Scott Leroy
The Walking Delegate

He stood up, and walked to the window and stood as if looking through it – though the shade was drawn. She saw the fingers at his back writhing and knotting themselves. She waited, unwinking, hardly breathing, all her life in the tumultuous beating of her heart.

He turned about. His face was almost wild. "I stayed away – because I love you – " His last word was a gasp, and he did not have the strength to say the rest.

It had come! Her great strain over, she fairly collapsed in a swooning happiness. Her head drooped, and she swayed forward till her elbows were on her knees. For a moment she existed only in her great, vague, reeling joy. Then she heard a spasmodic gasp, and heard his hoarse words add:

"And because – I am married."

Her head uprose slowly, and she looked at him, looked at him, with a deadly stupefaction in her eyes. A sickening minute passed. "Married?" she whispered.

"Yes – married."

A terrified pallor overspread her face, but the face held fixedly to his own. He stood rigid, looking at her. Her strange silence began to alarm him.

"What is it?" he cried.

Her face did not change, and seconds passed. Suddenly a gasp, then a little groan, broke from her.

"Married!" she cried.

For a moment he was astounded; then he began dimly to understand. "What, you don't mean – " he commenced, with dry lips. He moved, with uncertain steps, up before her. "You don't – care for me?"

The head bowed a trifle.

"Oh, my God!" He half staggered backward into a chair, and his face fell into his hands. He saw, in an agonizing vision, what might have been his, and what never could be his; and he saw the wide desert of his future.

"You!" He heard her voice, and he looked up.

She was on her feet, and was standing directly in front of him. Her hands were clenched upon folds of her skirt. Her breath was coming rapidly. Her eyes were flashing.

"You! How could you come to see me as you have, and you married?" She spoke tremulously, fiercely, and at the last her voice broke into a sob. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she did not heed them.

Tom's face dropped back into his hands; he could not stand the awful accusation of that gaze. She was another victim of his tragedy, an innocent victim – and his victim. He saw in a flash the whole ghastly part he, in ignorance, had played. A groan burst from his lips, and he writhed in his self-abasement.

"How could you do it?" he heard her fiercely demand again. "Oh, you! you!" He heard her sweep across the little room, and then sweep back; and he knew she was standing before him, gazing down at him in anguish, anger, contempt.

He groaned again. "What can I say to you – what?"

There was silence. He could feel her eyes, unchanging, still on him. Presently he began to speak into his hands, in a low, broken voice. "I can make no excuse. I don't know that I can explain. But I never intended to do this. Never! Never!

"You know how we met, how we came to be together the first two or three times. Afterwards … I said awhile ago that you were my best friend. I have had few real friends – none but you who sympathized with me, who seemed to understand me. Well, afterwards I came because – I never stopped to think why I came. I guess because you understood, and I liked you. And so I came. As a man might come to see a good man friend. And I never once thought I was doing wrong. And I never thought of my wife – that is, you understand, that she made it wrong for me to see you. I never thought – If you believe in me at all, you must believe this. You must! And then – one day – I saw you with another man, and I knew I loved you. I awoke. I saw what I ought to do. I tried to do it – but it was very hard – and I came to see you again – the last time. I said once more I would not see you again. It was still hard, very hard – but I did not. And then – your letter – came – "

His words dwindled away. Then, after a moment, he said very humbly: "Perhaps I don't just understand how to be a gentleman."

Again silence. Presently he felt a light touch on his shoulder. He raised his eyes. She was still gazing at him, her face very white, but no anger in it.

"I understand," she said.

He rose – weak. "I can't ask that you forgive me."

"No. Not now."

"Of course. I have meant to you only grief – pain. And can mean only that to you, always."

She did not deny his words.

"Of course," he agreed. Then he stood, without words, unmoving.

"You had better go," she said at length.

He took his hat mechanically. "The future?"

"You were right."

"You mean – we should not meet again?"

"This is the last time."

Again he stood silent, unmoving.

"You had better go," she said. "Good-night."

"Good-night."

