Part 22

Nils Jensen, still under bond pending the decision of his case by the Supreme Court, answered the charge at once. "Men, brothers," his voice rang out, "I've been a miner, and a member of this local, for thirteen years. I don't know who is to blame, but I know who isn't--and that's the Socialists among us. We've fought, in the union and at the polls, day in, day out, while your old-fashioned unionists have been pulling down fat jobs under Democratic sheriffs,----" a hit at Pooley, who had been first deputy under the previous official. "I'm not in favor of going on now, if the crowd's ready to stop. I can get work, here or somewhere else, in or out of jail,----" There was a friendly smile at this. "I know that the war between our class and the Paul Judson class will go on until classes are ended. If you're to blame anybody, blame ignorant laborers, who can't see that scabbing against their fellows cuts their own throats, and betrays their wives and children. Blame the labor fakers, the crooked bunch who 'lead' you so that their pockets are lined for delivering your votes to the old parties, while you get nothing. And when Jack Bowden says that Comrade Pelham Judson, as good a socialist as any one of us, is a lounging lemonade socialist, with a scab heart, he lies, and he knows he lies!"

The chair's rappings were lost in the outcries. "Order!" "Order!" broke all over the hall. An uproar circled around Jensen and also Bowden; for a minute the meeting threatened to break into a riot.

Jack Bowden jumped up to the platform, a document waving over his head. "Brothers!... Brothers!... Let me answer him!" He paused, while they quieted. "I'll answer him. When I moved that the committee be discharged without thanks, I knew what I was doing. When I charged that 'Mister'" (with an ugly sneer) "Pelham Judson, son of the vice-president of the Birrell-Florence-Mountain Iron and Steel Company, was born with a scab heart, I knew what I was doing!"

Cries of "Shame!" "Shame!" "Throw him out!"

He kept his place. As he waved the mysterious document before their faces, the cries weakened; curiosity hushed them.

"One member of that committee, a man who had no right on it, for he had no union card----"

"As Paul Judson has!" Jensen cut in sharply, amid indignant demands to keep quiet.

"One member of that committee has been--a scab! As he may be a scab again, when he pleases to. I have here," he opened the paper, so that the large red seals were displayed to all, "--affidavits from Connecticut, proving that 'Mister' Pelham Judson, 'Comrade' Judson if brother Jensen wants to call him that, in October, 1913, in New Haven, acted as a scab during a strike of conductors and motormen on the New Haven Electric Company, and helped to break that strike. He's kept quiet about it; I can't. And I say that such a man should be kicked out of all affiliation with the labor movement, here or elsewhere!"

"It's not true," shrieked Jensen and a score of fervid socialists. One brawny Norwegian started for the platform. "I'll tear out dat dam' liar's tongue." The sergeant-at-arms pulled him back.

Pelham rose, pale and trembling.

The chair picked him out. "Does brother Judson desire the floor?"

There was an intent silence, as he stood, alone, surrounded by the hostile hundreds of the men and women he had fought for. He tried to begin.

Bowden walked across the platform, toward him. "Is it true, or not?"

Pelham's swollen tongue licked his lips. At length he spoke, quietly, yet so penetratingly that every syllable reached his audience. "I can explain----" he began.

"Is it true?" Bowden led the demand of hundreds of angered throats.

He faced them unflinchingly. "It is true. I can explain----"

The hooting and jeering broke with savage, almost bestial fury. Doggedly Pelham kept to his feet, in spite of the efforts of Serrano and others to drag him down. "This is terrible, comrade," whispered Serrano. "You'd better leave----"

At length Bowden got the eye of the chair again. "I move that we give five minutes to Mr. Judson to 'explain', as he calls it, his scabbing."

In simple language Pelham told of his training in a home dedicated to the fight against labor; of his acts at New Haven, while a college student; of his conversion to socialism and the cause of labor. He did not mention what it had cost him; a few remembered this. When he came to his New Haven experiences, the hissing began, swelled in volume. All of the chair's entreaties could not stop it.

"If you think, comrades, that my usefulness on this committee is over, I hereby resign. But I can assure you that nothing will shake my efforts in the cause for which I have fought, am fighting, and will continue to fight."

No eloquence could have moved them. The mass psychology of the meeting demanded a victim; here was one before them. The shrivelling strike months of turmoil and undernourishment had thrown them back into a lower, more barbarous state; their sense of justice was perverted from ultimate social equality and order into a primitive condemnation of the accursed thing that had brought them into this predicament. They were only too ready to throw a Jonah to the deep, as an expiatory sacrifice to the omnipotent god who doled out bi-weekly pay-envelopes. They were in a starving panic to get back to the skimpy flesh-pots of a darker Egypt.

