that he won't have to go to the hospital, or come on the county when
his poor wife is gone. It will be the best I can do for him. Poor
fellow! What a shame I did not come down last night! And his wife a
hopeless invalid and the oldest child only four years old, Mary said!"
He was surprised, as he drew near the house, to see a group of men
standing there outside and talking together earnestly. As Mr. Hardy
came up they stood aside to let him pass, but were barely civil.
"Well, Stevens," Mr. Hardy inquired of one of the men, recognising him
as one of the employés in the casting room, "how is Scoville this
morning?"
"Dead!"
Mr. Hardy reeled as if struck in the breast with a heavy blow.
"Dead, did you say?"
"He died about an hour ago," said one of the other men. "The surgeon
was late in getting around, and after the amputation it was ascertained
that Scoville had received severe internal injuries."
"Was he conscious?" Mr. Hardy asked the question mechanically, but all
the while his mind was in a whirl of remorse.
"Yes; up to the last moment."
Mr. Hardy went to the door and knocked. A woman, one of the
neighbours, opened it and he went in. The sight stunned him. The dead
man had been removed to a rear room, but his wife lay upon the very
same ragged lounge Mr. Hardy had seen in his dream. The surgeon was
bending over her. The room was full of neighbours.
The surgeon suddenly arose and, turning about, spoke in a quiet but
decided tone:
"Now then, good people, just go home, will you, for a while? And
suppose some of you take these children along with you. You can't do
anything more now, and your presence disturbs the woman! Ah, Mr.
Hardy," he exclaimed, seeing the manager, "you here? This is a sad
business. Come, now, ladies, I must ask you to retire."
Everybody went out except the surgeon, the poor woman's sister, and Mr.
Hardy. He drew the surgeon over to the window and inquired concerning
the particulars. Mr. Hardy had received a shock at the very first, and
he trembled violently.
"Well, you see," explained the surgeon, "Scoville was a dead man from
the minute of the accident. Nothing could have saved him When the
accident happened I was down at Bayville attending the men who were
injured in the wreck last Saturday. I telegraphed that I would come at
once. But there was a delay on the road, and I did not get here until
three o'clock in the morning. Meanwhile everything had been done that
was possible. But nothing could save the poor fellow. This shock will
kill his wife. I doubt if she lives through the day."
"What will be done with the children?" Mr. Hardy asked the question
mechanically, again feeling the need of time to think out what was best
to be done. The surgeon shrugged his shoulders. He was accustomed to
scenes of suffering and distress continually.
"Orphans' Home, I suppose," he replied laconically.
A movement and a moan from the woman called him to her side, and Mr.
Hardy, left alone, thought a moment, then stepped over to the surgeon
and asked him if he could go into the other room and see the dead man.
The surgeon nodded a surprised assent, and Mr. Hardy stepped into the
rear room and closed the door. He drew back the sheet from the face of
the man and looked down upon it. Nothing in all his experience had
ever moved him so deeply. The features of the dead man were fixed, it
seemed to him, in an expression of despair. Mr. Hardy gazed steadily
upon it for half a minute, then replacing the sheet he kneeled down by
the side of the rude bed and prayed God for mercy. "O Lord," he
groaned in his remorse, "lay not the death of this man to my charge!"
Yet, even as he prayed, he could not drive back the thought which
chased across the prayer, "I am this man's murderer. I issued the
order compelling the Sunday work. I refused a week ago to inspect the
retorts, which were declared unsafe, on the ground that it was not my
business. I compelled this man to work under the fear of losing his
place if he refused to work. I compelled him to work on the one day in
which God has commanded all men to rest. I, a Christian by profession,
a member of the church, a man of means--I put this man in deadly peril
upon a Sunday in order that more money might be made and more human
selfishness might be gratified. I did it. And this man once saved my
life. I am his murderer, and no murderer shall inherit the kingdom of
God."
