The Coal War (28 page)

Hal went to pay his call on Jessie Arthur. It was the first time he had seen her since their parting in London; she was thinner and paler, and evidently suffering intensely. She seemed to him exquisite, yet at the same time fragile—costly, artificial, like some rare flower that blooms indoors, and that a breath of rough wind might destroy. He took her in his arms and kissed her gently, and discovered that tears were running down her cheeks.

It was not merely that she was moved at seeing him after so long; she went on sobbing, until he asked, “What is the matter?”

“Oh, Hal! I've been hearing such dreadful things about you! You have been risking your life!”

“Yes, I suppose so,” he said.

He wanted to tell his story; but she could not wait to listen. “It's Papa!” she exclaimed. “What are we going to do about him?”

Old Mr. Arthur was taking Hal's conduct as a personal insult, it appeared. He had made the cause of the operators his own; it was the banking-house of Robert Arthur and Sons which had taken the lead in advancing the money to preserve “order” in the coal-country; and now the head of the house had read in yesterday afternoon's paper about the arrest of his future son-in-law! He had read it, not in the “Gazette”, with Hal's statement, but in the “Herald”, one of the interest-controlled papers, with a statement of Major Cassels, to the effect that young Warner had made himself a menace to peace in the strike-district, giving encouragement to rioters and assassins. And on top of it, this very morning had come the confession of Dinardo, involving Hal's friends and intimates, the father of the Dago mine-urchin whom he had brought into the Arthur home!

“Hal, he's wild!” cried Jessie. “What in the world are we going to do?”

“I don't know, dearest.”

“He's forbidden me to see you! If he finds you here—”

“I'll go, if you think best,” Hal said; but the suggestion came too late. There stood the old gentleman in the doorway!

[23]

The old gentleman was really as “wild” as Jessie had described; he was as “wild” as anybody could possibly have described. When he saw Hal, he gave a jump, and stood with his fists clenched and his cheeks swelling. He brought his fists down, and cried, “Well, sir!” Three times he brought them up and down, as if pumping up his rage, and each time he cried, “Well, sir! Well, sir! Well, sir!” Then he began, quite literally, to romp up and down the room; he would walk a dozen steps one way, and shake one furious fist at Hal, then he would wheel about and walk as many steps the other way, and shake the other furious fist at Hal. “So you've got out of jail, sir! You condescend to honor us with a visit, sir! Did you escape? Or have you served your term out? How does it happen they failed to shave your head, sir?”

Hal answered nothing. Jessie made an effort to interpose—“Papa!”—but she only succeeded in diverting the storm to herself for a moment. “Hold your tongue! I'll have order in my home, even if it's nowhere else in the state!”

And again the old gentleman turned upon Hal. “How dare you show your face in a respectable home? To bring your shame to sully my daughter's pure name? Look at that, sir—look at that!” And one of the trembling hands indicated the library-table, where lay a copy of the morning paper. “Murderers and assassins! Italian black-hand conspirators—your own associates, convicted out of their own mouths! And you introduced them to my daughter, you brought them to my home! Go back to your nest of criminals, sir—your
tent-colony
, as you call it!”

Four times the old gentleman had raced up and down, and his color had deepened to a fiery purple with the unaccustomed violent exercise. Now suddenly, as he turned, he saw through the open doorway the figure of the butler passing by. “Horridge!” he shouted, and the black-clad, elderly person appeared, trying to keep his correct, impassive face. “Horridge, I want the servants up! Bring them all! Instantly! You understand?”

“Yes, Mr. Arthur.”

“Bring the cook! Bring Thomas! Bring the gardener and his boy! Bring Jane and Ellen and Kate! I want them all—every one of them!”

“Papa!” cried the horrified Jessie; but the old gentleman shouted at Horridge, “Go on! Don't stand there gaping at me!” And as the butler disappeared, the exercising up and down the room continued.

