The Coal War

by Upton Sinclair

  So, with beads of sweat on his forehead, he opened his eyes and realized that someone was knocking persistently on the door of the room. Before he could answer, the door began to open, and a face appeared. For a moment he thought he must still be dreaming. The face was that of Jessie Arthur!

  [37]

  She spoke his name, her voice a whisper. And so he realized that it was no dream, and started up—because he had his coat off, and his aspect and circumstances were not such as befitted the receiving of a young lady. Jessie, realizing this, stepped back, half closing the door; but it was only for a moment—when he had slipped into his coat, she appeared again. “Hal,” she whispered, “I must talk with you.”

  “Come in,” he said; and she came, and summoning all her resolution, closed the door behind her. Then, still holding the knob, she stood gazing at him, intense excitement in her aspect.

  “What is it?” he cried.

  She answered, her voice still faint and trembling, “I have done what you asked me to.”

  “What I asked you to?” Perhaps he should have known what she meant—but so much had happened since they had had their talk.

  “I have given up everything, Hal! I have run away from home!”

  “Jessie!”

  There was dismay in his tone, rather than welcome, and she, with her woman’s intuition, recognized it instantly, and turned even paler, and seemed to sway against the door. “You told me to do it, Hal! You said I must be willing to give up everything and follow you. So I did it!”

  There was a silence. Then, “Sit down,” he said, and made a move as if to help her. But she went to a chair alone, and sat down, gazing at him out of frightened eyes.

  “Hal!” she whispered. “You don’t want me?”

  “You don’t understand, Jessie. I’ve been through such horrible things since you saw me! I can’t think about—about us.”

  “I know, Hal; and I’ve been so frightened. I was afraid you’d be killed. I’ve suffered agonies—simply agonies. I couldn’t stand it any more, I had to come to you!”

  Again there was a silence, a long, trying silence. The tears came suddenly into the girl’s eyes, and she clasped her hands together. “Oh! You don’t love me any more!”

  “But Jessie, listen—I’ve ruined my life. I’ve been fighting, and I’ve killed men. I may be punished—sent to prison—”

  “I know, Hal. I met Captain Harding—that’s how I knew you were here. But I don’t care—I can’t do without you. I will share whatever happens.”

  “They might hang me!” he exclaimed.

  It was an attempt at evasion—and it availed not at all. “I don’t care what they do, Hal! Don’t you understand? I’ve run away! From Mamma and Papa—everyone and everything!”

  There was desperation in her voice—but no more than in Hal’s mind. “Jessie, I had no idea—” And he stopped.

  “What is it, Hal? You don’t trust me now? Answer me!”

  “It isn’t that, Jessie. But you see—something has happened. When you asked me if there was anybody else, I told you there was not—and that was true. But there has come to be since. When I thought you had given me up, I asked Mary Burke to marry me.”

  She started from her chair, and horror came into her eyes. “Oh, Hal!” And she took a step towards him, her hands stretched out. “Oh! You can’t mean it!”

  “I mean it, Jessie.”

  “Oh, surely, surely you couldn’t marry that woman! It’s too dreadful!”

  “I don’t know that I shall marry her, Jessie; she has not given me her answer.”

  “Not given you your answer?”

  “She told me to wait and think it over.”

  Jesssie had to have time to grasp the meaning of this last incredible statement. Some instinct told her that this was not a situation to be handled by hysterics; she became suddenly calm, mistress of herself. “Hal,” she said, “sit down, won’t you? There is so much I have to say to you.” And she came to him, and when he had seated himself in a chair, she knelt at his feet, gazing up into his eyes.

  “Hal, I know that you’ve lost your faith in me; and I don’t blame you—only you can have no idea how cruelly I’ve suffered, how hard it’s been for me, without a soul to understand or help. I kept hoping and praying that this trouble would be over, and that you’d come back to me. I had no idea it could last so long, or be so serious. But Hal, don’t you realize, I love you with all my heart, and I want to stand by you, I want to understand what you’re doing, and why. You must know that I love you, Hal! You must know that you love me; it’s just anger that has seized you, because I didn’t come, because I left you alone in your trouble! And you were here with this other woman, you felt sorry for her—and I feel sorry for her, too, Hal, I know she’s had a hard life—but oh, you can’t love her as you love me! You must know that, surely, Hal! Think what it would mean if you married her—a common woman, that couldn’t understand—”

  He started to interrupt, but she would not let him; she caught his hand in hers, and rushed on, with desperate pleading in her voice: “Oh, maybe I’m mistaken, maybe I’m doing her an injustice, I don’t really know her. But Hal, I know that I love you, and I knew you first—you were promised to me, Hal! And it isn’t as if I didn’t know that you love me. You do, and it’s just a momentary misunderstanding—you’re disgusted with me, and I don’t blame you—I’m ashamed of the way I’ve behaved. But I’m going to be different now, Hal; I’m yours, and I’m going to do what you ask me to—anything, anything! Don’t you understand, Hal—I’m yours, yours! I love you, I love you!”

  And there she was clinging to him, with her beautiful, sensitive face upturned, quivering with emotion; her trembling hands were clasping him. In that desperate emergency she cast away those reserves which are supposed to be essential to young ladyhood; he was hers, and she would have him—no vile common woman should take him away!

  So Hal felt again the power of that magic spell, that thrill of young love which is almost too intense to pass as happiness. Yes, he had known her first, she had the first place in his heart. He took her in his arms—how could he refuse to take her? And there she was, sobbing on his shoulder, clinging to him, quivering in his embrace. He was amazed by the storm of emotion which seized upon her, a terrible, soul and body-shaking tempest, incredible in a girl so delicate, so hitherto reserved. “I love you! I love you!” she whispered, again and again; and so how could he mention Mary Burke, how could he even think of her again? How could he do anything but respond to her embraces, and drink this cup of madness with her? He kissed her, and her lips met his, and seemed to cling to him and hold him, while a current of fire ran through his being, melting his resolution, burning up his fears and hesitations. Yes, she was his! She loved him in a way that was not to be denied, she sent into the deeps of his being a call that no man could leave unanswered!

  [38]

  When this soul and body-shaking tempest was past, Jessie was weak, almost swooning; he stood holding her in his arms, and her head was thrown back and her eyes closed—but even then her instinct did not fail to guide her.

  “What are we going to do, Hal?”

  “How do you mean, sweetheart?”

  “We’ve got to go away, or something. See the dreadful position I’m in! I’ve thrown away everything for you, I’ve ruined myself! I’ve come here alone, and when people find it out, they’ll never have anything to do with me any more.”

  “When did you leave home?” he asked.

  “Late last night. I said I had a headache and went to bed, and when everything was quiet I got up and stole away and took the night train. I locked the door of my room, and put a note on the outside, saying that I hadn’t been able to sleep all night, so please not to disturb me. That’ll put them off a while, but some time today they’ll break into the room, and they’ll know exactly where I’ve gone, and Papa will telephone down here, and they’ll come and arrest me, and Papa will take me and lock me up where I’ll never see you a
gain. That’s what I’m so frightened about, Hal—they may be after me any second!”

  “You say Appie knows where you are?”

  “Yes; I couldn’t find you, and I had to ask for him. I thought he might help me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Why—he said he thought you needed me.”

  Even in the midst of many bewilderments, Hal could not help smiling at this. But Jessie could see no particle of humor in the situation. “You do need me!” she exclained. “You look so ill, so perfectly dreadful! And don’t you see, Hal, how it was—I thought I could come to you and take care of you—I thought you would welcome me, that you’d be glad of what I’d done—”

  “So I would, Jessie—”

  “I thought—I thought we could be married right away, as you had said before; then they couldn’t carry me away, they couldn’t separate us. But now—now I’m disgraced forever! I’ve come to this horrible place—to your room! And if you cast me off, no one will ever speak to me again—”

  “No, dear,” he answered, “we’ll go and get married.”

  There was nothing else he could say; he had invited her, and now he would have to go through with it, and silence once for all the voices of protest in his soul. Obviously, every moment that she stayed here in this room, she was more deeply compromised; he would have to take her out. He had promised Appie not to leave the room, but Appie would not count this a breach of his word, but rather an intervention of providence to relieve him of an impossible burden.

  So Jessie wiped away her tears, and made a stab at the straightening of her hair, which had been blown awry in the tempest of emotion. They went down stairs—not too intensely preoccupied to note the significant smiles of loungers in this third-rate village hotel. Hal did not have to ask where to go, for he knew the justice of the peace, as it happened—the village coal-merchant, to whom, in the early days of government by gunmen, the strikers had many times made futile appeals both for justice and for peace. Now, however, the official was more cordial—this was the sort of work a justice of the peace could do gallantly, even in the midst of civil war! Captain Harding, having been found and summoned by telephone, came swiftly in an automobile; and with him for one witness and the village constable for the other, the irrevocable step was taken—just about ten minutes before the constable received a telephone message from police-headquarters in Western City, instructing him to seek out and hold under guard a runaway young lady named Jessie Arthur—age twenty, height five feet seven, hair golden brown, eyes brown, wearing a grey tailored suit and a small grey hat with a golden pheasant’s wing.

  [39]

  It was a strange and troubled honeymoon they had: the bridegroom being so much concerned about a strike-war that it was only by starts and flashes that he would realize that he was married; while as for the bride—well, she would think about her father and her family, and be seized with terror; and then she would realize that she had got the man she wanted, and she would be dizzy with rapture; and then again she would look about, and find herself completely surrounded by hordes of incendiary foreigners, and she would have fits of shivering again. She had come with her mind made up to be wholly and completely Hal’s, to subordinate herself and her ideas and wishes to him; she would not once ask him to come away, or to refrain from any of his revolutionary proceedings—and by this heroic and loving resolution she held fast for not less than four and twenty hours.

  Fortunately there was no more fighting. The truce which had been declared was made permanent by the news that Federal troops were on the way to take command of the situation. It was a striking commentary upon the generally accepted idea of the strikers as outlaws, that from the moment they knew that the militia had been ordered away, and that they were to be actually protected, not a single shot was fired in that entire coal-country!

  Meantime, Hal had one duty that could not be shirked; he must tell Mary Burke about his marriage. “Can’t you write to her?” Jessie ventured, timidly; but he answered that decency required him to see her, and Jessie said no more. Early next morning they took the train to Pedro, where Mary was helping in the care of a couple of hundred refugees.

  She had already heard the news, of course; for the reporters had been “on the job”—here at last was an occasion when a “millionaire Socialist” might take his rightful place upon the front page, even of Tony Lacking’s “moral paper”! Here were all the elements of “romance”—a truly and inescapably and essentially American “romance”, with two of the city’s wealthiest and therefore most influential names, and a desperate class struggle to serve as spice, and a real physical running away, and a real serious appeal to the police! A young “millionaire Socialist” might hand a ten dollar bill to a village constable and bid him keep still, and the constable might in all sincerity intend to do it, and think that he had done it; but of course he could not help telling the story to his wife, and his wife could not help telling the baker’s wife and blacksmith’s wife—and so it would be easy for a reporter, coming along an hour or two later, to get as many highly colored versions of the matter as he might wish. And obviously, of course, any competent reporter would realize that one of the first things the eloping young lady would do would be to send a telegram to her father, telling the news and begging for forgiveness; and any American reporter would know ways of getting a glimpse of that telegram—or, failing the glimpse, would feel perfectly safe in “faking” it!

