# The Great Fear

From The American Magazine, Jun 1909
The Great Fear
By JAMES OPPENHEIM
Author of "Everyday,"
"Groping Children," etc.
With Illustrations by Harry Townsend
A DOZEN pieces of old furniture piled one on top of the other at the edge of the sidewalk, could mean but one thing. An ill-clad young man stopped to look. He stood shadowy and bowed on the wet, gleaming pavement. The air was chill and a luminous fog rolled up and down Second Avenue, circling the elevated road pillars and blurring the blue gold of the lights. A bit of the dull light lit the young man's face; one could see that his lips were blue, his mouth moving, and his eyes staring.
"The man"—so he thought half-aloud—"lost his job; the wife had to get out and work; the kids took sick; the man took sick; the bunch starved and froze; and then—" he smiled bitterly—"they got the dispossess! Not for mine!"
He gazed silently at a broken bed, a straw mattress and a nicked kitchen chair. His jaw squared and he jammed his hands into his trouser pockets. A fear—the Fear—which had dogged him for six months now seemed to grapple with him.
"Not for mine!" he repeated fiercely.
He looked down the row of brilliant shop-windows through the dim air, and his eyes rested on the iron-grated glass of a pawnshop. The window was choked up with jewelry, revolvers and tools—symbols of the Fear. Unsteadily the young man walked across the pavement, pushed open a flap-door and slouched against a shining glass-topped counter in a dusky jewel-littered room. The pawnbroker came down behind the counter, rubbing his sleek hands.
The young man spoke huskily:
"I want a revolver—cheap."
"Five dollars?"
"Cheap—I said."
"Three?"
"What's the cheapest?"
The pawnbroker looked him over and shrugged his shoulders. Then he opened a drawer and lifted out an ugly short-barreled pistol a man could hide in his fist.
"How's dis?"
The young man fingered it, narrowing his eyes and thinking sharply. His heart bounded in his breast.
"How much?"
"Von dollar."
The young man brought out a little yellow pay-envelope, tore off one side and pulled out a thin folding of money. There were just twelve dollars. He slapped one down on the counter, and pocketed the pistol and the cartridges.
The pawnbroker whistled softly as he watched the young man go shuffling out into the misty evening.
He walked up to Eightieth Street and turned East through one of the shabby streets of New York—cavernous, empty and dark in the mist. The high windowed walls looked blank; the gutter was muddy. Here poverty was squalid and bleak—lit by far-spaced meager gaslights, fronted and backed by dull brick—lifeless, supine.
The young man shivered slightly and glanced about him like a hunted dog. Suddenly he stopped still, under a flaring blur of gaslight, and turned in at a green crumbling hall. It smelt damp, and it was dark and deep. He walked past the narrow stairway far to the rear of the ground floor. Again, in the darkness, he hesitated, his hand searching the wall. He found a door-knob—he shivered slightly—he pushed into his home.
What struck him first, like a hot iron run into his breast so that he felt like sobbing, was a low, sweet music—the cooing tones of a mournful, lovely voice. The bare dim kitchen-dining-room, with its rough table and old in-walled stove and naked gas-jet, was small and warm. Under the tiny flame a young woman sat on a rocker, swaying back and forth with a little baby at her breast. The child uttered little stifled cries; the mother's bending face was very near it. The young man stood, gazing. And in that moment, he loved as if he were starved for love—loved her brown light hair blown in wisps over her low forehead; loved her pale, hollow cheeks and her large mournful blue eyes; loved her thin, callous hands; loved even the familiar faded calico.
The young wife, hearing him, said: "Shuh!" without looking up, and warned him with a finger.
He stood, miserably swallowing at something in his throat, and then beyond his help a groan burst from his lips. His wife's face lifted under the light—startled, white, frightened. She rose with the child.
"Pete!" she cried, "you ain't—sick?"
His lips parted; he took two steps and flung his arms about her and the child, and half-sobbed:
"Annie! Annie! Annie!"
And suddenly he drew away from her. She clutched her child close as if he had threatened to steal it from her.
