Horn had hinted--he believed now she had meant to insult him--presented itself.Why should not he act upon the suggestion?He thought with loathing for the whole race of women--dabblers in art.How easy the thing would be:as easy as to turn back now and tell that old fool's girl that he loved her,and rake in half his millions.Why should not he do that?No one else cared for him;and at a year's end,probably,one woman would be like another as far as the love was concerned,and probably he should not be more tired if the woman were Christine Dryfoos than if she were Margaret Vance.He kept Alma Leighton out of the question,because at the bottom of his heart he believed that she must be forever unlike every other woman to him.
The tide of his confused and aimless reverie had carried him far down-town,he thought;but when he looked up from it to see where he was he found himself on Sixth Avenue,only a little below Thirty-ninth Street,very hot and blown;that idiotic fur overcoat was stifling.He could not possibly walk down to Eleventh;he did not want to walk even to the Elevated station at Thirty-fourth;he stopped at the corner to wait for a surface-car,and fell again into his bitter fancies.After a while he roused himself and looked up the track,but there was no car coming.He found himself beside a policeman,who was lazily swinging his club by its thong from his wrist.
"When do you suppose a car will be along?"he asked,rather in a general sarcasm of the absence of the cars than in any special belief that the policeman could tell him.
The policeman waited to discharge his tobacco-juice into the gutter.
"In about a week,"he said,nonchalantly.
"What's the matter?"asked Beaton,wondering what the joke could be.
"Strike,"said the policeman.His interest in Beaton's ignorance seemed to overcome his contempt of it."Knocked off everywhere this morning except Third Avenue and one or two cross-town lines."He spat again and kept his bulk at its incline over the gutter to glance at a group of men on the corner below:They were neatly dressed,and looked like something better than workingmen,and they had a holiday air of being in their best clothes.
"Some of the strikers?"asked Beaton.
The policeman nodded.
"Any trouble yet?"
"There won't be any trouble till we begin to move the cars,"said the policeman.
Beaton felt a sudden turn of his rage toward the men whose action would now force him to walk five blocks and mount the stairs of the Elevated station."If you'd take out eight or ten of those fellows,"he said,ferociously,"and set them up against a wall and shoot them,you'd save a great deal of bother.""I guess we sha'n't have to shoot much,"said the policeman,still swinging his locust."Anyway,we shant begin it.If it comes to a fight,though,"he said,with a look at the men under the scooping rim of his helmet,"we can drive the whole six thousand of 'em into the East River without pullin'a trigger.""Are there six thousand in it?"
"About."
"What do the infernal fools expect to live on?""The interest of their money,I suppose,"said the officer,with a grin of satisfaction in his irony."It's got to run its course.Then they'll come back with their heads tied up and their tails between their legs,and plead to be taken on again.""If I was a manager of the roads,"said Beaton,thinking of how much he was already inconvenienced by the strike,and obscurely connecting it as one of the series with the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of Mrs.
Horn and Mrs.Mandel,"I would see them starve before I'd take them back --every one of them.""Well,"said the policeman,impartially,as a man might whom the companies allowed to ride free,but who had made friends with a good many drivers and conductors in the course of his free riding,"I guess that's what the roads would like to do if they could;but the men are too many for them,and there ain't enough other men to take their places.""No matter,"said Beaton,severely."They can bring in men from other places.""Oh,they'll do that fast enough,"said the policeman.
A man came out of the saloon on the corner where the strikers were standing,noisy drunk,and they began,as they would have said,to have some fun with him.The policeman left Beaton,and sauntered slowly down toward the group as if in the natural course of an afternoon ramble.On the other side of the street Beaton could see another officer sauntering up from the block below.Looking up and down the avenue,so silent of its horse-car bells,he saw a policeman at every corner.It was rather impressive.
