By the time they set out for Baltimore the shadow over the country had darkened still more. Pierce studied the newspapers for hours every day. To his disgust, some of the western railroads had avoided trouble by raising wages as quickly as the men demanded. He was angry because he was frightened. His dividends had been so deeply cut this year that he was hard put to it to know how to pay the costs of his racing stable. It was unthinkable that Malvern should suffer because a horde of ignorant and dirty workingmen were dissatisfied with steady wages and good jobs.
Yet it was not just Malvern, he told himself honestly, that was his concern. Malvern was symbol of all that was sound and good in the nation. Family life, the land, healthy amusements, educated children, civilized ways of living—all were threatened. He wrote a letter of commendation to a magazine that printed a cartoon showing a skeleton disguised as a union rabble rouser, wearing a ribbon which was printed “Communist.” He was so angry one day that he could not eat his dinner because the foreigner named Marx, of whom John MacBain had spoken, was quoted in a northern newspaper as gloating over the rising strikes and dissensions and proclaiming them the beginning of a real revolution.
He had thrown the paper down and got to his feet and paced the dining room floor. “In God’s name what have Americans to make a revolution about?” he bellowed to Lucinda and their children. “We aren’t a lot of dirty starving peasants. We’ve got democracy here—a government, by God—”
“Pierce, stop cursing before the girls,” Lucinda commanded him. “Sit down and eat your beef before it’s cold.”
He had obeyed, but he could not eat as much as usual and he spent the rainy afternoon gloomily in his library, drinking too much with a savage satisfaction that if the world was going to hell he might as well go with it.
When they met John MacBain and Molly in Baltimore, at the great old-fashioned hotel which they had made their rendezvous, Pierce got rid of the womenfolk as fast as he could. He seized John by the arm and took him into the bar. It was mid-afternoon, and the place was empty but the two men sat down to drink, each comforted by the sight of the other’s grim looks.
“John, what the hell—” Pierce began. “It’s this stinking European fellow that’s behind everything!” By now Pierce had read enough to feel that he had found the source of evil. The man Marx was a threat to all that Malvern was.
John nodded and then said somberly, “All the same, Pierce, no foreigner could make headway here if we didn’t have four million unemployed. By Gawd, man, that’s a tenth of our population, pretty nearly! What’s happening at Martinsburg—” he broke off, shaking his head again.
“What’s happening now?” Pierce demanded. “I thought the police had—”
John snorted. “Police! They gave up. The mob was something awful. Why, Pierce, man, where have you been? The President of the United States has ordered out the government artillery!”
“Good God,” Pierce gasped. “But where are the state troops?”
“They wouldn’t fire on the strikers,” John said glumly. “Rotten with communism—the lot of them!”
Pierce felt dizzy with alarm. What he had seen as a dissatisfaction localized to a single industry, inspired by a single man, now grew into a danger as wide as the nation. He looked about the strange room and wished himself back at Malvern. The confidence with which he had left his own state, had crossed Virginia and Maryland, was gone. He was a stranger here, and who would listen to him? He dreaded meeting the executives whom he had been so sure he could guide. Then he pushed aside fear.
“John, we’ve got to be a beacon to the nation,” he said. “We’ve got to lead the railroads so wisely and so firmly that what we do will be a light to other industries. Everything depends on the railroads—we’re basic! If we can keep running and whip our men into reason, the nation will keep steady.”
“Amen, Pierce—if we can do it,” John replied.
They lifted their glasses simultaneously and looked at one another.
“Damn it, John,” Pierce said, “I can’t think of a thing in this world that’s worth proposing!”
“Nor I, by Gawd,” John agreed with unutterable gloom.
They drank their whiskey down in silence and for the comfort of their own bodies.
Pierce was awakened the next morning by his arm being shaken and then by the sound of shots. He looked up into Lucinda’s terrified eyes.
“Pierce—Pierce,” she was crying, “wake up—there’s some sort of a battle going on outside!”
