Angry Wife

Chapter Six

PERFORCE, PIERCE WAS COMPELLED in the next years to put aside thinking of his family. The railroad stocks upon which Malvern still depended for the capital to expand its acres and to build the barns needed for housing greater crops suddenly weakened. In the last ten years the nation had gone wild over railroads. Little towns and villages had seen themselves swollen into cities and railroad centers, whirlpools of trade and commerce. In the years since Pierce had bought his first railroad shares, new roads had been incorporated almost every month. Railroad promoters rode east and west in palatial private cars, and dined and got drunk with promoters of stores and shops and locomotive works, and enthusiastic men sat far into the night mapping new cities which were never to exist except upon paper.

Pierce heard vaguely of these doings, but Malvern lay around him, so peaceful and so eternal, he could not believe that beneath Malvern, in banks and railroads, the foundations of his life were shaking. John MacBain had spoken out his fears and warnings half a dozen times, but Pierce, with the hearty good humor of a man who lives upon fertile lands, had taken them as manifestations of John’s old tendency toward secret despair.

One morning after mid-December, when Lucinda was superintending the making of the yards of holly wreath to hang along the halls for Christmas, Jake brought him a telegram from John. It contained few words. “Things are bad. Come quick. John.”

He took the telegram to Lucinda as she sat enthroned in a huge oak chair on the stair landing. At her feet Georgia crouched, weaving the holly twigs in and out with scarlet cord. Along the balustrade two or three young servants crawled, twining the wreath in and out of the banisters.

Lucinda read the telegram, her pretty brows knit in a frown. “Oh Pierce, of all things, just at Christmas!” she cried.

“Christmas is a week off,” he said gravely. “I’ve got to go.”

“I always count that Christmas begins when the boys come home,” she protested.

“John wouldn’t send for me unless he really needed me,” he replied.

“Probably Molly has been playing the fool,” she said sharply. Never before had she remarked on Molly’s escapades.

He lifted his eyebrows at her. “I don’t think it’s Molly,” he replied. “John can handle her. No, it’s the railroad. Things haven’t been going too well—”

Now she was alarmed. “Why, Pierce—”

“Too much expansion,” he said briefly. Then he bent and kissed her hair. “Never mind Luce — go on with Christmas — whatever it is we’ll have Christmas as usual.”

She nodded. Whatever it was, it was not her business.

Georgia stood up and red holly berries fell from her frock. “Shall I go and help pack, ma’am?” she asked in her gentle voice.

“Yes — well, I suppose so,” Lucinda said, vexed.

“Minnie can take my place,” Georgia suggested.

Pierce turned and went upstairs and behind him he heard Georgia’s soft footfall. He had come to take her presence so much for granted in his house that she was scarcely a creature apart now from its life. He went into his rooms and she followed. To his own bedroom in the last five years he had added a booklined sitting room, so that if he were wakeful he could get up and read. He did not sleep well since Tom had gone away. It would take years to convince him that Tom was never coming back. When once in six months he had one of Tom’s long letters he slept very badly indeed. Tom was perfectly happy as the headmaster of his own small private school. None of the retribution which should have fallen on his head had come. Pierce dared not show the letters to Lucinda, lest such happiness infuriate her. He locked them into a small strong box in his desk.

“I can pack your things, sir,” Georgia was saying. “Why don’t you sit down and rest yourself?”

He looked at her and yielded. “Well, maybe I will. I ought to look up some of my papers before I go.”

“Yes, sir.”

She went into his bedroom, leaving the door open between. He heard drawers open and shut, and the latch of his closet sounded once or twice. She knew where everything was, for it was she who kept his things in order. Joe was his valet, but Georgia kept his things neat. He was aware of a mild friendship between her and Joe. Joe had never married—

He got up and went into his bedroom. Georgia was folding his white evening shirts carefully. She looked up.

“I didn’t tell Joe I was going,” he said abruptly. “I’ll want him along, of course.”

“I’ll tell him, sir,” Georgia replied.

“‘I don’t even know where he is,” Pierce grumbled.

“I know,” she said. Her cheeks dimpled. “It’s safe enough that if he thinks you’re busy he’s in the kitchen.”

She lifted the speaking tube from its hook near his bed and called into it, “Joe?”

She looked at Pierce, still smiling. “He’s there,” she said. “I knew he wouldn’t be working on the holly. He’s afraid of thorns.”

“Joe lazy?” he inquired. He enjoyed dimples in any woman’s cheeks.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied.

The dimples were still there and he kept looking at them. Then he felt his old uneasiness toward her. “Why don’t you and Joe get married, Georgia?” he asked abruptly.

The dimples disappeared instantly. She hung up the speaking tube and flushed a deep rose. “I couldn’t marry — him,” she said in a low voice.

“It would be a good thing,” he argued, still looking at her. “I’d give you the stone tenant house to live in.”

She gazed back at him, her eyes suffering. “I — can’t,” she whispered. Her face, open and quivering before his gaze, was like a magnolia flower. Her eyes were enormous and wet with sudden tears. The moment grew long, too long, then suddenly seeing the look upon his face she yielded to herself. She ran across the room and knelt before him, and bent her head to his feet.

He was horrified and shaken. He looked down into her face and despised himself because he could not keep from seeing how beautiful she was. “I ought to send you away,” he said in a strange hard voice.

“I have no home in the world but here,” she whispered.

“Get up!” he commanded her. He stepped back and turned and strode toward the door. He looked back and she was there, on her knees still, her delicate hands clasped, looking at him with her dark and sorrowful eyes.

“I must leave in half an hour,” he told her, and heard his own voice dry and harsh.

“Yes, sir.” The words were a sigh.

He hastened downstairs to find Lucinda. She had left the landing and was in the library, still surrounded by holly wreaths and servants. She was standing by the mantelpiece, directing the placing of the decorations behind the portrait of his mother. He went and stood beside her silently, and looked at his mother’s face.

“Do you think that wreath is too heavy?” Lucinda inquired.

“Perhaps,” he said absently. He wanted to feel his mother’s presence and Lucinda’s. He put his arm about Lucinda’s waist and took her right hand and pressed it to his lips. She let him caress her and then pulled her hand away, lifting her eyebrows at the servants who were stealing looks at them.

“Come to the door with me, Luce,” he begged. “I shan’t be seeing you maybe for a week.”

“A week!” she echoed. “Pierce — that’s Christmas Eve!”

“I’ll try to get home sooner,” he said.

