Kitabı oku: «The Way of the Strong», sayfa 25
She was speaking in the hope that what she said might help to stir him to some definite action. She was beginning to understand the powers which he possessed.
The man appeared to be lost in thought.
"I am going to marry Frank – one day," she went on, in her confident little way.
Suddenly Hendrie looked round at her. His eyes surveyed her closely. He became aware for the first time of the strength of her pretty face. The bright intelligence looking out of her deep eyes. The firmness of her mouth and chin. These things left a marked effect upon him. His manner became almost gentle.
"What is he doing in Calford?" he asked abruptly.
A faint smile lit the girl's eyes for a moment, and then passed.
"He's – guess you'd call it 'agitating.' He doesn't. I'd say he calls it preaching brotherhood and equality to a gang of railroaders."
Again the man started.
"He's – working on the – railroad trouble?" he demanded incredulously.
Phyllis nodded. Hendrie drew a deep breath.
"Yes. He's been working hard for a year now, and – and I believe he's just thrown himself into the cause of – Socialism with all his might. He – he gets talking everywhere. His name's always in the papers. Say, can't you do a thing? Can't you help – bring him here?"
Hendrie looked into the girl's earnest face. Then he looked away. A dozen conflicting emotions were stirring within him.
"I can't say right now, child," he replied, after a pause. Then he looked up, and Phyllis read a definite resolve in his hard gray eyes. "You best write him," he went on. "Write him to-day. Tell him how Monica is. Tell him all you like, but leave me out. Maybe I can do something. Guess there's going to be a big fight with labor, and we're going to be in it. Maybe the thought of it makes me feel good. It's about the only thing can make me feel good – now. But I wish – your Frank was on our side," he went on, almost to himself. "I'd say he'd be a good fighter. Yes, I'd say he was that. Must be. It's good to fight, too, when troubles get around. It's good – sure."
"Must men always – fight?" asked Phyllis quietly.
The man stared.
"Why, yes!" he said in astonishment.
"Frank doesn't think so."
The millionaire shook his head deliberately.
"Say," he cried confidently, "your Frank will fight when the time comes. And – he'll fight – big."
"What makes you say – that?"
The girl's question came sharply, and, in a moment, a great light leaped into Alexander Hendrie's eyes.
"What makes me say – that?" he cried. Then he shrugged, and moved to pass her on the stairs on the way to his wife's room. "I know," he said, confidently. "That's all."
CHAPTER IX
CAPITAL AND LABOR
It was a large hall on the outskirts of Calford, in one of the poorer neighborhoods. It was packed almost to suffocation by an audience of stern-faced, eager humanity. There were the ample figures of uniformed train conductors; there were the thin, hard-muscled freighters. There were men from the locomotive departments, with traces of coal-dust about their eyes, of which, even in their leisure, they never seem quite able to rid themselves.
There were colored Pullman servants, and waiters, and cooks from the dining-cars. There were plate-layers in their blue overalls, and machinists from the round-house. So, too, was the depot department represented. It was a great gathering of all grades of railroad workers on the Calford section of the system.
The benches were crowded right up to the narrow platform, upon which a group of four men, evidently workers like the audience, were seated behind a tall youth, with thick, fair hair and enormous breadth of shoulder. He was standing out alone. He was talking rapidly in a deep, resonant voice which carried distinctly to the remotest corners of the building. His face was flushed, and his blue eyes were alight with earnestness for the subject of his address.
Point after point he was striving to drive home by the sheer force of his own convictions. There was no display about him. There was none of the pathetic humor, or the unconsciously humorous pathos of the ordinary demagogue. He was preaching the gospel of equality, as he saw it, judiciously tempered to meet with the requirements of the society to which his audience belonged, and which he, for the moment, represented.
He talked well. Extremely well. And his audience listened. Frequently his sentences were punctuated by approving "hear, hears," in many directions. But there was none of that explosive approval which is as nectar to the ordinary demagogue.
To one man, sitting in the back of the hall, a man nearly as large as the speaker, though older, enveloped in a rough suit, which, while matching the tone of the rest of the audience, sat ill upon him, it seemed that the speaker lacked something with which to carry his audience.
