The Way of the Strong Part 62

"We came here, Frank, to show you all that was in the hearts of two women who--who love you," she said slowly. "Maybe we haven't done it well. I can't rightly say." Her smile was a little wistful, yet almost pathetically humorous. "It's the way with folks who try hard--isn't it?

They never just seem to get things right. But, say, it doesn't really figure any, does it? You see," she went on, "we both wanted you back.

But I needed something more than that. You told me in your--that long, long letter of yours, marriage between us was impossible. Well, say, dear, there's just one thing, and only one thing could make that so. If you don't need me then it's just--impossible. I asked you that, and you didn't tell me in words. But everything else you told me about, you just did want me."

The man made a movement as though to interrupt her, but she would not allow him to speak.

"Don't worry, dear. Guess you got all you need that way coming. I just want you to know I love you through and through, and that surely goes--just as long as I live. Meanwhile," she added, her smile gaining in confidence as her thoughts probed ahead into the distant future, "I'm going right back to home, and mother; right back to that little tumble-down shack you know, dear, and I'm going to get on with my--plowing. And later on, dear, when you just get the notion, and come along, why--I guess you'll find me waiting around for you--and I shan't be fixed up in black--and bugles. Good-bye, dear--for the present."

CHAPTER VIII

THE SHADOW OF WAR

With the pa.s.sing of summer, and the long, pleasant fall, winter's desperate night closed about the world. Now it was succeeded, at last, by the dawn of spring, bringing with it the delicate, emerald carpet of growing grain, which later would ripen to a brilliant cloth of gold.

Nor was the earth's beautiful spring raiment to be quickly discarded for its summer apparel. The keen winds yielded reluctantly to summer zephyrs, and winter's dread overcast retreated slowly before the rosy light of the ripening season.

If winter's clouds of threatening elemental storms were obstinate, so were the hovering clouds of human troubles. But, unlike the clouds of winter, the latter were growing with the advancing season, growing until the horizon hung with the threat of storm, that was ready to break even the horizon at which the ever optimistic farmer gazed.

It had been a troublous fall in the labor world, and an even more disturbed winter. The dark months of the year had proved a very hotbed for the microbe of industrial unrest, and it had propagated a hundredfold.

As spring dawned, from every corner of the world came the same story.

Strike, strike; everywhere, and in every calling, the word had gone forward--Strike! It mattered not the reason. It mattered not the worker's condition. If wages were ample, then strike for less work. If the work was insufficient, then strike for a minimum wage. In any case strike, and see the demands included recognition of labor unions, and particularly recognition of the demagogues who led them.

So the storm-clouds of industrial insurrection were fostered. They threatened, and, rapidly, in almost every direction, the flood of storm burst. Every sane, hard-thinking man asked his neighbor the reason.

Every far-sighted man, on both sides, shook his head, and pointed the approach of a hideous reckoning. Every fool looked on and laughed, and, shrugging his shoulders, swam with the tide on the side to which he belonged.

And all the time the demagogues screamed from the house-tops, and claimed the daily press. These carrion of democracy actually belonged to neither side. They did not toil in the mills, nor did they employ labor. Theirs it was to feed upon the carca.s.s of the worker, and wrest power from the hands of those who possessed it. Whatever happened, they must be winners in the game they played. Nor did it matter one iota to them who might be the sufferers by their juggling.

They possessed one marketable commodity, their powers of stirring strife. Nor were they particular to whom they sold. They belonged to a cla.s.s of their own, an unscrupulous, ambitious, self-seeking race of intelligent creatures, whose sole aim was publicity and power, which, in the end, must yield them that position and plenty which they decried in others. It mattered little to them whether they preached syndication or sauce. Their services must be paid for in the way they desired.

Vituperating from the summit of an upturned b.u.t.ter tub, or hurling invective from the cushioned benches of a nation's a.s.sembly of Legislature, it made no difference to them. Anything they undertook must be paid for, at their own market price.

These were the microbes of industrial unrest which had multiplied during the dark months of the year on hotbeds that were rich, and fat, and warm. Their paunches were heavy with the goodly supplies of sustenance which they drew from the bodies of those who, in their blind ignorance and stupidity, were powerless to resist their insidious blandishments.

Something of all this may have been in Alexander Hendrie's mind as he sat before the acc.u.mulations of work awaiting his attention on his desk in the library at Deep Willows. His hard face was shadowed, even gloomy. It was the face of a man which suggested nothing of the success that was really his. Nothing of the triumph with which the successful organizing of the wheat-growers' trust should have inspired him. All his plans had matured, all his efforts had been crowned with that success which seemed to be the hall-mark of the man. That which he set himself to do, he prided himself, he did with his might. Nor did he relinquish his grip upon it till the work was completed.

But on this particular spring morning, the hall-mark seemed somehow to have become obscured. His eyes were troubled and brooding. His work remained untouched. Even an unlighted cigar remained upon the edge of his desk, a sure sign that he had no taste for the work that lay before him.

This condition of affairs had been going on for some time. It had gradually grown worse. To the onlooker, to eyes that had no real understanding of the man, it might have suggested that the great spirit had reached the breaking point, or that some subtle, undermining disease had set in.

One, at least, of those who stood on intimate terms with this man knew that this was not so. Angus Moraine realized the growing depression in his chief, and, perhaps, feared it. But he knew its cause, or, at least, he knew something of its cause. For some reason, reasons which to the hard Scot seemed all insufficient, Hendrie had changed from the time of his discovery of the mistake he had made in the case of Frank Smith. He had heard from his employer, himself the story of that mistake, but Hendrie had only told him sufficient of it to account for his actions in obtaining the man's release.