“Has Georgia got your things ready?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said shortly. The enormous complexity of his life suddenly appalled him. If he did not send Georgia away, how would he hide from Lucinda what he knew? And if he did send her away, what reason would he give? He heartily longed to tell Lucinda exactly what had happened and let her deal with Georgia as she would. But prudence forbade this. Lucinda would never believe that he had not done something to bring Georgia to her knees before him. Lucinda would never believe in his innocence — nor in any man’s where a woman was concerned. He felt sweat stir at the roots of his hair and along his upper lip under his moustache, and he dared not put himself at her mercy. She was his wife and she knew the secret weaknesses of his being and his life was with her and must be with her through the years until old age and death, and he could not be at her mercy.

“Goodbye, honey,” he said. “Don’t bother to come to the door, after all. The house looks lovely. And I’ll be back before Christmas Eve, for sure.”

Lucinda kissed him gratefully. “If you can get some champagne in Wheeling bring home a dozen bottles, Pierce. The boys won’t think it’s a real party without it.”

“I will, my dear,” he promised her.

He dreaded to go into the hall lest Georgia were there. But she was not. Joe was getting the bags into the carriage, and he grinned at Pierce.

“I shore did hustle myself,” he panted. Pierce climbed into the carriage and Joe arranged the fur robe over his knees and jumped on the driving seat and the coachman pricked the twin black carriage horses with his whip and they set off down the long avenue of oaks.

“We’ve been through trouble before,” John said. There had been no pretense at festivity this time when Pierce arrived at the great mansion set on a hill outside Wheeling, nor at any time during the days he had been here. On the fourth day, after an almost silent dinner, the three of them at one end of the huge oval dining table in an enormous dining room, Molly had gone upstairs and John had brought him to the dark paneled library. A fire burned in an English iron grate under a white marble mantlepiece where a wreath of marble was upheld by naked cupids. It was near midnight and they were still talking, and the burden of their talk was what it had been for hours on each of the days he had been here in John’s house. Financial depression threatened the country. Men had seen it coming in vague and inexplicable fashion, a storm on the horizon, a wind on the sea. Pierce had not felt it at Malvern, and soundly rooted in his lands, he had taken the warnings he read in newspapers as the nervousness of business men whose fortunes were in flexible money instead of in farms and cattle.

But John had told him that the depression had already fallen upon the railroads. Passenger traffic was growing so light that it scarcely paid to run the trains on short journeys, and freight was falling off alarmingly fast. Something had to be done to check the downward spiral of the times.

“I should have thought that the expansion before the war would have taught you railroad fellows something,” Pierce said sourly.

John looked at him and grinned. “You ought to understand. You’ve done a little expanding yourself at Malvern.”

“Only for myself and my family,” Pierce grumbled. I haven’t taken the savings of widows and orphans.”

“You’ve used the savings of widows and orphans,” John retorted. “What would you have been if you hadn’t? Not the Squire of Malvern!”

Pierce avoided the thought. “After all you’ve told me, there’s only one thing to be done. Depression has hit the whole country and we know it. Then wages have got to come down.”

“Easier said than done,” John reminded him. “The men will go on strike.”

“Let them,” Pierce said.

“You don’t keep up with the times down there in the country, Pierce,” John complained. “Don’t you read any newspapers? Have you ever heard of a fellow called Marx?”

“No,” Pierce said, “who is he?”

“Oh, my God,” John groaned. “Did you ever hear of a communist, Pierce?”

“No,” Pierce said.

John leaned on the mantelpiece and shook a long forefinger at him. “You listen to me, Pierce,” he said in the sharp high voice with which he harangued directors at dinner tables and gangs at the works. “A strike isn’t a local nuisance nowadays. It’s something more, by Gawd!”

“What?” asked Pierce.

“That’s what I don’t know,” John’s forefinger dropped. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. When we have a strike here, in West Virginia, I don’t feel the roots are here.”

“Where are they?” Pierce asked, smiling incredulously.

“Over in Europe somewhere,” John said solemnly.

Pierce yawned. “You always were a gloomy fellow, John. Come on to bed. A night’s sleep will bring back your commonsense. What’s Europe got to do with us?”

John shook his head and poured two small glasses of whiskey from the big cut glass decanter on the table. They lifted their glasses and drank to one another, and marched up the broad stairs side by side. Behind them a silent liveried servant put out the lamps and set the screen across the fireplace.

In the wide upstairs hall John opened a heavy mahogany door and Pierce stood on the threshold of his room. Then they heard Molly’s voice. Her maid had opened the door opposite, and over the low footboard of her enormous bed, they saw Molly enthroned among silken pillows.

“Come in here, you two!” she called. “Pierce, you needn’t mind me — you’re just like a brother to me, damn you!”

They laughed, Pierce awkward for a moment. And then they went and stood at the foot of Molly’s bed. She looked very pretty indeed, in her blue satin nightgown and lace cap tied with blue ribbons. Her ruddy hair was braided and hung in plaits over her shoulders. Her white arms were bare and she threw down her book.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said frankly. “I’m worried to death. Pierce, are you afraid?”

“Of what?” he asked cautiously. He did not believe in talking about business with any woman.

“Those awful communists!” she wailed. “They want to take everything away from us!”

“Nonsense,” he said smiling. “We’re a civilized country, thank God.”

“Think of what the rabble did in France!” she cried.

“Think of what they didn’t,” he reminded her. “The palaces are still there and yours will be too, my dear — don’t worry!”

She was looking at him with bold bright eyes, and Pierce involuntarily glanced at John. He was staring at the rose-flowered carpet, the lines of his mouth saturnine.

“Goodnight, Molly—” Pierce said.

“Goodnight, Pierce,” she replied, and made a face at him.

They went back to Pierce’s room and Pierce laughed a little when he entered it. It was enormous, paneled in black walnut and curtained with red velvet.

“Napoleon might have slept in that,” he said cheerfully, staring at the tented, triple-sized bed.

John smiled drily. “I believe he did,” he remarked. “Though how these fellows get around to sleep in so many beds—”

Pierce laughed again. “I wouldn’t have it at Malvern for a pretty penny,” he said frankly.

Out of the darkness a huge brass lamp shone in a circle of yellow light and a coal fire burned and crackled in the black iron grate. John stood before it, warming his coat tails and Pierce stood facing him.

“You remember what I asked you, once?” John inquired. Pierce nodded, unbuttoning his satin waistcoat. “I ask you again,” John said firmly. “There’s a fellow hanging around Molly these days — you know Henry Mallows?”

