Chapter XIV: The Voice of Alleghenia 252 (3)

At one o'clock the whistle blew again, and a thousand voices whooped a derisive accompaniment, but no one of the throng in the streets made a move toward the mills. Half an hour later, watchmen swung to and bolted the gates, and, issuing presently from a small side entrance, in company, were received with cheers, handshakes, and slaps upon the back. Then the crowd gradually thinned,--many going to the already well-filled hall where McGrath was delivering an address, and others to their homes,--and a silence descended upon the neighborhood, broken only by the voices of the men about the saloon doorways.

At two, Peter Rathbawne, attended by his private secretary, came out of the side entrance and walked slowly away in the direction of his home. He held his head high, and his eyes straight to the front, and paid no attention to the respectful greetings of those of the strikers who saluted him, touching their hats. There were many among them whose hearts sank at this attitude in a man who had made it his boast that he knew every hand in his mills by sight, and who, in the past, had had a nod or a friendly word for each and all of them. For the first time a premonition settled upon them of what this strike, which had been welcomed principally for novelty's sake, might mean. It was the first the Rathbawne Mills had ever known. Some of those who saw the face of Peter Rathbawne that afternoon were already hoping that it might be the last.

The Lieutenant-Governor returned to his apartment for lunch. Cavendish was still sleeping as he had left him, with a stalwart negro porter, summoned from the Capitol by telephone early that morning, watching in a chair. Under Barclay's orders, a carpenter had already removed the splintered door of the wine-closet, and an upholsterer had replaced it by a slender brass rod from which swung a velvet curtain. With his own hands the Lieutenant-Governor had taken away the fallen bottle, mopped up the pool of absinthe, and put the room to rights. Now he dismissed the negro, took from his pocket a little box of strychnine tablets, obtained from his physician on his way from the Capitol, and, after a brief survey of his surroundings to see that all was in order, went over to the divan and shook the sleeping man by the shoulders.

"Come, lazy-bones!" he said, with a laugh. "You've slept over twelve hours. That will do--even for a nervous wreck."

Cavendish opened his swollen eyes slowly, looked at him, and then closed them again with a murmured "Oh, God!" which was like a groan.

To this the Lieutenant-Governor paid no heed. Passing into the bathroom, he turned on the cold water in the tub, poured a half glass of vichy from a syphon, and then returned, carrying the tumbler in his hand. Cavendish had raised himself on one elbow, and was looking stupidly about the room.

"Here you are," said Barclay cheerfully. "Stow this pill, and here's vichy to wash it down. Your bath's running. By the time you've had it, there'll be some clothes ready for you."

Cavendish gulped down the tablet, and sat upright.

"Last night"--he faltered.

For the first time in his life, the Lieutenant-Governor called him by his first name.

"Last night, Spencer," he said, looking him fairly in the eye, "belongs to the past, and is taboo. I won't hear a word about it. This is to-day. Get up, and we'll set about putting wrong right. You're a man again. Don't forget that. And I'm your friend. Don't forget that, either."

His hand rested for an instant on the other's shoulder with a firm pressure, and then he passed into his bedroom and shut the door.

They had lunch together in the dining-room of the "Rockingham," and then went up again to Barclay's rooms. At the door, Cavendish came to a halt.

"I can't stand this," he said.

"You'll have to," replied the Lieutenant-Governor, "so shut up!"

"You've made a change," said Cavendish obstinately, pointing to the curtained cupboard.

Barclay's eyes did not follow the gesture.

"So have you!" he answered. "Now, look here. There are twenty dollars in the waistcoat of that suit, and a letter to Payson of the 'Kenton City Sentinel.' Go down and see him this afternoon, and I think he'll give you a job at reporting, which will fix you up for the present. In another pocket you'll find a box, with three tablets like the one you had before lunch. Take one of them every two hours. In still another pocket there's a key to these rooms. I'm going to be busy till about ten o'clock, so you'll have to shift for yourself. Make yourself at home, and if you're awake I'll see you when I come in."

Taking him suddenly by the shoulders, he twisted him about, facing the chimney piece, on which stood a photograph of Natalie Rathbawne, smiling out of a silver frame.

"I'll leave you to talk it out with her," he added simply.

In the hall, as he passed out, he caught a reflection of Cavendish in a mirror. His hands were resting on the mantel-edge, and he was leaning forward with his haggard face close to the photograph. Barclay looked at his watch.

"Two o'clock," he said to himself, "and all's well!"

VII

THE MIRAGE OF POWER

Barclay was conscious of a feeling of exhilaration such as he had not known for many weeks, as he swung into Bradbury Avenue late that afternoon on his way to the Rathbawne residence. The duties of the day had been inordinately petty and vexatious, but he had dispatched them one and all with something approaching enthusiasm,--a touch of the old Quixotic energy with which he had taken office. The morning conversation in Governor Abbott's room had braced and toned him. He forgot its inauspicious opening, and even his distress at the attempt to force him into the position of mediator between Peter Rathbawne and the Union, in the solid satisfaction of having been able to speak his mind to McGrath, and call that worthy a blackguard to his face. He was a man who despised a quarrel, but, for its own sake, loved a square, hard fight.

Back, however, of this somewhat inadequate excuse for cheerfulness lay the Governor's assurance that in the matter of the strike his lieutenant was to have free rein. It was the first time since the beginning of their official association that Elijah Abbott had placed an actual responsibility in Barclay's hands. A corner-stone laying, a banquet here and there, the opening of a trolley line, or a library, or a sewer,--these were the major calls upon the Lieutenant-Governor's time. The main current of routine was a hopeless monotony of official correspondence, investigations, statistics, reading and reporting on the interminable and flatulent maunderings of the Legislature,--duties heart-breaking in their desperate tedium and maddening inutility.

