In jail Matthew Towns had let his spirit die. He had become one with the great gray walls, the dim iron gratings, the thud, thud, thud which was the round of life, which was life. Bells and marching, work and meals, meals and work, marching and whistles. Even, unchanging level of life, without interest, memory, or hope.
This at first; then, disturbing little things. As the greater life receded, the lesser took on exaggerated importance. The food, the chapel speaker, this whispered quarrel over less than a trifle; the oath and blows of a keeper.
“When I get out!”
Ten years! Ten years was never. If such a space as ten years ever passed, he would come back again to jail.
“They all do,” said the keepers; “if not here, elsewhere.”
The seal of crime was on him. It would never lift. It could not; it was ground down deep into his soul. He was nothing, wanted nothing, remembered nothing, and even if he did remember the trailing glory of a cloudlike garment, the music of a voice, the kissing of a drooping, jeweled hand—he murdered the memory and buried it in its own blood.
Then came the miracle. First that neat and self-reliant young woman who tried to make him talk. He was inclined to be surly at first, but suddenly the walls fell away, and he saw great shadowed trees and rich grass. He was bending over a dainty tea-table, and he talked as he had talked once before. But he stopped suddenly, angry at the vision, angry at himself. He became mute, morose. He took leave of Sara Andrews abruptly and went back to his bench. He was working on wood.
Then came the pardon. In a daze and well-nigh wordless, he had traveled to Chicago. He sat in the church like a drowning swimmer who, hurled miraculously to life again, breathed, and sank. He had no illusions left.
He knew Sara and Sammy. They wanted to use him. Well, why not? They had bought him and paid for him. All his enthusiasm, all his hope, all his sense of reality was gone. He saw life as a great, immovable, terrible thing. It had beaten him, ground him to the earth and beneath; this sudden resurrection did not make him dizzy or give him any real hope. He gave up all thought of a career, of leadership, of greatly or essentially changing this world. He would protect himself from hurt. He would be of enough use to others to insure this. He must have money—not wealth—but enough to support himself in simple comfort. He saw a chance for this in politics under the command of Sara and Sammy.
He had no illusions as to American democracy. He had learned as a porter and in jail how America was ruled. He knew the power of organized crime, of self-indulgence, of industry, business, corporations, finance, commerce. They all paid for what they wanted the government to do for them—for their immunity, their appetites; for their incomes, for justice and the police. This trading of permission, license, monopoly, and immunity in return for money was engineered by politicians; and through their hands the pay went to the voters for their votes. Sometimes the pay was in cash, sometimes in jobs, sometimes in “influence,” sometimes in better streets, houses, or schools. He deliberately and with his eyes closed made himself a part of this system. Some of this money, paid to master politicians like Sammy Scott, would come to him, some, but not much; he would save it and use it.
He settled in the colored workingmen’s quarter of the Second Ward—a thickly populated nest of laborers, lodgers, idlers, and semi-criminals. In an old apartment house he took the topmost flat of four dilapidated rooms and moved in with an old iron bed, a chair, and a bureau.
Then he set out to know his district, to know every man, woman and child in it. He was curiously successful. In a few months scarcely a person passed him on the street who did not greet him. The November elections came, and his district rolled up a phenomenal majority for Scott’s men; it was almost unanimous.
He deliberately narrowed his life to his village, as he called it. One side of it lay along State Street in its more dreary and dilapidated quarter. It ran along three blocks and then back three blocks west. Here were nine blocks—old, dirty, crowded—with staggering buildings of brick and wood lining them. The streets were obstructed with bad paving, ashes, and garbage. On one corner was a church. Then followed several places where one could buy food and liquor. On State Street were a dance hall, a movie house, and several billiard parlors, interspersed with more or less regular gambling dens. There were a half-dozen halls where lodges met and where fairs and celebrations were carried on. And all over were the homes—good, bad, indifferent.
He was strangely interested in this little universe of his. It had within a few blocks everything life offered. He could find religion—intense, fanatical, grafting, self-sacrificing. He could find prostitutes and thieves, stevedores, masons, laborers, and porters. Thus his blocks were a pulsing world, and in them there was always plenty to do—a donation to the church when the mortgage interest was about due; charity for the old women whose sons and daughters had wandered off; help and a physician for the sick and those who had fallen and broken hip or leg or had been run over by automobile trucks; shoes and old clothes for school children, bail for criminals; drinks for tramps; rent for the dance hall; food for the wild-eyed wastrels; and always, jobs, jobs, jobs for the workers.
When the new colored grocery was started, Matthew had to corral its customers, many of whom he had bailed out for crime. The police were his especial care. He gave them information, and they tipped him off. He restrained them, or egged them on. He warned the gamblers or got them new quarters. He got jobs for men and women and girls and boys. He helped professional men to get off jury duty. He sent young girls home and found older girls in places worse than home. He did not judge; he did not praise or condemn. He accepted what he saw.
Always, in the midst of this he was organizing and corralling his voters. He knew the voting strength of his district to a man. Nine-tenths of them would do exactly as he said. He did not need to talk to them—a few words and a sign. Orators came to his corners and vociferated and yelled, but his followers watched him. He saw this group of thousands of people as a real and thrilling thing, which he watched, unthrilled, unmoved. Life was always tense and rushing there—a murder, a happy mother, thieves, strikers, scabs, school children, and hard workers; a strange face, a man going into business, a girl going to hell, a woman saved. The whole organism was neither good nor bad. It was good and bad. Rickety buildings, noise, smells, noise, work—hard, hard work—
“How’s Sammy?” he would hear them say.
“How many votes do you want? Name your man.”
Thus he built his political machine. His machine was life, and he stood close to it—lolling on his favorite corner with half-closed eyes; yet he saw all of it.
Above it all, on the furthermost corner, on the top floor, were his bare, cold, and dirty rooms. He could not for the life of him remember how people kept things clean. It was extraordinary how dirt accumulated. He never had much money. Sammy handed him over a roll of bills every now and then, but he spent it in his charities, in his gifts, in his bribings, in his bonds. There was never much left. Sometimes there was hardly enough for his food.
Long past midnight he usually climbed to his bare rooms—one of them absolutely bare—one with a bed, a chair, and a bureau—one with an oil stove, a chair, and a table.
Then in time the aspect of his rooms began to change. A day came when he went in for his usual talk with the secondhand man. Old Gray was black and bent, and part of his business was receiving stolen goods, the other part was quite legitimate—buying and selling secondhand stuff. Towns strolled in there and saw a rug. He had forgotten ever having seen a rug before then. Of course he had—there in Berlin on the Lützower Ufer there was a rug in the parlor—but he shook the memory away with a toss of his head.
This rug was marvelous. It burned him with its brilliance. It sang to his eyes and hands. It was yellow and green—it was thick and soft; but all this didn’t tell the subtle charm of its weaving and shadows of coloring. He tried to buy it, but Gray insisted on giving it to him. He declared that it was not stolen, but Towns was sure that it was. Perhaps Gray was afraid to keep it, but Towns took it at midday and laid it on the floor of the barest of his empty rooms. Connors, who was a first-class carpenter when he was not drunk, was out of work again. Towns brought him up and had him put a parquet floor in the bare room. He was afterward half ashamed to take that money from his constituents, but he paid them back by more careful attention to their demands. Then in succeeding months of little things, the beauty of that room grew.