"You'll be sorry to leave Adamsville?"
"The iron-hearted city.... Sorry--and glad, too. It's one of the finest
places in America--to leave."
Her nostrils wrinkled with the old-time intimate charm. "You have
deteriorated."
"What could you expect, with myself as my only audience?"
Then he regretted leaving the way open for reference to another auditor;
but, after a noncommittal scrutiny, she did not pursue that topic.
"And then," Pelham continued hurriedly, "we're not leaving it forever.
We'll return for another round with the triumphant malefactors."
"You think there's a chance?" Her question was from the heart.
"The South is twoscore years behind the rest of the country. We were
premature.... But the South can't lag forever. Even the dreadful war
will quicken intellects everywhere; every day's headlines mention
'socialism,' where it was never heard of three years ago. If we are
wise--as we weren't in '61--it may come sensibly; if not, God help my
respected father, and the rest of the monied vultures, in that day!
"I remember my first view of the city--the furnaces, and the coke ovens;
it looked like the pit of hell to me.... Well----"
Word came at last of his detail to duty at Washington. It was hard to
end the home they had built together in the Haviland Avenue house; but
the prospect ahead salved the regret.
The work, when Pelham came to it, proved congenial and illuminating. He
was nearer the core of the matter now; the mining industry of a country
passed before his eyes.
At the suggestion of the deputy commissioner, he accompanied that
official on a special trip to New York, the port from which the
manufactured steel was being hurried over to the hungry fields of
France. Jane went along; the three stood together in the arc-lit glow
of the vast freight station.
"I thought you wanted to see it," the friendly commissioner repeated.
"Rails, guns, gun-stocks, wire, a thousand sundries--and every car your
eye can see straight from the Adamsville mills. There's enough steel
railing there to triple-track from the Marne to Berlin, with lots to
spare!"
They drew together at the vastness of the spectacle.
"The metallic sinews of war, my boy--just as the boys of Adamsville and
the country are the human sinews. I understand your feelings, Judson;
but can't you see that they are spreading the same ideal of democracy
that your comrades work for?"
"I hope some good will result; it's not easy to see clearly," Pelham
answered slowly.
As the commissioner left, the son of Adamsville placed his arm around
Jane. "And our mountain did all of this! What pawns it made of us! We
flung up here, the miners scattered, endless change and turmoil.... I
used to say the mountain mothered me; but it flung me out like my father
too. Perhaps it embodied all of us. Perhaps"--a sudden surge of bitter
memory turned the drift of his thinking--"perhaps autocracy would suit
the mountain, as well as democracy."
"I think not," Jane replied slowly. "When its products are washed away
by the streams, they quicken the whole soil. Humanity can afford culture
now for all; all must win their chance at it."
"The war sets us back...."
"And pushes us on too. After it is over, these metallic and human sinews
will rebuild a world democracy at peace. Men have failed; the women come
to their tasks now."
"Yes; the aching past surely has taught us something. We must build
right, now. Old standards are gone; the world furnace of war has
quickened all the people...."
"We've done our small part."
"With the biggest part still to do. We are to see the beginning of the
building of the New World in the hearts and souls of men.... For that is
the final building."
They walked out to the jutting end of the vast pier, studying the
aimless restlessness of the ocean drift sloshing against the clustered
piles.
She turned to stroke a raveling from his coat. Upon the bright flush of
her cheek he brushed a fleeting kiss.
A resting gull flopped heavily from a water-swung stake, skimmed low
over the gray sparkle, and lessened on beating wings into the
sun-glitter to the west.