But at last here was responsibility, actual and deeply significant, calling for the exercise of tact, courage, and immutable firmness. The particular task was not one which he would have coveted, and yet he welcomed it. Anything,--anything to assuage in him that sense of ineptitude, of being ignored, a titled nonentity!

With this vast lightening of spirit came, not only gratitude, but a sense of lenity toward Governor Abbott. He encouraged himself to believe that the note between them had been one of misunderstanding merely. It might not be too late, after all! Gradually, he began to form a mental picture of a growing sympathy and affiliation between them, large with possibilities of improvement for Alleghenia. As he turned into the Rathbawnes' gateway, he could have laughed aloud for very lightness of heart. His optimism was not even impaired by running, in the hall, full against Mrs. Rathbawne.

"_Good_ gracious! Lieutenant-Governor, is that you?"

Repeated and earnest endeavor on Barclay's part had never dissuaded her from this form of address.

"What _is_ the use of _having_ such a title, if one can't _call_ you by it?" she would say, when he remonstrated. "Do _you_ suppose that, if Natalie were engaged to a _prince_, I should be going around, calling him Tom, Dick, or Harry, instead of 'Your Royal _Highness_'? You ought to be _proud_ of your title. _I_ am!"

"But, Mrs. Rathbawne"--

"Now, _please_ not, Lieutenant-Governor, _please_ not! I like it best that way."

The north wind was attentive and amenable to the voice of persuasion, in comparison with Josephine Rathbawne.

"Of _course_ you know the _strike_ is on!" she continued now, without waiting for an assurance from Barclay that he was indeed none other than himself. "Isn't it _awful_? I expect to hear the roar of the mob at _any_ moment! Come into the drawing-room. Natalie _was_ there, only _half_ an hour ago."

And she swept through the doorway, Barclay following.

"Natalie," she began, "here's the Lieu--why, _Dorothy_! I took you for Natalie. And--er--oh! Why, Mr.--er--how de do? I didn't see you at first. Oh, _do_ turn on the switch, my dear. The place is as black as pitch."

The electric light, flooding the room, revealed young Nisbet, one vast, consuming blush, and Dorothy, with a dangerous light in her eyes, and her lips tightly compressed. It was plain that Mrs. Rathbawne had fallen foul of Dan Cupid's machinery once more!

"Why, Mr. _Nisbet_! I thought you were in New York."

"I had a telegram this morning, calling the date off," said young Nisbet in pitiable confusion; "that is, I didn't have to go, you know. So I just fell in here to explain. I thought some of you might spot me on the street, and after I'd said"--

He began to flounder hopelessly, and cast a glance of mute appeal at Dorothy. That facile young lady marched directly into the breach.

"If you and John are looking for Natalie," she said, "you'll find her in the library with Dad. How do you do, John?"

"Pretty well, I thank you, Flibbertigibbet. It is really your husband whom I came to see, Mrs. Rathbawne. I've a little business with him, so, for the moment, I'll have to give Natalie the cold shoulder."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Rathbawne, lifting her fat hands. "Of _course_, Lieutenant-Governor! I understand _perfectly_. Business before pleasure, _always_. Go right in, won't you, and send Natalie here to me. _I'll_ stay here. Aren't we going to have tea, Dorothy? Oh, _do_ try to sit up straight, my dear!"

Natalie and her father were bending low over a great portfolio, their heads close together in the yellow glow of the table-lamp, which was the only light in the room. Rathbawne looked up with a grim smile, as the Lieutenant-Governor entered.

"Pottering over my autographs, again, you see," he remarked. "I've been neglecting them shamefully, of late--eh, Natalie? Didn't have the time. It looks just now as if I wouldn't have to complain again of lack of leisure for quite a while!"

"It was that I dropped in to see you about," said Barclay, striving, with only partial success, to keep the exultation out of his voice. "You may not be in for so much leisure as you imagine, Mr. Rathbawne. You may not get much of a holiday, after all."

Without for an instant losing the Lieutenant-Governor's eye, Rathbawne reached out and touched his daughter on the arm.

"Oh, Dad!" she said reproachfully.

"There's no need for her to go, sir," added Barclay, "unless you wish it. I bring only good news."

Acquiescing, Rathbawne drew Natalie close to him, passing one arm across her shoulders, so that his gnarled hand rested firmly on the delicate fabric of her sleeve. Between these two there had always lain a sympathy, an affection, a mutuality of comprehension, more like the relation of husband and wife than that of child and parent.

"Nothing but good news?" answered Rathbawne. "Go on. What is it?"

"News not so much of actual happenings as of potentialities," said the Lieutenant-Governor. "Last night I had to say to you that in the cause of right I was as powerless to aid you as a baby. To-night, I have come to tell you that I am in a position to see justice done, and that I will."

In detail, his voice ringing with enthusiasm and confidence, he described the interview of that morning, his statement of Rathbawne's position, his passage at arms with McGrath, finally, the Governor's announcement that the strike was to be supervised by his lieutenant in his stead.

"I had almost lost hope," he concluded. "I thought my opportunity would never come, and here it is, after all--the chance to act! And, somehow, I feel that it is only the beginning--that, as he gets to understand me better"--

Rathbawne suddenly left his daughter's side, and in three steps was directly before the Lieutenant-Governor. As he interrupted him, his fingers closed upon the lapels of the other's coat, and he punctuated his words with little tugs at these, his knuckles coming together with tiny muffled thuds. He spoke with a gravity that was vibrant with suppressed anger and slow with sincere regret.

