Mountain Part 12

The outcrop-sc.r.a.ping continued fifty feet, before another opening was made.

World-unsettling events were happening, during the weeks when this minor dispute disturbed the serenity of relations on the mountain between owner and contractors. The same day that Pelham reported the repeated trespa.s.s on the easy outcrop, the startled papers told of the vaster trespa.s.s across the convenient miles of Belgium, which was bitterly contesting the gray-green flood of alien soldiers. The father turned from the headlines to discuss, with caustic vigor, the annoyance nearer home.

"There's no way to stop it, Pelham. They'll rob the surface, no matter what the contract reads. It's so much cheaper to get at ... lazy scoundrels! It 'ud take six years in court to settle it. Meanwhile, the mine would be locked up tighter than a barrel."

"You could get damages."

"Not a cent ... not solvent. Keep your eye on them; we'll play them along. Bad as this war promises to be, somebody's liable to need our iron. Prices must boost; the Hewin contract will hold our cost down. We won't lose."

There were few minds in Adamsville, at this time, that saw even this much connection between the remote struggle and placid home affairs.

In the spring, the third ramp was cut--half a mile to the north, beyond the crest of Crenshaw Hill, through a row of trees called the Locust Hedge. North of its base, on a wide bowl-like opening, the shacks and stockades for certain convict miners were built. Paul's bid for two hundred of the State long termers had been successful; these were isolated near the extreme end of the Crenshaw property, and kept at the deeper mining in the third series of entries.

Nearer Hillcrest, the underbrushed ridge at the foot of the higher peak was cleared, and houses were built for workers who did not live in Adamsville, or Lilydale, the negro settlement saddling the low Sand Mountains. A p.r.o.ng of the mountain s.h.i.+elded the Judson home from this shack town; otherwise the screams, shots, and general disorder around pay days would have driven away the family. "Hewintown" was the railroad's designation for the flag station below it; "Hewin's h.e.l.l Hole" was its usual t.i.tle.

Here Tom Hewin brought the three hundred miners from Pennsylvania, after he had discharged several gangs who fretted under the talk of union agitators.

Pelham helped erect the larger frame houses for the commissary, the office, and the overseers' homes. Frequently he idled through the two settlements, and tried in awkward fas.h.i.+on to understand the personal side of the workers. They answered civilly questions about their work; when he tried to go further, they drew back, surly and distrustful. He could not understand this wall of reserve.

One weazened grouch, Hank Burns, who had been a miner for forty years, tried to account for it. "Why should they trust you, Mr. Judson? They know you think they're dogs."

"But I don't!"

"Ain't you the owner's son? And a superintendent to boot. What should you have to do with such as us?"

Pelham gave way to a gust of pique. "That's a silly way to look at it."

Hank shook his head sagely. "Silly or not, Mr. Judson, how else can they look at it? You--or your paw--hires 'em, don't he? You can fire 'em too, if you don't like their talk. I hear some of 'em say, the other day, you was snoopin' 'round to spot union men. They know better than to talk."

The other shook his head, puzzled. "You talk to me."

"I ain't got no folks I've got to keep goin'. If I'm fired, I'm fired.

'Twon't be the first time. 'N' I don't shoot off my mouth any too much, either. Your job is to keep 'em workin', an' pay 'em what you got to.

Their job is to get what they can. That's all there is to it."

"The good of the mines is their good."

The old man chuckled noiselessly. "I ain't never seen it, if it is. You want what you can get, they want what they can get. You can't both have it...."

This was all Pelham could learn from him; it was as far as he could get.

Tom Hewin stayed on the job at all times. His son, Jim, every two or three months, broke loose for a half-drunk. He was too crafty to drink to the point where he lost control of himself; but he would become mean and quarrelsome. He made a habit of disappearing at these times for a couple of days.

"Jim sick again?" Pelham would ask, curious to piece out what he knew of the doings of these inferior folks.

Tom would lower at the absent son. "I used to whale his hide off for it, Mr. Judson. He's big enough to lick me now. He don't do no harm; an' I never seed him really intoxercated. He makes good money; he'll be a boss miner yet, even with this here foolin'. Booze an' women.... Every young man has to shoot off steam now an' then. They can't fool you, can they, now?" He leered in low camaraderie. "You been there yourself, eh? Don't tell me!"

Pelham was sure that he would not.

What with his work and reading, Pelham would have been content to remain a recluse on the mountain. Paul drove this out of his head at once.

