It was so different from the usual applause, the applause which had already started and which would follow the Manager's splendid appreciation of the obvious. Several diners—there were twelve at the table—looked up quickly and wondered at the Captain.
"What—what do you mean?" asked the Manager softly, amazed at the interruption. He had been coming to a point where he expected to hurl a smashing argument against the methods of some men who handled millions, and here he had been held up by a Captain, an employee of his Company. There was a silence, awkward, impressive—and the old seaman felt it, causing him to blush through his mahogany tan. He had committed himself, and he was essentially a modest man.
"I don't know exactly how to explain," said the Captain slowly. "These questions of human analysis are so very subtle, so elusive—I am only a sailorman after all, and perhaps I see things differently from the view taken by landsmen. There is much in the point of view. But it seems that I am still reasonable, still logical—and I am able to perform my duties even though I'm seventy."
He paused, passed his brown hand across his grizzled forehead, where the hair still hung thickly. Then he let it drop slowly down over his beard and his eyes seemed to have an introspective look. He spoke very slowly and with considerable hesitation as one not used to the ready flow of language, words every one of which had a meaning.
"There was a small matter," he continued, "which called my attention to the human judgment. I don't know how to tell it, but—well, you remember Jones, Captain Jones, who had an interest in the oil ships? Yes; well, I was thinking of him.
"Jones was one of the first oil carriers. That was before the Standard took charge. I had sailed with him as mate long before the war. He got a great tank ship—lost her. Then came the squeeze of the Consolidated, then the death of competition—and, well, Jones lost one thing after another. Froze out. They made him watchman at the office, made him night watchman, a man who had once run a ten-thousand-ton oiler, a man who had made them millions by his care and industry. Then he sank to the gutter and on forty dollars a month he tried to wrest a living for seven children—four of them girls. You know the old story, the sordid details. Jones had to take on liquor once in a while. He would have gone mad without a drunk at least once a month. He figured that it was best to get drunk than go mad, best for his family. It's all well enough to talk, for the chicken-souled loafers who preach to their flocks and then get their living through the generosity of silly women, to call poor Jones a drunken reprobate, a useless loafer, because he drank. But the red-hearted men, the men who knew him, knew what he was suffering, knew what weight was pulling him down. In two years he never bought a suit of clothes. He never spent anything upon himself—except at certain times he felt that he must undergo relaxation, must get away from himself—then he would get drunk, very drunk.
"His wife—oh, yes, he had his wife. She knew him, knew what he had gone through—she saw he got enough money for rum, helped him, stinted herself, slaved, worked—well, she did everything a poor, high-spirited woman could do."
Cone paused, took a drink, a mere sip, from his glass of water, then pushed it from him. The looks of the guests annoyed him. A prohibitionist from Maine glared at him and made him uncomfortable. There was a half-suppressed sneer upon the lips of the Manager, but he was a gentleman—and a host.
"Yes—I was speaking of his wife," he went on. "She helped him, held him up with a mighty soul, a tremendous strength for a woman. All through the dark and gloomy life he led, sleeping in the daytime and wandering about the desolate offices at night, she was always ready, always willing to lend a hand, steadying, guiding, always sound in judgment and above all ready at all times to make any sacrifice for either him or the children—yes, she was a great woman—may the God of the sea hold her gently where she lies in its bosom—dead? Oh, yes, she died long ago. The worst of the affair came about when Jones fell sick. He finally broke down under the awful strain, couldn't stand it—no, the liquor didn't hurt him, he was used to that. It was the despair, the dead weight of crushed hopes, the knowledge of an old man unable to make good against the tide, the tide which was sweeping his children down to hell. The oldest girl was twenty and forced to work at a place where—well, never mind, it was the same old sordid story of a young woman staying, sticking out at a place where it was impossible for her to come out as she went in. Ruin, and hell for her afterward—convention, we call it—but what's the use? She was the old man's favorite, and it hit him very hard, very hard indeed.
"Yes, I remember it very well. Poor old Jones, captain of a ten-thousand-ton ship, owner of a quarter interest in one of the biggest commercial enterprises in the world—six children and a wife starving on forty dollars a month and the seventh child—yes, it was pretty bad, especially bad for Jones, for he had done nothing to deserve his fate, nothing but fight a combination which knew no mercy. The relentless, implacable cruelty of corporations is well enough known to you gentlemen. Their laws are like the laws of Nature—transgress them and you must die. The laws of life are supposed to be just, therefore it is probable that those of some corporations are so likewise—I don't know. But they had smashed Jones. Crushed him down—yes, there he was at forty a month, trying to forget, trying to do something to keep his family alive, and then under the heaviest strain he broke one day—broke and went down."