"'There were two hundred and twelve strikes last year, of which only six had cause. The others were brought about by politicians and greedy unions. Dishonesty finds the line of least resistance in greed. Now, I have studied the strike problem from beginning to end. There can be no strike at the Bennington shops for a just cause. Had I lived long enough, the shops would have been open-shop. My son, never surrender once to injustice, for if you do you will establish a precedent, and you will go on surrendering to the end of time. I leave the shops to you. There is but one thing I demand, and that is that you shall never sell the shops; Bennington or nothing. If you have difficulties with the men, weigh them on the smallest scales. You will be master there--you alone. It is a big responsibility, but I have the greatest confidence in you. When the time comes, show that you are master, even to the tearing down of every brick and stone that took me so long to erect. I shall be where such disasters will not worry me in the least.'"

Bennington refolded the letter slowly. The men stood absolutely motionless, waiting.

"Men, if you go out this day, not one of you will ever find employment here again. My sense of justice is large, and nothing but that shall dictate to me. I shall employ and discharge whom I will; no man or organization of men shall say to me that this or that shall be done here. I am master, but perhaps you will understand this too late. Stay or go; that is as you please. If you stay, nothing more will be said on my part; if you go ... Well, I shall tear down these walls and sell the machinery for sc.r.a.p-iron!"

For the first time he showed emotion. He brought his hands strongly together, as a man puts the final blow to the nail, then b.u.t.toned up his coat and stood erect, his chin aggressive and his mouth stern.

"Well, which is it to be?" he demanded.

"You are determined to keep Chittenden?"

"Positively determined."

"We'll go out, Mr. Bennington," said Shipley.

"And what's more," added Morrissy, "we'll see that n.o.body else comes in."

He lighted a cigar, shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and walked insolently toward the exit. The majority of the men were grinning. Tear down this place? Kill the goose that laid the golden egg? It was preposterous. Why, no man had ever done a thing like that.

It was to cut off one's nose to spite one's face. It was a case of bluff, pure and simple. Winter was nearly three months off. By that time this smart young man would be brought to his senses. So they began filing out in twos and threes, their blouses and dinner-pails tucked under their arms. Many were whistling lightly, many were smoking their pipes, but there were some who pa.s.sed forth silent and grave. If this young man was a chip of the old block, they had best start out at once in search of a new job.

Bennington jumped down from his impromptu platform and closed the ponderous doors. Then he hurried to the main office, where he notified the clerks what had happened. He returned to his private office. He arranged his papers methodically, closed the desk, and sat down. His gaze wandered to the blue hills and rolling pastures, and his eyes sparkled; but he forced back what had caused it, and presently his eyes became dry and hard.

"'You and your actress and her lover'," he murmured softly. "My G.o.d, I am very unhappy!"

Chapter XV

The anonymous letter is still being written. This is the weapon of the cowardly and envious heart, so filled with venom and malice that it has the courage or brazenness to go about piously proclaiming the word duty. Beware of the woman who has ink-stains on her fingers and a duty to perform; beware of her also who never complains of the lack of time, but who is always harking on duty, duty. Some people live close to the blinds. Oft on a stilly night one hears the blinds rattle never so slightly. Is anything going on next door? Does a carriage stop across the way at two o'clock of a morning? Trust the woman behind the blinds to answer. Coming or going, little or nothing escapes this vigilant eye that has a retina not unlike that of a horse, since it magnifies the diameter of everything nine times. To hope for the worst and to find it, that is the golden text of the busybody. The busybody is always a prude; and prude signifies an evil-minded person who is virtuous bodily. They are never without ink or soft lead-pencils. Ink has accomplished more wonderful things than man can enumerate; though just now a dissertation on ink in ink is ill-timed.

To return again to the anonymous letter. Add and multiply the lives it has wrecked, the wars brought about. Menelaus, King of the Greeks, doubtless received one regarding Helen's fancy for that simpering son of Priam, Paris. The anonymous letter was in force even in that remote period, the age of myths. It is consistent, for nearly all anonymous letters are myths. A wife stays out late; her actions may be quite harmless, only indiscreet. There is, alack! always some intimate friend who sees, who dabbles her pen in the ink-well and labors over a backhand stroke. It is her bounden duty to inform the husband forthwith. The letter may wreck two lives, but what is this beside stern, implacable duty? When man writes an anonymous letter he is in want of money; when woman writes one she is in want of a sensation. It is easy to reject a demand for money, but we accept the lie and wrap it to our bosoms, so quick are we to believe ill of those we love.

