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CONRAD looked confusedly around, and the same voice said
again, "Mr.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7681
CONRAD looked confusedly around, and the same voice said
again, "Mr.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v13 - Her to Hux
"
"I reckon this thing is nuts for Lindau, too," said Fulkerson.
"Why, it must act like a schooner of beer on him all the while,
to see 'gabidal' embarrassed like it is by this strike. It must
make old Lindau feel like he was back behind those barricades
at Berlin. Well, he's a splendid old fellow; pity he drinks, as I
remarked once before. "
When March left the office he did not go home so directly as
he came, perhaps because Mrs. March's eye was not on him. He
was very curious about some aspects of the strike, whose import-
ance as a great social convulsion he felt people did not recog-
nize; and with his temperance in everything, he found its negative
expressions as significant as its more violent phases. He had
promised his wife solemnly that he would keep away from these
and he had a natural inclination to keep his promise; he had no
wish to be that peaceful spectator who always gets shot when
there is any firing on a mob. He interested himself in the ap-
parent indifference of the mighty city, which kept on about its
business as tranquilly as if the private war being fought out in
its midst were a vague rumor of Indian troubles on the frontier;
and he realized how there might once have been a street feud
of forty years in Florence without interfering materially with the
industry and prosperity of the city. On Broadway there was a
silence where a jangle and clatter of horse-car bells and hoofs
had been, but it was not very noticeable; and on the avenues
roofed by the elevated roads this silence of the surface tracks
was not noticeable at all, in the roar of the trains overhead.
Some of the cross-town cars were beginning to run again, with
a policeman on the rear of each; on the Third Avenue line, oper-
ated by non-union men, who had not struck, there were two
policemen beside the driver of every car, and two beside the con-
ductor, to protect them from the strikers. But there were no
strikers in sight, and on Second Avenue they stood quietly about
in groups on the corners. While March watched them at a safe
distance, a car laden with policemen came down the track, but
none of the strikers offered to molest it. In their simple Sunday
## p. 7675 (#489) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7675
best, March thought them very quiet, decent-looking people, and
he could well believe that they had nothing to do with the riot-
ous outbreaks in other parts of the city. He could hardly believe
that there were any such outbreaks; he began more and more to
think them mere newspaper exaggerations, in the absence of any
disturbance or the disposition to it that he could see. He walked
on to the East River: Avenues A, B, and C presented the
same quiet aspect as Second Avenue; groups of men stood on
the corners, and now and then a police-laden car was brought
unmolested down the tracks before them; they looked at it and
talked together, and some laughed, but there was no trouble.
March got a cross-town car, and came back to the west side.
A policeman, looking very sleepy and tired, lounged on the plat-
form.
"I suppose you'll be glad when this cruel war is over," March
suggested as he got in.
The officer gave him a surly glance and made him no answer.
His behavior, from a man born to the joking give-and-take
of our life, impressed March. It gave him a fine sense of the
ferocity of the French troops' putting on toward the populace
just before the coup d'état: he began to feel like populace; but
he struggled with himself and regained his character of philo-
sophical observer. In this character he remained in the car, and
let it carry him by the corner where he ought to have got out
and gone home, and let it keep on with him to one of the fur-
thermost tracks westward, where so much of the fighting was
reported to have taken place. But everything on the way was
as quiet as on the east side.
Suddenly the car stopped with so quick a turn of the brake
that he was half thrown from his seat, and the policeman jumped
down from the platform and ran forward.
DRYFOOS sat at breakfast that morning, with Mrs. Mandel as
usual to pour out his coffee. Conrad had already gone down-
town; the two girls lay abed much later than their father break-
fasted, and their mother had gradually grown too feeble to come
down till lunch. Suddenly Christine appeared at the door. Her
face was white to the edges of her lips, and her eyes were
blazing.
"Look here, father! Have you been saying anything to Mr.
Beaton? "
4
1
## p. 7676 (#490) ###########################################
7676
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
The old man looked up at her across his coffee-cup through
his frowning brows. "No. "
Mrs. Mandel dropped her eyes, and the spoon shook in her
hand.
"Then what's the reason he don't come here any more? "
demanded the girl; and her glance darted from her father to
Mrs. Mandel. -"Oh, it's you, is it? I'd like to know who told
you to meddle in other people's business? "
"I did," said Dryfoos savagely. "I told her to ask him what
he wanted here, and he said he didn't want anything, and he's
stopped coming. That's all. I did it myself. "
"Oh, you did, did you? " said the girl, scarcely less insolently
than she had spoken to Mrs. Mandel. "I should like to know
what you did it for? I'd like to know what made you think I
wasn't able to take care of myself? I just knew somebody had
been meddling, but I didn't suppose it was you. I can manage
my own affairs in my own way, if you please, and I'll thank you
after this to leave me to myself in what don't concern you. "
"Don't concern me? You impudent jade! " her father began.
Christine advanced from the doorway toward the table; she
had her hands closed upon what seemed trinkets, some of
which glittered and dangled from them. She said, "Will you
go to him and tell him that this meddlesome minx here had no
business to say anything about me to him, and you take it all
back? "
་
"No! " shouted the old man.
"And if -"
"That's all I want of you! " the girl shouted in her turn.
"Here are your presents. " With both hands she flung the jewels
-pins and rings and earrings and bracelets-among the break-
fast dishes, from which some of them sprang to the floor. She
stood a moment to pull the intaglio ring from the finger where
Beaton put it a year ago, and dashed that at her father's plate.
Then she whirled out of the room, and they heard her running.
up-stairs.
The old man made a start toward her, but he fell back in
his chair before she was gone, and with a fierce, grinding move-
ment of his jaws controlled himself. "Take-take those things
up," he gasped to Mrs. Mandel. He seemed unable to rise again
from his chair; but when she asked him if he were unwell, he
said no with an air of offense, and got quickly to his feet. He
mechanically picked up the intaglio ring from the table while
## p. 7677 (#491) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7677
he stood there, and put it on his little finger; his hand was not
much bigger than Christine's. "How do you suppose she found
it out? " he asked after a moment.
"She seems to have merely suspected it," said Mrs. Mandel
in a tremor, and with the fright in her eyes which Christine's
violence had brought there.
"Well, it don't make any difference. She had to know some-
how, and now she knows. " He started toward the door of the
library, as if to go into the hall, where his hat and coat always
hung.
