THE THORN OF THE ROSE

A few minutes later the two were on a north-bound Broadway car. Presently Mr. Driscoll blinked his bulging eyes thoughtfully at his watch. "I want to run in and see Keating a minute sometime this afternoon," he remarked. "He's just been doing some great work, Miss Arnold. If we hurry we've got time to crowd it in now." A pudgy forefinger went up into the air. "Oh, conductor—let us off here!"

Before Ruth had recovered the power to object they were out of the car and walking westward through a narrow cross street. Her first frantic impulse was to make some hurried excuse and turn back. She could not face him again!—and in his own home!—never! But a sudden fear restrained this impulse: to follow it might reveal to Mr. Driscoll the real state of affairs, or at least rouse his suspicions. She had to go; there was nothing else she could do. And so she walked on beside her employer, all her soul pulsing and throbbing.

Soon a change began to work within her—the reassertion of her love. She would have avoided the meeting if she could, but now fate was forcing her into it. She abandoned herself to fate's irresistible arrangement. A wild, excruciating joy began to possess her. She was going to see him again!

But in the last minute there came a choking revulsion of feeling. She could not go up—she could not face him. Her mind, as though it had been working all the time beneath her consciousness, presented her instantly with a natural plan of avoiding the meeting. She paused at the stoop of Tom's tenement. "I'll wait here till you come down, or walk about the block," she said.

"All right; I'll be gone only a few minutes," returned the unobservant Mr. Driscoll. He mounted the stoop, but drew aside at the door to let a woman with a boy come out, then entered. Ruth's glance rested upon the woman and child, and she instinctively guessed who they were, and her conjecture was instantly made certain knowledge by a voice from a window addressing the woman as Mrs. Keating. She gripped the iron hand-rail and, swaying, stared at Maggie as she stood chatting on the top step. Her fixed eyes photographed the cheap beauty of Maggie's face, and her supreme insight, the gift of the moment, took the likeness of Maggie's soul. She gazed at Maggie with tense, white face, lips parted, hardly breathing, all wildness within, till Maggie started to turn from her neighbor. Then she herself turned about and walked dizzily away.

In the meantime Mr. Driscoll had gained Tom's flat and was knocking on the door. When Maggie had gone out—the silent accusation of Tom's presence irked her so, she was glad to escape it for an hour or two—she had left the door unlocked that Tom might have no trouble in admitting possible callers. Mr. Driscoll entered in response to Tom's "Come in," and crossed heavily into the sitting-room. "Hello there! How are you?" he called out, taking Tom's hand in a hearty grasp.

"Why, Mr. Driscoll!" Tom exclaimed, with a smile of pleasure.

Mr. Driscoll sank with a gasp into a chair beside the couch. "Well, I suppose you think you're about everybody," he said with a genial glare. "Of course you think I ought to congratulate you. Well, I might as well, since that's one thing I came here for. I do congratulate you, and I mean it."

He again grasped Tom's hand. "I've been thinking of the time, about five months ago, when you stood in my office and called me a coward and a few other nice things, and said you were going to put Foley out of business. I didn't think you could do it. But you have! You've done a mighty big thing."

He checked himself, but his discretion was not strong enough to force him to complete silence, nor to keep a faint suggestion of mystery out of his manner. "And you deserve a lot more credit than you're getting. You've done a lot more than people think you have—than you yourself think you have. If you knew what I know——!"

He nodded his head, with one eye closed. "There's some people I'd back any day to beat the devil. Well, well! And so you're to be walking delegate, hey? That's what I hear."

"I understand the boys are talking about electing me."

"Well, if you come around trying to graft off me, or calling strikes on my jobs, there'll be trouble—I tell you that."

"I'll make you an exception. I'll not graft off you, and I'll let you work scabs and work 'em twenty-four hours a day, if you want to."

"I know how!" Mr. Driscoll mopped his face again. "I came around here, Keating, to say about three things to you. I wanted to congratulate you, and that I've done. And I wanted to tell you the latest in the Avon affair. I heard just before I left the office that those thugs of Foley's, hearing that he'd skipped and left 'em in the lurch, had confessed that you didn't have a thing to do with the Avon explosion—that Foley'd put them up to it, and so on. It'll be in the papers this afternoon. Even if your case comes to trial, you'll be discharged in a minute. The other thing——"

"Mr. Driscoll——" Tom began gratefully.

Mr. Driscoll saw what was coming, and rushed on at full speed. "The other thing is this: I'm speaking serious now, and just as your father might, and it's for your own good, and nothing else. What I've got to say is, get out of the union. You're too good for it. A man's got to do the best he can for himself in this world; it's his duty to make a place for himself. And what are you doing for yourself in the union? Nothing. They've turned you down, and turned you down hard, in the last few months. It's all hip-hip-hurrah for you to-day, but they'll turn you down again just as soon as they get a chance. Mark what I say! Now here's the thing for you to do. You can get out of the union now with glory. Get out, and take the job I offered you five months ago. Or a better one, if you want it."

