King Coal

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"All right, I'm with you," said the Coal King's son.

SECTION 16.

Hal never knew what Percy said to Cartwright that night; he only knew
that when they arrived at the mine the superintendent was summoned to a
consultation, and half an hour later Percy emerged smiling, with the
announcement that Hal Warner had been mistaken all along; the mine
authorities had been making all possible haste to get the fan ready,
with the intention of opening the mine at the earliest moment. The work
was now completed, and in an hour or two the fan was to be started, and
by morning there would be a chance of rescuers getting in. Percy said
this so innocently that for a moment Hal wondered if Percy himself might
not believe it. Hal's position as guest of course required that he
should graciously pretend to believe it, consenting to appear as a fool
before the rest of the company.

Percy invited Hal and Billy Keating to spend the night in the train; but
this Hal declined. He was too dirty, he said; besides, he wanted to be
up at daylight, to be one of the first to go down the shaft. Percy
answered that the superintendent had vetoed this proposition--he did not
want any one to go down but experienced men, who could take care of
themselves. When there were so many on hand ready and eager to go, there
was no need to imperil the lives of amateurs.

At the risk of seeming ungracious, Hal declared that he would "hang
around" and see them take the cover off the pit-mouth. There were
mourning parties in some of the cabins, where women were gathered
together who could not sleep, and it would be an act of charity to take
them the good news.

Hal and Keating set out; they went first to the Rafferties', and saw
Mrs. Rafferty spring up and stare at them, and then scream aloud to the
Holy Virgin, waking all the little Rafferties to frightened clamour.
When the woman had made sure that they really knew what they were
talking about, she rushed out to spread the news, and so pretty soon the
streets were alive with hurrying figures, and a crowd gathered once more
at the pit-mouth.

Hal and Keating went on to Jerry Minetti's. Out of a sense of loyalty to
Percy, Hal did no more than repeat Percy's own announcement, that it had
been Cartwright's intention all along to have the mine opened. It was
funny to see the effect of this statement--the face with which Jerry
looked at Hal! But they wasted no time in discussion; Jerry slipped into
his clothes and hurried with them to the pit-mouth.

Sure enough, a gang was already tearing off the boards and canvas. Never
since Hal had been in North Valley had he seen men working with such a
will! Soon the great fan began to stir, and then to roar, and then to
sing; and there was a crowd of a hundred people, roaring and singing
also.

It would be some hours before anything more could be done; and suddenly
Hal realised that he was exhausted. He and Billy Keating went back to
the Minetti cabin, and spreading themselves a blanket on the floor, lay
down with sighs of relief. As for Billy, he was soon snoring; but to Hal
there came sudden reaction from all the excitement, and sleep was far
from him.

An ocean of thoughts came flooding into his mind: the world outside,
_his_ world, which he had banished deliberately for several months, and
which he had so suddenly been compelled to remember! It had seemed so
simple, what he had set out to do that summer: to take another name, to
become a member of another class, to live its life and think its
thoughts, and then come back to his own world with a new and fascinating
adventure to tell about! The possibility that his own world, the world
of Hal Warner, might find him out as Joe Smith, the miner's buddy--that
was a possibility which had never come to his mind. He was like a
burglar, working away at a job in darkness, and suddenly finding the
room flooded with light.

He had gone into the adventure, prepared to find things that would shock
him; he had known that somehow, somewhere, he would have to fight the
"system." But he had never expected to find himself in the thick of the
class-war, leading a charge upon the trenches of his own associates. Nor
was this the end, he knew; this war would not be settled by the winning
of a trench! Lying here in the darkness and silence, Hal was realising
what he had got himself in for. To employ another simile, he was a man
who begins a flirtation on the street, and wakes up next morning to find
himself married.

It was not that he had regrets for the course he had taken with Percy.
No other course had been thinkable. But while Hal had known these North
Valley people for ten weeks, he had known the occupants of Percy's car
for as many years. So these latter personalities loomed large in his
consciousness, and here in the darkness their thoughts about him,
whether actively hostile or passively astonished, laid siege to the
defences of his mind.