Presently, out of the torrent of indignation Hal gathered the meaning of this new turn of the scene. A couple of weeks previously a reporter of the “Herald” had interviewed Hal and printed a few sentences of what he had to say about the strike. “Are you a Socialist?” the reporter had asked; and Hal, being a new hand and not seeing the trap, had answered, “I suppose I may be—after a fashion.” The reporter had made this the heart of the interview: “Coal-magnate's son a Socialist after a fashion!” And so old Mr. Arthur had got the phrase stuck in his crop. A Socialist after a fashion! An enemy of law and decency after a fashion! An incendiary and assassin after a fashion!

The servants came; frightened, yet curious, of course—knowing there was a “scene”. They stood in the doorway, each trying to keep behind the others; the old gentleman, turning in his mad career and seeing them, rushed up to them. “Come in! Come in! Howdy do, Yung?”—this to the fat and grinning Chinese cook. “Come in, Thomas, and you, Jones!”—this to the kitchen-man and the gardener. “Good morning, Kate! Howdy do, Jane? Walk in, Ellen! Walk in—don't be afraid!” And he took them by the shoulders and pushed them into the room—the footman and the gardener's boy, the chauffeur and the upstairs girls—eleven of them altogether, all that Horridge had been able to gather in the sudden emergency.

“Welcome! Welcome all!” cried the head of the banking-house of Robert Arthur and Sons. “I've called you up to introduce you to Comrade Warner. A Socialist after a fashion, you see—he'll be charmed to make your acquaintance! Comrade Yung, shake hands with Comrade Warner! Thomas, you're a Socialist after a fashion too, I believe—shake hands, shake hands, all of you!” For some reason Comrade Yung and Comrade Thomas hung back shyly, which did not please the old gentleman. “I want you to sit down and make yourselves at home! I mean what I say—sit down, sit down! We're all social equals now, there are no more classes, and I'm going to divide up my money and give you all a share, and we'll do the dirty work together. Comrade Kate, one of our women comrades, shake hands with Mr. Warner—you have pretty red cheeks and he'll be interested in you. We're going to be free-lovers now, you know—”

“Papa!” screamed Jessie.

And the old gentleman whirled upon her. “Yes, indeed! Didn't you know that? We're all free-lovers—after a fashion—”

“Papa, you shan't talk that way!”

“Oh, but you must get used to it! He has one woman down in the tent-colony, I hear, and you'll be the next. And Kate here—”

So far Hal had not said a word; but he thought it was time to speak now. “Mr. Arthur,” he said, “I realize that I made a mistake in coming to your home—”

“Yes, sir, you did indeed, sir!”

“So I think now, if you don't mind, I'll ask to be excused.”

“Very well, sir! Go back to your assassins and free-lovers—your Socialists after a fashion!”

Hal had turned, and started to the door; but he heard Jessie rushing after him, and she flung her arms about him, shrieking, “No, no! You shan't go!” And she turned upon her father. “How dare you say such things? How
dare
you insult your daughter?” She whirled upon the horrified crowd of servants. “Get out! Get out!” And she waved her hand with a gesture that made the group fairly reel.

There are times when discreet servants understand that the ladies of the household take precedence over the gentlemen, and this was one of the times. Yung and Thomas and Jones, Kate and Jane and Ellen, the gardener's boy and the footman, the chauffeur and the upstairs girl—they backed precipitately out of the room, and the last of them decorously closed the door.

Meantime Jessie was rushing on, a little virago, possessed by sudden unguessed demons. “How
dare
you say such things? I think you are
horrid!
I think you are
wicked!
I'll never speak to you again! You shan't drive Hal away—or if you do, I'll go with him! I'll go down to the coal-country with him, I'll join in the strike with him, I'll go to jail with him, you'll never see me again!”

The head of the banking-house of Robert Arthur and Sons quailed before this terrific blast. What was the world coming to, if a respectable father of a family could not lose his temper without his children being possessed by unguessed demons? He stood for a minute or two, pumping his hands up and down, puffing his cheeks and gasping like a cat-fish in the bottom of a boat; then he flung out his arms in a gesture of abandonment. “All right! All right! Have your own way! I wash my hands of the two of you! Go away with him if you wish—let him make you into a free-lover and an assassin!” And with this last cry of an elder and perishing generation, Mr. Arthur turned and rushed out of the room.

