THE SHADOWS AGAINST THE FLAME
“Do I know the place? Sure!” said Joe Denny when Wayne ordered the
chauffeur to be ready with the limousine at eight o’clock. The runabout
was in the shop and the limousine was a next year’s model that Wayne
had just acquired. “He’s the wonder, this Father Jim.”
“What’s that?” demanded Wayne.
“Father Jim, they call him out at Ironstead. Say, he knows how to put
the boys to work.”
“What line of study have you tackled?”
“Me study? Say, you’re not on to me. I’m one of the professors.”
Wayne glared at him without speaking and the former ball player
explained, with unmistakable pride and a gradual lapse into the
vernacular.
“I’m the baseball professor. We’re going to put up a nine in the spring
that will make anything else look sick that gets in front. Say, they’re
good people out there. It’s a new one on me, that kind of religion;
all friendly and sociable-like, and the strong, glad hand. He don’t
ask you to sign the pledge or come to church. He says he ain’t running
in opposition to the saloons, he’s just going to put up a better show.
But he’s made a deal with the tank joints. He’s told all of ’em
that if they sell to a fellow what’s loaded or to hurry-the-can kids
he’ll prosecute ’em and have their license took up. He goes into the
saloons and talks to the bosses quite confidential-like and tells ’em
he doesn’t object to their business as such. He says the workin’ man’s
entitled to sip his suds the same as the gents in the Allequippa Club;
but the bar-keep ought to throw out any man that gets loaded, which is
not being a gent any more. He talks kind o’ natural and reasonable,
like he had been a bar-keep himself some time. Say, it’s a sure thing
he could do his own bouncin’ all right. There was a Roumanian low-brow
out there who cheered himself with alcohol straight and went over to
the parish house to clean it out. He butted in and kicked open the
door where the geography class was learnin’ all about Afriky where the
niggers and monks come from. The kids in the night school skidooed for
the home plate, seein’ the fire in the Roumanian’s eye. ‘This is a hell
of a place,’ he yells, and reached for the Father. Father Jim caught
him one under the ear and knocked ’im over a big globe they have out
there to find the North Pole on. The bum thought the earth had caved
in on ’im for sure and laid on his back bleatin’ like a sick sheep.
Some of the kids had got the cops and when they chased in the Father
was pourin’ ice water on the Roumanian, delicate-like. ‘We’ll give him
about six months for this,’ says the sergeant; ‘don’t bother, Father,
to clean him up--he’ll come to in the wagon all right,’ says the
sergeant. ‘Sorry, boys, you’ve been put to the trouble,’ says Father
Jim, settin’ the earth on its right end again, ‘but my friend was late
to his lesson to-night and came in so fast he had heart failure,’ says
Father Jim. ‘Step downstairs, officers, and the night cookin’ class
will give you some coffee,’ says Father Jim. And if he didn’t put the
slob to sleep in his own bed--honest to God he did!
“And listen,” continued Joe, pleased to see that Wayne was interested,
“the gayest that happened was about old Isidore, the Jew ole-clothes
man, who had a row with the rabbi. He had it in for the rabbi good
and strong and he got a pair of pig’s feet and slipped ’em under the
rabbi’s chair in the synagogue, which was against the religion, and oh,
my, some of the members of that church got after Isidore and was goin’
to make ’im into a burnt sacrifice all right. But Father Jim hid ’im in
the cellar at the parish house and went to square it with the rabbi.
You might think, them not bein’ members of the same church, and viewin’
matters quite different, they’d give each other the razzle; but Father
Jim umpired the row all right and Isidore buys his meat at the kosher
shop now, which is proper, Father Jim says, him bein’ a Jew, which is a
great race, he says. Shall I crank the buzz wagon?”
Guided by a pillar of cloud that wavered against the stars of the keen,
autumn night, the motor sped on toward Ironstead. The black pall was
lighted fitfully by fierce gusts of flame; golden showers of sparks
rose ceaselessly, fountain-like, and gave a glory and charm to the
scene. At one point there fell on Wayne’s ears the mighty cymbal-crash
of hammers, now ringing clear and resonant, and lost again in a moment
in other tumults of the valley. The spectacle, the sounds, spoke with
a new language to his imagination. Here was the most stupendous thing
in the world, this forging of the power of the hills into implements
and structures and weapons for man’s use. The steel frames of towering
buildings, the ribs of swift ships, the needle that sews the finest
seam--these were all born of this uproar.
Wayne stood up in the motor to peer upon figures that moved about in a
glare of flame as though on a great stage set for a fantastic drama.
He knew the practical side of these smelting and forging and riveting
processes; but it suited his mood to-night to think of them as part of
some tremendous phantasmagoria. He singled out one dark Titan as the
chief actor, and named him Vulcan; and these were his slaves, these
shadowy shapes that swung the brimming crucibles on huge cranes or
manipulated with ease the long glowing bars that might have been the
prop and stay of some fiery-hearted Ætna. What could it all mean to
these hurrying, leaping men, the discordant hymn of the hammers, the
terrible heat, the infernal beat and clash, the nerve-wracking cry
of the saws as they severed the hot bars, the venomous, serpent-like
hissing that marked the last protest of the rebellious ore against
these tyrants who had wrested it from earth’s jealous treasuries.
And Joe, sitting unmoved, with his hands upon the wheel, turned to
see why his master delayed. Wayne crouched in the open door of the
tonneau, his broad shoulders filling the opening, his cap on the back
of his head, gazing upon a spectacle with which he had been familiar
from childhood; but to-night it took new hold of him. To these “singed
and scorched” beings, the shadows against the flame, Jim Paddock was
giving his life.
“Go on, Joe!” he shouted, and slammed the door.