CHAPTER XXI.
TO STRIKE OR NOT TO STRIKE
When the picnic party reached Cloverdale the day after the wedding, the Jimsons were not there.
Where Mr. Jimson concealed his bride and himself during his brief honeymoon no one ever knew, for he would not tell, and she could not, being bound to secrecy.
No one, that is, no one except Mr. and Mrs. Everest, and old Mrs. Jimson. To them Selina and the Mayor confided the news that they had been in a quiet New Hampshire village, where they could enjoy delightful drives among hills resplendent in autumn dress, and have no society forced on them but that of their hostess—a farmer’s widow.
As a result of this reposeful life, Mr. Jimson came home looking ten years younger, and Roger Stanisfield, meeting him in the street, told him so.
“I’ve had a quiet time for once in my life,” said Mr. Jimson. “I ought to have got married long ago. I have some one to look after me, and me only now. How is your wife?”
“Well, thank you.”
“And Tom and Berty and Bonny—gracious! I feel as if I had been away a year instead of three weeks.”
A shade passed over Roger’s face. “All well but Grandma and Berty.”
“What’s the matter with Grandma?”
“I don’t know. I am afraid she is breaking up.”
The Mayor looked serious, then he asked, abruptly, “And Berty?”
“Oh, River Street—it’s on her brain and conscience, and it is wearing her body down.”
“She’s doing what the rest of us ought to do,” said Mr. Jimson, shortly, “but, bless me—you can’t make over a city in a day; and we’re no worse than others.”
“I suppose the city council is pretty bad.”
Mr. Jimson shrugged his shoulders.
“Lots of boodle—I say, some of those aldermen ought to be dumped in the river.”
“You ought to get Berty out of city politics,” said Mr. Jimson, energetically. “That is no girl’s work.”
“She’s going to get out, Margaretta thinks,” said Roger, turning round and slowly walking down the main street of the city beside him. “But we’ve got to let her work out the problem for herself. You see, she’s no missionary. She is not actuated by the passion of a life-work. She has come to live in a new neighbourhood, and is mad with the people that they don’t try to better themselves, and that the city doesn’t enable them to do it.”
“She’ll probably marry Tom Everest, and settle down to housekeeping.”
“That will be the upshot of it. I’d be doubtful about it, though, if the River Street people had given her a hand in her schemes of reform.”
“She’s just an ordinary girl,” said the Mayor, briskly. “She’s no angel to let the River Streeters walk all over her.”
“No, she’s no angel,” returned Roger, with a smile, “but she’s a pretty good sort of a girl.”
“That she is,” replied Mr. Jimson, heartily. “Now tell me to a dot just what she has been doing since I went away. She seemed all right then.”
Roger looked amused, then became grave. “Just after you left, she got worked up on the subject of child labour. It seems the law is broken here in Riverport.”
“How does our State law read?” inquired Mr. Jimson. “Upon my word, I don’t know.”
“The statutes of Maine provide that no female under eighteen years of age, no male under sixteen, and no woman shall be employed in any manufactory or mechanical establishment more than ten hours each day. We also have a compulsory education law which prohibits children under fifteen years of either sex working, unless they can produce certificates that during the year they have attended school during its sessions.”
“Well?” said Mr. Jimson.
“Berty found that some old-clothes man here had a night-class of children who came and sewed for him, and did not attend school. She burst into our house one evening when Margaretta was having a party, and before we knew where we were she had swept us all down to River Street. It was a pitiful enough spectacle. A dozen sleepy youngsters sitting on backless benches toiling at shirt-making, round a table lighted by candles. If a child nodded, the old man tapped her with a long stick. Some of us broke up that den, but Berty was furious at the attitude of the parents.”
“I’ll bet they were mad to have their children’s earnings cut off,” observed Mr. Jimson. “Poor people are so avaricious.”
