“Would it not be a simpler matter, Mr. Steele, if you were to write to Philip Manson, and ask him to take a trip to his old home? You are a member of his club, I understand, and could quite readily hold your conference there if either of you did not care to discuss the state of affairs in this office.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Blair.”
“Oh, yes, you do. The dying uncle device, or the funeral of a relative device, have all been tried upon me before. I am proof against such schemes, and really, Mr. Steele, I paid you the compliment of believing you to be more original.”
“Do you think I am lying to you?” asked John indignantly, taking a step nearer the general manager’s table.
“We don’t call it lying, Mr. Steele; we may term it diplomacy, or what you like. A week ago you requested leave of absence to consult Philip Manson. I refused my permission. Now you come to me with the story of a dying relative. I am bound to believe you, although I made a friendly suggestion a moment since which apparently you do not intend to accept, so we will get back to the original situation. Your uncle is very ill, and I am very sorry. There are doubtless at this moment many excellent persons in extremity, yet nevertheless the trains of the Midland must run, and even if Mr. Rock-ervelt or myself were removed to a better land, not a wheel would cease turning on our account. Therefore, hoping you will accept the expression of my deep sympathy, which I hereby tender to you, I must nevertheless refuse to allow the office of division superintendent to remain vacant for one hour.”
“But this is the only relative I have in the world,” protested John, earnestly. “Here is the telegram I have received. Read it for yourself.”
Mr. Blair, still smiling, waved his stout hand gently to and fro, but refused even to glance at the paper laid before him.
“I do not doubt in the least that the despatch comes from Michigan. I can even guess that it is worded in the most urgent terms, and that the signature is perfectly genuine. Nevertheless, Mr. Steele, it is better we should understand each other. As I told you a week ago, if you leave your position without my permission you will find that position permanently filled on your return. This is a free country, and you are entitled to go or stay as you please. If you hand me in your resignation, as your predecessor did, I shall say to you as I said to him, ‘Go, and prosperity be with you,’ but while you are a member of my staff, you are under my orders. Do I make myself sufficiently plain?”
“Yes, you do,” replied John Steele, picking up his telegram and leaving the room.
Once more at his own desk he sat there for a long time with his head in his hands. At first it was his determination to resign forthwith. The situation was growing as intolerable for him as it had been for his predecessor, but the longer he thought over what had happened the more he realised the impossibility of surrender. If he resigned now, he left the Rockervelt system a failure. He would be compelled to begin at the foot of the ladder again, handicapped by practical dismissal; to strive as an unsuccessful man, his years of experience counting for nothing. But even if that consideration did not harden his resolution to remain where he was, the thought of his uncle would alone have been sufficient to turn the balance. Bitterly he accused himself of his neglect of the old man who, as he had just said, was his only relative on earth. While he was escaping from the hopeless poverty in which they had both lived, the struggle for existence had become so interesting that it had obliterated the fact that Dugald Steele was still where he had left him, and not a penny of money had the young man ever forwarded to him. Up to the time his salary was made fifty dollars a week he had not only saved no money but had run into debt. These obligations were now liquidated, and he had a few hundreds in the bank; the nucleus, he hoped, of more to follow. The old man had brought him up, after a fashion, allowing him to go to school during the winter months, but every waking hour the uncle forced the nephew to work almost beyond the limit of his youthful powers, and at last had driven him forth with blows and cursings during one of those periodical fits of temper which had made Dugald Steele a terror to the neighbourhood. One letter, indeed, John had written to his old home, when he got his situation at Hitchen’s Siding, but that had remained unanswered, and he had taken it for granted that his uncle’s anger was permanent. Nevertheless, the telegram showed that the uncle had kept the letter, or remembered the address, for the despatch had been sent to Hitchen’s Siding, and from there forwarded to John Steele’s office in Warmington.