"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.
"Why, the—my husband's condition—the death, our going away so quickly afterward. There are elements there of a good-sized boarding-house scandal."
"Yes, there are elements!" Sommers admitted, putting away his work. "We may as well leave as soon as we can. You are right; we had better fight it out alone."
"Yes, alone," she responded, with a glad note in her voice.
The next afternoon they looked at the cheap, flimsy cottages they passed in their walk with more interest than ever. The only places they could afford were far removed from the populous districts where patients live. They would have to pay for heat, too, and though they could starve the body, they could not freeze. So the matter was put off for the present, and they drew into themselves more and more, leaving the Keystone people to chatter as they willed.
CHAPTER IV
The great strike was fast being forgotten, as a cause argued and lost or won as you looked at it. A commission was holding many meetings these months, and going over the debris, taking voluminous testimony. It was said to be prejudiced in favor of the strikers, but the victors cared little. Its findings in the shape of a report would lie on the table in the halls of Congress, neither house being so constituted that it could make any political capital by taking the matter up. The Association of General Managers had lapsed. It had been the banded association of power against the banded association of labor. It had fought successfully. The issue was proved: the strike was crushed, with the help of marshals, city police, and troops. And with it the victors prophesied was crushed the sympathetic strike forever. It had cost, to be sure, many millions in all, but it paid. It was such a tremendous example!
The statistical side of passion was interesting and ironical. It gave the matter the air of a family row: the next day the heads of the factions were sitting down to make the inventory of broken glass, ruined furniture and provisions. A principle had been preserved, people said, talking largely and superficially, but the principle seemed elusive. The laborers, too, had lost, more heavily in proportion to their ability to bear—millions in wages, not to reckon the loss of manhood to those who were blacklisted for participation in the fracas.
The Commission went into the Pullman affair, quite unwarrantedly, according to the corporation, which was comfortably out of the mess. And there were minor disputes over the injunctions against Debs, and a languid stirring of dead bones in the newspapers. Every one was tired of the affair and willing to let it drop, with its lesson for this party or that. Sommers, having nothing more urgent to do, attended the meetings of the Commission and listened eagerly to get some final truth about the matter. But it seemed to him that both sides merely scratched the surface of the argument, and were content with the superficial "lessons" thereby gained. What good could come of the hearings? The country would get out of its doldrums sooner or later; employment would be easy to find; wages would rise, a little; every one would have his bellyful; and then, some years later, another wave of depression would set in, the bitter strife would be repeated, both parties unlessoned by this or any other experience. The world, at least this civilization, belonged to the strong; the poor would remain weak and foolish and treacherous.
It was whispered about on the first days of the hearing that an official of the American Railway Union would take the stand and make disclosures. He would show how the strike was finally ended, not by the law and the sword, but by money. The official's name was Dresser, Sommers heard, and every day he looked for him to take the stand. But the rumor passed away, and no "revelations" by Dresser or any one else who knew the inner facts appeared. Sommers learned them unexpectedly after the Commission had taken itself to Washington to prepare its report.