CHAPTER XXVIII

The town of Allenby had grown in the five years since the birth of Dorothea Harrison in Mrs. Olson’s house. It had a hotel now, a moving picture house, several emporiums, a Main Street, which was lit up by night and offered a meeting and loafing place for the people who lived there. The hotel was a square frame building, new, still fresh with paint, with kalsomined walls and hardwood floors. It called itself the best hotel in a hundred miles and was fairly accurate.

Dick lived there. It amused him at first, after the luxury of his home and his club, to walk down the resounding, uncarpeted corridor to the room which was his own with its golden oak bureau and white iron bedstead and uncomfortable rocking chair. The chair was only used as a clothes rack anyway, so it did not matter whether it was comfortable or uncomfortable. The bed was clean and comfortable and he was always grateful for that. He had made Allenby and the Allenby Hotel his headquarters because that seemed the most natural thing to do, but he did not stay there all the time. There were four or five small towns, most of them a little smaller, one larger, which were also part of his business, for they had grown up around the mines in which his company was interested, and he divided his time more or less among them all.

He had found the position very difficult. He was taking no one’s place, so the organizations of the mines did not know quite what to do with him. The attitude of the superintendents at first had been to treat him as a visitor, to “show” him things. When it came to them fully that he proposed making an extended stay among them, there was suspicion of his purposes. The undercurrent idea was at once that he was on some secret investigation, that some one was “going to be fired.” They didn’t like it. The simple statement which he made to them that the company had felt that a man on the ground might help the unsatisfactory situation met great skepticism. For a couple of weeks the relations were strained. But Dick made friends quickly, and what was more, he made himself useful. All of every day he was busy, going from one thing to another; talking to superintendents, foremen, men; sizing things up; listening to complaints when he must, but never encouraging them. He made no trouble, usurped no authority, did no meddling, with the result that he very soon found things brought to him for consultation and decision. Several grievances, small things in themselves, but which had been moot and bitter points between the miners and their superiors, were adjusted before they had developed so far that they made real trouble. And other things happened. Dick had consultations with some of the grocers and dealers in fuel in the towns and a certain amount of exploitation ceased as Dick pointed out that rival stores which could easily be started might put them out of business. He found out no more than the skilled investigator would have found out after a few days’ survey. But the difference between Dick’s work and that of a professional investigator was that Dick did something about it. He was not only investigating and observing, but he had, in a large measure, power to act and the brains to proceed.

These small successes gave him no illusions any more than his small failures confused his mind. He knew that the great dissatisfactions would not be solved by even model conditions, and model conditions were impossible to get. But he worked along and even garnered unexpected praise from that hard-thinking group of men who had allowed him permission to try his experiment.

It was a very simple life. All day at the mines, absorbed in study of practical things, varied perhaps in some way by a discussion with some of the foremen or some of the men themselves. He was amazed to find how hard every one was thinking. Nearly every man he met had some idea that changes were needed in mind, state or nation. He heard wise comments often as well as ridiculous ones, but he found no common basis for all the comments--nothing to build upon--no standard which they all would follow. He puzzled about it somewhat. At the end of the day, in the short evenings, he thought of these things, sometimes sitting in the unkempt lobby of the hotel, sometimes walking swiftly in the cold night. And as he walked he would see lights come out from the windows of the little houses and shadows pass the windows, and he would be very lonely. More lonely than he had been in Carrington, for he felt closer to these houses and yet shut out from them. He had the sense of men behind the windows, with their families--men basically like himself, women fundamentally like Cecily. And as he walked he often wondered, too, what it was that had parted him and Cecily again on that Christmas morning, why they could not have been happy together. Sometimes it seemed so cruelly abnormal to him that he was tempted to go to her again. Things looked simpler here in this little streetcarless, snow covered, hard driven town. Men were husbands and women were wives, and mental quibbles were of such little consequence. In these clear moments of normality it was amazing to him that he and Cecily had ever quarreled. She, the beautiful, loyal mother of his children; he, her husband, devoted to his children and loving Cecily so deeply. And yet there it was. In some way they had torn their marriage into shreds. Because she did not want him to like the things, the people, the amusements which she did not like; because she had rated him cheap and held herself dear; because she had insisted on her standards for both of them.

