The Web of Life Part 27

CHAPTER XXIII

That morning Sommers returned to the city. Mrs. Preston had asked him to notify Dr. Leonard and Miss M'Gann, the only friends she had in Chicago, that the funeral would take place late in the afternoon. In the elevator of the Athenian Building, Sommers met Dr. Lindsay with Dr. Rupert, the oldest member of the office staff. The two men bowed and edged their backs toward Sommers. He was already being forgotten. When the elevator cage discharged its load on the top floor, Rupert, who was popularly held to be a genial man, lingered behind his colleague, and tried to say something to the young doctor.

"Private practice?" he asked sympathetically, "or will you try hospital work again?"

"I haven't thought anything about it," Sommers replied truthfully.

Rupert, a man of useful, mediocre ability, eyed the younger man with curiosity, thinking that doubtless he had private means; that it was a pity he and Lindsay had fallen out, for he was a good fellow and clever.

"Well--glad to see you. Drop in occasionally--if you stay in Chicago."

The last phrase stung Sommers. It seemed to take for granted that there could be nothing professionally to keep him in Chicago after the fiasco of his introduction. He would have to learn how much a man's future depended upon the opinion of men whose opinion he despised.

Dr. Leonard came out of his den, where he was filling a tooth. His spectacles were pushed up over his s.h.a.ggy brows, and little particles of gold and of ground bone clung untidily to the folds of his crumpled linen jacket. His patients did not belong to the cla.s.s that is exacting about small things.

"So the feller has taken himself off for good," he observed, after listening to the doctor's brief statement. "That's first-rate, couldn't be better for Alves."

Sommers started at the familiar use of the first name. "She's never had a show. Preston wasn't much except as a looker. The first time she came in here I could see how things stood. But you couldn't budge her from him--jest like a woman--she loved him."

Sommers must have shown some irritation, for Dr. Leonard, watching him closely, repeated:

"Yes! she loved _him_, would have him back, though I argued with her against it. Well, I'm glad it's settled up now so clever. Of course I'll be out to the funeral. Alves ain't got any folks near connected, and Preston--well, it's no use harboring hard thoughts about dead folks.

They'll have to settle with some one else, won't they?"

From the Athenian Building Sommers went to an ambitious boarding-house that called itself a hotel, where Miss M'Gann boarded. A dirty negro boy opened the door, and with his duster indicated the reception room. Miss M'Gann came down, wearing a costume of early morning relaxation. She listened to the news with the usual feminine feeling for decorum, compounded of curiosity, conventional respect for the dead, and speculation for the future.

"Poor Mrs. Preston! I'll go right down and see her. I've been thinking for a week that I'd take a run on my bike down that way. But things have been so queer, you know, that I didn't feel--you understand?"

The doctor nodded and rose to go. Miss M'Gann's note was more jarring than the kindly old dentist's.

"Oh, you aren't going!" Miss M'Gann protested regretfully. "I want to ask so many questions. I am _so_ glad to see you. I feel that I know you _very_ well. Mr. Dresser, your intimate friend, has spoken to me about you. Such an interesting man, a little erratic, like a genius, you know."

As Sommers remained stiffly mute, Miss M'Gann's remarks died away.

"There is nothing more to tell," he said, getting up. "Of course Mrs.

Preston has had a very serious strain, and I,--her friends,--must see that she has rest."

"Sure," Miss M'Gann broke in warmly; "now a lot of us girls are going up to Plum Lake, Michigan, for four weeks. It would be good for her to be with a nice party--"

"We will see," the doctor said coldly.

Later Miss M'Gann said to one of her friends: "Talkin' to him is like rubbing noses with an iceberg. He's one of your regular freeze-you-up, top-notchy eastern swells."

"Perhaps it would be well if Mrs. Preston came here to stay with you for a few days. I will ask her," Sommers suggested, as he shook hands.

"Certainly," Miss M'Gann replied warmly, "first-cla.s.s house, good society, reasonable rates, and all that."

But the doctor was bowing himself out.

'He's taking some interest in the fair widow's welfare,' Miss M'Gann commented, as she watched him from behind the hall-door curtain. 'I hope he won't get the d. t.'s like number one, and live off her. Think she'd have had warning to wait a reasonable time.'

Meantime Sommers was musing over the "breezy" and "lively" Miss M'Gann, who, he judged, contributed much to the gayety of the Keystone Hotel. He had been hasty in suggesting that Alves might find a refuge in the Keystone. It would be for a few days, however, for he planned--he was rather vague about what he had planned. He wondered if there would be much of Miss M'Gann in the future, their future, and he longed to get away, to take Alves and fly.

He was tired; the sun was relentless. But he must make arrangements to sell his horse as soon as possible, and to give up his rooms. For the first time in his life he was conscious that he wanted to talk with a man, to see some friend. But of all the young professional men he had met in Chicago, there was not one he could think of approaching. On his way to his rooms he pa.s.sed the Lake Front Park, where some companies of troops were encamped.

Tents were flapping in the breeze, a Gatling gun had been placed, and sentries mounted. The bronzed young soldiers brought in from the plains were lounging about, watching the boulevard, and peering up at the ma.s.sive walls of the Auditorium. The street was choked with curious spectators, among whom were many strikers. The crowd gaped and commented.

"They'll _shoot_," one of the onlookers said almost proudly. "There ain't no use in foolin' with the reg'lars. Those fellows'd pop you or me as soon as a jack-rabbit or a greasy Injun."

The sinewy sentry s.h.i.+fted his gun and tramped off, his blue eyes marvelling at the unaccustomed sights of the great city, all the panoply of the civilization that he was hired to protect.

