Book 4. The Will Of King Coal - Section 26 To Section 30

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_ SECTION 26.

Hal took off his widow's weeds; and with them he shed the merriment he had worn for the benefit of the men. There came a sudden reaction; he realised that he was tired.

For ten days he had lived in a whirl of excitement, scarcely stopping to sleep. Now he lay back in the car-seat, pale, exhausted; his head ached, and he realised that the sum-total of his North Valley experience was failure. There was left in him no trace of that spirit of adventure with which he had set out upon his "summer course in practical sociology." He had studied his lessons, tried to recite them, and been "flunked." He smiled a bitter smile, recollecting the careless jesting that had been on his lips as he came up that same canyon:

"He keeps them a-roll, that merry old soul--
The wheels of industree;
A-roll and a-roll, for his pipe and his bowl
And his college facultee!"

The train arrived in Pedro, and Hal took a hack at the station and drove to the hotel. He still carried the widow's weeds rolled into a bundle. He might have left them in the train, but the impulse to economy which he had acquired during the last ten weeks had become a habit. He would return them to Mrs. Zamboni. The money he had promised her might better be used to feed her young ones. The two pillows he would leave in the car; the hotel might endure the loss!

Entering the lobby, the first person Hal saw was his brother, and the sight of that patrician face made human by disgust relieved Hal's headache in part. Life was harsh, life was cruel; but here was weary, waiting Edward, that boon of comic relief!

Edward demanded to know where the devil he had been; and Hal answered, "I've been visiting the widows and orphans."

"Oh!" said Edward. "And while I sit in this hole and stew! What's that you've got under your arm?"

Hal looked at the bundle. "It's a souvenir of one of the widows," he said, and unrolled the garments and spread them out before his brother's puzzled eyes. "A lady named Mrs. Swajka gave them to me. They belonged to another lady, Mrs. Zamboni, but she doesn't need them any more."

"What have _you_ got to do with them?"

"It seems that Mrs. Zamboni is going to get married again." Hal lowered his voice, confidentially. "It's a romance, Edward--it may interest you as an illustration of the manners of these foreign races. She met a man on the street, a fine, fine man, she says--and he gave her a lot of money. So she went and bought herself some new clothes, and she wants to give these widow's weeds to the new man. That's the custom in her country, it seems--her sign that she accepts him as a suitor."

Seeing the look of wonderment growing on his brother's face, Hal had to stop for a moment to keep his own face straight. "If that man wasn't serious in his intention, Edward, he'll have trouble, for I know Mrs. Zamboni's emotional nature. She'll follow him about everywhere--"

"Hal, that creature is insane!" And Edward looked about him nervously, as if he thought the Slavish widow might appear suddenly in the hotel lobby to demonstrate her emotional nature.

"No," replied Hal, "it's just one of those differences in national customs." And suddenly Hal's face gave way. He began to laugh; he laughed, perhaps more loudly than good form permitted.

Edward was much annoyed. There were people in the lobby, and they were staring at him. "Cut it out, Hal!" he exclaimed. "Your fool jokes bore me!" But nevertheless, Hal could see uncertainty in his brother's face. Edward recognised those widow's weeds. And how could he be sure about the "national customs" of that grotesque creature who had pinched him in the ribs on the street?

"Cut it out!" he cried again.

Hal, changing his voice suddenly to the Zamboni key, exclaimed: "Mister, I got eight children I got to feed, and I don't got no more man, and I don't find no new man for old woman like me!"

So at last the truth in its full enormity began to dawn upon Edward. His consternation and disgust poured themselves out; and Hal listened, his laughter dying. "Edward," he said, "you don't take me seriously even yet!"

"Good God!" cried the other. "I believe you're really insane!"

"You were up there, Edward! You heard what I said to those poor devils! And you actually thought I'd go off with you and forget about them!"

Edward ignored this. "You're really insane!" he repeated. "You'll get yourself killed, in spite of all I can do!"

But Hal only laughed. "Not a chance of it! You should have seen the tea-party manners of the camp-marshal!"

 

SECTION 27.

Edward would have endeavoured to carry his brother away forthwith, but there was no train until late at night; so Hal went upstairs, where he found Moylan and Hartman with Mary Burke and Mrs. Zamboni, all eager to hear his story. As the members of the committee, who had been out to supper, came straggling in, the story was told again, and yet again. They were almost as much delighted as the men in Reminitsky's. If only all strikes that had to be called off could be called off as neatly as that!