"My boy," he said, "it's not a gracious thing to do to spoil an enthusiasm like yours, but don't deceive yourself. Elijah Abbott as a trickster is alone in his class. You were never more powerless to act for the right than you are at this moment."

"But I have his assurance"--

"Oh, _his_ assurance! It isn't worth the ash off your cigar. What, give you a chance to interfere with the will of the Union which made him, and owns him, body and soul? Never in God's world! Listen to me. I spent an hour in his office this very afternoon, discussing the strike--_and he never so much as mentioned your name_!"

The Lieutenant-Governor winced as if the words had been the touch of a lancet. Then he closed his eyes.

"And I was in the next room," he said, almost as if to himself,--"planning--my--control--of the situation! Good God!"

"I went directly to him," continued Rathbawne, "because I knew that it would be purely and simply a waste of time to parley with the lesser officials who are either helpless or frankly his tools. I knew, too, that no satisfactory result would come of appealing to him, but I wanted to give him the chance. All I asked of him was an assurance that the mills would have proper police protection, and that, if necessary, the militia would be called out in support of order. The outcome was exactly what I expected. Governor Abbott rubbed his hands, and smiled, and said: 'All in good time, Mr. Rathbawne, all in good time. When the conditions seem to warrant it, we can discuss these measures.' That means that they are free to blow the mills to kingdom come, before a finger will be raised by the authorities to prevent them. And what's more, they'll do it! Do you think I don't know McGrath?"

As he had intended it should, this speech had given the other a chance to recover himself. The Lieutenant-Governor's habitual poise was already restored, and his voice, as he answered, was quite steady, but eloquent of his desperate discouragement and weariness.

"I hope it's not as bad as all that, Mr. Rathbawne. It's not necessary to tell you, that for me there can never again be such a thing as trusting the word of Governor Abbott; but, at the same time, I can hardly bring myself to believe that he would openly countenance the practical existence of anarchy in the capital city of Alleghenia."

"Well, I can, then!" declared Rathbawne. "I can believe anything of him! Mark my words, John, he's as sleek a scoundrel as you'll find outside of the State's Prison. He cares less for Alleghenia and her capital city than you do for one of the hairs on his rascally head. I tell you, the Union has bought him, body and soul, and unless a miracle comes down from heaven, I'm a beaten man!"

Barclay bit his lips without replying. In his heart of hearts, he knew that Peter Rathbawne's words were true.

"He'll be impeached, sooner or later," continued the old man, "if there's a speck of decency left in the Legislature--which I doubt. But long before that, John, long before that, I'll be down and out. I would to God you were Governor of Alleghenia, my boy. You're the only ray of hope I can see for her."

The Lieutenant-Governor fell back a step, and covered his face with his hands. For a full minute there was absolute silence. Rathbawne had returned to the table, and, with his fore-arms across the back of a chair, and one foot on the lower cross-bar, was staring vacantly at his autographs, his hands moulding and remoulding each other into an infinity of forms. Natalie was at the window, her face in the crevice between the curtains. The same impulse had prompted both father and daughter. There are some things which it is better not to watch.

They turned at the sound of his voice, to find him with his head flung back, his hands clenched at his sides, his right foot planted firmly in advance of his left, his whole bearing one of passionate earnestness. And, though he was seemingly addressing Rathbawne, there was that in his voice and in his words which was meant for every ear in the state!

"Governor of Alleghenia!" he said, "I would to God I were! Sometimes I almost--yes, sometimes I wholly despair. I love this state, Mr. Rathbawne, as I love nothing else on earth--not even my girl there, not even Natalie. You two are the only ones in the world who can understand what it means when I say that. It has always been so, ever since I was big enough to know what Alleghenia meant, and more than ever since I have come to understand her shame, and her vital peril, and her dire need. I've never tried to explain the feeling; I've never found any one who seemed to share it with me. I hear other men talk of national patriotism, and the flag, and all that, and I understand it, and honor them for it. But--while it may be only a fancy of mine--for me Kenton City comes even before Washington, and even before these United States of America the sovereign state of Alleghenia! I would have her courts incorruptibility itself, her government the perfect commingling of equity and mercy; her press the vehicle of verity, intelligence, and watchfulness; her public servants the faithful exponents of loyalty and diligence; her people, one and all, whatever is best in our interpretation of the word American--and then, something more!--Alleghenians!--citizens, not only of the Republic, but of the state which I would have shine brightest in the field of stars, and be quoted, from Maine to California, and from Florida to Washington, as the synonym for law and order, truth, integrity, and justice. You know how far the dream is from the reality. We are held up to ridicule and contempt as law-breakers, time-servers, and bribe-takers--and we deserve it! I can't see help on any hand. I don't believe our people, as a class, are actually vicious and corrupt--only callous and indifferent, accustomed so long to the spectacle of political chicanery and depravity that they have lost their ability to appreciate its significance. But, so far as results are concerned, it all amounts to the same thing. Once, I hoped I should be able to do something. But now--I'm a nonentity, Mr. Rathbawne, as you know, and not only that, but a man who has taken a false step, from which he can never recover. I'm dead, politically speaking--as dead as Benjamin Butler!"

He paused, drawing a deep breath.

"We were speaking of your interview," he added, more evenly. "What was the result?"

