"We haven't seen you for a week, Mr. Judson," blared out Dawson. "We
been readin' the social news, too. You've been busy."
"Yes.... I've been busy on my report." A flash of his father's acidity
spoke in the tones. Then he asked more quietly, "What about bonds?"
"You can help there," Spence mollified him. "We've got most of 'em
arranged for. When will your report go up?"
Pelham twisted forward on his chair. "It'll contain this latest plant.
I'll finish this week. I suspected something of the kind." He told them
of the offer made by Jim Hewin.
"It's an old stunt," said Dawson, unbending a little from his suspicion
of "white-collar" meddling in labor troubles. "They ought to be ashamed
to pull such stale gags. But here in the South----Those blackguardly
uglies will swear any of us into jail."
"There's the jury," said Spence, a fighting flash in his eyes. "We can
play a trick or two. Corporations ain't popular in Adamsville. Well,
we'll get the boys out first."
The whole thing brought Pelham up sharply to his neglected work. He got
one more maddeningly brief sight of Louise, before she continued her
round of visits. "I'll be back, lover boy, around the holidays."
"How can I stand your being away?"
But the Tollivers were too close to permit his saying more.
Nursing his unsettling sense of guilt, until he was sure his face must
publish the amorous errancy, he took himself to Jane on the accustomed
Friday evening. She had not marked his absences, accepting the
explanation that the report had kept him busied. To his wonderment, she
was as dear and essentially desirable as ever; her range of
attractiveness lay in ways so remote from Louise's red and feverish
charm, that he sensed no conflict between them; he could love both
wholly for their differing appeals.
Yet the evening was different, to him. The memory of intimate contacts
with the brief love who had gone left a mental stigma upon his body; he
was less willing than ever to touch Jane, or think of kissing her; she
must be kept all the more congealed in icy protection. As defense
against unnerving personal confidences, he had brought his report, which
had begun to trouble him, to ask her help and counsel. "I'm afraid of
it, Jane. You see, it goes all the way ... about my own father. It'll be
bound to make trouble for him ... and me. I could have another inspector
frame the final wording----"
"You back out! You must be a changeling some corporation elf has dumped
off on me!"
"Don't tease. The thing bites too hard; it has nothing but teeth."
"Of course you'll make it! Give it here; we'll fix it so that it can
masticate the toughest corporation board. What if it does make trouble?
It's the truth...."
She went over the whole of it, toning down the vituperative rhetoric of
the opening and conclusion, adding force to his presentation of facts.
He was startled at her ability to vivify the abstractions symbolizing
the red rage tearing apart city and mountain. Before she was done, he
was re-converted to faith in his eloquent accusations.
At length it was finished. He saw that advance copies reached the papers
on the day it was received by the governor. The _Advertiser_ and the
_Times-Dispatch_ did not even mention it. But the ever-helpful
_Register_ more than made up for their censoring. The slashing
indictment of the companies for their disregard of the protective laws,
the startling story of their lobbies to defeat safety measures, even
the account of his father's activity at the State Federation of Labor,
with the advertisements in the _Voice of Labor_ as exhibits, were given
in full. This was a new frankness in Adamsville politics. From this
Pelham passed to a treatment of starvation wages on the one hand, and
prodigal salaries, surpluses and dividends on the other. He featured
that the strike was for the enforcement of existing laws, and that the
companies refused any arbitration. The conclusion recommended that the
state enforce arbitration, or, if the companies could not be controlled,
that the profiteering be ended by the state's taking over the mines and
running them.
The lonely editorial voice of the _Register_ backed up even the most
radical demands of the document.
The answer of the companies came promptly. Both of the other papers
broke silence by denouncing the report as dishonest propaganda, with a
demand for the removal of the offending young hothead. They called again
for the militia to end the disorder at the mines.
Pelham received a wire from Governor Tennant the same night, suspending
him from the state's services under charges of misconduct in office. The
two hostile papers gave the details, the next morning; his strike
activities were set forth, and given as reasons for his dismissal.
