Francis Hopkinson Smith

“ Suddenly the little fellow gave a cry of terror and slid from the porch, trailing the shawl after him, his crutch jerking over the ground, his sobs almost choking him.
“Mammy! Cully! Stumpy's tied in the loft! Oh, somebody help me! He's in the loft! Oh, please, please!”
In the roar of the flames nobody heard him. The noise of axes beating down the burning fences drowned all other sounds. At this moment Tom was standing on a cart, passing up the buckets to Carl. Cully had crawled to the ridge-pole of the tool-house to watch both sides of the threatened roof. ”

“ Carl's budding hopes had been slightly nipped by the cold look in Tom's eye when she asked him if it took an hour to give Jennie a tattered apron. With some disappointment he noticed that except at rare intervals, and only when Tom was at home, he was no longer invited to the house. He had always been a timid, shrinking fellow where a woman was concerned, having followed the sea and lived among men since he was sixteen years old. ”

“ Outside the rail stood a solid mass of people. Inside every seat was occupied. It was too important a meeting for any trustee to miss.
McGaw stood on his toes and looked over the heads. To his delight, Tom was not in the room, and no one representing her. If he had had any lingering suspicion of her bidding, her non-appearance allayed it. He knew now that she was out of the race. Moreover, no New Brighton people had come. He whispered this information to Justice Rowan's brother behind his big, speckled hand covered with its red, spidery hair. ”

“ One morning Patsy came up the garden path limping on his crutch; the little fellow's eyes were full of tears. He had been out with his goat when some children from the tenements surrounded his cart, pitched it into the ditch, and followed him half way home, calling “Scab! scab!” at the top of their voices. Cully heard his cries, and ran through the yard to meet him, his anger rising at every step. ”

“ Before she could speak he snatched a handkerchief from a woman's neck, plunged it into the water of the horse-trough, bound it about his head, dashed up the short flight of steps, and crawled toward the terror-stricken child. There was a quick clutch, a bound back, and the smoke rolled over them, shutting man and child from view.
The crowd held their breath as it waited. A man with his hair singed and his shirt on fire staggered from the side door. In his arms he carried the almost lifeless boy, his face covered by the handkerchief. ”

“ As she spoke, Tom stood facing her father, hood and ulster off, the light of the windows silhouetting the splendid lines of her well-rounded figure, with its deep chest, firm bust, broad back, and full throat, her arms swinging loose and free.
“Ye see,” she said, turning to Babcock, “that man Duffy tried to do me,—he's the sergeant at the fort—and Dan McGaw—ye know him—he's the divil that wanted to work for ye. Ye know I always had the hauling of the coal at the fort, an' I want to hold on to it, for it comes every year. I've been a-watchin' for this coal for a month. ”

“ Brave spirits have fainted at the sight of spiders, others have turned pale at lizards, and some have shivered when cats crossed their paths. The only thing Tom feared on any number of legs, from centipedes to men, was Stumpy.
“Git out, ye imp of Satan!” she would say, raising her hand when he wandered too near; “or I'll smash ye!” The next instant she would be dodging behind the cart out of the way of Stumpy's lowered horns, with a scream as natural and as uncontrollable as that of a schoolgirl over a mouse. ”

“ Nothing ever pleased him so much as to work a poor woman into an agony of fright with threats of the Union. Wives and daughters had often followed him out into the street, begging him to let the men alone for another week until they could pay the rent. Sometimes, when he relented, the more grateful would bless him for his magnanimity. This increased his self-respect.
Tom met him at the door. She had been sitting up with a sick child of Dick Todd, foreman at the brewery, and had just come home. ”

“ It would have relieved his temper to unload a portion of it upon the offending stevedore. Nothing cools a man's wrath so quickly as not knowing the size of the head he intends to hit.
As he approached near enough to the sea-wall to distinguish the swinging booms and the puffs of white steam from the hoisting-engines, he saw that the main derrick was at work lowering the buckets of mixed concrete to the divers. Instantly his spirits rose. The delay on his contract might not be so serious. Perhaps, after all, Grogan had started work. ”

