In the Heart of a Fool Part 48

BEING NO CHAPTER AT ALL BUT AN INTERMEZZO BEFORE THE LAST MOVEMENT

The stage is dark. In the dim distance something is moving. It is a world hurrying through s.p.a.ce. Somewhat in the foreground but enveloped in the murk sit three figures. They are tending a vast loom. Its myriad threads run through illimitable s.p.a.ce and the woof of the loom is time.

The three figures weaving through the dark do not know whence comes the power that moves the loom eternally. They have not asked. They work in the pitch of night.

From afar in the earth comes a voice--high-keyed and gentle:

A Voice, _pianissimo_:

"This business of governing a sovereign people is losing its savor. I must be getting some kind of spiritual necrosis. Generally speaking, about all the real pleasure a grand llama of politics finds in life, is in counting his ingrates--his governors and senators and congressmen!

Why, George, it's been nearly ten years since I've cussed out a senator or a governor, yet I read Browning with joy and the last time I heard Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, I went stark mad. But woe is me, George! Woe is me. When the Judge and Dan Sands named the postmaster last month without consulting me, I didn't care. I tell you, George, I must be getting old!"

Second Voice, _fortissimo_:

"No, Doc--you're not getting old--why, you're not sixty--a mere spring chicken yet--and Dan Sands is seventy-five if he's a day. What's the matter with you in this here Zeitgeist that Carlyle talks about! It's this restless little time spirit that's the matter with you. You're all broke out and sick abed with the Zeitgeist. You've got no more necrosis than a Belgian hare's got paresis--I'm right here to tell you and my diagnosis goes."

Third Voice, _adagio_:

"James, my guides say that we're beginning a great movement from the few to the many. That is their expression. Cromwell thinks it means economic changes; but I was talking with Jefferson the other night and he says no--it means political changes in order to get economic. He says Tilden tells him--"

The Second Voice, _fortissimo_:

"Who cares what Tilden says! My noodle tells me that there's to be a big do in this world, and my control tinkles the cash register, pops into the profit account, eats up ten cent magazines, and gets away with five feet of literary dynamite fuse every week. I'm that old Commodore Noah that's telling you to get out your rubbers for the flood."

The First Voice, _andante con expression_:

"It's a queer world--a mighty queer world. Here's Laura's kindergarten growing until it joins with Violet Hogan's day nursery and Laura's flower seeds splashing color out of G.o.d's sunshine in front yards clear down to Plain Valley. Money coming in about as they need it. Dan Sands and Morty, Wright and Perry and the Dago saloon keeper, Joe Calvin, John Dexter and the gamblers--all the robbers, high and low, dividing their booty. With all the prosperity we are having, with all the opening of mills and factories--it's getting easier to make money and consequently harder to respect it. The more money there is, the less it buys, and that is true in public sentiment just as it is in groceries and furniture. Do you fellows realize that it's been ten years since the _Times_ has run any of those 'Pen Portraits of Self-Made Men'?" A silence, then the voice continues:

"George, I honestly believe, if money keeps getting crowded farther and farther into the background of life--we'll develop an honest politician.

We know that to give a bribe is just as bad as to take one. Think of the men debauched with money disguised as campaign expenses, or with offices or with franks and pa.s.ses and pull and power! Think of all the bad government fostered, all the injustices legalized, just to win a sordid game! The best I can do now is to cry, 'Lord have mercy on me, a sinner!

The harlot and the thief are my betters.'"

The _voices_ cease. The earth whirls on. The brooding spirits at the loom muse in silence, for they need no voices.

The First Fate: "The birds! The birds! I seemed to hear the night birds twittering to bring in the dawn."

The Second Fate: "The birds do not bring in the dawn. The dawn comes."

The First Fate: "But always and always before the day, we hear these voices."

The Third Fate: "World after world threads its time through our loom. We watch the pattern grow. Days and eras and ages pa.s.s. We know nothing of meanings. We only weave. We know that the pattern brightens as new days come and always voices in the dark tell us of the changing pattern of a new day."

The First Fate: "But the birds--the birds! I seem to hear the night birds' voices that make the dawn."

The Second Fate: "They are not birds calling, but the whistle of shot and sh.e.l.l and the shrill, far cries of man in air. But still I say the dawn comes, the voices do not bring it."

The Third Fate: "We do not know how the awakening voices in the dark know that the light is coming. We do not know what power moves the loom. We do not know who dreams the pattern. We only weave and muse and listen for the voices of change as a world threads its events through the woof of time on our loom."

The stage is dark. The weavers weave time into circ.u.mstances and in the blackness the world moves on. Slowly it grays. A thousand voices rise.

Then circ.u.mstance begins to run brightly on the loom, and a million voices join in the din of the dawn. The loom goes. The weavers fade. The light in the world pales the thread of time and the whirl of the earth no longer is seen. But instead we see only a town. Half of it shines in the morning sun--half of it hides in the smoke. In the sun on the street is a man.

CHAPTER XL

HERE WE HAVE THE FELLOW AND THE GIRL BEGINNING TO PREPARE FOR THE LAST CHAPTER

A tall, spare, middle-aged person was Thomas Van Dorn in the latter years of the first decade of the twentieth century; tall and spare and tight-skinned. The youthful olive texture of the skin was worn off and had been replaced by a leathery finish--rather reddish brown in color.

