The Way of the Strong Part 61

"Phyl!"

The man's look was one of dreadful pain. He felt as if every ideal and honest feeling he had ever had, had fallen upon him, crushing him beneath its burden. Phyl's ridicule was worse, far worse than any suffering he had endured, however unjust.

"You can't--you don't mean that," he cried hoa.r.s.ely. "No, no, Phyl, you don't mean it. You----"

"But I do--I do," the girl cried, with sudden pa.s.sion. "Oh, I know you've suffered. G.o.d only knows just how you've suffered! And since I've heard all you've gone through, I've suffered every moment of it with you. Yes, I know I've hurt you now, and I meant to hurt you--not because you hurt me, not because of all you wrote me in your letter, but because I want to tell you all I feel about--about this new life you figure to mix up with. Frank, your own honest notions are just too big for words. They're like you--all of them. But how--how are you going to carry them out? Say, I'll tell you. Maybe I'm just seeing things as they happen, and not as folks guess they're going to figger out. You're going to help fix things right by tying yourself to the ranks of labor, so as to fight capital. That's how you're going to bring about brotherly and sisterly love in the world! By fighting! Say, you said you were going to enlist in the army. You have. And it's a fighting army, facing all the horrors of a war far more dreadful than the life-and-death struggle of nations. Do you need me to tell you of the wretched, self-seeking leaders of the working men? The men who lead them like a flock of silly sheep so they may personally prosper and feed on them? Do you need me to tell you, what every paper in the world tells you, of the awful sufferings the helpless women and kiddies go through? All just because these grabbing leaders, yearning for publicity and power, order their men-folk to stop work, and resort to violence for a few odd cents more pay, or because some wretched scallawag, who richly deserves it, no doubt, has fallen under the rules of his employers. That's not your Socialism, if I know you. Oh, this horrible, horrible bitterness and hatred going on everywhere about us.

Why should it be? You ask that, too, and you get right up against one little fact of life--the power of money--and guess that's the root of it. It isn't! It isn't! I tell you there's just one cause. It's selfishness. It's the selfishness of one cla.s.s just as sure as it's the selfishness of another. And they bring all sorts of arguments about principle to prop themselves up on. There's no principle about it. It's just self, self, self, all the time. Everybody wants something they don't honestly earn. And when they can't get it, if they think they're strong enough, they just start right out to fight for it, like a lot of savages, while those who look to them for support and comfort are left to starve, and put up with all the horrors caused by savage pa.s.sions, inflamed to frenzy by those leaders who are the only creatures to obtain worldly advantage and benefit from their disgraceful doings. Oh, Frank, it's just awful to think that you have become one of these--these--villains."

The girl's pa.s.sionate denunciation came to an end just as she halted at the foot of the great flight of steps leading up to the entrance of the Eldorado Hotel. But she waited for no comment from her silent companion. She just glanced up and pointed at the building. Then, with an almost kaleidoscopic return to her lightest, smiling manner, she announced their arrival at their destination.

"Say, Frank," she cried, with an air of absurd importance. "This is my hotel. We've a suite of elegant apartments right on the first floor.

And, dear," with a sudden tenderness, "Mrs. Hendrie--Monica--your Mon, who loves you nearly as much as I do, is just waiting right there--for you. You'll come along in?"

Frank looked up into the tenderly pleading eyes, and his last objection melted before them.

He nodded.

CHAPTER VII

THE DECISION

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 pa.s.sed safely within. Then she discreetly withdrew to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sions 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, pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.s.

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 pa.s.sed 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 hoa.r.s.ely.

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.