936 Clinton AvenueMY DEARMR. WADSMORE,—On close questioning, I find that my son Charles was actuated in his dare-devil adventure of leaving for school at six-thirty o’clock on the first morning of the blizzard by a desire to win a purple-chalk star. He knows that he very nearly lost his life, and he is hoping that his rash act may be rewarded in the foolish way I mentioned above. He considers that he is a hero, unappreciated at home, and he is working himself into a fever over the whole thing.I am a plain man [Miss Prawl’s eyes wandered to thecoat of arms] and I greatly disapprove of such methods in education. Unless you can do away with your purple-star system immediately, I shall be obliged to transfer Charles to another private school which is nearer, and therefore more convenient.Awaiting your reply, I amVery truly yours,CHARLESAUGUSTUSSTARR.
936 Clinton Avenue
MY DEARMR. WADSMORE,—
On close questioning, I find that my son Charles was actuated in his dare-devil adventure of leaving for school at six-thirty o’clock on the first morning of the blizzard by a desire to win a purple-chalk star. He knows that he very nearly lost his life, and he is hoping that his rash act may be rewarded in the foolish way I mentioned above. He considers that he is a hero, unappreciated at home, and he is working himself into a fever over the whole thing.
I am a plain man [Miss Prawl’s eyes wandered to thecoat of arms] and I greatly disapprove of such methods in education. Unless you can do away with your purple-star system immediately, I shall be obliged to transfer Charles to another private school which is nearer, and therefore more convenient.
Awaiting your reply, I am
Very truly yours,CHARLESAUGUSTUSSTARR.
Miss Prawl read the note in a flash, snatched up the eraser, rubbed out the purple star, opened the chalk box, and dropped the purple chalk in the wastebasket.
'What Theodora said about the purple star is quite true,' she said, soberly. 'And I shall never give any one a purple star. Never!'
As Mr. Wadsmore left the room with an approving smile at Miss Prawl, Theodora’s eyes grew soft and bright, and she sighed with pathetic relief. For the first time since she had heard of the purple star, the world seemed altogether right.
ITwas only because it was the middle of the night that the barracks of Company Number 1 lay quiet. Even at that solitary hour the squares of moonlight from its sliding windows revealed two long huddled rows of Gold Medal cots creaking with the turnings of one hundred and sixty restless sleepers.
Down toward the end of Squad 15, Joseph Morley Ruggs lay wrapped in dreams more troubled than was his wont. The 'Meter' was standing before him, writing with a feathered sword in a giant book, 'Thou art weighed in the balance andfound—' The words kept spreading until thedwas crushed against the edge of the page. The Meter’s eyes became flaming nozzles, which shot waves of gas into Ruggs’s unmasked face. There was a crashing sound of many bands, playing mostly upon cymbals.
All at once the 'U.S.' on the Meter’s collar and the silver bars on his shoulders became incandescent, his body lengthened out like Aladdin’s genie, and he slowly disappeared upward in a whirl of smoke, mounted on the shaft of a rifle grenade—and Ruggs was left alone, holding in his hand a rectangular parchment headed, 'Honorable Discharge from the service of the United States.'
When he raised his head Alice, with sorrowful eyes, was looking him through and through—Alice, whom he had left a month before with the trembling words of acquiescence on her lips and a kiss of hope at his departure. Thereshe stood, shaking a finger of scorn at the paper of Failure in his hand.
The earth was giving way under him. As he sank lower and lower, voices grew abundant about him; and there arose a continuous clatter of rifle-bolts, bayonets, and mess-tins. A bugle somewhere was sounding the assembly. The company in the dusky distance was falling in under arms; the corporals were about to report, and he, Candidate Ruggs, would be absent.
He tried to hurry over dressing himself; but his arms worked in jerks, and when he attempted to run, his legs merely pulled and pushed back and forth heavily in one spot. Frantically he struggled to make headway against the solid air, but in vain. With a supreme effort he lunged forward—and came down at the side of his cot on both feet, with a resounding shock that made the boards of the flimsy barracks rattle.
'For Gawd’s sake,' growled the Duke of Squad 15, rising on his elbow, 'don’t you get enough settin'-up stuff in the daytime without jarrin' your muscles when decent folks sleep?'
'Who fell into the trench?' inquired Naughty, his legal mind going to the bottom of the matter.
'No use tryin' to sleep around here,' continued the Duke with a groan. 'Got to get a pass and lock yourself in a hotel over Saturday and Sunday.'
Some one in the middle of barracks was attempting to search out with a pocket-flash the cause of the excitement.
'Use of—star—shells—specially successful—'gainst active enemy—in No Man’s Land,' droned the great voice of small Squirmy in a far corner.
And the disturbance subsided with several chuckles, allowing Ruggs to dispose himself upon his rumpled sheets without further fire upon him.
In the morning, as he stood in ranks at reveille, he was secretly relieved to note the Meter’s normal appearance, and his life-sized pencil, though that active instrument was spelling out death to some career possibly at that moment. Degradation to the name of Ruggs had not yet come; the chance to be included among the commissioned few at the end of camp lay before him as a possibility.
He was wakened smartly from his musings. 'Dress up, put up your arm! you still asleep?'
The Duke, who had been a sergeant in the National Guard for six years, realized that, since the Meter was near at hand, it was a fortunate time to make penetrating corrections. The awe and respect which had bestowed on him the name of Duke on account of his knowledge of the rudiments, were now, in the squad over which he had tyrannized as acting corporal, beginning to wane.
Ruggs put up his arm, every bristling hair of his mouse-colored head erect with fury. It was difficult for a man fifteen years out of college, who had by dint of energy and foresight worked his way to the superintendency of one of the largest banking houses in the East, to take orders from a grocery clerk much younger and of slight education. 'Every kind of military communication should be impersonal.' These words of the Meter came to him opportunely. He fastened his mind on the details for the following day which the first sergeant was then reading out, and was rewarded.
'For company commander to-morrow—Ruggs!'
'He-re!' His voice came all cracked and husky.
'You’d better get onto those drill regs and get up that company stuff,' admonished the Duke at breakfast. 'I always find I can get along better after givin' it a once-over, no matter how well I know it.'
Ruggs made no reply. He was lost in the thought of thechance he had waited for through thirty-five days of slavery. His opportunity had come.
It was a red-letter day because of another circumstance. For the first time he had been called by name by the Meter at the morning conference.
The elation was so great that, when a note from Alice in the noon mail told him that she would spend the week-end near the camp, he had only time to reflect on what joy his success in handling the company would bring her. Every spare minute during the afternoon and evening he concentrated on close-order drill. Not satisfied with the snatches thus taken, he disappeared after taps, with his books and a small improvised stool, into the lavatory, where there was still a faint light from two badly arranged bulbs. There he delved into combat work and reviewed the company drill. It was one o’clock before he crawled dizzily into bed, with reveille before him at five-thirty.
He woke at five with a start. This was the day of his trial. Although he had stood at the head of ventures involving millions, no day of his life had seemed to him so full of hazard. The fact that he had made good in civil life, he understood, meant nothing in his favor in a military way. For only the previous week Cyrus Long, an industrial manager, with a salary of fifteen thousand a year, had been told plainly by the Meter that he could not make good. And Cy had left with the first failure of a lifetime in his wake.
