"I don't know," Sommers answered indifferently.
He was looking at the lights along the shore, and contriving some excuse to cut short his visit. It was clear that he was uncomfortably out of his element in the chattering circle. He was too dull to add joy to such a gathering, and he got little joy from it. And he was feverishly anxious to be doing something, to put his hand to some plough—to escape the perpetual irritation of talk.
The chatter went on from polo to golf and gossip until the group broke up into flirtation couples. As Sommers was about to stroll off to the beach, Lindsay came out of the dining room and sat down by him with the amiable purpose of giving his young colleague some good social doctrine. He talked admiringly of the manner in which the general managers had taken hold of the strike.
"Most of them are from the ranks, you know," he said, "fought their way up to the head, just as any one of those fellows could if he had the ability, and they know what they're doing."
"There is no one so bitter, so arrogant, so proud as your son of a peasant who has got the upper hand," Sommers commented philosophically.
"The son of a peasant?" Lindsay repeated, bewildered.
"Yes, that's what our money-makers are,—from the soil, from the masses. And when they feel their power, they use it worse than the most arrogant aristocrats. Of course the strikers are all wrong, poor fools!" he hastened to add. "But they are not as bad as the others, as those who have. The men will be licked fast enough, and licked badly. They always will be. But it is a brutal game, a brutal game, this business success,—a good deal worse than war, where you line up in the open at least."
Sommers spoke nonchalantly, as if his views could not interest Dr. Lindsay, but were interesting to himself, nevertheless.
"That's pretty fierce!" Lindsay remarked, with a laugh. "I guess you haven't seen much of business. If you had been here during the anarchist riots—"
Sommers involuntarily shrugged his shoulders. The anarchist was the most terrifying bugaboo in Chicago, referred to as a kind of Asiatic plague that might break out at any time. Before Lindsay could get his argument launched, however, some of the guests drifted out to the terrace, and the two men separated.