The city was under martial law, but it did not seem to mind it. The soldiers had had a few scuffles with rowdies at Blue Island and the stock yards. They had chased the toughs in and out among the long lines of freight cars, and fired a few shots. Even the newspapers couldn't magnify the desultory lawlessness into organized rebellion. It was becoming a matter of the courts now. The general managers had imported workmen from the East. The leaders of the strike--especially Debs and Howard--were giving out more and more incendiary, hysterical utterances. All workingmen were to be called out on a general strike; every man that had a trade was to take part in a "death struggle." But Sommers could see the signs of a speedy collapse. In a few days the strong would master the situation; then would follow a wrangle in the courts, and the fatal "black list" would appear. The revenge of the railroads would be long and sure.

Sommers went to his rooms and sought to get some rest before the time set for the funeral. The driving west wind, heated as by a furnace in its mad rush over the parched prairies, fevered rather than cooled him. His mind began to revolve about the dead man, lying with heavy, red-lidded eyes in the cottage. Was it,--was it murder? He put the thought aside laboriously, only to be besieged afresh, to wonder, to argue, to protest. After three hours of this he dressed and took the cable car for the cottage. He might find some pretext to examine the dead man again before the others came.

At the cottage gate, however, he overtook the good dentist, bearing a large florist's box. Miss M'Gann was already within the little front room, and Alves was talking in low tones with a sallow youth in a clerical coat. At the sight of the newcomers the clergyman withdrew to put on his robes. Dr.

Leonard, having surrendered the pasteboard box to Miss M'Gann, grasped Mrs.

Preston's hand.

"Alves," he began, and stopped. Even he could feel that the commonplaces of the occasion were not in order. "Alves, you know how mighty fond of you I am."

She smiled tranquilly. Her air of calm reserve mystified the watchful young doctor. The clergyman returned, followed by Mrs. Ducharme and Anna Svenson.

The Ducharme woman's black dress intensified the pallor of her flabby face.

Her hands twitched nervously over the prayer-book that she held. Subject to apoplexy, Sommers judged; but his thoughts pa.s.sed over her as well as Miss M'Gann, who stood with downcast eyes ostentatiously close to Mrs. Preston, and the grave old dentist standing at the foot of the coffin, and the clergyman whose young voice had not lost its thrill of awe in the presence of death. He had no eyes for aught but the woman, who was bound to him by firmer ties than those whose dissolution the clergyman was recording. She stood serene, with head raised above theirs, revealing a face that sadness had made serious, grave, mature, but not sad. She displayed no affected sorrow, no nervous tremor, no stress of a reproachful mind. Unconscious of the others, even of the minister's solemn phrases, she seemed to be revolving truths of her own, dismissing a problem private to her own heart.

To the man who tried to pierce beneath that calm gaze, the woman's complete control was terrible.

The minister's grave voice went on, p.r.o.nouncing the grave sentences of the service. The ceremonial words sounded all the more fateful said over this poor body. The little of life that he had had,--the eating and drinking in restaurants and hotels, the chaffing and trading with his own kind, the crude appeas.e.m.e.nts of crude desires,--all these were taken away, and thus stripped it was easy to see how small was his responsibility in the matter of life. He had crushed and injured this other human being, his wife, to whom he had come nearest, just as a dirty hand might soil and crumple a fine fabric. But she no longer reproached him, if she ever had; she understood the sad complexity of a fate that had brought into the hand the fabric to be tarnished. And what she could accept, others must, the world must, to whom the Prestons are but annoyances and removable blemishes.

Sommers felt the deaconlike att.i.tude of the dentist, the conventional solemnity of the schoolteacher and of the immobile Swede, the shaking, quavering terror of Mrs. Ducharme, mumbling to herself the words of the service. Why should the old woman be so upset, he wondered. But his vagrant thoughts always came back to the woman near the coffin, the woman he loved.

How could she summon up such peace! Was hers one of those mighty souls that never doubted? That steadfast gaze chilled his heart.

"The resurrection of the dead." Her glance fell, and for one swift moment rested on the dead man. She was debating those n.o.ble words, and denying their hope to _him_, to such as were dead in this life. Then once more her glance rose and fell upon Sommers, and swiftly it effaced his doubts.

She was so beautiful, a woman in the full tide of human experience! And the night before she had been so simple and tender and pa.s.sionate. He felt her arms about his heart, teaching him how to live. This moment, this careful putting away of the past must be over soon, in a few hours; whereupon he and she would cast it out of their hearts as they would leave this gloomy cottage and waste marshes. He would not think of the body there and its death, of anything but her. How exquisite would be this triumph, over her baulked, defeated past! 'Alves, Alves,' he murmured in his heart, 'only you who have suffered can love.' It seemed that an answering wave of color swept over her pale face.

There was a movement. The service was ended. The burial was the only thing that remained to be done. Sommers went to the cemetery with the minister and Dr. Leonard. He did not wish to be with Alves until they could be alone. The grave was in the half-finished cemetery beside the Cottage Grove cable line, among the newest lots. It was a fit place for Preston, this bit of sandy prairie in the incomplete city. The man who came and went from town to town, knowing chiefly the hotel and the railroad station, might well rest here, within call of the hoa.r.s.e locomotives gliding restlessly to and fro.

As the little company retraced their steps from the grave, Alves spoke to Sommers for the first time.

"You will come back with me?" she asked.

"Not now," he answered hastily, instinctively. "I must go back to town. The others will be there. Not to-day."