THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES JF forme Conbewe, DIANA VICTRIX. A Novel. i6mo, $1.25; paper, 50 cents. THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER. A Novel. I2IHO, $1.50. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, BOSTON AND NEW YORK. THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER BY FLORENCE CONVERSE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Ctjc tf itoerstDc press, Cambribgc 1900 COPYHIGHT, 1900, BY FLORENCE CONVERSE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED VIDA D. SCUDDER HER BOOK 1521423 Z iraiSfs olicrpol, yvwrk KOVK &yvo>rd fiai npoff-f)\Qfff Ifjiflpovrfs eS ykp oW Sri voffeTre ndvres, KO.L voffovvres, &s y& OVK fffnv vp.uv Sffris ^| tffov voffet. rb n\v y&p vfjiuv &\yos tls ly" epxerot fi&vov Kaff avriv, KovStv &\\ov fi 8 i/j^i ^vx^l if6\w T6 Ka/xe Kal <r* ifiov &ffr oi>x Sift"? y fSSovrd oAA* IffTf iroXAi (lev pe ScuepixTavTa 8^, iroAA^j 5 dSoiiy \06vTa (ppovriSos ir\d,vou. CEdipus Tyrannus, SOPHOCLES. Alas, my children ! All your sad complaint Was known to me before too well was known ; For I have watched your laboring sick estate. Yet ailing thus, not one of all your number Suffers as I must suffer : unto you His sorrow comes to each alone no more ; But I for all this troubled city groan, And for myself, and still with each of yon Must groan. Not as to one sof t-lapt in slumber Ye questing come : already many tears Of pity I have shed, and many paths Have traversed in the wanderings of my thought. (Translation) PAUL ELMER MOKE. CONTENTS PAS* BOOK I. THE IDYL I. A MEDLEVAL SETTING 3 II. A BUSINESS DETAIL 14 HE. THE SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE 23 IV. PLAYING WITH FIKE 81 V. CHRISTOPHER S PEOPLE 45 VI. THE FANATIC 63 VTI. THE PASTORAL MODE 79 VIII. WOULD-BE FRIVOLITY 88 IX. A SHOEMAKERS HOLIDAY 104 X. PATERNALISM 118 BOOK IL THE DRAMA. I. CHIEFLY LEGENDARY 125 II. A BACKWARD GLANCE 141 III. IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 150 IV. A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 171 V. THE JESUITICAL CALVINIST ..... 184 VI. THE INTERIM 195 VII. Two WAYS OF BETRAYING A TRUST . . . 210 VHI. A NON-COMMITTAL COMMITTEE .... 224 IX. HALF MEASURES 239 X. THE HELPING HAND 251 XI. THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR .... 263 XII. THE Vicious CIRCLE 276 BOOK HI. THE ELEGY I. THE CORONACH 283 II. A NEW EXPERIMENT 292 HI. THE CHRIST-BEARER 305 IV. TAKING UP THE BURDEN 310 BOOK I THE IDYL " The children of the new age, whom the new intuition gov erns." Social Ideals in English Letters, VIDA D. SCUDDEB. THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER CHAPTER I A MEDIEVAL SETTING A SHAFT of sunlight came straight down the brook, lit up the ripples, yellowed the stepping- stones, and sped shining into the air just above the slippery place where the brook gave a toss and racketed down the rocks. " This is my back yard," said young Kenyon, pressing the branch of a tree away from the path. The shaft of sunlight fell upon Agnes yellow hair, as she crowded through the underbrush, and carne out upon the gray rock overhanging the waterfall. " There ought to be a hermit sitting on the op posite bank," she said ; " it s like a bit of nature out of an old romance. How queer to find the Middle Ages growing in your back yard ! " " Why queer ? " asked Kenyon, plainly resent ing the adjective. Philip Starr, following close behind Agnes, laughed appreciatively. " Yes, exactly," she said, wheeling round upon 4 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER him and answering his laugh ; " now if it had been your back yard, Mr. Starr " Kenyon put out a restraining arm : " The rock looks innocent, Miss Gillespie, but it s not ; don t stand on the down-hill part, please." " Oh, I am sure-footed ; I was in Switzerland all last summer ; and this is quite a feeble little slope ; it goes almost down to the bed of the brook." " Apparently, yes," said Kenyon, but he moved so that she was obliged to step back. " Then you relegate us clergy to the Middle Ages, do you, Miss Gillespie ? " continued Starr. " Dear me, no ! " she answered, smiling over her shoulder; "I should hope to be delivered from doing anything so trite." " Chris ! Christopher ! " called a voice from the woods. " Yes, aunt Ada." " Mr. Gillespie and I are not coming out on the rock. I can t trust my nerves on it. We shall cross the stepping-stones at once." " Very well, we 11 come presently." "I want to stay here a little longer," said Agnes. Her eyes had been following the water as it leaped up into the sun-sparkles a moment, then slid below where the foam flattened and the stream twisted snake-fashion through the mottled stone gullies. " Suppose we sit down," suggested Philip Starr ; "Chris never lets anybody stand around on this rock very long." A MEDIAEVAL SETTING 5 " Is there a tragedy ? a tradition ? " asked Agnes lightly, settling her skirts about her feet. " No," Kenyon laughed, " but I in always afraid somebody s going to make one." " These are our dear stepping-stones, professor," said aunt Ada s voice farther up the brook ; " I never see them without tears. How many times, in bygone days, Christopher s father has carried me over on his back ! " Aunt Ada emerged from the bushes at the side of the brook, a tall, stout lady in a black gown and a flapping garden hat. Professor Gillespie followed, a dignified and slender man. The three young people on the rock looked at one another and simultaneously laughed. "Shall I go first, Miss Kenyon?" asked the professor, glancing apprehensively from aunt Ada to the stones. " Who else should lead the way when Professor Gillespie is at hand?" said the lady, sending a glance obliquely heavenward. " Father will never do it in this world," mur mured Agnes ; " he always has more than he can do to look out for himself." Philip Starr glanced at the girl s face, but it was only mischievous ; she had not meant to sharpen both edges of her remark. " I don t quite like to go and help them," Ken yon whispered apologetically. " Oh, no ; of course not," assented Agnes, and she laughed. 6 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " Agnes, dear," said the professor, " your laugh is very sudden and startling. Now, Miss Kenyon, if you will give me your hand " Aunt Ada gave her hand confidingly, planted one foot upon a stone, and drew the other foot up. But the professor had also trusted his feet and his equilibrium to a single stone. He and Miss Ken- yon made each other alternate, involuntary bows, twice, three times. The professor realized that he was squeezing a lady s hand ; he bowed again ; so did she. " I think they are going to make a tradition," said Agnes. " How deep is the water ? " The professor tottered. Miss Kenyon screamed. Philip Starr had already gone to the rescue, and as Christopher hastened after him, Agnes said : " This is increasingly mediaeval three knights and a damsel in distress. No, better still, two knights and a priest I forgot Mr. Starr." " You won t drown, you know, auntie, even if you do fall in," cried Kenyon reassuringly, " it s not more than six inches deep." Philip Starr had his arm around the confused lady and was trying to drag her back to the shore. " Let go Miss Kenyon s hand, father," cried Agnes. The professor, thus baldly admonished, aban doned his one chance of support, stumbled, floun dered, splashed his boots, and subsided palpitating, upon the opposite bank, from whence he dejectedly watched the transit of Miss Kenyon, with Starr A MEDIEVAL SETTING 1 leading her, and her nephew lending confidence to her right elbow. " Shall I come for you, Miss Gillespie ? " asked Kenyon. " Please don t," said Agnes, poising daintily on the stones. She was small and slight, with a little colorless face, a tip-tilted nose, a delicately curved, mobile mouth, and big hazel eyes. Her hair blazed bright gold as she crossed the sun-path in the mid dle of the brook. " Is she plain, or is n t she ? I can t make out," Christopher had said to Philip the night before, on the arrival of Miss Gillespie and her father at the Kenyon homestead. " I think there s a fire within," the young cler gyman had answered, " but she smiles like a flint." Christopher had advised him to use this geologic simile in his next sermon. " I am a very bad leader," sighed the professor, watching his daughter as she danced toward him over the stones. " We 11 all say nay to that, professor," objected Christopher heartily; "any feather-headed mor tal can skip over stepping-stones ; but when it comes to keeping our mental equilibrium we re a precious dizzy lot. You ve pulled some of us off the rocks more than once." Agnes slipped her arm through her father s and smiled at Christopher not like a flint. " She is fond of the professor," thought Starr, 8 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER and reproached himself for wondering why. Mr. Gillespie was obviously a kind and learned man. " Come farther down," said Christopher, and led them along the bank until they were opposite the gray rock. Then suddenly Agnes cried out and stood still. Beneath the brow of the rock there was a pool, a dull, unfathomable eye that sulked glassily. Dur ing the wet seasons the water ran through the pool, but in a dry time only a little water, or none at all, found its way thither, and this was a dry time. The young men tossed pebbles into the round eye, and the pebbles fell through the water, spots of whiteness, and faded without a sound. Only when the brook flowed in and out, and the sun, for an afternoon hour, shone down to the heart of the pool, could any one know that the stones at the bottom were brown, and the cuplike walls were perilously smooth. " Really a remarkable formation," observed the professor. * I miss the allegorical beast," laughed Agnes ; "he- ought to be standing by the pool, waiting for us as he waited for the knights, and showed them the way." " I did n t know you were devoted to the Mid dle Ages, Miss Gillespie," said Starr, " I thought you only went in for modern things, problems and the poor. Have n t you just come from England?" " And that s why," responded Agnes ; " I had A MEDIAEVAL SETTING 9 a warning before I sailed. There was a girl I met over there, a clever, delightful girl ; and she went round in a red van, and stood on a barrel and lectured, in a low-necked gown. I haven t read anything but mediaeval romances since. But I d look better on a barrel than she did." " Then the Middle Ages is only a precautionary measure, something like that of the ostrich?" laughed Christopher. " Ah ! you would n t be the true daughter of a professor of economics, my dear, if you did n t love modern conditions," said Miss Kenyon, with one of her oblique smiles. " Heaven preserve me from loving them ! " ex claimed Agnes involuntarily. Kenyon leaned toward her with his face all alight. Philip did not move, but a sudden sense of relief, of absurdly unnecessary happiness came over him. The girl caught her breath and returned hastily to her light tone. " Besides, it would n t be good for father, you know, it would hamper his development ; and I m particularly careful about father s development twice as careful as he is about mine." Mr. Gillespie smiled indulgently, and his daugh ter continued : " For instance, if father comes down to break fast and begins to worry about the relation be tween employer and employed, I feel it my duty to divert him by referring to the relation between 10 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER squire and knight ; and then if he switches off on the evils of the feudal system, which you may be sure he always does, he s that wily, I insist upon talking about individuals, about Launcelot, Sir Kay, anybody, so he s not a class, or a system, or a corporation. It is such a relief, after hearing nothing but the poor, and the rich, and * the unemployed, and the dispossessed, and the pro letariat, for months, to read about one man whose name was not Legion, and who went and cut off another man s head, individually, personally, and without having to ask the sanction of his union." " But the Round Table was a sort of union after all, was n t it, Miss Gillespie ? " queried Kenyon. " Yes, I suppose it was," she sighed ; " there s no denying that it was beautifully organized. But don t you get just a little tired, yourself, Mr. Kenyon, of the aggregate? I haven t known a person for months, except father, and sometimes I think he s largely made up of abstractions." She made a mischievous face at the professor, and patted his hand. " In other words, you are seeking for an indi vidual, a hero," said Philip Starr. " Yes, somebody who does something on his own responsibility." " I suppose it does n t matter whether that something is good or bad ? " suggested Kenyon. " N no, so it s heroic," she answered. " Can anything be heroic which is not good ? " mused the young clergyman. A MEDIAEVAL SETTING 11 " Why not ? " asked Christopher. " Launcelot was heroic almost. Tristram was heroic," Agnes affirmed. " But it was not their sin which made them heroes," persisted Starr. " Was n t it ? " said Agnes absently. " This is not an individualistic age," the pro fessor observed. " We seem to be passing beyond individualism into another phase of develop ment." " But we still remain individuals," said Kenyon. " The star-fish stays a star-fish, and evolution passes on over its head." "Kather over its stomach," the professor cor rected, with a twinkle. " Personality, like eternity, is a gift," said Miss Kenyon. After a pause she added : " You might unstrap the tea-basket now, Chris ; this is a very good place." " My practical aunt ! " exclaimed Kenyon ; " I left it on the other side of the brook, when I helped you over." " The basket is my birthday present from Chris," explained Miss Kenyon, as he went back along the bank. " It s quite the completest thing I ever saw, and it came from England. Chris is such a dear, thoughtful boy. I do not have to look far for my hero, Miss Gillespie." " You are fortunate," said Agnes. " Are you quite sure you d know a hero if you saw him ? " Starr asked the girl. 12 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " No, I m not ; appearances are so deceitful, especially modern ones." She was watching Chris topher, and Philip was watching him too ; she and Philip looked at each other, and, without meaning to, smiled a recognition of his thought. Kenyon was tall and muscular ; there was no thing vague about any of his outlines. He had the philosophic eye, deep-set, meditative. He was dark, with a pallid look about the temples. His nose was straight and made a sharp, clean angle with his forehead ; there was something peculiarly decisive about his nose. Agnes was interested in him, curious about him. She knew he had been her father s favorite pupil some six years before, when she was just entering a girls college. " A brilliant young fellow," the professor had called him, adding : " He ought to be a profes sional man, but he insists on following in his father s footsteps, and inheriting a factory. What ever he may do, I am convinced he has a career before him." These words had impressed Agnes, for her father, being a scholar, did not often say, " I am convinced." And now, after six years, this young man had reappeared upon the horizon. Doubtless he had existed during the interval, but Mr. Gilles- pie wrote brief letters, and Agnes had been little at home. When, therefore, she learned, some three weeks after her return from England, that Mr. Kenyon had invited her and her father to spend a few days at his home in the village of A MEDIEVAL SETTING 13 Kenyon, she was inclined to resent the invitation as a liberty. But the professor said : "I have been promising to visit him since before his father died, and that is more than a year ago. I think we must accept. I should like to see how he is managing his mills. I think he can give me statistics for that article I am doing for the Economist. Yes, we would better go. He says he wishes to consult me." " Has he come into his career ? " Agnes asked, and her father s answer seemed to her irrele vant : " He is not yet thirty, my dear." She watched the man now, as he set up the spirit-lamp and filled the tea-kettle. He was one of the people who could be silent without being awkward. " That is an heroic attribute," thought Agnes. " And his friend, the clergyman, who is quite a different type from father, believes in him also. I wonder if he believes in himself ? " " Mr. Starr," she said aloud, " do you think heroes believe in themselves ? " " If they do," replied Kenyon, assuming the responsibility of the answer, " I imagine they get pretty well disillusioned before the end of the fight." "Perhaps I could believe in him if I tried," thought Agnes. CHAPTER H A BUSINESS DETAIL " THEN it s settled that you 11 look after those trust funds, and you 11 come up to town early next week to get the power of attorney, or what ever it is that s needed ? " "Yes, I suppose I shall," said Christopher. He was driving the Rev. Philip Starr to the sta tion. " It is distinctly a bore and not in my line. This money is chiefly in railroads, you say? Hang it, Phil, why didn t you go and ask old Peter Watson? This is his province looking after the widow and the orphan. I don t know how. And besides, he has n t any scruples about the kind of thing money s invested in." " Then get the railroads out of the hands of pri vate individuals," said Starr. "This Mrs. Lo- ring is no business woman, and why her husband should have seen fit to leave her guardian of the estate, I cannot comprehend ; but he did, and she has sense enough to know that she and the seven little Loring minors are in a bad way. She s the richest woman in my congregation ; we are not a wealthy parish, you know far from it ; but she believes in the kind of thing St. Jude s stands for, A BUSINESS DETAIL J5 and she sticks to us. She is a splendid church worker, a most devout woman. I was surprised to have her come to me for this sort of thing. I told her I should prefer that she consult a busi ness man or a lawyer; but she is particularly unworldly; she s been dipping into modern in dustrial and commercial books, and she s scared. And " Philip ended with desperation " she up and down insists she won t trust anybody but me. You know how much of a business man I am." " I do," said Christopher. "And I," the young clergyman continued, " don t know any one I am willing to trust except you." "It would seem that Mrs. Loring is not the only unworldly person in St. Jude s," commented Christopher. " I knew you d help me out of it," said Philip, passing over the comment, " you don t know what a load you ve lifted off my mind. A church debt and an unsympathetic bishop are all in the day s work ; but when it came to managing the Loring trust money, I gave up." " And again I say old Watson," persisted Ken- yon ; " he s benevolence personified." " I don t want benevolence," said Philip, " and I don t want Mr. Watson. He rouses all my muscular Christianity. I suppose he s a good old gentleman, but his ideas on sanitation are old fashioned, I ve got some of his shoe people 16 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER at St. Jude s. I went to see him about it, once the sanitation ; but you can t argue with an old man like that, you know." Christopher was listening with a grin of appre ciation. "No," he said, "you can t argue with him ; you have to hit him on the head with a brick. One of his people 11 do it, too, some day. I hope, for your sake, that the delinquent won t hail from St. Jude s. I find he s been stuffing the professor with a lot of truck about the practical deteriora tion of the workingman under the influence of the ten-hour law. That s one unpleasant thing about the professor, he s so afraid he won t be fair to both sides of a question." " His daughter is n t troubled by the same sen sitiveness," observed Philip. " Not she! " Kenyon exclaimed. "Do you know, I like that girl ! Don t you think she s rather good looking? Not pretty, I suppose, but won derfully attractive. After all, expression counts more than regular features, even with a woman." "I think," said Philip Starr gravely, "that she is an unusual woman ; she has that dynamic quality called force. She is going to do things." Then he and Christopher got out of the dog cart and hitched the horse behind the neat little pink stone station. " Her devotion to her father is very pretty," said Christopher, falling into step beside his friend as the two paced the platform before the tracks. " Very pretty," Philip assented. A BUSINESS DETAIL 17 " I tell you what it is, Phil," said Kenyon ag gressively, "you ve never half appreciated the professor. He s one of the ablest and fairest and most advanced men in the country, in his specialty. Of course he s a little oblivious, and absorbed in his subject, but specialists have a right to be." The train came steaming in at this point, and noisily concealed the fact that young Mr. Starr did not attempt to defend his position. As he was going up the steps of the car he turned sud denly and said : " If you don t like railways you might change the investment. Why not put it into your own factory ? I m sure Mrs. Loring would consent. I d be certain it was being well managed then." Christopher contemplated his friend with that smile of indulgent affection which sometimes illu minates the countenance of the business man when he listens to the suggestions of a profes sional brother. "Oh, no," he said, "that s quite out of the question. I should not consider such a proposi tion for an instant. Don t worry about it ; aunt Ada has some money in the same place, and I can look after this along with hers ; it won t be any trouble." The train was moving ; the young men ex changed quick nods, and Kenyon went back to his horse. He was touched, stirred, by his friend s unworldly trustfulness. 18 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " Catch old Watson or any other man of busi ness suggesting that I should invest widows and orphans money in my shops," he thought, "es pecially in my shops," and he chuckled. " I believe they give me six months to go to smash in, don t they? Well, we 11 see ! " Lack of determination had never been a Ken- yon characteristic. Old Deacon Kenyon, Chris topher s great-grandfather, had been known among his contemporaries for " the stubbornest man in thirteen States." " When he said he d do a thing, fire nor water wa n t no hindrance." Christo pher s father was noted for the fixedness of his ways, and aunt Ada, when roused, made up for her mental deficiencies by a bland and unreasoning obstinacy which neither time nor persuasion could abate. By good fortune, the Kenyons usually set their faces toward the light, as their day and gen eration saw it ; if the time should come when they decided to face darkness, there would be need of a mightier lever than public opinion or the deca logue to turn them round. This was an element of weakness, no doubt, but none of the Kenyons had passed for weak men. Christopher was driving with his head victori ously high and his lips set close, when Agnes saw him coming down the street. " What an unusually handsome man he is," she mused, watching him. She was standing on the doorstep of a little cottage, " demonstrating " on what Tommie MacDougal called his "mouth or- A BUSINESS DETAIL 19 gan." Mrs. MacDougal and Tommie s older sis ter, Jeanie, stood in the doorway, and Tommie and two Callahans sat speechless upon the curb. Agnes eyes twinkled at Christopher over the top of the mouth organ, but she did not take the in strument away from her lips until with a flourish she had finished "Comin thro the Rye." " Shall I get you a barrel ? " said Christopher, and she laughed delightfully. " Were you going farther ? " he asked, " or per haps you will get in and let me drive you home? " " Yes, I will, thank you. Here, Tommie, it will be your turn to play a tune next time." She smiled at Mrs. MacDougal and Jeanie, got into the dogcart, and waved her hand to the little Callahans. " Are n t they nice ! " she said pleasantly, and continued without waiting for an answer, "I thought I d come out and see what your village was like." " You did n t strike the pretty part," Christo pher replied ; " you ought to have gone over that way," indicating with his whip. " These are mostly workingmen s houses down here." "I know; your aunt told me to go in that direction." Her host laughed. "And do you always do the opposite thing from what you are told to do ? " he asked. " No, not always ; the trouble is people usually tell me to do the thing I ve quite made up my mind beforehand not to do." 20 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " Then you wanted to come to this part of the village?" he asked. "Yes." They were silent for a few minutes. Christo pher had intended to drive round into the " pretty part," but something made him change his mind ; he continued to pass the workingmen s houses. " I always go through this part of the village," he said presently. " Then there is another road to the factory ? " " Yes." They went a long way in silence after that. Twice Christopher thought that Agnes was going to speak, but she did not. She was pondering over the fact that this young man was in earnest, that he had something vital to live for. The young students whom she had met at her father s house since her return from Europe, were vague, unreal, self-conscious men, with a passion for themselves or football or Jane Austen. Their criticisms were cold and dainty, and always of books. They had a delicate appre ciation of the mistakes of Adam Smith, of the scholarship of Professor Gillespie, of their own exquisiteness. But Mr. Kenyon talked of ideas, not of opinions ; of future possibilities, not of past mistakes ; and he never seemed to be thinking of himself. " Do you think you would have liked to live in the Middle Ages?" he asked, as he turned into the driveway leading to the Homestead. A BUSINESS DETAIL 21 " I suppose not, if I had lived in them," she answered. "I should have wanted to improve them out of themselves, no doubt. But they re nice to look back on." " I wonder if we shall be as nice to look back on? " he suggested. And she repeated, " I wonder ? " " We re desperately ugly now ; don t you think so?" " Whose fault? " she asked. " Ours mine, I suppose. Yes, I am sure it s mine; that s why I care so much. But I don t know what to do." " Don t you ever have dreams ? " " Ah, yes." He rested his arms on his knees and let the reins hang loose while the horse walked. " Well ? " she questioned. Christopher looked at her with a smile. " You d like to have me go ahead and act out my dreams ? " " No ; I don t know what they are." " I have a dream of reforming the the well, the universe," he said, with a laugh, " begin ning with the shoes on its feet." " So I supposed," Agnes replied, " and you re going to do it all yourself, you, one shoemaker." He laughed again. " That s nothing but paternalism," she taunted, "and you said last night you didn t believe in paternalism." " No," he said, " it s not paternalism it s inherited tendency. I was born benevolent ; my 22 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER people have always been benevolent. Of course, I don t expect to do it all ; the men would have to help, to work out their own salvation." " But yours would be the master mind," she persisted. " The way in which you say master mind is not flattering," he said, looking amused. " Don t you believe in master minds ? " " We meddle with the people," she exclaimed, " we play potter, and make a mess with the clay. We ought all to work together." " Yes, we ought," he assented thoughtfully. There were New England elms along the avenue, and the orioles were singing in them. Christo pher walked the horse, but did not speak again, chiefly because he wanted to tell this girl so many things. The professor was reading a magazine on the piazza of the aristocratic looking old white and yellow house. Agnes kissed him and went up stairs to her room. " I don t know why I should have this absurd desire to weep," she said to herself ; " I did n t know I was ever going to be excited any more over new friendships. I wish I had some woman belonging to me. I snubbed him, and I didn t need to ; I wonder if he really has a master mind ? " Then suddenly she began to cry, and as she cried she said : " I hate personalities that make me vibrate. Now I shall look like a fright ; and I m ugly enough already." CHAPTER in THE SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE WHEN Mr. Gillespie was only an instructor in the college from which he was graduated, he mar ried a little yellow-haired, white-faced girl with a burning spirit of agnosticism and no constitution. In spite of these facts, she was not a negative per son. The professor made up his mind more often during his married life than he did in all the years that came afterwards; but the little wife went early into the unknowable, and her husband re turned to his research and his scholarly indecisions, with a sense of relief, perhaps. During certain years, a little tow-headed child came daily to his study for kisses, and during certain other years a slim, small creature, with very long pale yel low braids and unpleasantly large eyes, appeared, much to the professor s perplexity, at all the lec tures which he saw fit to open to the public. The various widowed or maiden relatives who in the course of time kept house for him told him pretty tales of his little daughter s devotion to her father ; and he had his hours of brooding and dream, when the sight of a yellow head flitting about in the garden outside his study window brought back to 24 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER his mind the days of tremulous excitement and rapture when he had taken his great stand against the Manchester School. Always with the memory of those days there came to the professor a sense as of dazzling blindness, and a white light ablaze on his breast where his wife s head had lain when he kissed her hair. The child was prettier than her mother had been, but the professor could not be expected to know this. One thing he had set himself to know, and that was his subject. But his daughter was willful and persistent. " Of course, when I grow up, we shall be com panions, my father and I," she said. At thirteen she went into voluntary exile. " I must prepare for college, and I shall do it better at boarding school. Three of the girls in my class are going to boarding school," she told her father, and added : " I hope somebody will marry cousin Jane while I am away, because when I come back I shall be grown up, and I shall keep house for you my own self." The summer before she entered college, her father really began to be aware of her. He took her to Europe or, rather, she went with him. She was seventeen then, and in an attitude, of im pertinence toward all the world ; and while she clung to his arm and paced the deck of the steamer, or followed him about through cathedrals and art galleries, the professor realized that this precocious, brilliantly illogical young woman was as quick as most college boys in comprehending him, and twice as quick in tripping him up. THE SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE 25 " Yours is the most untrained mind that I have ever met, my dear," he remarked reprovingly one day. " "With my father a professor, too," she retorted. " Fie, for shame ! It s like the shoemakers chil dren." And when the professor began to consider her in the light of a pupil, a disciple, she ceased to embarrass him ; she became a joy to him, if some times a perplexing joy. Agnes had her way ; she and her father were companions when she grew up. The professor fell into the habit of laying aside certain books to be read when Agnes came home for the holidays. They were exciting times, those holidays. Every three months Agnes brought home a new heresy, and during the weeks of her vacation the professor s study was reverberate with controversy. Those were the days when women s colleges were just beginning to shake themselves free from the preparatory schools ; when standards were low, methods were loose, and students were few. Agnes Gillespie held her head very high, and endured her Alma Mater with a contempt which, while it may have been intellectually justifiable, was cer tainly not polite. The faculty called her brilliant, but morally undisciplined. The students, except her own chosen few, regarded her with bewilder ment and distaste, and she regarded them not at all. It was unquestionably a misfortune that they eould not read French and had never enjoyed the 26 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER advantage of attending Professor Gillespie s lec tures, but it could hardly be called their fault. One of Agnes more outspoken friends suggested once that she might take this into consideration, but Agnes said : " Why should I ? They would bore me just the same." Her work was the one thing she treated with respect. She had the professor s own capacity for collecting and absorbing knowledge, and her intellectual feats lingered for years as a tradition in the college. She was aware of her own abil ity, but she was not vainglorious; she accepted herself as she was, as a matter of course ; it was the dullness of all the other people which seemed to her exceptional. But in spite of her scorn and her cleverness, she did not take her college life easily. " My dear, you grow more and more like your mother," the professor said when Agnes, with dra matic apathy and a saving consciousness of the tragedy of the situation, informed him that she was a being without hope, without faith, without the power to have faith. " I cannot see a why in anything. It has all gone," she said. This was on Christmas Eve in her sophomore year. By Easter she had arrived at the conclusion that, for one who believed in nothing, all action was inconsistent. But when she impassively dis cussed the advisability of ceasing from the exer- THE SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE 27 cise of all her functions physical and mental, and reducing herself to a state of consistent nothing ness, the professor became alarmed. " My little child," he said, lifting her to his knee ; " my poor, unhappy little child ! " She was not unhappy, but neither of them knew that. And presently he whispered, " Who would keep house for me ? " Agnes rallied. " School yourself in the scientific attitude, my daughter ; it is your only salvation," continued the professor, after an interval of silence, during which Agnes arms had clasped themselves very tightly around his neck. " If we cannot be hopeful, we can be scientific ; though we lose all faith, we may still preserve that receptivity of mind which is the open door to science. Be receptive, my dear, and be patient." After a summer in England, during which she frequented cathedrals, lived in lodgings with her father at Oxford, and heard one or two memorable lectures by Ruskin, Agnes gave herself up, for a time, to what she was pleased to call " the emo tionalism of aesthetics," and spent the Sundays of the first term of her junior year in attending ritu alistic churches and High Church mission chapels. " And in this way I have been able to make the connection between political economy and life," she announced to her father between the courses on Thanksgiving Day. The professor looked bewildered. 28 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " You will have a large helping of the pudding, won t you, father ? " she continued, adding a few detached plums to the brown slice which she had intended for her parent. " Is n t it nice to have our Thanksgiving dinner without a whole raft of relatives for once in a way? Yes, I have found the People, capitalized in more ways than one. They are in the mission churches ; and the more color there is, and the more music why, the more People ! That is the connection between political economy and life. That is the reason for a living wage. I have something really vital to go on now ; it was all like a problem in geometry before, very pleasing and intricate, but not exactly useful, as far as I could see. This is the worst heresy yet, isn t it, father? But, you see, it isn t a heresy any longer, and that s why I m telling you. Here after, I m not going to study treatises ; I m going to study people. My mind has received about all the theories on economics that it will hold just now ; I think that is what has been the matter with me ; so I m going to be receptive in an entirely different direction. I shall really be more helpful to you in the long run, because you can get the theories and the books and the hypotheses, and I 11 get the people, and we 11 put them together and we 11 make life ! Oh, father ! Won t you have some more pudding ? " This outburst of incoherent enthusiasm meant more than the professor was in a position to com prehend. Agnes fellow students were absorbed in THE SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE 29 digging for Greek roots, in speculating on the pos sibility of the existence of a fourth dimension in emphasizing that belief in scholarship as an end in itself, and in the right of woman to be a scholar, which was, and rightly was, the self-appointed task of the pioneers among college-bred women. If the professor had been an authority on Greek texts or a lecturer on the Renaissance, his daughter would doubtless have studied philology or art as assidu ously as she studied Malthus and Adam Smith. But the professor was a devotee of the new science the great unifier which, as he said in his lec tures, was to inclose all other arts and sciences within its circumference, because it was the science and art of living. This idea was not original with the professor, but it served its purpose in impress ing his students. In Agnes girlhood, however, the new science had not touched the imagination of the new woman. There was, as yet, no College Settlement idea with which to vaccinate the under graduate mind. Filial affection and a defiant will alone caused Agnes to puzzle out the meaning of world markets, and trace the curve of supply and demand. Life was as much a thing apart, in her mind, as it was in the minds of all the other girls who were delving in the abstract. Even after she found the People and made the " connection," her attitude toward the universe continued for some time to be merely receptive. " You can be of most use in the world by devot ing yourself to your specialty, by clearing up your 30 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER own mind self-cultivation is wisdom ! " This was the cry of her fellow students, and Agnes ac cepted it as a truth. " We 11 put them together and make life," she said to her father, and she was glad ; but she did not know what she meant. In her senior year she became philanthropic, but the title of her graduating thesis was, "Benevo lence : Our Modern Crime," and it almost cost her her degree. Much to Agnes astonishment, this little episode alarmed the professor. He cut his classes and traveled all night in order to smooth the matter over. " I should not mind losing my degree if I lost it for the sake of the truth ! " she cried, with Shel- leyan ardor. "Suppose you made a mistake, and it was a lie ? " observed her father. " But it was n t a lie," she answered. " My child," the professor began gravely, " did you ever notice how very seldom I assert that any thing is a fact ? " " Yes, father." " And do you know why ? " " Why? " " Because I do not dare to deal lightly with any thing so grave as the truth." Agnes sighed. It was a little more than a year after this that she came to know Christopher Kenyon. CHAPTER IV PLATING WITH FIRE " YOUR friend Mr. Starr is a very interesting young man," said Agnes. She and Christopher were sitting on the broad piazza of the Homestead, the day after their drive through the village. " He s a splendid fellow ! " Christopher re sponded with enthusiasm, " and he 11 be a shining light some day." " I used to drop into St. Jude s occasionally, two or three years ago," Agnes continued idly ; " there was an ecstatic, mumbly old man there then." " Yes, he died, or was retired, or something, and they put Phil in his place. It s quite a parish now. I don t mean fashionable, but vigorous ; lots of mothers meetings and guilds and brotherhoods. Phil s beginning to be talked about." " I hope it won t spoil him," said Agnes. "I hope it won t ruin his health," amended Christopher. " He works longer hours than any mill operative in the State, and that s saying a good deal." " Mr. Kenyon ! this is the third time in ten minutes that I have changed the subject and you have brought it back to the laboring class." 32 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " I m sorry," he pleaded ; " I did n t realize it. I m afraid I ve gotten so I think only in industrial terms. And besides, you don t really mind. I know you are thinking about them as much as I am." " Everybody s doing things," Agnes said discon tentedly. She frowned and linked her fingers together, looking beyond Kenyon as she talked. " Over in England they re raging round tearing down tenement houses and forming leagues, and over here you re cutting down hours and putting up wages " " Doing things ! " exclaimed Kenyon bitterly, and he got up and walked away from her to the piazza railing. " It fidgets me," she continued, ignoring his re mark. He turned and flung out his hands. " That s because you want to help." But she put her fingers in her ears and cried, "No, I don t!" Christopher turned away again ; " we might talk about religion," he suggested, staring down the avenue. " Why do you do things, Mr. Kenyon ? " she asked perversely. " Because I believe in doing them ! " he cried out. Agnes got up and followed him to the piazza railing. " And suppose you were to make a mis take?" PLAYING WITH FIRE 33 " It would n t be the first time. There s no sin in making a mistake." " If your friend the clergyman were here, per haps he would question that," said Agnes. " How about the people who might suffer because of the mistake ? " " I believe it is better to make people suffer by doing things than by leaving them undone." " My father never taught you that," she said. " I don t remember," he answered, and she was relieved that he had not noticed her implied criti cism of the professor ; " but your father taught me the best of everything I do know." " Yes, of course he did," she assented, smiling ; " he always doe s teach everybody the best, the highest things." She said it a little over-eagerly, perhaps, from very loyalty. " For years your father has been my greatest inspiration." Agnes glowed. " Everything that I have done since I left col lege is due to him." " Mistakes and all ? " she questioned. She could not help it, and they both laughed. But she added seriously : " He is more inspiring, even to me, than any one I have ever known ; he makes me want to rise up and go and set everything straight, or try to. Only only " her voice grew wistful, " I m his daughter, and that s not the scientific attitude." " I don t know why it is n t," interrupted Chris- 34 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER topher, and his eagerness startled her into the realization that she was becoming confidential. " I don t know why it is n t ; science is experi ence, and experience is the result of investigation, and investigation implies action " He paused, expectant of her assent. " And now shall we talk about religion ? " she suggested demurely. " No, we shall not ! " he replied, and became silent, pacing the piazza, while she watched him, half mischievous, half embarrassed. They had been fencing with each other for three days. She felt in her heart an overwhelming tenderness to wards him which irritated her virginal pride and made her caustic in self-protection. And he fol lowed her about, insisting upon her attention, wooing her with economic theories, claiming her sympathy, mastering her, but as yet unconscious of the meaning of what he did. Aunt Ada found them still silent five minutes later, when she came out to pick the nasturtiums. " Let me help you, Miss Kenyon," Agnes cried, welcoming the diversion. " I 11 go and see about the carriage to take you and your father to the shops," said Christopher ; " Mr. Gillespie wanted to visit them to-day." " Thank you, but I don t think I 11 go," returned Agnes ; " it s so nice here with the nasturtiums." She knew she hurt his feelings, but she wanted to. "Christopher is always so thoughtful," mur- PLAYING WITH FIRE 35 mured aunt Ada, as her nephew went into the house. "You would better go, Miss Gillespie ; you 11 have a much nicer time than you will here at home with a prosy old lady." "No, I sha n t," said Agnes cheerfully. "Do you want them all picked ? " She had gone down below the piazza, where the nasturtiums grew in a long, climbing row. " Yes ; they like it, you know. Are you fond of flowers ? Chris is devoted to them. When he was a little boy he had a garden of his own, and he got a prize at a chrysanthemum show." Agnes was unobtrusively, but with intention, moving down the row of nasturtiums away from the sound of aunt Ada s voice. " I have been talking to that man as if I had known him forty years," she thought discontent edly. " It is absurd of me ; what do I care ? " and her little white face grew slowly pink and warm. "Chris is especially fond of the flame-colored ones," said aunt Ada ; " we always fill a bowl for his study table." Agnes deliberately avoided the flame-colored ones for as much as five minutes. " How fast you do it ! " aunt Ada called. " That s just like Chris, he " Agnes turned the corner of the piazza and came suddenly upon another girl. The two started, then recognized each other and smiled. They had met before in Mrs. MacDougal s doorway. " Miss Kenyon ? Is she here ? I was told " 86 THE BUKDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " Just around the corner," said Agnes, and in another moment she heard aunt Ada saying : " Ah, yes, Jeanie MacDougal ; you have come for the wine for your father, have n t you ? " " Philanthropy," sighed Agnes. " I suppose he pauperizes them. That s exactly what father would do, too ; he s so kind hearted, in spite of all his theories." " And Mr. Kenyon is he here also ? " asked the girl. " I would be grateful to be allowed to see him this morning about work. I stopped at the shops office on my way, but he was not there." Agnes listened with delight to the low, clear voice, a Scotch voice, though not so much in accent as in quality, in that musical crooning of the words which is so entirely un-American. " Now that s a pity," said aunt Ada. " He s just gone down to the shops with a guest. But stay here in the garden, my dear ; I have some calves -foot jelly to send to your father, but I m afraid it s not ready. Perhaps you will help Miss Gillespie with the nasturtiums." She trotted into the house and Agnes came round the corner of the piazza. " Your father is ill ? " " Yes, Miss Gillespie, quite ill for three weeks now, and it may be he will not work all this next winter." " I am very sorry." " I heard it only this morning from the doctor," PLAYING WITH FIRE 37 continued the girl ; " it is a low fever lie has been having, and his heart is weak." She did not sniff nor wipe her eyes as she spoke ; she only looked very sad ; and this self-control, together with the careful English, appealed to Agnes and disarmed her fastidiousness. " Do you work in the shops ? " she asked. " I would be coming to see Mr. Kenyon about that," Jeanie answered. She was moving along at Agnes side, picking the nasturtiums as she talked, and Agnes noticed how entirely at her ease she was, and unhampered by self-consciousness. "I wish to be allowed to take my father s place, be cause we need the money." "But even if you did get your father s work you couldn t expect to have his wages," said Agnes, talking out of book. " That is what I must inquire about," returned the girl. " Does Mr. Kenyon pay his men and women equal wages ? " Agnes asked curiously. " The women in the shops do not do the same kind of work as the men," answered Jeanie; "but if I can do my father s work, why shall I not have his wages ? " " Mr. Kenyon will perhaps tell you why," said Agnes with a peculiar smile. " Mr. Kenyon is a very just man," said the girl. " Has he ever paid a woman the wages of a man if she took a man s place ? " Agnes persisted. In her heart she was thinking with a kind of 38 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER wonder, " How far away I am from touching life ! but these people are his, according to the present system ; they belong to him ; he can make them or mar them as he chooses." " I do not know that," Jeanie answered ; " I have not been in the shops more than a year. His father was kind, but not the same." "Now while I go in and get some bowls and vases you can finish picking the few that are left," said Agnes, " and then we 11 arrange them." But when she came out of the house she found Jeanie standing ready for departure with a covered basket on her arm, while Miss Kenyon delivered a few final advices on the necessity of keeping the jelly in a cool place, and standing the bottle of wine on its head after it had been once uncorked. " I m sorry not to wait," said Jeanie. " I 11 be seeing him at the office to-morrow." " Could n t you see the foreman, or whoever has the work in charge ? " suggested Agnes. " We like to come to the young master, straight, if there s any new thing wanting to be done," said Jeanie ; and then, as she saw that Agnes was hold ing out her hand, she smiled, shifted the basket to her left arm, and held out her own right hand. " I 11 tell him for you, to-day, when he comes back," Agnes said. " Good-by ; I hope your father will be better soon." Christopher and the professor found something very like a bonfire on the piazza when they came home, a small, white-clad maiden sitting Turk- PLAYING WITH FIRE 39 ish fashion on the piazza floor with a semicircle of nasturtiums before her, and flamelet blossoms in her hair, in her lap, on her breast. She held a green bowl full of the flowers poised in air, as a good housewife holds a pie when she clips the edges, and she surveyed her work critically, lift ing her other hand to twitch a petal lightly, on this side or on that. Christopher and the professor came round the house from the stables, and Agnes did not hear them until they stepped upon the piazza. When she looked up and saw them watch ing her a faint, slow flush crept over all her face. There were only flame-colored nasturtiums in that bowl. The professor looked upon this vision as if he loved it. " This is my little salamander, Kenyon," he said ; " she lives forever at the heart of a flame." The little salamander blushed a brighter red, but laughed straight up into their faces in defiance of her own embarrassment. Christopher stood on his two feet, stock-still, but his soul went dizzy and whirled, and for a few sec onds he had no consciousness but of ecstasy, and the throbbing of his pulses against his wrists and his temples. When he came back to earth he found himself thinking, "And I have known her only three days. Does it always grip a man like this?" " If you re going in you might bring me another bowl or two," said Agnes. " There s no end to these flowers." 