At breakfast next morning no allusion was made to the promised excursion with Edwards, but Stacey was confident of its success. On this account, as well as on others, he was glad of last night’s storm. For he knew his father. Mr. Carroll might fancy that principles were the foundation of his life; they were not, they were mere dead wood. First and last it was by personal relationships that he was swayed. It was this that gave him his sweetness, his directness, his genius for holding friends, his absolute inability to be impartial. He would have made a very poor judge. As a result of the quarrel he would be unavoidably on Edwards’ side—because it was Stacey’s side.
Mr. Carroll was nearly always gay at breakfast; on this morning he was delightful. But he did not tease Catherine, as he often tried to do. Instead, he joked with the boys, with great detriment to their table manners, and reduced Jackie in particular to a condition that shocked even Carter.
As for Catherine, she seemed to Stacey shyer than usual, more withdrawn. This was natural, he thought. After that splendid outburst in defence of him she must of course retreat hurriedly into herself. Which was rather obtuse of Stacey, since he should surely have known by now that for Catherine giving was not logically followed by taking back, but by further giving. At any rate, despite her silence, he felt a closeness to her, a deep intimacy with her. There was a touch of melancholy at his heart, too; for he felt more than he cared to admit. He did not venture to speak much to Catherine—only a few matter-of-fact words. Ah, well, last evening’s scene had temporarily stripped off too many discreet veils, left emotions too naked; by to-night everything would have become normal again. Yet Stacey did not precisely envisage this certainty with satisfaction.
He motored into town with his father and Catherine, but left them at the door of the Carroll Building and went on to his own office.
He worked that morning with less complete absorption than usual, and at half past twelve went to the lunch-room, hoping to find Edwards.
Edwards was not there, but before Stacey had finished eating he came in, looking radiant. “It’s all right, Carroll,” he said gaily, limping over with a sandwich and coffee. “Your father saw things our way. There’s something pretty fine about him. You can’t help liking him. And then Mrs. Blair, well, she’s just a wonder—the real thing!”
Stacey was rather calmer. “What did father say he’d do?” he asked.
“Oh, he was non-committal, of course! Said he didn’t know whether he could do anything, but he’d try. Remarked that Colin Jeffries was a fair man, one of the fairest he knew, also a great citizen! And I was a lamb, Carroll, swallowed that without even a gulp! So it’s pretty clear he’s gone to take the thing up with Jeffries—or will go.”
Stacey considered his friend curiously. Extraordinary, this thinking in classes! Edwards did not think of capitalists as men; he thought of them as parts of a whole, which was capital. It was only capital he thought about really, as something with an existence of its own. So he took it for granted that if you swung over one capitalist to your side you could swing the whole, just as when you pulled back the lever of an engine you set the entire machine in motion. Neat, very,—but not true. Stacey himself, though he had suggested the scheme, was far from confident that his father could bring Colin Jeffries around, because Stacey saw the problem as a personal problem.
“Well,” he said soberly, “I hope father can pull it off. Come on up to the office.”
They sat in Stacey’s room and smoked silently.
“Mrs. Blair is a corker!” Edwards announced suddenly. “The best ever! Do you raise many like her in your caste?”
Stacey smiled. “Not so you’d notice it,” he returned drily.
“Well, I’m glad of that. I should hate to find some real reason for the existence of your plutocratic bunch.”
“Oh, you make me tired!” said Stacey wearily. “You talk like a child. At heart you have a kind of idea that the people I know are different from you. You resent it, but you have a secret feeling that they’re superior—Olympians. That’s because—”
But at this point in his attack the telephone bell rang and he lifted the receiver.
“That you, Stacey?” said his father’s voice, and Stacey knew at once that the attempt had failed. “I saw Colin Jeffries about that matter, had a long talk with him. But I couldn’t budge him. Said he’d do anything else in the world for me, but that in the matter of this strike he couldn’t even hear of a compromise. Said he’d be going back on every principle he had if he did. That it had come to a show-down. Was business to be run as an efficient competitive proposition with moderate financial reward, or was it to become a charitable institution with the investors as donators? He made a strong case for his stand—unanswerable logically. All the same . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well, I’ve heard those statistics from Edwards and I’ve seen some of the men. It’s not just that they should have to live like that.”
“What did Jeffries say when you pointed that out?”
“Said he was sorry for the men and their wives, very, but that he had to think of the stock-holders also. That they, too, were men and women, though you couldn’t get an employee to see it.”
“Neat point,” Stacey remarked. “Jeffries owns two-thirds of the common himself. I’ve seen the list of the other stock-holders. There is one widow among them. I’d be willing to defray her losses myself.”
“I’m sorry, son.” (Mr. Carroll’s voice was regretful.) “I’d like to have got this through for you—and because I think it’s right, though of course my convictions on the labor and capital situation in general remain unchanged.”
“Of course.”
“But I did what I could.”
“I know it, dad,” said Stacey. “Edwards will know that too. Thanks, just as much as if you’d brought it off. Good-bye. See you at dinner.”
He hung up the receiver, then looked across at Edwards. “Nothing doing,” he said, his face impassive.
Edwards’ face had flushed a dull crimson, and his jaw was set, so that there was an effect of massive squareness about his head. His eyes glowed.
“Yes,” he replied thickly, “so I judged. Bombs, Carroll, nice little hand-grenades,—that’s what’s wanted!”
