The Valley of the Moon Jack London

shrewdness on her part to guess. The fumes of whisky were on his

  lips at such times. His slow, deliberate ways were even slower,

  even more deliberate. Liquor did not affect his legs. He walked

  as soberly as any man. There was no hesitancy, no faltering, in

  his muscular movements. The whisky went to his brain, making his

  eyes heavy-lidded and the cloudiness of them more cloudy. Not

  that he was flighty, nor quick, nor irritable. On the contrary,

  the liquor imparted to his mental processes a deep gravity and

  brooding solemnity. He talked little, but that little was ominous

  and oracular. At such times there was no appeal from his

  judgment, no discussion. He knew, as God knew. And when he chose

  to speak a harsh thought, it was ten-fold harsher than

  ordinarily, because it seemed to proceed out of such profundity

  of cogitation, because it was as prodigiously deliberate in its

  incubation as it was in its enunciation.

  It was not a nice side he was showing to Saxon. It was, almost,

  as if a stranger had come to live with her. Despite herself, she

  found herself beginning to shrink from him. And little could she

  comfort herself with the thought that it was not his real self,

  for she remembered his gentleness and considerateness, all his

  finenesses of the past. Then he had made a continual effort to

  avoid trouble and fighting. Now he enjoyed it, exulted in it,

  went looking for it. All this showed in his face. No longer was

  he the smiling, pleasant-faced boy. He smiled infrequently now.

  His face was a man's face. The lips, the eyes, the lines were

  harsh as his thoughts were harsh.

  He was rarely unkind to Saxon; but, on the other hand he was

  rarely kind. His attitude toward her was growing negative. He was

  disinterested. Despite the fight for the union she was enduring

  with him, putting up with him shoulder to shoulder, she occupied

  but little space in his mind. When he acted toward her gently,

  she could see that it was merely mechanical, just as she was well

  aware that the endearing terms he used, the endearing caresses he

  gave, were only habitual. The spontaneity and warmth had gone

  out. Often, when he was not in liquor, flashes of the old Billy

  came back, but even such flashes dwindled in frequency. He was

  growing preoccupied, moody. Hard times and the bitter stresses of

  industrial conflict strained him. Especially was this apparent in

  his sleep, when he suffered paroxysms of lawless dreams, groaning

  and muttering, clenching his fists, grinding his teeth, twisting

  with muscular tensions, his face writhing with passions and

  violences, his throat guttering with terrible curses that rasped

  and aborted on his lips. And Saxon, lying beside him, afraid of

  this visitor to her bed whom she did not know, remembered what

  Mary had told her of Bert. He, too, had cursed and clenched his

  fists, in his nights fought out the battles of his days.

  One thing, however, Saxon saw clearly. By no deliberate act of

  Billy's was he becoming this other and unlovely Billy. Were there

  no strike, no snarling and wrangling over jobs, there would be

  only the old Billy she had loved in all absoluteness. This

  sleeping terror in him would have lain asleep. It was something

  that was being awakened in him, an image incarnate of outward

  conditions, as cruel, as ugly, as maleficent as were those

  outward conditions. But if the strike continued, then, she

  feared, with reason, would this other and grisly self of Billy

  strengthen to fuller and more forbidding stature. And this, she

  knew, would mean the wreck of their love-life. Such a Billy she

  could not love; in its nature such a Billy was not lovable nor

  capable of love. And then, at the thought of offspring, she

  shuddered. It was too terrible. And at such moments of

  contemplation, from her soul the inevitable plaint of the human

  went up: WHY? WHY? WHY?

  Billy, too, had his unanswerable queries.

  "Why won't the building trades come out?" he demanded wrathfuly

  of the obscurity that veiled the ways of living and the world.

  "But no; O'Brien won't stand for a strike, and he has the

  Building Trades Council under his thumb. But why don't they chuck

  him and come out anyway? We'd win hands down all along the line.

