V
"Comrade Higgins," said the Candidate, after a bit, "let's you and
me run away."
Jimmie looked startled. "How?"
"I mean from the Committee, and from the meeting, and from
everything." And then, seeing the dismay in the other's face: "I
mean, let's take a walk in the country."
"Oh!" said Jimmie.
"I see it through the windows of the railroad-cars, but I don't set
foot on it for months at a time. And I was brought up in the
country. Were you?"
"I was brought up everywhere," said the little machinist.
They got up, and paid each their ten cents to the proprietor of the
"Buffeteria." Jimmie could not resist the temptation to introduce
his hero, and show a pious Catholic that a Socialist Candidate had
neither hoofs nor horns. The Candidate was used to being introduced
for that purpose and had certain spontaneous and cordial words which
he had said not less than ten thousand times before; with the result
that the pious Catholic gave his promise to come to the meeting that
night.
They went out; and because some member of the Committee might be
passing on Main Street, Jimmie took his hero by an alley into a back
street; and they walked past the glass-factory, which to the
outsider was a long board fence, and across the Atlantic Western
railroad tracks, and past the carpet-factory, a huge four-story box
made of bricks; after which the rows of wooden shacks began to thin
out, and there were vacant lots and ash-heaps, and at last the
beginning of farms.
The Candidate's legs were long, and Jimmie's, alas, were short, so
he had almost to run. The sun blazed down on them, and sweat,
starting from the Candidate's bald head stole under the band of his
straw hat and down to his wilting collar; so he took off his coat
and hung it over his arm, and went on, faster than ever. Jimmie
raced beside him, afraid to speak, for he divined that the Candidate
was brooding over the world-calamity, the millions of young men
marching out to slaughter. On the placards which Jimmie had been
distributing in Leesville, there were two lines about the Candidate,
written by America's favourite poet:
As warm heart as ever beat
Betwixt here and judgement seat.
So they went on for perhaps an hour, by which time they were really
in the country. They came to a bridge which crossed the river Lee,
and there the Candidate suddenly stopped, and stood looking at the
water sliding below him, and at the vista through which it wound, an
avenue of green trees with stretches of pasture and cattle grazing.
"That looks fine," he said. "Let's go down." So they climbed a
fence, and made their way along the river for a distance, until a
turn of the stream took them out of sight of the road.
There they sat on a shelving bank, and mopped the perspiration from
their foreheads and necks, and gazed into the rippling current. You
couldn't exactly say it was crystal clear, for when there is a town
every ten miles or so along a stream, with factories pouring various
kinds of chemicals into it, the job becomes too much for the
restoring forces of Mother Nature. But it would take a dirty stream
indeed not to look inviting in midsummer after a four-mile walk. So
presently the Candidate turned to Jimmie, with a mischievous look
upon his face. "Comrade Higgins, were you ever in a swimmin' hole?"
"Sure I was!" said Jimmie.
"Where?"
"Everywhere. I was on the road off an' on ten years--till I got
married."
"Well," said the Candidate, still smiling, "what do you say?"
"I say sure!" replied Jimmie.
He was almost beside himself with awe, at this unbelieveable strange
fortune, this real comradeship with the hero of his dreams. To
Jimmie this man had been a disembodied intelligence, a dispenser of
proletarian inspiration, a supernatural being who went about the
country standing upon platforms and swaying the souls of multitudes.
It had never occurred to Jimmie that he might have a bare body, and
might enjoy splashing about in cool water like a boy playing
"hookey" from school. The saying is that familiarity breeds
contempt, but for Jimmie it bred rapture.
