McIVER'S OPPORTUNITY
When the politician stopped at the cigar stand late that afternoon for
a box of the kind he gave his admirers, the philosopher, scratching the
revenue label, remarked, "I see by the papers that McIver is still
a-stayin'."
"Humph!" grunted the politician with careful diplomacy.
The bank clerk who was particular about his pipe tobacco chimed in,
"McIver is a stayer all right when it comes to that."
"Natural born fighter, sir," offered the politician tentatively.
"Game sport, McIver is," agreed the undertaker, taking the place at the
show case vacated by the departing bank clerk.
The philosopher, handing out the newcomer's favorite smoke, echoed his
customer's admiration. "You bet he's a game sport." He punched the cash
register with vigor. "Don't give a hang what it costs the other
fellow."
The undertaker laughed.
"I remember one time," said the philosopher, "McIver and a bunch was
goin' fishin' up the river. They stopped here early in the morning and
while they was gettin' their smokes the judge--who's always handin' out
some sort of poetry stuff, you know--he says: 'Well, Jim, we're goin'
to have a fine day anyway. No matter whether we catch anything or not
it will be worth the trip just to get out into the country.' Mac, he
looked at the judge a minute as if he wanted to bite him--you know what
I mean--then he says in that growlin' voice of his, 'That may do for
you all right, judge, but I'm here to tell you that when _I_ go fishin'
_I go for fish_.'"
The cigar-store philosopher's story accurately described the dominant
trait in the factory man's character. To him business was a sport, a
game, a contest of absorbing interest. He entered into it with all the
zest and strength of his virile manhood. Mind and body, it absorbed
him. And yet, he knew nothing of that true sportsman's passion which
plays the game for the joy of the game itself. McIver played to win;
not for the sake of winning, but for the value of the winnings. Methods
were good or bad only as they won or lost. He was incapable of
experiencing those larger triumphs which come only in defeat. The
Interpreter's philosophy of the "oneness of all" was to McIver the
fanciful theory of an impracticable dreamer, who, too feeble to take a
man's part in life, contented himself by formulating creeds of weakness
that befitted his state. Men were the pieces with which he played his
game--they were of varied values, certainly, as are the pieces on a
chess table, but they were pieces on the chess table and nothing more.
All of which does not mean that Jim McIver was cruel or unkind. Indeed,
he was genuinely and generously interested in many worthy charities,
and many a man had appealed to him, and not in vain, for help. But to
have permitted these humanitarian instincts to influence his play in
the game of business would have been, to his mind, evidence of a
weakness that was contemptible. The human element, he held, must, of
necessity, be sternly disregarded if one would win.
While his fellow townsmen were discussing him at the cigar stand, and
men everywhere in Millsburgh were commenting on his determination to
break the strikers to his will at any cost, McIver, at his office, was
concluding a conference with a little company of his fellow employers.
It was nearly dark when the conference finally ended and the men went
their several ways. McIver, with some work of special importance
waiting his attention, telephoned that he would not be home for dinner.
He would finish what he had to do and would dine at the club later in
the evening.
The big factory inside the high, board fence was silent. The night came
on. Save for the armed men who guarded the place, the owner was alone.
Absorbed in his consideration of the business before him, the man was
oblivious of everything but his game. An hour went by. He forgot that
he had had no dinner. Another hour--and another.
He was interrupted at last by the entrance of a guard.
"Well, what do you want?" he said, shortly, when the man stood before
him.
"There's a woman outside, sir. She insists that she must see you."
"A woman!"
"Yes, sir."
"Who is she?"
"I don't know."
"Well, what does she look like?"
"I couldn't see her face, she's got a veil on."
The factory owner considered. How did any one outside of his home know
that he was in his office at that hour? These times were dangerous.
"Vodell is likely to try anything," he said, aloud. "Better send her
about her business."
"I tried to," the guard returned, "but she won't go--says she is a
friend of yours and has got to see you to-night."
"A friend! Huh! How did she get here?"
"In a taxi, and the taxi beat it as soon as she got out."
Again McIver considered. Then his heavy jaw set, and he growled, "All
right, bring her in--a couple of you--and see that you stand by while
she is here. If this is a Vodell trick of some sort, I'll beat him to
it."
Helen, escorted by two burly guards, entered the office.
McIver sprang to his feet with an exclamation of amazement, and his
tender concern was unfeigned and very comforting to the young woman
after the harrowing experience through which she had just passed.