"Mr. Dryfoos," palpitated Mrs. Mandel, "I can't remain here,
after the language your daughter has used to me - I can't let
you leave me I-I'm afraid of her- »
"Lock yourself up, then," said the old man rudely. He
added, from the hall before he went out, "I reckon she'll quiet
down now. "
He took the Elevated road. The strike seemed a very far-off
thing, though the paper he bought to look up the stock market
was full of noisy typography about yesterday's troubles on the
surface lines. Among the millionaires in Wall Street there was
some joking and some swearing, but not much thinking about
the six thousand men who had taken such chances in their at-
tempt to better their condition. Dryfoos heard nothing of the
strike in the lobby of the Stock Exchange, where he spent two
or three hours watching a favorite stock of his go up and go
down under the betting. By the time the exchange closed it had
risen eight points, and on this and some other investments he
was five thousand dollars richer than he had been in the morn-
ing. But he had expected to be richer still, and he was by no
means satisfied with his luck. All through the excitement of his
winning and losing had played the dull, murderous rage he felt
toward the child who had defied him, and when the game was
over and he started home, his rage mounted into a sort of frenzy:
he would teach her, he would break her.
He walked a long way
without thinking, and then waited for a car.
hailed a passing coupé.
None came, and he
"What has got all the cars? " he demanded of the driver, who
jumped down from his box to open the door for him and get his
direction.
"Hasn't been any car along
"Been away? " asked the driver.
for a week.
Strike. "
## p. 7678 (#492) ###########################################
7678
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
"Oh yes," said Dryfoos. He felt suddenly giddy, and he re-
mained staring at the driver after he had taken his seat.
The man asked, "Where to? "
Dryfoos could not think of his street or number, and he said
with uncontrollable fury, "I told you once! Go up to West
Eleventh, and drive along slow on the south side; I'll show you
the place. "
He could not remember the number of Every Other Week
office, where he suddenly decided to stop before he went home.
He wished to see Fulkerson, and ask him something about
Beaton: whether he had been about lately, and whether he had
dropped any hint of what had happened concerning Christine;
Dryfoos believed that Fulkerson was in the fellow's confidence.
There was nobody but Conrad in the counting-room, whither
Dryfoos returned after glancing into Fulkerson's empty office.
"Where's Fulkerson? " he asked, sitting down with his hat on.
"He went out a few moments ago," said Conrad, glancing at
the clock. "I'm afraid he isn't coming back again to-day, if you
wanted to see him. "
Dryfoos twisted his head sidewise and upward to indicate
March's room. "That other fellow out, too? "
"He went just before Mr. Fulkerson," answered Conrad.
"Do you generally knock off here in the middle of the after-
noon? " asked the old man.
"No," said Conrad, as patiently as if his father had not been
there a score of times, and found the whole staff of Every Other
Week at work between four and five. "Mr. March, you know,
takes a good deal of his work home with him, and I suppose
Mr. Fulkerson went out so early because there isn't much doing
to-day. Perhaps it's the strike that makes it dull. "
"The strike-yes! It's a pretty piece of business to have
everything thrown out because a parcel of lazy hounds want
a chance to lay off and get drunk. " Dryfoos seemed to think
that Conrad would make some answer to this, but the young
man's mild face merely saddened, and he said nothing. "I've
got a coupé out there now that I had to take because I couldn't
get a car. If I had my way I'd have a lot of those vagabonds
hung. They're waiting to get the city into a snarl, and then
rob the houses-pack of dirty, worthless whelps. They ought to
call out the militia and fire into 'em. Clubbing is too good for
them. "
## p. 7679 (#493) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7679
Conrad was still silent; and his father sneered, "But I reckon.
you don't think so. "
"I think the strike is useless," said Conrad.
"Oh, you do, do you? Comin' to your senses a little. Gettin'
tired walkin' so much. I should like to know what your gentle-
men over there on the east side think about the strike, any-
way. "
The young fellow dropped his eyes. "I am not authorized to
speak for them. "
"Oh, indeed! And perhaps you're not authorized to speak for
yourself? "
"Father, you know we don't agree about these things. I'd
rather not talk -»
"But I'm goin' to make you talk this time! " cried Dryfoos,
striking the arm of the chair he sat in with the side of his fist.
A maddening thought of Christine came over him. "As long as
you eat my bread, you have got to do as I say. I won't have
my children telling me what I shall do and shan't do, or take on
airs of being holier than me. Now you just speak up!
Do you
think those loafers are right, or don't you? Come! "
Conrad apparently judged it best to speak. "I think they
were very foolish to strike at this time, when the elevated
roads can do the work. "
«< Oh, at this time, heigh! And I suppose they think over
there on the east side that it 'd been wise to strike before we
got the Elevated? »
Conrad again refused to answer; and his father roared, "What
do you think? »
"I think a strike is always bad business. It's war; but some-
times there don't seem any other way for the workingmen to
get justice. They say that sometimes strikes do raise the wages,
after a while. "
-
"Those lazy devils were paid enough already," shrieked the
old man. "They got two dollars a day. How much do you
think they ought to 'a' got? Twenty? "
Conrad hesitated, with a beseeching look at his father. But
he decided to answer. "The men say that with partial work,
and fines, and other things, they get sometimes a dollar, and
sometimes ninety cents a day. "
"They lie, and you know they lie," said his father, rising and
coming toward him. "And what do you think the upshot of it
## p. 7680 (#494) ###########################################
7680
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
all will be, after they've ruined business for another week, and
made people hire hacks, and stolen the money of honest men?
How is it going to end? "
They will have to give in. "
"Oh, give in, heigh! And what will you say then, I should
like to know? How will you feel about it then? Speak! "
"I shall feel as I do now. I know you don't think that way,
and I don't blame you-or anybody. But if I have got to say
how I shall feel, why, I shall feel sorry they didn't succeed; for
I believe they have a righteous cause, though they go the wrong
way to help themselves. "
His father came close to him, his eyes blazing, his teeth set.
"Do you dare to say that to me? "
"Yes. I can't help it. I pity them; my whole heart is with
those poor men. "
"You impudent puppy! " shouted the old man. He lifted his
hand and struck his son in the face. Conrad caught his hand
with his own left, and while the blood began to trickle from
a wound that Christine's intaglio ring had made in his temple,
he looked at him with a kind of grieving wonder, and said,
"Father! "
The old man wrenched his fist away, and ran out of the
house. He remembered his address now, and he gave it as he
plunged into the coupé. He trembled with his evil passion, and
glared out of the windows at the passers as he drove home; he
only saw Conrad's mild, grieving, wondering eyes, and the blood
slowly trickling from the wound in his temple.
Conrad went to the neat set bowl in Fulkerson's comfortable
room and washed the blood away, and kept bathing the wound
with the cold water till it stopped bleeding. The cut was not
deep, and he thought he would not put anything on it. After a
while he locked up the office, and started out, he hardly knew
where. But he walked on, in the direction he had taken, till he
found himself in Union Square, on the pavement in front of Bren-
tano's. It seemed to him that he heard some one calling gently
to him, "Mr. Dryfoos! "
## p.
7681 (#495) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7681
CONRAD looked confusedly around, and the same voice said
again, "Mr. Dryfoos! " and he saw that it was a lady speaking to
him from a coupé beside the curbing, and then he saw that it
was Miss Vance.
