Eugene tried to control his crawling impatience, his passionate desire to burst into oaths of annoyance. He tried to smile.
“Of course, it’s not against the law, Martin. You have most certainly been hearing fairy tales. We give the men what we call ‘scrip.’ You see, they are ignorant wretches, Slavs and Poles and Germans, who are as innocent as children and would not know how to handle sums of real money. They would probably waste it or drink it up. So we provide them with scrip, which is the value of their wages, and provide stores on the grounds wherein they are certain to get their money’s worth. We provide them with better homes than they ever had in their own countries, and as they are a provincial people, close-knit, they prefer only their familiar friends, so feel no hardship in not associating with outside strangers. When they are ill, we provide doctors at our own expense. We provide burial. So,” he ended with a smile, “we are not slave-owners or drivers. We are really excessively kind to our workmen and their families. But you must have known of this condition for a long time. It is not new with us. After all, you have an equal interest with Ernest.”
“I didn’t know!” exclaimed Martin passionately. “It’s my fault, too! Your arguments are like Ernest’s: they sound reasonable and just and valid. But I can’t be fooled this time, Eugene! In spite of your arguments. I know there is something wrong here. How about the children? Do they go to school? No?”
“They are peasants,” said Eugene coldly. “They are unteachable. Learning would do them no good. Beasts of burden.”
“That is a lie, Eugene! They are human creatures, with souls and minds. Not beasts. You have no right to imprison them so. Your arguments are false. There is something most terribly wrong here, and I’m going to see for myself.”
Eugene shrugged; his heavy mouth became sullen and contemptuous. “We do not see eye to eye, Martin. I assure you that I am not a monster. The original idea, of course, was Ernest’s. I believe he studied the mills in Pittsburgh, and came to the conclusion that it would do very well here, also. But I, myself, am convinced that this is very good for the men, to be protected so, and that you must remember their origin and their stupidity, and their ignorance. They must be protected like children, and we must also protect ourselves.” The rain was running down his neck now, from his uncovered head, and he cursed Martin to himself.
“Yes, I can easily see that this would be Ernest’s idea,” said Martin bitterly. “It sounds like him. But these men have children, and their children will have children. We have no serfdom in America. You can’t confine these people forever! It is slavery! No government, even for the sake of patents, would have it so. And you give them no money. Oh, I can see a thousand holes in your arguments! You take back the scrip you give them for their wages in your stores; you allow them nothing for savings, for little decencies and pleasures. And I can well imagine how much and the kind of medical treatment you allow them! If they want to leave, to look for work elsewhere, to find better living conditions, you keep them here, like chained animals—”
“Why do you say ‘you’?” asked Eugene contemptuously. “Your profits, my good Martin, come from this, as well as ours. Your family is fed and comforted by this, your carriage moves on this, your bank account thrives from it, your luxuries and pleasantnesses are derived from this source. And your children’s inheritance comes from these mills and the labor of these people.” He tapped Martin on the shoulder with insulting familiarity. “Think it over very carefully, my Martin.”
The rain had become stronger, pelting and cold, and a wind was beginning to lash it vigorously. On this side of the wall guards patrolled, armed with rifles. Martin could see them, gigantic, uncouth men with brutal faces, moving doggedly back and forth, pausing occasionally, to spit tobacco juice or stare about them. They wore a sort of military uniform; their greatcoats ran with water, and the visors of their caps streamed with it. These men had been immensely diverted by the sight of their employer standing arguing in the rain with this strange and vehement young man. As it was now definitely dusk, they began to light lanterns, and carried them to and fro in their patrol, their boots splashing in growing puddles.
The factory stood at some distance, squat and bulky, a shapeless black mass of buildings with immense and towering chimneys which smeared stains of black and dull crimson against the darkening sky. Lights began to burn sullenly in the black walls of the factory, and the noise of the machinery quickened, became guttural thunder, as if everything were hurrying against the night. Between the factory and the walls stretched a desolate space, all flat mud and gravel, with here and there a low heap of slag or rusty iron or other débris. This flat level was pitted with shallow puddles now, which riffled with the rain. There was nothing but ugliness and desolation here, from the grim factories under a dark gray sky to the sheets of rain and its cold bleak splashing. Far to the left was another fence, lower than the main fence, and Martin could see the tops of low houses above it.