Trivialities, no doubt of it. They had thrown away vital things for trivialities. They’d won their points. He might go where he liked, amuse himself as he liked, live by his own standards. And where was he? A man without a home, without a family; and yet always with the precious sense of that family, his even though he was not with it. And she--he could imagine her sitting quietly in that long living-room of hers, with her book--alone. Or was she? Matthew had said it could not go on that way; that some man was bound to disturb Cecily. Cecily’s husband put that thought from his mind with distaste.

He came to the conclusion that they must have been living in a queer atmosphere, to let themselves be ruined by such mental abnormalities. No standards. Or was that the root of the trouble--Cecily’s standards? Cecily’s standards which had seemed when he married her to be so wonderfully beautiful and which had become so irritating, so inflexible, so rigid. They had set her apart from so many people. She had preserved them at such great cost.

Now, with the jazz fever out of his blood, with the cold air on his cheeks, Dick could see how he might have taught Cecily tolerance. She had learned many other things. But it was too late now for that. They had hurt each other too cruelly. Humiliated each other; and he had added a cruel touch of further humiliation on Christmas. At the thought of Christmas Dick always stopped thinking. He couldn’t bear to go on with the picture of himself that he imagined Cecily saw of him, sneaking home on a holiday, a sentimental, desirous, quarrelsome brute.

In a kind of debauch of lonesomeness, he used to think of other things about Cecily--of the way she used to tuck the little baby under her chin like a fiddle--of the way she looked with her hair spread out on her pillow. But it rested him. He would look back and remember little things which had seemed of no consequence, but now were comforting and sweet. She had loved him. He must persuade her to let him do something for the boys--settle something on her.

Then he would go to bed and get up to an immense day’s work.

In late February he ran in to Carrington for a week to straighten out things at the office and fight out some matters which weren’t being given the attention he wanted them to have. He was going back to the mines for another couple of months.

“I want to see the situation through the winter. Next winter I’ll know better how to go about things up there, even if it must be done at longer range.”

“Going to establish the millennium?” asked one of the directors, trying to “kid” Dick a bit.

Dick gave him a queer look.

“There’s no millennium coming for a damned long time yet,” he answered. “But we may save a lot of money and, what’s more, a lot of skins by finding out just what is going on up there.”

They praised his work in giving him greater leeway and full power to do what he thought best in dismissals and appointments.

He met Walter at lunch and asked after Della.

“Not too well,” said Walter, “but that’s part of it, I suppose.”

“Hurrah for you,” said Dick, “I didn’t know about it.”

“It makes a man feel helpless, doesn’t it?” asked Walter.

Dick nodded.

“Cecily has been a wonder to Della. She’s seen a lot of her and sort of bolstered her up.”

“Cecily?”

“Della turned to her more than to any one else. She was a little panicky, you know.”

“Cecily could help her out a lot,” said Dick shortly, and was on his way.

He had one other encounter. He had come in to Carrington just at this time because he had known that Matthew was on for three days from Washington. He had not known that seeing Matthew meant dining with Fliss at the hotel. But it did.

She was looking as pretty as ever, even somehow prettier, and she had a better manner. Still in apparent mourning, she would not dance, but she regaled Dick with tales of Washington which kept them all amused, and Dick enjoyed her as he had not enjoyed anybody since his break with Cecily. She spoke of that when Matthew had gone to find her coat and get a taxi. She was going to pay some calls while Dick and Matthew talked business.

“How is Cecily?” she asked Dick, the corner of her eyes lifted toward him.

“I don’t know.”

“You aren’t living there?”

“No.”

“Don’t stiffen, Dick. I don’t mean to pry. I’m really sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re a fool, Dick.”

“Which way?”

“Trying to get along without her. You can’t. Nobody seems to be able to. Here’s your little sister-in-law adoring her. Here’s Matthew much the same. Here’s you, the same, though she irritates you a little just as she does me. I confess I’m exempt. I don’t adore. But I never did fall for the good wife and mother type.”

“Change the subject, Fliss.”

“No, I won’t, Dick. I’ll say my say. I’ll say that you and your good wife ought to get together--if only for that blessed Dorothea’s sake. I suppose Cecily wouldn’t let me have Dorothea? I helped bring her into the world. Well, maybe I can send her an anonymous present once in a while. Dick, did you ever like me?”

