“What is that?”
“The power o’ orderin’ a man out o’ the ranks, an’ havin’ him shot. If Ah’d that power Ah’d lead the men maself, an’ get them anythin’ they wanted. The State will let you slowly starve a hundred men to death and never interfere, but if ye shot even Gibbons there’d be a row about it. An’ yet we think we’re civilized! Ah say we’re savages.”
“Oh, that’s wrong, Braunt!” cried Marsten, rising. “We’re long past that stage. If I get the reorganizing of the Union, I’ll try a fall with Sartwell some day, and will down him without shooting anybody.”
“Very well, lad, Ah’ll do ma best for ye, an’ wish ye luck.”
Braunt did his best, and the next week Marsten was unanimously made secretary of the Union by men who had looked upon him as a traitor only a few weeks before.
CHAPTER XXII.
MARSTEN made no move to communicate with Sart-well. If the manager expected the young man to propose a compromise, he was disappointed; and when he heard Marsten had been elected secretary of the Union, he smiled grimly, but made no comment. It was to be war to the knife, and Sartwell always admired an able antagonist. He made no motion against the Union, although at that time he could probably have forced seventy-five per cent of his employees to withdraw from it, had he been so minded. Marsten gave him due credit for declining to use the weapon of coercion against the men, knowing Sartwell too well to believe that the thought had not occurred to him. Yet there was little of the spirit of Christian forgiveness about the manager, as his wife had with truth often pointed out to him: he pursued an enemy to the bitter end. Gibbons metaphorically prostrated himself before Sartwell, and begged for the place in the works from which Marsten had been ejected. He was starving, he said. Sartwell replied that he was glad to hear it, and hoped Gibbons would now appreciate the sufferings of the men he had so jauntily led astray; so Gibbons had again humiliated himself for nothing.
To do Sartwell justice, however, it must be admitted that the attempted management of Marsten had slipped out of his hands in a way he had never anticipated. He did not dislike the young man; in truth, quite the opposite: still, he had higher ambitions for his only daughter than to see her marry one of his own workmen. The incident of finding Marsten with Edna in the garden had disturbed him more than he cared to admit, even to himself. If this persistent young fellow managed, when half starved, in the turmoil of the strike, to attend so successfully to his love affair, what might not happen when he was at peace with the world and had money in his pocket? Sartwell could have forbidden his daughter to see Marsten, and doubtless she would have obeyed; but he was loath to pique her curiosity regarding the reason for the prohibition, and he could not baldly tell her the young man craved permission to pay his addresses to her: that might set her fancy afire, with disastrous results to her father’s hopes. Sartwell only half expected Marsten would appeal to him against his discharge; but he knew that before the young fellow got another situation he must refer his new masters to his old manager, and, when that time came, or if Marsten made a move on his own account, Sartwell stood ready to make terms with him. If Marsten promised not to see the girl for two years, the manager would reinstate him, or would help him to secure another place.