The Portion of Labor Part 79

"He is badly hurt," replied Robert. "Have they found the man? Do you know what has been done about it?"

"They've got all the police force of the city out," replied Flynn, "but it's no use. They'll never catch Amos Lee. His mother was a gypsy, I've always heard. He knows about a thousand ways out of traps, and there's plenty to help him. They've got Dixon under arrest, and Tom Peel; but they didn't have any fire-arms on 'em, and they can't prove anything. Peel says he's ready to go back to work."

Flynn had a somewhat seedy and downcast appearance, although he fought hard for his old jaunty manner. His impulsive good-nature had gotten the better of his judgment and his own wishes, and he had gone to Mamie Brady and offered to marry her out of hand if she recovered from her attempted suicide. The night before he had watched, turn and turn about, with her mother. He gave a curious effect of shamefaced and melancholy virtue. He followed Robert to one side when he was hanging up his hat and coat. "I'm going to tell you, Mr. Lloyd," he said, rather awkwardly; "maybe you won't be interested in the midst of all this, but it all came from the strike. She's better this morning, and I'm going to marry her, poor girl."

Robert looked at him in a dazed fashion. For a moment he had not the slightest idea what he was talking about.

"I'm going to marry Mamie Brady," explained Flynn. "She took laudanum. It all happened on account of the strike. I'll own I'd been flirting some with her, but she'd never done it if she hadn't been out of work, too. She said so. Her mother made her life a h.e.l.l.

I'm going to marry her, and take her out of it."

"It's mighty good of you," Robert said, rather stupidly.

"There ain't no other way for me to do," replied Flynn. "She thinks the world of me, and I suppose I'm to blame."

"I hope she'll make you a good wife and you'll be happy," said Robert.

"She thinks all creation of me," replied Flynn, with the simplest vanity and acquiescence in the responsibility laid upon him in the world. "That shot wasn't meant for Mr. Risley," said Flynn, as Robert approached the office door. His eyes flashed. He himself would gladly have been shot for the sake of Ellen Brewster. He was going to marry, and try to fulfill his simple code of honor, but all his life he would be married to one woman, with another ideal in his heart; that was inevitable.

"I know it wasn't," Robert replied, grimly.

"Everything is quiet now," said Dennison, with his smooth smile.

Robert made no reply, but entered the great work-room. "He's mighty stand-offish, now he's got his own way," Dennison remarked in a whisper to Nellie Stone. He leaned closely over her. Flynn had followed Robert. The girl glanced up at the foreman, who was unmarried, although years older than she, and her face quivered a little, but it seemed due to a surface sensitiveness.

"I want to know if you've heard that Ed is going to marry Mamie Brady, after all," she whispered.

Dennison nodded.

She knitted her forehead over a column of figures. Dennison leaned his face so close that his blond-bearded cheek touched hers. She made a little impatient motion.

"Oh, go long, Jim Dennison," she said, but her tone was half-hearted.

Dennison persisted, bending her head gently backward until he kissed her. She pushed him away, but she smiled weakly.

"You didn't want Ed Flynn. Why, he's a Roman Catholic, and you're Baptist, Nell," he said.

"Who said I did?" she retorted, angrily. "Why, I wouldn't marry Ed Flynn if he was the last man in the world."

"You'd 'nough sight better marry me," said Dennison.

"Go along; you're fooling."

"No, I ain't. I mean it, honest."

"I don't want to marry anybody yet awhile," said Nellie Stone; but when Dennison kissed her again she did not repulse him, and even nestled her head with a little caressing motion into the hollow of his shoulder.

Then they both started violently apart as Flynn entered.

"Say!" he proclaimed, "what do you think? The boss has just told the hands that he'll split the difference and reduce the wages five instead of ten per cent."

Chapter LIX

When Robert Lloyd entered the factory that morning he experienced one of those revulsions which come to man in common with all creation. As the wind can swerve from south to east, and its swerving be a part of the universal scheme of things, so the inconsistency of a human soul can be an integral part of its consistency. Robert, entering Lloyd's, flushed with triumph over his workmen, filled also with rage whenever he thought of poor Risley, became suddenly, to all appearances, another man. However, he was the same man, only he had come under some hidden law of growth. All at once, as he stood there amidst those whirring and clamping machines, and surveyed those bowed and patient backs and swaying arms of labor, standing aside to allow a man bending before a heavy rack of boots to push it to another department, he realized that his triumph was gone.

