"You have the home--the house--to look out for, Cicily. That's a woman's work. What more can you wish?"

"The home! The house!" The exclamation was eloquent of disgust. "Ah, yes, once on a time, it was a woman's work--once on a time! But, then, you men were dependent on us. Marriage was a real partnership. Nowadays, what with servants and countless inventions, so that machinery supplies the work, the home is a joke. The house itself is an automatic machine that runs on--b.u.t.tons, push-b.u.t.tons. You men can get along without us just as well. You don't really depend on us for anything in the home.

Your lives are full up with interest; every second is occupied. Our lives are empty. My life is empty, Charles. I'm lonely, and heart-hungry, I've no ambition to go in for bridge. I'm not a gambler by choice. I don't wish to follow society as a vocation. I'm not eager even to be a suffragette. I want to be an old-fashioned wife--to do something that counts in my husband's life. I want him to depend on me for some things, always. I want to be my husband's partner." Little by little, while she was speaking, the coldness pa.s.sed from the woman's voice; in its stead grew warmth; there was pa.s.sionate fervor in the final plea. It moved Hamilton to pity, although he was ignorant as to the means by which he might a.s.suage his wife's so great discontent. Manlike, he attempted to overcome emotion by argument.

"Cicily," he urged, "just now, I'm up to my ears and over in work. They are crowding me mighty hard. There's dissatisfaction at the mill--danger of a strike. Morton is heading a syndicate--a trust, really--trying to absorb us. I'm fighting for my very life--my business life.... Cicily, you wouldn't throw obstacles in my way now, would you?"

"Obstacles! No; I want to help you."

"In business?" Hamilton queried, astounded. "You--help me--in business?"

"Yes," Cicily answered, steadily. "I can do something, I know." There was intensity of purpose in the glow of the golden eyes, as they met those of her husband; there was intensity of conviction in the tones of her voice as she uttered the a.s.surance. She realized that the crisis of her ambition was very near at hand.

"You can do nothing." The man's blunt statement was uttered with a conviction as uncompromising as her own. The egotism of it repelled the woman. There was a hint of menace in her manner, as she replied:

"Take care, Charles. Don't shut me out. You're making a plaything of me--not a wife.... And I--I won't be your plaything!"

"You mean--?"

"I mean," went on the wife relentlessly, "that this is the most serious moment of our married life. If you put me off now, if you shut me out of your life now--out of your full life--I can't answer for what will happen."

There followed a long interval of silence, the while husband and wife stared each into the other's eyes. In these moments of poignant emotion, the profound feeling of the woman penetrated the being of the man, readied his heart, and touched it to sympathy--more: it mounted to his brain, which it stimulated to some measure of understanding. That understanding was fleeting enough, it was vague and incomplete, as must always be man's inadequate knowledge of woman. But it was dominant for the time being. Under its sway, Hamilton spoke in gracious yielding, almost gratefully.

"Very well. You can help."

The young wife sat silent for a time, thrilling with the joy of conquest. The roses of her checks blossomed again; the radiance of her eyes grew tender; the scarlet lips wreathed in their happiest curves. At last, she rose swiftly, and seated herself on the arm of her husband's chair. She wound her arms about his neck, and kissed him fondly on cheek and brow and mouth.

Hamilton accepted these caresses with the pleasure of a fond bridegroom of a year, and, too, with a certain complacency as the tribute of grat.i.tude to his generosity. But, when she separated herself again from his embrace, he was moved to ask a question that was calculated to be somewhat disconcerting.

"What can you do?" he demanded.

"Oh, I don't know," Cicily answered, nonchalantly; "but something. I shall do something big! You see, you've done so much. Now, I must do something too--something big!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"But what have I done?" the husband questioned, perplexed anew by this charming wife of many moods.

"What have you done?" Cicily repeated, joyously. "Why, you've made me the happiest woman in the world--a partner!" Again, the rounded arms were wreathed about his neck; her face was hidden on his shoulder.

Hamilton's eyes were turned ceilingward, as if seeking some illumination from beyond. He listened, stupid, bemused, to that word echoing wildly through his brain: "Partner!" He understood fully at last, and with understanding came utter dismay. "Partner!... Oh, Lord!"

CHAPTER VII

In the days that followed, Cicily was almost riotously happy. The schemes that had been formulating themselves dimly in her mind following the altruistic suggestion made to her by Mrs. Delancy now took on definite shape and became substantial. In view of the fact that her husband had explicitly brought her into a business partnership with himself, it occurred to her that she might well combine the idea of making other people happy with practical uses in behalf of business. To this end, then, she devoted her intelligence diligently, with the result that she soon had concrete plans of betterment for the many, and these of a sort to redound directly to her husband's advantage in a business way. In brief, she conceived certain philanthropic operations to be carried out for the enjoyment of her husband's employes; the effect of such changes would inevitably be a better understanding between them and their employer, and an increased loyalty and efficiency on the part of the workers. With this laudable purpose, Cicily, after broaching the subject in detail to Hamilton, who made no objection, since her helpfulness was to be operated out of her private fortune, at once busied herself with the execution of the project. The factory downtown was soon a-chatter with excitement over the startling innovations that were under way. The employes cursed or cheered according to their natures, as they learned of the gifts bestowed by the wife of their employer. They regarded the new bath-tubs with wonder, albeit somewhat doubtfully. They discussed the library with appreciation, or lack of appreciation, according to their degrees of illiteracy or learning: the socialistic element condemned the inanity of the volumes selected; there were only histories, biographies, books of travel, foolish novels and the like--nothing to teach the manner by which the brotherhood of man must be worked out.