“ By eleven o'clock the hangers-on and idlers began to lounge into the big yard paved with cobblestones. At half past eleven McGaw got out of a buggy, accompanied by Quigg. At a quarter to twelve Tom, in her hood and ulster, walked rapidly through the gate, and, without as much as a look at the men gathered about the office door, pushed her way into the room. Then she picked up a chair and, placing it against the wall, sat down. Sticking out of the breast pocket of her ulster was the big envelope containing her bid. ”

“ They must look out for themselves coming home late at night. At the brewery strike, two years before, hardly a day passed that some of the non-union men were not beaten into insensibility.
That night Carl came back again to the porch door, and in his quiet, earnest way said: “We have t'ink 'bout da Union. Da men not go—not laik da union man. We not 'fraid”—tapping his hip-pocket, where, sailor-like, he always carried his knife sheathed in a leather case.
Tom's eyes kindled as she looked into his manly face. ”

“ Losing this contract, he had lost his only hope of paying them. Had it been awarded him, he could have found a dozen men who would have loaned him the money to take up these notes and so to pay Crane. He had comforted himself the night before with the thought that Justice Rowan could find some way to help him out of his dilemma; that the board would vote as the justice advised, and then, of course, Tom's bid would be invalidated. Now even this hope had failed him. “Whoever heard of a woman's doing a job for a city?” he kept repeating mechanically to himself. ”

“ Cully's metamorphosis was even more complete than Carl's. Now that the warm spring days were approaching, Mr. Finnegan had decided that his superabundant locks were unseasonable, and had therefore had his hair cropped close to his scalp, showing here and there a white scar, the record of some former scrimmage. Reaching to the edge of each ear was a collar as stiff as pasteboard. ”

“ As the months went by, however, he, too, gradually fell under the spell of Tom's influence. She reminded him of the great Norse women he had read about in his boyhood. Besides all this, he was loyal and true to the woman who had befriended him, and who had so far appreciated his devotion to her interests as to promote him from hostler and driver to foreman of the stables.
Nilsson knew Quigg by sight, for he had seen him walking home with Jennie from church. His knowledge of English was slight, but it was enough to enable him to comprehend Quigg's purpose as he talked beside him on the cart. ”

“ When this was propped up with a barrel stave it made a counter from which to pay the men, the paymaster standing inside.
Babcock was sitting on a keg of dock spikes inside this working shanty some days after he had discovered Tom's identity, watching his bookkeeper preparing the pay-roll, when a face was thrust through the square of the window. It was not a prepossessing face, rather pudgy and sleek, with uncertain, drooping mouth, and eyes that always looked over one's head when he talked. It was the property of Mr. Peter Lathers, the yardmaster of the depot. ”

“ He had come to discover something more definite about this woman who worked like a steam-engine, crooned over a cripple, and broke a plank with her fist, and he did not intend to leave until he knew. “Your daughter must have had great experience. I have never seen any one man handle work better,” he continued, extending his hand. Then, noticing that Mullins was still standing, “Don't let me take your seat.”
Mullins hesitated, glanced at Jennie, and, moving another chair from the window, drew it nearer, and settled slowly beside Babcock. ”

“ Thomas Grogan?” called the president again, in a louder voice.
“I can,” said the man with the heavy tread, who proved to be the foreman at the brewery. “She won't live till mornin'; one of her horses kicked her and broke her skull, so McGaw told me.”
“Broke her skull! My God! man, how do you know?” demanded the president, his voice trembling with excitement.
Every man's face was now turned toward the new-comer; a momentary thrill of horror ran through the assemblage. ”

“ As Babcock stepped aside to let the boy pass he heard Cully shouting in answer to the little cripple's cries. “Cheese it, Patsy. Here's Pete Lathers comin' down de yard. Look out fer Stumpy. He'll have his dog on him.”
Patsy laid down the pail and crept through the door again, drawing the crutch after him. The yardmaster passed with a bulldog at his heels, and touching his hat to the contractor, turned the corner of the coal-shed.
“What is your name?” said Babcock gently. A cripple always appealed to him, especially a child. ”

“ A few more horses and carts and another barn or two, and she herself would become a hated capitalist. That she had stood out in the wet and cold herself, hours at a time, like any man among them; that she had, in her husband's early days, helped him feed and bed their one horse, often currying him herself; that when she and her Tom had moved to Rockville with their savings and there were three horses to care for and her husband needed more help than he could hire, she had brought her little baby Patsy to the stable while she worked there like a man ”

