Leroy Scott

THE DAY AFTER

The distance to Tom's home was half a hundred blocks, but he chose to walk. Anger, disappointment, and underlying these the hopeless sense of being barred from his trade, all demanded the sympathy of physical exertion—and, too, there was the inevitable meeting with his wife. Walking would give him an hour before that.

It was after one when he opened the hall door and stepped into his flat. Through the dining-room he could see the gas in the sitting-room was turned down to a point, and could see Maggie lying on the couch, a flowered comforter drawn over her. He guessed she had stayed up to wait for his report. He listened. In the night's dead stillness he could faintly hear her breath come deep and regular. Seizing at the chance of postponing the scene, he cautiously closed the hall door, and, sitting down on a chair beside it, removed his shoes. He crossed on tiptoe toward their bedroom, but its door betrayed him by a creak. He turned quickly about. There was Maggie, propped up on one arm, the comforter thrown back.

She looked at him for a space without speaking. Through all his other feelings Tom had a sense that he made anything but a brave figure, standing in his stocking feet, his shoes in one hand, hat and overcoat on.

"Well?" she demanded at length.

Tom returned her fixed gaze, and made no reply to her all-inclusive query.

Her hands gripped her covering. She gave a gasp. Then she threw back the comforter and slipped to her feet.

"I understand!" she said. "Everything! I knew it! O-o-h!" There were more resentment and recrimination packed into that prolonged "oh" than she could have put into an hour's upbraiding.

Tom kept himself in hand. He knew the futility of explanation, but he explained. "I won, fairly. But Foley robbed me. He stuffed the ballot-box."

"It makes no difference how you lost! You lost! That's what I've got to face. You know I didn't want you to go into this. I knew you couldn't win. I knew Foley was full of tricks. But you went in. You lost wages. You threw away money—our money! And what have you got to show for it all?"

Tom let her words pass in silence. On his long walk he had made up his mind to bear her fury quietly.

"Oh, you!" she cried through clenched teeth, stamping a bare foot on the floor. "You do what you please, and I suffer for it. You wouldn't take my advice. And now you're out of a job and can't get one in your trade. How are we to live? Tell me that, Tom Keating? How are we to live?"

Only the word he had passed with himself enabled Tom to hold himself in after this outburst. "I'll find work."

"Find work! A hod-carrier! Oh, my God!"

She turned and flung herself at full length upon the couch, and lay there sobbing, her hands passionately gripping the comforter.

Tom silently watched the workings of her passion for a moment. He realized the measure of right on her side, and his sense of justice made his spirit unbend. "If we have to live close, it'll only be for a time," he said.

"Oh, my God!" she moaned.

He grimly turned and went into the bedroom. After a while he came out again. She had drawn the comforter over her, but her irregular breathing told him she was still awake.

"Aren't you coming to bed?" he asked.

She made no answer, and he went back. For half an hour he tossed about. Then he came into the sitting-room again. Her breath was coming quietly and regularly. He sat down and gazed at her handsome face for a long, long time, with misty, wondering thoughts. Then he rose with a deep-drawn sigh, took part of the covering from the bed, and spread it over her sleeping figure.

He tossed about long before he fell into a restless sleep. It was early when he awoke. He looked into the sitting-room. Maggie was still sleeping. He quickly dressed himself in his best suit (the one he had had on the night before was beyond further wearing), noting with surprise that his face bore few marks of conflict, and stole quietly out.

Tom's disappointment and anger were too fresh to allow him to put his mind upon plans for the future. All day he wandered aimlessly about, talking over the events of the previous night with such of his friends as chance put in his path. Late in the afternoon he met Pete and Barry, who had been looking for work since morning. They sat down in a saloon and talked about the election till dinner time. It was decided that Tom should protest the election and appeal to the union—a move they all agreed had little promise. Tom found a soothing gratification in Pete's verbal handling of the affair; there was an ease, a broadness, a completeness, to Pete's profanity that left nothing to be desired; so that Tom was prompted to remark, with a half smile: "If there was a professorship of your kind of English over at Columbia University, Pete, you'd never have to put on overalls again."

Tom had breakfasted in a restaurant, and lunched in a restaurant, and after Pete and Barry left he had dinner in one. It was a cheap and meager meal; with his uncertain future he felt it wise to begin to count every cent. Afterwards he walked about the streets till eight, bringing up at Ruth's boarding-house. The colored maid who answered his ring brought back the message: "Miss Arnold says will you please come up."