Sending the guards back to their posts, he listened gravely while she
told him where she had been and what she had seen.
"But, Helen," he cried, when she had finished, "it was sheer madness
for you to be alone in the Flats like that--at Whaley's place and in
the night, too! Good heavens, girl, don't you realize what a risk you
were taking?"
"I had to go, Jim," she returned.
"You had to go?" he repeated. "Why?"
"I had to see for myself if--if things were as bad as the Interpreter
said. Oh, can't you understand, Jim, I could not believe it--it all
seemed so impossible. Don't you see that I had to know for sure?"
"I see that some one ought to break that meddlesome old basket maker's
head as well as his legs," growled McIver indignantly. "The idea of
sending you, Adam Ward's daughter, of all people, alone into that nest
of murdering anarchists."
"But the Interpreter didn't send me, Jim," she protested. "He did not
even know that I was going. No one knew."
"I understand all that," said McIver. "The Interpreter didn't send
you--oh, no--he simply made you think that you ought to go. That's the
way the tricky old scoundrel does everything, from what I am told."
She looked at him steadily. "Do you think, Jim, the Interpreter's way
is such a bad way to get people to do things?"
"Forgive me," he begged humbly, "but it makes me wild to think what
might have happened to you. It's all right now, though. I'll take you
home, and in the future you can turn such work over to the regular
charity organizations." He was crossing the room for his hat and
overcoat. "Jove! I can't believe yet that you have actually been in
such a mess and all by your lonesome, too."
She was about to speak when he stopped, and, as if struck by a sudden
thought, said, quickly, "But Helen, you haven't told me--how did you
know I was here?"
She explained hurriedly, "The doctor sent a taxi for me and I
telephoned your house from a drug store. Your man told me you expected
to be late at the office and would dine at the club. I phoned the club
and when I learned that you were not there I came straight on. I--I had
to see you to-night, Jim. And I was afraid if I phoned you here at the
office you wouldn't let me come."
McIver evidently saw from her manner that there was still something in
the amazing situation that they had not yet touched upon. Coming back
to his desk, he said, "I don't think I understand, Helen. Why were you
in such a hurry to see me? Besides, don't you know that I would have
gone to you, at once, anywhere?"
"I know, Jim," she returned, slowly, as one approaching a difficult
subject, "but I couldn't tell you what I had seen. I couldn't talk to
you about these things at home."
"I understand," he said, gently, "and I am glad that you wanted to come
to me. But you are tired and nervous and all unstrung, now. Let me take
you home and to-morrow we will talk things over."
As if he had not spoken, she said, steadily, "I wanted to tell you
about the terrible, terrible condition of those poor people, Jim. I
thought you ought to know about them exactly as they are and not in a
vague, indefinite way as I knew about them before I went to see for
myself."
The man moved uneasily. "I do know about the condition of these people,
Helen. It is exactly what I expected would happen."
She was listening carefully. "You expected them to--to be hungry and
cold and sick like that, Jim?"
"Such conditions are always a part of every strike like this," he
returned. "There is nothing unusual about it, and it is the only thing
that will ever drive these cattle back to their work. They simply have
to be starved to it."
"But John says--"
He interrupted. "Please, Helen--I know all about what John says. I know
where he gets it, too--he gets it from the Interpreter who gave you
this crazy notion of going alone into the Flats to investigate
personally. And John's ideas are just about as practical."
"But the mothers and children, Jim?"
"The men can go back to work whenever they are ready," he retorted.
"At your terms, you mean?" she asked.
"My terms are the only terms that will ever open this plant again. The
unions will never dictate my business policies, if every family in
Millsburgh starves."
She waited a moment before she said, slowly, "I must be sure that I
understand, Jim--do you mean that you are actually depending upon such
pitiful conditions as I have seen to-night to give you a victory over
the strikers?"
The man made a gesture of impatience. "It is the principle of the thing
that is at stake, Helen. If I yield in this instance it will be only
the beginning of a worse trouble. If the working class wins this time
there will be no end to their demands. We might as well turn all our
properties over to them at once and be done with it. This strike in
Millsburgh is only a small part of the general industrial situation.
The entire business interests of the country are involved."
Again she waited a little before answering. Then she said, sadly, "How
strange! It is hard for me to realize, Jim, that the entire business
interests of this great nation are actually dependent upon the poor
little Maggie Whaleys."