"Nothing, beyond what I've told you," answered Rathbawne, shaking his head. "All I can do is to keep my mouth shut, await developments, and trust in a Providence which it takes a good bit of obstinacy to believe hasn't deserted the state of Alleghenia for good and all. It isn't for my own sake alone, John, that I pray the Union will give in before my people begin to think of violence. You remember '94 in Chicago? Well, we don't want anything like that in Kenton City. It would be the last straw! Alleghenia has a big enough burden of disgrace to carry, as it is."

A servant entered, even as he was speaking, to summon him to the telephone, and with an exclamation of impatience he left the room. Immediately, Natalie stepped from her post at the window, and came toward Barclay with outstretched hands.

"Oh, Johnny boy," she said, "I'm _so_ sorry. How you've been hurt, dear, and disappointed, and cruelly wronged!"

The Lieutenant-Governor's hands clenched again at the sound of sorrow in her voice, and he strove in vain to control the tremor of his lip. Tenderly he put his arms about her.

"I'm sorry, too, little girl--sorry you were here to see me make a fool of myself and then squeal when I got hurt as I deserved. I shouldn't have done that. But I was so proud--so grateful--I thought I was going to be able"--

"_Johnny--Johnny!_"

They held to each other rigidly for an instant, her face against his sleeve, in an agony which no tears came to soothe.

"There!" said Barclay presently. "I'm better already. It does one good to blow off steam, now and again."

His tone lightened perceptibly.

"And look here," he added, "what's most important, after all, is that I have news for you, and ought to be delivering it."

As yet, they did not dare to meet each other's eyes, but Natalie took the cue.

"You can spare yourself the trouble, my lord," she retorted, sweeping him a curtsy. "I can guess what it is, without your aid. You've found him!"

"How did you know?"

"I didn't. But you will remember that I asked you to find him. The inference is as plain as a pikestaff."

"Arrogance! But you're right. I have. He has been at my rooms since last night. He was frightfully shaky, and utterly despondent, but he's taking something to settle his nerves, and I've no doubt a week or so of good food and straight living will bring him around into something like his old form."

"Boy dear! And you're taking care of him?"

"Oh, just directing the cure, that's all! I'll tell you more when I can report definite progress. Do you suppose there is a single secluded corner in all this mansion which has not already been preëmpted by Dorothy and Nisbet?"

He slipped his arm about her again, and together they went out, across the wide hall, toward the drawing-room. Rathbawne was standing at the telephone under the stairway, but, as they approached him, he replaced the receiver, and stepped forth under the light of the chandelier. They both halted, shocked into speechlessness by the look on his face. The past ten minutes seemed to have added a decade to his age. His cheeks were white and drawn, and with his hands he groped before him, as if he had been stricken blind. As he came close to them, he lifted his head, and peered first at his daughter, and then at Barclay, seeming barely to recognize them.

"Dad! What _is_ it?" said the girl, in a voice just above a whisper.

Rathbawne raised his hand, and pushed back the hair from his forehead.

"A message--from Payson--of the 'Sentinel,'" he mumbled. "It seems there's a fire--a fire on Charles Street--near the mills--one of my buildings--a shop--a shop. Some one in the crowd--threw a torch in at the window--there is a great crowd--a throng of strikers--watching--cheering the flames--hissing the firemen. They've begun early--and this is only the beginning! My people--my people"----

He stumbled forward, and would have fallen, but that his daughter caught him. To his dying day Barclay remembered how, as he sprang to aid her, her hands gleamed, white and slender, against the black of Peter Rathbawne's coat.

The hush that followed was broken presently by the sound of the old man's choking sobs, and the low, soothing tones of Natalie, murmuring against his ear. From the drawing-room came indeterminate scraps of Mrs. Wynyard's gay chatter, as she regaled Mrs. Rathbawne with the gossip gleaned in a round of calls. She herself was partly visible, drawing off her gloves before the fire. From the music-room beyond issued the chords of Dorothy's none-too-sure accompaniment, and young Nisbet's superb, full tenor:--

"'Ah, love, could you and I with fate conspire
To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire'"--

But, in the Lieutenant-Governor's imagination, another sound mingled with and dominated these,--the voice of Michael McGrath, as he had heard it that morning, through the open door of Governor Abbott's room:--

"It won't be a strike like other strikes, not so long as I'm running it, that is. It's going to mean business from the word go!"

VIII

THE GOVERNOR UNMASKS

One spotted peach will contaminate an entire basket, one drop of ink cloud a full glass of clear water. It was so in the case of the strikers at the Rathbawne Mills. Their unwonted idleness, the long succession of empty hours, already, among the more improvident, the preliminary pressure of privation's teeth,--all these made them easy prey for the sophistries of men like McGrath and his associates. At first they simply laughed at the arraignments of Peter Rathbawne as a plutocrat, a slave-master, and an oppressor of the poor, knowing better in their hearts. But the memory of past kindness is too apt to be the most fleeting of human impressions. On the one side the gates of the Rathbawne Mills remained obstinately closed, and, though Rathbawne himself manifested no intention of resorting to the intolerable importation of "scab" labor, he persisted in his refusal to treat with the Union so long as the discharge of the fifteen men remained a subject proposed for debate. On the other hand, the denunciations of McGrath and the other Union orators were constant, unavoidable, and sufficiently plausible to produce an impression, and linger in the mind. And, meanwhile, to and fro among the strikers, stalked, arm in arm, the spectres of idleness and starvation, the one smirking openly, the other, as yet, half-veiled. Altogether it was fertile ground.