It was moved and seconded that the resignation be accepted. An earburst of "ayes" were for the proposition; one or two scattering voices registered weak negatives.

"The motion is carried."

The sudden blow had crushed all opposition. The resolutions to end the strike were accepted without debate.

Jack Bowden, highly satisfied with the night's work, went over to the state office with Bob Bivens and John Pooley. "Reckon I better destroy that?" he grinned, handing a letter out to the big State president.

It was from Henry Tuttle, on the company's legal stationery, enclosing the affidavits relating to Pelham's activities in the New Haven strike.

The letter was burned, the ashes scattered.

The next afternoon's _Register_ informed Pelham of the company's terms, which were to take back all except the ringleaders, some twenty in number--he noticed the names of Jensen and the committeemen heading it--at the old rate, with an agreement from each man binding him not to join the union. The strikers under arrest, continued the account, would be discharged in all probability, except in cases of serious nature.

The same paper contained the sparse outline of another story, which Pelham read with a growing horror.

At three-thirty the previous afternoon, an old man had entered the mining company's office, and asked for Paul Judson.

"What name?"

His watery blue eyes danced peculiarly beneath stringy white hair. "He doesn't know me. It's important."

"We must have your name."

Fumbling first on one foot, then the other, he eyed the uninterested clerk closely. At length he made up his mind. "My name is Duckworth--Christopher Duckworth, tell him. I've come about the settlement of the strike."

She marked down the name, snapping to the drawer. "He's out of town to-day."

"When does he return?"

"Maybe late this evening ... maybe not until to-morrow."

Suspicious old eyes searched her face. "Sure he isn't in?"

"I told you once, didn't I?"

"He may return to-day?"

"Maybe."

"I'll wait."

Passers in and out of the offices remembered his shoving a paper hurriedly into his pocket as they neared.

About an hour later, when the information clerk left for a few minutes, he rose, and started to open the door marked "Paul Judson: Private."

"Where you going?" an accounting clerk demanded, watching his unusual movements.

"Mr. Judson wants to see me."

"He isn't there."

He caught the old man roughly by the arm, as he tried to push past.

The enfeebled socialist retreated to the center of the room.

"Give him this," his quavering tones insisted, pushing a piece of paper into surprised hands.

The clerk looked up hurriedly, some warning of the unexpected, the dangerous, reaching him. His eyes caught the rusty glint of metal.

He jumped. At the same moment, the roar of the shot rattled the windows, acrid smoke swirled throughout the room, the old man's legs buckled up. He fell quietly to the floor; his shoes scraped the flooring once. He lay still.

The clerk read the note aloud, after the morgue had been phoned, and the body covered.

"To Paul Judson:

"This act is my punishment, for living on the earth your presence scars; a just God will punish you in another world.

"This act will bring home to your conscience your responsibility for murder:

"Murder of twenty-three miners in the mine explosion;

"Murder of John Dawson, and fifty innocent strikers, by the guns of your gunmen;

"Murder of your guards by your own acts;

"Murder of the bodies, hearts and souls of starving strikers. Murder of good in all people. Murder of justice in your courts.

"Murder of me, as a warning of what you deserve.

"CHRISTOPHER DUCKWORTH."

"Can you beat it?" the clerk whistled. "A plain nut."

"I seen how crazy he looked," said the information clerk. "Good thing he didn't miss an' hit you, Courtney."

A little stenographer fainted. One of the telephone operators discussed it with a chummy runner. "I wouldn't work here now, not if you paid me! It's awful bad luck."

"Gee, if I was afraid of stiffs!" he said, pityingly.

The scrubwomen grumbled at having to clean up the floor again. "Ought to be extra pay for this.... Bad enough to clean them floors once."

Paul Judson, returning from Jackson on the morning train, did not learn about the grim protest until he reached the office.

V

THE SCATTERING

XXIX

Stella Cole loitered, fascinated by the glisten of the new Judson kitchen. She addressed the cook, with that shade of superiority family servants invariably feel to newcomers.

"Could you ask Miss' Mary to step heah a secon', Mahaly?"

The girl departed, sniffing superciliously at the old mountain woman who still had the monopoly of the Judson laundry.

The gaunt-cheeked negress faced her mistress with an elemental dignity. "Miss' Mary, kin you ask Mr. Judson a favor fo' me?"

"Surely, Stella. What is it?"

She traced the linoleum pattern slowly with the frowsy toe of a black slipper. "Hit's dis way, Miss' Mary. Ah'se movin'."

"Moving! From the mountain?"

"Yassum."

"It isn't----" she hesitated a moment. "It isn't--the strike?"

