The Way of the Strong Part 59

She took the bewildered girl by the arm, and hurried her through the great entrance hall. Then up the wide staircase, and, having left the sharp-eared servants well behind, opened out a battery of eager questions.

"How ever did you get here all by yourself from that little far-away farm of yours?" she demanded. "How--how dared you attempt such a thing, my dear?" she went on, with genuine concern. "You shouldn't have done it. You really shouldn't, without letting me know, so that I could have arranged for your comfort."

They had reached the first floor, and Monica's arm was about the girl's supple waist.

"I never heard of such a thing," she hurried on, pushing open the door of her boudoir. "Weren't you frightened to death? How--how ever did you manage to find this house--you, who've never been away from your prairie home in your life?"

"I--I had to come, mam," Phyllis cried. "I--I hope you're not angry, but I just had to come. I got a letter from--from Frank, and he told me he was never coming back to me, and was going to--to--enlist--or something, in the army of workers and give his life to bettering their lot, and--and a lot of other silly nonsense like that. And--and I just had to come and see you--since I knew that--that you loved him, too."

There were tears crowding the girl's beautiful, appealing eyes as she looked up into Monica's face.

Monica stooped and kissed her quite suddenly. Then she unfastened and removed the unsightly cape and took the offending suit case from her.

She laid them aside, and then strove to rea.s.sure this child, who, though she had only seen her once before in her life, and only knew her through writing to her, somehow seemed to have become a part of her life.

"I'm so glad you came to me, Phyl," she cried. "There's so much to say--so much for us both to think of. Oh, my dear, my dear, my heart is broken. I don't know what to think, or what to do. My poor, poor boy."

An hour pa.s.sed. The housekeeper waited to see Mrs. Hendrie in the library, but she did not come. Two hours pa.s.sed. Monica and Phyllis still remained together in the former's room. As Monica had said, there was much for both to think of. Again she poured out the dreadful story of Frank's disaster. She was thankful, too, for the girl's sympathetic ears. It eased her own feelings, and helped her to think more clearly, which she had not been able to do since receiving Frank's curt note refusing her money. But at last there was nothing more left to tell, and Monica broke down, weeping over the havoc she felt that she alone had wrought.

"Oh, Phyl, Phyl," she cried desperately. "It is all my doing; all through my wretched selfishness. You--even you can't blame my husband.

The fault was mine alone."

Phyllis's dark eyes were hard as she flung in her denial.

"But I do blame him," she cried. "Even if Frank had been guilty it was a wicked, cruel thing to do. I can't help it if it hurts you, Mrs.

Hendrie. I do certainly blame your husband."

Monica shook her head.

"He was in a fury of jealousy, and no man is quite sane under such circ.u.mstances." Phyllis's challenge had given Monica the firmness of decision, which, in her grief, she had utterly lacked. "I _am_ to blame. I can see it all now. Had I never lied to Frank in my ridiculous sense of duty to my dead sister, and my selfish desire to marry my husband; had I never told the boy that I was his mother--this would never have happened. In his great goodness and chivalry, the poor boy sacrificed himself for what he believed was my honor. It--is--too terrible. Just G.o.d, what a punishment for my lies. Never, never, never, as long as I live, can I forgive myself. And now? Oh, what can I do?

Whatever can we do?"

Monica's tears flowed fast, and in sympathy for the suffering woman Phyllis wept, too. Her anger, her resentment against those who had injured her love were powerless to resist the appeal of this woman's grief. However she loved Frank, she remembered that Monica loved him, too. All his life she had struggled and slaved for him.

But she was there for a greater purpose than to help another woman in her suffering. She was there to help the man she loved. More than that, she was there to win him back to herself, to that happiness she believed she alone could give him. She knew him so well. She felt in her simple way that he needed her, in spite of his long, long letter giving her back her promise, and full of his unalterable resolve to put his past and all that belonged to it, behind him forever. She intended to pit herself against his desperate purpose. She was determined to restore the old Frank she knew, the old Frank she loved better than her life.