This is an aspect of human nature that eludes a.n.a.lysis, as quicksilver eludes the pressure of the finger. The anonymous letter breeds suspicion; suspicion begets tragedy. The greatest tragedy is not that which kills, but that which prolongs mental agony. Honest men and women, so we are told, pay no attention to anonymous letters. They toss them into the waste-basket ... and brood over them in silence.

Now, Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene was always considering her duty; her duty to the church, to society, to charity, and, upon occasions, to her lord and master.

"Bennington's men have gone out, the fools!" said Haldene from over the top of his paper.

"Have they?" Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene nibbled the tip of her pen. She sighed, tore up what she had written and filtered it through her fingers into the waste-basket.

"Yes, they've gone out. I don't know what the business world is coming to. Why, the brick-layer gets--I don't say earns--more than the average clerk. And Bennington's men go out simply because he refuses to discharge that young English inventor. ... What are you writing and tearing up so often?" he asked, his curiosity suddenly aroused.

"A letter."

"Thoughts clogged?"

"It is a difficult letter to write."

"Then there can't be any gossip in it."

"I never concern myself with gossip, Franklyn. I wish I could make you understand that."

"I wish you could, too." He laid his paper down. "Well, I'm off to the club, unless you are particularly in need of me."

"You are always going to the club."

"Or coming back."

"Some husbands--"

"Yes, I know. But the men I play poker with are too much interested in the draw to talk about other men's wives."

"It's the talk of the town the way you men play cards."

"Better the purse than the reputation."

"I haven't any doubt that you are doing your best to deplete both,"

coldly.

Then she sighed profoundly. This man was a great disappointment to her. He did not understand her at all. The truth was, if she but knew it, he understood her only too well. She had married the handsomest man in town because all the other belles had been after him; he had married money, after a fashion. Such mistakes are frequent rather than singular these days. The two had nothing in common. It is strange that persons never find this out till after the honeymoon. Truly, marriage is a voyage of discovery for which there are no relief expeditions.

So Haldene went to the club, while his wife squared another sheet of writing-paper and began again. Half an hour went by before she completed her work with any degree of satisfaction. Even then she had some doubts. She then took a pair of shears and snipped the crest from the sheet and sealed it in a government envelope. Next she threw a light wrap over her shoulders and stole down to the first letter-box, where she deposited the trifle. The falling of the lid broke sharply on the still night. She returned to the house, feeling that a great responsibility had been shifted from hers to another's shoulders.

Indeed, she would have gone to any lengths to save Patty a life of misery. And to think of that woman! To think of her a.s.suming a quasi-leadership in society, as if she were to the manner born! The impudence of it all! Poor Mrs. Bennington, with her grey hairs; it would break her heart when she found out (as Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene determined she should) the sort of woman her son had married. She straightened her shoulders and pressed her lips firmly and contemplated a duty, painfully but rigorously performed. She cast the sc.r.a.ps of paper into the grate and applied a match. It is not always well that duty should leave any circ.u.mstantial evidence behind.

The evening papers devoted a good deal of s.p.a.ce to the strike at the Bennington shops. They frankly upheld Bennington. They admitted that employers had some individual rights. They berated the men for quarreling over a matter so trivial as the employment of a single non-union man, who was, to say the most, merely an experimenter.

However, they treated lightly Bennington's threat to demolish the shops. No man in his right mind would commit so childish an act. It would be revenge of a reactive order, fool matching fools, whereas Bennington ought to be more magnanimous. The labor unions called special meetings, and with one or two exceptions voted to stand by the action of the men.

There was positively no politics behind this strike; everybody understood that; at least, everybody thought he understood. But there were some who smiled mysteriously and wagged their heads. One thing was certain; Bennington's friend, Warrington would lose many hundred votes in November. For everybody knew which way the Republican convention would go; there was n.o.body in sight but Warrington.

Bennington and Mrs. Jack dined at the old home that evening. There was plenty of gloom and forced gaiety around the board. John pretended that he was well out of a bad job; he was not a dreamer nor a socialist, not he; Utopia was not for the iron age. He told stories, joked and laughed, and smoked frequently. No one but the mother had the courage to ask if he really meant to tear down the mills. She came around the table, smoothed his hair as she had done since he was a boy, and leaned over his chair.

"John?"

"Well, mother mine?"

"Shall you really do it?"

"Do what?"

"Tear it down."

He did not answer at once, and she waited, trembling.

"You would not have me take back my words to the men, would you, mother?" quietly.

"Your father loved the place."