Mary Judson shivered as she spoke the word. The overtones to that word jangled horribly, summoning with their ghastly discord troops of disordered pictures, fragments of sorrows, jagged moments of agony. Around that word she grouped mentally Pelham's distressing breach with his father, the son's growth away from her, the dead-fingered protest of Duckworth's suicide, glimpses of red death staining the kindly mountain, the wilful burning of the house that had stored memories which, next to the Jackson childhood, were the most poignantly joyful life had given her. That word summoned the defacing of the mountain's beauty and harmony, and her present exile from it; as well as a spiritual exile, the cold-visioned knowledge of the chasm between her and Paul that had widened irrevocably in the hushed storms that were their quarrels born out of the strike.

The keen black eyes took in something of this, as it shadowed momentarily the lined, tortured face of the wife of Paul Judson. Mary Judson had grown old, older than the soft gray of her hair and the gray prints around her mouth indicated: old with the timeless age of torn illusions and murdered dreams: old with the age that the same three years had brought to Stella Cole.

"No'm, Miss' Mary.... Yassum, dat is.... Ah'se movin'."

A spasm of pity smoothed the mistress' drawn cheeks, as she felt gripped by the roughened brownish face, gnarled by its helpless acceptance of the death of hope. "Do you.... Have you found a house, Stella? Do you know where you're going?"

"Yessum. Ah knows whar Ah'se gwine."

"And you're going----"

"Home, Miss' Mary."

"Home?"

"Yessum...." Feeling that more was required, her face wrinkled with an old shy eagerness. "To Macon, Miss' Mary; Macon, Georgy. Whar me 'n' Tom comed f'um, afore we done moved to Atlanta.... Afore we done come here."

"We'll hate to lose you from the mountain, Stella."

"Yessum." She recrossed her hands uneasily, and straightened up from the table against which her hip had swayed for its solid rest.

Mary Judson studied the face of the mother before her with a hidden hunger, trying to read in its blackened lineaments the elusive recipe that had brought that flicker of happiness at the mention of home.

"Your boys.... You have Ed still, haven't you?"

"No'm." The rich tones grew gossipy, in a detached way. "Ah ain't got none of 'em. Jim he die fu'st, Miss' Mary; he die w'en de mine oxploded. De Lawd tuk him fu'st; he wuz a good chile. Den Babe. He wuz mah baby; dey shot him. Dat wuz two. Den Will an' Diana dey die, w'en de house burn down. Dey shoot dem too. Dey wuz good chillun too, Miss' Mary. Ah ain't ben 'specially a sinful 'ooman; Ah s'pose dey desu'ved it somehow, Ah caint figger out.... Dat makes ... yessum, dat makes fo'. Tom he die; he wuz ole, it wuz his time. Dat lef' Ed. De las' time dey bruk up dem strikers, dey shoot Ed." She gulped, closed her eyes a minute.

"I--I hadn't heard."

"No'm. Ed wuz diff'runt. Ed he kill a man. A white man. But de jedge tu'n him loose. Dey wuzn't nothin' wrong dar, de jedge he say. Dey made Ed a depity. Den dey kill him....

"Ah tole dem boys, Miss' Mary, Ah tole 'em a powerful time ago, hit wuzn't no nigger's business ter meddle in white folkses' fusses. Dey seed diff'runt. De Lawd done tuk 'em all, 'cep' me. Ah ain't got no business here, Miss' Mary. Ain't got no folkses here. Ah got two brudders in Macon, Georgy. So Ah'se movin'."

Mary bit her lips, to steady her words, to force back the tears that insistently crept down her own cheeks. "Anything that Mr. Judson can do for you, Stella----"

The negress dug around in the littered bulge of the handbag the mistress had given her, and brought up a greasy leather-covered book. "Dis here's Diana's bank book, what she save f'um her wu'k. Ah thought maybe Mr. Judson could git me de money. Dar's thuhty fo' dollars, she tole me. An' Ah got Tom's benefit money f'um de Galileum Fishermens, it comed in a letter." She discovered the creased check, and handed it over. "Den Ah'll have some money over w'en Ah gits to Macon; dey'll be gladder to see me; you know how it is, Miss' Mary. An' if Peter could drive me 'n' mah stuff to de depot, if he wuzn't too busy----"

"Of course I'll see that you have Peter. What day are you leaving?"

"Sad'day. De train goes at two erclock."

"I'll see that he gets there in plenty of time."

Stella's eyes roamed unconcernedly around the shining rows of aluminum pans; she sighed with satisfaction. "How's Miss Susie an' Miss Nell?"

"Both doing finely. Susie's living in Detroit, you know; and Nell is studying art in her neighborhood."

The old mammy leaned forward. "Ah seed Mistuh Hollis w'en he wuz heah las' monf. He do make a fine sojer, Miss' Mary."

"We are both proud of him. And now with Ned visiting in Jackson, there are only two of us here."

