“Now, you go on, Sheriff!” she exclaimed, bridling and simpering. “But come, gentlemen, it’s quite nippy down here, and I’ve got a right nice little stove a-burnin’ in your room.” They trooped after her; the splintered board stairs were gritty under their feet; the long wavering light of the lamp followed them. The cold persisted, following them like a wind. She flung open a leaning door and showed them the hollow wood shell of a drab, half-empty room barely lit and warmed by a tiny pot-bellied iron stove. The chill here was hardly less than in the hall below. Two iron cots with dingy quilts stood in the center of the room, and a broken chest of drawers, two rockers, a table and an oil-lamp, made up the rest of the furnishings. And over them all was the fine black patina of coal dust that nothing could eradicate.
When Paul and Guy were alone, Paul began to unpack a few of his articles and lay them on the chest of drawers. The austere silver brushes glittered in the dim light—the stove crackled. Guy sat down on the edge of his dubious cot and stared blankly at his own bag. He shivered. He had removed his hat and his bright curling hair showed threads of gold. He looked pathetically young, and frail, a light dancing figure collapsed on a sordid dust-heap.
“I hope,” said Paul grimly, without turning to face him, “that you’re enjoying yourself. I hope you are not too disappointed.”
“I’m not.” Guy’s eyes were bland and his voice high and calm. “It’s pretty horrible, though.” He took off his coat and opened his bag. A silence fell between them again as they prepared for bed. Fastidious Guy examined the straw mattress and the sheets and blankets. He pulled them back into place, put his shoes on again. It was apparent that he did not intend to sleep under the bed clothes, but on top of them. He laid out a woollen afghan that May had insisted he take with him. Without looking at Paul, and with apparent indifference, he said: “I think I know your game.”
Paul was so astounded at this remark that for a moment his bent back remained in position, petrified. Then he swung about on his cousin with rage. “What the hell do you mean by that remark?” he shouted. “My game? What game?”
And then he stopped, abruptly. For from out Guy’s small dimpled face Ernest’s eyes stared back at him, baleful, opaque and implacable. Those eyes were like a fist in his chest. “My father,” Guy said, “is a very remarkable man. I know it, too. But even a remarkable man can make mistakes. He thinks you’re the best he’s got. He doesn’t know what a big lumbering donkey you are. My father thinks he is founding a sort of dynasty: that’s the Englishman in him—family, money, tradition, father-to-son business. But he’s picked the wrong man to carry on the dynasty; he’s made his first mistake—in you. You’re no Empire-builder; you’re no Atlas. You’re all bulk and push. But Pa didn’t get where he is just by bulk and push. He’s got something else. For a bright man, Pa’s showing his age. You’ve got no imagination. No vision. Ever hear of vision, Paul?”
Paul, more and more astounded, more and more enraged, felt the thick black blood swelling through his throat and into the veins of his head. He stood there, his big body shaking with restrained explosions, his face swollen and empurpled. He opened his mouth, but no sound came from it.
Guy casually snapped his fingers, and smiled. The baleful look in his eyes took on a derisive shine from that smile. “But perhaps,” he continued lightly, “Pa expects the vision and the cleverness to come from the Bouchards. I don’t think he could really believe you have any. He can’t really not know that there’s a weak flabby place in you, Paul. A place like the one in your Pa.” He paused. “You see,” he added conversationally, “Pa thinks that you’re like him in lots of ways. He looks at me, and thinks he sees what he calls a jackanapes. But I’m really more like him. More like him than any one else in the world. What I want, and what he wants, are entirely different. I’m looking out of a different window. And looking out of that window, I see you. And I know what you are, and what you are after.” Under his cousin’s very nose, he lay down and stretched out, turning his back. “But you’ll see. I’m not going to let you get it. I’m my father’s son, after all.”
