"You may rest a.s.sured," Cicily interpolated, "that Mrs. Hamilton will continue to do precisely as she pleases."

"But, Cicily--" Hamilton would have protested.

"Precisely as she pleases," came the repet.i.tion, with an added emphasis, which, Hamilton knew from experience, it would be useless to combat.

"Faith," exclaimed McMahon, in humorous appreciation of the scene, "the filly has the bit in her teeth and is running away."

Cicily, however, was not to be diverted from a frank exposition of her position. Now, she faced the men, and made clear her att.i.tude:

"Let me tell you that Mrs. Hamilton is proud to be merely a member of the club which you have heard referred to and certainly she is not going to resign her membership in it. You men have your union. There's no reason why we women should not have our club as well. You say that I've been helping them. Very well, what of it? Yes, I have been helping them.

Why shouldn't the women take money from me, I'd like to know. For that matter, it's nothing like what you men have been doing--taking money from Carrington and Morton.... And you talk about fighting fair!"

At the final statement made by his wife, Hamilton whirled on the men.

"What's that?" he fairly barked. "Are Morton and Carrington supplying you fellows with money to prolong the strike?"

"Yes," Cicily replied, as the men maintained a sullen silence. "And these men of yours have been listening to their lying promises about starting a new factory, as soon as you are down and out for keeps." She eyed the men scornfully, as she continued: "Haven't you the sense to see that it's merely a plan to ruin Mr. Hamilton completely? They want to kill him off for good and all. Then, when he's out of the way, you'll have to work for any sort of wages they are willing to give you. Good gracious, the scheme is plain enough! Why can't you see it as it is--a plot to do him up through you? A woman can see the inside of it easily enough!"

But her sensible argument was wasted on the men, who already had their opinions formed, and were not likely to change them readily at a word.

"Women have no place in business," Schmidt reiterated, heavily. "We have proved that. Now, Mr. Hamilton, you just keep your wife to yourself. We don't want her meddling around in our concerns. And we'll keep our wives to ourselves. They don't want you!" he added significantly; and McMahon and Ferguson endorsed the sentiment by vigorous nods of a.s.sent. "So,"

the German concluded, "we will settle this strike ourselves, like men, without any more woman's interference. Am I right?"

"That's exactly what I want you to do," Hamilton replied. "And any time you want to come back with the cut, let me know."

"I hope you won't hold your breath while you're waiting," the Irishman advised grimly.

"And I hope you won't be hungry," Hamilton retorted.

With this exchange of civilities, the meeting between the men and their former employer came to an abrupt end. Without any further farewells than a series of curt nods, the men filed from the room.

"I'm thinking that it's a pleasant talk we'll be having together, this night," Mrs. McMahon remarked judicially, after the departure of the committee. "So, it's thinking I am that we'd better start early, and then we'll have time a plenty to thrash it out with the boys. Good-by, Mrs. Hamilton.... And please to remember that the next meeting of the club is to be on the Thursday."

"I'll surely be there," Cicily promised.

The adieux were quickly spoken, and the women took their departure, leaving husband and wife alone together, standing silently.

CHAPTER XVI

Hamilton stirred presently, turned, and threw himself heavily into the nearest chair, whence he stared curiously at his wife with morose eyes of resentment. Cicily felt the scrutiny, but she did not lift her gaze to his. She was not shirking the conflict between them, which seemed inevitable after this last episode; but she was minded to let her husband begin the attack. In her turn, she sought a chair, into which she sank gracefully, and rested in a pose of languid indifference that was fascinating in itself, but at this moment for some inexplicable reason peculiarly aggravating to the man. It may be that her apparent ease at a critical period in their fortunes appealed to him as hatefully incongruous; it may be that the gracious femininity of her, her desirability as a woman, thus revealed by the lissome la.s.situde of her body, emphasized the fact that she was a creature created for joy and dalliance, not for the rasping stratagems of the market-place. Whatever the cause, it is certain that the lazy abandon of her posture irritated him, and it was with an attempt to veil his chagrin that at last he spoke:

"Well," he exclaimed petulantly, "some more of your work, I see!"

Cicily, however, disguised the fact that she winced under the contempt in his tone.

"Yes," she answered eagerly. "Now, don't you see that I was right?"

The device did not suffice to divert Hamilton from his purpose of rebuke.

"So," he went on, speaking roughly, "not content with forgetting your duty, not satisfied with your dreary failure as a wife, you've turned traitor, too."

"You seem to forget that it was yourself who failed in your duty--not I," Cicily retorted.

"Is that trumped up, farcical idea, your excuse for fighting me?"

"I'm not making any excuses," Cicily replied, stiffly. "And for the simple and very sufficient reason that I am not fighting you."

"Then, what under heaven do you call it?" Hamilton demanded, with a sneer. "Is it by any chance saving me?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Yes, I'd do that," came the courageous statement, "if only you'd let me."

