But Jimmie was more careful now in his agitations. He had brought
such distress into his home by his jail sentence, that he had been
forced to make promises to Lizzie. Her anxiety for her children
could no longer be kept to herself; and this caused a certain amount
of friction between them, and sent Jimmie out grumbling at his lot
in life. What was the use of trying to educate a woman, who could
see no farther than her own kitchen-stove? When you wanted to be a
world-saviour, to walk tip-toe on the misty mountain-tops of
heroism, she dragged you down and chained you to the commonplace,
taking all the zest and fervour out of your soul! The memories of
"seam-squirrels" and of thin coffee and ill-smelling and greasy soup
had slipped somewhat into the background of Jimmie's mind, and he
lived again the sublime hour when he had confronted the court and
stood for the fundamental rights of an American citizen. He wanted
to have that act of daring appreciated at its true value. Poor,
blind, home-keeping Lizzie, who could not fulfil these deeper needs
of her husband's soul!

Jimmie had been, so far in his married life, as well domesticated as
could be expected of a proletarian propagandist. He had yearned to
own a home of his own, and meantime had manifested his repressed
wish by getting a big packing-box and some broken shingles, and
building a model play-house for Jimmie Junior in the back yard. He
had even found time on his tired and crowded Sundays to start a
garden in midsummer, the season when the local was least active. But
now, of course, the war had come to obsess his mind, driving him to
terror for the future of humanity, tempting him to martyrdoms and
domestic irritations.




II



It was at this critical period in Jimmie's life that there appeared
in Leesville a vivid young person by the name of Evelyn Baskerville.
Evelyn was no tired kitchen slave--with her fluffy brown hair, her
pert little dimples, her trim figure, her jaunty hat with a turkey
feather stuck on one side of her head. Evelyn was a stenographer and
proclaimed herself an advanced feminist; at her first visit she set
the local upside down. It happened to be "social evening", when all
the men smoked, and this "free" young thing took a cigarette from
her escort and puffed it all over the place. This, of course, would
not have made a stir in great centres of culture such as London and
Greenwich Village; but in Leesville it was the first time that the
equality of women had been interpreted to mean that the women should
adopt the vices of the men.

Then Evelyn had produced from her handbag some leaflets on Birth
Control, and proposed that the local should undertake their
distribution. This was a new subject in Leesville, and while the
members supposed it was all right, they found it embarrassing to
have the matter explained too fully in open meeting. Evelyn wanted a
"birth strike", as the surest means of ending the war; she wanted
the Worker to take up this programme, and did not conceal her
contempt for reactionaries in the movement who still wanted to
pretend that babies were brought by storks. The delicate subject was
finally "tabled", and when the meeting adjourned and the members
walked home, everyone was talking about Miss Baskerville--the men
mostly talking with the men, and the women with the women.

Pretty soon it became evident that the vivid and dashing young
person was setting her cap for Comrade Gerrity, the organizer. As
Gerrity was an eligible young bachelor, that was all right. But
then, a little later, it began to be suspected that she had designs
upon Comrade Claudel, the Belgian jeweller. Doubtless she had a
right to make her choice between them; but some of the women were of
the opinion that she took too long to choose; and finally one or two
malicious ones began to say that she had no intention of
choosing--she wanted both.

And then fell a thunderbolt into Jimmie's life. It was just after
his arrest when fame still clung to him; and after the meeting
Comrade Baskerville came up and engaged him in conversation. How did
it feel to be a jailbird? When he told her that it felt fine, she
bade him not be too proud--she had served thirty days for picketing
in a shirt-waist strike! As she looked at him, her pretty brown eyes
sparkled with mischief, and her wicked little dimples lost no
curtain-calls. Poor, humble Jimmie was stirred to his shoe-tips, for
he had never before received the attentions of such a fascinating
creature--unless perchance it had been to sell her a newspaper, or
to beg the price of a sandwich in his tramp days. Here was one of
the wonderful things about the Socialist movement, that it broke
down the barriers of class, and gave you exciting glimpses of higher
worlds of culture and charm!

Comrade Baskerville continued to flash her dimples and her wit at
Jimmie, despite the fact that Comrade Gerrity and Comrade Claudel
and several other moths were hovering about the candle-flame, and
all the women in the local watching out of the corners of their
eyes. Finally, to Jimmie's unutterable consternation, the vivid
young goddess of Liberty inquired, "Wouldn't you like to walk home
with me, Comrade Higgins?" He stammered, "Yes"; and they went out,
the young goddess plying him with questions about conditions in the
jail, and displaying most convincing erudition on the subject of the
economic aspects of criminology--at the same time seeming entirely
oblivious to the hoverings of the other moths, and the disgust of
the unemancipated ladies of Local Leesville.




III



They walked down the street together, and first Comrade Baskerville
shivered with horror at the "seam-squirrels", and then exclaimed
with delight over the conversion of "Dead-eye Mike" to Socialism,
and then made merry over the singing of the Internationale in the
police-station. Had she discovered a "character" in this seemingly
insignificant little machinist? At any rate, she plied him with
questions about his past life and his ideas. When he told her of his
starved and neglected childhood, she murmured sympathetically, and
it seemed to the fascinated Jimmie that here was a woman who
understood instinctively all the cravings of his soul. She laid her
hand on his arm, and it was as if an angel were touching
him--strange little thrills ran like currents of electricity all
over him.

