Mountain Part 38

"What do you think of _that_, comrade Judson?" Mrs. Hernandez asked, pus.h.i.+ng the morning paper over, and watching his expression closely.

The first sheet of the _Times-Dispatch_ held a page-wide display headline, concerning a dynamiting conspiracy unearthed among the leaders of the strike. With furious amazement Pelham read of the finding of a bundle of the explosive sticks on the tracks just before a trainload of workers was to arrive, and of a heavy charge, its fuse lit, in an upper opening of the second ramp. Company guards, he read, had testified to seeing four strikers sneak down the gap, away from the entry. Wilson, Jensen, and two other active agitators were already in jail; other arrests were to follow. A two column editorial bitterly a.s.sailed the "un-American" laborers, and demanded the militia to end the reign of terror.

"It's a plant, I'm sure. They're aching for an excuse to bring on the soldiers."

"They got four of the boys," she reminded him.

"It's outrageous."

He hurried around to the strike headquarters. Ben Spence, Dawson, McGue, and four others broke off their tense discussion as he entered.

"Why didn't you phone me about this?"

Spence answered, his tone not too friendly. "Couldn't find you."

"We haven't seen you for a week, Mr. Judson," blared out Dawson. "We been readin' the social news, too. You've been busy."

"Yes.... I've been busy on my report." A flash of his father's acidity spoke in the tones. Then he asked more quietly, "What about bonds?"

"You can help there," Spence mollified him. "We've got most of 'em arranged for. When will your report go up?"

Pelham twisted forward on his chair. "It'll contain this latest plant.

I'll finish this week. I suspected something of the kind." He told them of the offer made by Jim Hewin.

"It's an old stunt," said Dawson, unbending a little from his suspicion of "white-collar" meddling in labor troubles. "They ought to be ashamed to pull such stale gags. But here in the South----Those blackguardly uglies will swear any of us into jail."

"There's the jury," said Spence, a fighting flash in his eyes. "We can play a trick or two. Corporations ain't popular in Adamsville. Well, we'll get the boys out first."

The whole thing brought Pelham up sharply to his neglected work. He got one more maddeningly brief sight of Louise, before she continued her round of visits. "I'll be back, lover boy, around the holidays."

"How can I stand your being away?"

But the Tollivers were too close to permit his saying more.

Nursing his unsettling sense of guilt, until he was sure his face must publish the amorous errancy, he took himself to Jane on the accustomed Friday evening. She had not marked his absences, accepting the explanation that the report had kept him busied. To his wonderment, she was as dear and essentially desirable as ever; her range of attractiveness lay in ways so remote from Louise's red and feverish charm, that he sensed no conflict between them; he could love both wholly for their differing appeals.

Yet the evening was different, to him. The memory of intimate contacts with the brief love who had gone left a mental stigma upon his body; he was less willing than ever to touch Jane, or think of kissing her; she must be kept all the more congealed in icy protection. As defense against unnerving personal confidences, he had brought his report, which had begun to trouble him, to ask her help and counsel. "I'm afraid of it, Jane. You see, it goes all the way ... about my own father. It'll be bound to make trouble for him ... and me. I could have another inspector frame the final wording----"

"You back out! You must be a changeling some corporation elf has dumped off on me!"

"Don't tease. The thing bites too hard; it has nothing but teeth."

"Of course you'll make it! Give it here; we'll fix it so that it can masticate the toughest corporation board. What if it does make trouble?

It's the truth...."

She went over the whole of it, toning down the vituperative rhetoric of the opening and conclusion, adding force to his presentation of facts.

He was startled at her ability to vivify the abstractions symbolizing the red rage tearing apart city and mountain. Before she was done, he was re-converted to faith in his eloquent accusations.

At length it was finished. He saw that advance copies reached the papers on the day it was received by the governor. The _Advertiser_ and the _Times-Dispatch_ did not even mention it. But the ever-helpful _Register_ more than made up for their censoring. The slas.h.i.+ng indictment of the companies for their disregard of the protective laws, the startling story of their lobbies to defeat safety measures, even the account of his father's activity at the State Federation of Labor, with the advertis.e.m.e.nts in the _Voice of Labor_ as exhibits, were given in full. This was a new frankness in Adamsville politics. From this Pelham pa.s.sed to a treatment of starvation wages on the one hand, and prodigal salaries, surpluses and dividends on the other. He featured that the strike was for the enforcement of existing laws, and that the companies refused any arbitration. The conclusion recommended that the state enforce arbitration, or, if the companies could not be controlled, that the profiteering be ended by the state's taking over the mines and running them.

The lonely editorial voice of the _Register_ backed up even the most radical demands of the doc.u.ment.

The answer of the companies came promptly. Both of the other papers broke silence by denouncing the report as dishonest propaganda, with a demand for the removal of the offending young hothead. They called again for the militia to end the disorder at the mines.

Pelham received a wire from Governor Tennant the same night, suspending him from the state's services under charges of misconduct in office. The two hostile papers gave the details, the next morning; his strike activities were set forth, and given as reasons for his dismissal.

"You'll get your hearing," Ben Spence told him, "but that'll be all.

It's good-bye with you, my boy. And you've drawn just two pay checks!"

His father descended on him in proxy during the afternoon, in the person of Pratt Judson, who had run up from Jackson, at Paul's suggestion, after interviewing the governor, to act as intermediary. Pelham listened with ill grace to his uncle's suave attempts to cloud the matter.

"Bob Tennant is a friend of yours, as well as mine, Pelham. It would certainly hurt him to remove you; but what is he to do?"

"Does my father demand the removal?"

"You know better. He stood up for you, even against the whole board of directors. Family means a lot to Paul. But they're out for your scalp.

You've played yourself into their hands."

"I don't see how," the boy repeated doggedly, curving a steel-edged ruler until it cracked alarmingly. "I don't see how."

"If you'd gotten anyone's advice, my boy, you would know that a state official can't take sides in such matters. You've actually served on the strike committees, haven't you?"

"Heretofore inspectors haven't failed to serve the companies. They weren't fired."

"Let's not beat around the bush. Here's the best that Tennant can do.

The charges need never come up, if you don't kick up another row. The suspension can go for the present, and then in due course you can resign. Mary tells me you've wanted to take up advanced work in sociology. You know I'm not a rich man, Pelham; but I'll be willing, to pull you out of this hole, to stand the whole expense."

"Would you advise me to retreat under fire? Resign, with charges hanging over me?"

The portly uncle thought a minute. "They'll be withdrawn now, Pelham, if you'll agree to resign in six months, and take a vacation until then.

There'll be nothing against you."

The ruler splintered abruptly, littering the ordered desk. "It's running away from a fight, Uncle Pratt, and you know it. I can't do it."

"Think of the family--a black mark like this----"

"I'm thinking of the miners ... of my duty to them and the people."

"We're practical men, Pelham. You know enough about politics to know that you're b.u.t.ting your head against a stone mountain."

"Then I'll b.u.t.t, d.a.m.n 'em! Talk straight, Uncle Pratt. Would you advise me to back out of a fight in the middle of it?"

The elder man grinned in defeated sympathy. "You're a young fool, Pelham. We've got to do this quickly, or it's too late. I could give you until to-morrow to think it over----"

"I don't need the time. This is the only answer I could make."

"Well, I'll tell Paul. If you ever get into a sc.r.a.pe of any kind----"