"Pete!" she whispered tensely, "you've—lost your job!"
He buried his face in his hands and groaned again. So—it had come at last—the frightful long-expected moment. It was as if the floor beneath them cracked open and they were plunging a thousand miles into Blackness. ... When they next glanced at each other's face, they saw plainly written there the Fear—the Great White Fear. This is a Fear, not of the yellow or black races, but of the factory-drilled whites alone—the fear of unemployment, of dispossession, of moneylessness. It gives a hunted look to a face; a man becomes a little white animal cowering in a corner.
The young wife felt the hurry to her heart of the mother-passion. What would happen to this little baby—her baby—her son? This little thing that cried so at her breast?
"Wait! wait!" she whispered sharply. "He's got to go to sleep! Don't make a sound!"
She glided into the small dark bedroom, and as the young man sank on a kitchen chair, his head against the little table, he heard her sweet mournful voice singing the child to sleep. Why was he unwittingly forced to make his young wife suffer? What had she done? What had he done? They were honest. Good God, they were honest! They earned bread by the sweat of their brow; they had tasted Poverty; yes, got all the taste out of it, up against the palate,—the hot gall, the venom. Theirs had been a life squeezed dry of luxuries; theirs had been a hard fight on hard food and hard hours. Yet all was well enough,—all was splendid—splendid—save the Fear, the Fear that they went to bed with at night, the Fear they read in newspapers at breakfast, the Fear that sung in the factory machines all day. For these had been hard times,—times of the Fear. And now——
Breaking into his bitter thoughts, came the light footsteps he knew so well. A hand was laid thrillingly on his shoulder; and her shrill voice roused him:
"Pete! don't you care! Ain't we goin' to fight? It's all right, it's all right! Pete! Ain't we fighters? Now you tell me about it!"
The brave words sat him up straight. His fighting blood stirred; the saving power of anger, anger hot and strong, swept through him. And the wife calmly took a bit of sewing and sat on the rocker. He glanced a second at her parted lips, her flashing eyes. He raised a clenched fist and smote the table softly:
"Damn it! he—" she knew he meant the boss—"he laid off the last of us to-night. Said he was sorry—it's hard times. Was that my fault? We're slaves—slaves; this country better look out——"
A wild light came into his eyes, the light of the terrorist. His wife looking quickly, spoke sharply:
"Don't you go to talking that way, Pete! Things is bad enough!"
"Yes," he cried hotly, "who made 'em so? I? Was I honest? Was I skillful? Was I hardworking? Them"—she knew he meant the rich—"got their automobiles and yachts and palaces and servants hard times or no hard times. We're the slaves. Don't you cross me, kid—I say, slaves. Free? Free, how? Free to starve, beg, die,—that's how! They got the pay-envelopes, ain't they? Well, we got to feed out of their hands, and if they ain't a mind to feed us, what then? Eh?"
She spoke more sharply:
"That sort o' talk ain't goin' to pay the rent. You quit it and you hustle for a job."
He looked at her terribly and smote the table
"Annie, there ain't a job in my trade in the city!"
She shivered in spite of herself. He spoke the truth. She swallowed hard:
"You've—got to do something!"
"What? Come, now, what've I got to do?"
"Anything—any job."
"Ain't there thousands looking?"
"But, Pete, you're strong and young——"
"Not so strong, not so young as you think."
In the silence they heard the East River tugs wailing against the fog. In a tenement opposite a child was crying loudly. A gray chill seemed to settle about their hearts. They were alone in the Desert of the City. Millions of souls wove their warm lives about them.—in the flat above, in the street outside, up and down Manhattan and over the bridges. Shops were full of food and clothes; there were houses enough for a million more souls; trains and ships swept in with floods of riches; factories poured out produce. A great city of civilization, well-lit, sanitary, secure, towering its wealth into the very skies, held them in its mighty heart. Yet they were on a Robinson Crusoe Island. They were exiles in their own city. The huge machine in whirling had thrown them out into the gutter. The race said to them: "Not wanted." They were in a prison without a jailor to bring them food and keep them warm,— the prison of the Great White Fear. For a moment they avoided each other's eyes. They were panic-stricken,—an unreasoning terror rushing the blood to their heads. They knew they could not even help themselves, though in the midst of plenty. Something had gone wrong with the world. But who was to blame? The Boss, squeezed by Hard Times? The honest worker? Who?