He opened his dazed eyes wide and heard a roar like that of the sea beating against cliffs. He leaped out of bed, his nightshirt flying around him, and rushed to the window. A mob of people filled the street, milling, pushing, surging, yelling. “It’s here,” he cried, “the strike!”
“Let’s get out of this town, Pierce!” Lucinda cried back.
“You and the girls,” he amended. “You’d better go right to Washington as quick as you can before all the trains stop. Get out of the room, Luce, so that I can get dressed.”
She ran into the next room, obedient for once. Then the hall door opened and Joe came in. The white showed around the pupils of his eyes. “Lordy, lordy, what we goin’ to do?” he groaned. “The war’s bust out again—what the Yankees want now, marster?”
Before Pierce could answer, there was a loud knock and John MacBain came in, fully dressed. He had a telegram in his hand.
“I’ve got to get to Pittsburgh, Pierce,” he announced abruptly. “The Pennsylvania militia has been ordered out—they’re fighting mobs in the streets, there, too, by Gawd!”
“Pittsburgh!” Pierce groaned. “The whole country has gone mad.”
“They’re burning rolling stock there,” John said heavily. “You’ve got to meet the directors without me, Pierce.”
“If I have to, I have to,” Pierce said doggedly.
They clasped hands firmly and John was gone. Pierce turned. Behind him Joe stood waiting to shave him, mug in one hand and razor in the other. Pierce saw his hand shaking like an aspen.
“Give the razor to me. If you’re as scared as that, you’ll cut my throat,” he said sharply. All this nonsense, he thought angrily. What was the matter with him?
He dipped the brush in the soapy water briskly, swabbed his chin, and began to shave himself with long even strokes.
Behind him, Joe moaned, “We all be killed, I reckon!”
“Nonsense,” Pierce replied. Now that action was necessary he felt strong and competent. He had been an officer in the army, and he felt his blood grow cool again. He was not afraid of battle, now that he knew who the enemy was. He had sworn never again to enter a war against his fellow men but these communists were not fellow men. They were devils of destruction.
“You tell Georgia to help your mistress and the girls pack up right away,” he commanded Joe. “After breakfast I’ll get them into the private car and off to Washington.”
“You and me—” Joe faltered.
“We’re going to stay right here,” Pierce said grimly.
“Oh my—oh my!” Joe whispered under his breath.
He tiptoed out of the room and Pierce dressed himself. He had just buttoned his collar when the door opened smartly and he saw Sally mirrored over his shoulder. She was dressed for travel in her blue suit and hat. Her cheeks were flaming and her blue eyes were bright.
“Papa—” She came in and shut the door. “I’m not going to Washington—”
Pierce felt enormous irritation. “Oh yes, you are,” he retorted to her reflection in the mirror. “I’m going to be too busy to look after women—”
“Papa, I want to stay, with you—”
“You can’t stay with me—you must stay out of my way.”
“Papa—” she began again, but he snapped at her.
“Now, Sally, you can’t have your wish this time! The whole country is in danger. I’ve got to get to the company offices as fast as I can get rid of you girls.”
“But, Papa—wh
y are they fighting?”
“It’s a strike—you know that—” He was trying to fasten his tie.
“But why, Papa?”
“Well—they don’t want their wages cut.”
“Why do you cut them, Papa?”
“It’s not I—it’s the company.”
“But you told the company to do it—”
“I simply gave my opinion—the company is losing money—why, our profits are cut in half! The men have to share in the loss, that’s all. Management can’t take it all—”
“But, Papa, did you lose money or only just not make so much?”
“It’s the same thing,” Pierce declared.
“No, it isn’t,” Sally maintained.
Pierce turned to his beloved child with wrath and fury. “Now Sally, you don’t know what you’re talking about. If I expect to make five thousand dollars on a horse and I don’t make but twenty-five hundred, I’ve lost twenty-five hundred dollars.”
“No, you haven’t, Papa—you haven’t lost anything. You have the twenty-five hundred.”
