Mountain Part 57

The people's executive motored after the guest cars.

Paul Judson stood alone on the old cottage crest, surveying the overnight growth of the city toward his mountain. The houses on East Highlands had lapped closer and closer, until they broke in a spray over the foothills of the ore-rich summit.

Managing vice-president of the biggest mining business in the state, third largest land-owner in Bragg County, governor after next January!

Well, he had gotten where he had planned, sixteen uneven years ago.

He recalled vaguely the vision that he had had, when he had sat on the same crest beside Nathaniel Guild, and decided to purchase. He would bring the city, and the state, to the feet of the mountain.... He had done it.

The jutting enginehouse smokestacks, the ramp offices to the right, the snarl and screech of the loaded cars on the narrow-gauge lines, forced themselves into his attention. Not a scene of beauty; and there was a charred desolation where Hillcrest Cottage had once spread its graceful lines.

It was not the dream he had had. A man dreamed blindly; life brought to pa.s.s a subst.i.tute instead of the sought goal. It was a necessary process; since dreams must conflict, and the restless s.h.i.+ft of things constantly opened new possibilities, closed old ones. No, it was not what he had pictured.... There was no son beside him now, to take up the work in turn and pa.s.s it on to endless Judsons. Pelham.... Hollis in service, too pleased with the work to give it up.... Ned already determined to be a surgeon....

But it was a magnificent achievement.

Musing, he walked over the grayed site of the old house. His toe met an obstacle jutting in the gra.s.s. He poked it up with his cane. It was the fused handle of the Bohemian gla.s.s epergne which had been grandfather Judson's. He slipped it into his pocket to show Mary.

His wife, her face lined and colorless, as if from too many hours and years spent indoors, listened with intent attention to his account of the afternoon. Two sickly spots of color glowed at what the governor had said.

"But ... it will mean a hard contest, will it not?"

"I don't think so. The primary is the only chance for a real fight; and the Tennant crowd will stop that in advance. You'll have to brighten up a bit, Mary. You ought to do more entertaining...."

"I'm not very strong, Paul."

His gruff "Nonsense!" was the prelude to the further account of the planned amalgamation with National Steel. "We're still to have control of this district; Florence and I will be elected directors. It had to come; compet.i.tion is waste; cooperation is the modern method."

His wife sat with her eyes intent upon the melted fragment of colored gla.s.s in her hand. She turned it this way and that, up before the fading light, seeking what semblance of the colorful old token of Jackson life remained in it, what part was merely a charred, dead fragment of happier beauty.

"So I thought," he continued, unaware of her absorption, "that we could entertain the visiting gentlemen and their wives at dinner to-morrow evening."

A pinched expression of pain crossed her face. "You have not realized, Paul, that I am frailer this spring than any time since Ned was born...."

"I mean at the Steelmen's Club, not here. It won't be any trouble...."

"I can make the effort."

"You must see Dr. Giles. I had a talk with him about you; he says it's only nerves. If you'd quit thinking about that old fool that shot himself in my office, and those n.i.g.g.e.rs that fooled around the place until they got shot.... There's nothing really wrong with you. Nell must give up the art school; you need someone to look after you."

"She doesn't want to come; she's happier there."

"You ask Dr. Giles." He went on with elaborate suggestions about the dinner; Mary Judson laid down the blackened, fused handle of gla.s.s; then held it again against the darkened light without. Hardly a glint of color remained.... That night she laid it away upon a closet shelf in one of the unused rooms of the great house.

By Friday, after a long talk with Judge Florence, Paul had made up his mind. He had his secretary wire the governor to run back to Adamsville for a consultation; he sent word to Robert Kane, who had left the directorate to succeed Pelham as state mining inspector, to meet him half an hour before the governor was due. No chance that either would fail the engagement; one crook of his little finger, and the state came at his bidding. The iron mountain had given that power to its iron master--a magnetism repellent but irresistible.

