Word came at last of his detail to duty at Washington. It was hard to end the home they had built together in the Haviland Avenue house; but the prospect ahead salved the regret.
The work, when Pelham came to it, proved congenial and illuminating. He was nearer the core of the matter now; the mining industry of a country passed before his eyes.
At the suggestion of the deputy commissioner, he accompanied that official on a special trip to New York, the port from which the manufactured steel was being hurried over to the hungry fields of France. Jane went along; the three stood together in the arc-lit glow of the vast freight station.
"I thought you wanted to see it," the friendly commissioner repeated. "Rails, guns, gun-stocks, wire, a thousand sundries—and every car your eye can see straight from the Adamsville mills. There's enough steel railing there to triple-track from the Marne to Berlin, with lots to spare!"
They drew together at the vastness of the spectacle.
"The metallic sinews of war, my boy—just as the boys of Adamsville and the country are the human sinews. I understand your feelings, Judson; but can't you see that they are spreading the same ideal of democracy that your comrades work for?"
"I hope some good will result; it's not easy to see clearly," Pelham answered slowly.
As the commissioner left, the son of Adamsville placed his arm around Jane. "And our mountain did all of this! What pawns it made of us! We flung up here, the miners scattered, endless change and turmoil.... I used to say the mountain mothered me; but it flung me out like my father too. Perhaps it embodied all of us. Perhaps"—a sudden surge of bitter memory turned the drift of his thinking—"perhaps autocracy would suit the mountain, as well as democracy."
"I think not," Jane replied slowly. "When its products are washed away by the streams, they quicken the whole soil. Humanity can afford culture now for all; all must win their chance at it."
"The war sets us back...."