"I can't tell you how much I thank you, Mr. Driscoll," said Tom. "But that's all been settled before. I can't."

"Now you see here!"—and Mr. Driscoll leaned forward and with the help of a gesticulating fist launched into an emphatic presentation of "an old man's advice" on the subject of looking out for number one.

While he had been talking Ruth had walked about the block in dazing pain, and now she had been brought back to the tenement door by the combined strength of love and duty. During the last two weeks she had often wished that she might speak a moment with Tom, to efface the impression she had given him on that tragic evening when they had been last together, that knowing him could mean to her only great pain. That she should tell him otherwise, that she should yield him the forgiveness she had withheld, had assumed to her the seriousness of a great debt she must discharge. The present was her best chance—perhaps she could see him for a moment alone. And so, duty justifying love, she entered the tenement and mounted the stairs.

Tom's "Come in!" answered her knock. Clutching her self-control in both her hands, she entered. At sight of her Tom rose upon his elbow, then sank back, as pale as she, his fingers turned into his palms.

"Mr. Keating," she said, with the slightest of bows, and lowered herself into a chair by the door.

He could merely incline his head.

"You got tired waiting, did you," said Mr. Driscoll, who had turned his short-sighted eyes about at her entrance. "I'll be through in just a minute." He looked back at Tom, and could but notice the latter's white, set face. "Why, what's the matter?"

"I twisted my ankle a bit; it's nothing," Tom answered.

Mr. Driscoll went on with his discourse, to ears that now heard not a word. Ruth glanced about the room. The high-colored sentimental pictures, the cheap showy furniture, the ornaments on the mantelpiece—all that she saw corroborated the revelation she had had of Maggie's character. Inspiration in neither wife nor home. Thus he had to live, who needed inspiration—whom inspiration and sympathy would help develop to a fitness for great ends. Thus he had to live!—dwarfed!

She filled with frantic rebellion in his behalf. Surely it did not have to be so, always. Surely the home could be changed, the wife roused to sympathy—a little—at least a little!... There must be a way! Yes, yes; surely. There must be a way!... Later, somehow, she would find it....

In this moment of upheaving ideas and emotions she had the first vague stirring of a new purpose—the very earliest conception of the part she was to play in the future, the part of an unseen and unrecognized influence. She was brought out of her chaotic thoughts by Mr. Driscoll rising from his chair and saying: "There's no turning a fool from his folly, I suppose. Well, we'd better be going, Miss Arnold."

She rose, too. Her eyes and Tom's met. He wondered, choking, if she would speak to him.

"Good-by, Mr. Keating," she said—and that was all.

"Good-by, Miss Arnold."

With a great sinking, as though all were going from beneath him, he watched her go out ... heard the outer door close ... and lay exhausted, gazing wide-eyed at the door frame in which he had last seen her.

A minute passed so, and then his eyes, falling, saw a pair of gray silk gloves on the table just before him. They were hers. He had risen upon his elbow with the purpose of getting to the table, by help of a chair back, and securing them, when he heard the hall door open gently and close. He sank back upon the couch.

The next minute he saw her in the doorway again, pale and with a composure that was the balance between paroxysm and supreme repression. She paused there, one hand against the frame, and then walked up to the little table. "I came back for my gloves," she said, picking them up.

"Yes," his lips whispered, his eyes fastened on her white face.

But she did not go. She stood looking down upon him, one hand resting on the table, the other on a chair back. "I left my gloves on purpose; there is something I want to say to you," she said, with her tense calm. "You remember—when I saw you last—I practically said that knowing you could in the future mean nothing to me but pain. I do not feel so now. Knowing you has given me inspiration. There is nothing for me to forgive—but if it means anything to you ... I forgive you."

Tom could only hold his eyes on her pale face.

"And I want to congratulate you," she went on. "I know how another is getting the praise that belongs to you. I know how much more you deserve than is being given you."

"Chance helped me much—at the end."

"It is the man who is always striving that is ready for the chance when it comes," she returned.

Tom, lying back, gazing fixedly up into her dark eyes, could not gather hold of a word. The gilded clock counted off several seconds.

"Mr. Driscoll is waiting for me," she said, in a voice that was weaker and less forcedly steady. She had not changed her position all the time she had spoken. Her arms now dropped to her side, and she moved back ever so little.

"I hope ... you'll be happy ... always," she said.

"Yes ... and I hope you...."

"Good-by."

"Good-by."

Their eyes held steadfastly to each other for a moment; she seemed to waver, and she caught the back of a chair; then she turned and went out....

For long he watched the door out of which she had gone; then, heedless of the pain, he rolled over and stared at one great poppy in the back of the couch.

THE END