When Ruggs, making every inch of his five feet eleven count as the Meter approached, commanded 'Company, attention!' his accent was very unlike the ideal one he had planned to use. He noted the men in ranks eyeing him as much as to say, 'Well, how are you going to handle us this morning?'
'Give the company ten minutes' close-order drill, afterwhich proceed with fifteen minutes of extended order under battle conditions.'
The Meter shot the words out in two definite explosions.
It was the first time that such instructions had been issued, but Ruggs asked no questions.
'Squads right!' he sang out (meaning secretly squads left); then added, 'March!' in a surprised and subdued tone that he had not intended.
On the whole the first of the drill went along fairly well, except that at times some of the men were unable to hear his commands, andheknew thattheyknew that he continually meantrightwhen he saidleft, and vice versa—which did not add to his authority. But he was too honest to 'bluff' the matter before the Meter, each time admitting the error by a loud 'As you were!' and setting them straight without delay.
When the extended order part of the drill began, he inadvertently made his deployment so that one flank fanned out across the commanding officer’s lawn.
'Halt your company!' roared the Meter. 'Company commander report here!'
Ruggs yelled a demoralized 'Halt!' and ran to the captain.
'Who’s in command of this company?'
'I am, sir.'
'It doesn’t appear so; or possibly you wanted them to dance over the colonel’s lawn?'
'No, sir.'
'Then why did you put them there?'
'I didn’t mean to, sir.'
'You didn’t meannotto, did you?'
'No, sir.'
'You lead your command out over a fire-swept zone, and after it is decimated, you make a report that you didn’t mean to place it there. How will that look when the dead are counted?'
'Not very well, sir.'
'Go place your company where it belongs.'
Ruggs saluted and ran toward the centre of the line, yelling at the top of his lungs, 'Assemble,assemble,ASSEMBLEover here!'
'Come back!' shouted the Meter.
But Ruggs was so intent on gathering up the tramplers of the colonel’s lawn that he did not hear.
'Company commander—Mr. Ruggs!' repeated the Meter, putting all his power against his diaphragm.
Ruggs returned, his thick chest heaving, his hair matted, and a drop of perspiration clinging to the end of his big Roman nose.
'How was this drill to be conducted?' snapped his torturer.
'Under battle conditions, sir.'
'Do you suppose that the company stretched over a space of two hundred yards, while the barrage fire was going on, could hear such caterwauling as you’ve been attempting? What should you do?'
'Use whistle and signal, sir.'
'Have I not directed you to do so heretofore?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Either malicious or wooden—take your choice! Proceed with your drill.'
Cut to the quick, Ruggs thought hard what to do in his predicament. The studious, sleepless night was beginning to tell on him, but he called to his memory the signal for 'Assemble' and blew a stout blast on his whistle. He felt the Meter behind his back making damaging notes in the book, and the glances of his fellows before him betraying pity and superiority. The number of errors increased withthe length of the drill. Each time the Meter summoned him, the criticisms were more caustic. At last he waved his arms in unknown combinations and directions. But whenever the Meter stopped him, he was able, with much teeth-gritting that made his jaw muscles swell his cheeks, to set the movement straight without excitement.
In the afternoon, during a march along the road, the Meter directed the company to be halted and its commander to report to him.
'Mr. Ruggs, you see that little bluff about four hundred yards to the left of this road?'
'Yes, sir.'
'You have been marching along here as the advance party to your advance guard, when suddenly you receive a burst of fire from that bluff, which you estimate to be directed by about a platoon. What do you do?'
'I’d tell them to—'
'I didn’t ask you what you’d tell. I asked you what you’d do.'
'I’d put them, sir—'
'Put who?'
'I’d put the company—'
'You speak of the company as if it were a bird-cage or a jack-knife.'
'Sir, I just wanted—'
'I just asked you what YOU would do—do you get it?'
By this time Ruggs was so aroused that every fibre of his mind was alert. Instead of being more confused, he was able to concentrate more acutely than before. He pulled his whistle from his pocket and blew it almost in the Meter’s face, at the same time signaling to the company to deploy and lie down.
'That will do.' snorted the Meter. 'March your company back to barracks!'
Ruggs replaced his whistle in his pocket in a hang-dog way which showed that he was convinced that his doom was sealed.
'Squads right!' he commanded. 'As you were! I mean, squads left!—Oh, steady! Squads right about! March!'
The company, at route step, had become a ripple of mirth from end to end.
'O Ruggsie!' shouted the Duke, 'I know a good civilian tailor!'
The remark brought on a quantity of local laughter, and Naughty did not help matters much by starting, 'Keep the home fires burning.'
That evening the flank of Company Number 1 individually condoled with Ruggs, who was trying to decipher how he could be so full of so many different kinds of mistakes.
'He’s got the raspberry all right,' commented the Duke, before a large group, including Ruggs.
The 'raspberry,' be it said, was the name applied to the Sword of Damocles suspended by the Meter. When he called a failing candidate into the orderly room and implied that a resignation would be in order, that lost soul was known the company over as 'getting the raspberry,' or 'rasp.'
Just before taps, after life had become subdued through study, the small red-headed form of Squirmy was observed making its way to the centre of the long room. He was dressed in a black overcoat fished from the bottom of a trunk. A white tie torn from a stricken sheet made a flaring bow at his neck, and goggles and an old cap-cover served as headgear. He carried in his hand a Webster’s Unabridged, which he placed on an old box previously used for the same purpose.
'St!The Exhorter of Squad 21!' came in whispers from a dozen throats; and the room became still.
Squirmy searched his half-dressed congregation witheringly over the tops of his spectacles. Then from his small body proceeded slow tones of thunder,—
'And the Lord said unto Moses, "Squads right!" (Dramatic pause.)
'But Moses—not being a military man—commanded, "Squads left!" (Longer pause.)
'And great—was the confusion—among the candidites.
'Peace be with you,' he concluded, pointing an accusing finger at Ruggs; and the company went to bed holding their abdomens.
After the last drill on Saturday Alice arrived with her machine, chauffeur, and chaperone. When she spied Ruggs across the parade, with twenty-two pounds of office flabbiness gone, his hardened muscles holding his shoulders and neck erect underneath his khaki, an unmistakable admiration filled her wide hazel eyes.
For a moment his gladness was unalloyed, and the disappointments of crowded barracks and tangled drills faded utterly away. But as the day wore on, the pleasure grew limp in the face of the bleak future. His mind was repeatedly met with the question, 'Shall I tell her?' and he always turned on himself with the reply, 'I am not yet through.'
The unacknowledged dullness between them finally drove them into the distraction of a movie theatre. There, in the darkness, she caught stealthy glimpses of his tightened jaw and distressed face.
'It’s going to be very hard on him; he’ll be so disappointed,' she said to herself.
At the same time, while apparently following the antics of Mary Pickford, he was thinking, 'It’s going to be so hard on her! She’ll be so disappointed in me!'
