“Is there something?” replied Michael gently.
Allan moved, and the envelope crackled in his pocket. “I have to study,” he said. “You can go to sleep if you want to.” Michael smiled, and the smile was slow and sad. “I usually do, don’t I?” But he did not move, and his eyes remained on his brother’s dark and impatient face. “I have been thinking of your speech, Allan. Dad says the men are all talking about it to him. Poor fellows. They are counting on you to give them hope and courage, and to tell them what to do.”
“Very encouraging,” said Allan. “I hope we have a large crowd.”
Michael nodded. The quiet hands on his knees did not move. “And our Dad has told us that old Dan Boyle is ready to back you with all the money you want. It will be a great day for you, Allan. It is a miraculous thing to have a voice like yours, and the ability to use it, and the knowledge to inspire it. In a way, it is a sacred thing, a gift.”
“Thanks,” said Allan.
“It can be a dangerous thing, too,” added Michael thoughtfully.
Allan stood up. “What do you mean?” he demanded.
“Why, nothing at all,” said Michael with extreme mildness. “What did you think I meant, Allan?”
“Are you trying to say that I shouldn’t arouse the men to take action in their own behalf, and demand justice? Are you trying to say that I should just soothe them and urge them to wait for ‘better days’ in some vague future? And promise them a comfortable heaven at the end?”
Michael smiled again, and the smile was more sorrowful than before. “You know I don’t mean that, Allan. I know when you are acting, and you are acting now.”
Astounded, and enormously alarmed, Allan watched his brother remove his clothing and get into his long nightshirt. All Michael’s movements were slow and prosy and deliberate. This had annoyed Allan before; tonight it infuriated him. “Acting!” he said. “What the hell do you know about me, anyway?”
“A great deal, and what I know doesn’t give me pleasure,” said Michael. He got into bed and resolutely turned his face to the wall. Allan could see the broad and earthy mound of him, calm and immovable. There would be no more talk from Michael tonight. He fell asleep at once.
Allan sat down at the table and pulled a book toward him. His face was savage and intent. It was impossible for that mud-colored fool to know anything, unless he had preternatural powers. He opened his lawbooks, took out his yellow notes. Hour after hour went by. The windy rain battered screamingly against the windows. The lamplight wavered, sank, lifted again. Michael snored, as did Tim and his wife. A train howled dolorously through the darkness. There was no other sound in the room but the slow turning of pages. Allan pushed a book aside, took up another. This was a nightly search, dogged, unrelenting. It was not until almost three o’clock that Allan found what he had been seeking for many and almost hopeless months. Then he nearly shouted aloud in his delight, and he struck the page softly with his clenched fist.
Two years ago, in the tiny town of Flintsburg, an obscure and fusty old judge had rendered an opinion in the case of The Grandon Smelting Company vs. John Hillary. He had died six months later. His decision, still valid, still a precedent, had been hastily consigned to oblivion, and had gathered dust. No lawyer, famous or unimportant, had discovered it in its limbo, or if one had known of it, he had never exhumed it. Yet it stood on that page like a concentrated flame.
John Hillary had tried to unionize the workers of the company. He had called them to a meeting and had aroused them. He had been arrested on the charge of “disturbing the peace of the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” The miserable little lawyer who had been hired by the pennies of the workers had apparently lacked all competence, and had probably been bribed. But Judge Seldon Timothy had said, “It is my opinion that the punitive laws passed against labor in this Commonwealth are unconstitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution which prohibits free speech and free assembly; in fact, it expressly emphasizes these rights. Our punitive laws are a deliberate attempt to abrogate the Constitution, for no man is forbidden to form a brotherhood or a society which does not violate the precepts of the Constitution. Therefore, it is again my opinion that in bringing this man before me, true violence against the Constitution has been committed, for he has been arrested unjustly on a charge which attempts to abrogate the Constitution of the United States of America. It is further my opinion that any person or persons who attempt in any way to prevent the formation of a labor union or fraternal society are guilty of a violation of the Constitution and should be prosecuted. Case dismissed.”
There was the precedent, and Allan laughed again, exultantly. The Law. The Law was a harlot.
Michael murmured in his sleep distressfully, and Allan turned with a quick movement toward the bed. The lamplight flickered, rose high, and struck the poorly carved figure on the crucifix, which hung over Michael. For an instant it glowed as if touched by lightning.
26
The freight train lumbered, with screams and groans and squealings, through the narrow valleys and around and up and down the steep hills. Through sheer joy and pride and a sense of power, Tim Marshall pulled the cord and let the voice of the train, howling and echoing, race along the sides of mountains and go twisting through the valleys. The shrieking was not confined to demands for the right of way, or as warnings. Allan, his son, was firing for him, and, as usual, he was irritated by the irresponsible noise. But as usual Allan said to himself: Every man craves power. Small souls expend their craving in profitless clamor.
The pounding train thundered through small industrial towns, foggy and stinking with smoke and chemicals. Allan stood near his absorbed father, who was happily staring through the open window of his cab. The young man looked distastefully at the miserable little cities cowering under the December sky. Some day, he thought, people will demand the centralization of industries into one area, crowded together where they can stink all by themselves and allot one another space. And then about them there will be an open area like the circle surrounding a plague-stricken city, where no one will be allowed to live, and where only railroad spurs will be permitted. Far from the industrial centralization, the people will build their houses, free to breathe unpoluted air, to cultivate their gardens, and to live in quiet. It will be a problem for transportation, but that will be solved if men put their minds to it.
Tim Marshall could feel his son, who was taking a short rest from the firing of the engine, standing near him, looking over his shoulder. He turned his head and grinned at the sweating and black-faced young man. Sure, and it was a fine lad, that Allan. A gentleman, as Mary always said. Even the filthy shirt, rolled to the elbows, the open collar, the soot and the patched trousers, couldn’t take that look of gentry from him. But it’s gentry the Irish are, I’m thinking, thought Tim proudly. Sons of kings. He began to roar: “The harp that once through Tara’s halls!” His voice was a resonant bass, and it pleased him. He pulled the ear flaps of his cap down closer over his ears, for the bitter air stung; his face was bright red from the wind. He gave utterance to the train again; then, when the wailing died away, he shouted over the crash of his passage, “And so it’s to Scranton ye’ll be goin’, with that patent of yours. Good luck, my boy. Your mither made a novena for ye.”
Allan shouted back, “And when it’s sold, and under production, you and Ma will be living in a mansion!” Tim laughed aloud. He could not conceive of any fortune, in his simplicity, and so he said, “The poor lads, losing their fingers now, and ye’ll be the cause of savin’ ’em.”
He was happy. A train was a beloved and living thing to him, a yelling monster answering to his will. What more could a man want, except, perhaps, a decent living wage—not much, but enough for contentment, a pint of beer on a Saturday night, and solid food in the pantry. A new dress at Christmas for Mary, and a bit for the collection plate of a Sunday. Tim sighed, but not too discontentedly. A man had much with a wife like Mary and two fine sons. He shouted agai
n, “And it’ll be off with Mike after the holidays! And ye’ll be marryin’.”
He heard the raucous scraping of the shovel. His frown was not only to squint his eyes against cinders. Twenty-seven, that Allan. A lad that age should be married to a nice colleen, and there should be grandchildren. A little girl, with black curls and a smile. Tim pulled the whistle again; steam and smoke poured from the smokestack. The train was hurtling itself through open country now, before approaching Scranton.
Allan paused to wipe the blackened sweat from his face with the back of an equally black band. He stood again near his father. The December sky, remote and cold, was the color of blue steel, adrift with layers of white cloud. Below it, the dim aquamarine hills circled a small valley in which lay a small lake like frozen and pallid silver. The heaving and nearer land had taken on a dark bronze tone, flecked, in crevices, by veins of snow. Along the right of way spruces coated with glimmering ice stood in ranks of pale crystal. There was something wild yet static in the scene, something of desolation. Tim was seeing it also. “Not like the ould country,” he said. “After twenty-seven years, it gives a man’s heart no comfort.” He looked forward. The grime of Scranton blurred the painted color of the sky, and Tim was relieved.
Allan’s Sunday suit, and a clean shirt and a black cravat and his best boots, had been carefully wrapped, that morning, by Mary Marshall. Over the newspaper bundle Allan had thrown his working coat, to protect it from soot and sparks. He would wash in the station. He went back to his firing, for the last spurt to Scranton. Tim was singing again.
The great murky bulk of the Interstate Iron & Steel Company stood like a fire-breathing and black-smoking dinosaur in the midst of tiny ramshackle cottages and gaunt, impoverished double-family houses, all grimed with soot, every window coated with dark film, every brick or wooden walk gritty underfoot, every stoop overlaid with the lava of cinders. The monster chimneys roared and spewed with flame against a lead-colored sky that seeped filthy moisture; a heavy stench mingled with the smoke. No one had considered the welfare or health of the inhabitants of the region when this stupendous mill had been built some eight years ago, a subsidiary of the mighty Interstate Railroad Company. Had anyone suggested that the company build beyond the confines of the city, indignation would have been expressed: “We need a constant water supply, and the Interstate Railroad Company should have easy access to its own freight yards.”
“The imperious needs of our hugely expanding country, and, in fact, the needs of the Public, come first,” Rufus deWitt would have said virtuously. No one had suggested that the inhabitants of the area were part of “the country,” or had any relationship with the “Public.” The relationship existed, however; many of the men who lived in the immediate area of this gigantic volcano worked within its smoldering walls. They coughed and sweated around its open hearths and its pits, and they coughed and shivered in their broken little houses at night. The river which ran near the mill was discolored with purple, yellow, sickly blue, and reddish blotches, its banks throwing up the skeletons of dead trees, its margins smeared with slime and the residue of chemicals, so that no living thing could grow there.
The yards about the mill were filled with man-made hills of slag and coke. They steamed, and they grew daily. Three spurs of the Interstate Railroad Company entered the yards, and the clanging engines and the belching smokestacks contributed to the noise of the area and the foulness of the air. A tall wooden fence, pointed and almost invulnerable, surrounded the yards and the mill, and at each four entrances armed guards, truculent and forbidding, stood in small booths, permitting only carefully scrutinized visitors or bonafide workmen to enter. There had been threats of “labor trouble” recently, and so the guards were doubly watchful, scowling and threatening.
Allan Marshall approached one of the gates, his cap pulled over his forehead, his old greatcoat fastened tightly over his Sunday suit. He glanced above the fence and saw the firelit and bellowing chimneys. He pulled the bell rope beside the gate, and immediately a guard slid aside the cover of a small opening in the thick wood and glared out at him. “No help bein’ hired!” he shouted contemptuously, noting the obvious poverty and low estate of the young man outside. He slapped the cover back over the opening. Allan nonchalantly rang the bell again. The cover flew back and the guard’s face, savage and swollen, appeared. “Get the hell out of here if you don’t want a bullet in your yeller hide!” he screamed.
Allan smiled and extended an envelope toward the face. He said very gently, “You’ll be looking for another job tomorrow, Cerberus, if you don’t read this and let me in at once.”
The guard’s eyes, black and piglike, stared at him with inhuman rage. Then two dirty fingers appeared beside the face and the envelope was snatched from Allan’s hand. The fine dirty rain sifted down, and as the sky darkened, the fiery chimneys brightened. Allan could see only the bent cap of the watchman now; the man was slowly and painfully reading a letter signed by Thomas Angers, Superintendent of the Interstate Iron & Steel Company, and addressed to Allan Marshall, 3 Potter’s Road, Portersville, Pennsylvania. Then the cap disappeared, the opening slammed shut with a violent clatter, a key grated in a lock, and the heavy gate swung open with loud creakings and groanings. Allan stepped inside, and the gate fell back, and was locked. The watchman studied Allan with the hatred of all small men who have been humiliated. “Who’da thought it?” he jeered. “In them clothes, too!”