He moved sideways to the door, his eyes never leaving her. He paused. She stood just as she had since she had touched his shoulder. He moved back to her, as in a trance.

"No." She held up a hand, as if to ward him off.

He took the hand – and the other hand. They were all a-tremble. And he bent down, slowly, toward her face that he saw as in a mist. The face did not recede. Their cold lips met. At the touch she collapsed, and the next instant she was sobbing convulsively in his arms.

And all that night she lay dressed on her couch… And all that night he walked the streets.

Chapter XXII
THE PROGRESS OF THE STRIKE

When morning began to creep into the streets, and while it was yet only a dingy mist, Tom slipped quietly into his flat and stretched his wearied length upon the couch, his anguish subdued to an aching numbness by his lone walk. He lay for a time, his eyes turned dully into the back yard, watching the dirty light grow cleaner; and presently he sank into a light sleep. After a little his eyes opened and he saw Maggie looking intently at him from their bedroom door.

For a moment the two of them maintained a silent gaze. Then she asked: "You were out all night?"

"Yes," he answered passively.

"Why?"

He hesitated. "I was walking about – thinking."

"I should think you would be thinking! After what happened to you Wednesday, and after losing your job yesterday!"

He did not correct her misinterpretation of his answer, and as he said nothing more she turned back into the bedroom, and soon emerged dressed. As she moved about preparing breakfast his eyes rested on her now and then, and in a not unnatural selfishness he dully wondered why they two were married. Her feeling for him, he knew, was of no higher sort than that attachment which dependence upon a man and the sense of being linked to him for life may engender in an unspiritual woman. There was no love between them; they had no ideas in common; she was not this, and not this, and not this. And all the things that she was not, the other was. And it was always to be Maggie that he was to see thus intimately.

He had bowed to the situation as the ancients bowed to fate – accepted it as a fact as unchangeable as death that has fallen. And yet, as he lay watching her, thinking it was to be always so, – always! – his soul was filled with agonizing rebellion; and so it was to be through many a day to come. But later, as his first pain began to settle into an aching sense of irreparable loss, his less selfish vision showed him that Maggie was no more to blame for their terrible mistake than he, and not so much; and that she, in a less painful degree, was also a pitiable victim of their error. He became consciously considerate of her. For her part, she at first marveled at this gentler manner, then slowly yielded to it.

But this is running ahead. The first days were all the harder to Tom because he had no work to share his time with his pain. He did not seek another position; as he had told Ruth, he knew it would be useless to ask for work so long as the charge of being a dynamiter rested upon him. He walked about the streets, trying to forget his pain in mixing among his old friends, with no better financial hope than to wait till the court had cleared his name. Several times he met Pig Iron Pete, who, knowing only the public cause for Tom's dejection, prescribed a few drinks as the best cure for such sorrow, and showed his faith in his remedy by offering to take the same medicine. And one evening he brought his cheerless presence to the Barrys'. "Poor fellow!" sighed Mrs. Barry after he had gone. "He takes his thumps hard."

One day as he walked about the streets he met Petersen, and with the Swede was a stocky, red-faced, red-necked man wearing a red necktie whose brilliance came to a focus in a great diamond pin. Petersen had continued to call frequently after nightly attendance had become unnecessary. Two weeks before Tom had gleaned from him by hard questioning that the monthly rent of twelve dollars was overdue, the landlord was raging, there was nothing with which to pay, and also nothing in the house to eat. The next day Tom had drawn fifteen dollars from his little bank account, and held it by him to give to Petersen when he next called. But he had not come again. Now on seeing him Tom's first feeling was of guilt that he had not carried the needed money to Petersen's home.

The stocky man, when he saw the two were friends, withdrew himself to the curb and began to clean his nails with his pocket knife. "How are you, Petersen?" Tom asked.

"I'm purty good," Petersen returned, glancing restlessly at the stocky man.

"You don't need a little money, do you?" Tom queried anxiously.

"No. I'm vorkin'." He again looked restlessly at his manicuring friend.