“ The more hot-headed and outspoken swore vengeance; not only against the horse-doctor, who had refused to permit McGaw to smuggle in the second bid, but against Crane & Co. and everybody else who had helped to defeat their schemes. They meant to boycott Crane before tomorrow night. He should not unload or freight another cargo of coal until they allowed it. The village powers, they admitted, could not be boycotted, but they would do everything they could to make it uncomfortable for the board if it awarded the contract to Grogan. Neither would they forget the trustees at the next election. ”

“ It's a poor place we have—we've been so long without work, an' my girl's laid off with a cough. She's been a-workin' at the box-factory. If the Union give notice again, I don't know what'll become of us. Can't we do somethin'? Maybe Mrs. Grogan might give up the work if she knew how it was wid us. She seems like a dacent woman; she was in to look at me girl last week, hearin' as how we were strangers an' she very bad.”
“Oh, ye don't know her. Ye can save yer wind and shoe-leather. She's on ter McGaw red hot; that's the worst of it. He better look out; she'll down him yet,” said Mrs. Todd. ”

“ When the submarine work lies miles from shore, a shanty is the only shelter for the men, its interior being arranged with sleeping-bunks, with one end partitioned off for a kitchen and a storage-room. ”

“ The women remembered the privations and suffering of that winter, and the three dollars a week doled out to them by the Central Branch, while their husbands, who had been earning two and three dollars a day, were drinking at O'Leary's bar, playing cards, or listening to the encouraging talk of the delegates who came from New York to keep up their spirits. The brewery employed a larger number of men than any other concern in Rockville, so trouble with its employees meant serious trouble for half the village if Schwartz defied the Union and selected a non-union woman to do the work. ”

“ There, as he afterwards expressed it, he “mopped up the floor” with one after another of the ringleaders, beginning with young Billy McGaw, Dan's eldest son and Cully's senior.
Tom was dumfounded at the attack on Patsy. This was a blow upon which she had not counted. To strike her Patsy, her cripple, her baby! The cowardice of it incensed her, She knew instantly that her affairs must have been common talk about the tenements to have produced so great an effect upon the children. She felt sure that their fathers and mothers had encouraged them in it. ”

“ Ye've been a sneak an' a coward to serve a woman so who never harmed ye. Now I give ye fair warnin', an' I want two or three other men in this room to listen; if this don't stop, ye'll all be behint bars where ye belong.—I mean you, too, Mr. Dempsey. As for you, Dan McGaw, if it warn't for yer wife Kate, who's a dacent woman, ye'd go to-day. Now, one thing more, an' I'll let ye go. I've bought yer chattel mortgage of Mr. Crane that's past due, an' I can do wid it as I pl'ase. ”

“ Tom stood for a minute looking him all over.
“Dennis Quigg,” she said slowly, weighing each word, her eyes riveted on his face, “ye're a very sharp young man; ye're so very sharp that I wonder ye've gone so long without cuttin' yerself, But one thing I tell ye, an' that is, if ye keep on the way ye're a-goin' ye'll land where you belong, and that's up the river in a potato-bug suit of clothes. Turn yer head this way, Quigg. ”

“ Tom's eyes filled. She could not see the cedars now. All the hill was swimming in light.
“Oi hev watched Carl sence he fust come, Mary. It's a good mither some'er's as has lost a foine b'y. W'u'dn't ye be lonely yersilf ef ye'd come here wid nobody to touch yer hand?”
Tom shivered and covered her face. Who was more lonely than she—she who had hungered for the same companionship that she was denying Jennie; she who had longed for somebody to stand between her and the world, some hand to touch, some arm to lean on; she who must play the man always—the man and the mother too! ”

“ The Scotchman, practical, sober-minded, sensible man as he was, had old-fashioned ideas of honesty and fair play. He had liked Tom from the first time he saw her,—he had looked after her stables professionally,—and he did not intend to see her, dead or alive, thrown out, without making a fight for her.
“I move,” said he, “that the president appoint a committee of this board to jump into the nearest wagon, drive to Mrs. Grogan's, and find out whether she is still alive. If she's dead, that settles it ”