When she had gone, and he found himself once more seated on his bunk in desolation, he berated himself violently:—
'I must have treated her badly. This will not do. I’ve never given up before. I’ve got to pull myself up to my best if it’s only a corporal’s job. It’s better to be amanthan a higher-up anyway. Good God, I can serve better by going where I’m put than where I want tobe put! True patriotism, after all, is filling the niche, whatever—'
'Say, Ruggsie,' burst in the Duke from the side door, 'big doin’s here Monday. Big review for a Russian general. This company is goin' to be divided into two—A and B companies.'
Ruggsie was silent.
'Don’t you care anything about it?' continued the Duke.
'I’m not interested in reviews—to be frank.'
'Say, old fellow, you don’t need to get so down because you tied up that drill the other day. Course, there’s a great deal to know about this military game. At first I was pretty green myself. May be in a second camp you can get onto the stuff.'
Ruggs was not desirous of discussing the matter with the Duke, who, having been given the natural opportunity, filled the gap with conversation.
'You know the Meter called me and that Reserve Lieutenant Sullivan into the orderly room and told us we were goin' to be in command of the two companies. He went over with us just how we were goin' to do. He’s a first-rate chap—the Meter is. First we line up along the roadnear the gate, and then we march to the parade-ground and review. I know every command I’m goin' to give right down in order—could say 'em off backwards. That’s the way to know your drill.'
At supper the Duke leaned over the table toward Vance, a broker from Wall Street who had spent the previous summer at Plattsburg, and observed confidentially,—
'Do you know, Vance, I’d like to have you as my first lieutenant when I’m a captain. You suit me O.K. I like the way you drill.'
Vance, immaculately neat and clean-shaven, acknowledged the remark with a bow and went on eating. Mortimer, just out of Dartmouth, aged twenty-two, gazed at the Duke with that deference with which Gareth first looked upon Lancelot.
At three o’clock Monday afternoon the twenty companies of the training camp were drawn up ready to display themselves to the Russian general. Automobiles were parked thickly on the roadways, making a black, gray, and brown banded circle around the parade-ground. Under the dense fringe of trees, the many-colored gowns of the women edged the green like a thick hedge of sweet peas. The heat and stillness had settled down over the camp tensely.
The dignitary, eagerly awaited, was overdue. The Duke, as he wiped the perspiration from his hat-band in front of the long column of companies standing at ease, congratulated himself on the certainty with which he would give the appropriate commands at various points before him on the level stretch of grass. Conscious fingering of his pistol-holster indicated his belief in the Meter’s choice.
A half-hour passed and the general had not arrived. All at once, the band, contrary to plan, started to move diagonally across the parade-ground. A mounted orderlypopped out from a group of regular officers and galloped straight toward the Duke.
'The major’s compliments,' he announced. 'The ceremony along the road-side will be dispensed with. You are to march your company to the line for review at once, sir.'
The field music struck up adjutant’s call, which was the signal for the first company to form line.
'Squads left!' shouted the Duke in most military fashion.
It was the command that he had rehearsed to start the company from the roadway to the ceremony proper—the opposite direction from the one toward the spot where the line should now be formed.
'March!' he added, without seeing his error. And the company wheeled off toward the woods away from the visitors, away from the band, away from everybody.
'Damn me!' he muttered, looking back over his shoulder at the vanishing goal. Then he roared, 'Column left! March!'
Again he had steered the head of the column in an opposite direction from the one intended. B and C companies were now directly between his objective and his organization, which was marching farther away with every step. He realized that he had taken time enough to be well on the way toward, instead of away from, the spot where the adjutant was waiting for him.
'Squadsleftmarch!' he bellowed desperately.
The company, in the shape of an L, not having completed the turn in column, now accordioned its flanks toward each other, intermingling inextricably. The organization became at once a crowd of fellows with rifles.
'Halt! Halt! Halt!' the Duke exploded; and immediately fell into helpless bewilderment.
There was a dreadful pause, during which beads of perspiration dropped from his face, making black spots on hisstarched clothing. His arm and fingers twitched and he blinked horribly.
'What a steadying influence he’ll have on Vance!' whispered some one near Ruggs, who, through compassion, was unable to feel mirthful.
The same orderly galloped up for the second time and delivered an ultimatum from the major in no uncertain language. Several platoon leaders sprang forward and succeeded in getting the company started in the right direction. But the strain had weakened the Duke’s nerve to such an extent that he was slow in dressing his company and failed to give 'Eyes right' in time, when actually passing in review under the scrutiny of the general himself.
And all this time the Meter had been hovering about, using his eyes mightily and his mouth not at all.
Back in barracks when ranks were broken, there were no remarks made openly on the leadership of the Duke. He had been a trusty drill-master and, it was reported, had a 'stand-in' with the Meter. It was not discreet to taunt him.
Indeed, it had been such a soakingly hot proceeding—the whole review—that most of the men were glad enough to grasp what little comfort they could without more ado. The extra marching beforehand had not helped to cool them off, mentally or physically. Under the single thin roof that separated them from the sun, the atmosphere, besides being hot, was excessively oppressive. As soon as they could get rid of their rifles, belts, and coats, they tossed them away in any direction. Those who arrived inside first, and consequently had a chance for the shower-bath, peeled off every soggy garment.
They were in this chaotic state of dishabille when a cry rose from the first squad, 'Man the port-holes!' Immediatelyone hundred and sixty male beings struggled for a view from the eastern windows.
'It’s the general—the whole party!' exclaimed one of the first.
'They’re coming in here,' volunteered another.
The crowd surged back and the voice of the acting first sergeant could be heard in an effort to prepare the company for inspection. They hurled their belongings into place with the speed and accuracy of postal clerks. Two nude unfortunates were without ceremony ejected into the cold world on the side of barracks farthest from the Russian advance. History does not record what ever became of them. A bather clad only in a scant towel and a scanter piece of soap, while making his entrance from the shower where he had splashed in ignorance of the coming invasion, was, to his amazement and resentment, forced suddenly into the lavatory, where, he was given to understand, he must remain. Ruggs, most incompletely dressed, coiled himself up underneath his cot behind two lusty suitcases.
When the general came down the aisle, the candidates standing fully clad at the foot of their bunks, at 'attention,' gave the impression of having waited for him nonchalantly in that position ever since the review. Mattress-covers were smoothed, bedding folded, clothing hung neatly, and all evidence of hurry or confusion effaced.
But the Meter smiled a Mona Lisa smile as the door closed upon generals, colonels, aides-de-camp, and himself.
'Rest,' shouted the acting first sergeant, and the company collapsed into tumultuous laughter. Wet under-clothing, matches, and cigarettes, were hauled from beneath mattresses, equipment from behind pillows, and knick-knacks from yawning shoe-tops.
In the midst of all this turmoil one of the doors reopened and the Meter stepped inside. Some one near him murmureda half-hearted 'Attention!' and all who were within earshot arose—all except one. At that moment Ruggs found himself halfway up from between the cots, his head and body upright and his legs fast asleep under him.
'Mr. Ruggs, I seem to see more of you than I did a moment ago.'
If the Meter had returned for a purpose, all idea of it vanished now, for he turned and disappeared, leaving Ruggs to bear his chagrin and to blush down as far as his legs.
