XIII
The morning's mail included one letter of importance for Pelham. It was a form announcement of a directors' meeting of the mining company, at ten.
Judge Florence was calling the group to order, when Pelham arrived. The young mining engineer took one comprehensive look around the massive directors' table, a plate-glass-covered stretch centering the sumptuous gray office. Slowly he let himself into the one vacant chair. Paul Judson sat next to the head; Henry Tuttle, of Tuttle and Mabry, general counsel for the corporation, was talking earnestly to him. Kane, one of Judson's directors, was grouped with two of the younger men from the other interest. Sam Ross, John and Stephen Birrell, Randolph, Pelham nodded to each in turn: their faces seemed to him carved into a new heartless savagery,—a huddled group of soul-squeezing masters of men.
As general manager, Paul reported briefly the facts of the accident, with evidence, gathered by company detectives, that the blow-up originated in a miner's criminal carelessness in seriously overcharging in number six entry. This was due to wilful misunderstanding of the company's haste to get out iron, to take advantage of war prices; haste, but not carelessness, was demanded.
Two of the fourteen in the entry most affected were still alive; one had given his deposition at the hospital, telling of the conversation between the miner and his foreman immediately preceding the explosion, in which the dead miner had boasted of the overheavy charge.
"There are, according to the latest reports," Paul concluded, "twenty-two dead, and about thirty injured in greater or less degree. Spence and Jacks have filed already the first damage suits. If we pay these claims, it will cost the company from a quarter of a million to a million dollars. Since the company is not at all responsible, I recommend that we make no settlement whatever." His thin lips lifted together, and contracted. He sat down.
"Can you give us the legal side, Henry?" Jeremiah Florence had lifted Henry Tuttle from Choctaw Falls to Adamsville, and started him on the driving career that made him the worst-feared corporation lawyer in this part of the South. He regarded him now with fatherly admiration.
Tuttle rose lankly, his thin watery eyes staring with fixed impassivity. His voice was soft and malleable; he was never hurried, never vehement; he possessed a tact that caught the idea of the more creative type, then carried it to unerring completion. "Paul's suggestion would hold, if we decided to follow it. There is no liability in this state for such an accident; it would be a different matter if the legislature had passed that additional liability act last fall. That is the legal side."
He took his feet more slowly in answer to the chairman's second question. "Public policy? That is perhaps different. It might be well to make some sort of settlement. It's never hard to buy off Spence and Jacks; three or four hundred apiece—a thousand at the most—they'd keep half, or more——"
John Birrell, the older of the two boys, who retained much of the implacable push that had carried old Stephen Birrell to the headship of the local mining industry, spoke sharply from his seat. "I agree with Mr. Judson. This is no time to yield; ore's high enough to pay for any unpleasantness. Give them an inch, they'll demand the whole plant. They were restless before, in our mines as well as the Judson; even the furnaces report union talk. This is the chance to step on the whole matter."
Three or four expressions of similar vigor were too much for Pelham. He took the floor unsteadily; the glances bent on him were curious, almost pitying. The table's circle had read of the pass with his father at the labor convention; there was an uneasy titillating expectancy as to how much of a fool he would make of himself, how long he could hang on to the fringes of business, while he nourished a sprouting radicalism.
"I represent only two shares as a stockholder," he began painstakingly. "I am only one director. But I wonder if you gentlemen know what you are doing. Thirty of your workers lie seriously injured; twenty-two families are deprived of their bread-winners through an accident not their fault, but yours; yours, and other mining employers' who have fought all safety legislation, even as late as last week——" His eye caught a side glimpse of his father's unperturbed profile, as he rolled an unlighted cigar around the rim of his teeth. "It is not enough to say that these were convicts, or negroes; many were hired white workers. I don't know how well you have the law sewed up; but every idea of justice entitles them to full settlement. Any other decision would be an outrage."
The aged chairman, while disavowing any sympathy with the spirit of the young man's remarks, wondered if a proper regard for public opinion would not dictate some middle course. The younger Birrell sided with him, as did Sam Ross, Tuttle, and several others. At length Paul Judson was asked again for his opinion.
