"Fight 'em!" said Colonel Broadcastle, with a sharp nod of his head.
Rathbawne turned from him to the Lieutenant-Governor, and to the latter, knowing the man he had been, there was something indescribably heart-rending in the sudden, irresolute trembling of his half-raised hands, the slow shake of his head, and the pathos of his raised eyebrows and drooping lips.
"John," he said, "I'm an old man, and you're a young one, but I'm a plain citizen, and you're the Lieutenant-Governor of Alleghenia. You know how things stand. Now, I've given you my girl, and after that it's not much to put myself into your hands as well. I'm getting on. My strength isn't what it was. I'm not as fit to stand such a struggle as this is bound to be, as I was thirty years ago. I look strong, but, in reality, I'm not. My doctor has warned me, more than once. A sudden shock—you know what these medical chaps say about sudden shocks! I've laughed at him, of course, and yet—I know there is truth in it. I've been up against hard propositions, but never one as hard as this. I've had big responsibilities, but never a responsibility that I felt as I feel this one. If I hold out, I know what people and the newspapers will say,—how they'll blackguard me,—but I'm not afraid of that. I'm not even thinking of it. No, and I'm not thinking of what the strain may mean to me. Every man's turn is sure to come—why not one way as well as another? But what I am thinking of is the result upon the lives of these people whom I've made, as surely as if I were another Creator. And McGrath's another Beelzebub! There's a fight on between us for the salvation of a little world of four thousand souls! But I'm not God! I can't act with the conviction of omniscience. I've been the most independent of men. I've made my own fortune with my own brains. I've done as I saw fit, and the results have seemed to indicate that I've been oftener right than wrong. But now, I'm at a loss. It's not the men I'm thinking of so much. They ought to be able to make their own way, as I've made mine. It's the women and children dependent upon them—the women and children who have no voice in the matter, and yet who are bound to suffer most by a strike. I've got to think for them. I've reached a crisis—a cross-ways—and I've got to choose which course to take—and I can't! All my experience counts for nothing. I've never—you probably know it—asked for advice before. But now I must have the unprejudiced, the outside point of view. I've always thought there was a clear, unmistakable boundary between right and wrong, but now there's some right in the wrong, and a big sight more of wrong in the right! I've heard Broadcastle's opinion, and I want yours. If you agree, I'll go by what you say. As I said before, John, in this matter I'm the individual—you're the state. I'll go by what you say. What shall I do?"
Peter Rathbawne's words had wrought tremendously upon the Lieutenant-Governor. He answered slowly, looking down, and with a perceptible tremor in his voice.
"Mr. Rathbawne, you and the Colonel know how high-sounding my title is, and how little, in reality, it means. There is no need to go into details. I'm Lieutenant-Governor of Alleghenia, yes!—and as helpless in the cause of right as a new-born baby! If I could by any means, in any manner, support the advice I gave you, I would give it willingly."
"John!" said Peter Rathbawne, "I don't mean that. I've put the case wrongly. Give me your counsel, not as Lieutenant-Governor, but as my friend, and the man who loves my daughter!"
The Lieutenant-Governor raised his eyes from the finger-tips with which, as the other was speaking, he had been plucking at the cloth.
"Fight them, Mr. Rathbawne," he said, "and may God help you—because I can't!"