U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [502]
In a crowd that had just been unloaded from the wagon on the steep street outside the policestation she caught sight of a tal man she recognized as Donald Stevens from his picture in the Daily. A redfaced cop held on to each of his arms. His shirt was torn open at the neck and his necktie had a stringy look as if somebody had been yank-ing on it. The first thing Mary thought was how hand-somely he held himself. He had steelgrey hair and a brown outdoorlooking skin and luminous grey eyes over high cheekbones. When he was led away from the desk she fol owed his broad shoulders with her eyes into the gloom of the cel s. The woman next to her whispered in an awed voice that he was being held for inciting to riot instead of sauntering and loitering like the rest. Five thousand dol ars bail. He had tried to hold a meeting on Boston Common.
Mary had been there about a halfhour when little Mr. Feinstein from the office came round with a tal fashion-ablydressed man in a linen suit who put up the bail for
-455-her. At the same time Donald Stevens was bailed out. The four of them walked down the hil from the police-station together. At the corner the man in the linen suit said,
"You two were too useful to leave in there al day.
. . . Perhaps we'l see you at the Bel evue . . . suite D, second floor." Then he waved his hand and left them. Mary was so anxious to talk to Donald Stevens she didn't think to ask the man's name. Events were going past her faster than she could focus her mind on them.
Mary plucked at Donald Stevens' sleeve, she and Mr. Feinstein both had to hurry to keep up with his long stride. "I'm Mary French," she said. "What can we do?
. . . We've got to do something." He turned to her with a broad smile as if he'd seen her for the first time.
"I've heard of you," he said. "You're a plucky little girl
. . . you've been putting up a real fight in spite of your liberal committee.""But they've done the best they could," she said.
"We've' got to get the entire workingclass of Boston out on the streets," said Stevens in his deep rattling voice.
"We've gotten out the garmentworkers but that's al ." He struck his open palm with his fist. "What about the Italians? What about the North End? Where's your office? Look what we did in New York. Why can't you do it here?" He leaned over towards her with a caressing confidential manner. Right away the feeling of being tired and harassed left her, without thinking she put her hand on his arm. "We'l go and talk to your committee; then we'l talk to the Italian committee. Then we'l shake up the unions.""But, Don, we've only got thirty hours," said Mr. Feinstein in a dry tired voice. "I have more con-fidence in political pressure being applied to the governor. You know he has presidential aspirations. I think the gov-ernor's going to commute the sentences." At the office Mary found Jerry Burnham waiting for
her. "Wel , Joan of Arc," he said, "I was just going
-456-down to bail you out. But I see they've turned you loose." Jerry and Donald Stevens had evidently known each other before. "Wel , Jerry," said Donald Stevens savagely,
"doesn't this shake you out of your cynical pose a little?"
"I don't see why it should. It's nothing new to me that col egepresidents are skunks." Donald Stevens drew off against the wal as if he were holding himself back from giving Jerry a punch in the jaw. "I can't see how any man who has any manhood left can help getting red . . . even a pettybourgeois journal-ist."
"My dear Don, you ought to know by this time that we hocked our manhood for a brass check about the time of the first world war . . . that is if we had any . . . I suppose there'd be various opinions about that." Donald Stevens had already swung on into the inner office. Mary found herself looking into Jerry's reddening face, not knowing what to say.
"Wel , Mary, if you have a need for a pickup during the day . . . I should think you would need it . . . I'l be at the old stand.""Oh, I won't have time," Mary said coldly. She could hear Don-ald Stevens' deep voice from the inner office. She hurried on after him. The lawyers had failed. Talking, wrangling, arguing about how a lastminute protest could be organized Mary could feel the hours ebbing, the hours of these men's lives. She felt the minutes dripping away as actual y as if they were bleeding from her own wrists. She felt weak and sick. She couldn't think of anything. It was a relief to be out in the street trotting to keep up with Donald Ste-vens' big stride. They made a round of the committees. It was, nearly noon, nothing was done. Down on Hanover Street a palefaced Italian in a shabby Ford sedan hailed them. Stevens opened the door of the car.