After the burning of Mr. Rathbawne's shop, on the first night of the strike, ensued a week of comparative quiet. The outrage had been flagrant, the source, if not the very author, of it was known, and the police did--nothing. For three days the press of Kenton City blazed with indignation, excepting only the "Record," which openly favored the strikers, and then all the papers alike suddenly ceased to refer to the incident at all. For, while McGrath was not in favor of wasting the funds of the Union, he was as well aware as the next man that a dollar, as well as a stitch, in time, saves nine.

Herein lay the cardinal peril of Alleghenia. As John Barclay had said, it was not that her people, as a class, were corrupt or criminal, but merely that they viewed with easy tolerance evidences of laxity and lawlessness which would have set the citizens of another state by the ears, and filled the newspaper columns and the public forums with indignation and protest. In this respect, the papers of Kenton City were the most flagrant offenders. Even the most reputable, the "Sentinel," could be silenced at practically any moment by those cognizant of the method, and in a position to command the price, of manipulation. As a whited sepulchre it was a conspicuous success, being irreproachably scholarly, dignified, and didactic in tone, and wholly destitute of principle.

Michael McGrath, demagogue though he was, knew his public as the physician knows the pulse he feels. It was a feature of the strike at the Rathbawne Mills that no attempt was made to justify the cause of the strikers in the eye of the disinterested public of Kenton City. McGrath himself was fully alive to the slenderness of his pretext, and alive, as well, to the strength of Peter Rathbawne's case, if it should come to a discussion of the rights and wrongs involved, wherein his business probity and his justice to, and consideration for, his employees, would furnish arguments well-nigh unanswerable. He contented himself, therefore, with standing upon a simple declaration of the will of the Union, which was, in effect, his own; and, strong in his reliance, if not upon the support, at least upon the non-interference of the state authorities, devoted his attention to holding the press in check, by methods long since found effectual, and confidently left the public to think and act as it saw fit.

There could have been no more contemptuous comment upon the moral and intellectual status of the community than this insolent assumption of its indifference to the commonest principles of justice, but for a time his confidence had the appearance of being amply justified. The strike went its way, characterized by an infinity of petty outrages and a constant and consistent vilification of Peter Rathbawne, while--with the exception of that first and promptly quashed protest on the part of the press--no voice was raised in opposition.

Reduced to its lowest terms, the struggle was one between Rathbawne and McGrath, and that, not as representatives the one of a great industrial, the other of a great socialistic organization, but as individuals. The source of the stream which had thus reached its rapids, and was plunging on toward its annihilating cataract, lay far back in the early days of Rathbawne's commercial career. McGrath was a man who practiced neither the vice of forgetfulness nor the virtue of forgiveness. As plain as the event of a yesterday lay upon his memory his contemptuous dismissal from Rathbawne's employ, charged in particular with a petty peculation, and in general with the indisputable fact of being a bad influence in the mills. His case had been in many ways identical with that of the men whose cause he was now, for reasons of his own, espousing.

But Peter Rathbawne, then less shrewd in estimating men than now, had reckoned without due credit to the vindictiveness and pertinacity of the man before him. McGrath--brutally handsome in those days, idle, insolent, and independent--later had developed qualities of which at the time there was little evidence. He had smiled and shrugged his shoulders--a habit which had grown upon him--as Rathbawne gave his verdict, and had instinctively resisted the temptation to threaten revenge. For that inspiration he had been devoutly grateful ever since. It had enabled him to work in silence and unseen, like a mole, toward the goal at which he aimed. He was a poker player, was Michael McGrath, of the class which pulls victory out of defeat by the aid of its own personality and a low pair. The calm indifference with which he had received his dismissal from the employ of Peter Rathbawne seemed to him, on reflection, to have been the unconscious forerunner of the elaborate _nonchalance_ with which he now viewed the unexpected filling of a broken straight. It was certain that the other player had not guessed the strength of his cards.

He had never forgiven, never forgotten. It had taken a quarter-century of unremitting effort, of indomitable perseverance, of calculated ingenuity, to secure to him the position which he now felt to be assured--that of being able to cope with the man who had been his adversary, and so overwhelmingly his superior. The fight was on at last,--a fight in which the odds were not only equal, but, if anything, in favor of the former mill-hand, thus become one of the most powerful men in Alleghenia; a fight to be fought to the bitter finish, with an almost certain triumph as his reward.

Added to these motives was another,--newer, it is true, but none the less potent,--his hatred for the Lieutenant-Governor. He had been able to laugh within a half-minute after the words "unmitigated blackguard" had smitten his ears; but they had rankled for all that. It was not so much the insult, as the knowledge that it was justified. He was remarkably candid with himself, was Michael McGrath.

Hence the unparalleled venom of the strike at the Rathbawne Mills. McGrath's dual sense of wounded vanity prescribed a course of surpassing vindictiveness. His personal resentment, reinforced by consummate appreciation of the adversaries with whom he had to deal, dictated a safe road to revenge, which enabled him to fling wide the floodgates of his long-stored animosity, secure in his knowledge of having the upper hand. Disorder, calumny, outrage, even open anarchy--he could venture upon them unafraid. A corrupt Governor, whom he had created, stood behind him, smiling tolerantly. An indifferent community would let him have his will. Only he must proceed by degrees, and be ready at any moment to take one backward step for the sake of being able presently thereafter to take two in advance.