“They were, and Berty was in a dancing rage. She got up a paper called The Cry of the Children. You can imagine what her editorials would be. Then she had the children of River Street walk in a procession through the city. Nobody laughed at her, everybody was sympathetic but apathetic. Now she is in a smouldering temper. Her paper is discontinued, and I don’t know what she is going to do.”
“This is mighty interesting,” said Mr. Jimson, “but there’s Jones, the lumber merchant from Greenport. I’ve got to speak to him—excuse me,” and he crossed the street.
Roger continued on his way to the iron works, and two minutes later encountered Berty herself coming out of a fancy-work store.
“Good morning,” he said, planting himself directly before her.
“Good morning,” she returned, composedly.
“What have you been buying?” he asked, looking curiously at the parcel in her hand.
“Embroidery.”
“For some other person, I suppose.”
“No, for myself.”
“Why, I never saw you with a needle in your hand in my life.”
“You will now,” she said, calmly.
“How’s the park getting on, Berty?”
“Famously; we have electric lights, and the children can stay till all hours.”
“Is your helper satisfactory?”
“She is magnificent—a host in herself. She can shake a bad boy on one side of the park, and slap another at the other side, at the same time. I think I’ll resign my curatorship in favour of her. She only gets half my pay now.”
“Why resign, Berty?”
“Well, I may have other things to do,” she said, evasively.
“You’re going to get married.”
“Not that I know of,” she said, calmly.
“Good-bye,” replied Roger; “come oftener to see us, and be sure to bring your embroidery.”
Berty gazed after him with a peculiar smile, as he swung quickly away, then she made her way to River Street.
At one of the many corners where lanes led down to wharves, a group of men stood talking with their hands in their pockets.
Berty stopped abruptly. Through the women in the street she knew what the chief topic of conversation among the wharf labourers just now happened to be.
“Are you talking of your projected strike?” she asked, shortly.
Not one of them spoke, but she knew by their assenting looks that they were.
“It’s a lovely time for a strike,” she said, dryly; “winter just coming on, and your wives and children needing extra supplies.”
The men surveyed her indulgently. Not one of them would discuss their proposed course of action with her, but not one resented her knowledge of it, or interference with them.
“You men don’t suffer,” she said, and as she spoke she pulled up the collar of her jacket, and took a few steps down the lane to avoid the chilly wind. “See, here you stand without overcoats, and some of you with nothing but woollen shirts on. It’s the women and children that feel the cold.”
One of the men thoughtfully turned a piece of tobacco in his mouth, and said, “That’s true.”
“What do you strike for, anyway?” she asked.
One of the stevedores who trundled the drums of codfish along the wharves for West Indian shipment, said, amiably, “A strike is usually for higher wages and shorter hours, miss.”
“Oh, I have no patience with you,” exclaimed Berty, bursting into sudden wrath. “You are so unreasonable. You bear all things, suffer like martyrs, then all at once you flare up and do some idiotic thing that turns the sympathy of the public against you. Now in this case, you ought to have the public with you. I know your wages are small, your hours too long, but you are not taking the right way to improve your condition. Because the Greenport wharf labourers have struck, you think you must do the same. A strike among you will mean lawlessness and violence, and you strikers will blink at this same lawlessness and violence because you say it is in a good cause. Then we, the long-suffering public, hate you for your illegality. There’s the strong arm of the law held equally over employers and employed. Why don’t you appeal to that? If you are right, that arm will strike your oppressors. You can keep in the background.”
“There’s a machine back of that arm,” said a red-haired man, gloomily, “and, anyway, there ain’t a law standing to cover our case.”
“Then make one,” said Berty, irritably. “You men all have votes, haven’t you?”
“Yes, miss,” said a man in a blue shirt, “all except this lad. He’s just out from Ireland. He’s only been ashore two weeks.”
“That’s the way to settle things,” said Berty, warmly. “I’ve found out that votes are the only things that make anybody afraid of you—you all know how I came to this street. I found living conditions unbearable. In my feeble way I have tried to rectify them. Nobody cares anything for me. The only good I have accomplished is to get a park for the children.”