"You don't say! That's good. What at?"

Petersen's restlessness became painful. "At de docks."

Tom saw plainly that Petersen was anxious to get away, so he said good-by and walked on, puzzled by the Swede's strange manner, by his rather unusual companion, and puzzled also as to how his work as longshoreman permitted him to roam the streets in the middle of the afternoon.

When Tom met friends in his restless wanderings and stopped to talk to them, the subject was usually the injustice he had suffered or the situation regarding the strike. Up to the day of the Avon explosion the union as a whole had been satisfied with the strike's progress. That event, of course, had weakened the strikers' cause before the public. But the promptness with which the union was credited to have renounced the instigator of the outrage partially restored the ironworkers to their position. They were completely restored three days after the explosion, when Mr. Baxter, smarting under his recent loss and not being able to retaliate directly upon Foley, permitted himself to be induced by a newspaper to express his sentiments upon labor unions. The interview was an elaboration of the views which are already partly known to the reader. By reason of the rights which naturally belong to property, he said, by reason of capital's greatly superior intelligence, it was the privilege of capital, nay even its duty, to arrange the uttermost detail of its affairs without any consultation whatever with labor, whose views were always selfish and necessarily always unintelligent. The high assumption of superiority in Mr. Baxter's interview, its paternalistic, even monarchical, character, did not appeal to his more democratic and less capitalized readers, and they drew nearer in sympathy to the men he was fighting.

As the last days of May passed one by one, Tom's predictions to Ruth began to have their fulfillment. By the first of June a great part of the building in the city was practically at a standstill; the other building trades had caught up with the ironworkers on many of the jobs, and so had to lay down their tools. The contractors in these trades were all checked more or less in their work. Their daily loss quickly overcame their natural sympathy with the iron contractors and Mr. Baxter was beset by them. "We haven't any trouble with our men," ran the gist of their complaint. "Why should we be losing money just because you and your men can't agree? For God's sake, settle it up so we can get to work!"

Owners of buildings in process of construction, with big sums tied up in them, began to grow frantic. Their agreements with the contractors placed upon the latter a heavy fine for every day the completion of the buildings was delayed beyond the specified time; but the contracts contained a "strike clause" which exempted the bosses from penalties for delays caused by strikes. And so the loss incurred by the present delay fell solely upon the owners. "Settle this up somehow," they were constantly demanding of Mr. Baxter. "You've delayed my building a month. There's a month's interest on my money, and my natural profits for a month, both gone to blazes!"

To all of these Mr. Baxter's answer was in substance the same: "The day the union gives up, on that day the strike is settled." And this he said with unchangeable resolution showing through his voice. The bosses and owners went away cursing and looking hopelessly upon an immediate future whose only view to them was a desert of loss.

But Mr. Baxter did not have in his heart the same steely decision he had in his manner. Events had not taken just the course he had foreseen. The division in the union, on which he had counted for its fall, had been mended by the subsidence of Tom. The union's resources were almost exhausted, true, but it was receiving some financial assistance from its national organization, and its fighting spirit was as strong as ever. If the aid of the national organization continued to be given, and if the spirit of the men remained high, Mr. Baxter realized that the union could hold out indefinitely. The attempt to replace the strikers by non-union men had been a failure; Mr. Driscoll and himself were the only contractors who still maintained the expensive farce of keeping a few scabs at work. And despite his surface indifference to it, the pressure of the owners of buildings and of the bosses in other trades had a little effect upon Mr. Baxter, and more than a little upon some other members of the Executive Committee. A few of the employers were already eager to yield to the strikers' demand, preferring decreased profits to a long period of none at all; but when Mr. Isaacs attempted to voice the sentiments of these gentlemen in a meeting of the Executive Committee, a look from Mr. Baxter's steady gray eyes was enough to close him up disconcerted.

So Buck Foley was not without a foundation in fact for his hopeful words when he said in his report to the union at the first meeting in June: "The only way we can lose this strike, boys, is to give it away."