“Yes,” Pierce said.

“I don’t want him to father any child of mine,” John said with feeling. “A sissy, if I ever saw one!”

Pierce took off his coat and hung it over a chair. “Doesn’t his wife—”

“His wife,” John said with bitterness, “is used to loose ways on her own account, from all I hear. Those lords and ladies! Pierce, I’m fond of you. I could love any child of yours — as I’d love my own.”

“I’ve had all the children I’m going to have, John.” He spoke lightly, but his head swam. A woman’s face sprang before his eyes, and he was shocked to discover that it was Georgia’s as she had knelt before him. He turned away abruptly. Joe had unpacked his bags and his nightshirt lay on the big bed.

“I reckon I’ll turn in, John.” He faced his friend, smiled, and walked toward him and clasped John’s long bony hand.

“Is that final?” John asked.

“Final,” Pierce said.

“Then I won’t ask you again.”

“No, John.”

Long into the night Pierce lay thinking and arranging his life. He was used to himself. Since he had been sixteen years old he had suffered from wild and brief flashes of interest in pretty women. He had never taken these feelings seriously, knowing them the common lot of most men. Nor had he ever spoken of them to Lucinda. They were no more significant than a wayward dream to be forgotten in the morning. Now carefully he relegated Georgia to such dreams. She was a servant in his house and nothing was more despicable than a man’s folly with his wife’s maid. It was a degradation entirely beneath him. He felt a boyish superiority in refusing to engage himself with Molly, the wife of his friend, and a renewal of devotion to John — good old John, who trusted him so much! He determined that if he had a chance, he would, for John’s sake, talk to Molly and tell her not to destroy her husband’s happiness. Upon the calm of moral rectitude he fell asleep in Napoleon’s bed and did not dream.

The next morning, waked by Joe’s footsteps creeping around the room, he lay in lazy comfort. At Malvern there was always the weather to rouse him early. As soon as the dawn broke he had the landsman’s curiosity to know what the sky was and whether the sun would shine. Once out of bed he could not go back to it. But here in the city it did not matter what the weather was. It was simply inconvenient or convenient. Today it was convenient for home-going. A broad bar of bright winter sunshine lay across the floor and paled the flames leaping in the grate. Joe, holding up his master’s trousers critically, met his eyes across them.

“You better change to your good grey pants today, Master Pierce,” he said gravely. “Theseyere creases didn’t set with all the pressin’ I did.”

“All right,” Pierce yawned and stretched mightily. “We’re going home so I might as well look pretty.”

He felt gay and relieved of his problems. Today he would talk to Molly and clear his debt of friendship to John. Alone with Joe it suddenly occurred to him that he would speak of Georgia, and tell him he must marry her. He piled his pillows and lay back on them. Joe was lifting the grey trousers from the hanger in the big mahogany wardrobe.

“Joe!” he said suddenly.

Joe jumped and clutched the trousers. “Lordamighty, Marse Pierce, why you yell at me like that?” he asked reproachfully.

Pierce laughed. “I didn’t mean to yell — I just thought of something. Joe, I told Georgia that if you and she would get married I’d let you have the little stone tenant house.”

“It’s a mighty nice house,” Joe said thoughtfully, smoothing the creases of the trousers.

“Well?” Pierce asked.

“Georgia’s a mighty nice girl,” Joe said still more thoughtfully. “But I reckon she won’t marry no colored man.”

“She can’t marry anybody else,” Pierce said positively.

“No, sir — reckon she cain’t,” Joe agreed.

“Have you asked her?” Pierce inquired.

“I mintion it, yes, sir — about a thousand times, I reckon. She always says the same thing. ‘You go ’way fum me, Joe’—that’s all she say — don’t say nothin’ else but just that. So I goes away.”

“You try her again,” Pierce commanded.

“Kin I tell her you said I was to?” Joe looked at him with a gleam of hope in his small dark eyes.

Pierce considered, staring into the canopy of the bed.

“Yes,” he said finally, “tell her I said so. Tell her I want you two to get married and have children — right away.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said doubtfully. “Thank you kindly, Marster Pierce.”

He went away and Pierce got up and made a great splash of cold water in the flowered porcelain basin on the washstand. Then he dried himself before the fire. There was a mirror above the mantel and he saw his tall firm white body reflected in it. He would have been less than a man had he not felt complacently that he did not look his age by ten years.

He went down to breakfast half an hour later dressed in his grey suit and a new satin tie that Lucinda had ordered from New York for him. His dark hair, barely silvered at the temples, was smoothly brushed and he had trimmed the ends of his moustache. Molly was alone in the dining room, when he came in.

“John’s gone to the office — he said to tell you,” she told him. “I came down to have breakfast with you — you vain and handsome man!”

“Thank you, Molly,” he said. He did not touch her hand but he smiled at her as the butler pulled out his chair for him. Kidneys and bacon and eggs were set before him and his coffee was poured. Then the servants went away and he was left alone with her.

“I’ll breakfast with you, my dear,” he said, “and then I’ll go and see if John has any more news for me before I take the train south.”

“I’ll miss you, Pierce — I always miss you—” she said. She leaned her arms on the table and the white lace of her elbow sleeves fell away from them. She wore a blue satin thing — a peignoir of some sort, he supposed. He did not look at her beyond a glance.

“You know what a fuss we make over Christmas,” he said, buttering a muffin. “Lucinda scolded me for leaving at all.”

“Has Lucinda changed?”

“Not a bit — a dash of silver over her right temple that makes her more beautiful than ever.”

Molly took her coffee cup in both hands and sipped from it, her eyes contemplating him over the edge. He looked up, caught their gaze and looked at his plate again.

“I suppose she’s very much the mistress of the manor?” She put an edge of malice to the words, but he refused to hear it.

“Lucinda has always been that,” he said cheerfully, “even when I came back from the war and found half the servants gone and the house threadbare and nothing but cornbread in the pantry. Of course, now, Malvern’s all that we’ve dreamed — almost!”

“You’ve stayed in love with her, Pierce?”

“How could I help it?” he retorted.

“My Gawd, she’s had a very good thing in you, Pierce,” Molly said flatly. “Jewels and children — and a great fine house — and acres of prosperous land — and racing horses—”

He lifted his head. “Molly, you should have seen Beauty’s foal win the Darby! Lord, it made me think of music! Phelan’s turned into a great little jockey. Of course Beauty is living on the best of the pasture, retired, honorably discharged.”