She smiled when he gave signs of having discovered her, and
came up to the door of her carriage. "I am so glad to meet
you. I have been longing to talk to somebody; nobody seems to
feel about it as I do. Oh, isn't it horrible? Must they fail? I
saw cars running on all the lines as I came across; it made me
sick at heart. Must those brave fellows give in? And everybody
seems to hate them so-I can't bear it. " Her face was estranged
with excitement, and there were traces of tears on it. «You
must think me almost crazy to stop you in the street this way;
but when I caught sight of you I had to speak. I knew you
would sympathize. I knew you would feel as I do. Oh, how
can anybody help honoring those poor men for standing by one
another as they do? They are risking all they have in the world
for the sake of justice! Oh, they are true heroes! They are
staking the bread of their wives and children on the chance
they've taken! But no one seems to understand it. No one
seems to see that they are willing to suffer more now, that other
poor men may suffer less hereafter. And those wretched creat-
ures that are coming in to take their places—those traitors! ”
"We can't blame them for wanting to earn a living, Miss
Vance," said Conrad.
"No, no! I don't blame them. Who am I, to do such a
thing? It's we-people like me, of my class-who make the
poor betray one another. But this dreadful fighting- this hideous
paper is full of it! »
She held up an extra, crumpled with her
nervous reading. "Can't something be done to stop it? Don't
you think that if some one went among them, and tried to make
them see how perfectly hopeless it was to resist the companies
and drive off the new men, he might do some good? I have
wanted to go and try it; but I am a woman, and I mustn't! I
shouldn't be afraid of the strikers, but I'm afraid of what people
would say! " Conrad kept pressing his handkerchief to the cut
in his temple, which he thought might be bleeding, and now
she noticed this. "Are you hurt, Mr. Dryfoos? You look so
pale. »
"No, it's nothing a little scratch I've got. "
XIII-481
—
-
## p. 7682 (#496) ###########################################
7682
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
"Indeed you look pale. Have you a carriage? How will you
get home? Will you get in here with me, and let me drive
you? »
"No, no," said Conrad, smiling at her excitement. "I'm per-
fectly well- »
"And you don't think I'm foolish and wicked for stopping you
here, and talking in this way? But I know you feel as I do! "
"Yes, I feel as you do. You are right-right in every way.
I mustn't keep you. Good-by. " He stepped back to bow, but
she put her beautiful hand out of the window, and when he took
it she wrung his hand hard.
"Thank you, thank you! You are good, and you are just!
But no one can do anything. It's useless! "
The type of irreproachable coachman on the box, whose
respectability had suffered through the strange behavior of his
mistress in this interview, drove quickly off at her signal, and
Conrad stood a moment looking after the carriage. His heart
was full of joy; it leaped; he thought it would burst. As he
turned to walk away, it seemed to him as if he mounted upon
the air. The trust she had shown him, the praise she had given.
him, that crush of the hand-he hoped nothing, he formed no
idea from it, but it all filled him with love, and cast out the pain
and shame he had been suffering. He believed that he could
never be unhappy any more; the hardness that was in his mind
toward his father went out of it: he saw how sorely he had tried
him; he grieved that he had done it: but the means, the differ-
ence of his feeling about the cause of their quarrel,- he was
solemnly glad of that since she shared it. He was only sorry for
his father. "Poor father! " he said under his breath as he went
along. He explained to her about his father in his revery, and
she pitied his father too.
He was walking over toward the west side, aimlessly at first,
and then at times with the longing to do something to save those
mistaken men from themselves, forming itself into a purpose.
Was not that what she meant, when she bewailed her woman's
helplessness? She must have wished him to try if he, being a
man, could not do something: or if she did not, still he would
try; and if she heard of it, she would recall what she had said,
and would be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of her
pleasure in what he was going to do, he forgot almost what it
was; but when he came to a street-car track he remembered it,
## p. 7683 (#497) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7683
and looked up and down to see if there were any turbulent
gathering of men, whom he might mingle with and help to keep
from violence. He saw none anywhere; and then suddenly, as if
at the same moment,- for in his exalted mood all events had
a dream-like simultaneity,- he stood at the corner of an avenue,
and in the middle of it, a little way off, was a street car, and
around the car a tumult of shouting, cursing, struggling men.
The driver was lashing his horses forward, and a policeman was
at their heads, with the conductor, pulling them; stones, clubs,
brickbats hailed upon the car, the horses, the men trying to
move them. The mob closed upon them in a body; and then
a patrol wagon whirled up from the other side, and a squad of
policemen leaped out and began to club the rioters. Conrad could
see how they struck them under the rims of their hats; the blows
on their skulls sounded as if they had fallen on stone; the riot-
ers ran in all directions.
One of the officers rushed up toward the corner where Conrad
stood, and then he saw at his side a tall old man with a long
white beard. He was calling out at the policeman: "Ah yes!
Glup the strikerss-gif it to them! Why don't you co and glup
the bresidents that insoalt your lawss, and gick your Boart of
Arpidration out of toors? Glup the strikerss-they cot no friendts!
They cot no money to pribe you, to dreat you! "
The officer whirled his club, and the old man threw his left
arm up to shield his head. Conrad recognized Lindau, and now
he saw the empty sleeve dangle in the air, over the stump of
his wrist. He heard a shot in that turmoil beside the car, and
something seemed to strike him in the breast. He was going to
say to the policeman, "Don't strike him! He's an old soldier!
You see he has no hand! " but he could not speak, he could
not move his tongue. The policeman stood there; he saw his
face: it was not bad, not cruel; it was like the face of a statue,
fixed, perdurable; a mere image of irresponsible and involun-
tary authority. Then Conrad fell forward, pierced through the
heart by that shot fired from the car.
March heard the shot as he scrambled out of his car, and at
the same moment he saw Lindau drop under the club of the
policeman, who left him where he fell, and joined the rest of
the squad in pursuing the rioters. The fighting round the car
in the avenue ceased; the driver whipped his horses into a gal-
lop, and the place was left empty.
## p. 7684 (#498) ###########################################
7684
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
March would have liked to run; he thought how his wife had
implored him to keep away from the rioting; but he could not
have left Lindau lying there if he would. Something stronger
than his will drew him to the spot, and there he saw Conrad
dead beside the old man.