Between these outbursts of satisfaction, they discussed their future. Moylan was going back to Western City, Hartman to his office in Sheridan, from which he would arrange to send new organisers into North Valley. No doubt Cartwright would turn off many men--those who had made themselves conspicuous during the strike, those who continued to talk union out loud. But such men would have to be replaced, and the union knew through what agencies the company got its hands. The North Valley miners would find themselves mysteriously provided with union literature in their various languages; it would be slipped under their pillows, or into their dinner-pails, or the pockets of their coats while they were at work.

Also there was propaganda to be carried on among those who were turned away; so that, wherever they went, they would take the message of unionism. There had been a sympathetic outburst in Barela, Hal learned--starting quite spontaneously that morning, when the men heard what had happened at North Valley. A score of workers had been fired, and more would probably follow in the morning. Here was a job for the members of the kidnapped committee; Tim Rafferty, for example--would he care to stay in Pedro for a week or two, to meet such men, and give them literature and arguments?

This offer was welcome; for life looked desolate to the Irish boy at this moment. He was out of a job, his father was a wreck, his family destitute and helpless. They would have to leave their home, of course; there would be no place for any Rafferty in North Valley. Where they would go, God only knew; Tim would become a wanderer, living away from his people, starving himself and sending home his pitiful savings.

Hal was watching the boy, and reading these thoughts. He, Hal Warner, would play the god out of a machine in this case, and in several others equally pitiful. He had the right to sign his father's name to checks, a privilege which he believed he could retain, even while undertaking the role of Haroun al Raschid in a mine-disaster. But what about the mine-disasters and abortive strikes where there did not happen to be any Haroun al Raschid at hand? What about those people, right in North Valley, who did not happen to have told Hal of their affairs? He perceived that it was only by turning his back and running that he would escape from his adventure with any portion of his self-possession. Truly, this fair-seeming and wonderful civilisation was like the floor of a charnel-house or a field of battle; anywhere one drove a spade beneath its surface, he uncovered horrors, sights for the eyes and stenches for the nostrils that caused him to turn sick!

There was Rusick, for example; he had a wife and two children, and not a dollar in the world. In the year and more that he had worked, faithfully and persistently, to get out coal for Peter Harrigan, he had never once been able to get ahead of his bill for the necessities of life at Old Peter's store. All his belongings in the world could be carried in a bundle on his back, and whether he ever saw these again would depend upon the whim of old Peter's camp-marshal and guards. Rusick would take to the road, with a ticket purchased by the union. Perhaps he would find a job and perhaps not; in any case, the best he could hope for in life was to work for some other Harrigan, and run into debt at some other company-store.

There was Hobianish, a Serbian, and Hernandez, a Mexican, of whom the same things were true, except that one had four children and the other six. Bill Wauchope had only a wife--their babies had died, thank heaven, he said. He did not seem to have been much moved by Jim Moylan's pleadings; he was down and out; he would take to the road, and beat his way to the East and back to England. They called this a free country! By God, if he were to tell what had happened to him, he could not get an English miner to believe it!

Hal gave these men his real name and address, and made them promise to let him know how they got along. He would help a little, he said; in his mind he was figuring how much he ought to do. How far shall a man go in relieving the starvation about him, before he can enjoy his meals in a well-appointed club? What casuist will work out this problem--telling him the percentage he shall relieve of the starvation he happens personally to know about, the percentage of that which he sees on the streets, the percentage of that about which he reads in government reports on the rise in the cost of living. To what extent is he permitted to close his eyes, as he walks along the streets on his way to the club? To what extent is he permitted to avoid reading government reports before going out to dinner-dances with his fiancee? Problems such as these the masters of the higher mathematics have neglected to solve; the wise men of the academies and the holy men of the churches have likewise failed to work out the formulas; and Hal, trying to obtain them by his crude mental arithmetic, found no satisfaction in the results.

 

SECTION 28.

Hal wanted a chance to talk to Mary Burke; they had had no intimate talk since the meeting with Jessie Arthur, and now he was going away, for a long time. He wanted to find out what plans Mary had for the future, and--more important yet--what was her state of mind. If he had been able to lift this girl from despair, his summer course in practical sociology had not been all a failure!

He asked her to go with him to say good-bye to John Edstrom, whom he had not seen since their unceremonious parting at MacKellar's, when Hal had fled to Percy Harrigan's train. Downstairs in the lobby Hal explained his errand to his waiting brother, who made no comment, but merely remarked that he would follow, if Hal had no objection. He did not care to make the acquaintance of the Hibernian Joan of Arc, and would not come close enough to interfere with Hal's conversation with the lady; but he wished to do what he could for his brother's protection. So there set out a moon-light procession--first Hal and Mary, then Edward, and then Edward's dinner-table companion, the "hardware-drummer!"

