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The Stillwater Tragedy

T >> Thomas Bailey Aldrich >> The Stillwater Tragedy




Richard's words went into one ear and out the other, without
seeming for an instant to arrest Mr. Shackford's attention. The idea
of Slocum not accepting money--anybody's money--presented itself to
Mr. Shackford in so facetious a light as nearly to throw him into
good humor. His foot was on the first step of the staircase, which he
now began slowly to mount, giving vent, as he ascended, to a serious
of indescribable chuckles. At the top of the landing he halted, and
leaned over the rail.

"To think of Slocum refusing,--that's a good one!"

In the midst of his jocularity a sudden thought seemed to strike
Mr. Shackford; his features underwent a swift transformation, and as
he grasped the rail in front of him with both hands a malicious
cunning writhed and squirmed in every wrinkle of his face.

"Sir!" he shrieked, "it was a trap! Slocum would have taken it! If
I had been ass enough to make any such offer, he would have jumped at
it. What do you and Slocum take me for? You're a pair of rascals!"

Richard staggered back, bewildered and blinded, as if he had
received a blow in the eyes.

"No," continued Mr. Shackford, with a gesture of intense contempt,
"you are less than rascals. You are fools. A rascal has to have
brains!"

"You shameless old man!" cried Richard, as soon as he could get
his voice.

To do Mr. Shackford justice, he was thoroughly convinced that
Richard had lent himself to a preposterous attempt to obtain money
from him. The absence of ordinary shrewdness in the method stamped it
at once as belonging to Slocum, of whose mental calibre Mr. Shackford
entertained no flattering estimate.

"Slocum!" he muttered, grinding the word between his teeth.
"Family ties!" he cried, hurling the words scornfully over the
banister as he disappeared into one of the upper chambers.

Richard stood with one hand on the newel-post, white at the lip
with rage. For a second he had a wild impulse to spring up the
staircase, but, controlling this, he turned and hurried out of the
house.

At the gate he brushed roughly against a girl, who halted and
stared. It was a strange thing to see Mr. Richard Shackford, who
always had a pleasant word for a body, go by in that blind, excited
fashion, striking one fist into the palm of the other hand, and
talking to his own self! Mary Hennessey watched him until he wheeled
out of Welch's Court, and then picking up her basket, which she had
rested on the fence, went her way.






XII





At the main entrance to the marble works Richard nearly walked
over a man who was coming out, intently mopping his forehead with a
very dirty calico handkerchief. It was an English stone-dresser named
Denyven. Richard did not recognize him at first.

"That you, Denyven! . . . what has happened!"

"I've 'ad a bit of a scrimmage, sir."

"A scrimmage in the yard, in work hours!"

The man nodded.

"With whom?"

"Torrini, sir,--he's awful bad this day."

"Torrini,--it is always Torrini! It seems odd that one man should
be everlastingly at the bottom of everything wrong. How did it
happen? Give it to me straight, Denyven; I don't want a crooked
story. This thing has got to stop in Slocum's Yard."

"The way of it was this, sir: Torrini wasn't at the shop this
morning. He 'ad a day off."

"I know."

"But about one o'clock, sir, he come in the yard. He 'ad been at
the public 'ouse, sir, and he was hummin'. First he went among the
carvers, talking Hitalian to 'em and making 'em laugh, though he was
in a precious bad humor hisself. By and by he come over to where me
and my mates was, and began chaffin' us, which we didn't mind it,
seeing he was 'eavy in the 'ead. He was as clear as a fog 'orn all
the same. But when he took to banging the tools on the blocks, I
sings out, ''Ands off!' and then he fetched me a clip. I was never
looking for nothing less than that he'd hit me. I was a smiling at
the hinstant."

"He must be drunker than usual."

"Hevidently, sir. I went down between two slabs as soft as you
please. When I got on my pins, I was for choking him a bit, but my
mates hauled us apart. That's the 'ole of it, sir. They'll tell you
the same within."

"Are you hurt, Denyven?"

"Only a bit of a scratch over the heye, sir,--and the nose," and
the man began mopping his brow tenderly. "I'd like to 'ave that
Hitalian for about ten minutes, some day when he's sober, over yonder
on the green."

"I'm afraid he would make the ten minutes seem long to you."

"Well, sir, I'd willingly let him try his 'and."

"How is it, Denyven," said Richard, "that you and sensible
workingmen like you, have permitted such a quarrelsome and
irresponsible fellow to become a leader in the Association? He's
secretary, or something, isn't he?"

