Helen of the Old House Part 15

CHAPTER IX

THE MILL

It was pay day at the Mill.

No one, unless he, at some period in his life, has been absolutely dependent upon the wages of his daily toil, can appreciate a pay day.

To experience properly the thrill of a pay day one must have no other source of income. The pay check must be the only barrier between one and actual hunger. Bobby and Maggie Whaley knew the full meaning of pay day. Their mother measured life itself by that event.

Throughout the great industrial hive that morning there was an electrical thrill of antic.i.p.ation. Smiles were more frequent; jests were pa.s.sed with greater zest; men moved with a freer step, a more joyous swing. The very machinery seemed in some incomprehensible way to be animated with the spirit of the workmen, while the droning, humming, roaring voice of the Mill was unquestionably keyed to a happier note.

In the offices among the bookkeepers, clerks, stenographers and the department heads, the same brightening of the atmosphere was noticeable. Nor was the spirit of the event confined to the Mill itself; throughout the entire city--in the stores and banks, the post office, the places of amus.e.m.e.nt, in the homes on the hillside and in the Flats--pay day at the Mill was the day of days.

It was an hour, perhaps, after the whistle had started the big plant for the afternoon.

John Ward was deep in the consideration of some business of moment with the superintendent, George Parsons--a st.u.r.dy, square-jawed, steady-eyed, middle-aged man, who had come up from the ranks by the sheer force of his natural ability.

There is nothing at all unusual about John Ward. He is simply a good specimen of the more intelligent cla.s.s of our young American manhood, with, it might be, a more than average mind for business, which he had inherited from his father. He is, in short, a fair type of the healthy, clean-living, straight-thinking, broad-gauged, big-hearted young citizen such as one may find by the hundreds of thousands in the many fields of our national activities. In our arts and industries, in our banks and commercial houses, in our factories and newspapers, on our farms and in our professions, in our educational inst.i.tutions, among our writers and scientists, in our great transportation organizations, and in the business of our government, our John Wards are to be found, ready to take the places left to them by the pa.s.sing of their fathers.

Since his return from the war, the young man had devoted himself with the enthusiasm of a great purpose to a practical study of his father's big industrial plant. Adam still held the general management, but his son knew that the time must come when the responsibility of that position would fall to him.

With John's inherited executive ability and his comrades.h.i.+p, plus the driving force of his fixed and determined purpose, it was not strange that he so quickly gained the loyal support and cooperation of his father's long-trained a.s.sistants. His even-tempered friendliness and ready recognition of his dependence upon his fellow workers won their love. His industry, his clear-headed, open-minded consideration of the daily problems presented, with his quick grasp of essential details, commanded their admiring respect. Under the circ.u.mstance of his father's nervous trouble and the consequent enforced absence of Adam from his office for more and more frequent periods, it was inevitable that John, by common, if silent, consent of the executive heads, should be advanced more and more toward the general manager's desk.

The superintendent, gathering up his blue prints and memoranda, arose.

"And will that be all, sir?" he asked, with a smile.

Nearly every one smiled when he finished an interview with Adam Ward's son; probably because John himself nearly always smiled when he ended a consultation or gave an order.

"That's all from my side, George," he said, leaning back in his chair and looking up at the superintendent in his open, straightforward way that so surely invited confidence and trust. "Have you anything else on your mind?"

"Nary a thing, John," returned the older man, and with a parting "so long" he started toward the door that opened into the Mill.

With that smile of genuine affection still lingering on his face, John watched the st.u.r.dy back of the old superintendent as if, for the moment, his thoughts had swung from George Parsons' work to George Parsons himself.

The superintendent opened the door and was about to step out when he stopped suddenly and with a quick, decided movement drew back into the room and closed the door again. To the young man in the other end of the big office it looked as though the superintendent had seen something that startled him. Another moment and George was again bending over John's desk.

"The old man is out there, John."

"What! Father! Why I had no idea that he was coming down to-day." A look of anxiety came into the frank gray eyes. "He has not been so well lately, George. I wonder why he didn't come to the office first as usual."

"He sometimes slips in back that way, you know," returned the superintendent.

"He really ought not to be here," said the young man. "I wish--" He hesitated.

"He's generally in a state of mind when he comes in like that," said George. "You're not needing a goat, are you, boy?"

John smiled. "There's not a thing wrong in the plant so far as I know, George."

"I don't know of anything either," returned the other, "but we may not know all the way. There's one thing sure, the old man ought not to be wandering through the works alone. There's some of those rough-necks would--well it's too darned easy, sometimes, for accidents to happen, do you see? I'll rustle out there and stick around convenient like.

