100%: the Story of a Patriot Part 10
"But, my G.o.d!" said McGivney. "What did you have to go and get that kind of a girl for?"
"I had to take what I could," answered Peter. "Besides, they're all alike--they get into trouble, and you can't help it."
"Sure, you can help it!" said McGivney. "Why didn't you ask long ago? Now if you've got yourself tied up with a marrying proposition, it's your own lookout; you can't put it off on me."
They argued back and forth. The rat-faced man was positive that there was no way Peter could pretend to marry Jennie and not have the marriage count. He might get himself into no end of trouble and certainly he would be ruined as a spy. What he must do was to pay the girl some money and send her somewhere to get fixed up. McGivney would find out the name of a doctor to do the job.
"Yes, but what excuse can I give her?" cried Peter. "I mean, why I don't marry her!"
"Make something up," said McGivney. "Why not have a wife already?"
Then, seeing Peter's look of dismay: "Sure, you can fix that. I'll get you one, if you need her. But you won't have to take that trouble--just tell your girl a hard luck story. You've got a wife, you thought you could get free from her, but now you find you can't; your wife's got wind of what you're doing here, and she's trying to blackmail you. Fix it up so your girl can't do anything on account of hurting the Goober defense. If she's really sincere about it, she won't disgrace you; maybe she won't even tell her sister."
Peter hated to do anything like that. He had a vision of little Jennie lying on the sofa in hysterics as he had left her, and he dreaded the long emotional scene that would be necessary. However, it seemed that he must go thru with it; there was no better way that he could think of. Also, he must be quick, because in a couple of hours Sadie would be coming home from work, and it might be too late.
Section 25
Peter hurried back to the Todd home, and there was white-faced little Jennie lying on the bed, still sobbing. One would think she might have used up her surplus stock of emotions; but no, there is never any limit to the emotions a woman can pour out. As soon as Peter had got fairly started on the humiliating confession that he had a wife, little Jennie sprang up from the bed with a terrified shriek, and confronted him with a face like the ghost of an escaped lunatic. Peter tried to explain that it wasn't his fault, he had really expected to be free any day. But Jennie only clasped her hands to her forehead and screamed: "You have deceived me! You have betrayed me!" It was just like a scene in the movies, the bored little devil inside Peter was whispering.
He tried to take her hand and reason with her, but she sprang away from him, she rushed to the other side of the room and stood there, staring at him as if she were some wild thing that he had in a corner and was threatening to kill. She made so much noise that he was afraid that she would bring the neighbors in; he had to point out to her that if this matter became public he would be ruined forever as a witness, and thus she might be the means of sending Jim Goober to the gallows.
Thereupon Jennie fell silent, and it was possible for Peter to get in a word. He told her of the intrigues against him; the other side had sent somebody to him and offered him ten thousand dollars if he would sell out the Goober defense. Now, since he had refused, they were trying to blackmail him, using his wife. They had somehow come to suspect that he was involved in a love affair, and this was to be the means of ruining him.
Jennie still would not let Peter touch, her, but she consented to sit down quietly in a chair, and figure out what they were going to do. Whatever happened, she said, they must do no harm to the Goober case. Peter had done her a monstrous wrong in keeping the truth from her, but she would suffer the penalty, whatever it might be; she would never involve him.
Peter started to explain; perhaps it wasn't so serious as she feared. He had been thinking things over; he knew where Pericles Priam, his old employer, was living, and Pericles was rich now, and Peter felt sure that he could borrow two hundred dollars, and there were places where little Jennie could go--there were ways to get out of this trouble--
But little Jennie stopped him. She was only a child in some ways, but in others she was a mature woman. She had strange fixed ideas, and when you ran into them it was like running into a stone wall.
She would not hear of the idea Peter suggested; it would be murder.
"Nonsense," said Peter, echoing McGivney. "It's nothing; everybody does it." But Jennie was apparently not listening. She sat staring with her wild, terrified eyes, and pulling at her dress with her fingers. Peter got to watching these fingers, and they got on his nerves. They behaved like insane fingers; they manifested all the emotions which the rest of little Jennie was choking back and repressing.
"If you would only not take it so seriously!" Peter pleaded. "It's a miserable accident, but it's happened, and now we've got to make the best of it. Some day I'll get free; some day I'll marry you."
"Stop, Peter!" the girl whispered, in her tense voice. "I don't want to talk to you any more, if that's all you have to say. I don't know that I'd be willing to marry you--now that I know you could deceive me--that you could go on deceiving me day after day for months."
Peter thought she was going to break out into hysterics again, and he was frightened. He tried to plead with her, but suddenly she sprang up. "Go away!" she exclaimed. "Please go away and let me alone. I'll think it over and decide what to do myself. Whatever I do, I won't disgrace you, so leave me alone, go quickly!"
Section 26
She drove him out of the house, and Peter went, though with many misgivings. He wandered about the streets, not knowing what to do with himself, looking back over the blunders he had made and tormenting himself with that most tormenting of all thoughts: how different my life might have been, if only I had had sense enough to do this, or not to do that! Dinner time came, and Peter blew himself to a square meal, but even that did not comfort him entirely. He pictured Sadie coming home at this hour. Was Jennie telling her or not?
There was a big ma.s.s meeting called by the Goober Defense Committee that evening, and Peter attended, and it proved to be the worst thing he could have done. His mind was in no condition to encounter the fierce pa.s.sions of this crowded a.s.semblage. Peter had the picture of himself being exposed and denounced; he wasn't sure yet that it mightn't happen to him. And here was this meeting--thousands of workingmen, h.o.r.n.y handed blacksmiths, longsh.o.r.emen with shoulders like barns and truckmen with fists like battering rams, long-haired radicals of a hundred dangerous varieties, women who waved red handkerchiefs and shrieked until to Peter they seemed like gorgons with snakes instead of hair.
Such were the mob-frenzies engendered by the Goober case; and Peter knew, of course, that to all these people he was a traitor, a poisonous worm, a snake in the gra.s.s. If ever they were to find out what he was doing--if for instance, someone were to rise up and expose him to this crowd--they would seize him and tear him to pieces. And maybe, right now, little Jennie was telling Sadie; and Sadie would tell Andrews, and Andrews would become suspicious, and set spies on Peter Gudge! Maybe they had spies on him already, and knew of his meetings with McGivney!
Haunted by such terrors, Peter had to listen to the tirades of Donald Gordon, of John Durand, and of Sorensen, the longsh.o.r.emen's leader. He had to listen to exposure after exposure of the tricks which Guffey had played; he had to hear the district attorney of the county denounced as a suborner of perjury, and his agents as blackmailers and forgers. Peter couldn't understand why such things should be permitted--why these speakers were not all clapped into jail. But instead, he had to sit there and listen; he even had to applaud and pretend to approve! All the other secret operatives of the Traction Trust and of the district attorney's office had to listen and pretend to approve! In the hall Peter had met Miriam Yankovich, and was sitting next to her. "Look," she said, "there's a couple of d.i.c.ks over there. Look at the mugs on them!"
"Which?" said Peter.
And she answered: "That fellow that looks like a bruiser, and that one next to him, with the face of a rat." Peter looked, and saw that it was McGivney; and McGivney looked at Peter, but gave no sign.
The meeting lasted until nearly midnight. It subscribed several thousand dollars to the Goober defense fund, and adopted ferocious resolutions which it ordered printed and sent to every local of every labor union in the country. Peter got out before it was over, because he could no longer stand the strain of his own fears and anxieties. He pushed his way thru the crowd, and in the lobby he ran into Pat McCormick, the I. W. W. leader.
There was more excitement in this boy's grim face than Peter had ever seen there before. Peter thought it was the meeting, but the other rushed up to him, exclaiming: "Have you heard the news?"
"What news?"
"Little Jennie Todd has killed herself!"
"My G.o.d!" gasped Peter, starting back.
"Ada Ruth just told me. Sadie found a note when she got home. Jennie had left--she was going to drown herself."
"But what--why?" cried Peter, in horror.
"She was suffering so, her health was so wretched, she begs Sadie not to look for her body, not to make a fuss--they'll never find her."
And horrified and stunned as Peter was, there was something inside him that drew a deep breath of relief. Little Jennie had kept her promise! Peter was, safe!
Section 27
Yes, Peter was safe, but it had been a close call, and he still had painful scenes to play his part in. He had to go back to the Todd home and meet the frantic Sadie, and weep and be horrified with the rest of them. It would have been suspicious if he had not done this; the "comrades" would never have forgiven him. Then to his dismay, he found that Sadie had somehow come to a positive conviction as to Jennie's trouble. She penned Peter up in a corner and accused him of being responsible; and there was poor Peter, protesting vehemently that he was innocent, and wishing that the floor would open up and swallow him.
In the midst of his protestations a clever scheme occurred to him.
He lowered his voice in shame. There was a man, a young man, who used to come to see Jennie off and on. "Jennie asked me not to tell." Peter hesitated a moment, and added his master-stroke.
"Jennie explained to me that she was a free-lover; she told me all about free love. I told her I didn't believe in it, but you know, Sadie, when Jennie believed in anything, she would stand by it and act on it. So I felt certain it wouldn't do any good for me to b.u.t.t in."
Sadie almost went out of her mind at this. She glared at Peter.
"Slanderer! Devil!" she cried. "Who was this man?"
Peter answered, "He went by the name of Ned. That's what Jennie called him. It wasn't my business to pin her down about him."
"It wasn't your business to look out for an innocent child?"
"Jennie herself said she wasn't an innocent child, she knew exactly what she was doing--all Socialists did it." And to this parting shot he added that he hadn't thought it was decent, when he was a guest in a home, to spy on the morals of the people in it. When Sadie persisted in doubting him, and even in calling him names, he took the easiest way out of the difficulty--fell into a rage and stormed out of the house.