"Mistuh Pelham ain't come roun' much, is he? He doan't git along wid his paw, do he?... Dat's what mah boys dey say, in dat union...."

Mary breathed out heavily. "They do not agree on everything, Stella."

Stella's eyes rounded with satisfaction; with the intimate impertinence native to negroes who have grown old in confidential employ, she nodded her head proudly. "Mah boys dey got along finely wid deir paw, Miss' Mary. Thank you kin'ly, ma'am, fuh speakin' to Mr. Judson."

Finally the trunks and boxes were packed, with the help of neighbors from Lilydale. Brother Adams' boys got most of her sons' clothes, except the newest suits; these she folded into the bottom of the biggest trunk for future emergencies. Peter was on hand, at Mr. Judson's orders, to crate such of the furniture as she wished to take; although many of the extra things went to this friend and that.... There did not seem much use in taking everything.

Babe's cap with the new mining lamp, Diana's school books and framed diploma, the old family Bible, Ed's re-shined deputy's badge, were wrapped carefully together.

At length the last package was hoisted onto the wagon, and after laying the shoebox of lunch on the seat Peter was to occupy, and taking a final drink of spring water, she clambered carefully up to the driver's bench. Peter hopped up with gray-haired, cricket-like agility, clucked sharply, and the horses jogged off.

They drove behind the crest, on the circling road above Lilydale. Peter chuckled to himself.

"What you laughin' at?"

"Ah'se thinkin', sistuh Stella, dat you sho' buried a passel er people in dis place."

She nodded in complacency. "Six of 'em, Peter, six of 'em."

He chuckled on. "Dey gwineter plant you nex', sistuh Stella."

"Dey gotter kill me fu'st."

She looked back, as the road turned into the viaduct for Adamsville, and sighed heavily. She remembered the arrival in the city ... the wait in the office of the Galilean Fishermen, while the children ate up all the cold fish sandwiches and speckled bananas Tom had gotten for their lunch. All gone. All gone. Unbidden, fragmentary pictures of the romping, frolicking boys, sober Diana, came.... Jim crying, when the hatchet chopped his foot.... Babe's round face.... Ed's face, and the others, in their pine-wood coffins.... Tom's kindly smile. All gone. A weak tear welled from under each old eyelid.

She looked around cautiously to see if Peter was noticing. No, he was drowsing forward, letting the horses choose their own way.

She undid quietly the end of the box of lunch, and took out a sandwich. Real chicken breast! The sisters of the Zion Church certainly did do things up in style.

XXX

The visit of the president of the National Steel Company was the floodtide of the year to Adamsville. On Paul Judson, both as President of the Commercial Club and through his connection with the mining companies, fell the largest share of the reflected glamor from the guest's powerful personality.

After the luncheon at the new Steelmen's Club, the party crowded into cars, to inspect the region's mineral development.

"Eight solid miles of mountain here," Paul's inclusive gesture swept the stretch from Hazelton to far beyond North Adamsville up the valley, "five other locations within a ten mile radius ... seventeen camps in all."

"It's a big plant, Mr. Judson."

"It's the largest in the South, sir. Coal yonder," he indicated the valley beyond Shadow Mountain, "only nine miles as the crow flies. The cheapest iron and steel region in the world. They don't grow that close together in Pittsburgh, the Lakes, or anywhere."

"A wonderful opportunity.... We're prepared to talk business."

"So are we." Both smiled the comprehending smile of men of achievement.

Sam Ross and urbane Judge Florence took the visitor for a round of the patent tipples. "We're just getting over a little strike in these mines," the Judge expanded.

"I've followed it. Came out all right, didn't it?"

"Oh, yes. But do you know, those fellows hung out for over a year! And they were beaten from the start."

"I know. In the Colorado trouble----" Reminiscences came in opulent detail.

Governor Tennant, a member of the receiving party, stayed behind for a word with Paul. "Did Jerry Florence speak to you for me?"

"Not yet...."

"He will, when he has the chance. My second term's up next year, Paul. The state wants a business governor. Adamsville hasn't had her chance for five terms.... Would you?..."

The owner of the mines drove his hands into his pockets, clenched to mask the sudden exhilaration. His voice remained unthrilled. "It's out of my line, Bob.... I doubt if it could go through."

"Not a doubt of it. The primary's the election, remember; we can make the papers and the politicians so insistent, that you can't refuse. You'd hardly have opposition."

"I'll see what the Judge thinks.... You'll hear from me by Friday."

"The offer stands."

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 pass a substitute instead of the sought goal. It was a necessary process; since dreams must conflict, and the restless shift 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 pass 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 grass. He poked it up with his cane. It was the fused handle of the Bohemian glass 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; competition is waste; cooperation is the modern method."

His wife sat with her eyes intent upon the melted fragment of colored glass 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 niggers 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."