Tom undertook to stand out against the proposal of submission, but he might as well have tried to shoulder back a Fundy tide. Men remembered it was he who had so hotly urged them into a strike that thus far had cost them seven weeks' wages. "I suppose you'd have us lose seven more weeks' money," they sneered at him. They said other things, and stronger, for your ironworker has studied English in many places.
Monday evening found Tom in a chair at one of the open windows of his sitting-room, staring out at nothing at all, hardly conscious of Maggie, who was reading, or of Ferdinand, who lay dozing on the couch. He was completely discouraged—at the uttermost end of things. He had searched his mind frantically for flaws in the negotiations and in Foley's conduct, flaws which, if followed up, clue by clue, would reveal Foley's suspected treachery. But he found none. There seemed nothing more he could do. The vote would come on Wednesday evening, and its result was as certain as if the count had already been made.
And so he sat staring into the line of back yards with their rows and rows of lighted windows. His mind moved over the past five months. They had held nothing for him but failure and pain. He had fought for honor in the management of the union's affairs, staking his place in his trade on the result—and honor in the contest with dishonesty had gone down in defeat. He had urged the union to strike for better wages, and now the strike was on the eve of being lost. He would have to begin life over anew, and he did not know where he could begin. Moreover, he had lost all but a few friends; and he had lost all influence. This was what his fight for right had brought him, and in five months.
And this was not the sum of the bitterness the five months had brought him—no, nor its greater part. He had learned how mighty real love can be—and how hopeless!
He had been sitting so, dreaming darkly, for an hour or more when Maggie asked him if he had heard whether Petersen had come back. The question brought to his mind that he had neglected Mrs. Petersen for four days. He rose, conscience-smitten, told Maggie he would be back presently, and set forth for the tenement in which the Petersens had their home. He found Mrs. Petersen, her child asleep in her lap, reading the Bible. She appeared to be even slighter and paler than when he had last seen her, but her spirit seemed to burn even higher through the lessened obscuration of her thinning flesh.
No, Petersen had not yet come back. "But I fetched my trouble to God in prayer," she said. "An' He helped me, glory to His name! He told me Nels is comin' back."
Tom had nothing to give to one so fired by hope, and he slipped away as soon as he could and returned home. On entering his flat, his eyes going straight through the dining-room into the sitting-room, he saw Maggie gazing in uncomfortable silence at a man—a lean, brown man, with knobby face, and wing-like mustache, who sat with bony hands in his lap and eyes fastened on his knees.
Tom crossed the dining-room with long strides. Maggie, glad of the chance to escape, passed into the bedroom.
"Petersen!" he cried. "Where on earth've you been?"
Petersen rose with a glad light in his face and grasped the hand Tom offered. Immediately he disengaged his hand to slip it into a trousers pocket. Tom now noted that Petersen's face was slightly discolored,—dim yellows, and greens, and blues—and that his left thumb was brown, as though stained with arnica.