The Courage of the Commonplace | Page 8

if they were ladies; children ran by his side, and
he knocked their caps over their eyes and talked nonsense to them, and
swung on whistling. But at night, alone in his room, he was serious.
How to keep the men patient; how to use his influence with them; how
to advise the president--for young as he was he had to do this because
of the hold he had gained on the situation; what concessions were
wise--the young face fell into grave lines as he sat, hands deep in his
pockets as usual, and considered these questions. Already the sculptor
Life was chiselling away the easy curves with the tool of responsibility.
He thought of other things sometimes as he sat before the wood fire in
his old Morris chair. His college desk was in the corner by the window,
and around it hung photographs ordered much as they had been in New
Haven. The portrait of his father on the desk, the painting of his mother,
and above them, among the boys' faces, the group of boys and girls of
whom she was one, the girl whom he had not forgotten. He had not
seen her since that Tap Day. She had written him soon after--an
invitation for a week-end at her mother's camp in the woods. But he
would not go. He sat in the big chair staring at the fire, this small room
in the West, and thought about it. No, he could not have gone to her
house party--how could he? He had thought, poor lunatic, that there
was an unspoken word between them; that she was different to him
from what she was to the others. Then she had failed him at the
moment of need. He would not be taken back half-way, with the crowd.
He could not. So he had civilly ignored the hand which had held out
several times, in several ways. Hurt and proud, yet without conceit, he

believed that she kept him at a distance, and would not risk coming too
near, and so stayed altogether away. It happens at times that a big,
attractive, self-possessed man is secretly as shy, as fanciful, as the
shyest girl--if he cares. Once and again indeed the idea flashed into the
mind of Johnny McLean--that perhaps she had been so sorry that she
did not dare look at him. But he flung that aside with a savage
half-thought.
"What rot! It's probable that I was important enough for that, isn't it?
You fool!" And about then he was likely to get up with a spring and
attack a new book on pillar and shaft versus the block system of mining
coal.
The busy days went on, and the work grew more absorbing, the
atmosphere more charged with an electricity which foretold tempest.
The president knew that the personality of the young superintendent
almost alone held the electricity in solution that for months he and his
little musical club and his large popularity had kept off the strike. Till
at last a day came in early May.
We sit at the ends of the earth and sew on buttons and play cards while
fate wipes from existence the thing dearest to us. Johnny's father that
afternoon mounted his new saddle-horse and rode through the
afternoon lights and shadows of spring. The girl, who had not forgotten,
either, went to a luncheon and the theatre after. And it was not till next
morning that Brant, her brother, called to her, as she went upstairs after
breakfast, in a voice which brought her running back. He had a paper in
his hand, and he held it to her.
"What is it, Brant? Something bad?"
"Yes," he said, breathing fast. "Awful. It's going to make you feel badly,
for you liked him--poor old Johnny McLean."
"Johnny McLean?" she repeated. Brant went on.
"Yesterday--a mine accident. He went down after the entombed men.
Not a chance." Brant's mouth worked. "He died--like a hero-- you
know." The girl stared.
"Died? Is Johnny McLean dead?"
She did fall down, or cry out, but then Brant knew. Swiftly he came up
and put his big, brotherly arm around her.
"Wait, my dear," he said. "There's a ray of hope. Not really hope, you
know--it was certain death he went to--but yet they haven't found--they

don't know, absolutely, that he's dead."
Five minutes later the girl was locked in her room with the paper. His
name was in large letters in the head-lines. She read the account over
many times, with painstaking effort to understand that this meant
Johnny McLean. That he was down there now, while she breathed pure
air. Many times she read it, dazed. Suddenly she flashed to the window
and threw it open and beat on the stone sill and