IN THE Cares which Mrs. March shared with her husband that
night she was supported partly by principle, but mainly by the
potent excitement which bewildered Conrad's family and took all
reality from what had happened. It was nearly midnight when
the Marches left them and walked away toward the Elevated
station with Fulkerson. Everything had been done by that time
that could be done; and Fulkerson was not without that satisfac-
tion in the business-like dispatch of all the details which attends
each step in such an affair, and helps to make death tolerable
even to the most sorely stricken. We are creatures of the
moment; we live from one little space to another, and only one
interest at a time fills these. Fulkerson was cheerful when they
got into the street, almost gay; and Mrs. March experienced a
rebound from her depression which she felt that she ought not
to have experienced. But she condoned the offense a little in
herself, because her husband remained so constant in his grav-
ity; and pending the final accounting he must make her for
having been where he could be of so much use from the first
instant of the calamity, she was tenderly, gratefully proud of all
the use he had been to Conrad's family, and especially his mis-
erable old father. To her mind March was the principal actor
in the whole affair, and much more important in having seen
it than those who had suffered in it. In fact, he had suffered
incomparably.
"Well, well," said Fulkerson, "they'll get along now.
We've
done all we could, and there's nothing left but for them to bear
it. Of course it's awful, but I guess it'll come out all right. I
mean," he added, "they'll pull through now. "
"I suppose," said March, "that nothing is put on us that we
can't bear. But I should think," he went on musingly, "that
when God sees what we poor finite creatures can bear, hemmed
round with this eternal darkness of death, he must respect us. "
"Basil! " said his wife. But in her heart she drew nearer to
him for the words she thought she ought to rebuke him for.
## p. 7685 (#499) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7685
“Oh, I know,” he said, "we school ourselves to despise human
nature. But God did not make us despicable; and I say, what-
ever end he meant us for, he must have some such thrill of
joy in our adequacy to fate as a father feels when his son shows
himself a man. When I think what we can be if we must, I
can't believe the least of us shall finally perish. "
"Oh, I reckon the Almighty won't scoop any of us," said
Fulkerson, with a piety of his own.
"That poor boy's father! " sighed Mrs. March. "I can't get
his face out of my sight. He looked so much worse than death. "
"Oh, death doesn't look bad," said March. "It's life that
looks so in its presence. Death is peace and pardon. I only
wish poor, poor old Lindau was as well out of it as Conrad
there. "
"Ah, Lindau! He has done harm enough," said Mrs. March.
"I hope he will be careful after this. "
son.
March did not try to defend Lindau against her theory of the
case, which inexorably held him responsible for Conrad's death.
"Lindau's going to come out all right, I guess," said Fulker-
"He was first-rate when I saw him at the hospital to-night. "
He whispered in March's ear, at a chance he got in mounting the
station stairs: "I didn't like to tell you there at the house, but
I guess you'd better know: they had to take Lindau's arm off
near the shoulder. Smashed all to pieces by the clubbing. "
In the house, vainly rich and foolishly unfit for them, the be-
reaved family whom the Marches had just left lingered together,
and tried to get strength to part for the night. They were all
spent with the fatigue that comes from heaven to such misery
as theirs, and they sat in a torpor in which each waited for the
other to move, to speak.
Christine moved, and Mela spoke. Christine rose and went
out of the room without saying a word, and they heard her going
up-stairs. Then Mela said, "I reckon the rest of us better be
goun' too, father. Here, let's git mother started. "
She put her arm round her mother, to lift her from her chair;
but the old man did not stir, and Mela called Mrs. Mandel from
the next room. Between them they raised her to her feet.
"Ain't there anybody a-goin' to set up with it? " she asked, in
her hoarse pipe. "It appears like folks hain't got any feelin's in
New York. Woon't some o' the neighbors come and offer to set
up, without waitin' to be asked ? »
## p. 7686 (#500) ###########################################
7686
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
"Oh, that's all right, mother. The men'll attend to that.
Don't you bother any," Mela coaxed, and she kept her arm round
her mother with tender patience.
"Why, Mely, child! I can't feel right to have it left to hire-
lin's, so. But there ain't anybody any more to see things done
as they ought. If Coonrod was on'y here- »
"Well, mother, you are pretty mixed! " said Mela, with a
strong tendency to break into her large guffaw. But she checked
herself and said, "I know just how you feel, though. It keeps
a-comun' and a-goun'; and it's so and it ain't so, all at once;
that's the plague of it. Well, father! Ain't you goun' to come? "
"I'm goin' to stay, Mela," said the old man gently, without
moving. "Get your mother to bed, that's a good girl. "
"You goin' to set
set up with him, Jacob? " asked the old
woman.
"Yes, 'Liz'beth, I'll set up. You go to bed. "
"Well, I will, Jacob. And I believe it'll do you good to set
up. I wished I could set up with you; but I don't seem to have
the stren'th I did when the twins died. I must git my sleep,
I don't like very well to have you broke of your rest,
Jacob, but there don't appear to be anybody else. You wouldn't
have to do it if Coonrod was here. There I go ag'in! Mercy!
so's to-
-
mercy! "
"Well, do come along, then, mother," said Mela; and she got
her out of the room, with Mrs. Mandel's help, and up the stairs.
From the top the old woman called down: "You tell Coon-
rod - »
She stopped, and he heard her groan out, "My Lord!
my Lord! »
He sat, one silence, in the dining-room where they had all
lingered together; and in the library beyond the hireling watcher
sat, another silence. The time passed, but neither moved; and
the last noise in the house ceased, so that they heard each other
breathe, and the vague, remote rumor of the city invaded the
inner stillness. It grew louder toward morning, and then Dry-
foos knew from the watcher's deeper breathing that he had fallen
into a doze.
He crept by him to the drawing-room, where his son was;
the place was full of the awful sweetness of the flowers that
Fulkerson had brought, and that lay above the pulseless breast.
The old man turned up a burner in the chandelier, and stood
looking on the majestic serenity of the dead face.
## p. 7687 (#501) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7687
He could not move when he saw his wife coming down the
stairway in the hall. She was in her long white flannel bed-
gown, and the candle she carried shook with her nervous tremor.
He thought she might be walking in her sleep; but she said
quite simply, "I woke up, and I couldn't git to sleep ag'in with-
out comin' to have a look. " She stood beside their dead son with
him. "Well, he's beautiful, Jacob. He was the prettiest baby!
And he was always good, Coonrod was; I'll say that for him. I
don't believe he ever give me a minute's care in his whole life.
I reckon I liked him about the best of all the children; but I
don't know as I ever done much to show it. But you was always
good to him, Jacob; you always done the best for him, ever
since he was a little feller. I used to be afraid you'd spoil him.
sometimes in them days; but I guess you're glad now for every
time you didn't cross him. I don't suppose since the twins died
you ever hit him a lick. ”
She stooped and peered closer at the
face. "Why, Jacob, what's that there by his pore eye?
