As Schmidt concluded his oratorical flourish in this astonishing
fashion, the other occupants of the room turned amazedly, to behold
Cicily herself, standing in the open doorway of the study.
The young wife was a very charming, radiant vision, as she rested there
motionless. She was gowned for the street, wearing that ravishing hat
which had been the cause of McMahon's undoing, a dainty and rather
elaborate device in black and red, and a black cloth gown, short and
closely cut, which showed to delightful advantage the lissome curves of
her form. Beneath, a luxurious _chaussure_ in black showed the
inimitable grace of tiny feet and ankles. Now, as she regarded the
company in some astonishment, the perfect oval of her cheeks was broken
by the play of dimples as she smiled a general welcome on the men before
her. But her attention was particularly arrested by Schmidt, who, after
his first greeting in words, was now bowing stiffly from the hips, a
feat of some difficulty by reason of his girth. Cicily watched the
formal performance with mingled emotions of amusement and alarm. When,
at last, it was successfully accomplished, however, and the pudgy figure
straightened, she recognized the socialist, and came forward.
"Why, it's Mr. Schmidt!" she exclaimed, cordially. "I'm so glad to see
you!" To this, the German murmured a guttural response, too much
overcome by pleasure for coherent speech. The new-comer passed on, and
made her greetings to Ferguson and McMahon with the like pleasant
hospitality, shaking hands with each.
"This is, indeed, charming," she exclaimed heartily. "Did you bring your
wives along?"
Schmidt, as usual, constituted himself the spokesman.
"Mrs. Hamilton," he stated, with somber impressiveness, "this is
business."
"Good gracious!" Mrs. Hamilton exclaimed, with some trepidation. "I hope
it's nothing that they would not approve of."
"Be easy," Ferguson, admonished, soothingly. "Sure, it's only that we're
talking business. It's a matter of wages. The woman folk always approve
of them."
Schmidt rolled his eyes heavenward in despair.
"But, when we tell them of the ten per cent. cut! _Ach, Himmel!_"
Cicily turned a startled glance on her husband.
"A ten per cent. cut!" she exclaimed, involuntarily. "Why, Charles!"
Hamilton was annoyed by this unexpected irruption of the feminine into
the most serious of business discussions--the intrusion of the female on
the financial. He spoke with distinct note of disapproval in his voice:
"Now, Cicily, you know nothing of this."
Delancy, too, added the weight of his accustomed authority.
"Don't bother with things that do not concern you, Cicily." There was a
patronizing quality in the admonition that irritated the wife.
Ferguson spoke to the same effect, but with a radically different motive
underlying his words:
"Of course, it don't concern you, Mrs. Hamilton. I guess you'll be glad
to have some more money to put in bath-tubs and libraries and
gymnasiums. No, ma'am, it don't concern you. But it'll make some
difference to our wives and daughters, I'm thinking--ten per cent. out
of the pay-envelope every week. It'll take the curl out of my Sadie's
false hair, all right."
"There will be always some good in everything," Schmidt murmured
cynically, but not loud enough for the Yankee to hear.
Cicily was aware of the tension about her, and deemed it the part of
wisdom to create a diversion.
"What a coincidence!" she exclaimed, gayly. "Mrs. Schmidt and Mrs.
Ferguson and Mrs. McMahon are all coming around here this afternoon. I
invited them to attend a meeting of our club."
The dignified face of Mr. Delancy, which was that of the old-school
business man, clean-shaven save for the white tufts of side-whisker, was
distorted by an emotion of genuine horror; his pink cheeks grew scarlet.
"Cicily!" he gasped.
Hamilton, too, was hardly less disconcerted, for all his familiarity
with his wife's equalization whimsies.
"Invited them here?" he questioned, frowning.
The manner of both utterances was of a sort that must inevitably offend
the husbands of the women. Cicily, with the sensitiveness of her sex,
sought to cover the impression by speaking with a manner of increased
enthusiasm.
"Oh, yes," she answered. "Isn't it good of them? They have promised to
return my call this afternoon."
Ferguson yielded to a Yankee propensity for dry humour:
"I only hope that Mr. Delancy and Mr. Hamilton won't be too nice to
them."
McMahon, too, would have made some comment; but Hamilton, who now
perceived his blunder, which might have a disastrous effect on the
attitude of these men toward him, hastened to make a diversion on his
own account.
