He placed his hands and feet against the jambs of the door and turning his head around, he continued in a half-hysterical voice:
“It’s the likes o’ me that’s the revolutionaries, but we get no credit for it. It’s the likes o’ me that does the hard work, eddicatin’ me fellow-men, an’ at the same time strikin’ an honest blow for better conditions. But men like you are criminals. Criminals, criminals, that’s what yez are. Don’t lay hands on yer father, Mary. Don’t—”
“I’m not touching you,” cried Mary. “Come on now. Get to bed.”
She got him into the hall. He sighed and broke into half-stifled sobs. Going up the stairs he kept saying in a low melancholy voice:
“If I had only put him on the scaffoldin’ with me, instead of eddicatin’ him, maybe he’d be alive an’ an honest man today. If I had only …”
Then his voice died away into a mumble as a door closed behind him upstairs.
When Mary returned to the kitchen after putting him to bed, she found Gallagher sitting beside her mother, writing rapidly in a notebook. He had taken off his hat. His close-cropped black head looked very handsome to her. Still she shivered looking at it. The side face looked very cruel, with the brooding expression on it, as he looked downwards at the notebook.
She stood watching him until he finished writing. Then he sighed. He got up. He said a few words to Mrs. McPhillip. Then he shook hands with her and turned to Mary.
“I want to speak to you,” he said.
She led him into the parlour excitedly. It was dark there and she had to fumble around for matches to light the gas. She couldn’t find them. Gallagher offered his box. He lit a match. She went to take it from him. Their fingers touched. She started and stumbled over something. The match fell from his fingers and went out. He reached out his hands to catch her as she stumbled. He caught her by the wrists and held her tightly. They had not spoken a word. It was very queer in the darkness. Their faces were very close together, but they could not see one another. They stood still, each of them mastered by some strange impulse, that bound their tongues. They stood still, in the utter darkness and silence of the little stuffed room, for almost a minute. Then Gallagher spoke. He spoke in a soft whisper. The sound of his voice was soft and caressing. His lips were so close to hers that his breath came moist to her lips. There was a catch in his voice, as if the volume of sound were not strong enough to steady itself on the air.
“Mary,” he said, “I want you to come to a Court of Inquiry with me tonight.”
She made no attempt to reply. Neither did he seem to expect a reply. It seemed that the words and their implication were foreign to the purpose of their meeting here. It seemed that the coursing of their blood and the confused beating of their hearts, was in response to some prearranged assignation of declared love.
But there had never been a question of amorous relations between them. They had never met in privacy like this before. Their previous meetings were more in the nature of quarrels. Mary had always disputed with Gallagher, particularly of late, when she had become violently opposed to him. But now in the darkness, in the solitude, both she and he were mastered by some amazing emotion that was inexplicable.
“Dan,” she whispered suddenly, “you make me afraid. Why are we standing here in the darkness? What do you want with me?”
“I want you to revenge your brother,” said Gallagher suddenly, as if he had obeyed an unforeseen impulse and broached an unexpected subject, with which his mind had hitherto only toyed nervously. “I want you to join me, Mary. I want you to take your brother’s place in the Organization. But a greater place than he held. No. It’s not your brother’s place I want you to take but …”
“Dan, what are you talking about?” she panted in a terrified voice.
There was a pause during which Gallagher imperceptibly moved his face closer to hers. Their lips met. They kissed gently. Then she drew back suddenly, shivering violently. She wanted to rush away and to shout, but the fascination of his voice was upon her. His voice and the glamour of his face. His face and the romance of his life. She was bound suddenly by it. Suddenly too, it became apparent to her why she had been eager to convert him. It had been in order to meet him, with a plausible excuse.
And she was almost engaged to Joseph Augustine Short, who was a “gentleman,” who would place her in a respectable sphere of life, who would free her forever from the hated associations of her slum life with its squalor, its revolutionary crises, its damnable insecurity, its soul-devouring monotony.
Mother of Mercy! Was she in love with Gallagher? Was she going to be drawn into the web of his conspiracies by the deadly fascination of his face and of his voice, by the romance of his life?
“Mary,” he murmured at last, “you are the remainder of me. The two of us together would make a complete whole. There would be nothing else wanting to the two of us, no unfulfilled … er … well … it’s not that either. I have not fully worked out that part of the theory. I have approached it from another point of view.”
“What is it, Dan?” She drew away her face farther and loosened one hand. He was wrapped in dreams now and he did not attempt to stop her. In fact he let her go altogether