He listened attentively, he followed every word, seeking to discover the nature of this lack. It was not easy to detect. Yet he was sure of its existence. Nor was it till the evening was half spent that he quietly registered the fact that this man missed one great essential to win his way to the hearts of these people. He was not one of them. He only understood their lives through immature observation. He had never lived their life.
Somehow the conviction left him satisfied, and he settled himself more comfortably upon his uncomfortable bench.
Later on he became aware of a sense of restlessness running through the hall. There was a definite clearing of throats among the audience. There was a good deal of shifting of positions. He even observed the inclination of heads toward each other, which told him that whispered conversations were going on about him. To him this meant a waning interest in the speaker. Doubt was no longer in his mind, but now his satisfaction became touched with regret.
Now he knew this man was not brutal enough. He was not coarse enough. He did not know the hearts of these men sufficiently. His mind was far too ideal, and his talk further lacked in its appeal to self.
To hold these men he must come down to definite promises of obtaining for them, and bestowing upon them, the fulfilment of desires they were incapable of satisfying for themselves. It was the old story of satisfied men made dissatisfied, and now they required the promise of satisfaction for appetites suddenly rendered sharp-set.
The man in the rough clothes, which sat so ill upon him, knew that these men would leave that hall feeling they had wasted a leisure that might have been given up to their own particular pastimes.
The meeting lasted over two hours, but the man at the back of the hall left long before its close. He had heard all he wanted to hear, and felt it was sufficient for his purpose.
He drove back to his hotel in a handsome automobile, in which his clothes looked still more out of place. This was quickly remedied, however, and, when once more he emerged from the building, he was clad as befitted the sixty-horsepower vehicle which he re-entered.
Frank had returned to his room at the Algonquin Hotel. He was tired, and a shadow of dissatisfaction clouded his blue eyes as he scanned the bundle of manuscript lying in his lap.
He was going over his speech, the speech he had made that night to the railroad men of Calford. He knew he had not "made good," and was seeking the weak spots in the written manuscript. But he could not detect them.
It never occurred to him that his weakness lay in the fact of that manuscript. He had written his speech because he felt it was an important occasion. Austin Leyburn had impressed its importance upon him. He had written it and learned it by heart, and the result had been – failure. Of the latter he was convinced, in spite of assurances to the contrary by his comrades on the platform, For the rest the significance of his failure had passed him by.
Yes, it was no use shirking the point. He had failed. He threw the manuscript upon his dressing bureau, and abandoned himself to the unpleasant reflections the knowledge brought.
It was nearly midnight when a bell-boy knocked at his door. A man, he said, was waiting below, and wished to see him. He handed him a card.
Frank took it and glanced at it indifferently. Then his indifference passed, and his eyes lit with a peculiar expression. The boy waited.
"Alexander Hendrie," he read.
"Wants to see you – important," the boy urged, as the man remained silently contemplating the strip of pasteboard.
"Important." The word repeated itself in Frank's brain again and again. He still stared at the card. What did Alexander Hendrie want? What could he want? By what right did he dare to intrude upon him?
He was on the point of sending down a deliberate refusal to see him. He was hot with resentment, a resentment he had endeavored long ago to stifle, and had almost succeeded. But he had miscalculated the human nature in him. Now it rose up and scattered the result of his careful schooling.
"Shall I show him up?" demanded the boy impatiently.
It was on the tip of Frank's tongue to pronounce his refusal, when, quite suddenly, he changed his mind. No, he would see him. It would be good to see him. He could at least show him he was not afraid of him. He could let him see how he despised all that which this man counted worth while. Yes, he would see him.
"Show him up," he said coldly. The boy hurried away, pocketing, with the avidity of his kind, the trifling silver coin he was presented with.
Frank rose from his chair and began to move about the room in the restless fashion of a man disturbed more than he admits, more than, perhaps, he knows. All thought of his evening's failure had passed from his mind. He was about to confront the man who had dishonestly sent him to a convict's cell, and a deadly bitterness surged through his veins.
The door opened without any warning. Frank's back was turned. His bed stood between him and his visitor when he swung round and looked into the millionaire's face.
"Well?" he demanded, with a deliberate harshness.
Every feeling of bitter antagonism was expressed in his greeting.
The millionaire closed the door behind him. His face expressed no feeling whatsoever. He had schooled himself well, and his schooling possessed the ripeness of experience. He heard the younger man's tone, and every feeling it expressed was conveyed to his understanding. He made no attempt at politeness or amiability. He accepted the position as the other chose to make it, but without any display of resentment.