Then there was that other, more intimate matter, the news of which had leaped like wildfire throughout the household at Deep Willows. Monica was ailing. It was obvious that she was to become a mother, and it was equally obvious that her health was suffering in an extraordinary manner. There was a doctor, a general pract.i.tioner, in residence at Deep Willows. There was also a night nurse in attendance, besides a girl companion, from one of the outlying farms over Gleber way.

These things were known by everybody, not only in the house, but in the neighborhood, and Angus understood that the combination of them all was responsible for the apparently halting movement of the mechanism which so strenuously drove the life of Alexander Hendrie. The man himself was just the same underneath it all, but, for the moment, the clouds were depressing him, and it would require his own great fighting spirit to disperse them.

Angus was in good humor as he entered the library just before noon. He believed he possessed the necessary tonic for his employer's case, and intended to administer it in his own ruthless fashion.

Hendrie glanced across at the door as he heard it open. Then, when he saw who his visitor was, he sighed like a man awakening from an unpleasant dream. He picked up his cigar and lit it, and Angus watched the action with approval. He always preferred to deal with Hendrie when that individual had a cigar thrust at an aggressive angle in the corner of his mouth.

"Well? Anything to report?" Hendrie demanded. The effort of pulling himself together left him alert. The last shadow had, for the moment, pa.s.sed out of his cold gray eyes.

"Why, yes."

Angus drew up a chair and laid a sheaf of papers beside him. He saw the crowded state of the desk, but gave no sign of the regret which the sight inspired.

"Guess there's a h.e.l.l of a lot of trouble coming if you persist in this colored labor racket," he said quickly. "I don't mind telling you I hate n.i.g.g.e.rs myself, hate 'em to death. But that's not the trouble. As I've warned you before, ever since that blamed Agricultural Labor Society racket started, the beginning of last year, we've had the country flooded with what I call 'east-side orators.' Talk? Gee! They'd talk h.e.l.l cold. They've got the ear of every white hobo that prides himself he knows the north end of a plow from the south, and they've filled them full of this black labor racket."

Hendrie was lifted out of himself. The cold light of his eyes flashed into a wintry smile.

"Ah," he said. "Strike talk."

"Sure. And I guess it's going to be big. I'd say there's a big head behind it all--too."

Hendrie nodded.

"They've been gathering funds all the year. Now they guess they're ready--like everybody else--to get their teeth into the cake they want to eat. Go ahead."

Angus took a cigar from the box Hendrie held out, and bit the end off.

"It's well enough for you. You ain't up against all the racket. I am.

We've got plenty labor around here without darnation n.i.g.g.e.rs. Why not quit 'em?"

Hendrie shook his head, and the other went on.

"Anyway, yesterday, Sunday, I was around, and I ran into a perfect hallelujah chorus meeting, going on right down, way out on the river bank. Guess they didn't reckon I'd smell 'em out. There were five hundred white men at that meeting, and they were listening to a feller talking from the stump of a tree. It was the n.i.g.g.e.r racket. That, and strike for more wages, and that sort of truck. He was telling 'em that there was just one time to strike for farm folks. That was harvest.

Said it would hurt owners more to see their crops ruined in the ear than to quit seeding. Well, I got good and mad, and I'd got my gun with me. So I walked right up to that feller, and asked him what in h.e.l.l he was doing on your land. He'd got five hundred mossbacks with him, and he felt good. Guessed he could bluff me plenty. He got terribly gay for a while, till I got busy. You see, with five hundred around it was up to me to show some nerve. The moment he started I whipped out my gun. I gave him two minutes to get down and light out. He wasted most of them, and I had to give him two that shaved the seat of his pants, one for each minute. Then he hopped it, and the five hundred mossbacks laffed 'emselves sick. However, I told 'em they were disturbing the Sunday nap of the fish in the river, and they, too, scattered. But it don't help, Mr. Hendrie. It means a big piece of trouble coming. Those fellers'll gather round again like flies, and they'll suck in the treacle that flows from the lips of some other flannel mouth. Specially if it's 'black' treacle."

Hendrie's smile had become fixed. And the set of it left his eyes snapping.

"See here, Angus," he cried, with some vehemence. "I don't hold a brief for n.i.g.g.e.rs as n.i.g.g.e.rs. But I hold a brief for them as human creatures."

He swung himself round on his chair and rested his elbow, supporting his head upon his hand, upon the overflowing desk. His cigar a.s.sumed a still more aggressive pose in the corner of his mouth.

"The world's just gone crazy on equality. That is, the folk who've got least of its goods. That's all right. I'd feel that way myself--if I hadn't got. Well, here's an outfit of white folk who reckon to make me pay, and pay good. Not me only, but all who own stuff. Well, if they can make me pay--guess I'll just have to pay. But anyway, I've a right to demand the equality they're shouting for. Guess a n.i.g.g.e.r hasn't a dog's place among white folks. I don't care a darn. But a n.i.g.g.e.r can do my work, and I can handle him. And if the whole white race of mossbacks don't like it they can go plumb--to--h.e.l.l. That's the way I feel.

That's the way all this strike racket that's going on makes me feel. If they want fight they can get all they need. Maybe they reckon they can break me all up with their brawn and muscle, and by quitting, and refusing to take my pay. I just tell you they can't. Let 'em build up their giant muscle, and get going good. I'll fight 'em--but I'll fight 'em with the wits that have put me where I am, and--I'll beat 'em."

Angus Moraine's sour face and somber eyes lit. He knew his man, and he liked to hear him talk fight. But he was curious to know something of that which he knew still remained to be told.

"This is the first year of the trust operations," he said shrewdly.

"What if the crop is left to rot on the ground? This place, here, is now just a fraction of the whole combine, as I understand it."

Hendrie nodded. Amus.e.m.e.nt was added to the light of battle in his eyes.

"Sure," he said.

Then he reached across the desk and picked up a large bundle of papers.