Silently they sat in the dim room, gazing upon the floor, and then at last the young wife spoke tremblingly:
"How much have you got?"
There was a moment's silence:
"Here!"
He pulled out the yellow envelope and handed it to her. She grasped it with feverish hands, and suddenly looked at him.
"It's torn, Pete!"
He looked at the table, and mumbled,
"Yes."
Something like a pang bit her heart. She pulled out the bills.
"Pete, there's only eleven—there ought to be twelve!"
He half-closed his eyes:
"I spent one."
"For what?" Her tone was frightened: it shook him.
He could stand the strain no longer. He suddenly rose, and for the first time since the child came, rough-mouthed her.
"It's none of yer business! Shut up!"
Out into the black bedroom he swung. Somehow he stumbled against the crib. Soft light from the kitchen fell on the sleeping child. He leaned close. Hard times indeed had come; he had wronged his wife; she too was suffering. He swallowed again and softly felt in his pocket for the lump of cold steel.
Then he fell to brooding on the baby's face. Sleep is an elemental thing, full of awe. The breathing of the child came very tenderly; the blue transparent lids were softly shut; the dark little head was bent back; the little hands stuck up in the air with helpless waxen fingers. It was his child, his own son, fast asleep. Mystery of Sleep! mystery of Fatherhood! He gazed and his mood strangely softened. The tears choked his throat. He turned away; he staggered slowly into the kitchen; he sank on the chair at the table; he lowered his head on his hands, and he cried softly like a little child.
"I wish the kid had never been born!" he sobbed.
The woman's arms were about him, soft and comforting, and her voice murmured a hundred meaningless things in his ear.
But he sobbed: "It's no world for a poor little kid!"
Yet he drew her close, he lifted his face to hers, and looking in each other's eyes, they smiled tenderly, luminously. Their hearts filled with love. They were marvelously soothed and calmed.
"Pete," smiled the young wife, "we're goin' to fight, ain't we? We're fighters, Pete! Ain't we goin' to fight?"
"Sure, Annie!" he laughed, "like the devil!"
The Hunt began early next morning—the Hunt for the Job. The hunter, however, is really the hunted. Now and then he bares his skin to the unthinking blows of the world, and runs off to hide himself in the crowd. You may see him bobbing along the turbulent man-currents of Broadway, a tide-tossed derelict in the thousand-foot shadows of the skyscrapers. The mob about him is lusty with purpose, each unit making his appointed place, the morning rush to work bearing the stenographer to her machine, the broker to his ticker, the ironworker to his sky-dangling beam. In the mighty machine of the city each has his place, each is provided for, each gets the glow of sharing in the world's work. The morning rush, splashed at street crossings with the gold of the eastern sun, is rippled with fresh eyes and busy lips. They are all in the machine. But our young man crouching in a corner of the crowded car is not of these; slinking down Broadway he is aware that the machine has thrown him out and he cannot get in. He is an exile in the midst of his own people. The sense of loneliness and inferiority eats the heart out of the breast; the good of life is gone; the blackness soaks across the city and into his home, his love, his soul.
Some go bitter and are for throwing bombs; some despair and are for wiping themselves away; some—the rank and file—are for fighting to the last ditch. Peter pendulated between all three or these moods. In ordinary times he would have been all fight; in these hard times, drenched with the broadcast hopelessness of men, he knew he was foredoomed to defeat. Only a miracle could save him.
