"To-morrow, then. You are dismissed."
The Educational Board, in conclave a.s.sembled, reads the essay. My disquisition is unanimously condemned. Exemplary punishment is to be visited upon me for "precocious G.o.dlessness, dangerous tendencies, and insubordination." I am publicly reprimanded, and reduced to the third cla.s.s. The peculiar sentence robs me of a year, and forces me to a.s.sociate with the "children" my senior cla.s.s looks down upon with undisguised contempt. I feel disgraced, humiliated.
Thus vision chases vision, memory succeeds memory, while the interminable hours creep towards the afternoon, and the station clock drones like an endless old woman.
III
Over at last. "All aboard!"
On and on rushes the engine, every moment bringing me nearer to my destination. The conductor drawling out the stations, the noisy going and coming produce almost no conscious impression on my senses. Seeing and hearing every detail of my surroundings, I am nevertheless oblivious to them. Faster than the train rushes my fancy, as if reviewing a panorama of vivid scenes, apparently without organic connection with each other, yet somehow intimately a.s.sociated in my thoughts of the past. But how different is the present! I am speeding toward Pittsburgh, the very heart of the industrial struggle of America.
America! I dwell wonderingly on the unuttered sound. Why in America? And again unfold pictures of old scenes.
I am walking in the garden of our well-appointed country place, in a fashionable suburb of St. Petersburg, where the family generally spends the summer months. As I pa.s.s the veranda, Dr. Semeonov, the celebrated physician of the resort, steps out of the house and beckons to me.
"Alexander Ossipovitch," he addresses me in his courtly manner, "your mother is very ill. Are you alone with her?"
"We have servants, and two nurses are in attendance," I reply.
"To be sure, to be sure," the shadow of a smile hovers about the corners of his delicately chiseled lips. "I mean of the family."
"Oh, yes! I am alone here with my mother."
"Your mother is rather restless to-day, Alexander Ossipovitch. Could you sit up with her to-night?"
"Certainly, certainly," I quickly a.s.sent, wondering at the peculiar request. Mother has been improving, the nurses have a.s.sured me. My presence at her bedside may prove irksome to her. Our relations have been strained since the day when, in a fit of anger, she slapped Rose, our new chambermaid, whereupon I resented mother"s right to inflict physical punishment on the servants. I can see her now, erect and haughty, facing me across the dinner-table, her eyes ablaze with indignation.
"You forget you are speaking to your mother, Al-ex-an-der"; she p.r.o.nounces the name in four distinct syllables, as is her habit when angry with me.
"You have no right to strike the girl," I retort, defiantly.
"You forget yourself. My treatment of the menial is no concern of yours."
I cannot suppress the sharp reply that springs to my lips: "The low servant girl is as good as you."
I see mother"s long, slender fingers grasp the heavy ladle, and the next instant a sharp pain pierces my left hand. Our eyes meet. Her arm remains motionless, her gaze directed to the spreading blood stain on the white table-cloth. The ladle falls from her hand. She closes her eyes, and her body sinks limply to the chair.
Anger and humiliation extinguish my momentary impulse to rush to her a.s.sistance. Without uttering a word, I pick up the heavy saltcellar, and fling it violently against the French mirror. At the crash of the gla.s.s my mother opens her eyes in amazement. I rise and leave the house.
My heart beats fast as I enter mother"s sick-room. I fear she may resent my intrusion: the shadow of the past stands between us. But she is lying quietly on the bed, and has apparently not noticed my entrance. I sit down at the bedside. A long time pa.s.ses in silence. Mother seems to be asleep. It is growing dark in the room, and I settle down to pa.s.s the night in the chair. Suddenly I hear "Sasha!" called in a weak, faint voice. I bend over her. "Drink of water." As I hold the gla.s.s to her lips, she slightly turns away her head, saying very low, "Ice water, please." I start to leave the room. "Sasha!" I hear behind me, and, quickly tiptoeing to the bed, I bring my face closely, very closely to hers, to catch the faint words: "Help me turn to the wall." Tenderly I wrap my arms around the weak, emaciated body, and an overpowering longing seizes me to touch her hand with my lips and on my knees beg her forgiveness. I feel so near to her, my heart is overflowing with compa.s.sion and love. But I dare not kiss her--we have become estranged.
Affectionately I hold her in my arms for just the shadow of a second, dreading lest she suspect the storm of emotion raging within me.
Caressingly I turn her to the wall, and, as I slowly withdraw, I feel as if some mysterious, yet definite, something has at the very instant left her body.
In a few minutes I return with a gla.s.s of ice water. I hold it to her lips, but she seems oblivious of my presence. "She cannot have gone to sleep so quickly," I wonder. "Mother!" I call, softly. No reply. "Little mother! Mamotchka!" She does not appear to hear me. "Dearest, _golubchick_!" I cry, in a paroxysm of sudden fear, pressing my hot lips upon her face. Then I become conscious of an arm upon my shoulder, and hear the measured voice of the doctor: "My boy, you must bear up. She is at rest."
IV
"Wake up, young feller! Whatcher sighin" for?" Bewildered I turn around to meet the coa.r.s.e, yet not unkindly, face of a swarthy laborer in the seat back of me.
"Oh, nothing; just dreaming," I reply. Not wishing to encourage conversation, I pretend to become absorbed in my book.
