Lawyers -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 -- Fiction
It seemed wonderfully simple now and wonderfully peaceful. He would go
to Forbes to-morrow and draw up a legal paper, the last legal paper he
would ever put his name to, his last compromise, turning over his
interest in this factory to his mother; and Forbes—poor old Forbes! He
was sorry for Forbes, but he knew what would happen; left alone, Forbes
would end by selling out, profitably, to the trust. And then for Luke
the open road, the old open road that he had always loved, the learning
of a manual trade, the sale of his labor-power no more than was
necessary to keep him alive and free to go wherever slaves fought the
system of corruption for their liberty, until sometime, when the
soldiers would have Luke before them instead of behind them, and did not
shoot over the heads of the mob. He was tasting of contentment for the
first time in his life. He was glad that he had not died out there in
the riot. There was so much to do. There was so much to do in this
life that he did not see how he had ever had time to think of any other.
And now he was about to do his part of it conscientiously, with open
eyes and with all his soul, and to do it with complete power over
himself, using no compulsion upon others and allowing no other to use
compulsion upon him. Luke had conquered. For every soul there is,
somewhere, a separate road to salvation. Luke had found his own....
Somewhere out in the city a clock struck eleven. He knew that he had
been standing at the window for a long time, but he had no idea it was
so long as this. If he had been so engrossed, what, he wondered, had
finally roused him. He remembered: it was something about the door. He
had not heard it move; he merely thought that it was moving. He turned
to it, but it did not move. Perhaps a draught of air had deceived him.
The factory was very quiet....
§4. "Don’t open your trap! I got you covered! If you let out one yip,
I’ll croak you."
The door had opened and closed, letting in a figure that quickly bolted
it and then discreetly avoided the light from the window. Luke saw a
dim form in the shadow. All that projected into the shaft of light was
a fist tightly clenched about a leveled revolver.
"What do you want?" asked Luke.
He was not afraid to disregard this intruder’s command to silence. He
was curiously fearless. He supposed that this unseen man was some
fanatic from the mob. Anybody could have slipped into the factory
through the door that Luke had left open when the terror of the
soldiers’ fire swept the street and the smoke of it clouded the doorway.
This was an avenger thus arrived. Luke felt the presence of a certain
crude justice. He had deserved this.
"Don’t worry; I’m not going to yell," he said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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