"What can you do?" she cried, a glowing light of strength and love shining in her beautiful, half-tearful eyes. "What can we do? Why, everything. But we're not going to do it by writing letters, mam. You love him? You? And you can just sit at home right here, and hand him words written on paper, and push money into the envelope, money which means nothing to either of you, when he comes out of the prison you helped to send him to? Oh, mam, mam, how could you? Your place was at the gates of Alston prison as it was mine, if I had known, like you did. It was for us to have been along there, ready to reach out, and--and help him. What can we do? What can I do? I'll tell you. Oh, I know it's not for me to tell you things. Maybe I'm young and foolish.

Maybe I don't know much. I'm just not going to write my Frank in answer to his--his nonsensical stuff. But I won't take back my promise to be his wife. I'm--I'm going to marry him--because I know he wants me, and I want him. Oh, no, I'm not going to marry a man who gets worrying to make strikes and things, and calls it helping labor. I'm not going to marry a man who's always making trouble in the world, who leaves kiddies starving for what he calls a 'principle,' and most folks generally--miserable. But I'm going to marry my Frank, and I'm going right on to Toronto to find him--if I have to walk there."

The girl finished up breathlessly. All her love and courage were shining in her eyes. Monica had been held spellbound by the force and determination underlying every unconsidered word Phyllis uttered, and now she sprang from her seat, caught in the rush of the other's enthusiasm.

"Oh Phyl, Phyl," she cried, catching the girl by the shoulders, and looking down into her ardent face. "You brave, brave child. I never thought. I could never have thought, fool that I am. Yes, yes, we will go to him. Not you alone. I will go, too. You are the bravest, wisest child in the world, and--I love you for it."

CHAPTER VI

IN TORONTO

The street care hummed in the still summer air. The sun awnings were stretched out from the endless array of stores, across the super-heated sidewalk. A busy life perspired beneath them. Toronto's central shopping areas were always crowded about midday, not with the smart woman shopper, but with the lunching population of the commercial houses.

It was more than a month since Frank's memorable journey from the hopeless precincts of Alston to one of Canada's gayest cities; a month during which he had found his days far easier than he expected, if more full of the responsibilities of life. From the moment of his meeting with Austin Leyburn he had permitted himself a looking forward, if not with anything approaching youthful hope and confidence, at least to a life full of that work which his understanding suggested to him might serve to deaden bitter memories, and help him to face a useful future.

His new aspirations, his new convictions, sprang from a simple, impulsive heart rather than from any deep study of Socialistic doctrine. He had no logic on the matters of his beliefs, he needed none. It was sufficient that he had seen, had felt, and he hugged to himself the thoughts thus inspired.

For the moment the man Leyburn, with his narrow eyes, his purposeful face, was something little less than a G.o.d to young Frank. Here was a champion of those very people whom he believed needed all the help forthcoming. Here was a man who, from sheer belief in his own principles, had devoted himself, nay, perhaps, sacrificed himself, to those very ideals which he, Frank, had only just awakened to. His official positions in the organized societies of labor surely testified to the sincerity of his purpose. Thus it was certainly the work of Providence that he, Frank, had been thrown into such contact at the moment of his need.

On that eventful train journey, Leyburn had promised to enroll him among the workers for the good of the submerged ranks of labor.

Moreover he had proved as good as his word. He had done more. For some unexplained reason he took Frank into his own personal office, keeping him under his direct supervision, a.s.sociating with him, and treating him to a confidence that was by no means usual in one of the most powerful heads of the labor movement in Canada.

It was a strange a.s.sociation, these two. On the one hand a man of great organizing powers, of keen, practical understanding of Socialistic principles; and, on the other, a youth of lofty ideals which had little enough to do with the bitter cla.s.s hatred belonging to the sordid modern product of Socialism. Yet the older man's interest was very evident, and was displayed in many different ways. He frequently lunched with his protege, and never failed to take him to any demonstration of labor at which it was his duty to speak.