In addition to her activities for good in this direction, Cicily added something actual to her ideas in reference to the up-lift of woman. She made herself known to the wives of some of the men who worked in the factory, and called on them in their homes. She invited them to visit her in return, and she matured a project to make the Civitas Society her ally in this n.o.ble work of up-lift and equalization in the social order. With such eager works, her days were filled full, and she was glad in the realization that it was, indeed, become her splendid privilege to share in her husband's broader life.... She was his--partner!

It may be doubted if Hamilton had more than the shadow of knowledge as to his wife's happiness in the changed order. The episode, as he deemed it, in which she had been given a partnership with him, hardly remained in his memory. When he thought of it at all, he smiled over it as over the vagary of one among a woman's innumerable varying moods. But he thought of it very rarely, for his time was absorbed in the desperate struggle to find a way out from the destruction that loomed very close at hand. In the end, he decided not to reject the offer made by Morton in behalf of the trust. Otherwise, he would be confronted by Carrington's compet.i.tion in selling to the independent trade at a dead loss. But he was determined ultimately to combat this compet.i.tion to the limit of his ability and capital. It was apparent to him that success would be impossible from the outset unless he should reduce his operating expenses to the minimum. For this reason, he planned to make the cut in wage-scale that had been suggested by Morton, although in reality it was to overcome the machinations of the trust, not to further them. He solaced his conscience by reiteration of the truth: that, in the event of winning, the reduction would have been but a temporary thing; whereas, without it, he must close down the factory immediately.

For the sake of his workers, as well as for his own, he was resolved to pursue the one course that offered a hope of victory.

Naturally enough, the employes did not understand or approve. When news of the proposed cut in the scale was made known, there came clamor and wrath and sorrow. Meetings of the workers were held, and in due time a committee of three waited on Hamilton by appointment in the study of his house uptown. Schmidt, the most garrulous of the three, was a man in the prime of life, heavily built, bald, with a white mustache that gave him a certain grotesque resemblance to Bismarck. The other two members of the committee were Ferguson, a thin, alert-mannered Yankee of forty, who spoke with a p.r.o.nounced drawl; and McMahon, a short, red-headed, shrewd Irishman, with a face on which shone a volatile good-humor. The three, on entering the library and being greeted by Hamilton, found that their employer had fortified himself for the conference by the presence of Mr.

Delancy, in whose business judgment the younger man had great confidence. The men received the pleasant salutation of Hamilton with awkwardness, but without any trace of shamefacedness, for they had the consciousness of their righteous cause to give them confidence in a strange environment. Hardly were they seated at their host's request in chairs facing him and Mr. Delancy, when Schmidt bounced up, and, after squaring himself resolutely in a position of advantage before the empty fireplace, proceeded to declaim vigorously as to the rights between labor and capital, speaking sonorously, with a p.r.o.nounced German accent.

After some five minutes of this, Mr. Delancy, who was both nervous and irritable, as the orator paused for breath at a period, ventured to protest.

"Yes, yes, man," he exclaimed, testily. "But I don't care a d.a.m.n about Schopenhauer and socialism, and I'm sure Mr. Hamilton doesn't. Let's get to the wages paid in the Hamilton factory."

Ferguson came to the support of Delancy, as did McMahon, who said amiably:

"Give the boss a chance, Smitty."

Schmidt, however, was inclined to be recalcitrant.

"There was no arrangement yet to give the boss a chance," he argued.

"Just give him a chance then because he's a friend of mine," urged the Irishman with a grin of such exceeding friendliness toward the German himself that it was not to be resisted. Schmidt nodded in token that the employer should be allowed to speak, but he retained his position as a presiding officer before the fireplace.

Hamilton forthwith set out to present his side of the case to the men before him.

"As you know," he said briskly, "I'm the owner of the Hamilton factory.

I pay the wages. Now, the Hamilton factory has been kept running through good times and through bad times for more than thirty years. Sometimes, too, it has been run at a loss, without any cut in the wage-scale to help the owner in that period of loss. Well, it seems to me under the circ.u.mstances that I have a right to run my own business."

"Oh, certainly!" Ferguson agreed, languidly.

But Schmidt added a correction to the general concession.

"As long as you run it in our way, and don't cut wages."

"I'm sorry, men," Hamilton retorted, without any avoidance of the issue; "but that cut must go."

The members of the committee looked from one to another, and shook their heads dolefully. They knew too well the hardships that would be wrought among their fellows by a ten per cent. cut the length of the scale. It was McMahon who spoke first, with his usual air of good-nature in the sarcasm, but a note of grimness underlying the surface pleasantry.

"Well, now, you see," he said in his rich brogue, addressing Ferguson and Schmidt, "the boss has to save a mite to pay for the new bath-tubs and that natty bit of a gymnasium and the library they've been putting in lately."

"_Ach, Himmel!_" Schmidt snorted, disgustedly. "We will have manicures soon already!" He stared at his pudgy fingers with the work-begrimed nails, and grinned sardonically.

Hamilton flushed under the taunts.

"I have nothing to do with those improvements," he declared, in self-justification. "They are all being put in by Mrs. Hamilton at her own expense. She is doing it to make you men and women there more contented with your lot--to make you happy."

"To make us happy!" Schmidt grunted. "Bathtubs!"

McMahon's sense of humor led him to indulge in another flight of pleasantry, which shadowed forth the grim reality of these lives.

"Sure, but the gymnasium is great," he said, blandly. His tone was so deceptive that Hamilton smiled in appreciation of the compliment to his wife's undertaking, and even Mr. Delancy relaxed the harsh set of his features. "The longer you work in it," the Irishman continued innocently, "outside of hours of course, the stronger you get, and the more you can do in hours for the boss.... Sure, it's great!"

Hamilton hastily changed the subject. He explained that, the cut would not be applied to the wages of the women in the packing-department, where a hundred were employed. He declared frankly that their pay was insufficient to stand such a reduction.