40 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER He turned mechanically and went into the house, and the professor followed him ; but Chris topher came back directly with the bowls, and sat on the piazza railing watching the salamander arrange the flowers. He was thinking all manner of inexpressible thoughts about fire-priestesses, and oracles, and prophetesses on flaming tripods, and nymphs of Pan. "There was a girl here named Jeanie Mac- Dougal," began Agnes, " and she wanted to see you about work. I promised to speak to you about it." " That green bowl always goes in my study, the one you ve just finished," said Christopher ; " I 11 take it," and he stooped, bracing his feet, and set the bowl on the railing beside him. " She says her father will not be able to work for many months," Agnes continued, " and she wants you to let her take his place and do his work." " I beg your pardon ; who is this ? " " Her name is Jeanie MacDougal, and she is such a pretty girl, with a charming voice." "Oh, yes, I know. Well, I don t know why she should n t take his place and hold it for him if she can do his work." He spoke musingly, as if he were weighing the matter in his mind. " She wants his wages, too," said Agnes. " Yes, of course," he assented. " Would you really give a young girl the same wages that you would a grown man ? " PLAYING WITH FIRE 41 " I don t see how I could help it if she did the same work, and did it as well." " But " said Agnes, and stopped. " The occasion has never arisen before, but I expected that it would some day," he observed smiling. " I hope to do more radical things than this in my business. I ve been talking them over with your father." He spoke confidently. " I hope to do more radical things with my business ? " queried Agnes, looking at him from under drooped eyelids, and with a faintly sarcastic curve to her lips. " Of course, being a democratic person, you ve talked all these radical changes over with your men? Of course you ve given them an opportunity to say whether or not they think these changes are wise ? Of course you could n t think of adopting the paternal attitude ? " " This is the second time you ve said that to me," he observed. He felt the light scorn in her voice and her eyes, but it did not sting him ; he was conscious of stimulus in her words, not of criticism. His eyes dilated and his whole face kindled ; he stood on his feet, very straight, and looked out a long way over Agnes head with an intent smile on his lips. " That s what I 11 do," he said presently. " Oh, don t ! " cried Agnes ; " I don t know why I said it. It is n t sensible ! Nobody does it ! " She, too, stood up, and the blossoms fell about her feet. " I m only a girl ; I have n t any expe- 42 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER rience. I just say what comes into my head. I beg your pardon ! " " Don t you think I am in earnest ? " he said, the light of her inspiration still flashing in his eyes. " I m sure your father would approve are n t you ? I ve been making up my mind towards this thing for six months, and now I seem to see a way. Thank you." " You re neither of you fit to run a business," she retorted. " I know father is n t ; he is much too high minded." " Perhaps I may take that as a compliment ? " said Christopher. She stooped to pick up the nasturtiums, but she wanted to cry and to laugh, for joy. " He is just like the hero in a story book," she said to herself. " He cares about doing things ; he is full of the power of living for other people ; I have never known any one like him. Then it is really true that things can happen in the nineteenth cen tury ! " He addressed the orioles in the elms : " Shall I make it a profit-sharing scheme ? The world would n t be so shocked at that ; it s been done successfully before. Or shall I give up my capi tal ; divide it into twelve hundred equal parts, a share for every man ? " Agnes clasped her hands in her distress. " No ! You don t mean it." He rested his eyes upon her, but still specula- tively, and continued without attending to her en treaty : PLAYING WITH FIRE 43 "That is what I d like to do. But I m afraid. They don t know about business ; they re only shoemakers. And besides, wouldn t that be just charity ? " " Go and talk to father some more," she pleaded ; " he never rushes into action in this silly way." " Have I rushed ? " said Christopher, with a smile. He was teasing her, but he was in earnest, too. " I ve said I would consult them, but that does n t mean I shall do what they tell me to. I m really very deliberate as deliberate as a man who is n t a scholar with all eternity before him can be. Now I wonder if I can t strike a happy medium ? Something that will give them a share in the profits while it is educating them up to the right level to own the capital ? And in the inter val I can regard myself as their trustee in man aging the shops for them ? Frankly, don t you think that s possible ? " he asked. " I ve been taught that all things are possible," she answered coolly ; " I don t think you re going to do it at all." "Don t you? Well, wait and see!" His voice was low, and he smiled down at her exult antly. His eyes confused her, and yet she wanted to look in them again. He was young ! And he cared for the things she cared for ! And he was not afraid of making mistakes. " I never met any one before who cared in just the way you do," she said in a breathless sort of way. 44 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " And I never met any one who cared the way you do, either," he answered. " Oh, I don t care I I" " I dare you to say it again," he laughed, com ing closer to her. " I wish I had gone down to see your shops with you," she said somewhat incoherently. " I 11 take you now, this afternoon." " No ; your aunt has a party." " To-morrow, then." " We are going home to-morrow." " To-morrow ! Since when ? Why ? " " Because because we must ! " She carried the flowers indoors after that. " I want to go home," she said to herself. " I want to go. I wish we could go now. I oh I want to go ! " And Christopher, sitting alone in his study that night, with the bowl of nasturtiums held between his hands, said : " I 11 do it that way for the pre sent ; keep it under my own control and give them the best possible conditions till they are able to stand alone and shoulder the burden till they have had a chance to grow a bit of course if they are willing. Then I 11 make myself one of them and keep only my share. But it s safer not to shock the community too violently in the be ginning. And yet I wonder what would hap pen if I did ? Another man might dare She . lives forever at the heart of a flame." CHAPTER V CHRISTOPHER S PEOPLE THE hall in which the Shoe Workers Union of the town of Kenyon held its meetings was slowly filling with men and women. Now and again, as the crowd gathered, some man pulled out another settee from the wall, and shoved it into position, facing the platform. The president of the union, a laster, kept one eye on the door and fingered the lapel of his coat nervously while he exchanged loose sentences with the secretary. The night was cool for September, but, despite open win dows, the hall already smelt stuffy. A sullen growl of conversation, broken by occasional twitters of laughter from a group of women standing by one of the windows, pervaded the place. The trea surer of the cutters was taking this opportunity to collect dues. Several men filtered through the doorway, and the laster held up two fingers to at tract their attention and called out : " Plenty of seats up front ! Will the lady mem bers over there by the window please take seats if they don t object ; it s most eight o clock." The lady members thus addressed stood away from one another with a little rustle, and surveyed 46 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER the room in search of empty settees. Two or three of the younger ones made faces at the laster. A newcomer, a red-haired young man, came and sat on the edge of the platform, and stared at the crowd. " What s up ? " he inquired pleasantly. " Maybe you think I know," replied the laster. " I told you t ree months ago this sorter thing could n t last," grumbled another man. " I worked for a young feller James B. Trench, he is begun just like this one, all smooth-spoken and everything thought of the men. And his shops is as bad as old Peter Watson s to-day. It s all well enough till they- git squeezed for money, and then see how much they re fond of the men." " You think it s a cut-down, then ? " suggested a little sharp-eyed man with smoothly brushed oily hair. " I don t think nothin ," said the laster. " If it s a cut-down, why would n t he sneak it on us in the shops ? They don t ring no bells for a cut-down," sneered a great hulking fellow with no collar on and a quid of tobacco in his cheek. All this while an old man with white hair and dark, thoughtful eyes sat on a front bench and said nothing. A trim, sharp-featured woman, the chairman of the stitchers, had come up to ask the laster to read a notice from the stitchers at the next meet ing of the Union something about an annual ball. CHRISTOPHER S PEOPLE 47 " I heard he s goin to get married," she said in a high, brisk voice. " Wen they git married they blow in what ten men earns in a year, and then they come on the shop with a poor mouth and says we 11 have to retrench. Oh, I know um ! " The untidy man shifted his quid and looked about for a spittoon. " Maybe he 11 be afther invitin us to the sarri- mony the night," volunteered the secretary. A laugh followed this remark, and the grumbler who had worked with James B. Trench said : " I wonder will it be the little tow-headed lady was here in the summer ? She was n t much on looks ; there s better lookin girls than her down in Kenyon shoe-shops to-day, ain t there, Jirnmie ? " He clapped the red-haired young man on the back as he spoke, and the red-haired young man laughed and said : " Bet your life ! " The stitchers chairman giggled over her shoul der as she went back to the other women, and pre sently the other women laughed noisily, all except Jeanie MacDougal, who blushed and smiled. " Say, Jimmie, get a brace on, and let s have a double weddin ," said the secretary. " Aw, shut up ! " replied Jimmie, and added, returning to the subject under discussion, " I don t see no reason why he is n t going to do the right thing by us yet. I ain t got no cause to suspicion him." The old man on the front bench turned his eyes 48 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER approvingly on Jimmie, and opened his mouth to speak ; but just then Christopher came into the hall, and the growl of conversation was suddenly hushed. Christopher shook hands with the laster, nodded to the red-haired man, and asked if they were all here. " I think they are, Mr. Kenyon, all we ve noti fied ; all the foremen and foreladies is here, and we sent word to twenty-five lasters, twenty stitch ers, fifteen cutters, and so on, down. There d ought to be about two hundred and fifty here, and I guess they are ; the room s comfortably full." " Then I might as well begin," said Christopher, and he went up on the platform. For as much as a minute he said nothing. He only stood looking down on the rows of men and women who had come here at his bidding to listen to him. At first he had thought to have them all come, the whole twelve hundred his people the little world for whom his will was law ; but as he considered the plan, he dreaded the stir and gossip which such a step must cause, and, more over, he had no wish to advertise his new idea by hiring the town theatre, the only place large enough for such a meeting. So he contented him self with calling out the representative men and women, the most intelligent. They were a superior lot of people, these shoe- workers of Kenyon, citizens of the town, handing their trade from father to son ; good American or CHRISTOPHER S PEOPLE 49 Irish-American stock for the most part, with a sprinkling of Scotch-Irish and French Canadians ; used to a hard master, but a just one, as masters go used to hard times, but not to starvation. Some of the older ones had seen Christopher grow up and go to college ; they remembered him as an observant, imperious little boy who poked about among the benches and said, " Let me try ; I want to see if I can do that." They remembered him again, at home for a va cation, musing half an hour at a time in the door way of the lasting-room, or moving slowly down the alleys between the benches, to pause beside some worker, lose himself in his thoughts, and break the silence suddenly with : " You are organ ized, of course? " Or : " You think piece-work is more desirable than time-work ? " Or some other question equally disconcerting and calculated to arouse suspicion. When he left college he went to Europe for a year before entering the firm, and vague rumors floated through the factory of his studying condi tions on the other side. " So s to know how to grind us down cheaper when he comes back. Damn these college dudes ! They make the worst kind when they takes to it serious." During his father s lifetime he contented him self chiefly with putting in improved machines ; but even this had its suspicious side. " New machines means somebody s got to lose a job," they said among themselves, and waited. 50 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER And then the old gentleman died, and there was the estate to settle, and there were the books to examine, and " These books shall never again record such a profit as this," Christopher said. He kept his word. He was going to keep it now, as he stood on the platform before his people and looked down into their distrustful faces. " When I was a boy in college," he began, " my friends all tried to keep me from going into busi ness. They said, Be a lawyer, be a doctor, be a college professor ; only, they all said, teachers and fellows alike, only don t go into business. They told me I was an idealist, a dreamer, and I could n t keep my dreams, my ideals, my faith in human nature, if I dabbled with industrial mat ters. They told me industrial matters were hope less better keep out. And I would n t listen to them. I said my father s factory was waiting for me, and just because I had a better education than some men who were in the shoe trade, and just because I saw the evils of the present way of liv ing more clearly than some men, all the more, for those reasons, I had no right to shirk the chance that lay ready to my hand to make things better if I could. My friends said I was a fool. Some times I think I am." The audience were absolutely silent, and sat staring at him with bewildered eyes ; his strange beginning had claimed their attention ; they lis tened. CHRISTOPHER S PEOPLE 51 Christopher stood a little straighter and raised his voice. " I have called you together this evening because I want you to help me. I am not satisfied with the way the factory is being run." Surely no one uttered a sound, no one stirred, and yet a shiver went through the hall. " I have been going over the books during the past six months, and I am not satisfied with the profits " Again that shiver, this time audible. " They are too large." When two hundred and fifty people catch their breath the sound is a strange one ; there is a click in it, and afterwards the air trembles. A woman in the back of the room whispered, " He s gone crazy. Oh, my God ! poor thing ! " and bit her lip and her handkerchief to keep back the tears. " People have called me a dreamer," continued Christopher, " and I mean to take them at their word. I mean to make my factory our factory a shoe factory to dream about. But I ve been hunting for one to model on, and I can t find it." Some man broke into a subdued guffaw, and the audience rustled and smiled nervously. " I know that the conditions in the Kenyon shops are pretty good, as shops go better than most." The red-haired man nodded sympathetically. 52 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " But that s not saying much, when you con sider what goes on in some shops." The lowering silence that followed this remark answered Christopher better than words could have done. " I ve been trying to plan better things, but I can t do it alone. In fact, I don t feel that I have a right to do it alone. Perhaps you are satisfied with things as they are ; perhaps you don t want a change. And if you don t, I can t see that I have any right to impose my ideas upon you. You make the shoes ; I don t." All eyes in the room were staring at him per plexedly. Again he raised his voice and straight ened his shoulders. " I ve brought you here to-night to help me ; I want to know what you would consider ideal con ditions, the very best conditions, for a shoe shop. I want to see the thing with your eyes. I might put in improvements, looking at matters from the employer s point of view, which would not be in the least practical from your point of view. I want to get your point of view. The only time an employer gets at his men s minds in these days is when he has goaded them into a strike. You would be ready enough, you union men, to tell me what I must n t do, after I had done it. Tell me now what I ought to do. I don t promise to do it, but I want to know what it is. What would you consider first-class conditions for a shoe shop ? " He paused, and the people began to look at one CHRISTOPHER S PEOPLE 53 another uneasily, to mutter scraps of sentences, derisive, angry, puzzled. " Yes, it is a question," he said. " I want an answer anybody." The murmur grew, and there was a scornful note in it. " No, I am not jollying you," he began again, catching up a word from the front bench and lift ing it to the platform, greatly to the embarrassment of the man who had muttered it. " I have asked a plain question in all seriousness, and I want an answer." The murmur subsided, people began to nudge one another. Suddenly, in the back of the hall, a woman stood up. She was an American woman, middle-aged, with gray hair and a quiet, thought ful face; she spoke slowly, but her English was fairly accurate. The audience twisted on the settees to look at her. " I don t consider," she began, " I don t consider that there can be such a thing as a shoe shop, or any other kind of a shop, fit to dream about, until it can be founded on a cooperative basis, where all share alike and the shop is the shop of all the people that works in it. But there is n t any use saying this. I m not crazy enough to suppose it would be done. I m just talking." " Thank you," said Christopher. The old man on the front settee arose, leaning with one hand on his stick. " Ten hours is too long a working day for any 54 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER man," he said. "I ve read that it ought to be eight; the reasons were good, in the book. Of course you could n t do it, Mr. Kenyon, with every body else working long hours. But maybe you d like to read about it." " I have read about it," Christopher answered. The audience stirred and whispered, and glanced furtively at the young master, waiting on the plat form. "I d like to say," said the red-haired man, ris ing and throwing his head back, " that this piece work ain t all it s cracked up to be. I m ge.ttin mighty sick of it. But, then, what s the use ? shoemakers has always had piece - work ; only there s them and this I 11 say because from the talk to-night I believe you mean well by us, and I m willin to be free-spoken " Christopher inclined his head gravely. " There s this I 11 say : that even in Kenyon shops and they re the best shops goin " The old man knocked on the floor with his cane, and Christopher again acknowledged the compli ment by a bend of his head. " Even in Kenyon shops there s them as don t dare put into the office all they earns every week for fear it 11 bring a cut-down, on account of this devil s way of fixin the price of the work by the fastest worker. They saves it over till a week when they earns less, or else they gets some slow worker to put it on his slip and give them the pay." CHRISTOPHER S PEOPLE 55 Angry glances were darted at Jimmie, and somebody muttered " Shame ! " Yes, I know this," said Christopher, and his people hushed and looked at him with stealthy anger. " Mr. Kenyon has already " a voice began. " Stand up ! " * Show yourself ! " "Can t hear!" Jeanie MacDougal, very pink and shy, rose from among the stitchers. " You have already made equal wages for men and women, Mr. Kenyon." " Hardly that ; I ve made a temporary excep tion in your favor, to end when your father comes back to work on the first of January. But I am willing to consider the question of equal wages, if any of you believe in it." He glanced around for an answer ; but the faces were either dazed or willfully blank. " I suppose you know that the general adoption of the plan of payment of equal wages means, in time, the driving of women out of industry ? " Casey and the old man and the oily, black-haired laster nodded assent, but the rest of the audience showed no intelligence on the subject. " Because, if an employer has to pay a woman the same as a man, he s going to hire the man every time." The chairman of the stitchers jumped up. "I don t see no harm if it means the men 11 56 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER have to take care of the women. There ain t many of us workin in Kenyon shops to pass the time." The little woman snapped her eyes and sat down, and everybody laughed. The man without a collar stumbled to his feet next, and swayed back and forth clumsily a moment before he spoke. " I believe to see cooperation and the eight-hour day in heaven, same as the rest of you, but I take it Mr. Kenyon ain t plannin to make shoes to walk on the golden streets yet awhile. Nor I ain t got the prospect of bein supported by no man, the way the women has if there s a change. There ain t better shops in the country than these Ken yon shoe shops ; I d ought to know ; I ve worked in enough of em. And I say let well enough alone the way things is ; we might do worse ; this is good enough for me ; I m satisfied." The audience applauded this man, and watched Christopher to see if an expression of satisfaction was what he had really wanted from them all along ; but something in his face, a gravity that was al most sadness, disconcerted them, and the clapping died away into an embarrassed silence. " Perhaps you 11 understand me a little better, perhaps you 11 trust me a little more, when you know what I believe, and where I stand," he began again; "only be fair with me, for, God knows, I mean fair by you. I thank you for dealing with me even as frankly as you have; Mrs. Sennett says no shop will be ideal for her until it is cooper- CHRISTOPHER S PEOPLE 67 ative ; Mr. Morse thinks we work too long hours ; and my friend Jimmie Casey here, who used to beat me at marbles down on Kenyon common" (the audience warmed visibly), "says he s tired of piece-work. Then there are some of you who are suspicious of change, and call yourselves satis fied because you are afraid of falling out of the frying-pan into the fire. I wonder how you would feel if you were in my place ? What would you do ? I am running a factory under a competitive system, and I don t believe in competition." There was applause from that part of the hall where Mrs. Sennett sat. " I am living on an income of twenty-five thou sand a year at the lowest, and Jimmie Casey is living on an income of well, to put it at its best showing, and not allow for a dull season, seven hundred and fifty a year ; and the chief reason is because my father owned the factory and handed it over to me, and Jimmie s father did n t. And I can t seem to make that out a good and sufficient reason. The man in college who taught me the most and the best that I know said to me once : It is the men and women who sit at the benches in your father s factory and make shoes ten hours a day who are sending you through college. I have never forgotten it, and I said then, Please God, they shall never be sorry they sent me. No ! better than that, they shall be glad, some day ! They cheered him then. " When I was an undergraduate, the fellows 68 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER called me a socialist ; now that I am a manufac turer they ought to call me a liar ; that is, when they don t call me a fool. Of course, I could get out of the trade. I could give up the fight, close up the business, and hand over the shops to a man who would run them as the world expects them to be run. I have thought of doing that, and then I have thought of you. There are enough bad shops getting worse all the time ; I won t help to make another one worse. It is n t merely that I should be getting out of the difficulty and salving my conscience by giving it all up ; I can t sell twelve hundred men and women into worse in dustrial slavery than that they already endure. As long as there are slaves in trade I 11 keep my slaves to myself, and try to treat them like men." A great sigh went up over that hall, men sat white and tense in their chairs, women s lips quiv ered. " And it s because I want to treat you like men that I ve called you here to-night. For God s sake, don t make me have to treat you like slaves." "We won t," cried Jimmie Casey, rising in his seat; and other men cried out, and a hoarse shout arose, mingled with the sobs of women. It was such a grief -stricken expression of joy that Christopher, standing on the platform, watching the bewildered, agitated faces, wept in his heart over them. " Then you will help me to carry out my dream ? " CHRISTOPHER S PEOPLE. 59 He stretched out his hands. " I can t move with out you ; it would be very easy for me to let things go on in the old way, and spend my surplus in charity. But I don t believe in charity ! I won t build hospitals, I won t found workingmen s homes ! Let the sick rot, and the poor starve, let misery increase, till the world understands why ! Charity is not what you want, you men ! " " No no no no no ! " The sound grew into a roar. When it had died away Christopher continued : " No ! What you want is work ! Decent, educat ing, strengthening, soul-building work, that makes thinking, right-minded human creatures of you. Not charity, that pauperizes you ; not slavery, that eats up all your time and strength and does not keep you properly alive ; but work, that makes every man his own master." " Hurrah-rah-rah-rah ! " They stood up in their seats and cheered him, and his eyes kindled and sent out fire into the audience. " I, too, want work," he said, " the right kind of work. Share my work with me ! " " We will, we will ! " Jimmie Casey and Mr. Morse started the cry, and it was taken up all over the hall. " Then listen to me ! Send me committees from your unions, to confer with me on changes. Send committees on wages, on time, on anything that needs discussion, on cooperation. Send men and 60 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER women. In two days begin to send them, and we shall see what we can do. In so far as coopera tion is practicable in this competition-ridden age, we 11 have it ; in so far as short hours are prac ticable, we 11 have them ; if equal pay for men and women is right for now, we 11 have it. You shall advise with me. I thank you. Only trust me ; I mean fair." He came down from the platform, and they broke out into cheers. When he could make him self heard he said : " Go home now, and begin to plan committees. Let the work be done through the unions. Good night." As he closed the door and went downstairs into the street, the cheering and the sound of a great number of people moving, the sound of benches and feet and voices, followed him. " They are roused," he thought ; " they are very hard to rouse, bitterly hard ! but I have done it. I must not frighten them now by too radical mea sures. I wonder how much I dare ? Christopher, you are going to convert the world yet you and she." In the hall the excited people were staring at one another. Some of them went down to the street at once. Others collected in little knots among the disorderly settees. " Of course you took notice that it was * coopera tion so far as is practicable, short hours so far as is practicable. Of course you took notice of CHRISTOPHER S PEOPLE 61 that," said the untidy man to his neighbor. He of the oily hair laughed uneasily, and addressed Jimmie Casey. " Say, Jimmie, goin to call the cutters to-night ?" " You bet ! " cried Jimmie. "What do you think?" queried the lasters chairman. " Is it a new bluff ? " Jimmie had moved away and another man an swered : " I m damned if I see. For all his talk he s a cute one ; he ain t showed his hand." " If it s all his money," said the chairman of the stitchers, " what s it but charity, anyway ? " And Jeanie MacDougal replied, in her soft Scotch voice : " Of course all love is charity ; but is it not that all charity is not love ? And Mr. Kenyon has a very large heart." " Course you would n t get her to say nothing, the way he s treated her father," said another girl ; " and Jimmie s her steady he s got to stick up for her relations." "Say, Tom, goin to send in a committee?" some man asked the laster. " Oh, I suppose so. He s runnin this show, and if he wants committees he can have em. There ain t no reason for the union standing out against him yet. But if this here s a trick ! " Old Mr. Morse went slowly along the street, shaking his head, and a tear ran down his cheek. " That I should have lived to see the day," he 62 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER murmured, over and over again, " that I should have lived to see the day ! " But the union secretary joined him and said : " I would n t be after feelin too rej icin , Mr. Morse. He s a good heart, that young man, but I ain t so sure but they re right w en they calls him a fool." CHAPTER VI THE FANATIC THE Rev. Philip Starr had been hearing com plaints and giving advice all day, and he was tired. He had closed the door upon the last suppliant and was sitting at his desk by the window with his face uplifted to the late afternoon light. It was a rough-hewn face, blocked out with bold chisel- strokes that had slipped sometimes at the corners. The cheek bones were big and high, the nose was massive, and the lips were full but almost color less. The head was crowned by a mop of very wavy hair, dark brown, gleaming red in the light. There were shadows in the face, deep places under the eyes, violet eyes they were, and shallow places along the cheeks. Not even his most doting parishioners ventured to call the Rev. Philip Starr handsome ; but the cultured ones said lovingly that the saints in the old pictures had shadows like those in their faces, and the uncultured cried with joy, " Ain t he got the smile ! " His lips were grave now, as he looked wearily out across the small bricked back yard which his assistant called " the close ; " but his eyes followed the sunshine slipping through the alley. It was 64 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER characteristic of him that when tired he uncon sciously turned his face toward the light, and con sidering this peculiarity, the rectory study ought to have had more than one window. " Why don t you cut another ? " Christopher sometimes asked; "the old ladies of the parish would delight in paying the bill." " Because I don t need it." " I wonder if you ever realize that you need any thing!" exclaimed Christopher, and his friend said : " I don t know that that is my business." There was an open letter from Christopher on the desk this evening, and the young clergyman took it up after a moment, and re-read it by the waning light. " I suppose," he said musingly, " that he is walking straight into the jaws of martyrdom. I wonder what she thinks of him ? And it was she who put it into his head to do this, he says, last July. I think I must call upon her, she comes so often to the church, and she looks so terribly earnest sometimes. I wonder if she I wonder if Chris?" The Rev. Philip Starr rose to his feet and stood looking out of the window, his hands clasped be hind his back. " The rector, he s always runnin after stray sheep," one of his parishioners said ; and that part of the intellectual world which existed outside of Philip s Christianity stood disconcerted before his THE FANATIC 65 missionary spirit. To believe in state control of railways, and at the same time to wear a cassock, these two things, which seemed incompatible in the eyes of the orthodox radicals, nevertheless drew them by a certain fascination to St. Jude s, where they sat listening askance, gingerly, as fearful that the miracle of conversion might overtake them unawares. Sometimes the rector preached on Ba laam s inspired beast, sometimes on the spiritual necessity for physical fasting, sometimes on the divine hopelessness of the modern social problem and the glory of Christian failure. And always the orthodox radicals failed to get the point ; but they got a vast deal of mysticism and unrest and dissatisfaction out of the sermons, a vast deal of stimulus which they needed. And they always came again. Christopher came sometimes, when he happened to be in the city ; but he was not an orthodox rad ical, and he was not afraid of being converted. That was the hopelessness of it. He had his work to do, and he was satisfied. Agnes came, too, very often ; and she was not an orthodox radical either she was not an orthodox anything. But she was not satisfied, and she had nothing to do. Once Agnes and Christopher came together, and Philip saw them, and a consciousness of being very young and very solitary smote upon him. He preached on the Incarnation that day and Agnes kindled under his words ; and Christopher looked afar off or else he looked at Agnes. Both those young 66 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER men looked often at Agnes. Philip was looking at her now, in thought, as he stood by his win dow. " Such an intense little face ! seeking seek ing ! I 11 go to see her soon. I think I can help her. Dear old Chris ! I m glad for him ; I m glad for him " After a moment the Rev. Philip Starr made the sign of the cross upon his breast and stood so tensely still that it seemed he almost held his breath. He had preached a great deal about re nunciation in his little day. The shadows lay darker on his face, and the bricked yard was all gray. There was no one to pass by and stare at the young rector looking out of his window. The bell rang as he stood there, and a man s voice outside in the hall said : " He does not usually see people at this hour, you say ? I m sorry. Will you give him my " " Come in ! " called Philip. There was a brief silence before the door was opened by a sort of janitor or sexton or errand boy, whose baffled expression of countenance plainly said, " How am I ever to carry out your instructions if you don t uphold me ? " " Mr. Starr, this is most kind of you," said the old gentleman who followed the boy. " Not at all, Mr. Watson ; I recognized your voice, and I never feel that I have a right to keep busy men waiting. Charlie, I think you have n t brought in my lamp ; get it, won t you ? Here is THE FANATIC 67 a chair, Mr. Watson, right at your hand. The days are growing shorter." The old gentleman sat down and stared curi ously about him, while the long cassocked figure strode into the dimness of the narrow, cell-like room and emerged with another chair. There were books on one side of the room, from floor to ceiling ; the window and the desk were on the other side, and a plain wooden cross. The floor was bare and unpolished. There was no curtain at the window, only a plain shade, which Philip drew down as the boy entered with a lighted student lamp. " He has come to ask me to help him do some thing disagreeable to some of his workmen who attend St. Jude s, I suppose," thought the clergy man as he seated himself in the extra chair and waited for his visitor to speak. Mr. Watson withdrew his eyes from their sur vey of the room and turned them, still perplexed and questioning, upon Philip s face ; then he came out of his reverie with a slight bend of the head and a smile of apology. He was a robust old gentleman with a broad red face, made broader and more red by the expanse of fuzzy white whisker which rayed out from his cheeks. He had the inquisitive, sharply smiling blue eye which goes with a certain type of bene volence, and below his flat, smooth-shaven upper lip was a long line of mouth which ran away at both ends into his whiskers when his eyes smiled. 68 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER He was not unique ; he looked like a great many other prosperous and well-intentioned old gentle men. " I ve come to consult you on two matters that are very near my heart, Mr. Starr, and I want your cooperation," he began. " Exactly," thought Philip, but he preserved a discreetly attentive silence. " You and I are fellow workers in the humani tarian movement, Mr. Starr, and we ought to stand shoulder to shoulder in this good cause. It is a disgrace to society the way the philanthropists are pulling, each in his own direction and for the sake of his own hobby. We shall never begin to ac complish anything until we can leave off distrust ing each other s methods and adopt some plan of concerted action." Philip bowed politely to this platitude. " Now there is young Christopher Kenyon," the visitor continued ; " his father and I went to school together as fine a young fellow as breathes to day, I am firmly convinced, but deluded by However, I did not mean to speak of him just yet. Later ! later ! Mr. Starr, I am thinking of found ing a hospital." " Ah ! " Philip leaned forward with a sense of relief, and smiled appreciatively. The old gentleman also leaned forward, encour aged by this sympathetic reception of his plan, and continued : " You don t think there are too many hospitals THE FANATIC 69 already, Mr. Starr ? You don t think the city is overburdened with hospitals ? I have met with that objection from some people." " No, I do not ; my experience with hospitals is that there may be any number of them, but they always unite in drawing the line at just the par ticular case I want them to undertake." " I am glad to hear this from a competent au thority ; glad indeed, Mr. Starr. You lift a weight off my mind. For I will confide to you, this is no mushroom project, sprung up in a night. I think you would be interested in learning the his tory of this hospital ; it is to be a workingmen s hospital, Mr. Starr." "A splendid thing ! " said Philip heartily. " More than that, built by the workingman him self." Philip looked puzzled. " Several years ago, Mr. Starr, I confided my desire for just such a hospital to my superin tendent ; he is an excellent man, a Christian man " " I have heard of him," observed Philip dryly. Mr. Watson glanced at the young man, and added : " Doubtless the men grumble ; it is the prerogative of the men to grumble. He has borne their ill-will with a truly Christian spirit, and all the while that they have exerted their petty spite against him he has been rearing for them this monument of benevolence. I spoke to him of this dear wish of my heart, and he said : You shall 70 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER have your hospital, Mr. Watson, and the men shall build it for you ; it shall be built not only for workingmen, but by workingmen. I will en gage to save enough money out of the wages of the operatives in the next five years to build this institution. And, Mr. Starr, he has done it actually done it ! To me there is something Napo leonic in an achievement like that." "Decidedly Napoleonic," assented Philip, and after a pause, " There are more ways than one of making the workingman help himself." His eyes were dangerous as he said this, but his lips twitched. " Of course I shall attend to the endowment," the old man resumed, " but the building itself will cost close on to two hundred thousand ; although we shall rule out all luxury, all useless softness of living, that would tend to make the men discon tented with their lot. Now, we shall be wanting a chaplain for this hospital, Mr. Starr, and of course we shall not have a Catholic ; that would be out of the question ; I could not conscientiously. But a number of my men come to St. Jude s, and they all know you and like you, and " " You said there were two matters about which you wished to consult me," interrupted Philip. " Perhaps we could come back to this later." He wanted time to overcome his indignation, and refuse the chaplaincy with becoming meek ness. The humor of the situation only inflamed him to sarcasm, and he had no wish to lose his temper before this estimable old gentleman. THE FANATIC 71 " The second matter ah, yes ! " sighed Mr. Watson ; " that is about our friend Christopher. Do you know what that young man is doing now, Mr. Starr ? Have you heard ? " "He keeps me pretty well inforined as to his life," Philip answered. " He and I are friends, Mr. Watson ; we were schoolboys together there is no man to-day whom I trust more implicitly than I do Christopher Kenyon." There was a warning note in Philip s voice as he said these words. Perhaps old Peter Watson was a little deaf. " So I supposed, so I supposed," he replied ; " that was why I came to you ; I knew that if anybody could turn him from his insane course, you could. Frankly, Mr. Starr, I love this young man. We are competitors ; but what is competi tion ? I have watched that boy grow up. When his father died and the market was uneasy and suspicious of him, rightfully suspicious, as I now realize, I could have drawn off half of his buy ers, half of his buyers ! But I refrained. I said : This is a young man ; he has his way to win ; don t make it too hard for him, Peter ; you were a young man once. And I refrained. And what is the result of this forbearance on my part, Mr. Starr what is the result ? This young man is ruining trade. He is setting himself up against good old Adam Smith. He is actually trying to teach me and all the other manufacturers in the country how to run a shoe-shop. Why! I was 72 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER making shoes before that boy was thought of, Mr. Starr before he was thought of! Understand me, I don t come to you to-day for my own sake. I come for the sake of the boy. He is not hurting me. Beyond creating a passing flurry in the trade, beyond taking off a few men from my shops men who can always be replaced ! Men ! Why, men are the cheapest thing in the market to-day ! He does n t hurt me, he does n t hurt any of the rest of us ; he only ruins himself. He is ramming his head against a stone wall, and I am sorry for him. That is why I am here to-day, Mr. Starr." " Yes, truly, he is ramming his head against a stone wall," said Philip in a strange tone. " Even I, who am no business man, can see that." " Then labor with him, Mr. Starr ; plead with him. You are the one to do this. You are his friend, and of his own age. We old folk are held in no reverence by fhe present generation; he would not listen to me. And I am a quick man ; it is not soothing to have a young whippersnapper rise and insinuate that the business one has con ducted for thirty years on the strictest principles of business honor is all a lie. Who should be able to judge of business honor if not I, who for almost half a century have never failed to answer for every scrap of paper to which my name was signed? Honor! Perhaps I am growing old, Mr. Starr; perhaps I feel these slights too keenly. There are other younger men who only laugh and say, Let him break ! and he will break. Mark THE FANATIC 73 me, he will break ; not this year, perhaps, nor next, but the crash must come. He is sinking his money in a bottomless pit. He can t stand out alone against all the rest of the community. The workingman is hand and glove with him now, but that is because the workingman is sucking his life-blood. Mr. Starr, the workingman is a leech ; he is never satisfied. This young man is prepar ing a dangerous retribution for himself ; he is laying a fuse beneath the foundations of a peace ful commercial community ; he is creating revo lutionists to break down this splendid republic which his forefathers have so prayerfully builded. And when his money is gone, who will feed his pauperized eight-hour-a-day workingmen ? Not I, Mr. Starr; this I declare that not one of those ungrateful fools shall be taken back into my shops; not one! There are always men to be had." " Why do you ask me to speak to him ? " said Philip. "You call him young; but I also am young." " You are a minister of the Gospel, Mr. Starr ; upon what can the world rely for stability if not upon the Church ? " Then that danger signal in Philip s eyes blazed out in one flash, and he got up and walked to the other end of his study. " It is a bitter thought to me that you should assume that the Church has taken from me the power of being young like other men," he said, 74 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER coming back. " What is the stable age whereto we are all leveled that are ordained priests ? Sta bility ! How dare the world look to the Church for stability? the world that says stability is death; that says absence of competition means stagnation of ambition, means standstill, means the impeding of progress. Let us alone to man age our seesaw of competition, you cry. This is business ; religion is different. And wealth goes up, up, up, on the seesaw. But when the poverty end of that plank strikes bottom it is going to strike hard, and the other end would better take care." " Mr. Starr, you astonish me ! " gasped the old gentleman. "And you, also, have astonished me," said Philip. " If I had been less astonished, perhaps, I should not have spoken so plainly." " You mistake my meaning when I say sta bility." " I think not. You mean it in two ways : re spectability, when you apply it to the Church; death, when you apply it to the world. There is another meaning, which is a real one. Yes, truly the Church is stable, because her God is stable ; but when the day comes that she is stable because her priests are stable, then will there be death indeed. But that day is never coming. Mr. Watson, if the world were ruled Christ s way, do you think there would be any need of docking the workman s pay in order to build him a hospital ? THE FANATIC 75 If the world were ruled Christ s way, would there be any need of taking precautionary measures to prevent men from being discontented with their lot in life, even their hospital lot ? If the world were ruled Christ s way, would Christopher Ken- yon be ramming his head against a stone wall while all the rest of the peaceful commercial com munity looked on and said, Let him break ? Would man, who is made in God s image, be the cheapest thing in the market to-day ? " Bright tears stood in Mr. Watson s eyes, and he wiped them away with his handkerchief and blew his nose. He had always prided himself on being responsive to emotional appeals; he had had long training in revival meetings. " You are an idealist, Mr. Starr, and it is right that you should be," he said. " I too am an ideal ist, but I am an older man ; neither have I been subjected to that appeal of mysticism which your Church makes constantly to its ministers, and which seems to me a little too dangerously inflam matory when made to the pure idealist. Not that I blame you, Mr. Starr but I fear you have much disillusion before you, and I doubt if your mysticism will save you from disillusion. No, if the world were ruled Christ s way, many of these deplorable things that you mention would not be true. But I insist that it must be ruled Christ s way by Christians, and the people who put forth these socialistic theories are a godless crew. I will have nothing to do with a movement which 76 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER has not Jesus as its watchword. And beware, Mr. Starr, do not tamper with your religion. Flee the tempter. When progress means anti-Christ it must be shunned." " Then when you cut down your shoe-workers wages in order to build them a hospital, your watchword was Jesus ? " Philip said gravely. " It most assuredly was. A hospital ! Do you know of anything more beneficial to the commu nity than a hospital, unless it be a church, Mr. Starr?" "Yes; what Christopher Kenyon is doing is more beneficial." " More beneficial ! My dear sir, think a minute ! Whom does it benefit ? Look forward, look for ward ! Not our young friend Christopher, who has all the crushing forces of competition arrayed against him, and must go to the wall. Not the workmen, who will be thrown out of a job when the crash comes, and will be in bad odor with the other manufacturers. Not the market, which wants cheap shoes. Look beyond ! " " I do ; and the people who will be benefited are all those who will stand by and see him fight against the world for the thing he believes is the truth, and see him fail, and, perhaps, see him die although we don t die in a commercial civiliza tion." " No, we only commit suicide," interrupted Mr. Watson. "Take care, take care, young man. There s more in commercial warfare than mere THE FANATIC 77 endurance ; there s more than a possibility of fail ure and death ; there is a possibility of sin." "There is always a possibility of sin," said Philip sternly. Mr. Watson rose. " Then see to it that when the end comes you have n t this foolish boy s soul on your conscience. I know I know," waving his hand impatiently, "I ve seen high-minded men go into business before ; I ve been at it forty years, and I ought to know the temptations." " Mr. Watson, I would rather a man should die with all the world against him than make one hair s-breadth compromise with his conscience for safety s sake. And competition or no competi tion, to me the action of the man who deprives his fellow beings of their physical, intellectual, and spiritual heritage by underpaying them and over working them, is just as truly a sin as the action of the man who steals his neighbor s name and writes it in a check-book, although the world con dones the one offense and condemns the other. I believe in martyrdom. My faith is fixed and grounded in martyrdom. Who says that we have a right to believe in temporal success in any success save that of laying down our lives a failure in the eyes of the world ? Only the non-Christian have any right to believe in what is called success. Even the possibility that competition may put my friend in the dilemma of choosing between sins, even the possibility that he may fall, is not enough to make me dissuade him from his course. To 78 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER show the world the dilemma would do it more good than building it a hospital. And one never quite believes that one s friend will fall." The old gentleman wiped away another tear and pulled himself together. " Well, I 11 say good-night, Mr. Starr. I came on a fool s errand, it seems ; but I like you two misguided young men. And, by the way, Kenyon is non-Christian, is he ? He s quite insolent about his certainty of success." " Yes ; God is very tender to Christopher. He has given him a cross that shall be heavier than yours or mine can ever be. Good-night." Outside in the street old Peter said thought fully: " Interesting phenomenon, a fanatic." CHAPTER VII THE PASTORAL MODE IN those autumn days a charmed quiet settled upon Agnes like a cloud, and wrapped her away from the world into a kind of mental invisibility. The stillness of her mood baffled the professor and oppressed him with a foreboding of change. Hitherto he had found her thoughts ready and clamoring for inspection, and now they were not there. Nevertheless, he was conscious that very close to him, even though unseen, she was think ing. Her restless desire for action had stopped, and she sat for hours by her window looking out across the college yard, through sunless haze and the gray-browns and olives of November trees, see ing something that she did not speak about, something that must have been neither joy nor sorrow, so entirely thoughtful, so without smiles or tears was her face. And when she was not looking out of the window she sat by the fire in her father s study, if he were away, and held a book open on her knees any book. Philip found her thus one afternoon not long after his encounter with Mr. Watson. And to Philip the quietness which was upon her, the in- 80 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER tensity of thoughtfulness, was simple, if unspeak able, for this was his own mood. He stood within the veil, and the mystery to which she leaned, a-hush, beckoned him also. " Then you do sometimes call upon people who are not your parishioners ? " Agnes said, with a new slowness of speech, as if her mind were com ing back from somewhere else. " Why ? " She asked the question with a bit of a smile, and sat down again in her little armchair by the fire, motioning him to a seat. " I have come to talk to you about Christopher," answered Philip. " He is n t in the parish either, but you and I are his friends, and I think that now, and in the years to come, he is going to need his friends." " Oh, are you frightened also ? " she said wea rily. " Are you also distrustful of anything that involves action ? So many people have been talk ing, and they are all so amazed, poor things I Even father is troubled, although of course he does not feel justified in having an opinion as yet. But you have been preaching just the sort of thing that Mr. Kenyon is trying to put into prac tice. Are sermons only words, after all? When is the not dangerous time for putting theories into practice ? How are you going to get around your kind of exhortation ? But I suppose you have to be prudent ; clergymen always have to be pru dent" " I in afraid I can t flatter myself I have dis- THE PASTORAL MODE 81 played an objectionable or even an unobjection able amount of prudence in the affair thus far," he said, with a smile of reminiscence ; " and," slowly, " as for getting around my kind of exhor tation I don t think I shall try to get around it." " You don t think you will try to get around it ! Then you ah ! " As the meaning of his words was borne in upon her, her face became so full of power, and hope, and passion for the ideal, that she was life-giving, like an exalted thought ; she was beautiful. She and Philip looked at each other with radiant eyes purified by the vision of their common ideal. And then she caught her breath with a little sob and all her face broke into trouble and tenderness, and she cried : "Talk to him, Mr. Starr! Plead with him! They say he cannot succeed, and he will not listen. Oh, I am afraid! And it was I who helped to make him do it. He ought not to have let me. I have no experience. It was wicked of me, but I laughed at him. And now he is doing this splen did thing. And it means failure ? " She wanted him to reassure her. " Yes, it means failure," he said. She sat with her hands clasped round one knee, and looked long into the fire. "Don t you know it means failure?" he re sumed at last. "Yes." * Have we Christians any right to look forward 82 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER to world success ? Have we any right to demand anything higher than His height?" " I am not a Christian," she said defiantly. Philip looked full into her face without speak ing, and she dropped her eyes. " After all, don t you agree with me that no thing can be called failure except sin ? " he con tinued presently. " Yes ; but sin is such a general term : the Great Failure was because of sin. Aren t you arguing in a circle? And besides" her tone was light but still defiant " you came to talk to me about Mr. Kenyon ; you did n t come to con vert me, did you ? " " That depends," said Philip, and they both smiled. But Agnes grew grave again after a moment. " He could n t do it if he thought it would not succeed ; don t you know he could n t ? " she said. " Could you ? " Philip asked gently, and waited. " Yes," she whispered. "Why?" She shaded her eyes from the fire with one hand and sat very still ; Philip could only see the reverence on the lips that would not answer him ; and suddenly she cried out : " But I don t want him to fail ; I don t want him to fail ! He has n t the reason for submission to failure that that " " That you and I have," Philip ended for her. THE PASTORAL MODE 83 She did not contradict him ; she only glanced up piteously, then looked away into the fire and sighed. " Tell me what it is you don t believe," he urged. "No." " Why not ? " " Because I am afraid." " Afraid that I shall convince you ? " His voice and eyes were full of pleading. "Oh, no not afraid of you; not afraid of any one outside myself. I can still defy the world to convince me. But if I put it into words, I am afraid. The words will play me false ; I am afraid I shall convince myself." " Tell me what it is you don t believe." "No!" " Yes, tell me." " If I do not believe that the Man who volun tarily made the Great Failure, and promised so much before He laid Him down on the cross Ah, why pursue it ? " " Yes ? " he said. " Then I do not know why I go on living ; for eighteen hundred years ago the end of the world was come, and all the rest is death." " And you agree," Philip added, " that you and I have a reason for submitting to failure which Christopher has not ? " He waited in silence a few moments, for he saw that she could neither speak nor listen ; then he turned the subject. 