Mountain Part 8

Her brown hair was somewhat sandy, her nose turned up a trifle, and she was not as quick-witted as the other Judsons. But the girls realized she was safe; there was no fear she would annex any of their suitors, and she shared the confidences of at least half a dozen best friends at all times.

Early in the summer, Pelham was paired with one of these intimates, Virginia Moore. The girl was tall and slim, almost gawky. Her habit was to serve a direct overhand ball, then permit her partner to win the point. Her caustic tongue made her generally disliked; but he found this an alluring novelty, after the insipid small talk of the others.

When the set was over, he led her to his chosen rock seat carved out of the outcrop beyond the gap. The talk became personal, Virginia shrewdly deferring to his superior masculinity, with flattering attention.

At last his stumbling tongue blurted out, "V-virginia, do you want to wear my frat pin?"

She hesitated, and smiled encouragingly.

He blushed under his heavy tan. "We can only give it to mother, or sister, or--or--or the girl we ... we're engaged to."

"Well, we're not related." She twisted a spray of hydrangea into her hair.

He unpinned the black enameled symbol, his heart jumping violently, and moved closer. With a pretty gesture, she indicated where he should place it.

The cool fragrance of her made him giddy. One loose strand of hair brushed against his forehead, causing him to tingle and tickle all over.... He wanted to bruise her against his body, as on mad moonlit nights he had flung himself around some rough-barked oak on the summit.

Ignorant that girls, not in books, at times felt such emotions, he affixed the pin with impersonal decorum. Then he slid to the ground beside her feet, and stared against the burning sunset.

When the sun dropped back of his hill, he rose gropingly. It was hard to phrase some things; he was desperately anxious not to appear ridiculous in her eyes. Yet, unless all of his reading was wrong, something more was expected of a man in love.

"I--I ought to kiss you, if we're engaged."

She closed her eyes, docilely.

He held her lithe cool body, and he felt the rapture of brushing his lips against her own.

He led the way down the path, exaggeratedly attentive.

For the remainder of the brief summer he spent every spare moment with the girl,--mornings on the courts, long afternoon walks, whispering evenings in the rock seat. He would come home after a day with her, and lie, tumbling sleeplessly on his bed, living over the delicious last moments spent with her, and elaborating intenser fantasies of love-making. Her eyes obsessed him; they were like his mother's.

Another friendship marked the summer. Old Nathaniel Guild did not come to the place as often as before; the winter had been hard on him, and the steep paths were often too much for his frail strength. As Paul was kept close to his desk, it was the son who accompanied Guild on his infrequent rambles over the grounds, and the rougher land beyond the fence.

"You notice the tilt of these outcrop rocks, Pelham?" he asked, one afternoon. "They slant forty degrees on this hill, and forty-four beyond Logan Avenue, on the other hill. Last week I was over beyond West Adamsville; all of these strata are there; only they angle to the west, instead of to the east, as here. Like this."

He diagrammed roughly on a sheet in his note book.

"Here are the two Ida veins,--the big veins here; here is the soft hemat.i.te under them, and a thin harder vein. Then comes bedrock, and under it a heavy clay deposit. Above the Ida vein there was quartz,--the same quartz we take from the back of the place. Now, on the west part of town,"--he indicated with sweep of his hand the hazy distance beyond the furnaced city,--"there the same strata were once. But the erosion has gone further. There is only a trace of the quartz, and the three top veins. Only a few thin streaks of the bottom hard ore are there. Even the bedrock has been washed off some of the hills...."

Pelham nodded.

"If we could have gotten hold of that iron too!... All gone, all washed away."

"How does it happen that the strata are the same?"

Nathaniel looked at him sharply from under bushy gray eyebrows. He turned again to the paper, and continued the two lines until they met, high above what was now Adamsville.

"Wait.... This point is the sand hills,--there to the east. There are more of them beyond the West Highlands range. See,----" and a firm stroke of the pencil continued their lines until they arched above the former peak.

Pelham watched the moving pencil, fascinated.

"Was the mountain ever like that?"

"The rocks are absolute proof. This valley,"--he gestured toward the city,--"was once the hidden center of the hill."

"... How long ago?"

Nathaniel chuckled gently. "Ah, that's beyond us. Hundreds of thousands of years, maybe."

Somehow this made the mountain more real to Pelham. Though he might climb, under the midnight stars, to the highest crag on Crenshaw Hill, he was just at the beginning of what had once been the peak. He fancied he could trace its towering crown, blacker than the surrounding blackness, lifting up to the sky and the sparkling stars.

What a fleeting second of time, to the mountain, were the eighteen laborious years that meant so much to him! This hill would continue to jut toward the clouds when the last trace of man's restless activity had crumbled into dusty forgetfulness.

He formed the habit of circling up to these crags, after a night at the club or the park with Virginia. They supplied the needed solitude for his crammed fancies. Some nights, after he had been with her, his body would burn like a torch. The pelting pa.s.sion that shivered throughout him frightened him. He needed the mountain and the stars to calm him for bed. Love was becoming an overmastering torrent; it threatened to upset his whole equilibrium.

His father got wind of the affair, through some chance comment. He went straight to the point with the boy. "You're seeing a lot of that Moore girl, Pelham."

"Yes, sir.... I like her."

"L. N. Moore has four daughters, all unmarried. He is worth about twenty-five thousand dollars. That's all they will get."

"I--I hadn't ever thought about that, father."

"You've got to think about it. Here Tom Dodge's children have married millions--every one of them. Sarah married Jack Lamar; he owns the steel works. The boys connected with the Vanderventer and the O'Ryan money.

There's an intelligent family."

Pelham got hot all over. He muttered something about not marrying for money.

"Who wants you to marry for money?" his father interrupted. "The Dodge crowd managed to fall in love with folks who had money. It's a big difference. I'm going to leave the girls well fixed; they ought to marry well. I want you to keep your eyes open."

The talk left a bad taste in Pelham's mouth.

Even though his mother did not care for Virginia as much as he had thought she would, his attentions continued until vacation ended, and he returned to the muggy northern city.

Nell responded to the open life almost as fully as Pelham. Hollis was busy at school, and Sue preferred staying with her mother; so the older sister frequently had her favorite mare saddled, and covered fifteen miles before she turned the horse loose in the spring lot.

Paul was on the mountain frequently, mornings and afternoons; Hillcrest Subdivision had at last been put upon the market. Most of the work fell on his shoulders; his roadster buzzed up and down the avenues, displaying the place to prospective purchasers. The lower lots sold well from the start. After six months, the investment had almost paid for itself, with less than an eighth of the land disposed of.

In the early spring, Nathaniel came to Paul with a proposition to take the land off the lists as residence property, until the iron could be mined.

"As soon as we sell any of the crest places, it will be too late. Now's the time; we can form our own mining corporation, and sell to South Atlantic Steel. Ore's reached the highest point in twelve years. It will mean a fortune, Paul, and the land will be just as good after the iron's out."

Paul was set against the plan at first. There was more ready money in the other; it would spoil the face of the subdivision; they didn't know the ropes.

The older man was insistent. "It'll mean money--big money. We can't overlook a shot like this."

He went over the suggestion for Mary's benefit; she too protested. "Why, Mr. Guild, the mountain's our home; it would be dreadful to spoil it.

What would happen to the cottage?"

Paul cut in, shortly; his mind was quickened by opposition of any kind; and the chance for a quiet public dominance of his wife was not to be overlooked. "We don't intend to touch this part of it, Mary.... I'll tell you, Nate; we'll go over it with Ross and Sam Randolph. If there's as much in it as you say, we can't afford to neglect it."