The day after the next Thanksgiving, Paul, excited and jubilant, drove
up the graveled path to the side door of Hillcrest. "Read those," he
pushed three papers into Mary's hands, as she rose from the veranda
rocker.
Her eyes blurred, so that she had to take off her glasses, as, sick at
heart, she realized what the documents were. Her husband spread them out
on her lap, explaining rapidly. "This is the certificate of
incorporation of the Mountain Mining Company. Here's my contract with
them--I hold fifty-one per cent of the stock, counting twenty shares in
your name and one in Pelham's, so we retain the controlling
interest--which provides the terms for the taking out of the ore. This
last is a carbon of the letter I got off to the boy this morning, giving
all the details."
She had lost her fight after all. "The cottage," she whispered, "how
long now before we must leave it?"
He slapped a pointing finger at the center of the second paper. "Section
seven--here it is--we won't move at all! This part of the mountain is
not to be touched, until all the rest is mined. As long as the house
stands, we're safe." He smiled, in conscious self-approval.
She raised dimmed eyes. "That's good of you, Paul. It hurts me to see
any of it disturbed.... I suppose you could do nothing else."
Refolding the sheets, he slipped them into an envelope with enthusiastic
finality. "The thing grows bigger and bigger every time I go over it. If
it pans out, we can buy Adamsville! I said a mountain of gold,
remember.... Ground will be broken in the spring. We'll put Tow Hewin in
charge of it now--he's the man poor Nate spoke of--and when Pelham comes
back in June, he can put his M. E. degree right into harness.... God! It
means millions!"
"You're sure the cottage is safe? It would break my heart to think we'd
have to give it up. It's such a splendid home for the children----"
He pushed out his lips. "It is a lovely place, Mary; but you've gotten
rooted here. By the way, I'll wire to St. Simon's Island to-night for
rooms for you and the girls for the summer. It will be a fine change.
The children can go, too. Pelham and I will stay on the job here."
Her lips trembled; leave before Pelham came--not see him all summer?...
The son's reply was an enthusiastic endorsement of the affair. He had
gone over the plan with his father on the previous holiday, before
returning to take a year's graduate work, and the enterprise appealed to
his imagination. It was sacrilege, in a way--like disemboweling a parent
for the money that could be made out of it. But what an invitation to
his trained activity! A marvelous chance to show what he was made of.
He explained the project to Neil Morton, who had also returned for
graduate work, after a summer's practical experience in a Wyoming
smelter.
Neil twisted his shoulders comfortably into the dingy Morris chair.
"Your mountain makes me weary, Pell. Morning, noon ... night. You'd
think it was the only ore proposition in the country."
Pelham flushed, but unchecked finished his sentence. "It'll be the
biggest plant in the whole South yet."
Neil grinned. "When the Adamsville papers get through with it, I suppose
it will."
Pelham abruptly changed the subject. "I met one nice girl last week end,
Neil--you would have liked her. Her father's Professor North at
Cambridge, and she's full of all sorts of crazy notions. Ruth is a
suffragette; wanted to vote, or run for governor, or something."
"Shocking," his friend remarked languidly. He was used to Pelham's
reactions.
"Tried to convert me."
There was silence for a few moments, then Neil straightened up in his
chair. "Do you realize, Pelham, that in Wyoming, where I summered, women
have voted for over thirty years? Why, the mayor of one of the mining
towns is a mother who has raised eleven children! Crazy notions,
indeed."
Pelham looked disturbed. "They must be bad women, if they vote. Who ever
heard of a decent lady mixing up with politics? Think of my mother, or
yours, Neil; would you be willing to have her mingle with negroes and
common riff-raff at the polls?"
The other exploded at this. "She does! Mother's the best little stump
speaker in the county! And Polly's been to two conventions already."
Pelham lighted a handy cigarette. "I always said that Texans were
batty."
"What did you do to your suffragist, anyhow?"
"Oh, she had too much coin for my simple taste. If father learned about
her, he couldn't talk anything else.... Not for mine!"
A rattle of knocks on the door broke off the discussion. Several
graduate students pushed into the room. "Hello, Judson. Going out for
supper, Neil?"
He stretched himself up, and reached for a cap. "Pell and I were just
about to prowl down to Heublein's."
"Come on, then."
As they crossed Chapel Street, the rubber-lunged news-boys were
shouting, "All about the big strike! Street car men to quit to-morrow!"
Pelham purchased a smudgy sheet. While the waiter was double-quicking
their orders, all eyes were directed at the leading story.
"Look at this," Ralph Jervis, one of the classmates, pointed
insistently, "the president of the road says he'll break the strike with
college men. Let's take a week off, and be blooming motormen!"
A spectacled Senior dissented at once. "It wouldn't be the thing,
fellows. Those strikers may be in the right, for all we know."
Jervis howled his disgust. "That's what comes of joining the Socialist
Study Club! Falkhaven's a regular anarchist. Why, it's a great idea! Are
you on, Neil?"
"Sure!" The Texan roused himself to answer briskly. "If Pell'll come
too."
"I'm for it," Pelham assented quietly.
The constant deference and affection displayed toward his big-hearted
roommate hurt him, against his will. For all his ability in studies and
on the mat, Pelham was not popular. He had never been accepted in the
higher circles of Sheff life, the Colony and Cloister groups; and he in
turn held himself aloof from the run of the class.
He was a thorough-going snob, for all his talk of democracy. Anywhere in
the South, which held the finest people in the country, a Judson would
be known and recognized, and given his proper place. These Yankees, no
matter how nice they might be personally, were Republicans; in the
South, only negroes and turncoats belonged to that party. At meetings of
the Southern Club, he had seconded the resolution asking that negro
students be provided with a separate gymnasium and eating hall. It had
furnished a week's laugh to the University; hot-headedly, he resented
this. He felt that the leading men held him merely on tolerance; he
shrank in upon himself.
This feeling of isolation was not entirely unwelcome. He had become used
to it in his mountain days. Here it had driven him to the College
Library, where he had mastered all its bulky volumes on mining and
kindred phases of engineering. He branched from these into higher
mathematics, until he could stump his instructor on the fourth
dimension. The previous Christmas holiday, he had turned to modern
European drama, and had covered what he could find in an amazing short
time; although it was not easy to stomach such plays as "The Weavers,"
and some of Shaw's dramatic maunderings.
His college loyalty, and class loyalty, in the social sense, continued
at a high pitch; and he was among the first to arrive at the office of
the New Haven Electric, and to sign up for strike-duty.
He spent an intense morning learning the mechanism of the car--it was
not difficult, for a good driver; and he knew automobiles thoroughly.
He was put at a controller on the Savin Rock run, with a halfback for
his conductor, and two guards furnished by a Newark agency to aid the
uniformed policemen in preserving order through the rioting poorer
districts.
The resort was reached, and the return made, in a tiresomely unexciting
manner. On the second trip out, a crowd had gathered near the turn by
the switching yards, which shouted epithets at the green crew.
"They're a bunch uh mouthin' blackguards, mate," the cheek-scarred guard
on the front platform observed with alcoholic familiarity. He dodged a
spattering tomato flung jeeringly by a tiny Irishwoman. "All they does
is shoot off their mouth."
Pelham found the guard's nearness the main irritation of the ride.
When they neared the same corner on the run in, two women stepped into
the street. He slowed the car. They suddenly turned back to the
sidewalk. He urged the speed up two notches.
A wagon had been backed across the track. "Clear that off, there." The
driver was evidently too asleep, or drunk, to heed.
"You move it," he ordered the guard.
As the man stepped down uneasily, the rush began. Out of the cheap
lodging houses and dingy side entrances flooded shouting men, women,
children. Bricks, garbage, old bottles thumped against the car sides.
"Better not stop, Judson," the green conductor's shout reached him.
"It'll be hot in a minute."
The guard struggled with the heads of the horses. A whirling
broom-handle from the sidewalk knocked him against the wheels. He let go
the bits, uncertainly.
"Kill the dam' scabs!"
"To hell with 'em!"
"Yah, scabs! Kill the college scabs!"
Pelham swung the heavy switch key dangerously close to the heads of the
rioters near the footboard. "Shove off that wagon, there. We're going
through."
The horses backed protestingly. The iron rod leapt toward the shrinking
crowd. The track was cleared.
Baffled, they surged across the rails in front; car windows were
smashed, a turmoil boiled on the rear steps, where policeman and
conductor battled with the more incautious attackers. The second guard
sneaked off down the alley.
Three or four boarded the front steps. A shrieking woman in the lead
caught Pelham's arm. He felt himself dragged toward the door. The
swiftness of it dazed him; he could not hit a woman.
"Naw yer don't!" The guard woke up, tore loose the woman with bullying
arms. "This rough stuff don't go!" He threw her back into the crowd. An
Italian bent at Pelham's feet; a shiny blade snaked toward his leg. He
cracked the man's shoulders with the switch key; the knife rang on the
cobbles.
Pelham toed the bell vigorously. The car started with a jerk. The front
caught one fleeing obstructor, throwing him sideways. Infuriated jeers
and howls came from women and children forced aside. A brick splintered
the glass at his right, just missing his head. He broke through, and
came into the center of the town.
A dispatcher took charge, placed him on a quieter run, and laid off the
Savin Rock line for the day.
He compared experiences with the others at supper. Jervis was in the
hospital, with a stove-in rib; Neil's ear wore a bandage; others were
laid up wholly or partly. Two of the strikers had been shot in an open
battle near the station, and a guard killed; the hospitals were filled
with minor injuries. The casualty list beat football, they agreed; and
it was better sport!
By the next day, the streets were more orderly. Police reserves
patrolled the focal spots, with orders to shoot to kill; mobmen were
clubbed on the slightest provocation, and arrested wholesale for
vagrancy. The station wagons clanged throughout the streets all day.
Pelham went back to his first run; there was no further tie-up.
He was switched later to the line Neil was on. This route pushed far
into the country, and through the depressing filth of a mill suburb.
Jeering lanes of factory men and women lined the roadway; most of them,
Pelham judged from the chatter, must be Polacks. There was one
persistent group centered around the tail of a cart. Here a woman
gesticulated fiercely beneath a red banner.
A stooping giant of a man, six feet three at least, turned from the
speaker's words to shake his fist at the approaching car and scream
profanely at its driver. "You lousy scab! You dam' thief!"
Pelham, secure in reliance on the bluecoat beside him, stopped the car.
"You're a liar," he said shortly. "Go on about your work, instead of
swearing at peaceful citizens."
The man sputtered in frenzy. "This was my run, you----" The profanity
spilled recklessly. "Stealing the bread out of working men's mouths, you
white-livered scab!"