Still Jim.
by Honore Willsie Morrow.
CHAPTER I
THE QUARRY
"An Elephant of Rock, I have lain here in the desert for countless ages, watching, waiting. I wonder for what!"
MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.
Little Jim sat at the quarry edge and dangled his legs over the derrick pit. The derrick was out of commission because once more the lift cable had parted. Big Jim Manning, Little Jim"s father, was down in the pit with Toma.s.so, his Italian helper, disentangling the cables, working silently, efficiently, as was his custom.
Little Jim bit his fingers and watched and scowled in a worried way. He and his mother hated to have Big Jim work in the quarry. It seemed to them that Big Jim was too good for such work. Little Jim wanted to leave school and be a water boy and his father"s helper. Big Jim never seemed to hear the boy"s request and Little Jim kept on at school.
The noon whistle blew just as the cable was once more in running order.
Little Jim slid down into the pit with his father"s dinner bucket and sat by while his father ate.
Big Jim Manning was big only in height. He was six feet tall, but lean.
He was sallow and given to long silences that he broke with a slow, sarcastic drawl that Little Jim had inherited. Big Jim was forty-five years old. Little Jim was fourteen; tall and lean, like his father, his face a composite of father and mother. His eyes were large and a clear gray. Even at fourteen he had the half sweet, half gay, wholly wistful smile that people watched for, when he grew up. His hair was a warm leaf brown, peculiarly soft and thick. Little Jim"s forehead was the forehead of a dreamer. His mouth and chin were dogged, persistent, energetic.
When he was not in school, Jim never missed the noon hour at the quarry.
He had his father"s love for mechanics. He had his father"s love for law and order making, the gift to both of their unmixed Anglo-Saxon ancestry. When Big Jim did talk at the noon hour, it was usually to try to educate his Italian and Polish fellow workmen to his New England viewpoint. Little Jim never missed a word. He adored his father. He was profoundly influenced by the dimly felt, not understood tragedy of his father"s life and of the old New England town in which he lived.
Big Jim spread a white napkin over his knee and poured a cup of steaming soup from the thermos bottle. Toma.s.so broke off a chunk of bread and took an onion from one pocket and a piece of cheese from another. Big Jim and "Ma.s.so, as he was called, working shoulder to shoulder, day by day, had developed a sort of liking for each other in spite of the fact that Big Jim held foreigners in utter contempt.
"Why did you come to America, anyhow, "Ma.s.so?" drawled Big Jim, waiting for his soup to cool.
"Ma.s.so gnawed his onion and bread thoughtfully. "Maka da mon" quick, here; go backa da old countra rich."
"What else?" urged Big Jim.
"Ma.s.so looked blank. "I mean," said Big Jim, "did you like our laws better"n yours? Did you like our ways better?"
"Ma.s.so shrugged his shoulders. "Don" care "bout countra if maka da mon".
Why you come desa countra?"
Big Jim"s drawl seemed to bite like the slow gouge of a stone chisel.
"I was born here, you Wop! This very dirt made the food that made me, understand? I"m a part of this country, same as the trees are. My forefathers left comfort and friends behind them and came to this country when it was full of Indians to be free. Free! Can you get that?
And what good did it do them? They larded the soil with their good sweat to make a place for fellows like you. And what do you care?"
"Ma.s.so, who was quick and eager, shook his head. "I work all da time. I maka da mon. I go home to old countra. That "nough. Work alla da time."
Big Jim ate his beef sandwich slowly. Little Jim, chin in palm, sat listening, turning the matter over in his mind. His father tried another angle.
"What started you over here, "Ma.s.so? How"d you happen to think of coming?"
"Ma.s.so understood this. "Homa, mucha talk "bout desa landa. How ever"boda getta da mon over here. I heara da talk but it like a dream, see? I lika da talk but I lika my own Italia, see? But in olda countra many men work for steamship compana. Steamship compana, they needa da mon", too, see? They talk to us mucha, fixa her easy, come here easy, getta da job easy, see? Steamship men, they keepa right after me, so I come, see?"
Big Jim lighted his pipe. "Tell Mama that was a good dinner, Jimmy," he said. "I haven"t got anything personal against you, "Ma.s.so," he went on.
"You"re a human being like me, trying to take care of your family. I suppose you can"t help it that Italians as a cla.s.s are a lawless lot of cut-throats. You certainly are willing workers. But I"d like to bet that if we"d shut the doors after the Civil War and let those that was in this country have their chance, this country would have a wholesomer growth than it has now. I"ll bet if they had fifty men in this quarry like me instead of a hundred like you, it would turn out twice the work it does now."
"But Dad, they say you can"t get real Americans to do this kind of work," said Little Jim.
