The Way of the Strong Part 65

The millionaire closed the door behind him. His face expressed no feeling whatsoever. He had schooled himself well, and his schooling possessed the ripeness of experience. He heard the younger man's tone, and every feeling it expressed was conveyed to his understanding. He made no attempt at politeness or amiability. He accepted the position as the other chose to make it, but without any display of resentment.

"I drove from Deep Willows to hear you speak to-night. Also, I wanted to speak to you." Hendrie glanced about him at the pleasantly furnished bedroom. "May I--sit?"

For a moment Frank remained silent. He looked hard at this strong, ruthless man with his slightly graying hair and clean-cut, resolute features. Nor did his powerful figure, in its faultless evening dress, escape his attention.

Suddenly he kicked the rocker he had previously been occupying toward his visitor. His action was the extreme of discourtesy and contempt.

"You are uninvited, but--it's a free enough country," he said, with almost childish rudeness.

Hendrie pa.s.sed his manner by.

"Yes, I s'pose it's a free enough country," he said, accepting the chair deliberately.

Frank watched him, and slowly his self-schooling began to rea.s.sert itself. This man had come with a definite purpose. Somehow, he felt that, had he been in his place, it would have required some nerve, even courage, for him to have faced any man he had dishonestly condemned to penitentiary for five years. Nature again was strong in him. He admired courage--even in one whom he knew to be an enemy.

"Free enough for the rich," he said, with a sarcasm that hardly fitted him. "Honest people don't always find it free."

The millionaire eyed him leisurely. Somehow his gray eyes were softer than usual. This man seemed powerless to move him to antagonism, even to pa.s.sive resentment.

"Would you mind if--I lighted a cigar?" he inquired. "I s'pose it's useless to offer you one. You don't care to receive anything at my hands."

Frank seated himself upon the edge of the bed.

"Smoke all you want," he said ungraciously. "No, I want nothing at your hands--except to be let alone."

Hendrie deliberately lit his cigar. For once it did not find its way to the corner of his hard mouth. He blew a thin stream of smoke from his pursed lips, and the action ended in the faintest possible sigh.

"I'm sorry," he said. Then he leveled his eyes directly into the other's. "I made you an offer months ago. You refused it then. I s'pose you still feel the same? It still stands."

Frank sat up, and his eyes lit.

"It can go on standing," he cried fiercely. "I tell you I want nothing from you. I suppose it is only the arrogance of your wealth makes you dare to offer me--me such compensation." He finished up with a laugh that had nothing pleasant in it.

"Dare?" Hendrie's bushy brows were raised mildly.

"Yes, dare!" There was something very like violence in the younger man's tone.

"I thought every man who does a wrong--unwittingly--has a right to make--reparation, not compensation."

"Unwittingly? Do you call it 'unwitting' when you use your wealth to bribe and corrupt so that a man, even if he be guilty, may be made to suffer? These were the things you did to ruin me--an innocent man."

Hendrie smoked on. His eyes were lowered so that the other could not see their expression.

"I did these things, and--there is no excuse," he said presently. "You are young. Anyway, you cannot see with my eyes. Let me try to fit the case on you. Suppose you married--your Phyllis. Suppose you had every reason for believing her faithless to you. Suppose you caught her lover, as you believed, with money, your money, with which she had supplied him. To what lengths would you go to punish him?"

"It would be impossible. As impossible as it was in your wife's case."

"Just so. But--suppose. Suppose--you believed."

Hendrie was leaning forward in his rocker.

"I might shoot him, but I would not----"

"Just so--you would commit murder, where I--I resorted to methods perhaps less criminal. Suppose I had shot you. Suppose I had escaped the legal consequences of my crime, and then discovered your innocence.

Need I go further?"

The subtle manner in which he had been inveigled into debate infuriated Frank. But somehow he was powerless to withdraw. The man's calmness held him, and he blundered further.

"If you possessed half the honesty you claim for your purpose you would have been man enough to go to your wife for explanation."

Again Hendrie's eyes were averted, but the extraordinary mildness of his manner forced itself further on the younger man.

"And yet you would have shot the man you found in what you believed similar relations to your--Phyllis? Do you know why you would have done that--even worse than I did--in the eyes of the law? I will tell you.

It is because--you love Phyllis. Because you really love Phyllis you would do as your heart dictates--not as your head prompts you. Did you not truly, humanly love, you would go to her for explanation, because then you would not fear to hear the hideous truth from her, that she no longer loved you. In some things, my boy, where our love is concerned, we do not possess all our courage. I was older, I knew more of life, therefore I did not shoot, as I could easily have done. But my pa.s.sion for my wife is as strong as is your young love for Phyllis, and I was too cowardly to risk hearing the truth that her love for an elderly man was dead, and all her affection was given to a younger man. Try and picture my fears if you can. I, with my hair graying, and you, with the flowing hair of superb youth."

Frank had no answer. He was trying to remember only his injuries at this man's hands.

