Jake and Pauley, the two men who brought me up from Pullman, were happy enough to stay the several days it took me to organize supplies. At least at Hull House they were fed, which was better than down in Pullman. When we finally loaded up the wagon I was disappointed at the paucity of the amount I had been able to purchase. It appeared to be so little, when I knew that the need that would meet us at the other end would be so great. But it would have to do. At any rate, it would be an improvement over the completely empty shelves I had left behind. I thought even the Hull House residents were happy to see me leave, so demanding had I become with my begging.
It was a hot and dusty ride back down to Pullman. We did not see any of the mobs so feared by the people who read the newspapers. When we arrived it was easy to recruit some of the weary men in the meeting room to help carry the supplies up to my relief station. They were only too quickly unloaded and I gave a small amount of food to my helpers to take home, saying the rest would be distributed the next day when I had managed to round up my committee, who would once again oversee the fair distribution of the goods.
I locked the doors and descended to the clinic on the second floor to let Dr. Chapman know that I had returned. His door was shut but in the corridor, on the hard bench, there was a single waiting patient. I felt a thrill of recognition.
“Raoul.”
He looked around as if in a fog. I was so glad to see him. I was so tired of being angry, of having to hammer at people to make them understand the crisis. I was so happy to be able to tell him that I had returned with supplies. Not enough, perhaps, but at least it was something. I longed to feel his arm around my shoulders in a confidential manner, as when we had last met. I was so excited to reconnect that I sat down close beside him and put a hand on his arm. I had worried I would feel embarrassed, seeing him after the kisses he had surprised me with the last time, but now my scruples seemed ridiculous to me. He had a warmth and an enthusiasm that I felt a great need for. He still had hope for success and I needed to feel that. It seemed that he was one of the few who felt the same passion for this situation as I did.
But he looked at me, as if I were a stranger, then looked down at my hand on his arm and moved away from me, pointedly sliding several inches to the side with a distinct frown on his face. I was mortified. It was such a forward thing I had done, sitting practically on top of him, touching him. I was so wrong about how I assumed he felt about me and it was all obvious to me in that second. I jumped to my feet in a useless attempt to hide my shame.
“Mr. LeClerc. I have just returned from the city. I have managed to bring back some supplies. Not much. Not enough, but some. Is there news of the strike? Is there any hope of it ending?”
He looked sullen. It was so unlike him. In the weeks since I had first met him, his hair had gotten longer and so had his moustache. He had let a small goatee grow on his chin. He looked more foreign than ever, I thought. More like the idea of a wild-eyed anarchist. But his eyes were not wild. They were dull under the lowering brow of his frown.
“I cannot say at this time. It doesn’t matter what we do, they lie. They provoke trouble to blame the unions and Debs. They want to crush us but it will come at a cost to them. They want to gag us, but we will be heard. They are turning the full force of the government and the money people against us, but they will learn. They will find out that the workingman will fight back.”
At that moment the door to the office opened and Dr. Chapman ushered out a very ill-looking Fiona MacGregor. I realized Raoul was in the corridor because he was waiting for her. The doctor seemed angry. Fiona was very pale as she shuffled forward, leaning on his arm. Raoul leaped up and took over solicitously, with one arm around her as he gave her support.
“She needs bed rest. Complete bed rest,” the doctor said. “There is nothing else I can do for her. Take her home. I have nothing else to say to you.” Then he turned and went back into his office, closing the door with a bang. I jumped.
“Miss MacGregor, you’re ill. I’m so sorry to hear it. I . . . I’ve brought back some supplies from Hull House. I was going to come and see you, to get our committee together.” She looked at me vaguely and slumped against LeClerc. “But don’t worry. I will gather the others. You go home and rest, like the doctor said.” LeClerc was taking her to the stairs, ignoring me. Soon I was left alone in the corridor. It was the end of the day, dusk coming on, so all of the doctor’s patients were finally gone. I stepped over and knocked on his door.