That night Squirmy took his text from the book of Currussians, and gave a splendid and inspiriting talk on how Moses, although he had been found by the King’s daughter in the bulrushes, had nothing on Ruggs, who was discovered by the King himself among the valises. 'And be it said,' concluded the exhorter, 'that both foundlings wore the same uniform.'
The first of August was close at hand. Rumors kept coming up like the dawn 'on the road to Mandalay.' The 'makes' (those recommended for commissions), it was said, had already had their names sent to Washington. Before and after drills, members of the company were being constantly summoned into the orderly room for interviews, the purport of which was leaking out through the camp. A reserve captain had been given his walking papers. Squirmy was to be a second lieutenant; Naughty, a first lieutenant; and Vance, a captain.
The Duke had just been summoned. As he made his way up the aisle to the front of barracks, hushed whispers ran around from circle to circle: 'Will he get a captaincy or just a lieutenancy out of it?' And many a covetous eye followed his retreating figure.
At dinner he had not returned. In the afternoon and during the next day his place in the squad was vacant. It began to be rumored that he had been sent away on some special detail, perhaps to France.
In the evening Ruggs, having finished his supper early, was surprised to find the Duke in civilian attire sitting on the cot he had occupied, which was now divested of all its former accompaniments.
'Good-bye,' began the Duke, extending a cold hand rather ungraciously. 'Jus' turned in all my stuff.'
'Leaving?' queried Ruggs.
'Yep, got the rasp all right!'
There was an awkward pause, which was filled by the Duke’s interest in the lock of his suitcase, after which he continued haltingly,—
'Meter called me in and told me no use to stay here—said my experience was all right—but because I’d had so much, he expected more. Told me any man that got fussed up and couldn’t get out of an easy hole without help after six years' trainin' was no good for leadin' men. Said he couldn’t trust men’s lives to me, and so he couldn’t give me a commission. Gave me a lot of guff like that, with no sense to it. He’s a hell of a man!'
'Do you mean to say you’re discharged—and that’s all?' Ruggs was plainly astounded.
'You bet; that’s the end of the little Duke of Squad 15. Be good to yourself. Say good-bye to the fellows for me, will you?'
Several men strolled back from supper. The Duke casting a furtive glance in their direction as much as to say, 'I don’t care to meet any of them any more,' added a 'So long,' and disappeared, suitcase in hand, through the side door.
'What chance for me,' thought Ruggs, 'if the Duke gets the raspberry?'
That night he carefully smoothed out a civilian suit and placed it on a hanger at the head of his cot. He also wrote several letters to business friends at home. He did not write to Alice.
Excitement for the next few days was severe. Some were not eating their meals, few were sleeping much, and all were stale. The physical training had truly been intensive, but the mental strain had been breaking. Friends greeted each other in a preoccupied way, and the nightly singing had grown feeble.
As for Ruggs, he looked forward to the acceptance of his discharge with as much grace as possible. He had striven honestly, and had apparently made of himself only an object for laughter, but he was far from giving up. Several candidates had confided to him their disappointment, as they would have liked, they said, to see him gain a commission. Indeed they had felt all along that he was going to make good.
Yet the day of his reckoning seemed never to materialize. Men went into the orderly room, and came out with hectic smiles of relief or sickly efforts at cheerfulness, while he watched and waited.
One day, after the first drill, Vance was sitting on his bunk talking finances, when a voice from the other end of the barracks called out,—
'The following men report in the orderly room at once!'
The silence was crisp. Then the voice continued with a list of about ten names, toward the end of which was Ruggs.
'Good-bye, Vance,' said he, rising. He put on his coat and brushed his clothing and shoes carefully.
Vance eyed him narrowly and pityingly during the operation,as much as to say, 'There’s no use taking any more pains with those clothes; you’ll never need them again.'
Ruggs caught the look and understood.
'You see I can’t get out of the habit,' he confessed. 'It’s not so much the clothes as—as—myself.'
At the orderly room door he waited a small eternity before his name was called.
Once inside he found himself for the first time alone with the Meter. Under his scrutiny heretofore Ruggs had felt himself to be merely number one of the rear rank needful of correction. And yet the victim felt that he could part from the captain with no feeling of resentment at the blow he was about to receive.
'Mr. Ruggs!'
The Estimator of Destinies wheeled in his chair and cast a look of brotherly frankness into Ruggs’s eyes.
'Yes, sir.'
'Mr. Ruggs, you’ve been here almost three months.'
'Yes, sir.'
'I haven’t time to mince matters with you. You have one great failing which I’m going to dwell upon. You attempt to do too many things at once. In the military service you are compelled to consider what is best for the moment. Nothing changes so fast or furiously as a military situation. Don’t forecast what you’ll do next so much as figure what you’ll donow. Make your men be of the greatest use in the team rightnow—understand? What you’d be liable to do would be a certain amount of banking in the trenches. While you’d be speculating on how much interest your venture would bring you to-morrow, a gas wave comes over to-day and finds your men without masks. Be ready for the thing at issue. You’ve got to take this matter in hand at once and overcome it.'
Ruggs acknowledged to himself that his difficulties were all too plainly exposed. He had tried to compass the whole of drill regulations in a single night. He had been so interested in what he was going to do to the enemy after he reached the bluff, that he had forgotten to give the proper signals to start the company on its mission. If only he had understood the correct method of approach at the beginning!
'That,' went on the Meter, as if in continuation of Ruggs’s thoughts, 'has been your downfall.'
There was a knock at the door. In answer to the captain’s 'Come in,' a thick official document was handed him.
'Be seated, Mr. Ruggs. Pardon me while I read this!'
It took some time for the perusal, during which Ruggs saw light in the shape of a new plan.
'Captain,' he inquired, as the Meter looked up, 'is there any chance for me to get into another camp or couldn’t you recommend me?'
'Second camp!' cried the Meter, staring at Ruggs as if the candidate were bereft of reason. 'Second camp! You’ll get all the second camp that’s coming to you. The whole purpose of this camp is to pick out the proper wood-pulp—that’s all. None of you is capable of being an officer now; but the men I’ve chosen, I hope have the makings. You yourself have two assets: first, a knowledge of men, and second, the power to think under stress. In another month you’ll be training rookies from the draft. What I wanted to tell you was, you’d better look out for your failing when you’re the first lieutenant, instead of the captain, of that company of yours. Do you understand?'
Ruggs understood and managed to retire. Once outside, he leaned against the building to steady his knees,and pressed his hands into his pockets to keep his fingers from trembling.
'Sorry about it, old chap!' spoke up one of those waiting near the entry.
Ruggs realized how the shock must have affected his features. The incident gave him an idea.
When he had recovered sufficiently to go back to his bunk, Vance, in a rather conventional and perfunctory tone, inquired about the outcome.
'Oh,' the dissembling Ruggs declared, 'the Meter said he’d let me stay on till the end of camp for the training I’d get, if I wanted to.'
