Claxton did not materialize.
The new crew captain squatted under the nearest torch, and peered at the
group. "Judson there?"
Pelham, protesting and nervously laughing, was shoved forward, stripped
by the big Y'd team men, and edged into his corner. He found himself
facing Ted Schang, of last year's wrestling squad, one of the promising
light-weights of the University.
The derisive juniors gobbled their war cry. "Go it, Teddy boy! At 'im!
Eat up the dam' frosh!"
Teddy ate him up, the first fall, by a swift half Nelson, and a quicker
recovery when Pelham tried to turn over and wriggle out.
"Yea 'Twelve! Kill 'im!"
In the brief rest, he ground his fingers into his palms, and determined
to show what 'Thirteen could do. He was the crest of the class wave for
the moment; an aching loyalty shook him.
This time he was more cautious. The team sub was confident now, and left
a careless opening, which Pelham seized at once. After a long, tough
tussle he won; but this left him winded; so that the third fall, and the
match, went to the upper classman. But he had won one fall; and he was a
figure in his class from that night.
His mother was inordinately proud of the boy's participation. Her
elaboration of his night-letter home, which she wrote to her sister,
fell later into his hands, and he shook delightedly over it. "Think of
the honor, Lotta! Selected from all of Yale to represent his school on
the opening week, and landing the second fall in the whole University!
We are surely proud that God has given us such a strong, manly son. Paul
is very pleased, and is sending him a check for fifty. Jackson can show
those Yankees something yet."
Paul's pride showed in more definite and characteristic fashion. He had
a story run in the _Times-Dispatch_, and the _Evening Register_;
Pelham's picture headed the account, which stressed the fact that he was
a product of the local high school, "the son of Mr. and Mrs. Paul
Judson, of Hillcrest Cottage, and a grandson of Judge Thomas F. Judson,
the distinguished jurist of Jackson." All these things advertised the
family, and the business.
Neil Morton was frankly critical. "Do they do that sort of thing in
Adamsville often, sonny? Why didn't your old man run his own cut too,
and a picture of home sweet home, with the Judson family grouped around
a lawn-mower in the front yard? Pass her over!"
But Pelham shame-facedly held on to it; and both clippings were later
pasted into his scrap-book.
At the end of a hard year, Pelham, fully three inches taller, counted
the days before he got home to his mother and the mountain.
He enjoyed the mountain as never before, in the summer following. At New
Haven, his had been the subordinate lot of the hundreds like himself.
Only unusual qualities could hold the top there; and he, younger than
most in his class, was far from the envied heights. Once these younger
sons scattered to their home cities and villages, their importance grew
amazingly. Adamsville held young Judson to be in a fair way of becoming
the biggest man in the northern university.
His home became an appendix to the Country Club, as the festive center
of the younger crowd. The tennis courts were never out of use; sport
frocks and flannel trousers peopled them from eleven till dusk fell.
Along the bridle paths leading to the road and beyond, the leaves were
set dancing by laughing couples; benches and rustic seats beneath
flowering rhododendrons, beside the winding lanes of the Forty Acres,
invited languorous love-making. And after a brisk session of men's
doubles, the pool which Hollis had urged and finally constructed, below
the chilly chalybeate spring behind the cottage, was better than all the
club showers in the world.
Both of the sisters were popular. Nell danced well, and never lacked
eager escorts. Sue, on the contrary, had no outstanding good feature.
Her brown hair was somewhat sandy, her nose turned up a trifle, and she
was not as quick-witted as the other Judsons. But the girls realized she
was safe; there was no fear she would annex any of their suitors, and
she shared the confidences of at least half a dozen best friends at all
times.
Early in the summer, Pelham was paired with one of these intimates,
Virginia Moore. The girl was tall and slim, almost gawky. Her habit was
to serve a direct overhand ball, then permit her partner to win the
point. Her caustic tongue made her generally disliked; but he found this
an alluring novelty, after the insipid small talk of the others.
When the set was over, he led her to his chosen rock seat carved out of
the outcrop beyond the gap. The talk became personal, Virginia shrewdly
deferring to his superior masculinity, with flattering attention.
At last his stumbling tongue blurted out, "V-virginia, do you want to
wear my frat pin?"
She hesitated, and smiled encouragingly.
He blushed under his heavy tan. "We can only give it to mother, or
sister, or--or--or the girl we ... we're engaged to."
"Well, we're not related." She twisted a spray of hydrangea into her
hair.
He unpinned the black enameled symbol, his heart jumping violently, and
moved closer. With a pretty gesture, she indicated where he should place
it.
The cool fragrance of her made him giddy. One loose strand of hair
brushed against his forehead, causing him to tingle and tickle all
over.... He wanted to bruise her against his body, as on mad moonlit
nights he had flung himself around some rough-barked oak on the summit.
Ignorant that girls, not in books, at times felt such emotions, he
affixed the pin with impersonal decorum. Then he slid to the ground
beside her feet, and stared against the burning sunset.
When the sun dropped back of his hill, he rose gropingly. It was hard to
phrase some things; he was desperately anxious not to appear ridiculous
in her eyes. Yet, unless all of his reading was wrong, something more
was expected of a man in love.
"I--I ought to kiss you, if we're engaged."
She closed her eyes, docilely.
He held her lithe cool body, and he felt the rapture of brushing his
lips against her own.
He led the way down the path, exaggeratedly attentive.
For the remainder of the brief summer he spent every spare moment with
the girl,--mornings on the courts, long afternoon walks, whispering
evenings in the rock seat. He would come home after a day with her, and
lie, tumbling sleeplessly on his bed, living over the delicious last
moments spent with her, and elaborating intenser fantasies of
love-making. Her eyes obsessed him; they were like his mother's.
Another friendship marked the summer. Old Nathaniel Guild did not come
to the place as often as before; the winter had been hard on him, and
the steep paths were often too much for his frail strength. As Paul was
kept close to his desk, it was the son who accompanied Guild on his
infrequent rambles over the grounds, and the rougher land beyond the
fence.
"You notice the tilt of these outcrop rocks, Pelham?" he asked, one
afternoon. "They slant forty degrees on this hill, and forty-four beyond
Logan Avenue, on the other hill. Last week I was over beyond West
Adamsville; all of these strata are there; only they angle to the west,
instead of to the east, as here. Like this."
He diagrammed roughly on a sheet in his note book.
"Here are the two Ida veins,--the big veins here; here is the soft
hematite under them, and a thin harder vein. Then comes bedrock, and
under it a heavy clay deposit. Above the Ida vein there was quartz,--the
same quartz we take from the back of the place. Now, on the west part of
town,"--he indicated with sweep of his hand the hazy distance beyond the
furnaced city,--"there the same strata were once. But the erosion has
gone further. There is only a trace of the quartz, and the three top
veins. Only a few thin streaks of the bottom hard ore are there. Even
the bedrock has been washed off some of the hills...."
Pelham nodded.
"If we could have gotten hold of that iron too!... All gone, all washed
away."
"How does it happen that the strata are the same?"
Nathaniel looked at him sharply from under bushy gray eyebrows. He
turned again to the paper, and continued the two lines until they met,
high above what was now Adamsville.
"Wait.... This point is the sand hills,--there to the east. There are
more of them beyond the West Highlands range. See,----" and a firm
stroke of the pencil continued their lines until they arched above the
former peak.
Pelham watched the moving pencil, fascinated.
"Was the mountain ever like that?"
"The rocks are absolute proof. This valley,"--he gestured toward the
city,--"was once the hidden center of the hill."
"... How long ago?"
Nathaniel chuckled gently. "Ah, that's beyond us. Hundreds of thousands
of years, maybe."
Somehow this made the mountain more real to Pelham. Though he might
climb, under the midnight stars, to the highest crag on Crenshaw Hill,
he was just at the beginning of what had once been the peak. He fancied
he could trace its towering crown, blacker than the surrounding
blackness, lifting up to the sky and the sparkling stars.
What a fleeting second of time, to the mountain, were the eighteen
laborious years that meant so much to him! This hill would continue to
jut toward the clouds when the last trace of man's restless activity had
crumbled into dusty forgetfulness.
He formed the habit of circling up to these crags, after a night at the
club or the park with Virginia. They supplied the needed solitude for
his crammed fancies. Some nights, after he had been with her, his body
would burn like a torch. The pelting passion that shivered throughout
him frightened him. He needed the mountain and the stars to calm him for
bed. Love was becoming an overmastering torrent; it threatened to upset
his whole equilibrium.
His father got wind of the affair, through some chance comment. He went
straight to the point with the boy. "You're seeing a lot of that Moore
girl, Pelham."
"Yes, sir.... I like her."
"L. N. Moore has four daughters, all unmarried. He is worth about
twenty-five thousand dollars. That's all they will get."
"I--I hadn't ever thought about that, father."
"You've got to think about it. Here Tom Dodge's children have married
millions--every one of them. Sarah married Jack Lamar; he owns the steel
works. The boys connected with the Vanderventer and the O'Ryan money.
There's an intelligent family."
Pelham got hot all over. He muttered something about not marrying for
money.
"Who wants you to marry for money?" his father interrupted. "The Dodge
crowd managed to fall in love with folks who had money. It's a big
difference. I'm going to leave the girls well fixed; they ought to marry
well. I want you to keep your eyes open."
The talk left a bad taste in Pelham's mouth.
Even though his mother did not care for Virginia as much as he had
thought she would, his attentions continued until vacation ended, and he
returned to the muggy northern city.
Nell responded to the open life almost as fully as Pelham. Hollis was
busy at school, and Sue preferred staying with her mother; so the older
sister frequently had her favorite mare saddled, and covered fifteen
miles before she turned the horse loose in the spring lot.
Paul was on the mountain frequently, mornings and afternoons; Hillcrest
Subdivision had at last been put upon the market. Most of the work fell
on his shoulders; his roadster buzzed up and down the avenues,
displaying the place to prospective purchasers. The lower lots sold well
from the start. After six months, the investment had almost paid for
itself, with less than an eighth of the land disposed of.
In the early spring, Nathaniel came to Paul with a proposition to take
the land off the lists as residence property, until the iron could be
mined.
"As soon as we sell any of the crest places, it will be too late. Now's
the time; we can form our own mining corporation, and sell to South
Atlantic Steel. Ore's reached the highest point in twelve years. It will
mean a fortune, Paul, and the land will be just as good after the iron's
out."
Paul was set against the plan at first. There was more ready money in
the other; it would spoil the face of the subdivision; they didn't know
the ropes.
The older man was insistent. "It'll mean money--big money. We can't
overlook a shot like this."
He went over the suggestion for Mary's benefit; she too protested. "Why,
Mr. Guild, the mountain's our home; it would be dreadful to spoil it.
What would happen to the cottage?"
Paul cut in, shortly; his mind was quickened by opposition of any kind;
and the chance for a quiet public dominance of his wife was not to be
overlooked. "We don't intend to touch this part of it, Mary.... I'll
tell you, Nate; we'll go over it with Ross and Sam Randolph. If there's
as much in it as you say, we can't afford to neglect it."
After the visitor had gone, he walked out to the front, and stared at
the red smudges that marked the furnaces and rolling mills. When Mary
joined him, a wrap thrown around her shoulders, he was chewing the end
of an unlighted cigar. She laid her hand on his arm.
"Paul, dear, you weren't angry at what I said at supper?"
"Of course not. Women can't be expected to look on a business matter as
men do."
She shrank from the implied rebuke. "You--you aren't serious about this
mining, are you?"
He waved toward the dark foot of the hill with the cigar. "D'ye know
what we cleared from the bottom of the Crenshaw lands, Mary, on these
first sales?"
She was silent.
"Our share was ninety thousand dollars! And the place didn't cost
fifty."
"I'm sorry to see any of it go, Paul. It would make such a wonderful
home for our children--when they're grown up and married, and have their
own little homes within reach----"
He crushed the cigar beneath his heel. "You're much too sentimental,
sometimes, Mary. The children wouldn't thank me to hold on to the land,
when I can get a hundred and ten a foot for inside lots."
"We have all the money we can possibly use now, Paul. You must have made
a hundred and fifty thousand this year----"
"That hardly touches it."
"It makes me afraid, sometimes--our having so much, when so many people
have so little. If we could just keep Hillcrest as it is----"
"We haven't anything," he answered sharply. "Jack Lamar and his brother
came here just before I did; they've five million apiece. And God only
knows how much Russell Ross has made out of iron. He's in with that
South Atlantic Steel bunch; he could sell out for twenty-five millions
to-morrow, I verily believe.... I'd be lucky to get a million."
She stubbornly returned to what was on her mind. "And now you are
willing to take this wonderful estate you have worked over for ten
years, and throw it away, because Russell Ross has more money than you!
Think what the Rosses were."
"My father wouldn't have wiped his shoes on them. And any one of them
could buy out Jackson three or four times now. This mountain--if it's
handled right--it will simply mint money. It will be a mountain of
gold."