Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; City and town life -- Fiction; Coal mines and mining -- Pennsylvania -- Fiction; Labor leaders -- Fiction
At the meeting David Ormsby had been as always quiet and self-possessed.
A halo of kindly intent hung over him and when a banker, one of the
directors of the company, had finished a speech he arose and walked up
and down, his hands thrust into his trousers pockets. The banker was a
fat man with thin brown hair and delicate hands. As he talked he held a
pair of yellow gloves and beat with them on a long table at the centre
of the room. The soft thump of the gloves upon the table made a chorus
to the things he had to say. David motioned for him to be seated. “I
will myself go to see this McGregor,” he said, walking across the room
and putting an arm about the shoulder of the banker. “Perhaps there is
as you say a new and terrible danger here but I do not think so. For
thousands, no doubt for millions of years, the world has gone on its way
and I do not think it is to be stopped now.
“It has been my fortune to see and to know this McGregor,” added David
smiling at the others in the room. “He is a man and not a Joshua to make
the sun stand still.”
In the office in Van Buren Street, David, the grey and confident, stood
before the desk at which sat McGregor. “We will get out of here if you
do not mind,” he said. “I want to talk to you and I would not like being
interrupted. I have a fancy that we talk out of doors.”
The two men went in a street car to Jackson Park and, forgetting to
dine, walked for an hour along the paths under the trees. The wind from
the lake had chilled the air and the park was deserted.
They went to stand on a pier that ran out into the lake. On the pier
David tried to begin the talk that was the object of their being
together but felt that the wind and the water that beat against the
piling of the pier made talk too difficult. Although he could not have
told why, he was relieved by the necessity of delay. Into the park they
went again and found a seat upon a bench facing a lagoon.
In the presence of the silent McGregor David felt suddenly embarrassed
and awkward. “By what right do I question him?” he asked himself and in
his mind could find no answer. A half dozen times he started to say what
he had come to say but stopped and his talk ran off into trivialities.
“There are men in the world you have not taken into consideration,”
he said finally, forcing himself to begin. With a laugh he went on,
relieved that the silence had been broken. “You see the very inner
secret of strong men has been missed by you and others.”
David Ormsby looked sharply at McGregor. “I do not believe that you
believe we are after money, we men of affairs. I trust you see beyond
that. We have our purpose and we keep to our purpose quietly and
doggedly.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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