"Oh, just directing the cure, that's all! I'll tell you more when I can report definite progress. Do you suppose there is a single secluded corner in all this mansion which has not already been preëmpted by Dorothy and Nisbet?"
He slipped his arm about her again, and together they went out, across the wide hall, toward the drawing-room. Rathbawne was standing at the telephone under the stairway, but, as they approached him, he replaced the receiver, and stepped forth under the light of the chandelier. They both halted, shocked into speechlessness by the look on his face. The past ten minutes seemed to have added a decade to his age. His cheeks were white and drawn, and with his hands he groped before him, as if he had been stricken blind. As he came close to them, he lifted his head, and peered first at his daughter, and then at Barclay, seeming barely to recognize them.
"Dad! What is it?" said the girl, in a voice just above a whisper.
Rathbawne raised his hand, and pushed back the hair from his forehead.
"A message—from Payson—of the 'Sentinel,'" he mumbled. "It seems there's a fire—a fire on Charles Street—near the mills—one of my buildings—a shop—a shop. Some one in the crowd—threw a torch in at the window—there is a great crowd—a throng of strikers—watching—cheering the flames—hissing the firemen. They've begun early—and this is only the beginning! My people—my people"——
He stumbled forward, and would have fallen, but that his daughter caught him. To his dying day Barclay remembered how, as he sprang to aid her, her hands gleamed, white and slender, against the black of Peter Rathbawne's coat.
The hush that followed was broken presently by the sound of the old man's choking sobs, and the low, soothing tones of Natalie, murmuring against his ear. From the drawing-room came indeterminate scraps of Mrs. Wynyard's gay chatter, as she regaled Mrs. Rathbawne with the gossip gleaned in a round of calls. She herself was partly visible, drawing off her gloves before the fire. From the music-room beyond issued the chords of Dorothy's none-too-sure accompaniment, and young Nisbet's superb, full tenor:—
"'Ah, love, could you and I with fate conspire
To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire'"—
But, in the Lieutenant-Governor's imagination, another sound mingled with and dominated these,—the voice of Michael McGrath, as he had heard it that morning, through the open door of Governor Abbott's room:—
"It won't be a strike like other strikes, not so long as I'm running it, that is. It's going to mean business from the word go!"