CHAPTER XI.
SARTWELL showed little sign of the wear and tear of the struggle. He walked from the station to his office every morning at his usual hour, as if everything were going on to his entire satisfaction. He was always dressed with scrupulous neatness, and he invariably carried in his hand a trimly folded umbrella, which no one had ever seen him undo, for when it rained he took a cab. The umbrella seemed a part of him, and a purely ornamental part; he was never met on the street without it. No man could say when Sartwell purchased a new suit of clothes; each suit was precisely the same as the one that preceded it, and it was always put on before its predecessor began to show signs of wear.
There was as little change in Sartwell’s demeanour towards his men as there was in his clothes. He did not keep his eyes on the ground as he passed along the street to the gates, nor was there, on the other hand, any belligerency in his manner. The men had gone out; that was their affair; he nodded to them or bade them a curt “Good-morning,” as had been his habit before the trouble. Few of them had the presence of mind to do otherwise than raise their fingers to their caps or answer, with the customary mumble, “Mornin’, sir.” Habit is strong in the human animal, as has often been pointed out.
No one of all those concerned was more anxious for the strike to end than Sartwell, but none the less was he determined that it should end his way. He saw the openings in his armour through which, with a blindness not understandable to the manager, Gibbons neglected to thrust.
Curiously enough, it was not Gibbons that Sartwell feared in this contest, but Marsten. He knew the young man had been strongly against the strike, but he also knew that he had thrown in his lot with the men; and although the leaders of the strike, up to that time, had held aloof from Marsten, pretending to look upon him as a covert traitor to the cause, still Sartwell feared they might take him into their counsels at last, and that he would show them the way out of their difficulties. The manager had made it his business to learn all he could of what was done by his opponents, and he had been amazingly successful. He knew of Marsten’s visit to Barney and of the generally futile result of that conference; but he had so slight a confidence in Barney’s good sense, that he feared some hint might have been dropped by the artist which would show the men how anxious Monkton & Hope were for a settlement on almost any terms. As time passed, and Sartwell saw that Gibbons still held Marsten at arm’s length, he became less and less anxious. Affairs were rapidly approaching a crisis when Marsten’s aid would be useless.
A few days after the announcement of the reduction in strike pay had been made, Sartwell, approaching the gates in the morning, saw Marsten standing alone at the street corner. The manager had almost passed him without greeting on either side, when the elder man suddenly stopped, turned half around, and said sharply:
“On picket duty, Marsten?”
“No, Mr. Sartwell.”
“Not in their confidence, perhaps.”
“I suppose I am neither in their confidence, nor in yours, Mr. Sartwell.”