The slight squint of his eyes was due somewhat to the little puffs under them, and a suspicious, crafty air had grown into the full orbs, which once glowed with emotion, when the younger man mounted in his oratorical flights. His hands were gloved to match his exactly formal clothes, and his hat--a top-hat when Judge Van Dorn was in the East, and a sawed-off compromise with the local prejudice against top-hats when he was in Harvey--was always in the latest mode. Often the hat was made to match his clothes. He had become rigorous in his taste in neckties and only grays and blacks and browns adorned the almost monkish severity of his garb. Harsh, vertical lines had begun to appear at the sides of the sensuous mouth, and horizontal lines--perhaps of hurt pride and shame--were pressed into his wide, handsome forehead and the zigzag scar was set white in a reddening field.

All these things a photograph would show. But there was that about his carriage, about his mien, about the personality that emerged from all these things which the photograph would not show. For to the eyes of those who had known him in the flush of his youth, something--perhaps it was time, perhaps the burden of the years--seemed to be sapping him, seemed to be drying him out, fruitless, pod-laden, dry and listless, with a bleached soul, naked to the winds that blow across the world. The myriad criss-crosses of minute red veins that marked his cheek often were wet with water from the eyes that used to glow out of a very volcano of a personality behind them. But after many hours of charging up and down the earth in his great noisy motor, red rims began to form about the watery eyes and they peered furtively and savagely at the world, like wolves from a falling temple.

As he stood by the fire in Mr. Brotherton's sanctuary, holding his _Harper's Weekly_ in his hand, and glancing idly over the new books carelessly arranged on the level of the eye upon the wide oak mantel, the Judge came to be conscious of the presence of Amos Adams on a settee near by.

"How do you do, sir?" The habit of speaking to every one persisted, but the suave manner was affected, and the voice was mechanical. The old man looked up from his book--one of Professor Hyslop's volumes, and answered, "Why, h.e.l.lo, Tom--how are you?" and ducked back to his browsing.

"That son of yours doesn't seem to have set the Wahoo afire with his unions in the last two or three years, does he?" said Van Dorn. He could not resist taking this poke at the old man, who replied without looking up:

"Probably not."

Then fearing that he might have been curt the old man lifted his eyes from his book and looking kindly over his gla.s.ses continued: "The Wahoo isn't ablaze, Tom, but you know as well as I that the wage scale has been raised twice in the mines, and once in the gla.s.s factory and once in the smelter in the past three years without strikes--and that's what Grant is trying to do. More than that, every concern in the Valley now recognizes the union in conferring with the men about work conditions.

That's something--that's worth all his time for three years or so, if he had done nothing else."

"Well, what else has he done?" asked Van Dorn quickly.

"Well, Tom, for one thing the men are getting cla.s.s conscious, and in a strike that will be a strong cement to make them stick."

Van Dorn's neck reddened, as he replied: "Yes--the d.a.m.n anarchists--cla.s.s consciousness is what undermines patriotism."

"And patriotism," replied the old man, thumbing the lapel of his coat that held his loyal legion b.u.t.ton, "patriotism is the last resort--of plutocrats!"

He laughed good-naturedly and silently. Then he rose and said as he started to go:

"Well, Tom,--we won't quarrel over a little thing like our beloved country. Why, Lila--" the old man looked up and saw the girl, "bless my eyes, child, how you do grow, and how pretty you look in your new ginghams--just like your mother, twenty years ago!" Amos Adams was talking to a shy young girl--blue-eyed and brown-haired, who was walking out of the store after buying a bottle of ink of Miss Calvin. Lila spoke to the old man and would have gone with him, but for the booming voice of Mr. Brotherton, the gray-clad benedict, who looked not unlike the huge, pot-bellied gray jars which adorned "the sweet serenity of books and wall paper."

Mr. Brotherton had glanced up from his ledger at Amos Adams's mention of Lila's name. Coming forward, he saw her in her new dress, a bright gingham dress that reached so nearly to her shoe tops that Mr.

Brotherton cried: "Well, look who's here--if it isn't Miss Van Dorn! And a great pleasure it is to see and know you, Miss Van Dorn."

He repeated the name two or three times gently, while Lila smiled in shy appreciation of Mr. Brotherton's ambushed joke. Her father, standing by a squash-necked lavender jug in the "serenity," did not entirely grasp Mr. Brotherton's point. But while the father was groping for it, Mr.

Brotherton went on:

"Miss Van Dorn, once I had a dear friend--such a dear little friend named Lila. Perhaps you may see her sometimes? Maybe sometimes at night she comes to see you--maybe she peeps in when you are alone and asks to play. Well, say--Lila," called Mr. Brotherton as gently as a fog horn tooting a nocturne, "if she ever comes, if you ever see her, will you give her my love? It would be highly improper for a married gentleman with asthmatic tendencies and too much waistband to send his love or anything like it to Miss Van Dorn; it would surely cause comment. But if Lila ever comes, Miss Van Dorn," frolicked the elephant, "give her my love and tell her that often here in the serenity, I shut my eyes and see her playing out on Elm Street, a teenty, weenty girl--with blue hair and curly eyes--or maybe it was the other way around," Mr. Brotherton heaved a prodigious sigh and waved a weary, fat hand--"and here, my lords and gentlemen, is Miss Van Dorn with her dresses down to her shoe tops!"

The girl was smiling and blushing, sheepishly and happily, while Mr.