“ His foreman had just reported that there was not enough material to last the concrete-mixers two hours. If Grogan did not begin work at once, the divers must come up.
Heretofore to turn over to Grogan the unloading of material for any submarine work had been like feeding grist to a mill—so many tons of concrete stone loaded on the scows by the stone crushing company had meant that exact amount delivered by Grogan on Babcock's mixing-platforms twenty-four hours after arrival, ready for the divers below. This was the way Grogan had worked, and he had required no watching. ”

“ They wuz daisies, they wuz. Go on, Pop; it's better'n a circus;” while Patsy would cheer aloud at the downfall of the vanquished, with their “three thousand lance-bearers put to death by the sword,” waving his crutch over his head in his enthusiasm.
Jennie would come in too, and sit by her mother; and after Nilsson's encounter with Quigg—an incident which greatly advanced him in Tom's estimation—Cully would be sent to bring him in from his room over the stable and give him a chair with the others, that he might learn the language easier. ”

“ No wan can be moore pained than meself that so estimable a woman as Mrs. Grogan—a woman who fills so honorably her every station in life—should at this moment be stricken down either by the hand of an assassin or the hoof of a horse. Such acts in a law-abidin' community like Rockville bring with them the deepest detistation and the profoundest sympathy. ”

“ Ye said it, and ye know ye said it. Ye want that drunken loafer Dan McGaw to get me work. Ye've been at it all summer, an' ye think I haven't watched ye; but I have. And ye say I don't pay full wages, and have got a lot of boys to do men's work, an' oughter be over me tubs. Now let me tell ye”—Lathers shrank back, cowering before her—“if ever I hear ye openin' yer head about me, or me teams, or me work, I'll make ye swallow every tooth in yer head. Send down somethin' with a mustache, will I? There's not a man in the yard that's a match for me, an' ye know it. ”

“ When Tom heard the news, she left her teams standing in the road and went straight to McGaw's house. His widow sat on a broken chair in an almost empty room.
“Don't cry, Katy,” said Tom, bending over her. “I'm sorry for Billy. Seems to me, ye've had a lot o' trouble since Dan was drowned. It was not all Billy's fault. It was Crimmins that put him up to it. But ye've one thing left, and that's yer boy Jack. Let me take him—I'll make a man of him.”
Jack is still with her. Tom says he is the best man in her gang. ”

“ Say, mister, ye'd oughter git onter Patsy—he's de little kid wid de crutch. He's a corker, he is; reads po'try an' everythin'. Where'll I sign? Oh, I see; in dis'ere square hole right along-side de ole woman's name”—spreading his elbows, pen in hand, and affixing “James Finnegan” to the collection of autographs. The next moment he was running along the dock, the money envelope tight in his hand, sticking out his tongue at McGaw, and calling to Lathers as he disappeared through the door in the fence, “Somp'n wid a mustache, somp'n wid a mustache,” like a news-boy calling an extra. ”

“ Now, haul out, Cully, and let that other team back up.”
Babcock pushed open the door in the fence and stepped in. A loaded scow lay close beside the string-piece of the government wharf. Alongside its forward hatch was rigged a derrick with a swinging gaff. The “fall” led through a snatch-block in the planking of the dock, and operated an iron bucket that was hoisted by a big gray horse driven by a boy. A gang of men were filling these buckets, and a number of teams being loaded with their dumped contents. The captain of the scow was on the dock, holding the guy. ”

“ Union men must be employed on the work, whoever got it.
McGaw, however, was desperate. He denounced Tom in a vocabulary peculiar to himself and full of innuendoes and oaths, but without offering any suggestion as to how his threats against her might be carried out.
With his usual slyness, Quigg said very little openly. He had not yet despaired of winning Jennie's favor, and until that hope was abandoned he could hardly make up his mind which side of the fence he was on. Crimmins was even more indifferent in regard to the outcome—his pay as walking delegate went on, whichever side won ”

“ In the open, elevators rose high as church steeples; long lines of canal-boats stretched themselves out like huge water-snakes, with hissing tugs for heads; enormous floats groaned under whole trains of cars ”