Monica and Frank were alone in the former's private sitting-room at the Eldorado Hotel. Phyllis had conducted him to the door of the room, where she waited until he had passed safely within. Then she discreetly withdrew to pass many anxious moments pacing the narrow limits of her own bedroom on the same floor.
The sitting-room was a large, handsomely furnished apartment with two lofty windows looking out upon the busy street, directly over the hotel's entrance porch. At one of these windows Frank was standing, with his back turned upon the room and the woman who had drawn so near to him. His troubled blue eyes were fixed upon the busy life outside, but it had no interest for him. Whatever he had gone through before, he believed that he was now facing the climax of his life. It had arisen so suddenly, so unexpectedly, as such climaxes do; and it found him ready for impulsive action that had to be controlled.
Monica was just behind him, and a little to one side. One hand was resting upon the cold radiator as though she needed its support. Her beautiful face was drawn, and pale, great dark rings surrounded her eyes. Her age was strongly marked just now, it was even exaggerated, and had somehow communicated itself to her shoulders, which drooped in an unusually hopeless manner.
It had been a long, and for both, a painful interview. It had been a scene of love and humility on the part of the proud wife of Alexander Hendrie, and of affection yet decision, not untouched with bitterness, on the part of the boy who had developed so quickly into a man of responsibility. The mother love had pleaded with a humility that was pathetic, and the man had listened, steeling his heart against the inroads which the sound of that gentle voice made upon his determination.
Never for one moment did he find aught of blame for her. Never did he, by word or look, convey anything but the love she had always known. How could it be otherwise? Nothing could have broken down a love such as his, founded as it was upon long years of self-sacrificing devotion toward himself. Monica was still to him all she had ever been—his mother.
But now her final appeal, that he should abandon his present life and return to her, had been made, and, as the end came, she handed him a letter in Alexander Hendrie's handwriting.
The letter remained unread in his hands, held limply, a thing apparently of no interest to him.
"Won't you read it, Frank? Won't you read it—for my sake?" Monica urged, after a long, painful silence.
There was something like tears in her voice, and the sound became irresistible to the man.
He sighed, and glanced down at the folded paper.
"Where is the use?" he asked gently. "There can be nothing in it to alter my determination. Oh, Mon, don't you understand? If I can hear you plead and still remain certain my purpose is right, how can anything this man has to say, turn me from it?"
Monica drew a step nearer. Her hand had left the cold iron. Now the other was laid tenderly upon his shoulder.
"I know, I know, Frank," she cried. "But—won't you read it? When you have read it you will understand why I want you to do so. It is the letter of a man with a mind as big as his passions are—violent. It is the letter of a man whose proud head is bowed in the—dust with grief at the wrong he has done to you. If you knew him as I know him, you would realize all that the writing of that letter must have cost him. Were it not that I know something of the great, passionate heart that beats in his body I could not have believed such a letter written by him possible. Oh, Frank, if nothing I can say, can turn you from the purpose of your life, let me plead, as I have never pleaded to any one before, be your just, kindly self for a few moments, and—listen while he speaks to you."
Frank unfolded the letter, and, after a moment's hesitation, withdrew his gaze from the window, and began to read, Monica waited breathlessly. The letter, in a clear, bold handwriting, was without heading or date.
"I cannot begin this with a conventional heading. I cannot expect that you would tolerate any sort of demonstrativeness. Therefore, what I have to say must be short, sincere, and to the point. I am sending this by Monica, to ensure your receiving it, and in the hope that she will persuade you to read it. I can think of only one wrong, ever committed by man, greater than that which I have done to you. The wrong I refer to was done some two thousand years ago. The horror of that crime has remained to those whose forbears committed it, and will remain so long as their lives last. The horror of my crime will so remain with me. This may sound extravagant to you, however bitter your feelings, but you do not know, perhaps you never will know, all that is in my mind as I write. However, that is for me, and it is not easy. The expression of all my regrets would be useless to convey what I feel. Let them pass. There are things I desire to do, and I implore you, as you may hope for future salvation, as you may pity a mind and heart racked with torture, to come back with Monica, and accept an equal partnership in all I have in the world. It is here, waiting for you at all times between now and the day I die. I hope that some day you may learn to forgive the wrongs I have inflicted upon you.
