Robert Hardys Seven Days | Page 3

to make the
explanation just given, Mrs. Hardy said, speaking coldly, as if it were a
matter of indifference to her:
"Mr. Burns, the foreman, called while you were out."
"He did? What did he want?"
"He said four of the men in the casting room were severely injured this
afternoon by the bursting of one of the retorts, and the entire force had
quit work and gone home."
"Couldn't Burns supply the place of the injured men? He knows where
the extras are."
"That was what he came to see you about. He said he needed further
directions. The men flatly refused to work another minute, and went
out in a body. I don't blame them much. Robert, don't you believe God
will punish you for keeping the shops open on Sunday?"
"Nonsense, Mary," replied Mr. Hardy; yet there was a shadow of
uneasiness in his tone. "The work has got to go on. It is a work of
necessity. Railroads are public servants; they can't rest Sundays."
"Then when God tells the world that it must not work on Sundays, He
does not mean railroad men? The Fourth Commandment ought to read,
'Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, except all ye men who
work for railroads. Ye haven't any Sunday.'"
"Mary, I didn't come from one sermon to listen to another. You're
worse than Mr. Jones."
Mr. Hardy half rose on the lounge and leaned on his elbow, looking at
his wife with every mark of displeasure on his face. Yet as he looked,

somehow there stole into his thought the memory of the old New
England home back in the Vermont Hills, and the vision of that quiet
little country village where Mary and he had been brought up together.
He seemed to see the old meeting-house on the hill, at the end of a long,
elm-shaded street that straggled through the village, and he saw himself
again as he began to fall in love with Mary, the beauty of the village;
and he had a vision of one Sunday when, walking back from church by
Mary's side, he had asked her to be his wife. It seemed to him that a
breath of the meadow just beyond Squire Hazen's place came into the
room, just as it was wafted up to him when Mary turned and said the
happy word that made that day the gladdest, proudest day he had ever
known. What, memories of the old times! What!
He seemed to come to himself, and stared around into the fire as if
wondering where he was, and he did not see the tear that rolled down
his wife's cheek and fell upon her two hands clasped in her lap. She
arose and went over to the piano, which stood in the shadow, and
sitting down, with her back to her husband, she played fragments of
music nervously. Mr. Hardy lay down on the lounge again. After a
while Mrs. Hardy wheeled about on the piano stool and said:
"Robert, don't you think you had better go over and see Mr. Burns
about the men who were hurt?"
"Why, what can I do about it? The company's doctor will see to them. I
should only be in the way. Did Burns say they were badly hurt?"
"One of them had his eyes put out, and another will have to lose both
feet. I think he said his name was Scoville."
"What, not Ward Scoville?"
"I think Burns said that was the name."
Mr. Hardy rose from the lounge, then lay down again. "Oh, well, I can
go there the first thing in the morning. I can't do anything now," he
muttered.

But there came to his memory a picture of one day when he was
walking through the machine shops. A heavy piece of casting had
broken from the end of a large hoisting derrick and would have fallen
upon him and probably killed him if this man, Scoville, at the time a
workman in the machine department, had not pulled him to one side, at
the risk of his own life. As it was, in saving the life of the manager,
Scoville was struck on the shoulder, and rendered useless for work for
four weeks. Mr. Hardy had raised his wages and advanced him to a
responsible position in the casting room. Mr. Hardy was not a man
without generosity and humane feeling; but as he lay on the lounge that
evening and thought of the cold snow outside and the distance to the
shop tenements, he readily excused himself from going out to see the
man who had once saved him, and who now lay maimed for life. If
anyone thinks it impossible that one man calling himself a Christian
could be thus indifferent