Meredith Nicholson

“ Voices are choked and muffled when men speak, and speech in the coal world is limited to essential directions and conferences; laughter is rarely heard. Indeed, a particular gravity marks the coal miner, and he does not always lose it when he emerges into sunlight. The hazard of his trade and the gloom in which he labours under the crust of the spinning globe numb any joy he might take in his own skill.
This life in the earth was not to Joe’s liking, and he had never expected to return to it. Love of Wayne Craighill alone had brought him back to the pit ”

“ We count on him, Colonel Craighill. By the way, Wayne, an old friend of ours has turned up here—Paddock of agile legs and stammering tongue. What profits it, may I ask, for any man to lay up store of wealth for his children when they’re likely to scorn the fleshpots for locusts and wild honey? One might expect Paddock to come here to study the iron business, but bless me! he’s come to save our souls. ”

“ She saw her hopes for her work crumble into dust, and the world of beauty which the dawning consciousness of her powers had illumined before her, the joy of success, the stimulus of applause, the acquaintance of people who would appreciate her skill—all these things she would sweep away by a word and forget that they had ever been her dreams or that life had ever held anything better for her than being Joe’s wife, and living on with him, and eating the bread won for her by the hand that lay there in hers. ”

“ Through these years of the Great Prosperity it was as easy to count millions as to count heads. In fact, Mr. Richard Wingfield, watching and listening in his corner, announced that a million had become a contemptible sum that hardly assured one’s daily bread.
Wayne Craighill was, in the fullest sense, a child of the city. Its oldest blood was in his veins. His mother had been a Wayne, the daughter of a merchant whose great-grandfather had fought in the Continental army, and whose grandfather had shared Perry’s glory on Lake Erie. ”

“ And Addie, poor Addie up there at the house, you deceived her, too, for she thought she was marrying a man; and the night you went to Boston without her because you were afraid to spring her on the Brodericks, she found you out.”
“I should strike you down for this—for speaking to me of my wife in such infamous terms. The fact that you assume the rôle of her champion is an insult to her—a flagrant, unpardonable insult!”
“It’s you that insulted her; you were ashamed of her; men treat their mistresses better than that! She deserved better of the great Roger Craighill.” ”

“ There, too, was Paddock, the clerical sentimentalist. Only a little while before Paddock had crossed the threshold of his office and struck down, in effect, the cup with which he was about to consecrate his life to evil things. It is the way of the guilty to take counsel of omens; the knocking at the gate in Macbeth is the loud beating of every conscience-struck heart. Wayne’s imagination played upon the figure of Jean Morley, drifting through the storm to the remote house where a woman, weak as he was weak, yielded herself to a kiss he had calculated in coldest reason. ”

“ Jean went to the house of the [478] friends with whom she had been staying, and the next morning left for New York.
Joe was at work in a dark cavern of the Florence colliery at the hour of her departure. With his butty and their two labourers he had gone to a far corner of the mine. There is no night of the outer world like that of the pit beneath, and no atmosphere like that of the moist air of a coal mine. The very silences have their own profundity, as though heightened by the weight of darkness. ”

“ There are some men who, if they asked to be allowed to remain here permanently to escape the dangers and temptations of the world, I should not refuse. I should feel that way in the case of weaklings, failures or cowards; but you are different, Craighill. You do not fall within these classifications. The House of Peace is not for you; you’ve got to go back into the world to wrestle with it, to get under the devil’s heels perhaps, but to find your feet finally and in time to become a man, honoured, respected and loved by men. ”

“ He bought a pipe as better suited to his new rôle as a man of the road and they set out for a walk in the streets of Harrisburg. Laughter flashed out from open windows; boys and girls went sweet-hearting through the quiet streets; gay speech, floating out from verandas and doorsteps, contributed to the sense of spring. A girl’s voice, singing to the strumming of a banjo, gave him a twinge of heartache. He was an alien in a strange land and the openness and simplicity and sweetness of the town life drove in upon him the realization of his own detachment from the world of order and peace. ”

“ She walked as people walk who are bred in a hill country—with a slight sway of the body from the hips—and she carried her head high. In imagination he robed her in fashionable raiment, a figure of distinction in any company, only to protest to himself that her qualities were superior to feathers or flounces and were as new in her as though no woman had ever possessed them before. ”

“ Craighill shrugged her shoulders and her eyes brightened with a rekindling of her anger, coloured now by what seemed to be a genuine fear.
“Wayne,” she cried, “what is there about that man? He’s an evil being of some kind. That first time I saw him at Fanny’s he affected me just as he did to-night. I have a feeling of suffocation, of smothering, when he looks at me and those little eyes of his dance like devils.”
“Oh, now, Addie, that’s coming pretty rough! Walsh is a bully old fellow. He can’t help not being handsome, but he’s the real thing; there’s no punk in Tom Walsh. ”

“ Colonel Craighill believed himself sincere in his devotion to reform work, and the Mail’s assault was unfortunate in that it evoked echoes of the familiar cynicisms against all movements for our political and moral uplift. Gentlemen in white waistcoats at banquet tables cannot re-create mankind by resolution; nor do their failures mean that the people are unsound. Politics and government are practical matters. Democracy is an ideal. ”

“ In her prettiest of morning gowns she seemed to Jean Morley the loveliest and most fortunate of beings; but to her the girl was only a reminder of yesterday’s untoward events. Jean’s steady, grave eyes, tranquil from restful slumber and her freshness—the glow of her skin from the bath, her appearance of zest for the new day’s business—only irritated Mrs. Craighill as they sat at the tiny table that had been improvised before the sitting room fire.
[308] One thing must be done and done quickly: Mrs. Blair must be advised of her presence in town. ”