"Well, sir, he writes an uncommonly clean fist, and then he's a
born horator. He's up to all the parli'mentary dodges. Must 'ave 'ad
no end of hexperience in them sort of things on the other side."

"No doubt,--and that accounts for him being over here."

"As for horganizing a meeting, sir"--

"I know. Torrini has a great deal of that kind of ability; perhaps
a trifle too much for his own good or anybody else's. There was never
any trouble to speak of among the trades in Stillwater till he and
two or three others came here with foreign grievances. These men get
three times the pay they ever received in their own land, and are
treated like human beings for the first time in their lives. But what
do they do? They squander a quarter of their week's wages at the
tavern,--no rich man could afford to put a fourth of his income into
drink,--and make windy speeches at the Union. I don't say all of
them, but too many of them. The other night, I understand, Torrini
compared Mr. Slocum to Nero,--Mr. Slocum, the fairest and gentlest
man that ever breathed! What rubbish!"

"It wasn't just that way, sir. His words was, and I 'eard
him,--'from Nero down to Slocum.'"

"It amounts to the same thing, and is enough to make one laugh, if
he didn't make one want to swear. I hear that that was a very lively
meeting the other night. What was that nonsense about 'the privileged
class'?"

"Well, there is a privileged class in the States."

"So there is, but it's a large class, Denyven. Every soul of us
has the privilege of bettering out condition if we have the brain and
the industry to do it. Energy and intelligence come to the front, and
have the right to be there. A skillful workman gets double the pay of
a bungler, and deserves it. Of course there will always be rich and
poor, and sick and sound, and I don't see how that can be changed.
But no door is shut against ability, black or white. Before the year
2400 we shall have a chrome-yellow president and a black-and-tan
secretary of the treasury. But, seriously, Denyven, whoever talks
about privileged classes here does it to make mischief. There are
certain small politicians who reap their harvest in times of public
confusion, just as pickpockets do. Nobody can play the tyrant or the
bully in this country,--not even a workingman. Here's the Association
dead against an employer who, two years ago, ran his yard full-handed
for a twelvemonth at a loss, rather than shut down, as every other
mill and factory in Stillwater did. For years and years the
Association has prevented this employer from training more than two
apprentices annually. The result is, eighty hands find work, instead
of a hundred and eighty. Now, that can't last."

"It keeps wages fixed in Stillwater, sir."

"It keeps out a hundred workmen. It sends away capital."

"Torrini says, sir"--

"Steer clear of Torrini and what he says. He's a dangerous
fellow--for his friends. It is handsome in you, Denyven, to speak up
for him--with that eye of yours."

"Oh, I don't love the man, when it comes to that; but there's no
denying he's right smart," replied Denyven, who occasionally marred
his vernacular with Americanisms. "The Association couldn't do
without him."

"But Slocum's Yard can," said Richard, irritated to observe the
influence Torrini exerted on even such men as Denyven.

"That's between you and him, sir, of course, but"--

"But what?"

"Well, isr, I can't say hexactly; but if I was you I would bide a
bit."

"No, I think Torrini's time has come."

"I don't make bold to advise you, sir. I merely throws out the
hobservation."

With that Denyven departed to apply to his bruises such herbs and
simples as a long experience had taught him to be efficacious.

He had gone only a few rods, however, when it occurred to him that
there were probabilities of a stormy scene in the yard; so he turned
on his tracks, and followed Richard Shackford.

Torrini was a Neapolitan, who had come to the country seven or
eight years before. He was a man above the average intelligence of
his class; a marble worker by trade, but he had been a fisherman, a
mountain guide among the Abruzzi, a soldier in the papal guard, and
what not, and had contrived to pick up two or three languages, among
the rest English, which he spoke with purity. His lingual gift was
one of his misfortunes.

Among the exotics in Stillwater, which even boasted a featureless
Celestial, who had unobtrusively extinguished himself with a
stove-pipe hat, Torrini was the only figure that approached
picturesqueness. With his swarthy complexion and large, indolent
eyes, in which a southern ferocity slept lightly, he seemed to
Richard a piece out of his own foreign experience. To him Torrini was
the crystallization of Italy, or so much of that Italy as Richard had
caught a glimpse of at Genoa. To the town-folks Torrini perhaps
vaguely suggested hand-organs and eleemosynary pennies; but Richard
never looked at the straight-limbed, handsome fellow without
recalling the Phrygian-capped sailors of the Mediterranean. On this
account, and for other reasons, Richard had taken a great fancy to
the man. Torrini had worked in the ornamental department from the
first, and was a rapid and expert carver when he chose. He had
carried himself steadily enough in the beginning, but in these later
days, as Mr. Slocum had stated, he was scarcely ever sober. Richard
had stood between him and his discharge on several occasions, partly
because he was so skillful a workman, and partly through pity for his
wife and children, who were unable to speak a word of English. But
Torrini's influence on the men in the yard,--especially on the
younger hands, who needed quite other influences,--and his
intemperate speeches at the trades-union, where he had recently
gained a kind of ascendancy by his daring, were producing the worst
effects.

