Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 33, Number 352, 25 October 1908 — Page 10

THE

HELPLESS

CLASS (By Zooa Gale.

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Copyright 1908 by Thomsi VL McKeeLIKE this, for example," Mrs. Winkler said helplessly. She stepped under a wido umbrella of marble, delicately carved, and sat on the stone bench beneath it. Instantly a circle of tiny fountains sprang from the turf about It and a shower of water descended from the umbrella's loping sides and' spangled the green, momentarily Telling her pretty and more commonplace face. Eve stepped back with a little cry of pleasure. "How charming!" she said. "It makes rainbows." Young Hartley, his thin shoulders and sharply bridged nose constituting the high lights of his outline, frankly stared, holding his chin in his hand. "What an invincible novelty," he said in his monotone. But he said everything on a monotone and lie said that most things were invincible. Mrs, Winkler rose, and the waters ceased, and she ducked gracefully under the still dripping umbrella and faced her two guests. "Charming!" she repeated In distaste. "Oh, very, I have no douDt, in a barbaric, Turkish, roof-garden way. But In a modern summer home, near a reality like a lumber camp, I must say 4hat It ImN presses me as unconventionally out of the picture." . t " Eve saiQ nothing, but she was sorely tempted to reflect that, as to the conventional, Mrs. Winkler would have worn live white doves on her head If they had been decreed. "If this were all-" said the little hostess im-1 pressively. "As If it were not queer enough andi mad enough for my brother to have shut himself up here for weeks, with out this nonsense. For years he has hardly known that he owned a lumber mill, and now he has taken It up, I fancy, as one takes up a fad. Trick umbrellas and lumber camps and indoor lagoons and that kind of thing!" Mrs. Winkler said to the horizon. "Dear, dear," observed young Hartley, "a lumber camp. Ain't that a place where some most awful whistle goes off at some most awful hour?" "And now a strike threatened at the mill " "A strike?" said young Hartley. "Ain't thatwhere the supers growl In their throats In the wings? And the pine knots flare on collarless necks no?" ' "And as for the lagoon," Mrs. Winkler mounted 1 to her climax, "that has to be piped from a tank on top of the hill and we may all be drowned In our beds, moment by moment." Then she looked anxiously toward the drive. "The others ought to be coming," she said. "You mustn't oreathe a word of this to them. One or two . of my guests have absolute electric buttons for nerves. "Bo, really, In spite of the beauty of the place wth the woods so near, I did hesitate a good deal when he asked me up here this summer. I don't know where Alex Is. 1 haven't seen him since I came, though 1 had a welcoming note from him brightening me up with news of the probable strike In the mill. But I know you understand, and I know 1 can depend on you two In anything trying. And I simply cannot tell ail the rest the peculiar . truth." Eve looked at her smiling a little bit, but wholly fondly. Mrs. Winkler was so entirely like a mechanical toy that one was tempted to forget that he was morally responsible for her own wires. "Here are the rest now," she cried, as wheels sounded below. "Not a word about the list of skeletons!" Through the terrace Bhadows the hospitably distracted little woman went. Eve followed her leisurely and young Hartley followed Eve, his chin in bis hand. ' "Eve," said he, "won't you let hor announce our engagement at dinner to-night?" "What an epicure you are," the lady said lightly. 'Can't you enjoy a plain dinner without an engagement?" ' ' "Eve," Bald young Hartley, with all his might. She looked at him with the most tolerant serenity. "Not If you ask me a hundred thousand times," she made It clear. 1 That night when the rest were at coffee on the veranda, Eve slipped across the terrace in the dusk to where, well out of range of the house, the "trick" umbrella on the little slope of green was marked by a single glimmering point of light. Instantly , as she seated herself, there rose about her, three or lour feet from the umbrella seat, the thin wall of rwater, a row of tiny fountains set so closely together that they leaped one upon another. The isolation was Instant and thorough. '. "Ah." Eve reflected, why doesn't everyone have one instead of a music box and a teakwood room?" Almost at once some one spoke to her outside the fountain fence. "How charming of you to be amused," he said, ' 'with these little contrivances." This, Eve thought with a shade of annoyance, ;would be one of the house party escaped from coffee. "'But It is the contrivances that are charming," she Teturned, wondering who it would be. Not young Hartley, at all events, whom she had left glowering apart. Very vely Toby Slocum, who was always ambling aba -' "You reallj jink so?" whoever It was, remarked Incredulously. "And -how does one amuse oneself in there, may I ask?" It was so exactly like a toy castle and a kind of same that, "One pretends," she answered gravely. "Often a stupid performance," the man's voice answered with some frankness of belief. "But pre-, tending what. If one may press the matter?" She could not have helped her answer. "Perhaps that one is a princess and that orgies are Imminent," she said.