“And that was a great thing,” said the man in the blue shirt, “and I guess we all think of it when we look at you.”
“I just wanted common necessities,” said Berty, eloquently, “air, light, water, and space—wanted them for myself and my neighbours on the street. I have badgered the city council till I have got to be a joke and a reproach. Nobody cares anything about you down here, because you haven’t any influence. I’ve found out that if I could say to the city council, ‘Gentlemen, I have five hundred votes to control,’ they would listen to me fast enough.”
The men smiled, and one said, kindly, “I’m sure, miss, you’d get our votes in a bunch, if we could give them.”
“I don’t want them,” said Berty, quickly. “It isn’t a woman’s business to go into reforming city politics. It’s the men’s place. You men fight for your homes if a foreign enemy menaces us. Why don’t you organize, and fight against the city council? Drive it out, and put in a good one. Those few men aren’t there to make the laws. They are to administer them. You are the people. Make what laws you please. If they are not workable, make new ones. I’m disgusted with those aldermen. The very idea of their arrogating to themselves so much authority. You would think they were emperors.”
The men smiled again. From him in the blue shirt came the emphatic remark, “We couldn’t turn out the present lot, miss. They’re too strong for us.”
“Oh, you could,” replied Berty, impatiently. “I’ve been going over our voting-list, and I find that the city of Riverport consists of ‘poor people,’ as we call them, to the extent of two-thirds of the population. You poor men have the votes. Now don’t tell me you can’t get what you want.”
“But there’s party politics, miss,” suggested a quiet man in the background.
“Shame on you, Malone,” and Berty pointed a finger at him, “shame on you, to put party politics before family politics. Vote for the man who will do the best for your wife and children. If you haven’t got such a man, organize and put one in. Let him give you equal privileges with the rich—or, rather, not equal privileges—I am no socialist. I believe that some men have more brains than others, and are entitled by virtue of their brains to more enjoyments and more power, but I mean that the city owes to every citizen, however poor, a comfortable house and a decently kept street.”
“That’s sound, miss,” said Malone, slipping still further forward, “but we’d never get it from the city.”
“Put in some of your number as aldermen. Why shouldn’t you in democratic America, when even in conservative England there can exist a city council made up of men who work by the day—masons, painters, bricklayers, and so on. Do that, and you will have a chance to carry out all sorts of municipal reforms. I think it is disgraceful that this ward is represented by that oiled and perfumed old gentleman Demarley, who never comes to this street unless he wants a vote.”
Malone stared intently at Berty, while a man beside him murmured something about the board of aldermen having promised certain reforms.
“Don’t speak to me of reforms from those men that we have now,” returned Berty, with flashing eyes. “When I came to River Street, I used to blame the policemen that they didn’t enforce the law. Now I see that each policeman is a chained dog for some alderman. He can only go the length of his chain. A strapping great creature in uniform comes along to your house, Mr. Malone, and says, in a lordly way, ‘Mrs. Malone, you are obstructing the sidewalk with those boxes; you must remove them.’
“‘And you are obstructing my peace of mind,’ she says, ‘with that old drug-store over there open all hours, and with our young lads slipping in and out the back door, when they ought to be in bed. Haven’t you eyes or a nose for anything but boxes?’
“And the policeman says, meekly, ‘I see nothing, I hear nothing; there must be something wrong with your own eyes and hearing, Mrs. Malone. It’s getting old you are.’ Then he moves on to look for more boxes and small boys. That’s the length of his chain.”
They were silent, and Berty, with increasing heat and irritation, went on. “This city is entirely corrupt. I say it again and again, and you know it better than I do—but I am going to stop talking about it. I had a lovely scheme for setting up a shop to sell pure milk to try to keep the breath of life in your babies a little longer, and I was going to get out plans for model dwellings, but I am going to stop short right here, and mind my own business.”
