“What!” cried Rupert. There was no doubt about his anger now.
“One moment,” said Tom. “I’m against a strike, but it’s a good weapon. It’s maybe a better weapon when it isn’t used than when it is. It can hit the striker as well as the struck.”
“Oh? That’s dawned on you, has it?”
“Some time before you were born. But this strike wouldn’t hurt the striker. There’s somebody ready to buy Hepplestall’s. I’ll call him Mr. B., because B stands for butcher, and a butcher will buy a bull but he won’t buy a mad bull. Mr. B. will think twice before he buys Hepplestall’s when Hepplestall’s men are on strike against being sold. No one buys trouble with his eyes open. That’s why we can stop this. That’s the public way, but I’ve still great hopes we’ll stop it privately, in this room.”
“Then you—” Rupert began hotly, but William interrupted. “You may have noticed that I was writing, Mr. Bradshaw. This letter goes to-night finally declining to treat in any way for a sale of Hepplestall’s. I have signed it and I am Head of Hepplestall’s. I hope, Sir Rupert, the future Head will sign it with me.”
“Uncle!” he said, and turned his back.
“It isn’t needful,” said Tom, “for me to add that nobody shall ever know from me that there was any question of a sale.”
“Thank you,” said William. “As a fact, Mr. Bradshaw, there never was.” He believed what he said, too. He believed he had never been influenced by Gertrude or convinced by Rupert. He believed he had merely toyed pleasantly with the idea, standing himself superior to it. “But that shall not prevent me from appreciating your actions, yours, Lady Hepplestall, and yours, Mr. Bradshaw. We Hepplestalls are all trustees, all of us,” he emphasized, looking at Rupert’s stiff back, “but you have shown to-day that you are sharer in the trust.”
Tom wondered for a moment what was the polite conversational equivalent of ironical cheers; William was escaping too easily, but the chief point was not the regent but the heir, Mary’s Rupert, and he could spare William the knowledge that he had deceived nobody.
“Sir Rupert spoke just now,” he said, “of the rights of property. They are rightful rights only when they are matched with a sense of responsibility, and capital that forgets responsibility is going to get it in the neck.”