The Way of the Strong Part 66

"Do you so treat--your labor?"

"I pay him his market price. Privately I am at all times ready to help him. But my best sympathies are not with the poor creature who has no thought beyond his food, his sleep, and the fathering of numerous offspring which, without regard to responsibility, he sheds upon the world in worse case than himself. It is the man who will strive to rise above his lot that has my sympathy. The man who has the courage to face disaster, and even starvation, that, in however small a degree, he may leave his mark upon the face of the world. That is the man who appeals to me, and whom I am even now seeking to help."

Frank rose from his seat upon his bed.

"You are helping--now?" he demanded incredulously.

The millionaire smiled.

"Maybe you would not call it by that name." He shook his head, and rose heavily from his chair. "Let that pa.s.s," he said, with a quick, keen glance into the boy's face. "I must get back to Deep Willows. I had no right to spend all this time away. Mrs. Hendrie is ill--seriously ill, I fear. Your Phyllis is with her, serving her for friends.h.i.+p's sake.

She does not receive even a market value for her toil. The price of her service is inestimable."

"Mon--Mrs. Hendrie is--ill?"

Frank's face blanched. A great trouble crept into his eyes. Hendrie noted the expression closely.

"Yes," he said simply. "She is to become a--mother. But she is ill--and--ah, well, maybe she'll pull through. It is in the hands of Providence." He sighed with genuine trouble.

"You say--Phyllis--is with her?"

"Why, yes. She has been with us for months."

"Has Mon--Mrs. Hendrie been ill--so long?"

Frank's voice was almost pleading.

"She began to ail when she--returned from Toronto--nearly a year ago."

"A year--ago?"

"Yes."

The keen eyes of the millionaire were strangely soft as he watched the evident suffering in the boy's young face. He waited.

"I----" Frank hesitated. Then, with a sudden impulsive rush, he blurted out a request. "Can I--that is, might I be allowed to call and see--her?" he asked, his voice hoa.r.s.e with sudden emotion. He had forgotten he desired nothing at this man's hands.

"Why, yes. The doors of Deep Willows are always open to you."

Frank looked up. For a moment something very like panic swept over him.

His visitor's eyes were upon him, watching him with nothing but kindness in their depths. Each was thinking of the same thing. Each knew that a battle had been fought out between them, and victory had been won. Frank's panic lay in the knowledge that he had been the loser. Then his panic pa.s.sed, and only resentment, and his anxiety for Monica remained. But the miracle of it was that his resentment was far less than he could have believed possible.

Hendrie picked up his hat.

"I'm glad I came," he said, moving toward the door.

Frank averted his eyes.

"Good night," he said brusquely, vainly striving to bolster his angry feelings.

"Good night, my boy."

Hendrie pa.s.sed out of the room and closed the door behind him carefully.

As he went Frank flung himself into a chair, and, for a while, sat with his face buried in his hands. Monica was ill. Seriously ill. Maybe dangerously ill. Phyllis had said no word of it in her letters. Not one word, and she was with her. No word had reached him.

He caught his breath. He had suddenly realized how utterly he had cut himself out of Monica's life, the life of this woman who had been as a mother to him.

CHAPTER X

STRIKE TROUBLES SPREADING

It was a sultry afternoon, one of those clammy days when flies stick and become victims of the drink habit, striving to quench unnatural thirst at patches of spilled liquor on bar-room counters, and, in a final frenzy, endeavor to commit suicide in the dregs of warm tumblers left by their human fellow-sufferers.

Lionel K. Sharpe, the proprietor of the Russell Hotel at Everton, was propped behind his counter, smiling with amiable idiocy at the vagaries of two drunken flies scrambling about the inner sides of a tumbler, which contained the dregs of what was alleged to be port wine. Abe Hopkinson, and Josh Taylor, the bullet-headed butcher, watched them from the other side of the bar.

"Guess I'd say it's hereditary in flies," said Abe, feeling scientific.

"Wot's hered--hereditry?" demanded the butcher.

"Why--drink," explained Abe.

"Seems it's here--her--hereditry in most folk," smiled Lionel K., chewing the stump of his cigar vigorously to conceal his difficulty with such scientific terms.

The butcher nodded.

"I'd say some thirsts couldn't be brought on any other way," he said.

"Well, not to say--easy."

Abe grinned.

"Guess you ain't a believer in that guy Darwin's highbrow theory?"

"Don't know what it is," replied the butcher, lifting the gla.s.s, and tilting it so as to put the ruddy liquid within reach of the volubly buzzing insects. "Anyway, I don't believe in it. Say--I'll swar' them two sossled microbes is holding a concert to 'emselves. See, one of 'em's doing the buzzin', and blamed if the other feller ain't just wavin' a leg to beat the band, keepin' time. Say, ain't they havin' a h.e.l.l of a time?"

Lionel K. Sharpe struck a match, tried to light his cigar stump, burned his mustache, and abandoned the attempt.

"h.e.l.l!" he cried in disgust. Then he pointed at the flies. "Say, Josh, jest think of it. Guess that splash of port's well-nigh a sea--leastways a lake to them. How'd you fancy standin' around a sea of port wine?"

"Guess I'd rather be settin' in a boat and paddlin' around in it--jest as long as it wasn't your port. On second thought, I'd rather be in a sailin' craft. You see, I'd have more hands free." He pointed at the flies. "Say, that feller's quit buzzin'. I've a notion he's sung hisself hoa.r.s.e. Mebbe he's got the hiccups. Wal, say, get that! They're kissin' each other."

"They're sloshed to the gills, sure," grinned Sharpe.

"Ain't it queer?" said Abe. "Blamed if it ain't jest the same with folks. They git a drink under their belts, an' it sets 'em foolish.

They get blowin' their horns, an' doing things. Then they start singing, an' finish up shootin'--or kissin' each other."