84 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER "You and I are his good friends," he began cheerily. " Let us take counsel together. I came partly because I wanted to tell you that I, also, believe in him and in the thing he has done ; and I shall stand by him whatever comes. I know you must believe in him, because he has written me that you suggested this course of action to him, and you yourself have told me that. I only wanted you to know that I would stand by him." " He is blessed in having so loyal a friend," said Agnes with some constraint. She was beginning to realize that she had betrayed a good deal more than ordinary interest in Christopher s affairs dur ing the last half hour, and she was wondering just how much this young clergyman knew, and how much he took for granted. Would he tell Chris topher how distressed she was ? Fortunately the firelight made blushing easy. But Philip was quick to note the reserve in her tone, and he understood. " I don t see just what we are to take counsel about," she said lightly. " Of course, I feel par ticularly interested in the new plan because it was I who suggested it to him ; and I can t help having qualms when I think what the result may be. I am visited at intervals by a sort of remorse. But I m afraid I m a very cold sort of person, Mr. Starr ; you see, even my emotions are impersonal and sci entific in their sources." " You re not like old Mr. Watson, then," said Philip, smiling ; " he came to remonstrate with me THE PASTORAL MODE 85 about Chris the other day, for purely personal and affectionate reasons, he said." " Old Mr. Watson ! " exclaimed Agnes. " Well, he assuredly can do the most impertinent things ! He kissed me once because he had known my mother when she was a girl ; took me completely by surprise ; and father was so angry ! But he comes to the house now and again. He s been rather nice about looking up safe investments for father, and seeing that our modest little hoard does n t get lost, strayed, or stolen. Tell me about him. What did you do?" "I I m afraid I jumped on him with both feet, as the boys say." "You ! " Agnes gave a little crow of delight. " He meant well," said Philip ; " but he is old and bewildered. I really felt quite sorry for him at the end." "I should think you might; it was the least you could do after jumping on him." " He does n t predict immediate failure for Chris" " Oh, he does n t ! " Agnes bristled. " But he seems to think that it is inevitable, with all the forces of competition arrayed against him." "I wonder why you didn t suggest that he should join the minority and make one less in the array." " You would n t have wondered if you had been there." " The reason that you have come to me is that 86 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER you want me to help you persuade Mr. Kenyon that what he is doing will fail ; but I have told you that, in the first place, he cannot be convinced that it will fail ; and, in the second place, he could not do it if he were not buoyed up by the hope of success." " No, that is not the reason I came to you." Philip s voice was lower than it had been. " Then what else can I do ? " " You can help me to help him to understand the meaning of failure." " Ah ! " There was pain and mockery in the little cry. " You wanted to convert me in order to save your friend s soul ; that was why you came." "No!" Something in his voice puzzled Agnes, and she looked at him ; but he was sitting quite calmly in his chair almost too calmly, perhaps. " That was very rude of me," she said. And the Rev. Philip Starr thought in his heart dully, " This is temptation," but he smiled a friendly response to her apology. " But he may succeed, you know," she persisted after a moment, going back to the old discussion. "People do succeed sometimes even good peo ple." " Yes, martyrdom is success," Philip replied. " Don t ! " she exclaimed. " I will believe in success ! It is right ! and the right always tri umphs." " So it does," assented Philip, rising. THE PASTORAL MODE 87 " And yet," she murmured, " I suppose I shall try to help you ; I m afraid I can t help trying. Only, I shall never convert him. I can t talk of such inward things. I m not a missionary." She held out her hand, and her words were light, but her eyes were reverent and wistful. He walked miles that afternoon, praying prayers that he did not stop to listen to, and wondering at himself, and God, and her. " Even if there were no Christopher the end would be the same, for me. Poverty ! Poverty ! Her hair is gold ; and gold is not for me. " Good Jesus, Fountain of Love, Fill us with Thy Love ; Absorb us into Thy Love ; Compass us with Thy Love. " That we may Win through Thy Love others to Thy Love. " Jesus, Who having been Thyself tempted, knowest how to succor those that are tempted: succor us in our temptations. " The November wind, mist laden, blew in his face, and the night fell, and still he walked on trying to thank God. CHAPTER VIH WOULD-BE FRIVOLITY " FATHER has got it in his head that he is n t doing his duty by me," Agnes wrote to Christo pher early in December. " He insists that I am growing up without any of the legitimate pleasures of youth, and that it makes me dull. I tell him he is not very polite to say so, and that, moreover, the legitimate pleasures of youth always struck me as particularly flat ; but he says I only say that to make him feel comfortable, and he won t be satisfied with anything less than an At Home ; * so an At Home it is to be. You know the kind : assorted sizes to suit all ages. Father wanted to make it entirely young people, but I did n t know enough to fill all the parlor chairs, so we ve had to ask a few heads of departments, and wives, and things, to stand round in corners and lean against the wall. Those who are not infirm may dance. Will you come ? I counted you in when I was trying to fill the chairs. We shall be almost wholly academic if you don t, and it is not good for us to be academic. It marbleizes us ; it turns the Galatea metamorphosis the wrong way round. I have sent a card to Mr. Starr, but perhaps he has WOULD-BE FRIVOLITY 89 forgotten what such things mean. Please explain, and bring him if you can ; tell him if he does n t come we shall all be at the mercy of that unenlight ened Dr. Chester, of St. James , who believes in neither trades unions nor incense. I am sending a little note to your aunt, asking her to spend a few days with us before the party, and show me how to do things." Christopher s answer came at once. " Yes, I will come to your party if you will come to mine. That pretty Scotch girl, whom perhaps you remember, Jeanie MacDougal, is going to marry a nice fellow in the factory, a cutter, who used to be a crony of mine when we were small boys. The wedding is to take place the twenty- ninth of December, and auntie and I are going to have a reception at the house afterwards. I want to make it a kind of recognition of the new order of things that is to begin in the shops with the New Year. The men have been doing splendid work through the committees. They are fine fellows, and as soon as they get so that they are willing to trust me we shall lift the world up another notch. I 11 bring Philip to the At Home if moral sua sion will do it. I 11 tell him it s his duty. Do you know what a brick he s been all through this crisis ? He s written me letters that ought to go down to posterity along with Burke and Milton. Regular organ-prose, with the trumpet-stop pulled out full force the kind that sends armies to their deaths glorified. If it had not been for you and 90 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER Philip I don t know what I should have done these last two months. I ve felt discouraged enough sometimes to go and drown myself except that I don t do things that way." Of course he kept her letter, and she kept his. The professor, who had no intellectual sympa thy with aunt Ada, chiefly because she had no intellect, could not see why she must be invited to spend a few days at the house. " You are quite capable of managing this little affair, my dear. Indeed, I should be much more willing to trust you in an emergency than her, although she is twice your age. She has a dizzy mind." But Agnes said : " She was very nice to us while we were in Kenyon, and I have n t had a chance to show her any attention since, and she 11 like to come." She did like to come ; although she said, with a questioning, troubled look, that perhaps she was not doing right to leave home during this crisis. " You know you have heard, perhaps, that Chris is making some changes in the factory ? " " Yes." " I wish I understood business matters better," again there was a wistful pause. " I have the most complete confidence in Chris, and I know that whatever he may do, even if it should be a mistake, he is doing it from the most conscientious motives. I don t exactly see why people should be talking about it or why it should get into the WOULD-BE FRIVOLITY 91 papers. But such is life, and we must bear one another s burdens. I had a letter from Anne Finchley the other day, Anne and I were room mates at the academy, and she had seen some thing about it and was trying to find out. Anne always did have her full share of curiosity, but I m not putting myself out to answer the letter. What paper was it in, Agnes ? And and it was n t favorable, I suppose ? " " It was only an editorial on the general trend of reform movements. And considering the fact that all the newspapers are under the control of capitalists, and are obliged to stand in with the employer, it was remarkably fair." " But Christopher is a capitalist and an em ployer at least, I always inferred so from what James used to say." " Yes, but it is not quite the same thing ; he does n t want to be." Aunt Ada sighed and shook her head. " This trying to get out of the place you were born to occupy in the world seems a tempting of Providence ; it works on my nerves dreadfully. His father was so different ; a kind man, but be lieved in their keeping their distance. I m afraid I believe in that too. When you let the lower classes get out of focus they re rude. There was no one readier than James to give help when any of the hands were in distress. We were always cooking jelly or broth for some poor sick soul. But I trust Chris is not making a mis- 92 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER take somebody told me the other day that he was going to give up his place at the head and go in just like any common workman. My dear, I will confess I have been troubled ; I expect to have him brought home any day on a litter by the infu riated mob. I really wish I could find out what it is I dread. But I don t dare to say anything to Chris ; he looks so grieved when I venture to advise." " I do not believe he is making a mistake, dear Miss Kenyon, but he does need to feel that we trust him." " Trust him I I would trust him with my last penny. Indeed, I do. He looks out for all my lit tle money affairs. He looks out for Anne Finch- ley s affairs too, because she s alone. And Mary Anne Hapgood, a kind of fourth cousin, always trusted her investments to James ; and now Chris has assumed the care of them without a word, and I know positively that he never thinks of charging her a cent for his time. And I approve of his being busy, for Satan finds some mischief still. And now, just lately I found it out, he s become trustee for that Mrs. Loring s estate, the Loring, you know, who died and left that large family, and the mother was to manage the estate. It s just like him but to support the factory in idleness into the bargain ! I can t see but that they were very well off before. Of course they have to work, but the laborer is worthy of his hire, and James had to work for his money too. And they have WOULD-BE FRIVOLITY 93 fairly good homes, if they would only keep them clean and in repair, and when they re sick I ve been down myself to nurse them. There s that McCarthy baby had the croup " " Now, I m going to leave you right here by the window where you can see the boys going to and from the classes, through the yard, Miss Kenyon, while I run in to the city for an hour. I ve told Maggie to keep up the fire in the library, and if your friend Mrs. Hapgood comes, take her right in there ; and don t you think she would like to stay to luncheon ? " I will never make broth and jelly for any poor person. I never, never will ! " Agnes said to her self vehemently, while she was putting on her hat ; " I won t even make toast ! There ! If they are not able to afford it for themselves, then the world shall enjoy the spectacle of seeing them die. I only wish they were lying by the roadside now, dying of neglect. I don t suppose the world will lift its hand to change things until they are as obvious as that. But meanwhile the system is just as bad, the principle is just as wrong. Oh, dear ! Father will say I am jumping at conclu sions. And I suppose nobody will want to talk about anything else at the party, and I shall get angry and say rude things to my guests." It was quite true that they did not care to talk about anything else, and, being for the most part people whose daily occupation consisted in dis course, they handled the subject with a volubility 94 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER and fluency which were peculiarly exasperating. Even the girls said to one another : "Have you heard about Christopher Kenyon? I always knew he d do something queer. Is he really going to wear a leather apron, or whatever they wear, and work in the factory with the men ? " " S-s-h-h, there s his aunt. Somebody said he was coming to-night." " I should think he d hate to go about when he knew everybody was talking, should n t you ? " " Are they engaged, do you think ? " " I don t object so much to the thing he has done," said the Professor of Constitutional His tory, addressing a group of his compeers. " This is a free country ; if a man chooses to swamp him self in a cooperative experiment, I see no reason why he should n t do it." " And as for cooperation, you know," said a graduate student who was hovering on the out skirts of the group, " it is n t cooperation ; it is a mild form of profit sharing. He runs his shops on an eight-hour day and union rates of wages, and equal pay for men and women where the women do men s work all this at the desire of the em ployees. Then he gives them a certain per cent. I don t know just what of the profits at the end of each year. I believe if at the end of a few years they decide they want to put their profits into the business and buy shares, he 11 make the thing cooperative ; but he does n t force them to do it. He s keeping the whole affair in his own WOULD-BE FRIVOLITY 95 hands, just like any ordinary business. There s nothing radical about his scheme ; he s just edu cating the men. It s a big risk, for he s got to pay high wages and go on short hours, and he s unprotected in bad years when the profits run short ; still, he keeps the men from meddling in the business yet awhile, and I guess he s all right." " But I must say I find his method disappoint ing," returned the Professor of Constitutional His tory. " How a boy brought up in the quiet refine ment and self-contained dignity of a New England home could bring himself to address a large meet ing of workingmen in that sensational manner is more than I can understand. And there was no need of it. He could have obtained the same results by calling together the foremen and con ferring with them and " " Not the foremen, professor," interrupted the graduate student a second time. " He wanted to get at the men, you know, and the foremen are considered on the side of the employer. They are n t received into the unions since that row in the Knights of Labor, when they were found act ing as spies." " Then he could have chosen men from their unions " - " That was what he did, only instead of taking one man from each, he took several ; and consid ering that he has twelve hundred in his shops, it seems to me that was a fairer way. Does n t it strike you so, Professor Gillespie ?" 96 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " Still," said Professor Gillespie slowly, " I deplore the sensational character of the meeting. I cannot feel that these violent shocks adminis tered to public opinion, these sudden wrenchings away of what, in the eyes of the community, has assumed through long custom a perhaps unnecessa rily sacred character, these willful oppositions to conventionality, can accomplish in the end what might be arrived at, more slowly, to be sure, but more permanently, I fully believe, through the patient, unobtrusive education of the community to an unconscious acceptance of better things. We owe something to the community in which we live. We have no more right to be discourteous to the community than we have to be discourteous to the individual." There was a pause. Professors mused with eyes cast down, professors wives settled their lace in patient silence, and the graduate student walked away with his hands in his pockets. " What did he say in this speech ? " asked the head of the Department of Oriental Languages. "It was not reported," said the wife of the Professor of Greek. " They seemed to manage to keep the newspaper men out." " That does not look as if he meant to be sensa tional," commented a young English instructor. "Oh, understand me," Professor Gillespie ex claimed ; "I don t for a moment imagine that Kenyon had any ulterior motive in calling this meeting. The man is an idealist of the purest WOULD-BE FRIVOLITY 97 type ; but, like all idealists, when he attempted action, he showed his inexperience of the world by his method. I accuse him of nothing except, per haps, a little too much sentiment and, after all, the world is not overrun with sentiment. I only wish he had consulted me before taking the step. I might have been able to restrain him a little." " They say he quoted you as an authority in his speech, professor," observed the wife of the college librarian. " Quoted me ! " The professor s tone was one of undisguised annoyance ; but just then a college senior came up to claim the wife of the librarian for a square dance she was a genial lady with two pretty daughters and, the music beginning, the little group flattened itself against the parlor wall. " Oh, here you are ! " said Agnes to her father ; " I thought you were in the library, and I took Dr. Chester in there. Is anything the matter ? " she asked, as they were crossing the hall. " I have just heard that Kenyon quoted me in his speech, and it is a little annoying one s words get so distorted sometimes through repetition. For the sake of the college I should not care to be misrepresented ; for myself, it does not matter ; but, in a way, we of the faculty hold the college reputation in our hands, and it would be unwise that I should be quoted as advocating inflamma tory doctrine." " You dear lamb of a parent ! " cried Agnes, 98 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER patting his hand. "Nobody would think of be lieving that you advocated doctrine or anything else that was inflammatory. Of course he quoted you whom should he quote if not you ? I think it was very nice of him, if he did. You would n t have him quoting any of those old fossils in the department, would you ? " The professor smiled uneasily, but Dr. Chester was standing by the new chess table in the library, and further remonstrance was impossible. Christopher and Philip were late, because Philip had a guild meeting to attend first. When they came into the parlor, Agnes was standing under the chandelier talking to her father and Mr. Wat son. She was dressed in some heavy, cream-col ored material, made in a straight, simple fashion that emphasized her smallness and her slender- ness ; she carried in her hand three great shaggy- headed chrysanthemums, cream colored, with flame-tipped petals and long, stiff, green stems ; there were other chrysanthemums like them in a tall jar on the hearth. " He sent her those," thought Philip. " Yes, that is the way they do. How very young she looks how very young ! " She made one little step toward them, smiling, with outstretched hand. There was a lull in the conversation, and Christopher knew that every one was looking at him. It made him angry, but when he took her hand, something in her eyes said, " Don t mind them ! " and he did n t. The WOULD-BE FRIVOLITY 99 professor greeted him cordially, Mr. Watson shook his hand and looked into his face with in quisitive, smiling eyes, and the hum of conversa tion rose again. " Who is the old gentleman with the Santa Claus countenance?" asked the instructor in English. " Oh, don t you know ? " said the wife of the Professor of Experimental Psychology. " That s the rich old Mr. Watson, who s always founding things and sending poor young men through col lege. They say he s quite a character ; he goes down to the post office every Christmas and puts stamps on all the packages that are mailed with out sufficient postage, because he does n t like to think that people must go without their Christ mas presents." " Excellent ! I 11 drop mine in without any stamps at all this year ! " " He s a shoe manufacturer also, a competitor of young Kenyon s, and not at all in sympathy with his ideas. Quite dramatic to see them to gether, is n t it ?" " Yes," murmured the instructor thoughtfully ; " the old dispensation and the new." "Young Kenyon is handsome, is he not ? " " Yes ; curious face. Odd manner of hesitat ing and looking you through before he speaks. I d like to see him win." The rector of St. Jude s had been taken pos session of by Mrs. Loring, the professor had 100 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER moved away to speak to other guests, and Agnes, Christopher, and Mr. Watson were left standing together under the chandelier. " Ah, young man, young man, we re all talking about you ; do you know it ? " said old Peter. "Mr. Kenyon ought to feel glad that he has given us something sensible to talk about," said Agnes. The old man looked at her thoughtfully, almost sadly. " You vigorous young things," he said. " You think you are going to conquer the world. We thought so once. Well well ! " " This is a waltz ; may I have it ? " said Chris topher. "Yes," Agnes answered, and smiled over her shoulder at old Peter as she went away. He crossed to the side of the room where Philip stood against the wall, by Mrs. Loring s chair. Dr. Chester also leaned against the wall watching the dancers. " Who is the handsome man dancing with Miss Gillespie ? " he asked. " That is young Kenyon," Watson answered. " Ah ! The one that " " Yes ; does n t look as if he were such a fool, does he ? " " No ; and yet if you notice the eye, Mr. Watson, that is not the eye of a sane, practical man. There is fundamental weakness there. Very sensitive mouth the face of a poet." WOULD-BE FRIVOLITY 101 " Unfortunately he thinks he was born to make shoes. He would do the world a great deal more good by writing poetry. Shoe factories are in creasing every year, but poets are getting scarce. There are no Byrons to-day." Dr. Chester glanced sidewise at this old gentle man who was so unliterary as to care for Byron, and the conversation languished. " Poor old man ! " said Agnes to Christopher. " He was really quite pathetic, was n t he ? " " Yes, but if you want pathos you ought to see his workmen," Christopher answered. " Let us waltz through the sitting-room ; your aunt was wondering a while ago why you did n t come. She seemed to have an idea that some of your men were waiting round corners to slay you. She is very confused about the whole matter, and people have been talking to her." " This eternal talking ! " exclaimed Christopher. " What good does it do ? " " I don t know. But it goes on, like the winds and tides and the rotation of the earth. These rooms are full of broken bits of conversation about you and cooperation and shoes, and nobody has convinced anybody of anything, and nobody cares. And it s a misplacement of terms anyway, for you re not cooperating yet. It is n t a matter for conviction ; it is only a pleasant exercise for the tongue. We re a very serene society, we college people who live in books. Starvation and cheap labor get to be a matter of curves and diagrams 102 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER with us, we are so stolidly impersonal except in personalities." " You don t live in books," said Christopher ; " Starvation is not a curve to you." "No, it s an angle. And that reminds me, I .want some lemonade. Tell me what you said about father in your speech." In the morning, when aunt Ada had departed on an early train, the professor, searching for Agnes in order to give her a message before he went to his classes, found her in the parlor, open ing all the windows. " My dear child this cold December day ! What are you doing? " " I am blowing all those futile words out of the house. I am so afraid some of them will get over looked, and whisk into corners." The professor laughed, and his daughter came up to him and clasped her hands around his arm. " Was n t it a horrid party, dear ? You 11 never make me have another, will you ? If those are the legitimate pleasures of youth, decidedly I want to put away childish things. I was n t in tended to be frivolous ; I was n t intended not to care." The professor kissed her and smoothed her fore head, as he said : " Sitting up late does not agree with you, that is all. Now I thought we had a most interesting evening. The young people seemed to enjoy the WOULD-BE FRIVOLITY 103 dancing, and no one looked in the least bored ; there was abundance of really clever conversa tion." " To what purpose ? " Agnes inquired. Her father laughed again and said : " She is growing positively utilitarian ! " " Yes," she exclaimed, " there was abundance of conversation, but I did not find it very clever. The house is full of impertinent echoes ; that was why I opened the windows. We may be going to lose our teeth and our hair in coming generations, but of this I am certain we shall never lose our tongues." " What particularly displeased you in the con versation ? " the professor asked. And, as he spoke, the general trend of the evening s discourse passed slowly across his mind, and along with it a vision of Agnes dancing with Christopher. There must have been a sudden light in the professor s eyes, for his daughter stammered and blushed when she tried to answer his question. " Oh, well everything ! " she said pettishly. " But he will not speak to her while his affairs are in this unsettled condition," thought the pro fessor ; " he will be sure of the experiment first. I trust he will." CHAPTER IX A SHOEMAKERS HOLIDAY JEANIE MACDOUGAL had a white wedding. The snow began on Christmas Day, and by the twenty- eighth, when the storm lifted and the trains ran on schedule time, the village of Kenyon had retired several feet below the surface of things. To be sure, the roads and by-roads between the factory and the cottages of the workmen were beaten hard and white by the passing to and fro of twenty-four hundred feet four times a day, but the avenue be tween the elms had to be ploughed out to bring Agnes and her father from the station, and there was a snowdrift on the front piazza higher than a man s head. Icicles four and five feet long hung in a fringe all around the eaves of the great square house, and draped the cupola with frost devices. The glen and the pool and the waterfall had gone to spend the winter at the North Pole ; at least, that was what Christopher said when Agnes asked him to take her to see them. But the village was not asleep under its white coverlet. Fingers had never been so busy in Kenyon, no, not for all the factory with its ten hours a day, as they were that Christmas week ; because James s son, as the A SHOEMAKERS HOLIDAY 105 workers called Christopher, was going to give a " blow out " at the Homestead on Jiuamie Casey s wedding night, and every woman in the stitching- room was making a new dress. If the men did not use their fingers in honor of the occasion, they used their brains, and the brains were in greater need of the exercise. The twenty-ninth was a Saturday, and, at the request of the men, a half-holiday to celebrate the new era which was about to begin. Everybody said it was like Jimmie s luck, " to get the pret tiest girl in Kenyon shops for a wife, and a half- holiday, and a party, and the next day Sunday." Jeanie and Jimmie were married in the little white Congregational meeting-house, that being the nearest approach to Scotch Presbyterianism that the town afforded and Jimmie being a bad Catholic. The white meeting-house had a very sloping roof and a front square tower surmounted by a pyramidal steeple and four small longitudinal sections of pyramid, set at the four corners of the tower s roof. All the bad Catholics and the good Congregationalists and Baptists and Methodists and Episcopalians went to the ceremony, and all the good Catholics stayed outside the meeting-house and stared in decorous silence as the bridal party went up the holly strewn path to the door. Christopher and his guests had seats immedi ately behind the bride s family, and were even more interesting than the bride, in the eyes of the congregation. A large marriage bell of white 106 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER flowers, with a white satin bow presumably a true lover s knot tied to its clapper, hung above the space at the end of the central aisle, where Jimmie and Jeanie were to stand, in front of the platform and the pulpit. On one end of the white satin ribbon there was written in silver letters : "A TOKEN OF APPRECIATION." and on the other end : "FROM THE CUTTERS." From the top of the small reading-desk, popu larly known as the pulpit, a horn of plenty, fash ioned in white roses, poured a motionless cascade of pink roses down the front of the desk even to the edge of the platform. To the tip of this horn was tied a broad blue satin ribbon, one end of which fell intentionally over the right side of the desk, the other intentionally over the left. On the left end was written in gold letters : "FOR J. AND j." on the right : "WITH THE STITCHERS BEST WISHES." Christopher had sent down two great hampers of flowers from the Homestead greenhouse, and on the end of each pew, standing up very straight and stiff, and tied very tight, was a variegated nosegay. A friend of Jeanie s who had taken music lessons was to play the wedding march, and during the quarter of an hour which preceded the A SHOEMAKERS HOLIDAY 107 arrival of the bridal party she leaned over the gallery, backwards from the organ bench, every two minutes, at the risk of her life, and whispered very loudly: " Have they come ? " Whereupon the usher who happened to be at that end of the aisle, replied : " Nup," or " Naw." One of them said once : "Yes, they have," and followed it by a "Nit! " which had to be very audible because the organist was pulling out the stops. When the bride and groom did arrive, the noise of their sleigh bells could be heard a quarter of a mile away, and this so confused the organist that she began to play too soon, and she finished the march when the procession was only halfway up the aisle. Then, because it did not occur to her to begin again, she stopped ; and Jimmie had on new boots, the best that Kenyon shops afforded, a winter variety with a squeak. Meanwhile, all the good Catholics who were not engaged in tying mis tletoe over the storm door of the meeting-house, or in scattering rice among the robes in the sleigh, were digging their toes against the foundations of the building and flattening their faces against its leaded window panes. But after this everybody was very still, and only the minister and Jimmie and Jeanie spoke. Jimmie kissed Jeanie immediately after the ceremony. Every one heard him do it. But it was 108 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER Christopher who first noticed the mistletoe over the storm door, and even the good Catholics broke their polite silence and cheered when he kissed the bride. At six o clock the road from Kenyon village to the Homestead was alive with a trudging throng of shoemakers. They did not arrive at Christo pher s reception in carriages, neither did they ar rive at nine because they were invited for seven, rather they came at half-past six. They did not carry lanterns, because the moon and the snow were trying to outshine each other. " Was n t Jeanie just grand, though ! " said the organist to another stitcher ; " and did you know, auntie Kenyon give her the veil, for a present ? " " I 11 bet you there ain t any girl ever was mar ried in a sweeter pair of slippers than her. Sam told me they gilded the heels before they sent em home, and I made them kid rosettes myself ; they was n t easy." " And did you hear Jimmie s shoes squeak ? " " Yes, and I like to died I wanted to laugh so bad, and ma kept a-pokin me to behave myself." " Well, Mr. Morse, this here s the beginning of the new day for shoe workers, so some of them thinks," said a cutter, falling into step beside the slow old man. " The new day, yes, the new day," repeated Morse. " When you and me and all of us is goin to have just as much, gradual, in proportion to our A SHOEMAKERS HOLIDAY 109 time, as he does. Well when he don t make no more profit of his shoe business than I do, and sticks to it and stays satisfied, that day I 11 be lieve. Share and share alike well, it sounds pretty to hear him talk." " It don t sound pretty to hear you talk," said the old man suddenly, " and you re on your way to eat his bread." " Bread ! " the cutter cried ; " I m not lookin to eat no bread this night. My mouth is fixed for cake." Those who were near enough to hear him, laughed, and a woman exclaimed : " Somebody said there was a ring in the bride cake." " Hope I get it." " Aw, you pig ! Give some of the old maids a chance." And so, laughing and grumbling and criticising, they came to the avenue between the elms, and slowly relapsed into nervous speechlessness. " They are beginning to arrive," said Christo pher. He and Agnes and two or three young ladies who belonged to the " best people " in the village, and two or three young men, who looked upon the whole affair as a great lark, had been entertaining the bride and groom and one another. The professor sat in the corner of the library alone with a book on " The Housing of the Poor," and aunt Ada was somewhere in the region of the pantry. 110 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER The whole twelve hundred did not come to the reception, for some were sick, and some were in different, and some had to stay at home and mind the children, but enough came to fill the first floor and the enclosed piazzas of the Homestead, and the broad second-floor hall. At first they came up in couples and shook hands with the bride and groom, preserving a grim, almost a fierce, silence the while. But soon the crowd grew too great for even this courtesy ; people jostled each other, and smiled, and conversed in whispers. Christopher slipped in and out among his guests, shaking hands, and scattering words of greeting. Agnes also smiled upon people, and shook hands with them whether she knew them or not. Sometimes people liked to be spoken to in this informal way, and they said to each other, " Ain t she a lovely little thing ! " but sometimes they did n t like it, and then they lifted their eyebrows and noses and muttered, " What makes her so fresh ? " One of the " best people " sang a classic lullaby and a fervid Creole love song, and a band in the upper front hall played " Annie Rooney," and the Drinking Song from " Faust," and " Yankee Doodle," and a great many other airs that every body had heard before. Refreshments were cir culated early, and something happened then that broke through the formal reserve of the occasion, and set everybody laughing and talking with his neighbor, all the ice cream was boots and shoes and slippers. A SHOEMAKERS HOLIDAY 111 There were green ice-cream shoes, buttoned with silver bonbons, and yellow ice-cream shoes laced with spun sugar, and chocolate ice-cream top boots with strawberry ice-cream tops ; there were lemon sherbet slippers, and raspberry sherbet Oxford ties. " Will you look at the vamp on her, Tom ! " some one cried. And " Minnie, mine s slippers, look, look ! " And " I ve been eatin the shoes I made all my life, but they none of em tasted like this ! " And " Say, Mamie, is the green kind to eat ? Ain t you afraid of the buttons ? " " You re a genius ! " said Christopher to Agnes, for it was she who had suggested this device to aunt Ada ; " Now the old ones can go home, and we can have a Virginia reel in every room, and liven things up a bit. You may not believe it, but it is only nine o clock. It will all be over in an hour." There were five reels downstairs and one up stairs. Christopher and Agnes and Jimmie and Jeanie led the one in the parlor, and the " best people " were scattered through the other rooms to act as interpreters and guides. " If we done this often we d keep Kenyon shops busy fillin our orders for shoes," said a laster, dancing a vigorous clog before his partner. " Look at old Ma Flannigan ; she s gettin worked up ! " The Irish matron in question was " takin steps " on the hard-wood floor. 