Hal was embarrassed in beginning his farewell talk with Mary. He had no idea how she felt towards him, and he admitted with a guilty pang that he was a little afraid to find out! He thought it best to be cheerful, so he started to tell her how fine he thought her conduct during the strike. But she did not respond to his remarks, and at last he realised that she was labouring with some thoughts of her own.

"There's somethin' I got to say to ye!" she began, suddenly. "A couple of days ago I knew how I meant to say it, but now I don't."

"Well," he laughed, "say it as you meant to."

"No; 'twas bitter--and now I'm on my knees before ye."

"Not that I want you to be bitter," said Hal, still laughing, "but it's I that ought to be on my knees before you. I didn't accomplish anything, you know."

"Ye did all ye could--and more than the rest of us. I want ye to know I'll never forget it. But I want ye to hear the other thing, too!"

She walked on, staring before her, doubling up her hands in agitation. "Well?" said he, still trying to keep a cheerful tone.

"Ye remember that day just after the explosion? Ye remember what I said about--about goin' away with ye? I take it back."

"Oh, of course!" said he, quickly. "You were distracted, Mary--you didn't know what you were saying."

"No, no! That's not it! But I've changed my mind; I don't mean to throw meself away."

"I told you you'd see it that way," he said. "No man is worth it."

"Ah, lad!" said she. "'Tis the fine soothin' tongue ye have--but I'd rather ye knew the truth. 'Tis that I've seen the other girl; and I hate her!"

They walked for a bit in silence. Hal had sense enough to realise that here was a difficult subject. "I don't want to be a prig, Mary," he said gently; "but you'll change your mind about that, too. You'll not hate her; you'll be sorry for her."

She laughed--a raw, harsh laugh. "What kind of a joke is that?"

"I know--it may seem like one. But it'll come to you some day. You have a wonderful thing to live and fight for; while she"--he hesitated a moment, for he was not sure of his own ideas on this subject--"she has so many things to learn; and she may never learn them. She'll miss some fine things."

"I know one of the fine things she does not mean to miss," said Mary, grimly; "that's Mr. Hal Warner." Then, after they had walked again in silence: "I want ye to understand me, Mr. Warner--"

"Ah, Mary!" he pleaded. "Don't treat me that way! I'm Joe."

"All right," she said, "Joe ye shall be. 'Twill remind ye of a pretty adventure--bein' a workin' man for a few weeks. Well, that's a part of what I have to tell ye. I've got my pride, even if I'm only a poor miner's daughter; and the other day I found out me place."

"How do you mean?" he asked.

"Ye don't understand? Honest?"

"No, honest," he said.

"Ye're stupid with women, Joe. Ye didn't see what the girl did to me! 'Twas some kind of a bug I was to her. She was not sure if I was the kind that bites, but she took no chances--she threw me off, like that." And Mary snapped her hand, as one does when troubled with a bug.

"Ah, now!" pleaded Hal. "You're not being fair!"

"I'm bein' just as fair as I've got it in me to be, Joe. I been off and had it all out. I can see this much--'tis not her fault, maybe--'tis her class; 'tis all of ye--the very best of ye, even yeself, Joe Smith!"

"Yea," he replied, "Tim Rafferty said that."

"Tim said too much--but a part of it was true. Ye think ye've come here and been one of us workin' people." But don't your own sense tell you the difference, as if it was a canyon a million miles across--between a poor ignorant creature in a minin' camp, and a rich man's daughter, a lady? Ye'd tell me not to be ashamed of poverty; but would ye ever put me by the side of her--for all your fine feelin's of friendship for them that's beneath ye? Didn't ye show that at the Minettis'?"

"But don't you see, Mary--" He made an effort to laugh. "I got used to obeying Jessie! I knew her a long time before I knew you."

"Ah, Joe! Ye've a kind heart, and a pleasant way of speakin'. But wouldn't it interest ye to know the real truth? Ye said ye'd come out here to learn the truth!"

And Hal answered, in a low voice, "Yes," and did not interrupt again.

 

SECTION 29.

