She nodded. "I must go now, I think."
"Addio!" he said. "I shall look for you. For the present I must remain here, with the Committee."
When Janet reached Faber Street she halted on the corner of Stanley to stare into the window of the glorified drugstore. But she gave no heed to the stationery, the cameras and candy displayed there, being in the emotional state that reduces to unreality objects of the commonplace, everyday world. Presently, however, she became aware of a man standing beside her.
"Haven"t we met before?" he asked. "Or--can I be mistaken?"
Some oddly familiar quizzical note in his voice stirred, as she turned to him, a lapsed memory. The hawklike yet benevolent and illuminating look he gave her recalled the man at Silliston whom she had thought a carpenter though he was dressed now in a warm suit of gray wool, and wore a white, low collar.
"In Silliston!" she exclaimed. "Why--what are you doing here?"
"Well--this instant I was just looking at those notepapers, wondering which I should choose if I really had good taste. But it"s very puzzling--isn"t it?--when one comes from the country. Now that saffron with the rough edges is very--artistic. Don"t you think so?"
She looked at him and smiled, though his face was serious.
"You don"t really like it, yourself," she informed him.
"Now you"re reflecting on my taste," he declared.
"Oh no--it"s because I saw the fence you were making. Is it finished yet?"
"I put the last pineapple in place the day before Christmas. Do you remember the pineapples?"
She nodded. "And the house? and the garden?"
"Oh, those will never be finished. I shouldn"t have anything more to do."
"Is that--all you do?" she asked.
"It"s more important than anything else. But you have you been back to Silliston since I saw you? I"ve been waiting for another call."
"You haven"t even thought of me since," she was moved to reply in the same spirit.
"Haven"t I?" he exclaimed. "I wondered, when I came up here to Hampton, whether I mightn"t meet you--and here you are! Doesn"t that prove it?"
She laughed, somewhat surprised at the ease with which he had diverted her, drawn her out of the tense, emotional mood in which he had discovered her. As before, he puzzled her, but the absence of any flirtatious suggestion in his talk gave her confidence. He was just friendly.
"Sometimes I hoped I might see you in Hampton," she ventured.
"Well, here I am. I heard the explosion, and came."
"The explosion! The strike!" she exclaimed; suddenly enlightened. "Now I remember! You said something about Hampton being nitro-glycerine--human nitro-glycerine. You predicted this strike."
"Did I? perhaps I did," he a.s.sented. "Maybe you suggested the idea."
"I suggested it! Oh no, I didn"t--it was new to me, it frightened me at the time, but it started me thinking about a lot of things that had never occurred to me."
"You might have suggested the idea without intending to, you know. There are certain people who inspire prophecies--perhaps you are one."
His tone was playful, but she was quick to grasp at an inference--since his glance was fixed on the red b.u.t.ton she wore.
"You meant that I would explode, too!"
"Oh no--nothing so terrible as that," he disclaimed. "And yet most of us have explosives stored away inside of us--instincts, impulses and all that sort of thing that won"t stand too much bottling-up."
"Yes, I"ve joined the strike." She spoke somewhat challengingly, though she had an uneasy feeling that defiance was somewhat out of place with him. "I suppose you think it strange, since I"m not a foreigner and haven"t worked in the mills. But I don"t see why that should make any difference if you believe that the workers haven"t had a chance."
"No difference," he agreed, pleasantly, "no difference at all."
"Don"t you sympathize with the strikers?" she insisted. "Or--are you on the other side, the side of the capitalists?"
"I? I"m a spectator--an innocent bystander."
"You don"t sympathize with the workers?" she cried.
"Indeed I do. I sympathize with everybody."
"With the capitalists?"
"Why not?"
"Why not? Because they"ve had everything their own way, they"ve exploited the workers, deceived and oppressed them, taken all the profits." She was using glibly her newly acquired labour terminology.
"Isn"t that a pretty good reason for sympathizing with them?" he inquired.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I should think it might be difficult to be happy and have done all that. At any rate, it isn"t my notion of happiness. Is it yours?"
For a moment she considered this.
"No--not exactly," she admitted. "But they seem happy," she insisted vehemently, "they have everything they want and they do exactly as they please without considering anybody except themselves. What do they care how many they starve and make miserable? You--you don"t know, you can"t know what it is to be driven and used and flung away!"
Almost in tears, she did not notice his puzzled yet sympathetic glance.
"The operatives, the workers create all the wealth, and the capitalists take it from them, from their wives and children."
"Now I know what you"ve been doing," he said accusingly. "You"ve been studying economics."
Her brow puckered.
"Studying what?"
"Economics--the distribution of wealth. It"s enough to upset anybody."
"But I"m not upset," she insisted, smiling in spite of herself at his comical concern.
"It"s very exciting. I remember reading a book once on economics and such things, and I couldn"t sleep for a week. It was called "The Organization of Happiness," I believe, and it described just how the world ought to be arranged--and isn"t. I thought seriously of going to Washington and telling the President and Congress about it."