Frank responded readily to this kindly treatment. Nor did it ever occur to him to wonder at it. So it came about, that, bit by bit, this kindly man with the narrow eyes and hard smile, drew from him the complete story of his life's disaster.

It was on the occasion when the last detail of the story was pa.s.sionately poured into his apparently sympathetic ears that Austin Leyburn treated his protege to something of his platform oratory.

"Out of evil comes good--sometimes," he said, with a twisted, satirical smile. "You certainly have been the victim of the cla.s.s against which all our efforts are directed. Think of it," he went on, thrusting his elbows upon the luncheon table which stood between them--they were in the fly-ridden precincts of the cheap restaurant which Leyburn always affected--and raising his voice to a denunciatory pitch. "Think of it.

Every man with power to think, with power to work, who comes within the web of this wealthy man you speak of--whoever he is--is open to the possibilities for evil of his acc.u.mulations of wealth. That man, a millionaire, openly confesses to being able to buy the law sufficiently to legally crush the moral, almost the physical life out of those who offend him." Then he smiled whimsically. "Can you wonder at the cla.s.s hatred existing, and of which I know you do not wholly approve?" Then he shrugged, as though to dismiss the matter. "As I said, good out of evil--sometimes. But for that experience you would undoubtedly have joined the ranks of the oppressors and a.s.similated their creed."

"Yes, yes," cried Frank eagerly. "I see all that. I see the iniquity of it all that such tyranny should be possible. I agree entirely. It is against the very principles of all creation that any one man should possess such power. No man, woman, or child is safe with such possibilities in our midst. But this cla.s.s hatred. The opposition of labor is not directed sufficiently against the principle. It is directed against the individual, and so becomes cla.s.s hatred."

"Remember you are dealing with human nature," Leyburn objected. "When such forces as we control are put into active protest against a principle, the principle must become merged in the individual who represents it. It is the tangible evidence which an ignorant ma.s.s of labor needs of the existence of offense against the principle which causes the bitterness of its lot."

"My objection is against that fact," Frank persisted, in the blindness of enthusiasm. "Cla.s.s hatred! It is dreadful. Christ never preached cla.s.s hatred; and no man who ever walked this earth had a greater understanding of real life than He. Listen, I read in one of your books, written by a man reputed to be a great thinker, that--if the working men and women of the world were wiped out, capital and its cla.s.s would become useless, paralyzed. He also said that if, on the other hand, those who represent capital were wiped out, if all but the working men and women were exterminated, the world would still go on undisturbed, because of the worker left behind."

Leyburn nodded.

"That is one of the strongest bases of the labor movement. Why should the man or woman who lives by the sweat of others enjoy the luxury which is denied to the people who make that luxury possible? Is the argument not perfectly, humanly just?"

Frank leaned back in his hard chair. This man was damping some of his enthusiasm by the argument which seemed to him as purely selfish as were the existing conditions of the methods of capital.

"Then the husbandman in the vineyard was all wrong?" he demanded.

"On the contrary, he was quite right--if he could got no more than the penny he engaged for," replied Leyburn cynically.

Frank returned again to the attack.

"Now you are preaching for the worker the very methods of present-day capital. You are telling him to--grab."

"So long as capital--grabs, labor must do likewise. Unfortunately this is an age of grab, and until evolution carries it away, like any other pestilential influence, we must all grab, or die in the gutter."

Frank shook his head.

"No, no," he cried desperately. "I can't believe it. This war of cla.s.ses is all wrong. It is against all the ethics of brotherhood. It is the war of body against brain. Leave out the individual and stick to the principle. If the working cla.s.s were wiped out to-morrow the brain, which is really the life of the world, would only change its tactics.

After a brief stagnation it would evolve a fresh condition of things.