  But no, O'Brien's got their goat, an' him up to his dirty neck in

  politics an' graft! An' damn the Federation of Labor! If all the

  railroad boys had come out, wouldn't the shop men have won

  instead of bein' licked to a frazzle? Lord, I ain't had a smoke

  of decent tobacco or a cup of decent coffee in a coon's age. I've

  forgotten what a square meal tastes like. I weighed myself

  yesterday. Fifteen pounds lighter than when the strike begun. If

  it keeps on much more I can fight middleweight. An' this is what

  I get after payin' dues into the union for years and years. I

  can't get a square meal, an' my wife has to make other men's

  beds. It makes my tired ache. Some day I'll get real huffy an'

  chuck that lodger out."

  "But it's not his fault, Billy," Saxon protested.

  "Who said it was?" Billy snapped roughly. "Can't I kick in

  general if I want to? Just the same it makes me sick. What's the

  good of organized labor if it don't stand together? For two cents

  I'd chuck the whole thing up an' go over to the employers. Only I

  wouldn't, God damn them! If they think they can beat us down to

  our knees, let 'em go ahead an' try it, that's all. But it gets me

  just the same. The whole world's clean dippy. They ain't no sense

  in anything. What's the good of supportin' a union that can't win

  a strike? What's the good of knockin' the blocks off of scabs

  when they keep a-comin' thick as ever? The whole thing's

  bughouse, an' I guess I am, too."

  Such an outburst on Billy's part was so unusual that it was the

  only time Saxon knew it to occur. Always he was sullen, and

  dogged, and unwhipped; while whisky only served to set the

  maggots of certitude crawling in his brain.

  One night Billy did not get home till after twelve. Saxon's

  anxiety was increased by the fact that police fighting and head

  breaking had been reported to have occurred. When Billy came, his

  appearance verified the report. His coatsleeves were half torn

  off. The Windsor tie had disappeared from under his soft

  turned-down collar, and every button had been ripped off the

  front of the shirt. When he took his hat off, Saxon was

  frightened by a lump on his head the size of an apple.

  "D'ye know who did that? That Dutch slob Hermanmann, with a riot

  club. An' I'll get'm for it some day, good an' plenty. An'

  there's another fellow I got staked out that'll be my meat when

  this strike's over an' things is settled down. Blanchard's his

  name, Roy Blanchard."

  "Not of Blanchard, Perkins and Company?" Saxon asked, busy

  washing Billy's hurt and making her usual fight to keep him calm.

  "Yep; except he's the son of the old man. What's he do, that

  ain't done a tap of work in all his life except to blow the old

  m
an's money? He goes strike-breakin'. Grandstand play, that's

  what I call it. Gets his name in the papers an makes all the

  skirts he runs with fluster up an' say: 'My! Some bear, that Roy

  Blanchard, some bear.' Some bear--the gazabo! He'll be bear-meat

  for me some day. I never itched so hard to lick a man in my life.

  "And--oh, I guess I'll pass that Dutch cop up. He got his

  already. Somebody broke his head with a lump of coal the size of

  a water bucket. That was when the wagons was turnin' into

  Franklin, just off Eighth, by the old Galindo Hotel. They was

  hard fightin' there, an' some guy in the hotel lams that coal

  down from the second story window.

  "They was fightin' every block of the way--bricks, cobblestones,

  an' police-clubs to beat the band. They don't dast call out the

  troops. An' they was afraid to shoot. Why, we tore holes through

  the police force, an' the ambulances and patrol wagons worked

  over-time. But say, we got the procession blocked at Fourteenth

  and Broadway, right under the nose of the City Hall, rushed the

  rear end, cut out the horses of five wagons, an' handed them

  college guys a few love-pats in passin'. All that saved 'em from

  hospital was the police reserves. Just the same we had 'em jammed

  an hour there. You oughta seen the street cars blocked,

  too--Broadway, Fourteenth, San Pablo, as far as you could see."

  "But what did Blanchard do?" Saxon called him back.