"Deal with facts, Jimmy; deal with facts," drawled his father. "I"m working here. Will Endicott, John Allen, Phil Chadwick are all day laborers. Our forefathers founded this government and this town. What"s happened to it and to us? It"s too late for us older men to do much. But you kids have got to think about it. What"s happened to us? What"s happened to this old town? I want you to think about it."
Little Jim took the dinner bucket and started for home. His father had not been talking on a topic new to the Mannings or to the Mannings"
friends. Little Jim had been brought up to wonder what was the matter with his breed, what had happened to Exham. Little Jim"s forefathers had once held in grant from an English king the land on which the quarry lay. His grandfather had given it up. Farm labor was hard to get. The mortgage had grown heavier and heavier. The land all about was being bought up by Polish and Italian hucksters who lived on what they could not sell and whose wives and children were their farm hands. Grandfather Manning could not compete with this condition.
Big Jim had gone to New York City in his early twenties. He had had a good high school education and was a first-cla.s.s mechanic. But somehow, he could not compete. He was slow and thoroughgoing and honest. He could not compete with the new type of workman, the man bred to do part work.
When Little Jim was five, the Mannings had come back to Exham, with the hope of somehow, sometime, buying back the old farm.
Little Jim pa.s.sed the old farmhouse slowly. It was used for a storehouse for quarry supplies now. Yet it still was beautiful. Two great elms still shaded the wide portico. The great eaves still sheltered many paned windows. The delicate bal.u.s.trade still guarded the curving staircase. The dream of Little Jim"s life was to live in that great, hospitable mansion.
He pa.s.sed with a boy"s deliberation down the long street that led toward the cottage where the Mannings now lived. The street was heavily shaded by gigantic elms. It was lined on either side by fine Colonial houses, set in gardens, some of which still held dials and bricked walks; wide, deep gardens some of which still were ghostly sweet. But the majority of the mansions had been turned into Italian tenement houses. The gardens were garbage heaps. The houses were filthy and disheveled. The look of them clutched one"s heart with horror and despair, as if one looked on a once lovely mother turned to a street drabble.
Little Jim looked and thought with a sense of helpless melancholy that should not have belonged to fourteen. When he reached the cottage, his mother, taking the bucket from him, caught the look in the clear gray eyes that were like her own. She had no words for the look. Nevertheless she understood it immediately. Mrs. Manning was nervous and energetic, with the half-worried, half-wistful face of so many New England women.
"Jimmy," she said, "Phil Chadwick just whistled for you. He went to the swimming hole."
The words were magic. They swept that intangible look from Jim"s face and left it flushed and boyish.
"Gee!" he exclaimed, "he"s early today. Can I have my dinner right off?"
"Yes," replied his mother, "but remember not to go in until three o"clock. I"m sure I don"t see what keeps all you boys from dying! And how you can stand the blood suckers and turtles up there in that mud hole! Goodness! Come, dear, I"ve cooled off your soup so you can hurry.
I knew you"d want to."
Will Endicott dropped in at the Mannings" that evening. Will was a short, florid man, younger than Big Jim. Little Jim, his hair still damp and his fingers wrinkled from water soak, laid down his _Youth"s Companion_. Usually when Will Endicott came there were some lively discussions on the immigration question and the tariff. Even had Little Jim wanted to talk, he would not have been allowed to do so. Among the New Englanders in Exham the old maxim still obtained, "Children are to be seen and not heard." But Little Jim always listened eagerly.
Endicott looked excited tonight. But he had no news about the tariff.
"There"s a boy at my house!" he exclaimed. "He just came. Nine pounds!
Annie is doing fine."
"Oh!" cried Mrs. Manning, while Big Jim shook Will"s hand solemnly. "Oh, goodness! I didn"t know--Why I thought tomorrow--Well, I guess I"ll go right over now. Goodness----" and still exclaiming, she hurried out into the summer dusk.
"That"s great, Will!" said Big Jim. "I wish I could afford to have a dozen. But they cost money, these kids. I suppose you"ll be like me, never be able to afford but the one."
"He"s awful strong," said Will, abstractedly. "To hear him yell, you"d think he was twins. Looks like me, too. Red as a beet and fat."
"Must be a beauty," said Big Jim. "That Wop that works with me has seven children about a year apart. Doesn"t worry him at all. He just moves into a cheaper place, cuts down on food and clothes and takes another one out of school and sets him to work. They"re growing up like Indians, lawless little devils. A fine addition to the country! I was reading the other day that by the law of averages a man has got to have four children to be pretty sure of his line surviving. And it said that we New Englanders have the smallest birth rate in the civilized world except France, which is the same as ours. And we"ve got the biggest proportion of foreigners of any part of America now, up here."
Will came out of the clouds for a moment. "I"ve been telling you that for years. What"s the matter with us, anyhow?"
Big Jim shrugged his shoulders. "All like you and me, I suppose. If we can"t give a child a decent chance, we won"t have "em. And these foreigners have cut down wages so"s we can hardly support one, let alone two."