The Judsons blended easily into the life on the mountain.
Paul took it upon himself to plan and arrange all the details of the new
home. Mary found her wishes unconsulted, when furniture was to be placed
or purchased.
Much of the furnishings of the Jackson house he used in the new
"Hillcrest Cottage." The dining-room suite, with its stately, ornate
sideboard and carved chairs, was rearranged in the bay-windowed corner
room, overlooking the long vista of Bragg Valley. The diners looked out
on the pigmy furnace smokestacks punctuating the dun smoke-mist. The
children's rooms, the three chief bedrooms, and the living-room
furniture remained unaltered.
Upon the other things, Paul put down his foot. The library set, its
antique bookcases and desks curling up toward the ceiling, must be
relegated to the attic. The mahogany and bird's-eye maple suite, which
had furnished the spare bedroom, must accompany it. The family
portraits, the china heirlooms, and the odd judge's musty home library,
in the same crates in which they had come from Jackson, were pushed into
the odd-shaped angles of the twilight garret. These had no place in the
elaborate simplicity of a country home.
The study and library were fitted up afresh in dull quartered oak, with
sectional bookcases. New porch chairs and lounges for the wide verandas,
Persian rugs for the rooms where the old carpets would not suffice, he
listed, viewed, and finally purchased. Mary's heart ached these days as
she realized how she had been pushed out of his living.
The phone rang one afternoon. "I'm sending out a rug for the library,
Mary. Abramson's promised to get it there before five."
"Did you look at the one at Hooper's I told you about?"
"We'll talk about that when I get home." He rang off sharply.
Mary had it spread out before he arrived. It was a beauty, she thought
ruefully; but it must have cost a mint. And it didn't go too well with
the new bookcases and desk.
Paul reached home a little early, tired and cross from a big deal that
had hung fire for ten days. "Well, how do you like it?"
"It's a lovely piece of goods. How much was it? The tag was off."
He walked in to observe it, altering its angle slightly. "It's just what
we wanted. I think we'll have another for the parlor, too." He ignored
her anxious eyes, and she did not press the question.
On Sundays Nathaniel Guild usually dropped in, for a stroll over the
place, after a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and coffee at seven.
There was so much they must plan together; this could be done only on
the ground. Paul, of course, was living on the mountain, and his share
in the land was much the larger; but both were interested in the
projected development, the wide boulevards curving with the contour of
the ground, the advantageous grouping of sites naturally adapted to
sloping lawns and well-placed residences.
"You see, Nate, every shrub I set out, every walk we put in, every
flight of steps, will increase the value, when we put it on the
market."
"Waiting a few years,----"
"Now's the time to begin. Adamsville is spreading fast; it's course is
bound to be this way. East Highlands is _the_ residence section now----"
"I see Mrs. Friedman's building on Haviland Avenue----"
"And three new houses to go up on East Thirtieth!"
"... It'll take a lot of money." His eyes roamed reflectively over the
gray, jagged outcrop, almost concealed by a tangle of grape and
blackberry vines and rangy sumach bushes.
Paul tugged vindictively at a nettle that had encroached upon the path
winding up to the house,--he carried his garden gloves for just such
purposes. "It'll be cleared before next summer,--all this half of it."
On weekday mornings the master of the mountain was up earlier, hoeing
the flower beds that frilled the verandas, and seeing to the setting out
of trees and vines. After seven o'clock, he superintended the gangs of
negro laborers who were filling and grading the gap road, and the
extensions that bent down to the railroad spur on the west.
At times, that first winter, there were more than forty workmen
remolding the mountain's resisting face. Quartz blasted from the quarry
above the tracks, on the Logan land, made a permanent roadbed. The
winter's settling would have it ready for the final surface of dirt
after the spring rains. The negroes worked for a dollar a day; and Paul
often observed disgustedly, after inspection of the day's work, that
four-fifths of the job had been done before eight-thirty, when he left
for the office in the city.
Pelham, just beyond his ninth birthday, found his spare time provided
for. He spent his afternoons and Saturdays assisting in the overseeing
of the grading. His father believed in getting him to work young. The
mountain would be his some day,--his and his brother's and sisters',--it
was none too soon to begin now to learn its problems.
When not at school, he was started in, before six o'clock, at
weed-picking. Nell and Sue, and even the baby, could help here, when the
work was near the house. In order to give a material incentive, the
children were paid one cent a bucket for the weeds. Their earnings were
banked with their mother, who kept the accounts in a little red book, an
object of especial reverence to the involuntary depositors.
Pelham was especially sharp at locating the big weeds, their roots
matted with moist earth, and spreading fan-like over the rocks never far
below the surface. Five or six of these, and his bucket was full. Then
he would lie on his back, dreaming, his body registering, through the
blue cotton pants and thin shirt, each rock and hump on the ground. He
followed the clouds sailing, like misty Argoes, over the placid blue sea
of sky; he watched the crimson-capped woodpeckers tapping industriously
at a nearby oak or hickory trunk, or the bouncing flight of flickers
from clump to clump of bluegum and white-gum, or the distant descending
spirals of a lazy buzzard, answering some noisome summons to a hidden
and hideous feast.
"How you gettin' 'long, Pell? My second bucket's full, an' Susie's
almost finished."
He would reluctantly carry his weeds to the pile, and go back to the
work and his dreaming.
He was a problem to his energetic father. He would start industriously
enough, but the day's toll always fell far below what was expected. The
parents had many conferences over him.
"I don't know what to make of the boy, Mary. I never used to loaf like
Pelham does. He's as bad as a nigger."
"He's only a boy, Paul."
"He's got to learn to work."
The mother sighed.
The son received ten cents a week for keeping the bedrooms supplied with
coal. Several nights he had been routed out of bed, and made to stumble
down to the coalhouse, while his father impatiently held the lantern, to
do the neglected task. He was perpetually losing things. Hammers, saws,
dewed in the morning grass, a saddle that he had forgotten to hang
up,--these would furnish damning indictments of his carefulness.
To teach him responsibility, the three newly-purchased crates of
Leghorns were put in his charge. Many a time a dried water-trough or a
suspiciously pecked-up chicken-run, its last grain of corn consumed,
brought him into trouble. Perhaps he had spent the afternoon whittling a
dagger, or carefully cleaning an old horse-skull discovered under the
green valley pines. He was very proud at the idea of possessing the
chickens, and grew fond of them; but remembering to attend to them was a
very different matter.
"I don't never have any time for myself, mother," he would complain,
after a scene with Paul. "The Highland boys don't have to work all the
time."
"Your father is very busy, Pell; if you don't help him, who will?"
Continued repetition of these negligences caused tingling reminders to
be applied to the boy. Paul hated to whip his son; he almost despised
himself for causing suffering to a smaller human; but what was he to do?
Pelham grew familiar with the feel of his father's belt; and still did
not, or could not, change his ways.
He could hardly remember when there had not been some friction between
them. Consciously and unconsciously he patterned himself after his
father in many things. Paul was jolly and companionable, whenever he
wished to be; he was an unusually clean representative of a class that
prided itself upon its chivalry and courage. These traits the boy
followed.
Then, too, his father had shown him inordinate attention, as the first
son, ever since his birth. This masculine approval, added to the
adulation of adoring women relatives, exalted his already high opinion
of himself, made him selfishly demand more than his share.
His mother's love, for instance,--there were times when he wanted to
feel he had all of it. When his father was off on business trips, he
became, young as he was, the head of the house. It fretted him to be
reduced again to a humble subordinate position.
He could sleep in Mary's room, when Paul was away; this privilege he
lost on the return. He hardly realized how this tinged his thoughts with
dislike of the father. The parents had a vast, almost a godlike, part in
his life,--as in the lives of all children. Whatever daily good or ill
he received, came primarily from them; his own efforts counted only as
they pleased or displeased the deities. What he did not receive, he
blamed upon his father; and he often dwelt upon the happy home life
should Paul die, or disappear. He could earn a living for mother, and
make a loving home for her....
These things created an unseen and growing breach between the two.
When he first came to Adamsville, Paul had had to go out and make
business for himself. He had allied himself to James Snell, a fidgety,
pushing real estate operator who was familiar with the newcomer's
success in Jackson. "The Snell-Judson Real Estate and Development
Company" came into existence; Paul joined the Commercial Club, the
Country Club, and met here as many people as he could. Before the
winter was over, he found his hands full. Perpetual application to the
complications of real estate problems throughout the county was wearing;
which made him less liable than ever to put up with Pelham's
shortcomings. As the spring grew on, and the matter did not mend, he
called his son into his room early one morning. "You left the cow-gate
unlatched last night, Pelham."
