Mountain Part 51

The first edition of the _Register_ was hot with headlines promising war. Pelham took a copy back to his desk in the Charities' Building, and, after navigating through excited cables of submarine sinkings, and profound announcements from minor Was.h.i.+ngton officials, found the brief mention of the local case. The jury had rendered the expected verdict of acquittal, after being out less than half an hour.

Pelham fumbled away the afternoon at his desk, self-disgusted and dispirited. The country was being sucked into the red whirlpool of war--a self-inflicted wounding of the white race amounting almost to race suicide. Labor everywhere had fought, before the conflict, to prevent its coming; but it was inherent in the spread of world-wide capitalism. Prussian militarism was a hateful contributing factor; but, if the Germans had been merely imperialists like the British, the conflict would have come just the same: labor's dumb impotence prevented the one saving force from effective prevention. The German socialists had been traitors to the international, except for scattered heroes like Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg; long local schooling in servitude had been too strong. The Allied comrades had not been much better, despite the facts that the British Labor Party promised continued agitation, and Italy and France were hopeful. Russia alone seemed firm: although the amazing news of the March Revolution had been followed by information that the new government contained more bourgeois than revolutionary elements....

And now the United States would come in. There would be defections among the socialists, of course; but Pelham prayed that the ma.s.s of the movement would stand untouched. "I'll stick," he muttered to himself.

"If I'm alone.... But it won't be that bad."

His mind turned to the local situation. There was hope still, in the nucleus of fighting strikers--this latest judicial outrage would only increase their determination to defeat the company. But the election ...

the death of Dawson ... the militia ... this decision ... Jane's leaving.... Things were in a mess.

Most bitterly of all he felt the strike situation. This conflict with his father had called out all the fighting vigor in his blood; win that, and he would have achieved something.... If only his mother could have seen the justice of the strikers' side, and come with him! That would have been a happy household, just he and his dear mother; no uncertain-tongued Jane, to scold at him for nothing, and embarra.s.s his tangled affairs still further by leaving him without any cause,--certainly without any cause that she knew of. She was utterly unlike his mother, his turbulent wrath told him; cold, unsympathetic, un-understanding.... Sweet in a way, but not what he needed....

Well, he would see Louise to-night.

XXVI

On the way to the Ha.s.sons', he sought to solve the tangle of his domestic affairs.

He could not quite account for the errant streak in his blood, that drove him so joyfully toward the soft arms awaiting him. Surely he had an overplus of idealism.... Perhaps this was a part of it: of his endless search for perfection in woman ... for some woman, say, who held the magnificent sweetness his mother had received as the dear Barbour heritage. Louise had something of the understanding mother-spirit, that was the mountain's, that was his own mother's. And in turn the mountain wildness coursed in his blood; these had been his emotions, before he became its prodigal child.

The girl met him at the door, wide-eyed, a little wistful. "Well, Mr.

Lover, you did come! Yesterday was lonely.... I have bad news; the folks have changed their plans; they'll be back, to-night.... We can take a ride, though."

His smiling lips straightened, but there was a dancing glow in his eyes.

"Get your coat, girl," he said with affectionate curtness.

He turned from Highland Boulevard, the glitter of its lights reflected in the suave l.u.s.ter of the rain-damp pavement, into quieter, less-lighted Haviland Avenue. Into a darkened garage ran the car. Her eyes queried his. He pressed off the lights.

Over the cropped gra.s.s to the stone steps; inside the darkened porch he pulled out his keys, opened the door, led into the expectant hallway.

"Your ... home?"

"Jane is away," he said briefly.

The shades were pulled down carefully, a light lit. She sat, her eyes wide, on the hall couch, adjusting her skirts in the light. The dull gray paper brought out all of her ripe rosy loveliness; he paused, struck by the picture.... It was the couch on which he had last seen Jane sitting; a sardonic inner smile disturbed him.

"I don't feel that this is right, Pell--in her house----" Her deep eyes puckered in uncertainty.

Dominant lips closed her protest; she rested for a fleeting moment against him.

On the steps' landing he paused to point out tennis trophies gleaming against the dark woodwork.

Then they turned again, hand in hand, up the carpeted rounds to the dim silence above....

Before midnight he told her good-bye on the Ha.s.son porch.

There were times, in the two weeks which followed, when Pelham viewed himself from without, with a definite disgust; when he realized that a furtive fraction of love could never make up for the big gap caused in the day's doings by the absence of Jane. Once Louise had to tease him out of this mood.

"I'm leaving you, Mr. Lover, on Wednesday.... Make my last three days pleasant."

He took her to the station. As they entered it, two cars disgorged another increment of the militia.

He rode to the first stop with her.

"You were a good lover," was her final praise. "Run down to the coast and see me sometime.... If you still want me."

XXVII

It was just after ten, in the dry heat of a July day six weeks later, when four of the deputies appeared on the road at the entrance to the miners' shack village, and started to enter. They were backed by a squad of the new Home Guard, who had come to help out the militia, now in process of gradual federalization.

"What d'ye want?" called out John McGue, the only committeeman at the moment in the informal town. Pelham, Joe Mullins, the new national organizer, and a committee were visiting the governor, to protest against two exceptionally brutal clubbings by the restlessly inactive guards. It was a hopeless trip, except as a protest.

"You hold things down, McGue," Mullins had told him. "It's coming, by G.o.d! They'll consent to arbitrate before the middle of August, or the federal government'll step in! Four new camps, man, in three weeks--they can't get any more men, either, for love or money. We've got 'em!"

Things were looking serious for the company. The Ed Cole verdict had reacted against it; defections from the ranks of the strike-breakers were frequent, and the output was hardly a third of that of the summer before the strike.

McGue wondered if the visit of the guards and militiamen had been timed to fit in with the absence of most of the strike leaders in Jackson.

"What d'ye want?" he repeated.

"We got warrants for six men." The deputy--it was Huggins--started to walk on in; McGue kept his place.

"Get out of the way, there," Huggins warned him shortly.

"Gimme the names; we'll git the men fer you. No need to go trampling through people's houses and gardens, as you guards did last week."

"I'll give you nothin'."

The voices in dispute resounded down the vacant roads. Men, hungry men, their natures warped with the long unequal struggle, ma.s.sed in a s.h.i.+fting background behind the rugged committeeman.

"Get out of my way, or I'll jug you too."

Silently McGue stepped aside. The crowd flattened back against the flimsy walls. The armed guards, grinning at one another, jostling and joking, penetrated deeper and deeper into the straggly irregularity of the settlement.

All at once Huggins caught sight of an undergrown, misshapen boy scowling from the back of the men and women. Pus.h.i.+ng them aside, he shoved to the spot, the guards close behind. His hand gripped the boy's arm, until he winced.

"Hey--whatcher----"

"What's your name?"

"Aw, you lemme 'lone! I ain't done a thing."

"Take him, there." He shook the boy savagely. "Your name's McGuire, ain't it? Frank McGuire--I know you."