So the wretched man prayed there by the side of that cold body. Yet
the world to-day goes on with men in high places who have it in their
power to change the conditions that exact Sunday labour from thousands
of weary men and drive the commerce of the world across the continent
at the cost of that priceless thing, the soul of man, in order that the
owners of railroad stock and the men who get their salaried living from
it may have more money. What! is it not true that every Sunday in this
land of Christian homes and hearts many and many a well-fed, sleek,
self-satisfied, well-dressed man, with a high salary and
well-established social position, with a luxurious home and money in
the bank, goes to church and sits down in a softly cushioned pew to
listen to the preaching of the Gospel, while within hearing distance of
the services an express train or a freight thunders by upon the road
which declares the dividends that make that man's wealth possible? On
those trains are groups of coal-begrimed human beings who never go
inside a church, who never speak the name of God or Christ except in an
oath, who lead lives that are as destitute of spiritual nourishment as
a desert of sand and rocks, and who are compelled to labour contrary to
God's everlasting law of rest, in order that man may have more to feed
his body and indulge his passions! Do not tell us it is necessary
labour. It is labour for the making of more money. It does not need
to be done. The community could dispense with it; in the sight of God
it is a wicked use of human flesh and blood and souls; and the starved
spiritual natures of these men will come up at the Judgment Day before
the men who had it in their power to say, "Not a wheel shall turn on
these tracks on Sunday, even if we don't make a little more money."
Money or souls! Which is worth more in the thought of the railroad
corporation? Let the facts make answer.
Mr. Hardy did not know just how long he kneeled there in that bare
room. At last he arose wearily and came out; his prayer had not
refreshed him. The surgeon glanced at him inquisitively, but asked no
questions. The sick woman was in a state of semi-unconsciousness. Mr.
Hardy's cook, her sister, sat listlessly and worn out by the side of
the lounge. The surgeon rapidly gave directions for the use of some
medicine, and prepared to go. Some of the neighbours called, and the
surgeon let two of the women come in. Just as the two men were going
out together--Mr. Hardy still absorbed in his great desire to do
something of importance for the mother and her children--his minister,
Mr. Jones, appeared.
He looked surprised at seeing Mr. Hardy, inquired the news of the
doctor, and at once asked if he could see the poor widow. The doctor
thought it would do no harm. Mr. Jones whispered to Mr. Hardy:
"She was a faithful member of our church, you know."
Mr. Hardy did not know it, to his shame he confessed. This sister of
his in Christ had been a member of the same church, and he had not even
known it. If she had happened to sit on the same side of the building
where he sat, he would probably have wondered who that plain-looking
person was, dressed so poorly. But she had always sat back on the
other side, being one of a few poor women who had been attracted into
the church and been comforted by Mr. Jones' simple piety and prayers.
The minister kneeled down and said a gentle word to the woman. Then as
if in reply to a low-voiced request he began a prayer of remarkable
beauty and comfort. Mr. Hardy wondered, as he listened, that he could
ever have thought this man dull in the pulpit. He sat down and sobbed
as the prayer went on, and took to himself the consolation of that
heavenly petition. When Mr. Jones rose, Mr. Hardy still sat with his
hands over his face. The surgeon was called out by someone. Then the
minister, after making arrangements for the funeral of Scoville with
the women who had come in, started to go out, when Mr. Hardy rose, and
they went away together.
"Mr. Jones," said Mr. Hardy, as they walked along, "I have an
explanation and a confession to make. I haven't time to make it now,
but I want to say that I have met God face to face within the past
twenty-four hours, and I am conscious for the first time in years of
the intensely selfish life I have lived. I need your prayers and help.
And I want to serve the church and do my duty there, as I never before
have done it. I have not supported your work as I should. I want you
to think of me this week as ready to help in anything in my power.
Will you accept my apology for my contempt of your request a week ago?
I will come into the meeting Thursday night and help in any way
possible."
Mr. Jones' eyes filled with tears. He grasped Mr. Hardy's hand and
said:
"Brother, God bless you! Let me be of service to you in any way I can."
Mr. Hardy felt a little better for the partial confession, and parted
with his minister at the next corner, going down to his office.
It was now ten o'clock, and the day seemed to him cruelly brief for the
work he had to do. He entered the office, and almost the first thing
he saw on his desk was the following letter, addressed to him, but
written in a disguised hand:
"_Mr. Hardy_,--Us in the casting room don't need no looking after but
maybe the next pot of hot iron that explodes will be next the offis if
you thinks we have bodies but no sols some morning you will wake up
beleving another thing. We ain't so easy led as sum folks supposes.