"I reckon this thing is nuts for Lindau, too," said Fulkerson.
"Why, it must act like a schooner of beer on him all the while,
to see 'gabidal' embarrassed like it is by this strike. It must
make old Lindau feel like he was back behind those barricades
at Berlin. Well, he's a splendid old fellow; pity he drinks, as I
remarked once before. "
When March left the office he did not go home so directly as
he came, perhaps because Mrs. March's eye was not on him. He
was very curious about some aspects of the strike, whose import-
ance as a great social convulsion he felt people did not recog-
nize; and with his temperance in everything, he found its negative
expressions as significant as its more violent phases. He had
promised his wife solemnly that he would keep away from these
and he had a natural inclination to keep his promise; he had no
wish to be that peaceful spectator who always gets shot when
there is any firing on a mob. He interested himself in the ap-
parent indifference of the mighty city, which kept on about its
business as tranquilly as if the private war being fought out in
its midst were a vague rumor of Indian troubles on the frontier;
and he realized how there might once have been a street feud
of forty years in Florence without interfering materially with the
industry and prosperity of the city. On Broadway there was a
silence where a jangle and clatter of horse-car bells and hoofs
had been, but it was not very noticeable; and on the avenues
roofed by the elevated roads this silence of the surface tracks
was not noticeable at all, in the roar of the trains overhead.
Some of the cross-town cars were beginning to run again, with
a policeman on the rear of each; on the Third Avenue line, oper-
ated by non-union men, who had not struck, there were two
policemen beside the driver of every car, and two beside the con-
ductor, to protect them from the strikers. But there were no
strikers in sight, and on Second Avenue they stood quietly about
in groups on the corners. While March watched them at a safe
distance, a car laden with policemen came down the track, but
none of the strikers offered to molest it. In their simple Sunday
## p. 7675 (#489) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7675
best, March thought them very quiet, decent-looking people, and
he could well believe that they had nothing to do with the riot-
ous outbreaks in other parts of the city. He could hardly believe
that there were any such outbreaks; he began more and more to
think them mere newspaper exaggerations, in the absence of any
disturbance or the disposition to it that he could see. He walked
on to the East River: Avenues A, B, and C presented the
same quiet aspect as Second Avenue; groups of men stood on
the corners, and now and then a police-laden car was brought
unmolested down the tracks before them; they looked at it and
talked together, and some laughed, but there was no trouble.
March got a cross-town car, and came back to the west side.
A policeman, looking very sleepy and tired, lounged on the plat-
form.
"I suppose you'll be glad when this cruel war is over," March
suggested as he got in.
The officer gave him a surly glance and made him no answer.
His behavior, from a man born to the joking give-and-take
of our life, impressed March. It gave him a fine sense of the
ferocity of the French troops' putting on toward the populace
just before the coup d'état: he began to feel like populace; but
he struggled with himself and regained his character of philo-
sophical observer. In this character he remained in the car, and
let it carry him by the corner where he ought to have got out
and gone home, and let it keep on with him to one of the fur-
thermost tracks westward, where so much of the fighting was
reported to have taken place. But everything on the way was
as quiet as on the east side.
Suddenly the car stopped with so quick a turn of the brake
that he was half thrown from his seat, and the policeman jumped
down from the platform and ran forward.
DRYFOOS sat at breakfast that morning, with Mrs. Mandel as
usual to pour out his coffee. Conrad had already gone down-
town; the two girls lay abed much later than their father break-
fasted, and their mother had gradually grown too feeble to come
down till lunch. Suddenly Christine appeared at the door. Her
face was white to the edges of her lips, and her eyes were
blazing.
"Look here, father! Have you been saying anything to Mr.
Beaton? "
4
1
## p. 7676 (#490) ###########################################
7676
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
The old man looked up at her across his coffee-cup through
his frowning brows. "No. "
Mrs. Mandel dropped her eyes, and the spoon shook in her
hand.
"Then what's the reason he don't come here any more? "
demanded the girl; and her glance darted from her father to
Mrs. Mandel. -"Oh, it's you, is it? I'd like to know who told
you to meddle in other people's business? "
"I did," said Dryfoos savagely. "I told her to ask him what
he wanted here, and he said he didn't want anything, and he's
stopped coming. That's all. I did it myself. "
"Oh, you did, did you? " said the girl, scarcely less insolently
than she had spoken to Mrs. Mandel. "I should like to know
what you did it for? I'd like to know what made you think I
wasn't able to take care of myself? I just knew somebody had
been meddling, but I didn't suppose it was you. I can manage
my own affairs in my own way, if you please, and I'll thank you
after this to leave me to myself in what don't concern you. "
"Don't concern me? You impudent jade! " her father began.
Christine advanced from the doorway toward the table; she
had her hands closed upon what seemed trinkets, some of
which glittered and dangled from them. She said, "Will you
go to him and tell him that this meddlesome minx here had no
business to say anything about me to him, and you take it all
back? "
་
"No! " shouted the old man.
"And if -"
"That's all I want of you! " the girl shouted in her turn.
"Here are your presents. " With both hands she flung the jewels
-pins and rings and earrings and bracelets-among the break-
fast dishes, from which some of them sprang to the floor. She
stood a moment to pull the intaglio ring from the finger where
Beaton put it a year ago, and dashed that at her father's plate.
Then she whirled out of the room, and they heard her running.
up-stairs.
The old man made a start toward her, but he fell back in
his chair before she was gone, and with a fierce, grinding move-
ment of his jaws controlled himself. "Take-take those things
up," he gasped to Mrs. Mandel. He seemed unable to rise again
from his chair; but when she asked him if he were unwell, he
said no with an air of offense, and got quickly to his feet. He
mechanically picked up the intaglio ring from the table while
## p. 7677 (#491) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7677
he stood there, and put it on his little finger; his hand was not
much bigger than Christine's. "How do you suppose she found
it out? " he asked after a moment.
"She seems to have merely suspected it," said Mrs. Mandel
in a tremor, and with the fright in her eyes which Christine's
violence had brought there.
"Well, it don't make any difference. She had to know some-
how, and now she knows. " He started toward the door of the
library, as if to go into the hall, where his hat and coat always
hung.
