Still Jim Part 34

But he was not able to compa.s.s the cool indifference that had kept him staring out the window of the Interior Department. There was growing within him an overwhelming desire to protest. He saw that, however fair the other members of the committee were inclined to be, their certainty of Freet's dishonesty, coupled with the fact that he was a pupil of Freet's, would be used by the restless vindictiveness of the Vermont member without doubt, to bring about his dismissal.

He felt an increasing desire to make a last stand against the wall of the nation's indifference, to make the people of the Project and the people of the world understand his viewpoint. But words failed him until the last day of the Hearing.

On this last day, Sara and Pen attended the hearing, as guests of Fleckenstein, who had sent his great touring car for them. Jim nodded to them across the room but made no attempt to speak to them. It was nearing five o'clock when Fleckenstein closed his testimony.

"The Reclamation Service," he said, "is like every other department of the government. It is a refuge for the incompetent whose one skill is in grafting. The cost of this dam has jumped over the estimates by hundreds of thousands. Forty dollars an acre is what the farmers of this project must pay the government instead of the estimated thirty. I do not lay the whole blame on Mr. Manning, even though he is Freet's pupil. Part of it is due to the criminal ignorance and weakness of Mr. Manning's predecessor. We farmers----"

"Stop!" thundered Jim. He jumped to his feet. Fleckenstein gasped. Jim threw back his hair. His gray eyes were black. His thin brown face was flushed. Under his khaki riding suit his long steel muscles were tense.

"My predecessor was Frederick Watts. I grew to know him well. He was a master mind in his profession, but he was gentle and sensitive and, like many men who have lived long in the open, silent. About the time that he started to build this dam the money interests in this country decided that the nation was getting too much water power control. They decided that the best way to stop the nation's growth in this direction was to discredit the Service. Frederick Watts was one of their first targets.

By means too subtle for me to understand, they set machinery going in this vicinity by which every step that Watts took was made a kick against him.

"They never let up on him. They hounded him. They put him to shame with the nation and in the privacy of his own family. Watts was over fifty years old. He was no fighter. All he wanted was a chance to build his dam. He was gentle and silent. He went into nervous prostration and died, still silent, a broken-hearted man.

"Up in the big silent places you will find his monuments; dams high in mountain fastnesses, an imperishable part of the mountains; trestles that bridge canyons which birds feared to cross. He spent his life in utter hards.h.i.+ps making ways easy for others to follow. These monuments will stand forever. But the name of their builder has become a blackened thing for rats like Fleckenstein to handle with dirty claws.

"And now they are after me. And you, many of you, in this audience, are the sometimes innocent and sometimes paid instruments of my downfall.

You accuse me of grafting, of lying and stealing. You don't understand."

Jim paused and moistened his lips. The room was breathless. Pen could hear her heart beat. She dug her fingernails into her palm. Could he, _could_ he find the words? Even if these people did not understand, could he not say something that would teach her how to help him? Jim did not see the crowded room. Before him was his father's dying face and Iron Skull's. His hands felt their dying fingers.

"I am a New Englander. My people came to New England 250 years ago and fought the wilderness for a home. We were Anglo-Saxons. We were trail makers, lawmakers, empire builders. We founded this nation. We threw open the doors to the world and then we were unable to withstand the flood that answered our invitation. The New Englander in America is as dead as the Indian or the buffalo. My people have failed and died with the rest. I am the last of my line.

"But I have the craving of my ancestry with something more. I can see the tragedy of my race. I know that the day will come when the civilization of America will be South European; that our every inst.i.tution will be altered to suit the needs of the South European and Asiatic mind.

"I want to leave an imperishable Anglo-Saxon thumb print on the map; a thumb print that no future changes can obliterate, a thumb print that shall be less transitory than the pyramids because it will be a part of the fundamental needs of a people as long as they hunger or thirst.

"Look at the roster of the Reclamation Service. You will find it a roster of men whom the old vision has sent into dam building and road making. Here in the Service you will find the last stand of the Anglo-Saxon trail makers.

"I want to build this dam. I want to build it so that, by G.o.d, it shall be standing and delivering water when the law that makes it possible shall have pa.s.sed from the memory of man! And you won't let me build it.

You, some of you Anglo-Saxons yourselves, destined to be obliterated as I shall be, are fighting me. You say that I am _stealing_. I, fighting to leave a thumb print!"

Jim dropped into his seat and for a moment there was such silence in the room that the palm leaves outside the window could be heard rattling softly in the breeze. Then there broke forth a great round of handclapping, and during this Jim slipped out. He was not much deceived by the applause. He knew that it would take more than a burst of eloquence to overcome the influences at work against the Service.

He returned to the dam that night, Pen and Sara came up the next day and that evening Jim went over to call. It was his first word with Pen since the walk to Wind Ridge. He found Sara sleeping heavily. Pen greeted him casually.