The boy sensed the gravity of his father's tone, and grew at once
apprehensive. "I thought I shut it, father----"
"Peter had to spend an hour looking for them, this morning. This is the
second time in a week."
The boy became voluble. "The other time, father, you know I told
you----"
"Yes, you told me. You're always telling me. Did you take that scythe
down to be sharpened yesterday?"
"I meant to--I'll take it this afternoon, sure."
"You'll take it before you go to school this morning."
"Father,--if I'm tardy,----"
"You can explain to Professor Gloster you made yourself late."
The boy's lip pouted; a whimper trembled behind it.
"Twice this week you've failed to hoe the spring garden. Do you know who
watered your chickens last night?"
Pelham was silent. The list was growing too large to explain away, apt
as he had become in excuses.
"I had a talk with your mother yesterday." The father sat on the edge of
his bed, his eyes down, thumping a yard-stick against his left thumb.
So it was going to be the yard-stick! That wouldn't hurt,--not like the
belt, or a hickory switch, anyway. Pelham began to frame his voice for
the proper mingling of crying and entreaty. The more you seemed to be
hurt, the less you got. Only, you had to take the first two or three
quietly, or father would see through you.
The elder walked over to the bureau, and placed the measure beside the
rose-shears and the spraying can. No, it was not going to be the
yard-stick. The boy looked furtively around; there was no other weapon
in sight.
Paul continued, "Your conduct bothers your mother as much as it does me.
We don't know what to do with you. You're almost ten now ... old enough
to be trusted. You know you can't be. Your mother thinks I ought to give
you another chance. I promised her I would." His tones grew crisper,
more biting. "I know what's the matter with you. You're dog mean. You
think you can impose on me. I know it. And I'll have no more of this
slovenly work-dodging around my place."
He had worked himself into a rage, by this time; but his tones were
icily cold and correct. "This confounded laziness has got to stop. It's
your job to stop it, do you hear? And if you don't do it within a
week,--you know I mean what I say,--I'll thrash you every morning, until
you do!"
He rose menacingly. Pelham shrank from him.
"I'm not going to touch you,--this morning. I promised your mother I
wouldn't. But this is a last warning."
For the first few days, the son's conduct was unimpeachable. He attended
strictly to his duties, and accomplished all of them passably. But one
afternoon, he stopped at the foot of the hill to play ball with the East
Highland boys, and entirely forgot to leave an order for linseed oil and
chicken-feed at the food store near the livery stable. When Saturday
came, he worked irritably around the tomato plants until eleven o'clock.
Then he sneaked off to Shadow Creek with some boys from the Gloster
School. He was back by four, and tried desperately to finish his tasks
by nightfall; but several were forgotten entirely. When no punishment
followed, he grew careless again.
Paul was detained at the office Monday night. Just before eleven, the
telephone's tinkle aroused Mary. "Coming right away, dear."
With a start she wondered if Pelham's tasks had been performed. She made
the rounds. Not a thing done! Skuttles empty, water-trough unfilled, and
the hungry chickens pecking desperately among the hard pebbles in the
run, after her light had aroused them. There would be time for her to do
them, if she hurried....
She had hardly finished washing coal-grime and cracked cornmeal from her
hands, when Paul's call sounded in front.
Through the opened front door came his faint voice. "Come down to the
steps, Mary." She caught up the lantern, and picked her way down to him.
"I told that boy to oil these hinges, sure, this afternoon. And look at
that pile of trash,--he hardly touched it. Here's the shovel. He hasn't
done a single chore since I left the mountain."
Mary lighted the way back to the house, thoroughly upset.
Two mornings later, Paul called the boy. "Come into my room, Pelham."
The boy followed, a sick feeling at his stomach.
His father twisted a hand within Pelham's shirt-collar, and snapped off
his own belt. The loose end of the belt danced and stung against the
boy's bare legs. His father's words came to him brokenly and
explosively. "Pay no attention to what I say.... Your confounded
negligence.... Continually soldiering on me. You're mean as gar-broth."
By this, Pell gave way entirely. The agonizing pain burnt his bare
calves, and radiated up his legs. He punctuated the blows with sobbing
explanations, and promises never to let it happen again. At the
intensity of the pain, he tried to intercept the blows with his hands.
