Brissenden

“ What's the matter with poor Briss?"
"That's exactly what I thought you might be able to tell me. But if nothing, in him, strikes you——!"
He met my eyes a moment—then glanced about. "Where is he?"
"Behind you; only don't turn round to look, for he knows——" But I dropped, having caught something directed toward me in Brissenden's face. My interlocutor remained blank, simply asking me, after an instant, what it was he knew. On this I said what I meant. "He knows we've noticed."
Long wondered again. "Ah, but I haven't!" He spoke with some sharpness. ”

“ Yes, literally, that final note, in the smoking-room, the note struck in Obert's ejaculation on poor Briss's hundred years, had failed to achieve for me a worthy implication. I was forced, after looking at Grace Brissenden a minute, to recognise that my imagination had not risen to its opportunity. The full impression took a minute—a minute during which she said nothing; then it left me deeply and above all, as I felt, discernibly conscious of the prodigious thing, the thing, I had not thought of. ”

“ Brissenden grinned. "There's not a magazine in Christendom that would dare to publish it--you know that."
"I know nothing of the sort. I know there's not a magazine in Christendom that wouldn't jump at it. They don't get things like that every day. That's no mere poem of the year. It's the poem of the century." ”

“ It was extremely curious to me to divine, just here, that she hadn't a glimmering of the real logic of Brissenden's happy effect on her nerves. It was the effect, as coming from him, that a beautiful delicacy forbade her as yet to give me her word for; and she was certainly herself in the stage of regarding it as an anomaly. Why, on the contrary, I might have wondered, shouldn't she have jumped at the chance, at the comfort, of seeing a preference trivial enough to be "worked" imputed to her? ”

“ Obert was at all events sufficiently struck with my view to throw out a question on it. "So that, paying to his last drop, Mr. Briss, as you call him, can only die of the business?"
"Oh, not yet, I hope. But before her—yes: long."
He was much amused. "How you polish them off!"
"I only talk," I returned, "as you paint; not a bit worse! But one must indeed wonder," I conceded, "how the poor wretches feel."
"You mean whether Brissenden likes it?"
I made up my mind on the spot. "If he loves her he must. That is if he loves her passionately, sublimely." ”

“ Brissenden, "if you'll only name me the place."
Ah, I could still but laugh and resume! "He doesn't screen Lady John—she doesn't screen herself—with your husband or with anybody. It's she who's herself the screen! And pleased as she is at being so clever, and at being thought so, she doesn't even know it. She doesn't so much as suspect it. She's an unmitigated fool about it. ”

“ Guy Brissenden presently said. "I do—'for' her—help to keep it up." And then, still unexpectedly to me, came out the rest of his confession. "I want to—I try to; that's what I mean by being kind to her, and by the gratitude with which she takes it. One feels that one doesn't want her to break down." ”

“ We hovered so near the case of Mr. and Mrs. Brissenden that it positively excited me, and all the more for her sustained unconsciousness. "Oh, the man's not aware of his own change. He doesn't see it as we do. It's all to his advantage." ”

“ It is The Parthenon, he thought, the August Parthenon, and it must contain "Ephemera." If only Brissenden were here to see!
He was turning the pages of the magazine, when suddenly he stopped. "Ephemera" had been featured, with gorgeous head-piece and Beardsley-like margin decorations. On one side of the head-piece was Brissenden's photograph, on the other side was the photograph of Sir John Value, the British Ambassador. A preliminary editorial note quoted Sir John Value as saying that there were no poets in America, and the publication of "Ephemera" was The Parthenon's. ”

“ Brissenden took her view. "Oh, she doesn't want to do anything so like the real thing. And, as for what he does, they don't feel in the same way. He's not nervous."
"Then why does he go in for a screen?"
"I mean"—she readily modified it—"that he's not so nervous as May. He hasn't the same reasons for panic. A man never has. ”

“ Martin asked curiously, passing him a glass. “Here, down this and be good.”
“Because—” Brissenden sipped his toddy and smiled appreciation of it. “Because of the women. They will worry you until you die, as they have already worried you, or else I was born yesterday. Now there’s no use in your choking me; I’m going to have my say. This is undoubtedly your calf love; but for Beauty’s sake show better taste next time. What under heaven do you want with a daughter of the bourgeoisie? Leave them alone. ”

“ Has she happened, with you, to throw any light on it?"
"I think," said Brissenden after another moment, "that she's rather afraid of you."
I could only be surprised. "The most harmless man in the house?" ”

“ Server had been able to risk, but there was a rich indifference to risk in the mere carriage of Grace Brissenden's head. Her reference, for that matter, to our discussed subject had the effect of relegating to the realm of dim shades the lady representing it, and there was small soundness in her glance at the possibility on the part of this person of an anxious prowl back. There was indeed—there could be—small sincerity in any immediate demonstration from a woman so markedly gaining time and getting her advantages in hand. ”

“ Briss—have been in the spirit of this from the moment that, while I talked with Lady John, the sight of these two seated together had given me its message! But Obert's answer to my guarded challenge had meanwhile come. "Oh, when a woman's so clever⸻!"
That was all, with its touch of experience and its hint of philosophy; but it was stupefying. She was already then positively again "so clever?" This was really more than I could as yet provide an explanation for, but I was pressed; Brissenden would have reached his wife's room again, and I temporised. ”

“ He was the fad of the hour, the adventurer who had stormed Parnassus while the gods nodded. The hundreds of thousands read him and acclaimed him with the same brute non-understanding with which they had flung themselves on Brissenden's "Ephemera" and torn it to pieces--a wolf-rabble that fawned on him instead of fanging him. Fawn or fang, it was all a matter of chance. One thing he knew with absolute certitude: "Ephemera" was infinitely greater than anything he had done. It was infinitely greater than anything he had in him. ”