"I drove from Deep Willows to hear you speak to-night. Also, I wanted to speak to you." Hendrie glanced about him at the pleasantly furnished bedroom. "May I – sit?"
For a moment Frank remained silent. He looked hard at this strong, ruthless man with his slightly graying hair and clean-cut, resolute features. Nor did his powerful figure, in its faultless evening dress, escape his attention.
Suddenly he kicked the rocker he had previously been occupying toward his visitor. His action was the extreme of discourtesy and contempt.
"You are uninvited, but – it's a free enough country," he said, with almost childish rudeness.
Hendrie passed his manner by.
"Yes, I s'pose it's a free enough country," he said, accepting the chair deliberately.
Frank watched him, and slowly his self-schooling began to reassert itself. This man had come with a definite purpose. Somehow, he felt that, had he been in his place, it would have required some nerve, even courage, for him to have faced any man he had dishonestly condemned to penitentiary for five years. Nature again was strong in him. He admired courage – even in one whom he knew to be an enemy.
"Free enough for the rich," he said, with a sarcasm that hardly fitted him. "Honest people don't always find it free."
The millionaire eyed him leisurely. Somehow his gray eyes were softer than usual. This man seemed powerless to move him to antagonism, even to passive resentment.
"Would you mind if – I lighted a cigar?" he inquired. "I s'pose it's useless to offer you one. You don't care to receive anything at my hands."
Frank seated himself upon the edge of the bed.
"Smoke all you want," he said ungraciously. "No, I want nothing at your hands – except to be let alone."
Hendrie deliberately lit his cigar. For once it did not find its way to the corner of his hard mouth. He blew a thin stream of smoke from his pursed lips, and the action ended in the faintest possible sigh.
"I'm sorry," he said. Then he leveled his eyes directly into the other's. "I made you an offer months ago. You refused it then. I s'pose you still feel the same? It still stands."
Frank sat up, and his eyes lit.
"It can go on standing," he cried fiercely. "I tell you I want nothing from you. I suppose it is only the arrogance of your wealth makes you dare to offer me – me such compensation." He finished up with a laugh that had nothing pleasant in it.
"Dare?" Hendrie's bushy brows were raised mildly.
"Yes, dare!" There was something very like violence in the younger man's tone.
"I thought every man who does a wrong – unwittingly – has a right to make – reparation, not compensation."
"Unwittingly? Do you call it 'unwitting' when you use your wealth to bribe and corrupt so that a man, even if he be guilty, may be made to suffer? These were the things you did to ruin me – an innocent man."
Hendrie smoked on. His eyes were lowered so that the other could not see their expression.
"I did these things, and – there is no excuse," he said presently. "You are young. Anyway, you cannot see with my eyes. Let me try to fit the case on you. Suppose you married – your Phyllis. Suppose you had every reason for believing her faithless to you. Suppose you caught her lover, as you believed, with money, your money, with which she had supplied him. To what lengths would you go to punish him?"
"It would be impossible. As impossible as it was in your wife's case."
"Just so. But – suppose. Suppose – you believed."
Hendrie was leaning forward in his rocker.
"I might shoot him, but I would not – "
"Just so – you would commit murder, where I – I resorted to methods perhaps less criminal. Suppose I had shot you. Suppose I had escaped the legal consequences of my crime, and then discovered your innocence. Need I go further?"
The subtle manner in which he had been inveigled into debate infuriated Frank. But somehow he was powerless to withdraw. The man's calmness held him, and he blundered further.
"If you possessed half the honesty you claim for your purpose you would have been man enough to go to your wife for explanation."
Again Hendrie's eyes were averted, but the extraordinary mildness of his manner forced itself further on the younger man.
"And yet you would have shot the man you found in what you believed similar relations to your – Phyllis? Do you know why you would have done that – even worse than I did – in the eyes of the law? I will tell you. It is because – you love Phyllis. Because you really love Phyllis you would do as your heart dictates – not as your head prompts you. Did you not truly, humanly love, you would go to her for explanation, because then you would not fear to hear the hideous truth from her, that she no longer loved you. In some things, my boy, where our love is concerned, we do not possess all our courage. I was older, I knew more of life, therefore I did not shoot, as I could easily have done. But my passion for my wife is as strong as is your young love for Phyllis, and I was too cowardly to risk hearing the truth that her love for an elderly man was dead, and all her affection was given to a younger man. Try and picture my fears if you can. I, with my hair graying, and you, with the flowing hair of superb youth."
