The man on the platform had shaken off the initial clumsiness of speech and bearing. Like a swimmer, he had needled the wave. He was not clumsy now; he was speaking with short, stripped words, nakedly, with earnestness at white heat. Once he had been dumb and angry, he said, as a maddened dog. He had been through years that had made him so. He had been growing like a wolf. There were times when he wanted to take hold of the world's throat and tear it out. "Do you remember Ishmael in the Bible?—his hand against every man and every man's hand against him? Well, I was growing to feel that way." Then at that point—"and that was perhaps three years ago, and I was down South in a town in my state, trying to get work. I knew how to break rock, and I knew how to make parts of shoes, and I didn't know much besides, except that it was a hard world and I hated it"—at this point chance "or something" had sent him an acquaintance, an educated man, a bookkeeper in the concern where he finally got a job. Out of the acquaintanceship had grown a friendship. "After a while I got to going to his house. He had a wife who helped him lots." The three used to talk together, and the man lent him books and made him read them, and "little by little, he led me on. He was like an old man I knew in the mountains when I was a boy. He showed me that we're all sick and sorry, but that we're growing a principle of health. He showed me how slow we creep up from worm to man, and how now we're fluttering toward something farther on, and how hands of the past come upon us, and how we yet escape—and the wings strengthen. He showed me how vindictiveness is no use, and how much that is wrong with the world is owing to poor social mechanism and can be changed. He showed me what Brotherliness means, on the road to Unity. He put it in my mind and heart to want to help. He told me I had a good mind. I had always rather liked books, but I'd been where I couldn't get any, even if they'd given you time for reading. He made me study things out, and one day I began to think—think for myself—think it out. I've never stopped. Usually now, I'm at night-school nights. I'm learning, and I'm going to keep on, until I make thinking Wisdom." He studied the ceiling a moment, then spoke out with a ring in his voice. "I was a mountain boy. When I wasn't out of my teens I got drunk at a dance and played hell-fool and almost killed a man or two. Then the sheriff chased me up to Catamount Gap, and the stuff was still in me and my head hitting the stars, and I shot and shot at the sheriff.... Well, the end of all that playing was that I went to the penitentiary for four years. One thing I want wisdom for is to know how to talk to people about what is called crime and about that great crime, our law courts and penal system. Well, I came out of the penitentiary, and then it was very hard to get work. It was bitter hard. That's another thing I want learning and wisdom for—to talk about that. You see, the penitentiary wasn't content with the four years; it followed me always. And then it's hard to get work anyhow. There wasn't any use in going back to the mountains. But after a while I got work and kept it. Then, three months ago, I came up here, and I got work here. I'm working on your streets now, and studying between times.... I'm standing up here to-night to tell you that you've got a flag that draws the unhappy to you, when it happens that they're seeking with the mind. I don't know much about class-consciousness. We didn't have it in the mountains, though, of course, we had it in the penitentiary. But I know that we've got to take the best that was in the past and leave the worst, and go on with the best toward new things. We've got to help others and help ourselves. And it doesn't do just to want to help; you've got to have a working theory; you've got to use your mind. You've got to consider your line of march and mark it out and blast away the rock upon it and go on. And I am willing to be of your construction gang. The man I was talking about thought pretty much that way, too. He said there were a lot of isolated people, here, there, and everywhere, not only those that call themselves working-people, but others, too, and women just as well as men, who were thinking that way—that they might not call themselves Socialists, but that they were blood kin just the same. I don't know why, to-night, but I am thinking of something that happened when I had been a year in the penitentiary, and they had rented a lot of us up the river to make the bed for a railroad. While I was up there, I couldn't stand it any longer, and I ran away. They set the dogs on my track and took me, of course, but before they did, I was lying in a thicket, and I hadn't had anything to eat for two days and a night. A little girl, about twelve years old, I reckon, came over a hill and down to the stream by the thicket. She gathered flowers and set them around a big rock for a flower doll tea-party. She had two little apple pies and she put those in the middle—and then she saw me, lying in the thicket. And I was wearing"—the colour flared into his face, then ebbed—"I was wearing stripes.... I don't think she ever thought of being frightened. She gave me both pies, and she sat and talked to me like a friendly human being. I've never forgotten. And when the dogs came, as they did pretty soon, and the men behind them, she lay on the grass and cried and cried as if her heart would break. I've never forgotten. That's what I mean. I don't care what we've done, if we're not fiends incarnate, and very few of us are, we've got to feel toward one another like that. We've got to feel, 'if you are struck, I am struck. If you are wearing stripes, I am wearing stripes.' We've got to feel something more than Brotherhood. We've got to feel identity. And as a part, anyway, of that road seems to me to be named Socialization, I'm willing to be called a Socialist."
He nodded to the audience, and, stepping from the platform, amid a clapping of hands and stamping of feet, did not return to his place in the back of the hall, but sat upon the edge of the stage, his hands clasped around his knee. A German clockmaker and a fiery, dark woman spoke each for a few minutes, and then the meeting ended. There was a noise of rising, of pushing back chairs, a surge of people, in part toward the exit, in part toward the platform. Hagar touched Rachel on the arm. "Wait here for me. I want to speak to that man.—Yes, I know him. Wait here, Rachel."
She made her way to the space before the platform where men and women were pressing about the speakers. The man with the grey flannel shirt was answering a question or two, put by the dark-eyed man who had spoken first. He stood with a certain mountain litheness and lack of tension. A movement, his answer given, brought him face to face with Hagar. She had taken off her hat, so that it might not trouble the people behind her, and she had it still in her hand. Her dark, soft hair framed her face much as it had done in childhood; she was looking at him with wide, startled eyes.
"I had to come to tell you," she said, "that I am glad you came through. I never forgot you either."
"'Forgot you either!'—" The man stared at her.
"They were apple turnovers," she said; but before she had really spoken there came the flush and light of recognition.
"Oh—h!..." He fell back a step; then, with a reddened cheek and a light in his eyes, put out his hand. She laid hers in it; his fingers closed over hers in a grasp strong enough to give pain.
Then, as their hands dropped, as she fell back a little, the second speaker came between, then others. Suddenly the lights were lowered, people were staying too long. Rachel's hand on Hagar's arm drew her back. "Come, we must go!" Willy, too, was insistent. "It's getting late. Show's over!" The space between her and the boy of the thicket, the figure drawn against the sky of the canal lock, widened, filled with forms in the partial dusk. She was half-drawn, half-pushed by the outgoing stream through the door, out upon the stair, and so down to the street, where now there were fewer lights. The wind had arisen and the air turned colder. "We'll take this cross-town car, and then the Elevated," and while she was still bewildered, they were on the car. The bell clanged, they went on; again, in what seemed the shortest time, they were out in the night, then climbing the long stairs, then through the gate and upon the rushing Elevated. Willy talked and talked. He was excited. "I thought it was going to be all about bombs! But they talked sense, didn't they?—and there was something in the air that kind of warmed you! Next time I'm in New York I'm going again. Look at the lights streaming off! By Jiminy! New York's great!"
He was not staying at the Maines', but with other kinspeople a few blocks away. He saw the two in at the door, said good-night, and went whistling away. Hagar and Rachel turned off the lowered gas in the hall and went softly upstairs.
As they passed Mrs. Maine's door she asked sleepily from within, "Did you enjoy the play?"