When the two builders of the mining strength rose to meet the governor, there was a subdued glitter of expectation in the eye of the younger man. He took the governor's hand with a new a.s.surance.

Bob Tennant--"Whiskey-barrel Tennant"--had sought his accustomed solace on the ride up from Jackson; his face was flushed brick-red, although his tones were still straight.

"Well, Paul--am I in the presence of the next governor?" He essayed a satisfactory bow with oldtime courtliness.

"... Yes," Paul answered slowly.

"That's great, old man!"

"Shake hands with him, Bob--Mr. Robert Kane, your mining inspector."

Tennant's self-possession bridged the surprise. "So he's your trump-card!"

"Can you put it over?"

"Whatever you say goes with me, Paul; whatever I say, goes with the state. You won't mind frankness, Mr. Kane; we're practical men. You didn't want to run yourself, Paul?"

The magnate walked the length of the office, smoothing a cigar between his fingers. He tore off the silver wrapper, rolled it into a ball, and flung it deftly into an open basket. "There's a lot of soreness about that strike still, Bob; it's hardly worth the trouble. Jerry Florence agrees with my idea. Kane'll make a good man; his gift union card is worth a few votes. You have something else we need."

"Speak it out," Tennant nodded with vigorous affability. "Anything in heaven or h.e.l.l for a friend--ain't that what they all say about Bob Tennant, old man?"

"Yes.... Todd Johnson's an old man, Bob; ready to retire. You can keep me in mind for the next senatorial vacancy; say within two years."

"Why didn't I think of that! Well, gentlemen, we'll regard that as settled. Let's go by the club, and do a little celebrating."

"We'll join you there in an hour," the astute iron man, half-pitying the other's craving, a.s.sured him. "Wait for us."

When Tennant had gone, the master walked throughout the office, rolling the unlighted cigar with satisfaction around the rim of his teeth.

"He'll do as he says, Kane; we furnish the funds.... You'll have a job, the next four years."

"Matters in general? The war?"

Judson regarded him thoughtfully. "It won't last four years. There's certain victory, now that our country's in. I'm thinking about conditions to follow. You see what's happening in Russia----"

Kane laughed self-consciously. "We wouldn't be safe there. In some mining corner, where the radicals control, they jailed all the mine-owners; even shot one, for being a monarchist. But here, in this country----"

"That's the idea. We've got to convince the American workingman that he is never to turn on the creator of his prosperity. We'll have sporadic unrest; and that spineless bunch at Was.h.i.+ngton add to it, by kowtowing to the railroad brotherhoods, and even allowing unions among government employees. We can stiffen up their back-bones."

"Why, our workingman is not only the best paid in the world, he's getting a larger share all the time--even in some lines in Adamsville."

"Yes.... That's what we must stop. We did it, to the miners. What we've done here, we can do elsewhere. Patriotism, prosperity--these answer any discontent. Elections or strikes, we can't lose, with these as achieved slogans. Now that we're in National Steel, we have their backing as well. The mines are safe; we've got to keep them so. If once we give way an inch, they'll demand two more. I know you'll hold fast."

"Yes.... As governor, I'll hold fast."

"Now to find Bob Tennant, and keep him alive until he has you elected."

They left the watchman to darken the office, and departed for the Steelmen's Club.

The weeks that followed that last strike meeting pushed Pelham into deepening despondency. The Charities work was over; at the end he noticed a growing aloofness in the philanthropy offices. His father and the iron men contributed heavily; why should the son be welcomed?

Louise was gone; he had made no effort to fill her place, although Dorothy Meade had stopped him on the street one morning, and looked searchingly into his face--less as friend of Jane, than as if to appraise the changes in him, and measure him for a vacancy in her days.... She need not look there; he felt that that yesterday was not worth reviving. Jane's absence removed a substantial joy from his life; the mere bodily gap was not insistent enough to warrant casual or commercial filling.

A burst of energy sent him after permanent employment. The doors were shut kindly in his face; the mines would have none of him; and he found that the corporations' fingers were upon the whole city.