Mountain Part 55

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 G.o.d 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?"

"Ya.s.sum."

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

Mary Judson s.h.i.+vered 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.... Ya.s.sum, 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....