Better look to house and employ spesul patrol; if you do we will blak
his face for him."
There was no signature to this threatening scrawl, which was purposely
misspelled and ungrammatically composed. Mr. Hardy had received
threats before, and paid little attention to them. He prided himself
on his steady nerves, and his contempt of all such methods used to
scare him. Only a coward, he reasoned, would ever write an anonymous
letter of such a character. Still, this morning he felt disturbed.
His peculiar circumstances made the whole situation take on a more
vivid colouring. Besides all that, he could not escape the conviction
that he was in a certain sense responsible for the accident in the
casting room. It was not his particular business to inspect machinery.
But his attention had been called to it, and he felt now as if he had
been criminally careless in not making the inspection in the absence of
the regular officer. An investigation of the accident would free Mr.
Hardy from legal responsibility. But in the sight of God he felt that
he was morally guilty. At this moment Mr. Burns came in. He looked
sullen, and spoke in a low tone:
"Only half the men are back this morning, sir. Scoville's death and
the injuries to the others have had a bad effect on the men."
Mr. Hardy crumpled the letter nervously in his hand.
"Mr. Burns, I would like to apologise for my neglect of the injured
men. Who are they, and how badly are they hurt?"
Burns looked surprised, but made answer, describing briefly the
accidents. Mr. Hardy listened intently with bowed head. At last he
looked up and said abruptly:
"Come into the casting room."
They went out of the office, passed through the repairing shops, and
entered the foundry department. Even on that bright winter morning,
with the air outside so clear and cool, the atmosphere in this place
was murky and close. The forges in the blacksmith room at the farther
end glowed through the smoke and dust like smouldering piles of rubbish
dumped here and there by chance upon some desolate moor and stirred by
ill-omened demons of the nether world. Mr. Hardy shuddered as he
thought of standing in such an atmosphere all day to work at severe
muscular toil. He recalled with a sharp vividness a request made only
two months before for dust fans, which had proved successful in other
shops, and which would remove a large part of the heavy, coal-laden
air, supplying fresh air in its place. The company had refused the
request, and had even said, through one of its officers, that when the
men wore out the company could easily get more.
Mr. Hardy and the foreman paused at the entrance to the casting room,
where the men had been injured the day before. A few men were working
sullenly. Mr. Hardy asked the foreman to call the men together near
the other end of the room; he wanted to say something to them. He
walked over there while the foreman spoke to the men. They dropped
their tools and came over to where Mr. Hardy was standing. They were
mostly Scandinavians and Germans, with a sprinkling of Irish and
Americans. Mr. Hardy looked at them thoughtfully. They were a
hard-looking crowd. Then he said very slowly and distinctly:
"You may quit work until after Scoville's funeral. The machinery here
needs overhauling."
The men stood impassive for a moment. Finally a big Dane stepped up
and said:
"We be no minded to quit work these times. We no can afford it. Give
us work in some other place."
Mr. Hardy looked at him and replied quietly:
"The wages will go on just the same while you are out."
There was a perceptible stir among the men. They looked confused and
incredulous. Mr. Hardy still looked at them thoughtfully.
Finally the big Dane stepped forward again and said, speaking more
respectfully than he did at first:
"Mr. Hardy, we be thinking maybe you would like to help towards him the
family of the dead and others as be hurt. I been 'pointed to take up
purse for poor fellows injured. We all take hand in't. My brother be
one lose his two eyes."
A tear actually rolled down the grimy cheek of the big fellow and
dropped into the coal-dust at his feet. Mr. Hardy realised that he was
looking at a brother man. He choked down a sob, and, putting his hand
in his pocket, pulled out all the change he had and poured it into the
Dane's hand. Then, seeing that it was only four or five dollars, he
pulled out his purse and emptied that of its bills, while Burns, the
foreman, and all the men looked on in stupefied wonder.
"No, no thanks! I'll do something more."
Mr. Hardy walked away feeling as if the ground were heaving under him.