"Mr. Dryfoos," palpitated Mrs. Mandel, "I can't remain here,
after the language your daughter has used to me - I can't let
you leave me I-I'm afraid of her- »
"Lock yourself up, then," said the old man rudely. He
added, from the hall before he went out, "I reckon she'll quiet
down now. "
He took the Elevated road. The strike seemed a very far-off
thing, though the paper he bought to look up the stock market
was full of noisy typography about yesterday's troubles on the
surface lines. Among the millionaires in Wall Street there was
some joking and some swearing, but not much thinking about
the six thousand men who had taken such chances in their at-
tempt to better their condition. Dryfoos heard nothing of the
strike in the lobby of the Stock Exchange, where he spent two
or three hours watching a favorite stock of his go up and go
down under the betting. By the time the exchange closed it had
risen eight points, and on this and some other investments he
was five thousand dollars richer than he had been in the morn-
ing. But he had expected to be richer still, and he was by no
means satisfied with his luck. All through the excitement of his
winning and losing had played the dull, murderous rage he felt
toward the child who had defied him, and when the game was
over and he started home, his rage mounted into a sort of frenzy:
he would teach her, he would break her.
He walked a long way
without thinking, and then waited for a car.
hailed a passing coupé.
None came, and he
"What has got all the cars? " he demanded of the driver, who
jumped down from his box to open the door for him and get his
direction.
"Hasn't been any car along
"Been away? " asked the driver.
for a week.
Strike. "
## p. 7678 (#492) ###########################################
7678
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
"Oh yes," said Dryfoos. He felt suddenly giddy, and he re-
mained staring at the driver after he had taken his seat.
The man asked, "Where to? "
Dryfoos could not think of his street or number, and he said
with uncontrollable fury, "I told you once! Go up to West
Eleventh, and drive along slow on the south side; I'll show you
the place. "
He could not remember the number of Every Other Week
office, where he suddenly decided to stop before he went home.
He wished to see Fulkerson, and ask him something about
Beaton: whether he had been about lately, and whether he had
dropped any hint of what had happened concerning Christine;
Dryfoos believed that Fulkerson was in the fellow's confidence.
There was nobody but Conrad in the counting-room, whither
Dryfoos returned after glancing into Fulkerson's empty office.
"Where's Fulkerson? " he asked, sitting down with his hat on.
"He went out a few moments ago," said Conrad, glancing at
the clock. "I'm afraid he isn't coming back again to-day, if you
wanted to see him. "
Dryfoos twisted his head sidewise and upward to indicate
March's room. "That other fellow out, too? "
"He went just before Mr. Fulkerson," answered Conrad.
"Do you generally knock off here in the middle of the after-
noon? " asked the old man.
"No," said Conrad, as patiently as if his father had not been
there a score of times, and found the whole staff of Every Other
Week at work between four and five. "Mr. March, you know,
takes a good deal of his work home with him, and I suppose
Mr. Fulkerson went out so early because there isn't much doing
to-day. Perhaps it's the strike that makes it dull. "
"The strike-yes! It's a pretty piece of business to have
everything thrown out because a parcel of lazy hounds want
a chance to lay off and get drunk. " Dryfoos seemed to think
that Conrad would make some answer to this, but the young
man's mild face merely saddened, and he said nothing. "I've
got a coupé out there now that I had to take because I couldn't
get a car. If I had my way I'd have a lot of those vagabonds
hung. They're waiting to get the city into a snarl, and then
rob the houses-pack of dirty, worthless whelps. They ought to
call out the militia and fire into 'em. Clubbing is too good for
them. "
## p. 7679 (#493) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7679
Conrad was still silent; and his father sneered, "But I reckon.
you don't think so. "
"I think the strike is useless," said Conrad.
"Oh, you do, do you? Comin' to your senses a little. Gettin'
tired walkin' so much. I should like to know what your gentle-
men over there on the east side think about the strike, any-
way. "
The young fellow dropped his eyes. "I am not authorized to
speak for them. "
"Oh, indeed! And perhaps you're not authorized to speak for
yourself? "
"Father, you know we don't agree about these things. I'd
rather not talk -»
"But I'm goin' to make you talk this time! " cried Dryfoos,
striking the arm of the chair he sat in with the side of his fist.
A maddening thought of Christine came over him. "As long as
you eat my bread, you have got to do as I say. I won't have
my children telling me what I shall do and shan't do, or take on
airs of being holier than me. Now you just speak up!
Do you
think those loafers are right, or don't you? Come! "
Conrad apparently judged it best to speak. "I think they
were very foolish to strike at this time, when the elevated
roads can do the work. "
«< Oh, at this time, heigh! And I suppose they think over
there on the east side that it 'd been wise to strike before we
got the Elevated? »
Conrad again refused to answer; and his father roared, "What
do you think? »
"I think a strike is always bad business. It's war; but some-
times there don't seem any other way for the workingmen to
get justice. They say that sometimes strikes do raise the wages,
after a while. "
-
"Those lazy devils were paid enough already," shrieked the
old man. "They got two dollars a day. How much do you
think they ought to 'a' got? Twenty? "
Conrad hesitated, with a beseeching look at his father. But
he decided to answer. "The men say that with partial work,
and fines, and other things, they get sometimes a dollar, and
sometimes ninety cents a day. "
"They lie, and you know they lie," said his father, rising and
coming toward him. "And what do you think the upshot of it
## p. 7680 (#494) ###########################################
7680
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
all will be, after they've ruined business for another week, and
made people hire hacks, and stolen the money of honest men?
How is it going to end? "
They will have to give in. "
"Oh, give in, heigh! And what will you say then, I should
like to know? How will you feel about it then? Speak! "
"I shall feel as I do now. I know you don't think that way,
and I don't blame you-or anybody. But if I have got to say
how I shall feel, why, I shall feel sorry they didn't succeed; for
I believe they have a righteous cause, though they go the wrong
way to help themselves. "
His father came close to him, his eyes blazing, his teeth set.
"Do you dare to say that to me? "
"Yes. I can't help it. I pity them; my whole heart is with
those poor men. "
"You impudent puppy! " shouted the old man. He lifted his
hand and struck his son in the face. Conrad caught his hand
with his own left, and while the blood began to trickle from
a wound that Christine's intaglio ring had made in his temple,
he looked at him with a kind of grieving wonder, and said,
"Father! "
The old man wrenched his fist away, and ran out of the
house. He remembered his address now, and he gave it as he
plunged into the coupé. He trembled with his evil passion, and
glared out of the windows at the passers as he drove home; he
only saw Conrad's mild, grieving, wondering eyes, and the blood
slowly trickling from the wound in his temple.
Conrad went to the neat set bowl in Fulkerson's comfortable
room and washed the blood away, and kept bathing the wound
with the cold water till it stopped bleeding. The cut was not
deep, and he thought he would not put anything on it. After a
while he locked up the office, and started out, he hardly knew
where. But he walked on, in the direction he had taken, till he
found himself in Union Square, on the pavement in front of Bren-
tano's. It seemed to him that he heard some one calling gently
to him, "Mr. Dryfoos! "
## p.
7681 (#495) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7681
CONRAD looked confusedly around, and the same voice said
again, "Mr. Dryfoos! " and he saw that it was a lady speaking to
him from a coupé beside the curbing, and then he saw that it
was Miss Vance.