Trudging up Seventy-ninth Street to Third Avenue, fresh with Annie's kiss and the baby's pranks, he had the last bit of daring dashed out of him by a strange throng of men. Before a small Hebrew synagogue, and packed in the deep area were forty unemployed workers, jammed crowd-thick against the windows and gate. It was fresh weather, not cold, yet the men shivered. Their bodies had for long been unwarmed by sufficient food or clothing; there was a grayness about them as of famished wolves; their lips and fingers were blue; they were unshaved and frowzy with some vile sleeping place. Hard times had blotched the city with a myriad of such groups. And as Peter stopped and imagined himself driven at last among them, he saw a burly fellow emerge from the house and begin handing out charity bowls of hot coffee and charity bread. Peter, independent American workman, was stung at the sight; the souls of these workers were somehow being outraged: they were eating out of the hands of the comfortable, like so many gutter dogs.
The rest of the morning Peter dared now and then to present himself at an office to ask work. At some places he tried boldness, at others meekness, and at last he begged, "For God's sake, I have a wife and baby—" He met with various receptions at the hands of clerks, office boys and bosses. A few were sorry, some turned their backs, the rest hurried him out. Each refusal, each "not wanted in the scheme of things," shot him out into the streets, stripped of another bit of self-reliance. In spite of himself, he began to feel his poor appearance, his drooping lip, his broken purpose. He was a failure and the world could not use him. He hardly dared to look a man in the eyes, to lift his voice above a whisper, to make a demand, to dare a refusal. He slunk home at last like a cowed and beaten animal.
It was two in the afternoon. Wearily he pushed in the door, and stood in the dancing sunlight on the kitchen floor. At the window, in the dazzling light, Annie was tucking the baby in the little shiny go-cart. She looked up anxiously and saw his stricken sick face and the limp body with the life gone out of it.
She glided over to him; she hushed his complaining lips with a kiss; she crowded him in a chair and brought him food; she let the full measure of her love go warming through him. Like the true mother-wife she prattled on about the baby, archly drawing smiles to his taut lips, and at last she induced him to walk out with her in the sunny afternoon. Up the streets to the West he wheeled the go-cart, and Annie walked at his side talking quickly. They trudged through a strange slash of the city's life, squalid poverty to Third Avenue, mediocre fringes of middle class to Lexington, middle class respectability to Madison, luxurious wealth to Fifth Avenue, and then one of the loveliest stretches of landscape Park beyond. As they walked block by block west, the street grew quieter, finer, less crowded, more and more palatial, and last they stepped from the avenue-divided social classes of Man into the sweet democracy of Nature. The hills were yet green and pure; pines glittered green among bare boughs in the wash of sun; the walks were clean; the air fresh and tingling. Here mingled the well-to-do and the poor, bench by bench, and they sat down, and to Peter came a moment of deep peace, fraught with thoughts alien to his daily life. The escape from Man, from the world that did not want him, brought him face to face with quiet Nature, the world that had arms to gather in all that came. Here he had a place at last; he felt a new kinship with the still life of the earth; he had come back to the mother of all. Sitting on the hard bench, and pushing the go-cart out and in, a strange sense of a God in things swept his brain and a mood eternal with life and death and mystery possessed him. He had never been religious; but now his heart opened out to the undercurrent of all the hurling worlds, and he was softened, subdued to Nature, and, for the time being, calm and ready.
So went the days until the money dwindled away,—the mornings of humiliation, the afternoons of peace. Annie was roused to her full strength; they ate their money penny by penny; they resolutely forgot the little daily pleasures. And yet within two weeks, there was nothing left. Peter was up before dawn each morning to answer advertisements; but each time he was one of a hundred men storming one job. Several times the employer had to call the police to disperse the mob of the unemployed. There was work nowhere; men hung feverishly to their jobs; ordinary men did extraordinary work; only those were laid off whose positions were squeezed out by the business slump. And so Peter was buffeted about in the whirlpool, cuffed by the whirlwind—a useless bit of humanity. His misery became more numb and callous; the pain of it grew less and less; but so did the man. He was acquiring the tramp-soul, the vagrant-heart. He grew careless of how he looked or where he drifted. He was sinking down from social stratum to social stratum; he was slowly being engulfed by the Undertow, the Underworld of Crime and Vagrancy that is the quicksand-foundation of the modern city, over which the strong world towers like a house of cards.
