Robert Hardy's Seven Days Part 4

"My son," called Mr. Hardy after him gently, "won't you stay with the rest of us?"

George sat down with a shamefaced look, Alice and Clara came back, and Mr. Hardy read that famous sixth chapter of Ephesians, beginning, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord." Then in a brief but earnest prayer he asked G.o.d's help and blessing on all the day, and rose to face it, the great burden of his responsibility beginning to rest upon him for the first time. He sat down for a moment by his wife and kissed her, putting his arm about her, while Bess climbed up on the side of the couch and the boys stood irresolute and wondering. Any outward mark of affection was so unusual on the part of their father that they felt awkward in the presence of it. Mrs. Hardy was almost overcome.

"O Robert, I cannot bear it! Surely it was nothing more than a dream!

It couldn't have been anything more. You are not going to be called away from us so soon."

"Mary, I would G.o.d that I had seven years to atone for my neglect and selfishness towards you alone. But I am certain that G.o.d has granted me but seven days. I must act. G.o.d help me! Boys, you will be late.

We will all be at home this evening. Alice, care for your mother and cheer her up. You are a good girl, and----"

Again Mr. Hardy broke down as he thought of the many years he had practically ignored this brave, strong, uncomplaining nature in his own house, and remorse tore him fiercely as he recalled how he had persistently discouraged all the poor girl's ambitious efforts to make her way as an artist, not on account of the expense--for Mr. Hardy was not a n.i.g.g.ard in that respect--but because he had a false idea concerning the profession. He looked at the girl now as she limped across the floor to her mother, her pale, intellectual face brightened by her love, and her eyes s.h.i.+ning with tears at her father's unusual praise. "O G.o.d," was the inner cry of Mr. Hardy's heart, "what have I not neglected when I had it in my power to create so much happiness!"

The thought almost unnerved him; and for a moment he felt like sitting down to do nothing. But only for a moment. He rose briskly, went out into the hall and put on his overcoat, and, coming back a moment, said, "I am going down to see poor Scoville the first thing. I shall be so busy you must not look for me at lunch. But I will be back to six o'clock dinner. Good-bye!" He kissed his wife tenderly, and she clung to him sobbing. Then he kissed his daughters, a thing he had not done since they were babies, and shook hands with the boys, and marched out like one going to execution, something bright glistening in his own eyes.

Ah! ye fathers and husbands, you who are toiling for the dear ones at home, how many of you have grown so unaccustomed to the tender affections of home that your own wife would almost faint and think something was going to happen to you if you kissed her good-bye when you went away to your work in the morning! How do you know that she who has been your faithful friend and lover all these years, and nursed you through peevish sickness and done a thousand things every day for you without so much as a word of thanks or praise on your part--how do you know she does not care for these demonstrations of affection? And if she does not, how does it happen except through neglect? Call it not a little thing. It is of such little things that heaven is made, and it is of the home where such little things are found that it can truly be said, "Love is master, and the Evil One cannot find an entrance to blot with his foul tread the sweetest thing on earth."

Mr. Hardy hurried down towards the tenement where Ward Scoville lived, revolving in his mind as he went along plans for his future happiness and comfort.

"I'll deed him the place where he lives, and arrange it in some way so that he won't have to go to the hospital, or come on the county when his poor wife is gone. It will be the best I can do for him. Poor fellow! What a shame I did not come down last night! And his wife a hopeless invalid and the oldest child only four years old, Mary said!"

He was surprised, as he drew near the house, to see a group of men standing there outside and talking together earnestly. As Mr. Hardy came up they stood aside to let him pa.s.s, but were barely civil.

"Well, Stevens," Mr. Hardy inquired of one of the men, recognising him as one of the employes in the casting room, "how is Scoville this morning?"

"Dead!"

Mr. Hardy reeled as if struck in the breast with a heavy blow.

"Dead, did you say?"

"He died about an hour ago," said one of the other men. "The surgeon was late in getting around, and after the amputation it was ascertained that Scoville had received severe internal injuries."

"Was he conscious?" Mr. Hardy asked the question mechanically, but all the while his mind was in a whirl of remorse.

"Yes; up to the last moment."