Not a man or woman in the factory looked at him. All continued working with a sort of patient fierceness, as if storming a citadel--as, indeed, they were in one sense--and waging incessant and in the end hopeless warfare against the destructive forces of life. Robert stood in the midst of them, these fellow-beings who had bowed to his will, and saw, as if by some divine revelation, in his foes his brothers and sisters. He saw Ellen's fair head before her machine, and she seemed the key-note of a heart-breaking yet ineffable harmony of creation which he heard for the first time. He was a man whom triumph did not exalt as much as it humiliated. Who was he to make these men and women do his bidding? They were working as hard as they had worked for full pay. Without doubt he would not gain as much comparatively, but he was going to lose nothing actually, and he would not work as these men worked. He saw himself as he never could have seen himself had the strike continued; and yet, after all, he was not a woman, to be carried away by a sudden wave of generous sentiment and enthusiasm, for his business instincts were too strong, inherited and developed by the force of example. He could not forget that this had been his uncle's factory.

He shut his mouth hard, and stood looking at the scene of toil, then he resolved what to do.

He spoke to Flynn, who could not believe his ears, and asked him over.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said.

"Go and speak to the engineer, and tell him to shut down," said Robert.

"You ain't going to turn them out, after all?" gasped Flynn. He was deadly white.

"No, I am not. I only want to speak to them," replied Robert, shortly.

When the roar of machinery had ceased, Robert stood before the employes, whose faces had taken on an expression of murder and menace. They antic.i.p.ated the worst by this order.

"I want to say to you all," said Robert, in a loud, clear voice, "that I realize it will be hard for you to make both ends meet with the cut of ten per cent. I will make it five instead of ten per cent., although I shall actually lose by so doing unless business improves. I will, however, try it as long as possible. If the hard times continue, and it becomes a sheer impossibility for me to employ you on these terms without abandoning the plant altogether, I will approach you again, and trust that you will support me in any measures I am forced to take. And, on the contrary, should business improve, I promise that your wages shall be raise to the former standard at once."

The speech was so straightforward that it sounded almost boyish.

Robert, indeed, looked very young as he stood there, for a generous and pitying impulse does tend to make a child of a man. The workmen stared at him a minute, then there was a queer little broken chorus of "Thank ye's," with two or three shrill crows of cheers.

Robert went from room to room, repeating his short speech, then work recommenced.

"He's the right sort, after all," said Granville Joy to John Sargent, and his tone had a quality of heroism in it. He was very thin and pale. He had suffered privations, and now came additional worry of mind. He could not help thinking that this might bring about an understanding between Robert and Ellen, and yet he paid his spiritual dues at any cost.

"It's no more than he ought to do," growled a man at Granville's right. "S'pose he does lose a little money?"

"It ain't many out of the New Testament that are going to lose a little for the sake of their fellow-men, I can tell you that," said John Sargent. He was cutting away deftly and swiftly, and thinking with satisfaction of the money which he would be able to send his sister, and also how the Atkins family would be no longer so pinched. He was a man who would never come under the grindstone of the pessimism of life for his own necessities, but lately the necessities of others had almost forced him there. Now and then he glanced across the room at Maria, whose narrow shoulders he could see bent painfully over her work. He was in love with Maria, but no one suspected it, least of all Maria herself.

"Lord! don't talk about the New Testament. Them days is past,"

growled the man on the other side of Joy.

"They ain't past for me," said John Sargent, stoutly. A dark flush rose to his cheek as if he were making a confession of love.

"Lord! don't preach," said the other man, with a sneer.

Ellen had stopped work with the rest when Robert addressed them.

Then she recommenced her st.i.tching without a word. Her thoughts were in confusion. She had so long held one att.i.tude towards him that she could not readily adjust herself to another. She was cramped with the extreme narrowness of the enthusiasm of youth. At noontime she heard all the talk which went on about him. She heard some praise him, and some speak of him as simply doing his manifest duty, and some say openly that he should have put the wages back upon the former footing, and she did not know which was right. He did not come near her, and she was very glad of that. She felt that she could not bear it to have him speak to her before them all.

When she went home at night the news had preceded her. f.a.n.n.y and Andrew looked up eagerly when she entered. "I hear he has compromised," said Andrew, with doubtful eyes on the girl's face.

"Yes; he has cut the wages five instead of ten per cent.," replied Ellen, and it was impossible to judge of her feelings by her voice.