Which remark might be said, by one speaking from the vantage of later events, to have been a bit of unconscious prophecy.

Chapter XXIII
THE TRIUMPH OF BUSINESS SENSE

Mr. Baxter had to withstand pressure from still another source – from himself. His business sense, as had owners and contractors, demanded of him an immediate settlement of the strike. In its frequent debates with him it was its habit to argue by repeating the list of evils begotten by the strike, placing its emphasis on his losses that promised to continue for months to come. Unlike most reformers and other critics of the status quo, Mr. Baxter's business sense was not merely destructive; it offered a practicable plan for betterment – a plan that guaranteed victory over the strikers and required only the sacrifice of his pride.

But Mr. Baxter's pride refused to be sacrificed. His business sense had suggested the plan shortly after the union had voted to strike. He would have adopted the plan immediately, as the obvious procedure in the situation, had it not been for the break with Foley. But the break had come, and his pride could not forget that last visit of Foley to his private office; it had demanded that the walking delegate be humiliated – utterly crushed. His business sense, from the other side, had argued the folly of allowing mere emotion to stand in the way of victory and the profitable resumption of work. Outraged pride had been the stronger during April and May, but as the possibility of its satisfaction had grown less and less as May had dragged by, the pressure of his business sense had become greater and greater. And the Avon explosion had given business sense a further chance to greaten. "Try the plan at once," it had exhorted; "if you don't, Foley may do it again." However, for all the pressure of owners and contractors and of his business sense – owners and contractors urging any sort of settlement, so that it be a settlement, business sense urging its own private plan – in the early days of June Mr. Baxter continued to present the same appearance of wall-like firmness. But his firmness was that of a dam that can sustain a pressure of one hundred, and is bearing a pressure of ninety-nine with its habitual show of eternal fixedness.

Mr. Baxter had to withstand pressure from yet another source – from his wife. When he had told her in early May that the strike was not going to be settled as quickly as he had first thought, and had asked her to practice such temporary economy as she could, she had acquiesced graciously but with an aching heart; and instead of going to Europe as she had intended, she and her daughter had run up to Tuxedo, where with two maids, carriage, and coachman, they were managing to make both ends meet on three hundred dollars a week. But when the first days of June had come, and no prospect of settlement, she began to think with swelling anxiety of the Newport season.

"Why can't this thing be settled right off?" she said to her husband who had run up Friday evening – the Friday after the Wednesday Foley had assured the union of certain victory – to stay with her over Saturday and Sunday. And she acquainted him with her besetting fears.

Only another unit of pressure was needed to overturn the wall of Mr. Baxter's resistance, and the stress of his wife's words was many times the force required. During his two days at Tuxedo Mr. Baxter sat much of the time apart in quiet thought. Mrs. Baxter was too considerate a wife to repeat to him her anxieties, or to harass him with pleas and questions, but just before he left early Monday morning for the city she could not refrain from saying: "You will try, won't you, dear, to end the strike soon?"

"Yes, dear."

She beamed upon him. "How soon?"

"It will last about three more weeks."

She fell on his neck with a happy cry, and kissed him. She asked him to explain, but his business sense had told him it would be better if she did not know the plan, and his love had given him the same counsel; so he merely answered, "I am certain the union will give up," and plead his haste to catch his train as excuse for saying nothing more.

That afternoon a regular meeting of the Executive Committee took place in Mr. Baxter's office. It was not a very cheerful quintet that sat about the cherry table: Isaacs, in his heart ready to abandon the fight; Bobbs, Murphy, and Driscoll, determined to win, but with no more speedy plan than to continue the siege; and Baxter, cold and polite as usual, and about as inspiring as a frozen thought.

There was nothing in the early part of the meeting to put enthusiasm into the committee. First of all, Mr. Baxter read a letter from the Civic Federation, asking the committee if it would be willing to meet again, in the interest of a settlement, with the strikers' committee.

"Why not?" said Isaacs, trying to subdue his eagerness to a business-like calm. "We've got nothing to lose by it."