“ It did not seem possible during these bountiful years that the wolf would ever yelp in the steep cañons of the Greater City, or that steel, iron and coal could ever less magically change to gold. It was, indeed, inconceivable that the prosperous citizens would not forever disport themselves in the glittering hotels of New York and go on discovering, like so many Columbuses, the delights of London and Paris. ”

“ Mrs. Craighill had made sure of the girl; their evening together had afforded ample opportunity for the strengthening of ties of amity.
She had tested Jean in her own way and found her singularly guileless. In the quiet of Mrs. Craighill’s sitting room she had thrown open doors that revealed the narrow vistas of a happy girlhood; and a certain forlornness due to Jean’s identification, in Mrs. Craighill’s mind, with wet shoes and shabby, bedraggled skirts, yielded to the charm of the girl’s simplicity and candour. ”

“ He was in his thirtieth year but appeared older to-day as his gaze lay upon the drifting, shifting smoke-cloud that hung above the Greater City.
The son of Colonel Roger Craighill was inevitably a conspicuous person in his native city and his dissipated habits had long been the subject of despairing comment by his fellow-citizens, and the text of occasional lightly veiled sermons in press and pulpit. Dick Wingfield had once remarked that is was too bad that there were only ten commandments, as this small number painfully limited Wayne Craighill’s possible infractions. ”

“ We’re all chumps where the women are concerned, Wingfield; they nail us every time. The Colonel was bound to walk into the trap. Lord, man, even I’ve had ’em after me! A few yards of crêpe coming in to ask my advice about managing their property; sympathy gag; helpless woman; no one to appeal to; comes to Tom Walsh because of his success in business, his reputation for being square and so on. Now that I’m down here alone and the impression’s abroad that I’m a solid citizen, they’re looking me up rather more freely. While I was with Craighill the Colonel got all the crêpe. ”

“ The erect figure of the man, the arched neck and upraised foot of the horse, were startlingly vivid. The weird spectacle held them fascinated. At any moment the mystical horseman might take flight and gallop into the enfolding fog in pursuit of his lost legion. Other figures, equally fantastical, and ghostly monuments rose against the starry sky out of the drifting fog-ribbons. Joe, staring about, cried aloud in fear as he stumbled against a cannon. Wayne explained that they were on the Gettysburg battlefield and that these were memorials of dead soldiers. ”

“ She looked at him gravely once, but, with the portrait still in her eyes, only half seeing him. The dejection of the young aspirant who gazes upon an achievement he feels to be immeasurably beyond his own powers was written upon her face. Wayne had expected that she would show embarrassment when he revealed himself, but her indifference piqued him. Here, clearly, was no subject for easy conquest. She seemed sincerely interested in the beautiful painting before which they stood, and perhaps, after all, she was not the usual paint-smearing trifler, but a serious student. ”

“ So far as Paddock was personally concerned he could join heartily enough in the girl’s admiration. But now that chance had thrown her again in his way, he wished to make the most of it; a poor art student, contributing her services in this humble fashion to the work of a social settlement, was a new species. She must be an unusual young woman or Fanny Blair would not have taken her up. The remembrance of her sharp rebuff in the art gallery did not make it easy to talk to her now; but she put down her cup and towel and addressed him with a directness that was disquieting. ”

“ COLONEL CRAIGHILL IS ANNOYED MRS. CRAIGHILL had seen her husband manifest anger on the night of Wayne’s departure for Philadelphia, but she had not until this morning found him crabbed and petulant. A night in a sleeping-car is not conducive to serenity, but a wife has a right to expect her lord to bring a bright countenance home from the wars. Colonel Craighill greeted Jean with his habitual courtesy, but scarcely heeded his wife’s explanation of the young woman’s presence in the house. ”

“ Are you having so much trouble to make up your mind?” demanded Mrs. Blair, her keen sensibilities aroused by the fixedness of Wayne’s stare at the likeness before him and the resulting interval of suspense. There was something here that she did not grasp, and she was a woman who resented being left in the dark. This interview with her father had been trying enough, but her brother’s manner struck her ominously. Colonel Craighill smiled urbanely, undisturbed by his son’s prolonged scrutiny of the face in the locket; he attached no great importance to Wayne’s opinions on any subject. ”

“ Winter, running before the hounds of spring, hides snow like a miser in a myriad pockets of the hills and flies northward across the blue lakes to escape the gleeful laughter of freed springs and singing brooks.
Scratch the crust and you may kindle the world’s hearth; scatter seed and fields were never so green. A fair prospect for the eye, but greater the hope in the heart of man. Fortunate nation this, to have so secure a keystone in the arch of states! The spirits of the pioneers, haunting the hilltops, gaze down in pride upon the teeming valleys. ”

“ Whatever Joe’s right arm might have been, his left had its own peculiar cunning. After two innings he had the opposing batters at his mercy; his grin broadened under the stimulus of the cheering. He struck out three men in succession and the crowd was wild.
“They was fruit,” said Joe later, as he and Wayne ate supper in the village hotel. “They hadn’t any eye. They fanned before the ball started.”
“It’s too bad to waste you. You ought to go back into the game,” said Wayne. “You’d better write to those fellows who wanted you in New York before you cracked your arm. ”