Here precisely lay the weak point in his plan of campaign. With the fatuity incidental on occasions to even the shrewdest minds, he had not counted upon independence in the host which he believed slave to him, in thought and word and deed. He rated himself the dictator, the prompter without whose suggestion no one of all the players in this gigantic tragedy could speak his line. As a matter of fact, like all leaders of his class, he could drive his followers forward at will, while totally unable to hold them back. He was wholly master so long as he used the spur. The peril lay in the fancied efficacy of the curb. In short, he was discovering already that he had unwittingly created a monster beside which Frankenstein's was the veriest doll.

Thus, shortly, the strain began to tell upon the four thousand unemployed sets of nerves around the Rathbawne Mills. Meetings became more frequent and more turbulent; drinking and disorder were observably on the increase; and at the end of another four weeks one of the gates of the mills was beaten down, and several hundred men and boys paraded around shop after shop, breaking windows and singing ribald songs. It was not a very serious demonstration in itself. Its ominous feature lay in the fact that the police made no attempt to check it. There was something else about it, to the thinking of McGrath. It was not so much that events were moving too fast, but that they were moving without intelligent control.

Two nights later, another building belonging to Peter Rathbawne, and situated only a half-block from the mills, was burned in the same manner as the first, watched by an enormous crowd of strikers, who applauded each fresh burst of flame, as if the fire had been a circus or a play. Still there was no move on the part of the police.

Then it was that the business men of Kenton City sat up in their office chairs and began to think. This was an eventuality entirely outside the calculations of McGrath. But the pachydermatous inertia of the citizens of Alleghenia had yet its vulnerable spot, where the weapon might enter. Vaguely these men had known that the state was rotten, but the fact had never been brought to their attention in a manner so poignantly suggestive before. Unwittingly McGrath had aroused the suspicion that it was not the purse of Peter Rathbawne alone which was in danger. If it was possible for disorder to go to such extremes in the very streets of Kenton City without fear of interference or rebuke, then no man's property was safe. That thought was the Achilles' heel of the community. So it was that a Citizens' Committee, composed of presidents of two insurance companies, directors from five banks, representatives from the Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Trade, and, finally, Colonel Amos Broadcastle, was appointed to wait upon the Mayor. That gentleman, as was entirely to be expected, referred them to the Governor, and to the Governor they went.

Barclay was present at the interview. For his own reasons Governor Abbott had kept his immediate subordinate well to the fore in all matters pertaining to the strike since the latter's rebuke to McGrath,--in all matters, that is to say, not involving the exercise of actual authority. Of that, indeed, the Lieutenant-Governor had had no hope after the conversation in Peter Rathbawne's library. He met the representatives of the press, conducted the correspondence with mill-owners and other negatively interested parties, and at the Governor's request made what was palpably a farcical inspection of the entire state militia--to judge of their readiness for strike service!--a task which consumed a fortnight in constant travel, and visits to armories all alike in insufficient equipment and utter slovenliness. The Ninth Regiment alone remained, and this command was to parade for inspection by the Governor himself that very evening. The coincidence flashed through Barclay's mind as the Citizens' Committee entered, with Broadcastle, in his capacity as spokesman, at its head.

The dignity and air of command habitual to the Colonel of the Ninth were doubly apparent as he advanced toward the Governor's table. Both Barclay and Abbott rose to receive him, but the latter reseated himself, as soon as Broadcastle had introduced his fellow-members of the Committee. He listened to what followed with an air of thoughtfulness, tinged with a faint and exasperating suggestion of amusement. At a neighboring table, his official stenographer took down every word which fell.

Colonel Broadcastle was not accustomed to mince matters, when the occasion demanded brevity and conciseness. Now, he stepped to within a few feet of the Governor's table, and stood rigidly confronting him, with his hands clasped before him on the head of his stick, in the position of parade-rest.

"Governor Abbott," he said, in his curt, dry voice, "these gentlemen and myself form a Committee appointed by a meeting of the business men of Kenton City, to protest against the state of affairs now existing in connection with the strike at the Rathbawne Mills. It is only generous to presume that other matters have diverted your attention from an appreciation of these conditions. The situation is without parallel in the annals of Alleghenia. Disorder is rampant, and destruction of property is freely indulged in by the strikers without any apparent fear of molestation. Despite the fact that there is a large police-force, it makes no effort to check these operations. The sole reply of Chief Pendle to the protests of those interested in the promotion of law and order has been that he will not suffer any outside interference in the control of his department--the which, in view of his responsibility to the public, can only be regarded as sheer and intolerable insolence! An appeal to Mayor Goadby has elicited the response that the whole matter lies in the Governor's hands."

The Colonel paused. The Governor, leaning back in his chair, and fingering a pencil, smiled slightly and nodded his head.

"I suppose that is so," he said. "Continue, continue, Colonel Broadcastle."

"It is the sense of the law-abiding element of Kenton City," went on the Colonel, flushing at the condescension of his tone, "that the limit of endurance has been reached. If, willfully or otherwise, the police do not act, my regiment is prepared to act as substitute. I have already placed it at the service of the Adjutant-General. His reply, like the Mayor's, was to refer me to you for orders. I am here to receive them, sir."

"Your offer is appreciated," said the Governor suavely. "We of Kenton City have reason to be proud of the Ninth, Colonel Broadcastle. I congratulate myself upon my privilege of reviewing it, to-night. And we have reason to be proud, as well, of the intelligence which has made such an organization possible. Your disinterested devotion"--

Broadcastle flung up his chin.

"I am not here to receive compliments, sir!" he said abruptly.

"Nor I to bestow them," answered the Governor, unruffled. "As commander-in-chief of the state forces, I believe it is not outside my province to render deserved commendation to a subordinate."