  There was nothing said about “Red Mary”, of course; there was no romance about her, none for her. “Red Mary” was out begging old clothing among the towns-people of Pedro, for women and children who had been driven out of their tent-homes and caught in the rain, and had nothing dry to put on, and no money to buy things. Having buried her young brother only two days before, the girl had plenty of reason for regarding herself as badly treated, and for staying at home and being overwhelmed by grief; but instead, here she was with young Rovetta and a handcart. When Hal met her, she was helping to push this vehicle, loaded to top-heaviness with cast off clothing of every size and color and shape.

  Needless to say, the young “millionaire Socialist” had been looking forward to this interview with no little perturbation. It is one of the disadvantages incidental to being too eligible, too attractive—this sinking at the heart as you walk down the street and see a girl approaching; this sense of unutterable self-abasement, of desire to sink through the side-walk, to disappear entirely from sight and even from memory. In vain the too-eligible and too-attractive one tells himself that the law does not allow him to marry two women, and that in such a matter it is a question of first come, first served. The uncomfortable sensations do not leave him—especially when they are accompanied by a sense of pity so strong as to make his heart bleed.

  Mary had a band of black about her arm, the only reminder of poor crippled Tommie with the back of his head shot off. She had no trace of that Irish complexion which had caused Hal to say that she must dine on rose-leaves; on the contrary, her face was wan and deeply lined, and when she saw Hal, her effort to smile was infinitely tragic.

  Rovetta tactfully went on with his cart, and Mary put out her hand. “I’ve heard the news, Joe,” she said. “I wish ye luck.”

  “Mary,” he began—and then he did not know what to say. “I’m ashamed to meet you, Mary.”

  “You mean about us, Joe? Sure, don’t think of it! ’Twas only a dream, Joe. Such things don’t happen!”

  “I want to tell you, Mary, Jessie came to me—she had run away from home, and I couldn’t—” He stopped; it did not seem quite right to apologize for having got married; but on the other hand it did not seem quite right not to apologize!

  “I know how it was, Joe—at least I read in the paper, and I could guess. And I know ye were promised to her, and I know ’tis better. She’s your own kind. Ye know how it is, I like to be honest, and I’ll not try to deny I’d have liked to had ye, Joe Smith; but I knew I could not have made ye happy. ’Twas a dream, as I s
ay; such things don’t happen to the likes of me.”

  There was more pain for “Joe Smith” in these brave words than there would have been in either tears or reproaches. He stood looking at the girl, with her wan features and her lips twisted into another attempt at a smile. She had spoken the true word in that last—such things did not happen “to the likes of her”. Freedom and joy did not come to the likes of her; “romance” did not touch her with its golden wings. For the likes of her were poverty and frustration, humiliation and loneliness, at the best the bitter mockery which the world and its preachers call “duty”. Pushing a hand-cart down the street, for example, and collecting old clothes for naked and shivering outcasts—while reading in the papers about the triumphs and delights of those who have been born to power and ease!

  It was the way of the world, summed up in one picture; and as Hal contemplated it, he was suddenly seized with shame for those raptures of young love to which he had abandoned himself. Those charms which had seduced him, those allurements of the senses, those sweetnesses of the “honeymoon”—stolen sweets, extracted from the sweat and blood of people like this girl before him!

  “Joe,” she said, reading his every thought, “ye must not be takin’ it like that! Ye must give her a chance, and maybe ye can teach her, and both of ye be happy. Only—I must say this, Joe—don’t forget us—I mean the miners. They need ye so bad!”

  “I know it, Mary; I’ll never forget!”

  “We been beaten, Joe! We got nothin’ to show for this long fight! Ye must realize that—”

  “Mary, please believe this—I’ve told it to Jessie, and I’ll never change. I’m going on helping the working-people, all the rest of my life. You and I will find ways—some new plan—”

  “You and I can never work together like we been doin’, Joe.” And she smiled sadly at his protests. “There’s no use thinkin’ about that—ye’ll find it out in time. But there’ll be many ways ye can help the miners, and if I can be sure that ye won’t lose interest, then I’ll not feel so bad about losin’ ye, Joe—I’ll be able to tell meself it was a help to ye to think ye were in love with a workin’ girl!”