Yes, Comrade Baskerville could appreciate his sufferings, because
she had suffered too. She had had a stepmother, and had run away
from home at an early age and fought her own way. That was why she
stood so firmly for woman's emancipation--she knew the slavery of
her sex through bitter experience. There were many men who believed
in sex-equality as a matter of words, but had no real conception of
it in action; as for the women--well, you might see right here in
the local the most narrow, bourgeois ideas dominating their minds.
Jimmie did not know what ideas Comrade Baskerville meant, but he
knew that her voice was musical and full of quick changes that made
him shiver.

He was supposed to be taking her home; but he had no idea where she
lived, and apparently she had no idea either, for they just wandered
on and on, talking about all the wonderful new ideas that were
stirring the minds of men and women. Did Comrade Higgins believe in
trial marriages? Comrade Higgins had never heard of this wild idea
before, but he listened, and bravely concealed his dismay. What
about the children? The eager feminist answered there need not be
any children. Unwanted children were a crime! She proposed to get
the working-class women together and instruct them in the technique
of these delicate matters; and meantime, lacking the women, she was
willing to explain it to any inwardly embarrassed and quaking man
who would lend his ear.

Suddenly she stopped and cried, "Where are we?" And there came a
peal of merry laughter, as she discovered they had gone far astray.
They turned and set off in the right direction, and meantime the
lecture on advanced feminism continued. Poor Jimmie was in a
panic--tumbled this way and that. He had considered himself a
radical, because he believed in expropriating the expropriators; but
these plans for overthrowing the conventions and disbanding the
home--these left him aghast. And trilled into his ear by a vivid and
amazing young thing with a soft hand upon his arm and a faint
intoxicating perfume all about her! Why was she telling these things
to him? What did she mean? What? WHAT?




IV



They came to the house where she lived. It was late at night, and
the street was deserted. It was up to Jimmie to say good night, but
somehow he did not know how to say it. Comrade Evelyn gave him her
hand, and for some reason did not take it away again. Of course it
would not have been polite for Jimmie to have pushed it away. So he
held it, and looked at the shadowy form before him, and felt his
knees shaking. "Comrade Higgins," said the brave, girlish voice, "we
shall be friends, shall we not?" And of course, Jimmie answered that
they would--always! And the girlish voice replied, "I am GLAD!" And
then suddenly it whispered, "Good night!" and the shadowy form
turned and flitted into the house.

Jimmie walked away with the strangest tumult in his soul. It was
something which the poets had been occupied for centuries in trying
to portray, but Jimmie Higgins had no acquaintance with the poets,
and so it was a brand new thing to him, he was left to experience
the shock of it and to resolve the problems of it all alone. To be
rolled and tossed about like a man in a blanket at a college
ragging! To be a prey to bewilderment and fear, hope and longing,
despair and rebellion, delicious excitement, angry self-contempt
and tormenting doubt! Truly did that poet divine who first conceived
the symbol of the mischievous little god, who steals upon an
unsuspecting man and shoots him through the heart with a sharp and
tormenting arrow!

The worst of it was, Jimmie couldn't tell Lizzie about it. The first
time in four years that he had had a trouble he could not tell
Lizzie! He even felt ashamed, as he came home and crawled into
bed--as if he had done some dreadful wrong to Lizzie; and yet, he
would have been puzzled to tell just what the wrong was, or how he
could have avoided it. It was not he who had made the young feminist
so delicious and sweet and frank and amazing. It was not he who had
made the little god, and brewed the poison for the arrow's tip. No,
it was some power greater than himself that had prepared this
situation, some power cruel and implacable, which plots against
domestic tranquillity; perhaps it was some hireling of capitalism,
which will not permit a propagandist of social justice to do his
work in peace of soul.

Jimmie tried to hide what was going on; and of course--poor, naive
soul--he had never learned to hide anything in his life, and now was
too late to begin. The next time the local met, the women were
saying that they were disappointed in Comrade Higgins; they had
thought he was really devoted to the cause, but they saw now he was
like all the rest of the men--his head had been turned by one smile
on a pretty face. Instead of attending to his work, he was following
that Baskerville creature about, gazing at her yearningly, like a
moon-calf, making a ninny of himself before the whole room. And he
with a wife and three babies at home, waiting for him and thinking
he was hustling for the cause. When the meeting adjourned, and the
Baskerville creature accepted the invitation of Comrade Gerrity to
escort her home, the dismay of Comrade Higgins was so evident as to
be ludicrous to the whole room.




V



In the interest of common decency it was necessary for the women of
the local to take action on this matter. At least, a couple of them
thought so, and quite independently and without pre-arrangement they
called on Lizzie next day and told her that she should come more
frequently to meetings, and keep herself acquainted with the new
ideas of advanced feminism. And so when Jimmie came home that night,
he found his wife dissolved in tears and there was a most harrowing
scene.

For poor Elizabeth Huszar, pronounced Eleeza Betooser, had had no
chance whatever to familiarize herself with the new ideas of
advanced feminism. Her notions of "free unions" had been derived
from a quite different world, whose ideas were not new, but on the
contrary very, very old, and were "advanced" only on the road to
perdition. She judged Jimmie's behaviour according to thoroughly old
standards, and she was broken-hearted, overwhelmed with grief and
shame. He was like all the rest of men--and when she had fondly
thought he was different! He despised her and spit upon her--a woman
he had picked up in a brothel.