"Gentlemen, you understood what I said before. I have told you what you must do—refuse to pay one cent to any claimant, no matter how strongly the claim is pressed. Any other course, in the long run, will be suicide. Unless you want ultimate bankruptcy, you will treat this as a business matter." He gathered into a portfolio the papers before him. "I have some matters to attend to. I have shown you how to handle the matter. You can call me in for a vote."
The discussion veered and twisted after his abrupt departure; but Pelham could not fail to see, even through his disgust, how his father's insistent advice, no matter how unpleasantly phrased, dominated the group. The driver of men is never popular; and Paul Judson's keen, aggressive mind drove them against their wills. Within an hour a resolution embodying his idea was put and carried with only the son's dissenting vote.
The Times-Dispatch contained a report of the meeting, and an interview with Paul Judson stressing the legal side of the situation. An editorial referred to the disaster as one of the necessary casualties of industrial growth, paid tribute to the company's promise of further safety devices, and hung on an attack on the "forces of unrest that sought to make capital of the accident, to aid their insidious unAmerican propaganda."
Pelham was puzzled by this wording, until he came across Jane, who had charge of the relief work among the victims' families. Her large eyes sparkled with a light of warfare, as she fell into step beside him, among the poor-ridden shanties of Hewintown. "You hadn't heard? Why, it's all over town now, Pell. There's a big meeting at Arlington Hall at seven-thirty to-night, to discuss the accident—and a strike!"
"Fine! It had to come—the radical unionists were just waiting the chance."
"Will you take me?"
"You couldn't keep us away."
They arrived early, but the crowd had come earlier. Only by taking stage seats were they able to get in at all. When the son of the owner of the mine was recognized, there was slight hissing, and scattered handclapping from a few Socialists. Jensen came over quietly to Pelham, his eyes dancing. "Your application's gone through, my boy; Hernandez has your red card in his pocket."
They shook hands silently. Now, Pelham realized, he was a recognized member of the red-bannered army, who were leading man into his promised earthly heritage.
Michael Serrano, who presided, plunged into the thing that had brought them there. "I'm a bricklayer by trade, as you all know. The bricklayers have made me president of their local four times. I'm called the 'reddest of the red.' If this murderous mine accident doesn't make all of you reds too, then you aren't fit for anything but to be murdered!"
The crowd stamped approval. They had come in fighting spirit; the proper key had been hit from the start.
"Now, if ever, is your chance to win your rights. The papers have been slobbering of wartime profits on ore; the reckless haste to line their pockets was the real cause of this explosion for which the worthy directors of your mines are responsible. They can't afford a shutdown now; this is your hour to win!"
Turning from the applause, he introduced Ben Spence as "a labor lawyer, with a union card in place of a heart." Spence and Jacks were the regular federation attorneys, and Spence was quite close to Pooley and Bivens; but he always professed a near-socialism that captivated his hearers in Labor Day addresses. He passed from a humorous opening into an indictment of the mining corporations that brought the hot crowd clamoring to their feet, with wild shouts of "Go to it, Ben! Eat 'em up!"
The next few speeches scattered. Pelham wondered if the mass desire would evaporate without action. Serrano saw the drift, and walked over to where the son of Paul Judson sat drinking in the wild-mouthed denunciation of his father's rapacity and cold-heartedness. "I'm going to call on you, comrade."
"You have to?"
The chairman nodded. "You give 'em hell. I'll sound 'em out first. These regular unionists—pfui!" He spat in scorn, and went back to his splintered gavel.
Jack Bowden, of the Miners', tied up with the Big Pooley gang, finished his inconclusive remarks. At once Serrano's orotund Italian voice shot out into the crowd. "Now you've heard what you're getting. And you've heard what you're entitled to. How many miners are in this crowd? Raise your hands."
Amid general neck-stretching, the hands went up—almost a third of the vociferous audience. There was a rattle of applause at the good showing.