At another hour Richard might have been inclined to condone this
last offense, as he had condoned others; but when he parted from
Denyven, Richard's heart was still hot with his cousin's insult. As
he turned into the yard, not with his usual swinging gait, but with a
quick, wide step, there was an unpleasant dilation about young
Shackford's nostrils.

Torrini was seated on a block of granite in front of the upper
sheds, flourishing a small chisel in one hand and addressing the men,
a number of whom had stopped work to listen to him. At sight of
Richard they made a show of handling their tools, but it was so clear
something grave was going to happen that the pretense fell through.
They remained motionless, resting on their mallets, with their eyes
turned towards Richard. Torrini followed the general glance, and
pause din his harangue.

"Talk of the devil!" he muttered, and then, apparently continuing
the thread of his discourse, broke into a strain of noisy
declamation.

Richard walked up to him quietly.

"Torrini," he said, "you can't be allowed to speak here, you
know."

"I can speak where I like," replied Torrini gravely. He was drunk,
but the intoxication was not in his tongue. His head, as Denyven had
asserted, was as clear as a fog-horn.

"When you are sober, you can come to the desk and get your pay and
your kit. You are discharged from the yard."

Richard was standing within two paces of the man, who looked up
with an uncertain smile, as if he had not quite taken in the sense of
the words. Then, suddenly straightening himself, he exclaimed,--

"Slocum don't dare do it!"

"But I do."

"You!"

"When I do a thing Mr. Slocum backs me."

"But who backs Slocum,--the Association, may be?"

"Certainly the Association ought to. I want you to leave the yard
now."

"He backs Slocum," said Torrini, settling himself on the block
again, "and Slocum backs down," at which there was a laugh among the
men.

Richard made a step forward.

"Hands off!" cried a voice from under the sheds.

"Who said that?" demanded Richard, wheeling around. No one
answered, but Richard had recognized Durgin's voice. "Torrini, if you
don't quit the yard in two minutes by the clock yonder, I shall put
you out by the neck. Do you understand?"

Torrini glared about him confusedly for a moment, and broke into
voluble Italian; then, without a warning gesture, sprung to his feet
and struck at Richard. A straight red line, running vertically the
length of his cheek, showed where the chisel had grazed him. The
shops were instantly in a tumult, the men dropping their tools and
stumbling over the blocks, with cries of "Keep them apart!" "Shame on
you!" "Look out, Mr. Shackford!"

"Is it mad ye are, Torrany!" cried Michael Hennessey, hurrying
from the saw-bench. Durgin held him back by the shoulders.

"Let them alone," said Durgin.

The flat steel flashed again in the sunlight, but fell harmlessly,
and before the blow could be repeated, Richard had knitted his
fingers in Torrini's neckerchief and twisted it so tightly that the
man gasped. Holding him by this, Richard dragged Torrini across the
yard, and let him drop on the sidewalk outside the gate, where he lay
in a heap, inert.

"That was nate," said Michael Hennessey, sententiously.

Richard stood leaning on the gate-post to recover he breath. His
face was colorless, and the crimson line defined itself sharply
against the pallor; but the rage was dead within him. It had been one
of his own kind of rages,--like lightning out of a blue sky. As he
stood there a smile was slowly gathering on his lip.

A score or two of the men had followed him, and now lounged in a
half-circle a few paces in the rear. When Richard was aware of their
presence, the glow came into his eyes again.

"Who ordered you to knock off work?"

"That was a foul blow of Torrini's, sir," said Stevens, stepping
forward, "and I for one come to see fair play."

"Give us your 'and, mate!" cried Denyven; "there's a pair of us."

"Thanks," said Richard, softening at once, "but there's no need.
Every man can go to his job. Denyven may stay, if he likes."

The men lingered a moment, irresolute, and returned to the sheds
in silence.

Presently Torrini stretched out one leg, then the other, and
slowly rose to his feet, giving a stupid glance at his empty hands as
he did so.

"Here's your tool," said Richard, stirring the chisel with the toe
of his boot, "if that's what you're looking for."

