The Portion of Labor Part 73

"Did you explain all this to the committee?" asked Risley.

"Explain? No! I told them my course was founded upon strict business principles, and was as much for their good as for mine. They understood. They know how hard the times are. Why, it was only last week that Weeks & McLaughlin failed, and that meant a heavy loss. I didn't explain." Then Robert hesitated and colored. "I have just explained to her," he said, with a curious hang of his head, like a boy, "and if my explanation was met in the same fashion by the others in the factory I might as well have addressed the north wind.

They are all alike; they are a different race. We cannot help them, and they cannot help themselves, because they are themselves."

"You mean by her, Ellen Brewster?" Risley said.

Robert nodded gloomily.

"That is all in the paper," said Risley--"what she said to the men."

Robert made an impatient move.

"If ever there was a purely normal outgrowth, a perfect flower of her birth and environments and training, that girl is one," said Risley, with an accent of admiration.

"She is infected with the ranting idiocy of those with whom she has been brought in daily contact," said Robert; but even as he spoke he seemed to see the girl's dear young face, and his voice faltered.

"Even as you may be infected with the conservatism of those with whom you are brought in contact," said Risley, dryly.

"What a democrat you are, Risley!" said Robert, impatiently. "I believe you would make a good walking delegate."

Risley laughed. "I think I would myself," he said. "Wouldn't she listen to you, Robert?"

"She listened with such utter dissent that she might as well have been dumb. It is all over between us, Risley."

"How precipitate you are, you young folks!" said the other, good-humoredly.

"How precipitate? Do you mean to say--?"

"I mean that you are forever thinking you are on the brink of nothingness, when the true horizon-line is too far for you ever to reach in your mortal life."

"Not in this case," said Robert.

"You know nothing about it. But if you will excuse me, it seems to me that the matter of all these people being reduced to starvation in a howling winter is of more importance than the coming together of two people in the bonds of wedlock. It is the aggregate against the individual."

"I don't deny that," said Robert, doggedly, "but I am not responsible for the starvation, and the aggregate have brought it on themselves."

"You have shut down finally?"

"Yes, I have. I would rather shut down than not, as far as I am concerned. It is distinctly for my interest. The only one objection is losing experienced workmen, but in a community like this, and in times like this, that objection is reduced to a minimum. I can hire all I want in the spring if I wish to open again. I should run a risk of losing on every order I should have to fill in the next three months, even with the reduced list. I would rather shut down than not; I only reduced the wages for them."

Robert rose as he spoke. He felt in his heart that he had gotten scant sympathy and comfort. The older man looked with pity at the young fellow's handsome, gloomy face.

"There's one thing to remember," he said.

"What?"

"All the troubles of this world are born with wings." Risley laughed, as he spoke, in his half-cynical fashion.

As Robert walked home--for there was no car due--he felt completely desolate. It seemed to him that everybody was in league against him.

When he reached his uncle's splendid house and entered, he felt such an isolation from his kind in the midst of his wealth that something like an actual terror of solitude came over him.

The impecunious cousin of his aunt's who had come to her during her last illness acted as his housekeeper. There was something inexpressibly irritating about this woman, who had suffered so much, and was now nestling, with a sense of triumph over the pa.s.sing of her griefs, in a luxurious home.

She asked Robert if it were true that the factory was closed, and he felt that she noted his gloomy face, and realized a greater extent of comfort from her own exemption from such questions.

"Business must be a great care," said she, and a look of utter peaceful reflection upon her own lot overspread her face.

After supper Robert went down to his aunt Cynthia's. He had not been there for a long time. The minute he entered she started up with an eagerness which had been completely foreign to her of late years.

"What is the matter, Robert?" she asked, softly. She took both his hands as she spoke, and her look in his face was full of delicate caressing.

Robert succ.u.mbed at once to this feminine solicitude, of which he had had lately so little. He felt as if he had relapsed into childhood. A sense of injury which was exquisite, as it brought along with it a sense of his demand upon love and sympathy, seized him.

"I am worried beyond endurance, Aunt Cynthia," said he.

"About the strike? I have read the night papers."

"Yes; I tried to do what was right, even at a sacrifice to myself, and--"

Cynthia had read about Ellen, but she was a woman, and she said nothing as to that.

"I tried to do what was right," Robert said, fairly broken down again.

Cynthia had seated herself, and Robert had taken a low foot-stool at her side. It came over him as he did so that it had been a favorite seat of his when a child. As for Cynthia, influenced by the appealing to the vulnerable place of her nature, she put her slim hands on her nephew's head, and actually seemed to feel his baby curls.

"Poor boy," she whispered.

Robert put both his arms around her and hid his face on her shoulder, for love is a comforter, in whatever guise.

Chapter LV

On the day after the strike Ellen went to McGuire's and to Briggs's, the two other factories in Rowe, to see if she could obtain a position; but she was not successful. McGuire had discharged some of his employes, reducing his force to its smallest possible limits, since he had fewer orders, and was trying in that way to avert the necessity of a cut in wages, and a strike or shut-down. McGuire's was essentially a union factory, as was Briggs's. Ellen would have found in either case difficulty about obtaining employment, because she did not belong to the union, if for no other reason. At Briggs's she encountered the proprietor himself in the office, and he dismissed her with a bluff, almost brutal, peremptoriness which hurt her cruelly, although she held up her head high as she left. Briggs turned to a foreman who was standing by before she was well out of hearing.

"I like that!" he said. "Mrs. Briggs read about that girl in the paper last night, and the strike wouldn't have been on at Lloyd's if it hadn't been for her. I would as soon take a lighted match into a powder-magazine."

The foreman grinned. "She's a pretty, mild-looking thing," he said; "doesn't look as if she could say boo to a goose."

"That's all you can tell," returned Briggs. "Deliver me from a light-complexioned woman. They're all the very devil. Mrs. Briggs says it's the same girl that read that composition that made such a stir at the high-school exhibition. She'd make more trouble in a factory than a dozen ordinary girls, and just now, when everything is darned ticklish-looking."

"That's so," a.s.sented the foreman, "and all the more because she's good-looking."

"I don't know what you call good-looking," returned Briggs.

He had two daughters, built upon the same heavy lines as himself and wife, and he adored them. Insensibly he regarded all more delicate feminine beauty as a disparagement of theirs. As Briggs spoke, the foreman seemed to see in the air before his eyes the faces of the two Briggs girls, large and ma.s.sive, and dull of hue, the feminine counterpart of their father's.