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"An ogre would never askpermisslon to enter, you know," he said, and strode leisurely through the wall of her fastness. And he was manifestly not young Hartley nor yet Toby Slocum, ambling about. This was no member of the house party at all. He stood before her with the water clinging to his shabby riding clothes and to the collarless shirt of brown flannel and to his sun-burned face and hands. He was some one big ana erect, with deep-set eyes and a close clipped moustache, and Eve saw his u nds veined, and almost ugly in their strength, bhe looked at him with an instant quickening of interest. The man seemed to Intimate that this is a world of good brown flannel Instead of eternal serge and immemorial broadcloth. "A moment ago," he said, "down there on the gravel, 1 was looking up to the veranda, at the coffeo and the people. And I was wishing that I might go up there among them and say various thing to them. If I haven't frightened you too much may I say them to you?" "You have not frightened m In the least," Eve

HE LAUGHED A LITTLE SOFTLY AT THE UNMISTAKABLE CHANGE IN HER MANNER, was able to return serenely. And this was partly true, for some way the man inspired courage, like a crisis. "I was merely wondering," he said, still standing before her, his arms folded, his disreputable felt hat crushed in one hand, "whether they know up there on the veranda, at that coffee, that a committee from the mill Is likely to descend upon them any night now, and talk about things of which they and their coffee are profoundly Ignorant?" At that Mrs. Winkler's vague, fluffy mention that arternoon of a strikfe at the mill came back to Eve. ."But why will they come here?" she asked. "Those people on the veranda there, most of them, never heard of the lumber camp." "Precisely," he said somewhat grimly. "Neith- . er until lately has the man who owns the mill and the veranda. There, one would fancy, is the exact rub." With that there came to Eve a swift hazard of who the man might be. Why had she not thought of him before Alex Loverldge, Mrs. Winkler's amazing brother whose fade were "the 'trick umbrella, the lumber mill, and that kind of thing." Who else should thi3 be, appearing to her at his ease in brown flannel and shabby riding clothes. . . His next words, she thought, confirmed her. "Having never heard of this camp," he said, "your friends there at their coffee probably have no idea that down at the mill a hundred men and women and some forty children are living In a condition which I am Inclined to call slavery abominable pay, overwork, long hours, improper food, wretched living places, the camp store run at an enormous profit because the men are compelled week by week to buy stuff they don't want and can't use; te camp school closed for months at a time on pretext of there being no teacher, so that twenty or more children all under age may be free to handle the 6hingles. 1 think we may safely say that up there over the coffee, all this and the strike that seems Imminent do not enter Intimately into the talk?" "No," Eve said slowly, "I don't think, of course, that they have an Idea of all that. Save of the strike. That was mentioned this afternoon.." "Ah, yes," said the man, "that was mentioned this afternoon. Precisely." It was a remarkable series of statements to be made within a kind of toy palace where the seclusion might be supposed to be instant and thorough. Eve felt as if they had taken her to some place of the world where the isolation was irremediable, and as If the great appalling question of the time, of the near future, was before her for her to solve. "What does one do?" she said. "Half of us sit at our coffee on the veranda." he answered, "and the other half wonder in mills and the like. Though to be sure the time for wondering is almost done." "But there must be something to do," Eve protested. "There is always something to do." For the flrst time the man smiled faintly, his teeth flashing beneath his close-clipped moustache. "1 applaud the motto," he said. "It is my own. There is indeed much to be done, only nobody seems the one to do It. We don't talk each other's language, the veranda and the mill. And the veranda oh, well," he broke oft vehemently.