It was enough for Vance, and those standing about refrained from asking embarrassing questions. For the next four days Ruggs was treated as one who has just lost his entire family in a wreck. On the evening of the fifth day, after supper, a reserve officer from headquarters appeared in barracks with a list, the substance of which he said could be disclosed to the public. When he had finished reading the first lieutenants every eye glared at Ruggs; and when the list was completed there was a rush for blankets and the victim. How many times Ruggs’s feet hit the ceiling, he never quite remembered.
Later, Squirmy gave a very helpful talk on Joseph, who was sold by his brothers down into Egypt after they had hidden him under a bushel. 'Ah! gentlemen,' he exhorted, 'thistime little Joey sold his brothers. Little Joey Ruggs is going to have a coat of many colors and be ruler over many!'
And again the fun turned on Ruggs, but he stole away and wired Alice.
THEREwas a heavy odor in the little house which quite blighted the soft spring air as it blew in through the half-open window. For supper there had been onions and sausage, and the fried potatoes had burned. The smells which had risen from the kitchen stove had mingled with the raw, soapy fumes which gave testimony that Monday was wash-day in the Black family. Now the smoking of the kerosene lamp on the centre-table seemed to seal in hermetical fashion the oppressive room against the gentle breeze of the May evening.
The woman, bending over a pair of trousers which she was patching, stuck the needle in the cloth, pulled the thimble from her fat, red finger, and rubbed her hands over her eyes.
'Bed-time, Billy,' she said to the nine-year-old boy who was playing with a picture-puzzle on the other side of the table.
'Aw, ma, let me stay up, till pa and the boys get home.'
The woman shook her head.
'I’ll get up in plenty of time to feed the chickens, anyhow. Honest, I will.'
'You ought to be glad to go to bed,' the mother sighed in answer. 'I’d be. Seems to me I’d be tickled to death if I could drop into bed without my supper any night.'
'I’ll go if you’ll go, too. I just hate to go to bed knowing all the rest of you are up.'
'Me go to bed! Why these trousers of yours aren’t finished yet and I’ve got to mend Tom’s shirt and yourfather’s coat, and then there’s the bread to set. Much chance I have to go to bed for a couple of hours, yet! Now you run along. If you go like a good boy, you can have a cooky.'
She put the thimble on her finger and bent over her mending again. She sewed steadily on until an hour later, when she heard the buggy drive into the yard and one of the boys came running in to ask her if she knew where the barn-lantern was. It was in the cellar, and there was barely enough oil to make a dim light while the horse was being unharnessed. The boys were sent to bed immediately, with an injunction to be quiet so Billy would not be awakened. She heard the heavy tread of her husband in the kitchen, as he hunted for the dipper to get a drink of water. Then he came into the sitting-room, sat down in a chair, and began pulling off his shoes. He groaned as he did it.
'Say, Em,' he said, 'guess who I saw in town to-night?'
'Who?' was the unimaginative response.
'You’d never guess in a hundred years. You’d never guess what she did, either. She sent you these.'
He drew from his pocket a package and a sheet of notepaper. The woman looked at them for a moment, but she didn’t touch them.
'Hurry up, Em,' said the man. 'They won’t bite you.'
'But what—' she faltered.
'The best way to find out about 'em is to open 'em.'
She opened the package first. It was a cheap colored print of St. Cecilia at the Organ. It was in a bright gilt frame. Then she opened the note. She read it through once, with a little frown puckering her forehead. Then, more slowly, she read it the second time.
'Minnie Jackson!' she murmured. 'I haven’t seen her for nearly ten years. I don’t know when I’ve thought about her, even. You read it, Jake?'
'Yes. She didn’t seal it.' He waited a minute, then said, 'I couldn’t just make out what it was all about. What day is this?'
'It’s our birthday—Minnie’s and mine. We used to call ourselves twins, but she’s a year older than I am. I’ve been so busy all day I never thought about it. What does Minnie look like?'
'Oh, she looks about the same, I guess, as the last time she was home. She’s getting fatter, though. Guess the climate out in California must agree with her.'
'Is she as fat as I am?'
'Just about, I guess.'
'Did she look as if they were well off? What kind of a dress did she have on?'
'I don’t know. Good enough, I guess. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. While she ran into the store to get this picture and write this note to you, old Jackson was bragging to me about how well Elmer had done. He said Min had married about as well as any girl round here.'
'Did he say anything about whether she ever paints any?'
'Paints? What ever are you talking about, Em?'
She had bent over her sewing again, and he could not see her face as she answered, 'When Minnie and I were little girls, I reckon we never had any secrets from each other, at all. I know I talked about things to her I never could have told anybody else. She was that way with me, too. Well, she always said she wanted to paint, and I wanted to play. She was always copying every picture she saw. I remember she did one picture called A yard of Roses, from a calendar. It was so good you couldn’t have told the difference. Don’t you remember the time she took the prize at the art exhibit at the country fair, with a picture she had copied, called The Storm? One of thejudges said it just made him shiver to look at it, it was so real.'
'Come to think of it, I believe I do recollect something about Min having queer notions. I know us boys used to think she was stuck-up. What did she mean about the vow and about this picture being of you, by her?'
For a moment there was only the little click of her thimble against the needle. Then she said, 'I guess I can’t make it clear to you, Jake. Minnie always did have her own way of putting things. We had lots of fancies, as we used to call them. But I suppose she was thinking about our old dreams. If they’d come true, she might have painted me, sitting like that.'
'It don’t look much like you, even when you was young,' was the reply of the man, not given to 'fancies'; 'but what is it about the vow?'
'I don’t know,' said his wife shortly.
It was one of the few lies she had ever told her husband. Just why, having told him so much, she couldn’t tell him that Minnie Jackson and she had promised each other that, no matter what happened, nothing should keep them from realizing their ambitions, and that each year they would give a report to each other on their birthday, she could not have said. But suddenly her throat contracted and she could not see the patch on the coat.
'How this lamp does smoke!' she said, as she brushed her hand over her eyes.
'Well,' yawned her husband, 'I guess most folks, leastwise most girls, have silly notions when they’re young. Who’d ever think to see you now, that you ever had any such ideas? You’re a good wife for a farmer, Em. There ain’t a better woman anywhere, than you.'
It was one of the few times in all the years of their marriage that he had praised her. Jacob Black had never beenone to question life or to marvel at its wonders. For him, it held no wonders. The spell of life had caught him when he was young. He had 'fallen in love' with Emmeline Mead and he had married her. She had borne him eight children. Five of them had lived. If Jacob Black had thought about it at all, which he did not, he would have said that was the way life went. One was young. Then one grew old. When one was young, one married, and probably there were children.
The wing of romance had brushed him so lightly in its passing, that at the time it had brought to him no yearning for an unknown rapture, no wonder at the mystery of life. After twenty-one years, if he had given it any thought whatsoever, he would have said that their marriage 'had turned out well.' Em had been a good wife; she had risen at daylight and worked until after dark. She wasn’t foolish about money. She never went to town unless there was something to take her there. She went to church, of course, and when it was her turn, she entertained the Ladies' Aid. Such recreations were to be expected. Yes, Em had been a good wife. But then, he had been a good husband. He never drank. He was a church member. He always hired a woman to do the housework, for two weeks, when there was a new baby. He let Em have the butter and chicken money.