112 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " This here s a sight betther than a barrn door, Master Chrissie," she cried, with a wink. And Christopher called, " Go ahead ! Faster, Music!" Mrs. Flannigan, being further entreated by cries of, " Let er go, GaUagher ! " " Tune up, ma ! " " Now s yer chance ! " settled her face into an expression of anxious, tense gravity, and began an Irish jig. The men kept time with hands and feet, and the women, especially the young Ameri can women, laughed until the tears ran down their cheeks. The professor came and looked gravely on, standing behind two of the women, and peer ing urbanely over their shoulders. Aunt Ada, aghast at such revelry, touched her nephew and said : " Mercy ! Is the woman drunk ? " Fortunately the guests were too much absorbed in the dance to hear her. In an hour it was all over ; even the " best people " had gone, after thanking Christopher for a delightful evening, as if they thought he had invited them to look on at a show. " Will you come up in the cupola ? " Christo pher asked Agnes. " The moon is very fine, and you can see them going home a long way down the road. You d better take a shawl or some thing, though I don t believe it s cold up there." " Ah, why have n t I been up here before ? " Agnes cried, as she came out into the little room on the roof. It was square, like the rest of the A SHOEMAKERS HOLIDAY 113 house, with windows on every side, and the moon light came through every window, or seemed to. Agnes went to one and looked out. In the west there was a low line of hills, which rounded one beyond the other in ridges and bil lows, white and luminous against the brighter, moon-flooded sky ; and close below the house the glen nestled, somewhere under a great stretch of wintry, ice-crusted treetops. Between these and the white sea of hills lay the village, with four long three-story buildings at its upper end, stuck full of silver eyes the Kenyon shops, with their windows glinting in the moonlight. The sleigh bells of the " best people " still sounded, far, far away on the snow ; and along the white road winding from the Homestead past solitary farms, and clustered barns, and groves of leafless birch, straggled a dark line, that moved onward and broke away at both ends into moving dots Christopher s people going home, to those rows and rows of plain, bare wooden houses lying in the shadow of Kenyon shops. The sky was all a-prick with frosty stars shining in despite of the moon ; the sound of the sleigh bells had died away, but the shoemakers were singing "Down went McGinty to the bottom of the sea " very faint and far, and the clock in the white meeting house struck the hour. " Where am I leading them ? If I but knew ; oh, if I but knew ! " The despondency in his voice was strange to 114 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER Agnes, and she turned to where he stood, behind her, with the moonlight full upon him, his dark eyes sadly following the zigzag line far off on the snowy road. " Sometimes I almost stop," he said ; " some times I lift my fist to smash it all. Sometimes I do not care to do anything but lie down under the load of it and let the waters go over me, and never think, and never strive again. When one is inade quate to life the reasons for continuing to live lose their meaning." " Oh, do not say such things ! " she cried ; " I think of you always with your head lifted high and the light of unconquerable hope in your eyes, looking forever on victory." " Not forever. I pay my price." " I did n t know you could undertake anything you thought might fail." " I could n t. But I never agreed to undertake myself." " Ah ! if it s only yourself you re afraid of why ! I m not afraid ! " Her face was uplifted, and she smiled strength upon him. " Are n t you ? " he said softly. " Why do you believe in me ? Why do you think it worth while to tempt me back to belief in myself ? They don t believe in me. They are afraid or contemptuous or sullen." " Jimmie Casey believes in you." " I ve been good to Jimmie." " And you re going to be good to the others ; A SHOEMAKERS HOLIDAY 115 so good ! Ah, think how fortunate you are ! You can act ; you can change the world s ways that you do not like, that you do not believe in. And the rest of us may only watch and think and talk. You are the only man I know who is doing things ; the rest of us are only sending out propaganda that goes into the world s waste basket. I d give all niy life to be a failure, if that could make things straight." " But if I am a failure the plan will fail." " Will it ? Are you sure ? " He had been looking out over her head at the distant shops with their silver argus eyes ; now he looked at her and smiled slowly and there came into his eyes a tenderness that made her heart beat quicker as she tried to keep her face turned up to his. "This is not your real self that fears to act. You told me once you would rather hurt people by doing things than by leaving them undone." " I would ! " he answered ; " I am very incon sistent." "No, not inconsistent, only disheartened. But you are going straight on with it, believing in it, and in yourself." He laughed softly, and reached out both his arms to her, saying : "Ami? How are you grown so wise, so small ? " And then he took her hands and said : " You must not say such things to me, because I love you. You must not speak to me at all ; you 116 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER must not see me when I come to town, for when you do I want to tell you that I love you. I want to beg you to trust your life to me that I may break it, as perhaps I soon shall break the lives of Jim- mie Casey and his wife, and all those other men and women down there in the little houses. And I must not. Other men, young like me, look for ward to growing richer as they grow older. But I cannot look forward to that I must grow poorer and poorer ; I must ! I would not have it otherwise." She stood before him with her hands in his and her head bent. " I would not have it otherwise. But I love you. And the plan is all yours all yours, who said to me, You would not do it without giving them a chance to speak ; and the glory is all yours, for when I think of you and your belief in me, hard places smooth away, and anything seems possible. All this is yours." " And the failure, too, shall be mine, all mine," she said, looking up, her small white face unsmil ing, her eyes wide upon his. He drew her straight into his arms and held her there with her face looking up to him while he spoke to her : " Oh, my beloved, see how weak I am, to tell you this I never meant to tell. Forget it ! Blot it out ! and me ! " She moved her head against his breast, a little gesture of refusal, that was all. " I have no more right to take a wife than Philip A SHOEMAKERS HOLIDAY 117 Starr has. I have espoused the cause of the poor. I am one of them." " And I," she said. They forgot the poor after this. The dark line and the moving dots quite disap peared from the road. The singing and the sleigh- bells died away. The clock in the meeting-house struck the hour. " It is very late : we must go down," Agnes said. CHAPTER X PATEBNALISM THE professor accepted the situation with the philosophic sweetness and good breeding which he invariably displayed in all conventional emergen cies. " But you don t seem a bit surprised ! " Agnes protested. And he only smiled thoughtfully and stroked her hair. The smile gave her a lump in her throat, so that she was silent for some time be fore she said : "I I won t repeat that old thing they always say in books, about your not losing your daughter and gaining a son ; but it s true, father. You know it is, don t you ? " He smiled again and kissed her. " And just think how badly you would have felt if all the other professors daughters had gone and gotten married, and I had been left on your hands, an old maid I Now, would n t you, father ? " " I should never have been able to hold up my head again if such a calamity had overtaken me, I am quite sure," he replied, and they laughed tearfully together. ** I heard the gate click," said he. PATERNALISM 119 Agnes blushed, and flitted hurriedly to the door. " And remember, father dear, it was my fault ; I told him to do it just that way and " " My dear, I can quite believe you ; one has only to look at you to know that it has all been your fault from the beginning. I don t blame him in the least." She laughed nervously, and whisked out of the room. Christopher was standing in the hall. " Oh, perhaps we would better forget all about it ! " she cried. " It hurts him so, and he is an angel. Don t ask him ! Go away ! " Christopher took her hands and looked at her, and she smiled in mockery of herself, while the tears ran down her cheeks. " I would rather you did it with a carving knife," she said ; " that is a gentle weapon." Upstairs she turned upon herself and faced the situation. " There s no use trying to make excuses ; there is n t an atom of altruistic motive in my conduct. Father is not going to be benefited, or educated, or made happier by it one bit. I m doing it just plain because I want to ; and yet if I don t do it I shall be morbid. The natural relation be tween parents and children is hideous ! I don t see why we were made this way. And father is going to miss me terribly, even though I see him every few days. I am a pig. Oh, dear ! I hope 120 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER he is not being very hard on Christopher. When you act you can t be as cautious as when you theorize." Christopher was endeavoring to explain this fact to the professor in halting language, and the pro fessor was not disposed to be very hard on him. This young man who had so irrevocably committed himself to champion a principle could not fail to become a bright figure in the eyes of those men who existed in the community by virtue of educat ing principles into it ; and after the first shock of unpleasant surprise, the first inevitable recoil from the conventional, that gentle academic world in which the professor moved began to rejoice tem perately in Christopher. Had the professor been a business man he could not have adjusted himself so quickly to the new plan ; but three months after Christopher s speech in Kenyon the heavens had not fallen, the Kenyon shops were still apparently as much trusted by the commercial world as for merly under the old system, and the newspapers had dropped the subject. Despite his conscien tious and scholarly striving after fair mindedness, the professor instinctively trusted the man of in tellectual tradition rather than the workingman. This was natural. And the workingman he dis trusted. The professor himself never guessed this ; he had quite a different idea of his own mental attitude. Christopher, the benefactor of the Ken yon shoemakers, a dominating intellectual force, doing good in the face of public opinion, the pro- PATERNALISM 121 fessor could understand and respect ; but Chris topher identified with his men, as he meant some day to be, a co-worker with them, their mouth piece not all the generalities in that famous speech had been able to press in this idea upon the professor s mind. When it should penetrate, as one day it must, the professor would look else where for authority. Peter Watson was illiterate and a bore, but he was a dominating force, not a mouthpiece. To-day the professor s whole heart was with Christopher, this clean, high-souled young man who had given his life to the active demonstrating of a principle, who loved Agnes, and who was saying now : " I do not indulge in hyperbole when I tell you that you and she have been the moving spirits in my life. Years ago, when I was only a crude, wide-minded, wool-gathering boy, you set me at definite thinking, and last summer she came, and spurred me on to action. And I am selfish ; I want her in my life, and you. I did not mean to tell her so, but I have. And for the new plan, I have weighed it carefully from a business point of view, and the chances are not all for failure. Believe me, I should not have undertaken this thing if I had felt that it could only end in wreck for the men s sake, if not for my own. And even if it should fail, I am not as bad off as the men ; " he smiled jokingly. " I can always teach political economy. You know you wanted me to 122 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER stick to my book. I shall never be a rich son-in- law ; that is, after a year or two I sha n t be ; but do you care for that ? Your words have not led me to think that you do. And if it should suc ceed ! Professor give me your daughter now, that I may say to all the world when that time comes, Hers is the glory and her father taught us how to live. " " Boy, why do you plead so ? Why do you fear ? I was young once. They said I was imprudent to hamper myself so early with a wife ; but I should not be where I am to-day if she had not fired my spirit and flashed me into life. Agnes has her mother s soul. Go, work together, help each other. After all, it is not what you do that counts, per haps ; it is the reason why you do it. I know that I shall always trust your * reason why, even though I may disapprove of your method." "Did he say that really?" Agnes cried when she and Christopher were alone together in the library later. " I 11 confide to you that I ve always suspected father of being just as impulsive as the rest of us, and that s why he lays so much stress on caution and justice, because he s afraid of him self. The dear love ! We must show him how very wise and judicial we can be. And we must have him know the working people and love them with us. And we must not let him be lonely. Oh, dear ! I don t like to think about it." BOOK II THE DRAMA " In ordinary competitive trade, the man who refuses to play the game according to the rules, must simply retire and let an other take his place." " The honest example of a morally enlightened individual has not that power of permeating industry which is required by the gospel of moralizing the employer. " John Buskin, Social Reformer, J. A. HOBSON. CHAPTER I CHIEFLY LEGENDARY THE brook in the glen raced down the rocks, and the sunbeams flashed through the water, as on that other day when Agnes crossed the stepping- stones ; but this afternoon the pool at the bottom of the glen was clear and full of light like a deep topaz. All the woods were red and yellow and brown ; a leaf dropped now and then. There would be no more summer days after this one. October was looking back with a sigh. Agnes sat by the brookside, dabbling one hand in the water, smiling, and looking afar off. There was a little heap of garments behind her, under a tree, and a pair of small brown socks and ankle ties lay on a flat rock in midstream. She held a child s shirt and a workbox in her lap, but she continued to sit among her smiling thoughts, doing nothing, until a bird note, more sudden, shriller than the rest, apprised her that some other sound to which her ear was tuned had ceased. " Where are you, Christopher ? " she called. Yes ! " There was a rustle, a sound of labored breath ing, and then there came out of the underbrush on 126 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER the other side of the brook a boy of nine years, naked, and bearing a large stone on his shoulder. " You must not go too far away," Agnes said, " for when I don t see you I think you have fallen into the pool, and that gives me a pang." She smiled playfully, and he laughed, making a delight ful sound quite like the brook. "I was hunting for a stone," he explained; " there is a bigger one a little way back, but I couldn t lift it." He began to come across the brook as he spoke, still bearing the stone on his shoulder. He had his mother s hair and his father s eyes, this boy, and Agnes used to say he had caught his uncle Philip s smile. She had brought him up chiefly out of doors and out of clothes, having a theory that light and air were good for little bodies. " What are you going to do with the stone ? " she asked. " I am going to bear it for a burden. Don t you know about Christopher ? " " I know about two Christophers, a little one and a big one ; which ? " " Oh, not us ! " he cried scornfully. " This is a very big one, the biggest of all St. Christopher. Uncle Philip told me all about him last night." "Tell me!" " Well, his name was n t I think if I m going to talk I d better put down this stone. There ! " He toppled his burden into the brook with a CHIEFLY LEGENDARY 127 splash, heaved a tremendous sigh, and clambered up on the flat rock beside his shoes and socks. " His name was n t Christopher in the first place ; it was Offero, and he was a giant. Mo ther, you re not listening ; you re looking at some thing in your mind." " No, I am looking at you." He leaned backward on one hand and used the other for purposes of expression ; the sunlight fell rosily on him, the breeze lifted his hair ; he dan gled one leg down the side of the rock, and the water curled over his toes. " Well, he was a giant, so tall that he used a pine-tree for a staff, a tall southern pine, uncle Philip says he guesses, the kind I ve never seen ; and he was the the strongest man then extant." Observing a change in his mother s face, the boy added hastily : " It was something like that that he said, any way, and I ve heard him use that word to mean the same sort of thing." Agnes composed her face and nodded. " He was also very proud to be strong, and he said he must only serve the greatest ruler, because he was the strongest man. I asked uncle Philip why he didn t be a ruler himself if he was so strong, but uncle Philip said some people were born with the in stinct for service like father ; he said father could be a ruler too, if he wanted to. If father was a king I d be a 128 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER prince ! " He sat up at the thought and clasped his hands. " You would like to be a prince ? " Agnes asked, watching him. It was evidently a tempting prospect, for he did not answer at once ; then he said slowly, " Could I be the son of a king, and serve too ? " "Ask uncle Philip." " I will. But this giant did n t seem to know he could be anything except a servant, and he went to the court of the greatest king he knew, and served him a long time. But one day some body said something about the devil, and the king looked scared, and the giant inquired who was the devil. I think it was kind of queer he had lived all that time without ever hearing of him, don t you? Why! I ve heard of him ever since I was four days old and uncle Philip was my godfather, and renounced the devil and all his works for me, and I yelled when they put the water on my head ; don t you remember ? " He drew his foot out of the brook, and rested his chin on his knees. " And the giant said, If the devil is somebody you re afraid of, I guess he s greater than you, and I ll go serve him. And they begged and begged, but he wouldn t stay, and he took his pine-tree staff and went away. Um-m-m I made a piece of poetry that time. Listen : And they begged and begged, but he would n t stay, and he took his pine-tree staff and went away." CHIEFLY LEGENDARY 129 Agnes expressed her appreciation of this effort, and her son continued : " By and by he met the devil and all his works, walking along the road, and he knew him right away because he looked different. And he said, I guess I d like to serve you, Mr. Devil, and the devil said, You are n t the first, nor yet you won t be the last. And the devil was surprised that the giant did n t say, How much 11 you give me ? but that was n t the way the giant did things. Uncle Philip says it is n t the way father does things, either. And it was very good for the giant, because when he wanted to leave there was n t any bargain to hold him, the way there was with that German man and the other devil, you know. He just threw up his job, same as Sam O Donnell over in Mr. Watson s shops, and quit. And that happened one day when they passed a crucifix on the road, and the devil put his tail between his legs and said, Let s go round another way ! And the giant said, Who was this man on the cross ? Then they said, Christ, only they hated to say it. And the giant said, Good-by ! Then they begged and they begged, but he would n t stay, and he took his pine-tree staff and went away. And after a long time he met a holy hermit in a hut by a river side. And he said, Do you know where Christ is? I want to serve Him. And the hermit said, I serve Him. So the giant asked what to do. You must kneel down and pray without ceasing. And 130 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER the giant said, * I have n t got brains enough to do that. I guess you 11 have to work that racket. " " Christopher, Christopher ! Uncle Philip did not say that ! " " No, I m not doing it word for word ; that is one of Tom Painter s ways of saying things, and I thought it just fitted on to this. Then the hermit said, You must fast most every day in the week, and eat only herbs and berries ; and the giant doubled up his right arm, so that the muscle stood straight up, like mine, and he told the hermit, I bet you can t do that ! and the hermit said, No, he could n t ; and the giant said, Neither could I if I fasted most every day in the week and ate only herbs and berries. Then the hermit pointed to the river and said, You go down there and carry everybody across that asks. Then he looked at him and said, You may get drowned ; ain t you afraid ? And the giant said, * Afraid ! Me ? And now the interesting part is coming." Christopher left his perch on the rock, and came and lay down on his stomach beside his mother, with his elbows in her lap. " Do you like this story, mother ? " " Very much indeed ! " " Well, one night, when the rain was coming down in sheets and the wind was howling like mad, and the river was swollen to five times its size, there was a knock at the door and a little voice said, Offero, Offero ! And the giant said, Oh, rats ! " CHIEFLY LEGENDARY 131 " Christopher, what have I told you about say ing that word ? Did you forget ? " " I did n t say it, mother ; the giant said it, and I m quite sure he would have, are n t you ? " Being thus appealed to, Agnes refrained from pressing her discipline further, and contented her self with suggesting that the giant need not say it again. " Mother, did n t you ever say slang when you were little ? " " Yes, but that is no reason why I should let you say it when you are little." Christopher sighed, and shook himself. " Uncle Philip says I m very like you." " And so you are ; I used to be quite a naughty little child sometimes. Now, tell me the story, quick ! " " Well, he went to the door and looked out, but he could n t see anybody, so he went back to bed. And in a minute he heard it again, c Offero ! Of- fero ! take me over the river ! So he hopped up again and opened the door, and there was a little bit of a baby child, ever so much littler than me, and it said, Take me over the river ! I asked uncle Philip why he did n t say to the baby, You re too little to know your own mind, and make it come in out of the rain ; but uncle Philip said the hermit had told him never to refuse to take anybody across that asked him ; so he said, Oh, well, if you must ! And he picked the lit tle boy up and put him on his shoulder, that 132 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER lovely way, with your legs around the other per son s neck, and your hands in his hair, and he said, Now, hang on tight ! Then he took his pine-tree staff and entered into the flood and it raged just like the brook in the spring. And the farther he went, the heavier that baby got, till it felt like a regular elephant. And the giant said to himself : S pose I should sink ! And he thought of his master that he served, and he said, If he s the greatest ruler in the world, this is his time to help me ; and he cried out very loud, * O Master, O Christ, come and help me, else this heavy little baby and I are going to drown ! And for a minute or two after that, he got on better, and then he began to lose his feet again, and he cried again, O Master, O Christ, help your servant and his burden out of the deep waters ! That s like a psalm, is n t it ? And every time he d feel himself going under, he d call out like that, and something would seem to happen to prevent him drowning. And at last he got to the other side, and he puffed and blowed tremenjous, and he said, * If I d been carrying the whole round world on my shoulders, I don t believe it would have felt any heavier. And the little baby said, * No, it would n t, for you have borne the world in bearing Me, for I am He who made the world, and I am your Master. After this you are named Christo pher, because that means the man that carried Christ. And He began to grow and shine, till CHIEFLY LEGENDARY 133 Christopher could n t bear to look at Him, and he fell down at Christ s feet and hid his face. And Christ said, now let me see if I can remember this in the very words," the boy knelt beside his mother and stared intently into her eyes, " Who soever that beareth a burden yea, though he bear the very world itself and all its sorrows if he call upon Me he cannot sink for I will help him. " Agnes drew her boy into her lap, and he nestled against her and put his arms around her neck. " * If he call iipon Me, he cannot sink, " she repeated, as if to herself. Her face was very sad, but the child could not see it, for he was snuggling his nose in her neck, and she rested her chin on his hair. Presently he spoke again : " I asked uncle Philip if that was n t what father was doing bearing all the world and its sorrows when he works his shops different from other people, and he said yes ; only he looked so very sad, so very, very sad, it made me want to cry. Mother, what made uncle Philip look that way ? " " Why should I know, darling ? " said Agnes unsteadily. " There is n t any danger, mother ! If he call upon Me, he cannot sink, for I will help him. I m always going to call on Him, and I m going to bear all the world I possibly can, because I cannot sink. Where is my stone? " " Never mind the stone now, dear ; it s time to put on clothes." 134 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " No, not yet ! " " Yes, this very minute. Come, let s do it quick, and get it done." "No, no, no! It ll be winter so soon now." He was wriggling out of her arms. "A nice boy you are, to talk about bearing burdens, and you re not even willing to bear the burden of a few clothes." He stopped wriggling, looked at her, then ducked his head to receive his undershirt. The elder Christopher always said that Agnes governed her son by repartee. Once started, he tumbled into his clothes rap idly, his mother assisting at a button here and there. " Barefoot ? " he asked, while she tied his sailor- knot. "No; uncle Philip will like to see the shoes you helped to make." " He can see them better off than on." " He can t see how well they fit." The boy took a flying leap from the shore to the flat rock. " I hear them ! " he cried in a moment. " Oh, I ve got this old thing in a knot ! Rrah " he glanced at his mother, laughed, gave the shoe string a final jerk, and was off over the stepping- stones, crying, " Father ! father ! " Agnes closed her workbox and brushed a few twigs from her gown, as Philip and the elder Christopher appeared on the other side of the CHIEFLY LEGENDARY 135 brook, coming towards her, but somewhat impeded by the antics of a small jumping boy. Christopher was forty years old at this time, and the dreamy beauty of his youth was gone, overlaid by a certain well-knit aspect of bone and muscle and common sense, which clothes the man of action with added finiteness in the prosaic mid dle years of life. He had lost the lithe freedom of motion which characterized his younger days, but he had gained in its place a decision and promptitude of activity not to be despised. The high, heroic uplift of his head had settled into a determined, level outlook, square upon life and its disillusions, some people might have called it a dogged look. This was a man who had made up his mind once for all. The world had ceased to insist that Christopher ought to be a poet ; it ac cepted him comfortably at his own valuation, as a shoemaker. But his wife, when she looked into his eyes, found something there that the world missed, and never despaired of her hero. There was sorrow and heartbreak in Christopher s eyes ; even his wife could not always understand why this should be, but it helped her to realize that the model shoe factory, which seemed to run so smoothly, was making something more than a mere business man of her husband. Philip, too, had changed ; there were gray streaks in his wavy red-brown hair, and he was more than ever gaunt and loose- jointed. In his violet eyes there was the look as of one who 136 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER prayed without ceasing, but neither his bishop nor his parish could complain that he did not work also. " Has Philip ever had a great personal sorrow ? " Agnes asked her husband once. And he answered conclusively, "No, not that I have ever heard of, and I know all about his per sonal affairs." " Because sometimes I have wondered," she explained ; " and yet, I don t see what it could be. But I feel as if his real life were very much hid den from us." " It may be because he is a priest." "Yes, it may be," she mused, but her tone lacked conviction. In Agnes herself the ten years had wrought the greatest change of all ; not in externals, she was still the same small, blonde, child-like looking creature, slender, swift. But the crude pertness was gone, the tendency to interrupt, to contradict, to set at naught. Agnes had much better man ners now; she was not easily ruffled. She said that the mother of such an active, mind-of-his-own young person as little Christopher could not afford to be easily ruffled. Uncle Philip was not the only one who realized that little Christopher was very like his mother. " Now we are going down above the pool and throw in pebbles," said the boy, when his father and his uncle had crossed the brook. " Mother never lets me go down there when just she s here CHIEFLY LEGENDARY 137 because she says the allegolical beast 11 jump at me. Is n t she funny ? " He hopped ahead with uncle Philip, and his father and mother followed to the place overlook ing the pool, where they had talked of heroes years before. "What do you suppose your disciple is doing now, my dear ? " said Christopher, as he sat down on the bank and looked around for a pebble. " I have n t any disciples," Agnes answered, " they re all yours." He laughed. " I thought you considered Jeanie Casey your special pupil." "Oh, Jeanie! But I don t see what she can do ; she s married." Philip and Christopher looked amused, and Christopher continued : " That does n t seem to have prevented her from working in Watson s shoe shops for the past six weeks." "Watson s shoe shops? Christopher! What do you mean?" " Jeanie has turned reformer. I believe she wanted it to be a surprise to you. She is trying to organize Watson s stitching-room, and incident ally she makes his shoes. Jimmie tells me she hasn t dared to put in the full amount of her earnings any week since she s been there. Mrs. MacDougal is looking out for the children." " Do you think she will accomplish anything? " " She has already accomplished something. In 138 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER six weeks, working from the inside, she has done for the women what Casey and Tom Painter, working on the outside, have only just succeeded in doing after six months for the men. She has got them to the point of wanting to organize." " But how did she get in ? I don t understand. Didn t the superintendent suspect she belonged to our people ? " " The zeal of the reformer, my dear. And be sides, they take anybody and ask no questions. She says the discipline is very bad ; there is thiev ing going on all the time. Philip, here, was the one who found her out. He was going to see Watson about some man who had cut himself up badly with a defective machine, and he met Jeanie in the entry. And so the glorious work goes on." Christopher s tone was not one of glory, how ever. " Oh, dear ! " sighed Agnes, " I wish she hadn t quite yet. She was not made to be a reformer ; it will break her heart. What do you suppose the result will be ? " " I have no doubt it will be some kind of un pleasant mess between Watson and ourselves, but then " lightly, " we ought to be used to that sort of thing by this time. I m ready to stand up for Jeanie. Her ideal is all right and she means well. None of the rest of us have any bet ter excuse for our mistakes." " That is the way he talks all the time, Philip," Agnes said with playful discontent ; " he is so CHIEFLY LEGENDARY 139 impatient. Just because all the world has not adopted profit sharing and cooperation, he gets discouraged. You may not believe it, but he really does. And here am I, who have a right to be impatient, because I was born so, obliged to insist that ten years is n t a very long time after all, and that it is the world s fault, not his. And do you know, Philip, sometimes he actually talks as if it were not a success. Not a success ! And in 94 we did n t make any profits at all, and yet we kept straight on, paying union wages and working eight hours. Is n t he unreasonable ? To be sure, we re still profit sharing, we have n t gone into real cooperation yet; but then, things always take longer than you think they will and," looking at her husband as if to convince herself she agreed to what she said, " it is better to be cautious better for the world and the shops." Her husband smiled at her. " What do you know about business," he said, " or about success, either ? What is one profit sharing factory, or ten, or twenty in a country like this ? It s the whole industrial system that needs remodeling. One or two men working at an isolated experiment can t make the change. It s all a vicious circle. The manufacturer isn t to blame entirely. He has to fight the man who sup plies the raw material." " Father, what is a vicious circle ? " asked little Christopher. 140 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " It is a figure of speech, my son ; something you will learn more about when you study rhetoric and political economy." " Are times particularly bad just now? " Philip inquired. " No ; they are always bad, you know. I turn away applicants for work day after day." Little Christopher was talking to himself. " A vicious cow," he said ; " that s a bad cow ; she 11 hook you. A vicious circle " " I suppose you could n t go on indefinitely making no profits ? " observed Philip. " That depends upon what you call no profits," answered Christopher. " If I were a true cobper- ator I should n t approve of an idle surplus." He had evaded the question, but Philip did not notice that. " I know what ! " shouted the little boy, scram bling into his father s lap and pulling his father s face around to compel attention. " The pool s a vicious circle ; because if you fall in you can t get out." CHAPTER II A BACKWAKD GLANCE FOE ten years Christopher had not ceased to beat his head against a stone wall. He had a hard head. He did not convert any of his com petitors ; they were making money too easily their way, and they wanted to make money. Against all the other shoe factories in the country Christo pher beat his head, and especially against those that made his grade of shoes, especially against Peter Watson s factory. Then the leather trust was formed, and Christopher beat his head against that. Industrial depression settled heavily upon the world, and he beat his head against that. And always the shoe workers in Kenyon shops received the union rate of wages, and worked an eight-hour day. And always the world was demanding a cheaper shoe, cheaper and cheaper. It was small wonder that sometimes Christopher grew dizzy, confused, desperate. One bad year there were no profits to be shared, but when he told his men, they lifted their hats and gave three cheers for him. This was the first evidence he had had of their collective good will and sympathy, and it put heart into him for a time. But it was bad 142 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER for him, too ; it made him more obstinate. He set his teeth hard and vowed to place their interests always first. The next year Agnes put her own little capital into the factory. " But your father," Christopher protested. " It is my money," Agnes said. " All years will not be bad like this one. You cannot be allowed to go under for the lack of a little money, after making a success of your plan for six years." " A success 1 " He smiled sadly and shook his head. "Yes, a success!" she persisted. " Of course, looking back, you see now how differently you might have done it: how you might have divided all your capital among the men and made it a cooperative factory at once, instead of working towards cooperation through profit sharing. But they had never earned that money why would n t it have been charity, just the same?" " Only," he explained, " it would have put the business as much into their hands as into mine, after the deed of gift was gotten over. The busi ness is too much in my hands, Agnes I " He paused, looked away from her, and resumed hur riedly, " I have too much liberty to act without consulting them ; this is only a modified form of paternalism." " But it seemed the best you could do ; you were only thinking of them. It is working towards emancipation," she added, " and meantime you are educating them." A BACKWARD GLANCE 143 He smiled undisguised satire of her remark, then looked into her eyes mournfully, as if he would tell her something. But he kissed her instead. For many months she had been wait ing for him to tell her this something, and always, as now, he kept it back. " There is the boy," he said presently ; but she knew that this was not what he had thought of telling her. " The boy is blessed with an exuberantly healthy body and an active mind," she answered. "If he thinks he is going to live off his old mother s scanty property he is very much mistaken." " But he will have to be educated." Then Agnes laughed and shook her husband by the shoulders, and all the while her eyes were shining through tears. " I suppose you expect to go into bankruptcy to-morrow, or perhaps this afternoon," she said. " Oh, faithless, faithless ! Are you sorry you did it ? Would you undo it if you could ? " " No ! " he exclaimed. " I would do it all over again to-morrow. I would do everything that I have done just as I have done it." He spoke slowly and thoughtfully, as if his mind were dwelling upon some one thing that he had done. " Why can t the men take out shares now and begin to make it cooperative ? " Agnes exclaimed suddenly. " Because it would n t be fair to them," he said, 144 and added, with an attempt at frankness, " the capital is somewhat involved, just for the moment." And more years passed by. What went on in Christopher s mind in those years no one ever knew, but he grew steadily more despondent, more reticent. Two or three communities of cranks went apart and experimented, and failed. Usually, because Christopher shared their convictions, or they thought he did, they bought their community shoes of him, at a discount ; and of course they did n t pay him they could n t ; they did n t have the money. Much to Christopher s disgust Kenyon shops became the pride and boast of all contiguous phi lanthropy and economics. Church societies and charitable associations overwhelmed him with appli cations for work for deserving individuals who had fallen victims to the iniquities of the present social system. Professor Gillespie sent down detach ments of students to observe conditions. Maga zines indicated their desire to publish articles entitled " A Model Factory ; " and special artists went about taking pictures of exteriors and inte riors : The Women s Gymnasium ; A Working- man s Home ; The Main Street of Kenyon Village looking West from the Shops ; The Stitching- Room. The village was really a model, but Chris topher and his wife got tired of hearing people sentimentalize over it. As for the manufacturing world, it lifted its eye- A BACKWARD GLANCE 146 brows at the mention of Christopher, and professed itself as certain of one thing, namely, "that he didn t make anything out of it, and, moreover, that he must be doing business at a loss." His competitors surmised, with sneers, that the old man had left more money when he died than was found in the shoe shops. They said, " How he does it we don t see, but ! " And meanwhile they waited to find out, under selling him wherever they could while they waited. Personally, they liked him. People in general were not particularly inter ested in Christopher. The manufacture of shoes is not a romantic occupation ; it is devoid of the sensational element ; it is singularly lacking in picturesque details. The public is already suffi ciently bored by the commonplace not to go out of its way to study mere sordidness. And as an in dividual, Christopher did not try to catch the pub lic eye. He and his wife lived the year round in the Homestead at Kenyon. Agnes said the coun try was the best place for a little boy. Her few women friends in the college coterie spoke to one another occasionally of the loneliness of her life, but Agnes had never been a sociable being, and she was not aware that she missed much by bury ing herself in Kenyon. The young Christopher was an occupation in himself, and after the bad year of no profits Agnes had rigidly refused to keep more than one servant. Aunt Ada still made one of the household ; indeed, had it not been for aunt 146 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER Ada, Agnes and Christopher, in the early days of their enthusiasm, would have felt obliged to give up the Homestead and go to live among the men in one of the new model dwellings in the village. Agnes felt the necessity for this step more keenly than Christopher, for he was accustomed to the home of his forefathers, and living in it seemed almost a law of nature. " Aunt Ada would be lonely. We could n t ask her to go with us, and we really have no right to uproot her. She ought to live here ; it was her father s house," he said. "She hasn t money enough to buy it, and I can t afford to make her a present of it." Agnes did not press the matter further. Her conscience was quieted, and she was glad of an opportunity to stay. She loved the great white and yellow house, and the elms, and the glen, and the cupola. So aunt Ada did the mending, and awoke each morning to new domestic bewilderments. She was always getting used to some added social innova tion, but she did not grow more radical as she grew older and after a while Agnes stopped trying to plunge her into enlightenment. But there was society at Kenyon. The young mistress of the Homestead was " at home " every Friday afternoon ; and almost any other afternoon she might have been seen in the village with her little son, calling upon Mrs. MacDougal or Mrs. Casey or Mrs. Morse or Mrs. Somebody Else, A BACKWARD GLANCE 147 whose husband or sons or daughters worked in the shops and expected to be directors some day. There was a Woman s Club in Kenyon, that stud ied socialism and industry. There was a dancing class that met once a fortnight at the Homestead. The " best people " criticised Agnes, and wondered at her, but she moved serenely on in her own way ; and when little Christopher had a birthday party the children of the " best people " were not slighted, but neither were the Caseys. " Of course, to a certain extent it s sentimental," Agnes explained to Philip ; " at least outsiders in sist that it is, but I don t see how I can consistently do anything different. And the people who say that my friendship for a woman like Jeanie Casey cannot be a sincere thing because of the difference in our stations, don t know the meaning of friend ship. I certainly should not know how to be friends with them, even though we did have the same taste in parlor furniture." " We are passing through a period of social strain," Philip answered, rather stupidly, Agnes thought ; " I suppose therein lies the hopefulness of the situation. There was no social strain under the feudal system." Agnes called him " Philip the Hopeful," and the Christian paradox was embodied in this title, for no clergyman in Philip s city took a more austere view of life than Philip did ; not one kept his eyes, and the eyes of his congregation, more firmly fixed on renunciation and failure and the Cross than 148 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER Philip did ; not one dwelt so keenly, so insistently, upon the capacity of man for sin. " How can a good man like that get so close into your heart and know its temptations and its wicked desires?" his parishioners said to one another. Even the professor once asked his daughter if she thought that the influence of so ascetic a per sonality as Philip s was altogether healthful for a child like little Christopher. But Agnes laughed and said that a little asceticism would not do a young animal any harm. Perhaps the professor was sensitive on the subject of his grandchild, for the friendship between Philip and little Chris topher was a mighty one, and the boy sometimes questioned grandfather s authority. The professor had slipped into a handsome elderliness of the mild and cultured type. But his inward tumult was not the less disturbing to him. The habit of intellectual hesitation had grown upon him, and there were some of his stu dents impatient, radical fellows who were known to complain that the professor did not keep abreast of the times, and that there was no getting a decided answer out of him. Sometimes of a Sat urday night when he came down to Kenyon he had quite a badgered air, and was wont to find flaws in decided action of any kind. He took the re form movement of Jeanie Casey very ill, and said it wellnigh discouraged him from ever hoping any thing from that class of people, since they were so likely to spoil all true progress by plunging into A BACKWARD GLANCE 149 affairs much too big for them, and when they them selves were only half educated. " It is this injudicious meddling that spoils all, my dear. I am glad that you have not yet found the caring for your husband and child too slight an occupation." Under the circumstances, Agnes thought it wise not to tell him that she found time to look after the Casey children too. " Is everybody as discontented as we are?" she said musingly. " I wonder what is the matter with us ? Are we the queer ones, or is all the rest of the world like us ? I suppose I ought to know more people." " You know heaps of people, mother," protested little Christopher. " You know all the people in the shops, and their families, more than twelve hundred." " So I do ! " laughed Agnes. " But there is Mrs. Casey, who is going to know all the people in Mr. Watson s shops besides. Think of that ! " He did think of it for a moment, and then he said, in unconscious imitation of uncle Philip, " Will it make her any happier? " Agnes gave a little shout of laughter, and hugged him. " Time will show," she said. CHAPTER in IN THE ENEMY S CAMP IT was a quarter before seven o clock on a Jan uary morning, and the streets around Peter Wat son s factory were full of sleepy people going to work. Some of the people had to pass through a hideous little park, a leafless, frozen place, with a corner of the factory nudging it on its west end, and rows of dirty brick lodging - houses running down its sides. Jeanie Casey came out of one of the lodging-houses and stopped on the steps for a moment, looking east. There was a red sunrise. The pointed belfry of a fire-engine house stood up in the sky, and little rosy clouds floated behind it and above it. A distant hill, notched with sub urban roofs, seemed almost dewy in the morning light. The wonder of the sky glowed abroad over all the park ; but along the path the people trailed westward, a grimy line, nor ever turned their heads. Jeanie came down the steps and loitered, watching the color flush and pale. " Did you know there was a sunrise ? " she said in her pretty voice to one of the women who came towards her. " I know it s ten minutes of seven," the woman IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 151 answered, " and I won t stand no chance of the elevator if I don t hustle. Them iron stairs wears me out." She hurried on and left Jeanie in the middle of the park. "What you lookin at?" said another woman, staring apathetically at the sky ; and then, after a pause : " They say old Watson s took back Annie Curry. You was n t here before she left, was you ? " "No." " She was forelady ten years for Watson, and then she got huffy and lit out. But I guess he can t get along without her. There ain t nothin she don t hear nor see, and she runs to him with everything. You d better look out what you say in front of her. She ain t got no use for unions." " Thank you," said Jeanie quietly. She had turned and was walking towards the factory with the woman. " There was ten new ones come in on Friday," continued the woman ; " Foster put em to top coverin . I don t see nothin to do about organ- izin in a place like this, where they re takin on help all the time, and turnin it off ; there s too much change." " Still," returned Jeanie, " there is a great many who have been here for years, and stay right on. I believe the union will succeed, if only they are willing to keep from their striking for better pay a little longer, till they are more on their feet." 152 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " You ve got lots of grit," said her companion, and the two turned into the factory doorway and began to mount the iron stairs. These were gray, cold stairs, dirty, although they had just been swept. They were broad and not steep, but they went on and on interminably, past great tin-plated doors painted gray and decorated with black inscriptions, such as " Lasters," or " Cutters," or " Socking and Heelers," or " Welt ing." At the fifth landing, where the legend on the door read " Stitching-Room," Jeanie and her companion turned in, taking off their jackets as they walked. The factory extended the length of a city block, and the stitching-room was as long as the factory. There were scores of windows on all its sides, and through some of them the sunrise color came ; but although the room was full of people, no one was looking out of the windows. There were six rows of shoemakers benches, low, narrow tables, down the length of the room, with aisles between. On a great many of these benches stood sewing-ma chines, run by " power," for stitching the leather and the linings. On other benches were pots of brownish paste and little hammers. On others were machines for putting on shoe buttons or for mak ing buttonholes. And everywhere, on benches, on chairs, on rows of open shelves between the aisles, were parts of shoes, some half sewed into shape, others merely cut out and waiting to be put to gether, and all tied in bundles with coarse hempen IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 153 string. There were bundles of sole linings, and bundles of tongues, bundles of vamps, and bundles of uppers, white linings, and leather outsides, black leather, brown leather, russet leather. Along the ceiling of this room, in swaying rows high above the benches, the hats and jackets of the workers hung on little swinging planks which could be detached from nails in the rafters. Women and girls moved about, getting themselves into long aprons, putting machines in order, hurrying down the aisles with pots of fresh paste, standing round a little pen near the middle of the room where needles and thread were sold. The superintendent, a fat man, was pulling on his indoor jacket and speaking to a tall, keen-eyed woman with a thin, red-tipped nose, rough, reddened cheeks, an ob stinate mouth, and black hair combed in water waves. " That s her," said Jeanie s friend. " She is a very narrow, good woman with a temper," Jeanie observed. The other laughed. " You ve struck it right," she said, " specially the temper ; " and having arrived at her own bench she stopped, nodded, took down her empty plank, hung her hat and coat on it, and sent the garments swaying up to the ceiling. Jeanie s bench was farther down the room, in front of one of the windows ; and as she got to it the factory whistle blew, and screeched, and reverberated through all the room. Some of the employees were already at work, the others 154 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER settled into their seats as unobtrusively as possible. There were signs everywhere on the walls : " If You don t Understand, Ask Questions." " Be Sure You re Eight, and then Hustle." " Keep your Eyes Open and your Mouth SHUT, except on Business." > " No Visitors Wanted." A little fifteen year old girl, who was sewing duck covers over the tops of satin-lined boots to keep the linings from being soiled in the lasting- room, said : " Good-morning, Jeanie." All the women called one another by their Christian names ; little girls said " Mary " and " Maggie " to women who were old enough to be their grandmothers. It was the way of the fac tory. Often two women working at the same bench did not know each other s surnames, but there had to be some sort of handle for conven ience of address. The woman who sat next to Jeanie came in a little late; the whiz and whir of the machines had already begun. " By God ! I ve only got one life," she cried, slamming down her bag, " and I m havin it at old Peter s." She was a gaunt, gray-haired woman, blowzy, with a wild sparkle in her old eye, suggestive of immodest mirth. All the young things who sat near her called her " Auntie," and she set them on to talk of " the fellows," and to make vulgar IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 155 jokes. The benches in this part of the room were separated a little from the others, and used for extra women when there was a special pressure of work. The comparative seclusion gave the stitch ers who worked near Jeanie more opportunity to talk together than they would have had in the main part of the room. "Annie Curry s come back," said the blowzy woman. " I 11 bet this bench don t chin so free ; she s got long ears." " They ain t near so long as your tongue," volunteered a pert little girl with a marquise ring on her stubby forefinger. Just here the forewoman came down the aisle and conversation ceased. Annie Curry walked slowly, glancing from side to side at the workers and their work. She paused behind Jeanie s chair for a few seconds. This was an experienced stitcher, and a very rapid one, not a bit nervous, either. Miss Curry seemed about to make a re mark, but changed her mind and walked on. " Lord ! what s the good of stitchin so fast," grumbled a pretty little woman opposite Jeanie. " She can tell how much you earn even if you don t put it on your slip. It s you hummers that takes the bread out of our mouths and brings on the cut- downs." "When the union is a little stronger we can make them take back the cut - downs," Jeanie answered in a low tone. Then the machine whizzed, and the pasters and pressers tapped, and the hours dragged on. 166 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER In the middle of the morning a tall woman, all flushed and tearful, came down the aisle and stopped to speak to Jeanie s opposite neighbor, showing her a slip of paper with figures on it. One or two heads were lifted inquiringly, and the conversation, begun in a low tone, broke out into audible complaints. " Of course I know who done it ! But what can I say ? I did n t see her, and nobody can t prove it against her because she don t keep no record book." " Such dirty low ways as is in this shop I never see ! " cried the pretty woman. " Have you been to Foster?" ** He said it was a shame," the tearful woman replied ; " but what good s that ? She got her slip in first, and and all my week s pay s took." She wiped her eyes and strode off down the aisle. " What s the matter ? " asked some one. " A girl stole her case numbers off her slip and sent em in first to the office and got all her pay." " Oh, shame ! " murmured Jeanie. " Yes, indeed, you may say shame," the pretty woman exclaimed ; " but what do they care down to the office who gets the money? Only they ain t goin to pay it twicet. And that woman ain t paid her rent for four months, and she s got two young ones to feed on this kind of thing." " If Mr. Watson knew would he not do some thing?" IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 157 " He d say, go to Foster." " Old Peter ain t so bad, though," commented another woman. " I seen him one day when Fos ter cursed a girl had spoiled a pair of shoes, Polish boots they was, and she done something to the eyelets was wrong. And old Peter called him down, called him down, he