Torrini advanced a step as if to pick it up, then appeared to
alter his mind, hesitated perhaps a dozen seconds, and turning
abruptly on his heel walked down the street without a stagger.

"I think his legs is shut off from the rest of his body by
water-tight compartments," remarked Denyven, regarding Torrini's
steady gait with mingled amusement and envy. "Are you hurt, sir?"

"Only a bit of a scratch of the heye," replied Richard, with a
laugh.

"As I hobserved just now to Mr. Stevens, sir, there's a pair of
us!"






XIII





After a turn through the shops to assure himself that order was
restored, Richard withdrew in the direction of his studio. Margaret
was standing at the head of the stairs, half hidden by the scarlet
creeper which draped that end of the veranda.

"What are you doing there?" said Richard looking up with a bright
smile.

"Oh, Richard, I saw it all!"

"You didn't see anything worth having white cheeks about."

"But he struck you . . . with the knife, did he not?" said
Margaret, clinging to his arm anxiously.

"He didn't have a knife, dear; only a small chisel, which couldn't
hurt any one. See for yourself; it is merely a cat-scratch."

Margaret satisfied herself that it was nothing more; but she
nevertheless insisted on leading Richard into the workshop, and
soothing the slight inflammation with her handkerchief dipped in
arnica and water. The elusive faint fragrance of Margaret's hair as
she busied herself about him would of itself have consoled Richard
for a deep wound. All this pretty solicitude and ministration was new
and sweet to him, and when the arnica turned out to be cologne, and
scorched his cheek, Margaret's remorse was so delicious that Richard
half wished the mixture had been aquafortia.

"You shouldn't have been looking into the yard," he said. "If I
had known that you were watching us it would have distracted me. When
I am thinking of you I cannot think of anything else, and I had need
of my wits for a moment."

"I happened to be on the veranda, and was too frightened to go
away. Why did you quarrel?"

In giving Margaret an account of the matter, Richard refrained
from any mention of his humiliating visit to Welch's Court that
morning. He could neither speak of it nor reflect upon it with
composure. The cloud which shadowed his features from time to time
was attributed by Margaret to the affair in the yard.

"But this is the end of it, is it not?" she asked, with troubled
eyes. "You will not have any further words with him?"

"You needn't worry. If Torrini had not been drinking he would
never have lifted his hand against me. When he comes out of his
present state, he will be heartily ashamed of himself. His tongue is
the only malicious part of him. If he hadn't a taste for drink and
oratory,--if he was not 'a born horator,' as Denyven calls him,--he
would do well enough."

"No, Richard, he's a dreadful man. I shall never forget his
face,--it was some wild animal's. And you, Richard," added Margaret
softly, "it grieved me to see you look like that."

"I was wolfish for a moment, I suppose. Things had gone wrong
generally. But if you are going to scold me, Margaret, I would rather
have some more--arnica."

"I am not going to scold; but while you stood there, so white and
terrible,--so unlike yourself,--I felt that I did not know you,
Richard. Of course you had to defend yourself when the man attacked
you, but I thought for an instant you would kill him."

"Not I," said Richard uneasily, dreading anything like a rebuke
from Margaret. "I am mortified that I gave up to my anger. There was
no occasion."

"If an intoxicated person were to wander into the yard, papa would
send for a constable, and have the person removed."

"Your father is an elderly man," returned Richard, not relishing
this oblique criticism of his own simpler method. "What would be
proper in his case would be considered cowardly in mine. It was my
duty to discharge the fellow, and not let him dispute my authority. I
ought to have been cooler, of course. But I should have lost caste
and influence with the men if I had shown the least personal fear of
Torrini,--if, for example, I had summoned somebody else to do what I
didn't dare do myself. I was brought up in the yard, remember, and to
a certain extent I have to submit to being weighed in the yard's own
scales."

"But a thing cannot be weighed in a scale incapable of containing
it," answered Margaret. "The judgment of these rough, uninstruicted
men is too narrow for such as you. They quarrel and fight among
themselves, and have their ideas of daring; but there is a higher
sort of bravery, the bravery of self-control, which I fancy they do
not understand very well; so their opinion of it is not worth
considering. However, you know better than I."

"No, I do not," said Richard. "Your instinct is finer than my
reason. But you _are_ scolding me, Margaret."

"No, I am loving you," she said softly. "How can I do that more
faithfully than by being dissatisfied with anything but the best in
you?"

"I wasn't at my best a while ago?"

"No, Richard."

"I can never hope to be worthy of you."

But Margaret protested against that. Having forced him to look at
his action through her eyes, she outdid him in humility, and then the
conversation drifted off into half-breathed nothings, which, though
they were satisfactory enough for these two, would have made a third
person yawn.