"You'll get your hearing," Ben Spence told him, "but that'll be all.
It's good-bye with you, my boy. And you've drawn just two pay checks!"
His father descended on him in proxy during the afternoon, in the person
of Pratt Judson, who had run up from Jackson, at Paul's suggestion,
after interviewing the governor, to act as intermediary. Pelham listened
with ill grace to his uncle's suave attempts to cloud the matter.
"Bob Tennant is a friend of yours, as well as mine, Pelham. It would
certainly hurt him to remove you; but what is he to do?"
"Does my father demand the removal?"
"You know better. He stood up for you, even against the whole board of
directors. Family means a lot to Paul. But they're out for your scalp.
You've played yourself into their hands."
"I don't see how," the boy repeated doggedly, curving a steel-edged
ruler until it cracked alarmingly. "I don't see how."
"If you'd gotten anyone's advice, my boy, you would know that a state
official can't take sides in such matters. You've actually served on the
strike committees, haven't you?"
"Heretofore inspectors haven't failed to serve the companies. They
weren't fired."
"Let's not beat around the bush. Here's the best that Tennant can do.
The charges need never come up, if you don't kick up another row. The
suspension can go for the present, and then in due course you can
resign. Mary tells me you've wanted to take up advanced work in
sociology. You know I'm not a rich man, Pelham; but I'll be willing, to
pull you out of this hole, to stand the whole expense."
"Would you advise me to retreat under fire? Resign, with charges hanging
over me?"
The portly uncle thought a minute. "They'll be withdrawn now, Pelham, if
you'll agree to resign in six months, and take a vacation until then.
There'll be nothing against you."
The ruler splintered abruptly, littering the ordered desk. "It's running
away from a fight, Uncle Pratt, and you know it. I can't do it."
"Think of the family--a black mark like this----"
"I'm thinking of the miners ... of my duty to them and the people."
"We're practical men, Pelham. You know enough about politics to know
that you're butting your head against a stone mountain."
"Then I'll butt, damn 'em! Talk straight, Uncle Pratt. Would you advise
me to back out of a fight in the middle of it?"
The elder man grinned in defeated sympathy. "You're a young fool,
Pelham. We've got to do this quickly, or it's too late. I could give you
until to-morrow to think it over----"
"I don't need the time. This is the only answer I could make."
"Well, I'll tell Paul. If you ever get into a scrape of any kind----"
"I appreciate that, and I'll remember it."
The strike committee heard what had occurred within an hour, as far as
Pelham's decision was concerned.
"Good boy!" said Spence. "Give 'em a run for their dirty money."
Serrano, an unofficial member of the group, broke in excitedly. "Why not
run Judson as labor candidate for sheriff, and elect him? That's the
best answer to make to the crooks! You'd run, wouldn't you?"
Pelham thought rapidly. It would at least give a wonderful chance for
propaganda, even if they couldn't overcome the big odds against them. "I
don't think we could win----"
"Win? We'd lick the lights out of 'em! Man, Adamsville's waking up! With
the strike going on, you could beat out Dick Sumter hands down! Look how
he's turned the sheriff's office over to the companies! Will you do it?"
There might be something in it; his heart expanded sharply from the
excitement. He kept his voice level. "I'd be willing to, of course. What
do you think of it, Ben?"
The cautious labor lawyer was not so enthusiastic. "You might do it,
Judson. You'd have to have union labor entirely behind you----"
"We can make 'em endorse him!"
"Socialist and all?" quizzed Spence, smiling doubtfully.
"Sure! Think what it would mean to the strike, if we had the sheriff's
office! We could enforce order then.... They'd have no chance to call
out their brass-buttoned Willies."
"Well, it's a big chance."
The hearing at Jackson, the next week, was the cut-and-dried farce that
Pratt Judson and Spence had predicted. The governor was friendly but
firm. "It's my duty, Mr. Judson, as a servant of all the people, to
remove you."
Jane, on fire with the idea of the campaign, caught his hand impulsively
when he hurried back to tell her. "Don't mind it. We knew what they
would do.... Now--show them!"
The thing moved slowly. There were countless obstacles. Pooley, Bowden,
the regular machine, would not hear of it. An uproarious meeting of the
Trade Council shoved through an endorsement. The leaders changed their
talk then, but Pelham felt their hidden antipathy working against him.
So far there had been no open announcement of the race, and it was now
the last week of August.
"Ben Spence, you've got to put this thing over. Hire Arlington Hall--the
socialist local will put up the money--and start it next Sunday
afternoon."
"Hadn't we better wait until things are straightened out a bit----"
"We'll wait until election's over, then. We've waited three weeks now."
"All right. Dawson says he'll back you; he's worth a lot."
Then began first-hand knowledge of the detail of politics for Pelham.
Even before the announcement meeting, the socialist local, in its
haphazard groping for democracy, selected a committee to steer the
campaign. They met in Pelham's office the next night.
Pelham mused over their faces, as they blundered down to business.
Surely the most extraordinary group ever assembled to direct the
political destinies of Adamsville! Serrano, a bricklayer, a loud voiced,
commanding bulk of a man, who banged with the improvised gavel;
Christopher Duckworth, pioneer in the Adamsville movement, an
impecunious old architect who had had his name on the state ticket at
every election for sixteen years; two machinists, fighting units of a
fighting group, "Mule" Hinton and Henry Gup; the party's state
secretary, Mrs. Ola Spigner, who had come up from her farm in Choctaw
County, ever on hand for a fight; Phifer Craft, a failure as a
commission merchant, and a deep theoretical student of Marx and
Dietzgen; Abe Katz, spokesman of the tailors' union and the Arbeiter
Ring; and his landlady, Mrs. Hernandez, invariable woman member on
committees. They were not even leaders in their trades, except Serrano
and perhaps Katz. Most were poor speakers or spoke not at all. But out
of the ill-lit slums and lean cheap suburbs they had been flung together
by a burning idealism for a greater world. They were the hands of a
people's groping faith.
"I mofe we elect us a treasurer," said Abe Katz seriously. So began the
business of the campaign.
Dawson, Ben Spence, even Bowden and the Bivens group dropped in at
occasional meetings; but this faithful nucleus was always on hand, doing
the real work. They mapped out the itinerary of speakers, got out the
first literature, sent soliciting committees to the various unions for
endorsement and funds, in fact directed the whole campaign.
Any of the comrades were willing to be broken in as chairmen of the
meetings. The speaking at first fell heavily on Serrano, Duckworth, and
Pelham himself; but gradually the liberal element of the city came into
the fight. Dr. Gulley threw the support of his Free Congregation into
the contest with the "County Ring," as represented by Sumter;
near-radical lawyers, Will Tatum, Judge Deason, Harvey Cade, eager to
oust the corporation toadies, were invaluable assistants; Lane Cullom's
car was always at the call of the committee, and shared with Pelham's
the duty of touring the rambling county roads to the further meetings.
The unique campaign drew crowds from the start. One night Pelham called
for a show of hands of all the men present who were voters; the result
was so astonishing, that he repeated the lesson again and again. In West
Adamsville, filled with itinerant furnace workers, not one man in
fifteen was a voter. In the country districts, about one in ten; in the
city, slightly less. With the aid of Ben Spence, he looked up the
question, and thereafter added a vigorous attack on the election laws to
his onslaughts on the company-owned sheriff's office.
"Do you know what your servants down in Jackson did in 1902, when they
framed the new Constitution? They told you it would take the vote from
'the niggers'; it took the vote from you white men as well. In New
York, in Illinois, in most of the northern and eastern states, from
eighteen to twenty-two per cent of the population vote; in Western
suffrage states, up to thirty-five per cent. And in the South? Georgia
has something like five per cent, this state four, and Mississippi only
three and a half per cent! Half of the men in this state are white; six
out of every ten of these have been disfranchised by that Constitution.
The cumulative poll tax, which says you can't vote unless every poll tax
since 1902 has been paid by the February before the election, the
grandfather clause, giving votes to the southern slave-masters and not
to the southern wage-slaves who make the state's wealth now, these have
robbed you of your voice in the government. The southern laborer has
been classed with children, women, negroes, and idiots--will you stand
for it?"
The campaign, thanks to the _Register's_ hearty support, began to alarm
the politicians. Pat Donohoo, who controlled five saloons, and claimed
to be able to deliver the Irish and Catholic vote, came in to see
Pelham. "We know your father," he confided huskily. "Give me your word
that you'll behave when you're elected, and I'll see that you get every
Catholic and Irish vote in the county. We're out to teach Dick Sumter a
lesson."
Pelham answered briskly. "Of course I'll behave. My platform says what
I'll do, Donohoo. If your men want to vote for me, go to it. They'll get
a square deal from me, I'll promise that."
"You see," he explained to the committee, "he's playing safe. No matter
who's elected, he can claim the credit."
"Never trust them Catholics," said Mrs. Spigner, a devout propagandist
for the _Menace_. "They're all Jesuits."
"He couldn't deliver anyhow," consoled Ben Spence.
The crafty lawyer made the labor support fairly solid, by promising
liberal appointments to the State Federation crowd. Pelham did not know
about this, and Spence did not imagine that the promises would have to
be fulfilled.
For one of the meetings the candidate worked harder than usual. It had
been old Duckworth's suggestion that a speaking be advertised for the
corner across from the University Club, in the very heart of the
"silk-stocking" district. The neighborhood was liberally posted, and the
committee were on hand to cover the retreat of the speakers, if too much
of a riot developed. To their surprise, the large crowd listened to Dr.
Gulley's fervent appeals, to the withering sarcasm of Harvey Cade, and
to Judson's vitriolic attack on the leisure class, with close and
appreciative attention. One or two of the East Highlands boys hooted a
few times, but a policeman routed them. The applause was as hearty here
as at Hazelton or Irondale.
Pelham's opponent stirred himself tardily, and was careful not to answer
the accurate broadside of charges flung at him by the deposed mining
inspector. General attacks on socialism were much more popular than lame
apologies for an unfair and one-sided administration; and the common
charge that American socialism was pro-German was roared and ballyhooed
by the political servants of the corporations, upon platforms opulently
framed in bunting. Pelham laughed at this intense patriotism, suddenly
discovered as an answer to the sheriff's anti-labor activities; but it
made continual inroads upon his strength with the docile people. The
tide wavered to and fro; the _Register_ claimed four days before
election that Judson's chances were better than even; the alarmed
opposing sheets insisted that there was only one man in the race, and
that the iron city would never tolerate a man who openly advocated free
love, kaiserism, and the despotism of the mob.
The closing rally of the Democrats came on Saturday night, an
old-fashioned whooping wind-up in the Lyric theater; Pelham covered five
county meetings and two city ones during the same time. Monday night,
while the opposing forces rested their public activities, occurred the
Judson finale, at Main Park, in the rickety summer band-stand. The
trampled green in the open heart of the city was black with intent and
serious faces, whose throats cheered themselves hoarse over the
hoarsened voice of their leader,--though his tones, roughened by night
after night of straining open-air talking, could barely reach half of
his crowd.
The final applause was given; the reporters rushed off with their copy;
the squads of comrades and union men left with their wives and children
for cheap scattered homes. Pelham took Jane back to the Andersons', to
sit, glum and wholly exhausted, slumped against the back of the couch,
until after two.
"Never mind, you dear old fighter," she insisted. "You've done more than
anyone else could."
Tuesday, election day, was a hectic tumult of excitement for both sides.