did, right before the room, and he begged her pardon." " He give ten dollars to that young feller hurt his arm on the machine, don t you know ? " " Mr. Starr made him do that," said Jeanie. " Aw yes, words is cheap," cried Auntie. " Fos ter can swear at me all day, so I get my pay, I don t care. But it s the dockin and this and that, and maybe only fifty cents in your envelope Saturday night ; and you ve been workin all week from seven till six. My Lord ! I don t see how some of em lives. But then they don t. I don t call myself livin " " Just the same you re a lively corpse," said the little girl with the marquise ring. "Yes, you and me has to hustle, don t we, Katie?" the old woman replied with a meaning grin. " There was somebody askin after you last night ; where was you ? " "You hold your mouth," said Katie, turning sullen. " And you expectin to do somethin with a union in a shop like this ! " said the pretty woman, addressing Jeanie. " I tell you, you can t never do it. How can anybody tell but the one she sits 158 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER next to at the bench goes and reports all she says ? There s no trusting nobody." Annie Curry came by and took away a case of vamps and uppers which Jeanie had just stitched. " I tell you, she s got her eye on you," whis pered Auntie. " Why ? " Jeanie asked. * I don t know, but she has, just the same." There was a pretty little dark-eyed girl near by, top-covering shoes, and she had not covered ten pairs in all the three hours since the morning whistle had blown. " Mamie s got the jumps," some of her com rades said. Mamie fidgeted in her seat, went on errands for her neighbors, distributed duck covers, cases of shoes, drinks of water ; did anything that would keep her from her work. Once she opened the window and leaned out, and Auntie said : " Whether you fall out, or whether you stay in, it don t make no difference, except they 11 have to bury you." " I would n t mind goin to heaven," muttered the girl. " Heaven ! " laughed Auntie. "Well, where d you guess I d go?" the girl exclaimed defiantly. " And what will you be doing when you get to heaven ? " asked Jeanie, smiling. " I 11 sit on a throne and make faces at Peter Watson ; that s what I 11 do ! " IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 159 " Shut that window ! " exclaimed the pretty woman. " It s blowin right down my back." " Pity about you ! " said Mamie, and then taking up her needle languidly, "Foster s took on two Armenians this morning." " I know what that means," the pretty woman cried. " The minute them foreign help begins to come into a shop prices goes down. They don t live like decent folks." " I m foreign," said Jeanie, with a smile. Mamie giggled. " Oh, well, you know what I mean," the pretty woman explained, " French Canadians and all low, black-lookin people that talks gibberish." " What are you ? Scotch? " asked Mamie. Jeanie nodded at the girl over the top of the machine. " Yes, I am Scotch. I only cam over from Scotland when I was a bit of a girl, but a wee mite older than you ; yet I was bigger ; I had n t been put into a factory and my growth stopped." Mamie s eyes were wistful. " Mother put me in to help out, because there s so many of us," she said. " What did you do in Scotland ? " " I milked the cows, and fed the pigs, and made the butter. I use n t to do much else then, when I was little. And I had a great liking to go away alone among the hills. Not little mounds like that one out of the window with houses atop, but great up-climbing, tree-covered ones ; and rocky 160 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER they were. And I d take the dog, Murdoch, we called him, and I d presently plait me a leash of rashes, rushes they say here, but I ve not seen any like, tall and green and thick. And away would we go into the hills, the leash around my wrist, and the dog straining to get out of my hand. And I wore no shoes in those days, nor ever thought to come to the making of them. And, oh, the ground, the earth and the grass, t was good to the feel of you ! Go on with your work, child, you ve not earned five cents worth this morning. It s a pity to stay in a noisy, close place like this if you re not here to work." " What else did you do ? " said Mamie, shoving her needle in and out once or twice. Auntie and the pretty woman and all the others within hear ing were listening. The coarse jokes had ceased for the moment. " Of a Sunday, then, I went to church, to the kirk we called it, and I read in the Good Book. All that was before my grandfather died, and my father, and the farm went. They were good men those two. I 11 be remembering always the last Sunday my father was alive, and he read for the prayer, the night, of Ananias and Sap- phira his wife, and the wicked lie that was theirs, and he closed the book and looked upon me fee- ble-like, and Jeanie, he sayed, * whatever it be that becomes to you, say the truth. A lie s a wicked thing, he sayed. And I ve borne that in mind for all these years, and kept to it." IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 161 The tapping and whirring continued without words for a while. The faces of some of the women had suddenly flushed. Mamie looked tired and a little bewildered. Auntie winked at a flashy girl with a dirty pink ribbon around her neck, but the girl only smiled in a sick sort of way and went on with her work. A girl with a case of shoes in her arms, a stitcher from another part of the room, came down the aisle and stopped a moment to lay her hand on Jeanie s shoulder and say : " Shall you be here the noon hour ? There s some of us wants to speak to you." "Yes!" New cases of shoes, or parts of shoes, were brought and dumped down beside the workers. The top-coverers grabbed for the cases of laced or Polish boots, as they were called, and grumbled when they could n t get them. It was easier to sew through eyelets than through leather, and the buttoned boots were paid for at the same rate as the Polish. " This is the third case of Polish boots that girl over there, that Jenny, has took and put under her chair this hour," said Mamie ; " and she ain t finished her one case yet. My, but she s got the dirty, rotten gall ! " " What s that you re sayin ? " asked the girl in question fiercely. " It s none of your business what I m sayin . I was n t speakin to you." 162 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " You was sayin it about me, and I 11 have you know I ain t afraid to come over there and break your face for you, not for Foster, nor Annie Curry, nor none of them. It ain t the first time you ve spoken low down talk about me." " Nor it won t be the last," began Mamie ; but the forewoman came in sight, and Jeanie said, " Oh, a gentle little girl like you to talk so ! " and the pretty woman snapped out, " Shut up, you little sauce-box ! " " I d like to know if you all think this place is a chin parlor, that you re gossiping and laugh ing so every time I come by ? " observed Annie Curry, pausing a moment. Nobody replied to her, and she passed on. "There, do you see now! " murmured the pretty woman. And there was no more conversation until the noon whistle blew. This was a signal for general confusion. The greater number of the women took down their hats and coats, and hurried out ; others only bent lower over their work with grim eyes ; others, again, sat back in their chairs, stretched them selves, wiped their faces, and took their luncheon out of bags or paper packages. Among these latter was Jeanie. She opened the window near her and breathed in long breaths of the sharp January air ; she sat on the edge of her bench and ate her lunch. A man came through the room with a tray of sandwiches and doughnuts, and a large can of coffee. Some of the women bought from IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 163 him, and sat at their work sipping and munching. Presently the girl who had spoken to Jeanie about remaining in during the lunch hour came toward her, followed by three other girls. They were all neat, wide-awake, and efficient looking, evidently skilled workers. " We wanted to talk a little more about what was up at the union last night," began the first girl. "We wasn t just speakin for ourselves then, you know ; it s the feelin of most all the girls. Ain t it, Nellie ? " " Sure ! " said Nellie, who was a very tall, pale girl. " They come to me and they says, What s the matter with the union, Nellie? they says. Why don t it get a move on? they says; we thought Mis Casey said we was goin to ask for higher wages. Ever so many of them was sayin just them words to me, Mis Casey. And now this new cut-down that s come last week makes em all mad. What s the good of a union,* they says, if you ve got to take the cut-down thout sayin nothin ? " " If you want to keep them interested you ve got to do somethin , Mrs. Casey," said the third girl, a brunette with a magenta stock which almost touched her ears. " They keep complainin that they ve put in their dues for two months now, and they can t ask no more girls to put in money when there s nothin to show for it." " But, you know, everything must take time," said Jeanie. She looked from one to another of 164 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER these young women and felt discouraged and help less. " If we strike we must have money behind us to live on while we re out of work." " Then, as far as I see," commented the fourth girl, "we re expected to pay our money for two or three years, and all the time workin in this hell of a shop, yes, it is that," she cried, as the others smiled or lifted their eyes in mild protest. " How do I know I 11 be here in three years ? Maybe I 11 be dead. It s enough to kill you, such a place ! " This girl was a little yellow- haired, befrizzled creature. " Why don t you say maybe you 11 be married ? That s what you mean," laughed the young wo man with the magenta stock. " Well, and I don t care if I do ! " retorted the little one. " You see, Mis Casey," this was the young woman who had asked for the interview; she seemed quieter than the others, " you see, Mis Casey, this cut-down s made the stitchers awful mad. There ain t more than a dozen of us has earned as much as a dollar a day since it was put on ; and I was talkin to a man last night, he s a cutter ; Joe Murphy, you know him," ap- pealingly to her friends, " and he said it was a shame, and he knew the cutters would go out with us, and he thought the lasters would too, if we struck. They re all of em spoilin for a row, he said." " But we 11 have to consult," Jeanie began ; IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 165 "we d have to lay it before the Boot and Shoe Workers and get their support." " I guess we re the ones to know what we want, we that has to work in this shop ! " cried the little blonde. " I d like to see anybody telling me what I want or not." " You know it is n t safe to talk so loud of these things here," cautioned Jeanie. " Miss Curry has come back from her lunch." " If she don t hold her jaw she 11 get somethin from me now," muttered Nellie, following the fore woman with angry eyes, "talkin the way she does!" " I don t see what old Peter took her back for, anyhow," said the girl with the magenta stock; " there was never no peace with her." "I ll tell you," the little blonde volunteered; " she runs to him and tattles everything, and she knows when a worker don t put in all she makes on her own slip. We ain t done with cut-downs yet." " Well, this I know," cried Nellie, " I 11 throw up this job, and the union, and all, but she don t jaw me one more time the way she done this morning. I ain t here to take that kind of talk from nobody ; no, not from old Peter even." Women were beginning to come back to the benches. Some of the machines were already whirring, and little Mamie loitered near the group of talkers. " We must n t be saying any more before her," whispered Jeanie, and then the whistle blew. 166 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER The afternoon was a gray one ; drops of misty rain flicked against the windows. From time to time some girl, passing down the aisle on an errand, would stop at Jeanie s chair and say some thing in a low tone. After one of these whispered conferences the pretty woman looked across mean ingly at Jeanie and said : " I think so too." " You will only bring ruin to yourselves. It is not time," Jeanie answered, and bent over her machine with a troubled face. " You can t wait forever, when you get as old as I am," muttered Auntie. " But we re not working only for ourselves," Jeanie answered softly. " Maybe you ain t, but I am. I d like to know who d work for me if I did n t." "Mrs. Casey," said a girl hurriedly, leaning over Jeanie, " there s three hundred and fifty names on the union secretary s book, and only five hundred in the stitching-room. Most of the rest that ain t in the book are only little young things, or those as are too new to have been talked to." She did not wait for an answer, but went on down the room with a case of vamps. Presently she came back. " We ve found out nearly everybody, and they are all willin . Sha n t I send out the notices for an extra meetin to-morrow night ? " Jeanie stopped her work and meditated with IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 167 her head bent. She was frightened at the restless insistence of the women. She felt as if she had opened water gates and the flood was upon her. "And besides," continued the girl, "all the middle of the room is mad against Annie Curry ; they say they won t stand her. They 11 go out if Peter don t shake her. They re going to get up a petition. We d ought to have a meetin about that if we don t about the other. And I know three lasters, Mrs. Casey, and they all says the lasters 11 go out if we do, and only too glad to. They say this cut-down s only the be ginning." " This corner here is the noisiest and the laziest place in the whole stitching-room." The voice was that of Annie Curry. " What are you doing here, Rose Bailey ? This ain t where you belong." " Well, I ve got to get more vamps, have n t I ? It ain t my fault if they keep the vamps down to this end of the room." " There s plenty of vamps at the other end." " Well, I did n t see them." " You did n t want to see them, then, because they were there." " I tell you I did n t see them." "You re not the first girl I ve caught down at this end of the room where she ought n t to be. I don t know what you re up to," she continued, addressing herself now to Jeanie, " but if I find any more girls hanging round your chair and 168 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER making confusion when they ought to be at work, I 11 complain of you to the superintendent." The girl with the vamps went back to her own place muttering. " This whole room acts as if it had a bum-shell underneath it," the forewoman resumed, coming nearer to Jeanie and watching her as she worked. " I should think you d be ashamed, a quick worker like you, to keep the slow ones away from their earnings." " She knows a better way, maybe, to help the slow ones than workin all her might and bringin on a cut-down," exclaimed the pretty woman. Jeanie looked at her warningly, but it was too late. " Oh, you know a better way, do you ? " Annie Curry paused, and studied the rapid stitcher. " Where have I seen you ? " " I don t know," Jeanie answered. " Have n t I seen you at Kenyon ? " "No!" " I have a memory for faces, but I have n t been down there in years. Have you ever worked in the Kenyon shoe shops ? " " No, I never have." Miss Curry stood another while in silence before she said : " Well, I don t know where you re come from, but I can tell you one thing : if you ve come round here with any of that trades union talk, you won t make anything out of it. That s one thing IN THE ENEMY S CAMP 169 Mr. Watson won t stand. You re a good worker, and you look sensible. If you know which side your bread s buttered, you won t try to come any labor agitation in this shop. It don t go down." She went off after this. "My bread ain t been buttered on either side so long, I guess I ain t got nothin to lose," said Auntie, with a laugh. "Don t you be frightened of her now," whis pered the pretty woman to Jeanie. " You re solid with Foster ; he knows a good worker when he s got one, and he ain t goin to let her turn you off." " You should never have said what you did to her," Jeanie returned. " We are not in a state to declare the union yet." " And what did I say ? " cried the pretty woman, bridling. " Union ! Who said a word about the union ? Not I ! I 11 put it to you, Auntie, if I did. Now, did I ? There s nobody here can go for to say I did." " Aw, shut up ! " said little Mamie. " Do you want her jumpin on us again? " No more girls ventured to speak to Jeanie that afternoon, but her own thoughts shouted insistently to her above the roar of the machines. " It was a lie, a verra black and complete lie. But if I had not done it, all this work of four months would have been for naught. He will not let Kenyon workers in here. Oh, Jeanie, it was a lie ! I 11 not tell Jimmie. I could n t bear 170 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER to have Jimmie excuse the lie to me. And I talked about my father and his words ; and all the women believe me. But I am a truthful woman. They should believe me. This is a lie for the truth. God will forgive me this lie. I couldn t do the Lord s work if I did not tell this lie. He made me tell it." At the end of the day she went down the iron stairs with the great throng of men and women. They did not know she was a Kenyon woman ; she had kept that from them. " And when they do know, they 11 have forgot about the lie," she said. But she could not sleep that night. To her great relief, when the strike came it was not through the stitchers. She felt that the Lord had condoned her offense, but she did not cease to abhor herself. CHAPTER IV A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN PHILIP was the first to hear that there was a strike in Peter Watson s factory. He met a shoe- making parishioner, Martin Carey, on the street one morning late in January, and he saw that the man wanted to tell him something ; so he stopped to shake hands. There was a moment of blank silence between them, in the midst of the traffic and noise of the street, and then Martin said : " The strike s on, Mr. Starr ; we ve all just come out this morning." Philip was taken by surprise ; he had had more confidence in the patience and good sense of the men. " I did not know that you expected to do any thing in such a hurry! " he exclaimed. " Nor we did n t, Mr. Starr, but he forced us to it. There was notices put up last Thursday all over the shop, demanding every shoe worker to sign a paper that he did n t belong to any labor organization, and would n t." " Ah, then it was not -for higher wages ? " " No, sir ! There was some fool women among the stitchers a-dyin to strike, but we d a headed 172 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER them off. It s not against the cut-down, and it s not for a raise ; it s for the union. Watson had got wind of it. We sent a committee to talk to him, but he said he d never had no union in his shop, and he never will. He 11 treat with the individual, man to man, and not have no organi zation round, intimidatin honest men from their work, that has a right to earn a livin in a free country. That s his talk, you know. And we all come out, it ain t an hour ago." Philip stared gravely at the passing crowd and said nothing. " You don t blame us, Mr. Starr?" " No, Martin, I don t blame you. But a strike is a serious thing, a terrible thing." "Lord! don t I know?" said Martin. "I did n t want to come out. I d have stood another cut-down without a fight. I know the manufac turers is hard pressed, Mr. Starr, undersellin and undersellin , notwithstandin old Peter give away twelve thousand in charities last year, the papers said. I d have took a cut-down and said nothin . But the union s our one chance to hold our own against them ; and to ask a man to sign away his belongin to a union is askin him to sign away his freedom. It s makin a slave of him, body and soul. And if I ve got to starve anyhow, I 11 starve my way, and not the way Peter Watson chooses." " Did they all come out ? " asked Philip. " Every one, solid, Mr. Starr. Even the ones A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 173 that was n t in the union followed us. They 11 go back, though, there s lots of them that 11 go back. That s the trouble. But we 11 make it hot for them if they do." " You must avoid violence if you want to carry the sympathy of the community," Philip cautioned. The man looked gloomy. " You won t gain anything by being brought up in the courts." " "We ain t goin into this thing for violence, Mr. Starr. But the community d ought to deal fair by us ; and they don t take into account that sometimes if a man gets his head broke, it s be cause he deserves it." Philip smiled and held out his hand. " That s true," he said, " only be careful." " You don t happen to know if there s any help needed out to Kenyon, Mr. Starr, an experi enced laster?" The clergyman shook his head. "I don t be lieve so, Martin. Shoe workers at Kenyon don t throw up their jobs if they can help it. Mr. Ken yon was saying the other day that he turns away applicants all the time." " Yes, I know," the man acquiesced sadly ; " I did n t have no real hope of such a thing, but it s safe to ask. There s a man, now ! " he contin ued with rising enthusiasm. " You don t see his name on no charity lists and orphans homes and hospitals. The men that does his work gets his money. Well, Mr. Starr, I m keeping you. If 174 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER you d go round and see Mary when you have a spare hour ? I hate to go home and tell her ; but she s a good woman." Philip went out to the professor s. He had some hope of finding Christopher there, as this was Christopher s day in town and he usually lunched with his father-in-law before going into the city for an afternoon of business. Philip found the two men in the professor s study, and they were glad to see him, but surprised, for he did not or dinarily make visits to the college in the middle of the day. " I came, hoping to find you together," he began. And then, without further prelude, " The strike has come in Watson s shops." For a moment there was silence. " It is just to-day, then," said Christopher. "Yes, this morning. I met one of the men. They all came out together." " I did not know that a strike was anticipated there," observed the professor. The impersonal, intellectual interest in his tone seemed to impress the other two men ; they looked at him for a moment in a kind of daze, adjusting themselves to the fact that this was no vital mat ter to him. " Jeanie Casey was troubled the last time I saw her," Christopher said presently. " She was afraid a strike would be precipitated. The women have been infuriated by the last cut-down." " But they have not struck against the cut- A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 175 down," Philip explained; "Watson has tried to make them sign a contract giving up their union. It is for the principle of the union that they are striking." " Really ! " exclaimed the professor, leaning on the study table. " Now, that seems to me remark ably fine and noble." "Nevertheless," said Christopher, "I have no hope that the strike will succeed." " And why ? " demanded the professor. It was always difficult for him to understand why any thing which obtained academic sanction might not be accepted without question by the general public. " Just because it is for a principle," Christopher asserted ; " If it were for a specific cause, an ob vious material need, I should have some hope for it. But the community has not yet acquired the ability to grasp principles ; it does n t act on prin ciple itself ; and, moreover, the trade union princi ple is not simply overlooked by the community, it is actively detested." For a number of years the union principle had been the professor s pet hobby. He had been one of the earliest economists in the country to come round to it ; for whatever his defects might be he was a student, and a judge of book matter and written opinions. He had long been in sympathy with the English union movement ; and if he got his ideas on the general subject from English pub lications, rather than from observation of the facts 176 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER and the workingmen as they were evolved under American conditions, he could hardly be blamed, since all economists were looking towards England as the leader in matters of industrial and economic reform. What the professor did not understand was that the average mortal had no conception whatever of the union principle, and avoided en lightenment concerning it with all the stubborn ness and density born of ignorance. Christopher had more than once endeavored to convince him of this fact. The professor seldom came in contact with the average mortal except in a state of tute lage. Christopher, being a business man, came in contact with little else ; he knew whereof he spoke. The professor listened patiently, but without con viction ; he could not believe that man in general was such a fool. Some of the ablest scholars indorsed the union principle ; it was plainly the only fair thing under present conditions. Chris topher acknowledged that all this was true, but asserted that man in general paid no attention to the opinions of scholars, was incapable of appre ciating abstractions. " But some one has to translate the abstractions into concrete terms, and the scholar has not always the peculiar ability necessary for this service," said the professor, speaking better than he knew. " Well, you must acknowledge," answered Chris topher, " that some of the abstractions do hang fire a precious long time." " Do you mean to tell me that men are incapable A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 177 of listening to reason, my dear boy ? Nonsense ! I am not a recluse, Christopher; I mingle with my kind." " Your kind ; yes, professor." " Then let us educate the general public into an appreciation of this abstraction. Here is this strike, our concrete example, ready to our hand. Let us rouse the community to an appreciation of the suf ferings of these strikers and a desire to help them. Come now ! You and Agnes are always complain ing of my being a theorist. Here is a point where I can join forces with you. I really don t see," the professor paused and considered, "I really don t see why those of us who are con vinced of the righteousness of this principle should not express our sympathy with this strike and do what we can towards making it a success. In fact I don t see but that it is our duty to uphold this strike. The question is, what can we do to make these men feel our sympathy, and to insure their success." " Only, it won t succeed. The men will not up hold their union." " That is absurd, Christopher ! When you and I both know that the employers grievance is always this loyalty of the men to the unions." " Still, I know what I am talking about. This union is new, weak, demoralized by bad conditions. It has very little money. A strike needs money if it is to succeed." Here Philip struck into the discussion, saying : 178 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " But if the professor educates his community, won t it give money ? " " Yes, to be sure, of course ! " nodded the pro fessor. " And people like to help in a definite way ; they will understand better ; they will have more sympathy, if they give support to these men." " But you forget," objected Christopher, " that this community of which we talk is made up of in dividuals, who are engaged in upholding this very competitive system which we deplore, or else they are half-baked philanthropists, like Watson, devoid of democratic instincts." " But these people are not idiots, my dear Chris topher," interrupted the professor. "I begin to think that your constant association with working- men and uneducated members of society is leading you to undervalue the intelligence of your own class. Business men will listen to reason." "Not where their pockets are concerned, pro fessor." " Chris is incorrigible," laughed Philip. " See here, old fellow, there s no harm in having a try at this thing, is there ? " " Then there s Watson himself," continued Christopher, without stopping to answer his friend. " Even if you carry your community with you as to principle, even if you get money enough to enable the strikers to stay out a few weeks, Watson s got the whip hand. There he is, with a great factory on the outskirts of a great city, A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 179 where he can, and does, take in all the riffraff and tramp labor that s out of a job. He can get all the men he wants at his own terms. What they waste by spoiling work in learning the trade, he gets out of them through low wages and dock ing. He gives them enough to keep them always in debt and just on the verge of starvation. When they get desperate, they go on the tramp. The wonder to me is, how a union was ever worked up in such a place." " And again I say educate ! " persisted the pro fessor. " Educate the people not to buy shoes made under such evil conditions. Educate them to recognize the evils of such a shop. After all, my dear boy, if the strike, materially, should fail, I still think we should regard this as an oppor tunity not to be missed. There may be a moral victory even where there is material defeat. And to have brought the workingman and the educated man into closer spiritual and intellectual sympathy, to have shown them that they are parts of one great social system, and dependent upon each other, to have broken down, to some extent, this barrier of distrust which now exists between the classes, this would be worth our effort, even though the strike itself should fail." " Indeed, yes ! " cried Philip. " I agree with you thoroughly, professor." " If you don t rather succeed in alienating them still more," Christopher added ; and then, " It s bad enough to look on and see the workingman 180 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER exploited for the material benefit of society, but it would be worse to have him exploited for society s intellectual and spiritual benefit as well, by using him to point a moral and adorn a tale." " Then you would have us let this strike go on, fail, bring prices a little lower ; you would have us let a drowning man go down while we sit on the shore and do not turn a hand to assist him ? " said Philip sternly. "I don t see the use of your going into the water after him, if you can t swim yourself." " But if we can swim a little ? " said the pro fessor. Christopher was looking into Philip s face with a sad smile. " I suppose I am only talking," he said. " Of course I want them to be helped ; it is very much to my advantage to have them succeed. But I in so tired of patching. The whole system has got to be changed before we ve any fair chance of success. Competition is at the root of the mis chief." " Meanwhile," Philip smiled, laying his two hands on his friend s shoulders, " you 11 show us where to put this patch." " Now, my idea is this," the professor began hur riedly : " Suppose we send out a small circular explaining the situation to those .people of whose sympathy we can be fairly sure." He named over a number of college professors, a couple of city lawyers, three or four clergymen, and some A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 181 twenty philanthropists and public-spirited people of both sexes. " Ask each one of these to bring an intelligent friend. We can have one of the large college class-rooms, and we can there discuss ways and means of attack. How does this appeal to you?" " Admirable ! " said Philip. "You would like me to speak about it to the heads of the union, to some of the leading labor men, no doubt ? " Christopher suggested. " Yes ! " assented the professor. " That had n t occurred to me, but it would be a very good plan. Yes " after a meditative pause " do so ! " " Would it not be well to inform them of the meeting, and ask them to be present?" queried Philip. "I I question it." The professor spoke with hesitation. " At this first meeting might it not be just as well to be to ourselves? We shall discuss the situation with more freedom we shall" " One of the reasons for assisting in this strike is to promote confidence between the workingman and the more privileged, I believe," commented Christopher. " Well, if you advise it," said the pro fessor. " You know the workingman better than I do. Personally, I should doubt the wisdom of it just at this juncture." " I agree with Chris, professor," said Philip. " The labor men have a right to know what we are 182 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER about. If we start fair with them and give them our confidence from the beginning, it will make all the difference in the world. Moreover, it is their strike, not ours ; they are the ones who are run ning it. We must to a certain extent put our selves under their guidance." " To be sure to be sure," the professor has tened to acquiesce. " Yes true ; you are right. It had n t occurred to me." He spoke in a kind of muse, as if he were being hurried into convic tion faster than he wanted to be, and were looking backward at his thoughts. " You will stay to luncheon with us, Philip, and we can decide on the plan of the circular at table." " I must go in town immediately after lunch," said Christopher. " This news puts a different aspect on some of my business. I 11 take the cir cular in to the printer s. There s nothing like promptitude in a case of this kind. Half the strikes are lost by nothing in the world but de lay. And " he turned to his father-in-law with vigor and decision in his tones "if you really wish to help in this thing, I believe you can make it a success. You can be of service if you hammer at the community, and bring Peter Watson and his shoes and his methods into disfavor. Make the public come down on him, and he 11 have to draw in his horns. The public, the community, can force him to take down those notices and re instate his men on a just scale of wages, if it will. The community can always force an individual to A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 183 do right, but it never is interested enough in real issues to try. You rouse the community, and Wat son s done for. But you and I, and a handful of lukewarm amateurs, all pulling in different direc tions and with different degrees of conscientious ness, can t move the man an inch out of his course. Don t think me ill natured ! I thank you for your sympathy in this matter. I wish all men s motives were as noble as yours always are, professor." " Now you re talking ! Ye have not yet re sisted unto blood, striving against sin, " exclaimed Philip. " Such a grumbling old pessimist as you are getting to be, Chris ! " " I m not a pessimist, I m only a disillusioned optimist," said Christopher. " But stiU an optimist? " " Oh, yes ! once and forever ! " He said it with a half smile, and his eyes dwelt upon his friend s face curiously, as if he saw something there which he himself had lost, and which he grieved to lose. " Of course, I shall not venture to lean only on theory in dealing with this strike," mused the professor. " I owe it to the community to under stand the particular conditions I must investigate. I may find that this strike is not a good concrete example of the upholding of the principle. I don t anticipate any such result, but I owe it to the community to be unbiased." Then the maid came in to say that luncheon was served. CHAPTER V THE JESUITICAL CALVINIST ONE day, about three weeks after the announce ment of the strike in Mr. Watson s shops, Jeanie Casey came to Agnes and said : " I have been grieving to tell you, and the sinful pride would not let me speak. But now I will. But you must n t be thinking how that I would n t do the same to-morrow if it was to do, for I would. There is no repentance in me. But I must be telling somebody. I must." Agnes put her into an easy chair and took away her hat and jacket and kissed her. Jeanie had grown thin ; the large simplicity of her gaze was gone; she looked at Agnes straight and square, but with sternness, and there was a curious rigid ity about her mouth. " She is like the pictures of the old covenanters," thought Agnes, " and perhaps I am to blame." Aloud she said: "I ve tried to see you, Jeanie, ever since the strike began, but you were always in town, or away somewhere getting money ; and this week we thought Christopher was going to have the measles, but he did n t." " I left little Jean with him in the garden," said THE JESUITICAL CALVINIST 185 Jeanie, and then she folded her hands and sat still in the great chair, and lost herself in her thoughts. " Tell me how you ever persuaded them to organize," said Agnes, after a few moments of silence. " It seemed such an impossible task." " For a long time I d no hope," Jeanie replied. " They were but staring loons in the beginning ; but there were some with husbands, and these got into the way of talking with them, and of a sud den, whether I would have it or no, the thing spread ; and after a bit it rolled up like a snow ball, verra fast, too fast. And out of my hand it was ; and I, there, feeling it to slip, and could not stop it. Here in Kenyon a woman will have a bit time of her own for the thinking, but there ! And if there s no thinking there 11 be no doing ; or there 11 be just blind crazy doing." " How do you mean ? " said Agnes uneasily ; " don t you approve of this strike ? " " Ay ! " of this strike ; but that s a verra different matter." " I don t understand." " There was a cut-down ; and the stitchers were fierce to go out for a rise. The terrible thing it is, Mrs. Kenyon, to feel the people slip out from the power of you, and take their own way. To hold your hand out in a torrent and think to hold the water back, and feel it over-slip the grasp of you, and never stop for you, nor take notice of you that your hand is there. That is it ! But the Lord had an eye to his poor. He turned the tor- 186 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER rent another way. And to me he showed a mercy that I am not deserving ; for it is a verra sinful woman that I am, verra sinful." She fell into a reverie again and said nothing for a long while. At last Agnes touched her hand. "You said you were going to tell me, Jeanie." " Yes ! I must be telling somebody." The voices of the children came up from the garden. There was shouting, and then : " Stop, Chrissie ! You hurt ! Stop ! " Agnes went to the window and threw it open. Her son was hauling an unwilling little maiden across the snow. " Chris ! Chris ! What are you doing ? Don t be rude ! Remember she is a little girl." " We re playing strike, mother, and she s a scab, and I m just giving it to her. Come away, you mean old traitor you, I 11 teach you to take the bread out of my children s mouths ! " " Don t you think you would better play some thing that is n t quite so rough ? " suggested Agnes. " I don t want to be a cab all the time," pro tested little Jeanie ; " it s your turn now." " I m not going to be a scab ever, even play ing," Christopher cried ; and Agnes closed the window and left them to settle the matter as best they could. Jeanie did not seem to have heard the contro versy, but when her hostess came and sat down be side her, she gathered her thoughts together with an evident effort, and began : THE JESUITICAL CALVINIST 187 " It s neither here nor there with this strike, what I m telling you now ; it can mak no differ ence one way or another way to that. It s just for my own self, and that I m sore wanting a friend." Agnes felt a sense of relief, for which she re proached herself. She had been dreading some revelation which should prejudice the public against the strikers. " Tell me, dear ! " she whispered, stroking Jea- nie s hand. " There was a day, some while back, and the forewoman that had left the shop cam in again to work. The week before that there was the cut- down. The woman was a meddling body, but she meant it for her duty. She was a cruel woman, but God-fearing. Far be it fra such a weak ves sel as I to detract fra her. They lie in that shop, Mrs. Kenyon, and they tak what does not belong to them, and they re aye at strife one with another. A heart-breaking place it is. The forewoman took notice of me that day for my good quick work. And so she saw the other women, how they cam talking to me, for they were angry with the cut- down, and she did but rub them on the raw places, so they were mad against her, and crazy for the strike. There was not a woman cam by my chair but did not stop to complain, railing against Annie Curry, the forewoman, and demanding the strike. Then Annie Curry cam beside me and said, Where is it that I ve seen you? and I said 188 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER 4 1 don t know ; it was true, I did n t know. Then she said to me, Have you ever worked in the Kenyon shops?" and I said, No, I never have." "Jeanie!" The Scotchwoman lifted her head and looked sternly at her friend. " For four months I had worked among these women, Mrs. Kenyon, early and late, to lead them out of the land of Egypt, to learn them the only way to stand out for their bit bread, when the master cuts and cuts and cuts into the wages. And they were beginning to understand. If I d left them then, all that I d been at would have gone for naught. They d have rioted a bit, and been brought low, and crowded under to worse blackness and worse hunger. They were n t fit to stand alone, and do you think I d leave them then, just to the saving of my one soul ? I m thinking, anyway, the Lord wouldn t have great need of a soul that could desert his poor down-trod den ones in their straits. I m thinking the Lord will not be hard on me for that lie, Mrs. Kenyon." Agnes realized what a pale, untried morality was hers, in her sheltered life. To remonstrate with this burdened sister seemed impertinence. " But if the people who are trying to help this strike should find that the strikers were did that sometimes they said what was n t quite straight," she faltered, " I am afraid they might lose sympathy." THE JESUITICAL CALVINIST 189 " And how many times, tell me, Mrs. Kenyon, has that old man lied to his workers, or made his superintendent lie to them, or made Annie Curry lie to them ? Ah, if the people beant brought up on lies by the ones that pretend to be standing for a model to them, do you think they would n t be ashamed to lie ? But it s give a lie and tak a lie, till the truth s overlaid so deep, there s no man can come at it even with a pickaxe." " I know, it is our fault," said Agnes sadly. "But don t go to fash yourself about this lie, now, Mrs. Kenyon. It has not a thing to do with the strike. The Lord turned the torrent. Those women with their overweening recklessness made Annie Curry suspicious of trade union talk ; and you 11 be knowing as how that Mr. Watson boasts him that he had always a free shop. And he put up the notices, and we all cam out. The women are doing bravely. They 11 stick to it better than the men, now they have come to it." " You think, then, that a lie is justifiable, some times ? " questioned Agnes. She was troubled. " I don t know that. But this I know, that the Lord will be waiting to the Judgment Day to say to me, * Jeanie, will He say, * Jeanie, I thank you verra kindly for that lie. " Agnes gasped. Her friend s eyes blazed. " If that woman had cam to you," she cried, " and asked of you in my place the question, and all those poor things with but you to look to, 190 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER and only halfway to knowing how to get out from their slavery, would you have said yes, and let them turn you out ? Could you ? " " No," said Agnes slowly. " No, I oh, I know I should have told the lie. But it s wrong. We don t know the ways of God, Jeanie ; they are not our ways. He could bring success, you know, even if we could not see how it was to come." " But if it s a mistake I ve made, oh, Mrs. Kenyon ! The Lord could have showed me another way, if it had been His will so to do. And if it was all to be done over again, I d be saying the same words. There s no helping it." " I know I understand," Agnes whispered soothingly. "I couldn t tell Jimmie, Mrs. Kenyon. And the nights I lie awake with thinking on it, till my thoughts go a-ring-around, dizzy. And it s sick ened I am to the sight of food. I had to come speak with you, to share it. But don t be troubled for the strike, this strike, there is nothing the lie would have to do with that." " I hope not," Agnes said. But she thought of her father, with his passion for accuracy, for moral purity, his instinctive distrust of the workingman, and her heart sank. The professor had thrown his whole mind, for the time being, into this strike, and was applying to it those laboratory methods of investigation which had become indispensable to him in all search for truth. He had spoken at two public THE JESUITICAL CALVINIST 191 meetings gotten up to promote interest in the strike ; spoken, to be sure, with such circumspect caution as to rouse the antagonism and scorn of all the labor men present, but still, spoken, and with sufficient appreciation of the point of view of the strikers to rouse in his own sensitive conscience the question as to whether he was being partial. " I must call the child and go," said Jeanie, ris ing. " The mother complains of my neglecting the home, and Jeanie and Jamie are needing me badly. Good-by ; and I hope you 11 not be a-wearied and disheartened the way I am, never, Mrs. Kenyon." " Ah, Jeanie, don t you think I have my wor ries ? Do you think it is easy for Mr. Kenyon to make his shoe shops decent places when all the rest of the world is cutting down ? Do you think it is easy for him to pay his men the wages he does, when all his competitors are underselling him ? " She stopped. She had not meant to speak of her own trouble. " I know, Jimmie was saying the other night " Here Jeanie also stopped. " What was Jimmie saying ? " " Oh, nothing much. He is not one to meddle with what is not his affair. But I know he was saying it was a hard time for all, and he did n t see how Mr. Kenyon stood up against the competi tion. I told him t was an easy thing to see, that he stood by the grace of God. There s nothing else but that, by which any one of us can stand." 192 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER After she had gone, Agnes sat by the window thinking, till little Christopher came in from his play and clambered into her lap. He was still feeling the effects of his slight illness of the early part of the week, and had trying times of languor and irritability. " What are you doing, mother ? " " Thinking, my darling ! " " What about ? The strike ? " Agnes smiled. " Yes, the strike." " Everybody s thinking about the strike, mother. I think about it a great deal." " Do you ? " She smiled again and drew his face close to hers, looking quizzically into his eyes. " Yes ! Little Jeanie says her father says what they need is less talk and more money." " I have no doubt he is right. But come ; I know a little boy who has n t done any lessons for three days. How will he ever get to college at this rate?" Christopher ignored this question, and pro pounded one of his own. " Mother, why does n t father give them all the money they want ? " " Because father has n t enough money to go round. He has to pay the men who work for him." " I Ve got four dollars. Can t I give that ? Would n t it buy bread * to put into their chil dren s mouths ? " THE JESUITICAL CALVINIST 193 " Suppose you get your slate and see how much bread it would buy." " And I can give it, can t I ? " " Yes, if you wish to." He cantered across the room and brought his slate from a table ; then drew a hassock close to his mother s feet and sat down. " Now," Agnes began, " you have four dollars. Let us see how much bread that would buy. What does a loaf of bread cost ? " " I don t know." " Well, suppose a loaf costs ten cents, how many could you get for your four dollars ? " He chewed his slate pencil for a minute and then began to figure. After a short time he looked up suspiciously and said : " This is lessons ! " " Why, so it is ! " replied his mother with ad mirable composure ; " but it is quite interesting, don t you think so ? " He grunted and chewed his pencil. " You know you have n t finished yet ; you will want to find out how many people all those loaves of bread will feed." "I could eat a whole loaf of bread at one time! " he exclaimed in scorn. " Then you would be a little pig ; and in a strike you could n t be allowed to be a little pig, you know." He bent over his slate with renewed interest, and Agnes had no more trouble about lessons. 