"Alexander Hendrie."
The letter remained in Frank's hand as his eyes were once more lifted to the window. There was a slight change in them, a slight softening in their expression. Monica, watching him, drew a sharp breath. For an instant hope leaped within her, and a whispered urging escaped her.
"Frank!"
The man made no movement, but the softening passed swiftly out of his eyes.
"You will—come?"
He held out the letter in reply.
"Take it, Mon, take it back to him," he said deliberately, yet without harshness. "I will not write a reply, but you can take him this message. The past is over, and, though perhaps it cannot easily be forgotten, I have no longer any feeling about it beyond hatred of the injustice which makes it possible for the weight of one man's wealth to bring about such persecution as was dealt out to me. Tell him I cannot accept that which he has no right to be able to give. Tell him there are thousands—hundreds of thousands of men and women who could be benefited by that which he would now give to me."
Monica drew back sharply, the caressing weight of her hand slipped from his shoulder.
"You mean that? Oh, no, no, Frank! You cannot answer him like that. It is not you—never, never!"
"That is the answer, dear." Frank had turned from the window, and came towards this woman who had been more than a mother to him. "That is the answer to his letter, and to all that you have asked me. But you are right, it is not I—it is the teaching of the suffering and misery I have witnessed that is speaking, and to that teaching I remain loyal."
"Frank is right, Mrs. Hendrie."
The man looked across the room with a start, and Monica turned abruptly. Phyllis was standing just inside the room with her back to the door she had just closed behind her. She nodded in answer to their looks of surprise, and her eyes were smiling, but with suspicious brightness.
"You're going, Frank?" she demanded. "You're just going right back to those—you've—you've joined?"
The girl's voice was so quiet, so soft. Nor was any of her aching heart permitted to add one touch of appeal to her manner. The man cleared his throat. He averted his eyes.
"Yes, Phyl," he said hoarsely.
He stood there feeling as though he was once more before a tribunal, awaiting sentence. Phyllis had drawn close to Monica's side, and her strong young arm had slipped protectingly about the elder woman's waist. The girl understood her suffering, and her own added to the sympathy of her action.
Her eyes shone up into the man's face. Their brightness was the brightness of tears she would not shed.
"Then—it's 'good-bye'?" she said gently.
The man nodded. He dared not speak until he had full mastery of himself.
Phyllis sighed.
"We came here, Frank, to show you all that was in the hearts of two women who—who love you," she said slowly. "Maybe we haven't done it well. I can't rightly say." Her smile was a little wistful, yet almost pathetically humorous. "It's the way with folks who try hard—isn't it? They never just seem to get things right. But, say, it doesn't really figure any, does it? You see," she went on, "we both wanted you back. But I needed something more than that. You told me in your—that long, long letter of yours, marriage between us was impossible. Well, say, dear, there's just one thing, and only one thing could make that so. If you don't need me then it's just—impossible. I asked you that, and you didn't tell me in words. But everything else you told me about, you just did want me."
The man made a movement as though to interrupt her, but she would not allow him to speak.
"Don't worry, dear. Guess you got all you need that way coming. I just want you to know I love you through and through, and that surely goes—just as long as I live. Meanwhile," she added, her smile gaining in confidence as her thoughts probed ahead into the distant future, "I'm going right back to home, and mother; right back to that little tumble-down shack you know, dear, and I'm going to get on with my—plowing. And later on, dear, when you just get the notion, and come along, why—I guess you'll find me waiting around for you—and I shan't be fixed up in black—and bugles. Good-bye, dear—for the present."
With the passing of summer, and the long, pleasant fall, winter's desperate night closed about the world. Now it was succeeded, at last, by the dawn of spring, bringing with it the delicate, emerald carpet of growing grain, which later would ripen to a brilliant cloth of gold. Nor was the earth's beautiful spring raiment to be quickly discarded for its summer apparel. The keen winds yielded reluctantly to summer zephyrs, and winter's dread overcast retreated slowly before the rosy light of the ripening season.