Mr. Hardy went to the door and knocked. A woman, one of the neighbours, opened it and he went in. The sight stunned him. The dead man had been removed to a rear room, but his wife lay upon the very same ragged lounge Mr. Hardy had seen in his dream. The surgeon was bending over her. The room was full of neighbours.

The surgeon suddenly arose and, turning about, spoke in a quiet but decided tone:

"Now then, good people, just go home, will you, for a while? And suppose some of you take these children along with you. You can't do anything more now, and your presence disturbs the woman! Ah, Mr.

Hardy," he exclaimed, seeing the manager, "you here? This is a sad business. Come, now, ladies, I must ask you to retire."

Everybody went out except the surgeon, the poor woman's sister, and Mr.

Hardy. He drew the surgeon over to the window and inquired concerning the particulars. Mr. Hardy had received a shock at the very first, and he trembled violently.

"Well, you see," explained the surgeon, "Scoville was a dead man from the minute of the accident. Nothing could have saved him When the accident happened I was down at Bayville attending the men who were injured in the wreck last Sat.u.r.day. I telegraphed that I would come at once. But there was a delay on the road, and I did not get here until three o'clock in the morning. Meanwhile everything had been done that was possible. But nothing could save the poor fellow. This shock will kill his wife. I doubt if she lives through the day."

"What will be done with the children?" Mr. Hardy asked the question mechanically, again feeling the need of time to think out what was best to be done. The surgeon shrugged his shoulders. He was accustomed to scenes of suffering and distress continually.

"Orphans' Home, I suppose," he replied laconically.

A movement and a moan from the woman called him to her side, and Mr.

Hardy, left alone, thought a moment, then stepped over to the surgeon and asked him if he could go into the other room and see the dead man.

The surgeon nodded a surprised a.s.sent, and Mr. Hardy stepped into the rear room and closed the door. He drew back the sheet from the face of the man and looked down upon it. Nothing in all his experience had ever moved him so deeply. The features of the dead man were fixed, it seemed to him, in an expression of despair. Mr. Hardy gazed steadily upon it for half a minute, then replacing the sheet he kneeled down by the side of the rude bed and prayed G.o.d for mercy. "O Lord," he groaned in his remorse, "lay not the death of this man to my charge!"

Yet, even as he prayed, he could not drive back the thought which chased across the prayer, "I am this man's murderer. I issued the order compelling the Sunday work. I refused a week ago to inspect the retorts, which were declared unsafe, on the ground that it was not my business. I compelled this man to work under the fear of losing his place if he refused to work. I compelled him to work on the one day in which G.o.d has commanded all men to rest. I, a Christian by profession, a member of the church, a man of means--I put this man in deadly peril upon a Sunday in order that more money might be made and more human selfishness might be gratified. I did it. And this man once saved my life. I am his murderer, and no murderer shall inherit the kingdom of G.o.d."

So the wretched man prayed there by the side of that cold body. Yet the world to-day goes on with men in high places who have it in their power to change the conditions that exact Sunday labour from thousands of weary men and drive the commerce of the world across the continent at the cost of that priceless thing, the soul of man, in order that the owners of railroad stock and the men who get their salaried living from it may have more money. What! is it not true that every Sunday in this land of Christian homes and hearts many and many a well-fed, sleek, self-satisfied, well-dressed man, with a high salary and well-established social position, with a luxurious home and money in the bank, goes to church and sits down in a softly cus.h.i.+oned pew to listen to the preaching of the Gospel, while within hearing distance of the services an express train or a freight thunders by upon the road which declares the dividends that make that man's wealth possible? On those trains are groups of coal-begrimed human beings who never go inside a church, who never speak the name of G.o.d or Christ except in an oath, who lead lives that are as dest.i.tute of spiritual nourishment as a desert of sand and rocks, and who are compelled to labour contrary to G.o.d's everlasting law of rest, in order that man may have more to feed his body and indulge his pa.s.sions! Do not tell us it is necessary labour. It is labour for the making of more money. It does not need to be done. The community could dispense with it; in the sight of G.o.d it is a wicked use of human flesh and blood and souls; and the starved spiritual natures of these men will come up at the Judgment Day before the men who had it in their power to say, "Not a wheel shall turn on these tracks on Sunday, even if we don't make a little more money."

Money or souls! Which is worth more in the thought of the railroad corporation? Let the facts make answer.