194 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER When the elder Christopher came home to din ner and heard the tale, and had the slate presented to him that he might admire the sum, there was a twist of irony in his smile as he said : " Yes, we re all using the strike for educational purposes." CHAPTER VI THE INTERIM IT was a long strike, so long that after awhile the community began to look dazed when it was mentioned, and to say, "Oh, is that thing still going on ? " This, notwithstanding the fact that the professor, during all this time, talked of little else. But the professor s audience was necessarily limited. In the beginning, acted upon by the novelty of dealing with a reality, he kindled, and became almost precipitate in his desire to champion the cause of the oppressed. If he was too old to see visions, his dilated eyes, his fervid rhetoric, pro claimed that at least he dreamed dreams. Just what he expected his aroused community to do for the strikers was never definitely formulated ; something in the nature of a bloodless industrial revolution, perhaps. Be that as it may, the dream was but a dream, the occasion never ripened, the professor never dared to arouse his community. He never got through weighing evidence. After the first flush of contact with life had faded, after he had attended a few labor meetings, as a specta tor, for even in this period of spontaneity his 196 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER enthusiasm did not betray him into sitting on a strikers platform, after he had heard one or two labor agitators, he experienced a revulsion from the actual. The horny hand of toil irritated his sensitive scholar s palm. The florid oratory, the impossible English, the uncertain logic, and the bad taste more than all else, the bad taste of these people whom, in theory, he had come to regard as martyrs of society, aroused the pro fessor s intellectual distrust, that most alert faculty of his scholastic mind. Ought a people who were such bad dialecticians to be trusted to think for themselves ? This dumbness of the dispossessed, this chaos of sound which they emitted, exasper ated the fluent professor ; they could not explain themselves. In the class-room Professor Gillespie always distrusted those students who could not ex plain themselves ; he knew they had not studied their lesson, and were trying to impose upon him. Another reason, in his eyes, for distrust of the workingmen lay in the fact that this strike evaded tabulation. The professor could not reduce it to a formula ; neither could he sift it to a first cause. The very unanimity and persistence with which the men reiterated the union principle as the cause of the strike, came to sound like a hollow pretense in the ears of the professor after he had once set foot on this industrial slough of despond, and had begun to realize into what a hodge-podge of animosities, passions, incoherent side-issues, and misunderstood statements he was about to sink. THE INTERIM 197 Like Christian in that other slough, his one idea, having stumbled in, was to get out as best he could and save his soul alive ; but, like Christian, he got in deeper than he wanted to before he got out, and he was sore besmirched. The professor, despite his leanings, was not a child of the new era ; his im pulse was not social, his conscience was not social ; he was at all times most keenly aware of his own individual soul, and of the jeopardy in which it stood, a purely moral jeopardy, quite divorced from anything Calvinistic, but still a jeopardy. The very impetuosity with which the workingman plunged into strife, caught at half truths, misin terpreted ideas, deterred the professor from action, intimidated him. Such ill-considered haste seemed criminal. In reality the workingman had no more true power of initiative than the professor, but he had conviction, which lent a certain terror to his abortive experiments ; and in general he cared more for his brother s soul than for his own. Con tact with life had suggested to him that his own soul was a very small affair. It was not long before the professor began to tell his friends that his great fear was lest, being carried away by his sympathy for the working class, he should be unfair to the employers. " They also have a side," he reminded Philip. He claimed that just because all the people with whom he came in contact were in sympathy with the strikers, at least a majority, and just because, from an economic point of view, he himself believed in 198 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER trades unions, he must take all the more care not to be prejudiced, not to be partial. If he had been living on terms of spiritual fellowship with one or more of the distressed families involved in the strike, if he had ever been hungry in his life, he might have realized that there was also immoral ity in deliberately refraining from action, on the bare possibility that in a particular struggle for a principle which his own reason approved, certain individuals might be acting on interested motives, and certain events might not prove to be what they claimed to be. But this he failed to see. It was a question, in some people s minds after the strike was over, as to how far he had saved his soul alive, after all. Irony became habitual with Christopher in these days. He railed alternately against his own false position as an employer and his father-in-law s scholastic methods, and he gave all his ready money to the strikers, as, to do him justice, the professor did too. There came a strained look about Agnes eyes, more noticeable on Sundays when her father and her husband were together at the Homestead, but evident at other times as well, for Philip made a special visit down to Kenyon one day because of the memory of that expectant, worried look. He found Agnes and the boy in the sitting-room, and little Christopher greeted his uncle Philip with a shout, but there were traces of tears on his cheeks, and a certain chair was standing in a sus- THE INTERIM 199 picious fashion, with its face to the wall, in what Agnes called the disciplinary corner of the room. " There is no bad news ? " she questioned, com ing to meet him as he stood in the doorway with the boy climbing up his legs. " No ; no news, good or bad," he answered, with an assuring smile. " I came down to have a look at this godson of mine ; a little bird tells me when he needs looking after." Christopher glanced consciously at his mother and hung his head. " He has not been very well lately," Agnes said, with a smile of understanding, " and it makes him cross and not quite so considerate of other people as I think little boys ought to be." " And you?" said Philip, turning the unsociable chair about and sitting down in it. " Have you been well ? " " I ! Oh, yes ; I am always well. I get a little blue, sometimes, over the strike. It lasts so long and we hear such tales. I worry about Christo pher, too ; he is taking it so hard, and he does n t sleep well." " I have been wondering," said Philip thought fully, "how it would do for you and the boy to get away somewhere for a few weeks and have a little change, south or by the sea." Agnes opened her eyes in amazement. " And leave Christopher ? " Her counselor smiled. "Oh, no, Philip! that is out of the question. 200 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER Christopher needs me. And, besides, we could n t afford it. We are beginning to be quite poor people now. We can t spend money without think ing twice about it, as we used to do. And the strike may fail. I must be with Christopher when the strike fails." " It will make a difference with him, I suppose," Philip said vaguely. " Yes, a great difference. You, who are not in business, cannot appreciate how much. If I say anything about its being good of him to give so much towards the strike, he insists that he does it from selfish motives and purely as a business in vestment ; that it is to his interest that the strike should win. He says, Philip, that if the strike fails his own business will go under, because he won t be able to compete against Mr. Watson ; and I, knowing the business, know it is true. No, I cannot go away." "Why doesn t grandfather hustle around and make people make old Pete I mean old Mr. Watson treat his men fair ? " said the little boy suddenly. " Well, young man, why don t you hustle round and do your own duty faithfully, and help your mother, instead of criticising your elders ? " Little Christopher opened his eyes at his uncle Philip, and seemed uncertain whether to laugh or to cry. " Suppose you run down and ask aunt Ada to send me up some of her raspberry shrub and a few THE INTERIM 201 cookies," said his mother ; " and if you are very careful you may bring the tray yourself. Don t spill anything." Christopher retired, smiling and winking back a tear, and Agnes added : "He hears so much, and he is beginning to have such a mind of his own. I am afraid it is not a very good atmosphere for a child." " I met your father yesterday," Philip began, "and he said he had decided to seek a personal interview with Mr. Watson. He felt that it was indispensable to the right understanding of the strike, and that the committee had no right to in volve its own supporters for or against the strikers until it, as a committee, had a complete under standing of the strike. And he added that the farther he investigated the more complex the situ ation revealed itself to be." Agnes looked at Philip and nodded, but at his words, not at him. " Moreover, your father feels that it is only just to Mr. Watson to inform him of what we are doing ; for he would have a right to complain if action were taken without giving him an opportu nity to state his side." " Yes," interrupted Agnes, " I know all this, and how it would not be fair to involve the people who had appointed the committee in a mistake, and how father, of course, must think of the col lege and remember what he owes to that, and not be partisan. Yes I you see I know all this." 202 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER She said it very quietly, but with a tightening in her lips and a burning in her eyes. " I know he is right," she added presently. " I know, from his point of view, he is right ; he could not do differently. But, meanwhile, the people are beginning to starve they are beginning to be turned into the street. Every day I get pitiful letters, all tears and bad spelling, asking for help ; calling on Christopher as the one hope of the peo ple ; beseeching his wife to help the wives and little ones of those who are suffering from injus tice. I wish I could make it real to father, but I can t. It is n t that he is not a kind-hearted man, and he is almost always ready to help individuals ; but he cannot get beyond the appreciation of this strike as an economic problem. I can t bring it home to him that every day of delay in giving help means starvation for people whom he may find innocent in the end. He says the lesson will be just as valuable to the community whether the strike succeeds or not. But the strikers are a part of the community ; he does n t count them in." " I wish your father could come into more favor able personal relations with the workingmen," said Philip. "They don t understand him, and he does n t understand them. It is impossible for him to realize that a man who cannot grasp the point of a question when it is first put to him in correct English, who cannot answer without ram bling all round the subject, can still be a reasoning and even efficient being. Your father does not THE INTERIM 203 believe in the workingmen, and I don t see how we can expect him to. They work through life, he works through books. His intellectual impatience and intellectual suspicion are inevitable." "Christopher says he is only alienating them more completely. And father is such a scrupu lously upright man, you know. He would be hor rified if he really knew what he is doing, but he never will know." Philip had said of Agnes in the early days of his acquaintance with her, " She is going to do things." And yet, few women led a life more pas sive, more receptive, more feminine. The girl Ag nes had fretted and fumed against inactivity, had ridiculed conventionality, had gasped for freedom. The woman neither struggled nor criticised nor complained. She educated her little son patiently, tenderly, and wisely ; ordered her husband s house hold with minute and rigid economy ; was assiduous in her devotion to the improvement of the village, and read and studied and meditated without inter mission. It was a shut-in life, calm to the verge of repression, the life of a strong-willed woman who dominated her own impatience of tempera ment, and did not " do things " because she would not, which was the f orcef ullest of doing after all. If Christopher s wife said little, it was not be cause she was oblivious of what went on around her. She knew much. She knew that something was going wrong at the shops. This was her keen est and her ever-present knowledge. What this 204 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER something might be she told herself coldly that she was not capable of divining. At times she even denied to herself the possibility of anything being wrong ; but the denial did not affect the cer tainty of her knowledge. During the three years that she carried this certainty on her heart, Agnes gained rapidly in power of self-control. Love for Christopher was at the bottom of it all, her knowledge, her denial, her silence, and her con stant expectation that he would speak to her of this thing that troubled him. Agnes knew, also, by this time, that her father was not a great man ; she even guessed that he was a moderately small one. On these points she was more frank with herself than on that other suppressed certainty, but she was not the less silent to the world. Agnes loyalty was as great as her force of will, and closely akin to it. She might speak to Philip of her sorrow at her father s inability to sympathize with the working people, but to no one, not even to her husband, could she con fess her discovery that her father was not a leader in action, and that he was ceasing to be a leader in thought. This spectacle of the professor adjust ing his spyglass on the hills of old fogydom was intensely painful to his daughter. She could not deceive herself into the belief that his was the conservatism of age rather than of temperament ; for her relentless intelligence told her that he was still not far beyond the prime of life, and in stances of previous indecisions thrust themselves THE INTERIM 205 upon her memory whether she would or no. She was very tender with her father, very patient and respectful under the laborious didacticism which carried in it a suggestion of fault-finding, for she knew that there was disappointment on his side as well as on hers. His constant fortifying of his po sition when he talked with her, hurt her more than unconscious arrogance would have done. On the other hand, she would have been less patient, less respectful, if she had trusted his judgment, and he knew it. Once only, in these harassing months, did she flash out upon him, and that was when he had found fault with Christopher s attitude and methods. "Christopher cannot afford to wait. He has his men to consider. Life is a doing, father, not just a thinking. And you know I m not afraid of failing. We live by the example of a Failure." When Agnes allowed her Christianity to shine through her ethics, the professor invariably re plied : " My dear, we are arguing on different planes," and changed the subject. He had taken a sentimental pride in his daugh ter s callow agnosticism, and her reversion to faith could not fail to disappoint him ; he had never ceased to be irritated by her assertion that she grasped her religion with her intellect as well as with her emotions. She was always reticent with regard to this inner meaning of life which had come to sustain her when the new bewilderment 206 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER of her love for Christopher made the reality of the Eternal a spiritual necessity for her. But she was characteristically steadfast. Philip was con tinually surprised by the strength and depth of her conviction, as it was revealed to him in the mirror of her boy s mind. " There, I never spilt a single drop ! " said a triumphant voice in the doorway, " and the cook ies are a new batch ; they re hot." Neither Agnes nor Philip made any further allusion to the professor ; instead, Philip returned to the subject with which he had opened his visit. " If you are not able to go away yourself, how would it do to give this young man a change of scene ? " Little Christopher glanced from his uncle to his mother and back again to his uncle, cocking his head expectantly and nibbling his cookie. " Would you be willing to trust him to me for a while ? I d be very careful. And I think it s about time I began to try my hand at him, don t you ? Will you come, Christopher ? " " To be in the rectory alone with you ? " ex claimed the child, amazement and delight strug gling in his voice. "Well, not quite alone, you know; there s Mollie, the cook, and Charlie, who keeps me tidy, and there s that monstrous great cat." " And may I light the altar candles and wear a little black cassock all the time ? " THE INTERIM 207 Philip burst out laughing. "That depends," he said. " Will you come ? " Christopher paused, and then said slowly, eying his uncle : " What would you do if if little boys are n t as considerate of other people as mother thinks they ought to be ? " Philip performed a suggestive pantomime upon his knees and asked again : " Will you come ? " To his surprise the little boy held out his hand confidingly and said : " Yes, if mother 11 let me." Philip put his arm around the child and drew him between his knees. " You 11 lend him to me ? " he said to Agnes. "I can give him change of scene. He needs a change. You know, mother, this boy of ours is our great hope : he has got to deliver the world frprn our mistakes; he has got to comfort the world after our failures ; he has got to redeem the world from our sins. That s why he s living to day ; that s why all boys are living, to do bet ter than their fathers did." Christopher s eyes were fixed intently on his uncle s face. " I don t think I could ever do better than my father does," he said in a slow inward voice, never moving his eyes. " My father is like St. Christo pher, he s carrying the burden of the world, and mother says it s through very deep waters just now." 208 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " Nevertheless, you ve got to try to do better than he," Philip resumed, and turning again to Agnes : " We must help him ; we must get him ready. I am a symbolist, you know ; I believe in the effi cacy to the human spirit of the outward visible sign, used with understanding, and I shall proceed on that method with this young man. All chas tisement that is real is spiritual ; but just as we children of a larger growth need OUT symbols, so I think the younger children are helped by them too, and I shall treat our boy symbolically. Do you know what I mean?" he added, turning to Christopher, whose eyes had been on him all the while. The child s face flushed and he wriggled in em barrassment. " Yes, I know ; mother did it this morning, but she did n t call it that name." Out of respect for Christopher s feelings, his mother and uncle Philip repressed their inclina tion to laugh, and hastened to change the subject. " I think you and I shall have to go to the crys tal maze when you come to town," said uncle Philip thoughtfully. " I really think we shall." Christopher gurgled in ecstasy. " And what do you suppose a Zoo is ? " Christopher flung his arms around uncle Philip s neck with a shout. " I know ! Elephants, and monkeys, and tigers. Oh ! " then he paused and drew back " but THE INTERIM 209 I should specially like to light the altar candles, because here mother never lets me do anything with matches." " I m not going to try to make a clergyman out of him," laughed Philip. " Never fear ! " "No, you re going to teach me how to help father, are n t you? " "Good-by!" Philip said. "I shall look for him Monday. And you if there is ever any help I can give you, you will not hesitate to call on me ? " "There is no help, dear Philip; Christopher and I must just stand it together. He has set his heart on not lowering the men s wages, but he knows and I know Ah, well after all, what do we know ? The strike may succeed." CHAPTER VH TWO WAYS OF BETRAYING A TRUST THE professor wrote Mr. Watson a note ask ing for an interview. It was Philip who finally pestered him into taking this course of action. Philip said : " We must do something, for already the men have begun to drift back to the shops, and he has gotten outside labor enough to resume part of his work. If you really feel that Mr. Watson ought to be consulted " " I do without question," said the professor. " Then why delay ? I will go and talk to him about it at once." But to this the professor could not consent. He preferred to have the interview himself. He ar gued that Philip, as an Anglican clergyman, would not gain Mr. Watson s sympathy. Philip did not feel the force of the argument, but he saw that the professor s conscience was in an inflamed con dition, and that there would be difficulty in per suading him to accept the evidence of anybody s senses but his own ; so he let him have his way. Mr. Watson could not find a free hour for the conference until the following week. This was TWO WAYS OF BETRAYING A TRUST 211 a pity, as it wasted more time. During the inter val a number of new men were hired at the shops. The two gentlemen met on a bright morning of late March, in Mr. Watson s private office, a small bare sanctum manifestly devoted to business. The great safe stood at one side of the room, and on the wall above it hung a picture of the shops. In a corner on a small table gleamed an ornate silver pitcher and goblets, a gift from the employ ees in a misguided moment of gratitude for some half -understood benefit interpreted by domineering foremen. The master s desk, a clumsy, old-fash ioned piece of furniture, occupied the space next the window, and a green-shaded electric bulb hung conveniently low over it. The one bit of human sweetness in the room was a photograph which stood on the desk, Mr. Watson s grandson, a chubby laughing baby of three, with his grand father s round bright eyes. The men said old Peter had been closer than the green on a leaf since this child had come into the world. Ten years had made but little difference in the manufacturer s outward appearance. His cheeks had withered, but they were just as red as they used to be. His knees shook when he walked, but the hand that signed that honorable name was just as steady as it had been ten years before ; the mind was just as unflinchingly and lucidly commercial. He greeted the professor with a cordial manner in which respect and sympathy were nicely blended, 212 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER and gave orders to his secretary not to disturb him. The professor apologized for taking his time, but the old gentleman replied with a merry smile, that it was he who ought to apologize for inad vertently taking so much of the professor s time, and he hoped the professor would absolve him from all intention to trespass. He hoped also this with a look of veiled commiseration that the well-meaning but, to his mind, misguided peo ple for whom the professor was laboring so de votedly were proving themselves correspondingly grateful for his unwearied efforts. As the pro fessor had not yet received evidence of the grati tude of the strikers, this remark was peculiarly soothing to his self-pity. But on the other hand, neither had the strikers received evidence of the professor s unwearied efforts, and it is a question whether they could be expected to be grateful for the searching manner in which he was endeavoring to keep himself unspotted for their sakes. Their sullen suspicion, and Philip s impatience, and Chris topher s moody scorn made the genial appreciative- ness of the white-haired, rosy old gentleman espe cially welcome to the professor at this crisis, and led him to betray more discontent with the work ing people than he otherwise might have done. Then, too, Mr. Watson was so fair to Christopher, so generous in his admiration of his idealistic com petitor whom he was wrecking as rapidly as competitive methods would permit. He spoke of TWO WAYS OF BETRAYING A TRUST 213 him with tears, at the same time insinuating that Christopher s point of view was youthful and er roneous, lacking in common sense. The professor defended his son-in-law s theories up to a certain point. Into the region of pure socialism he confessed he could not follow him, but " the boy " had not yet introduced anything alarmingly radical into his business, the mild form of profit sharing which then obtained in the Kenyon shops could hardly be expected to demol ish the state, and the professor insisted politely that Christopher s attitude towards trades unions was sound, both economically and morally. " My dear Mr. Gillespie," said the old man, " before theories I must, perforce, retire. When I was young I had no time to theorize. I was obliged to act. The world was not willing to stand still while I found out how it moved. I had to get my experience by doing my work, rather than by speculating on how badly other people were doing theirs; and, on the whole, I don t regret it." His eye rested absently on the great iron safe as he spoke, and the professor felt the signifi cance of the glance. " I know how the world is made," he continued, "I have lived in it long enough to know, and human nature does n t change. Man needs the incentive of competition. My methods may be old-fashioned, but they were instituted by a generation which was quite as dis tinguished for piety as the present one, and they are safe and honest. I have proved them so." 214 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " You must acknowledge, however, that the others also are practical," objected the professor. " In all the ten years of my son s experiment he has not reduced his men s wages." Old Peter s only answer to this assertion was a smile of mingled pity, politeness, and reserve, which endured through a silence of fully a minute. Then he resumed : " Of course I do not need to repeat to an au thority like yourself the reasons why the business man is obliged to cut down wages. These reasons are well known to you ; doubtless you have already stated them much better in your books than I could give them here." The professor had not written books, but the inference was flattering. "What your son-in-law s methods of meeting these difficulties may have been, I do not know ; the difficulties exist. I can only say that he has used his methods ten years, I have used mine forty, and I have never done business at a loss." This last statement made the professor uneasy. Did it imply that Christopher had done business at a loss ? Had he ? Agnes and her husband had never felt it ne cessary to keep the professor informed of all the details of management at the Kenyon shops, but the professor had supposed he understood the situa tion. Was there However, he had not come here to discuss his son-in-law s affairs with a com petitor, and his good taste warned him that it TWO WAYS OF BETRAYING A TRUST 215 would be neither suitable nor well-bred to do so. He wheeled back to the subject in hand, mentally resolving to have a talk with Agnes at the earliest opportunity. " But as far as the present strike is concerned," he said, " and it is of that that I wished to speak to you, the question is not one of wages ; it is purely of principle, the right of the men to organize." Old Peter pursed up his lips and regarded his visitor for a long time silently, with almost quiz zical eyes. The professor waited, becoming more and more perturbed in spirit as the seconds passed. At last the old gentleman opened his lips and said : " I will tell you a tale." He paused again, but continued almost imme diately : " I have not spoken of this to any one. It was not worth my while. The community got a little excited over this strike in the beginning, but I Ve seen it excited before. I knew it would n t last. It was in fact, I am an old man ; unusual exertion and excitement tire me it was easier to let the matter blow over than to defend myself. We who serve the Lord for half a century get used to being misrepresented, you know, Mr. Gillespie. But you have been open with me, you have dealt with the situation conscientiously and kindly. I will tell you a tale." Here, then, was something in the nature of evi dence. The professor composed himself to listen. 216 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " There was in my shops, during the six months previous to this strike, a Scotchwoman named Casey." The professor knitted his brows and tried to re call something. " A common name enough, but she was an un common sort of woman. She came from we did n t know where. We are, perhaps, a little lenient in the matter of credentials at the factory. My prin ciple is, if they need the work, give it to them. We have n t time to inquire into the genealogy of all our employees." The professor s conciliatory mood hindered him from remembering that the trade union version of this statement was that Peter would hire any old tramp who would sell himself cheap. " The woman was also a skilled stitcher ; and in this day of hulking, inefficient, unskilled labor, we manufacturers are only too glad to get hold of an operative who knows his trade and won t waste all our profits in damaging the machines and the raw material." His auditor nodded sympathetically. " We did n t pay much attention to her ; that was where we made our mistake ; but the superin tendent is a kind-hearted man, and if the women do their work he lets them have pretty much what they want. Moreover, I do not approve of the spy ing system, Mr. Gillespie never have. But one thing I have emphatically learned in this strike. The more lenient you are with the workingmen, the TWO WAYS OF BETRAYING A TRUST 217 less they will thank you for it. The workingmen are like children, they must be dominated. Here after I shall pursue a much sterner policy in my dealings with them." " Yes, I have been more and more convinced of their childishness during the past weeks," the pro fessor acquiesced. " And this woman, to whom we were paying higher wages than to any other stitcher in the shop, was all the while inciting her fellow workers to re bellion, under our very noses. Such is gratitude, Mr. Gillespie. But to come to my story. In Jan uary, as perhaps you know, I was obliged to reduce the wages of the stitchers " " I did hear of such a reduction, but it did not seem to bear directly on the strike," said the pro fessor. Mr. Watson pursed up his lips again and was significantly silent for a moment. Then he con tinued : " I will not stop now to state my reasons for the reduction; I am willing to show you my books later, if you care to see them. About this time I also reengaged a very efficient forewoman who had left me some months before, but she found it more difficult to get work elsewhere than she had sup posed. The little experience did her good. When she came back to the shops she discovered that the stitching-room was in a state of complete turmoil and disorder. The women were slighting their work ; they stood around in groups during work- 218 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER ing hours and talked excitedly among themselves ; they were on the verge of insubordination. And this Scotchwoman was at the centre of all the dis turbance. My forewoman soon found that a strike was brewing. Yes, Mr. Gillespie, a strike for higher wages. She also learned from unguarded remarks let fall by the women, that they were organized. Now, Mr. Gillespie, I shall not at pre sent attempt to discuss with you my views with regard to trade organization ; you already know them. The workers have a right to organize ; I have a right to refuse to treat with organizations. To me the. personal touch, the direct dealing with the individual, is the all-important matter. The unions wish to debar certain individuals from labor ; I claim, and there are many with me, that every man has a right to work if he wishes to work. However, this is not the point of my story. I had sufficient evidence to satisfy me that this strike was brewing, a strike for higher wages, mind you, and I took what seemed to me, at the mo ment, the best means to prevent it. A strike is a miserable affair, Mr. Gillespie ; I did what I did to save my people from misery. Perhaps I was hasty ; I know I was hurt, angry at their lack of confidence. Perhaps, under the first irritation of the shock, an arbitrary tone crept into those notices which might have been avoided had I waited for my heart to cool. But there was no time to wait ; the strike for wages was imminent ; and I pre cipitated what I had tried to prevent. They saw a TWO WAYS OF BETRAYING A TRUST 219 better chance for winning the public sympathy, and they took it. They at once raised this hue and cry about the union principle. My dear Mr. Gillespie, here old Peter laid his hand caress ingly on the professor s knee, " do you not see the real cause of the strike ? The union principle has a very pretty sound. But I know what I am talking about." The professor sat with his head in his hand, musing. He was disheartened, disgusted. " I have been dreading something of this kind all along," he said. " I have feared they were not open with me." " Open ! " exclaimed Mr. Watson ; and then he laughed, an old man s chuckling, mocking laugh. " Why, my dear sir, here is a case in point : the forewoman has a wonderful gift for faces, quite a detective kind of quality, and she remembered having seen this stitcher Casey somewhere, some time ago. She asked her point blank if she had ever worked in the Kenyon shops," the profes sor started, " and she said she had not. We found out afterwards that she had." " Why ! I believe that is the woman my daugh ter has made her particular friend ! " cried the professor. " And now I think of it, she " " Indeed ! I only tell you this to give you an idea of their methods ; to indicate how far they may be trusted. Of course it has no bearing on the strike." " But there I must beg to differ with you," ex- 220 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER claimed the professor. " I consider that it has a bearing on the strike, a moral bearing, a very important bearing." " Truel " Mr. Watson acquiesced, adding, after a pause, "and it was such a short-sighted lie, too." " I must think this matter over," said the pro fessor. " I confess to you that I am bewildered. My whole attitude with regard to the strike has undergone a change. I must consider. I think of my son s devotedness through all these years. It will wring the innermost fibres of his nature to tell him these things." The naivete of this remark was not lost upon old Peter, but he kept his countenance. " Perhaps Mr. Kenyon knows," he suggested. " As I said, this has no direct bearing on the strike. Doubtless the woman considered it a lie in a good cause. We wink at some things which, though shady in themselves, seem to make for our scheme of righteousness." " I have never known a man with a keener sense of honor than Christopher Kenyon," said the pro fessor stiffly. " When I gave him my daughter I knew that whatever inexperience, whatever impet uosity there might be still " There was a tumult outside the office. Men ran past the window. A crowd began to collect. The two gentlemen got up hastily and went out to see what was the matter. The crowd had gathered round tw,o men, one of whom lay on the ground unconscious, while the TWO WAYS OF BETRAYING A TRUST 221 other, looking dazed and white, and wiping blood from his face, leaned against the wall of the fac tory. It was the noon hour. Two or three people told the story haphazard to the master. The men had been friends and had worked together at the same bench. They both went out at the time of the strike, but two days ago the man who was wiping his face had gone back to work. He had so many to care for. To-day the friend had met him as he came out of the shop, there had been words, hard names, then blows. The striker had gotten the worst of it. " He did n t have no breakfast to slug on," com mented a voice in the crowd. In falling he had struck some loose lumber. They thought he had probably broken a rib. They touched him and he groaned. " Kun to the office, one of you, and ask Mr. John son to ring for the ambulance," said the master. " He must go to the Workingmen s Hospital." The man opened his eyes and looked straight at old Peter. " I m damned if I 11 go to your bloody hospi tal," he said. " I 11 die first," and he fainted again. " I 11 shake hands on that ! " said the other man ; and as he said it he, too, looked at old Peter ; then he turned and walked unsteadily into the shop. There was supreme insolence in the words and the action. " Very well ! if he prefers the police station to 222 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER the hospital," began the old gentleman ; but there was something ominous in the way in which those workingmen stood with their brows bent upon him watchfully. " Or, I don t care, do as you please ! " he added, " only get him out of here ; I can t have the factory yard turned into a butcher shop." He moved toward the office, and the professor followed him. " These are some of the things we have to en dure, Mr. Gillespie, from the people we feed and clothe, and whose wounds we bind up. My heart is lacerated with episodes of this nature." The brutality and the discourtesy of the scene had been too much for the professor. For the moment he lost all sense of values. " I thank you for your kindness," he said ab sently. " You have done me a service. I am much disturbed by this morning s experience. I must consider. I " He paused and thought a moment. " I do not think I can continue to serve on this committee. For my son s sake I should not wish to expose the machinations of the strike." He stopped again and stared broodingly at the floor, then shook Mr. Watson s hand and went out through the factory yard with bent head. Two men were lounging by the gate, and as he passed, one of them said : "Do you think that scab Murphy 11 get bounced ? Did n t he have the gall, though ? And then to walk back into the shop ! " TWO WAYS OF BETRAYING A TRUST 223 " They ain t bouncin expert cutters round these shops just now, for a little jaw," returned the other. " Old Peter 11 swallow more cold truth than that before he 11 lose a dollar. Murphy knew it, too. There ain t no flies on Murphy. Maybe you think he s scabbin it for love of old Peter! Nit!" CHAPTER VIII A NON-COMMITTAL COMMITTEE AFTER his interview with Mr. Watson, the pro fessor veiled himself in an atmosphere of mystery. Philip and Christopher were unable to come at him ; he baffled them by hint and silences. He said that, all things considered, he preferred to regard Mr. Watson s communication as confiden tial. He confessed himself uncertain what course of action to pursue. The affair was a delicate one. He could not move in it without hurting some body s feelings. He dreaded the brutal violence of the workmen. " No one likes to be confronted with his own faults." He assured his son-in- law, perhaps too insistently, that his sympathy was still with the cause of labor, and that his belief in the trades union principle was still unshaken ; but under the circumstances And meanwhile he did nothing. " He is growing old," Christopher said to Philip. "It must be that else I can t believe the man s a moral coward, you know, I can t ! I have reverenced him more than I ever have any other man living. I have loved him as a son. It s a habit with me. Disappointments like that A NON-COMMITTAL COMMITTEE 225 break up one s life. I I should n t know how to take it. He s getting old ; he can t keep up with us. That s all. We must be patient with him." Philip was silent, as he usually was when the professor came under discussion. But he set to work to stir up certain individuals who had at tended those early meetings of the " community " on behalf of the strike. The professor had one or two letters of inquiry concerning the progress of the investigation. Several acquaintances stopped him on the street to ask when the report would be forthcoming ; a few joked him about it, and one man hinted testily that the committee had not done its duty and needed to be called to account. One member of the committee, in a moment of absent mindedness, had sailed for Europe ; the other member was active chiefly in complaining that the chairman had never called a formal meet ing. The professor, harassed and uneasy, con sented to explain himself, and empowered Philip to send out notices to the constituents. About thirty people came, most of them in that mood of inflated tyranny which is induced by the prospect of being able to find fault with somebody. Agnes was there ; she had come to town to do some shopping and to carry little Christopher back to Kenyon. Philip regretted having forced the meeting when he saw her. He had a presenti ment that the professor was not going to appear to advantage. Somebody who was nobody in particular occu- 226 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER pied the chair, but the audience tacitly recognized that Philip Starr had engineered this meeting. The ladies untied their feather boas and loosened their jackets ; the gentlemen selected seats with slow and thoughtful precision ; a few hung reluc tantly about the doorway. There was a lack of spontaneity in the conversation after the arrival of the professor. A watchful courtesy prevailed. The chairman announced the subject of the meet ing, and called upon the committee for its report. The professor arose and looked around upon his hearers with that air of seriously conscious but well-bred righteousness with which he was accus tomed to dominate his classes. He was a hand some man of a serene, soft - visaged type that just escaped the flabby. He wore his beard close- clipped and following the oval fullness of his womanly, smooth cheek; his lips were sensitive almost to unsteadiness, but not quite; his eyes were gentle, wistful, speculative ; at times lambent, mistily. His hair and beard were of that dark shade of brown which grizzles slowly, and as yet the gray threads were few. As he stood there he showed himself for what he was, a very gentle man, earnest, gracious, considerate. " Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen : your committee begs your indulgence in that it has no formal report to make this evening " The audience found itself unable to dissemble surprise at this statement, but endeavored by silence to convey an impression of disapproval. A NON-COMMITTAL COMMITTEE 227 " As chairman of this committee," the professor continued, " I wish to state that all blame for this seeming negligence, I trust when you have heard my statement you will be willing to absolve me from the charge of intentional neglect, all blame must rest upon me. I wish also to apologize to the other members of my committee." Here the professor s eye roved over the assembly until it found the one other member who was present, when it fixed itself upon him exclusively. " I wish to apologize for what may have appeared to be a lack of recognition of my responsibility towards them. If I have erred in my duty as chairman it has been through a desire to save my busy colleagues from the preliminary confusion and entanglement which characterize all investi gations of this nature. I did not expect to act alone ; in fact, I have not acted alone ; I have taken no action in the matter whatever." The dissatisfied member, being subdued by the professor s persistent gaze, assumed, in spite of his own better judgment, a mollified expression of countenance, and even politely smiled. " If I had known what the present investigation involved it is fair to say that I should never have undertaken it," resumed the professor. " I was not equipped for it. I do not believe that any one of us here in this room this evening is equipped for the kind of experience into which I was plunged. Truth was decidedly, in this in stance, at the bottom of a well ; and although I 228 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER went down several fathoms, and through an un speakable amount of slime and sediment, I have failed to bring her up." The audience smiled at this metaphor and began to look appeased. " I have been unable to bring in a report simply because until very lately I could not obtain a suf ficient number of facts accounting for the strike, either for or against the strikers." He gave his final clause with emphasis and glanced towards Philip. " As far as I can judge neither side in this strike, neither employer nor employees, under stands the position of the other side, and, partly through lack of self-control, partly through lack of intelligence, meetings for discussion and concilia tion always result in further misunderstandings and increased rancor. Not having been able to arrive at the real rights of the case, I have not felt justified in involving my constituents in action either for or against the strikers. The matter has seemed to me too serious to allow of hasty action, too serious in its bearing upon the moral tone of the community. As an individual I may, without serious detriment to myself, allow my sympathies to carry me away into expressions of partisanship which, in general, do no harm ; but it is quite an other thing to force a community into a false and perhaps immoral position before the eyes of the judicial world. This is all that your committee has to say on the subject. The facts did not war rant action. If my statement is unsatisfactory I A NON-COMMITTAL COMMITTEE 229 should be glad to amplify it, if I can do so without prejudice to those who have aided me in attaining my present state of ignorance. Are there any questions any one would like to ask ? " The professor paused, looked around, and sat down. The chairman threw the matter open for discus sion ; he did n t need to, but that was his mistake. The audience pitied him and thought how much better it could have presided than he did. A pass ing thought, however, for the professor was upper most in men s minds. A red-faced, sullen-looking gentleman in the back of the room inquired if Professor Gillespie spoke for himself or for the committee, when he said that the facts did not warrant action. The sullen-looking gentleman understood that the com mittee had taken no concerted measures, and he should like to know if other members, through personal investigations, had arrived at the same opinion as the chairman. The professor replied, flushing slightly, that he was sorry to have caused misunderstanding in the minds of his audience ; the statement was his, not the committee s ; the report was an informal one ; in fact, it was no report at all ; if other members of the committee were persuaded differently he wished they would speak for themselves. The one other member, not having made any investigations on his own account, kept still. A sallow, emaciated man with a blue-black, 230 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER curling beard arose and said that it seemed to him the committee had transcended its powers. As he understood it, the committee had been appointed for purposes of investigation only ; the right to decide for or against action rested entirely with the body of people who had appointed the com mittee, and the chairman was not empowered to decide, either personally or on behalf of the com mittee, whether or not the facts warranted action ; he was simply empowered to collect the facts, and state them. This presentation of the situation was so lucid, so true, and at the same time so unexpected, that the audience was, for the moment, shocked into speechlessness. Then Christopher stood up and surveyed the people all around him. " Let me assure this meeting that the necessity for action is entirely obviated," he said. "The strike is lost. Mr. Watson s shops resumed full work to-day. About a thousand men have gone back." This seemed to be news, and disconcerting news, to all except Philip and Agnes. "Might I ask," murmured a timid, feminine voice, " did it end in favor of the strikers or against them ? " Christopher, who had sat down, rose again. " I said the strike was lost," he repeated quietly. The audience had become grave and abstracted, eyes were lowered, heads were bent thoughtfully. A NON-COMMITTAL COMMITTEE 231 On a sudden, a woman got up, her face aflame with emotion, her eyes flashing. " If this is the case I do not see why we are here. The only dignified thing we can do under the circumstances is to adjourn." " Do you make that in the form of a motion, Mrs. Burroughs ? " asked the chairman. " Oh, you idiot ! " said Agnes in an exasperated whisper. " Before we adjourn I should like to ask Pro fessor Gillespie," it was Philip who spoke, and all eyes were turned to him hopefully, "I should like to ask just what he would have us to under stand by his statement at the beginning of his his report, that until very lately he could not obtain a sufficient number of facts. Are we to understand that very lately he has come into pos session of important facts ? " The professor faced his audience and hesitated. " These facts that is, some of these facts in general, perhaps I may say all of them have not a direct bearing upon the strike. They are in teresting to me as they throw light on the charac ter of the people in the strike, indirectly. But after careful consideration, I have concluded that they are not of the nature of evidence, strictly so called, and I prefer to consider them as confiden tial. I believe I am acting the part of wisdom in considering them as confidential. There have been enough heart-burnings caused by this strike. I am not willing to cause more, unnecessarily." 