Lane Cullom insisted on driving Pelham in his car, proud of the
reflected light that went to the faithful aid of the candidate. The
relief of shooting along chill stretches of November road from
polling-place to polling-place was indescribable.
At five the polls closed. Pelham, after a lunch-stand supper, sat in his
half-dismantled headquarters, his finger upon the pulse of the wires
that led to every part of the county.
The returns began. One by one the faithful precincts lifted Judson to a
good lead, and increased it. Hazelton, West Adamsville, distant
Coalstock, the mining boxes, all went well, more than neutralizing the
early farming returns, which were four to one for Sumter. And then the
totals grew evener, and wavered now one way, now another. The vocal vote
was Judson's; the silent, unchangeable Democratic mass began to lend its
weight to the incumbent. There was still a fighting chance. Counting at
the city boxes proceeded with sickening slowness.
The last of the county returns was wired from distant Chinaberry
Junction: Judson led by fifty-two votes! If the city had broken even, he
would have it!
The jubilant comrades and strikers conscripted sudden parades of
celebration; the corporations were licked! It would paralyze the
companies to have the law-enforcers, their oldtime bulwark, turned
against them!
Then, as if at the touch of a single lever, the thirteen big city boxes
unloosed their flood of figures. First ward, Sumter, a hundred lead;
eleventh, Sumter three hundred ahead; ninth, Sumter, two hundred more;
fifth, eight hundred and eighty to the good for Sumter--this was the
Highlands ward; not one lone box tallying for Judson. Within twenty
minutes, enough of the returns were in to convince Pelham that the
citizens of Bragg County had spoken in their freeborn majesty, and had
chosen Richard Sumter sheriff by a majority of almost two to one.
The morning papers gave the corrected figures--8,450 to 4,281. The
corporations still held the court house.
"It's really a victory," Mrs. Spigner, the state secretary, repeated
with cheerless optimism, as Pelham drove her to the early mail train for
Choctaw County. "You raised a socialist vote of six hundred something
like six hundred per cent. You impatient youngsters, who think one
election has any importance! Remember, comrade, it's all a part of the
class struggle!"
At the end of a day of fatiguing post mortems and loquacious
consolations, of noisy assurances that he had won, punctuating his
dismemberment of the decapitated headquarters, he sought his real
inspiriter, Jane. The city lay under a shimmer of thin November
sunshine, that woke to dusky gold the tawny leaves flickering, at the
chilly breeze's lash, upon motionless black boughs--that revealed
pitilessly the feathery plumes of golden rod reaching over the sidewalk
from the vacant lot beyond Andersons', plumes the season's slow alchemy
had transmuted to insubstantial silver fragility, sifting into the
reddish mold at the fingering of the spurts of ground wind. Pelham would
have preferred a drizzling, cloud-heavy night sky, in which the decrepit
cheerfulness of the late landscape, and he himself, could have been
decently shrouded in isolating obscurity.
Jane gave him both her hands as he mounted the last step, reading, in
the drawn corners of his mouth, and the heaviness beneath his eyes, the
half-raised signals of surrender.
There was a flavor of bitterness in his first words. "It was really a
victory, after all----"
"You've heard that enough to-day, I know. Don't try to talk: here, these
cushions----" slipping them easily under his head, as a firm hand upon
his shoulder soothed his protest. "Let yourself relax, all over. There."
Her eyes meditated between one of the chairs and the end of the couch
beside him. She sat upon the couch.
The drowsy stillness, the moment's remoteness from the iron affairs of
the racking city, the soft rustle of her dress, the gentle eddies of air
that seemed scented by her presence, lulled and comforted. He reached
for her hand, and laid it against his cheek, where it loitered, a cool
solace, a gradual masterer of his undirected fancies.
The hours sagged by. There was little talk; that could wait. Not of his
willing his mind began to embroider the miserly store of caresses he had
asked or received from Jane; one by one the feverish moments with the
other girl, purged into a less bodily ecstasy, recurred to him, with his
own love's face and form holding their rightful place in his
arms--translated memories which in their turn were embellished by a
drugged imagination into warmer visionings of mutual surrender. Attempts
to re-channel his thinking were unsuccessful; at last he let the wanton
heart have its way.