Rage alone was not now petrifying Paul. It was fully aroused fear, the sickening consciousness that his suspicions were justified. This malicious little dog, this little terrier! Many times before he had experienced blind rage, but never before had he wanted to kill. The desire became a veritable ecstasy, a yawning, head-swinging ecstasy. It actually propelled him toward his reclining cousin with extended hands, for he was caught in the most overwhelming instinct of his species. When he suddenly realized what he was about, his knees turned to shaking jelly, and for one moment all his other thoughts and hatreds were lost in the black pit of his real horror. He stood there, trembling, gasping.
Then he turned away, sat down heavily upon his bed, and stared somberly before him. He began to speak in a thick strained voice. “You’re a little ass, Guy. You’re just a kid. I—I have no game. You forget that I’m part of Barbour-Bouchard now. I’m going to do my best to help your father carry out what he wishes. If you’re really going to show some interest at last, I’ll help you. I’m your sister’s husband, and I’ve got to take care of her share. My father helped build up this business too.” He drew a heavy breath. “I don’t want to rob you.” And because of his horror, he believed this.
Guy turned over slowly, and the lamp glittered on his handsome teeth as he grinned. “Who said anything about ‘robbing’?” he asked.
And across the little space between their cots, the cousins stared at each other, and the cold mountain wind shook the bare window-panes. They were alone here under the most fantastic circumstances, this powerful young man and the boy. Then suddenly Guy, exultant, saw the grotesqueness of the situation, and he burst into wild thin laughter, and rolled in spasms upon his bed.
“My father,” he cried, “would have killed, if he had felt that way!”
CHAPTER LXXXI
When Guy awoke the next morning he discovered that Paul was already gone. He was amused at this, but satisfied. He had had no desire to accompany his cousin anywhere. He saw that much snow had fallen in the night, and long velvety folds of it made soft terraces on the black hills. A clear thin sky shone overhead. There was not a sound, except for the distant closing of a door and a woman’s shrill voice. Moreover, the room was bitterly cold, and Guy huddled under his coats. He stared at the ceiling fixedly; the dimples in his cheeks gave him the effect of smiling boyishly. But he was not smiling. His eyes had in them a certain pointed slash of pupil which was more than a little savage. After a long time of staring, he began to whistle under his breath, and sprang out of bed. The whistle rose to loud singing. “After the ball is over, ta ta ta tatata!” He danced about the room as he pulled on his trousers; after he had laced his small and dainty boots he danced again, with curvettings and pirouettes, with swift light movements full of grace and buoyancy. His fair bright hair fell back from his face with a faun-like flow, and his features seemed sharpish and puck-like and a little unhuman. When he had been a child, old Hilda had called him “fey.” She had seen a wild laughter in him, a cruelty in the gaiety, a bitter brightness that no human flesh could touch. Only she had known that in spite of that gaiety and brightness and laughter, the dancing and the grace, he was more like his father than any one in the world would ever be. People said of him, as they said of Ernest: “You never know what he is thinking.”
He flew down the rickety stairs three at a time and landed at the bottom as lightly and boundingly as a cat. A dingy door opened from the hallway and Mrs. McCloskey, still in dressing gown and cap, thrust her gaunt and cunning face through the aperture. “Land sakes!” she ejaculated angrily. “Was you aimin’ to shout the house down?” As youthful Mr. Miller, secretary to a more important man, she disdained him. “Come on in the kitchen and eat your break’as. I ain’t got all day. Coffee’s cold, but I don’t guess you’ll mind that.”
He followed her into a filthy and ancient wooden kitchen where a coal stove fumed sullenly and the
coal dust and dirt were thick on the one narrow uncurtained window. On the corner of a wooden table, scarred and ingrained with grease and more dirt, she had laid his breakfast. The coarse white china was none too clean, and the tableware was of bent pewter. She poured out lukewarm coffee for him; it made him slightly nauseated as he smelt it. She thrust discolored sugar in a paper sack under his nose. On his plate she deposited two slices of fried “sow belly” and a thick stale slice of gray bread. This done, she retired to the stove, folded her arms on her sunken breast, and regarded him malevolently over her pointed shoulder.
“I don’t think I’m hungry,” said Guy, turning his smooth face toward her.
“Hah!” She wrinkled her face hideously at him, and fiercely nodded her head. “You don’t like my victuals?”
