Chapter XIX Mischief Afoot
My first thought in accepting Mercy Fillmore’s commission had been to intrust her letter to one of my men. But once outside the house, it dawned upon me that I held in my hand a provident excuse to seek the conspirators in their lair. The hint by which Parks had roused such enviable anxiety corroborated the information I had received from my spy service. The campaign of action was evidently at hand, and I might possibly learn from a personal visit what I could not learn through others—provided I could pass unchallenged through the doors of the House of Blazes. The letter I held was a card of admission certain to be honored, if Parks were there. For the rest, chance must serve to expose or to conceal the plans that were keeping the agitators’ committees in prolonged session.
H. Blasius received me with reserve born of suspicion, and his bleary eyes searched my face coldly at my name and my demand for Parks.
“Meestaire Park? Why do you want him?” he inquired at last.
“I have a very important message for him,” I replied.
“Gif to me ze message,” said Blasius. “When Meestaire Park he come, he shall have it.”
“I couldn’t give it to you,” I said. “I am to deliver it into his hands only. And I can tell you that he will be very angry if there’s any delay about it.”
H. Blasius’ pasty face took on an expression of dismay at the thought of an angry Parks, and with a grumbling of French interjections that suggested the cracking of his ill-regulated internal machinery, he waddled to a doorway at the end of the bar, and disappeared up a box stairway.
I looked around the saloon at the dozen or more men who lounged about in varying degrees of alcoholic stupefaction, and had just noted a group of men half concealed at a table at the farther end of the L of the room, when a rapid step descended the stairs, and Parks appeared.
“Hampden!” he cried, shaking my hand. “What can I do for you? It is a surprise to see you here.”
“If I need an apology for intruding, here is a good one.” And I held out Mercy’s letter.
Parks seized it with a start of emotion as he recognized the handwriting, looked about with apparent thought of the profanation of reading Mercy’s words in that place, and then giving me a nod to follow him, strode to a secluded table and opened the letter. His face lost something of its aggressive resolution as he read and re-read the pages.
“Hampden,” he said in a softened voice, “did you ever realize that the sympathies of women are individual and concrete? The welfare of the masses is but a shadow to them, except as they see it through some one they know and care for. Here my petty personal welfare is put before the interests of the whole people!” And he laid a monitory finger on the letter. “I am asked to give up an enterprise of the greatest moment lest I shall get my head cracked or be thrown into prison.”
“Would you have her think otherwise?”
He looked at the letter without answering. Then he thrust it into his pocket, gave his head a shake, and his face was once more dominated by the aggressive spirit of the agitator.
“I don’t deny it is pleasant to be considered worth a moment of anxiety; but it is weakening to the resolution. It is something that must have no part in my life.”
“Good heavens, Parks! You don’t mean to say that you would give up the chance to get a girl like Mercy Fillmore, just for the sake of making speeches about—” It was on the tip of my tongue to say “the riffraff,” but in deference to the prejudices of my listener, I ended weakly with “—people who don’t care a snap of their fingers for you?”
Parks was silent for some seconds, and he studied the table with a far-away look in his eyes.
“Do you think I have a chance?” he asked.
“Great Scott, man, how much encouragement do you want? Why, if a young lady I could name—and won’t—showed half as much interest in my personal safety as this girl is showing in yours, I’d be down on my knees at once.”
He looked in my eyes, with something of frank boyishness, for the first time, showing under the enthusiast and dreamer.
“I don’t mind confessing to you, Hampden, that I’ve been in love with that girl ever since we were school children together. But I think you overestimate her interest in me. She is a very sympathetic person, and—” He did not finish the sentence, but gave his hand a wave that made her anxieties include the entire circle of her acquaintance. “It was her work among the suffering poor that led me to the studies that have shown me the rights of man and the wrongs of society. But, I have resolved, Hampden, before I say a word, to accomplish something—to make myself known—to strike a blow for the regeneration of mankind that shall make the nations ring.”
His voice had risen in the oratorical fervor of his last sentence, until it attracted attention from the group at the lower end of the room, and a chorus of voices called “Parks! Parks!”
“Here!” responded Parks. “What’s wanted?” And rising, with a wave of the hand that summoned me to follow him, he strode to the farther end of the L where a group of five or six men sat around a table.
Dominating the group, I recognized Denis Kearney, talking with grandiose bonhomie to his companions. There was a self-satisfied look on his face, and something of arrogance was added to his bearing. A brief experience of public applause had banished the simplicity from his countenance, and in its place had come the indefinable lines of calculation, ambition and authority. He was leaning back in his tilted chair, but came to his feet as we approached. He shook hands warmly with Parks, and remembered me as though he were conferring a favor.
“I’ve shaken thousands of hands this day,” he said as he gave me a grip. “It’s harder worrk than hefting barrels, but it’s worrk in a good cause. We’ll drive the haythins into the say in a month.”
Parks introduced me with a wave of the hand to the men about the table, and Kearney continued:
“Well, we’d better be thinkin’ of the program for to-morrow night, and how to get our tarriers out. I’ve got something to say about the police interferin’ with our meeting last night that ought to raise the timperature about forty degrees.”
“I’ve been thinking about the speeches,” said Parks, “and I’ve concluded it’s time to swing ’em round.”
“Swing ’em round to what?” demanded a tall man with a black mustache, who had been introduced to me as Enos.
“The overthrow of capitalism,” responded Parks, his face aglow. “The Chinese cry is a good thing to rouse ’em with, but the Chinese question is only a little corner of the real issue before the people. Capitalism, plutocracy—these must be put down before the people can come to their rights, and it’s time we told ’em so.”
