“I don’t know what you’re goin’ to do about it, men; but I know what I’m goin’ to do. I’m goin’ down, now, to see Dick Malleson. I ain’t goin’ to beg ’im for my job; I’m goin’ to demand it, and if he don’t give it to me, by God! I’ll take it! And if ye’ll go along ye’ll have them millionaries on their knees in an hour’s time, a-beggin’ for mercy. Who goes?”
“We all go! We’re fightin’ strong, an’ we’re fightin’ mad, an’ we’ll have our rights. Come on!”
There was a rush for the hall doors. The sound of the chairman’s gavel was lost in the din. The pending resolution and its fate were forgotten. Men fought with each other in their eagerness to get to the street and to take up the line of march to the mills. Chairs were overturned. Doors were wrenched from their hinges. Prayer-books and hymnals and lesson-leaves were scattered on the floor and trampled under shuffling feet. Lamar, red-faced, shouting, gesticulating, tried to stem the torrent, but he might as well have tried to hold back Niagara. Some laughed at him, others cursed him, no one obeyed him.
The rector of Christ Church, standing in a niche by the organ, had looked on and listened in horrified amazement. He saw that the hour for riot and bloodshed had arrived, and he made one supreme effort to avert the final catastrophe. He sprang to the platform and shouted to the mob. Men turned to see who it was that was speaking, and then turned away. They did not care to hear him. They paid no more attention to him than if he had been a man of straw, except that some of them laughed at him, some mocked him, some ridiculed him. His appeal for wisdom and order fell on deaf ears. These men had no use, to-day, for sermons or religion, or pious advice. What they wanted was action—and plenty of it.
When he found that his effort was utterly useless, the rector stopped speaking and came down from the platform. At the foot of the steps he met Lamar, gazing, with frightened eyes, at the disappearing crowd.
“Lamar,” he cried, “stop them! They’re wild! They’re rushing to destruction!”
“I can’t,” replied Lamar. “No man can stop them. God in heaven couldn’t stop them now!”
From Lamar’s lips the ejaculation was impious, but the clergyman did not stop to consider it.
“Then come with me,” he said. “Let’s follow on and do what we may to prevent bloodshed and arson.”
Lamar made no reply, but he started on in obedience to the request. So they went on their hopeless mission, servant of Christ and enemy of God together, both rejected by those whom they had served, hissed and hooted at as they made their way through crowded streets black with the breaking storm.