I cannot express the sense of comfort, and of trust, which this reflection brought me. I recall stopping just then at the corner of a small green city square, for I had now reached the better part of the city, and of seeing with keen pleasure the green of the grass and the bright colour of a bed of flowers, and two or three clean nursemaids with clean baby cabs, and a flock of pigeons pluming themselves near a stone fountain, and an old tired horse sleeping in the sun with his nose buried in a feed bag.
"Why," I said, "all this, too, is beautiful!" So I continued my walk with quite a new feeling in my heart, prepared again for any adventure life might have to offer me.
I supposed I knew no living soul in Kilburn but Bill the Socialist. What was my astonishment and pleasure, then in one of the business streets to discover a familiar face and figure. A man was just stepping from an automobile to the sidewalk. For an instant; in that unusual environment, I could not place him, then I stepped up quickly and said:
"Well, well, Friend Vedder."
He looked around with astonishment at the man in the shabby clothes--but it was only for an instant.
"David Grayson!" he exclaimed, "and how did YOU get into the city?"
"Walked," I said.
"But I thought you were an incurable and irreproachable countryman! Why are you here?"
"Love o' life," I said; "love o' life."
"Where are you stopping?" I waved my hand.
"Where the road leaves me," I said. "Last night I left my bag with some good friends I made in front of a livery stable and I spent the night in the mill district with a Socialist named Bill Hahn."
"Bill Hahn!" The effect upon Mr. Vedder was magical.
"Why, yes," I said, "and a remarkable man he is, too."
I discovered immediately that my friend was quite as much interested in the strike as Bill Hahn, but on the other side. He was, indeed, one of the directors of the greatest mill in Kilburn--the very one which I had seen the night before surrounded by armed sentinels. It was thrilling to me, this knowledge, for it seemed to plump me down at once in the middle of things--and soon, indeed, brought me nearer to the brink of great events than ever I was before in all my days.
I could see that Mr. Vedder considered Bill Hahn as a sort of devouring monster, a wholly incendiary and dangerous person. So terrible, indeed, was the warning he gave me (considering me, I suppose an unsophisticated person) that I couldn't help laughing outright.
"I assure you--" he began, apparently much offended.
But I interrupted him.
"I'm sorry I laughed," I said, "but as you were talking about Bill Hahn, I couldn't help thinking of him as I first saw him."
And I gave Mr. Vedder as lively a description as I could of the little man with his bulging coat tails, his furry ears, his odd round spectacles. He was greatly interested in what I said and began to ask many questions. I told him with all the earnestness I could command of Bill's history and of his conversion to his present beliefs. I found that Mr. Vedder had known Robert Winter very well indeed, and was amazed at the incident which I narrated of Bill Hahn's attempt upon his life.
I have always believed that if men could be made to understand one another they would necessarily be friendly, so I did my best to explain Bill Hahn to Mr. Vedder.
"I'm tremendously interested in what you say," he said, "and we must have more talk about it."
He told me that he had now to put in an appearance at his office, and wanted me to go with him; but upon my objection he pressed me to take luncheon with him a little later, an invitation which I accepted with real pleasure.
"We haven't had a word about gardens," he said, "and there are no end of things that Mrs. Vedder and I found that we wanted to talk with you about after you had left us."
"Well!" I said, much delighted, "let's have a regular old-fashioned country talk."
So we parted for the time being, and I set off in the highest spirits to see something more of Kilburn.
A city, after all, is a very wonderful place. One thing, I recall, impressed me powerfully that morning--the way in which every one was working, apparently without any common agreement or any common purpose, and yet with a high sort of understanding.
The first hearing of a difficult piece of music (to an uncultivated ear like mine) often yields nothing but a confused sense of unrelated motives, but later and deeper hearings reveal the harmony which ran so clear in the master's soul.
Something of this sort happened to me in looking out upon the life of that great city of Kilburn. All about on the streets, in the buildings, under ground and above ground, men were walking, running,creeping, crawling, climbing, lifting, digging, driving, buying, selling, sweating, swearing, praying, loving, hating, struggling, failing, sinning, repenting--all working and living according to a vast harmony, which sometimes we can catch clearly and sometimes miss entirely. I think, that morning, for a time, I heard the true music of the spheres, the stars singing together.
Mr. Vedder took me to a quiet restaurant where we had a snug alcove all to ourselves. I shall remember it always as one of the truly pleasant experiences of my pilgrimage.
I could see that my friend was sorely troubled, that the strike rested heavy upon him, and so I led the conversation to the hills and the roads and the fields we both love so much. I plied him with a thousand questions about his garden. I told him in the liveliest way of my adventures after leaving his home, how I had telephoned him from the hills, how I had taken a swim in the mill-pond, and especially how I had lost myself in the old cowpasture, with an account of all my absurd and laughable adventures and emotions.
Well, before we had finished our luncheon I had every line ironed from the brow of that poor plagued rich man, I had brought jolly crinkles to the corners of his eyes, and once or twice I had him chuckling down deep inside (Where chuckles are truly effective).
Talk about cheering up the poor: I think the rich are usually far more in need of it!
