In the Heart of a Fool Part 36

He smiled and patted his daughter's hair and rose to go back to work.

The girl plucked at his coat and said: "Now sit down, father, I want to talk to you," she hesitated. "It's about Mr. Brotherton. You know he's been coming out here for years and I thought he was coming to see me, and now Martha thinks he comes to see her, and Martha always stays there and so does Ruth, and if he is coming to see me--" she stopped. Her father looked at her in astonishment. "Why, father," she went on,--"why not? I'm twenty-five, and Martha's twenty-two and even Ruth is seventeen--he might even be coming to see Ruth," she added bitterly.

"Yes, or Epaminondas--the cat--eh?" cut in the old man. Then he added, indignantly, "Well, how about this singing Jasper Adams--who's he coming to see? Or Amos--he comes around here sometimes Sat.u.r.day night after G.

A. R. meeting, with me--what say? Would you want us all to clear out and leave you the front room with him?" demanded the perturbed Captain.

Then the father put his arm about his child tenderly: "Twenty-five years old--twenty-five years--why, girl, in my time a girl was an old maid laid on the shelf at twenty-five--and here you are," he mused, "just thinking of your first beau and here I am needing your mother worse than I ever did in my life. Law-see' girl--how do I know what to do--what say?" But he did know enough to draw her to him and kiss her and sigh.

"Well--maybe I can do something--maybe--we'll see." And then she left him and he went to his work. And as he worked the thought struck him suddenly that if he could put one of his sprockets in the Judge's automobile where he had seen a chain, that it would save power and stop much of the noise. So as he worked he dreamed that his sprocket was adopted by the makers of the new machines, and that he was rich--exceedingly rich and that he took the girls to visit the Ohio kin, and that Emma had her trip to the Grand Canyon, that Martha went to Europe and that Ruthie "took vocal" of a teacher in France whose name he could not p.r.o.nounce.

As he hammered away at his bench he heard a shuffling at the door and looking up saw Dr. Nesbit in the threshold.

"Come in, Doctor; sit down and talk," shrilled the Doctor before the Captain could speak, and when the Doctor had seated himself upon the box by the workbench, the Captain managed to say: "Surely--come right in, I'm kind of lonesome anyhow."

"And I'm mad," cried the Doctor. "Just let me sit here and blow off a little to my old army friend."

"Well--well, Doctor, it's queer to see you hot under the collar--eh?"

The Doctor began digging out his pipe and filling it, without speaking.

The Captain asked: "What's gone wrong? Politics ain't biling? what say?"

"Well," returned the Doctor, "you know Laura works at her kindergarten down there in South Harvey, and she got me to pa.s.s that hours-of-service law for the smelter men at the extra session last summer. Good law!

Those men working there in the fumes shouldn't work over six hours a day--it will kill them. I managed by trading off my hide and my chances of Heaven to get a law through, cutting them down to eight hours in smelter work. Denny Hogan, who works on the slag dump, is going to die if he has to do it another year on a ten-hour shift. He's been up and down for two years now--the Hogans live neighbors to Laura's school and I've been watching him. Well," and here the Doctor thumped on the floor with his cane, "this Judge--this vain, strutting peac.o.c.k of a Judge, this cat-chasing Judge that was once my son-in-law, has gone and knocked the law galley west so far as it affects the slag dump. I've just been reading his decision, and I'm hot--good and hot."

The Captain interrupted:

"I saw Violet Hogan and the children--dressed like princesses, walking out to-day--past the Judge's house--showing it to them--what say? My, how old she looks, Doctor!"

"Well--the d.a.m.ned villain--the infernal scoundrel--" piped the Doctor.

"I just been reading that decision. The men showed in their lawsuit that the month before the law took effect the company, knowing the law had been pa.s.sed, went out and sold their switch and sold the slag dump, to a fake railroad company that bought a switch engine and two or three cars, and incorporated as a railroad, and then--the same people owning the smelter and the railroad, they set all the men in the smelter that they could working on the slag dump, so the men were working for the railroad and not for the smelter company and didn't come within the eight hour law. And now the Judge stands by that farce; he says that the men working there under the very chimney of the smelter on the slag dump where the fumes are worst, are not subject to the law because the law says that men working for the smelters shall not work more than eight hours, and these men are working for a cheating, swindling subterfuge of a railroad. That's judge-made law. That's the kind of law that makes anarchists. Law!" snorted the Doctor, "Law!--made by judges who have graduated out of the employ of corporations--law!--is just what the Judge on the bench dares to read into the statute. I tell you, Cap, if the doctors and engineers and preachers were as subservient to greed and big money as the lawyers are, we would soon lose our standing. But when a lawyer commits some flagrant malpractice like that of Tom Van Dorn's--the lawyers remind us that the courts are sacred inst.i.tutions."

The Doctor's pipe was out and in filling it again, he jabbed viciously at the bowl with his knife, and in the meantime the Captain was saying:

"Well, I suppose he found the body of the decisions leaning that way, Doc--you know Judges are bound by the body of the law."

"The body of the law--yes, d.a.m.n 'em, I've bought 'em to find the body of the law myself."

The Doctor sputtered along with his pipe and cried out in his high treble--"I never had any more trouble buying a court than a Senator. And lawyers have no shame about hiring themselves to crooks and notorious lawbreakers. And some lawyers hire themselves body and soul to great corporations for life and we all know that those corporations are merely evading the laws and not obeying them; and lawyers--at the very top of the profession--brazenly hire out for life to that kind of business.

What if the top of the medical profession was composed of men who devoted themselves to fighting the public welfare for life! We have that kind of doctors--but we call them quacks. We don't allow 'em in our medical societies. We punish them by ostracism. But the quack lawyers who devote themselves to skinning the public--they are at the head of the bar. They are made judges. They are promoted to supreme courts. A d.a.m.n nice howdy-do we're coming to when the quacks run a whole profession. And Tom Van Dorn is a quack--a hair-splitting, owl-eyed, venal quack--who doles out the bread pills of injustice, and the strychnine stimulants of injustice and the deadening laudanum of injustice, and falls back on the body of the decisions to uphold him in his quackery. Justice demands that he take that fake corporation, made solely to evade the law, and shake its guts out and tell the men who put up this job, that he'll put them all in jail for contempt of court if they try any such shenanigan in his jurisdiction again. That would be justice. This--this decision--is humbug and every one knows it. What's more--it may be murder. For men can't work on that slag dump ten hours a day without losing their lives."

The captain tapped away at his sprocket. He had his own ideas about the sanct.i.ty of the courts. They were not to be overthrown so easily. The Doctor snorted: "Burn their bodies, and blear their minds, and then wail about our vicious lower cla.s.ses--I'm getting to be an anarchist."

He prodded his cane among the debris on the floor and then he began to twitch the loose skin of his lower face and smiled. "Thank you, Cap," he chirped. "How good and beautiful a thing it is to blow off steam in a barn to your old army friend."

The Captain looked around and smiled and the Doctor asked: "What was that you were saying about Violet Hogan?"

"I said I saw her to-day and she looked faded and old--she's not so much older than my Emma--eh?"

"Still," said the Doctor, "Violet's had a tough time--a mighty tough time; three children in six years. The last one took most of her teeth; young horse doctor gave her some dope that about killed her; she's done all the cooking, washing, scrubbing and made garden for the family in that time--up every morning at five, seven days in the week to get breakfast for Dennis--Emma would look broken if she'd had that." The Doctor paused. "Like her mother--weak--vain--puts all of Denny's wages on the children's backs--Laura says Violet spends more on frills for those kids than we spend for groceries--and Violet goes around herself looking like the Devil before breakfast." The Doctor rested his chin on his cane. "Remember her mother--Mrs. Mauling--funny how it breeds that way. The human critter, Cap, is a curious beast--but he does breed true--mostly." The Doctor loafed, whistling, around the work shop, prodding at things with his cane, and wound up leaning against one end of the bench.

"Last day of the century," he piped, "makes a fellow pause and study.

I've seen fifty-three years of the old century--seen the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph, the fast printing press, the transcontinental railroad, the steam thresher, the gasoline engine--and all its wonders clear down to Judge Tom's devil wagon. That's a good deal for one short life. I've seen industry revolutionized--leaving the homes of the people, and herding into the great factories. I've seen steam revolutionize the daily habits of men, and distort their thoughts; one man can't run a steam engine; it takes more than one man to own one.

So have I seen capital rise in the world until it is greater than kings, greater than courts, greater than governments--greater than G.o.d himself as matters stand, Cap--I'm terribly afraid that's true."

The Doctor was serious. His high voice was calm, and he smoked a while in peace. "But," he added reflectively--"Cap, I want to tell you something more wonderful than all; I've seen seven absolutely honest men elected this year to the State Senate--I've sounded them, felt them out, had all kinds of reports from all kinds of people on those seven men.

Each man thinks he's alone, and there are seven."

The Doctor leaned over to the Captain and said confidentially, "Cap--we meet next week. Listen here. I was elected without a dollar of the old spider's money. He fought me for that smelter law on the quiet. Now look here; you watch my smoke. I'm going to organize those seven, and make eight and you're going to see some fighting."

"You ain't going to fight the party, are you, Doc?" asked the amazed Captain, as though he feared that the Doctor would fall dead if he answered yes. But the Doctor grinned and said: "Maybe--if it fights me."