  "He led the procession, an' he drove my team. All the teams was

  from my stable. He rounded up a lot of them college

  fellows--fraternity guys, they're called--yaps that live off

  their fathers' money. They come to the stable in big tourin' cars

  an' drove out the wagons with half the police of Oakland to help

  them. Say, it was sure some day. The sky rained cobblestones. An'

  you oughta heard the clubs on our heads--rat-tat-tat-tat,

  rat-tat-tat-tat! An' say, the chief of police, in a police auto,

  sittin' up like God Almighty--just before we got to Peralta

  street they was a block an' the police chargin', an' an old

  woman, right from her front gate, lammed the chief of police full

  in the face with a dead cat. Phew! You could hear it. 'Arrest

  that woman!' he yells, with his handkerchief out. But the boys

  beat the cops to her an' got her away. Some day? I guess yes. The

  receivin' hospital went outa commission on the jump, an' the

  overflow was spilled into St. Mary's Hospital, an' Fabiola, an' I

  don't know where else. Eight of our men was pulled, an' a dozen

  of the Frisco teamsters that's come over to help. They're holy

  terrors, them Frisco teamsters. It seemed half the workingmen of

  Oakland was helpin' us, an' they must be an army of them in jail.

  Our lawyers'll have to take their cases, too.

  "But take it from me, it's the last we'll see of Roy Blanchard

  an' yaps of his kidney buttin' into our affairs. I guess we

  showed 'em some football. You know that brick buildin' they're

  puttin' up on Bay street? That's where we loaded up first, an',

  say, you couldn't see the wagon-seats for bricks when they

  started from the stables. Blanchard drove the first wagon, an' he

  was knocked clean off the seat once, but he stayed with it."

  "He must have been brave," Saxon commented.

  "Brave?" Billy flared. "With the police, an' the army an' navy

  behind him? I suppose you'll be takin' their part next. Brave?

  A-takin' the food outa the mouths of our women an children.

  Didn't Curley Jones's little kid die last night? Mother's milk

  not nourishin', that's what it was, because she didn't have the

  right stuff to eat. An' I know, an' you know, a dozen old aunts,

  an' sister-in-laws, an' such, that's had to hike to the poorhouse

  because their folks couldn't take care of 'em in these times."

  In the morning paper Saxon read the exciting account of the

  futile attempt to break the teamsters' strike. Roy Blanchard was

  hailed a hero and held up as a model of wealthy citizenship. And

  to save herself she could not help glowing with appreciation of

  his courage. There was something fine in his going out to face

  the snarling pack. A brigadier general of the regular army was

  quoted as lamenting the fact that the troops had not been called

  out to take the mob by the throat and shake law and order into

  it. "This is the time for a little healthful bloodletting," was

  the conclusion of his remarks, after deploring the pacific

  methods of the police. "For not until the mob has been thoroughly

  beaten and cowed will tranquil industrial conditions obtain."

  That evening Saxon and Billy went up town. Returning home and

  finding nothing to eat, he had taken her on one arm, his overcoat

  on the other. The overcoat he had pawned at Uncle Sam's, and he

  and Saxon had eaten drearily at a Japanese restaurant which in

  some miraculous way managed to set a semi-satisfying meal for ten

  cents. After eating, they started on their way to spend an

  additional five cents each on a moving picture show.

  At the Central Bank Building, two striking teamsters accosted

  Billy and took him away with them. Saxon waited on the corner,

  and when he returned, three quarters of an hour later, she knew

  he had been drinking.

  Half a block on, passing the Forum Cafe, he stopped suddenly. A

  limousine stood at the curb, and into it a young man was helping

  several wonderfully gowned women. A chauffeur sat in the driver's

  sent. Billy touched the young man on the arm. He was as

  broad-shouldered as Billy and slightly taller. Blue-eyed,

  strong-featured, in Saxon's opinion he was undeniably handsome.

  "Just a word, sport," Billy said, in a low, slow voice.

  The young man glanced quickly at Billy and Saxon, and asked

  impatiently:

  "Well, what is it?"

  "You're Blanchard," Billy began. "I seen you yesterday lead out

  that bunch of teams."

  "Didn't I do it all right?" Blanchard asked gaily, with a flash

  of glance to Saxon and back again.

  "Sure. But that ain't what I want to talk about."

  "Who are you?" the other demanded with sudden suspicion.

  "A striker. It just happens you drove my team, that's all. No;

  don't move for a gun." (As Blanchard half reached toward his hip

  pocket.) "I ain't startin' anythin' here. But I just want to tell

  you something."