232 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER The sallow, black-bearded man arose. " I should like to ask, Mr. Chairman, if it lies in the province of this committee to decide what it shall withhold as evidence or not as evidence from this meeting, and whether indirect testimony has not as important a place in an investigation of this kind as direct testimony ; and whether this committee has a right to decide which shall be called direct and which indirect." " If the gentleman would kindly state his objec tions one at a time," suggested the chairman. " They were simply questions, Mr. Chairman, not objections, if you please." A frail little woman with a sea-shell complexion and iron gray hair took the floor and addressed herself sidewise towards the questioner. " Each one of us must of course be guided in a report of this kind, which is a revelation of the words and feelings of others, by their individual conscience. I appreciate Professor Gillespie s feel ing in this matter and would suggest to this meet ing that as we had sufficient confidence in him to appoint him chairman of our committee we should now give an example of our confidence by respect ing his reticence on this point." The meeting sat in silence for a few moments, baffled, but not subdued. " I trust I shall not be transgressing respect if I ask from what source Professor Gillespie had this indirect testimony which he does not regard in the nature of evidence." The speaker was a A NON-COMMITTAL COMMITTEE 233 tall, slow-moving, clumsy man with a smooth face, a large nose, and a dome-like forehead. " From the manufacturer." The professor s eyes shifted as he answered, and he did not re main standing. " From Mr. Watson ? " " Yes ! " The clumsy man asked no more questions. The expression of his face indicated that he had got all the information he wanted ; it also indicated what he thought of that information. Philip now returned to the charge. "You said these indirect facts threw light on the character of the people in the strike. Do I understand you to mean the working people ? " "The working people and the manufacturer also." " And that light, I judge, was not favorable to both sides ? " There were two labor men sitting a little apart in the back of the room, and one of them spoke. " I guess we all know where that light lit un favorable if old Peter flung the calcium," he ob served. Those members of the audience whose instinct was literary gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the moment ; but on the whole, a sense of hu mor was not predominant in the meeting. Philip had remained standing. " Does Professor Gillespie still feel that he is justified in keeping these facts to himself ? " 234 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER Philip s face was curiously pale, and alight with an exalted severity. The audience thought he was angry. But he was only sorry for Agnes. The professor got up hastily, his face was crim son, his eyes were wide and bright like those of a creature brought to bay. " The whole affair has been a disgraceful muddle from beginning to end," he exclaimed. " I have reason to believe that the alleged cause for the strike, the union principle, was not the real cause, that there has been deliberate deceit practised." " Maybe there has," said the labor man, speak ing out of order, " but it s not been all on our side nor a half, nor a quarter on our side ; you can stack your Bibles if you like, I m ready." The chairman rapped timidly on his table with a lead pencil. " I am not prepared to state what are facts and what are not facts in this evidence," continued the professor. " I have not had time to sift the matter. For personal reasons my position is difficult and, pardon me, very unpleasant. But I am ready to say this much : that I have been agreeably disap pointed in Mr. "Watson, the manufacturer in ques tion. In my interview with him he met me with an ingenuousness and courtesy such as I could hardly have hoped for at his hands, considering the errand on which I was bound. My opinion of his ability and his benevolence is higher than it was, and I have much to thank him for. I can appreciate, as never before, that there is an employer s side in all these difficulties." A NON-COMMITTAL COMMITTEE 235 He sat down and was followed on the floor by a young architect who had lately caused a small stir in cultured circles by refusing, on grounds of aesthetic socialism, to take a contract for a fifteen- story building. " How much more time would Professor Gilles- pie like for getting his evidence into shape ? If there is anything picturesque in the details he has picked up I suppose we are all willing to wait." Then the professor went a little way towards re deeming himself. " As these meetings were first held with the idea of giving aid to the strikers," he said, " and as I have not been able, through lack of time and other circumstances, to carry out the requirements of those who appointed me chairman of the commit tee, and as the strike has failed and there is no longer need of action on my part, I beg leave to retire from my position. Allow me to present to my committee and to this meeting my sincere apo logies and regrets for the inefficient and unsatis factory manner in which I have conducted this investigation. Your disappointment, your disillu sion, ladies and gentlemen, is not deeper than my own." " Mr. Chairman," said Philip, " I accept Mr. Gillespie s explanation, and apologize if I have seemed discourteous. I was not aware that he had personal reasons. I presume a motion to adjourn is in order, and I " " Mr. Chairman ! one moment, please." It was 236 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER the Professor of Moral Philosophy who had risen. " Before we adjourn may it not be fitting to say that, although this strike has come to an end before we, as a body, have come to a decision in regard to it, nevertheless, we may look upon it as a lesson, an experience for all of us, a widening of our outlook upon life? And, after all, this is the important thing, not whether strikes fail, or whether they succeed, but whether we, as men and women, have gained in moral and spiritual growth by our expe rience of them." "Do you make this as a motion?" asked the chairman. " N-no," faltered the Professor of Moral Philoso phy, looking a little dazed. " Mr. Chairman, I move that we adjourn," said Philip. " It is moved that we adjourn," announced the chairman. " All those in favor will please rise." Darting glances of animosity and disgust at the chair, the audience rose as a body. " All those opposed," but nobody listened to him any more. " Mr. Kenyon," said the woman who had moved adjournment earlier in the evening, " I should like to know what has become of those strikers who did not go back to work." Christopher looked at her out of his grave eyes. " Some are dead, Mrs. Burroughs. Yes, of star vation, I presume. One or two are in jail for assault and battery. Quite a number have moved A NON-COMMITTAL COMMITTEE 237 away and gotten work elsewhere, or else they have n t gotten work. The rest have disappeared." " You mean?" " I don t know where they are." " Oh, Mr. Kenyon, is n t there something we can do?" " We had our chance," he replied. "And lost it?" " And lost it." " But you don t think it was our fault, Mr. Ken- yon ? We were willing." " It is always the comunity s fault," Christo pher answered. " Whose else ? It is true that one man can do next to nothing, but all men can do much if they are of one mind." " But we were not in a position to understand the rights of the case." " How about the wrongs ? " " And some of them have actually died, Mr. Kenyon ? " " Yes ; but the ones who have gone back to work are to be pitied the most. They will not die of starvation, they will only starve, body and soul." " Ah ! I shall not sleep to-night." His answer was a preoccupied smile and a slight bow, and he moved away. Agnes was clinging to his arm. "Let us go to father, Christopher! He is standing over there all alone," she whispered. As they crossed the room they came upon the two labor men, who were making their way towards 238 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER the door. The one who had spoken in the meet ing stopped a moment to say : " Well, Mr. Kenyon, he bit off more n he could chew. That s the last time I ever trust one of em. They ain t got any backbone." He turned and looked at the professor for a moment silently, then he said : " Lord ! ain t he innocent ! " CHAPTER IX HALF MEASUEES OF course the failure of the strike was attended by a perfectly logical economic result old Peter sold his shoes at a lower price than Christopher could sell his, and Christopher s shoes went a-beg ging. Agnes was disturbed by the intensity and subdued excitement in her husband s manner in these days, but when he did not take her into his confidence she asked no questions. She thought all his trouble was anger against her father, and she respected him for his reticence. Her own mind was a good deal taken up with her father. She recognized that his failure in handling the strike had widened the rift that had already begun to separate her from him. It need not have widened this rift had her father chosen to take himself differently. But his pride had been grievously hurt, and he had always found difficulty in put ting himself in the wrong. That his conservatism should grow on him after his unpleasant experience was not unnatural. He had made a mistake ; he had laid himself open to ridicule ; it would be a long time before he ventured to make another mis take. He had had a hint that something he 240 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER or his world was not stable. He was a gentle, high-minded, conscientious man, but he was too much of a figure in his own landscape ; he played with great ideas quite seriously, but nothing out side himself impelled him to heroism. Christopher, too, was disappointed in the professor, but his dis appointment was overlaid by a heavier burden. In three months the eldest Loring minor would come of age, and the trust money must be restored. At present the trust money was not available. Christopher had not as yet grasped this fact in its full rounded significance. He saw it on its commer cial side alone ; he had never seen it on any other side. The events of the past three years had made him a financier rather than a moralist. For two years, or three a certain vagueness clouded the details of this period the Kenyon shops had run without a profit, but they had continued to run. Kenyon men never got less than the union rate of wages; Kenyon men never worked more than eight hours a day. Christopher and his con fidential bookkeeper worked considerably more than eight hours, especially just before those ap pointed days when the Loring interest fell due, for the interest had to be paid at the railroad rates then quoted, even though the trust money was invested elsewhere for the time being. In three months the heir was to assume the responsibility of the funds on behalf of his mother and sisters. " Men have paid back larger sums in less time," Christopher assured himself. But the failure of HALF MEASURES 241 the strike came as a shock to him, for despite his keenness and his skepticism he had unconsciously counted on success; perhaps because he had no other event in which to hope. When the failure came his depression and anxiety were too deep to allow him to hold the professor responsible. The professor became only one more pitiful victim and tool in the working of the sullen and dominant power which was darkening Christopher s horizon and bearing down relentlessly upon him and all his bright efforts for social regeneration. " The men would take less, for a while, if we asked them to," suggested the confidential book keeper. " We shall never ask them," Christopher an swered, black obstinacy lowering in his eyes. " I shall think of a way. Give me time. We have been in tight places before. " Never as tight as this," said the confidential bookkeeper. "I good God ! Mr. Kenyon, I can t sleep nights, thinking of this thing." "Neither can I," replied Christopher, "but we shall weather it." He held up his head somewhat after the fashion in which he had held it years ago when he smiled at Philip Starr s unworldly proposition and drove down the village street and met Agnes. The world had given him six months to break in, then ; and he had held his own for eleven years ; he had given twelve hundred shoe workers eleven years of peace and plenty ; he had made the workingmen his friends. 242 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " They can t touch you, you know, my boy, what ever happens," he added and turned to go. " But I m thinking of you, Mr. Kenyon." Christopher put his hand on the young man s shoulder. This was a village boy who had gone through a business college because his father worked in Kenyon shops and could afford to give him a chance. " God bless you, Sam ! " said his master, and then, with a reassuring smile : " There are dozens of men in the United States to-day in just the same fix as I am ; it s the price we pay for competition. They 11 come through so shall I. Men are coming through this sort of crisis every day ; we don t hear about them ; we only hear of the ones that fail." He walked home by way of the glen and the pool. He had fallen into the habit of coming round this way and sitting alone by the brookside, for the place was quiet. In his study he felt too near his wife. But to-day as he sat on the slant of the great gray rock with the pool beneath him, out of sight, his son came through the underbrush on the other side of the waterfall and welcomed him with a shout. " How s this ? " said Christopher. " I thought your mother had forbidden your coming to the glen alone." " She s let me this spring, because I m bigger," explained the boy, his look of delight fading before his father s impatient tone. " I ve promised to HALF MEASURES 243 never go on the big gray rock, and never in the water below the stepping-stones. And I never do ; truly. But " with his head on one side, coax- ingly "I could come over on it if you are there." " Well, come ; but you must be quiet." He came and sat at his father s right hand, de murely imitating his father s pose. He was more intimate with his mother and his uncle Philip than with his father, and he loved him, therefore, with a more romantic affection. He had gone with Philip, once, to see some men in Mr. Watson s factory, and the difference between the conditions there and those in his father s shops, the difference between the people, too, had made a strong impres sion upon him. " And it is all on account of my father that things are so different in our factory ? " the boy questioned his uncle. " All on account of your father," Philip an swered. He delighted in fostering this hero wor ship in Christopher s son. " And I ve got to do better than that, you say ! " exclaimed the child. "Oh, my! how ever can I? Uncle Philip, did anybody ever have quite such a such a great man for a father ? " To-day he sat reverently beside the great man, and from time to time glanced at him, but did not venture to break the silence. At last Christopher, aware of these glances, smiled, and rumpled the yellow hair. " Well, so you ve decided to come back and 244 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER live with us a little while longer before you turn into a clergyman like uncle Philip ? " " I m not going to turn into a clergyman like uncle Philip." " No ! I thought that was aU settled ? " " Oh, no ! I never promised to be a clergy man." Christopher looked down at his son in amuse ment. " What am I to do with you then ? " " Take me into the business." Christopher laughed out suddenly, and as sud denly hushed. " You don t want to be just an old shoemaker like your father," he said, with an effort at a ban tering tone. " Oh, but yes I do ! " returned little Christopher with absolute conviction. Then his eyes dilated and his cheeks flushed, and he rose to his knees beside his father. " Why ! I d rather be like you than anybody in all this world. You re the most oh, the most honorablest man there is, father ! " Christopher s eyes were set upon his son in a fixed stare, a dreadful stare, as of one who looks into an abyss. But the little boy, occupied with his own emotion, blinded by an inward vision of excellence, missed the look, and, flinging himself upon his father, continued his innocent rhapsody. " You re carrying the burden of the world, you know, and I ve got to, too, because I m little Christopher. Uncle Philip says I must do better HALF MEASURES 245 than you, because I m your son, and sons must always do better than their fathers. But I don t see how I can, father. I don t see how I can do better than you." There were little beads of moisture on Christo pher s brow and in the hollows of his temples. He held his son in a rigid, mechanical embrace, and said nothing. " Uncle Philip says we ve got to keep on till all the men in the world run their shops the way we run Kenyon shops. All the men in the world just that way ! " " A better way," said his father. " A better way ! " repeated little Christopher in unbelieving accents. " A better way than yours, father?" " You ve got to find a better way than mine, Christopher. Mine is a bad way." He took the child s head between his hands and looked straight into the dark eyes so like his own. " A bad way," he repeated ; " remember that." He lifted the boy in his arms and carried him off the gray rock and through the underbrush in silence. On the open lawn at the back of the house he set him down and said : " Now run and play ! " A simple mandate, but one quite impossible for little Christopher to obey under the circumstances. " I 11 ask uncle Philip," he said after a long period of solitary meditation, during which his little mind had arrived nowhere. But uncle 246 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER Philip was busy and did not come to Kenyon for some weeks. Christopher went to seek his wife. He had a half -formed intention of telling her everything, and yet he knew he should not do it. He found her in their own room reading a book on trusts, which was creating a ripple even beyond economic circles. He threw himself on the sofa, and she laid aside her book and came to sit near him with some sewing. " Christopher," she said, " don t be too hard on father." Her husband lifted his head with a puzzled look. After a moment he said, " Oh ! " and fell back again on the sofa. " I am quite sure that whatever father may do, whatever mistakes he may make, he is always actuated by the highest motives," she continued. " And high motives are a sufficient excuse for bad actions?" said Christopher musingly. He was not thinking of her father, but she did not know that. She cried out, " Oh, Christopher ! " involunta rily, and with an accent of pain which roused him. " My beloved ! " he exclaimed, drawing her to him, " you misunderstood. I was stupid ! Be lieve me, I was not thinking of your father when I said those words. I was not judging him." She let herself sink down on the floor beside the sofa, and rested her chin on his breast, scanning his face. HALF MEASURES 247 " The strike has disappointed me, your father s inability to act has disappointed me ; but after all, those of us who rush into action don t come off any more gloriously, and my disappointment in your father is only a small affair in my con sciousness. Don t let it trouble you, dearest. I am so much more disappointed in other things. When a man has failed himself in his great need, he has little heart to blame others for failing him also." " You have not failed yourself, my husband ! " she said with grave assurance. Yes, I have." " You have not failed me ! " He took her head between his hands as he had taken the boy s ; he kissed her on her eyes, her throat, her lips, very gently. "We are in a bad way," he said. " We have been before," she answered. " It is only your natural despondency that unnerves you now, you, who can hope so high ! " " Beloved, I have hoped too high. I have been proud as Lucifer. And now I cannot hope any more." "You know that is not true," she whispered, brushing his cheek with a butterfly touch as she bent over him, moving her lips. " You know you are hoping now, planning, finding a way. What is it at this time that is so urgent ? " "Agnes, I must have money to pay a loan, a large loan. And Watson has caught the market." 248 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " A large loan ? You never told me. When did you borrow it ? " " Oh, a business man borrows more or less all the time," he returned evasively; "it s a part of the system." " But can t you pay the interest, or renew, or something, the way you ve done other times ? " " No ; this time the principal must be paid. I I won t go into the details ; it s a complicated affair ; you would n t understand. But I ve got to find the money." " When must it be paid ? To-morrow ? " He was nervous and unstrung he almost laughed. " No ; in three months." " Oh ! three months ! But of course you 11 do it in three months. I knew it would turn out less black than you pictured it. You are always such a faithless giant. Three months ! The idea ! " " But the season is almost over, Agnes ; the runners are coming in every day, and they have sold next to nothing." ." Can t the banks help you? " " They 11 have to, if anything does. But I don t want to show them the books." His eye fell before her questioning glance. " I don t want them to see how little we ve made these last years, dearest. I don t care to have them know that we ve been running on no profits. They they would n t understand, you know they are n t used to men who who don t mind doing business that way." HALF MEASURES 249 " But it s an honest business," she cried in dignantly, and again he could not lift his eyes to hers. " If you could show profits like Peter Watson s, that would indeed be something to be ashamed of. Christopher, show them those books ! It will give those greedy bank directors a lesson. Perhaps it will bring about a change of heart in them." She smiled and kissed him. " You don t understand," he reiterated. " What don t I understand ? " she asked softly, and waited, watching him. But he kept his eyes lowered, and did not answer. " Is there some thing else ? " " Yes, there is something else." " Is it the something that I have been waiting for you to tell me for months and months, and you have had it on your lips to tell me and in your eyes to tell me, but you have never told ? " He looked up at her, startled, terrified. " Yes, it is that," he replied, and raised himself on his elbow, frightened at himself, at the pos sibility that he might be going to tell her this thing. " It has troubled you, and I have wanted to share the trouble," she whispered, putting her arms around his neck. " I have been lonely in this mist that was somehow between us. If I had not known you for what you are I might have thought you were keeping it from me because it was something wrong. There have been times when that thought has crossed me, that it was 250 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER something wrong. Forgive me, Christopher. It was not a real thought; I never really believed such a thing of you, my husband ; it was only a flash of unruly imagination tempting me. One s mind is such a curious place. I have prayed for us both ; I thought, I wanted to think, that it was because you were in need of of God. Forgive me ! You are doing this work so much alone, and it makes me tremble because I don t believe even you can do it alone with just human strength. You are such a good man, and you are trying to lift such a heavy weight, all alone. But I have not believed that it was a wrong thing you would not tell me. I am only trying to explain. You are not disappointed ? You do not believe I ever really doubted you ? Now tell me this thing." Christopher sat up and took her in her arms a moment with a laugh and a kiss. "I am going to try the bank," he said; "we shall come through yet." And he went down to his study. CHAPTER X THE HELPING HAND BUT to say truth, Christopher had already come into closer contact with the bank than was pru dent. The Loring interest had been obtained by notes of hand, some of which were approaching their second maturity, and to ask for more time was certain to excite suspicion. Hitherto Christo pher had kept his fingers off aunt Ada s little com petence ; but now he took her stocks and bonds, and those of her old schoolmate, and sold them through a broker, as he had sold the Loring funds on a previous occasion. Having by this means squared himself with the bank in regard to the notes of hand, he decided to venture the new loan. The amount he must ask for made him sick, but there was no other way out. He knew that rumor had begun to be busy with his name, that men were talking about him idly. The broker who disposed of the stocks may have taken a dis passionate interest in public affairs, in strikes, and shoe markets, and trust funds, or he may have been simply loquacious. Christopher waited longer than he could afford to, thinking the wave of gossip would subside. One day young Loring 252 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER called to take a lesson in managing his own affairs, came all the way down to Kenyon to take this lesson. Christopher carried him home to dinner, showed him the garden and the glen, and kept the conversation on athletics and Kipling. The next day he opened negotiations for the loan, and, hav ing offered to make showing of his business, he turned the strong and apparently solvent side of it towards the bank. Then the bank s finance committee being in session, one of its members ex pired of apoplexy in the presence of his colleagues, and, after the unavoidable delay occasioned by courtesy and the shock, Peter Watson was chosen in the room of the deceased member. Christo pher s first knowledge of this latter event came in the form of a polite note from old Peter, request ing an interview with Mr. Kenyon, and informing him that in writing this note his correspondent acted in no way for the bank, but entirely out of personal interest in his old friend s son. Chris topher telephoned his wife that he was called to town on business, and might be kept over night. She asked no questions, because the telephone girl was not kept very busy in Kenyon, and had been known to retail messages. She dreaded many things, but, fortunately, not the right one. In the train, Christopher occupied himself with wondering whether old Peter really knew, or whether he was only trying to find out. " I might test his benevolence by offering to borrow from him," he thought, and a grim smile THE HELPING HAND 263 flitted across his lips. " I suppose this note means he won t stand up for me with the bank. Well, if he does n t " Christopher s mind became a con fused hurly-burly of rejected half measures. " Just give me time and I 11 think my way out." For weeks the plan that was to save him, and his industrial enterprise, and his family, had seemed to hover on the threshold of his consciousness ; but it did not enter. As he walked through the yard of Watson s fac tory, a man spoke to him, a man he had seen at labor union meetings. " We re downed this time, Mr. Kenyon," said the man, " but we 11 be at it again, and we won t make the same mistakes next time." The words heartened Christopher, and sent him into old Peter s presence with a brave front. " All ! I m obliged to you for coming so soon," exclaimed the old gentleman. " I hardly expected you before noon ; did n t know you could get away so easily." " The morning trains run every half hour," re plied Christopher. " I inferred from your note that the business might be urgent." " No no," said old Peter, affecting noncha lance. " I m sorry if I hurried you." " I was not hurried ; it was perfectly convenient for me to come." Christopher had taken a chair at one side of the manufacturer s desk. The two men were silent for a moment, and then old Peter spoke, stretch- 264 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER ing his arm along the desk towards his guest, a friendly gesture. " The fact is, my boy, you re in a tight place." Christopher took a step in the dark. " Yes, I am," he answered, and waited. " I knew it," returned Watson, but in the tone of one who had wanted confirmation. Christopher breathed more freely. " Perhaps he does not really know," he thought. Aloud he adopted the friendly tone of his competitor. " You think you can get this money for me, Mr. Wat son?" "I have nothing to do with it, you know," deprecated old Peter. " It is entirely with the bank, and being but just appointed on the finance committee I should hesitate to to " He did not say what he should hesitate to do, although Christopher waited a minute to find out. " What I thought when I sent you that note," he resumed, " was that I might be able to prevent the necessity of your borrowing at least such a large sum from the bank. It Va very large sum." He scanned his visitor s face keenly. " Perhaps my proposition is irregular from a business point of view, but for your father s sake " " This is most kind, most generous of you ! " exclaimed Christopher, feigning spontaneity. In his heart he was questioning : Is he sorry for me ? Can it be that he is going to help me out ? " Peter smiled quizzically. " Is the new school of industry the only one that is to be allowed to THE HELPING HAND 255 practice generosity ? " he asked. " You did n t ex pect it of me, did you ? Well, well ; I, too, thought that I was an old wise man at forty. Now, let us see what we can do. Come, tell me all about it ! " Christopher felt his heart shrink, contract. He and old Peter looked at each other steadily from beneath low-drawn eyebrows. " Still, you are my competitor," said Christo pher. The effort to breathe, to keep his voice in order, made his head ring. " I had thought your difficulty might not be directly connected with competition," suggested old Peter. His tone was very smooth ; it startled Christopher, but it angered him too, and sent the blood to his face. " All my difficulties are connected with competi tion," he said hotly. " Hm I remember ; you young reformers make competition cover a multitude of sins." There was a hard look in the old gentleman s eyes. " God ! he knows ! " thought Christopher ; but the next moment he was doubting again. " Mr. Watson," he said, holding his head high, " I owe a large sum of money : I have made a bad investment ; you have taken the market away from me ; you have undersold me ; you have ruined my this year s business ; I cannot pay this money that I owe. Now will you help me out ? " " What securities do you offer ? " " I have laid my securities before the bank." There came into old Peter s eyes the shadow of 256 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER a smile that said as plain as words could have said it, " Do you take me for a fool ? " and as he smiled old Peter shook his head gently, and tapped on the table with a pencil. " I have been led to suppose that the bank was satisfied with these securities, Mr. Watson." And still the old man shook his head and smiled. " What had you in mind if the bank did n t see its way towards granting this loan ? " he said at last. " I do not see that our relations justify me in answering that question." Christopher assumed an expression of dignity as he made this reply. "I cannot be expected to lend money at hap hazard," began the old gentleman after a pause. " For all I know, this money may go to bolster up your enterprise, and there is no harm in say ing it I think we both know I don t approve of your way of doing business." So many of Peter s remarks had a double meaning for Christopher! They stung him, maddened him. " The proposition came unasked from you, sir ! " he exclaimed, rising and taking his hat. " True, and I have not withdrawn it. Sit down, sit down ! A man in as tight a place as you are can t afford to take offense when his theories are criticised." " May I ask in how tight a place you assume me to be ? " Peter twinkled genially. "As tight as your temper," he suggested, and Christopher sat down, remembering that this was an old man. THE HELPING HAND 257 " Mr. Kenyon, I like you. I told your friend the clergyman so years ago when you were start ing out on this venture. I asked him to warn you ; but he had a bee in his bonnet too. You ve made an interesting fight. I m willing to ac knowledge you are something more than a dreamer. I like you. Mr. Kenyon, what should you say to me if I were to make you a proposition something like this : I am enlarging my business ; sell me your plant ; sell me your machinery, your build ings, what stock you have on hand, and begin over again. I will buy you out for half the amount you wish to get from the bank. Perhaps I can prevail on the committee to let you have the other half. This is an unworldly proposition, I admit. But I like you. What do you think of it?" " I think," said Christopher, with a smile, " that I am more of an obstacle to you commercially than I had flattered myself I was, since you wish to buy me out." Peter leaned his elbow on the desk, rested his chin in his hand, and looked straight at Christo pher with narrow eyes. " Think again," he said. There was a threat in his voice. " What do you mean ? " demanded Christopher haughtily. " I said this was an unworldly proposition, Mr. Kenyon. You are in a tight place. Are there no other ways in which I could obtain possession of your plant if I wanted to ? " 258 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER Christopher sat perfectly still, his nostrils di lated, his eyes, after one flash of fear, carefully lowered upon a spot on the floor. When he could trust his voice he answered : " If there are, you would better take advantage of them, for I shall never sell." " Don t be a fool ! " said old Peter. " What should I be to sell twelve hundred men into slavery ? Men who believe in me ; men whom I have educated to carry out the principles that I believe are honest. Yes, I have made a mistake. I have not been radical enough. If I were to do it over again I should do it differently. I should give up all, divide the capital, and take my share. I have kept too much power in my own hands ; I have not been equal to the responsibility ; the men ought to have shared it. But I was very far from my people at first. I was a college man and I could not trust them. It seemed as if judg ment rested only with the learned. I have made a mistake. I have mismanaged for them, I have ignored them, and now you ask me to betray them as well. They trust me ! " " There speaks the dreamer ! But is it not true that their situation will be the same whether you sell to me or whether you do not ? How much longer do you expect to run your business if you do not get this loan ? How much longer do you expect to even if you do get it ? Frankly, is not your scheme already a failure, Mr. Kenyon ? " " No I my scheme will only be a failure when it THE HELPING HAND 259 convinces my men that the present commercial sys tem is a righteous one. If my shoe factory must be bankrupt and my workmen must starve, it shall be the world s fault, not mine. And my men shall recognize that it is the world s fault. My scheme has hardly been more than a protest, but as a protest it shall not be in vain. It is considered a crime to murder a man ; but to mur der whole hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children, by slow starvation, bad air, unwhole some labor, that one or two men may grow rich and sleek, and morally stultified, this is legiti mate." Sleek was a good word to apply to old Peter. Christopher glanced out of the window, where, across the yard, the ugly factory whirred, and hun dreds of human beings worked, and sickened, and starved for bread and for love. Then he turned and looked at its master. "A man may not break open his neighbor s house," Christopher continued, " and take his bric- abrac, but he may, without fear of criticism, cheat his workmen of their living wage in order to make the same profit in a bad year that he does in a good year." He stood on his feet the better to make his defense. "The world may no longer burn martyrs at the stake, but it may still perse cute by competitive methods any individual who tries to do business so that his fellow men may have a chance as well as himself. It is the world s fault if I have failed ! it is the world s fault ! " 260 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " Nevertheless, you are not the man to say it." The dry tone put an end to Christopher s elo quence, dropped him down to the flat, gray level of his sin, and the realization that old Peter knew. He began to pace the office rapidly. " I repeat, that you are not the man to make this arraignment," said old Peter. " Much that you say is true theoretically. Whether we are going to mend it by giving the brutal instincts and the unreason of the lower classes freer play than they already have, I take the liberty to doubt. Whether your moral lesson to your men is going to be as complete as you think it will be, I also doubt, considering your own methods of meeting the world s persecution. However, the morals of the workingman are already twisted ; your ex ample may not do much more harm." Christopher stopped in his walk and faced the old man with an oath. " I know I am speaking plainly, Mr. Kenyon, but you have spoken plainly too. You say that the failure of your business is the world s fault. Is the loss of the Loring money also the world s fault?" Christopher turned white and his eyes blazed with fury. " How long have you been prying into my affairs ? " he said quietly. "Not prying; only putting two and two to gether. That was a very large sum of money to borrow, as I remarked before, suspiciously large. You have lost your sense of proportion, Mr. Ken- THE HELPING HAND 261 yon. Is it nothing to use money that does not belong to you ? Is it nothing to reduce a trusting woman and her tender offspring to beggary ? Is it nothing to obtain money under false pretenses ? Is it nothing to drag your father s honest name in the dust and to bring disgrace upon your wife and your son ? " Christopher flung up his arms with a gesture of torture and appeal, and continued his walk with his hands at his temples and his fingers digging into his face. " I gave you an opportunity to avoid this plain speaking. I offered you an honorable way out of the difficulty; an opportunity to save your wife and child, to keep your name stainless before the world. Mr. Kenyon, you are hardly more than forty years old. Take care how you fling yourself away ; take care how you fling away your son s future. You have a duty to that son as well as to these twelve hundred ungrateful leeches that have fed on you for the last eleven years. Mr. Kenyon, I offer you this opportunity again. Think of your son. Let the workingmen stand on their own feet. Sell me your plant and I will " "No! No! No!" shouted Christopher. "You miserable tempting devil ! You damned white washed hypocrite ! You accuse me of sin ! You ! How many widows and orphans have you cheated, old man ? How many young manufacturers beside myself have you wrecked and driven into the pit ? How many men, women, and children in this last 262 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER strike died of slow starvation, or went to prison for theft and assault? How many workingmen are starving now on the miserable pittance you have called a wage since you broke the strike ? You believe in a God and a mercy-seat, and so much the worse for you ! Don t venture to bear testimony against me in high places, old man ! I have cast my lot in with the workers, and with them I stay. There was no other way out ; there was no other way ; I tried to find one. The sys tem and men like you have made righteous living impossible. And my sin be on whose shoulders your God chooses, but I can bear it better than I could bear yours." Old Peter sat alone in his office and passed his hand several times across his forehead. Hard words are disturbing, even though they do not strike deep ; and a callous old man may also be plaintive. He wrote a note to Philip Starr, in which he said : " Our friend Christopher has made his choice. I think he may need you. He seemed quite beside himself. I have done all that a Chris tian could be expected to do under the circum stances, and my advances have been met with vituperation. Now see what you can do." He mailed this note on his way to the bank. Philip got it the next morning. CHAPTER XI THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR FOR ten minutes after Christopher went out of Peter Watson s office he was as unaware of him self and his surroundings as a man in a dead faint. He neither thought nor felt nor saw ; he only walked, straight ahead, with a slow, lagging step and blank eyes. He had gone the length of the dreary little park where Jeanie had lodged in the winter, he had climbed an arid suburban hill, before his mind stirred. Then he sat down mechanically on a block of granite near a half -built house, and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. It was early June and midday, but time and place had gone out for Christopher; he had begun to walk in eternity. During the remainder of that long day he neither looked at his watch nor ate any food. From time to time as he wandered through the streets, the sights and sounds of the city were borne in upon him, he heard and saw and consid ered them, but he had done with them, not con sciously, not by his own will, but as it were inevi tably. " I am what is called a bad man," he said to himself at last, getting up from the block of 264 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER granite and walking down the hill. " I am a de faulter, a criminal, a thief! But this is impos sible ! I am an honorable man a gentleman. I have no evil in my heart towards man or all the world." "I do not understand how this thing came about. I have lost its beginning. If I could but remember when it began to be a crime ! But I cannot." "Let me think. In the beginning it was not a crime. I swear to God it was not a crime in the beginning. Would I I, Christopher Ken- yon, have committed a crime ? The thing is pre posterous, unimaginable. When did it change? For I have not changed. I cannot remember anything about it why I told myself I could do it. If I could recall the reasoning now, the justi* fication I know there is a justification. I know ! But I cannot remember the defense. It has gone from -me." " Perhaps, after all, crime is always nothing more than this. Perhaps they all feel this way, all those other men." " Not guilty ! Not guilty ! I do not understand why I am guilty. I do not understand ! Neither does the world. The world is twisted. It calls this sin. This ! But I could not commit sin I ! " " Ruffians, villains these are sinners. But I am clean. Who shall look into my soul and say I am not clean ? O God, what is sin ? I cannot seem to understand." THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 265 " Let me think ! I have taken that which does not belong to me. But I had a reason ? Surely, I had a reason ? The men ? Yes, but there was some other? deeper, more convincing? And it was not a crime then, in the beginning ? " " If I could only remember these last three years! But they are gone. I think I was not awake. I did not know what I was doing. I have been walking in my sleep, and I have sinned." He was sauntering past a long reach of cheap shops in one of the broad thoroughfares that had developed slum spots at intervals along its length as it traversed the city. He saw a dirty little fellow take a plum off a pile on a fruit-stand and run into a court. " Just so," he thought, " and I suppose he ought not to have taken the plum ; but these things are done so quickly, and, after all, they mean nothing. I cannot see that they mean anything. I wonder what they will mean to Agnes ! " He stopped and looked for a long time into a baker s window. " This will not make any difference to her ; she is my wife ; she will see how it is impossible that I can be a criminal. I am not afraid that Agnes will not see brave little Agnes, who dwells for ever at the heart of a flame." " I would not tell her before. I cannot think why it was that I would not tell her. But she has told me she believed in me." " Let me think ! What was it she said ? Some- 266 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER thing about her imagination, and knowing all the while I had done nothing wrong. And yet I have. What will she say ? What will Agnes say ? " He turned away from the baker s window and went on down the street. A woman, passing, looked at him, his face was so openly a face of grief. " I think I will get the men to explain it to Agnes," he continued ; " the men will understand. I did it for the men ; they will see how it is not sin. Perhaps the men can tell me the justifica tion. I think she would like to have them explain it to her. I am glad I did not desert the men." After an hour or more he came to an open place a park, where there was a stone bench and the statue of a patriot. He sat down and looked at the man of bronze and read the inscription of praise carved on the pedestal. He had meant to be a patriot too ; he had meant to deserve well by his fellow men. He had lifted his arm against the oppressor, and cast in his lot with the down trodden and weak. And withal, evil had triumphed gloriously. To-morrow he must go down into the pit, if indeed he were not already descending, a knave, the despoiler of widows and orphans, dishonored, unsung. " I do not understand," he said again, for the fiftieth time and then, aloud, he murmured, " Monuments of brass." When he left the statue he walked down the middle of a long, pretentious avenue planted with THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 267 four rows of trees still young and upstart in char acter. " And there is no one to lead them. I tried, and I have failed. They are afraid of each other, and of all the world. For a little while they leaned on me, but I am a broken reed. I wonder what they will do ! I wonder when the new day will dawn ! Who will arise and take pity on the workingmen ? Alas, alas, they needed me, and I have failed. If I could only see, even now, now that it is over, how it might have been done another way. But I could not cut down the wages. That, too, would have meant defeat, and I could not in crease the hours. God knows we had little need to increase the hours this last year, with no one to buy the shoes. " It was only a loan. I borrowed it, I did not steal. I did not steal! My hands are clean of theft. I borrowed it. They did not give me time. If I could see some other way I might have gone, instead of this, I would thank God. They drove me into it, and I do not see anything I could have done, but this except betray the men ; except go out of business and give it all up and leave the men to shift for themselves. And that was not to be thought of. When the world comes to acknowledge that that, too, is sin, that grinding of the poor, that conventional method of stealing another man s bread, the mills will be kept busy weaving sack-cloth ; men will go to the furnace for nothing but ashes." 