“How many foals have you had from her that were first-rate?”

“Four good racing horses—”

They both loved horses, and they forgot themselves, as he meant they should.

“I wish John cared about horses,” Molly said with discontentment.

“His horses are all iron,” Pierce said lightly.

“John and I don’t have anything in common,” she said in a low voice.

He cut through a rasher of bacon firmly. “Yes, you do, Molly. You have this fine house together and you have big parties and you have your trips to Europe and you have damn near everything a woman needs—”

“Except the one thing—”

“Lots of women don’t want children,” he countered.

“Don’t be silly,” she retorted. “You know what I want … Pierce, are we going to grow old like this?”

He met her squarely. “Yes, Molly — just like this, my dear. I love you but I love John better.” He put half a well-buttered muffin into his mouth.

“You don’t care what I do?” she demanded.

“I don’t want John hurt,” he replied.

“You don’t care if I’m hurt?”

“Molly, I’ve made it a rule never to care about any woman except Lucinda. But if you hurt, John, then—”

“Then what, Pierce?”

“I reckon I don’t want to see you again as long as we live.”

“If you don’t care what I do, what does that matter to me?”

“Henry Mallows,” he began.

“You know I don’t care about Henry!” she broke in.

“Then why—”

She interrupted him passionately. “Because you won’t look at me — and every morning I look at myself in the mirror and see myself growing older, and I think—”

He burst into loud laughter. “You see yourself looking like the rose of Sharon,” he said briskly, “and you think what mischief you can do this day. Ah, Molly, I know you! Even if I — gave in to you — which I never will, my red-haired darling — you will still look in your mirror in the morning and think of what mischief you can do.”

“Pierce, I wouldn’t — I promise you — Oh, Pierce, dearest—”

She was half out of her chair and he threw down his napkin. He was sick with disgust at himself. For the fraction of a second when he looked at her smooth pink skin he had thought of Georgia’s cream-pale face again — not Lucinda—

“I swear I think there’s something wrong with my insides,” he groaned. “I keep seeing things.” He got up and pushed in his chair. “I’ve been eating and drinking too well here, Molly. It’s time I left.”

Let her do what she would, he thought. John would have to bear his own burden. He smiled at her as she stood staring at him and then he turned quickly and left the room. Upstairs in his own room he sent for Joe. They took an early train and went away without telling Molly or John goodbye. He wanted to get home.

Christmas Eve at Malvern had never been so magnificent. Pierce gave himself up to the joy of his children. Martin was at the University, and Carey was beginning his first year. Both of them were tall and handsome and he was certain that neither was virgin. But it was none of his business. They were men and must lead men’s lives. He had wondered uneasily if he ought to warn them.

He discussed it with Lucinda after the big dance on Christmas Eve. They lay side by side in her spacious bed, enjoying together every detail of the evening’s scene. The house was subsiding into stillness about them. Guests were gone and they could hear the servants downstairs moving about, sweeping and straightening and putting away dishes. Then the stillness of the country night covered them. But the house was still awake. Beams cracked and the wind echoed in the chimneys. He loved the sound of the great old house settling for the night, with mild groans and wistful sighs and creaks.

“What would you tell the boys, pray?” Lucinda asked crisply out of the darkness.

“I don’t know,” he pondered, “just warn them, maybe—”

“I’ve warned them about nasty diseases,” she said.

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” he replied. “Boys pick up that sort of knowledge from one another easily enough.”

“What then, pray?” Lucinda inquired. “You don’t know a thing about women, Pierce!”

“Oh, I don’t, eh?” he growled.

“No,” she said flatly and yawned.

“I know you,” he maintained.

“Oh, nonsense,” she cried.

“I certainly know you,” he insisted. “I can almost tell what you’re going to say.”

“That’s why I say it,” she replied. “But it’s not what I think.”

He was confounded by this mischief. “Then why don’t you say what you think?” he demanded of her.

“Because it’s not what you want me to say.” Her voice was pert and he was infuriated.

“Oh rubbish!” he said loudly.

“Oh rubbish,” she echoed. “There — didn’t I say you wouldn’t like it?”

He felt pinpricked without knowing where to find the pin. “Don’t think I take you seriously,” he told her with majesty from his pillow.

“No, dear — I know you don’t.” Her voice was dangerous.

“Why should I?” he inquired.

“I can’t imagine.” She yawned again pretentiously and he turned his back for a moment. Then he flounced over again.

“See here, Luce, we can’t go to sleep like this!”

“I can go to sleep anyhow — I’m dead,” she retorted.

“You know I have to feel things are all right between us—”

“Aren’t they? I didn’t know they weren’t.”

He was silent a moment. Then he put his hand through the darkness and touched her soft breast.

She shook his hand off. “Please, Pierce — not tonight, for mercy’s sake!”

“You’re cold as stone these days—” he accused her.

“No, I’m not,” she denied. “But you’ve grown — careless.”

“I want another child, Luce!”

“Diamonds and sapphires couldn’t tempt me,” she replied firmly.

He leaped out of bed at that and went stamping into his own room and banged the door. He was not given to self-pity, but he allowed himself a measure of it now. What was the use of a man’s being faithful to his wife? If Lucinda only knew, he thought savagely, that twice in the fortnight he had refused other women — but he could not tell her. She would laugh aloud and then turn on him with malice and suspicion. He could hear her voice. “And what, pray tell, made her think you were — willing?”

No denials could be valid. Truth itself was not valid to Lucinda where the maleness of a man was concerned. He got into his solitary bed, and in a temper he pulled the covers strongly and left his feet bare. In fury he wrapped them about his feet and lay in a snarl of sheets and blankets and dug his head into the pillows. Lucinda was not a comfortable woman. She did not appreciate him nor the strength of his self-denials. Then he grinned at himself ruefully in the darkness. Self-denial? He was in love with Lucinda still, and she alone could stir his passion. But she was not comfortable, he maintained against this too severe honesty. He loved her more than she loved him. He sighed gustily into the night. It would be pleasant to be loved, for once, more than he loved. He fell asleep, still warming himself with self-pity.

In the midst of the peace of the next summer, after the spring crops had been sown and the winter wheat harvested, at the time of year when Malvern was at the heights of its glory, Pierce one day picked up the county newspaper after his ample noon meal. He lay on a long wicker chair on the terrace, preparing for his usual afternoon nap.