“ Would the definite dramatic signal for ringing the curtain down be then only—as a grand climax and coup de théâtre—the due attestation that poor Briss had succumbed to inexorable time and Mrs. Server given way under a cerebral lesion? Were the rest of us to disperse decorously by the simple action of the discovery that, on our pianist's striking his last note, with its consequence of permitted changes of attitude, Gilbert Long's victim had reached the point of final simplification and Grace Brissenden's the limit of age recorded of man? ”

“ There's everything to make it so. They must live on pins and needles. Anything proved would go tremendously hard for her."
"In spite of which you're surprised that I 'protect' her?"
It was a question, however, that my companion could meet. "From people in general, no. From me in particular, yes."
In justice to Mrs. Brissenden I thought a moment. "Well, then, let us be fair all round. That you don't, as you say, breathe is a discretion I appreciate; all the more that a little inquiry, tactfully pursued, would enable you to judge whether any independent suspicion does attach. ”

“ The analogy too," I wound up, "may very well be only half a help. It was easy to find poor Briss, because poor Briss is here, and it's always easy, moreover, to find a husband. But say Mrs. Server's poor Briss—or his equivalent, whoever it may be—isn't here."
We had begun to walk away with this, but my companion pulled up at the door of the room. "I'm sure he is. She tells me he's near."
"'Tells' you?" I challenged it, but I uncomfortably reflected that it was just what I had myself told Mrs. Brissenden.
"She wouldn't be as she is if he weren't. Her being as she is is the sign of it. ”

“ The Socialists have called another convention to smash the American trade-union movement [said President Gompers] . Scanning the list of twenty-six signers of this call, one will look in vain to find the name of one man who has not for years been engaged in the delectable work of trying to divert, pervert, and disrupt the labor movement of the country.... ”

“ It must be an obvious fact to all serious observers of the times, that the day of the political success of such a party in America would be the day of its defeat, immediately followed by an industrial and financial crisis, from which none would suffer more than the working class itself.... By its own declarations and acts the American Federation of Labor shows that it accepts wage-slavery as a finality ... ”

“ Even those labor organizations of the industrial and radical type, such as the American Labor Union, the Western Federation of Miners, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, were believed to be, for one reason or another, quite unprepared to negotiate—much less to fight—with the ever more highly integrated organizations of employers. At the constitutional convention in June, 1905, Clarence Smith of the American Labor Union explained the reasons for initiating the movement. ”

“ Is it possible that this bunch of pork-chop philosophers, agitators who have no real, great organizing ability or creative brain power, are able to frighten the capitalistic class more than any other labor movement organized in America? Is it true that this body of politicians were able to send 5,000 men to jail in the various free-speech fights?... Are these the men who put a song in the mouth and a sense of solidarity in the heart of the hobo? ”

“ As the situation appears to me after many deep conversations and discussions with working men of all conditions, I say very emphatically that the I. W. W. should work in harmony with the American Federation of Labor. There is not the least necessity for having two organizations. The field of action is wide enough for all to be able to coöperate in the economic struggle.... ”

“ Industrial unionism will not come through soup houses, spectacular free-speech fights, sabotage or insults to the flags of nations.... Men will not be organized or educated by means of violence, for violence is but the weapon of ignorance, blind to the cause that subjugates humanity and sightless to the remedy that will break the fetters of wage slavery. ”

“ Lawrence, together with San Diego, and one or two other "free-speech" cities, really introduced the Industrial Workers of the World to the American public. The organization and its activities were known to students of the labor problem and to others who happened to be on the spot when a fight was on, but they were not known to the great body of citizens. Lawrence and the free-speech fights made the name of this little group of intransigents a household word, hardly less talked about and no whit better understood than the words "socialist" and "anarchist." ”

“ The American Federation of Labor, which presumes to be the labor movement of this country, is not a working-class movement.... You are going to be confronted with the so-called labor leader—the man who will tell you ... that the interests of the capitalist and the workingman are identical.... There is no man who has an ounce of honesty in his make-up but recognizes the fact that there is a continuous struggle between the two classes, and this organization will be formed, based and founded on the class struggle, having in view no compromise and no surrender.... ”

“ It is superfluous to enumerate the long catalogue of deliberate acts of treason to the working class at home and abroad, and the shocking corruption that such style of unionism was bound to breed. Suffice it to say, as proof, that these craft unions are found amalgamated with an organization of capitalists, known as the "Civic Federation," the purpose of which is to establish "harmonious relations between labor and capital." These craft unions are mainly organized in the American Federation of Labor. ”

“ The purpose of industrial unionism is to organize the working class in approximately the same departments of production as those which will obtain in the coöperative commonwealth, so that, if the workers should lose their franchise, they would still possess an economic organization intelligently trained to take over and collectively administer the tools of industry and the sources of wealth for themselves. ”

“ The Socialist party adopted an opportunist policy, endorsed and often leagued itself with the conservative trade unions, refrained from any attempt to form or coöperate in the formation of socialist unions, and contented itself with the endeavor to make the existing unions socialistic by converting their individual members to socialism—a policy which came to be known as "boring from within." ”

“ The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
[Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as on the industrial field, and take hold of that which they produce by their labor through an economic organization of the working class, without affiliation with any political party.] ”

“ The rapid gathering of wealth and the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands make the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class, because the trade unions foster a state of things which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. The trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. ”