She smiled when he gave signs of having discovered her, and
came up to the door of her carriage. "I am so glad to meet
you. I have been longing to talk to somebody; nobody seems to
feel about it as I do. Oh, isn't it horrible? Must they fail? I
saw cars running on all the lines as I came across; it made me
sick at heart. Must those brave fellows give in? And everybody
seems to hate them so-I can't bear it. " Her face was estranged
with excitement, and there were traces of tears on it. «You
must think me almost crazy to stop you in the street this way;
but when I caught sight of you I had to speak. I knew you
would sympathize. I knew you would feel as I do. Oh, how
can anybody help honoring those poor men for standing by one
another as they do? They are risking all they have in the world
for the sake of justice! Oh, they are true heroes! They are
staking the bread of their wives and children on the chance
they've taken! But no one seems to understand it. No one
seems to see that they are willing to suffer more now, that other
poor men may suffer less hereafter. And those wretched creat-
ures that are coming in to take their places—those traitors! ”
"We can't blame them for wanting to earn a living, Miss
Vance," said Conrad.
"No, no! I don't blame them. Who am I, to do such a
thing? It's we-people like me, of my class-who make the
poor betray one another. But this dreadful fighting- this hideous
paper is full of it! »
She held up an extra, crumpled with her
nervous reading. "Can't something be done to stop it? Don't
you think that if some one went among them, and tried to make
them see how perfectly hopeless it was to resist the companies
and drive off the new men, he might do some good? I have
wanted to go and try it; but I am a woman, and I mustn't! I
shouldn't be afraid of the strikers, but I'm afraid of what people
would say! " Conrad kept pressing his handkerchief to the cut
in his temple, which he thought might be bleeding, and now
she noticed this. "Are you hurt, Mr. Dryfoos? You look so
pale. »
"No, it's nothing a little scratch I've got. "
XIII-481
—
-
## p. 7682 (#496) ###########################################
7682
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
"Indeed you look pale. Have you a carriage? How will you
get home? Will you get in here with me, and let me drive
you? »
"No, no," said Conrad, smiling at her excitement. "I'm per-
fectly well- »
"And you don't think I'm foolish and wicked for stopping you
here, and talking in this way? But I know you feel as I do! "
"Yes, I feel as you do. You are right-right in every way.
I mustn't keep you. Good-by. " He stepped back to bow, but
she put her beautiful hand out of the window, and when he took
it she wrung his hand hard.
"Thank you, thank you! You are good, and you are just!
But no one can do anything. It's useless! "
The type of irreproachable coachman on the box, whose
respectability had suffered through the strange behavior of his
mistress in this interview, drove quickly off at her signal, and
Conrad stood a moment looking after the carriage. His heart
was full of joy; it leaped; he thought it would burst. As he
turned to walk away, it seemed to him as if he mounted upon
the air. The trust she had shown him, the praise she had given.
him, that crush of the hand-he hoped nothing, he formed no
idea from it, but it all filled him with love, and cast out the pain
and shame he had been suffering. He believed that he could
never be unhappy any more; the hardness that was in his mind
toward his father went out of it: he saw how sorely he had tried
him; he grieved that he had done it: but the means, the differ-
ence of his feeling about the cause of their quarrel,- he was
solemnly glad of that since she shared it. He was only sorry for
his father. "Poor father! " he said under his breath as he went
along. He explained to her about his father in his revery, and
she pitied his father too.
He was walking over toward the west side, aimlessly at first,
and then at times with the longing to do something to save those
mistaken men from themselves, forming itself into a purpose.
Was not that what she meant, when she bewailed her woman's
helplessness? She must have wished him to try if he, being a
man, could not do something: or if she did not, still he would
try; and if she heard of it, she would recall what she had said,
and would be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of her
pleasure in what he was going to do, he forgot almost what it
was; but when he came to a street-car track he remembered it,
## p. 7683 (#497) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7683
and looked up and down to see if there were any turbulent
gathering of men, whom he might mingle with and help to keep
from violence. He saw none anywhere; and then suddenly, as if
at the same moment,- for in his exalted mood all events had
a dream-like simultaneity,- he stood at the corner of an avenue,
and in the middle of it, a little way off, was a street car, and
around the car a tumult of shouting, cursing, struggling men.
The driver was lashing his horses forward, and a policeman was
at their heads, with the conductor, pulling them; stones, clubs,
brickbats hailed upon the car, the horses, the men trying to
move them. The mob closed upon them in a body; and then
a patrol wagon whirled up from the other side, and a squad of
policemen leaped out and began to club the rioters. Conrad could
see how they struck them under the rims of their hats; the blows
on their skulls sounded as if they had fallen on stone; the riot-
ers ran in all directions.
One of the officers rushed up toward the corner where Conrad
stood, and then he saw at his side a tall old man with a long
white beard. He was calling out at the policeman: "Ah yes!
Glup the strikerss-gif it to them! Why don't you co and glup
the bresidents that insoalt your lawss, and gick your Boart of
Arpidration out of toors? Glup the strikerss-they cot no friendts!
They cot no money to pribe you, to dreat you! "
The officer whirled his club, and the old man threw his left
arm up to shield his head. Conrad recognized Lindau, and now
he saw the empty sleeve dangle in the air, over the stump of
his wrist. He heard a shot in that turmoil beside the car, and
something seemed to strike him in the breast. He was going to
say to the policeman, "Don't strike him! He's an old soldier!
You see he has no hand! " but he could not speak, he could
not move his tongue. The policeman stood there; he saw his
face: it was not bad, not cruel; it was like the face of a statue,
fixed, perdurable; a mere image of irresponsible and involun-
tary authority. Then Conrad fell forward, pierced through the
heart by that shot fired from the car.
March heard the shot as he scrambled out of his car, and at
the same moment he saw Lindau drop under the club of the
policeman, who left him where he fell, and joined the rest of
the squad in pursuing the rioters. The fighting round the car
in the avenue ceased; the driver whipped his horses into a gal-
lop, and the place was left empty.
## p. 7684 (#498) ###########################################
7684
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
March would have liked to run; he thought how his wife had
implored him to keep away from the rioting; but he could not
have left Lindau lying there if he would. Something stronger
than his will drew him to the spot, and there he saw Conrad
dead beside the old man.