What was all his money compared with that life which had been
sacrificed in that gas-poisoned sepulchre! He could not banish from
his mind the picture of that face as it looked to him when he drew back
the sheet and looked at it.
Mr. Hardy hurried back to the office through the yard, and sat down at
the well-worn desk. The mail had come in, and half a dozen letters lay
there. He looked at them and shuddered. What did it all amount to,
this grind of business, when the heartache of the world called for so
much sympathy! Then ever him came the sense of his obligations to his
family; Clara's need of a father's help; George going to the bad; Alice
in need of sympathy; his wife weeping even now at home; the church and
Sunday School where he had been of so little use; the family of
Scoville to be provided for; the other injured men to be visited;
improvements for the welfare of the men in the shops to be looked
after; the routine of his business--all these things crowded in upon
him, and still he saw the face and heard the voice of Eternity: "Seven
days more to live!"
He sank into a reverie for a moment. He was roused by the sounding of
the noon whistle. What, noon already? So swiftly had the time gone!
He turned to his desk bewildered and picked up his letters, glanced
over them hurriedly, and gave directions for the answers of some of
them to his impatient clerk, who had been wondering at his employer's
strange behaviour this morning. Among the letters was one which made
his cheek burn with self-reproach. It was an invitation to a club
dinner to be given that evening in honour of some visiting railroad
president.
It was just such an occasion as he had enjoyed very many times before,
and the recollection brought to mind the number of times he had gone
away from his own home and left his wife sitting drearily by the fire.
How could he have done it! He tossed the gilded invitation fiercely
into the waste basket, and, rising, walked his room thinking, thinking.
He had so much to do and so little time to do it in! He thought thus a
moment, then went out and walked rapidly over to the hotel where he was
in the habit of getting lunch when he did not go home. He ate a little
hurriedly, and then hastened out.
As he was going out upon the sidewalk, two young men came in and
jostled against him. They were smoking and talking in a loud tone.
Mr. Hardy caught the sound of his own name. He looked at the speaker,
and it was the face of the young man he had seen in his dream, the one
who had insulted George and struck him afterwards. For a moment Mr.
Hardy was tempted to confront the youth and inquire into his son's
habits.
"No," he said to himself after a pause; "I will have a good talk with
George himself. That will be the best."
He hurried back to the office and arranged some necessary work for his
clerk, took a walk through the other office, then went to the telephone
and called up the superintendent of the Sunday School, who was a
bookkeeper in a clothing house. He felt an intense desire to arrange
for an interview with him as soon as possible. Word came back from the
house that the superintendent had been called out of town by serious
illness in his old home, and would not be back until Saturday. Mr.
Hardy felt a disappointment more keen than the occasion seemed to
warrant. He was conscious that the time was very brief. He had fully
made up his mind that so far as in him lay he would redeem his selfish
past and make a week such as few men ever made. He was just beginning
to realise that circumstances are not always in our control. We are
all obliged to wait for time to do some things. We cannot redeem seven
years of selfishness with seven days of self-denial. The death of
Scoville revealed to Mr. Hardy his powerlessness in the face of certain
possibilities. He now feared that the superintendent would fail to
return in time to let him confess to him his just sorrow for his lack
of service in the school. He sat down to his desk and under that
impulse wrote a letter that expressed in part how he felt. Then he
jotted down the following items to be referred to the proper
authorities of the road:
_Item_ 1. The dust in the blacksmith shop and in the brass-polishing
rooms is largely unnecessary. The new Englefield revolving rolling
fans and elevator ought to be introduced in both departments. The cost
would be but a small item to the road, and would prolong the life and
add to the comfort of the employés. Very important.
_Item_ 2. Organised and intelligent effort should be made by all
railroad corporations to lessen Sunday work in shops and on the road.
All perishable freight should be so handled as to call for the services
of as few men on Sunday as possible, and excursion and passenger trains
should be discontinued, except in cases of unavoidable necessity.
_Item_ 3. The inspection of boilers, retorts, castings, machinery of
all kinds should be made by thoroughly competent and responsible men
who shall answer for all unnecessary accidents by swift and severe
punishment in case of loss of life or limb.
_Item_ 4. In case of injury or death to employés, if incurred through
the neglect of the company to provide safety, it should provide
financial relief for the families thus injured, or stricken by death,
and, so far as possible, arrange for their future.
_Item_ 5. Any well-organized railroad could, with profit to its
employés, have upon its staff of salaried men a corps of chaplains or
preachers, whose business it would be to look after the religious
interests of the employés.
Under this last item Mr. Hardy wrote in a footnote: "Discuss
feasibility of this with Mr. B----, influential director."
It was now three o'clock. The short winter day was fast drawing to a
close. The hum of the great engine in the machine shop was growing
very wearisome to the manager. He felt sick of its throbbing tremor
and longed to escape from it. Ordinarily he would have gone to the
club room and had a game of chess with a member, or else he would have
gone down and idled away an hour or two before supper at the Art
Museum, where he was a visitor whenever he had plenty of time and the
business of the office was not pressing. Young Wellman had succeeded
to the clerical details of the shops, and Mr. Hardy's time was
generally free after four.
He had been oppressed with the thought of the other injured men. He
must go and see them. He could not rest till he had personally visited
them. He went out and easily ascertained where the men lived. Never
before did the contrast between the dull, uninteresting row of shop
tenements and his own elegant home rise up go sharply before him. In
fact, he had never given it much thought before. Now as he looked
forward to the end of the week, and knew that at its close he would be
no richer, no better able to enjoy luxuries than the dead man lying in
No. 760, he wondered vaguely but passionately how he could make use of
what he had heaped together to make the daily lives of some of these
poor men happier.
He found the man who had lost both eyes sitting up in bed and feeling
in a pathetic manner of a few blocks of wood which one of the children
in the room had brought to him. He was a big, powerful man like his
brother, the large-boned Dane, and it seemed a very pitiful thing that
he should be lying there like a baby when his muscles were as powerful
as ever. The brother was in the room with the injured man, and he said
to him:
"Olaf, Mr. Hardy come to see you."
"Hardy? Hardy?" queried the man in a peevish tone. "What do I know
him to be?"
"The manager. The one who donate so really much moneys to you."
"Ah?" with an indescribable accent. "He make me work on a Sunday. He
lose me my two eyes. A bad man, Svord! I will no have anything to do
with him."
And the old descendant of a thousand kings turned his face to the wall,
and would not even so much as make a motion towards his visitor. His
brother offered a rude apology. Mr. Hardy replied in a low tone:
"Say nothing about it. I deserve all your brother says. But for a
good reason I wish Olaf would say he forgives me."
Mr. Hardy came nearer the bed and spoke very earnestly and as if he had
known the man intimately:
"I did you a great wrong to order the work on Sunday, and in not doing
my duty concerning the inspection of the machinery. I have come to say
so, and to ask your forgiveness. I may never see you again. Will you
say to me, 'Brother, I forgive you'?"
There was a moment of absolute passivity on the part of the big fellow,
then a very large and brawny hand was extended and the blind man said:
"Yes, I forgive. We learned that in the old Bible at Svendorf."
Mr. Hardy laid his hand in the other, and his lips moved in prayer of
humble thanksgiving. What! Robert Hardy! Is this that proud man who
only the day before was so lifted up with selfishness that he could
coldly criticise his own minister for saying that people ought to be
more Christlike? Are you standing here in this poor man's house which
two days ago you would not have deigned to enter, and beseeching him as
your brother in the great family of God to forgive you for what you
have done and left undone? Yes; you have looked into the face of
Eternity; you realise now what life really means and what souls are
really worth.
He went out after a few words with the family, and saw all the other
injured men. By the time he had finished these visits it was dark, and
he eagerly turned home, exhausted with the day's experience, feeling as
if he had lived in a new world, and at the same time wondering at the
rapidity with which the time had fled.
He sighed almost contentedly to himself as he thought of the evening
with his family, and how he would enjoy it after the disquiet of the
day. His wife was there to greet him, and Alice and Clara and Bess
clung about him as he took on his coat and came into the beautiful room
where a cheerful fire was blazing. Will came downstairs as his father
came in, and in the brief interval before dinner was ready Mr. Hardy
related the scenes of the day.