Poor Jimmie was stunned. He was conscious of no disrespect for
Lizzie, it had not occurred to him to think that she might take the
matter that way. But so she had taken it, beyond doubt, and with
intensity that frightened him. He would not have believed that so
many tears could stream from one woman's eyes--nor that his good,
broad-faced, honest wife could be so abject in her misery. "Oh, I
knowed it, I knowed it all along--it would be that way! I hadn't
never ought to married you--you know I told you so?"

"But, Lizzie!" pleaded the husband. "You're mistaken. That hadn't
nothin' to do with it."

She turned upon him wildly, her fingers stuck out as if she would
claw him. "You mean to tell me if you hadn't 'a married a woman off
the street, you'd 'a gone chasin' a fluffy-haired girl? If you'd 'a
had a decent wife, that you knowed had some rights--"

"Lizzie!" he protested in consternation. "Listen here--"

But she was not to be stopped. "Everybody said I was a fool; but I
went an' done it, 'cause you swore you'd never hold it up to me! An'
I went an' had them children"--Lizzie swept her arm at the
children, as if to wipe them off the earth, to which they had come
by a cruel mistake.

Jimmie Junior, who was old enough to know that something serious was
happening, and whose instinct was all against being wiped off the
earth, began to howl wildly; and that set off the little ones--soon
they were all three of them going at the top of their lungs.
"Boo-hoo-hoo!"

It was truly a terrible climax to a romance. Jimmie, almost
distracted, seized the hand of his injured spouse. "It's all
nonsense!" he cried. "What they been tellin' you! I ain't done a
thing, Lizzie! I only walked home with her one night."

But Lizzie answered that one night was plenty enough--she knew that
from intimate and hateful experience. "And I know them fluffy-headed
kind that frizzes their hair. What does she want to walk home at
night with married men fer? And talkin' about the things she does--"

"She don't mean no harm, Lizzie--she's tryin' to help workin' women.
It's what's called birth control--she wants to teach women--"

"If she wants to TEACH women, why don't she TALK to the women!
What's she all the time talkin' to MEN fer? You think you can tell
me tales like that--me, that's been what I have?" And Lizzie went
off into another fit, worse than ever.




VI



Jimmie found that it was with romance as with martyrdom--there was
a lot of trouble about it which the romancers did not mention. He
really felt quite dreadful, for he had a deep regard for this mother
of his little ones, and he would not have made her suffer for
anything. And she was right, too, he had to admit--her shots went
deep home. "How'd you feel, if you was to find out I'd been walkin'
home with some man?" When it was put to him that way, he realized
that he would have felt very badly indeed.

A flood of old emotions came back to him. He went in memory with his
group of roystering friends to the house of evil where he had first
met Elizabeth Huszar, pronounced Eleeza Betooser. She had taken him
to her room, and instead of making herself agreeable in the usual
way, had burst into tears. She had been ill-treated, and was
wretchedly lonely and unhappy. Jimmie asked why she did not quit the
life, and she answered that she had tried more than once, but she
could not earn a living wage; and anyhow, because she was big and
handsome, the bosses would never let her alone, and what was the
difference, if you couldn't keep away from the men?

They sat on the bed and talked, and Jimmie told her a little about
his life, and she told about hers--a pitiful and moving story. She
had been brought to America as an infant; her father had been killed
in an accident, and her mother had supported several children by
scrub-work. Lizzie had grown up in a slum on the far east side of
New York, and she could not remember a time when she had not been
sexually preyed upon; lewd little boys had taught her tricks, and
men would buy her with candy or food. And yet there had been
something in her struggling for decency; of her own volition she had
tried to go to school, in spite of her rags; and then, when she was
thirteen she had answered an advertisement for work as a nursemaid.
That story had made an especial impression upon Jimmie--it was truly
a most pitiful episode.

Her place of employment had been a "swell" apartment, with a
hall-boy and an elevator--the most wonderful place that Lizzie had
ever beheld; it was like living in Heaven, and she had tried so hard
to do what she was told, and be worthy of her beautiful mistress and
the lovely baby. But she had been there only two days when the
mistress had discovered vermin on the baby, and had come to Lizzie
and insisted on examining her head. And of course she had found
something. "Them's only nits!" Lizzie had said; she had never heard
of anybody who did not have "nits" in their hair. But the beautiful
lady had called her a vile creature, and ordered her to pack up her
things and get out of the house at once. And so Lizzie had had to
wait until she became an inmate of a brothel before anybody took the
trouble to teach her how to get the "nits" out of her hair, and how
to bathe, and to clean her finger-nails and otherwise be physically
decent.

Jimmie recalled all that, and he fell on his knees before his wife,
and caught her two hands by main force, and swore to her that he had
not done any wrong; he went on to tell her exactly what wrong he had
done, which was the best way to convince her that he had not done
any worse. He vowed again and again that he would never, never dally
with Cupid again--he would see Comrade Baskerville at once and tell
her it was "all off".

And so Lizzie looked up through her tears. "No," she said, "you
don't need to see her at all!"

"What shall I do, then?'"

"Just let her alone--don't tell her nothin'. She'll know it's off
all right."




VII



But when you have a dead romance, you cannot leave it to rot on the
highway; you are driven irresistibly to bury it decently. In spite
of his solemn promises, Jimmie found himself thinking all the time
about Comrade Baskerville, and how he would act when he met her next
time--all the noble and dignified speeches he would make to her. He
must manage to be alone with her; for of course he could not say
such things with the jealous old hags of the local staring at him.
The best thing, he decided, would be to tell her the frank and
honest truth; to tell her about Lizzie, and how good and worthy she
had been, and how deeply he realized his duty to her. And then tears
would come into Comrade Baskerville's lovely eyes, and she would
tell him that she honoured his high sense of marital responsibility.
They must renounce; but of course they would be dear and true
friends--always, always. Jimmie was holding her hands, in his fancy,
as he said these affecting words: Always! Always! He knew that he
would have to let go of the hands, but he was reluctant to do so,
and he had not quite got to the point of doing it when, walking down
Jefferson Street on his way home from work--behold, in front of him
a trim, eager little figure, tripping gaily, with a jaunty hat with
a turkey-feather stuck on one side! Jimmie knew the figure a block
away, and as he saw it coming nearer, his heart leaped up and hit
him in the bottom part of his neck, and all his beautiful speeches
flew helter-skelter out of his head.

She saw him, and the vivid, welcoming smile came upon her face. She
came up to him, and their hands clasped. "Why!" she cried. "What a
pleasant meeting!"

Jimmie gulped twice, and then began, "Comrade Baskerville--" And
then he gulped again, and began, "Comrade Baskerville--"

She stopped him. "I'm not Comrade Baskerville," she declared.

He could not get the meaning of these unexpected words.

"What?" he said.

"Haven't you heard the news?" she said, and beamed on him. "I'm
Comrade Mrs. Gerrity."

He stared at her, utterly bewildered. "I've been that for
twenty-four whole hours! Congratulate me!"

Little by little the meaning of the words began to dawn in Jimmie's
stupid head. "Comrade Mrs. Gerrity!" he echoed. "But--but--I thought
you didn't believe in marriage."

There came the most bewitching smile, a smile decorated with two
rows of pearly white teeth. "Don't you understand, Comrade Higgins?
No woman believes in marriage--until she meets the right man."

This was much too subtle. Jimmie was still gaping open-mouthed.
"But then, I thought--I thought--" he stopped again; for in truth,
he had not known quite what he thought, and anyway, it seemed futile
to try to formulate it now.

But, of course, she knew, without his telling her; she knew the
meaning of his look of dismay, and of his stammering words. Being a
kind little creature, she laid her hand on his arm. "Comrade
Higgins," she said, "don't think I'm too mean!"

"Mean?" he cried. "Why, no! What? How--"

"Try to imagine you were a girl, Comrade Higgins. You can't propose
to a man, can you?"

"Why, no--that is--"

"That is, not if you want him to accept! You have to make him do it.
And maybe he's shy, and don't do it, and you have to put the idea in
his head for him. Or maybe he's not sure he wants you, and you have
to make him realize how very desirable you are! Maybe you have to
scare him, making him think you're going to run off with somebody
else! Don't you see how it is with a girl?"

Jimmie was still bady dazed, but he saw enough to enable him to
stammer, "Yes." And Comrade Baskerville--that is, Comrade Mrs.
Gerrity--gave him her hand again.

"Comrade Higgins," she said, "you're a dear, sweet fellow, and you
won't be too angry with me, will you? We'll be friends, won't we,
Comrade Higgins?"

And Jimmie clasped the soft, warm hand, and gazed into the shining
brown eyes, and he made a part of the wonderful speech which he had
been planning as he walked. He said: "Always! Always!"






CHAPTER VIII

JIMMIE HIGGINS PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT

I





The world struggle continued with constantly increasing ferocity.
All summer long the Germans hammered at the French and British
lines; while the British hammered at the gates of Constantinople,
and the Italians at the gates of Trieste. The Germans sent their
giant airships to drop loads of bombs on London and their submarines
to sink passenger-steamers and hospital-ships. Each fresh outrage
against international law became the occasion of more letters of
protest from the United States, and of more controversies in the
newspapers, and in Congress, and in Kumme's bicycle-shop on
Jefferson Street, Leesville.

In this last place, to be sure, the discussions were rather
one-sided. Practically all who came there regarded the munitions
industry as an accursed thing, and made no secret of their glee at
the misfortunes which befell it; at shipyards which caught fire and
burned up, at railroad bridges and ships at sea destroyed by
mysterious explosions. Kumme, a wizened-up, grizzle-haired old
fellow with a stubby nose and a bullet-head, would fall to cursing
in a mingling of English and German when anyone so much as mentioned
the fleets of ships that went across the water, loaded with shells
to kill German soldiers; he would point a skinny finger at whoever
would listen to him, declaring that the Germans in this country were
not slaves, and would protect their Fatherland from the perfidious
British and their Wall Street hirelings. Kumme took a newspaper
printed in German, and a couple of weeklies published in English for
the promotion of the German cause; he would mark passages in these
papers and read them aloud--everything that the mind of man could
recall or invent that was discreditable to Britain, to France and
Italy, to Wall Street, and to the nation which allowed Wall Street
to bamboozle and exploit it. There were many Americans who had
"muck-raked" their own country in the interests of social reform,
and had praised the social system of Germany. These arguments the
German propagandists now found useful, and Jimmie would take them to
the Socialist local and pass them about. From the meeting of the
local he and Meissner would go to the saloon where they had
rendezvous with Jerry Coleman, who would distribute more ten-dollar
bills to be used in the printing of anti-war literature.