"Well, Doc--" cried the Captain, "don't you think--"

"You bet I think--that's what's the matter. The smelter lawsuit's made me think. They want to control government so they can have a license to murder. That's what it means. Watch 'em blight Denny Hogan's lungs down on the dump; watch 'em burn 'em up and crush 'em in the mines--by evading the mining laws; watch 'em slaughter 'em on the railroads; murder is cheap in this country--if you control government and get a slaughter license."

The Doctor laughed. "That's the old century--and say, Cap--I'm with the new. You know old Browning--he says:

"It makes me mad To think what men will do an' I am dead."

The Doctor waved his cane furiously, and grinned as he threw back his head, laughed silently, kicked out one leg, and stood with one eye c.o.c.ked, looking at the speechless Captain. "Well, Cap--speak up--what are you going to do about it?"

"'Y gory, Doc, you certainly do talk like a Populist--eh?" was all the Captain could reply. The Doctor toddled to the door, and standing there sang back: "Well, Cap--do you think the Lord Almighty laid off all the angels and quit work on the world when he invented Tom Van Dorn's automobile--that it is the last new thing that will ever be tried?"

And with that, the Doctor went out into the alley and through his alley gate into his house. But the Captain's mind was set going by the Doctor's parting words. He was considering what might follow the invention of Tom Van Dorn's automobile. There was that chain, and there was his sprocket. It would work--he knew it would work and save much power and much noise. But the sprocket must be longer, and stronger.

Then, he thought, if the wire spokes and the ball-bearing and rubber tires of the bicycle had made the automobile possible, and now that they were getting the gasoline engine of the automobile perfected so that it would generate such vast power in such a small s.p.a.ce--what if they could conserve and apply that power through his invention--what if the gasoline engine might not through his Household Horse some day generate and use a power that would lift a man off the earth? What then? As he tapped the bolts and turned the screws and put his little device together, he dreamed big dreams of the future when men should fly, and the boundaries of nations would disappear and tariffs would be impossible. This shocked him, and he tried to figure out how to prevent smuggling by flying machines; but as he could not, he dreamed on about the time when war would be abolished among civilized men, because of his invention.

So while he was dreaming in matter--forming the first vague nebulae of coming events, the infinite intelligence washing around us all, floating this earth, and holding the stars in their courses, sent a long, thin fleck of a wave into the mind of this man who stood working and dreaming in the twilight while the old century was pa.s.sing. And while he saw his vision, other minds in other parts of the earth saw their visions. Some of these myriad visions formed part of his, and his formed part of theirs, and all were part of the great vision that was brooding upon the bourne of time and s.p.a.ce. And other visions, parts of the great vision of the Creator, were moving with quickening life in other minds and hearts. The disturbed vision of justice that flashed through the Doctor's mind was a part of the vast cycle of visions that were hovering about this earth. It was not his alone, millions held part of it; millions aspired, they knew not why, and staked their lives upon their faith that there is a power outside ourselves that makes for righteousness. And as the waves of infinite, resistless, all-encompa.s.sing love laved the world that New Year's night that cast the new Century upon the strange sh.o.r.es of time, let us hope that the dreams of strong men stirred them deeply that they might move wisely upon that mysterious tide that is drawing humanity to its unknown goal.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

WHEREIN VIOLET HOGAN TAKES UP AN OLD TRADE AND MARGARET VAN DORN SEEKS A HIGHER PLANE

The new Century brought to Harvey such plenitude that all night and all day the smelter fires painted the sky up and down the Wahoo Valley; all night long and all day long the miners worked in the mines, and all through the night and the long day the great cement factory and the gla.s.s factories belched forth their lurid fumes. The trolley cars went creaking and moaning around the curves through the mean, dirty, squalid, little streets of the mining and manufacturing towns. They whined impatiently as they sailed across the prairie gra.s.s under the befogged sunshine between the settlements, but always they brought up with their loads at Harvey. So Harvey grew to be a prosperous inland city, and the Palace Hotel with its onyx and marble office, once the town's pride, found itself with all its striving but a third-cla.s.s hostelry, while the three-story building of the Traders' Bank looked low and squatty beside its six and seven storied neighbors. The tin cornices of Market Street were wiped away, and yellow brick and terra cotta and marble took the place of the old ornaments of which the young town had been so proud.