She made such a picture of beauty as she stood there, her pretty face serious, her cheeks flaming, her red-gold hair curling under her blue hat, that his heat was smitten in the midst of his anger, and he softened.
“Honey, don’t you try to tell a man he hasn’t lost money when he knows his pocket is lighter than it ought to be. You get along—have you had your breakfast?”
Sally shook her head.
“Well, then, eat fast—I’m going straight to the station to see about a train to pull the car out—a freight or anything—”
“Papa, I warn you—” His daughter flung up her head and faced him. “If you make me go to Washington—I’ll—I’ll run away!”
“Sally—Sally!” he groaned.
From the street the roar came beating through the closed windows into the room. “There’s no time, child!”
“I will run away,” she repeated.
“What shall I do with her?” he asked loudly, lifting his eyes to the ceiling.
He wheeled and crossed the room and opened Lucinda’s door. She was in the next room with Georgia and Lucie, and all of them were packing the bags.
“Lucinda!” he shouted. “Sally is playing the fool—”
“I sent her to you,” Lucinda said briefly. “I can do nothing with her. She insists on staying with you. You’ve spoiled her, Pierce, though I’ve warned you again and again.”
In the doorway Sally stood smiling, triumphant. “Neither of you can do anything with me,” she said pleasantly. “So—I’m not going!”
Her parents looked at her, Lucinda coldly, Pierce savagely. “I’ve a good mind to give you a beating,” he muttered through his teeth.
“It’s too late,” Lucinda reminded him. “You wouldn’t lay a finger on her when she was little.”
Georgia looked up. “If you are willing, ma’am—sir—could I take Miss Sally to Philadelphia? Joe can go in my place to Washington, ma’am.”
They turned to her, grasping at the straw of escape.
“I’ve been thinking I would ask you to let me visit Bettina, please,” Georgia said. “If you’re willing, ma’am—Miss Sally can come, too.”
“No,” Lucinda said.
“Yes!” Sally cried. “Yes—yes—Papa, I’ve always wanted to see Uncle Tom again—”
“Sally!” Lucie’s prim whisper, horror-struck, hissed across the room.
“I don’t care—I do,” Sally insisted.
“Sally can stay at a hotel,” Pierce reasoned to Lucinda. “Georgia can be with her and look after her and Tom can come and see her.”
A volley of shots struck in the street and a window pane shattered.
Lucinda put her hands to her ears. “We’ve got to get away before we’re all killed—”
An hour later Pierce stood alone on the platform of the railroad station. His private car had gone, the last in a line of passage cars headed for the south. No one knew when the next train would leave, if ever. Trains were still leaving irregularly for the north, and on one of them he had put Sally and Georgia into a day coach, jammed with frightened people trying to leave Baltimore. He had held Sally close for a moment, exasperated with love for this wilful child of his. But Sally had been gay and excited.
“Mind you stay at a hotel,” he had commanded. “Your mama will never let me hear the end of it if you don’t.”
“Of course,” she had promised, without, he felt, in the least meaning it. He saw them on the train, squeezed against the window, and through the open window he had continued to talk.
“If things quiet down,” he said, “I may run up myself for a day or so, tell Tom. If I find you’ve been disobedient, Sally—”
“Oh, no!” she trilled.
The whistle blew and she waved and laughed. He saw Georgia’s face, softly alight, behind her.
“I hold you responsible for your young mistress, Georgia!” he shouted. The train was moving and he did not hear her answer, whatever it was. He caught her smile, and had a pang of foreboding.
But there was no time to think of what he felt. Across the platform a group of guardsmen were carrying the body of a young man. They laid him down and Pierce saw that he was dead. He drew near and looked down at him. He was bleeding from a gunwound and his face was mangled to a pulp, the features wiped away.
“A brickbat out of the damned mob,” one of the men muttered.
Before Pierce could speak the mob surged into the station.
“Get out of here, sir!” the guardsmen begged him—“They’ll tear you to pieces—in that silk hat!”