"Are you going to stand being treated as dirt, or will you act like men? How many of you miners vote strike? Let's hear your voices!"
The shout of approval showed how avid they were for some direct expression of their accumulated resentment. Bowden, a worried look on his face, rose to protest; the ecstatic chairman waved him down.
"I'm going to do an unusual thing. I'm going to call on one of your employers to tell what he really thinks about you. I call on Comrade Pelham Judson, assistant manager of the Birrell-Florence-Mountain Mining Company."
There was no applause. Pelham, tremendously alone, walked down to the front of the big platform. His mind registered random impressions—the faded tawdriness of the cheap bunting below the dirty footlights, the smell of fetid cigars and pipes, bulging necks above dirty unstarched collars, the fierce resentment and shining hunger for better things flaring in the eyes just below him. The irresistible contrast with the suave gray fittings of the directors' room flooded him.
He summoned all his knowledge of speaking, and stood silent, his eyes ranging the vast pit and the jammed galleries.
"Fellow laborers—comrades——" His voice choked. "Many of you know how I think about this. What happened two days ago on that red mountain I love was murder—definite, systematized murder. The danger has always been known; and when every effort to wipe out that danger by law has been fought, and the deaths occur, I call that deliberate murder!"
There was a startled pelt of applause in one corner of the room. It did not spread; the others were too interested, too surprised, to pass judgment.
"What ought you to do? Your referendum will decide. If I were in your places, there is only one thing I could do—and that is, strike! Strike against the company, and me—yes! Strike for the enforcement of the weak-kneed mining law, and for a better one! Strike for more pay, shorter hours, and your organization! Fight back! Unite"—his long, tense arms reached out, and drew in together in a clenching grasp—"bring together your force as one man, and there is no power in the world that can stand against you!"
This was familiar. They howled agreement.
"There are two ways you must strike. Part of the blame lies with that legislature at Jackson. You elected them; you can retire 'em. Strike politically. Unite at the polls—there'll be a labor ticket, the socialist ticket, for every office—drive it home to victory! Then you will have laws which would make such an explosion an impossibility!"
There were a few mock groans from the Voice of Labor crowd, but the majority still sat silent.
"You have a quicker weapon, on the industrial field—a strike. We've all read the announcement of the company's action; my vote was the only one against it at the directors' meeting. You must strike to teach your masters what they can't do! Strike for justice to the thirty men maimed and crippled in the cause of profits! Strike for the twenty-three families who are the worst sufferers from this hell. Yes, twenty-three, Mr. Chairman; I received phone word that Hank Burns died of his injuries at six-thirty to-night." There was a faintly rising moan of anger at this. "If you unite, as I believe you will, there is no power in the world that can stop you!"
He went back to his seat, trembling, his forehead moist with frigid sweat. Jane's rapturous hands caught his; he felt fully repaid.
The meeting broke up in an uproar of enthusiasm.
As he started for the Andersons' with Jane, the mad spell of a June moon-bright night caught and tortured him, until it was pain to think of letting her go. The cool darkness rushed by on both sides. Out of the crevasses of big buildings they passed into the more open stretches of low urban homes. The country club road invited; they slid over gentle rises until they had their fill of tree rustle and moon shimmer. Against the sky they traced the soft outlines of the swan and the lyre swung to the East over the dull rose glow of unsleeping furnaces; but the persistent flood from the moon dulled even Vega to a mild glimmer. At length the car whirred up the last hill, and stopped in front of the darkened house where she was to sleep.
There was so much to be said. The beauty of the night was throat-catching, and lifted them away from the hectic scene at Arlington Hall, and the bitter fight that to-morrow must bring. He felt her full sympathy with the attitude he must take; her first hand-grasp, as he took his seat after the speech, told him that. His hand, as the car waited before her house, lingered fearfully against hers; an electric current snapped between the two.