Old Kumme had a nephew by the name of Heinrich, who paid him a visit
now and then. He was a tall, fine-looking fellow, who spoke much
better English than his uncle, and wore better clothes. Finally he
came to stay, and Kumme announced that he was to help in the shop.
They didn't need any help that Jimmie could see, and certainly not
from a fellow like Heinrich, who couldn't tell a spoke from a
handle-bar; but it was none of Jimmie's business, so Heinrich put on
working clothes, and spent a couple of weeks sitting behind the
counter conversing in low tones with men who came to see him. After
a while he took to going out again, and finally announced that he
had secured a job in the Empire.




II



And then to the hangers-on in the shop there was another
addition--an Irish working man named Reilly. The Irishman was a
peculiar problem in the war--the thorn of the Allied conscience, the
weak spot in their armour, the broken link in their chain of
arguments; and so every German was happy when an Irishman entered
the room. This fellow Reilly came to have a punctured tyre mended,
and stopped to tell what he thought about the world-situation. Old
man Kumme slapped him over the back, and shook him by the hand, and
told him he was the right sort, and to come again. So Reilly took to
hanging about; he would pull from his pocket a paper called
Hibernia, and Kummc would produce from under the counter a paper
called Germania, and the two would denounce "perfidious Albion" by
the hour. Jimmie, bending over the straightening of a sprocket,
would look up and grin, and exclaim, "You bet!"

It was winter-time, and darkness came early, and Jimmie was doing
his work by electric light in the back of the shop, when Reilly came
and mysteriously drew him into a corner. Did he really mean what he
said about hatred of war, and willingness to fight against it? The
Empire Shops were now turning out thousands of shell-casings every
day, to be used in the murder of men. It was useless to try to start
a strike, there were so many spies at work, and they fired every man
who opened his mouth; if an outsider tried it they would send him to
jail--for, of course, old Granitch had the city government in his
vest-pocket.

All this was an old story to Jimmie; but now the Irishman went on to
a new proposition. There was a way to stop the work of the Empire, a
way that had been tried in other places, and had worked. Reilly knew
where to get some T.N.T.--an explosive many times more powerful than
dynamite. They could make bombs out of the steel tubing of bicycles,
and Jimmie, knowing the Empire Shops as he did, could find a way to
get in and arrange matters. There was big money in it--the fellows
who did that job might live on Easy Street the rest of their lives.

Jimmie was stunned. He had been perfectly sincere in classifying
German spies with sea-serpents; and here was a sea-serpent right
before his eyes, raising his head through the floor of Kumme's
bicycle-shop!

Jimmie answered that he had never had anything to do with that sort
of thing. That wasn't the way to stop war; that was only making more
war. The other began to argue with him, showing that it wouldn't
hurt anybody; the explosion would take place at night, and all that
would be damaged would be Abel Granitch's purse. But Jimmie was
obdurate; fortunately one thing that had been incessantly pounded
into his head at the local was that the movement could not use
conspiracy, it must work by open propaganda, winning the minds and
consciences of men.

First the Irishman became angry, and called him a coward and a
molly-coddle. Then he became suspicious, and wanted to know if
Jimmie would sell him out to the Empire. Jimmie laughed at this; he
had no love for Abel Granitch--the damned old skunk might do his own
spying. Jimmie would simply have nothing to do with the matter, one
way or the other. And so the project was dropped; but the little
machinist was moved to keep his eyes open after that, and he made
note of how many Germans, all strangers, were making the shop a
meeting-place; also the quick intimacy which had developed between
the Irishman and Heinrich, Kumme's nephew, who held himself so
straight and had no back to his head.

Matters came to a climax with startling suddenness--the explosion
of a bomb, though not the kind which Jimmie was expecting. It was an
evening in February, just as he was about to close up, when he saw
the door of the shop open, and four men walk in. They came with a
peculiar, business-like air, two of them to the puzzled Jimmie, and
the other two to Kumme. One turned back the lapel of his coat,
showing a large gold star, and announcing, "I am an agent of the
government, and you are under arrest." And at the same time the
other seized Jimmie's arms and slipped a pair of handcuffs over his
wrists. He passed his hands over his prisoner, a ceremony known as
"frisking"; and at the same time the other men had seized Kumme.
Jimmie saw two more men enter at the rear door of the shop, but they
had nothing to do, for both Jimmie and Kumme had been too much
startled to make any move to escape.

They were led out to an automobile, shoved in and whirled away. No
questions were answered, so after a bit they stopped asking
questions and sat still, reflecting upon all the sins they had ever
committed in their lives, and upon the chances of these sins being
known to the police.




III



Jimmie thought he was going to jail, of course; but instead they
took him to the Post Office building, to an upstairs room. Kumme was
taken to another room, and Jimmie did not see him again; all that
Jimmie had time to know or to think about was a stern-faced young
man who sat at a desk and put him on a griddle. "It is my duty to
inform you that everything you state may be used against you," said
this young man; and then, without giving Jimmie a chance to grasp
the meaning of these words he began firing questions at him. All
through the ordeal the two detectives stood by his side, and in a
corner of the room, at another desk, a stenographer was busily
recording what he said. Jimmie knew there were such things as
stenographers--for had he not come near falling in love with one
only a short time before?