When he came home, numb, white, sullen, Annie's silent fear grew day by day. All that was left in the home now was love, and that was endangered. Peter was morose and harsh and unresponsive. The Park, which at first was the saving touch, now made him impatient. Tramp-restlessness had seized him. He could not sit still on a bench and be quiet with the hills.
It was a night of wild storm. All afternoon he had been meditating on two things. One was flight from his wife and child, flight from the hyena city, flight from the burden. The other was the lump of steel in his pocket that could be hidden in a man's fist. This last meant flight from everything, including himself.
The low, back kitchen was dim with a flickering gaslight; the wild storm beat with gusts of washing rain down the sealed windows; the gale roared through the backyards, slamming shutters and whistling over clotheslines, and in the dimness at the small center table Annie and Peter ate a meager supper of bread and foul coffee. Each time they moved the floor creaked weirdly. Now and then a burst of noise swept down the airshaft as if to smother them.
They were drunk with despair—the young wife thin, hollow-cheeked, unkempt, biting slowly at a crust of bread; the lean white-faced man sitting, head on hand, sullen and absorbed in his mood. He was thinking of death. Face to face with it, he was going through a Hamlet-soliloquy in terms of an American workman. What was he facing, so common, so universal, so inevitable, so inscrutable? The vast mystery of his own life wrapped him like a rising ocean. He that was sitting there, alive in every nerve, brain thinking, hands moving, heart beating, what would happen to him if he lifted the lump of steel and emptied one of its chambers into his skull? There was but a film, after all, between this world and the next. Did it matter if he faced the Thing, had it out with the Thing, now, or a few years later? Didn't it all come to the same in the end? The world did not want him. Why should he want the world? They must be rid of each other.
Into this soliloquy broke his wife's voice, and yet as if from far away:
"Peter."
"Yes."
"Peter."
"What you want?" Sullen, defiant.
"PETER!" She suddenly bowed her head, and the weeks of terror had their pay. She sobbed wildly.
He looked at her stupidly. Why cry, when it was all the same in the end?
She lifted her face—wild with sobs.
"Peter—you've got to speak to me—this—this has got to stop! It will drive me crazy!"
In the moment's silence, her strange sobs chimed in with the swashing blows of the rain and the noise of the airshaft. They were in the deepest pit in a world of desolation.
Peter shifted uneasily and mumbled in a numb voice:
"Well—well—"
He had never seen his wife in this frantic state. She lifted her head again, and her words came sharp, hot, and flew wild:
"I can't stand it—I can't—I can't! You've changed—you don't love me, Peter—you don't love the baby any more—what is it? Are you going to kill yourself? Are you going to leave us? What did we do to you? Haven't I tried to help you a little bit at least? I'm a poor fool—I'm a poor fool of a woman—oh!"
He bit his lips and automatically put his hand in his pocket and clutched the cold lump of steel. His wife put her two hands to her face—hers was exquisite misery at that moment. She spoke in a low wail:
"Oh, what have we done that we must suffer this way? And the baby——" she lowered her voice and spoke in an intense whisper. "He's going to be sick—he's going to die! And you," she cried wildly, "you're his father—you're my husband! Good God! why don't you act like a man!"
Anger touched him:
"Have I hunted a job or not? Get one yourself, if it's easy as talking."
She looked at him, startled, white,—a new light dawning across her storm-tossed brain. She paused a moment; she caught his eyes; she spoke straight into him, making him quiver.
"I will, Peter!"
Something shocked hot and cold through him.
"You'll—you'll— What'll you do?"
"I'll get a job—there's lots of jobs as servants. I'll get a job!"
His jaw fell.
"You!"
She rose to her feet unsteadily.
And she crawled to her place beside her child. For long hours Peter sat, head in his hand, a vague new trouble stirring his heart into life, a new and vaster sense of tragedy and ruin, a feeling of the moral order of the world upset, of something sacred gone from life. And the storm blew about the tenement, sounding the dirge of the flight of human souls.