Frank had no answer. He was trying to remember only his injuries at this man's hands.
"It is because of these things I have dared to offer to make reparation to you, have dared to come and see you," Hendrie went on. Then his eyes smiled into the other's half angry, half troubled face. To any one knowing the man, his smile was a miraculous change from the front with which he usually faced the world. "You will accept nothing from my hands, you say. So be it. But – and make no mistake – reparation, all of it that lies in my power, shall be made. That you cannot prevent. Remember you are launched upon a life of great vicissitudes. You cannot foresee its ramifications, you cannot see its possibilities. Wherever you are I shall be looking on, and, though you may not know it, all my influence will be at work – on your behalf. I was around to-night, dressed in clothing no doubt you would like to see me dressed in always, listening to your particularly clever, but unconvincing speech to the railroad men. You would have done really well among men of a higher intelligence, men who think and feel as you do, but you failed to raise one single hope among those you were addressing, that they would get 'something for nothing' if they followed your leadership. Consequently you failed."
Frank's face suddenly flushed, and a fierce retort leaped to his lips.
"Something for nothing!" he cried scathingly. "That is your understanding of the laborer who is sweated by big corporations seeking outrageous dividends. Something for nothing!" he went on, lashing himself to a white fury. "It is always the sneer of the employer, of the vampire who lives by others' toil and enjoys luxury, while those who help them to it may starve for all they care. I tell you all these poor people can squeeze from the grasp of capital is only a tithe of their just due. Every man is entitled to a fair share of the profits of his toil. He is entitled to live a life of comfort and happiness in proportion to the service he gives in the world's work."
Frank's eyes were flashing and his breath came quickly, but he stared blankly as the other nodded approval of his claims.
"Perfectly right," Hendrie said. "Perfectly just." He leaned back in his rocker and swung himself to and fro. His cigar was poised in one hand, and his eyes were seriously reflective. "Does he not get that?" he asked, after a pause.
"No, a thousand times no!" Frank's denial came with all the force of his passionate conviction.
"You talk of service in the world's work," Hendrie went on reflectively, apparently untouched by the other's heat. "You suggest that it means a man's willingness to exercise his muscles, and whatever intelligence he may possess in the general work which is required by civilization at the moment, and, which, incidentally, is to provide him with a means of living. All labor and those who would protect labor forget, or they seem to me to forget, the fundamental principle of all civilization. They seem to forget that to which civilization owes its very existence – and to whom. Civilization owes its existence to the few – not the many. Civilization owes its progress to the thinkers, not the mere toilers. Battles are won by organization which is the work of the thinker, not the mad, uncontrolled rush of a rabble army. The mill owner is the thinker who must find a market for the wares produced in his mills, or there is no work for the laborer. He must found that mill, or it does not exist. He must spend a life of anxious thought, and ceaseless effort, exhausting his nervous forces till he often becomes a mental wreck, which no mere privations could reduce him to, and such as the mere toiler could never have to endure. The thinker will harness Nature's forces in a manner which will ultimately provide work for millions. But until he harnesses that power, that work is not possible. And so it would be quite easy to go on indefinitely illustrating the fact that labor owes its well-being, almost its existence, to the thinker. And you would deny the right of the thinker to reap the reward of his efforts."
"I deny the right to profits extorted at the expense of labor. I deny the right to a luxury which others, less endowed by Nature in their attainments, can enjoy. We are all human beings, made alike, with powers, of enjoyment alike, with a life that is one and the same, and I deny the right for one to be privileged over another in the creature comforts, which, after all, is one of the main objects of all effort in life. I deny the right to a power in the individual which can be dishonestly used to the detriment of his fellows."
Again the younger man's feelings had risen to fever heat. Again his feelings ran riot in his denial.
Alexander Hendrie looked on unmoved.