The men stood looking sheepishly at her, and at themselves, and, while they stood, Tom Everest, in a short walking-coat, and with his hat on the back of his head, came hurrying down the street.
He put his hat on straight when he saw Berty, and stopped to glance at her. He had got into the way of dodging down to River Street if he had any business that brought him in the neighbourhood, or if he could spare an hour from his office.
CHAPTER XXII.
DISCOURAGED
When Berty’s eyes rested on Tom, he came forward hat in hand.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he inquired, calmly, but with inward anxiety as he noticed her flushed face.
“No, thank you,” she said, wearily, “I was just talking to some of my friends here.”
Tom nodded to the men in a civil manner, then said, “Are you going home?”
“Yes, presently,” she returned. “I will just finish what I was saying. I was telling these men, Mr. Everest, that when I came to River Street, and saw how many things needed to be done in order to make the place comfortable, my brain was on fire. I wished to do everything to enable my neighbours to have decent homes and a pure atmosphere in which to bring up their children. But now I have got discouraged with them. They don’t second me. All the rich people say that poor people are shiftless and ungrateful, and I am beginning to think they are right. Here are these men standing before us. They are just as sensible as you are, or as any man in the city, but again and again they will vote for aldermen who care no more for their interests than they do for the interests of the sparrows flying about the city. They can pick up a living the best way they can. The city council has not one bit of care of its children, except the rich ones, and I say to these men here that there is no use for me or anybody to try to help them. They have got to help themselves.”
Tom looked concerned, but made no endeavour to reply, and Berty went on:
“It is all very fine to talk of helping the poor, and uplifting the poor. It just makes them more pauper-like for you to settle down among them, and bear all the burden of lifting them up. They have got to help you, and because they won’t help me, I am going to leave River Street just as soon as I get money enough. I’m disgusted with these people.”
Tom, to Berty’s surprise, gave no expression of relief—and yet how many times he had begged her to turn her back on this neighbourhood.
The wharf-men sank into a state of greater sheepishness than before. One of them, who carried a whip under his arm, shifted it, and, reaching forward, pushed Malone with it.
Other of the men were nudging him, and at last he remarked, regretfully, “I’m sorry to hear you say that you want to quit the street, miss. I hope you’ll change your mind.”
“Well, now, do you think it is a nice thing for me to be constantly running about interviewing aldermen who hate the sight of me, on the subject of the rights of great strong men like you and these others? Come, now, is it work for a girl?”
“Well, no, miss, it isn’t,” said Malone, uneasily.
“Then why don’t you do it yourselves? The ideal thing is to trust people, to believe that your neighbour loves you as well as he does himself, but he doesn’t. He pretends he does, but you’ve got to watch him to make a pretence a reality. For the good of your alderman neighbour make him love you. You don’t want plush sofas and lace window curtains. Bah, I’m getting so I don’t care a fig for the ‘rags’ of life—but you want well-made furniture, and a clean pane of glass to look out at God’s sky.”
“That’s so,” muttered Malone.
“Then for goodness’ sake get to work. Municipal reform can start right here on River Street as well as on Grand Avenue. I have all sorts of lovely papers telling just how model municipal government should be, and is conducted. It’s a living, acting plan in several cities, but I sha’n’t tell any of you one thing about it, unless you come and ask me. I’m tired of cramming information down your throats. Go on and strike, and do anything foolish you can. Let your wives freeze, and your poor children cry for food this winter. In the spring there will be a fine lot of funerals.”
“Oh, I say, Berty,” remarked Tom, in an undertone.
Her eyes were full of tears, but she went plunging on. “And I’ll tell you one thing that may be published to the city any day. I was not told not to tell it. Mr. Jimson wrote me a letter while he was away, and I think he is going to resign the mayoralty. He won’t tell why, of course, but I know it is because the city council is so corrupt. Now if you men had stood by him, and put in a decent set of councillors, he might have stayed in. I haven’t said a word of this before, because I felt so badly about it.”
