His soul stinging with the father's injustice, he waited until the other
had gone in leisurely certainty down the hill, and went in to his
mother. "I'm to leave the mountain next Saturday, mother."
"It's necessary, Pelham. You have distressed your father in so many
ways, I cannot see anything else for you to do."
Hurt pride spoke within him. "He said my late hours set a bad example
for the boys."
"Yes ... that too...."
The words crowded out. "He said that I was late because I was going with
bad companions, when he knows that's a lie!"
"Pelham, you shall not speak that way of your father to me."
"Mother, you know I've been at meetings and debates; you know how
straight I've been. If he'd had his way, I wouldn't have been," he added
with heated significance.
"What do you mean?" The unrehearsed query came against her will.
"When I was visiting at the Meades, he advised me to go to Butler's
Avenue, mother--to go to the Red Light district--to go to the women
there. That was his fatherly advice to me!"
Her face assumed a Puritanic severity, an alien look; she masked the
tumult of her heart with this outward symbol of incredulity. "I cannot
believe you, Pelham."
This was not the first occasion in which he had detected Mary's mobile
features solidified into a harsh and unreasoning insensibility to fact.
Whenever he or one of the other children had cornered the mother into a
situation demanding condemnation of Paul, this self-gorgonized
expression hardened upon her; it hid any admission of surprise, any
criticism of the husband, for the moment. And he had observed that it
served a second function--persisted in, it gave time for the breach in
the confidence in Paul to heal without apparent scar; henceforth she
seemed to live in the self-imposed delusion that her husband had never
been at fault. She would have held as a model wife the Red Queen, who
had trained herself to believe six impossible things--presumably to her
royal husband's advantage--before each breakfast.
Pelham had come to despise this obvious scouting of reality, this
sentimentalizing which called facts what it would have them, not what
they were. He retorted rather sharply, "There's no use not believing me.
You know I am not lying; those were my father's words."
The smug overcast of unbelief became glacial; in serene security in her
husband's impeccability, no matter what the facts might be, she turned
toward the house. "I do not wish to have you discuss the matter any
further." Then, a softer look in her eyes, she came back to where the
son stood, and slipped an arm around his shoulder. "I'm doing this for
your own best interest, mother's dearest boy; just as your father has
decided in his wisdom that the time has come when you must leave the
cottage."
There was a preliminary catch in her voice, affectionate, affecting, and
not consciously affected. "God only knows, my son, how much I love
you...." She did not say any more, as if with a moment's clarity of
insight she doubted the appropriateness of the inevitable formula. She
threw a half-puzzled glance at him, that seemed rather to survey herself
through him, as she left off talking, passed up the steps, and through
the screen door--for all the world as if to screen herself further from
his, and perhaps her own, searching scrutiny.
Well, that was ended. Pelham prepared to move. He found a vacant room
with Mrs. Hernandez, wife of a comrade. The outlook on symmetrical
suburban homes, in a cheap section near the mountain's foot, was far
different from the rolling vistas he had been so fond of; but at least
his books and Sheff pictures reminded of the old place.
Jim Hewin, whose attentions to Diana continued, although without his
first impetuous insistence, questioned the girl about the matter on one
of their infrequent meetings under the dumb oaks on the crest. "Young
Judson left home?"
"Last week."
"Squabbled with his old man?"
"I reckon so.... He just left." She continued listlessly to stare at the
burning breath of the far furnaces.
At length her moping could not be ignored. "What's the matter, gal?
What's on your mind?" He tried lightly to shake her out of her
melancholy.
She responded weakly to his clumsy friendliness, her tongue locked as to
its real trouble. She had come to-night to tell him; it seemed so easy,
as she went over the matter in the cleared kitchen, waiting for the
supper preparations to begin. She must tell him; he was entitled to
know.
And now an icy self-disgust tied her. This man at her side--what could
it mean to him, but a new peg for his obscene jokes? She had gone into
this thing, at the last, willingly; she must see it through. It was not
for him to guess at the faint unstirring life which her mad yielding had
summoned within her.
She pretended to meet his mood, and left him sure that she had "got out
of her spell." She cried herself and her hidden secret to sleep.
A spirit of lassitude lay over the mountain activities, with the
departure of Pelham and the cumulative effect of drenched days of
torrid July sunshine. The dusty mornings were dry and crackly, the
sullen summer air clung within the house at night. Futile breezes
spurted uncertainly, emphasizing the arid discomfort. Twice thunder
clouds massed over the nervous swelter, but were swept on before they
could spill their desired comfort. Dust-weighted leaves hung limp,
shrubs sickened and browned; only the weeds pushed blatantly upward.
Paul came out early the second day of the spell. The weight of the
weather was unbearable. It was as if heavy blankets of heat were
continually drifting down from the blazing heaven, too piercingly hot to
be drowsy; it was as if he walked through these thick palpable layers of
living, seering fire ... like walking undersea of a vast liquid ocean of
seething heat.
"You'd better get out of this," he announced shortly to Mary. "How would
the Thousand Islands do?... The girls, and Ned too; his school doesn't
open till late in September. Hollis had better stay with me; I need some
help.... Shall I make reservations for Tuesday?"
