“Well,” said Gibbons, taking no notice of the other’s insinuation, “you don’t need to come here for permission to visit Sartwell’s office. I suppose you have often been there before.”
“I have not been there since the strike began.”
“Oh, haven’t you?”
“No, I haven’t. Do you mean to assert that I have?”
“I assert nothing. It merely seems strange to me that you should come bawling here, saying you are going to consult Sartwell. It has nothing to do with us. Go and come as you please, for all I care.”
The members of the committee murmured approval of the chairman’s firm stand, and Marsten, seeing there was little use in further delay, turned on his heel and left them. The men lounging around the door nodded to him in a friendly manner as he went out, and the committee presumably continued its deliberations, untroubled by the interruption.
The young man walked down the street, looking neither to the right nor to the left, sick at heart, rather than angry, with the fatuous pettiness of Gibbons’s resentment, who would rather wound and humiliate a man he disliked, than accept help when it was freely offered.
“How different,” said Marsten to himself, “is the conduct of Sartwell! He has more cause to detest me than Gibbons has, yet he asks me to confer with him. He does not despise the smallest card in his hand, while Gibbons may be throwing away a trump, if I were mean enough, and traitor enough to the men, to refuse to tell what I may learn. Sartwell, parting with me in anger, hails me on the street, merely because he thinks he can use me to serve his employers. That he likes me no better than he did when I left him, is shown by the sting in his talk, yet he puts down his personal feelings, hoping to win a trick; while Gibbons, the fool, although approached in a friendly way, does his sneaking little best to drive a man over to the enemy. I wonder what Sartwell wants to discover. I’ll tell him nothing; but what a man he is to fight for—or against!”
“Hold hard, youngster. Where are you going?” cried the picket at the gate.
“I’m going to see Mr. Sartwell.”