His fancy played fitfully with fantasies that started with his lifting that warm dear hand to his kiss ... then the yielding lips ... then the mutual surrender. But like a scourge memory listed over to him the mouths he had kissed, youthfully, poignantly, casually.... No, he had done with that. This must be no mere union of bodies; love should begin with a pure communion of kindred spirits. A kiss, a caress—these were the soft persuasive preludes to the swelling finale of mating; cheapen them, wear out their springbud freshness, and the blossom of mated love must remain stunted, like a frost-warped dogwood flower,—must henceforth be soiled, like a draggled pear-blossom mired by an April downpour. Hereafter he would hold his lips—and keep hers—inviolate, virginal; the miraculous event of love consummated should not be fouled by recollections of squandered embraces, of cheap philanderings.
The desire to touch and conquer the hand beside his almost overpowered him, despite his ascetic musing. Spasmodically he pulled his hand away. A force stronger than his will brought it slowly back, until it shivered against hers.
Quietly, with restrained and schooled abandon, his words breathed out. "Jane ... dear ... dearer—dearest——"
Her intuitive eyes read the words that were coming, before his own mind framed them. A sudden blossoming of joy surged within her, so great for a moment that it prevented speech; then, panic-stricken, she wished to postpone the inevitable question, to delay the rapture, to flee away, with the words unspoken, for just a little longer to consider the matter.... She said nothing of this; her silence, blent into the silence of the mountain at the end of the rise before them, was voluble with another message than delay or hesitation.
An agony of doubt racked him. Hadn't he been mistaken all along? Wouldn't she laugh at him, for his presumption in reading even toleration in her eyes, that radiated indifferently upon things unworthy, like himself, and worthy alike? Would he dare go on? He must—even if her laugh shattered the iridescent sphere of his hopes.
An impassioned eagerness to get the words out made his tone forced and unnatural. "Will you have me, Jane? Will you love me—a little? I know I've no right to speak—my affairs are so tangled, and all——"
Then she raised her arm, until the hand was above his head; and her fingers touched his hair gently, caressingly, soothingly.
"Jane...." His voice was rich with reverent unbelief.
"Pelham dear——"
In excess of happiness, he caught the hand beside him almost to his lips; and then, instead, pressed it against his breast, against his heart.
His laugh was almost incoherent. "I was so afraid you'd say 'no.'"
The light shone only on her averted cheek. "I was so afraid ... you wouldn't ask me!"
"Silly girl! When every infinitesimal part of me aches and cries out to you! I can't believe yet that you've said yes."
"Yes," in joyous affection.
"And I will aim a lifetime toward making you glad you've said it!"
"I'll always be glad, no matter what comes."
"I've got to let you go now—it must be almost three.... And I'm not going to kiss you, even now, dearest—dearest—dearest! I'll say it all night to myself; I'll never use another word——"
"Well, hardly ever," she amended prettily.
"When we can be married, then you'll let me kiss you. And don't put me off too long!"
He fingered the wheel thoughtfully; why let her out at all? No, he must help protect her now.
"Good night, Jane ... dearest mine."
"Good-night ... my man."
His car sliced the friendly night that lay heavy on the hill road. He whirled up the great half circle to the crest far to the east of the cottage, and muffled the engine at the highest point. To his left, too far away to be distinguished except as an irregular blackness against the softer gray of the valley behind, lay the black peak of Crenshaw Hill, the fatal shattered entries beyond it, the mourning shacks of Hewintown near it. There was no light in them. Behind was the blur of Shadow Valley, and the endless diminishing rollers of hills sloping slowly to the salt gulf monotonous miles away. Before him lay Adamsville, almost asleep; the symmetrical criss-cross of lights, like a vast checker-board blending into the far distance, caught his imagination. His heart sang aloud with his own happiness—an emotion so overcoming, that he forced himself to think of lesser topics, to regain mental balance before returning to the rapture of Jane again....