"And nothing to gain!" snorted Driscoll.

"Tell the Civic Federation, not on its life," advised Murphy. "And tell 'em to cut their letters out. We're gettin' tired o' their eternal buttin' in."

Baxter gave Murphy a chilly glance. "We'll consider that settled then," he said quietly. In his own mind, however, he had assigned the offer of the Civic Federation to a definite use.

There were several routine reports on the condition of the strike; and the members of the committee had a chance to propose new plans. Baxter was not ready to offer his – he hung back from broaching it; and the others had none. "Nothin' to do but set still and starve 'em out," said Murphy, and no one contradicted him.

At the previous meeting, when pride was still regnant within him, Mr. Baxter had announced that he had put detectives on the Avon case with the hope of gaining evidence that would convict Foley of complicity in the explosion. Since then the detectives had reported that though morally certain of Foley's direct responsibility they could find not one bit of legal evidence against him. Furthermore, business sense had whispered Mr. Baxter that it would be better to let the matter drop, for if brought to trial Foley might, in a fit of recklessness, make some undesirable disclosures. So, for his own reasons, Mr. Baxter had thus far guarded the Avon explosion from the committee's talk. But at length Mr. Driscoll, restless at the dead subjects they were discussing, avoided his guard and asked: "Anything new in the Avon business?"

"Nothing. My detectives have failed to find any proof at all of Mr. Foley's guilt."

"Arrest him anyhow," said Driscoll. "If we can convict him, why the back of the strike's broken."

"There's no use arresting a man unless you can convict him."

"Take the risk! You're losing your nerve, Baxter."

Baxter flushed the least trifle at Driscoll's words, but he did not retort. His eyes ran over the faces of the four with barely perceptible hesitancy. He felt this to be his opening, but the plan of his business sense was a subject difficult and delicate to handle.

"I have a better use for Mr. Foley," he said steadily.

"Yes?" cried the others, and leaned toward him. When Baxter said this much, they knew he had a vast deal more to say.

"If we could convict him I'd be in favor of his arrest. But if we try, we'll fail; and that will be a triumph for the union. So to arrest him is bad policy."

"Go on," said Murphy.

"Whatever we may say to the public, we know among ourselves this strike is nowhere near its end. It may last all summer – the entire building season."

The four men nodded.

Baxter now spoke with apparent effort. "Why not make use of Foley and win it in three weeks?"

"How?" asked Driscoll suspiciously.

"How?" asked the others eagerly.

"I suppose most of you have been held up by Foley?"

There were four affirmative answers.

"You know he's for sale?"

"I've been forced to buy him!" said Driscoll.

Baxter went on more easily, and with the smoothness of a book. "We have all found ourselves, I suppose, compelled to take measures in the interests of peace or the uninterrupted continuance of business that were repugnant to us. What I am going to suggest is a thing I would rather not have to do; but we are face to face with two evils, and this is the lesser.

"You will bear me out, of course, when I say the demands of the union are without the bounds of reason. We can't afford to grant the demands; and yet the fight against the union may use up the whole building season. We'll lose a year's profits, and the men will lose a year's wages, and in the end we'll win. Since we are certain to win, anyhow, it seems to me that any plan that will enable us to win at once, and save our profits and the men's wages, is justifiable."

"Of course," said three of the men.

"What do you mean?" Driscoll asked guardedly.

"Many a rebellion has been quelled by satisfying the leader."

"Oh, come right out with what you mean," demanded Driscoll.

"The quickest way of settling the strike, and the cheapest, for both us and the union, is to – well, see that Foley is satisfied."

Driscoll sprang to his feet, his chair tumbling on its back, and his fist came down upon the table. "I thought you were driving at that! By God, I'm getting sick of this whole dirty underhand way of doing business. I'd get out if I had a half-way decent offer. The union is in the wrong. Of course it is! But I want to fight 'em on the square – in the open. I don't want to win by bribing a traitor!"