Mary's voice had dropped low, and Hal thought how rich and warm it was when she was deeply moved. She went on:

"I lived all me life in minin' camps, Joe Smith, and I seen men robbed and beaten, and women cryin' and childer hungry. I seen the company, like some great wicked beast that eat them up. But I never knew why, or what it meant--till that day, there at the Minettis'. I'd read about fine ladies in books, ye see; but I'd never been spoke to by one, I'd never had to swallow one, as ye might say. But there I did--and all at once I seemed to know where the money goes that's wrung out of the miners. I saw why people were robbin' us, grindin' the life out of us--for fine ladies like that, to keep them so shinin' and soft! 'Twould not have been so bad, if she'd not come just then, with all the men and boys dyin' down in the pits--dyin' for that soft, white skin, and those soft, white hands, and all those silky things she swished round in. My God, Joe--d'ye know what she seemed to me like? Like a smooth, sleek cat that has just eat up a whole nest full of baby mice, and has the blood of them all over her cheeks!"

Mary paused, breathing hard. Hal kept silence, and she went on again: "I had it out with meself, Joe! I don't want ye to think I'm any better than I am, and I asked meself this question--Is it for the men in the pits that ye hate her with such black murder? Or is it for the one man ye want, and that she's got? And I knew the answer to that! But then I asked meself another question, too--Would ye be like her if ye could? Would ye do what she's doin' right now--would ye have it on your soul? And as God hears me, Joe, 'tis the truth I speak--I'd not do it! No, not for the love of any man that ever walked on this earth!"

She had lifted her clenched fist as she spoke. She let it fall again, and strode on, not even glancing at him. "Ye might try a thousand years, Joe, and ye'd not realise the feelin's that come to me there at the Minettis'. The shame of it--not what she done to me, but what she made me in me own eyes! Me, the daughter of a drunken old miner, and her--I don't know what her father is, but she's some sort of princess, and she knows it. And that's the thing that counts, Joe! 'Tis not that she has so much money, and so many fine things; that she knows how to talk, and I don't, and that her voice is sweet, and mine is ugly, when I'm ragin' as I am now. No--'tis that she's so _sure!_ That's the word I found to say it; she's sure--sure--_sure!_ She has the fine things, she's always had them, she has a right to have them! And I have a right to nothin' but trouble, I'm hunted all day by misery and fear, I've lost even the roof over me head! Joe, ye know I've got some temper--I'm not easy to beat down; but when I'd got through bein' taught me place, I went off and hid meself, I ground me face in the dirt, for the black rage of it! I said to meself, 'Tis true! There's somethin' in her better than me! She's some kind of finer creature.--Look at these hands!" She held them out in the moonlight, with a swift, passionate gesture. "So she's a right to her man, and I'm a fool to have ever raised me eyes to him! I have to see him go away, and crawl back into me leaky old shack! Yes, that's the truth! And when I point it out to the man, what d'ye think he says? Why, he tells me gently and kindly that I ought to be sorry for her! Christ! did ye ever hear the like of that?"

There was a long silence. Hal could not have said anything now, if he had wished to. He knew that this was what he had come to seek! This was the naked soul of the class-war!

"Now," concluded Mary, with clenched hands, and a voice that corresponded, "now, I've had it out. I'm no slave; I've just as good a right to life as any lady. I know I'll never have it, of course; I'll never wear good clothes, nor live in a decent home, nor have the man I want; but I'll know that I've done somethin' to help free the workin' people from the shame that's put on them. That's what the strike done for me, Joe! The strike showed me the way. We're beat this time, but somehow it hasn't made the difference ye might think. I'm goin' to make more strikes before I quit, and they won't all of them be beat!"

She stopped speaking; and Hal walked beside her, stirred by a conflict of emotions. His vision of her was indeed true; she would make more strikes! He was glad and proud of that; but then came the thought that while she, a girl, was going on with the bitter war, he, a man, would be eating grilled beefsteaks at the club!

"Mary," he said, "I'm ashamed of myself--"

"That's not it, Joe! Ye've no call to be ashamed. Ye can't help it where ye were born--"

"Perhaps not, Mary. But when a man knows he's never paid for any of the things he's enjoyed all his life, surely the least he can do is to be ashamed. I hope you'll try not to hate me as you do the others."

"I never hated ye, Joe! Not for one moment! I tell ye fair and true, I love ye as much as ever. I can say it, because I'd not have ye now; I've seen the other girl, and I know ye'd never be satisfied with me. I don't know if I ought to say it, but I'm thinkin' ye'll not be altogether satisfied with her, either. Ye'll be unhappy either way--God help ye!"

The girl had read deeply into his soul in this last speech; so deeply that Hal could not trust himself to answer. They were passing a street-lamp, and she looked at him, for the first time since they had started on their walk, and saw harassment in his face. A sudden tenderness came into her voice. "Joe," she said; "ye're lookin' bad. 'Tis good ye're goin' away from this place!"

