Chapter 8
15. Jenny talked about this plan quite openly. She would put a red ribbon in her hair, and pin a red badge on her bosom, and go into meeting places and sell little pamphlets with red covers. So of course it would be Peter's duty to report her to the head of the Secret Service of the
Traction Trust. Peter regretted this and was ashamed of having to do it. She was a nice little girl, and pretty too, and a fellow might have had some fun with her if she had not been in such a hysterical state. He would sit and look at her as she sat bent over her typewriter.
She had soft fluffy hair, the color of twilight, and even white teeth, and a faint flush that came and went in her cheeks. Yes, she would not be bad looking at all, if only she would straighten up and spend a little time on her looks, as other girls did. But no, she was always in attention, and the devil of it was, she was trying to get Peter
into the same state. She was absolutely determined that Peter must get wrought up over the wrongs of the working classes. She took it for granted that he would when he was instructed. She would tell him harrowing stories, and it was his duty to be duly harrowed.
He must be continually acting an emotional part. She would give him some of her literature to read, and then she would pin him down and make sure that he had read it. He knew how to read. Pericles Priam had seen to that, because he wanted him to attend to the printing of his
circulars and his advertisements in the country newspapers where he was traveling. So now Peter was penned in a corner, and compelled to fix his attention upon the ABC of socialism, or Capital and Proletariat, or the path to power. Peter told himself that it was part of his job to acquire this information. He was going to be a Red, and he must learn their lingo.
But he found it awfully tiresome, full of long, technical words which he had never heard before. Why couldn't these fellows at least talk American? He had known that there were socialists and also arnequists, as he called them, and he thought they were all alike.
But now he learned not merely about socialists and arnequists, but about state socialists and communist anarchists, and communist syndicalists, and syndicalist anarchists, and socialist syndicalists, and reformist socialists, and guild socialists, to say nothing about single taxers and liberals and progressives and numerous other varieties, whom he had to meet, and classify and listen to respectfully and sympathetically.
Each particular group insisted upon the distinctions which made it different, and each insisted that it had really, truly, truth. And Peter became desperately bored with their everlasting talk. How much more simple to lump them all together, as did Guffey and McGivney, calling them all Reds.
Peter had got it clearly fixed in his mind that what these Reds wanted was to divide up the property of the rich. Everyone he had questioned about them had said this. But now he learned that this wasn't it exactly. What they wanted was to have the state take over the industries, or to have the labor
unions do it, or to have the working people in general do it. They pointed to the post office and the army and the navy as examples of how the state could run things. Wasn't that all right? demanded Jenny.
And Peter said, Yes, that was all right. But hidden back in Peter's soul all the time was a whisper that it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. If it was a sucker born every minute, then you might be sure that no matter how they fixed it up, there would always be some that would find it easy to live off the rest.
This poor kid, for example, who was ready to throw herself away for any fool notion, or for anybody that came along and told her a hard luck story, would there ever be a state of society in which she wouldn't be a juicy morsel to be gobbled up by some fellow with a normal appetite? She was alone in the house all day with Peter, and she got to seem more and more pretty as
he got to know her better. Also, it was evident that she liked Peter more and more as Peter played his game. Peter revealed himself as deeply sympathetic, and a quick convert to the cause. He saw everything that Jenny explained to him. He was horrified at the horrible stories.
He was ready to help her end the European war by starting a revolution among the working people of American City. Also, he told her about himself and awakened her sympathy for his harsh life, his 20 years of privation and servitude, and when she wept over this, Peter liked it. It was fine, somehow, to have her so sorry for him.
It helped to compensate for the boredom of hearing her be sorry for the whole working class. Peter didn't know whether Jenny had learned about his bad record, but he took no chances. He told her everything, and thus took the sting out of it. Yes, he had been trapped into evil ways, but it wasn't his fault.
He hadn't known any better. He had been a pitiful victim of circumstances. He told how he had been starved and driven about and beaten by old man Drubb, and the tears glistened in Jenny's gray eyes and stole down her cheeks. He told about loneliness and heart sickness and misery in the orphan asylum.
And how could he, poor lad, realize that it was wrong to help Pericles Priam sell his peerless pain paralyzer? How could he know whether the medicine was any good or not? He didn't even know now, as a matter of fact. As for the temple of Jim Jumbo, all that Peter had done was to wash dishes and work as a
kitchen slave, as in any hotel or restaurant. It was a story easy to fix up, and especially easy because the first article in the creed of socialist Jenny was that economic circumstances were to blame for human frailties. That opened the door for all varieties of grafters and made the child such an easy mark that Peter would have been ashamed to make a victim of her, had it not been that she
happened to stand in the path of his higher purposes, and also that she happened to be young, only seventeen, with tender gray eyes and tempting, sweet lips, alone there in the house all day. Section 16 Peter's adventures in love had so far been pretty much of a piece with the rest of his
life experiences. There had been hopes and wonderful dreams, but very few realizations. Peter knew a lot about such matters. In the orphan asylum there were few vicious practices which he did not witness, few obscene imaginings with which he was not made familiar.
Also, Pericles Priam had been a man like the traditional sailor, with a girl in every port, and generally in these towns and villages there had been no place for Peter to go save where Pericles went. So Peter had been the witness of many of his master's amours and the recipient of his confidences. But none of these girls and women had paid any attention to Peter.
Peter was only a kid, and when he grew up and was no longer a kid but a youth tormented with sharp desires, they still paid no attention to him. Why should they? Peter was nothing. He had no position, no money, no charms.
He was frail and undersized, his teeth were crooked, and one shoulder higher than the other. What could he expect from women and girls but laughter and rebuffs? Then Peter moved on to the temple of Jim Jumbo, and there a devastating experience befell him.
He tumbled head over heels and agonizingly in love. There was a chambermaid in the institution, a radiant creature from the Emerald Isles, with hair like sunrise and cheeks like apples, and a laugh that shook the dishpans on the kitchen walls. She laughed at Peter, she laughed at the majordomo, she laughed at all the men in the place who
tried to catch her round the waist. Once or twice a month, perhaps, she would let them succeed, just to keep them interested and to keep herself in practice. The only one she really favored was the laundry delivery man, and Peter soon realized why. This laundry fellow had the use of an automobile on Sundays, and Nell would dress herself up
to kill, and roll away and stay with him. He would spend all his week's earnings entertaining her at the beach. Peter knew because she would tell the whole establishment on Monday morning, Gee, but I had a swell time, she would say, and would count the ice creams and the merry-go-rounds and the whirly gigs and all the wang-doodle things.
She would tell about the tattooed men and the five-legged calf and the woman who was half-man, and all the while she would make the dishpans rattle. Yes, she was a marvelous creature, and Peter suddenly realized that his ultimate desire in life was to possess a swell lady friend like Nell. He realized that there was one essential prerequisite, and that was money.
None of them would look at you without money. Nell had gone out with him only once, and that was upon the savings of six months, and Peter had not been able to conceal the effort it cost him to spend it all. So he had been set down as a tightwad, and had made no headway. Nell had disappeared, along with everybody else, when the police raided the temple.
Peter never knew what had become of her, but the old longings still haunted him, and he would find himself imagining, suppose the police had got her, suppose she were in jail, and he with his new pull were able to get her out, and carry her away and keep her hid from the laundry man. These were dreams, but meantime here was reality.
Here was a new world. Peter had settled down in the home of the Todd sisters, and what was their attitude towards these awful mysteries of love. End of sections 15 and 16.