If winter's clouds of threatening elemental storms were obstinate, so were the hovering clouds of human troubles. But, unlike the clouds of winter, the latter were growing with the advancing season, growing until the horizon hung with the threat of storm, that was ready to break even the horizon at which the ever optimistic farmer gazed.
It had been a troublous fall in the labor world, and an even more disturbed winter. The dark months of the year had proved a very hotbed for the microbe of industrial unrest, and it had propagated a hundredfold.
As spring dawned, from every corner of the world came the same story. Strike, strike; everywhere, and in every calling, the word had gone forward—Strike! It mattered not the reason. It mattered not the worker's condition. If wages were ample, then strike for less work. If the work was insufficient, then strike for a minimum wage. In any case strike, and see the demands included recognition of labor unions, and particularly recognition of the demagogues who led them.
So the storm-clouds of industrial insurrection were fostered. They threatened, and, rapidly, in almost every direction, the flood of storm burst. Every sane, hard-thinking man asked his neighbor the reason. Every far-sighted man, on both sides, shook his head, and pointed the approach of a hideous reckoning. Every fool looked on and laughed, and, shrugging his shoulders, swam with the tide on the side to which he belonged.
And all the time the demagogues screamed from the house-tops, and claimed the daily press. These carrion of democracy actually belonged to neither side. They did not toil in the mills, nor did they employ labor. Theirs it was to feed upon the carcass of the worker, and wrest power from the hands of those who possessed it. Whatever happened, they must be winners in the game they played. Nor did it matter one iota to them who might be the sufferers by their juggling.
They possessed one marketable commodity, their powers of stirring strife. Nor were they particular to whom they sold. They belonged to a class of their own, an unscrupulous, ambitious, self-seeking race of intelligent creatures, whose sole aim was publicity and power, which, in the end, must yield them that position and plenty which they decried in others. It mattered little to them whether they preached syndication or sauce. Their services must be paid for in the way they desired. Vituperating from the summit of an upturned butter tub, or hurling invective from the cushioned benches of a nation's Assembly of Legislature, it made no difference to them. Anything they undertook must be paid for, at their own market price.
These were the microbes of industrial unrest which had multiplied during the dark months of the year on hotbeds that were rich, and fat, and warm. Their paunches were heavy with the goodly supplies of sustenance which they drew from the bodies of those who, in their blind ignorance and stupidity, were powerless to resist their insidious blandishments.
Something of all this may have been in Alexander Hendrie's mind as he sat before the accumulations of work awaiting his attention on his desk in the library at Deep Willows. His hard face was shadowed, even gloomy. It was the face of a man which suggested nothing of the success that was really his. Nothing of the triumph with which the successful organizing of the wheat-growers' trust should have inspired him. All his plans had matured, all his efforts had been crowned with that success which seemed to be the hall-mark of the man. That which he set himself to do, he prided himself, he did with his might. Nor did he relinquish his grip upon it till the work was completed.
But on this particular spring morning, the hall-mark seemed somehow to have become obscured. His eyes were troubled and brooding. His work remained untouched. Even an unlighted cigar remained upon the edge of his desk, a sure sign that he had no taste for the work that lay before him.
This condition of affairs had been going on for some time. It had gradually grown worse. To the onlooker, to eyes that had no real understanding of the man, it might have suggested that the great spirit had reached the breaking point, or that some subtle, undermining disease had set in.
One, at least, of those who stood on intimate terms with this man knew that this was not so. Angus Moraine realized the growing depression in his chief, and, perhaps, feared it. But he knew its cause, or, at least, he knew something of its cause. For some reason, reasons which to the hard Scot seemed all insufficient, Hendrie had changed from the time of his discovery of the mistake he had made in the case of Frank Smith. He had heard from his employer, himself the story of that mistake, but Hendrie had only told him sufficient of it to account for his actions in obtaining the man's release.
Then there was that other, more intimate matter, the news of which had leaped like wildfire throughout the household at Deep Willows. Monica was ailing. It was obvious that she was to become a mother, and it was equally obvious that her health was suffering in an extraordinary manner. There was a doctor, a general practitioner, in residence at Deep Willows. There was also a night nurse in attendance, besides a girl companion, from one of the outlying farms over Gleber way.