At five the next morning the sleeping man was roused by his wife. He sat up, and in the gray glimmering light saw Annie standing at the bedside with the baby in her arms. She spoke sharply:
"Peter! quick! I want to show you! Wake up!"
She laid the baby on the bed, and again and again showed him how to change the clothes. She did not notice his sullen listlessness, but spoke on and on, giving endless directions about the bottle of milk and the baby's outing and sleep. The baby lay at the foot of the bed cooing and fondling its feet. Suddenly Annie turned from it, seized Peter by both hands, leaned near and looked in his eyes.
"Peter, I'm trusting you with the best of my life—with all I've got—my flesh and blood and—" she stopped. "Promise me—" her voice rose almost hysterically—"promise me, you'll do nothing rash,—that you'll act like a man,—Peter,—that I can trust you! "
He was silent, his eyes on the baby.
"Peter," she cried, "promise me!"
"Oh, I'll promise," he mumbled.
She bent suddenly, kissing him on the lips; a tear splashed his hand. A moment later she was hugging and hugging her baby. And then she was gone and the door shut softly.
Peter was much perturbed; he had a desire to sob; something tough and hard and callous, knotted like a cancer about his heart, began to dissolve away. But he crawled out of bed, laid the baby in its crib, and slipped into his clothes. Then a busy time began for him. He felt curiously weak and empty, like a mere tottering shell of a man. It was hunger and cold and sickness and the Great White Fear. And it was something new, the sense of the sacred gone out of life.
He began his work, however, with a grim touch of humor. He was a poor sort of a mother at best, and of late he had been a poor sort of a father. He tussled long with the child's cries, rocking him, walking him, mumbling foolish words over the little head. Finally he got the milk, and stilled the child by over-feeding it.
And then the long day began. It was a gray cold day, but rainy fresh with the night's storm, and at ten that morning there was seen, cutting through squalor and wealth to the fading Park, a thin, sick, pale young man wheeling a go-cart. He walked alone, shuffling his feet, and leaning heavily over the handle. There had been no breakfast but a crust of bread and he was sick, sick through and through, nauseous, fever-shaken.
In the Park he doubled up weakly on a bench and pushed the go-cart out and in. And then the unbidden terrible thoughts began to tramp, tramp, tramp across his brain. He knew now that he was no "master of his fate"; the vast forces of the world, the interplay of human souls, the sweep of events, the cyclone of life, were all bearing him against his will to strange issues. Somehow he had been caught in a cataract and swept away. Even now, at the great moment of decision, his hands were tied. The only freedom he had was the freedom to die; this was the moment; this was the only act he could do to regain his mastery. And he had rashly promised this away. To what end?
And then bitterly the tramping thoughts flashed across his brain scene after scene, mood after mood, of his earlier life. He was back in the moonlit streets of summer, when he and Annie used to sit on the steps of the stoop, and this world was the pure magic; the nights that were the true days of life, the nights of sweet, frail first love. And he was back to his pride in his independence, the pride that prompted him to ask her to be his wife, to be the mother of his children. They had not expected an easy life; they were not used to that. But they had expected and entered into a warm little kingdom, a snug fairyland of Home, only two rooms, but Annie in them. And his greatest pride had been that he was the man, that he was the breadwinner, that Annie was free to be a wife and a mother. The coming of the child had eaten up his savings, but there was left his strength, his skilled hands, his ambition, and his deep love for Annie.
At this thought the poor young man doubled over deeper, and had to stifle his sobs.
And now? Events in which he had no part had suddenly broken his life to pieces. No one was to blame. So the world moved, and in moving, crushed. And it had mercilessly crushed him, not only physically, but—he sat up suddenly—his mind aghast. He was face to face with his mutilated heart.