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"there's no use trying to blind ourselves. The people at coffee on the verandas of this world are about as competent to handle the real problems of the mills as they are to direct the sun." "Then what did you mean to ask them to do up there on the veranda?" Eve asked reasonably. "I'm always thinking they could help," he said. "I've I've only to talk with you to see that they cannot." Certainly this was no proper flattery from a lord of the manor, within a toy palace. "I beg your pardon," he said quickly. "I am an ogre, I see. But won't you understand what I mean? The very" he hesitated, then he went on as simply as if it were coaching he was discussing "the very charm and perfection of you defeats you. You are the aristocrat to your finger tips. They can "pick you out before you can pick out one another. One' look at you yourself at your face, your hands, the sound of your voice, your way of talk and they would distrust you. You are as far from them as another life. You are of no more use in solving the problem of the age than a spirit would be. The aristocrat in you conquers you. You are Just as helpless in your way as these mill people are. You are bound like them. So is most of your class." Eve looked at him wonderlngly. "So Is most of your class." That hardly sounded like the lord of the manor! But whoever he was he was splendidly in earnest, and, somehow, he was near to the world in the making. But iie was classing her with the other side! "It isn't that," she said eagerly. "It's only that thre Is no one to tell us so that we understand. If we understood we could help those people. But there are a good many of us oh, most of us never know anything about such things. . . ." She broke off for be stood shaking his head with his luminous and singularly uncompromising smile. "It's bigger than that," he said. "We've got to know about such things we can't help it, you know. And it needs more than being told about them. It needs going out after them. It needs something to make the two classes clear to each other. And there isn't any way until every last one of us does something, no matter how little It is, for some poor devil or other. I don't mean give 'em soup or even soap. I mean give 'em your hand. ' Give 'em their own self-respect." Eva looked at him quickly. "But you are of my class," she said quietly; "and yet I think that both classes seem clear to you." He drew himself erect and folded his arms across his brown flannel shirt. "Pardon," he said, "I am not of your class. I am the superintendent at the lumber mill." Eve rose suddenly, and with her rising the delicate wall of water that had shut them in ceased abruptly, and revealed the darkness all about them. And when he marked the unmistakable change in her manner Involuntary and veiled as It was he laughed a little, softly, but with something of sadness and more of unmistakable bitterness. "My point proves itself," he said simply. "Surely you will see that my advice is wise. It Is this: When the committee comes to the house there, with the veranda, it will be wise If you will all be well within It you and your coffee. Nothing that you can do will mend matters in the very least. You see, do you not? that we do not know the way, you and I?" Then he was gone, striding away across the grounds, and Eve stood angry and ashamed. How had she let him see her annoyance? But she was not annoyed as he had supposed, she told herself. She stood still for a moment, her heart beating to a new measure. How splendidly In earnest he had been. How near, some way, to the world in the making! When, after a time, she went up the steps of the veranda, Mrs. Winkler called to her from her hanging porch chair, "Eve oh. Eve! We've an excursion planned for to-morrow. We're going to visit the lumber camp and see the boards go round. We're going in the drag and do it thoroughly investigate conditions and that kind of thing. Oh, I think it will please Alex so!" Eve did what she could but there was no changing Mrs. Winkler's intention. So all save Eve, who frankly .begged off, and young Hartley, who insisted on staying with her, did leave Just after luncheon. They were to visit the mill, have tea in the woods, and dine at the hotel four miles on, returning by moonlight. And they were looking very gay in Alex Loveridge's drag, which with Its magnificent gray horses, was known for miles about. There were nine of them the women charmingly conspicuous with those effects of the inconspicuous contrived by pink and white, by soft-colored plumes and shoes, and by fugitive veils, fluttering out Inconsequential and wavy, like laughter. On the lumber camp that bleak stretch of open where the wounded earth showed distorted members of trees and the great mill burrowed Into the wildwood like a giant worm at the heart of the green a fever had laid hold, the unrest of soul which is accounted unrest of body because the body is suffering. And that noon, because of the fever that was In them, the men had met In the schoolhouse to cast their die. When the drag emerged from the pines it had been known for two hours that the Btrike would be declared that night at quitting time. Matters therefore would doubtless have progressed logically to the official document to Loverldge had It not been for that unlucky drag. The men saw It from within the mill that afternoon, and looked at each other grimly, and more than ever doubted the efficacy of the document. They felt the charming consplcuousness of pink and white, the

