Success and How He Won It Part 26

"'The master,' always 'the master!' Can't you find another name for this Berkow? You used not to call him so, but ever since he has told you to your faces that he is, and will be, the first person here, you have not an opinion of your own about it. I tell you, if we go through with the thing, we shall be masters, he will only have the name then, and we shall have the power. He knows it very well; that is why he resists so strongly, and that is why we must persevere until he grants us all we ask. We must go on at any cost."

"Try it," said the Manager briefly. "See if you can turn the world topsy-turvy all by yourself. I have given up talking about it this long while."

Lawrence took his cap from the window-sill, and prepared to go.

"You must know best, if we are likely to succeed or not. You are our leader."

Ulric's face grew dark.

"Yes, I am, but I thought it would have been easier to keep you in hand. You make the work hard enough for me."

The young miner exclaimed indignantly,

"We! you can hardly complain of us. Every word you say is obeyed instantly."

"Obeyed!" And Ulric turned a dark and searching gaze upon his friend.

"Yes, obedience is not wanting, and it is not that I am complaining of.

But we are not as we used to be. Even you and I, Karl, are not as we used to be together. You are all of you so distant now, so cold and shy; it seems to me often as if you were all afraid of me, and--and that's all."

"No, no, Ulric!" Lawrence resented the reproach vehemently, it almost appeared as if the other had hit the right mark. "We have perfect trust in you, and you alone. No matter what you may have done, you did it for us, not for yourself. We know that, all of us, we none of us forget that."

"No matter what you may have done, you did it for us!" The words sounded harmless enough and may have contained no hidden meaning, but Ulric seemed to detect one in them, for he looked hard at the speaker.

Lawrence avoided his gaze, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.

"I must go," he said hastily. "I will send Wilms over to you. You will stay here, so that he will be sure to find you?"

Ulric made no answer. The flow of emotion of the last few minutes had subsided, and his face was pale again as at his entrance. He nodded affirmatively, and turned to the window.

The young miner took leave of the Manager and left the room, Martha rose and went out with him. During the whole of the foregoing conversation she had spoken no word, but had observed the two men attentively. She stayed rather long outside, but that could excite no wonder. Her uncle and cousin knew well enough that a newly-engaged pair have much to whisper to one another, and they seemed, indeed, to trouble themselves not at all about it.

The father and son remained alone together, and the silence now intervening was even more painful than that which had ensued on Ulric's entrance. He stood at the window now, leaning his forehead against the panes, and staring out without seeing anything before him.

The Manager still sat at the table resting his head on his hands; his sorrowful, care-worn face plainly showed the ravages which the last few weeks had made. The lines graven on it by old age were furrowed more deeply now, and his eye had grown dim. All the old animation and pugnacious vigour, with which he had been wont formerly to administer many a sermon to his son, had vanished; he sat there, quiet and depressed, making no attempt to renew the conversation.

At last the silence became intolerable to Ulric. He turned round hastily.

"And you say nothing to the news which Wilms has brought us? Is it really all the same to you whether we succeed, or whether we are beaten?"

The old man raised his head slowly.

"It is not all the same to me, but I can't take delight in your threats and your violence. Best wait and see who is most hurt by them, the gentlemen or ourselves. You do not care much about that, you have got your own way. It is for you to command now throughout the works. Every one appeals to you, every one bows down before you, obeys your slightest word. That was what you wanted from the first, what the whole business was set on foot for."

"Father!" cried the young man.

"Let be--let be," said the Manager, interrupting him. "You will not confess it to me, and perhaps not to yourself, but it is so. You took them all along with you, and me with the rest, for of what use to hold back alone? Take care where you lead us. The responsibility is yours."

"Did I begin the thing alone?" broke out Ulric vehemently. "Was it not decided unanimously that there must be a change, and have we not given our word to stand together until the change is made?"

"In case your demands were not granted--yes. But everything has been granted, or as good as everything, for what has been refused has really nothing to do with the demands of our people. You were the one to bring in all that, Ulric, and it is you alone who hold them to it. If it were not for you, they would have been at work long ago, and we should have peace and quiet on the works again."

Ulric threw back his head defiantly.

"Well, yes, I did start it, and I take no shame to myself that I can see farther, and provide for the future, better than the rest. If it will satisfy them that the old poverty should be made a little more bearable, and their miserable lives a little safer in the mines, it will not satisfy me, or any man of spirit among us. We ask for much, that is true, we ask for nearly everything, and if Berkow were the millionaire the world takes him for, he would never dream of giving himself into our hands. But he is that no longer, and his whole weal or woe depends upon whether these hands of ours are busy for him now or not. You don't know the state of things up there in the bureaus, and the reports which are read at the meetings, father, but I do, and I tell you, struggle against it as he may, he will have to yield when he is attacked on all sides at once."