There was a minute of silence, and the agitators looked about the table as if each sought to read the others’ thoughts.
“That’s all well enough, Parks,” said Kearney at last, “but we’ve tried ’em on that, an’ it’s no go. Whin I tell ’em the haythin is taking the bread out of their mouths and ivery pigtail ought to be driven into the say, they holler till I can’t hear me own voice. But whin I tell thim that society has got to be reorganized, an’ that times will niver be right till the collective capital of the nation is administhered by the nation’s ripresintatives—those are the worrds, aren’t they, Parks?—they shake their heads and say, ‘What th’ divil is he dhrivin’ at?’ I can git five thousand men to follow me to Chinatown to-night to burn the haythin out if I but say th’ worrd, but I couldn’t git fifty to follow me to the City Hall to turn th’ mayor out.”
The others nodded assent to Kearney’s words; but Parks’ face had been growing blacker and blacker, and now he broke forth impetuously:
“By heavens! If they don’t see their own interests, they must be made to see them. What are our tongues given us for but to tell them of the things they can’t see for themselves? The wrong, degradation and poverty we see about us are no more due to the petty evils of Chinese competition than to the wearing of machine-made shoes. They are due to the control of industry by capital—to the system that puts a thousand men to work for the benefit of one man instead of for the benefit of all men. The Chinese now do injure the white man. But you put the capital and labor of the nation under control of the nation’s representatives, and the labor of the Chinese would injure nobody—would help instead of hurt. The more the Chinaman produced, the more there would be to divide, and the less the Chinaman lived on, the more there would be for the rest of us. We must make capital the servant, not the master, of mankind. Wipe out the old system! Bring in the new!” Parks had grown more and more excited as he talked, and his hair stood out aggressively from the emphatic nods with which he had pointed his declamation.
“Do you mean that you want us to start a rebellion?” growled Enos.
“Successful rebellions are revolutions,” cried Parks, “and it is a revolution that society demands.”
“Well, society isn’t demanding it out loud,” said Kearney.
“We must work through the ballot-box,” said Enos, “we must keep within the law.”
At this word there was a harsh croak behind me, and I turned to see the white pasty face of H. Blasius gloating over us, his fat forefinger pointed at Enos.
“Law!” he cried. “It is ze superstition of politique imposed on us by ze capitalist, as ze superstition of moral is imposed on us by ze priest. When we say Non—no more for us—zen it is gone—we are free. Let us say Pouf! away! we make laws to suit ourself. Eh, mes braves?”
“Pooh!” said Enos. “You’re talking nonsense.”
“Nonsense? Poltron!” answered Blasius with contempt. “It take but a few barricade and two free t’ousand men to defend zem, and—boum! We have ze city. I was of ze Commune, and I tell you so. And instead of Marchons, you say Nonsense. Eh-h, cowarrd!”
Enos jumped to his feet, his dark face flushing angrily. His fists were doubled, and if Blasius had been a younger man, I should have witnessed the beginning of civil war in the camp of the agitators. But Enos held his arm before the gray hairs of the ex-Communard, and before the quarrel could be warmed by further words, there was an interruption that turned all thoughts from private disputes. A man burst through the swinging doors of the saloon and ran down to our table.
“Waldorf!” cried Parks.
I looked with interest at this leader of the Council of Nine—a tall, large-faced man, whose square jaw, spare cheeks, and bulging brows gave promise of force.
“It has come!” he cried.
“What?” cried Parks, springing to his feet. “The word from the brethren?”
“Just as good,” said Waldorf, waving a newspaper excitedly before the group. “See this!” And as he unfolded the sheet we could see the printed announcement of an extra edition.
Parks seized the paper, and cried out the headlines:
“Riot and Bloodshed—Pittsburgh in Flames—Railroad Shops Wrecked by a Furious Mob—Troops Cooped up in the Roundhouse and Compelled to Surrender! Fighting in Baltimore. Mob Law Rules a Dozen Cities.”
The men about the table looked at one another in silence, and the pallor of fear or excitement spread upon their faces.
“That’s the signal,” said Waldorf. “I wish we were better prepared.”
“Prepare’!” cried Blasius scornfully. “We need no more. We have arrms. We can make ze barricade. We have leaders—plans. All we need is ze brave heart, and—boum!—we arre ze government!”
“What are you going to do?” asked Kearney uneasily. I saw that he was not in the full confidence of the Council of Nine, and was disturbed at this glimpse of its plans.
“Here’s what we are going to do,” said Parks, who had resumed his seat and scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper. “This news settles the plans for to-morrow night’s meeting, and this is the way we’ll call it.” And he read out his composition with fervor:
NOTICE OF MEETING
The working-men and women of San Francisco will meet en masse this (Monday) evening, at 7:30, on the City Hall lots, to express their sympathy and take other action in regard to their fellow workmen at Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Prominent speakers will address the meeting. By order of
COMMITTEE.
“Hm-m!” said Kearney, with no evidence of enthusiasm in his tone. “That’ll bring ’em out, I suppose.”
“Just the thing!” said Waldorf, with warm appreciation of his colleague’s work. “It should call out every man and woman who is in sympathy with the oppressed toilers. ‘To express sympathy and take other action in regard to their fellow workmen.’ That’s well put, Parks.”
“What other action are you going to take?” asked Enos suspiciously.
“Come to the meeting and see,” said Parks.