Mr. Hardy did not know just how long he kneeled there in that bare room. At last he arose wearily and came out; his prayer had not refreshed him. The surgeon glanced at him inquisitively, but asked no questions. The sick woman was in a state of semi-unconsciousness. Mr.

Hardy's cook, her sister, sat listlessly and worn out by the side of the lounge. The surgeon rapidly gave directions for the use of some medicine, and prepared to go. Some of the neighbours called, and the surgeon let two of the women come in. Just as the two men were going out together--Mr. Hardy still absorbed in his great desire to do something of importance for the mother and her children--his minister, Mr. Jones, appeared.

He looked surprised at seeing Mr. Hardy, inquired the news of the doctor, and at once asked if he could see the poor widow. The doctor thought it would do no harm. Mr. Jones whispered to Mr. Hardy:

"She was a faithful member of our church, you know."

Mr. Hardy did not know it, to his shame he confessed. This sister of his in Christ had been a member of the same church, and he had not even known it. If she had happened to sit on the same side of the building where he sat, he would probably have wondered who that plain-looking person was, dressed so poorly. But she had always sat back on the other side, being one of a few poor women who had been attracted into the church and been comforted by Mr. Jones' simple piety and prayers.

The minister kneeled down and said a gentle word to the woman. Then as if in reply to a low-voiced request he began a prayer of remarkable beauty and comfort. Mr. Hardy wondered, as he listened, that he could ever have thought this man dull in the pulpit. He sat down and sobbed as the prayer went on, and took to himself the consolation of that heavenly pet.i.tion. When Mr. Jones rose, Mr. Hardy still sat with his hands over his face. The surgeon was called out by someone. Then the minister, after making arrangements for the funeral of Scoville with the women who had come in, started to go out, when Mr. Hardy rose, and they went away together.

"Mr. Jones," said Mr. Hardy, as they walked along, "I have an explanation and a confession to make. I haven't time to make it now, but I want to say that I have met G.o.d face to face within the past twenty-four hours, and I am conscious for the first time in years of the intensely selfish life I have lived. I need your prayers and help.

And I want to serve the church and do my duty there, as I never before have done it. I have not supported your work as I should. I want you to think of me this week as ready to help in anything in my power.

Will you accept my apology for my contempt of your request a week ago?

I will come into the meeting Thursday night and help in any way possible."

Mr. Jones' eyes filled with tears. He grasped Mr. Hardy's hand and said:

"Brother, G.o.d bless you! Let me be of service to you in any way I can."

Mr. Hardy felt a little better for the partial confession, and parted with his minister at the next corner, going down to his office.

It was now ten o'clock, and the day seemed to him cruelly brief for the work he had to do. He entered the office, and almost the first thing he saw on his desk was the following letter, addressed to him, but written in a disguised hand:

"_Mr. Hardy_,--Us in the casting room don't need no looking after but maybe the next pot of hot iron that explodes will be next the offis if you thinks we have bodies but no sols some morning you will wake up beleving another thing. We ain't so easy led as sum folks supposes.

Better look to house and employ spesul patrol; if you do we will blak his face for him."

There was no signature to this threatening scrawl, which was purposely misspelled and ungrammatically composed. Mr. Hardy had received threats before, and paid little attention to them. He prided himself on his steady nerves, and his contempt of all such methods used to scare him. Only a coward, he reasoned, would ever write an anonymous letter of such a character. Still, this morning he felt disturbed.

His peculiar circ.u.mstances made the whole situation take on a more vivid colouring. Besides all that, he could not escape the conviction that he was in a certain sense responsible for the accident in the casting room. It was not his particular business to inspect machinery.

But his attention had been called to it, and he felt now as if he had been criminally careless in not making the inspection in the absence of the regular officer. An investigation of the accident would free Mr.

Hardy from legal responsibility. But in the sight of G.o.d he felt that he was morally guilty. At this moment Mr. Burns came in. He looked sullen, and spoke in a low tone:

"Only half the men are back this morning, sir. Scoville's death and the injuries to the others have had a bad effect on the men."

Mr. Hardy crumpled the letter nervously in his hand.

"Mr. Burns, I would like to apologise for my neglect of the injured men. Who are they, and how badly are they hurt?"

Burns looked surprised, but made answer, describing briefly the accidents. Mr. Hardy listened intently with bowed head. At last he looked up and said abruptly: