Youth Challenges. Clarence Budington Kelland
defending him? Of course. You're a girl and you're close to the throne with a soft job. He's a good-looking kid in his namby-pamby Harvard way, too."
"Mr. Dulac! … My job—I was going to ask you what I should do. I want to help the men. I want them to feel that I'm with them, working for them and praying for them. Ought I to quit, too—to join the strike?"
Dulac looked at her sharply, calculatingly. "No," he said, presently, "you can do a lot more good where you are."
"Will there be trouble? I dread to think of rioting and maybe bloodshed. It will be bad enough, anyhow—if it lasts long. The poor women and children!"
"There'll be trouble if they try to turn a wheel or bring in scab labor." He laughed, so that his white teeth showed. "The first thing they did was to telephone for the police. I suppose this kid with a whole day's experience in the business will be calling in strike breakers and strong-arms and gunmen. … Well, let him bring it down on himself if he wants to. We're in this thing to win. It means unionism breaking into this automobile game. This is just the entering wedge."
"Won't the automobile manufacturers see that, too?" she asked. "Won't the men have all their power and wealth to fight?"
Dulac shrugged his shoulders. "I guess the automobile world knows who
Dulac is to-night," he said, with gleaming eyes.
Somehow the boast became the man. It was perfectly in character with his appearance, with his bearing. It did not impress Ruth as a brag; it seemed a natural and ordinary thing for him to say.
"You've been here just two weeks," she said, a trifle breathlessly; for he loomed big to her girlish eyes. "You've done all this in two weeks."
He received the compliment indifferently. Perhaps that was a pose; perhaps the ego of the man made him impervious even to compliments. There are men so confident in their powers that a compliment always falls short of their own estimate of themselves.
"It's a start—but all our work is only a start. It's preliminary," His voice became oratorical. "First we must unionize the world. Now there are strong unions and weak unions—both arrayed against a capital better organized and stronger than ever before in the world's history. Unionism is primary instruction in revolution. We must teach labor its power, and it is slow to learn. We must prepare, prepare, prepare, and when all is ready we shall rise. Not one union, not the unions of a state, of a country, but the unions of the world … hundreds of millions of men who have been ground down by aristocracies and wealth for generations. Then we shall have such an overturning as shall make the French Revolution look like child's play. … A World's Republic—that's our aim; a World's Republic ruled by labor!"
Her eyes glistened as he talked; she could visualize his vision, could see a united world, cleansed of wars, of boundary lines; a world where every man's chance of happiness was the equal of every other man's chance; where wealth and poverty were abolished, from which slums, degradation, starvation, the sordid wickednesses compelled by poverty, should have vanished. She could see a world of peace, plenty, beauty.
It was for this high aim that Dulac worked. His stature increased. She marveled that such a man could waste his thoughts upon her. She idealized him; her soul prostrated itself before him.
So much of accomplishment lay behind him—and he not yet thirty years old! The confidence reposed in him by labor was eloquently testified to by the sending of him to this important post on the battle line. Already he had justified that confidence. With years and experience what heights might he not climb! … This was Ruth's thought. Beside Dulac's belief in himself and his future it was colorless.
Dulac had been an inmate of the Frazer cottage two weeks. In that time he had not once stepped out of his character. If his attitude toward the world were a pose it had become so habitual as to require no objective prompting or effort to maintain. This character was that of the leader of men, the zealot for the cause of the under dog. It held him aloof from personal concerns. Individual affairs did not touch him, but functioned unnoticed on a plane below his clouds. Not for an instant had he sought the friendship of Ruth and her mother, not to establish relations of friendship with them. He was devoted to a cause, and the cause left no room in his life for smaller matters. He was a man apart.
Now he was awkwardly tugging something from his pocket. Almost diffidently he offered it to Ruth. It was a small box of candy.
"Here … " he said, clumsily.
"For me!" Ruth was overpowered. This demigod had brought HER a gift. He had thought about her—insignificant her! True, she had talked with him, had even taken walks with him, but those things had not been significant. It had seemed he merely condescended to the daughter of a martyr to his cause. He had been paying a tribute to her father. But a gift—a personal gift such as any young man might make to a girl whose favor he sought! Could it mean … ?
Then she saw that he was embarrassed, actually embarrassed before her, and she was ashamed of herself for it. But she saw, too, that in him was a human man, a man with fears and sensations and desires and weaknesses like other men. After all, a demigod is only half of Olympus.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you SO much."
"You're not—offended?"
He was recovering himself. In an instant he was back again in character.
"We men," he said, "who are devoted to the Cause have little time in our lives for such things. The Cause demands all. When we go into it we give up much that other men enjoy. We are wanderers. We have no homes. We can't AFFORD to have homes. … I," he said, it proudly, "have been in jail more than once. A man cannot ask a woman to share such a life. A man who leads such a life has no place in it for a woman."
"I should think," she said, "that women would be proud to share such a life. To know they were helping a little! To know they were making one comfortable spot for you to come to and rest when you were tired or discouraged. … "
"Comforts are not for us," he said, theatrically, yet he did not seem theatrical to her, only nobly self-sacrificing.
"It isn't right," she said, passionately. "The poorest laborer has more than you. He has his home and his family. No matter how poor he is, no matter what he suffers, he has some compensations. … And you—you're giving your life and everything in life that's bright and beautiful for that laborer."
"The happiness of one man buying the happiness of millions," he said, his black eyes glowing. "Yet sometimes we have our weak moments. We see and we desire."
"And are entitled to possess," she said.
His eyes glowed upon her hungrily—she read the hunger in them, hunger for HER! It frightened her, yet it made her heart leap with pride. To be looked upon with favor by such a man!
"Some women," he said, slowly, "might live through it. There are women big enough and strong enough—a few, maybe. Big enough to endure neglect and loneliness; to live and not know if their husbands would sleep at home that night or in a jail or be in the middle of a riot on the other side of the world! They could not even depend on their husbands for support. … A few might not complain, might be able to endure. … You, Miss Ruth—I believe you are one of them!"
Her cheeks paled. Was he—could he be about to ask her to share his life? It was impossible! Yet what else could he mean? To what else could his words be tending? She was awed, frightened—yet warmed by a surge of pride. She thought of her father. … If he could see and know! If knowledge could only pass to him that his daughter had been thought worthy by such a man to play her part for the Cause! … She waited tensely, hand pressed to her bosom.
Dulac stepped toward her, barbarically handsome. She felt the force, the magnetism of him. It called to her, compelled her. … She could not lift her eyes.
Slowly he approached another step. It was as though he were forced to her against his will. The silence in the room was the tense silence of a human crisis. … Then it was broken ruthlessly. There came a pounding on the door that was not a knock, but an alarm.