How strange is the sudden sound of English! Almost as suddenly had I been transplanted to American soil. Six months pa.s.sed after my mother"s death. Threatened by the educational authorities with a "wolf"s pa.s.sport" on account of my "dangerous tendencies"--which would close every professional avenue to me, in spite of my otherwise very satisfactory standing--the situation aggravated by a violent quarrel with my guardian, Uncle Nathan, I decided to go to America. There, beyond the ocean, was the land of n.o.ble achievement, a glorious free country, where men walked erect in the full stature of manhood,--the very realization of my youthful dreams.
And now I am in America, the blessed land. The disillusionment, the disappointments, the vain struggles!... The kaleidoscope of my brain unfolds them all before my view. Now I see myself on a bench in Union Square Park, huddled close to Fedya and Mikhail, my roommates. The night wind sweeps across the cheerless park, chilling us to the bone. I feel hungry and tired, f.a.gged out by the day"s fruitless search for work. My heart sinks within me as I glance at my friends. "Nothing," each had morosely reported at our nightly meeting, after the day"s weary tramp.
Fedya groans in uneasy sleep, his hand groping about his knees. I pick up the newspaper that had fallen under the seat, spread it over his legs, and tuck the ends underneath. But a sudden blast tears the paper away, and whirls it off into the darkness. As I press Fedya"s hat down on his head, I am struck by his ghastly look. How these few weeks have changed the plump, rosy-cheeked youth! Poor fellow, no one wants his labor. How his mother would suffer if she knew that her carefully reared boy pa.s.ses the nights in the.... What is that pain I feel? Some one is bending over me, looming unnaturally large in the darkness. Half-dazed I see an arm swing to and fro, with short, semicircular backward strokes, and with every movement I feel a sharp sting, as of a lash. Oh, it"s in my soles! Bewildered I spring to my feet. A rough hand grabs me by the throat, and I face a policeman.
"Are you thieves?" he bellows.
Mikhail replies, sleepily: "We Russians. Want work."
"Git out o" here! Off with you!"
Quickly, silently, we walk away, Fedya and I in front, Mikhail limping behind us. The dimly lighted streets are deserted, save for a hurrying figure here and there, closely wrapped, flitting mysteriously around the corner. Columns of dust rise from the gray pavements, are caught up by the wind, rushed to some distance, then carried in a spiral upwards, to be followed by another wave of choking dust. From somewhere a tantalizing odor reaches my nostrils. "The bakery on Second Street,"
Fedya remarks. Unconsciously our steps quicken. Shoulders raised, heads bent, and shivering, we keep on to the lower Bowery. Mikhail is steadily falling behind. "Dammit, I feel bad," he says, catching up with us, as we step into an open hallway. A thorough inspection of our pockets reveals the possession of twelve cents, all around. Mikhail is to go to bed, we decide, handing him a dime. The cigarettes purchased for the remaining two cents are divided equally, each taking a few puffs of the "fourth" in the box. Fedya and I sleep on the steps of the city hall.
"Pitt-s-burgh! Pitt-s-burgh!"
The harsh cry of the conductor startles me with the violence of a shock.
Impatient as I am of the long journey, the realization that I have reached my destination comes unexpectedly, overwhelming me with the dread of unpreparedness. In a flurry I gather up my things, but, noticing that the other pa.s.sengers keep their places, I precipitately resume my seat, fearful lest my agitation be noticed. To hide my confusion, I turn to the open window. Thick clouds of smoke overcast the sky, shrouding the morning with sombre gray. The air is heavy with soot and cinders; the smell is nauseating. In the distance, giant furnaces vomit pillars of fire, the lurid flashes accentuating a line of frame structures, dilapidated and miserable. They are the homes of the workers who have created the industrial glory of Pittsburgh, reared its millionaires, its Carnegies and Fricks.
The sight fills me with hatred of the perverse social justice that turns the needs of mankind into an Inferno of brutalizing toil. It robs man of his soul, drives the sunshine from his life, degrades him lower than the beasts, and between the millstones of divine bliss and h.e.l.lish torture grinds flesh and blood into iron and steel, trans.m.u.tes human lives into gold, gold, countless gold.
The great, n.o.ble People! But is it really great and n.o.ble to be slaves and remain content? No, no! They are awakening, awakening!
CHAPTER II
THE SEAT OF WAR
Contentedly peaceful the Monongahela stretches before me, its waters lazily rippling in the sunlight, and softly crooning to the murmur of the woods on the hazy sh.o.r.e. But the opposite bank presents a picture of sharp contrast. Near the edge of the river rises a high board fence, topped with barbed wire, the menacing aspect heightened by warlike watch-towers and ramparts. The sinister wall looks down on me with a thousand hollow eyes, whose evident murderous purpose fully justifies the name of "Fort Frick." Groups of excited people crowd the open s.p.a.ces between the river and the fort, filling the air with the confusion of many voices. Men carrying Winchesters are hurrying by, their faces grimy, eyes bold yet anxious. From the mill-yard gape the black mouths of cannon, dismantled breastworks bar the pa.s.sages, and the ground is strewn with burning cinders, empty sh.e.l.ls, oil barrels, broken furnace stacks, and piles of steel and iron. The place looks the aftermath of a sanguinary conflict,--the symbol of our industrial life, of the ruthless struggle in which the _stronger_, the st.u.r.dy man of labor, is always the victim, because he acts _weakly_. But the charred hulks of the Pinkerton barges at the landing-place, and the blood-bespattered gangplank, bear mute witness that for once the battle went to the _really strong, to the victim who dared_.
A group of workingmen approaches me. Big, stalwart men, the power of conscious strength in their step and bearing. Each of them carries a weapon: some Winchesters, others shotguns. In the hand of one I notice the gleaming barrel of a navy revolver.
"Who are you?" the man with the revolver sternly asks me.
"A friend, a visitor."