They surrounded him and hurried him across the tracks, and he made his way alone by back streets to the offices where the directors awaited him.
Pierce had never before faced the Board without John. Now as he looked down the long mahogany table, lined with grim faces, he felt his resolution fade. The power was in the hands of these men. He had been all for wielding that power while he was in Malvern. What threatened Malvern threatened the world. But now in the great dim board room, hung with red velvet from ceiling to floor at every window and paneled with the portraits of dead directors, he was confused. Feelings that he had forgotten came crowding back into his mind, memories so distant that he would have said they had ceased to exist.
He remembered again the young men who had died under his command in the war. They had fought with heartbreaking bravery, the pure bravery of the young, who alone are unselfish enough to die for a cause. The young man whom he had just seen in the street had died, too. How uselessly! A brick flung at random had crushed him. He had been ordered out this morning to do his duty and now he was dead.
He was distracted by his memories, confused and mingled with the news in telegrams and messages which lay before him.
“Military action must be taken all along the railroad,” Henry Mallows was saying in his high clear cold voice. “Nothing else will suffice.”
“The mob has command,” Jim McCagney said. He had aged greatly in the years that he had sat on the Board. His bitter grey eyes were set deep under eyebrows like bunches of dry heather.
Daniel Rutherford, the youngest of them all, turned at the sound of an open door, and took an envelope from a messenger boy. He tore it open and read it. “The Mayor has sworn in three thousand citizens as special police,” he cried. “He promises that the ringleaders of the mob will be in jail tonight.”
“Tut!” Jim McCagney growled, “don’t give a hoot for citizens in a case like this. Mallows is right. Guns are what’s wanted.”
“A detachment of one hundred marines is expected this evening,” Baird Hancock said drily.
“It’s the shops I’m thinking of,” Jonathan Yates put in. He was the one man in the room who had come up from the ranks, a thin, tired-looking man in a broadcloth suit too large for him. The heavy, velvet-lined collar rode up the back of his head and now and again he struggled with it.
Pierce was staring at the dispatche
s before him. “Pittsburgh, Reading, Harrisburg, Shamokin, Hornellsville, Chicago, Cincinnati, Zanesville, Columbus, Fort Wayne, St. Louis, Kansas City,” he read the names aloud solemnly.
Murmurs of anger rose from the men around the table. Pierce lifted his head. “I came into this room as fixed as any of you in my determination to put down these strikes,” he said slowly. “Now, as I see these foes catching from one place to another clear across the country, I ask myself—what have we done that was wrong?”
“Man, it’s not us—it’s the Reds!” McCagney shouted. “Our men alone wouldn’t have dared! The foreign communists have used our honest working folk as a pretext for their infamous machinations to overthrow the government of the United States!” He leaped to his feet, towering six foot six, his white hair flying, his beard a tangle. He banged the table with his fists. “Ne’er-do-wells!” he bellowed. “Rascals—robbers—internationalists!” He ground out the last word between his teeth with special hatred.
Silence followed, and in the silence Pierce drove away his memories. What had the past to do with today? “If we have proof that these strikes are inspired by foreigners,” he said slowly, “then it is time to put on our uniforms again and fight.”
“Amen, amen—” The word roared around the table from mouth to mouth.
They sat far into the night, while messages continued to pour in from the four corners of the nation. At midnight a last message was sent by the mayor. Two hundred and fifty rebels had been imprisoned. “Upon inquiry,” the mayor reported, “it was found that not one of them had been a worker on the railroad.”
“If we needed any further proof of foreign machination,” Henry Mallows said looking about triumphantly, “here it is.”
Pierce looked back at him, and wished that he need not agree with him. He had disliked Henry Mallows increasingly throughout the evening. Mallows had grown more handsome and distinguished looking with the years. Worldliness became him. His smooth cheeks and well-cut mouth were still young. What had seemed timid and foreign in his youth had become hard and self-assured as he had become a native and a patriot in his own country. His foreign wife had grown into a silent and delicate creature, finicking and invalid. There had been no children.
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