"Oh, do not let us juggle with words, Governor Abbott! It is precisely as commander-in-chief of the state forces that the time has come for you to act; it is precisely as your subordinate that I am here to receive your orders. Assume the responsibility which confronts you, issue the commands proper to the emergency, and you will have no more tireless executor of them than I. My regiment can be on duty at the Rathbawne Mills inside of six hours"--

"But, my good Colonel Broadcastle," broke in the Governor, "the state has no need of your regiment for the moment! Calling upon the militia is no light matter, sir. You talk about my ordering out the Ninth as you would advise me to ring for a messenger-boy!"

"The welfare of the municipality, if not that of the commonwealth," replied Colonel Broadcastle firmly, "demands that an immediate stop be put to this lawlessness. We are dealing with extremities, sir!"

The Governor swung forward, and placed his elbows on the table.

"You will permit me to be the best judge of what the welfare of the commonwealth may be," he retorted. "Whatever lawlessness exists--and I think you have grossly exaggerated its extent, Colonel Broadcastle--is due to the selfish obstinacy of one man. In my opinion, Mr. Rathbawne is entirely in the wrong. He had fair warning, which he did not choose to heed. If his property suffers at the hands of the strikers, he has only himself to blame."

"It is not a question of Mr. Rathbawne, or of any other individual," said Broadcastle, "but of the integrity of the state of Alleghenia!"

"The integrity of the state of Alleghenia," answered the Governor dryly, "has been intrusted, by the vote of her citizens, to me, as chief executive."

"An action," exclaimed the Colonel, "which I venture to predict they will shortly have reason most bitterly to regret!"

Governor Abbott rose abruptly to his feet.

"This interview is at an end, Colonel Broadcastle," he said, bringing his fist down upon the table with a thud. "I take exception to your remarks, from first to last. I consider myself fully competent to deal with the situation, and you may depend, sir, I shall do so at my own time, and in my own way. If Mr. Peter Rathbawne supposes that he can defy reason and justice at will, and that the state authorities are prepared to support him, he is grossly and fatally mistaken. Gentlemen, I have the honor to bid you good-day!"

For a quarter-minute, the two men stood facing each other, without speaking. It was observable that the eyes of neither flinched. Then--

"It is my earnest hope, Elijah Abbott," said the Colonel slowly, "to see you impeached by a righteously indignant community, and committed for a term of years to the State's Prison at Mowberly, for rank malfeasance in office!"

The Governor shrugged his shoulders.

"Your record and your position protect you, Colonel Broadcastle," he said, with something of his usual suavity. "Will you have the goodness to retire?"

As the Citizens' Committee left the room the Lieutenant-Governor turned on his heel, passed into his office, and closed the door.

For a long time he sat motionless at his desk, with his temples in his hands, staring at a frame upon the opposite wall, which contained the emblazoned arms of Alleghenia. These were a hand holding even balances, upon a circular shield, supported by the nude figures of two young men, representing Art and Labor. Above, upon a scroll, were the words, "_Justitia. Lex. Integritas._"

It was not only bad heraldry, but indifferently appropriate symbolism.

IX

THE NINTH PASSES IN REVIEW

The huge armory of the Ninth, transformed, by the same system which had metamorphosed the _personnel_ of the regiment itself, from a gaunt, barn-like structure, ill-fitted to its purpose in all but size, to the most cheerful, as well as the most completely equipped, of Alleghenian arsenals, was blazing with light and echoing to the sound of many voices. A steady stream of people poured in at the heavy doors, now standing wide, but significant, with their great timbers, elaborate locks and bolts, and precautionary peep-holes, of the possibility of an attitude less hospitable. Threading their way at a rapid pace through the more sluggish main current of the crowd, the members of the regiment, in an infinite variety of civilian attire,--from tweeds and knickerbockers to top-hats and evening-dress,--sought their respective company-rooms, vanished therein, and, presently, reappeared in uniform. It was as if behind those ten doors which lined the upper corridor there were as many moulds, identical in form, whereinto this perplexing diversity of raw material was plunged on entering, to be drawn forth again in a constant reduplication of militiamen.

As the hour for the review drew near, the proportion of these to the throng with which they mingled, perceptibly increasing, seemed, little by little, to leaven the whole lump. The dress-uniform of the Ninth was everywhere, the black shakos and epaulettes, white pompons, cross-belts and gloves, and multiplicity of brass buttons, lending the immense assemblage a singular spirit and vivacity.

On the floor of the drill-room the people spread in all directions, fan-like, from the main doorway, the multitudinous footfalls mounting murmurously into the spaces of the lofty roof, where forty arc-lights hung, dizzily suspended, pallid in the thin haze of dust swung upwards from the hurrying feet of the thousands below.

"Precisely like an army of ants--and every one of them with an uncle or two, and a round dozen of nephews and nieces!" said Mrs. Wynyard.

She and the Rathbawne girls were looking down upon the drill-floor from the balcony of the Colonel's room. Broadcastle and the Lieutenant-Governor were deep in conversation inside, having seized the delay in the arrival of Governor Abbott as an opportunity for a few words in private.

"How funny they are, scuttling along, all of them!" said Dorothy. "And how immensely pleased the favored ones are, who have a soldier to show them the way. I see a distinct difference in their walk from that of the others, don't you, Natalie? They seem to be saying '_We_ were _invited_--and by this splendiferous creature at our side!' See how they strut! And look at the soldierless ones, how timidly they go--just as if they had found their tickets in the street, or had crept in through the basement windows. 'Please, kind Mr. Soldier-man, let us stay and see the show. We'll be _awf'ly_ good!'"