He tried to smile, but the effort was feeble.

"Joe," she went on, "ye asked me to be your friend. Well, I'll be that!" And she held out the big, rough hand.

He took it. "We'll not forget each other, Mary," he said. There was a catch in his voice.

"Sure, lad!" she exclaimed. "We'll make another strike some day, just like we did at North Valley!"

Hal pressed the big hand; but then suddenly, remembering his brother stalking solemnly in the rear, he relinquished the clasp, and failed to say all the fine things he had in his mind. He called himself a rebel, but not enough to be sentimental before Edward!

 

SECTION 30.

They came to the house where John Edstrom was staying. The labouring man's wife opened the door. In answer to Hal's question, she said, "The old gentleman's pretty bad."

"What's the matter with him?"

"Didn't you know he was hurt?"

"No. How?"

"They beat him up, sir. Broke his arm, and nearly broke his head."

Hal and Mary exclaimed in chorus, "Who did it? When?"

"We don't know who did it. It was four nights ago."

Hal realised it must have happened while he was escaping from MacKellar's. "Have you had a doctor for him?"

"Yes, sir; but we can't do much, because my man is out of work, and I have the children and the boarders to look after."

Hal and Mary ran upstairs. Their old friend lay in darkness, but he recognised their voices and greeted them with a feeble cry. The woman brought a lamp, and they saw him lying on his back, his head done up in bandages, and one arm bound in splints. He looked really desperately bad, his kindly old eyes deep-sunken and haggard, and his face--Hal remembered what Jeff Cotton had called him, "that dough-faced old preacher!"

They got the story of what had happened at the time of Hal's flight to Percy's train. Edstrom had shouted a warning to the fugitives, and set out to run after them; when one of the mine-guards, running past him, had fetched him a blow over the eye, knocking him down. He had struck his head upon the pavement, and lain there unconscious for many hours. When finally some one had come upon him, and summoned a policeman, they had gone through his pockets, and found the address of this place where he was staying written on a scrap of paper. That was all there was to the story--except that Edstrom had refrained from sending to MacKellar for help, because he had felt sure they were all working to get the mine open, and he did not feel he had the right to put his troubles upon them.

Hal listened to the old man's feeble statements, and there came back to him a surge of that fury which his North Valley experience had generated in him. It was foolish, perhaps; for to knock down an old man who had been making trouble was a comparatively slight exercise of the functions of a mine-guard. But to Hal it seemed the most characteristic of all the outrages he had seen; it was an expression of the company's utter blindness to all that was best in life. This old man, who was so gentle, so patient, who had suffered so much, and not learned to hate, who had kept his faith so true! What did his faith mean to the thugs of the General Fuel Company? What had his philosophy availed him, his saintliness, his hopes for mankind? They had fetched him one swipe as they passed him, and left him lying--alive or dead, it was all the same.

Hal had got some satisfaction out of his little adventure in widowhood, and some out of Mary's self-victory; but there, listening to the old man's whispered story, his satisfaction died. He realised again the grim truth about his summer's experience--that the issue of it had been defeat. Utter, unqualified defeat! He had caused the bosses a momentary chagrin; but it would not take them many hours to realise that he had really done them a service in calling off the strike for them. They would start the wheels of industry again, and the workers would be just where they had been before Joe Smith came to be stableman and buddy among them. What was all the talk about solidarity, about hope for the future; what would it amount to in the long run, the daily rolling of the wheels of industry? The workers of North Valley would have exactly the right they had always had--the right to be slaves, and if they did not care for that, the right to be martyrs!

Mary sat holding the old man's hand and whispering words of passionate sympathy, while Hal got up and paced the tiny attic, all ablaze with anger. He resolved suddenly that he would not go back to Western City; he would stay here, and get an honest lawyer to come, and set out to punish the men who were guilty of this outrage. He would test out the law to the limit; if necessary, he would begin a political fight, to put an end to coal-company rule in this community. He would find some one to write up these conditions, he would raise the money and publish a paper to make them known! Before his surging wrath had spent itself, Hal Warner had actually come out as a candidate for governor, and was overturning the Republican machine--all because an unidentified coal-company detective had knocked a dough-faced old miner into the gutter and broken his arm! _

Read next: Book 4. The Will Of King Coal: Section 31 And Postscript

Read previous: Book 4. The Will Of King Coal: Section 21 To Section 25

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