“Oh, it’s not that.” He smiled at her, and the lightness of his eyes took on an innocent deep blue tinge, and the dimples made him look like a fascinating girl. “But it was a long journey yesterday, and my stomach’s upset.”
Even Mrs. McCloskey could not withstand that beautiful smile and ingratiating voice. She humped her shoulders, growled under her breath, and then exclaimed that she guessed she could give him an egg if he wanted it, and she had a couple of biscuits still hot in the oven. While she prepared this treat with unusual alacrity, Guy talked to her in his gay light voice, and she began to shout with laughter. He was telling her an amusing, and entirely fictitious story, about Paul, and she was sufficiently close to her ancestry to enjoy a story at the expense of her “betters.” The malice on her face made her more repellent than ever; as she squatted before the stove and fished inside for the biscuits, she rocked on her haunches in an ecstasy of enjoyment. When she gave him the egg and biscuits, and “found” some butter, she said, looking down at him with a leering and broken-toothed smile: “You are the prettiest young un I’ve seen in many a day!” A rank odor emanated from the long emaciated body in the frayed and matted dressing gown; he could see the sprouting whiskers on her spade-like chin. But he sparkled up to her as though she were an object of delight. She put her talons on his burnished and curling hair and wound a tendril or two over soiled fingers like bones.
“Tell me,” said Guy, lavishly spreading butter on his biscuits, and helping himself prodigally to large portions of apple butter which Mrs. McCloskey had also “found” in her larder, “are the miners starving much?”
“Starvin’?” Her gritty voice descended to a contemptuous growl, though she continued to play with his hair. “Yes, and dyin’ of it, and good riddance to the scum! Yesterday some hussy came a-beggin’ at the back door with her brat on her arm and I threw dishwater in her face!”
“Why?” asked Guy innocently. “She had done you no harm.”
“Why?” The talons paused on a lock and with unconscious viciousness jerked it smartly. “Scum, that’s why. Strikin’! Fightin’ their bread and butter. Destroyin’ law and order! That’s what: destroyin’ law and order! We got to have law and order. That’s the law.”
“Yes, I suppose so. It is rather defying law and order to ask for enough to eat, isn’t it?”
“Eh?” She peered down at him suspiciously. “You ain’t ribbin’ me, are you, young man?”
“I? Not at all. I’m just agreeing with you. You see, having the kind of father I have, I’ve got a great admiration for the law. It’s so—so convenient. Isn’t it?”
She scowled at him, confused and suspicions. “Your Pa? Was he a miner?”
“No. But he had something to do with the mines.”
“Railroad man?”
“Yes, I think you could call him that. Railroad man. But tell me, Mrs. McCloskey, how did you really come to hate the miners? You look like a mining man’s wife, yourself.”
“I told you, they’re scum. Ain’t that enough? Quarrellin’ with their bread and butter. Tryin’ to run the mines, and tellin’ the bosses what they want and what they’ll do. ’Tain’t right nor decent. Impudent, that’s what. If they don’t want to work, they don’t have to, but they ain’t got no right to stop other folks from workin’.”
“So you’ve been reading the Constitution, too, Mrs. McCloskey?”
“Constitution? What’s constitution?”
“Never mind. You know it without reading it. That’s called intuition. You are a very smart woman, Mrs. McCloskey.”
She simpered hideously, though still suspicious. “If you ain’t the beatingest young un! Want some more coffee?”
The snow was already flecked with the black dust that seemed to hang perpetually in the air when Guy left the boarding house. The militiamen on duty watched the slight quick figure mounting the side of the western hill, its coat collar upturned and hat well over the eyes. It was a boy’s figure, small and lithe. The militiamen grinned at each other, puzzled.