"My boy," he said gently, "if you would deny all these things, then appeal to your Creator to make all men of equal capacity in thought, morals, and muscle. You cannot force equality upon a world where the Divine Creator has seen fit to make all things unequal. I tell you you cannot change the principles of life. Let the sledge hammer of Socialism be turned loose, let it crush the oppressors of labor as it will. But life will remain the same. It will go on as before. The thinkers will live in the luxury you deplore, and the toiler will sweat, and ache, and sometimes live in misery, as he does now. But, remember, his misery is no greater than the misery among those clad in the purple. There is no greater misery in the world than the misery of the man or woman who can afford to be happy. All that can be done is to better the lot of the worker within given limits. But, for God's sake, make the limit such as to leave him with incentive sufficient to lift him from the ranks in which he is enlisted, should his capacity prove adequate for promotion."
The force of the millionaire's simple views left a marked effect upon the other. There was something so definite, yet so tolerant about them. Somehow Frank felt that this man was not thinking with the brain of the rich man. He was speaking from a wide and strenuous experience of life. It almost seemed to him that Alexander Hendrie must have gone through a good deal of that which he, Frank, believed to be the sufferings of the unjustly treated workers.
"You admit that the condition of labor needs improvement?" he demanded sharply.
"No one more readily," Hendrie replied earnestly. "Help them, give them every benefit possible. But the man who would tell them that they earn, and have a right to more than the market value of their daily toil is a liar! He is committing a crime against both society and labor itself."
"Do you so treat – your labor?"
"I pay him his market price. Privately I am at all times ready to help him. But my best sympathies are not with the poor creature who has no thought beyond his food, his sleep, and the fathering of numerous offspring which, without regard to responsibility, he sheds upon the world in worse case than himself. It is the man who will strive to rise above his lot that has my sympathy. The man who has the courage to face disaster, and even starvation, that, in however small a degree, he may leave his mark upon the face of the world. That is the man who appeals to me, and whom I am even now seeking to help."
Frank rose from his seat upon his bed.
"You are helping – now?" he demanded incredulously.
The millionaire smiled.
"Maybe you would not call it by that name." He shook his head, and rose heavily from his chair. "Let that pass," he said, with a quick, keen glance into the boy's face. "I must get back to Deep Willows. I had no right to spend all this time away. Mrs. Hendrie is ill – seriously ill, I fear. Your Phyllis is with her, serving her for friendship's sake. She does not receive even a market value for her toil. The price of her service is inestimable."
"Mon – Mrs. Hendrie is – ill?"
Frank's face blanched. A great trouble crept into his eyes. Hendrie noted the expression closely.
"Yes," he said simply. "She is to become a – mother. But she is ill – and – ah, well, maybe she'll pull through. It is in the hands of Providence." He sighed with genuine trouble.
"You say – Phyllis – is with her?"
"Why, yes. She has been with us for months."
"Has Mon – Mrs. Hendrie been ill – so long?"
Frank's voice was almost pleading.
"She began to ail when she – returned from Toronto – nearly a year ago."
"A year – ago?"
"Yes."
The keen eyes of the millionaire were strangely soft as he watched the evident suffering in the boy's young face. He waited.
"I – " Frank hesitated. Then, with a sudden impulsive rush, he blurted out a request. "Can I – that is, might I be allowed to call and see – her?" he asked, his voice hoarse with sudden emotion. He had forgotten he desired nothing at this man's hands.
"Why, yes. The doors of Deep Willows are always open to you."
Frank looked up. For a moment something very like panic swept over him. His visitor's eyes were upon him, watching him with nothing but kindness in their depths. Each was thinking of the same thing. Each knew that a battle had been fought out between them, and victory had been won. Frank's panic lay in the knowledge that he had been the loser. Then his panic passed, and only resentment, and his anxiety for Monica remained. But the miracle of it was that his resentment was far less than he could have believed possible.
Hendrie picked up his hat.
"I'm glad I came," he said, moving toward the door.
Frank averted his eyes.
"Good night," he said brusquely, vainly striving to bolster his angry feelings.
"Good night, my boy."
Hendrie passed out of the room and closed the door behind him carefully.
As he went Frank flung himself into a chair, and, for a while, sat with his face buried in his hands. Monica was ill. Seriously ill. Maybe dangerously ill. Phyllis had said no word of it in her letters. Not one word, and she was with her. No word had reached him.
He caught his breath. He had suddenly realized how utterly he had cut himself out of Monica's life, the life of this woman who had been as a mother to him.