Particularly he found himself wrestling with Jessie Arthur. Her face
rose up before him, appealing, yearning. She had one of those perfect
faces, which irresistibly compel the soul of a man. Her brown eyes, soft
and shining, full of tenderness; her lips, quick to tremble with
emotion; her skin like apple-blossoms, her hair with star-dust in it!
Hal was cynical enough about coal-operators and mine-guards, but it
never occurred to him that Jessie's soul might be anything but what
these bodily charms implied. He was in love with her; and he was too
young, too inexperienced in love to realise that underneath the
sweetness of girlhood, so genuine and so lovable, might lie deep,
unconscious cruelty, inherited and instinctive--the cruelty of caste,
the hardness of worldly prejudice. A man has to come to middle age, and
to suffer much, before he understands that the charms of women, those
rare and magical perfections of eyes and teeth and hair, that softness
of skin and delicacy of feature, have cost labour and care of many
generations, and imply inevitably that life has been feral, that customs
and conventions have been murderous and inhuman.

Jessie had failed Hal in his desperate emergency. But now he went over
the scene, and told himself that the test had been an unfair one. He had
known her since childhood, and loved her, and never before had he seen
an act or heard a word that was not gracious and kind. But--so he told
himself--she gave her sympathy to those she knew; and what chance had
she ever had to know working-people? He must give her the chance; he
must compel her, even against her will, to broaden her understanding of
life! The process might hurt her, it might mar the unlined softness of
her face, but nevertheless, it would be good for her--it would be a
"growing pain"!

So, lying there in the darkness and silence, Hal found himself absorbed
in long conversation with his sweetheart. He escorted her about the
camp, explaining things to her, introducing her to this one and that. He
took others of his private-car friends and introduced them to his North
Valley friends. There were individuals who had qualities in common, and
would surely hit it off! Bob Creston, for example, who was good at a
"song and dance"--he would surely be interested in "Blinky," the
vaudeville specialist of the camp! Mrs. Curtis, who liked cats, would
find a bond of sisterhood with old Mrs. Nagle, who lived next door to
the Minettis, and kept five! And even Vivie Cass, who hated men who ate
with their knives--she would be driven to murder by the table-manners of
Reminitsky's boarders, but she would take delight in "Dago Charlie," the
tobacco-chewing mule which had once been Hal's pet! Hal could hardly
wait for daylight to come, so that he might begin these efforts at
social amalgamation!

SECTION 17.

Towards dawn Hal fell asleep; he was awakened by Billy Keating, who sat
up yawning, at the same time grumbling and bewailing. Hal realised that
Billy also had discovered troubles during the night. Never in all his
career as a journalist had he had such a story; never had any man had
such a story--and it must be killed!

Cartwright had got the reporters together late the night before and told
them the news--that the company had at last succeeded in getting the
mine ready to be opened; also that young Mr. Harrigan was there in his
private train, prompted by his concern for the entombed miners. The
reporters would mention his coming, of course, but were requested not to
"play it up," nor to mention the names of Mr. Harrigan's guests.
Needless to say they were not told that the "buddy" who had been thrown
out of camp for insubordination had turned out to be the son of Edward
S. Warner, the "coal magnate."

A fine, cold rain was falling, and Hal borrowed an old coat of Jerry's
and slipped it on. Little Jerry clamoured to go with him, and after some
controversy Hal wrapped him in a shawl and slung him onto his shoulder.
It was barely daylight, but already the whole population of the village
was on hand at the pit-mouth. The helmet-men had gone down to make
tests, so the hour of final revelation was at hand. Women stood with wet
shawls about their hunched shoulders, their faces white and strained,
their suspense too great for any sort of utterance. A ghastly thought it
was, that while they were shuddering in the wet, their men below might
be expiring for lack of a few drops of water!

The helmet-men, coming up, reported that lights would burn at the bottom
of the shaft; so it was safe for men to go down without helmets, and the
volunteers of the first rescue party made ready. All night there had
been a clattering of hammers, where the carpenters were working on a new
cage. Now it was swung from the hoist, and the men took their places in
it. When at last the hoist began to move, and the group disappeared
below the surface of the ground, you could hear a sigh from a thousand
throats, like the moaning of wind in a pine-tree. They were leaving
women and children above, yet not one of these women would have asked
them to stay--such was the deep unconscious bond of solidarity which
made these toilers of twenty nations one!

