Part 28 (1/2)

He put out his hand. ”We are friends, aren't we?”

She instantly laid her hand in his.

”Friends,” he repeated. ”Let us hold fast to that--and let the rest take care of itself.”

”I'm ashamed of myself,” said she. And in her swift revulsion of feeling there was again opportunity for him. But he was not in the mood to see it.

”You certainly ought to be,” replied he, with his frank smile that was so full of the suggestions of health and sanity and good humor. ”You'll never get a martyr's crown at _my_ expense.”

At New York he rearranged their steamer accommodations. It was no longer diffidence and misplaced consideration that moved him permanently to establish the most difficult of barriers between them; it was pride now, for in her first stormy, moments in the train he had seen farther into her thoughts than he dared let himself realize.

CHAPTER XVII

POMP AND CIRc.u.mSTANCE

The day after the wedding, as Arthur was going home from work, he saw Ross on the lofty seat of a dogcart, driving toward him along lower Monroe Street. His anger instantly flamed and flared; he crushed an oath between his teeth and glanced about for some way to avoid the humiliating meeting. But there was no cross street between him and the on-coming cart. Pride, or vanity, came to his support, as soon as he was convinced that escape was impossible. With an air that was too near to defiance to create the intended impression of indifference, he swung along and, just as the cart was pa.s.sing, glanced at his high-enthroned former friend.

Ross had not seen him until their eyes met. He drew his horse in so sharply that it reared and pawed in amazement and indignation at the bit's coa.r.s.e insult to thoroughbred instincts for courteous treatment. He knew Arthur was at work in the factory; but he did not expect to see him in workman's dress, with a dinner pail in his hand. And from his height, he, clad in the carefully careless, ostentatiously unostentatious garments of the ”perfect gentleman,” gazed speechless at the spectacle.

Arthur reddened violently. Not all the daily contrasts thrust upon him in those months at the cooperage had so brought home to his soul the differences of caste. And there came to him for the first time that hatred of inequalities which, repulsive though it is in theory, is yet the true nerver of the strong right arm of progress. It is as characteristic of the homely, human countenance of Democracy as the supercilious smirk is of the homely, inhuman countenance of caste.

Arthur did not want to get up where Ross was seated in such elegant state; he wanted to tear Ross, all the Rosses down. ”The d.a.m.n fool!” he fumed. ”He goes lounging about, wasting the money _we_ make. It's all wrong. And if we weren't a herd of tame a.s.ses, we wouldn't permit it.”

And now he began to feel that he was the superior of this showy idler, that his own garments and dinner pail and used hands were the t.i.tles to a n.o.bility which could justly look down upon those who filched from the treasury of the toiler the means to buzz and flit and glitter in dronelike ease. ”As for these Whitneys,” he thought, ”mother's right about them.” Then he called out in a tone of good-natured contempt, which his stature and his powerful frame and strong, handsome face made effective: ”h.e.l.lo, Ross! When did _you_ come to town?”

”This morning,” replied Ross. ”I heard you were working, but I had no idea it was--I've just been to your house, looking for you, and was on the way to the factory. Father told me to see that you get a suitable position. I'm going to Howells and arrange it. You know, father's been in the East and very busy.”

”Don't bother,” said Arthur, and there was no pretense in his air of ease. ”I've got just what I want. I am carrying out father's plan, and I'm far enough into it to see that he was right.”

In unbelieving silence Ross looked down at his former equal with condescending sympathy; how well Arthur knew that look! And he remembered that he had once, so short a time before, regarded it as kindly, and the thoughts behind it as generous!

”I like my job,” he continued. ”It gives me a sense of doing something useful--of getting valuable education. Already I've had a thousand d.a.m.n-fool ideas knocked out of my head.”

”I suppose it _is_ interesting,” said Ross, with gracious encouragement.

”The a.s.sociations must be rather trying.”

”They _were_ rather trying,” replied Arthur with a smile. ”Trying to the other men, until I got my bearings and lost the silliest of the silly ideas put in my head by college and that sort of thing. But, now that I realize I'm an apprentice and not a gentleman deigning to a.s.sociate with the common herd, I think I'm less despicable--and less ridiculous. Still, I'm finding it hard to get it through my head that practically everything I learned is false and must be unlearned.”

”Don't let your bitterness over the injustice to you swing you too far the other way, Artie,” said Ross with a faint smile in his eyes and a suspicious, irritating friendliness in his voice. ”You'll soon work out of that cla.s.s and back where you belong.”

Arthur was both angry and amused. No doubt Ross was right as to the origin of this new breadth of his; but a wrong motive may start a man right just as readily as a right motive may start him wrong. Arthur would have admitted frankly his first feelings about his changed position, would have admitted that those feelings still lingered, still seemed to influence him, as grown people often catch themselves thinking in terms of beliefs impressed on them in childhood, but exploded and abandoned at the very threshold of youth. But he knew, also, that his present beliefs and resolves and aspirations were sincere, were sane, were final--the expression of the mind and heart that were really himself. Of what use, however, to argue with Ross? ”I could no more convince him,” thought Arthur, ”than I could myself have been convinced less than a year ago.”

Besides, of what importance were Ross's beliefs about him or about his views? So he said to him, and his tone and manner were now convincing: ”Well, we'll see. However, as long as I'm a workman, I'll stand with my cla.s.s--just as you stand with your cla.s.s. And while you are pretending to be generous to us, we'll pretend to be contemptuous of you. You'll think we are living off of your money; we'll think you are living off of our work. You'll say we're earning less than half what we get; we'll say you're stealing more than half what you get. It may amuse you to hear that I am one of the organizers of the trades union that's starting. I'm on the committee on wages. So some day you and I are likely to meet.”

”I don't know much about those things,” said Ross politely. ”I can see that you're right to ingratiate yourself with those working chaps. It will stand you in good stead when you get on top and have to manage them.”

Arthur laughed, and so did Ross. They eyed each the other with covert hostility. ”Poor creature!” thought Ross. And ”Pup!” thought Arthur. ”How could I have wanted Del to marry _him_?” He wished to pa.s.s on, but was detained by some suggestion in Ross's manner that he had not yet discharged his mind of its real burden.

”I was glad to see your mother so well,” said Ross.