Making People Happy Part 13

Cicily concealed her resentment of the patronizing manner, and replied with no apparent diminution in her amiability:

"That's just it: I am jealous!"

"Good heavens!" Hamilton cried, indignantly. "Surely, you know that I never think twice of any woman I meet in business."

The wife smiled in high disdain.

"Woman!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, with scornful emphasis. "I'm not in the least afraid of any woman being more to you than I am, Charles. Just let one try!"

"Why, what would you do?" Hamilton inquired, curiously.

The answer was swift and vigorous, pregnant with the insolent consciousness of power that is the prerogative of a lovely woman. Cicily leaned forward in her chair, and the golden eyes darkened and flashed.

"Why, I'd beat her! I'd be everything to you that she was--and more. I'd outdress her, I'd out-talk her, I'd outwit her, I'd out-think her. I'd play on your love and on your masculine jealousy. Oh, there'd be plenty of men to play the play with me. I'd be more alluring, more fascinating, more difficult, until I held you safe again in the hollow of my hand, and then--why, then, I'd be very much tempted to throw you away!"

The verve with which this girl-woman thus vaunted her skill in the use of those charms that dominate the opposite s.e.x thrilled and fascinated the lover, pierced the reserve that possession had overcast on ardor.

His cheeks flushed, under the provocation of the glances with which she marked the allurements of which she was the mistress. As she finished speaking, he sprang up from his chair, caught her in his arms, and drew her pa.s.sionately to his breast. But Cicily avoided the kiss he would have pressed on her lips. With her mouth at his ear, she whispered, plaintively now, no longer boastful, only a timid, fearing, jealous woman:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Yes, I can fight a rival who is a woman, Charles, and I can win. But this other rival, this fascinating monstrous, evil G.o.ddess--ah!"

Hamilton held his wife away from him by the shoulders, mid regarded her in bewilderment.

"Evil G.o.ddess!" he repeated, half in doubt as to her meaning.

"Surely, she must be that," Cicily declared, firmly; "this spirit who is the G.o.ddess of modern business, whom I feel absorbing you day by day, taking from me more and ever more of your thoughts, of your heart, of your soul, changing you in every vital way, and doing it in spite of all that I can do, though I fight against her with all my strength! Oh, it's terrible, the hopelessness of it all! Some day all of you will be gone, forever!"

"Swallowed up by the evil spirit?" Hamilton asked, quizzically, with a smile.

"Yes!" The answer was given with a seriousness that rebuked his levity in the presence of possible catastrophe.

The husband repeated his threadbare argument.

"But, dear," he urged gently, "you know that I love you just the same."

There was a curious, cynical sadness in the wife's voice as she replied:

"Probably, a man under ether loves one just the same. But who wants to be loved by a man under ether?"

"Cicily, you exaggerate!" Hamilton exclaimed. He dropped his hands from her shoulders, and reseated himself, while she remained standing before him. There was petulance in his inflection when he spoke again: "I have you, and I have my business."

Cicily made a _moue_ that sufficiently expressed her weariness of this time-worn fact.

"Your two loves!" she said, bitterly. "Now, at this moment, you think that they're equal. Well, perhaps they are--at this moment. Some day, the crisis will come. Then, you'll have to choose. It's a new triangle, Charles--the twentieth-century triangle in America: the wife, the husband and the business. But remember: when the choice comes for us, I shall not be an Aunt Emma!"

The manner of his wife, as well as her words, disturbed the husband strangely. Never had she seemed more appealing in her loveliness, never more daintily alluring to the eye of a man; yet, never had she seemed to hold herself so coldly aloof, to be so impersonally remote. He felt a longing to draw her again into the gentle trustfulness of the maiden who had gloried in his love.

"What do you want me to do, dear?" he questioned. "I told you that you could help me. I let you help."

Cicily seated herself again before she replied. When, at last, she spoke, her voice was listless:

"Yes; you let me spend some of my own money for luxuries. It seems that I could have used it to better advantage in helping to pay the men their wages, and thus save you from a possible strike."

"No," was the serious response. "At best, that would have been only a makeshift--putting off the evil day. No; this thing must be fought out, once for all. We are running at a loss. To take money from you would be merely to waste it. Let me tell you, too, that there isn't a chance in the world for the Hamilton factory in the event of a strike."

Cicily seized on the admission as favoring her side of the argument.

"Then, you must not cut the wages," she declared, with spirit. "You must fight Morton and Carrington."

"How can one man fight the trust?" Hamilton questioned, in return. "No, I'm caught between the two millstones: Morton, Carrington, the trust, above; the men, labor, below. To live, I must cut into the men. That's business."

"Now, I know it isn't right," Cicily exclaimed. "Tell me," she continued, bending forward in her eagerness, until he could watch the beating pulse of her round throat, "if I were to give you all my money, couldn't you fight, and yet keep up the wages? I have quite a lot, you know. It was acc.u.mulating, uncle said, all the time while I was growing up." She refused to be convinced by her husband's shake of the head in negation. "I've met a lot of their women and children, in these last few weeks, while I have been--playing at being in business. None of the families have any more than enough for their needs--I know! Some of them have barely that. A cut in wages will be something awful in its effects.

Why, Charles, some of the families have six or seven children."

"I know," the hara.s.sed employer acknowledged, with a sigh that was almost a groan. "But, Cicily, my dear, unless there is a cut, I shall be ruined. That is the long and the short of the matter. Unless I make the men suffer a little now, the factory must be closed down; all Dad's work must go for nothing. It's either I or them. If they don't take the cut for the time being, they'll soon be without any wages at all. Now, if you really want to help me, in a way to count, just do all you possibly can to prevent a strike. Then, you'll be helping me, and, too, you'll be helping them as well. Of course, you understand that I shall put back the wages as soon as ever I can."

"Good!" the wife cried, happily. "I'll help." Despite her distress over the situation as it affected both the workmen and her husband, she was elated by the fact that, at last, she was wholly within her husband's confidence; that, at last, she was actually to cooperate with him in his business concerns: a practical, no longer merely a theoretical, partner! Hamilton himself gave the cap to the climax of her delight.

"Now," he said, with a tender smile, "you're positively in business, according to your heart's desire. You're on the inside, all ready to fight the what-do-you-call-it."

But a new thought had changed the mood of the impulsive bride. Of a sudden, she sobered, and her eyes widened in fear.

"Yes," she said slowly, tremulously; "I'll help you, Charles, in any way that I can, for a strike would be too terrible. It would come between you and me."

Small wonder that, Hamilton was astounded by this declaration on the part of his wife. His usually firm jaw relaxed, dropped; he sat staring at the fair woman opposite him with unrestrained amazement.

"How under heaven could a strike at the factory come between you and me?" he queried, at last.

The answer was slow in coming; but it came, none the less--came firmly, unhesitatingly, unequivocally.

"If there were to be a strike, I could not let those women and those children suffer without doing something to help them."

At this candid statement as to what her course would be, the husband stiffened in his chair. His expression grew severe, minatory.

"What?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, harshly. "You'd use your money to help them? My wife use her money to fight me?" His frown was savage.

Cicily preserved her appearance of calm confidence, although she was woefully minded to cower back, and to cover her eyes from the menace in his. She was a woman of strongly fixed principles, however chimerical her ideas in some directions, and now her conscience drove her on, when love would have bade her retreat.

"I'd use my money to keep women and children from starving to death,"

she said, in a low voice, which trembled despite her will.

Hamilton smothered an angry imprecation. He strove to master his wrath as he spoke again, very sternly:

"Cicily, you are my wife. You have said that you were my partner. As either, as both, you have responsibilities toward my welfare that must be respected."

"I'm a woman, with responsibilities as a human being first of all," was the undaunted retort. "I wouldn't be fit to be a wife, if I were to let women and children starve without trying to help."

"Nonsense, Cicily!" Hamilton's anger was controlled now; but he remained greatly incensed over this stubborn folly on his wife's part, as he esteemed it. "Strikers don't starve to death, nowadays. They have benefits and funds, and all sorts of things, to help them. They don't even go hungry."