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soft-colored shoes and plumes and the laughter, and although they did not know of what those idle people talked nor at what they laughed nor the name of the queer equipage in which they rode, they did know that it had fared forth from Loveridge's house and they had heard that their own toil and ugliness had paid for it. So they hated it with reason, and without. The drag may have spent fifteen minutes in the camp. But that was long enough. At quitting time the men renounced with one voice the indirect and tedious method of a written appeal to Loverldge. They would go as they had wished, en masse, to Loveridge's house and they would see him face to face. If the superintendent would head this committee of the whole, so much the better. If he would not do so, they would go without a head. And they would go no later than that night. At which Endlcott, who seemed to understand the men considerably better than they did themselves, merely nodded and replied that, if they would have it so, and if they were really going to see Loverldge, he would go with them, certainly. He even added a suggestion. Suppose, he said thoughtfully, that they were to plan to arrive at Loveridge's house at about eight o'clock, when his guests would probably be on the veranda, at coffee? On the veranda of Loveridge's house, at about eight o'clock that night. Eve and young Hartley were at coffee along. . "The drag'H never be here for three hours," young Hartley was saying contentedly. "Eve! Why not announce our engagement as they all come up the 6teps?" "Chiefly because we're not engaged, you know," Eve explained. "But we could be by the time they got here," young Hartley submitted hopefully. "I could be." Eve looked down the gravel walk. Some way, though she was really fond of him, he had been, all day, rather Insupportable. And, too, she was fond of Toby Slocum and the rest, but she did not disguise from herself that they and their good-natured Jesting about the strike were become Insupportable too, from the moment that, the superintendent of the mill had laughed rather bitterly because she was one of them, and had strode off into the dark. Though, for all his striding off Into the dark he had not been far from her thought since. If only she could talk with him again 6he could tell him could make him know And at that, quite suddenly, she saw him standing at the foot of the steps, in his shabby riding clothes and shirt of brown flannel, and behind him the Bweep of gravel was growing black with men from the mill, and among them were women neatly dressed, and some of them with children in their arms. And the man himself said nothing and did not meet her eyes, but the silence of them all was broken by a demand, shrill or rough or sullen, from a score of throats: "Loverldge! Where's Loverldge? Where's Loverldge?" ... On which young Hartley lost his head. Eve had Involuntarily risen and young Hartley leaped past her. , "Stay where you are!" he said briefly. Leave them to me." , Iy obeyed. Then, with a sudden resolution to speak herself to the women, she followed him for a step or two toward the lagoon, flowing limidly across the veranda. In the same instant she saw him bending 'over something, and even as she sprang forward the mischief was done. Young Hartley had reached under the pyramid of coral, the responsive stream leaped Into the clear glass vase In the court, and the next moment the waters of the lagoon were gushing and teaming down the wide steps. Then, pleasantly Intoxicated with his own stupidity, he

"THE DRAG'LL NEVER BE HERE FOR THUEE .HOURS," YOUNG HARTLEY WAS SAYING CONTENTEDLY. Dounded within doors for the telephone. Eve ran to the corral and groped for the control of the water. There was the plate with a mechanism and spigots which she had no least notion bow to adjust. Whatever she turned served only to increase the laughing fury of the cascade. Through the clear vase in the court the water was boiling and leaping and flooding over the lagoon's low walls and already creeping over the marble floor of the court. Without, the steps were a smooth torrent, like the exquisite stair waterway at Versailles. She looked across the gulf, struck out by some Ironic chance to bo like the deeper gulf between her and these people. And then she saw that though the rest had huddled either way upon the sward. ?rtrtf'ff'fjf'