"And I tell you he will not!" declared the Manager. "He will close the works first. I know Arthur well; he was like that as a child, quite different from you. You stormed at everything, and were always for using force, if your work, or your play-fellows, or even your garden hedge, did not please you. He never set about anything willingly, and sometimes it would be a long time before he made up his mind to it; but, when once he began, he would never leave off until he had mastered the thing, whatever it might be. He is roused now, and he means to show you the stuff he is made of. He holds the reins, and no one will be able to drag them out of his hands; there is something of your own obstinacy in him. Think of what I say, when some day he makes you feel it."

Ulric stood gloomy and silent. He did not contradict in his usual vehement way, but the fact that contradiction was impossible stirred up a feeling of wrathful resentment within him. Perhaps he had already felt something of his adversary's mettle.

"And however the thing may turn out," continued his father, "do you suppose that you can stay on here as Deputy, that they will suffer you to remain on the works, after what has happened?"

The young man laughed scornfully.

"No, certainly not, if it depends upon the gentlemen up yonder. They will never take me into favour again, that is very sure. But there will be no question of favour. We shall dictate our terms to them, and the first condition made by all the men unanimously will be that I am to remain."

"Are you so certain of that?

"Father, don't insult my mates," exclaimed Ulric. "They would never desert me."

"Not if the first condition up yonder is that you should go? The master will insist on that, depend upon it."

"Never; he will never obtain that from them. They know all of them that I have not done it for my own sake. I was not badly off, I have no need to starve, I can earn my bread anywhere. It was their misery I wanted to lessen. Don't talk to me, of it, father. They give me trouble enough often, but when things come to be serious, I shall pull through; there is not one of them who will desert me then. Wherever I lead they will follow, and where I stand they will stand by me, yes, that they will, to the very death!"

"They would have some time ago, they won't now." The old man had risen, and only as he turned to the broad daylight could it be fully seen how careworn his features were, and how bowed the figure which, but lately, had been so strong and vigorous.

"You said to Lawrence yourself that things are not as they used to be,"

he went on in a very low voice, "and you know well the day and hour when the change came about. I hardly need tell you so now, Ulric, but that day cost me the bit of peace and rest I had hoped for in my old age. It is all over with that now, for ever!"

"Father!" cried the young man again. The Manager stopped him with a hasty gesture. "Let it be as it is. I know nothing of what happened, I will know nothing of it, for, if I had to listen to the story in so many words, then all would be up with me indeed. The mere thought is enough; it alone has almost driven me out of my senses."

Ulric's eyes flashed angrily again, as when his friend had made that allusion a short time before.

"And if I were to tell you, father, that the ropes gave way, if I were to tell you that my hand had never been near them"----

"Tell me nothing rather," broke in the old man bitterly. "I should not believe you, and the others would not believe you either. You were always savage and p.r.o.ne to use violence. You would have felled your best friend to the ground in your wrath. Try it, go among your mates and say to them: 'It was nothing but an accident.' There is not one of them who will believe you!"

"Not one?" repeated Ulric, hoa.r.s.ely. "And you doubt me too, father?"

The Manager fixed his dimmed eyes on his son.

"Can you look me in the face and declare that you were in no way to blame for the accident, in no way? that you"----he did not finish the question, for Ulric had not been able to bear his gaze. The eyes, which a minute before had flashed with anger, now sought the ground, a sharp quiver pa.s.sed over him, he turned away and--was silent.

A great stillness fell upon the room. Nothing was heard but the old man's heavy breathing. His hand trembled, as he pa.s.sed it across his brow, and his voice trembled still more, when at last he spoke in a low tone.

"Your hand was not near? Whether it were your hand precisely, or however it may have come about, they are all of opinion, thank G.o.d, that inquiries are useless, and that nothing can be proved, at all events in a court of justice. Settle it with yourself, Ulric, as to what befell down below, but don't bully your mates any more. You were quite right. They have been afraid of you since then, and nothing else.

See how long you can manage them with fear alone."

So saying he went out. Ulric made a rapid movement as though about to rush after him, but stopped suddenly, striking his forehead with his clenched fist, while a sound like a suppressed groan escaped his breast.