Sir Thomas Jackson Hathaway, Kt., Alderman of the City of London, looked along the masculine faces, spaced with the interstices of the departed ladies, of the little dinner-party of intimate friends, and then again to the brown keen visage of his son. He pushed along the decanter—he was old-fashioned and made a virtue of it—"Fill up, Harry, my boy—I've been looking after the cellar while you've been away—there's more of it." He laughed a little at the mirth of his implied suggestion that there might possibly be a shortage in the cellars of Sir Thomas Hathaway. And his guests laughed a little in courtesy.
"We've kept the flag flying here also, my boy," said the big, heavily jovial host, puffing hugely at his cigar and then taking it from his mouth to examine it with a superfluously critical eye. "You'll find things as well—better, than when you left. You don't mind, gentlemen, this little talk of shop? After all, we're all friends together, and most of us have some small interest in the little business, ha! ha!" The guests were, in fact, Sir Thomas Hathaway's co-directors in the large enterprises he controlled. He continued: "Better I may say, for we have been very conservative—we've looked to the younger generation away fighting our battles for us—and we've built up a reserve fund that a few years ago we shouldn't have dreamed of. You've come back to a first-class concern, Harry, my boy. Here's to it!" He raised and drained his glass, setting a followed example to his guests.
Captain Hathaway had been toying with a match on the tablecloth. He looked up—quiet and thoughtful, his face clean-cut and aristocratic by contrast with the heavy opulence of his sire.
"You don't anticipate Labour trouble, then, father?"
Sir Thomas Hathaway laughed, a guffaw, and crashed his hand on the table.
"Labour troubles, my boy! You need have no fear on that score. We're going to teach Labour a lesson. We haven't built up our reserve for nothing.—not only ourselves, but all the houses in the trade. For long enough we've been dictated to by Labour—and now, by God, we're going to crush it! Do you know what's coming, my boy? Have you thought about it? There's going to be the biggest flood of Labour chucked on the market that the world has ever known. All of 'em fightin'—fightin' for jobs! And the trade, Harry, my boy, is going to lock out! We're closed down now, and we shan't open again till our own good time. How long d'you think the Union funds'll last? We'll bust 'em—bust 'em for ever and a day. And when we open our shops again to Labour—it'll be on our own terms! Here, fill up, gentlemen, I can vouch for this wine—cost me a sinful price it did. We'll bust 'em, my lad, so that never again in our time shall we hear a word of Labour trouble." He gulped the glassful of his sinfully costly wine.
Captain Hathaway glanced round the table at the somewhat flushed, semi-senile features of his father's guests and partners. They were one and all nodding their heads in varying emphasis of approbation. He got up.
"Well, father, I don't think we'll discuss it now. Suppose we join the ladies?"
In the high drawing-room, softly lit with diffused radiance from the ceiling, draped with precious modern hangings that were genuine and spaced out with expensive antique paintings that were not, furnished with the luxury of a wealth too utterly complete in its overwhelming newness to allow imagination its leap across an artistic restraint, the ladies purred, or cooed in careful falsetto, as they awaited the entrance of the males. At a grand piano, slightly removed, a young woman with a delicately refined face played softly to herself—in a quiet ecstasy of gladness for which this was the only satisfying expression.