Paul took Hollis with him, ten days later, for a run up to Washington
connected with the delivery of steel to supply Allied orders, a mission
in which all of his driving sympathies were enlisted. Nor was he out of
key with his home city in this. Adamsville was one of the few Southern
cities whose sympathies had been against the Central Powers from the
beginning of the war. For the first two years the rest of the South
fussed and thundered against English interference with the profitable
pre-war cotton trade with Germany; an anti-English "freedom of the seas"
became the day's slogan in the one section of the country where English
blood still predominated. But the iron city never joined in this clamor;
its spokesmen, its suave senators and publicists, could waive the
blockaded deflection of cotton, when the iron and steel demands of the
Entente doubled the output of the mineral region. As the warring months
marched on, quick shipments commanded untold bonuses; as of old, where a
man's purse was, there was his heart. For commercial and patriotic
reasons the company fretted impotently at the continuance of the strike
at this time, especially when rail congestion became serious throughout
the country. Paul's trip was one of many that the metal magnates had to
make, to keep the wheels running as smoothly as possible upon the twice
interrupted tracks.
This trip left the mountain home in the care of old Peter, who stayed on
in his cluttered servant's room behind the kitchen. Diana Cole came in
to clean up once or twice a week. Jim Hewin's persistent curiosity about
the movements of the Judsons found full answer in her.
Two days after the master's departure, Peter hitched up and drove into
town, to bring out two boxes of books from the office, and some sacks of
cotton seed meal and oats. He dawdled around from store to store,
showing off his temporary responsibility and dignity. The hot hours
passed; he found relief in the cool shade of a side of the ice factory,
where frequent squabbles among intent young negro crap-shooters were
referred to him for his ponderous adjustments.
Diana, late in the afternoon, brought a pan of peas out to the mended
yellow rocker on the front porch of the Cole shack, and commenced
popping the viscid spheres out of the parched pods. At length her hands
slowed; she stared into the red sunset beyond Hillcrest Cottage on the
hill across.
She was struck by the odd reflection of the fiery glow in the kitchen
windows. It was as if the late sun shone clear through the house. She
rose agitatedly to her feet, the peas littering the steps, the pan
halting against the wilted morning-glory vines. "Maw!" she cried, panic
in her voice. "Maw! Will! Come here----"
A thin shimmer of smoke jerked restlessly above the kitchen end of the
big house. "That ain't--fire?"
"An' Mr. Paul an' ev'ybody gone!"
"Will," she turned hurriedly, "run to Hewintown--the men can save lots.
I'll phone the Fire Department----"
She raced up the familiar road, her mind working feverishly. Far behind
Stella panted. There had been no fire in the kitchen range since
morning, when Peter cooked his own bacon and coffee. At noon it had been
cold; she had seen it; Peter had started then for town.... Unless he had
come back.
The sun had almost gone down; it was dark in the hall. She threw open
the doors, and started frantically tugging at Miss' Mary's chiffonier
and washstand. The men arrived, coatless, willing. They piled furniture
around the big cedar north of the house. The heat of this burning wing
became blistering; the things had to be moved down the road.
Diana remembered the telephoning.
"We got an alarm," a gruff voice scolded. "Engines ought to be there
now."
Two neighbors from the base of the mountain came up, and began helping.
Armed guards at the entrances to the estate kept many away; these
watched the holocaust from beyond the gap, or from their own homes.
Dried wooden walls flamed up against the dark sky like giant fireworks;
massed smoke bellied and spit sparks as if the mountain vomited in fiery
discomfort.
Someone led a group of helpers up to the dim door of the garret, crowded
with carefully covered family treasures from Jackson days. The dusty
packing-cases promised little. "Nothing here," he said, closing the
door.
The north end was an oven now; the rescuers turned to the dining room,
parlors, and the boys' rooms on the south.
Diana ran back to the closet where Miss' Mary's silver was locked. She
left this to hurry to the window, and then the door.
Huggins, Jim Hewin, and a knot of guards stared at the hectic activity.
"Hey, niggers," one called to Will Cole and another, who were steering
the hall clock from the Jackson home through the door, "drop that clock.
You can't steal Mr. Judson's things."
Will and the other reached the porch.
"Drop it, I say," rang out Jim's ugly voice, as he balanced his pistol
tentatively. "You bastards, burnin' down the house, to steal the stuff!"
"That's a lie," Will called, shortly. Others took up the cry.
The guards raised menacing pistols.
A striker, his temper on fire from continuing irritations, dropped
behind the nearest steps, levelled his pistol, and shot toward the armed
group.
Diana ran out flying, shielding Will. "Don't shoot my brother, you
scoundrels----"
Jim's pistol, carefully aimed at the black striker, crackled viciously.
Tongues of flame spoke from the armed deputies.
"You plugged the gal," Huggins grinned casually, aiming again. "We got
both coons."
The astounded citizens ran between the sudden murderous combatants.
"This won't do!"
"The house is burning, while you're killing each other!"
The chemical engine swung around the southern curve of the road,
jetting ineffectually against the greedy insanity of the flames. The
strikers took up the four bodies, and carried them somberly to
Hewintown, Stella Cole following, dry-eyed and shivering with
uncomprehending hatred.
Pelham and Jane walked among the smouldering ruins the next day, their
hearts bitter at the headlines which blamed the strikers for the
burning. "There's no dirtiness they won't stoop to," he raged.
"Hanging's too good for those editors."
When Paul Judson arrived, to what had been home, in answer to Mr. Kane's
wire, it was to find that Tom Hewin, whose sub-contract still controlled
this part of the estate, had begun removing the rich outcrop where the
north end of the cottage had rested.
"This is outrageous, Hewin! We don't want this touched----"
"It's the contract, Mr. Judson. In section seven. I supposed----"
Paul left him, agonized at heart.
An injunction the next day stopped the theft of the outcrop, and removed
the Hewins from their connection with the property and the strike.
Only Ed was left to his mother to arrange for the burial of Diana and
Will. Neither of them knew, although Stella suspected, that there were
three dead in the two graves.