"I ain't got no folks I've got to keep goin'. If I'm fired, I'm fired.
'Twon't be the first time. 'N' I don't shoot off my mouth any too much,
either. Your job is to keep 'em workin', an' pay 'em what you got to.
Their job is to get what they can. That's all there is to it."
"The good of the mines is their good."
The old man chuckled noiselessly. "I ain't never seen it, if it is. You
want what you can get, they want what they can get. You can't both have
it...."
This was all Pelham could learn from him; it was as far as he could get.
Tom Hewin stayed on the job at all times. His son, Jim, every two or
three months, broke loose for a half-drunk. He was too crafty to drink
to the point where he lost control of himself; but he would become mean
and quarrelsome. He made a habit of disappearing at these times for a
couple of days.
"Jim sick again?" Pelham would ask, curious to piece out what he knew of
the doings of these inferior folks.
Tom would lower at the absent son. "I used to whale his hide off for it,
Mr. Judson. He's big enough to lick me now. He don't do no harm; an' I
never seed him really intoxercated. He makes good money; he'll be a boss
miner yet, even with this here foolin'. Booze an' women.... Every young
man has to shoot off steam now an' then. They can't fool you, can they,
now?" He leered in low camaraderie. "You been there yourself, eh? Don't
tell me!"
Pelham was sure that he would not.
What with his work and reading, Pelham would have been content to remain
a recluse on the mountain. Paul drove this out of his head at once.
"Join the University Club as soon as you can; we'll make your salary two
fifty a month, and you can afford the Country Club also. Circulate; it's
good advertising. We'll keep the hill going somehow."
The first taste led to more; soon he was a regular part of the life at
the clubs. Frequently he would knock off at four, while the other
workers were still at their jobs, to clean up and whizz over the hills
for a sharp match of doubles, or an energetic foursome.
He could not manage a thrill of regret at the news that the sweetheart
of a few summers back, Virginia Moore, was to be married in October.
There was a new crop of debutantes, and most of the girls of his college
days still put themselves out to attract him. For a few months he rushed
Nellie Tolliver, a brilliant hand at auction; but he tired of her stiff
preoccupation with the narrow limits of gossiping small talk.
One of his sister Nell's friends, Dorothy Meade, was more to his liking.
She had come from some level of Washington social life, to marry Lyman
Meade, the local representative of the Interstate Power Company. Lyman
went his own easy way, and she hers. _Chic_, with an orderly aureole of
fluffy gold hair, sparkling gray eyes and a perpetual display of more of
her shoulders and breast than the lax club convention permitted, her
only difficulty was in repelling admirers.
Saturdays were the regular dinner nights at the Country Club; Dorothy
was the final fluffy attraction that turned Pelham into an invariable
attender. He annexed himself to the lively group that ringed her on
these occasions, to the amusement of her gayer admirers.
"Here's Dots, poaching on the bassinet preserve!" some professional
bachelor, his head innocent alike of hair and illusions, would indict.
"First childhood or second, why should I discriminate?" Her cheerful
offensive routed the covetous critics.
Dorothy's young moth was at least persistent. Her attractive bungalow
dominated the hilly head of a by-street near the links, and Pelham
formed the habit of dropping in for Sunday suppers. She was good to her
maids, preparing and serving herself the crisp salad mysteries and
froth-crowned desserts.
"Can't I help some way?"
Her eyes would twinkle adorably. "Mamma's helpful boy! Here, let me put
this apron on you!"
He could feel her voluble fingers whisper to him, as they shaped the
knot; she would stand close before him, to see that the linen badge of
utility hung evenly from his stretched shoulders. This disturbed the
regularity of his heart-beats; but then, she was Lyman's wife, reflected
Pelham. When the husband was present, he smiled enviously at the timid
and satisfied adoration that Pelham's efforts to conceal published the
more.
Despite all of his reading, Dorothy's marriage made her, in his brown
adolescent eyes, wholly intangible. She could not have been guarded more
effectually by the Chinese Wall, or a thicket of fire, with a paralyzed
Siegfried moping without. Her liberal hints encountered an adamant
obtuseness; he was not linguist enough, in her case, to read correctly
frankly provocative pouts, slanted glances, even her gipsying fingers,
that brushed his like the kiss of wind-wedded blossoms. These and more
became substance of his erotic fancies; but the world of fantasy and of
reality, in this case, he knew could never blend.
His amorous stupidity often exasperated her.
One night she yielded a narrow seat for him on the porch-swing, an
openly demanded tete-a-tete, although the cushions on the stone steps
and the settles within were warm with gossiping friends. "You're always
so mournful when you're with me, Pelham."
"Oh, Mrs. Meade!" She tied his tongue when it came to repartee.
"Oh, Mr. Judson," she mimicked fretfully; then affirmed with decision,
"you must meet Jane Lauderdale. She's about your tempo."
His eyes widened apprehensively; Dorothy's caprices were sometimes
alarming. "Who's she?"
"The most serious little soul I know ... and the dearest. You'll like
her, when you meet her."
"When?"
"Planning to desert me already, sir! I'll have you for a month yet;
she's away."
"I'm satisfied; it's your lead;" he dropped with some gracefulness into
the parlance of auction bridge.
The time came when she took the lead. The crowd were noisy at the piano
one night, when Dorothy turned to him, in the tiny butler's pantry,
laying her piled platter on a shelf behind his head. Lifting her chin,
she said provokingly, "Don't you want to kiss me, Pelham?"
The suggestion plunged him under a quick disquieting flood of emotion.
One of his precious ideals citadeling womanhood crumbled with intuitive
rapidity. A warm inner lash flushed his neck and cheeks. Beyond this
betrayal, which was of short duration, he showed no sign of this
delicious incarnation of his remotely fantasied passion, this focalizing
on the solid earth of an ethereal hunger and its satisfaction.
His arms rounded her; he brought his lips down to her level; her own,
moist and cool, opened within his. The ecstatic sensation closed his
eyes.