It was a slow process, letting down the cage; on account of the danger
of gas, and the newness of the cage, it was necessary to proceed a few
feet at a time, waiting for a pull upon the signal-cord to tell that the
men were all right. After they had reached the bottom, there would be
more time, no one could say how long, before they came upon survivors
with signs of life in them. There were bodies near the foot of the
shaft, according to the reports of the helmet-men, but there was no use
delaying to bring these up, for they must have been dead for days. Hal
saw a crowd of women clamouring about the helmet-men, trying to find out
if these bodies had been recognised. Also he saw Jeff Cotton and Bud
Adams at their old duty of driving the women back.

The cage returned for a second load of men. There was less need of
caution now; the hoist worked quickly, and group after group of men with
silent, set faces, and pickaxes and crow-bars and shovels in their
hands, went down into the pit of terror. They would scatter through the
workings, testing everywhere ahead of them with safety-lamps, and
looking for barriers erected by the imprisoned men for defence against
the gases. As they hammered on these barriers, perhaps they would hear
the signals of living men on the other side; or they would break through
in silence, and find men too far gone to make a sound, yet possibly with
the spark of life still in them.

One by one, Hal's friends went down--"Big Jack" David, and Wresmak, the
Bohemian, Klowoski, the Pole, and finally Jerry Minetti. Little Jerry
waved his hand from his perch on Hal's shoulder; while Rosa, who had
come out and joined them, was clinging to Hal's arm, silent, as if her
soul were going down in the cage. There went blue-eyed Tim Rafferty to
look for his father, and black-eyed "Andy," the Greek boy, whose father
had perished in a similar disaster years ago; there went Rovetta, and
Carmino, the pit-boss, Jerry's cousin. One by one their names ran
through the crowd, as of heroes marching out to battle.

SECTION 18.

Looking about, Hal saw some of the guests of the Harrigan party. There
was Vivie Cass, standing under an umbrella with Bert Atkins; and there
was Bob Creston with Dicky Everson. These two had on mackintoshes and
water-proof hats, and were talking to Cartwright; tall, immaculate men,
who seemed like creatures of another world beside the stunted and
coal-smutted miners.

Seeing Hal, they moved over to him. "Where did you get the kid?"
inquired Bob, his rosy, smooth-shaven face breaking into a smile.

"I picked him up," said Hal, giving Little Jerry a toss and sliding him
off his shoulder.

"Hello, kid!" said Bob.

And the answer came promptly, "Hello, yourself!" Little Jerry knew how
to talk American; he was a match for any society man! "My father's went
down in that cage," said he, looking up at the tall stranger, his bright
black eyes sparkling.

"Is that so!" replied the other. "Why don't you go?"

"My father'll get 'em out. He ain't afraid o' nothin', my father!"

"What's your father's name?"

"Big Jerry."

"Oho! And what'll you be when you grow up?"

"I'm goin' to be a shot-firer."

"In this mine?"

"You bet not!"

"Why not?"

Little Jerry looked mysterious. "I ain't tellin' all I know," said he.

The two young fellows laughed. Here was education for them! "Maybe
you'll go back to the old country?" put in Dicky Everson.

"No, sir-ee!" said Little Jerry. "I'm American."

"Maybe you'll be president some day."

"That's what my father says," replied the little chap--"president of a
miners' union."

Again they laughed; but Rosa gave a nervous whisper and caught at the
child's sleeve. That was not the sort of thing to say to mysterious and
rich-looking strangers! "This is Little Jerry's mother, Mrs. Minetti,"
put in Hal, by way of reassuring her.

"Glad to meet you, Mrs. Minetti," said the two young men, taking off
their hats with elaborate bows; they stared, for Rosa was a pretty
object as she blushed and made her shy response. She was much
embarrassed, having never before in her life been bowed to by men like
these.

And here they were greeting Joe Smith as an old friend, and calling him
by a strange name! She turned her black Italian eyes upon Hal in
inquiry, and he felt a flush creeping over him. It was almost as
uncomfortable to be found out by North Valley as to be found out by
Western City!

The men talked about the rescue-work, and what Cartwright had been
telling of its progress. The fire was in one of the main passages, and
was burning out the timbering, spreading rapidly under the draft from
the reversed fan. There could be little hope of rescue in this part of
the mine, but the helmet-men would defy the heat and smoke in the burned
out passages. They knew how likely was the collapse of such portions of
the mine; but also they knew that men had been working here before the
explosion. "I must say they're a game lot!" remarked Dicky.

