“Stir round, will you!” said Benson. “And see if you can get a fire started—it's as cold as hell here!”
He had never been an especially agreeable man in his relation with his subordinates; and the bookkeeper after building a fire in the office stove went back into the shops, and informed Shanley the foreman that “The old man was hipped over something, and that he was a mighty good proposition to let alone.”
“Then I'm just the lad to leave him be, if that's so,” said the foreman jocosely.
And Shanley profiting by the hint kept out of the office. Jim's duties, however, did not admit of his taking a similar precaution; but he found that Tom Benson took no notice of him. He sat idly before his desk all the morning and if he noticed anything it was the skirmish line of the heat on the frosted window panes in front of him, which as the day advanced, retreated from the centre of the panes until a circle had been cleared in each, through which one might look.
He was still seated there at midday when the foundry bell clanged clear and sharp from the little square tower on the roof over his head. He watched the hands as they came hurrying out of the big gates, he heard the crisp sound of their footfalls as they disappeared up and down the street, where the snow lay heavy and white; and a smothered curse broke from his twitching lips.
“Did you speak?” asked Jim, who was putting coal in the stove preparatory to leaving, too.
“No,” said Benson gruffly, “I didn't.” Then as the bookkeeper was slipping into his coat, “Stop at the hotel, will you, and have them put me up a snack and a pot of coffee. You can fetch it with you when you come back after dinner.”
But when Williams brought the lunch, he hardly tasted it; and the coffee was cold before he gulped down a cupful of it. This was all he took.
All the afternoon the shops clanged and echoed as the work there went on. It was a sound he had loved once, but now it only brought to him the sickening consciousness that there would come a silence which he should be powerless to vivify into life and energy.
At last he took up a pen and found a sheet of paper and began to write, or rather scrawl, and this scrawl took the form of a letter which he afterward put in an envelope he had already addressed to his nephew. This was what he had written: