Free Lawless by John Jakes Page A

front of the easel. He spied the letter lying on a flimsy taboret. The handwriting and the franking registered slowly. From Gideon!
    He ripped the letter open, scanned the paragraphs of family news. Gideon’s wife, Margaret, was well, and so were the children, eight-year-old Eleanor and the baby, Will, born in 1869. Jephtha and Molly were in good health too, though Jephtha occasionally complained of pains in his chest. He was too busy to see a doctor, Gideon said.
    The real purpose of the letter was to convey some exciting personal news. Rather than take a position with the New York Union, the highly successful daily newspaper that had come back into the fold after Louis Kent’s death in late 1868, Gideon had decided to use a portion of his inheritance and start a small journal of his own. A journal devoted primarily to the cause of the workingman, in which Gideon was vitally interested.
    “Oh God,” Matt said aloud in disappointment. “Not a Strelnik in the family.”
    But it was true. The paper would be called Labor’s Beacon. Gideon planned to buy typesetting and printing on a bid basis, but do the editorial work. His office was to be a small rented loft in lower Manhattan. The family had moved to the island from New Jersey a few weeks ago. Another surprise!
    Gideon claimed the times demanded a militant response on behalf of the common man who worked for a living. All such men were exploited by those for whom they worked, Gideon believed. Matt was sorry to hear about his new crusade for two reasons. He considered it wasted effort; Gideon could not hope to pit his opinions against powerful business interests and win. More important, he considered it reckless. Gideon could be hurt—physically hurt—if he offended the wrong people. And he had an established family to think about.
    Matt wasn’t the only one with that reservation, as it turned out. Just at the end of the letter, Gideon wrote:
—and I might note, in confidence, that Margaret’s reaction to the decision has been odd and not a little upsetting.
    As I have so often said before, it was she who brought me to the threshold of the world of ideas, and taught me not to be afraid to enter. It was she who read to me hour after hour in the evening, neither smiling at my inability to understand unfamiliar concepts nor at my clumsiness when I first attempted to pronounce difficult new words which I learned from those readings. It was she who gave me a thirst for knowledge—which in turn generates a thirst to employ that knowledge to some useful end. To accomplish something. Bring about change!
    Nowhere is change needed more than in the affairs of the average laboring man. I began to realize that when I worked as an Erie railroad switchman. Margaret used to agree with me—if not outwardly, then tacitly. Now she has begun to exhibit a different attitude. She expresses fear about my establishing the little paper—
    Not fear for my safety, though some of that does seem to exist. But her chief fear seems to be that I will become too fond of my endeavor—
    Matt was struck by an unexpected feeling of kinship with his older brother. Margaret’s reaction to the labor journal sounded much like Dolly’s reaction to his painting. Women were not so different after all.
—too embroiled in producing the Beacon, and thus too inattentive to her, and to the needs of the family.
    The fear is unfounded, Matt. I must do my best to convince her.
    He started as a shadow fell across his legs. He hadn’t heard Dolly come in. She was carrying two goblets of white vin ordinaire. She saw his strained expression.
    “Not bad news, is it?”
    He folded the letter. “It may be. You can decide for yourself”—he rose and gently lifted the goblets from her fingers—“after we have a proper welcome home.”
    He bent to kiss her cheek, slipped his left arm around her. She struggled away.
    “Matt, we must talk!”
    “Plenty of time for that later.” He pressed her face with his free