Martin was oblivious of rain and cold and the fact that his hat brim ran like eaves. He had forgotten himself and his own sensations. When aroused by injustice, cruelty or exploitation, he lost all fear, became bold and passionate, immovable and implacable. And in this implacability was something of Ernest’s implacability. But Eugene Bouchard was acutely aware of his own discomfort, and he became angrier. Martin had not answered his last argument, but had stood, regarding him mutely, his face pale and stark in the increasing dimness.
“Look you, Martin, let us go inside. I am drenched completely. My visitors will think I am quite mad. If you must argue, come with me and dry yourself, and after I have disposed of Mr. Judson and Mr. Stanton, we will continue our argument in peace and comfort.”
He started to move away in the direction of the factories, but Martin stood obstinately in his tracks. “No, Eugene, I did not come for visits or arguments. I came to see things for myself. Leave me alone. I will walk about until I have seen everything.”
“You’ll get lung fever,” protested Eugene, but his expression was such as to lead one to believe that such a culmination had a lot in its favor. “Well, I, at least, do not wish to get it. I will be in my office for another hour, if you want anything.”
He walked away, clumping solidly through puddles and mud, his hands thrust in his coat pockets, his large head bent between his shoulders. Martin looked after him for a moment. He had no really active dislike for Eugene Bouchard. He knew that Eugene imitated Ernest unconsciously, and that his harshness and roughness, his assumed coldness and relentlessness, sat on him uneasily at times. He had distinctly seen a flash of discomfort and embarrassment on that broad brown face during the argument. Martin had read much of the innate cruelty and sadism of the Latin, but he suddenly doubted that even a Latin could be so icily cruel, so remorseless and brutal as his own race, which stemmed from the Teuton. He remembered that the Latin laughed, but never tried to justify himself; he remembered that the Teuton and his stems never laugh, but always try to justify themselves. He thought the latter the greater immorality. Martin grew quite a bit older as he stood there in the gathering darkness and the rain, and he felt considerably more humble. Some measure of his single-hearted fanaticism passed from him in that short space of time, and his eye seemed to him to have grown larger, and sadder.
“Ernest,” he thought, “is like a blight on everyone’s life. He’s blighted Eugene. He blighted Pa, though I don’t believe he meant to. He has blighted me, and he’ll blight his wife and his children. And I don’t believe he consciously means to! He can’t help it; he’s like a plague, or a cyclone. But I can’t,” he added to himself with resolution, “let him go on blighting the lives of hundreds without trying to do something about it.”
He turned on his heel and walked toward the lower fence. The guards watched him curiously. Very strange conduct for a Barbour and a gentleman! Martin arrived at the fence, and discovered himself confronted by another gate. This, however, was obsequiously opened for him by another watchman, who offered to e
scort him, an offer that Martin declined.
He found himself at the end of a short travesty of a muddy street, nightmarish, muddled and distorted, heaps of helter-skelter wooden refuse, crazily lining wood sidewalks and mudhole roads. Here and there in the leaning wrecks a yellow light burned bleakly. Wisps of smoke came from low chimneys and mixed with the foggy rain, so that the air was almost unbreathable and acrid. There was little sound here, on this street, besides the bitter rumble and splash of the rain, and the distant growling and clashing from the factory. Behind some of the shacks were chicken coops, and as Martin walked down the street very slowly, he would now hear the quarrelling and squawking of chickens and the dim hopeless wailing of little children. Once or twice the shrill voice of a woman rose, nagging and hysterical and violent. And the rain came down steadily, filling the mudholes with treacherous slimy pools, and the foggy, smoky air stung his lungs. He stumbled along, for it was almost too dark to see clearly, and there were no lampposts. He noticed that not one blade of grass was to be seen, not a single garden, not the smallest of shrubs or trees. Here lived and suffered and endured a veritable abomination of poverty, hopelessness, dirt and pain. The weight of his depression and sorrow and rage were too heavy in him to be articulate, even to form themselves into conscious thought. He felt as if he were carrying a burden too heavy for breath and heart to stand. He had feared much, but not so much as this. His feet seemed to lag, to be borne down, and he had a sudden horrible thought that he was going to fall into a mudhole and drown, right there in the midst of this welter of broken shacks and mud and rain and darkness and desolation.