"Join the University Club as soon as you can; we'll make your salary two fifty a month, and you can afford the Country Club also. Circulate; it's good advertising. We'll keep the hill going somehow."

The first taste led to more; soon he was a regular part of the life at the clubs. Frequently he would knock off at four, while the other workers were still at their jobs, to clean up and whizz over the hills for a sharp match of doubles, or an energetic foursome.

He could not manage a thrill of regret at the news that the sweetheart of a few summers back, Virginia Moore, was to be married in October.

There was a new crop of debutantes, and most of the girls of his college days still put themselves out to attract him. For a few months he rushed Nellie Tolliver, a brilliant hand at auction; but he tired of her stiff preoccupation with the narrow limits of gossiping small talk.

One of his sister Nell's friends, Dorothy Meade, was more to his liking.

She had come from some level of Was.h.i.+ngton social life, to marry Lyman Meade, the local representative of the Interstate Power Company. Lyman went his own easy way, and she hers. _Chic_, with an orderly aureole of fluffy gold hair, sparkling gray eyes and a perpetual display of more of her shoulders and breast than the lax club convention permitted, her only difficulty was in repelling admirers.

Sat.u.r.days were the regular dinner nights at the Country Club; Dorothy was the final fluffy attraction that turned Pelham into an invariable attender. He annexed himself to the lively group that ringed her on these occasions, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of her gayer admirers.

"Here's Dots, poaching on the ba.s.sinet preserve!" some professional bachelor, his head innocent alike of hair and illusions, would indict.

"First childhood or second, why should I discriminate?" Her cheerful offensive routed the covetous critics.

Dorothy's young moth was at least persistent. Her attractive bungalow dominated the hilly head of a by-street near the links, and Pelham formed the habit of dropping in for Sunday suppers. She was good to her maids, preparing and serving herself the crisp salad mysteries and froth-crowned desserts.

"Can't I help some way?"

Her eyes would twinkle adorably. "Mamma's helpful boy! Here, let me put this ap.r.o.n on you!"

He could feel her voluble fingers whisper to him, as they shaped the knot; she would stand close before him, to see that the linen badge of utility hung evenly from his stretched shoulders. This disturbed the regularity of his heart-beats; but then, she was Lyman's wife, reflected Pelham. When the husband was present, he smiled enviously at the timid and satisfied adoration that Pelham's efforts to conceal published the more.

Despite all of his reading, Dorothy's marriage made her, in his brown adolescent eyes, wholly intangible. She could not have been guarded more effectually by the Chinese Wall, or a thicket of fire, with a paralyzed Siegfried moping without. Her liberal hints encountered an adamant obtuseness; he was not linguist enough, in her case, to read correctly frankly provocative pouts, slanted glances, even her gipsying fingers, that brushed his like the kiss of wind-wedded blossoms. These and more became substance of his erotic fancies; but the world of fantasy and of reality, in this case, he knew could never blend.

His amorous stupidity often exasperated her.

One night she yielded a narrow seat for him on the porch-swing, an openly demanded tete-a-tete, although the cus.h.i.+ons on the stone steps and the settles within were warm with gossiping friends. "You're always so mournful when you're with me, Pelham."

"Oh, Mrs. Meade!" She tied his tongue when it came to repartee.

"Oh, Mr. Judson," she mimicked fretfully; then affirmed with decision, "you must meet Jane Lauderdale. She's about your tempo."

His eyes widened apprehensively; Dorothy's caprices were sometimes alarming. "Who's she?"

"The most serious little soul I know ... and the dearest. You'll like her, when you meet her."

"When?"

"Planning to desert me already, sir! I'll have you for a month yet; she's away."

"I'm satisfied; it's your lead;" he dropped with some gracefulness into the parlance of auction bridge.

The time came when she took the lead. The crowd were noisy at the piano one night, when Dorothy turned to him, in the tiny butler's pantry, laying her piled platter on a shelf behind his head. Lifting her chin, she said provokingly, "Don't you want to kiss me, Pelham?"

The suggestion plunged him under a quick disquieting flood of emotion.

One of his precious ideals citadeling womanhood crumbled with intuitive rapidity. A warm inner lash flushed his neck and cheeks. Beyond this betrayal, which was of short duration, he showed no sign of this delicious incarnation of his remotely fantasied pa.s.sion, this focalizing on the solid earth of an ethereal hunger and its satisfaction.