Never had he needed a mother as now, Jane felt, as she bent her energy
toward his tired spirit. He needed more than a mother; his feverish
driving unrest would quiet, in arms that held him closer than a mother's
might. The time had come for her to be mother to him, and something
else. Winner or not, he was a hearty fighter ... decent.... Jane
Lauderdale Judson ... the name meant something now; she had helped it
mean something. A tired boy; her tired boy....
He looked up into her face at last. Her eyes, radiant with unspoken
caresses, were a madonna's ... twin stars over a fretted sea; twin
stars, in a heaven so near that he could reach and touch it. Unsteadied,
he swung painfully to a seat beside her. Then, compelled by her dominant
eyes, he turned and faced her in the shadowy hush. Unsteadily he put out
his two arms, touching her lightly, fearfully, upon the shoulders, and
lingering there. The pressure of his fingers drew her toward him; a
pressure from no visible fingers pushed him inexorably toward her. He
felt her breast touch him softly, and settle contentedly against him. He
pressed his flushed face against the soft neck and the tendrils of her
hair; his lips lay against her flesh, although he did not dare move
them.
There was an unhurried rapture of stirless content. Half solaced for the
moment, he released her; but his eyes could not leave hers, nor his face
move far from her own.
Her clear voice came to him quietly, with the mellow reverberations of a
gong touched in dusky stillness. "Stupid...." He could not read the
half-closed eyes; he had to lean closer to make out the words. "Is that
all?... Must I ask you?..."
His lips touched hers, closed upon them, clung there. A giddy faintness
came with the long-withheld ardor; his eyes shut out sight, the other
senses ceased for the moment--the frantic remnant of his will and
consciousness seeking to make the moment perpetual. His own being seemed
to flow out and into the other, he seemed to absorb from the vital
contact all of the inestimable dearness that she meant to him. This
consummation, devoutly unwished for so long, was for that reason in its
realization doubly dear; it brought an ecstasy so brimming that for the
time no other sensation found space to obtrude.
Too soon, to his heart, the ecstatic eternity ended. Suddenly ashamed of
her daring in permitting the tardy rapture, not to think of inviting it,
Jane drew back, releasing her tingling lips into a prim pucker of
uncertainty. He sought her a second time, quickened to an arrogant sense
of ownership of intangible wonders. Her protest reached him: "We
shouldn't, Pelham dear...."
She found her lips too busied to frame more negative commandments,
despite her unevenly ebbing struggles of protest.
At length his sense of protection returned; dizzily he leaned back,
unstrung, and yet satisfied. The night noises pulsed a rhythm fuller,
more harmoniously triumphant with soft surges of loving certainty, than
he had ever felt; the pandering darkness was intimate and confidential.
With the slowing of the unleashed leap of his blood, recollections of
Louise Richard came, as he had once feared; but there was no conflict,
no sense of soilure, in the unreal, remote fantasy of the former
passion; only a sun-high glory and delight in this, as if the first had
been the needed soil in which the plant of love could grow toward
fulfillment.
Her ears caught his contented whisper. "What are a thousand defeats,
Jane ... loved one ... when there is this at the end of the way?"
"At the beginning of our new way," she amended with sober joy.
"It wipes out all the irks and littlenesses.... Under all our veneer and
varnish of culture, business, politics, we are man and woman ... male
and female ... our souls as nakedly desirous as were the first two who
mated.... Loved one!" It rendered him inarticulate, this delicious
stirring up of the hidden deeps. It was for this, he was sure, that men
and women had been molded; in this surrender they yielded themselves to
the ageless currents of joy-bringing unity that created life, and
continued it as life itself.
"I love your hair," she arranged it more to her liking. "It fretted your
eyes, that last speech.... I wanted to kiss it away ... then."