“Come in.”
I opened the door and left it open, as it usually was. He had his back to me, tidying up instruments on a table in the corner of the room.
“Dr. Chapman. I came to let you know that I’ve returned from the city . . . with some supplies.” I thought he would approve of my actions. “I saw Mr. LeClerc in the hallway. Poor Miss MacGregor. She’s ill, it seems?”
He banged a metal instrument into a container, his neck red. It made me wonder whether he was angry that Fiona had gone away with Raoul LeClerc. It seemed to me that he had some affection for her. Was he disappointed by her so obvious admiration for Mr. LeClerc? The doctor and Fiona MacGregor? But she was so young, and so uneducated. Yet clearly he was moved by some strong emotion. It shocked me.
“Miss MacGregor is ill and presumably she will recover if she rests. It is not something to be discussed. This miserable town and this miserable strike. They do nothing but drive people to awful choices. Men like Pullman and Debs are only too willing to sacrifice the ordinary people in their quest for power.”
“I believe that Mr. Debs and the ARU are trying to build a better future for all of the workers. How can they fight back against someone like Pullman without such an organization?” I thought he was more angry for the effect on little Fiona than for anything else. He really was angry on her account. But it was Raoul who was comforting her and taking care of her now. I felt the need to swallow my own disappointment about the feelings I’d thought Mr. LeClerc had for me. There was a greater good to be considered. The doctor was wrong about the ARU at least. “I’m sure Mr. LeClerc continues to want to help the people of Pullman.”
“LeClerc! He’ll help them to hell if he can.”
He was jealous of Raoul. I would never have thought it of the doctor. So much was happening before my eyes without my understanding any of it. Of course, the doctor had proposed marriage to me before all of this began. I turned him down believing he made the offer only from pity. And I was mortified to find I was correct. Perhaps in Fiona MacGregor, he had found a woman who truly raised his affections, only to lose her to the union man. I felt a knot in my throat.
“Dr. Chapman.” Alden appeared in the doorway. “Oh, Emily, I didn’t see you. I haven’t seen you since the clock tower incident. I tried to write that up the way it happened, by the way, but they changed it . . . they edited it.”
“‘Dictator Debs’, Alden? Instead of exposing how the Pullman Company used that Pinkerton man to trick those men, it becomes a condemnation of the strikers, as if they planted the bomb. It was all Jennings and Stark.”
“I know, Emily, but the newspapers are all against them. They were with the strikers while it was just Pullman, but once the ARU got involved, they turned against them.”
“Do you know what Stark did, Alden?”
“Shot Mooney? Yes, I heard.”
“And he still got away with it. Whitbread hid him in a wagon and drove him out of the police station so the crowd couldn’t get him.”
“He had no choice, Emily. That’s his job.”
“To save a murderer?”
“To protect him from a mad crowd. They would have torn him apart. You know Whitey couldn’t let that happen. Stark has to be dealt with by the law—although that’s not going to happen ’til this is all over. Right now he has the protection of having been deputized by Sheriff Arnold. But if he killed Brian O’Malley, you know Whitbread will get him in the end.”
“If he killed him. What else could have happened? Jennings and Stark planned the bomb plot. Brian O’Malley was going to tell on them, so they killed him and hung him up with the spy sign so they could blame the strikers.”
“Whitbread will have to prove it—but that will have to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For the end of this.”
“The strike? You see an end in sight? Well, good, because I don’t. I don’t see how any of this will end. What have you heard?”
“Same thing that you’re hearing. Listen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Listen, don’t you hear that?” He ran to the window and threw up the sash. There was a pounding noise and some shouting, but regular—not confused—shouting, then more pounding, tramping. I stepped over to stand beside him at the window.
There were rows of men in dark blue coats, with rifles on their shoulders, marching down the street. Stamp . . . stamp.
“It’s the army,” Alden explained. “The president sent the army.”