"Your name?" said the stern-faced young man; and then, "Where do you
live?" And then, "Tell me all you know about this bomb-conspiracy."

"But I don't know nothin'!" cried Jimmie.

"You are in the hands of the Federal government," replied the young
man, "and your only chance will be to make a clean breast. If you
will help us, you may get off."

"But I don't know nothin'!" cried Jimmie, again.

"You have heard talk about dynamiting the Empire Shops?"

"Y--yes, sir."

"Who?"

"A man--" Jimmie got that far, and then he recollected the promise
he had given. "I--I can't tell!" he said.

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't be right."

"Do you believe in dynamiting buildings?"

"No, sir!" Jimmie put into this reply a note of tense sincerity, and
so the other began to argue with him. Atrocious crimes had been
committed all over the country, and the government wished to put a
stop to them; surely it was the duty of a decent citizen to give
what help he could. Jimmie listened until a sweat of anxiety stood
out on his forehead; but he could not bring himself to "peach" on
fellow working men. No, not if he were sent to jail for ten or
twenty years, as the stern-faced young man told him might happen.

"You told Reilly you wouldn't have anything to do with bombs?" asked
the young man; and Jimmie answered "Sure, I did!" And his poor head
was so addled that he didn't even realize that in his reply he had
told what he had been vowing he would never tell!

The questioner seemed to know all about everything, so it was easy
for him to lead Jimmie to tell how he had heard Kumme cursing the
Empire Shops, and the country, and the President; how he had seen
Kumme whispering to Reilly, and to Germans whose names he had not
learned, and how he had seen Heinrich, Kumme's nephew, cutting up
lengths of steel tubing. Then the questioner asked about Jerry
Coleman. How much money had Jimmie got, and just what had he done
with it? Jimmie refused to name other people; but when the young man
made the insinuation that Jimmie might have kept some of the money
for himself, the little machinist exclaimed with passionate
intensity--not one dollar had he kept, nor his friend Meissner
either; they had given statements to Jerry Coleman, and this though
many a time they had been hard up for their rent. The police could
ask Comrade Gerrity and Comrade Mary Allen, and the other members of
the local.

So the questioner led Jimmie on to talk about the Germans in the
movement. Schneider, the brewer, for example--he was one of those
who cursed the Allies most vehemently, and he had been in this
bomb-conspiracy. Jimmie was indignant; Comrade Schneider was as good
a Socialist as you could find, and Socialists had nothing to do with
bombs! But young Emil Forster--he had been making explosives in his
spare hours, had he not? At which Jimmie became still more outraged.
He knew young Emil well; the boy was a carpet-designer and musician,
and if anybody had told such tales about him, they were lying, that
was all. The questioner went on for an hour or so, tormenting poor
Jimmie with such doubts and fears; until finally he dropped a little
of his sternness of manner, and told Jimmie that he had merely been
trying him out, to see what he knew about various men whose
pro-German feelings had brought them under suspicion. No, the
government had no evidence of crime against Schneider or Forster, or
any of the bona-fide Socialists. They were just plain fools, letting
themselves be used as tools of German plotters, who were spending
money like water to make trouble in munition factories all over the
country.




IV



The questioner, who explained himself as a "special agent" of the
Department of Justice, went on to read Jimmie a lecture. A sincere
man like himself ought to be ashamed to let himself be taken in by
German conspirators, who were trying to break up American industry,
to lead American labour by the nose.

"But they want to stop the making of munitions!" cried Jimmie.

"But's that's only so that Germany can make more munitions!"

"But I'm opposed to their being made in Germany, too!"

"What can you do to stop it in Germany?"

"I'm an international Socialist. When I oppose war in my own
country, I help the Socialists to oppose it in other countries. I
ain't a-going to stop--not so long as I've got any breath left in
me!" And here was Comrade Jimmie, delivering a sermon on pacifism to
the "special agent" of the government, who held his fate in his
hands! But no one was going to defend war to Jimmie Higgins and not
be answered--even though Jimmie might go to jail for the rest of his
life!

The young man laughed--more genially than Jimmie would have thought
possible at the start of this grilling. "Higgins," he said, "you're
a good-natured idiot. You can thank your lucky stars that one of the
men you trusted happened to be a government detective. If we didn't
know the truth about you, you might have had a hard time clearing
yourself."

Jimmie's jaw had fallen. "A government detective! Who is the
government detective?"

"Reilly," said the young man.

"Reilly? But it was him that tempted me!"

"Well, congratulate yourself that you resisted temptation!"

"But maybe he tempted Heinrich, too!"

"No, Heinrich didn't have to be tempted. It was on account of
Heinrich that we began the investigation. He has been making
explosives and planting them all over the country. His name isn't
Heinrich, and he isn't a nephew of Kumme; his name is von Holtz, and
he's a Prussian officer, a personal friend of the Kaiser."

Jimmie was speechless. For the love of Mike! He had been sitting in
the back part of old Kumme's bicycle-shop, filling his pipe from
the tobacco-pouch of a personal friend of the Kaiser. He had called
this personal friend of the Kaiser a fool and a jackass, informing
him that a real mechanic could put a ball-bearing together while he,
the personal friend of the Kaiser, was spitting on his hands. Could
you beat it?