"Now, men," he said, as affably as he could contrive, "I've made you
acquainted with the difficulties and the necessities of the situation.
As I said before, I depend on your loyalty.... Will you let me hear from
you later in the afternoon to-day?"
"You'll hear from us, all right," the Yankee assured his employer, with
significant emphasis, before Schmidt had a chance to speak; and McMahon
nodded agreement.
Once again, Cicily strove to lighten the mood of the men.
"If you're going away to think something over, be sure you come back in
time to take your wives home, after they've joined the club. It's the
Civitas Society, you know, for the up-lift of women."
No sooner were the members of the committee out of the room than Cicily
turned anxiously to her husband.
"Oh, Charles," she exclaimed, "tell me! It's not true, is it, that
there's to be a cut in wages at the factory?"
Hamilton turned away impatiently from the appealing face.
"Cicily," he said shortly, "Uncle Jim and I are very busy. We have
business of the highest importance to discuss."
Delancy, who from long experience knew much concerning his niece's
wilfulness, now read aright the resolute expression on her face. He
tugged nervously at his tufts of whisker, and spoke in a tone of
resignation:
"Oh, tell her, Charles, and have done with it.... Or, listen, Cicily.
It's this way: These men are getting more money than they ought to get.
Charles can't make a penny profit, running his business this way. That's
all there is to it--he's got to cut them ten per cent. I've advised it,
myself."
Cicily's charming nose was now distinctly tip-tilted, whatever might be
its normal line.
"Yes, I'd expect you to advise it, Uncle Jim," she remarked, dryly. She
turned to her husband, accusingly. "But, Charles, there is no reason why
you should follow his advice. Why didn't you ask me? I'm your partner. I
don't think you have treated me fairly in this."
Hamilton, overwrought and exasperated by the multiplication of his
worries, began a sharp answer; but it was interrupted by the
decisiveness with which his wife went on speaking:
"Charles, you have treated me like a child, like a fool.... And you said
that you'd let me help you!"
This reproach appealed to Hamilton as grossly unfair.
"Why, Cicily," he exclaimed, "I did let you help. I've let you do
everything that you wanted to do--no matter how--" In a sudden access
of discretion, he choked back the "foolish."
Delancy, presuming on the right of criticism that had been his during
the years of guardianship, spoke with a candor that was not flattering.
"He let you do more than I'd have let you do. He let you waste your
money on bath-tubs and libraries, and such foolishness, to make the men
dissatisfied. I wish somebody would tell me what a man working for two
dollars a day can do with a bath-tub and a library at the works."
"If anybody were to tell you, you wouldn't listen," was Cicily's pert
retort.
Delancy tugged at his wisp of whisker, and wagged his head dolefully.
"I don't know what young women these days are coming to," was his
melancholy comment.
"What you men are driving us to, you mean!" Cicily fairly snapped. It
was difficult enough to manage her husband, without having her position
jeopardized by the interference of this meddlesome old man, who stood
for that exclusion of her sex against which she was fighting. She went
to the chair in which Ferguson had been sitting, and reclined there in
a posture of graceful ease that was far from expressing the turmoil of
her spirit. As he watched her movements, and studied the loveliness of
her, with her delicate face aglow and her amber eyes brilliant in this
mood of excitement, Hamilton forgot his worriment for the moment in
uxorious admiration. He was smiling fondly on his wife, even as Delancy
uttered an exclamation of rebuke to him:
"And you're her husband!" His emphasis made it clear that a husband like
himself would have suppressed such insubordination long ago.
"Well," Hamilton replied placidly, and with a hint of amusement in his
voice, "you brought her up, you know."
"I did not--no such thing!" the old man spluttered. In his indignation,
he pulled so viciously on a whisker that he winced from the pain, which
by no means tended to soothe his ruffled temper.
"You're quite right, Uncle Jim," Cicily agreed, with dangerous sweetness
in the musical voice. "Of course, you never had any time to pay
attention to me, or to Aunt Emma either, for that matter. Oh, no, you
were too much absorbed in that horrid business of yours. You drove Aunt
Emma into working for the heathen, and incidentally, you did teach me
one thing: you taught me what sort of a wife not to be. I learned from
you never to be married after the fashion in which you and Aunt Emma are
married."