These things were known by everybody, not only in the house, but in the neighborhood, and Angus understood that the combination of them all was responsible for the apparently halting movement of the mechanism which so strenuously drove the life of Alexander Hendrie. The man himself was just the same underneath it all, but, for the moment, the clouds were depressing him, and it would require his own great fighting spirit to disperse them.
Angus was in good humor as he entered the library just before noon. He believed he possessed the necessary tonic for his employer's case, and intended to administer it in his own ruthless fashion.
Hendrie glanced across at the door as he heard it open. Then, when he saw who his visitor was, he sighed like a man awakening from an unpleasant dream. He picked up his cigar and lit it, and Angus watched the action with approval. He always preferred to deal with Hendrie when that individual had a cigar thrust at an aggressive angle in the corner of his mouth.
"Well? Anything to report?" Hendrie demanded. The effort of pulling himself together left him alert. The last shadow had, for the moment, passed out of his cold gray eyes.
"Why, yes."
Angus drew up a chair and laid a sheaf of papers beside him. He saw the crowded state of the desk, but gave no sign of the regret which the sight inspired.
"Guess there's a hell of a lot of trouble coming if you persist in this colored labor racket," he said quickly. "I don't mind telling you I hate niggers myself, hate 'em to death. But that's not the trouble. As I've warned you before, ever since that blamed Agricultural Labor Society racket started, the beginning of last year, we've had the country flooded with what I call 'east-side orators.' Talk? Gee! They'd talk hell cold. They've got the ear of every white hobo that prides himself he knows the north end of a plow from the south, and they've filled them full of this black labor racket."
Hendrie was lifted out of himself. The cold light of his eyes flashed into a wintry smile.
"Ah," he said. "Strike talk."
"Sure. And I guess it's going to be big. I'd say there's a big head behind it all—too."
Hendrie nodded.
"They've been gathering funds all the year. Now they guess they're ready—like everybody else—to get their teeth into the cake they want to eat. Go ahead."
Angus took a cigar from the box Hendrie held out, and bit the end off.
"It's well enough for you. You ain't up against all the racket. I am. We've got plenty labor around here without darnation niggers. Why not quit 'em?"
Hendrie shook his head, and the other went on.
"Anyway, yesterday, Sunday, I was around, and I ran into a perfect hallelujah chorus meeting, going on right down, way out on the river bank. Guess they didn't reckon I'd smell 'em out. There were five hundred white men at that meeting, and they were listening to a feller talking from the stump of a tree. It was the nigger racket. That, and strike for more wages, and that sort of truck. He was telling 'em that there was just one time to strike for farm folks. That was harvest. Said it would hurt owners more to see their crops ruined in the ear than to quit seeding. Well, I got good and mad, and I'd got my gun with me. So I walked right up to that feller, and asked him what in hell he was doing on your land. He'd got five hundred mossbacks with him, and he felt good. Guessed he could bluff me plenty. He got terribly gay for a while, till I got busy. You see, with five hundred around it was up to me to show some nerve. The moment he started I whipped out my gun. I gave him two minutes to get down and light out. He wasted most of them, and I had to give him two that shaved the seat of his pants, one for each minute. Then he hopped it, and the five hundred mossbacks laffed 'emselves sick. However, I told 'em they were disturbing the Sunday nap of the fish in the river, and they, too, scattered. But it don't help, Mr. Hendrie. It means a big piece of trouble coming. Those fellers'll gather round again like flies, and they'll suck in the treacle that flows from the lips of some other flannel mouth. Specially if it's 'black' treacle."
Hendrie's smile had become fixed. And the set of it left his eyes snapping.
"See here, Angus," he cried, with some vehemence. "I don't hold a brief for niggers as niggers. But I hold a brief for them as human creatures."
He swung himself round on his chair and rested his elbow, supporting his head upon his hand, upon the overflowing desk. His cigar assumed a still more aggressive pose in the corner of his mouth.