"Helen!" he protested, "you make me out a heartless brute."
"No, Jim, I know you are not that. But when you insist that what I saw
to-night--that the suffering of these poor, helpless mothers and their
children is the only thing that will enable you employers to break this
strike and save the business of the country--it--it does seem a good
deal like the Germans' war policy of frightfulness that we all
condemned so bitterly, doesn't it?"
"These things are not matters of sentiment, Helen. Jake Vodell is not
conducting his campaign by the Golden Rule."
"I know, Jim, but I could not go to Jake Vodell as I have come to
you--could I? And I could not talk to the poor, foolish strikers who
are so terribly deceived by him. Don't you suppose, Jim, that most of
the strikers think they are right?"
The man stirred uneasily. "I can't help what they think. I can consider
only the facts as they are."
"That is just what I want, Jim," she cried. "Only it seems to me that
you are leaving out some of the most important facts. I can't help
believing that if our great captains of industry and kings of finance
and teachers of economics and labor leaders would consider _all_ the
facts they could find some way to settle these differences between
employers and employees and save the industries of the country without
starving little girls and boys and their mothers."
"If I could have my way the government would settle the difficulty in a
hurry," he said, grimly.
"You mean the soldiers?"
"Yes, the government should put enough troops from the regular army in
here to drive these men back to their jobs."
"But aren't these working people just as much a part of our government
as you employers? Forgive me, Jim, but your plan sounds to me too much
like the very imperialism that our soldiers fought against in France."
"Imperialism or not!" he retorted, "the business men of this country
will never submit to the dictatorship of Jake Vodell and his kind. It
would be chaos and utter ruin. Look what they are doing in other
countries."
"Of course it would," she agreed, "but the Interpreter says that if the
business men and employers and the better class of employees like Peter
Martin would get together as--as John and Charlie Martin are--that Jake
Vodell and his kind would be powerless."
He did not answer, and she continued, "As I understand brother and the
Interpreter, this man Vodell does not represent the unions at all--he
merely uses some of the unions, wherever he can, through such men as
Sam Whaley. Isn't that so, Jim?"
"Whether it is so or not, the result is the same," he answered. "If the
unions of the laboring classes permit themselves to be used as tools by
men like Jake Vodell they must take the consequences."
He rose to his feet as one who would end an unprofitable discussion.
"Come, Helen, it is useless for you to make yourself ill over these
questions. You are worn out now. Come, you really must let me take you
home."
"I suppose I must," she answered, wearily.
He went to her. "It is wonderful for you to do what you have done
to-night, and for you to come to me like this. Helen--won't you give me
my answer--won't you--?"
She put out her hands with a little gesture of protest. "Please, Jim,
let's not talk about ourselves to-night. I--I can't."
Silently he turned away to take up his hat and coat. Silently she stood
waiting.
But when he was ready, she said, "Jim, there is just one thing more."
"What is it, Helen?"
"Tell me truly: you _could_ stop this strike, couldn't you? I mean if
you would come to some agreement with your factory men, all the others
would go back to work, too, wouldn't they?"
"Yes," he said, "I could."
She hesitated--then falteringly, "Jim, if I--if I promise to be your
wife will you--will you stop the strike? For the sake of the mothers
and children who are cold and hungry and sick, Jim--will you--will you
stop the strike?"
For a long minute, Jim McIver could not answer. He wanted this woman as
a man of his strength wants the woman he has chosen. At the beginning
of their acquaintance his interest in Helen had been largely stimulated
by the business possibilities of a combination of his factory and Adam
Ward's Mill. But as their friendship had grown he had come to love her
sincerely, and the more material consideration of their union had faded
into the background. Men like McIver, who are capable of playing their
games of business with such intensity and passion, are capable of great
and enduring love. They are capable, too, of great sacrifices to
principle. As he considered her words and grasped the full force of her
question his face went white and his nerves were tense with the
emotional strain.
At last he said, gently, "Helen, dear, I love you. I want you for my
wife. I want you more than I ever wanted anything. Nothing in the world
is of any value to me compared with your love. But, dear girl, don't
you see that I can't take you like this? You cannot sell yourself to
me--even for such a price. I cannot buy you." He turned away.
"Forgive me, Jim," she cried. "I did not realize what I was saying.
I--I was thinking of little Maggie--I--I know you would not do what you
are doing if you did not think you were right. Take me home now,
please, Jim."
