“The strike—yes! It’s a pretty piece of business to have everything thrown out because a parcel of lazy hounds want a chance to lay off and get drunk.” Dryfoos seemed to think Conrad would make some answer to this, but the young man’s mild face merely saddened, and he said nothing. “I’ve got a coupé out there now that I had to take because I couldn’t get a car. If I had my way I’d have a lot of those vagabonds hung. They’re waiting to get the city into a snarl, and then rob the houses—pack of dirty, worthless whelps. They ought to call out the militia, and fire into ’em. Clubbing is too good for them.” Conrad was still silent, and his father sneered, “But I reckon you don’t think so.”
“I think the strike is useless,” said Conrad.
“Oh, you do, do you? Comin’ to your senses a little. Gettin’ tired walkin’ so much. I should like to know what your gentlemen over there on the East Side think about the strike, anyway.”
The young fellow dropped his eyes. “I am not authorized to speak for them.”
“Oh, indeed! And perhaps you’re not authorized to speak for yourself?”
“Father, you know we don’t agree about these things. I’d rather not talk—”
“But I’m goin’ to make you talk this time!” cried Dryfoos, striking the arm of the chair he sat in with the side of his fist. A maddening thought of Christine came over him. “As long as you eat my bread, you have got to do as I say. I won’t have my children telling me what I shall do and shan’t do, or take on airs of being holier than me. Now, you just speak up! Do you think those loafers are right, or don’t you? Come!”
Conrad apparently judged it best to speak. “I think they were very foolish to strike—at this time, when the Elevated roads can do the work.”
“Oh, at this time, heigh! And I suppose they think over there on the East Side that it’d been wise to strike before we got the Elevated.” Conrad again refused to answer, and his father roared, “What do you think?”
“I think a strike is always bad business. It’s war; but sometimes there don’t seem any other way for the workingmen to get justice. They say that sometimes strikes do raise the wages, after a while.”
“Those lazy devils were paid enough already,” shrieked the old man. “They got two dollars a day. How much do you think they ought to ’a’ got? Twenty?”
Conrad hesitated, with a beseeching look at his father. But he decided to answer. “The men say that with partial work, and fines, and other things, they get sometimes a dollar, and sometimes ninety cents a day.”
“They lie, and you know they lie,” said his father, rising and coming toward him. “And what do you think the upshot of it all will be, after they’ve ruined business for another week, and made people hire hacks, and stolen the money of honest men? How is it going to end?”
“They will have to give in.”
“Oh, give in, heigh! And what will you say then, I should like to know? How will you feel about it then? Speak!”
“I shall feel as I do now. I know you don’t think that way, and I don’t blame you—or anybody. But if I have got to say how I shall feel, why, I shall feel sorry they didn’t succeed, for I believe they have a righteous cause, though they go the wrong way to help themselves.”
His father came close to him, his eyes blazing, his teeth set. “Do you dare to say that to me?”
“Yes. I can’t help it. I pity them; my whole heart is with those poor men.”
“You impudent puppy!” shouted the old man. He lifted his hand and struck his son in the face. Conrad caught his hand with his own left, and, while the blood began to trickle from a wound that Christine’s intaglio ring had made in his temple, he looked at him with a kind of grieving wonder, and said, “Father!”
The old man wrenched his fist away and ran out of the house. He remembered his address now, and he gave it as he plunged into the coupé. He trembled with his evil passion, and glared out of the windows at the passers as he drove home; he only saw Conrad’s mild, grieving, wondering eyes, and the blood slowly trickling from the wound in his temple.
Conrad went to the neat-set bowl in Fulkerson’s comfortable room and washed the blood away, and kept bathing the wound with the cold water till it stopped bleeding. The cut was not deep, and he thought he would not put anything on it. After a while he locked up the office and started out, he hardly knew where. But he walked on, in the direction he had taken, till he found himself in Union Square, on the pavement in front of Brentano’s. It seemed to him that he heard someone calling gently to him, “Mr. Dryfoos!”
V
Conrad looked confusedly around, and the same voice said again, “Mr. Dryfoos!” and he saw that it was a lady speaking to him from a coupé beside the curbing, and then he saw that it was Miss Vance.
She smiled when he gave signs of having discovered her, and came up to the door of her carriage. “I am so glad to meet you. I have been longing to talk to somebody; nobody seems to feel about it as I do. Oh, isn’t it horrible? Must they fail? I saw cars running on all the lines as I came across; it made me sick at heart. Must those brave fellows give in? And everybody seems to hate them so—I can’t bear it.” Her face was estranged with excitement, and there were traces of tears on it. “You must think me almost crazy to stop you in the street this