A group of women and children were gathered about to listen, their
shyness overcome by their torturing anxiety for news. They made one
think of women in war-time, listening to the roar of distant guns and
waiting for the bringing in of the wounded. Hal saw Bob and Dicky glance
now and then at the ring of faces about them; they were getting
something of this mood, and that was a part of what he had desired for
them.

"Are the others coming out?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Bob. "I suppose they're having breakfast. It's time
we went in."

"Won't you come with us?" added Dicky.

"No, thanks," replied Hal, "I've an engagement with the kid here." And
he gave Little Jerry's hand a squeeze. "But tell some of the other
fellows to come. They'll be interested in these things."

"All right," said the two, as they moved away.

SECTION 19.

After allowing a sufficient time for the party in the dining-car to
finish breakfast, Hal went down to the tracks, and induced the porter to
take in his name to Percy Harrigan. He was hoping to persuade Percy to
see the village under other than company chaperonage; he heard with
dismay the announcement that the party had arranged to depart in the
course of a couple of hours.

"But you haven't seen anything at all!" Hal protested.

"They won't let us into the mine," replied the other. "What else is
there we can do?"

"I wanted you to talk to the people and learn something about conditions
here. You ought not to lose this chance, Percy!"

"That's all right, Hal, but you might understand this isn't a convenient
time. I've got a lot of people with me, and I've no right to ask them to
wait."

"But can't they learn something also, Percy?"

"It's raining," was the reply; "and ladies would hardly care to stand
round in a crowd and see dead bodies brought out of a mine."

Hal got the rebuke. Yes, he had grown callous since coming to North
Valley; he had lost that delicacy of feeling, that intuitive
understanding of the sentiments of ladies, which he would surely have
exhibited a short time earlier in his life. He was excited about this
disaster; it was a personal thing to him, and he lost sight of the fact
that to the ladies of the Harrigan party it was, in its details, merely
sordid and repelling. If they went out in the mud and rain of a
mining-village and stood about staring, they would feel that they were
exhibiting, not human compassion, but idle curiosity. The sights they
would see would harrow them to no purpose; and incidentally they would
be exposing themselves to distressing publicity. As for offering
sympathy to widows and orphans--well, these were foreigners mostly, who
could not understand what was said to them, and who might be more
embarrassed than helped by the intrusion into their grief of persons
from an alien world.

The business of offering sympathy had been reduced to a system by the
civilisation which these ladies helped to maintain; and, as it happened,
there was one present who was familiar with this system. Mrs. Curtis had
already acted, so Percy informed Hal; she had passed about a
subscription-paper, and in a couple of minutes over a thousand dollars
had been pledged. This would be paid by check to the "Red Cross," whose
agents would understand how to distribute relief among such sufferers.
So the members of Percy's party felt that they had done the proper and
delicate thing, and might go their ways with a quiet conscience.

"The world can't stop moving just because there's been a mine-disaster,"
said the Coal King's son. "People have engagements they must keep."

And he went on to explain what these engagements were. He himself had to
go to a dinner that evening, and would barely be able to make it. Bert
Atkins was to play a challenge match at billiards, and Mrs. Curtis was
to attend a committee meeting of a woman's club. Also it was the last
Friday of the month; had Hal forgotten what that meant?

After a moment Hal remembered--the "Young People's Night" at the country
club! He had a sudden vision of the white colonial mansion on the
mountain-side, with its doors and windows thrown wide, and the strains
of an orchestra floating out. In the ball-room the young ladies of
Percy's party would appear--Jessie, his sweetheart, among them--gowned
in filmy chiffons and laces, floating in a mist of perfume and colour
and music. They would laugh and chatter, they would flirt and scheme
against one another for the sovereignty of the ball-room--while here in
North Valley the sobbing widows would be clutching their mangled dead in
their arms! How strange, how ghastly it seemed! How like the scenes one
read of on the eve of the French Revolution!

SECTION 20.

Percy wanted Hal to come away with the party. He suggested this
tactfully at first, and then, as Hal did not take the hint, he began to
press the matter, showing signs of irritation. The mine was open
now--what more did Hal want? When Hal suggested that Cartwright might
order it closed again, Percy revealed the fact that the matter was in
his father's hands. The superintendent had sent a long telegram the
night before, and an answer was due at any moment. Whatever the answer
ordered would have to be done.

There was a grim look upon Hal's face, but he forced himself to speak
politely. "If your father orders anything that interferes with the
rescuing of the men--don't you see, Percy, that I have to fight him?"