* * * * *
Silently they went out to his automobile. Tenderly he helped her into
the car and tucked the robe about her. The guards swung open the big
gates, and they swept away into the night. Past the big Mill and the
Flats, through the silent business district and up the hill they glided
swiftly--steadily. And no word passed between them.
They were nearing the gate to the Ward estate when Helen suddenly
grasped her companion's arm with a low exclamation.
At the same moment McIver instinctively checked the speed of his car.
They had both seen the shadowy form of a man walking slowly past the
entrance to Helen's home.
To Helen, there was something strangely familiar in the dim outlines of
the moving figure. As they drove slowly on, passing the man who was now
in the deeper shadows of the trees and bushes which, at this spot grew
close to the fence, she turned her head, keeping her eyes upon him.
Suddenly a flash of light stabbed the darkness. A shot rang out. And
another.
Helen saw the man she was watching fall.
With a cry, she started from her seat; and before McIver, who had
involuntarily stopped the car, could check her, she had leaped from her
place beside him and was running toward the fallen man.
With a shout "Helen!" McIver followed.
As she knelt beside the form on the ground McIver put his hand on her
shoulder. "Helen," he said, sharply, as if to bring her to her senses,
"you must not--here, let me--"
Without moving from her position she turned her face up to him. "Don't
you understand, Jim? It is Captain Charlie."
Two watchmen on the Ward estate, who had heard the shots, came running
up.
McIver tried to insist that Helen go with him in his roadster to the
house for help and a larger car, but she refused.
When he returned with John, the chauffeur and one of the big Ward
machines, after telephoning the police and the doctor, Helen was
kneeling over the wounded man just as he had left her.
She did not raise her head when they stood beside her and seemed
unconscious of their presence. But when John lifted her up and she
heard her brother's voice, she cried out and clung to him like a
frightened child.
The doctor arrived just as they were carrying Captain Charlie into the
room to which Mrs. Ward herself led them. The police came a moment
later.
While the physician, with John's assistance, was caring for his
patient, McIver gave the officers what information he could and went
with them to the scene of the shooting.
He returned to the house after the officers had completed their
examination of the spot and the immediate vicinity just in time to meet
John, who was going out. Helen and her mother were with the doctor at
the bedside of the assassin's victim.
McIver wondered at the anguish in John Ward's face. But Captain
Charlie's comrade only asked, steadily, "Did the police find anything,
Jim?"
"Not a thing," McIver answered. "What does the doctor say, John?"
John turned away as if to hide his emotion and for a moment did not
answer. Then he spoke those words so familiar to the men of Flanders'
fields, "Charlie is going West, Jim. I must bring his father and
sister. Would you mind waiting here until I return? Something might
develop, you know."
"Certainly, I will stay, John--anything that I can do--command me,
won't you?"
"Thank you, Jim--I'll not be long."
* * * * *
While he waited there alone, Jim McIver's mind went back over the
strange incidents of the evening: Helen's visit to the Whaley home and
her coming to him. Swiftly he reviewed their conversation. What was it
that had so awakened Helen's deep concern for the laboring class? He
had before noticed her unusual interest in the strike and in the
general industrial situation--but to-night--he had never dreamed that
she would go so far. Why had she continued to refuse an answer to his
pleading? What was Charlie Martin doing in that neighborhood at that
hour? How had Helen recognized him so quickly and surely in the
darkness? The man, as these and many other unanswerable questions
crowded upon him, felt a strange foreboding. Mighty forces beyond his
understanding seemed stirring about him. As one feels the gathering of
a storm in the night, he felt the mysterious movements of elements
beyond his control.
He was disturbed suddenly by the opening of an outer door behind him.
Turning quickly, he faced Adam Ward.
Before McIver could speak, the Mill owner motioned him to be silent.
Wondering, McIver obeyed and watched with amazement as the master of
that house closed the door with cautious care and stole softly toward
him. To his family Adam Ward's manner would not have appeared so
strange, but McIver had never seen the man under one of his attacks of
nervous excitement.
"I'm glad you are here, Jim," Adam said, in a shaking whisper. "You
understand these things. John is a fool--he don't believe when I tell
him they are after us. But you know what to do. You have the right idea
about handling these unions. Kill the leaders; and if the men won't
work, turn the soldiers loose on them. You said the right thing, 'Drive
them to their jobs with bayonets.' Pete Martin's boy was one of them,
and he got what was coming to him to-night. And John and Helen brought
him right here into my house. They've got him upstairs there now. They
think I'll stand for it, but you'll see--I'll show them! What was he
hanging around my place for in the night like this? I know what he was
after. But he got what he wasn't looking for this time and Pete will
get his too, if he--"
"Father!"
