Three weeks after the election, the cold set in. As if to compensate for
the maddening torridity of July and August, the biting tail of a
snowstorm lashed bleakly over Adamsville. The white flakes danced wildly
along the exposed crest of the mountain, stinging summer-seasoned skins.
Blasts whistled and shrieked, piling the chill drifts along the rutty
streets of Hewintown, sifting through sacks roofing the gaps in the
shack shingles.
Then a day of thaw, deepening the roads into a cold slushiness; and that
night a downburst of rain and hail, that cased trees, shrubs, hill-paths
in a glittering coating of ice. The brittle walks cut into feet whose
shoes lacked soling, the slippery steeps flung weakened women and men
against pointed rocks, adding to the already over-worked Charities the
chill cruelties of winter.
"Where's your overcoat, Ben, in this weather?" Pelham asked Wilson, now
out on bail, as they passed on the stiffened sidewalks.
"Ain't got none, Mr. Judson. An' the wife's down with the T. B., an' no
blankets in the house."
"I've got an extra coat; come on in to the office.... I'll phone Miss
Lauderdale about your people before we go to town."
"There's hundreds like us; you know charity can't stretch very far. What
these boys need is justice."
Pelham marveled at the untaught vision that could broaden its individual
suffering into universal understanding.
Wilson had not exaggerated the matter. The white plague gained on
undernourished men, their lungs rotted with underground damp and dust;
on anemic wives and mothers; on starved shadows of children and feebly
crying babies.
Each death piled higher their sullen hatred of the company. The
overcoated deputies boasted of their huge feeding, and treated with
growing insolence the wives and daughters of the men. Powder was being
laid for another explosion, in spite of Dawson's frantic efforts to keep
the strikers steady.
A worried meeting of the directors of the companies was called to
consider the continuing deadlock. "That man Dawson is the trouble," Paul
announced briefly to the chairman. "Get rid of him, and the backbone of
the strike is permanently dislocated. He's a born mischief-stirrer."
"Pity he can't be hung...."
"... Or tarred and feathered."
Judge Florence reminisced from the head of the table: "In '68 we knew
what to do with such riff-raff."
"It can be handled," Dudley Randolph inserted blandly. "He isn't popular
with many of the men, as it is. The local unions despise him. Let me
have the matter ... investigated. He won't trouble us long."
"Good."
"Your son is a bit troublesome too, Mr. Judson," confessed Henry Tuttle.
"Too bad he should be tangled up in it. This thing's got to be settled;
with these new English orders, it's suicide for us to withhold any force
that can stop this criminal strike."
Kane looked sideways at Paul Judson, who kept his eyes on
the table. The satellite spoke up uncertainly. "I'll tell you
something--privately--about him, that can stop his talking ... if we
must use it."
Tuttle nodded, after a glance at the inscrutable downcast gaze of the
vice-president.
"Is there anyone else?" said the chairman. "That lawyer, Spence?"
"No," said Tuttle, decidedly. "He's a lawyer; a lawyer thinks as his
clients do," and he smiled acidly. "Bivens, of the _Voice of Labor_,
Bowden, Pooley, employ him. He won't risk losing his livelihood ... or
go further than they will."
"It's time, Henry," Paul addressed the corporation counsel, "to go ahead
with our scheme. We've won the election; minor matters can be--er,
investigated, or otherwise handled. But as long as the strike lasts, we
are losing; our profit sheets show it. First your move, then ... the
militia. I advised it long ago, you remember."
The meeting closed with the uncomfortable, and frequent, impression
that, as usual, Paul Judson's sight alone had visioned correctly future
troubles--and their remedies.
The last week of November saw the playing of the withheld card. Hurrying
clerks of Tuttle and Mabry served on each houseowner the final notice of
eviction, granted suddenly by County Judge Little.
Roscoe Little, one of the Jackson family of that name, held a perpetual
lien on the judgeship because of his triumphant spinelessness. He had
never been known to express a decided opinion on either side of a
question; a weak-eyed hail-fellow-well-met, with a chin like the German
crown prince, he spent his mornings ruling in favor of corporation
attorneys, his afternoons absorbing comic weeklies and whiskey-and-sodas
at the University Club. He was unmarried; facetious barristers insisted
that he could not commit himself even in affairs of the heart.
There was nothing for the miners to do but move; the rifles of the
augmented deputies were an unanswerable persuasion. A few miles up the
valley the gray sandstone hill behind the mountain was undeveloped.
Spence secured the land at a slight rental, and here tents and
scrap-timber shacks did something to keep out the bitter winds of
winter.
Pelham helped in the moving, as did many of the socialists. Old Peter
came up to him in Hewintown the last day. "Mornin', Mr. Pelham."
"What you doing here, Peter?"
The ancient negro pointed with pride to the shined badge on his coat.
"Dey done made me a deppity, dey is."
Pelham turned off.
"Mr. Pelham, ole Tom Cole done come back."
"Not dead yet?"
"You cain't kill 'im. Dey cut 'im open, but he growed back agin. He am
powerful sickly, do'. De Ole Boy'll cotch him nex' time; he nacherally
favors preachers."
"But not company deputies, Peter?"
The negro chuckled off; Pelham walked back with Dawson from the new
shack village. The big organizer was thoroughly out of spirits. "It just
ain't moving, Judson."