Half of the time the lashings left red welts on his wrists and arms, and
one stroke caught a little finger, twisting it back until he was sure it
was broken.
"I'll teach you to impose on your father.... You won't obey me, will
you?..."
At last it was over, and Pelham crumpled, sobbing and shuddering,
against the footboard of the bed.
"Go down to the chicken-house, and attend to your work," his father
ordered him. Paul Judson, torn with anger and self-disgust, turned back
to the boy. "I'm going to thrash you every morning for a month. Maybe
that will do you some good."
After a few minutes, gulping down the stinging memories and black
bitterness against what he felt was rank injustice, Pelham limped out to
his duties. As he watered the hens, and scattered cracked corn before
the fuzzy yellow balls scratching around them, waves of self-pity
flooded him. He wept into the chicken-trough and into his handkerchief,
until it was a damp salt-smelly wad.
Morning after morning this kept up. Now it was in his own room, his
father's, the stable, or by the spring duck-houses; now a slipper, a
shingle, the hated belt, or a freshly cut withe. Once it was the stable
broom, which broke over his back at the second stroke,--that morning the
whipping ended abruptly. He wept, pleaded, excused himself, begged to
have another chance; nothing could shake the stern will of his father,
and the merciless schedule of pain.
Mary tried to keep busy at some place where she could not hear his
cries. But they pursued her from room to room.
Pelham wore his stockings to school,--they hid the old bruises, and the
fresh welts. Night after night he cried himself to sleep. And the
mother, stealing in to see the children safely in bed, would feel all
the agony seared on her heart, at the sight of the tear-channeled boyish
cheeks. She worried and brooded over the favorite son, until bluish
depressions pouched beneath her eyes, and a hard look came into them as
they followed her husband around his home tasks. He, in turn, became
boisterously loud-spoken, and made a vast amount of noise stamping on
the halls and porches. It was a gruesome three weeks for all.
At the end of this period, Pelham could stand it no longer. He kissed
his mother good night, clinging around her neck and pressing passionate
kisses upon her lips,--it would be the last time he would ever receive
this parting kiss, he told himself. Then he knotted up, in an old
sweater, his clean shirts and a change of underclothes, three
handkerchiefs, his stamp album, and "Grimm's Fairy Stories," and hid
them under the bed. To-morrow he would leave home forever.
While his mother was seeing to the breakfast table, he slipped into her
room, his eyes still red from the morning's session with his father. He
unlocked her drawer, and took out of her purse the three one dollar
bills he found. On the red book, he knew, he was entitled to more than
eight dollars, but this would do. He slipped in a note he had written
the night before, and hid the bulging sweater in a rock beside the front
path.
Walking to school with Nell, he pledged her to silence and then told her
he was going to run away that afternoon.
"That's wicked, Pell." Her wide eyes were horror-filled.
"Would you let them whip you every day of your life?" He turned on her
fiercely.
"Where are you going?"
"To Jackson, or Columbus, or somewhere,--anything to get away from here.
You'll look after my little chickies, won't you, sister?"
She promised.
The girls were dismissed for lunch at twelve, and as Pelham had only
half an hour, their mother usually met them at the big gate, and walked
back to the house with them. Nell waited till Sue had run ahead, then
betrayed the morning's confidence with maternal conscientiousness.
Mary went at once to her drawer,--she guessed how Pelham had gotten
funds. She put on her hat and hurried in to the office, carrying with
her the boy's note.
Her lips were set, and her voice difficult to control, when she faced
her husband across the bevelled glass that covered his desk. "Read this,
Paul," handing him the crumpled message.
It was written painstakingly in the boy's unformed upright script, a
youthful imitation of his father's distinctive hand:
"Dearest mother:--
I can not stand any moar whipings. Hollis can have my things wen he
growes up. I will come back as soon as father is ded.
Affexionately your son,
PELHAM JUDSON."
Before he had time to comment, the mother spoke. "You know I advised
against this--this brutal, cold-blooded punishment of my son. This is
what has come of it."
"Where is he?----"
She bit her lip to keep from crying. "He's gone; he may be dead, for
all I know. He told Nell he might go to Jackson...."
"I'll go down to the station. He can't leave before the 4:17."
"Promise me you won't whip the baby any more...." Her voice shook, in
spite of herself. "I'll go with you."