the superintendent of the mill stood at the foot of the steps, his arms folded, the water splashing ta the tops of his riding boots. Ha was looking not up at Eve, but over his shoulder at those poor people of his. staring up lmpotently at the house, at the lights, at the veranda vuta Its after-dinner cot fee things, and at the da'use that had met them. "You are just as helple- as these mill people are. You are bound, like them. So la most ol your class." The words came to Eve as poignantly as a present reproach. Here were a hundred or more men and women, come with an appeal from their class) to hers. And. "There isn't any way until every last one of ua does something, no matter how little it is, for soma poor devil or other. I don't mean give m soup nor even soap. I mean give 'em your hand. GIva 'em their own self-respect." And yet, la the supreme moment of her own chance to do something, here was the toy gulf aa there Is always a gulf, mocking them, killing their self-respect, stultifying ber own impulse to reach, out to them. Oh, but there must be something to do "there was always something to do. . . ." She tried to call to them, but her voice could not carry above the sound of the cascade. She looked down once at that mimic flood. Then she gathered her

white, soft skirts about her and stepped Into its i water. . . They watched her as she made her way across the wide top step thejsuperlntendent at first quizzically, then wonderlngly, then with something1 more the others in breathless amazement. After all, for her there was no great difficulty. The water flowed swiftly and It was cold, but she went through it with ease and began the descent of tha steps. At this, casting a disreputable felt hat on tha flooded gravel. Endlcott leaped forward and splashed up the waterway. She saw him coming and motioned him back protestingly. But he mounted to her. met her, and then dashed past her and sprang across the court to the fountain. There, swiftly, he thrust an arm to the shoulder under the pyramid of coral; and instantly the waters ceased to flow. Then he was back at her side, still without a word, and he lifted Eve in his arms and went wlta her down the steps and stood with her at his slda before the bewildered company. "I thank you." he said to her quietly, ''and I believe I was wrong. Had you something to say to these people?" Her frankly seeking, frightened look fell on tha woman nearest her a woman with a child who sat on the mother's arm staring at Eve over a plump little hand capractously patting Its own little mouth. And Eve drew a little quick breath and spoke her own unpremeditated message. "I don't think so," she said. "I Just wanted to be down here with them. I I think I wanted to see the children!"- ' She held out her 'hands to that nearest child. And the little one stretched out his hands and went to her quite simply, and sat looking back at his mother and the rest, still with a plump little hand patting Its own soft mouth. Eve looked beseechingly at Endlcott and a sudden little murmur and note of laughter, having in It something of pleasure, went among the rest. "My friends," he Bald gravely, "you are perfectly certain of one thing, though all else should fail. You are certain that I wish you well?" To this they said an Instant, eager "Yes." j "It Is true that I do," he said, "and yet I am Loverldge. I came to live among you -to amuse myself. In my ridiculous, evil leisure. I gave myself the job of superintendent. And now I am gogoing to give that to a better man and I am going to live here, near you, and we will get out and work for one another, the best we can. And this lady I think she is going to help us. She will, I believe. If you want her to as much as I do." Eve, meeting his eyes over the child's shoulder, knew what he meant. And she knew that she waa glad. And the face of Loverldge was shining with, great humility, as If be knew suddenly that It is a spirit which will solve the problem of the age, and that neither the charm and perfection of Era nor yet the bondage of the mill folk will prevail against It when "every last one of us does something" and does It right. Young Hartley, fresh from the telephone, came running from below stairs with the servants streaming after, and he stood In the great shiningdoorway of the house, with some dim notion that his Invincible fortifications had given out. At eight of Eve standing there remotely on the gravel with the child, be waved bis arms. "It's all righi, you know!" he shouted confidently. "I've fixed it! The police are eomin! Eve and Loverldge and the rest looked up at him across the gulf which had been bridged. For young Hartley stood on the other side. When the drag came home with laughter floating from it as Inconsequential and wavy as a fugitive veil, young Hartley sat on the veranda having: a cup of fresh coffee he had asked to be brought to him. "So sorry we couldn't get back before." Mrs. Winkler chattered. "Have Eve and you been verydull?" "Not so doosed very," replied young Hartley. "To speak the truth, Mrs. Winkler, your brother came." "Alex came!" the lady repeated shrilly. "Mercy! And what has he been doing now, pray?" Young Hartley went back to the table and stood poking among the cups. "Do you know," he said sadly; "I can't make out. But I tell you people. It's somethln invincible'" v

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