"What's especially wrong?"
"The negro question, for one thing."
"I know," Pelham said slowly. "Our white labor won't assimilate them, as
the rest of the country's labor does to the most backward white races.
They're a perpetual scab menace."
"Hell, yes," in sobered agreement. "Then, the South's general
backwardness."
"That's natural, here. Our capitalists, some of the slave-owning blood,
and all inheriting its attitude, feel less equality: they see labor
still as their slaves. Ultimately this will help awaken our people; but
now----"
"That's the hell of it; we ain't got the public with us. What with petty
union squabbles, and all--it's a job to make a dent in a saint's
patience."
"Any chance of a sympathetic strike?"
"What can you do with Bowden and these yellow pups?"
The enthusiasm of the workers, dragged down physically by the hard
rigors, slipped lower and lower. Picketing continued, and each arrival
of new trainloads of northern scabs threatened a break; but something of
the original zest had gone.
Pelham, however, found a compensating zest, in which life overpaid him
for the wintry gloom at strike headquarters. After a glum day with the
dispirited leaders he could count upon a solace that overbalanced worry
and sorrow; downhearted planning for the intransigent struggle gave way
to warm-hearted dusk dreams of a future bent to heart's will; the mines
and miners were deserted for Jane.
"It doesn't seem fair, dearest dear, for us to be so unreasonably happy,
when Ben Wilson, and his tubercular wife, and all the rest, have so
little...."
"Your father isn't a happy man."
"... No. He may have been as happy as we, once; fancy him as a young
lover! There is a price for ambition centered in grasping things: the
soul dries up and shrivels."
"Poor man!"
"This is the real wealth...."
He took her within his arms. At home in his kiss, her lips parted
slightly within his, like a bud daring to offer its tenderest petals to
the crush of the enveloping wind. When he let her go, he lay slack with
delicious unrest.
Abruptly he sat up, a decisive ring in his voice. "I'm going to marry
you, Jane."
"I had hoped so." She could not prevent the dimple from smiling within
her rounded cheek.
"I mean--now!"
"To-night?"
"I'll get the license to-morrow, adorable child--and we can have Dr.
Gulley, or the mayor----"
"Let's have His Honor! An Irish blessing isn't to be scoffed at, and the
Free Tabernaclers, as rebels, are a bit pallid. 'The Courthouse
Wedding'--how your mother will relish that!"
"They wouldn't come anyhow----"
"It isn't that; but they've gotten so used to your shocking them, that
life would lose its savor if you couldn't achieve a fresh shock every
month or two. I'm glad my new suit came----"
"As if that made any difference!"
"Ah, it will make a lot--to His Honor, for instance, and whatever
reporters carry word of it to the society editresses. 'A dove-colored
traveling suit,' they'll call it----"
"Wouldn't red be more appropriate?" he queried judiciously. "With the
local en masse as best man, and the Suffrage Association as matron of
honor----"
"Don't be horrid. I'll have Mrs. Anderson, and you can bring along your
precious Lane Cullom, who is so sure that Nellie Tolliver would be much
better for you."
"It's almost a Christmas wedding! We'll steal off for that week to
Pascagoula and New Orleans we mentioned. We could take the Gulf Express
to-morrow night--you have a time table; I brought it out last month,
when we aircastled on honeymoons.... But just think, if you hadn't
scorned the country club, you might have had either of the Birrell boys,
or----"
"You angler! It's not too late.... No; I have the pick of the bunch."
"Jane, my ... wife." There was comfort and joy in the word.
Considering the matter alone, he was delighted he had dared the plunge.
It was not easy, now, to prevent yielding to the watchful voices ever
whispering to him, wakened by Dorothy Meade, refired by the rocketing
affair with Louise, and now restirred by Jane herself. He had even
wandered once or twice down Butler's Avenue and the furtive alleys
behind, obsessed with red-lit imaginings of what went on behind those
night-lighted windows. His aggressive purism had left him; love should
be freely given and taken, he told himself. And it was to be his!
Odd that he had suggested New Orleans, when Louise Richard might be
there.... It was a relief that that affair was dead.... This was to-day;
the to-morrows were Jane's.
After his departure Jane located the time-table. She studied the formal
details dreamily. To-morrow night, by this time, they would be.... And
when they had passed this place, and that, what would they be saying?
What doing?
The black and white schedule merited respect; it would time their first
day ... night ... together.
She laid it aside with a blush; then, bidding her fancies behave, she
read over the unemotional schedule until she knew it, appropriately, by
heart.
GULF EXPRESS P. M.
Hazelton | 8.07|
ADAMSVILLE |Ar. 8.20|
Exercising the best man's prerogative, Lane Cullom insisted upon having
the abbreviated wedding party as his guests at a bridal dinner. The
chef at the University Club grill lifted the covers promptly at six, in
order that the Queen and Crescent's prized express might not have to
cool its wheels in the new Union Station, waiting for the essential
pair.
Lane, a satisfied fatigue relieving the crease in his brow, almost
missed the first course. "I had to see that the eggnog was mixed
properly, Pelham, before it was frozen,--soup or no soup."
The last delicious morsel melted upon their tongues; the host paid a
final flying visit to the club's pantry, conscripting two pocketfuls of
rice. "Now let's go!"