Delancy was not blest with an overabundant sense of humor. Now, he
forgot the general charge against him in shocked surprise over the final
statement, which he took literally.
"Look here, Cicily," he remonstrated. "It took twenty-two minutes in the
old First Presbyterian Church to marry your Aunt Emma and me. You
couldn't possibly get a more binding ceremony."
Cicily laughed disdainfully.
"Well, it's my opinion that you've never been married at all, really,"
she persisted, with a bantering seriousness. "You wouldn't have been
really married if you had spent two whole days in the church." Then, in
answer to the pained amazement expressed on her uncle's face, she
continued succinctly: "Yes, I mean it, Uncle Jim. Aunt Emma has been
second wife ever since those twenty-two minutes in the old First
Presbyterian Church, to which you referred so feelingly.... And she has
my sympathy. You married business first, and Aunt Emma afterward.
Business had the first claim, and has always kept first place. That's
why Aunt Emma has my sympathy."
Delancy rose from his chair, greatly offended, now that he perceived the
manner in which he had been bamboozled by the wayward humor of his
niece. He moved toward the door at a pace as hurried as dignity would
permit. There, he turned to address his disrespectful former ward.
"Charles has my sympathy!" he growled; and stalked from the room.
"Don't forget that you are coming to dinner on Sunday--with your second
wife!" the irrepressible Cicily called after him impertinently. But, if
the reminder was heard, it was not answered; and husband and wife were
left alone together.
Hamilton would have remonstrated with his bride over her wholly
unnecessary irritating of her uncle, but he was not given an
opportunity. Before the door was fairly shut behind her offended
relation, Cicily took the war into the enemy's camp by a curt question:
"Now, Charles, why do you cut wages?"
"Because I have to," was the prompt response.
"And why didn't you tell me?"
"Tell you? Nonsense!" The man's tone was expressive of extreme
annoyance.
"But I'm your partner," Cicily persisted bravely, although her heart
sank under the rebuff. "You yourself said that I was."
"Well, and so you are, since you want it so," Hamilton admitted; "and
you're attending to your end, aren't you?"
"Yes, the little end," Cicily agreed, disparagingly.
At that, Hamilton was plainly exasperated.
"What end did you expect?" he demanded. "I tell you, Cicily," he
continued, in the tone of one arguing with labored patience to convince
a child of some truism, "that business is too big, too serious, too
strong for a woman like you, my dear."
"Yes, that's just the fear that grips my heart sometimes, Charles," the
wife admitted. With an ingenuity characteristic of her active
intelligence, she had perceived a method whereby to twist his words to
her own purpose. "Look here!" she went on in a caressing voice, utterly
unlike the emphatic one in which she had spoken hitherto. "Do you for a
moment imagine that I really like business? Well, then, I don't--not a
little bit! For that matter, hardly any woman does, I fancy. As to
myself, Charles, I'm afraid of it--that's the whole truth. I'm only in
it to watch it--and you!"
The change in her manner had immediate effect on the husband. Again, he
was surveying her with eyes in which admiration shone. For the
ten-thousandth time, he was reveling in the beauty of that oval contour,
in the tender curves of the scarlet lips.... But he forgot to voice his
thoughts. Indeed, what need? He had told her so many times already!
"You talk as if business were a woman," he said, with a smile of
conscious sex superiority, "and as if you were jealous."
Cicily concealed her resentment of the patronizing manner, and replied
with no apparent diminution in her amiability:
"That's just it: I am jealous!"
"Good heavens!" Hamilton cried, indignantly. "Surely, you know that I
never think twice of any woman I meet in business."
The wife smiled in high disdain.
"Woman!" she ejaculated, with scornful emphasis. "I'm not in the least
afraid of any woman being more to you than I am, Charles. Just let one
try!"
"Why, what would you do?" Hamilton inquired, curiously.
The answer was swift and vigorous, pregnant with the insolent
consciousness of power that is the prerogative of a lovely woman. Cicily
leaned forward in her chair, and the golden eyes darkened and flashed.
"Why, I'd beat her! I'd be everything to you that she was--and more. I'd
outdress her, I'd out-talk her, I'd outwit her, I'd out-think her. I'd
play on your love and on your masculine jealousy. Oh, there'd be plenty
of men to play the play with me. I'd be more alluring, more fascinating,
more difficult, until I held you safe again in the hollow of my hand,
and then--why, then, I'd be very much tempted to throw you away!"