“Not any worse than yours, my good man,” replied Allan.
“And my name ain’t Cerbi——or what the hell you call it!” said the guard with a fresh glare.
“It fits you,” said Allan. “Which way to Mr. Angers’ office?”
Another guard, gnomelike yet powerful of body, appeared at the door of the booth. “Watch the gate; I’m takin’ this fine gentleman to the office,” said the first guard sneeringly. He beckoned to Allan with his head, then trudged toward the mill, his boots grinding on gravel and cinders. Allan followed, whistling. The sweet strong sound pierced through the clamor and the roar that beat through the heavy and sodden air. The faery Irish theme was like a nostalgic memory in purgatory, sad yet hopeful. The guard stopped, turned his head, and the brutal face changed. “Irish, eh?” he growled. “So’m I.” He trudged forward again, looked back. “You don’t believe it, I’m thinkin’.” Allan continued to whistle, as if he were alone in some dreamlike green glade drifting with fragrant mist. “You think I like this job?” said the guard belligerently.
“Why not?” asked Allan. “You make a living at it.” The guard stopped as if struck, swung about and glowered. He studied Allan for a long moment, squinting at him. Then his heavy features became somber. “I can see,” he said, and walked on. “And it’s a favor you’ll be doin’ me to whistle somethin’ else.”
The walk seemed interminable to Allan; the two men wound around the steaming hills of slag and coke and coal. Now tiny streams of black water ran through the cinders, and little pools reflected back the scarlet vomiting from the chimneys so that they formed puddles of fire on the dark and broken earth. The mill and its subsidiary buildings loomed like gushing mountains in the near distance. A very good facsimile of hell, thought Allan. To the side, somewhere, engines screamed, and freight vibrated on some unseen tracks.
Now they were on wet brick walks, which skirted the mill. They were suddenly in a clear place, devoid of hills of slag, and the unbearable noise became more bearable. Allan’s whistling became louder and clearer. The guard was pointing in silence to the front of a building with a grilled door. He thrust Mr. Angers’ letter in Allan’s hand, and after a long and bitter look at the young man he turned away and trudged back, leaving Allan alone. Allan watched the squat and ungainly figure recede, and he smiled. He went to the grilled door, rang a bell. The door opened and a thin and white-faced man, obviously a clerk, peered at him from under a green eyeshade. Allan gave him the letter.
In a few moments he was in a quiet corridor, gaslighted and clean and ba
re, lined with closed doors. The roar of the mills was almost obliterated here. Allan followed the silent clerk, turned a corner in a corridor, and found himself walking on crimson carpet. This new, and shorter, corridor was obviously private, and now Allan could hear subdued voices, assured and rich, and once he heard a man laugh confidently. At the end of the corridor there was another door, and this the clerk opened with an obsequious bend of his head directed not at Allan but at those who sat beyond. “Mr. Marshall,” he murmured.
Allan saw before him an immense firelit office, with paneled walls on which hung an excellent painting. Crimson curtains shut out the desolation beyond the windows, and an Oriental rug covered the polished floor. A glittering chandelier, ablaze with light, hung from the tall ceiling and shone on brown and blue leather furniture and on a broad carved desk in the exact center of the room. At the desk sat a slender, middle-aged man, and beside him, smoking a very fine cigar, sat another man, ponderous, clad in broadcloth, with a florid face and a mane of gray hair streaked with red. Rufus deWitt! thought Allan, and for a moment he was taken aback. The slender man said quietly, “Come in, Mr. Marshall.” He indicated a chair opposite Rufus with a movement of his white and elegant hand. As Allan walked to the chair, Mr. Angers’ eyes, calm and almost colorless, scrutinized him without personal interest. He possessed the stillest face Allan had ever seen; it seemed carved and molded out of ivory, without a line of character, without a wrinkle, without expression. His pale hair was coated exactly over every contour of his skull. Here, thought Allan, as he carefully removed his greatcoat, is the most impersonal face I have ever encountered.
Never Victorious, Never Defeated Page 31