The men scarcely heard her last sentences. The “River Streeters,” as they were called, took to a man an extraordinary interest in civic affairs, and they fell to discussing this bit of news among themselves.
“Come home, Berty,” said Tom.
“Yes, I will,” she said, meekly. “I’ve said all I want to. Just steady me over that crossing. I’ve got dust in my eyes.”
Poor Berty—she was crying, and good, honest Tom choked back a sudden sympathetic lump in his throat.
“Don’t worry, little girl,” he said, huskily. “You’ve done a lot of good already, and we’re all proud of you.”
“I have done nothing,” said Berty, passionately, “nothing but get the park for the children. I just love the children on this street. I want their fathers to do something for them. It’s awful, Tom, to bring up boys and girls in such an atmosphere. What will their parents say when they stand before the judgment seat—I can’t stand it, Tom—the lost souls of the little ones just haunt me.”
“There, there,” murmured Tom, consolingly, “we’re most home. Try to think of something else, Berty—you’ll live to do lots of work for the children yet.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
GRANDMA’S REQUEST
For three weeks the weather had been chilly and disagreeable. “The winter will set in early,” the oldest inhabitants were prophesying, when suddenly the full glory of the Indian summer burst upon the city.
Berty was delighted. “Dear Grandma will get better now,” she kept saying, hopefully. “This is what she wants—just a little warm sunshine before the winter comes.”
Grandma’s health had for some time been a cause of anxiety to her many friends. All through the autumn she had been ailing, and strangely quiet, even for her. And she had complained of feeling cold, a thing she had never done before in her life. Nothing seemed to warm her, not even the blazing fires that Berty kept in some of the many open fireplaces with which the old house was well supplied.
To-day there was a change. When the warm, lovely sunshine came streaming into her room, Grandma had got out of bed. She had come down-stairs, and, very quietly, but with a gentle smile that sent Berty into an ecstasy of delight, she had visited every room in the house.
The guinea-pigs and pigeons in the wood-shed, the two women working in the kitchen, had been made glad by a call from her, and now she was resting on a sofa in the parlour.
“I feel twenty years younger to see you going about!” exclaimed Berty, delightedly, as she tucked a blanket round her.
“Twenty years!” murmured Grandma.
“Of course that’s exaggeration,” explained Berty, apologetically. “I know that you know I’m not twenty yet. I just wanted you to understand how glad I feel.”
“Go out on the veranda,” said Grandma, “and breathe the fresh air. You have been in the house too much with me lately.”
Berty’s upper lip was covered with a dew of perspiration. She was hot all the time, partly from excitement and anxiety about Grandma, and partly from her incessant activity in waiting on her in the heated atmosphere of the house.
Berty reluctantly made her way to the veranda, where she promptly dislodged from a rocking-chair the mongrel pup, who, after long hesitation, had finally chosen to take up his abode with her.
The pup, however, crawled up beside her after she sat down, and she gently swayed to and fro in the rocking-chair, absently stroking his head and gazing out at the stripped grain-fields across the river.
“The ripened sheaves are garnered in,
Garnered in, garnered in,”
she was singing softly to herself, when some one remarked in an undertone, “Well, how goes it?”
“Oh,” she said, looking up, “it is you, is it, the omnipresent Tom?”
“Yes, I just slipped up for a minute to see how Grandma is. Won’t this sunshine set her up?”
“You saw her as you came through the room?”
“Yes, but she was asleep, so I did not speak. How is she?”
“Better, much better, and I am so glad.”
“So am I,” responded Tom, heartily; “it makes us all feel bad to have her ill, but, I say, Berty, you must not take it so to heart. You’re looking thin.”
“I can’t help worrying about Grandma, Tom.”
“How long since you’ve been out?”
“Two weeks.”