And now Annie had gone out to be the Man, and he had stayed home to be the Woman. This then was the sacred something that had been lost. He felt dimly, though there was no clear thinking, that the most sacred part of their marriage was that he was the Man and she the Woman, that the world-struggle fell to him, the home-struggle to her—a relationship touched sacred by a million human years up from the very cave of the first man,—something so ingrained in human bone and flesh that it was nearly as sacred as the more ancient love. Would it not have been better to kill himself, than to let the marriage be killed?
It was supper time. The poor sick man had cradled his baby in his arms, until the little one slept. Then tenderly, very tenderly, with eyes gone blind, he had laid the few pounds of human flesh in the crib. He was strangely changed. He wandered weakly up and down the dim kitchen. He forgot how hungry he was, how empty and fever-stricken.
His heart, his mind, his soul, were yearning for Annie. He hungered for her; the sight of her mournful blue eyes, the pathetic, old-known hollowness of her cheeks, the touch of her hands. The world had crippled him and driven her from her home; they were both greatly wronged; he was becoming a mere woman, and she a man. But who could help it? There was that little baby in the crib! One had to care for him, one had to give all up utterly, as Annie had done, that one young soul might live and grow and be sunned into a man. One had to sacrifice even a bit of manhood.
He walked up and down, hungering for his wife. He stopped to listen to each sound. He did not wonder any more why life is, or death is, or pain is. He knew—that love is.
And then, at last, startling him in spite of his expectancy, the door burst open and Annie rushed in. Twilight had come and the room was ghostly and gray. Just for a moment, glimmeringly at the shining stove he stood, irresolute, drinking in each feature of her face, loving fiercely the light brown hair blown in wisps over the low forehead; the large blue eyes, now flashing so strangely; the deep cheeks, now so darkly colored, the whole woman dim and soft in the twilight. And then it came over him that she was sparkling with excitement. And he noticed that she carried two bulging paper bags.
"Peter!" she cried, "the baby—how is he?"
He could hardly speak; he blurted.
"He's—all right—and you—did you get it?"
She put down the bags.
"Supper, Pete!" she cried in an exhilarating voice, that swept electricity through him. "Supper!"
She rushed and flung her arms about him.
"Pete, Pete! I got it! I got a job! It's a dollar a day—very special. A grand house over near Fifth Avenue. Peter! Ain't it glorious, Pete?"
He humbly drew her close, and then the experiences of the day overmastered him. The growing mood of the long weeks broke its ice and went pell-mell down the valleys of April. He heaved terribly, his shoulders wrenched—wrenched—his head went down on her shoulder—he knew not what he was doing, but the long unnatural man-sobs shook through the darkening room.
"Pete!" she cried, taking him closer and closer. "It's all right! Everything's all right! Don't you feel that way about it! I love the work, honest, I do, and we can live, Pete! We can wait. Better times are coming!"
He laughed through his sobs weirdly.
"You're the man of the two of us. You're the fighter!"
"Don't you believe it, Pete!" she cried. "But get busy; light up big and blazing; set the table. I got—what you love best—guess—guess——"
"What!" he mumbled, "cornbeef——"
"And cabbage—" she cried.
He kissed and kissed her like a man possessed, the big tears on his twitching checks. He stroked and stroked her cheek softly; he held her face away to look into it with lustrous eyes, its shades of love and fondness. And then, softly, he whispered:
"Wait a minute, wait a minute!"
Swiftly he slouched through the darkness to the square of window stained with the few lights back of the yards. He raised it, his figure black against it, he drew secretly from his pocket a lump of steel hidden in his fist, he reached out his hand and opened it—and listened. Something hard hit the pavement of the backyard.
And Annie, bustling about with the supper, though the tears streamed, pretended that she did not hear.
But he stood gazing on the first star in the far-flushed skies, the evening star, and he knew and Annie knew by some strange vast tide of light through their hearts, that the Great White Fear had been flung out of the window, and was gone forever. There would be Hard Times and Good Times, there would be new Exilings and New Hunts, but they had learned how to Fight, to Fight in team with all the strength of man and woman married. They had won their roof and their crust.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1932, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 91 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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