He was far enough along now to see that still another street lay at right angles to this one, a street no more attractive, and bounded, as was the other street, by the imprisoning wooden wall. He had almost reached the intersection when from one of the houses soared a searing cry of agony, shrill and penetrating. So sharp and high was it that it seemed scarcely human, but as it was repeated again and again, with increasing force and crescendo, he was able to control his suddenly thudding heart long enough to recognize that the cries came from some suffering child. Interspersed with the sounds of resistless anguish came the hoarse, sobbing voice of a woman, apparently trying to offer sympathy and help, and a chorus of frightened cries from other children.
Martin found himself in front of a shack of rough, unpainted boards, stained and running with water. A dim lamp burned in the one window that faced the street, a rude, uncurtained window. He stumbled through a hole of water and mud, and went to this window. He could see inside quite clearly. He saw a room whose walls and floor were of unpainted pine; it was not a large room, and its smallness was cluttered. Two rude beds almost filled it, and a number of home-made chairs. There were two or three large wicker boxes in the corners, heaped with rags and unidentifiable objects. A small iron stove fumed smokily in the center of the room. There were at least five small children crowded about the stove, and in one of the beds lay another child, tossing and screaming, throwing up its hands and legs with drowning gestures, while a slatternly woman, shapeless and haggard, tried to hold it down by force and voice. All the children were crying in sympathy, shivering in their inadequate clothing. The yellow lamplight glimmered on the pale and emaciated faces and arms, on the woman half lying on the bed, on the tortured child struggling to escape its agony.
Never in all his life, in England or in America, had Martin seen such a sight of poverty and despair. He ran to the sagging door, beat upon it passionately. The crying children stopped their wailing, but the agonized screams of the other went on and on. There was a stumbling and a movement inside, and the door was dragged open, revealing the weeping, dishevelled woman, and behind her, the crowding faces of the children, their mouths open, their eyes peering anxiously. The slightly warmer air rushed out, fetid and smoky, and Martin gasped.
“Let me come in!” he exclaimed.
The woman barred his way. He could see her dark, foreign face, her black eyes, her dragging black hair. She was staring at him with dull perplexity. He put his hand on the door, thrust it from her grasp and entered the room. The woman burst into exclamations, gestured excitedly, wrung her hands, glared at him. He looked pitifully at her terrified face, and noted the sunken cheeks, the empurpled broken lips, the eyelids swollen with tears. He looked at the children, who, shrinking from this apparition, had run behind the stove. Even the screaming baby stopped her cries and stared at him from the bed with a twisted, wizened face and bloody mouth.
He tried to smile, but his lips felt thick, and he was afraid that he was about to burst into tears. He tapped himself on the chest. “Barbour. Mr. Barbour.” Now he could smile, encouragingly. He knew he must be a strange sight, drenched and mud-stained, his hat and hair running with water, and his face pale and wild. No wonder the poor woman continued to glare at him with open terror, backing away from him toward her children, who rushed from the stove to cluster about her calico skirts. “Barbour,” he repeated, and held out his hand.