You'd better stay where you are as if you didn't know he was on the job. And remember, son, if you _should_ need a goat, I'm qualified. If anything has happened--whether it has or he only thinks it has--just you blame it on to old George. I'll understand."

The work was at the height of its swing when burly Max Gardner paused a second to straighten his back and wipe the sweat from his sooty face.

As he stooped again to his heavy task, he said to his mates in a voice that rumbled up from the depths of his naked, hairy chest, "Get a gate on y'--get a gate on y'--y' rough-necks. 'Tis th' boss that's a-lookin'

'round to see who he'll be tyin' th' can to next."

The men laughed.

"There's one thing sure," said Bill Connley, who looked as though his body were built of rawhide stretched over a framework of steel, "when John Ward ties the can to a man, that man knows what 'tis for. When he give Jim Billings his time last week, he says to him, says he, 'Jim, I'm sorry for y'. Not because I'm fir'in' y',' says he, 'but because y're such a loafer that y're no good to yerself nor to anybody else--y're a disgrace to the Mill,' says he, 'and to every honest working man in it.' An' Jim, he never give a word back--just hung his head an' got out of sight like a dog with his tail between his legs after a good swift kick."

"An' th' young boss was right at that," commented st.u.r.dy Soot Walters.

"Jim was a good man when he was new on the job, but since he got the wrinkles out of his belly, he's been killin' more time than any three men in the works."

"Pa.s.s me that pinch bar, Bill," called d.i.c.k Grant from the other side.

As he reached for the tool, his glance took in the figure that had caught the eye of big Max. "Holy Mike!" he exclaimed, "'tis the old man himself."

Every man in the group except Max turned his face toward Adam Ward, who stood some distance away, and a very different tone marked the voice of Bill Connley as he said, "Now what d'ye think brings that danged old pirate here to look us over this day?"

"Who the devil cares?" growled Scot, as, with an air of sullen indifference, they turned again to their work.

No one seeing the Mill owner as he viewed his possessions that day could have believed that this was the wretched creature that Helen had watched from the arbor. Away from the scenes of his business life Adam Ward was like some poor, nervous, half-insane victim of the drug habit.

At the Mill, he was that same drug fiend under the influence of his "dope."

His manner was calm and steady, with no sign of nervousness or lack of control. His gray face--which, in a way, was the face of a student--gave no hint of the thoughts and emotions that stirred within him. As he looked about the great industrial inst.i.tution to which he had given himself, body, mind and soul, all the best years of his life, his countenance was as expressionless as the very machines of iron and steel and wood among which he moved--a silent, lonely, brooding spirit.

No glow of worthy pride in the work of his manhood, no gleam of friendly comrades.h.i.+p for his fellow workmen, no joy of his kins.h.i.+p with the great humanity that was here personified shone in his eyes or animated his presence. Cold and calculating, he looked upon the human element in the Mill exactly as he looked upon the machinery. Men cost him a certain definite sum of dollars; they must be made to return to him a certain increase in definite dollars on that cost. The living bodies, minds, and souls that, moving here and there in the haze of smoke and steam and dust, vitalized the inanimate machinery and gave life and intelligent purpose to the whole, were no more to him than one of his adding machines in the office that, mechanically obedient to his touch, footed up long columns of dollars and cents. It is not strange that the humanity of the Mill should respond to the spirit of its owner with the spirit of his adding machines and give to him his totals of dollars and cents--with nothing more.

Quickly the feeling of Adam Ward's presence spread throughout the busy plant. Smiling faces grew grim and sullen. In the place of good-natured jest and cheerful laugh there were muttered curses and contemptuous epithets. The very atmosphere seemed charged with antagonism and rebellious hatred.

"Wad ye look at it?" said one. "And they tell me that white-faced old devil used to work along side of Pete and the Interpreter at that same bench where Pete's a-workin' yet."

"He did that," said another. "I was a kid in the Mill at the time; 'twas before he got hold of his new process."

"Pete Martin is a better man than Adam Ward ever was or will be at that--process or no process," said a third, while every man within hearing endorsed the sentiment with a hearty word, an oath or a pointed comment.

"But the young boss is a different sort, though," came from the first speaker.

"He is that!"

"The boy's all right."

"John's a good man."

A workman with a weak face and s.h.i.+fty eyes paused in pa.s.sing to say, "You'll find out how different the boy is onct he's put to the test.

He's the same breed, an' it's just like Jake Vodell said last night, there ain't one of the greedy capitalist cla.s.s that wouldn't nail a laboring man to the cross of their d.a.m.nable system of slavery if they dast."

A silence fell over the group.