The Nine-Tenths Part 3

He went on up, entered the neat, still front room, lit the gas beside the bureau mirror, and began to pace up and down. His mother was searching for him; he might have known it; he should have remembered it.

And then he heard the uncanny shouting of the newsboys--as if those dead girls had risen from their ashes and were running like flaming furies through the city streets, flinging handfuls of their fire into a million homes, shaking New York into a realization of its careless, guilty heart, crying for vengeance, stirring horror and anger and pity. Who was the guilty one, if not he, the boss?

And then the inquisition began, the repeated sting of las.h.i.+ng thoughts and cruel questions. He asked himself what right he had to be an employer, to take the responsibility of thirty lives in his hands. He was careless, easy-going, he was in business for profits. Had such a man any right to be placed over others, to be given the power over other lives? The guilt was his; the blame fell on him. He should have kept clean house; he should have stamped out the smoking; he should not have smoked himself. There fell upon his shoulders a burden not to be borne, the burden of his blame, and he felt as if nothing now in the world could a.s.suage that sense of guilt.

Life, he found, was a fury, a cyclone, not the simple, easy affair he had thought it. It was his living for himself, his living alone, his ignorance of the fact that his life was tangled in with the lives of all human beings, so that he was socially responsible, responsible for the misery and poverty and pain all about him.

That _he_ should be the one! Had he not lived just the average life--blameless, cheerful, hard-working, fun-loving--the life of the average American? Just by every-day standards his was the useful and good life. But no, that was not enough. In his rush for success he had made property his treasure instead of human beings. That was the crime.

And so these dead lay all about him as if he had murdered them with his hands. It was his being an average man that had killed sixty-three girls and men. And what had he been after? Money? He did not use his money, did not need so much. Just a little shared with his employees would have saved them. No, the average man must cease to exist, and the social man take his place, the brother careful of his fellow-men, not careless of all but his own gain.

A boy pa.s.sed, hoa.r.s.ely shouting that terrible extra. Would nothing in the world silence that sound? The cold sweat came out on his face. He was the guilty one. That was the one fact that he knew.

And then he paused; the door opened creakingly and his mother entered.

She was a magnificent young-old woman, her body sixty-three years old, her mind singularly fresh and young. She was tall, straight, spirited, and under the neat glossy-white hair was a n.o.ble face, somewhat long, somewhat slim, a little pallid, but with firm chin and large forehead and living large black eyes set among sharp lines of lids. The whole woman was focussed in the eyes, sparkled there, lived there, deep, limpid, quick, piercing. Her pallor changed to pure whiteness.

"Joe ..." her voice broke. "I've been looking for you...."

He paused, walled away from her by years of isolation. She advanced slowly; her face became terrible in its hungry love, its mother pa.s.sion.

She met his eyes, and then he fled to her, and his body shook with rough, tearless sobs. Her relief came in great tears.

"And all those girls," she was murmuring, "and those men. How did it happen?"

He drew back; his eyes became strange.

"Mother," he said, harshly, "I'm the guilty one. There was a heap of cotton waste in the corner, shouldn't have been there. And I let the men smoke cigarettes."

She was horrified.

"But _why_ did you do that?" she whispered, moving a little away from him.

"My thoughtlessness ... my _business_." The word was charged with bitterness. "Business! business! I'm a business man! I wasn't in business"--he gave a weird laugh--"for the health of my employees! I was making money!"

She looked at him as if he had ceased being her son and had turned into a monster. Then she swayed, grasped the bedpost and sank on the bed.

Her voice was low and harsh.

"_Your_ fault ... and all those young girls...."

His mother had judged him; he looked at her with haggard eyes, and spoke in a hollow voice.

"Nothing will ever wipe this guilt from my mind.... I'm branded for life ... this thing will go on and on and on every day that I live...."

She glanced at him then, and saw only her son, the child she had carried in her arms, the boy who had romped with her, and she only knew now that he was suffering, that no one on earth could be in greater pain.

"Oh, my poor Joe!" she murmured.

"Yes," he went on, beside himself, "I'm blasted with guilt...."

She cried out:

"If you go on like this, we'll both go out of our minds, Joe! Fight!

It's done ... it's over.... From now on, make amends.... Joe!"--She rose magnificently then--"Your father lost his arm in the war.... Now give your life to setting things right!"

And she drew him close again. Her words, her love, her belief in him roused him at last.

"You know the fault isn't all yours," she said. "The factory inspector's to blame, too--and the men--and the people up-stairs--and the law because it didn't demand better protection and fire-drills--all are to blame. You take too much on yourself...."

And gradually, striving with him through the early morning hours, she calmed him, she soothed him, and got him to bed. He was at last too weary to think or feel and he slept deep into the day. And thinking a little of herself, she realized that the tragedy had brought them closer together than they had been for years.

Out of those ashes on East Eighty-first Street rose a certain splendor over the city. All of New York drew together with indignation and wondrous pity. It did not bring the dead girls to life again--it was too late for that--but it brought many other dead people to life.

Fifty thousand dollars flowed to the newspapers for relief; an inquest probed causes and guilt and prevention; ma.s.s--meetings were held; the rich and the powerful forgot position and remembered their common humanity; and the philanthropic societies set to work with money, with doctors and nurses and visitors. The head of one huge a.s.sociation said to the relief committee in a low, trembling voice: "Of course, our whole staff is at your service." Just for a time, a little time, the five-million-manned city flavored its confused, selfish struggle with simple brotherhood.

How had it happened? Whose was the fault? How came it that sixty girls were imprisoned in the skies, as it were, and could only fling themselves down to the stone pavement in an insanity of terror? What war was more horrible than this Peace of Industry? Such things must be prevented in future, said New York, rising like a wrathful G.o.d--and for a while the busy wheels of progress turned.

Joe had to attend the inquest as a witness. He gave his testimony in a simple, sincere, and candid way that gained him sympathy. His men testified in his behalf, trying to wholly exonerate him and inculpate themselves, and the lawyers cleverly scattered blame from one power to another--the city, the State, the fire department, the building department, etc. It became clear that Joe could not be officially punished; it was evident that he had done as much as the run of employers to protect life, and that his intentions had been blameless.

However, that did not ease Joe's real punishment. He was a changed man that week, calm, ready with his smile, but haggard and bowed, nervous and overwrought, bearing a burden too heavy for his heart. He made over the twenty thousand dollars of insurance money to the Relief and Prevention Work; he visited the injured and the bereaved; he forgot Myra and tried to forget himself; he attended committee meetings.

Myra wrote him a little note:

DEAR JOE,--Don't forget that whatever happens I believe in you utterly and I love you and shall always love you, and that you have me when all else is lost.

Your MYRA.

To which he merely replied:

DEAR MYRA,--I shall remember what you say, and I shall see you when I can.

Yours, JOE.

It was on Sunday afternoon that Joe met Fannie Lemick on the street. Her eyes filled with tears and he noticed she was trembling.

"Mr. Joe!" she cried.

"Yes, Fannie...."

"Are you going, too?"

"Going where?"

"Don't you know? _The ma.s.s-meeting at Carnegie Hall_!"

He looked at her, smiling.

"I'll go with you, if I may!"