The clock struck nine.
'I’m going to bed,' he said, 'there’s lots to do to-morrow. Nearly through your mending?'
'No. Anyhow, I guess I’ll wait up for John and Victoria to come home.'
'Better not, if you’re tired. John may get in early, but probably Vic will be mooning along.'
'What?' she cried. 'What do you mean by that, Jake Black?'
'Say, Em, are you blind? Can’t you see there’s something between her and Jim? Haven’t you noticed that it isn’t John he comes to see now? Haven’t you seen how Vic spruces up nights when, he’s coming over?'
The woman dropped her sewing in her lap. The needle ran into her thumb. Mechanically, she pulled it out. She was so intent, looking at him, trying to grasp his meaning, that she did not notice the drops of blood which fell on her mending. When she spoke, it was with difficulty.
'O Jake, it can’t be. It just can’t be.'
'Why can’t it?'
'Why, he’s not good enough for Victoria.'
'Not good enough? Why, what’s the matter with Jim? I never heard a word against him and I’ve known him ever since he was a little shaver. He’s steady as can be, and a hard worker.'
'I know all that. I wasn’t thinking about such things. I was thinking about—oh, about—other things.'
'Other things? Well, what on earth is the matter with the other things? Forman’s place is as good as any hereabouts, and it’s clear, and only three children to be divided among. There’s money in the bank, too, I’ll bet.'
'But Victoria is so young, Jake. Why, she’s just a girl!'
'She’s old as you was, when we got married, Em.'
He went into the kitchen for another drink of water. When he came through the room, he bent over to pick up his shoes.
'Say, Em,' he said, 'you surely don’t mean what you’ve been saying, do you, about Jim not being good enough for Vic? 'Cause it ain’t likely that she’ll ever get another chance as good.'
She did not answer. The man looking at her, the man who had lived with her for more than twenty years, did not know that a sudden rage against life was in her heart. Hedid not know that the lost dreams of her youth were crying out in her against the treachery of life. He did not know that the bandage which the years had mercifully bound across her eyes had fallen away, and that she was seeing the everlasting tragedy of the conflict between dreams and life. He did not know that, in that moment, she was facing the supreme sorrow of motherhood in the knowledge that the beloved child cannot be spared the disillusions of the years. He only knew that she was worried.
'Don’t you be giving Vic any of your queer notions,' he said, in a voice which was almost harsh.
Jacob Black was an easygoing man. But he had set his heart on seeing his daughter the wife of Jim Forman. Did not the Forman farm join his on the southeast?
Until she heard him walking around in their bedroom overhead, she sewed on. Then she laid down her work. She picked up the picture. It was small, but she held it clutched in both hands, as though it were heavy. It would not have mattered to her if she had known that critics of art scoffed at the picture. To her it was more than a masterpiece; it was a miracle. Had she not felt like the pictured saint, when she had sat at the organ, years ago? She, too, had raised her eyes in just that way; and if actual roses had not fallen on the keys, the mystical ones of hopes too fragile for words, and beauties only dreamed of, had fallen all about her. There was a time when she had played the little organ in church. How her soul had risen on the chords which she struck for the Doxology, which always came just before the benediction! Even after Victoria was born, she had played the organ for a time. Then the babies came fast, and when one has milking to do and dishes to wash and one’s fingers are needle-pricked, it is hard to find the keys. Also, when one works from daylight till dark, one wants only rest. There is a sleep too deep for dreams.
It was years since Emmeline Black had dreamed except in the terms of her motherhood. For herself, the dream had gone. She did not rebel. She accepted. It was the way of life with women like her. She would not have said her life was hard. Jacob Black had been a good husband to her. Only a fool, having married a poor farmer, could expect that the dreams of a romantic girl would ever come true. Once she had expected it, of course. That was when Jacob Black had seemed as a prince to Emmeline Mead. She had felt the wing of romance as it brushed past her. But that was long ago. She did not like the routine of her life. But neither did she hate it. For herself, it had come to seem the natural, the expected thing. But for Victoria—
Her dreams had not all gone when Victoria was born. That first year of her marriage, it had seemed like playing at being a housekeeper to do the work for Jacob and herself. She had loved her garden, and often, just because she had loved to be with him and because she loved the smell of the earth and the growing things which came from it, she had gone into the fields with her husband. Then, when the year was almost gone, her baby was born. She had loved the other children as they came, and she had grieved for the girls and the boy who had died; but Victoria was the child of her dreams. The other children had been named for aunts and uncles and grandfathers, and so had satisfied family pride. But that first baby had been named for a queen.
None of the boys cared for music. They 'took after' the Black family. But Victoria, so Emmeline felt, belonged to her. She had always been able to play by ear, and her voice was sweet and true. The butter-and-egg money for a long time had gone for music lessons for Victoria. When the girl was twelve, her mother had begun a secret fund. Every week she pilfered a few pennies from her own smallincome and put them away. Some time Victoria was to go to the city and have lessons from the best teacher there. For five years she did not purchase a thing for herself to wear, except now and then a dress pattern of calico. That was no real sacrifice to her. The hard thing was to deny pretty clothes to Victoria.
Then a year of sickness came. She tried to forget the little sum of money hidden away. Surely their father could pay the bills. If she had spent the butter-and-egg money, as he had thought she had done, he would have had to pay them alone. But when the doctor said that Henry must be taken to the county seat for an operation, there was no thought of questioning her duty. Her husband had been surprised and relieved when she gave him her little hoard. It was another proof that he had a good wife, and one who was not foolish about money.
At last, her sewing was finished. She went into the kitchen and began to set the bread. But her thoughts were not on it. She was thinking of Emmeline Mead and her dreams, and how they had failed her. She had expected Victoria Black to redeem those dreams. And now Victoria was to marry and go the same hard way toward drab middle-age. She heard some one step on the front porch. There was a low murmur of voices for a moment and a little half-stifled laugh. Then the door opened.
'Mother, is that you?' came something which sounded half-whisper, half-laugh from the door.
She raised her eyes from the bread-pan. She smiled. But she could not speak. It seemed as if the fingers of some world-large hand had fastened around her heart. To her Victoria had always been the most beautiful, the most wonderful being, on earth. But she had never seen this Victoria before. The girl was standing in the door—eyesshining, lips trembling, her slim young body swaying as if to some hidden harmony. Then she leaped across the kitchen, and threw her strong arms round her mother.
'I’m so glad you’re up and alone! O mother, I had to see you to-night. I couldn’t have gone to bed without talking to you. I was thinking it was a blessed thing father always sleeps so hard, for I could tip-toe in and get you and he’d never know the difference.' She stifled a little laugh and went on, 'Come on, outdoors. It is too lovely to stay inside.' She drew her mother, who had not yet spoken, through the door. 'I guess, mother,' she said, as if suddenly shy when the confines of the kitchen were left behind for the star-lighted night, 'that you know what it is, don’t you?'
For answer, Emmeline Black sobbed.
'Don’t, mother, don’t. You mustn’t mind. Just think how near home I’ll be! Isn’t that something to be glad about?'