  "Be quick, then."

  Blanchard lifted one foot to step into the machine.

  "Sure," Billy went on without any diminution of his exasperating

  slowness. "What I want to tell you is that I'm after you. Not

  now, when the strike's on, but some time later I'm goin' to get

  you an' give you the beatin' of your life."

  Blanchard looked Billy over with new interest and measuring eyes

  that sparkled with appreciation.

  "You are a husky yourself," he said. "But do you think you can do

  it?"

  "Sure. You're my meat."

  "All right, then, my friend. Look me up after the strike is

  settled, and I'll give you a chance at me."

  "Remember," Billy added, "I got you staked out."

  B
lanchard nodded, smiled genially to both of them, raised his hat

  to Saxon, and stepped into the machine.

  CHAPTER XIII

  From now on, to Saxon, life seemed bereft of its last reason and

  rhyme. It had become senseless, nightmarish. Anything irrational

  was possible. There was nothing stable in the anarchic flux of

  affairs that swept her on she knew not to what catastrophic end.

  Had Billy been dependable, all would still have been well. With

  him to cling to she would have faced everything fearlessly. But

  he had been whirled away from her in the prevailing madness. So

  radical was the change in him that he seemed almost an intruder

  in the house. Spiritually he was such an intruder. Another man

  looked out of his eyes--a man whose thoughts were of violence and

  hatred; a man to whom there was no good in anything, and who had

  become an ardent protagonist of the evil that was rampant and

  universal. This man no longer condemned Bert, himself muttering

  vaguely of dynamite, end sabotage, and revolution.

  Saxon strove to maintain that sweetness and coolness of flesh and

  spirit that Billy had praised in the old days. Once, only, she

  lost control. He had been in a particularly ugly mood, and a

  final harshness and unfairness cut her to the quick.

  "Who are you speaking to?" she flamed out at him.

  He was speechless and abashed, and could only stare at her face,

  which was white with anger.

  "Don't you ever speak to me like that again, Billy," she

  commanded.

  "Aw, can't you put up with a piece of bad temper?" he muttered,

  half apologetically, yet half defiantly. "God knows I got enough

  to make me cranky."

  After he left the house she flung herself on the bed and cried

  heart-brokenly. For she, who knew so thoroughly the humility of

  love, was a proud woman. Only the proud can be truly humble, as

  only the strong may know the fullness of gentleness. But what was

  the use, she demanded, of being proud and game, when the only

  person in the world who mattered to her lost his own pride and

  gameness and fairness and gave her the worse share of their

  mutual trouble?

  And now, as she had faced alone the deeper, organic hurt of the

  loss of her baby, she faced alone another, and, in a way, an even

  greater personal trouble. Perhaps she loved Billy none the less,

  but her love was changing into something less proud, less

  confident, less trusting; it was becoming shot through with

  pity--with the pity that is parent to contempt. Her own loyalty

  was threatening to weaken, and she shuddered and shrank from the

  contempt she could see creeping in.

  She struggled to steel herself to face the situation. Forgiveness

  stole into her heart, and she knew relief until the thought came

  that in the truest, highest love forgiveness should have no

  place. And again she cried, and continued her battle. After all,

  one thing was incontestable: THIS BILLY WES NOT THE BILLY SHE HAD

  LOVED. This Billy was another man, a sick man, and no more to be

  held responsible than a fever-patient in the ravings of delirium.

  She must be Billy's nurse, without pride, without contempt, with

  nothing to forgive. Besides, he was really bearing the brunt of

  the fight, was in the thick of it, dizzy with the striking of

  blows and the blows he received. If fault there was, it lay

  elsewhere, somewhere in the tangled scheme of things that made

  men snarl over jobs like dogs over bones.

  So Saxon arose and buckled on her armor again for the hardest

  fight of all in the world's arena--the woman's fight. She ejected

  from her thought all doubting and distrust. She forgave nothing,

  for there was nothing requiring forgiveness. She pledged herself

  to an absoluteness of belief that her love and Billy's was

  unsullied, unperturbed--severe as it had always been, as it would

  be when it came back again after the world settled down once more

  to rational ways.