“I agree,” said Stacey coolly. “It would be a pleasure to toss one at Jeffries; but that’s no use. Never was. The reaction swings you back to below where you started.”
“You’re so damned cold-blooded about it!” Edwards cried furiously. “Can’t you put yourself—”
“Shut up!” said Stacey harshly. “I’m twice as angry as you are—and I’m going to take a hand in this somehow.”
And, in truth, an observer studying the two men carefully would have ended by believing Stacey the more dangerous. With only a little extra tautness in the muscles of his face to alter his appearance, there was yet something hard and ruthless in his expression. It was quite clear that if, as Stacey had learned, nothing of his fanciful, fastidious, early self had really vanished, neither had anything vanished of that embittered, stony, cold-and-passionate self he had brought back from the war. This morning while he was at work his thoughts about the strike and about Mr. Carroll’s undertaking had been haphazard, interrupted by warm memories of the scene at home the night before. Now Stacey’s whole mind was concentrated in a kind of chilly fierceness on the single problem of how he could force Colin Jeffries to yield.
“It’s got to be personal fighting—no principles; they’re no good,” he thought. “Now what handle have I got? What do I know about Jeffries?”
In response to this way of putting it, a casual winter-night’s memory flashed into his mind. Of course! He threw up his head and laughed unpleasantly.
“I’ve got a sort of half-idea, Edwards,” he observed. “Maybe it will work out. Now you run along and let me think it over. See you to-morrow.”
Stacey sat there, reflecting intensely, for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then he got up, went out, and walked over to the building in which Colin Jeffries had his office.
The millionaire’s large outer-office was full of men waiting. They sat singly or in groups and talked in low tones. Some of them, men prominent in one business or another, Stacey recognized and nodded to. He gave his card to a young man—some sort of secretary, probably—who promised to take it in to Mr. Jeffries but said he feared there wasn’t the slightest chance of seeing him this afternoon except by appointment.
“Take the card in, anyway,” Stacey remarked, and sat down.
Less than ten minutes later the secretary returned, obviously impressed, to say that Mr. Jeffries would see Mr. Carroll now; then conducted him to the financier’s private office.
“Come in, Stacey,” said Mr. Jeffries cordially, getting up to shake hands. “Sit down, won’t you?”
“Thanks,” said Stacey, and did so, across the table from the millionaire.
This being called by his first name amused him. It must be meant as a kingly compliment by Mr. Jeffries, since he and Stacey had not met above half a dozen times—or perhaps it was to aid in the effect of cordiality. But there were many other things besides amusement in Stacey’s mind. He was thinking swiftly, taking stock of his adversary, all in the brief interval while he accepted and lighted a courteously proferred cigarette.
This cordiality now,—it was not a warmth radiating from inner good will; it was external, a fire built on snow. He felt the man as cold—perhaps cruel, too. If so, cold even in his cruelty. Stacey felt aversion, something in that personality was rasping to him; but he was far from feeling contempt. He recognized that he was encountering a strong and steely character, not one—like most—only apparently strong. Not a touch here of the business-man as shown in romances or movies, no nervous movement of papers, no abstracted air of meditation on vast enterprises. Mr. Jeffries did not even say that he could spare Stacey a few minutes of his time; he was as leisurely as though he were lounging at a club. Yet the man was intensely busy from morning to night, and at this moment his outer-office was crowded with those waiting to see him.
“It was about the street-railway strikers that I wanted to speak to you, Mr. Jeffries,” said Stacey, blowing out his match. (There had only been that much of a pause.)
A look of regret came over the millionaire’s face. “I’m sorry, Stacey,” he replied, shaking his head slowly, “but there’s nothing I can do. I explained my position to your father this morning.”
“Yes, I know you did,” Stacey continued carefully. “But you and he are so much alike” (they were alike superficially; Stacey disclaimed almost passionately that there was any deep likeness) “that I feel sure you must both see this trouble as a matter of principle, as labor versus capital, as a strike,—not as men striking. The men can’t live on the wages you’re offering to pay them, Mr. Jeffries. Can’t—live.”
“And the company can’t live and give them any better ones,” returned Mr. Jeffries quietly.
Stacey did not express his opinion of the company’s right to life. He attended quietly to what Mr. Jeffries said. All this was no use, anyway.
“There’s more in this than you see, Stacey. It’s a test case—an unfortunate one, I grant you; test cases are rarely the ones a man would choose. It’s come to a question of whether business organized on private capital can exist at all. If it can’t we’d better know it at once; if it can then it will have to be run on the basis of a decent adjustment between receipts and disbursements.”
Stacey, quite unmoved by this, shook his head. “I don’t see how this can be a test case,” he observed. “Suppose you win,—it’s a paper victory only. Neither these men nor any others can work for you permanently at a wage that won’t support them and their families. Know what I think?” he demanded, gazing sharply at the older man, “I rather think the whole thing’s a threat held over the head of the city council.”
Mr. Jeffries laughed. “That’s shrewd of you, Stacey,” he remarked. “But, if so, you’ll admit it’s not very successful.”
Stacey, wary because of the note of flattery, continued to gaze at him. How keen the man was! Not once had he said: “You young men who’ve come back with socialistic ideas . . .” He had met Stacey with apparent candor and with no touch of tolerant superiority. His manner proclaimed equality,—but perhaps just faintly over-proclaimed it.
“You won’t even consider yielding,” Stacey asked, “so that these men can support their families—now—in winter?”
“I can’t, my boy. It’s to you............