"I guess it won't be so rough that I can't stand it—if you can," Anne added in an emphasis that escaped Roger, visioning again the absurd sandwich that was to unite Labor and Capital.
But the next evening, as she followed Roger into the already well-filled room, Anne forgot her personal interest in the feel of suppressed antagonism that filled the very air. Almost abnormally sensitive to hidden currents, as Anne passed down the empty space so clearly separating the two factions of the audience, she felt the currents playing across her.
On the right, in little knots and groups about Hilary Wainwright's desk, were the directors and their wives, the Russell Sagers, et al., a few thin, rather pale young men and a woman with horn-rimmed glasses, stringy hair and a note book. On the left, a fat man with a red face and very black hair and two women, one scarcely more than a girl, with bobbed chestnut curls, and great violet eyes, child-like eyes above the scarlet lips of a woman.
As Roger led to seats just opposite this girl, Anne noticed that the girl looked at them, and said something to the woman beside her, but the latter did not answer, nor even turn to them. She was a squat, heavily built woman, with a swarthy skin, and densely black, living hair, without a thread of gray, although Anne judged her more than forty.
She gripped Anne's attention and held it. She was so still. She looked as if she could wait forever and, in the end, the thing she waited would come. She was like the earth, silent, indifferent to all the play of light and shadow in life. She lived for a purpose. Whatever it was, Anne felt it like a thick, brown shell about her. Again the girl with the bobbed hair spoke to her. This time she frowned and shrugged aside the girl's remarks. It was like the motion of a tree disturbing the poise of a bright insect lodged for a moment upon its leaves. The girl laughed and the heavy woman lit a cigarette. She smoked in deep, violent draws that obscured her face in a cloud of stinging blue smoke.
At the odor, a short, bald-headed man rose on the other side of the room and opened a window. When he came back to his chair the woman beside him bowed her thanks. She was a large, gray-haired woman, conspicuous as the one bright spot amid the dark tailored suits of the other women and the business clothes of the men. Her amber-colored tunic, of soft silk, blended into the golden tint of her rounded, unlined face. Her skirt of golden-brown broadcloth toned in perfect harmony with her brown suede boots. When, through her gold lorgnette, hung on an amber chain, her brown eyes smiled their thanks to the man for his service, she seemed to come down from some height for the special purpose. She was like a rich, perfectly-ripened apricot, hung beyond reach. Next to her, on the left, the black-coated slimness of the Reverend Kenneth Peabody Smythe stood out like an exclamation point, calling attention to his presence in this extraordinary gathering.
At his desk, Hilary Wainwright kept glancing anxiously from the door to the group of men talking together in the third row. These men were all beyond middle age, with well-brushed gray hair, white, well-kept hands and tailored clothes. Two of them were lean, sharp-eyed men, their bodies tightened like springs, perfect mechanisms for the gripping and adjusting of any obstruction before them. The other was shorter, with a heavy neck and predatory eyes, the cheap cartoonists' favorite illustration of a capitalist.
Hilary Wainwright was just moving to join them, when the door opened and a large, raw-boned man in an untidy overcoat entered hurriedly and, without looking to the right or left, came straight to the seat beside the bobbed-haired girl. His boots left a muddy trail across the rug, and, as he shrugged himself out of his overcoat the ashes from his cigar stub fell on the girl's lap. With a dainty flip of her white fingers she brushed them aside, leaned close to the man, and whispered. He nodded, and the girl patted his knee. With a tap of his gavel, Hilary Wainwright called the meeting to order.
Under cover of the preliminary remarks on the present situation among the longshoremen, Anne whispered to Roger:
"Who's that man?"