The thread of wires and pipes that made the web of the spider behind the bra.s.s sign, multiplied and the pipes and the rails and the cables that carried his power grew taut and strong. New people by thousands had come into the town and gradually the big house, the Temple of Love on Hill Crest, that had been deserted during the first years of its occupancy, filled up. Judge Thomas Van Dorn and his handsome wife were seen in the great hotels of New York and Boston, and in Europe more or less, though the acquaintances they made in Europe and in the East were no longer needed to fill their home. But the old settlers of Harvey maintained their siege. It was at a Twelfth Night festivity when young people from all over the Valley and from all over the West were masqueing in the great house, that Judge Van Dorn, to please a pretty girl from Baltimore whom the Van Dorns had met in Italy, shaved his mustache and appeared before the guests with a naked lip. The pursed, shrunken, sensuous lips of the cruel mouth showed him so mercilessly that Mrs. Van Dorn could not keep back a little scream of horror the first time he stood before her with his shaved lip. But she changed her scream to a baby giggle, and he did not know how he was revealed. So he went about ever after, preening himself that his smooth face gave him youth, and strutting inordinately because some of the women he knew told him he looked like a boy of twenty-five--instead of a man in his forties. He was always suave, always creakingly debonaire, always, even in his meannesses, punctilious and airy.

So the old settlers sometimes were fooled by his att.i.tude toward Margaret, his wife. He bore toward her in public that shallow polish of attention, which puzzled those who knew that they were never together by themselves when he could help it, that he spent his evenings at the City Club, and that often at the theater they sat almost back to back unconsciously during the whole performance. But after the curtain was down, the polite husband was the soul of attendance upon the beautiful wife--her coat, her opera gla.s.ses, her trappings of various sorts flew in and out of his eager hands as though he were a conjurer playing with them for an audience. For he was a proud man, and she was a vain woman, and they were striving to prove to a disapproving world that the bargain they had made was a good one.

Yet the old settlers of Harvey felt instinctively that the price of their Judge's bargain was not so trifling a matter as at first the happy couple had esteemed it. The older people saw the big house glow with light as the town spread over the hill and prosperity blackened the Valley. The older people played their quiet games of bridge, by night, and said little. Judge Van Dorn polished the periods of his orations, kept himself like a race horse, strutted like a gobbler, showed his naked mouth, held himself always tightly in hand, kept his eye out for a pretty face, wherever it might be found, drank a little too much at night at the City Club; not much too much but a very little too much--so much that he needed something to brighten his eyes in the morning.

But whatever the Judge's views were on the chess game of the cosmos, Margaret, his wife, had no desire to beat G.o.d at his own game. She was a seeker, who always was looking for a new G.o.d. G.o.d after G.o.d had pa.s.sed in weary review before her. She was always ready to tune up with the infinite, and to ignore the past--a most comfortable thing to do under the circ.u.mstances.

As she turned into Market Street one February morning of the New Year in the New Century, leading her dachshund, she was revolving a deep problem in her head. She was trying to get enough faith to believe that her complexion did not need a renovation. She knew that the skin-thought she kept holding was earth-bound and she had tried to shake it, but it wouldn't shake. She had progressed far enough in the moment's cult to overcome a food-thought when her stomach hurt her, by playing a stiff game of bridge for a little stake. But the skin-thought was with her, and she was nervous and irritable and upon the verge of tears for nothing at all. Moreover, her dog kept pulling at his leash, so altogether her cup was running over and she went into Mr. Brotherton's store to ask him to try to find an English translation of a highly improper German book with a pious t.i.tle about which she had heard from a woman from Chicago who had been visiting her.

Now Mr. Brotherton had felt the impulse of the town's prosperity in his business. The cigar stand was gone. In its place was a handsome plain gla.s.s case containing expensive books--books bound in vellum, books in hand-tooled leather, books with wide, ragged margins of heavy linen paper around deep black types with illuminated initials at the chapter heads; books filled with extravagant ill.u.s.trations, books so beautiful that Mr. Brotherton licked his chops with joy when he considered the difference between the cost mark and the price mark. The Amen Corner was gone--the legend that had come down from the pool room, "Better go to bed lonesome than wake up in debt," had been carted to the alley. While the corner formerly occupied by the old walnut bench still held a corner seat, it was a corner seat with sharp angles, with black stain upon it, and upholstered in rich red leather, and red leather pillows lounged luxuriously in the corners of the seat; a black, angular table and a red, angular shade over a green angular lamp sat where the sawdust box had been. True--a green angular smoker's set also was upon the table--the only masculine appurtenance in the corner; but it was clearly a sop thrown out to offended and exiled mankind--a mere mockery of the solid comfort of the sawdust box, filled with cigar stubs and ashes that had made the corner a haven for weary man for nearly a score of years.

Above the black-stained seat ran a red dado and upon that in fine old English script, where once the old sign of the Corner had been nailed, there ran this legend:

"'The sweet serenity of Books' and Wallpaper, Stationery and Office Supplies."