"The world's just gone crazy on equality. That is, the folk who've got least of its goods. That's all right. I'd feel that way myself—if I hadn't got. Well, here's an outfit of white folk who reckon to make me pay, and pay good. Not me only, but all who own stuff. Well, if they can make me pay—guess I'll just have to pay. But anyway, I've a right to demand the equality they're shouting for. Guess a nigger hasn't a dog's place among white folks. I don't care a darn. But a nigger can do my work, and I can handle him. And if the whole white race of mossbacks don't like it they can go plumb—to—hell. That's the way I feel. That's the way all this strike racket that's going on makes me feel. If they want fight they can get all they need. Maybe they reckon they can break me all up with their brawn and muscle, and by quitting, and refusing to take my pay. I just tell you they can't. Let 'em build up their giant muscle, and get going good. I'll fight 'em—but I'll fight 'em with the wits that have put me where I am, and—I'll beat 'em."
Angus Moraine's sour face and somber eyes lit. He knew his man, and he liked to hear him talk fight. But he was curious to know something of that which he knew still remained to be told.
"This is the first year of the trust operations," he said shrewdly. "What if the crop is left to rot on the ground? This place, here, is now just a fraction of the whole combine, as I understand it."
Hendrie nodded. Amusement was added to the light of battle in his eyes.
"Sure," he said.
Then he reached across the desk and picked up a large bundle of papers. He passed them over to the other.
"Take 'em," he said easily. "Read 'em over at your leisure. You got property in this trust. Maybe you'll read something there that's cost me a deal of thought. That's the United Owners' Protection Schedule. You'll find in it a tabulated list of every property in the combine. Its area of grain. Its locality. Also a carefully detailed list ofOwner Workers, their numbers, and supplies of machinery for seeding andharvesting. You'll also find a detailed distribution sheet of how these, in case of emergency, can be combined and distributed, and, aided with additional machinery, supplied by the trust, can complete the harvest on all trust landswithout the help of one single hired man. The machinery is ordered, and is being distributed now—in case the railroad troubles develop about harvest time. There's also another document there of no small importance. It was passed unanimously at the last general meeting of directors, and is inspired by these—darned labor troubles. It empowers me to sell cropsstandingin the ear, at a margin under anticipated market price to speculators—if it's deemed advisable by the directors. This again is for our protection."
Then he held up a bunch of telegrams.
"These are wires from some of the big speculators. They're in code, so you can't read 'em. They're offers to buy—now. These offers, increasing in price each time as we get nearer the harvest, will come along from now on till the grain is threshed. I can close a deal any moment I choose to put pen to paper. Well?"
"Well?"
Angus looked into the man's fearless eyes, marveling at the wonder of foresight he displayed. For the moment he almost pitied the dull-witted farmhand who contemplated pitting himself against such caliber.
"Say, Angus, boy," Hendrie went on, after a pause. "Sometimes I sort of feel the game isn't worth it, fighting this mush-headed crowd who have to get other folks to think for 'em, and tell 'em when they're not satisfied. It's like shooting up women and children, in spite that any half-dozen could literally eat me alive. I tell you brain's got muscle beat all along the line. Give every man an equal share all over the world, and in six months' time it will be cornered again by brain that isn't equally distributed, and never will be."
"I'm getting another crew of niggers up from the south, and you'll have 'em put on 'time' right here at Deep Willows," he went on, after a pause. "I'm going to run my land in my own way. They need fight? They can get it. I'm in the humor to fight. And if they shout much more I'll get Chinamen down from Vancouver to bear a hand in the work."
Hendrie stood for a moment with his hand on the open door. His eyes were still alight with the fire of battle which Angus's visit had inspired. The reckless spirit of defiance was still stirring, a recklessness which was, perhaps, unusual in him. The strongest characteristic of this man was his invincible resolution. It was his deliberateness of purpose, urged by supreme personal force that had placed him where he was—not recklessness.
But just now an actual desire for recklessness was running riot through his hot veins. He wanted to fight. He felt it was the safety valve necessary for his own desperate feelings.
Monica's condition more than troubled him. All the more so because he knew that his own actions had helped her peculiar ailing, which was rapidly sapping all her vitality at the time she most needed it. He knew, no one better, that Frank's troubles, his absence, and the uncertainty of his future, had played upon her nervous system till she was left no longer fit to bear her burden of motherhood.