IN THE Cares which Mrs. March shared with her husband that
night she was supported partly by principle, but mainly by the
potent excitement which bewildered Conrad's family and took all
reality from what had happened. It was nearly midnight when
the Marches left them and walked away toward the Elevated
station with Fulkerson. Everything had been done by that time
that could be done; and Fulkerson was not without that satisfac-
tion in the business-like dispatch of all the details which attends
each step in such an affair, and helps to make death tolerable
even to the most sorely stricken. We are creatures of the
moment; we live from one little space to another, and only one
interest at a time fills these. Fulkerson was cheerful when they
got into the street, almost gay; and Mrs. March experienced a
rebound from her depression which she felt that she ought not
to have experienced. But she condoned the offense a little in
herself, because her husband remained so constant in his grav-
ity; and pending the final accounting he must make her for
having been where he could be of so much use from the first
instant of the calamity, she was tenderly, gratefully proud of all
the use he had been to Conrad's family, and especially his mis-
erable old father. To her mind March was the principal actor
in the whole affair, and much more important in having seen
it than those who had suffered in it. In fact, he had suffered
incomparably.
"Well, well," said Fulkerson, "they'll get along now.
We've
done all we could, and there's nothing left but for them to bear
it. Of course it's awful, but I guess it'll come out all right. I
mean," he added, "they'll pull through now. "
"I suppose," said March, "that nothing is put on us that we
can't bear. But I should think," he went on musingly, "that
when God sees what we poor finite creatures can bear, hemmed
round with this eternal darkness of death, he must respect us. "
"Basil! " said his wife. But in her heart she drew nearer to
him for the words she thought she ought to rebuke him for.
## p. 7685 (#499) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7685
“Oh, I know,” he said, "we school ourselves to despise human
nature. But God did not make us despicable; and I say, what-
ever end he meant us for, he must have some such thrill of
joy in our adequacy to fate as a father feels when his son shows
himself a man. When I think what we can be if we must, I
can't believe the least of us shall finally perish. "
"Oh, I reckon the Almighty won't scoop any of us," said
Fulkerson, with a piety of his own.
"That poor boy's father! " sighed Mrs. March. "I can't get
his face out of my sight. He looked so much worse than death. "
"Oh, death doesn't look bad," said March. "It's life that
looks so in its presence. Death is peace and pardon. I only
wish poor, poor old Lindau was as well out of it as Conrad
there. "
"Ah, Lindau! He has done harm enough," said Mrs. March.
"I hope he will be careful after this. "
son.
March did not try to defend Lindau against her theory of the
case, which inexorably held him responsible for Conrad's death.
"Lindau's going to come out all right, I guess," said Fulker-
"He was first-rate when I saw him at the hospital to-night. "
He whispered in March's ear, at a chance he got in mounting the
station stairs: "I didn't like to tell you there at the house, but
I guess you'd better know: they had to take Lindau's arm off
near the shoulder. Smashed all to pieces by the clubbing. "
In the house, vainly rich and foolishly unfit for them, the be-
reaved family whom the Marches had just left lingered together,
and tried to get strength to part for the night. They were all
spent with the fatigue that comes from heaven to such misery
as theirs, and they sat in a torpor in which each waited for the
other to move, to speak.
Christine moved, and Mela spoke. Christine rose and went
out of the room without saying a word, and they heard her going
up-stairs. Then Mela said, "I reckon the rest of us better be
goun' too, father. Here, let's git mother started. "
She put her arm round her mother, to lift her from her chair;
but the old man did not stir, and Mela called Mrs. Mandel from
the next room. Between them they raised her to her feet.
"Ain't there anybody a-goin' to set up with it? " she asked, in
her hoarse pipe. "It appears like folks hain't got any feelin's in
New York. Woon't some o' the neighbors come and offer to set
up, without waitin' to be asked ? »
## p. 7686 (#500) ###########################################
7686
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
"Oh, that's all right, mother. The men'll attend to that.
Don't you bother any," Mela coaxed, and she kept her arm round
her mother with tender patience.
"Why, Mely, child! I can't feel right to have it left to hire-
lin's, so. But there ain't anybody any more to see things done
as they ought. If Coonrod was on'y here- »
"Well, mother, you are pretty mixed! " said Mela, with a
strong tendency to break into her large guffaw. But she checked
herself and said, "I know just how you feel, though. It keeps
a-comun' and a-goun'; and it's so and it ain't so, all at once;
that's the plague of it. Well, father! Ain't you goun' to come? "
"I'm goin' to stay, Mela," said the old man gently, without
moving. "Get your mother to bed, that's a good girl. "
"You goin' to set
set up with him, Jacob? " asked the old
woman.
"Yes, 'Liz'beth, I'll set up. You go to bed. "
"Well, I will, Jacob. And I believe it'll do you good to set
up. I wished I could set up with you; but I don't seem to have
the stren'th I did when the twins died. I must git my sleep,
I don't like very well to have you broke of your rest,
Jacob, but there don't appear to be anybody else. You wouldn't
have to do it if Coonrod was here. There I go ag'in! Mercy!
so's to-
-
mercy! "
"Well, do come along, then, mother," said Mela; and she got
her out of the room, with Mrs. Mandel's help, and up the stairs.
From the top the old woman called down: "You tell Coon-
rod - »
She stopped, and he heard her groan out, "My Lord!
my Lord! »
He sat, one silence, in the dining-room where they had all
lingered together; and in the library beyond the hireling watcher
sat, another silence. The time passed, but neither moved; and
the last noise in the house ceased, so that they heard each other
breathe, and the vague, remote rumor of the city invaded the
inner stillness. It grew louder toward morning, and then Dry-
foos knew from the watcher's deeper breathing that he had fallen
into a doze.
He crept by him to the drawing-room, where his son was;
the place was full of the awful sweetness of the flowers that
Fulkerson had brought, and that lay above the pulseless breast.
The old man turned up a burner in the chandelier, and stood
looking on the majestic serenity of the dead face.
## p. 7687 (#501) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7687
He could not move when he saw his wife coming down the
stairway in the hall. She was in her long white flannel bed-
gown, and the candle she carried shook with her nervous tremor.
He thought she might be walking in her sleep; but she said
quite simply, "I woke up, and I couldn't git to sleep ag'in with-
out comin' to have a look. " She stood beside their dead son with
him. "Well, he's beautiful, Jacob. He was the prettiest baby!
And he was always good, Coonrod was; I'll say that for him. I
don't believe he ever give me a minute's care in his whole life.
I reckon I liked him about the best of all the children; but I
don't know as I ever done much to show it. But you was always
good to him, Jacob; you always done the best for him, ever
since he was a little feller. I used to be afraid you'd spoil him.
sometimes in them days; but I guess you're glad now for every
time you didn't cross him. I don't suppose since the twins died
you ever hit him a lick. ”
She stooped and peered closer at the
face. "Why, Jacob, what's that there by his pore eye?