She blinked like a stupid animal. The name evidently meant something to her, but his appearance more evidently did not. So, he turned from her in despair and went to the bed. The woman shrieked, leapt forward, reached the bed the instant he did. But he bent over the child, and the lamp shone on his face. Then something in his face, so steadfast and so calm, so almost beautiful, and so kind, seemed to reassure her, for she burst out again into a torrent of guttural sounds, and began to weep. She pointed to the baby, who had resumed her screams of anguish. The child threw her limbs about, clutching at Martin’s hands with clawlike fingers, glaring at him with mad baby eyes, her mouth open and vibrating with her screams. He felt the burning and emaciated grasp on his hands, and very gently he began to examine the child. But he could ask no questions, and looked at the mother helplessly. She comprehended, turned the child on her side, and touched the ear. Martin now saw that back of the ear was a great red swelled place, humid and hot, and he knew what was wrong. Unless aid was gotten for the little one immediately, she must die. “My God!” he exclaimed, “can no one speak English here?” He looked at the children. The eldest was a boy of about ten, and he looked at Martin hesitantly. “I can. Little bit,” he muttered, frightened.
“Thank God! Look here, boy, run out there to the watchman. Send him to me. Tell him Mr. Barbour wants to talk to him right away.”
The boy, after one long stupefied stare at Martin, ran out into the rain and darkness. Within a few minutes he returned with the Irish watchman from the main gate. The panting man was much amazed and disgruntled, but his voice and manner were obsequious. He shouldered aside the woman as he tramped, wet and muddy, into the room, and stood before Martin, his hat in his hand, his club tucked under his arm.
Then for the first time Martin realized what a blessed power money was, how it could command and save, soothe agony and destroy fear, raise up and rescue. He had thought of it as something inherently evil and sinister, and here it was, an angel of mercy in robes of light! Its power rushed through him, making him feel stronger than he had ever felt in all his life, and he knew, instantly, what it was that he must do! All his confusion left him, left him free
“I want a doctor,” he said curtly to the watchman. “At once. Tell him a child here has a very bad ear, and is suffering. Tell him Mr. Barbour wants him at once. Now, run!”
The watchman hesitated, though he scraped respectfully. “But Mr. Barbour, orders is that the Superintendent must give the word—”
“Damn you!” cried Martin, to his own astonishment, “is the Superintendent named Barbour or am I? This is my factory, not the Superintendent’s! And I want the doctor or you’ll get the sack tomorrow!”
The man ran precipitately. Martin returned to the bed. He made the woman understand that he wanted warm water, and when it was brought he wiped the child’s stained face and hands, and gave the little one a cup of cold water. So gentle was he, so tender, that the baby’s screams dwindled to whimpers, and once she managed a smi
le so piteous that he could scarcely endure it. He continued to talk to her soothingly, and for a few incredible moments she actually slept with her cheek against his hand. Her mother crouched on the opposite side of the bed, and the children stood about her. They all looked at Martin as they would have looked at a deliverer or a god.
The child awoke, sobbing, and had begun to scream again, when the watchman returned with a young and shabby doctor with an amazed expression and incredulous eyes. Though Martin had never seen him before, he had seen Martin in his carriage many times, and recognizing him, was overcome with trepidation and embarrassed nervousness. He examined the child with his fine thin young hands, and then gave her a crushed tablet in water. Then standing up, he turned to Martin and shook his head. “She ought to have had a doctor before this,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir, but it’s septic ear. They do operations on it, now, but it’s very dangerous, and almost always fatal. But I think it’s even too late for that, Mr. Barbour.”
Martin looked back at him steadily and quietly. “Look here, nothing must be spared for this child. She must have everything. How about a hospital? Nurses? A doctor from New York or Philadelphia?”
The young doctor shook his head slightly. “Our hospitals aren’t—aren’t very good, sir. Pesthouses of infection. It’s the crime of the nineteenth century, that no one has ever done anything about our hospitals. Worse than prisons, and not much cleaner. Mr. Barbour, sir, you can’t realize what is going on in the world! Only a doctor knows. And we’re helpless. Our hospitals aren’t fit for dogs, and no one tries to do anything about it. We have no adequate nursing, only women who are little better than outcasts, drudges and drunken slatterns. Every doctor knows what is needed, but the poor ones are helpless, and the rich are indifferent. Wealthy people can have the best in their own homes—” He gestured helplessly. “For the poor, they can get along by the casual help of nature, or die. Sometimes death is best for them. Hospitals sometimes prolong their suffering, or kill them quicker.” His young face became hard and twisted with bitterness.
Dynasty of Death Page 43