The Way of the Strong Part 64

Hendrie looked into the girl's earnest face. Then he looked away. A dozen conflicting emotions were stirring within him.

"I can't say right now, child," he replied, after a pause. Then he looked up, and Phyllis read a definite resolve in his hard gray eyes.

"You best write him," he went on. "Write him to-day. Tell him how Monica is. Tell him all you like, but leave me out. Maybe I _can_ do something. Guess there's going to be a big fight with labor, and we're going to be in it. Maybe the thought of it makes me feel good. It's about the only thing can make me feel good--now. But I wish--your Frank was on our side," he went on, almost to himself. "I'd say he'd be a good fighter. Yes, I'd say he was that. Must be. It's good to fight, too, when troubles get around. It's good--sure."

"Must men always--fight?" asked Phyllis quietly.

The man stared.

"Why, yes!" he said in astonishment.

"Frank doesn't think so."

The millionaire shook his head deliberately.

"Say," he cried confidently, "your Frank will fight when the time comes. And--he'll fight--big."

"What makes you say--that?"

The girl's question came sharply, and, in a moment, a great light leaped into Alexander Hendrie's eyes.

"What makes me say--that?" he cried. Then he shrugged, and moved to pa.s.s her on the stairs on the way to his wife's room. "I know," he said, confidently. "That's all."

CHAPTER IX

CAPITAL AND LABOR

It was a large hall on the outskirts of Calford, in one of the poorer neighborhoods. It was packed almost to suffocation by an audience of stern-faced, eager humanity. There were the ample figures of uniformed train conductors; there were the thin, hard-muscled freighters. There were men from the locomotive departments, with traces of coal-dust about their eyes, of which, even in their leisure, they never seem quite able to rid themselves.

There were colored Pullman servants, and waiters, and cooks from the dining-cars. There were plate-layers in their blue overalls, and machinists from the round-house. So, too, was the depot department represented. It was a great gathering of all grades of railroad workers on the Calford section of the system.

The benches were crowded right up to the narrow platform, upon which a group of four men, evidently workers like the audience, were seated behind a tall youth, with thick, fair hair and enormous breadth of shoulder. He was standing out alone. He was talking rapidly in a deep, resonant voice which carried distinctly to the remotest corners of the building. His face was flushed, and his blue eyes were alight with earnestness for the subject of his address.

Point after point he was striving to drive home by the sheer force of his own convictions. There was no display about him. There was none of the pathetic humor, or the unconsciously humorous pathos of the ordinary demagogue. He was preaching the gospel of equality, as he saw it, judiciously tempered to meet with the requirements of the society to which his audience belonged, and which he, for the moment, represented.

He talked well. Extremely well. And his audience listened. Frequently his sentences were punctuated by approving "hear, hears," in many directions. But there was none of that explosive approval which is as nectar to the ordinary demagogue.

To one man, sitting in the back of the hall, a man nearly as large as the speaker, though older, enveloped in a rough suit, which, while matching the tone of the rest of the audience, sat ill upon him, it seemed that the speaker lacked something with which to carry his audience.

He listened attentively, he followed every word, seeking to discover the nature of this lack. It was not easy to detect. Yet he was sure of its existence. Nor was it till the evening was half spent that he quietly registered the fact that this man missed one great essential to win his way to the hearts of these people. _He was not one of them._ He only understood their lives through immature observation. He had never lived their life.

Somehow the conviction left him satisfied, and he settled himself more comfortably upon his uncomfortable bench.

Later on he became aware of a sense of restlessness running through the hall. There was a definite clearing of throats among the audience.

There was a good deal of shifting of positions. He even observed the inclination of heads toward each other, which told him that whispered conversations were going on about him. To him this meant a waning interest in the speaker. Doubt was no longer in his mind, but now his satisfaction became touched with regret.

Now he knew this man was not brutal enough. He was not coa.r.s.e enough.

He did not know the hearts of these men sufficiently. His mind was far too ideal, and his talk further lacked in its appeal to self.

To hold these men he must come down to definite promises of obtaining for them, and bestowing upon them, the fulfilment of desires they were incapable of satisfying for themselves. It was the old story of satisfied men made dissatisfied, and now they required the promise of satisfaction for appet.i.tes suddenly rendered sharp-set.

The man in the rough clothes, which sat so ill upon him, knew that these men would leave that hall feeling they had wasted a leisure that might have been given up to their own particular pastimes.

The meeting lasted over two hours, but the man at the back of the hall left long before its close. He had heard all he wanted to hear, and felt it was sufficient for his purpose.

He drove back to his hotel in a handsome automobile, in which his clothes looked still more out of place. This was quickly remedied, however, and, when once more he emerged from the building, he was clad as befitted the sixty-horsepower vehicle which he re-entered.

Frank had returned to his room at the Algonquin Hotel. He was tired, and a shadow of dissatisfaction clouded his blue eyes as he scanned the bundle of ma.n.u.script lying in his lap.

He was going over his speech, the speech he had made that night to the railroad men of Calford. He knew he had not "made good," and was seeking the weak spots in the written ma.n.u.script. But he could not detect them.

It never occurred to him that his weakness lay in the fact of that ma.n.u.script. He had written his speech because he felt it was an important occasion. Austin Leyburn had impressed its importance upon him. He had written it and learned it by heart, and the result had been--failure. Of the latter he was convinced, in spite of a.s.surances to the contrary by his comrades on the platform, For the rest the significance of his failure had pa.s.sed him by.

Yes, it was no use shirking the point. He had failed. He threw the ma.n.u.script upon his dressing bureau, and abandoned himself to the unpleasant reflections the knowledge brought.

It was nearly midnight when a bell-boy knocked at his door. A man, he said, was waiting below, and wished to see him. He handed him a card.

Frank took it and glanced at it indifferently. Then his indifference pa.s.sed, and his eyes lit with a peculiar expression. The boy waited.

"Alexander Hendrie," he read.

"Wants to see you--important," the boy urged, as the man remained silently contemplating the strip of pasteboard.

"Important." The word repeated itself in Frank's brain again and again.

He still stared at the card. What did Alexander Hendrie want? What could he want? By what right did he dare to intrude upon him?

He was on the point of sending down a deliberate refusal to see him. He was hot with resentment, a resentment he had endeavored long ago to stifle, and had almost succeeded. But he had miscalculated the human nature in him. Now it rose up and scattered the result of his careful schooling.

"Shall I show him up?" demanded the boy impatiently.

It was on the tip of Frank's tongue to p.r.o.nounce his refusal, when, quite suddenly, he changed his mind. No, he would see him. It would be good to see him. He could at least show him he was not afraid of him.

He could let him see how he despised all that which this man counted worth while. Yes, he would see him.

"Show him up," he said coldly. The boy hurried away, pocketing, with the avidity of his kind, the trifling silver coin he was presented with.

Frank rose from his chair and began to move about the room in the restless fashion of a man disturbed more than he admits, more than, perhaps, he knows. All thought of his evening's failure had pa.s.sed from his mind. He was about to confront the man who had dishonestly sent him to a convict's cell, and a deadly bitterness surged through his veins.

The door opened without any warning. Frank's back was turned. His bed stood between him and his visitor when he swung round and looked into the millionaire's face.

"Well?" he demanded, with a deliberate harshness.

Every feeling of bitter antagonism was expressed in his greeting.