Oh yes, he knew. He knew of the shattered wreck of her woman's heart, and it maddened him to think that the cause of it lay at his door. More than this, the black, haunting shadow of memory left him no peace. It was with him at all times, now jeering and mocking, now threatening him. But his own remorse he felt he could bear. He was a fighter; he could battle with self as with any other foe. But, for Monica, his love drove him to a desperation which sometimes threatened to overwhelm him.
He closed the door behind him, and hurried toward the entrance hall. As he reached it he saw the figure of Phyllis Raysun ascending the stairs. He promptly called to her.
"Tell me," he cried. "Well, child? What is Dr. Fraser's report?"
The girl turned, and almost reluctantly descended the stairs.
Monica's appeal to her to come to her had been irresistible to the heart of the sympathetic girl. The appeal had been conveyed to her by Hendrie himself, the man whom she believed she hated as a monster of cruelty. She had listened to him, and something in the manner in which he had urged her, promising that the work of her farm should go forward during her absence by his own men, and that her mother should lack for no comfort that money could purchase, gave her an insight into a nature that began at once to interest her, in spite of her definitely formed opinions of him. The man certainly puzzled her young, but, for a girl of her upbringing, wide understanding.
Nor had her stay at Deep Willows lessened her interest.
Now she looked at him with unsmiling eyes.
"The doctor's just gone right into Everton for special physic," she said.
"Yes, yes. But—his report?"
Phyllis's gaze wandered to the front door, out of which the doctor had just passed.
"He says—slight improvement," she replied coldly.
"Ah! Improvement! Yes?"
The man sighed. He was clinging to the meager encouragement of that single word.
Phyllis understood. She nodded. Then her eyes lit with a sudden purpose, and she dashed his hope.
"Oh, but say, Mr. Hendrie," she cried. "It doesn't just mean a thing. It doesn't sure—sure. There's just one hope for Mo—for Mrs. Hendrie. It's Frank. You don't understand. How can you understand us women? Get Frank right back to her, and—and you won't need Doc. Fraser for her any more than I want him. That's what you'll need to do. She's pining her life right away for him. She loves him. He's—he's her son. Can't you see? She just worships you right through, because you're her husband. But Frank? Why, she thinks of the days when his little hands used to cling around her, tearing her fixings, that cost money, and all that. She—she just loves every hair of his poor head."
The girl's hands were held out appealingly, and the man's eyes dared not look in their direction. She had poured an exquisite torture into his already troubled heart, and her appealing hands had twisted the knife that probed its depths. She could not add one detail to his knowledge of all it would mean, not only to Monica, but to himself, if only Frank could be brought home to the great house at Deep Willows.
One hand went up to his clammy brow. The square-tipped fingers ran their way through his ample, graying hair. Then, with a sudden nervous movement, his arms flung out.
"Oh, God!" he cried, his eyes suddenly blazing with a passion that had for one brief moment broken the bonds which usually so sternly controlled it. "What do you know, child? What can you know of the awful longing I have to bring that boy here? You say I do not know you women. I tell you you do not know all that men can feel. You think me a brute, a monster; I have seen it in your eyes. You think my every thought is money and self. Maybe you are justified. It is money—gold that has been my undoing. It is that which has wrecked my life. Pshaw! You don't understand. Nobody does—but myself. But I tell you, here and now, I'd give all I have, everything I possess in life, even life itself, to bring that boy here, and know that he would remain with us for—ever."
His outburst left the girl half frightened. But his passion died out almost as swiftly as it had arisen. His control was not long yielded, and, as his eyes resumed their wonted steadiness, and looked up into Phyllis's with something almost like a smile, she timidly sought to help him.
"I'm—I'm sorry," she said, on the impulse. Then she leaned forward eagerly. "But—but can't it—be done? Oh, if he would only come—in time. I know he will come—some day. If I did not—then—then I shouldn't want to go right on living."
The man started slightly.
"I—I had forgotten—you," he said.
Phyllis nodded.
"Frank is in—Calford," she said slowly. "I had mail from him yesterday."
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 Icando 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."
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.