268 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER He sat on a bench under the waving young trees and pressed his head between his hands. In the roadway on either side of him the carriages of the rich rolled up and down, noiselessly for the most part, on rubber tires, but with an occasional jingle of harness. "I do not see how I could have done differ ently," he said. " Either way it was sin. This is what the world has come to. A man must give up trying to earn a living; there is no other way out." He sat for an hour under those young trees, with nursemaids coming and going on the grass around him, and the unstable toddlers knocking against his knees. As the afternoon wore on, his mind cleared and he faced the situation intelli gently, but always without hope. He told himself definitely that he had sinned, had broken the law, and must suffer. But what about these other men who had broken the law ? After all, it was only a question of which way to break it. The honest man was caught in a trap these days. Profit sharing was safe enough, pitifully safe, if he hadn t kept up the wages too. But men would say he had been too hasty with his reforms, had wanted to do too much too quickly. They would say he had been obstinate. Well, that was true. And yet, if he had it all to do over again, he should be more radical, he should make a cleaner sweep. The fault lay in his academic distrust, in his powerlessness to escape from the tradition of benevolence which had enervated his character. THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 269 "I wanted to save them from their own mis takes. I thought they were children. I would educate them and then give them their independ ence. And the thing was plainly too big for me. It would not have been too big for all of us to gether. We should not have allowed each other to be dishonest. I ought to have divided the cap ital ; I ought to have given it to them in the first place. Charity ! Oh, fool, fool ! Whose was it, if not theirs ? Theirs that laid it up for my father. Never mine! And I have squandered it. We were so young, Agnes ; and we thought we were so radical, and we thought we gave the men so much liberty. You would have done it better than I, dear, you, with your divine rashness in doing right. But I made you my wife, and I gave you the child ; and I did not tell you what I was doing. I have been so wrong in so many ways." About five o clock he got down into the shop ping streets and threaded his way deliberately through the maze of women and loungers that thronged the sidewalks and jostled towards the shop windows. He had a sense as of infinite toil ers crowding upon his heart, stifling him, crushing life and thought and the power of action out of him. Behind the counters in the shops he saw the men and women measuring cloth, and selling pins, shooting money boxes through pneumatic tubes, tying parcels with white string. Above his head, on the other side of the street, cloak-makers sat at sewing-machines, printers read copy, elevators rose 270 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER and fell eternally crammed. Under his feet, be neath the honeycomb slabs of clouded glass, women sold china and tinware for the great department stores, or altered ready-made garments. " And they are almost all underpaid and over worked. And I have failed." He fled from this toiling bedlam to the devious windings of the lower city, and strayed among bank buildings, railroad offices, government edi fices, set slantwise, edgewise, cornerwise, along the narrow twisted streets. Christopher had walked all day unrecognized, but here, in the dusk of the June evening, an acquaintance hailed him. " Holloa, Kenyon ! you ve missed the seven fifteen. Better come home to dinner with me. I ve got to take my wife to hear that wall-eyed East Indian what s-his-name talk about Mahat- inas. He s a regular old rat, but he juggles the women ; uses the tail of his turban for a hand kerchief. Fine show ! Come on ! " "Thank you," Christopher answered, with a smile, " but I m a materialist, you know. Having pinned my faith on tough hides and leather, I don t take stock in astral bodies ; and my wife expects me. My regards to Mrs. Morton. The next day, as this man stood with the crowd outside the newspaper offices reading a sensational bulletin, he turned a shocked face on his elbowing neighbor and said : " My God ! I saw him yesterday spoke to him ; and he answered me with a joke ! " THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 271 Christopher came to the water s edge at dark, and looked out on the shipping, the distant lights of the navy yard, the shadowy suggestions of islands in the harbor. A policeman eyed him and walked back and forth near at hand. " He thinks I am going to drown myself," thought Christopher. "Well, why not?" He looked at the water again, then turned on his heel and walked inland. As he passed the policeman he said, " Good evening fine night ; there s going to be a moon." The policeman assented cheerfully and went off on his beat. The people whom Christopher met now were Italians and Russian Jews. Men came out of dark and unexpected alleys, rat holes ; children swarmed up from cellars ; an occasional " Gospel Mission, Welcome to All " or " Salvation Army Headquarters " illuminated an upper window. "Poor wretches!" said Christopher. "These cannot even make shoes. The thieves on the other side have driven them over to us, and we are treating them like rotten cabbage ; pressed down, packed tight. But it ferments. It is even known to explode, and make a very nasty mess. I ought to have devoted myself to literature. I could have written excellent books of social invective. But it will do no good now, now that I have committed the unconventional sin. Only the conventional sins pass, with the world." He was in the station, and as he walked down 272 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER between the tracks to his train, he turned absently to the left hand instead of to the right ; but the conductor recognized him and sang out, " This side for Maberley, Rowell, and Kenyon Village." Christopher acknowledged the warning with a nod and a smile, and got into the car. Just so sane, and yet so confused, had he been all day. He watched the rising moon through the car window. He counted the stations mechanically. "I shall not need to tell Agnes to-night," he thought. " It will be too late to-night. I wonder what will happen to - morrow ? Will everybody know? And when it is all over, what shall we do, Agnes and I and the boy ? Shall we go and live in the village in one of the factory cot tages ? We ought to have done that in the first place. Agnes said we ought. She did not want to live in the Homestead when the workers had only their little houses. Shall we go to the city, perhaps, and start there, fresh ? " On a sudden, Christopher sat bolt upright in his seat. The man in front glanced round, but the light in the car was poor. Sin ! That was what it meant ! That ! O God ! O God ! only let him get away into the dark ness, away from his fellow men anywhere. Escape ! Escape ! while there was yet time. They would put detectives on his track. They would try him in court, and twelve men, some of whom he might even know by name, Morton, perhaps, would bring in a verdict of guilty ! " THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 273 " Kenyon Village," called the brakeman, " this train express to Chatfield." Christopher staggered out, and around the dark side of the little station. Oh, horrible ! Why had he never thought of this ? Not guilty ! Not guilty ! And old Wat son would go free to slay his tens of thousands. He went down the deserted village street almost at a run, and under the walls of the factory he dropped down in a heap, babbling, shaken with sobs. Above his head the hundred silver eyes of the moonlighted windows gleamed towards the Home stead, as they had gleamed that other night eleven years ago when he had told Agnes he loved her and he could only drag her down to poverty and wretchedness. And she did not care. But she did not know what wretchedness meant, then, nor did he. How could he have believed, then, that he should commit a common, vulgar crime ? He, Christopher Kenyon, the man of great ideals. " I do not understand," he said ; " I do not un derstand." He came out from the shadow of the wall and looked up at the shops, his shops, that were to have belonged to every shoe worker in Kenyon, as to him, after the profit sharing had developed into cooperation, and the cooperation into labor copart nership. Three years ago some of the men had come to him and asked to have their very small 274 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER accumulated profits used to buy shares and form a stock company on the cooperative basis, but Chris topher had dissuaded them; he would not take their little money on false pretenses, when times were so bad. He had never cheated his men of a penny. " Watson was right I have twisted their morals. They will not be able to see that I have done wrong. Will they come into the court ? Will they follow me ? And in that place I shall hear that they have lost their little homes ; that they are out of work ; that Watson has bought the factory. It was my wife who told me that I could not do it alone ; but who was to help ? How can a man by searching find out God ? That s scrip ture. I m getting religious. It s rather late in the day. But she knew; my little wife always knows. I could n t do it alone. Life is all done : henceforth, idiots, paupers, and ex-convicts. O God, O God ! Why must so many other sinful men go free?" He went towards home by the way of the glen. " It s nobody s fault but mine," he whispered, stumbling among the trees in the treacherous moon-darkness. " Her father is a weak man. He spoiled the strike. But I am a weak man too ; only, I meant it for the best, for the men s sake. And yet it was a sin. I know, I know ! O God, I wish I did not know ! What was it Philip said, once ? Ye have not resisted unto blood, some thing like that. Philip, old fellow, most pitiful, THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 275 sternest friend, I have sinned. I was obstinate. I did not tell Agnes, I did not tell you, I did not tell the men, because I knew it was sin. Yes, Philip, I know the cause was in God s hand. But when a man has planned his life, and set himself a goal, and seen that it was good good, I say, not sinful, not selfish, and when a man s head s harder than a battering ram Philip, Philip, old fel low, tell your God for me that I have sinned. I do not understand His ways, but my ways are bad. Help the boy, Philip ; start him straight. Guilty I Guilty ! Yes ; it s all true. But if it were to do again ? I am afraid afraid. It s all very well to say Repent, you John the Baptists, but I was just as anxious to hurry the kingdom of heaven as you are. I know I d sin again, being I. God ! I ve got to learn how to repent. There was no body else even willing to sin for the men ; and what could I do ? Not guilty, your Honor ! I only borrowed it." " Where am I ? Ah, yes ; the gray rock. Let me sit here awhile and think." CHAPTER XH THE VICIOUS CIRCLE LITTLE Christopher came dancing down to the glen through the brilliant June sunshine. Uncle Philip had come out from the city quite early to talk business with mother, he said, and to give a diligent little boy a holiday. Mother had run up to uncle Philip and caught him by the arm and cried, " He has sent me a message by you ? " and uncle Philip had said, " Is n t he here ? " But little Christopher was so happy at having a holi day he didn t pay much attention to these re marks ; he just ran out of the room with a shout, and slid down the banisters and raced across the lawn to the woods. In the woods he sang a little song, all chirrups and twitters and trills. He had forgotten his cap, and his hair blew out around his head in a very halo as he ran. So went this little namesake of a saint down into the valley of the shadow to take up his burden. The shadow was in the pool. All the rest of the glen was a-flicker with shattered light. Yesterday Christo pher had begun a dam a little way up the brook. He stood now and surveyed the scene of his labors, poised on the great low-lying branch of a tree that overhung the water. He had one eye for suitable THE VICIOUS CIRCLE 277 dam-stones too, wedge-shaped ; and what was that on the gray rock ? Not a stone ! No, a straw hat. Christopher s bird song overflowed into a little ripple of laughter. " Father ! " he called, and waited smiling. Then he hopped off the bough, and took his way across the stepping-stones. " Father, fa-ather ! " he called again. Long years afterward, when he was an old man and the burden had at last revealed itself to him for what it was, the very Christ, the Man of Sorrows, he could still see, as on this bright June morning, the sun-bespattered glen, the mot tled, restless water, the crowding trees on the bank, the little tufts of quaker-ladies growing in the chinks of the rocks in midstream, and the great gray rock with his father s hat lying on it. He meant to stand on the opposite bank and peer across the brook with his sharp child eyes be yond the gray rock through the trees, and cry, " I spy, father, you need n t try to hide." But as he came out upon the little ledge above the pool, he saw the shadow. He stood quite still to look at it. The water running down heavily over the lip of the pool kept the shadow mercifully below the surface, about a foot below. It lay and shifted there, in shape like a man, mercifully, also, as yet face downward. Christopher climbed down the rocks, keeping his eyes always upon the shadow. He climbed down till he stood on the flat smooth rim of the 278 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER pool. If he had been a man or a woman, he would undoubtedly have turned sick or giddy ; he might have fainted. Being a child, and alone, he stooped down upon the edge of the pool and looked at the shadow, and looked and looked and looked, with out uttering a sound. It was not that he did not understand. He climbed back up the rocks at last, looking over his shoulder with strained eyes, and turning white and panting a little. But he crossed the stepping-stones sure-footed. On the lawn he broke into a slow run ; in the house he walked again up the stairs. He made no sound until he reached his mother s room, but in the doorway he paused, gasped once or twice helplessly, and at last cried out: " Mother ! father ! The vicious circle ! " And then he began to scream, one scream after another, faster and faster, standing straight up in the doorway with his little lips all blue. Philip sprang to him and lifted him up in his arms, straining him close to hush those dreadful screams. " My God, what have they done to this child ? " he cried. " The pool ! " whispered Agnes, coming very close and looking an unspeakable question into his face. " He always calls the pool the vicious circle." " Stay here ! " exclaimed Philip. But she was gone, and aunt Ada was in the room asking if Christopher had bumped his head. THE VICIOUS CIRCLE 279 Philip gave the boy to her and dashed out of the house. He caught up with Agnes at the edge of the wood, and tried to hold her back, to get ahead of her, but she clung to him fiercely, hindering him, and they went on together. "Do not think this dreadful thing," he mur mured at last, as a flash of the brook came through the trees. " How dare you ? " she answered. " He is my husband. He is a brave man. He will face them all." And then she crossed the brook, and the thing that was never to be explained was revealed to her. For he had been a brave man. BOOK III THE ELEGY " Yea, said John Ball, "t ia the twilight of the dawn. God and St. Christopher send us a good day ! A Dream of John Ball, WILLIAM MORKIS. CHAPTER I THE CORONACH THE day the master of Kenyon shops was bur ied the bells in the village tolled f rojn sunrise to sunset. People on the trains thrust their heads out of the car windows at the little station, asking : "Who is dead?" And the train men answered with averted faces : " Christopher Kenyon, the shoe manufacturer." " What ! the one that " But the train men were always busy about other things and moved away deafly. The stores in Kenyon Village were all closed on that day. In the morning three were found open displaying their wares, and certain shoe workers passing by put up the shutters and locked the doors. The storekeepers took the hint. No chil dren went to school that day, no children played in the streets. There was silence everywhere, save for the tolling of the bells and, now and again, the heavy sobbing of some woman in her garden gath ering flowers. Every shoe worker s little house had a garden patch before it ; Christopher had 284 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER planned these houses, and the gardens were full of bright flowers. On the day of his funeral they were stripped bare. At two o clock the Kenyon men and women came out of their doorways by twos and threes and fours, and turned their faces towards the Homestead twelve hundred grief- sodden faces stained with three days tears. There was a baud of crape on every man s hat ; every woman had made her a new gown. These Kenyon shoe workers all had money laid by ; and if they chose to spend it on mourning garments for a dead friend who should ^gainsay them? A man can starve with a cheerful stomach if his heart is replete with a sense of sentimental harmonies ful filled. At least, a workingman can. They moved down the road in a long black pro cession, the men walking stolidly apart from one another in grim silence, the women with bowed heads, weeping. Eleven years before they had come this same road, in holiday attire, with wonder and derision in their hearts. And the man had toiled for them eleven years silently, doggedly, losing wealth and home and honor. The man had sinned for them. On that last day he had thought with bitterness that they would never be conscious of his sin ; he had said : " I have twisted them so that their souls must squint at truth." But right and wrong are not complex facts to simple minds, and eleven years of brotherly love make men see through a glass less darkly. They THE CORONACH 285 knew that he had sinned for them. And they tolled the bells all day, and they put on black clothes. Philip saw them coming between the elms, and Agnes heard them. "Who is it?" she whispered. "Is it father? Ah, I thought he would come ; I was sure he would never leave me all alone now ! " " No, dear," Philip answered ; " it is the men and women from the shops ; their hands are full of flowers." "And not father?" she questioned, "not father ? " She leaned her head against the side of the coffin and stared, tearless, straight ahead. The foremost men and women came up the steps, across the piazza, into the hall. At the parlor door they suddenly stopped ; a look of be wilderment came into their faces and changed swiftly through compassion to silent and terrible anger. Philip and Agnes and the boy were alone in the parlor with their dead. Aunt Ada could be heard weeping upstairs. No other person had come to Christopher s funeral ; the world, too, had recognized his sin. Philip motioned with his arm, and Christopher s people came in. They filled the parlor, as on that other day, eleven years before, they filled the library and the dining-room, the hall and the stairs ; two hundred men stood silent and uncovered on the broad piazza. The professor did come. 286 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER In all consistency he ought to have stayed away, for the sake of the community, and he meant to. But suddenly in the early afternoon he looked at his watch, jumped, caught up his hat, and ran for the train. The throng on the piazza divided to let him pass. Agnes lifted her head and looked at him. When he came to sit beside her she gave him her hand for a moment and murmured, " Thank you," in a very steady cold little voice. The professor felt as if his daughter, not his son-in-law, had died to him. Philip gave his friend Christian burial, for there was no man to say how he had come by his death, and the doubt was merciful. At the end old Mr. Morse, hoary and bent, almost ninety years old, crept up and spoke to Philip. " We wish to carry him," he said. Philip looked at Agnes. " Yes," she answered. " But you will ride ? " her father faltered. She shook her head and dropped her veil over her face. After a moment she said : " It is a warm day, father. I would rather have you stay here." " Oh, no," he protested mildly. Yes." So he stayed. They carried Christopher, ten men, and other ten, and other. Four hundred of his men carried him that mile and a half. Philip went before, read- THE CORONACH 287 ing prayers, and Agnes and the boy walked beside, and the twelve hundred followed. The last half mile Jimmie Casey carried little Christopher. The child had been as one half asleep these three days, docile, dignified, serious ; but in the middle of the night he would start up screaming; and Agnes heart was bitter against the inexplicable wanton ness of God, that had thrust this hideous experi ence into her son s life. Philip held her hands and said, " Hush ! " when she cried out upon God. " Hush ! He is an all-wise Father. He knows. And the boy has a brave, great spirit." But Philip s own heart was wellnigh broken. The little country graveyard was in a grove of tall pine-trees, a shady place, illimitably sighing. There were only crosses and low monuments and flat stones among these pine-trees; in some places there were only mounds. The men laid Christopher at his father s feet, by the side of a saintly elder brother who had died young. They had all been so honorable, these Kenyons. " I could n t bear to go to the grave," aunt Ada moaned. " I know he could n t help it, poor boy. But his father was such an upright man, and never could understand mistakes in others, and so was his grandfather. I hope they don t take it amiss, for all our sakes I hope they don t. But I could never endure to go to the grave, Agnes, with my nerves as they are. I should be expecting something to happen." 288 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER They laid the black sheep with his paler breth ren, and nothing happened; the pines sighed, that was all. After the first spadeful of earth had fallen, with its shuddering finality of sound, Agnes led the boy to the side of the grave, and he and she dropped flowers in. Philip followed them, and all the twelve hundred crowded after, each one with a flower. It was a rosy bed. " Will you not sing a hymn ? " Philip asked, for Christopher s people still stayed, as if loth to leave the master alone, though the sexton had begun to fill the grave. Then Jeanie Casey had an inspiration. "There would be that Cail hymn," she said. " He gave it to us in print, it s a year gone now. And some of us were delegates to the Cail. We d be knowing maybe a verse or two." They sang it. He had told them it was a great hymn, and they had read it for his sake and loved it for their own. And because they loved it they knew it, word by word. That is workingmen s way. "Approach ye, approach ye, sons of men, rejoicing; Brother by brother, march on with prayer and song ! Cry unto Jesus, our Brother born to save us ; O come, son of Mary, Jesu, our Redeemer, O come, King triumphant, and reign on earth ! " The earth is the Lord s, the nations are his children, Yea, though their birthright they know not or deny ; Rending asunder what God hath willed united. THE CORONACH 289 O come, son of Mary, Jesu, our Redeemer, O come, King triumphant, and reign on earth ! Twelve hundred voices lifted up among the pine- trees, and women sobbing. " What though the proud withdraw themselves beyond us ! What though the rich make naught of poor men s blood ! He, Lord of all, shall lay their pride in ashes. i, O come, son of Mary, Jesu, our Redeemer, O come, King triumphant, and reign on earth ! " Who shall despair, though round us be confusion ; Though not for us the perfect order dawn ? The Day-Star is seen, the darkness is departing ! O come, son of Mary, Jesu, our Redeemer, O come, King triumphant, and reign on earth ! " They covered the grave with their nosegays after this and went home to the sound of the tolling beUs. In the evening the professor explained himself to Philip. " I considered the matter carefully, and decided that, on the whole, I would better stay away. This has been a great shock to the community ; the influence of such an action as as his, is far- reaching and insidious. However, I may mourn personally, and I do mourn, Philip ; he was to me as a son ; the knowledge that I have been deceived in him, that he was unworthy, is heart-breaking. But we ought not to gratify our feeling for senti- 290 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER ment by ignoring the public attitude of disapproval, which I believe to be a righteous attitude, and a salutary one. The public must not have its ethi cal standards lowered ; we are responsible, as indi viduals, for the ethics of society at large. I have no right to do anything which will make for lax morality. But Agnes is my only daughter. In the end I could only throw logic to the winds. I fear she was grieved at my late arrival, but I am sure when we talk it over she will agree with me. Where is she ? " She is putting the child to bed. I do not be lieve she is in any condition to discuss ethical ques tions to-night." The professor flushed : " I hope you do not think that resentment could have anything to do with my attitude," he said. " He made away with my small annuity, but I am still an able man in mind and body. If that were all he had done I could bear it gladly ; but he has wrecked my daughter s life, stained his son s name. And yet, although I am not a Christian, Philip, and your theology looks upon me askance, I freely forgive all this, because she loved him. But the community must be thought of." Philip went out on the piazza and walked up and down in the starlight. Upstairs the windows were open, and he could hear Agnes voice sooth ing the little boy. What would she do, the loyal, flame-hearted little woman ? Go home and live with her public- THE CORONACH 291 spirited father ? No ! Philip knew that she could not do that. "Oh, pitying God," he murmured, "why do you raise up this temptation to me now? My friend s wife ! " CHAPTER H A NEW EXPERIMENT EARLY the next morning Philip was in the vil lage calling upon the more responsible and intelli gent shoe workers. He had something to say to them, something to which they listened with grave interest and acquiescence. He proposed that they should start a cooperative store in the village. It was not a new idea to them. They had read and studied much concerning cooperation, these able shoemakers ; they had even discussed among them selves the possibility of starting something of the kind. Their leisure had given them opportunity to look around for further activity. There was already a rumor going round that young Loring had taken the shops as part payment of the debt, and that old Peter had bought them of him at an immense advantage to himself. " He s a regular noodle, that swell ; he d ought to have more sense than to give away a first-class plant like this one ; I ain t sorry to see him skinned. No, Mr. Starr, may be it s not Christian, but I ain t," said Jimmy Casey with fervor. " It s that old man that would be the worst," Jeanie interrupted, " with his letters of sorrow to A NEW EXPERIMENT 293 the widow and then to buy at the shameful low price, and lay that load on the shoulders of them that will pay the master s debts." " You will speak to the men, then, of this pro position of mine ? " asked Philip, turning to go. " Speak to them ? Yes, Mr. Starr ! You may rest easy on its goin through. Why ! the men owe their souls and bodies to the man that s dead, Mr. Starr. And besides, it s safe, and we d own the whole of it. We could start as small as we liked, and all the men would buy their goods of us. Twelve hundred customers ain t bad to start on, espe cially when most of them would be shareholders too." " He s a good man," Jeanie said, watching the clergyman swing down the street, "an excellent good man." " What do you think, ain t he mighty fond of Mrs. Kenyon ? and and the kid ? " Jimmie added hastily, abashed by the look that came into his wife s face. " I m thinkin as that s neither here nor there," she replied, " for the reason that, on the one side, she d never. The one that s gone was her man ; she d weary of takin another. And on the t other side never would he. He 11 be havin enough to do to serve God, and he knows it. Nor he s no- thin so vile, to look on his friend s wife, to take her." " The man s dead," muttered Jimmie. "Ay, the man s dead, James Casey, but and 294 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER do you think there 11 be the hantle of difference in that for they two spirits all their life long? Na na." In the afternoon there was a family conference in the library at the Homestead. Agnes, very white and exhausted, but severely self-controlled, sat in a great leathern chair by the desk with the boy, alert but unnaturally quiet, leaning against her knee. He ought not to have been there, but he was nervous and fretful, and she could not bear to send him away and make a scene. Aunt Ada occupied a creaking rocking-chair by a window; the professor sat upright judicially in another great chair, and Philip moved about the room, now look ing out of a window, now leaning against the man tle-shelf, now sitting down for a few moments on the edge of a sofa. " Come and sit on grandfather s knee, Christo pher," said the professor ; " you 11 tire mother, leaning against her so." He reached out and took the child by the arm, but Christopher jerked away petulantly and began to cry. Agnes gathered him into her lap, and after a moment of weariness and effort, compelled herself to control him by whis pered reproof and the warning that he must go up to his own room if he could not be a good boy. He climbed up on the arm of her chair at last and sat there, with his hand tightly clasped in hers. " I have had your old room put in order, Agnes," gaid the professor, " and the small one in the third A NEW EXPERIMENT 295 story for Christopher. I want you to come just as soon as you feel that you can. I suppose the sooner the better now, before the before the house is sold." " Sold ! " cried little Christopher. " This is our house, father s house! Who is going to sell it? Mother, this is our house." " Hush, dear, hush ! You must not interrupt. You do not understand." "But why?" " We are poor people, dear. We can t afford to live here. If you interrupt again, Christopher, mother will take you upstairs." " All your old friends will be glad to welcome you," continued the professor; "their sympathy has been most delicate and touching ever since the ever since. And you know how my life will be made rich and complete by your presence in your old home, my daughter. We shall not be as well off materially as in the days when you were learn ing to keep house for me, but I shall not grieve except for you. There are good schools for Chris topher, and when the time comes I am sure, by my influence, I can get a college scholarship for him. But we need not think so far ahead now ; the important point at present is that your home is ready for you, and I want you to come." The rocking-chair in the window creaked and aunt Ada sniffed. Agnes raised herself in her seat and slipped her arm around her boy. "Thank you, father dear," she began, with a 296 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER suggestion as of gasping in her voice. " Thank you. But you know when Christopher and I were mar ried we planned to live a certain kind of life, and although he has gone I still want to live out our ideal ; all the more because, because he " She leaned her head on her hand, shading her eyes for a moment. " My experience during my married life has only strengthened my belief in our ideal his ideal. I cannot I I cannot justify him to " She stopped again as if speech were impossible, but lifted her head pre sently and continued in an even voice, "lean- not justify him to the world better than by living the life he believed in and I believe in." "My poor child," said the professor tenderly, " there is no jus " but he did not finish his sen tence. " God has given me an opportunity to be really one of them, and I do not care to live any other way ; there is no other way that is life for me." " But have you considered ways and means ? " suggested the professor still gently. "By right, you have nothing nothing, my daughter, with which to make an establishment. In honor, every thing must go." " I have my two hands," she answered. " Few working people have more." The professor grew a little excited, but tried to keep himself calm. " That would be nonsense, my dear. In the first place, you are not physically equal to it, even A NEW EXPERIMENT 297 if I should permit it, and I shall not permit it. You are unstrung and ill, Agnes, and no wonder. We will not attempt to discuss the situation now. Come home with me, and after a few months, when you have rallied, I am persuaded that you will agree with me that it is useless to be led away by the sentiment of the thing any longer. I know, my child, my daughter, life does not seem worth living to you now " " You are mistaken," she said quietly ; " it does seem worth living, very worth, and we must dis cuss the situation to-day. Do not speak of not permitting, father dear. You would not suffer any one to govern your own conscience for you, and I cannot suffer you or any one else to govern mine." " But you do not consider, Agnes, that I have the right to take care of you ; that the world will expect me to take care of you ; that people in general will not understand your attitude. You owe something to me, to your father, Agnes." " I do not think I owe it to you to become a burden on you now, in the later years of your life, especially since you have not more than enough to keep yourself comfortably, as you are accustomed to living. As for the world," her face stiffened and she sat straight up, "I owe it just so much in money, very little besides except the know ledge that I am true to his ideal." " And may I ask how you intend to support yourself and this boy ? " " By work," she returned simply. " I want to 298 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER stay near Christopher s own people ; perhaps I can make shoes, c est mon metier," she smiled patheti cally, and spread her hands out before her. " Absurd ! Preposterous ! " cried the professor, jumping up and striding about the room. " In Peter Watson s shops, I suppose ? You d die in a week." A strange look came into his daughter s face. " I thought you had a better opinion of him than that," she said. Philip had been silent throughout the discussion, but now he spoke ; and at the sound of his voice the professor came back to his seat, and the rock ing-chair, which had been creaking violently, be came silent. "I think your father is right," Philip began. " You could not stand it, for Mr. Watson does not conduct his shops on Kenyon principles. But the shoe workers themselves, in the village, are think ing of starting an enterprise which may solve your difficulty. I was talking to them this morning about it. What splendid, wide-awake fellows they are, some of them. And the growing boys ! So well developed, so alert, so altogether sensible and intelligent. Free-born, no longer slaves. The experiment has not failed. Far from it. It was well worth while giving twelve hundred men and women and their children eleven years of breathing space and good food ; it was well worth while let ting up the pressure. These men have minds ; they are reasonable; more than that, they are A NEW EXPERIMENT 299 thoughtful, and in the best sense of the term, am bitious. They all have a little money, a very little, but still something, saved up, and before Mr. Watson steps in and grinds them down they want to get this money safely invested and out of his way, and on the road to bringing them in a pos sible return. They have decided, I hope, to try the experiment of a cooperative store. The thing is safe enough ; there is practically no competition in a place like this ; they can begin with a few supplies and gradually increase as the demand grows. And if the shoe shops are enlarged, as I hear Watson intends to enlarge them, and the town grows, and the shoe workers are loyal to the cooperative store, as I believe they will be, since it will belong to them, I don t see why, in time, the thing should not be a power in the town, and even react upon the shops to a certain extent." " Yes, it has been done with marked success in England," assented the professor. " And by the workingmen themselves," Philip added decisively, " with almost no capital." Agnes had been listening eagerly. " If they could do something like that," she said, her eyes shining wistfully, " it would seem as if the eleven years had been worth while for the men." " Now, you know, if they start an enterprise of this kind," continued Philip, hurrying his words a little, " they will need some one to take charge of it ; some one, in plain words, to mind the shop." 300 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER "And I could do that!" Agnes exclaimed breathlessly. " Oh, Philip, would they trust me?" " Trust you ! " " Yes, I know they would," she whispered, " they are my people. I shall live among them after all. I did not want to take Christopher into a foul city street ; and now perhaps we may live here with his father s people, where he ought to live." Moans from the rocking-chair engaged the at tention of the family at this moment. "And aunt Ada can come with us, I think, Philip," said Agnes in a soothing tone. " My dear child, don t think of me," sobbed the old lady. "I should never venture to trust my self to an experiment again, never, though you meant as well as the cherubim ; I could n t stand the strain at my age, Agnes, I really could n t. I have three hundred dollars, in a stocking. Chris topher s father always said it was a foolish place, so I dropped out of the habit of speaking of it, but it s there. And Anne Finchley s going to buy her a right in the Home for Gentlewomen, and she s real insistent for me to come too. I d be safe there ; and I m so nervous about experi ments." " I think you are wise, Miss Kenyon," said Philip, going over to the old lady and standing by her chair. " I know the Home, and it is a charming place, and very select. You would be comfortable, I am sure." A NEW EXPERIMENT 301 " Oh ! but aunt Ada could n t do that," said Agnes emphatically. " Yes, I could," reiterated aunt Ada ; " I m go ing to." " The family would never allow it, you know," pursued Agnes. " There s your cousin, Henry Thatcher, who has been wanting you to visit him and his wife for a long time." " No, I 11 go to a Home," murmured aunt Ada. Philip bent over her soothingly. " You might visit the Thatchers first, you know," he suggested, " and talk the matter over with them." " Yes, I might ; but I don t think I will." " They would be grieved if you did n t," said Philip. " I 11 never go into another experiment, what ever else I do," wailed the old lady. " Agnes," the professor began under cover of Philip s consolatory remarks, " you surely do not consider this matter seriously. I cannot believe that you do ; I cannot believe that my daughter would so willfully cast aside her education and social position as to sit in a shop and sell gro ceries. If you will not think of yourself or me, think of this child. How are you preparing him for his battle with the world ? He is entering the lists heavily handicapped, and you deliberately choose to fetter him closer by depriving him of social advantages, by bringing him up among illit erate, prejudiced people, who have been his father s undoing. He should be educated strictly to a sense 302 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER of business morality ; he has to bear a heavy load in making reparation for his father s mistake. I speak plainly, Agnes, but you force me to. This boy has need of the most refined association in life ; he has also need of being helped in a material way, in order that he may live down the wrong that his father has done, for we must not blind ourselves to the fact that, although he had the best intentions, he did do wrong." Little Christopher had sprung from the arm of the chair and stood before his grandfather quiver ing with fury. " Don t you say that again ! " he shouted ; " don t you dare ! If you had n t meddled in things that were none of your business we would n t have lost that strike, and my father could have sold his shoes. Jimmie Casey said so ; I heard him. My father could n t do wrong my father " Philip took the child by the shoulders and pushed him towards the door. " Go to your room," he said sternly, " and wait there till I come to you ! " And they heard the little boy stumbling upstairs and sobbing. The professor s face was scarlet ; he looked as if he were going to cry. " Dear father, forgive him ! " said Agnes hastily. " It has all been such a shock to him, such a cruel, cruel shock." " Even if there were any truth in the latter part of his statement," the professor began stiffly, A NEW EXPERIMENT 303 " you know, Agnes, I could not have acted other wise than I did in the strike ; I could not have smothered my conscience even to save Christo pher s reputation." " The strike is all over," she answered wearily. " And, as far as this money is concerned, this money that the men have saved out of their wages, and which they are now to put into this new scheme, I do not see how you can conscien tiously have anything to do with it, seeing that it is, morally, part of the trust money." " If in the end I can pay back all the money I owe, that is all that can reasonably be ex pected," she replied. " In the meantime I must live, and I do not think that this money of the shoe workers is more the price of blood than most of the money in trade. None of it is quite clean." " We are all unstrung," said her father. " We are not capable of talking over matters rationally. I will go home for the present. I have an impor tant lecture to give to-morrow, and I must run over the facts. You can send for me when you need me." He kissed her and went out of the room. Philip also moved towards the door, but Agnes went to him hurriedly. " You will not tell him," she cried. " Is it not better that he should learn the truth from those who love his father, rather than from those who could not understand ? Is it not better 304 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER that lie should hear it now, when we can speak to him in parable, rather than later, when the truth must be thrust baldly upon him ? " She covered her face with her hands, and he went up to the child s room. CHAPTER HI THE CHRIST-BEAKER LITTLE Christopher sat on the edge of his bed, staring miserably out of the window. He stood up when uncle Philip came in, and standing very still, in an attitude of mingled resignation and defi ance, he said : " You can put me to bed ; you can whip me ; you can keep me on bread and water all the rest of your life. But it won t do any good." " No," assented uncle Philip, " it would n t do any good." He sat down, drawing the boy to him, and for a few moments he only stroked the yellow hair, and prayed silently for wisdom to guide this bruised affrighted spirit. The little boy lifted his eyes to his uncle s face and waited, awed by this unusual method of deal ing with naughtiness. " You know, Christopher," said uncle Philip at last, " that your father is my dearest friend, that I love him as I love no other man on earth ? " " Yes, yes ! You would never say such dread ful things about him as " Philip laid his finger upon the boy s lips. 306 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " It may be that I am going to say harder things of him than your grandfather has said ; but re member, I say them loving him, and loving you, his son. Christopher, your father did do wrong." " No, not my father ! " insisted the boy. " Yes, your father. And I am telling you be cause I love him and you." " Not my father ! " Christopher repeated. There was a ring of tenacity in his wailing voice. " Do not say it again ! " said Philip, pressing the child against his breast. " I will try to tell you so that you will understand." " There was a man with a load on his back, the burden of the world, its sins and its sorrows. He was a God-fearing man and brave, and he had it in his heart to show the world how to live with out sin, and without sorrow. Then Christ came to him and said, Carry Me ! And the man looked upon Christ and considered ; and when he spoke, his answer was this : If I take up you, I must set down this load ; and it is not you only, for you bear a cross ; all this I am not able to carry. But if I set down the load the people will starve, they will lie down and die under this burden. And Christ said, * Carry Me ! " This burden that I bear must not be set down, the man replied. I know that the thing I do is a good thing. I have warrant from above. If I carry you and the cross who will carry the burden ? " And Christ said, Carry Me ! THE CHRIST-BEARER 307 " But the man cried out bitterly, This thing I have set me to do, and it is a good thing. I will not turn aside. And he kept on his way, and the darkness settled down, and he tripped and fell, and the end of his life came so that he died ; and the burden remained for a stumbling-block in the path." " But don t you know, if he had taken up Christ, why, Christ would have carried the burden ? " said little Christopher. " In my saint s story, Christ said, In bearing Me you have borne the world and all its sorrows. " " That was what I wanted you to remember," said Philip. " Did father forget ? " whispered the boy. "Yes, father forgot." " Why did n t you remind him, uncle Philip ? " There was a startled silence, then Philip drew the child more closely. " Would God that I had ! But he was my friend ; I loved him ; I did not know he had lost his way ; and he never told me. But I ought to have known ; yes, I ought to have known." " What did father do that was wrong ? " the boy asked presently. " He took some money that had been given to him to take care of, and he used it to help his own workingmen, because the shoe shops were run ning in debt. Christ said to him : The shoe shops must fail rather than that you should commit a sin. And your father could not bear to have the 308 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER workingmen suffer ; so he took this money for their sake. But the money was not his to take." " I know," said Christopher, " it was the Loring money. That s what Jimmie Casey meant when he talked to Tom Painter about young Loring; only he stopped in the middle of it when he saw me listening." " Mrs. Loring asked your father to take care of that money until her son was old enough to know how to use it." " How much money was it ? " " A great deal, my boy." " Is that why we re selling the Homestead ? " " Yes ! " " Is it more money than the Homestead ? " "Yes!" " When I m a man, uncle Philip, I 11 pay that money back to young Loring, every bit." " Yes, Christopher, that is one of the things you have got to do." " Then it will be all right again ? Father won t have done wrong ? " " If you took ten cents out of the contribution basin, and I saw you, and I put in ten cents, would that make it all right ? " " Not for me," said the child, shaking his head. " But it won t be forever wrong, uncle Philip, it won t be forever ? " " That is between God and your father, my boy, and God is patient, and He gave your father an honest soul." THE CHRIST-BEARER 309 " I don t want anybody to say to me that my father did wrong," said the child piteously. " I can t bear that any one shall say that to me ; I can t bear it ! " He began to sob, and Philip s heart ached. "My little burden-bearer," he said, "you must not say I cannot bear, for you ve got to bear all your life long. My boy with the great name, Christopher! Christ-bearer! Your father s brave son ! " " Father was named that too." " But he forgot. You are never to forget. You are to take up your father s burden, Christ s way. You are never to go your own way, by sin, even if it seems to lead to a good end. You are to lay down your heart s desire and carry Christ, whenever He bids you." " And you 11 remind me ? " " I 11 do my best. But the time will come when you will have to remind yourself." "Christopher Christ-bearer," said the child. " Christopher Christ-bearer. What was it I said to grandfather ? I can t remember. I was so angry, there did n t seem to be enough of me to be as angry as I felt. I won t forget." He put his arms around his uncle s neck, and cried a little, gently, and then the two knelt down, and Philip prayed for the multiplication of Christ- bearers. CHAPTER IV TAKING UP THE BURDEN Bur the one human gratification for which he hungered was not vouchsafed to Philip. Agnes did not turn to him in her grief. He might com fort the child, but the mother had no need of him. He could only stand aside in desperate loneliness, and pray. It seemed to the poor fellow at this time, that he had never done anything all his life long but pray ; he almost wearied of the exercise of this gentle talent. He had an idea that he would have been satisfied if he had but been al lowed to carry out his legitimate function of priest, and administer ghostly comfort to this best beloved of his flock. But Agnes had entered a region of experience where God and her sorrow touched ; and not Philip, nor any other human creature, not even, in a certain sense, her little son, would ever be necessary to her again. So Philip bowed his head and returned to his parish, saying in his heart : " What is this travesty that I have called temp tation ! Lord, comfort her, comfort her ! For she is hurt so deep no man can fathom her ! " She was very silent, and when she did speak her TAKING UP THE BURDEN 311 face was blank like a mask, but lie knew that she was not rebellious, for she went with him to an early service in the little church at Kenyon, the day after Christopher s funeral. The weeks following the funeral were busy ones. The world criticised Agnes, called her fanatical, called her undutiful, said she was silly and stub born ; accused her of a desire for notoriety, and invented fantastic tales concerning her plans for the future. Her place was with her father, the world said in its blind, conventional way ; but Ag nes had made her decision neither in pique nor in selfishness. She would gladly have welcomed now the filial remorse which had wrung her heart at the time of her marriage ; but she could rouse none of it. She and her father had parted company, the fellowship between them was broken. Hence forth he must walk alone, she must follow her ideal. She was hopelessly certain of the line of conduct which she ought to pursue, and she went quietly about the preparations for the new life, deaf to the fag-ends of fiction and criticism that floated down to Kenyon. The Homestead sold for a fair price, and then followed dreary auction days, when Agnes sat in the cupola, looking out to Kenyon shops, and the boy, always beside her, watched the wagons go down the driveway and identified their contents in moods varying from childish curiosity to passionate and tearful protest. Aunt Ada toiled up the cupola stairs two or three times an hour to say: 312 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER " The dining-table s gone. I remember when James bought it as well as if it were yesterday." Or: " They re knocking down the pier-glass in grandma Thatcher s room. Grandma always said that pier - glass should come to me when when but I sha n t need it now." Or she would stand on the lowest step of the last flight of stairs, with her head just above the cupola floor, and whisper hastily : " Don t you want to come down for a little vari ety, Agnes ? The Pierces have driven over, and they re bidding against the Clarence Joneses for that old rattletrap of a cradle of aunt Clarissy Kenyon s. They re real amusing. They ve run it up to twice what it s worth already." But the day came when the old house stood emp tied of all its belongings, save the heavy, hand some pieces of furniture which the new owner had kept, and the few modest pieces which Agnes was to carry with her to the little rooms behind the cooperative shop in the village. Even aunt Ada had gone. Cousin Henry Thatcher had claimed her for a visit of an indefinite period. " Going to a Home, indeed I " exclaimed cousin Henry when Philip warned him of the old lady s intention. " I don t make a parade of loving my fellow men the way some of my relatives do, but I guess I can keep the members of my own family out of the poorhouse. You leave the old lady to me. I 11 manage her." And he did. TAKING UP THE BURDEN 313 To-inorrow Agnes and the boy would go away too. Agnes had put little Christopher to bed, and sat alone in her own room. There was intense weariness in her face, weariness not of time past, but of time to come, and this without trace of petulance or any small passion. There was shock in her eyes ; not a startled look, but eternal ache of disillusion ; terrible, irrecoverable surprise, from which there could be no rebound. Here had been brutal wrenching of heart-strings, and the poor threads hung limp and fluttered. Agnes hero had proved to be a sinful man, like all the other heroes ; and Philip was right, heroes were not made by their sins. Dry-eyed she sat, leaning on her hand, the dis honored wife. That he had died, perhaps one un- namable way, was matter for grief and pity and loneliness ; that he had sinned, was matter for sor row and prayer. But that he had shut her away from his struggle, that he had made her a stranger to his soul, emptily calling her his wife Of a truth her hurt went very deep. She was a sensible little woman; she always had been. She said to herself over and over again those first bitter days : " After a while I shall get dulled to it, and I shall set my whole mind and heart to the work ; that does not fail me ; I shall kindle to the work, thank God ! But the difference in life will never go away from me. It seems as if the earth had turned, and were going round another way. After 314 THE BURDEN OF CHRISTOPHER a while I shall not be dizzy. After a very long while." The child in the other room woke out of a dream and sat up suddenly in his bed all a-shiver. He was going to cry out for comfort, when through the open door he saw his mother s face. She did not know that he was awake, and he sat still for a long moment, watching her. Then he slipped out of bed and came running toward her. At the sound of his little bare feet pattering across the floor she turned, drawing the gray look back into her soul, and greeting him with the mother s face that he knew. " What is it, my precious ? I thought you were asleep, long ago." " I was, but I waked up." He climbed into her lap and knelt upright there, with his arms around her neck. " I m going to take care of you, mother." "Yes, my son, I am sure of that." She laid her head against his breast wearily and held him close. " Have you got a burden too, mother ? " " Yes, Christopher." " Has everybody ? " " I am afraid so." He caressed her wistfully, rubbing his chin against her hair, and cuddling his fingers in her neck. " I have got my burden, but I feel very strong ; I d like to help you with yours too, mother." TAKING UP THE BURDEN 315 " You shall, my darling ; you do already." After a little while she took him back to his bed, and as he lay down he said : " I don t know whether I am most sorry to leave the Homestead or most glad to keep cooperative shop. It s so different ; it s like shutting up one story-book and beginning another." " Very like," she answered, with a smile, bend ing over him. " And we 11 make the new one a happy story-book, about a boy who was his mo ther s comfort and joy and delight " " And his name was Christopher," continued the child, with a gurgle of satisfaction. " And that means Christ-bearer. And when he got big he carried most of his mother s burden besides his own." He lay still a moment, and then exclaimed with a happy sigh : " Oh, what a lot of things I have got to do when I am a man! " fiitacrsibe PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON & CO. CAMBRIDGE, MASS. U.S.A. 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