At the sight of the headlines all thought of sleep left him abruptly. He sat up, reading avidly, then groaned and threw the paper on the stone flags. Then he seized it to read again the shocking news. Two days ago, in Martinsburg, a sensible city of his own state, the railroad crews had struck in protest to the third cut in their wages.

All during the spring Pierce had followed with approval the news of the recurring wage cuts for the railroad employees. It was only fair, he told himself and Lucinda and anyone else who was near him, that workingmen should share the growing disaster of the times. He himself was suffering enough by not getting any dividends. Martin and Carey, home for holidays, had listened to him in their separate ways, Martin without interest and Carey with shrewd, smiling attention. The only dissenting voice in his house was his third son John, who out of perversity and contrariness to himself, Pierce felt, took the side of the workingmen. But he shouted John down easily.

“Don’t talk about what you can’t understand!” he had ordered.

The last time John had muttered something. Pierce could not hear it.

“What did you say, sir?” he demanded.

John had lifted his head. “I said that I don’t think you understand things yourself,” Father—”

Pierce had been shocked at such impudence. “Understand what?” he had demanded of this gangling boy.

“What it’s like to be a workingman,” John said sturdily.

Pierce had snorted laughter. “And you think you do?” he had inquired.

“I have more imagination than you have, Father,” John had replied fearlessly.

Pierce’s anger melted. He liked his sons to be fearless even toward himself. “Get along with you and your imagination,” he said, his eyes twinkling. Then out of respect for the boy he had added honestly, “And I like you to stand up to me, John — it’s manly of you.”

He had been comforted by the warm look in the boy’s grey eyes — Tom’s eyes, they were.

But there was no doubt that depression was sweeping over the country like a hurricane. No one understood why these storms recurred in a country where enterprise was free and where every man got what he deserved if he worked hard. Pierce believed that it was a man’s own fault if he did not prosper, and with his feet firm upon his own soil, he took the depression as an act of God, inexplicable and irritating as acts of God were apt to be.

He had been pleased when in May the other railroads had begun to cut wages drastically and had complained loudly to John MacBain and his own directors because their railroad did not do so. A few weeks ago he had been delighted to receive from the president of the company a notice that at last wages had been reduced, in despair over the continuing depression. In a brief note to John MacBain, for Pierce hated letterwriting, he had expressed his pleasure and his confidence that dividends could be restored soon.

“We are on the right track at last,” he had written John. “Labor has got out of hand and must be controlled. People who have put their money into the railroads must get it back.” This letter John had not answered, but John also hated to write letters and never did so unless there was a crisis.

Only yesterday, in church, Pierce had given thanks to God sincerely for all good things, including health and peace in his time. The glorious summer sunshine had slanted down through the stained glass windows of the Presbyterian church of his fathers. Here he and Tom had sat as small boys, sighing and wriggling. Here his children had been christened. He had thanked God frankly for wealth — well, why not for wealth?

And even while he was giving thanks to God this thing had already happened! He felt cheated and he got up impulsively to find Lucinda and complain to her. Then he sat down again and stared across his fields to the mountains. Lucinda would not be interested. She had always divided life firmly into what was men’s business and what was hers. Whatever the difficulties he had, she did not consider them her affair. Money might be hard to get, but what else had men to do but to get it? He missed Tom, as he often did, in swift short spasms of needing to talk to a man. Malvern had good neighbors. Nobody could be more fun than the Raleighs and the Bentons and the Carters and the Hulmes and a dozen other families, when it came to fox-hunting and horse-racing. Pierce took pride in the fact that on any weekend he could gather twenty families at Malvern and on any day in hunting season. But his sons were still young and he had no man in the house to quarrel with and argue with and be knit to, as he had been knit to Tom.

What would Tom think of such news? He got up again and began to pace the sunlit flags of the long terrace. Philadelphia was near Baltimore. He could go to the company offices at Baltimore and find out for himself exactly what was happening and what might be expected to happen. He could reinforce company policies with his own advice. Then he’d run over to Philadelphia and see Tom.

“I might as well own up that I want to see the fellow again,” he thought sentimentally. He had not seen Tom once in all these years, although they had written regularly if not often. He wouldn’t tell Lucinda — they had not mentioned Tom for a long while. He had stopped telling her even when he had a letter, because she closed her lips firmly at the very sound of Tom’s name.

But he went to find her to tell her of his plan to go to Baltimore. He found her surrounded by their daughters, to whom she was teaching sewing. That is, she was sitting in her rose-satin chair, in her own sitting room upstairs, taking dainty stitches in a bit of linen, and Sally and Lucie were sitting beside her. Lucie was absorbed but Sally was frowning and pausing every moment to look out the open window. Between the two girls Georgia came and went, examining stitches and correcting mistakes. She looked at him when he came in and away again. Since that strange day when she had knelt at his feet, she had spoken no word to him beyond what was absolutely necessary in the communication of servant to master. His own behavior had been as careful, and between them, like scar tissue over a wound, they had constructed a surface.

“Luce,” he began abruptly. “There’s a railroad strike. I’ve got to go to the head offices at Baltimore. I’m going to telegraph John MacBain to meet me there.”

Lucinda looked up from her sewing and raised her delicate eyebrows. “What can you accomplish, Pierce? You’re not an executive.”

“I’m one of the Board of Directors, nevertheless,” he said firmly. “I’m going to see for myself what the men are thinking of and what’s to be done. If necessary, I’ll ask for a special meeting of the directors on behalf of the stockholders. We can’t let the railroad get into the hands of labor. It’ll be the end of the country. Socialism — communism — whatever you want to call it—”

He was halted by a swift look from Georgia’s suddenly upraised eyes. Then she looked down again. She was at Sally’s side now, and she began to rip out a line of stitches.

“Oh dear—” Sally cried, “don’t tell me I’ve got them wrong again! Georgia, you are mean—”

“You pay no mind to what you’re doing, Miss Sally,” Georgia said quietly.

Sally turned to him. “Papa, if you’re going to Baltimore — let me go with you!”

“Pray tell—” Lucinda cried at her daughter. “Why should you go to Baltimore? I’ve a mind to go myself though, Pierce. While you’re busy at meetings I could get myself and the girls some new frocks.”

He was horrified at this onslaught of women and struggled against it but in vain. By the time he left the room a few minutes later not only Lucinda and Sally were going with him but Lucie as well and Georgia to look after the girls and serve Lucinda. He groaned in mock anguish. “I thought I was going to do business instead of squiring a lot of women!”

“Well look after ourselves,” Lucinda said sweetly. “You don’t need to pay us any mind. I shall take the girls to Washington maybe — or even New York.”

