Mountain Part 9

After the visitor had gone, he walked out to the front, and stared at the red smudges that marked the furnaces and rolling mills. When Mary joined him, a wrap thrown around her shoulders, he was chewing the end of an unlighted cigar. She laid her hand on his arm.

"Paul, dear, you weren't angry at what I said at supper?"

"Of course not. Women can't be expected to look on a business matter as men do."

She shrank from the implied rebuke. "You--you aren't serious about this mining, are you?"

He waved toward the dark foot of the hill with the cigar. "D'ye know what we cleared from the bottom of the Crenshaw lands, Mary, on these first sales?"

She was silent.

"Our share was ninety thousand dollars! And the place didn't cost fifty."

"I'm sorry to see any of it go, Paul. It would make such a wonderful home for our children--when they're grown up and married, and have their own little homes within reach----"

He crushed the cigar beneath his heel. "You're much too sentimental, sometimes, Mary. The children wouldn't thank me to hold on to the land, when I can get a hundred and ten a foot for inside lots."

"We have all the money we can possibly use now, Paul. You must have made a hundred and fifty thousand this year----"

"That hardly touches it."

"It makes me afraid, sometimes--our having so much, when so many people have so little. If we could just keep Hillcrest as it is----"

"We haven't anything," he answered sharply. "Jack Lamar and his brother came here just before I did; they've five million apiece. And G.o.d only knows how much Russell Ross has made out of iron. He's in with that South Atlantic Steel bunch; he could sell out for twenty-five millions to-morrow, I verily believe.... I'd be lucky to get a million."

She stubbornly returned to what was on her mind. "And now you are willing to take this wonderful estate you have worked over for ten years, and throw it away, because Russell Ross has more money than you!

Think what the Rosses were."

"My father wouldn't have wiped his shoes on them. And any one of them could buy out Jackson three or four times now. This mountain--if it's handled right--it will simply mint money. It will be a mountain of gold."

She shuddered. "Paul----"

"I can imagine what you would say, if I hadn't made what I have out of it. You spend what I make quickly enough."

"I save everywhere I can----"

"Oh, you, and the place, and the girls; and it costs a lot to keep Pelham going. We need every cent of it. I tell you, this mountain is worth millions! And I won't stop until I've gotten every red cent out of it."

It was in that mood that he went to the conference with the iron men.

One Sunday morning, when the negotiations had been carried over until the next week, Nathaniel's housekeeper phoned that the old man had died shortly before daybreak. Paul took charge of the funeral, saw to the s.h.i.+pping of the body to the Ohio home, and turned the matter over to the lawyers for the estate.

Within a month he had secured his partner's interest in the whole property, and was the sole owner of the mountain.

"If we do mine," he told Mary, "Pelham's mining engineering course will make him the man for the place. He'll get Nate's share, if he's worth it."

In June Snell and Judson threw open another large subdivision, in a cheaper suburb near Hazelton, and Mr. Snell's incapacity put the burden of this on Paul's shoulders. Further plans for Hillcrest were laid over until he could find time to take them up again.

VII

The day after the next Thanksgiving, Paul, excited and jubilant, drove up the graveled path to the side door of Hillcrest. "Read those," he pushed three papers into Mary's hands, as she rose from the veranda rocker.

Her eyes blurred, so that she had to take off her gla.s.ses, as, sick at heart, she realized what the doc.u.ments were. Her husband spread them out on her lap, explaining rapidly. "This is the certificate of incorporation of the Mountain Mining Company. Here's my contract with them--I hold fifty-one per cent of the stock, counting twenty shares in your name and one in Pelham's, so we retain the controlling interest--which provides the terms for the taking out of the ore. This last is a carbon of the letter I got off to the boy this morning, giving all the details."

She had lost her fight after all. "The cottage," she whispered, "how long now before we must leave it?"

He slapped a pointing finger at the center of the second paper. "Section seven--here it is--we won't move at all! This part of the mountain is not to be touched, until all the rest is mined. As long as the house stands, we're safe." He smiled, in conscious self-approval.

She raised dimmed eyes. "That's good of you, Paul. It hurts me to see any of it disturbed.... I suppose you could do nothing else."

Refolding the sheets, he slipped them into an envelope with enthusiastic finality. "The thing grows bigger and bigger every time I go over it. If it pans out, we can buy Adamsville! I said a mountain of gold, remember.... Ground will be broken in the spring. We'll put Tow Hewin in charge of it now--he's the man poor Nate spoke of--and when Pelham comes back in June, he can put his M. E. degree right into harness.... G.o.d! It means millions!"

"You're sure the cottage is safe? It would break my heart to think we'd have to give it up. It's such a splendid home for the children----"

He pushed out his lips. "It is a lovely place, Mary; but you've gotten rooted here. By the way, I'll wire to St. Simon's Island to-night for rooms for you and the girls for the summer. It will be a fine change.

The children can go, too. Pelham and I will stay on the job here."

Her lips trembled; leave before Pelham came--not see him all summer?...

The son's reply was an enthusiastic endors.e.m.e.nt of the affair. He had gone over the plan with his father on the previous holiday, before returning to take a year's graduate work, and the enterprise appealed to his imagination. It was sacrilege, in a way--like disemboweling a parent for the money that could be made out of it. But what an invitation to his trained activity! A marvelous chance to show what he was made of.

He explained the project to Neil Morton, who had also returned for graduate work, after a summer's practical experience in a Wyoming smelter.

Neil twisted his shoulders comfortably into the dingy Morris chair.

"Your mountain makes me weary, Pell. Morning, noon ... night. You'd think it was the only ore proposition in the country."

Pelham flushed, but unchecked finished his sentence. "It'll be the biggest plant in the whole South yet."

Neil grinned. "When the Adamsville papers get through with it, I suppose it will."

Pelham abruptly changed the subject. "I met one nice girl last week end, Neil--you would have liked her. Her father's Professor North at Cambridge, and she's full of all sorts of crazy notions. Ruth is a suffragette; wanted to vote, or run for governor, or something."

"Shocking," his friend remarked languidly. He was used to Pelham's reactions.

"Tried to convert me."

There was silence for a few moments, then Neil straightened up in his chair. "Do you realize, Pelham, that in Wyoming, where I summered, women have voted for over thirty years? Why, the mayor of one of the mining towns is a mother who has raised eleven children! Crazy notions, indeed."

Pelham looked disturbed. "They must be bad women, if they vote. Who ever heard of a decent lady mixing up with politics? Think of my mother, or yours, Neil; would you be willing to have her mingle with negroes and common riff-raff at the polls?"

The other exploded at this. "She does! Mother's the best little stump speaker in the county! And Polly's been to two conventions already."

Pelham lighted a handy cigarette. "I always said that Texans were batty."