"h.e.l.lo, Still! Sara was suffering so frightfully after his trip that he took his morphine. It was insane of him to go to the Hearing, but he would do it. Sit down. We won't disturb him a bit."

She pulled the blanket over the unconscious man in her usual tender way.

"You are mighty good to him, Pen," said Jim.

"I try to be. I guess I'm as good to him as he'll let me be, poor fellow. Jim, he was fine in his college days, wasn't he?"

"I never saw a more magnificent physique," answered Jim. "He was a great athlete and I used to believe he was a greater financier than Morgan."

Pen looked at Jim gratefully. "And if it hadn't been for the accident he would have been just as easy to get along with as the average man."

Jim chuckled. "I don't know whether that's a compliment to Sara or an insult to the average man. What have you done with yourself during the investigation?"

"Taken care of Sara, communed with my soul and the laundry problem and had several nice talks with Jane Ames. She is a dear."

Jim nodded. Then he pulled the Secretary's letter from his pocket with a copy of his own answer and handed them to Pen. "I've come for advice and comment," he said.

Pen read both and her cheeks flushed. "Have you sent your answer?"

Jim nodded.

Pen stared at him a moment with her mouth open, then she said, with heartfelt sincerity, "Jim, I'm perfectly disgusted with you!"

Jim gasped.

"Like the average descendant of the Puritan," Pen sniffed, "you are lying down on your job. Thank G.o.d, I'm Iris.h.!.+"

"Gee, Pen, you're actually cross!"

"I am! If I were not a perfect lady I'd slap you and put my tongue out at you, anything that would adequately express my disdain! For pig-headed bigotry, bounded on the north by high principles and on the south by big dreams, give me a New Englander! You make me tired!"

"For the Lord's sake, Pen!"

Pen laid down her bit of sewing and looked at Jim long and earnestly, then she said, quietly, "Jim, why don't you go to work?"

Jim looked flushed and bewildered. "I work eighteen hours a day."

Pen groaned. "I'm talking about your capacity, not your output. You are only using half of what is in you, Still. You build the dam and you refuse to do anything else. Why, with your kind of creative, engineering mind, you are perfectly capable of administering the dam, too. Of handling all the problems connected with it in a cool, scientific way that would come very near being ideal justice. You know that the projects are an experiment in government activity. You know that the people who will control them have no experience or training that will fit them for handling the projects. Yet you refuse to help them. You are just as stupid and just as selfish as if you had built a complicated machine and had turned it over to children to run, refusing them all explanation or guidance."

Pen paused, breathless, her cheeks scarlet, her eyes glowing. Jim watched her, his face pitifully eager. Perhaps, he thought, Pen was actually going to lay her finger on the cause of his inadequacy.

"Instead of antagonizing every farmer on the Project, you ought to be making them feel that you are their partner and friend in a mighty difficult business. You told us yesterday that your ancestors not only made the trail but also the law of the trail. What are you doing? It's your own fault if you lose your job, Still!"

Pen got up and turned Sara's pillow and shaded the light from his face, mechanically.

"You are just like all the rest of what you call the Anglo-Americans.

You go about feeling superior and abused and calling the immigrants hard names. You are just a lot of quitters. You have refused national service. If you _are_ a dying race and you _are_ convinced that the world can't afford to lose your inst.i.tutions, how low down you are not to feel that your last duty to society is to show by personal example the value of your inst.i.tutions."

"I don't see what I can do," protested Jim.

"That's just what I'm trying to show you," retorted Pen. "I have to plow through your ignorance first--clear the ground, you know! After you Anglo-Americans founded the government most of you went to money making and left it to be administered by people who were racially and traditionally different from you. You left your immigration problems to sentimentalists and money-makers. You left the law-making to money-makers. You refused to serve the nation in a disinterested, future-seeing way which was your duty if you wanted your inst.i.tutions to live. You descendants of New England are quitters. And you are going to lose your dam because of that simple fact."

Jim began to pace the floor. "Did you ever talk this over with Uncle Denny, Penelope?"

"No!" she gave a scornful sniff. "If ever I had dared to criticize you, he'd have turned me out of the house. No one can live in New York and not think a great deal about immigration problems. And--I have been with you much in the past eight years, Jimmy. I can't tell you how much I have thought about you and your work. And then, just before old Iron Skull was killed, he turned you over to me."

Jim paused before her. "He was worried about you, too," she went on. "He said you were not getting the big grasp on things that you ought and that I must help you."

"I wonder if that was what he was trying to tell me when he was killed,"

said Jim. "The dear old man! Go on, Pen."

"I've just this much more to say, Jim, and that is that if the Reclamation Service idea fails, it's more the fault of you engineers than of anyone else. The sort of thing you engineers do on the dam is typical of the Anglo-American in the whole country. You are quitters!"