"It is because of these things I have dared to offer to make reparation to you, have dared to come and see you," Hendrie went on. Then his eyes smiled into the other's half angry, half troubled face. To any one knowing the man, his smile was a miraculous change from the front with which he usually faced the world. "You will accept nothing from my hands, you say. So be it. But--and make no mistake--reparation, all of it that lies in my power, shall be made. That you cannot prevent.

Remember you are launched upon a life of great vicissitudes. You cannot foresee its ramifications, you cannot see its possibilities. Wherever you are I shall be looking on, and, though you may not know it, all my influence will be at work--on your behalf. I was around to-night, dressed in clothing no doubt you would like to see me dressed in always, listening to your particularly clever, but unconvincing speech to the railroad men. You would have done really well among men of a higher intelligence, men who think and feel as you do, but you failed to raise one single hope among those you were addressing, that they would get 'something for nothing' if they followed your leaders.h.i.+p.

Consequently you failed."

Frank's face suddenly flushed, and a fierce retort leaped to his lips.

"Something for nothing!" he cried scathingly. "That is your understanding of the laborer who is sweated by big corporations seeking outrageous dividends. Something for nothing!" he went on, las.h.i.+ng himself to a white fury. "It is always the sneer of the employer, of the vampire who lives by others' toil and enjoys luxury, while those who help them to it may starve for all they care. I tell you all these poor people can squeeze from the grasp of capital is only a t.i.the of their just due. Every man is ent.i.tled to a fair share of the profits of his toil. He is ent.i.tled to live a life of comfort and happiness in proportion to the service he gives in the world's work."

Frank's eyes were flas.h.i.+ng and his breath came quickly, but he stared blankly as the other nodded approval of his claims.

"Perfectly right," Hendrie said. "Perfectly just." He leaned back in his rocker and swung himself to and fro. His cigar was poised in one hand, and his eyes were seriously reflective. "Does he not get that?"

he asked, after a pause.

"No, a thousand times no!" Frank's denial came with all the force of his pa.s.sionate conviction.

"You talk of service in the world's work," Hendrie went on reflectively, apparently untouched by the other's heat. "You suggest that it means a man's willingness to exercise his muscles, and whatever intelligence he may possess in the general work which is required by civilization at the moment, and, which, incidentally, is to provide him with a means of living. All labor and those who would protect labor forget, or they seem to me to forget, the fundamental principle of all civilization. They seem to forget that to which civilization owes its very existence--and to whom. Civilization owes its existence to the few--not the many. Civilization owes its progress to the thinkers, not the mere toilers. Battles are won by organization which is the work of the thinker, not the mad, uncontrolled rush of a rabble army. The mill owner is the thinker who must find a market for the wares produced in his mills, or there is no work for the laborer. He must found that mill, or it does not exist. He must spend a life of anxious thought, and ceaseless effort, exhausting his nervous forces till he often becomes a mental wreck, which no mere privations could reduce him to, and such as the mere toiler could never have to endure. The thinker will harness Nature's forces in a manner which will ultimately provide work for millions. But until he harnesses that power, that work is not possible. And so it would be quite easy to go on indefinitely ill.u.s.trating the fact that labor owes its well-being, almost its existence, to the thinker. And you would deny the right of the thinker to reap the reward of his efforts."

"I deny the right to profits extorted at the expense of labor. I deny the right to a luxury which others, less endowed by Nature in their attainments, can enjoy. We are all human beings, made alike, with powers, of enjoyment alike, with a life that is one and the same, and I deny the right for one to be privileged over another in the creature comforts, which, after all, is one of the main objects of all effort in life. I deny the right to a power in the individual which can be dishonestly used to the detriment of his fellows."

Again the younger man's feelings had risen to fever heat. Again his feelings ran riot in his denial.

Alexander Hendrie looked on unmoved.

"My boy," he said gently, "if you would deny all these things, then appeal to your Creator to make all men of equal capacity in thought, morals, and muscle. You cannot force equality upon a world where the Divine Creator has seen fit to make all things unequal. I tell you you cannot change the principles of life. Let the sledge hammer of Socialism be turned loose, let it crush the oppressors of labor as it will. But life will remain the same. It will go on as before. The thinkers will live in the luxury you deplore, and the toiler will sweat, and ache, and sometimes live in misery, as he does now. But, remember, his misery is no greater than the misery among those clad in the purple. There is no greater misery in the world than the misery of the man or woman who can afford to be happy. All that can be done is to better the lot of the worker within given limits. But, for G.o.d's sake, make the limit such as to leave him with incentive sufficient to lift him from the ranks in which he is enlisted, should his capacity prove adequate for promotion."

The force of the millionaire's simple views left a marked effect upon the other. There was something so definite, yet so tolerant about them.

Somehow Frank felt that this man was not thinking with the brain of the rich man. He was speaking from a wide and strenuous experience of life.

It almost seemed to him that Alexander Hendrie must have gone through a good deal of that which he, Frank, believed to be the sufferings of the unjustly treated workers.

"You admit that the condition of labor needs improvement?" he demanded sharply.

"No one more readily," Hendrie replied earnestly. "Help them, give them every benefit possible. But the man who would tell them that they earn, and have a right to more than the market value of their daily toil is a liar! He is committing a crime against both society and labor itself."