Windy McPherson's Son Part 25

When Colonel Tom had finished Sam gave a careless glance at the old man's red face and trembling fingers. He had no doubt that the outburst of eloquence had fallen upon deaf ears and without comment put Webster's motion to the vote.

To his surprise two of the new employe directors voted their stock with Colonel Tom's, and a third man, voting his own stock as well as that of a wealthy southside real estate man, did not vote. On a count the stock represented stood deadlocked and Sam, looking down the table, raised his eyebrows to Webster.

"Move we adjourn for twenty-four hours," snapped Webster, and the motion carried.

Sam looked at a paper lying before him on the table. During the count of the vote he had been writing over and over on the sheet of paper this sentence.

"The best men spend their lives seeking truth."

Colonel Tom walked out of the room like a conqueror, declining to speak to Sam as he pa.s.sed, and Sam looked down the table at Webster and made a motion with his head toward the man who had not voted.

Within an hour Sam's fight was won. Pouncing upon the man representing the stock of the south-side investor, he and Webster did not go out of the room until they had secured absolute control of the Rainey Company and the man who had refused to vote had put twenty-five thousand dollars into his pocket. The two employee directors Sam marked for slaughter.

Then after spending the afternoon and early evening with the representatives of the eastern companies and their attorneys he drove home to Sue.

It was past nine o'clock when his car stopped before the house and, going at once to his room, he found Sue sitting before his fire, her arms thrown above her head and her eyes staring at the burning coals.

As Sam stood in the doorway looking at her a wave of resentment swept over him.

"The old coward," he thought, "he has brought our fight here to her."

Hanging up his coat he filled his pipe and drawing up a chair sat beside her. For five minutes Sue sat staring into the fire. When she spoke there was a touch of hardness in her voice.

"When everything is said, Sam, you do owe a lot to father," she observed, refusing to look at him.

Sam said nothing and she went on.

"Not that I think we made you, father and I. You are not the kind of man that people make or unmake. But, Sam, Sam, think what you are doing. He has always been a fool in your hands. He used to come home here when you were new with the company and talk of what he was doing. He had a whole new set of ideas and phrases; all that about waste and efficiency and orderly working toward a definite end. It did not fool me. I knew the ideas, and even the phrases he used to express them, were not his and I was not long finding out they were yours, that it was simply you expressing yourself through him. He is a big helpless child, Sam, and he is old. He hasn't much longer to live. Do not be hard, Sam. Be merciful."

Her voice did not tremble but tears ran down her rigid face and her expressive hands clutched at her dress.

"Can nothing change you? Must you always have your own way?" she added, still refusing to look at him.

"It is not true, Sue, that I always want my own way, and people do change me; you have changed me," he said.

She shook her head.

"No, I have not changed you. I found you hungry for something and you thought I could feed it. I gave you an idea that you took hold of and made your own. I do not know where I got it, from some book or hearing some one talk, I suppose. But it belonged to you. You built it and fostered it in me and coloured it with your own personality. It is your idea to-day. It means more to you than all this firearms trust that the papers are full of."

She turned to look at him, and put out her hand and laid it in his.

"I have not been brave," she said. "I am standing in your way. I have had a hope that we would get back to each other. I should have freed you but I hadn't the courage, I hadn't the courage. I could not give up the dream that some day you would really take me back to you."

Getting out of her chair she dropped to her knees and putting her head in his lap, shook with sobs. Sam sat stroking her hair. Her agitation was so great that her muscular little back shook with it.

Sam looked past her at the fire and tried to think clearly. He was not greatly moved by her agitation, but with all his heart he wanted to think things out and get at the right and the honest thing to do.

"It is a time of big things," he said slowly and with an air of one explaining to a child. "As your socialists say, vast changes are going on. I do not believe that your socialists really sense what these changes mean, and I am not sure that I do or that any man does, but I know they mean something big and I want to be in them and a part of them; all big men do; they are struggling like chicks in the sh.e.l.l. Why, look here! What I am doing has to be done and if I do not do it another man will. The colonel has to go. He will be swept aside. He belongs to something old and outworn. Your socialists, I believe, call it the age of compet.i.tion."

"But not by us, not by you, Sam," she plead. "After all, he is my father."

A stern look came into Sam's eyes.

"It does not ring right, Sue," he said coldly; "fathers do not mean much to me. I choked my own father and threw him into the street when I was only a boy. You knew about that. You heard of it when you went to find out about me that time in Caxton. Mary Underwood told you. I did it because he lied and believed in lies. Do not your friends say that the individual who stands in the way should be crushed?"

She sprang to her feet and stood before him.

"Do not quote that crowd," she burst out. "They are not the real thing.

Do you suppose I do not know that? Do I not know that they come here because they hope to get hold of you? Haven't I watched them and seen the look on their faces when you have not come or have not listened to their talk? They are afraid of you, all of them. That's why they talk so bitterly. They are afraid and ashamed that they are afraid."

"Like the workers in the shop?" he asked, musingly.

"Yes, like that, and like me since I failed in my part of our lives and had not the courage to get out of the way. You are worth all of us and for all our talk we shall never succeed or begin to succeed until we make men like you want what we want. They know that and I know it."

"And what do you want?"

"I want you to be big and generous. You can be. Failure cannot hurt you.

You and men like you can do anything. You can even fail. I cannot. None of us can. I cannot put my father to that shame. I want you to accept failure."

Sam got up and taking her by the arm led her to the door. At the door he turned her about and kissed her on the lips like a lover.

"All right, Sue girl, I will do it," he said, and pushed her through the door. "Now let me sit down by myself and think things out."

It was a night in September and a whisper of the coming frost was in the air. He threw up the window and took long breaths of the sharp air and listened to the rumble of the elevated road in the distance. Looking up the boulevard he saw the lights of the cyclists making a glistening stream that flowed past the house. A thought of his new motor car and of all of the wonder of the mechanical progress of the world ran through his mind.

"The men who make machines do not hesitate," he said to himself; "even though a thousand fat-hearted men stood in their way they would go on."

A line of Tennyson's came into his mind.

"And the nation's airy navies grappling in the central blue," he quoted, thinking of an article he had read predicting the coming of airs.h.i.+ps.

He thought of the lives of the workers in steel and iron and of the things they had done and would do.

"They have," he thought, "freedom. Steel and iron do not run home to carry the struggle to women sitting by the fire."

He walked up and down the room.

"Fat old coward. d.a.m.ned fat old coward," he muttered over and over to himself.

It was past midnight when he got into bed and began trying to quiet himself for sleep. In his dreams he saw a fat man with a chorus girl hanging to his arm kicking his head about a bridge above a swiftly flowing stream.

When he got down to the breakfast room the next morning Sue had gone. By his plate he found a note saying that she had gone for Colonel Tom and would take him to the country for the day. He walked to the office thinking of the incapable old man who, in the name of sentiment, had beaten him in what he thought the big enterprise of his life.

At his desk he found a message from Webster. "The old turkey c.o.c.k has fled," it said; "we should have saved the twenty-five thousand."

On the phone Webster told Sam of an early visit to the club to see Colonel Tom and that the old man had left the city, going to the country for the day. It was on Sam's lips to tell of his changed plans but he hesitated.

"I will see you at your office in an hour," he said.