He could think of no good reason to forbid it. The boys were safe enough at home. If Lucinda had made up her mind to come with him the girls might as well come too. He telegraphed John MacBain and Lucinda included an invitation to Molly and what he had planned as a severe business trip now became a holiday. In the secret part of his mind he said that he would nevertheless escape his women and go and see Tom. The next day in the midst of much packing Georgia stopped him in the upper hall, her arms full of frocks.

“Master Pierce, if you think of a way, I’d like to go and see Bettina.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll speak to your mistress.” He had long ago forgotten that once he had not wanted to be called master in his house nor to have Lucinda called mistress.

By the time they set out for Baltimore the shadow over the country had darkened still more. Pierce studied the newspapers for hours every day. To his disgust, some of the western railroads had avoided trouble by raising wages as quickly as the men demanded. He was angry because he was frightened. His dividends had been so deeply cut this year that he was hard put to it to know how to pay the costs of his racing stable. It was unthinkable that Malvern should suffer because a horde of ignorant and dirty workingmen were dissatisfied with steady wages and good jobs.

Yet it was not just Malvern, he told himself honestly, that was his concern. Malvern was symbol of all that was sound and good in the nation. Family life, the land, healthy amusements, educated children, civilized ways of living — all were threatened. He wrote a letter of commendation to a magazine that printed a cartoon showing a skeleton disguised as a union rabble rouser, wearing a ribbon which was printed “Communist.” He was so angry one day that he could not eat his dinner because the foreigner named Marx, of whom John MacBain had spoken, was quoted in a northern newspaper as gloating over the rising strikes and dissensions and proclaiming them the beginning of a real revolution.

He had thrown the paper down and got to his feet and paced the dining room floor. “In God’s name what have Americans to make a revolution about?” he bellowed to Lucinda and their children. “We aren’t a lot of dirty starving peasants. We’ve got democracy here — a government, by God—”

“Pierce, stop cursing before the girls,” Lucinda commanded him. “Sit down and eat your beef before it’s cold.”

He had obeyed, but he could not eat as much as usual and he spent the rainy afternoon gloomily in his library, drinking too much with a savage satisfaction that if the world was going to hell he might as well go with it.

When they met John MacBain and Molly in Baltimore, at the great old-fashioned hotel which they had made their rendezvous, Pierce got rid of the womenfolk as fast as he could. He seized John by the arm and took him into the bar. It was mid-afternoon, and the place was empty but the two men sat down to drink, each comforted by the sight of the other’s grim looks.

“John, what the hell—” Pierce began. “It’s this stinking European fellow that’s behind everything!” By now Pierce had read enough to feel that he had found the source of evil. The man Marx was a threat to all that Malvern was.

John nodded and then said somberly, “All the same, Pierce, no foreigner could make headway here if we didn’t have four million unemployed. By Gawd, man, that’s a tenth of our population, pretty nearly! What’s happening at Martinsburg—” he broke off, shaking his head again.

“What’s happening now?” Pierce demanded. “I thought the police had—”

John snorted. “Police! They gave up. The mob was something awful. Why, Pierce, man, where have you been? The President of the United States has ordered out the government artillery!”

“Good God,” Pierce gasped. “But where are the state troops?”

“They wouldn’t fire on the strikers,” John said glumly. “Rotten with communism — the lot of them!”

Pierce felt dizzy with alarm. What he had seen as a dissatisfaction localized to a single industry, inspired by a single man, now grew into a danger as wide as the nation. He looked about the strange room and wished himself back at Malvern. The confidence with which he had left his own state, had crossed Virginia and Maryland, was gone. He was a stranger here, and who would listen to him? He dreaded meeting the executives whom he had been so sure he could guide. Then he pushed aside fear.

“John, we’ve got to be a beacon to the nation,” he said. “We’ve got to lead the railroads so wisely and so firmly that what we do will be a light to other industries. Everything depends on the railroads — we’re basic! If we can keep running and whip our men into reason, the nation will keep steady.”

“Amen, Pierce — if we can do it,” John replied.

They lifted their glasses simultaneously and looked at one another.

“Damn it, John,” Pierce said, “I can’t think of a thing in this world that’s worth proposing!”

“Nor I, by Gawd,” John agreed with unutterable gloom.

They drank their whiskey down in silence and for the comfort of their own bodies.

Pierce was awakened the next morning by his arm being shaken and then by the sound of shots. He looked up into Lucinda’s terrified eyes.

“Pierce — Pierce,” she was crying, “wake up — there’s some sort of a battle going on outside!”

He opened his dazed eyes wide and heard a roar like that of the sea beating against cliffs. He leaped out of bed, his nightshirt flying around him, and rushed to the window. A mob of people filled the street, milling, pushing, surging, yelling. “It’s here,” he cried, “the strike!”

“Let’s get out of this town, Pierce!” Lucinda cried back.

“You and the girls,” he amended. “You’d better go right to Washington as quick as you can before all the trains stop. Get out of the room, Luce, so that I can get dressed.”

She ran into the next room, obedient for once. Then the hall door opened and Joe came in. The white showed around the pupils of his eyes. “Lordy, lordy, what we goin’ to do?” he groaned. “The war’s bust out again — what the Yankees want now, marster?”

Before Pierce could answer, there was a loud knock and John MacBain came in, fully dressed. He had a telegram in his hand.

“I’ve got to get to Pittsburgh, Pierce,” he announced abruptly. “The Pennsylvania militia has been ordered out — they’re fighting mobs in the streets, there, too, by Gawd!”

“Pittsburgh!” Pierce groaned. “The whole country has gone mad.”

“They’re burning rolling stock there,” John said heavily. “You’ve got to meet the directors without me, Pierce.”

“If I have to, I have to,” Pierce said doggedly.

They clasped hands firmly and John was gone. Pierce turned. Behind him Joe stood waiting to shave him, mug in one hand and razor in the other. Pierce saw his hand shaking like an aspen.

“Give the razor to me. If you’re as scared as that, you’ll cut my throat,” he said sharply. All this nonsense, he thought angrily. What was the matter with him?

He dipped the brush in the soapy water briskly, swabbed his chin, and began to shave himself with long even strokes.

Behind him, Joe moaned, “We all be killed, I reckon!”

“Nonsense,” Pierce replied. Now that action was necessary he felt strong and competent. He had been an officer in the army, and he felt his blood grow cool again. He was not afraid of battle, now that he knew who the enemy was. He had sworn never again to enter a war against his fellow men but these communists were not fellow men. They were devils of destruction.

“You tell Georgia to help your mistress and the girls pack up right away,” he commanded Joe. “After breakfast I’ll get them into the private car and off to Washington.”

“You and me—” Joe faltered.

“We’re going to stay right here,” Pierce said grimly.

“Oh my — oh my!” Joe whispered under his breath.

He tiptoed out of the room and Pierce dressed himself. He had just buttoned his collar when the door opened smartly and he saw Sally mirrored over his shoulder. She was dressed for travel in her blue suit and hat. Her cheeks were flaming and her blue eyes were bright.

“Papa—” She came in and shut the door. “I’m not going to Washington—”

Pierce felt enormous irritation. “Oh yes, you are,” he retorted to her reflection in the mirror. “I’m going to be too busy to look after women—”

“Papa, I want to stay, with you—”

“You can’t stay with me — you must stay out of my way.”

“Papa—” she began again, but he snapped at her.

“Now, Sally, you can’t have your wish this time! The whole country is in danger. I’ve got to get to the company offices as fast as I can get rid of you girls.”

“But, Papa — why are they fighting?”

“It’s a strike — you know that—” He was trying to fasten his tie.

“But why, Papa?”

“Well — they don’t want their wages cut.”

“Why do you cut them, Papa?”

“It’s not I — it’s the company.”

“But you told the company to do it—”

“I simply gave my opinion — the company is losing money — why, our profits are cut in half! The men have to share in the loss, that’s all. Management can’t take it all—”

“But, Papa, did you lose money or only just not make so much?”

“It’s the same thing,” Pierce declared.

“No, it isn’t,” Sally maintained.

Pierce turned to his beloved child with wrath and fury. “Now Sally, you don’t know what you’re talking about. If I expect to make five thousand dollars on a horse and I don’t make but twenty-five hundred, I’ve lost twenty-five hundred dollars.”

“No, you haven’t, Papa — you haven’t lost anything. You have the twenty-five hundred.”

She made such a picture of beauty as she stood there, her pretty face serious, her cheeks flaming, her red-gold hair curling under her blue hat, that his heat was smitten in the midst of his anger, and he softened.

“Honey, don’t you try to tell a man he hasn’t lost money when he knows his pocket is lighter than it ought to be. You get along — have you had your breakfast?”

Sally shook her head.

“Well, then, eat fast — I’m going straight to the station to see about a train to pull the car out — a freight or anything—”

“Papa, I warn you—” His daughter flung up her head and faced him. “If you make me go to Washington — I’ll — I’ll run away!”

“Sally — Sally!” he groaned.

From the street the roar came beating through the closed windows into the room. “There’s no time, child!”

“I will run away,” she repeated.

“What shall I do with her?” he asked loudly, lifting his eyes to the ceiling.

He wheeled and crossed the room and opened Lucinda’s door. She was in the next room with Georgia and Lucie, and all of them were packing the bags.

“Lucinda!” he shouted. “Sally is playing the fool—”

“I sent her to you,” Lucinda said briefly. “I can do nothing with her. She insists on staying with you. You’ve spoiled her, Pierce, though I’ve warned you again and again.”

In the doorway Sally stood smiling, triumphant. “Neither of you can do anything with me,” she said pleasantly. “So — I’m not going!”

Her parents looked at her, Lucinda coldly, Pierce savagely. “I’ve a good mind to give you a beating,” he muttered through his teeth.

“It’s too late,” Lucinda reminded him. “You wouldn’t lay a finger on her when she was little.”

Georgia looked up. “If you are willing, ma’am — sir — could I take Miss Sally to Philadelphia? Joe can go in my place to Washington, ma’am.”

They turned to her, grasping at the straw of escape.

“I’ve been thinking I would ask you to let me visit Bettina, please,” Georgia said. “If you’re willing, ma’am — Miss Sally can come, too.”

“No,” Lucinda said.

“Yes!” Sally cried. “Yes — yes — Papa, I’ve always wanted to see Uncle Tom again—”

“Sally!” Lucie’s prim whisper, horror-struck, hissed across the room.

“I don’t care — I do,” Sally insisted.

“Sally can stay at a hotel,” Pierce reasoned to Lucinda. “Georgia can be with her and look after her and Tom can come and see her.”

A volley of shots struck in the street and a window pane shattered.

Lucinda put her hands to her ears. “We’ve got to get away before we’re all killed—”

An hour later Pierce stood alone on the platform of the railroad station. His private car had gone, the last in a line of passage cars headed for the south. No one knew when the next train would leave, if ever. Trains were still leaving irregularly for the north, and on one of them he had put Sally and Georgia into a day coach, jammed with frightened people trying to leave Baltimore. He had held Sally close for a moment, exasperated with love for this wilful child of his. But Sally had been gay and excited.

“Mind you stay at a hotel,” he had commanded. “Your mama will never let me hear the end of it if you don’t.”

“Of course,” she had promised, without, he felt, in the least meaning it. He saw them on the train, squeezed against the window, and through the open window he had continued to talk.

“If things quiet down,” he said, “I may run up myself for a day or so, tell Tom. If I find you’ve been disobedient, Sally—”

“Oh, no!” she trilled.

The whistle blew and she waved and laughed. He saw Georgia’s face, softly alight, behind her.

“I hold you responsible for your young mistress, Georgia!” he shouted. The train was moving and he did not hear her answer, whatever it was. He caught her smile, and had a pang of foreboding.

But there was no time to think of what he felt. Across the platform a group of guardsmen were carrying the body of a young man. They laid him down and Pierce saw that he was dead. He drew near and looked down at him. He was bleeding from a gunwound and his face was mangled to a pulp, the features wiped away.

“A brickbat out of the damned mob,” one of the men muttered.

Before Pierce could speak the mob surged into the station.

“Get out of here, sir!” the guardsmen begged him—“They’ll tear you to pieces — in that silk hat!”

They surrounded him and hurried him across the tracks, and he made his way alone by back streets to the offices where the directors awaited him.

Pierce had never before faced the Board without John. Now as he looked down the long mahogany table, lined with grim faces, he felt his resolution fade. The power was in the hands of these men. He had been all for wielding that power while he was in Malvern. What threatened Malvern threatened the world. But now in the great dim board room, hung with red velvet from ceiling to floor at every window and paneled with the portraits of dead directors, he was confused. Feelings that he had forgotten came crowding back into his mind, memories so distant that he would have said they had ceased to exist.