“That’s too long for one of your active disposition to stay in the house. Come, take your dog and walk back to town with me. See, he is all ready to come.”
Mugwump, indeed, was fawning round Tom in a servile manner.
“He’s liked me ever since he had a taste of my coat,” observed the young man.
“If you won’t take a walk with me, let me row you over to Bobbetty’s Island this afternoon,” pursued Tom.
Berty shook her head, but said, eagerly, “Do tell me how Mafferty is getting on.”
“Finely—he says that’s a first-class shanty we put up for him—the stove is a beauty, and, Berty, another consignment of cats has arrived.”
“Oh, Tom, what are they like?”
The young man launched into a description of the new arrivals. “There are four white kittens—one pair yellow eyes, three pairs blue, for which you should charge twenty dollars to intending purchasers; three black Persian kings, worth thirty dollars, and a few assorted kittens from five dollars up.”
Berty listened in rapt attention. When he had finished, she said, “You’ve been tremendously good about my tramp, Tom.”
“I like partnerships,” he said, modestly; “in fact, I—”
“That reminds me,” interrupted Berty, unceremoniously; “has he had another letter from his wife?”
“Yes, she is coming in ten days.”
The girl clasped her dog so energetically round the neck that he squealed in protest. “Isn’t it just lovely, that we have been able to do something for that man? Oh, do you suppose he will be happy there with his wife and the cats?”
“No, certainly not,” said Tom, coolly. “He’s going to have his bursts, of course.”
“And what are we to do?” asked Berty, sorrowfully.
“Forgive him, and row him back to the island,” said Tom, hopefully. “It’s as much our business to look after him as anybody’s.”
Berty turned in her chair, and stared at him long and intently. “Tom Everest, you are changing.”
“Pray Heaven, I am,” he said earnestly, and something in the bright, steady gaze bent on her made her eyes fill with tears.
“I have learned a lot from you,” he continued, in a low voice. “When I heard you talking to those men the other day, it stirred my heart. It seemed pitiful Berty, that a girl like you, who might think only of amusing herself, should be so touched by her neighbours’ woes that she should give up her own peace of mind in order to try to help them. Then I heard that though you could not move the men, the women of the street were much put out at the thought of your leaving, and so exasperated with the men, that they told them they had got to do something to help their families. I said to myself, ‘I’ve only been giving Berty a half assistance up to this. She shall have my whole assistance now.’”
Berty’s face was glowing. “Tom,” she said, gently, “if we live, we shall see great reforms on River Street.”
“I hope so,” he replied, heartily.
“We shall see,” and she upraised one slim brown hand, “perhaps, oh, perhaps and possibly, but still, I trust, truly, we shall see this our city one of the best governed in America.”
“Oh, I hope so,” returned Tom, with a kind of groan.
“Don’t doubt it,” continued the girl. “Who lives will see. I tell you, Tom, the women are desperate. The River Street houses are growing older and older. What woman can endure seeing her children die, and know that they are poisoned out of existence? I tell you, Tom, the men have got to do something or emigrate.”
“They’ll not emigrate,” said Tom, shortly, “and upon my word,” and he looked round about him, “I don’t know but what I’d be willing to live on River Street myself, to help reform it.”
Berty was silent for a long time, then she said, in a low voice, “You will not regret that speech, Tom Everest.”
“All right, little girl,” he replied, cheerfully, and jumping up from his low seat. “Now I must get back to work. Come, Mugwump, I guess your missis will let you have a walk, even if she won’t go herself.”
The lawless dog, without glancing at Berty for permission, bounded to his side and licked his hand.
“You haven’t very good manners, dog,” said Tom, lightly, “but I guess your mistress likes you.”
“I always did like the bad ones best,” said Berty, wistfully. “It seems as if they had more need of friends—good-bye, Tom.”
“Good-bye, little girl,” he returned, throwing her a kiss from the tips of his fingers. “Maybe I’ll run up this afternoon.”