Mr. Harrod, the "special agent", informed Jimmie that he would have
to testify as to what he knew; and Jimmie was so indignant at the
way he had been taken in that he was willing to do so. He would have
to give bond to appear, added the other; did he know anyone who
would vouch for him? Jimmie racked his harassed brain. Comrade Dr.
Service might consent, if he were quite sure that Jimmie had not
really meant to help the Germans. Mr. Harrod kindly consented to
give this assurance, and called up Dr. Service, whom he seemed to
know, and told him the circumstances. Dr. Service finally said that
he would put up a couple of thousand dollars to guarantee Jimmie's
appearance before the grand jury and at the trial. Mr. Harrod added
that if Dr. Service would promise to come in the morning and attend
to the matter, the government would take his word and let the
witness go for the night. The doctor promised, and Jimmie was told
that he was free till ten o'clock next morning. He went out like a
skylark escaping from a cage!




V



He had been warned not to talk to anyone, so he told Lizzie that he
had been kept late to make repairs on a motor-cycle. And next
morning he got up at the usual hour, to avoid exciting suspicion,
and went and stared at the shop, which was locked up, with a
policeman on guard. He bought a copy of the Leesville Herald, and
read the thrilling story of the German plot which had been unearthed
in Leesville. There were half a dozen conspirators under arrest, and
more than a dozen bombs had been found, all destined to be set off
in the Empire Shops. Franz Heinrich von Holtz, who had blown up a
bridge in Canada and put an infernal machine on board a big Atlantic
liner, had been nailed at last!

Half an hour before time, Jimmie was waiting at the Post Office
building, and when Comrade Dr. Service arrived, they went in and
signed the bond. Coming out again, the grim and forbidding doctor
ordered Jimmie into his car, and oh, what a dressing-down he did
give him! He had Jimmie where he wanted him--right over his
knees--and before he let him up he surely did make him burn! The
little machinist had been so cock-sure of himself; going ahead to
end the war, by stopping the shipping of munitions, and paying no
heed to warnings from men older and wiser than himself! And now see
what he had got himself in for--arrested with a gang of fire-bugs
and desperadoes, under the control and in the pay of a personal
friend of the Kaiser!

Poor Jimmie couldn't put up much of a defence: he was cowed, for
once. He could only say that he had had no evil intention--he had
merely been agitating against the trade in munitions--a wicked
thing--

"Wicked?" broke in the Comrade Doctor. "The thing upon which the
freedom of mankind depends!"

"W--what?" exclaimed Jimmie; for these words sounded to him like
sheer lunacy.

The other explained. "A nation that means to destroy its neighbours
sets to work and puts all its energies into making guns and shells.
The free peoples of the world won't follow suit--you can't persuade
them to do it, because they don't believe in war, they can't realize
that their neighbours intend to make war. So, when they are attacked
their only chance for life is to go out into the open market and buy
the means of defence. And you propose to deprive them of that
right--to betray them, to throw them under the hoofs of the
war-monster! You, who call yourself a believer in justice, make
yourself a tool of such a conspiracy! You take German money--"

"I never took no German money!" cried Jimmie, wildly.

"Didn't Kumme pay you money?"

"But I worked in his shop--I done my ten hours a day right
straight!"

"And this fellow Jerry Coleman? Hasn't he given you money?"

"But that was for propaganda--he was agent for Labour's National
Peace Council--"

And the Comrade Doctor fairly snorted. "How could you be such an
ass? Don't you read the news? But no--of course, you don't--you
only read German dope!" And the Comrade Doctor drew out his
pocket-book, which was bursting with clippings, and selected one
from a New York paper, telling how the government was proceeding
against the officials of an organization called "Labour's National
Peace Council" for conspiring to cause strikes and violence. The
founder of the organization was a person known as "the Wolf of Wall
Street"; the funds had been furnished by a Prussian army officer, an
attache of the German legation, who had used his official immunity
to incite conspiracy and wholesale destruction of property in a
friendly country. What had Jimmie to say to that?

And poor Jimmie for once had nothing to say. He sat, completely
crushed. Not merely the money which he had got from Kumme on
Saturday night, but also the ten-dollar bills which Jerry Coleman
had been slipping into his hand--they, too, had come from the
Kaiser! Was the whole radical movement to be taken over by the
Kaiser, and Jimmie Higgins put out of his job?






CHAPTER IX

JIMMIE HIGGINS RETURNS TO NATURE

I





Kumme's bicycle-shop went out of business, and its contents were
sold at auction. Jimmie Higgins watched the process wistfully,
reflecting how, if he had not wasted his substance on Socialist
tracts, if he had saved a bit of his wages like any normal human
being, he might have bought this little business and got a start in
life. But alas, such hopes were not for Jimmie! He must remain in
the condition which the President of his country described as
"industrial serfdom"; he must continue to work for some other man's
profit, to be at the mercy of some other man's whim.

He found himself a job in the railroad shops; but in a couple of
weeks came an organizer, trying to start a union in the place.
Jimmie, of course, joined; how could he refuse? And so the next time
he went to get his pay he found a green slip in his envelope
informing him that the Atlantic Western Railroad Company would no
longer require his services. No explanation was given, and none
sought--for Jimmie was old in the ways of American wage-slavery,
euphemistically referred to as "industrial serfdom".