The iron city, an iron checker-board of lights.... The will-less men moved here and there by great hands hidden in the opposing darknesses—by capital's sleek and pudgy paw, by labor's grimed and toil-stained fingers: behind these, moved by the greater mastery of the forces of nature; by the mountain, and the iron grip it embodied; by the touch of the golden god that was to-day its master. A futile game, for the poor pawns ... where one in a thousand became king; and kingship brought no joy, but only division and unrest. The blasted, furnace-punished ore was material for the painful alchemy that made it gold: more than this, the miners themselves, the stooped laborers, the slatternly starved wives, the thin children, the corpses lifted from the ruptured bowels of the hill, to a final scattering in some cheap pine house of decay—all these were part of the horrid modern alchemy that made them gold for his father's sake. That he had ever been a part of it! Well, with Jane his, he was through with the old horrors....
Jane ... with an effort he brought his mind again to the scene before him. The sleeping homes of the iron city, black in the darkness before him! Each of those tiny houses held situations, problems, as complex as that storm that must soon break over the cottage beyond the mining section. They were all asleep, gathering strength for fresh outbreaks of hatred and love.
What if they never woke? What if the sleep became a merciful finality, sponging out the aimless unrest men called life? Who could say which would be better?
For him, his problems simplified, glorified now by what Jane had said to-night, life, with all its zest and joyous restlessness, was infinitely preferable.
He must go on; he must make the complete break with his father, and soon. It was a perilous thing, this going alone; but he knew that he was able to do it, just as he had once roamed alone the hidden reaches of the mountain.
He stood out from his car, to be nearer to the mountain. It was an instinctive action he could not have explained. The soft strength of the soil rose through him; he felt refreshed. It was not only battlefield, but the cause of the struggle; it was the prize to be won by the angry puppets its iron strings pulled here and there. There was no other course he could follow; he felt a calm certainty that the mountain, the great dark mother with its bleeding iron heart of red, understood this, and was wholly in accord with it. The mountain understood it—and a dearer, nearer heart, his from henceforth.
He slept at length peacefully.
Paul Judson pushed the next morning's paper over to Mary without words, his stiff forefinger indicating the part he wished her to read. It was an account of the previous night's meeting, featuring a florid write-up of Pelham's emotional outburst.
She finished it without comment.
Her husband looked at her evenly. "There has never been any insanity in either side of the family, or I would think Pelham came by this naturally."
"He isn't a fool, Paul."
"Where does he think this will end? It's bad enough when we are united against the perpetual unrest of the ignorant mob. But to have my son turn against all that his ancestors fought for!"
Mary watched him thoughtfully. "You two cannot pull together, Paul. Why not help him get somewhere else?"
"You mean——"
"You mentioned that Governor Tennant wanted to do you a favor, and suggested Pell as mining inspector, or something. Wouldn't that straighten out this situation?"
Paul looked at her doubtfully. "One of us has to make the break. Of course, he'll make trouble wherever he is. But he is my son. A thing like that might make him behave."
Finishing his coffee, he pushed his chair back raspingly over the hardwood floor. Over in the boys' wing he called Ned. "Will you tell Pelham I would like to speak to him?"
Father and eldest son walked quietly out over the untouched portion of the outcrop before the house. "You don't want me to discuss with you the unusual line of activity you have taken up, Pelham...."
"It is only fair to tell you, father, that I have joined the socialist party."
"You don't intend to remain with the mining company."
Pelham gulped. This was what it must mean.
"I can get Bob Tennant to appoint you a State Mining Inspector. You can live on the salary."
"There is no work I would rather do.... Of course, I can not change my ideas."
"We'll regard it as settled. I'll wire him this morning."
Two days later, Pelham received the notification of the appointment, just before Spence, the labor lawyer, had him on the phone. The young mine-operator at once shared his information.
"That's splendid, Judson! I've got news too—the referendum was eight to one for strike—and the national's wired that John Dawson's on the way! Big John Dawson—now for some fireworks!"
This was progress, with a vengeance! Pelham was free at last of the company; the revolution—at least in Adamsville—was heartily on its way. With Jane's spirit backing him, and always beside him, he felt that this hectic week had justified itself. Now for the triumphant clash!