"How preposterous you are, Dorothy!" answered Mrs. Wynyard. "Look! The people are taking to the sides of the room already, and the companies are forming. What astonishing method and precision there is to it all! Do you suppose each man has a little circle marked on the floor, to show just where he is to stand?"

"I haven't the most remote doubt of it," said Natalie, with a smile,--"and his name neatly lettered inside it with gilt paint!"

The long, enclosed racks at the ends of the drill-room were open now, and the electric light winked upon the barrels of the Springfields, as busy, white-gloved hands plied the polishing cloths along them. The enormous drill-floor, cleared as if by magic from the disorderly weed-growth which had encumbered it, began to make manifest its proper crop--long lines of gray and white, like sprouting sage, at first but a dot here and there, to indicate the direction, then a scattering, then distinct clumps, finally a thick, serried row. In the distance, a bugle sounded, followed by a long ruffle of drums, and Colonel Broadcastle stepped quickly to the window of the balcony.

"There's the Governor," he said. "Will you come in? I'll send my orderly to show you to your seats."

At the same moment, the door from the corridor opened, and the orderly entered, his hand at his shako.

"Sir, the Governor has arrived."

Then, as the trio on the balcony stepped in through the window, he turned suddenly and superlatively scarlet. As has been said, young Nisbet was accustomed to getting what he wanted. In this instance what he had wanted happened to be that the Adjutant should choose him from the guard detail as Colonel's orderly. To be thus chosen was to be admittedly the most immaculate of thirty men, all more immaculate than a thousand immaculate others. The thing was not easy of achievement, but Dorothy Rathbawne was to be present at the review, and so--there was no second way about it--it simply had to be done. Young Nisbet's way of doing it was an absolutely new uniform and gold-plated buttons and accoutrements. Extravagance? Vanity? Perhaps! But at the present moment, he was wearing one cross-belt where his thousand and odd comrades were wearing two. There was no answer to such an argument as that.

Colonel Broadcastle had reserved seats for the party on the temporary reviewing stand, and, five minutes after they had taken their places, the bugles sang again, a curt order--"'shun! 'shun!"--ran in varying intonations from company to company, and the slack gray ranks before them stiffened into absolute rigidity. Then from the broad hallway beyond came a tremendous burst of sound, and, to the strains of the famous old march of the Ninth, the regimental band swung into view, followed by Governor Abbott and Colonel Broadcastle and the former's staff.

To the Lieutenant-Governor, but newly returned from his wearisome round of the state armories, much of what followed was so stale as to be no more than a constantly increasing strain upon nerves already overtaxed. He deliberately allowed his attention to wander, until he felt rather than actually perceived the steady tramp-tramp of the men, swinging, fours right, into column, the occasional "hep! hep!" of an officious file-closer, the endless succession of fours winking past him, like the palings of a gray fence seen from the window of a train, the intervals narrowed by short-step, widening again at the "Forward--_march_!" the blare of the band, lessening as it approached the further end of the building, then suddenly bursting into its former volume at the right-about. He endured it all listlessly. It was tediously familiar, stamped upon his brain by repetition after repetition.

Moreover, he was completely fagged, and unutterably oppressed by his burden of discouragement. The old wounds, in part healed by his recent absence from the immediate vicinity of his constant discomfiture, had been re-opened and set bleeding afresh by Governor Abbott's treatment of the Citizens' Committee. Whatever lingering hope had remained in his mind of peace with honor for the troubled capital of Alleghenia, seemed to have been effectually dispelled by that interview. The most enduring charity, the most fatuous credulity, the blindest partisanship--even these could not have preserved a last spark of confidence in Elijah Abbott. Still less was Barclay's indeterminate hope of the ultimate triumph of right able to stand against such crushing evidence of its instability. It was no longer a question of suspicions, of precedents, of deductions from the significance of a host of former misdoings. Out of his own mouth was the Governor convicted. "At my own time, and in my own way," he had said. It was a phrase, nothing more, and could be boiled down until its whole purport was contained in one word--Never!

"Fours _left_--_March_! Compan_ee_--_halt_!"

The entire regiment, as one man, swung from column of fours into battalion front, halted, and then--cr-r-rick! boooo-m-m-m!--came to order arms. The sides of the room were lined with a solid rampart of white and gray and gold. Barclay was aware of the First Sergeants, scurrying from their positions to report, of their voices, and those of the Majors and the Adjutant, and, finally the Colonel:--

"Take your post, sir!"

But his thoughts were anywhere and everywhere else. What a farce it all was, this life which he was leading, this mental and moral martyrdom to an impossible hope, this eternal and heart-sickening ordeal of hope deferred, this waiting, waiting, waiting, for something which never would and never could happen! Rotten, rotten to the core, this state for which he would have given his heart's blood, and not only rotten, but not caring a whit for her rottenness--glorying rather, in her own degradation. The chief executive had flung back into their very faces the appeal to his conscience of the most influential men in Kenton City; the police, even now seated about their station stoves, were sniggling at the predicament of the public which paid them for its protection against precisely the kind of thing which they openly tolerated and encouraged; yes, and even the militia, the guarantee of law and order, Broadcastle's own command, were decked out in tinsel and pipeclay, strutting to music in a palpable bid for applause and admiration. And yonder--the tide of anarchy was slowly but surely rising about the Rathbawne Mills, presaging riot, bloodshed, God alone knew what!--but one thing, inevitably,--the absolute downfall of dignity and rout of decency in Alleghenia!