“I wonder just how much,” teased Dick.

“Cecily and I have always been jealous of each other, you know. I suppose that when we are old and gray and wear caps (only I mean to Marcel mine to the end), that we will still be jealous of the parts of our husbands’ minds we haven’t got. Cecily has a lot of Matthew’s (the best part of it, too) and I have a tiny scrap of yours which she begrudges me. But she can’t have it, Dick. I cling to it. She can have most of you, but I want the tiny scrap of you that wants brighter color than Cecily will give you. So there!”

She finished with her old impudent smile.

“Foolish woman!” he said.

“Foolish nothing. I’m a working woman these days with no time for foolishness. I’m storming Washington society. And as Matthew goes up and up I shall trail along after him. Just talking of you, darling,” she finished as Matthew came in sight.

Dick spent a few dutiful days with his mother, repressing her efforts to repeat to him the gossip about his affairs and just as definitely refusing to hear or talk ill of Cecily. Mrs. Harrison wanted him to make some effort to get Dorothea for her. But he refused.

“Dorothea is better with her mother.”

“You never know. Cecily will probably get some notion to put the child into a convent.”

“Nonsense, mother.”

But he had to hold himself rather sternly in check as he found himself trying to keep away from his old house. He had a very definite ache for the children. He wanted just to see them, but he really couldn’t hang around street corners, he told himself. Finally, on the day he left, he telephoned the house. It was relief when Ellen answered. He had decided to hang up if it was Cecily’s voice.

“It’s Mr. Harrison, Ellen. No, I didn’t want to speak to Mrs. Harrison. It’s all right that she’s out. I’m leaving town in a few minutes and I was wondering if you could bring Dorothea down to the train. And Leslie? It isn’t far. Mrs. Harrison has the baby with her? Then, if you could--fine, fine, fine. I’ll send you home in a taxi. Can’t I send a taxi for you? All right, in half an hour, then.”

He was trembling when he saw the children come down the platform, Dorothea so competent now, Leslie tumbling along like a small brown bear. Such wonderful children! He had not had time for toys, but he had raided a confectioner’s.

“Are you going away again, daddy?”

“I must, dear. I have work to do. You must be a good girl and mind mother.”

“I do.”

“Mrs. Harrison well, Ellen?”

“Yes, Mr. Harrison. I’m sure she’ll be sorry you can’t come for dinner.”

“Trying to keep us respectable, Ellen?” Dick chuckled, but his laughter was a little husky.

“Better come out with us,” urged Ellen with unusual boldness.

Dick shrank instinctively.

“Wouldn’t do--wouldn’t do at all. Too bad, Ellen, but it’s too late for that. Remember what you promised; let me know if Mrs. Harrison ever needs me. Good-by, Leslie, old chunk; good-by, Dorothea, my darling.”

Ellen took them off reluctantly and Dick jumped on his train--a train of daycoaches, perambulated by boys with “popcorn, chewing gum and candy.” He felt like a tramp, and sitting slouched up beside his window, pulled his cap over his eyes. Homeless. What did it matter if he was rich and equipped with power? He was homeless. A wave of bitterness towards his wife swept over him. There were Walter and his Della, waiting for their child; Fliss with her Matthew; Cecily and he--separated.

“I must work,” he told himself. “I must work like hell.”

That was what he did, what he had to do. He was hardly back in Allenby before trouble broke out. The long winter had worn on every one. Nerves which could not be sent to Florida for rehabilitation were none the less shattered in dirty-faced miners and their stolid seeming wives. Professional agitators; a long list of impossible demands; poor whiskey obtained from the blind pigs; an official firing an unwary shot; other angry shots; the old story of the strike and its outcome. Dick toiled night and day now, using every ounce of influence he had gained, doing the things which must be done in every strike; trying to keep sparks from the inflammable bitterness, fighting, losing, winning a little, seeing privation and trouble face to face as he had never seen it.

It took him out of his own trouble, but while the men in Carrington congratulated themselves on their foresight in having “Harrison on the job up there,” Dick changed rather visibly. His step did not have so much spring and the youth which he had carried so blithely in his face until this age of thirty-seven seemed quite gone.