The verve with which this girl-woman thus vaunted her skill in the use
of those charms that dominate the opposite sex thrilled and fascinated
the lover, pierced the reserve that possession had overcast on ardor.
His cheeks flushed, under the provocation of the glances with which she
marked the allurements of which she was the mistress. As she finished
speaking, he sprang up from his chair, caught her in his arms, and drew
her passionately to his breast. But Cicily avoided the kiss he would
have pressed on her lips. With her mouth at his ear, she whispered,
plaintively now, no longer boastful, only a timid, fearing, jealous
woman:
[Illustration]
"Yes, I can fight a rival who is a woman, Charles, and I can win. But
this other rival, this fascinating monstrous, evil goddess--ah!"
Hamilton held his wife away from him by the shoulders, mid regarded her
in bewilderment.
"Evil goddess!" he repeated, half in doubt as to her meaning.
"Surely, she must be that," Cicily declared, firmly; "this spirit who is
the goddess of modern business, whom I feel absorbing you day by day,
taking from me more and ever more of your thoughts, of your heart, of
your soul, changing you in every vital way, and doing it in spite of all
that I can do, though I fight against her with all my strength! Oh, it's
terrible, the hopelessness of it all! Some day all of you will be gone,
forever!"
"Swallowed up by the evil spirit?" Hamilton asked, quizzically, with a
smile.
"Yes!" The answer was given with a seriousness that rebuked his levity
in the presence of possible catastrophe.
The husband repeated his threadbare argument.
"But, dear," he urged gently, "you know that I love you just the same."
There was a curious, cynical sadness in the wife's voice as she replied:
"Probably, a man under ether loves one just the same. But who wants to
be loved by a man under ether?"
"Cicily, you exaggerate!" Hamilton exclaimed. He dropped his hands from
her shoulders, and reseated himself, while she remained standing before
him. There was petulance in his inflection when he spoke again: "I have
you, and I have my business."
Cicily made a _moue_ that sufficiently expressed her weariness of this
time-worn fact.
"Your two loves!" she said, bitterly. "Now, at this moment, you think
that they're equal. Well, perhaps they are--at this moment. Some day,
the crisis will come. Then, you'll have to choose. It's a new triangle,
Charles--the twentieth-century triangle in America: the wife, the
husband and the business. But remember: when the choice comes for us, I
shall not be an Aunt Emma!"
The manner of his wife, as well as her words, disturbed the husband
strangely. Never had she seemed more appealing in her loveliness, never
more daintily alluring to the eye of a man; yet, never had she seemed to
hold herself so coldly aloof, to be so impersonally remote. He felt a
longing to draw her again into the gentle trustfulness of the maiden who
had gloried in his love.
"What do you want me to do, dear?" he questioned. "I told you that you
could help me. I let you help."
Cicily seated herself again before she replied. When, at last, she
spoke, her voice was listless:
"Yes; you let me spend some of my own money for luxuries. It seems that
I could have used it to better advantage in helping to pay the men their
wages, and thus save you from a possible strike."
"No," was the serious response. "At best, that would have been only a
makeshift--putting off the evil day. No; this thing must be fought out,
once for all. We are running at a loss. To take money from you would be
merely to waste it. Let me tell you, too, that there isn't a chance in
the world for the Hamilton factory in the event of a strike."
Cicily seized on the admission as favoring her side of the argument.
"Then, you must not cut the wages," she declared, with spirit. "You must
fight Morton and Carrington."
"How can one man fight the trust?" Hamilton questioned, in return. "No,
I'm caught between the two millstones: Morton, Carrington, the trust,
above; the men, labor, below. To live, I must cut into the men. That's
business."
"Now, I know it isn't right," Cicily exclaimed. "Tell me," she
continued, bending forward in her eagerness, until he could watch the
beating pulse of her round throat, "if I were to give you all my money,
couldn't you fight, and yet keep up the wages? I have quite a lot, you
know. It was accumulating, uncle said, all the time while I was growing
up." She refused to be convinced by her husband's shake of the head in
negation. "I've met a lot of their women and children, in these last few
weeks, while I have been--playing at being in business. None of the
families have any more than enough for their needs--I know! Some of them
have barely that. A cut in wages will be something awful in its effects.