Unnoticed, Helen had come into the room behind them. In pacing the open
door she had seen her father and had realized instantly his condition.
But the little she had heard him say was not at all unusual to her, and
she attached no special importance to his words.
Adam Ward was like a child, abashed in her presence.
She looked at McIver appealingly. "Father is excited and nervous, Jim.
He is not at all well, you know."
McIver spoke with gentle authority, "If you will permit me, I will go
with him to his room for a little quiet talk. And then, perhaps, he can
sleep. What do you say, Mr. Ward?"
"Yes--yes," agreed Adam, hurriedly.
Helen looked her gratitude and McIver led the Mill owner away.
When they were in Adam's own apartment and the door was shut McIver's
manner changed with startling abruptness. With all the masterful power
of his strong-willed nature he faced his trembling host, and his heavy
voice was charged with the force of his dominating personality.
"Listen to me, Adam Ward. You must stop this crazy nonsense. If you act
and talk like this the police will have the handcuffs on you before you
know where you are."
Adam cringed before him. "Jim--I--I--do they think that I--"
"Shut up!" growled McIver. "I don't want to hear another word. I have
heard too much now. Charlie Martin stays right here in this house and
your family will give him every attention. His father and sister will
be here, too, and you'll not open your mouth against them. Do you
understand?"
"Yes--yes," whispered the now thoroughly frightened Adam.
"Don't you dare even to speak to Mrs. Ward or John or Helen as you have
to me. And for God's sake pull yourself together and remember--you
don't know any more than the rest of us about this business--you were
in your room when you heard the shots."
"Yes, of course, Jim--but I--I--"
"Shut up! You are not to talk, I tell you--even to me."
Adam Ward whimpered like a child.
For another moment McIver glared at him; then, "Don't forget that I saw
this affair and that I went over the ground with the police. I'm going
back downstairs now. You go to bed where you belong and stay there."
He turned abruptly and left the room.
But as he went down the stairway McIver drew his handkerchief from his
pocket and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
"What in God's name," he asked himself, "did Adam Ward's excited fears
mean? What terrible thing gave birth to his mad words? What awful
pattern was this that the unseen forces were weaving? And what part was
he, with his love for Helen, destined to fill in it all?" That his life
was being somehow woven into the design he felt certain--but how and to
what end? And again the man in all his strength felt that dread
foreboding.
* * * * *
When Peter Martin and his daughter arrived with John at the big house
on the hill, Mrs. Ward met them at the door.
The old workman betrayed no consciousness of the distance the years of
Adam Ward's material prosperity had placed between these two families
that in the old-house days had lived in such intimacy.
Mary hesitated. It must have been that to the girl, who saw it between
herself and the happy fulfillment of her womanhood, the distance seemed
even greater than it actually was.
But her hesitation was only for an instant. One full look into the
gentle face that was so marked by the years of uncomplaining
disappointment and patient unhappiness and Mary knew that in the heart
of John Ward's mother the separation had brought no change. In the arms
of her own mother's dearest friend the young woman found, even as a
child, the love she needed to sustain her in that hour.
When they entered the room where Captain Charlie lay unconscious, Helen
rose from her watch beside the bed and held out her hands to her
girlhood playmate. And in her gesture there was a full surrender--a
plea for pardon. Humbly she offered--lovingly she invited--while she
held her place beside the man who was slowly passing into that shadow
where all class forms are lost, as if she claimed the right before a
court higher than the petty courts of human customs. No word was
spoken--no word was needed. The daughter of Peter Martin and the
daughter of Adam Ward knew that the bond of their sisterhood was
sealed.
In that wretched home in the Flats, little Maggie Whaley smiled in her
sleep as she dreamed of her princess lady.
The armed guards at their stations around McIver's dark and silent
factory kept their watch.
The Mill, under the cloud of smoke, sang the deep-voiced song of its
industry as the night shift carried on.
In the room back of the pool hall, Jake Vodell whispered with two of
his disciples.
In the window of the Interpreter's hut on the cliff a lamp gleamed
starlike above the darkness below.