“You’re too tenderhearted, Mary.”
“No, ’tis not that! Should I go off and leave me own brother and sister, that need me?”
“But you could earn money and send it to them.”
“I earn a little here—I do cleanin’ and nursin’ for some that need me.”
“But outside—couldn’t you earn more?”
“I could get a job in a restaurant for seven or eight a week, but I’d have to spend more, and what I sent home would not go so far, with me away. Or I could get a job in some other woman’s home, and work fourteen hours a day for it. But, Joe, ’tis not more drudgery I want, ’tis somethin’ fair to look upon—somethin’ of my own!” She flung out her arms suddenly like one being stifled. “Oh, I want somethin’ that’s fair and clean!”
Again he felt her trembling. Again the path was rough, and having an impulse of sympathy, he put his arm about her. In the world of leisure, one might indulge in such considerateness, and he assumed it would not be different with a miner’s daughter. But then, when she was close to him, he felt, rather than heard, a sob.
“Mary!” he whispered; and they stopped. Almost without realising it, he put his other arm about her, and in a moment more he felt her warm breath on his cheek, and she was trembling and shaking in his embrace. “Joe! Joe!” she whispered. “You take me away!”
She was a rose in a mining-camp, and Hal was deeply moved. The primrose path of dalliance stretched fair before him, here in the soft summer night, with a moon overhead which bore the same message as it bore in the Italian gardens of the leisure-class. But not many minutes passed before a cold fear began to steal over Hal. There was a girl at home, waiting for him; and also there was the resolve which had been growing in him since his coming to this place—a resolve to find some way of compensation to the poor, to repay them for the freedom and culture he had taken; not to prey upon them, upon any individual among them. There were the Jeff Cottons for that!
“Mary,” he pleaded, “we mustn’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“Because—I’m not free. There is someone else.”
He felt her start, but she did not draw away.
“Where?” she asked, in a low voice.
“At home, waiting for me.”
“And why didn’t ye tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
Hal realised in a moment that the girl had ground of complaint against him. According to the simple code of her world, he had gone some distance with her; he had been seen to walk out with her, he had been accounted her “fellow.” He had led her to talk to him of herself—he had insisted upon having her confidences. And these people who were poor did not have subtleties, there was no room in their lives for intellectual curiosities, for Platonic friendships or philanderings. “Forgive me, Mary!” he said.
She made no answer; but a sob escaped her, and she drew back from his arms—slowly. He struggled with an impulse to clasp her again. She was beautiful, warm with life—and so much in need of happiness!
But he held himself in check, and for a minute or two they stood apart. Then he asked, humbly, “We can still be friends, Mary, can’t we? You must know—I’m so sorry!”
But she could not endure being pitied. “ ’Tis nothin’,” she said. “Only I thought I was going to get away! That’s what ye mean to me.”
XXV
Hal had promised Alec Stone to keep a lookout for troublemakers; and one evening the boss stopped him on the street, and asked him if he had anything to report. Hal took the occasion to indulge his sense of humour.
“There’s no harm in Mike Sikoria,” said he. “He likes to shoot off his head, but if he’s got somebody to listen, that’s all he wants. He’s just old and grouchy. But there’s another fellow that I think would bear watching.”
“Who’s that?” asked the boss.
“I don’t know his last name. They call him Gus and he’s a ‘cager.’ Fellow with a red face.”
“I know,” said Stone—“Gus Durking.”
“Well, he tried his best to get me to talk about unions. He keeps bringing it up, and I think he’s some kind of troublemaker.”
“I see,” said the boss. “I’ll get after him.”
“You won’t say I told you,” said Hal, anxiously.
“Oh, no—sure not.” And Hal caught the trace of a smile on the pit-boss’s face.
He went away, smiling in his turn. The “red-faced feller. Gus,” was the person Madvik had named as being a “spotter” for the company!
There were ins and outs to this matter of “spotting,” and sometimes it was not easy to know what to think. One Sunday morning Hal went for a walk up the canyon, and on the way he met a young chap who got to talking with him, and after a while brought up the question of working-conditions in North Valley. He had only been there a week, he said, but everybody he had met seemed to be grumbling about short weight. He himself had a job as an “outside man,” so it made no difference to him, but he was interested, and wondered what Hal had found.
Straightway came the question, was this really a workingman, or had Alec Stone set someone to spying upon his spy. This was an intelligent fellow, an American—which in itself was suspicious, for most of the new men the company got in were from “somewhere East of Suez.”
Hal decided to spar for a while. He did not know, he said, that conditions were any worse here than elsewhere. You heard complaints, no matter what sort of job you took.
Yes, said the stranger, but matters seemed to be especially bad in the coal-camps. Probably it was because they were so remote, and the companies owned everything in sight.
“Where have you been?” asked Hal, thinking that