Her mother nodded her head as she wiped her eyes on her gingham apron.
'I wondered if you saw it coming?' the girlish voice went on. 'You never let on, and the kids never teased me any. So I thought perhaps you told 'em not to. I haven’t felt like being teased about Jim, some way. It’s been too wonderful, you know.'
Not until that moment did Emmeline Black acknowledge the defeat of her dreams. Wonderful! To love and be loved by Jim Forman, of whom the most that could be said was that he was steady and a hard worker, and that there were only two other children to share his father’s farm!
'Don’t cry, mother,' implored Victoria, 'though I know why you’re doing it. I feel like crying, too, only something won’t let me cry to-night. I guess I’m just too happy ever to cry again.'
Still her mother had not spoken. She had stopped crying and stood twisting her apron with nervous fingers.
'Mother,' said Victoria, suddenly, 'you like Jim, don’t you?'
She said it as if the possibility of any one’s not liking Jim was preposterous. But, nevertheless, there was anxiety in her voice.
Her mother nodded her head.
'Then why aren’t you really glad? I thought you would be, mother.'
There was no resisting that appeal in Victoria’s voice. Never in her life had she failed her daughter. Was she to fail her in this hour?
'You seem like a little girl to me, Victoria,' she found voice to say, at last. 'I guess all mothers feel like this when their daughters tell them they are going to leave them. I reckon I never understood until just now, why my mother acted just like she did when I told her your father and I were going to be married.'
Victoria laughed joyously. 'I’m not a little girl. I’m a woman. And, mother, Jim is so good. He wants to be married right away. He says he can’t bear to think of waiting. But he said I was to tell you that if you couldn’t spare me for a while, it would be all right.'
There was pride in her lover’s generosity. But deeper than that was the woman’s pride in the knowledge that he could not 'bear to think of waiting.'
'It isn’t that I can’t spare you, dear,' said her mother. 'But, O Victoria, I’d wanted to have you go off and study to be a fine musician. I’ve dreamed of it ever since you were born.'
'But I couldn’t go even if it wasn’t for Jim. Where would we ever get the money? Anyway, mother, Jim is going to buy me a piano. What do you think of that?'
'A piano?'
'Yes. He has been saving money for it for years. He says I play too well for an old-fashioned organ. And on our wedding trip we’re going to Chicago, and we’re going to pick it out there, and we’re going to a concert and to a theatre and to some show that has music in it.'
In spite of herself, Emmeline Black was dazzled. In all her life she never had gone to the city except in her dreams. Until that far-off day of magic when Victoria should be a fine musician, she had never hoped to replace the squeaky little organ with a piano.
'He says he has planned it ever since he loved me, and that has been nearly always. He says he can just see me sitting at the piano playing to him nights when he comes in from work. I guess, mother, we all have to have our dreams. And now Jim’s and mine are coming true.'
'Have you always dreamed things, too?' asked her mother.
It did not seem strange to her that she and this beloved child of hers had never talked about the things which were in their hearts until this night. Mothers and daughters were like that. But there was a secret jealousy in knowing that they would not have found the way to those hidden things if it had not been for Jim Forman. It was he, and not she, who had unlocked the secrets of Victoria’s heart.
'Why, yes, of course, mother. Don’t you remember how you used to ask me what was the matter when I was a little girl, and would go off sometimes by myself and sit and look across the fields? I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know just what it was. And don’t you remember asking me sometimes if I was sick or if somebody had hurt my feelings, because you’d see tears in my eyes? I’d tell you no. But some way I couldn’t tell you it was because the red of the sunset or the apple trees in blossom or the crescentmoon, or whatever it happened to be, made me feel so queer inside.' She laughed, but there was a hint of a sob in her voice. 'Isn’t it strange, mother, that we don’t seem able to tell folks any of these things? I couldn’t tell you even now, except that I always had an idea you’d felt just the same way, yourself. I seemed to know I got the dreams from you.'
'Hush,' warned her mother. 'There’s some one coming. Oh, John, is that you?'
'Yes. Why don’t you two go to bed?' answered the boy. 'It’s getting late, and there’s lot to do to-morrow.'
'It is bed-time, I guess,' said his mother. 'Run along, Victoria. And sweet dreams.'
She cautioned John and his sister not to wake the others, as they prepared for bed. She walked into the house. She tried the clock. Yes, Jake had wound it. She locked the door. She folded her mending neatly and put it away. She placed Minnie Jackson’s letter in the drawer of the table. She took the picture of St. Cecilia and balanced it on the little shelf above the organ, where had been a china vase with dried grasses in it. She stood off and looked at it critically. She decided that was the very place for the picture. She looked around the room for a place to put the vase, and made room for it on top of the little pine book-case. She walked to the table and hunted in the drawer until she found pen and ink and a piece of ruled paper.
'Dear Minnie,' she wrote in her cramped, old-fashioned hand, 'I was so glad to get your note and the picture. I want to thank you for it. Can’t you come out right away and spend the day with me? I have so much to tell you, and I want that you should tell me all about yourself, too. You see I’m keeping the vow, just as you did, although we had forgotten it for so long. Isn’t it strange, Minnie, about things? Here I’d thought for years that my dreams weregone. And now it seems Victoria had them, all the time. It’s a secret yet, but I want to tell you, and I know she won’t mind, that Victoria is going to be married. You know Jim Forman, don’t you? Anyway, you knew Cy Forman and Milly Davis, and he’s their eldest child. I hope Victoria can keep the dreams for herself better than I did. Perhaps she can. She’s going to have things easier than I have, I hope. But if she can’t, surely she can keep them until she has a child to give them to, just as I gave mine to her. I never thought of it before, but it seems to me to-night that perhaps that is the surest way there is of having our dreams last. I don’t see how I’m going to stand it to see my girl growing fat and tired and old from hard work, like I’ve done. But there is another side to it. You’re a mother, too, Minnie, so I guess I don’t need to tell you that all the music and all the pictures in the world wouldn’t make up to me, now, for my children. We didn’t know that when we had our "fancies," did we? But we know it now. Come out soon, Minnie. We’ll have so much to talk about, and I want that you and Victoria should know each other.'
She folded the paper and slipped it into an envelope which she addressed and stamped. Then she blew out the light.
TENdays after my graduation from Harvard I took my place as an unskilled workman in one of the largest of the great soft-coal mines that lie in the Middle West. It was with no thought of writing my experiences that I chose my occupation, but with the intention of learning by actual work the 'operating end' of the great industry, in the hope that such practical knowledge as I should acquire would fit me to follow the business successfully. That this mine was operated in direct opposition to the local organization of union labor, and had won considerable notoriety by successfully mining coal in spite of the most active hostility, gave an added interest to the work. The physical conditions of the mine were the most perfect that modern engineering has devised: the 'workings' were entirely electrified; the latest inventions in coal-mining machinery were everywhere employed, and every precaution for the safety of the men was followed beyond the letter of the law.