He remembered again the young men who had died under his command in the war. They had fought with heartbreaking bravery, the pure bravery of the young, who alone are unselfish enough to die for a cause. The young man whom he had just seen in the street had died, too. How uselessly! A brick flung at random had crushed him. He had been ordered out this morning to do his duty and now he was dead.

He was distracted by his memories, confused and mingled with the news in telegrams and messages which lay before him.

“Military action must be taken all along the railroad,” Henry Mallows was saying in his high clear cold voice. “Nothing else will suffice.”

“The mob has command,” Jim McCagney said. He had aged greatly in the years that he had sat on the Board. His bitter grey eyes were set deep under eyebrows like bunches of dry heather.

Daniel Rutherford, the youngest of them all, turned at the sound of an open door, and took an envelope from a messenger boy. He tore it open and read it. “The Mayor has sworn in three thousand citizens as special police,” he cried. “He promises that the ringleaders of the mob will be in jail tonight.”

“Tut!” Jim McCagney growled, “don’t give a hoot for citizens in a case like this. Mallows is right. Guns are what’s wanted.”

“A detachment of one hundred marines is expected this evening,” Baird Hancock said drily.

“It’s the shops I’m thinking of,” Jonathan Yates put in. He was the one man in the room who had come up from the ranks, a thin, tired-looking man in a broadcloth suit too large for him. The heavy, velvet-lined collar rode up the back of his head and now and again he struggled with it.

Pierce was staring at the dispatches before him. “Pittsburgh, Reading, Harrisburg, Shamokin, Hornellsville, Chicago, Cincinnati, Zanesville, Columbus, Fort Wayne, St. Louis, Kansas City,” he read the names aloud solemnly.

Murmurs of anger rose from the men around the table. Pierce lifted his head. “I came into this room as fixed as any of you in my determination to put down these strikes,” he said slowly. “Now, as I see these foes catching from one place to another clear across the country, I ask myself — what have we done that was wrong?”

“Man, it’s not us — it’s the Reds!” McCagney shouted. “Our men alone wouldn’t have dared! The foreign communists have used our honest working folk as a pretext for their infamous machinations to overthrow the government of the United States!” He leaped to his feet, towering six foot six, his white hair flying, his beard a tangle. He banged the table with his fists. “Ne’er-do-wells!” he bellowed. “Rascals — robbers — internationalists!” He ground out the last word between his teeth with special hatred.

Silence followed, and in the silence Pierce drove away his memories. What had the past to do with today? “If we have proof that these strikes are inspired by foreigners,” he said slowly, “then it is time to put on our uniforms again and fight.”

“Amen, amen—” The word roared around the table from mouth to mouth.

They sat far into the night, while messages continued to pour in from the four corners of the nation. At midnight a last message was sent by the mayor. Two hundred and fifty rebels had been imprisoned. “Upon inquiry,” the mayor reported, “it was found that not one of them had been a worker on the railroad.”

“If we needed any further proof of foreign machination,” Henry Mallows said looking about triumphantly, “here it is.”

Pierce looked back at him, and wished that he need not agree with him. He had disliked Henry Mallows increasingly throughout the evening. Mallows had grown more handsome and distinguished looking with the years. Worldliness became him. His smooth cheeks and well-cut mouth were still young. What had seemed timid and foreign in his youth had become hard and self-assured as he had become a native and a patriot in his own country. His foreign wife had grown into a silent and delicate creature, finicking and invalid. There had been no children.

Pierce turned away from this man of whom John MacBain had spoken so bitterly, and looked at the other listening, stubborn faces. “We must remember that the sympathies of the press and of the people, however, are with the workingmen,” he said. “If we act too severely or even too swiftly we may find ourselves condemned, though unjustly. We must distinguish between our own men and the communists.”

Silence fell about him as the directors digested this common sense.

“I move we adjourn,” Jim McCagney said abruptly.

“To meet again on Monday morning,” Henry Mallows amended.

Pierce seconded the amended motion and it was carried and the endless meeting was over.

Pierce slept deep in exhaustion through the night and was awakened just before dawn by a fire alarm. He got out of bed and without lighting the lamp he went to the window and looked down. The streets were swarming again with people. Trouble had begun again. Toward the west the sky blazed almost to the zenith.

The railroad shops!

He dressed himself hurriedly and went out bareheaded, fearing that his silk hat would betray him. The streets were so crowded that he could barely force his way westward. It was an hour before he reached the railroad shops and found that they had not yet caught fire. A train of oil cars was burning. The firemen had isolated the cars and so far had saved the shops. While they worked the mob turned to a lumberyard and planing mill a few blocks away and set it afire. In a few minutes the air was filled with smoke and the flames roared black-edged toward the sky.

Pierce stood back among the crowd, watching and helpless. He looked at the faces around him. Some were silent and grave, some were wild, some were drunken. He recognized no one and with a strange feeling that the whole world was burning to destruction he went back to the hotel. Downstairs the clerk gave him his door key and noted his return.

“Terrible, ain’t it, sir?” he murmured.

“Yes,” Pierce said.

He felt chilled although the night had been warm. But there was no hot water with which to warm himself. He was grimed with smoke and he washed himself in cold water and then put on his nightshirt again and got back into bed.

He lay shivering and strangely lonely, but for no one. He did not want Lucinda or the children. He was glad that they were not with him. His mood was old and he recognized it as the mood of many nights in the war when battle loomed in the morning. Then as though to carry the illusion to reality he heard the sudden sharpness of guns firing in the streets. He listened, lying tense and ready to spring out of bed. Then the sounds were stilled and he fell asleep at last for an hour.

All through the next day he came and went, restless and yet exhausted. The streets were milling with people again, the crowds falling back only before the marines who had arrived early in the morning. It was a war which he did not understand. What was the cause and what the end?

By afternoon eight marines and eight policemen were dead. How many other dead there were no one knew, for the mob hid their own dead. At midnight the mayor reported again. The armed men had won and the city was safe once more. Trains would run within the hour. Pierce went back to the hotel and found a telegram from John MacBain.

“Change in company policy absolutely necessary. Postpone meeting until I come. John.”

Pierce rang for a messenger and sent the telegram to Henry Mallows. Crisis in Baltimore was over, but would arms suffice for final victory? He sat down in his room, grimed and exhausted and this night too tired to go to sleep. Suddenly he knew what he wanted. He wanted to go and see Tom. Maybe Tom could tell him what the war was about.