"It's a case where it would be wrong not to bribe – if you want to use so harsh a word," said Baxter, his face tinged the least bit with red. "It is either to satisfy Mr. Foley or to lose a summer's work and have the men and their families suffer from the loss of a summer's wages. It's a choice between evils. I'll leave to the gentlemen here, which is the greater."

"Oh, give your conscience a snooze, Driscoll!" growled Murphy.

"I think Baxter's reasoning is good," said Bobbs. Isaacs corroborated him with a nod.

"It's smooth reasoning, but it's rotten! – as rotten as hell!" He glared about on the four men. "Are you all in for Baxter's plan?"

"We haven't heard it all yet," said Bobbs.

"You've heard enough to guess the rest," snorted Driscoll.

"I think it's worth tryin'," said Murphy.

"Why, yes," said Bobbs.

"We can do no less than that," said Isaacs.

"Then you'll try it without me!" Driscoll shouted. "I resign from this committee, and resign quick!"

He grabbed his hat from Baxter's desk and stamped toward the door. Mr. Baxter's smooth voice stopped him as his hand was on the knob.

"Even if you do withdraw, of course you'll keep secret what we have proposed."

Driscoll gulped for a moment before he could speak; his face deepened its purplish red, and his eyes snapped and snapped. "Damn you, Baxter, what sort d'you think I am!" he exploded. "Of course!"

He opened the door, there was a furious slam, and he was gone.

The four men looked at each other questioningly. Baxter broke the silence. "A good fellow," he said with a touch of pity. "But his ideas are too inelastic for the business world."

"He ought to be runnin' a girls' boardin' school," commented Murphy.

"Perhaps it's just as well he withdrew," said Baxter. "I take it we're pretty much of one mind."

"Anything to settle the strike – that's me," said Murphy. "Come on now, Baxter; give us the whole plan. Just handin' a roll over to Foley ain't goin' to settle it. That'd do if it was his strike. But it ain't. It's the union's – about three thousand men. How are you goin' to bring the union around?"

"The money brings Foley around; Foley brings the union around. It's very simple."

"As simple as two and two makes seven," growled Murphy. "Give us the whole thing."

Baxter outlined his entire plan, as he expected it to work out.

"That sounds good," said Bobbs. "But are you certain we can buy Foley off?"

"Sure thing," replied Murphy, answering for Baxter. "If we offer him enough."

"How much do you think it'll take?" asked Isaacs.

Baxter named a figure.

"So much as that!" cried Isaacs.

"That isn't very much, coming from the Association," said Baxter. "You're losing as much in a week as your assessment would come to."

"I suppose you want the whole Association to know all about this," remarked Murphy.

"Only we four are to know anything."

"How'll you get the Association to give you the money then?" Murphy followed up.

"I can get the emergency fund increased. We have to give no account of that, you know."

"You seem to have thought o' everything, Baxter," Murphy admitted. "I say we can't see Foley any too soon."

Bobbs and Isaacs approved this judgment heartily.

"I'll write him, then, to meet us here to-morrow afternoon. There's one more point now." He paused to hunt for a phrase. "Don't you think the suggestion should – ah – come from him?"

The three men looked puzzled. "My mind don't make the jump," said Murphy.

Baxter coughed. It was not very agreeable, this having to say things right out. "Don't you see? If we make the offer, it's – well, it's bribery. But if we can open the way a little bit, and lead him on to make the demand, why we're – "

"Held up, o' course!" supplied Murphy admiringly.

"Yes. In that case, if the negotiations with Foley come to nothing, or there is a break later, Foley can't make capital out of it, as he might in the first case. We're safe."

"We couldn't help ourselves! We were held up!" Alderman Murphy could not restrain a joyous laugh, and he held out a red hairy hand. "Put 'er there, Baxter! There was a time when I classed you with the rest o' the reform bunch you stand with in politics – fit for nothin' but to wear white kid gloves and to tell people how good you are. But say, you're the smoothest article I've met yet!"

Baxter, with hardly concealed reluctance, placed his soft slender hand in Murphy's oily paw.