He mounted the stairway behind the maid. Ruth was standing at the head of the stairs awaiting him.

She wore a loose white gown, held in at the waist by a red girdle, and there was a knot of red in her heavy dark hair. Tom felt himself go warm at sight of her, and there began a throbbing that beat even in his ears.

"You don't mind my receiving you in my room, do you?" she said, opening her door, after she had greeted him.

"Why, no," said Tom, slightly puzzled. His acquaintance with the proprieties was so slight that he did not know she was then breaking one.

She closed the door. "I'm glad to see you. I know what happened last night; we heard at the office." She held out her hand again. The grip was warm and full of sympathy.

The hand sent a thrill through Tom. In his fresh disappointment it was just this intelligent sympathy that he was hungry for. For a moment he was unable to speak or move.

She gently withdrew her hand. "But we heard only the bare fact. I want you to tell me the whole story."

Tom laid his hat and overcoat upon the couch, which had a dull green cover, glancing, as he did so, about the room. There were a few prints of good pictures on the walls; a small case of books; a writing desk; and in one corner a large screen whose dominant color was a dull green. The thing that struck him most was the absence of the knick-knackery with which his home was decorated. Tom was not accustomed to give attention to his surroundings, but the room pleased him; and yet it was only an ordinary boarding-house room, plus the good taste of a tasteful woman.

Tom took one of the two easy chairs in the room, and once again went over the happenings of the previous night. She interrupted again and again with indignant exclamations.

"Why, you didn't lose at all!" she cried, when he had finished the episode of the eight drunken men.

"You won, and it was stolen from you! Your Mr. Foley is a—a——" Whichever way she turned for an adequate word she ran against a restriction barring its use by femininity. "A robber!" she ended.

"But aren't you going to protest the election?"

"I shall—certainly. But there's mighty little chance of the result being changed. Foley'll see to that."

He tried to look brave, but Ruth guessed the bitterness within. She yearned to have him talk over things with her; her sympathy for him now that she beheld him dispirited after a daring fight was even warmer than when she had seen him pulsing with defiant vigor. "Won't you tell me what you are going to do? If you don't mind."

"I'd tell if I knew. But I hardly have my bearings yet."

"Are you sure you can't work at your trade?"

"Not unless I kiss Foley's shoes."

She did not like to ask him if he were going to give in, but the question was in her face, and he saw it.

"I'm not that bad licked yet."

"There's Mr. Driscoll's offer," she suggested.

"Yes. I've thought of that. I don't know what move I'll make next. I don't just see now how I'm going to keep at the fight, but I'm not ready to give it up. If I took Mr. Driscoll's job, I'd have to drop the fight, for I'd practically have to drop out of the union. If the protest fails—well, we'll see."

Ruth looked at him thoughtfully, and she thrilled with a personal pride in him. He had been beaten; the days just ahead looked black for him; but his spirit, though exhausted, was unbroken. As a result of her experience she was beginning to regard business as being largely a compromise between self-respect and profit. In Tom's place she guessed what Mr. Baxter would do, and she knew what Mr. Driscoll would do; and the thing they would do was not the thing that Tom was doing. And she wondered what would be the course of Mr. Berman.

At the moment of parting she said to him, in her frank, impulsive way: "I think you are the bravest man I have ever known." He could only stumble away from her awkwardly, for to this his startled brain had no proper answer. His courage began to bubble back into him; and the warmth aroused by her words grew and grew—till he drew near his home, and then a chill began to settle about him.

Maggie was reading the installment of a serial story in an evening paper when he came in. She glanced up, then quickly looked back at her paper without speaking.

He started into the bedroom in silence, but paused hesitant in the doorway and looked at her. "What are you reading, Maggie?"

"The Scarlet Stain."

He held his eyes upon her a moment longer, and then with a sigh went into the bedroom and lit the gas. The instant he was gone from the doorway Maggie took her eyes from the story and listened irresolutely. All day her brain had burnt with angry thoughts, and all day she had been waiting the chance to speak. But her obstinate pride now strove to keep her tongue silent.

"Tom!" she called out, at length.

He appeared in the doorway. "Yes."

"What are you going to do?"

He was silent for a space. "I don't just know yet."

"I know," she said in a voice she tried to keep cold and steady. "There's only one thing for you to do. That's to get on the square with Foley."

Their eyes met. Hers were cold, hard, rebellious.

"I'll think it over," he said quietly; and went back into the bedroom.