"And your manner of doing it," Hamilton went on, still in a tone of sneering contempt, "I suppose would be by going on the way you have been going--giving money to my enemies, and so prolonging the strike, and so ruining me!"

"I do believe you are blind!" Cicily declared, angrily. She changed her pose to one of erect alertness, and her eyes flashed fire at her husband. "Is it possible that you don't appreciate why I gave those women money--why I helped them? Why, I wouldn't be a woman, if I didn't.

As I've told you before, I was a woman before I became a wife. If keeping other women and little children from going hungry isn't wifely, isn't businesslike, then thank G.o.d I'm not wifely, not businesslike!"

"Well, you're not, all right," Hamilton announced succinctly. "I'm glad that you're satisfied with yourself--n.o.body else is."

"Oh, I know what you want," was the contemptuous answer. "You want the conventional, old-time wife, the sort that is always standing ready and waiting to swear that her husband is right, even when her instinct, her brain, her heart, all cry out to her that he is wrong. Well, Charles, I am not that sort of wife, nor ever will be. The real root of the trouble is that we women are changing, developing, while you men are not: you are the same. We, as a s.e.x, are growing up, at last; your s.e.x is standing still. The ideas our grandmothers held, the lives they led, would kill us of dry rot. But you men are just where your grandfathers were in relation to your homes and your beliefs as to the duty of your wives. Of course, your old-time wife looked up to her over-lord with reverence; she hung on his every word with profound respect; she swore by his every careless opinion, without ever daring to call her soul or her mind her own. For that matter, why shouldn't she have done so? He was educated, after some sort of fashion at least; and he went abroad into the world, where he mixed with his fellows, where he did things, good or bad; while she, poor, pretty, ignorant doll, s.n.a.t.c.hed up by him in early girlhood, and afterward kept sequestered, forced to a.s.sume the tragic responsibilities of a wife and mother before she was old enough to appreciate her difficult position--what chance did she have? Now, to-day, I tell you, it is all different. We're as well educated as you men--better, oftentimes. We have discovered that we can think intelligently; we do think. We, too, go abroad into the world; we, too, do things. Best of all, we see with a new, clearer vision. And we see certain things that you men have become blinded to through centuries of usage, of selfish, careless struggling for your own ends. We are able to see with the distinctness of truth the right relation of the man and the woman--an equal relation, with equal rights for each, with equal claims on each other, with equal duties to each other in the home and in the world outside the home--partners, held together by love."

"My dear," Hamilton remarked dryly, as his wife paused, "you have omitted one salient qualification of the modern woman: she is, preeminently an orator. Why, you, yourself, are a feminine Demosthenes--nothing less." But he abandoned, his tone of raillery, as he continued: "And so, what you've been doing--that's your idea of partnership, is it?"

"Yes," Cicily declared, spiritedly. "When one partner makes a mistake, it's the duty of the other to set things straight."

"By ruining him!" the husband e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, in savage distrust.

"Have I ruined you?" There was a flame of indignation in the amber eyes, and the curving lips were turned scornfully; but there was a restrained timbre of triumph in the music of her voice. "No! Why, let me tell you something: Those women are for you, already. They are helping me against their husbands. You'll win in the end--in spite of all the damage you tried to do to-day with your colossal blundering. But they're loyal to me, and they'll forgive you for my sake, and they'll give you the victory in the fight.... Just wait and see!"

"Nonsense!" Hamilton mocked. He considered his wife's a.s.sertions as merely the maunderings of an extravagant enthusiast. She was sincere--more the pity!--but she knew absolutely nothing of the problems with which she insisted on entangling herself so futilely.

"I promise you," Cicily persisted, undismayed by her husband's jeering att.i.tude of scepticism, "that you will win in the end. Yes, you will; because it is right: that you should. I am doing my part, not only to help you; but, too, because it is right. We owe a duty not only to ourselves, but to those people as well.... Even you must see that!"

"Well, I don't," Hamilton maintained, consistently. But he winced involuntarily under the expression of pity for his ignorance that now showed in his wife's face.

"Well, it only serves to ill.u.s.trate what I said," Cicily went on, with a complacency that annoyed the man almost beyond endurance. "The woman has the clearer visions nowadays. That's where we differ from our dear departed grandmothers, from our mothers even. They had a personal conscience that stopped short at the front and back doors of the home.

We women of to-day have a bigger conscience, which takes in the bigger family. It's a social conscience, and that it is which makes us different from those women of the earlier generations. Don't you see, Charles, that you and I are really a sort of big brother and sister to those in our employ? So, let us help them, even if we have to do it against their own mistaken efforts of resistance."

"Of course," Hamilton suggested, still sneeringly, "Morton and Carrington, too, are our dear brothers."

For an instant, Cicily was nonplused by the question; but, of a sudden, she received one of those inspirations on which she usually relied for escape from a predicament.

"Oh, yes, indeed," she replied happily, and beamed radiantly on her astonished husband, in antic.i.p.atory enjoyment of her repartee. "They're our bad brothers, whom we must spank--hard!"