[24]

Jessie Arthur stood weeping in Hal's arms. Of course it took but a minute for the storm of her rage to pass, and then she was horrified at what she had done; she had never even thought a disrespectful thought about her father before—and now she had told him he was horrid! Did not Hal see the misery he was causing her, bringing all this dissension and distress into her life? How was she to stand it—all her relatives scolding her—brothers and sisters, cousins and uncles and aunts!

“Sweetheart,” he answered, “I see your trouble, but what can I do? I have a duty—”

“You have a duty to
me!
” she cried. “I need you, Hal!”

“Dearest, you don't need me as the strikers do. If you only knew what is happening to them!” And again he began to recite the cruel story: Mrs. Bobek with her poor, half-frozen little baby; Old Mike with his mutilated arm; the jails with their half-crazed inmates. Jessie had never heard of such horrors in her life, and she gazed at him aghast, the tears running down her cheeks.

“Jessie,” he said, “you want me to help
you;
but why can't you help
me
?”

“What could I
do
, Hal?”

“You might come down there and support those people.” Seeing her look of dismay, he added, “You threatened to, just now.”

“Yes, I know. But I couldn't really, Hal!”

“Why not?”

“Girls don't do such things.”

“Some girls don't,” he answered.

“What could I accomplish?” she asked, catching the note of bitterness in his voice.

“You might comfort people who are in distress; you might be the means of making others hear what was happening. The newspapers, you see—” Then suddenly he stopped, thinking what the newspapers would do if a daughter of the banking-house of Robert Arthur and Sons were to join the coal-strikers!

And she saw why he had stopped. “Mamma and Papa would go crazy!”

“I didn't suppose Mamma and Papa would enjoy it, Jessie.”

“They would lock me up, Hal—if they knew I was even thinking of such a thing!”

“There's a way you can prevent that, sweetheart. We can go and get married; then people would expect you to come with me.”

Such things have been done in the world's history, but to look at Jessie's face you would not have thought so. “Hal!” she whispered. “Papa would never see me again!”

“Papas have threatened that,” he said—“and changed their minds later on.”

He was looking at her. She wore a costly house-dress, exquisite, fragile, with colors chosen to match her eyes and hair. A maid had tended her soft hands, arranged the last strand of her golden-brown hair. Her little slippers were of cream silk, and would probably not be worn a dozen times before they were cast away. Hal, seeing them, had a sudden vision of the thick red mud at the Horton tent-colony!

Perhaps if he were to urge her, she would take the plunge. And it was a temptation, for he loved her, and when he was with her his senses were intoxicated. But his reason said no. If she came, it must be of her own impulse; it must not be with the idea, conscious or unconscious, that she could draw him back into the old life. Hal's mind had become clear on that point. He would not go back; he had enlisted for the war.

Then too, there was a doubt about his sweetheart, gnawing like a worm in his heart. How
could
she show so little effective response to the thing that was dear to him? Was there something lacking in her? He made the excuse that she was so young, but he had to admit that she was not so very young; she was nineteen—and surely that is old enough for a woman to discover that the jewels she wears are the crystallized agony of other people. Seeing that she did not discover it, he pointed it out to her, many times and in many ways. He waited for her to show that she cared about it; but all she showed was that she cared about
him
!

There was something Jessie was now trying to say to him; blushing and hesitating, not meeting his eyes. That dreadful story—that thing her father had referred to—

“What about it?” he asked, coldly. He would not help her on that matter.

“I want you to tell me, Hal!”

“I am not going to discuss scandals, Jessie. All I have to say is that the tale they are telling about me is false. You will have to believe that.”

“I believe it, Hal. But then—we have to think how things look to other people. Isn't that girl at the tent-colony?”

“She is at the tent-colony—because her young brother is lying there with his foot maimed by a bullet. Would you have her anywhere else under the circumstances?”

“No—I suppose not.” Then, after a pause, “Is she in love with you, Hal?”

“I don't know, Jessie,” he answered. He had no right to tell her about Mary Burke's affairs, and he would not take the chance of her relatives asking her questions.