It was half-past six on a July morning when the day-shift began streaming out of the wash-house: some four hundred men,—white, black, and of perhaps twenty-eight nationalities,—dressed in their tattered, black, and greasy mine-clothes. The long stream wound out of the wash-house door, past the power-house where the two big generators that feed the arteries of the great mine all day long with its motive power were screaming in a high, shrillrhythm of sound,—past the tall skeleton structure of the tipple-tower, from which the light morning breeze blew black clouds of coal-dust as it eddied around the skeleton of structural iron-work,—to a small house at the mine-mouth, sheathed in corrugated iron, where the broken line formed a column, and the men, one by one, passed through a gate by a small window and gave their numbers to a red-faced man, who checked down in a great book the men who were entering the mine.
From the window we passed along to a little inclosure directly above the mouth of the main hoisting-shaft. Sheer above it the black tower of the tipple pointed up into the hot, blue morning sky; and the dull, dry heat of the flat Illinois country seemed to sink down around it. But from the square, black mouth of the shaft a strong, steady blast of cool air struck the faces of the men who stood at the head of the little column waiting for the next hoist. On the one side of the shaft-mouth, long lines of empty railroad cars stretched out beyond into the flat country, each waiting its turn to be filled some time during the day with coal that would come pouring down over the great screens in the tipple; and on the other side of the shaft-mouth, under the seamed roof of the building where the checker wrote down the numbers of the day-shift, sat the hoisting engineer—a scrawny, hard-faced man with a mine-cap pushed back from his forehead.
Beside him was the great drum on which the long steel cables that lifted and lowered the hoisting-cage were rapidly unwinding, and in his hand he held a lever by which he controlled the ascent or descent of the 'cage.' The first cage had been lowered, and as I watched him and the dial before him, I saw his hand follow his eye, and as the white arrow passed the 300-foot level, the hand drew back a notch and the long, lithe wire began to uncoil more slowly. Threehundred and fifty feet,—and another notch,—and as the arrow reached near the 400-foot mark, his foot came down hard on the brake, and a minute later a bell at his elbow sounded the signal of the safe arrival of the hoist. A minute, and another signal; and then, releasing his foot from the brake, and pulling another lever toward him, the drums, reversed, began to rewind; and as the arrow flew backwards, I realized that the cage was nearing the top—the cage on which a minute later I was to make my descent as a 'loader' into one of the largest, and perhaps most famous, of the vast soft-coal mines that lie in our Middle States.
As the thin cables streamed upward and over the sheave-wheels above the shaft and down to the reeling-drums, I looked at the men about me and felt a sudden mortification at the clean blue of my overalls, and the bright polish on my pick and shovel. A roar at the shaft-mouth, the grind of the drums as the brakes shot in, and the cage lifted itself suddenly from the shaft.
The cage, or elevator, in which the men were lowered into the mine, was a great steel box divided into four superimposed compartments, each holding ten men; and I stood, with nine others, crowded on the first or lowest deck. As the last man pushed into his place and we stood shoulder to shoulder, the hoisting engineer slowly slipped his lever again toward him, and as slowly the cage sank. Then, in an instant, the white-blue of the sky was gone, except for a thin crack below the deck above us, through which a sheet of white light sliced in and hung heavily in the dusty air of our compartment. The high song of the generators in the power-house, the choking puffs of the switch-engine in the yards, and the noise of men and work which I had not noticed before, I now suddenly missed in the absence of sound.
There was a shuffling of feet on the deck above, and again we sank, and this time all was darkness, while we paused for the third deck to fill. Once more—and again for the fourth. Then, as the cage started and the roar of the shoes on the guide-rails struck my ears, I looked at the men about me. They were talking in a whirr of foreign words; and in the greasy yellow light of their pit-lamps, which hung like miniature coffee-pots in the brims of their caps, the strong, hard lines of their faces deepened. The working day was begun.
As the cage shot down, the wall of the shaft seemed to slip up, and from its wet, slimy surface an occasional spatter of mud shot in on the faces of the miners. Strong smells of garlic, of sweat, and of burning oil filled the compartment, and the air, which sucked up through the cracks beneath our feet as though under the force of a piston, fanned and pulled the yellow flames in the men’s caps into smoking streaks. Then I felt the speed of the 'hoist' diminish. A pressure came in my ears and I swallowed hard; and a second later, a soft yet abrupt pause in our descent brought me down on my heels. The black wall of the shaft before me suddenly gave way, and we came to a stop on the bottom of the mine.
It was cool, and after the heat of a July morning, the damp freshness of the air chilled me. With dinner-pails banging against our knees, we pushed out of the hoist; and as the men crowded past, I stood with my back against a great timber and looked around me. Behind, the hoist had already sunk into the 'sump' or pit, at the bottom of the shaft, in order that the men on the second compartment might pass out into the mine; and a second later they swarmed by me—and still I stood, half-dazed by the roar of unknown sounds, my eyes blanketed by the absence of light, and my whole mind smothered and crushed.
I was standing just off the main entry or tunnel of the mine, which began on my left hand out of blackness and passed again, on my right, into a seeming wall of darkness. The low, black roof, closely beamed with great timbers, was held by long lines of great whitewashed tree-trunks. A few electric lights shone dimly through their dust-coated globes, and the yellow flames from the men’s pit-lamps, which had flared so bright in the compartment of the hoisting-cage, seemed now but thin tongues of flame that marked rather than disclosed the men.
Out of the blackness on the left, two tracks passed over a great pit and stretched on into the blackness on the right, as though into the wall of the coal itself. Then, far off, a red signal-light winked out and made distance visible; and beyond it came the sound of grinding wheels; there was the gleam of a headlight on the steel rails. The ray grew larger and two yellow sparks above it flamed out into pit-lights. A train was coming out of the entry and I waited until it should pass. With a grind of brakes it suddenly loomed out of the blackness and into the dull haze of light at the shaft-bottom. With a roar it passed by. The locomotive, a great iron box, was built like a battering-ram, the headlight set in its armor-plated bow, and behind, on two low seats, as in a racing automobile, sat the motorman and the 'trip-rider' or helper, the motorman with one hand on the great iron brake-wheel, the other on his controller, and the trip-rider swinging on his low seat, half on the motor and half over the coupling of the rocking car behind, clinging to the pole of the trolley. Their faces were black with the coal-dust,—black as the motor and their clothing,—and from their pit-lamps the flames bent back in the wind and streamed out straight along their cap-tops.
Low above the head of the trip-rider, the wheel on the trolley streaked out sudden bursts of greenish-white sparksalong the wire; and as the train passed by, the roar of the locomotive gave place to the clattering of the couplings of the long string of stocky cars, each heaped high with its black load of coal. Some one seized me by the elbow.
'What’s yer number?' he asked.
'419.'
'Loader? New man?'
I nodded.
'Then come along with me.'
He was a tall, thin man, who walked with his head thrown forward and his chin against his chest as if in constant fear of striking the low beams overhead. I followed him, stumbling rather clumsily over the broken coal beside the track. The train had come to a stop over the pit between the rails, and men with iron bars were beating loose the frogs and releasing the hopper-bottoms of the cars. Heavy clouds of fine coal-dust poured up from the cars as the coal roared down into the bins; and the clanking of metal, the crash of falling coal, and the unintelligible shouting of the foreigners, filled the entry with a dull tumult of sounds.