Why, Charles, some of the families have six or seven children."
"I know," the harassed employer acknowledged, with a sigh that was
almost a groan. "But, Cicily, my dear, unless there is a cut, I shall be
ruined. That is the long and the short of the matter. Unless I make the
men suffer a little now, the factory must be closed down; all Dad's work
must go for nothing. It's either I or them. If they don't take the cut
for the time being, they'll soon be without any wages at all. Now, if
you really want to help me, in a way to count, just do all you possibly
can to prevent a strike. Then, you'll be helping me, and, too, you'll be
helping them as well. Of course, you understand that I shall put back
the wages as soon as ever I can."
"Good!" the wife cried, happily. "I'll help." Despite her distress over
the situation as it affected both the workmen and her husband, she was
elated by the fact that, at last, she was wholly within her husband's
confidence; that, at last, she was actually to cooeperate with him in
his business concerns: a practical, no longer merely a theoretical,
partner! Hamilton himself gave the cap to the climax of her delight.
"Now," he said, with a tender smile, "you're positively in business,
according to your heart's desire. You're on the inside, all ready to
fight the what-do-you-call-it."
But a new thought had changed the mood of the impulsive bride. Of a
sudden, she sobered, and her eyes widened in fear.
"Yes," she said slowly, tremulously; "I'll help you, Charles, in any way
that I can, for a strike would be too terrible. It would come between
you and me."
Small wonder that, Hamilton was astounded by this declaration on the
part of his wife. His usually firm jaw relaxed, dropped; he sat staring
at the fair woman opposite him with unrestrained amazement.
"How under heaven could a strike at the factory come between you and
me?" he queried, at last.
The answer was slow in coming; but it came, none the less--came firmly,
unhesitatingly, unequivocally.
"If there were to be a strike, I could not let those women and those
children suffer without doing something to help them."
At this candid statement as to what her course would be, the husband
stiffened in his chair. His expression grew severe, minatory.
"What?" he ejaculated, harshly. "You'd use your money to help them? My
wife use her money to fight me?" His frown was savage.
Cicily preserved her appearance of calm confidence, although she was
woefully minded to cower back, and to cover her eyes from the menace in
his. She was a woman of strongly fixed principles, however chimerical
her ideas in some directions, and now her conscience drove her on, when
love would have bade her retreat.
"I'd use my money to keep women and children from starving to death,"
she said, in a low voice, which trembled despite her will.
Hamilton smothered an angry imprecation. He strove to master his wrath
as he spoke again, very sternly:
"Cicily, you are my wife. You have said that you were my partner. As
either, as both, you have responsibilities toward my welfare that must
be respected."
"I'm a woman, with responsibilities as a human being first of all," was
the undaunted retort. "I wouldn't be fit to be a wife, if I were to let
women and children starve without trying to help."
"Nonsense, Cicily!" Hamilton's anger was controlled now; but he remained
greatly incensed over this stubborn folly on his wife's part, as he
esteemed it. "Strikers don't starve to death, nowadays. They have
benefits and funds, and all sorts of things, to help them. They don't
even go hungry."
"Then, why do they ever give in?" was the pertinent query. "I tell you
they do go hungry--often, even at the best of times. I've been down
among those people. I've seen them with three, six, children to feed and
clothe, and rent to pay, on two to four dollars a day. What chance have
they to save? I tell you, if there's a strike, some of them will starve,
and, if you let them starve, Charles, you won't be my husband!"
"Cicily!"
"I mean it." The wife rose from her chair, went to her husband, and
kissed him, tenderly, sorrowfully. Then, she turned to leave the room.
But, before she reached the door, Hamilton spoke again, gravely, quite
without anger:
"Cicily, my dear," he said, "I give you credit for being as sincere and
honest as you are foolish. So, the only chance for all of us is that you
should do your best now, at once, to prevent an issue that may spell
catastrophe for all of us. It's up to you now, my dear partner, to do
your best to win them, to keep them from striking."
The young wife paused in the doorway, and faced her husband. There was a
trace of tears veiling the radiance of the golden eyes. Her voice
quivered, but the low music of it was very earnest:
"I will, Charles--I will fight hard--my hardest--for my happiness and
for yours!"