He got another start as helper to a truckman. It was the hardest
work he had yet done--all the harder because the boss was a dull
fellow who would not talk about politics or the war. So Jimmie was
discontented; perhaps the spring-time was getting into his blood; at
any rate, he hunted through his Sunday paper, and came on an
advertisement of a farmer who wanted a "hand". It was six miles out
in the country, and Jimmie, remembering his walk with the Candidate,
treated himself to a Sunday afternoon excursion. He knew nothing
about farm-work, and said so; but the munition-factories had drained
so much labour from the land that the farmer was glad to get
anybody. He had a "tenant-house" on his place, and on Monday morning
Jimmie hired his former boss--and truckman--to move his few sticks
of furniture; he bade farewell to his little friend Meissner, and
next day was learning to milk cows and steer a plough.

So Jimmie came back to the bosom of his ancient Mother. But alas, he
came, not to find joy and health, not as a free man, to win his own
way and make a new life for himself; he came as a soil-slave, to
drudge from dawn to dark for a hire that barely kept him going. The
farmer was the owner of Jimmie's time, and Jimmie disliked him
heartily, because he was surly-tempered and stingy, abusing his
horses and nagging at his hired man. Jimmie's education in
farm-economics was not thorough enough to enable him to realize that
John Cutter was as much of a slave as himself--bound by a mortgage
to Ashton Chalmers, President of the First National Bank of
Leesville. John drudged from dawn to dark, just as Jimmie did, and
in addition had all the worry and fear; his wife was a sallow and
hollow-chested drudge, who took as many bottles of patent-medicine
as poor Mrs. Meissner.

But Jimmie kept fairly cheerful because he was learning new things,
and because he saw how good it was for the babies, who were getting
fresh air and better food than they had ever had in their little
lives before. All summer long he ploughed and harrowed and hoed, he
tended horses and cows and pigs and chickens, and drove to town with
farm produce to be sold. He would be too tired at night even to read
his Socialist papers; for six months he let the world go its way
unhindered--its way of desperate strife and colossal anguish. It was
the time when the German hordes hurled themselves against the
fortifications of Verdun. For five horrible months they came on,
wave upon endless wave; the people of France set their teeth and
swore, "They shall not pass!" and the rest of civilization waited,
holding its breath.




II



The only chance Jimmie had to talk about these matters was of a
Saturday night when he strolled up to the store at a near-by
cross-roads. The men he met here were of a new type to him--as
different from factory people as if they came from another planet.
Jimmie had been taught to laugh at them as "hayseeds";
intellectually he regarded them as relics of a vanished age so, of
course, he could not listen to their talk very long without "butting
in". He began with the declaration that the Allies were as bad as
the Germans. He got away with that, because they had all been taught
to hate the "Britishers" in their school-books, and they didn't know
very much about Frenchmen and "Eye-talians". But when Jimmie went on
to say that the American government was as bad as the German
government--that all governments were run by capitalists, and all
went to war for foreign markets and such plunder--then what a
hornet's nest he brought about his ears! "You mean to say American
armies would do what them Proosians done in Belgium?" And when
Jimmie answered "Yes," an indignant citizen rose from his seat on a
cracker-box, and tapped him on the shoulder and said: "Look here,
young feller, you better run along home. You'll git yerself a coat
of tar and feathers if you talk too much round these parts."

So Jimmie shut up for a while; and when he went out with his armful
of purchases, an aged, white-whiskered patriarch who had been
listening got up and followed him out. "I'm going your way," he
said. "Git in with me." Jimmie climbed into the buggy; and while the
bony old mare ambled along through the summer night the driver asked
questions about Jimmie's life. Where had he been brought up? How had
it been possible for a man to live all his life in America, and know
so little about his native land?

Peter Drew was this old farmer's name, and he had been in the first
battle of Bull Run, and had fought with the Army of Northern
Virginia all the way to Richmond. So he knew how American armies
behave; he could tell Jimmie about a million free men who had rushed
to arms to save their nation's integrity, and had made a clean job
of it, and then gone quietly back to their work at farm and forge.
Jimmie had heard Comrade Mary Allen, the Quaker, make the statement
that "Force never settled anything". He repeated this now, and the
other replied that an American ought to be the last person in the
world to make such a statement, for his country had provided the
best illustration in history of the importance of a good job of
spanking. It was force that had settled the slavery question--and
settled it so that now you might travel in the South and have a hard
time to find a man that would want to unsettle it.

But Jimmie knew nothing about all that; he knew nothing about
anything in America. The old man said it frightened him to realize
that the country had let a man grow up in it with so little
understanding of its soul. All that precious tradition, utterly dead
so far as Jimmie was concerned! All those heroes who had died to
make free the land in which he lived, and to keep it free--and he
did not know their names, he did not even know the names of the
great battles they had fought! The old man's voice trembled and he
laid his hand on Jimmie's knee.

The little Socialist tried to explain that he had dreams of his own.
He was fighting for international freedom--his patriotism was
higher and wider than any one country. And that was all right, said
the other, but why kick down the ladder by which you had
climbed--and especially when you had perhaps not entirely finished
climbing? Why not know the better side of your own country, and
appeal to it? Peter Drew went on to tell of a speech he had heard
Abraham Lincoln make, and to quote things Lincoln had said; could
Jimmie doubt that Lincoln would have opposed the rule of the country
by Wall Street? And when a country had been shaped and guided by
such men as Lincoln, why trample its face and besmirch its good
name--just because there were in it some evil men contending against
its ideals of freedom and democracy?