“Call it a trick, if you like. A strike is war; you must not expect it to be fought with rose-leaves. But aside from that, I have borne in mind the real interests of the men. I could have filled the works with competent men—yes, ten times over. If I had done so, where would the strikers be at the end of the fight? Some would be in prison, some would have broken heads, all would be out of employment. I want my own men back here. I want them to understand they have got a fool for a leader. They have had a nice little play spell; they have eaten and drank their money—the vacation has come to an end. If they return to work now, there is work for them; if they delay much longer, I shall fill the shops with genuine workmen, and the Union has no money now to bribe them with.”
“If I tell the men all this, there will be a riot. They will mob the bogus workmen who have taken their money.”
“Oh, no, they won’t. I have told the bogus workmen just how long the money would continue to be paid, if they held their tongues. With last week’s reduced payment the loafers have scattered. The men may mob Gibbons, and I think he richly deserves it.”
“They will be much more likely to attack you.”
“They are welcome to try it. Now, I think that is all I have to say, Marsten. I have required no answers from you, and I imagine I have given you some interesting information. I am ready to get to work, with the former employees of the firm, or without them, just as they choose. The best friend of the men will be he who advises them to call off this foolish strike and buckle down to business once more.”
CHAPTER XII.
Albert Langly found himself compelled to search for a cheaper room. The thin young man bitterly regretted that good money had to be wasted on food, clothes and rent. A person cannot live without food; Langly had tried it, not as an economical experiment, but largely through forgetfulness, and he found, to his astonishment, that hunger actually forced itself upon his attention, after a sufficient lapse of time. The changeable English climate, not to mention the regulations of that moral body the police force, compelled him to cover himself; and a room he needed mainly to keep his stacks of music dry. The church of St. Martyrs-in-the-East afforded a very good living to its rector and a very poor one for its organist, although if people were paid according to professional efficiency in this world, the salaries of clergyman and musician might have been reversed. Those who entered the church door came, not to hear the sermon, but to listen to the music.
Langly never applied for more remuneration, because deep down in his musical soul he knew he was already taking advantage of the generosity of the church authorities, and he lived in constant fear that some day they would discover this and righteously dismiss him. To be allowed to play on that splendid instrument, erected at the cost of an unbelievable amount of money, was a privilege which he felt he ought to pay for, if he were the honest man the deacons thought him. He tried to soothe his troubled conscience, by telling it that he would refuse to take money were it not that sheet music was so dear, even when bought from the man who gave the largest discount in London, to whose shop Langly tramped miles once a week; but thus the guilty have ever endeavoured to lull the inward monitor, well knowing, while they did so, the sophistry of their excuses. The consciousness of deceit told on Langly’s manner; he cringed before the rector and those in authority. Never did one of the kindly but deluded men accost their organist without causing a timorous fear to spring up in his heart that the hour of his dismissal had arrived. Yet, let moralists say what they will, the wicked do prosper sometimes on this earth when they shouldn’t, while the innocent suffer for the misdeeds done by others. There was the case of Belcher, for example, and although it must in justice be admitted that Belcher’s hard luck caused the organist many twinges of conscience, still of what avail are twinges of conscience when the harm is wrought? If, in our selfishness, we bring disaster on a fellow-creature, after-regret can scarcely be called reparation.