Guy reached the top of the hill, and stood in dazzling sunshine. He paused and looked around him. The hill descended to a narrow and jagged valley, white with snow, which was divided by the oozing black seepage of a narrow stream. On each side of the stream were small clapboard shacks with thin leaning chimneys languidly throwing off thin wisps of orange smoke against the pale and shining clarity of sky and hillside. Here and there the remains of broken picket fences staggered partially around a shack. Behind one or two shacks a bleating goat was tethered. The new snow was barely polluted as yet either by dust or footstep, though Guy did see the scuttling figures of some bent shawled women darting in the rear of the shacks. But no children nor men were visible. The slopes of other hills broke up the landscape beyond the Valley, scarred irregularly by the shafts of the mines.
Guy had never been in a mining section before, but he knew instinctively that such a region was noisy and active. But though railroad cars stood on sidings and the tips were gaunt and black beams in the white winter sunlight, there was no sound at all. Not even a militiaman nor a prowling detective was about. Guy was disappointed; he had been led to believe that the strikes in this region were particularly desperate and violent.
He heard a shot, sudden and sharp and reverberating through the shattering white hush. He struck off in its general direction, his legs and feet rapidly becoming soggy and wet; soon he was sweating as he waded through the snow. He reached another narrow valley and another double row of silent and smoking shacks. He went on. Finally he arrived at the steep slope of the last hill and struggled up it. Reaching the top, he looked down.
The feet of the gathering hills formed the crude and smaller end of a great funnel. In this irregular circle or pit were crowded at least one hundred men. Another two hundred or more were scattered on the hillsides, their shabby clothes black blotches against the whiteness. They looked more like mis-shapen, pathetic and enormous ants than men, for they moved with continual restlessness, and their bodies were bent, their heads turning from side to side. In the center of the hundred at the bottom, on a box or large stone, stood the man whose voice Guy had been hearing. He was haranguing his fellows with passionate gestures, movements up and down of his long ragged body, and the rising crescendo of his sharp and assaulting voice. He seemed to be having little success, however, for the miners remained apathetic. They said nothing, made no sound whatsoever, yet their attitudes, the very aspects of their huddled sharp shadows on the trampled snow, showed despair, irresolution and defeat. They made no individual movements, except to blow on their numbed hands and languidly stamp their freezing feet on the ground. Here was no violence, no fury and hate, but only men who were hungry and bewildered. No Militiaman or other stranger was in sight, and no one lifted his eyes to see that small watching figure on top of the hill.
There was a sudden pause. The speaker had come to the end of his speech. Not a man spoke, there was no murmur of applause nor dissent. Then there was a quick and violent disturbance among the men on the eastern slope, and a man ran down the hill to the bottom. His movement was like a torpedo lashing through still water, and electrified his companions. He reached the bottom, pushed aside the other spe
aker and leapt upon the box. The men on the slopes began to run down, crowding closely about this man who was about to speak. Now a murmur rose from them, excited and expectant. It was a throaty murmur, partly of hope and partly of pleasure.
He lifted up his arms in a dramatic gesture, and again they were silent. The air was so clear and transparent that Guy could see him very distinctly. He was a tall broad man of about forty, with fiery hair uncovered in the sunshine. He had a broad and fiery face, irascible and fierce. This was John Glenwyn, a Welshman, a miner by birth and heritage and instinct, who had left Wales during the last disorders in the collieries there. A bachelor, a hater, an idealist and a fighter, he had the raw and catastrophic eloquence of his kind; they called him a firebrand, both because of his hair and his tongue. At that time he was both detested and hunted by the mine owners, and he was forced to live cautiously and furtively. But he was always mysteriously imported when a strike was about to collapse, and never failed to lash the strikers into action again, usually a mad action full of violence and narcotized loss of the instinct of self-preservation. Nor did he disappear when the fury ran screaming through the region; having great personal courage and a natural lust for struggle and combat, he could always be found where the blows were the thickest and most unrestrained. Hate was native to him, a vigorous force which would have been impersonal and dangerous in a man without a vision. But he had the vision: that of social justice, and the hatred became a hammer that could not be resisted. “The only difference between me and the bosses,” he would say, grinning and showing his wolfishly white teeth, “is that they love money and I don’t. That’s all.” It was true, for all its apparent obscurity: John Glenwyn was totally penniless, though he could have been quite otherwise.
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