Mountain Part 59

"You think there's a chance?" Her question was from the heart.

"The South is twoscore years behind the rest of the country. We were premature.... But the South can't lag forever. Even the dreadful war will quicken intellects everywhere; every day's headlines mention 'socialism,' where it was never heard of three years ago. If we are wise--as we weren't in '61--it may come sensibly; if not, G.o.d help my respected father, and the rest of the monied vultures, in that day!

"I remember my first view of the city--the furnaces, and the c.o.ke ovens; it looked like the pit of h.e.l.l to me.... Well----"

Word came at last of his detail to duty at Washington. It was hard to end the home they had built together in the Haviland Avenue house; but the prospect ahead salved the regret.

The work, when Pelham came to it, proved congenial and illuminating. He was nearer the core of the matter now; the mining industry of a country pa.s.sed before his eyes.

At the suggestion of the deputy commissioner, he accompanied that official on a special trip to New York, the port from which the manufactured steel was being hurried over to the hungry fields of France. Jane went along; the three stood together in the arc-lit glow of the vast freight station.

"I thought you wanted to see it," the friendly commissioner repeated.

"Rails, guns, gun-stocks, wire, a thousand sundries--and every car your eye can see straight from the Adamsville mills. There's enough steel railing there to triple-track from the Marne to Berlin, with lots to spare!"

They drew together at the vastness of the spectacle.

"The metallic sinews of war, my boy--just as the boys of Adamsville and the country are the human sinews. I understand your feelings, Judson; but can't you see that they are spreading the same ideal of democracy that your comrades work for?"

"I hope some good will result; it's not easy to see clearly," Pelham answered slowly.

As the commissioner left, the son of Adamsville placed his arm around Jane. "And our mountain did all of this! What p.a.w.ns it made of us! We flung up here, the miners scattered, endless change and turmoil.... I used to say the mountain mothered me; but it flung me out like my father too. Perhaps it embodied all of us. Perhaps"--a sudden surge of bitter memory turned the drift of his thinking--"perhaps autocracy would suit the mountain, as well as democracy."

"I think not," Jane replied slowly. "When its products are washed away by the streams, they quicken the whole soil. Humanity can afford culture now for all; all must win their chance at it."

"The war sets us back...."

"And pushes us on too. After it is over, these metallic and human sinews will rebuild a world democracy at peace. Men have failed; the women come to their tasks now."

"Yes; the aching past surely has taught us something. We must build right, now. Old standards are gone; the world furnace of war has quickened all the people...."

"We've done our small part."

"With the biggest part still to do. We are to see the beginning of the building of the New World in the hearts and souls of men.... For that is the final building."

They walked out to the jutting end of the vast pier, studying the aimless restlessness of the ocean drift sloshing against the cl.u.s.tered piles.

She turned to stroke a raveling from his coat. Upon the bright flush of her cheek he brushed a fleeting kiss.

A resting gull flopped heavily from a water-swung stake, skimmed low over the gray sparkle, and lessened on beating wings into the sun-glitter to the west.

x.x.xI

Spring on the mountain. Over the eastern rim of sand hills the st.u.r.dy sun of May flared up. The neutral gray pooled in the valleys woke to a rustling flame of green; the wind whipped from the crest the last shred of clinging cloud, and dried the wet kiss of the mist upon cottage and bungalow, rumpling the summit as far as eye could cover.

The sibilant buzz of motor trucks, returning to the distant dairies beyond the second mountain, died eastward. Lawn mowers clicked rhythmically, school tardy bells rang, chatting nursemaids chose the stone benches under the deepest shade of the parked roadways. Jays flickered noisily through the ringed oaks still rising from the spa.r.s.e areas of fenced outcrop.

A gray limousine disturbed the sunny height with its alien whirr--turning from Logan Avenue to reach the great flowery green on the crest left of the gap. Two men climbed out, stretching cramped limbs; the first with firm carefulness, testing each footing before he rested upon it, the second with deferential a.s.sistance.

The elder man walked over to a curved bench facing the spread of the city below. From old habit he pulled out a cigar, twisted the silver wrapper into a ball, and spun it deftly into smooth gra.s.s covering a healed scar caused by the old mining. His teeth crunched into the well-packed leaves; his tongue rolled the unlit Havana around the rim of his mouth.

The other stopped a step or two behind. "It's rough on you, Paul....

You're all alone in the new Hillcrest Cottage now, aren't you?"

"Yes, Governor...."

He pondered soberly, and spoke again with a deprecating cough. "Your wife was an exceptional woman."

"Death makes no exceptions," the other mused aloud; there was small feeling within him that this was anything else than a philosophic excuse for weakness in others. After a few minutes silence, he took up the thread again. "You know, Kane, Mary hadn't been strong for some years.

Life on the mountain was hard on a woman. She took the strike very much to heart; her house was burnt then.... That was why I declined the Senatorship ... then." His squinting gaze took in the panorama before and to the rear. "It's changed.... Not a mine within ten miles now; nothing nearer than those wonderful new openings this side of Coalstock.... Houses, houses, houses...." His eyes looked from the ample homes along the crest estate, to the cheap frame houses crowding the foot of the hill, on the side toward Adamsville; and then to the negro settlement of Lilydale behind, which a pushing real estate firm had continued to the very border of the Hillcrest lands.

"It's a pity the land fringing yours hadn't your development. When the riff-raff once move into a neighborhood----"

"I know, I know. The mountain's held out, so far."

Paul achieved a moment's isolation by walking to the edge of the summit.

The children would return soon to their scattered homes; he was the last Judson living in Adamsville.... He--and the mountain. He had risen to the crest of his ambition--he asked no more.

The mountain soil was still iron-stained; but much of its strength had pa.s.sed to him--had given him this iron grip upon things and people.

Power, iron power ... wherever men were, the iron sinews of the mountain had carried the name of Paul Judson.

"Have we time for that trip to North Adamsville?" Kane at last interrupted.

"Get in. Something's wrong out there; dissatisfaction, that should have been squelched. I'm going to make a change."

Following the northward trail of robin and flicker, the gray limousine whirred away from the smoothed crags and their reddened memories.

The children dawdled back from school. The homing older people returned from office and club, from mill and furnace and store. The artificial lights by night made golden wounds on the darkness. One by one these blended with the black, except for the street-globes reared below the damp green of the leaves.

The sprinkled glitter of city lights below cast a quiet shimmer over the drowsy hillside. Far away, in a giant semicircle, an intermittent surf of furnace glare and c.o.ke-oven glow mottled with dusky crimson the low haze of the sky.

Following the sun trail, the silver glitter of the Lyre climbed from the east, the northern cross spread its ungainly form, the soft brightness of Vega poised like a fleck of white light above the somber fringe of Shadow Mountain. The soft glamor of the May night reaffirmed its immemorial sway over the sleeping hulk of the mountain.

Two screech-owls sent their shivery call through the dark. Shreds of cloud drifted lower and lower, until they rested lightly on the foliage above the healed scars of ramp and gulley. The stars sagged westward; after them the clouds, and all the trespa.s.sers by night, were quietly driven by a faint breeze rustling its promise of dawn.

THE END.