“If you can’t hear all of this and still
want life with me,” he said, “there is
no future for us together. I want you. I’m
afraid of you and afraid of my love for you but still
I want you. I’ve been seeing your face
floating above the audiences in the halls where I’ve
been at work. I’ve looked at babies in
the arms of workingmen’s wives and wanted to
see my babe in your arms. I care more for what
I am doing than I do for you but I love you.”
McGregor arose and stood over her. “I love
you with my arms aching to close about you, with my
brain planning the triumph of the workers, with all
of the old perplexing human love that I had almost
thought I would never want.
“I can’t bear this waiting. I can’t
bear this not knowing so that I can tell Edith.
I can’t have my mind filled with the need of
you just as men are beginning to catch the infection
of an idea and are looking to me for clear-headed
leadership. Take me or let me go and live my
life.”
Margaret Ormsby looked at McGregor. When she
spoke her voice was as quiet as the voice of her father
telling a workman in the shop what to do with a broken
machine.
“I am going to marry you,” she said simply.
“I am full of the thought of it. I want
you, want you so blindly that I think you can’t
understand.”
She stood up facing him and looked into his eyes.
“You must wait,” she said. “I
must see Edith, I myself must do that. All these
years she has served you—she has had that
privilege.”
McGregor looked across the table into the beautiful
eyes of the woman he loved.
“You belong to me even if I do belong to Edith,”
he said.
“I will see Edith,” Margaret answered
again.
McGregor left the telling of the story of his love
to Margaret. Edith Carson who knew defeat so
well and who had in her the courage of defeat was
to meet defeat at his hands through the undefeated
woman and he let himself forget the whole matter.
For a month he had been trying to get workingmen to
take up the idea of the Marching Men without success
and after the talk with Margaret he kept doggedly at
the work.
And then one evening something happened that aroused
him. The Marching Men idea that had become more
than half intellectualised became again a burning
passion and the matter of his life with women got itself
cleared up swiftly and finally.
It was night and McGregor stood upon the platform
of the Elevated Railroad at State and Van Buren Streets.
He had been feeling guilty concerning Edith and had
been intending to go out to her place but the scene
in the street below fascinated him and he remained
standing, looking along the lighted thoroughfare.
