When Robert went home in the winter twilight he was more miserable
than he had ever been in his life. He felt as if he had been
assaulting a beautiful alabaster wall of unreason. He felt as if
that which he could shatter at a blow had yet held him in defiance.
The idea of this girl, of whom he had thought as his future wife,
deliberately setting herself against him, galled him inexpressibly,
and in spite of himself he could not quite free his mind of
jealousy. On his way home he stopped at Lyman Risley's office, and
found, to his great satisfaction, that he was alone, writing at his
desk. Even his stenographer had gone home. He turned around when
Robert entered, and looked at him with his quizzical, yet kindly,
smile.
"Well, how are you, boy?" he said.
Robert dropped into the first chair, and sat therein, haunched up as
in a lapse of despair and weariness.
"What is the matter?" asked Risley.
"You have heard about the trouble in the factory?"
For answer Risley held up a night's paper with glaring head-lines.
"Yes, of course it is in the papers," assented Robert, wearily.
Risley stared at him in a lazily puzzled fashion. "Well," he said,
"what is it all about? Why are you so broken up about it?" Risley
laid considerable emphasis on the _you_.
"Yes," cried Robert, in a sudden stress of indignation. "You look at
it like all the rest. Why are all the laborers to be petted and
coddled, and the capitalists held up to execration? Good Lord, isn't
there any pity for the rich man without his drop of water, in the
Bible or out? Are all creation born with blinders on, and can they
only see before their noses?"
"What are you talking about, Robert?" said Risley, laughing a
little.
"I say why should all the sympathy go to the workmen who are acting
like the pig-headed idiots they are, and none for the head of the
factory, who has the sharp-edged, red-hot brunt of it all to bear?"
"You wouldn't look at it that way if you were one of the poor men
just out on strike such weather as this," said Risley, dryly. He
glanced as he spoke at the window, which was beginning to be thickly
furred with frost in spite of the heat of the office. Robert
followed his gaze, and noted the spreading fairy jungle of
crystalline trees and flowers on the broad field of glass.
"Do you think that is the worst thing in the world to bear?" he
demanded, angrily.
"What? Cold and hunger not only for yourself, but for those you
love?"
"Yes."
"Well, I think it is pretty bad," replied Risley.
"Well, suppose you had to bear that, at least for those you loved,
and--and--" said the young man, lamely.
Risley remained silent, waiting.
"If I had been my uncle instead of myself I should simply have shut
down with no ado," said Robert, presently, in an angry,
argumentative voice.
"I suppose you would; and as it was?"
"As it was, I thought I would give them a chance. Good God, Risley,
I have been running the factory at a loss for a month as it is. With
this new wage-list I should no more than make expenses, if I did
that. What was it to me? I did it to keep them in some sort of work.
As for myself, I would much rather have shut down and done with it,
but I tried to keep it running on their account, poor devils, and
now I am execrated for it, and they have deliberately refused what
little I could offer."
"Did you explain all this to the committee?" asked Risley.
"Explain? No! I told them my course was founded upon strict business
principles, and was as much for their good as for mine. They
understood. They know how hard the times are. Why, it was only last
week that Weeks & McLaughlin failed, and that meant a heavy loss. I
didn't explain." Then Robert hesitated and colored. "I have just
explained to her," he said, with a curious hang of his head, like a
boy, "and if my explanation was met in the same fashion by the
others in the factory I might as well have addressed the north wind.
They are all alike; they are a different race. We cannot help them,
and they cannot help themselves, because they are themselves."
"You mean by her, Ellen Brewster?" Risley said.
Robert nodded gloomily.
"That is all in the paper," said Risley--"what she said to the men."
Robert made an impatient move.
"If ever there was a purely normal outgrowth, a perfect flower of
her birth and environments and training, that girl is one," said
Risley, with an accent of admiration.
"She is infected with the ranting idiocy of those with whom she has
been brought in daily contact," said Robert; but even as he spoke he
seemed to see the girl's dear young face, and his voice faltered.
"Even as you may be infected with the conservatism of those with
whom you are brought in contact," said Risley, dryly.
"What a democrat you are, Risley!" said Robert, impatiently. "I
believe you would make a good walking delegate."
Risley laughed. "I think I would myself," he said. "Wouldn't she
listen to you, Robert?"
"She listened with such utter dissent that she might as well have
been dumb. It is all over between us, Risley."
"How precipitate you are, you young folks!" said the other,
good-humoredly.
"How precipitate? Do you mean to say--?"
"I mean that you are forever thinking you are on the brink of
nothingness, when the true horizon-line is too far for you ever to
reach in your mortal life."
"Not in this case," said Robert.
"You know nothing about it. But if you will excuse me, it seems to
me that the matter of all these people being reduced to starvation
in a howling winter is of more importance than the coming together
of two people in the bonds of wedlock. It is the aggregate against
the individual."
"I don't deny that," said Robert, doggedly, "but I am not
responsible for the starvation, and the aggregate have brought it on
themselves."
"You have shut down finally?"
"Yes, I have. I would rather shut down than not, as far as I am
concerned. It is distinctly for my interest. The only one objection
is losing experienced workmen, but in a community like this, and in
times like this, that objection is reduced to a minimum. I can hire
all I want in the spring if I wish to open again. I should run a
risk of losing on every order I should have to fill in the next
three months, even with the reduced list. I would rather shut down
than not; I only reduced the wages for them."
Robert rose as he spoke. He felt in his heart that he had gotten
scant sympathy and comfort. The older man looked with pity at the
young fellow's handsome, gloomy face.
"There's one thing to remember," he said.
"What?"
"All the troubles of this world are born with wings." Risley
laughed, as he spoke, in his half-cynical fashion.
As Robert walked home--for there was no car due--he felt completely
desolate. It seemed to him that everybody was in league against him.
When he reached his uncle's splendid house and entered, he felt such
an isolation from his kind in the midst of his wealth that something
like an actual terror of solitude came over him.
The impecunious cousin of his aunt's who had come to her during her
last illness acted as his housekeeper. There was something
inexpressibly irritating about this woman, who had suffered so much,
and was now nestling, with a sense of triumph over the passing of
her griefs, in a luxurious home.
She asked Robert if it were true that the factory was closed, and he
felt that she noted his gloomy face, and realized a greater extent
of comfort from her own exemption from such questions.
"Business must be a great care," said she, and a look of utter
peaceful reflection upon her own lot overspread her face.
After supper Robert went down to his aunt Cynthia's. He had not been
there for a long time. The minute he entered she started up with an
eagerness which had been completely foreign to her of late years.
"What is the matter, Robert?" she asked, softly. She took both his
hands as she spoke, and her look in his face was full of delicate
caressing.
Robert succumbed at once to this feminine solicitude, of which he
had had lately so little. He felt as if he had relapsed into
childhood. A sense of injury which was exquisite, as it brought
along with it a sense of his demand upon love and sympathy, seized
him.
"I am worried beyond endurance, Aunt Cynthia," said he.
"About the strike? I have read the night papers."
"Yes; I tried to do what was right, even at a sacrifice to myself,
and--"
Cynthia had read about Ellen, but she was a woman, and she said
nothing as to that.
"I tried to do what was right," Robert said, fairly broken down
again.
Cynthia had seated herself, and Robert had taken a low foot-stool at
her side. It came over him as he did so that it had been a favorite
seat of his when a child. As for Cynthia, influenced by the
appealing to the vulnerable place of her nature, she put her slim
hands on her nephew's head, and actually seemed to feel his baby
curls.
"Poor boy," she whispered.
Robert put both his arms around her and hid his face on her
shoulder, for love is a comforter, in whatever guise.