The occurrence at Slocum's Yard was hotly discussed that night at
the Stillwater hotel. Discussions in that long, low bar-room, where
the latest village scandal always came to receive the finishing
gloss, were apt to be hot. In their criticism of outside men and
measures, as well as in their mutual vivisections, there was an
unflinching directness among Mr. Snelling's guests which is not to be
found in more artificial grades of society. The popular verdict on
young Shackford's conduct was as might not have been predicted,
strongly in his favor. He had displayed pluck, and pluck of the
tougher fibre was a quality held in so high esteem in Stillwater that
any manifestation of it commanded respect. And young Shackford had
shown a great deal; he had made short work of the most formidable man
in the yard, and given the rest to understand that he was not to be
tampered with. This had taken many by surprise, for hitherto an
imperturbable amiability had been the leading characteristic of
Slocum's manager.

"I didn't think he had it in him," declared Dexter.

"Well, ye might," replied Michael Hennessey. "Look at the lad's
eye, and the muscles of him. He stands on his own two legs like a
monumint, so he does."

"Never saw a monument with two legs, Mike."

"Didn't ye? Wait till ye're layin' at the foot of one. But ye'll
wait many a day, me boy. Ye'll be lucky if ye're supploid with a
head-stone made out of a dale-board."

"Couldn't get a wooden head-stone short of Ireland, Mike."
Retorted Dexter, with a laugh. "You'd have to import it."

"An' so I will; but it won't be got over in time, if ye go on
interruptin' gintlemen when they're discoorsin'. What was I sayin',
any way, when the blackguard chipped in?" continued Mr. Hennessey,
appealing to the company, as he emptied the ashes from his pipe by
knocking the bowl in the side of his chair.

"You was talking of Dick Shackford's muscle," said Durgin, "and
you never talked wider of the mark. It doesn't take much muscle, or
much courage either, to knock a man about when he's in liquor. The
two wasn't fairly matched."

"You are right there, Durgin," said Stevens, laying down his
newspaper. "They weren't fairly matched. Both men have the same
pounds and inches, but Torrini had a weapon and that mad strength
that comes to some folks with drink. If Shackford hadn't made a neat
twist on the neckerchief, he wouldn't have got off with a scratch."

"Shackford had no call to lay hands on him."

"There you are wrong, Durgin," replied Stevens. "Torrini had no
call in the yard; he was making a nuisance of himself. Shackford
spoke to him, and told him to go, and when he didn't go Shackford put
him out; and he put him out handsomely,--'with neatness and
dispatch,' as Slocum's prospectuses has it."

"He was right all the time," said Piggott. "He didn't strike
Torrini before or after he was down, and stood at the gate like a
gentleman, ready to give Torrini his chance if he wanted it."

"Torrini didn't want it," observed Jemmy Willson. "Ther' isn't
nothing mean about Torrini."

"But he 'ad a dozen minds about coming back," said Denyven.

"We ought to have got him out of the place quietly," said Jeff
Stavers; "that was our end of the mistake. He is not a bad fellow,
but he shouldn't drink."

"He was crazy to come to the yard."

"When a man 'as a day off," observed Denyven, "and the beer isn't
narsty, he 'ad better stick to the public 'ouse."

"Oh, you!" exclaimed Durgin. "Your opinion don't weigh. You took a
black eye of him."

"Yes, I took a black heye,--and I can give one, in a hemergency.
Yes, I gives and takes."

"That's where we differ," returned Durgin. "I do a more genteel
business; I give, and don't take."

"Unless you're uncommon careful," said Denyven, pulling away at
his pipe, "you'll find yourself some day henlarging your business."

Durgin pushed back his stool.

"Gentlemen! gentlemen!" interposed Mr. Snelling, appearing from
beind the bar with a lemon-squeezer in his hand, "we'll have no black
eyes here that wasn't born so. I am partial to them myself when
nature gives them; and I propose the health of Miss Molly Hennessey,"
with a sly glance at Durgin, who colored, "to be drank at the expense
of the house. Name your taps, gentlemen."

"Snelling, me boy, ye'd wint the bird from the bush with yer
beguilin' ways. Ye've brought proud tears to the eyes of an aged
parent, and I'll take a sup out of that high-showldered bottle which
you kape under the counter for the gentle-folk in the other room."

A general laugh greeted Mr. Hennessey's selection, and peace was
restored; but the majority of those present were workmen from
Slocum's, and the event of the afternoon remained the uppermost
theme.

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