"But how _can_ you fight him?"

"With the one weapon I have--publicity."

"You mean--" Percy stopped, and stared.

"I mean what I said before--I'd turn Billy Keating loose and blow this
whole story wide open."

"Well, by God!" cried young Harrigan. "I must say I'd call it damned
dirty of you! You said you'd not do it, if I'd come here and open the
mine!"

"But what good does it do to open it, if you close it again before the
men are out?" Hal paused, and when he went on it was in a sincere
attempt at apology. "Percy, don't imagine I fail to appreciate the
embarrassments of this situation. I know I must seem a cad to you--more
than you've cared to tell me. I called you my friend in spite of all our
quarrels. All I can do is to assure you that I never intended to get
into such a position as this."

"Well, what the hell did you want to come here for? You knew it was the
property of a friend--"

"That's the question at issue between us, Percy. Have you forgotten our
arguments? I tried to convince you what it meant that you and I should
own the things by which other people have to live. I said we were
ignorant of the conditions under which our properties were worked, we
were a bunch of parasites and idlers. But you laughed at me, called me a
crank, an anarchist, said I swallowed what any muck-raker fed me. So I
said: 'I'll go to one of Percy's mines! Then, when he tries to argue
with me, I'll have him!' That was the way the thing started--as a joke.
But then I got drawn into things. I don't want to be nasty, but no man
with a drop of red blood in his veins could stay in this place a week
without wanting to fight! That's why I want you to stay--you ought to
stay, to meet some of the people and see for yourself."

"Well, I can't stay," said the other, coldly. "And all I can tell you is
that I wish you'd go somewhere else to do your sociology."

"But where could I go, Percy? Somebody owns everything. If it's a big
thing, it's almost certain to be somebody we know."

Said Percy, "If I might make a suggestion, you could have begun with the
coal-mines of the Warner Company."

Hal laughed. "You may be sure I thought of that, Percy. But see the
situation! If I was to accomplish my purpose, it was essential that I
shouldn't be known. And I had met some of my father's superintendents in
his office, and I knew they'd recognise me. So I _had_ to go to some
other mines."

"Most fortunate for the Warner Company," replied Percy, in an ugly tone.

Hal answered, gravely, "Let me tell you, I don't intend to leave the
Warner Company permanently out of my sociology."

"Well," replied the other, "all I can say is that we pass one of their
properties on our way back, and nothing would please me better than to
stop the train and let you off!"

SECTION 21.

Hal went into the drawing-room car. There were Mrs. Curtis and Reggie
Porter, playing bridge with Genevieve Halsey and young Everson. Bob
Creston was chatting with Betty Gunnison, telling her what he had seen
outside, no doubt. Bert Atkins was looking over the morning paper,
yawning. Hal went on, seeking Jessie Arthur, and found her in one of the
compartments of the car, looking out of the rain-drenched
window--learning about a mining-camp in the manner permitted to young
ladies of her class.

He expected to find her in a disturbed state of mind, and was prepared
to apologise. But when he met the look of distress she turned upon him,
he did not know just where to begin. He tried to speak casually--he had
heard she was going away. But she caught him by the hand, exclaiming:
"Hal, you are coming with us!"

He did not answer for a moment, but sat down by her. "Have I made you
suffer so much, Jessie?"

He saw tears start into her eyes. "Haven't you _known_ you were making
me suffer? Here I was as Percy's guest; and to have you put such
questions to me! What could I say? What do I know about the way Mr.
Harrigan should run his business?"

"Yes, dear," he said, humbly. "Perhaps I shouldn't have drawn you into
it. But the matter was so complicated and so sudden. Can't you
understand that, and forgive me? Everything has turned out so well!"

But she did not think that everything had turned out well. "In the first
place, for you to be here, in such a plight! And when I thought you were
hunting mountain-goats in Mexico!"

He could not help laughing; but Jessie had not even a smile. "And
then--to have you drag our love into the thing, there before every one!"

"Was that really so terrible, Jessie?"

She looked at him with amazement. That he, Hal Warner, could have done
such a thing, and not realise how terrible it was! To put her in a
position where she had to break either the laws of love or the laws of
good-breeding! Why, it had amounted to a public quarrel. It would be the
talk of the town--there was no end to the embarrassment of it!

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