SECTION 13.
But then, as they were on their way home, tragedy fell upon them.
Hearing a step behind them, Mary turned and looked; then catching Hal by
the arm, she drew him into the shadows at the side, whispering to him to
be silent. The bent figure of a man went past them, lurching from side
to side.
When he had turned and gone into the house, Mary said, "It's my father.
He's ugly when he's like that." And Hal could hear her quick breathing
in the darkness.
So that was Mary's trouble--the difficulty in her home life to which she
had referred at their first meeting! Hal understood many things in a
flash--why her home was bare of ornament, and why she did not invite her
company to sit down. He stood silent, not knowing what to say. Before he
could find the word, Mary burst out, "Oh, how I hate O'Callahan, that
sells the stuff to my father! His home with plenty to eat in it, and his
wife dressin' in silk and goin' down to mass every Sunday, and thinkin'
herself too good for a common miner's daughter! Sometimes I think I'd
like to kill them both."
"That wouldn't help much," Hal ventured.
"No, I know--there'd only be some other one in his place. Ye got to do
more than that, to change things here. Ye got to get after them that
make money out of O'Callahan."
So Mary's mind was groping for causes! Hal had thought her excitement
was due to humiliation, or to fear of a scene of violence when she
reached home; but she was thinking of the deeper aspects of this
terrible drink problem. There was still enough unconscious snobbery in
Hal Warner for him to be surprised at this phenomenon in a common
miner's daughter; and so, as at their first meeting, his pity was turned
to intellectual interest.
"They'll stop the drink business altogether some day," he said. He had
not known that he was a Prohibitionist; he had become one suddenly!
"Well," she answered, "they'd best stop it soon, if they don't want to
he too late. 'Tis a sight to make your heart sick to see the young lads
comin' home staggerin', too drunk even to fight."
Hal had not had time to see much of this aspect of North Valley. "They
sell to boys?" he asked.
"Sure, who's to care? A boy's money's as good as a man's."
"But I should think the company--"
"The company lets the saloon-buildin'--that's all the company cares."
"But they must care something about the efficiency of their hands!"
"Sure, there's plenty more where they come from. When ye can't work,
they fire ye, and that's all there is to it."
"And is it so easy to get skilled men?"
"It don't take much skill to get out coal. The skill is in keepin' your
bones whole--and if you can stand breakin' 'em, the company can stand
it."
They had come to the little cabin. Mary stood for a moment in silence.
"I'm talkin' bitter again!" she exclaimed suddenly. "And I promised ye
me company manner! But things keep happening to set me off." And she
turned abruptly and ran into the house. Hal stood for a moment wondering
if she would return; then, deciding that she had meant that as good
night, he went slowly up the street.
He fought against a mood of real depression, the first he had known
since his coming to North Valley. He had managed so far to keep a
certain degree of aloofness, that he might see this industrial world
without prejudice. But to-night his pity for Mary had involved him more
deeply. To be sure, he might be able to help her, to find her work in
some less crushing environment; but his mind went on to the
question--how many girls might there be in mining-camps, young and
eager, hungering for life, but crushed by poverty, and by the burden of
the drink problem?
A man walked past Hal, greeting him in the semi-darkness with a nod and
a motion of the hand. It was the Reverend Spragg, the gentleman who was
officially commissioned to combat the demon rum in North Valley.
Hal had been to the little white church the Sunday before, and heard the
Reverend Spragg preach a doctrinal sermon, in which the blood of the
lamb was liberally sprinkled, and the congregation heard where and how
they were to receive compensation for the distresses they endured in
this vale of tears.
What a mockery it seemed! Once, indubitably, people had believed such
doctrines; they had been willing to go to the stake for them. But now
nobody went to the stake for them--on the contrary, the company
compelled every worker to contribute out of his scanty earnings towards
the preaching of them. How could the most ignorant of zealots confront
such an arrangement without suspicion of his own piety? Somewhere at the
head of the great dividend-paying machine that was called the General
Fuel Company must be some devilish intelligence that had worked it all
out, that had given the orders to its ecclesiastical staff: "We want the
present--we leave you the future! We want the bodies--we leave you the
souls! Teach them what you will about heaven--so long as you let us
plunder them on earth!"
In accordance with this devil's program, the Reverend Spragg might
denounce the demon rum, but he said nothing about dividends based on the
renting of rum-shops, nor about local politicians maintained by company
contributions, plus the profits of wholesale liquor. He said nothing
about the conclusions of modern hygiene, concerning over-work as a cause
of the craving for alcohol; the phrase "industrial drinking," it seemed,
was not known in General Fuel Company theology! In fact, when you
listened to such a sermon, you would never have guessed that the hearers
of it had physical bodies at all; certainly you would never have guessed
that the preacher had a body, which was nourished by food produced by
the overworked and under-nourished wage-slaves whom he taught!
