat down to wipe his streaming face, a brother rose and said, in a harsh, rasping voice, "I want to ask a question."
"That's in order, Brother Bowersox," said Offitt.
The man was a powerful fellow, six feet high. His head was not large, but it was as round as an apple, with heavy cheek-bones, little eyes, close-cut hair, and a mustache like the bristles of a blacking-brush. He had been a driver on a streetcar, but had recently been dismissed for insolence to passengers and brutality to his horses.
"What I want to ask is this: I want to know if we have joined this order to listen to chin-music the rest of our lives, or to do somethin'. There is some kind of men that kin talk tell day of jedgment, lettin' Gabrel toot and then beginnin' ag'in. I ain't that kind; I j'ined to do somethin';—what's to be done?"
He sat down with his hand on his hip, squarely facing the luckless Bott, whose face grew as purple as the illuminated side of it. But he opened not his mouth. Offitt answered the question:
"I would state," he said glibly, "the objects we propose to accomplish: the downfall of the money power, the rehabitation of labor, the——"
"Oh, yes!" Bowersox interrupted, "I know all about that,—but what are we goin' to do?"
Offitt paled a little, but did not flinch at the savage tone of the surly brute. He began again in his smoothest manner:
"I am of the opinion that the discussion of sound principles, such as we have listened to to-night, is among the objects of our order. After that, organization for mutual profit and protection against the minions of the money power,—for makin' our influence felt in elections,—for extendin' a helpin' hand to honest toil,—for rousin' our bretheren from their lethargy, which, like a leaden pall——"
"I want to know," growled Bowersox, with sullen obstinacy, "what's to be done."
"Put your views in the form of a motion, that they may be properly considered by the meetin'," said the imperturbable president.
"Well, I motion that we stop talkin' and commence doin'——"
"Do you suggest that a committee be appointed for that purpose?"
"Yes, anything." And the chairman appointed Bowersox, Bott, and Folgum such a committee.
All breathed more freely and felt as if something practical and energetic had been accomplished. The committee would, of course, never meet nor report, but the colloquy and the prompt action taken upon it made every one feel that the evening had been interesting and profitable. Before they broke up, Sleeny was asked for his initiation fee of two dollars, and all the brethren were dunned for their monthly dues.
"What becomes of this money?" the neophyte bluntly inquired of the hierophant.
"It pays room rent and lights," said Offitt, with unabashed front, as he returned his greasy wallet to his pocket. "The rest goes for propagatin' our ideas, and especially for influencin' the press."
Sleeny was a dull man, but he made up his mind on the way home that the question which had so long puzzled him—how Offitt made his living—was partly solved.