In the Heart of a Fool Part 50

"Father," cried Grant, "I saw Tom Van Dorn yesterday, too, in his big new car--and I don't need your guides to tell me who is moving with the current and who is buffeting it. Oh, father, that h.e.l.l-scorched face--don't talk to me about his faith and mine!" The old man remounted his printer's stool for another half-hour's work before dusk deepened, and smiled as he pulled his steel spectacles over his clear old eyes.

One would fancy that a man whose face was as seamed and scarred with time and struggle as Grant Adams's face, would have said nothing of the h.e.l.l-scorched face of Tom Van Dorn. Yet for all its lines, youth still shone from Grant Adams's countenance. His wide, candid blue eyes were still boyish, and a soul so eager with hope that it sometimes blazed into a mad intolerance, gazed into the world from behind them. Even his arm and claw became an animate hand when Grant waved them as he talked; and his wide, pugnacious shoulders, his shock of nonconforming red hair, his towering body, and his solid workman's legs, firm as oak beams,--all,--claw, arms, shoulders, trunk and legs,--translated into human understanding the rebel soul of Grant Adams.

Yet the rebellion of Grant Adams's soul was no new thing to the world.

He was treading the rough road that lies under the feet of all those who try to divert their lives from the hard and wicked morals of their times. For the kingdoms of this earth are organized for those who devote themselves chiefly, though of course not wholly, to the consideration of self. The world is still vastly egoistic in its balance. And the unbroken struggle of progress from Abel to yesterday's reformer, has been, is, and shall be the battle with the spirit that chains us to the selfish, accepted order of the pa.s.sing day. So Grant Adams's face was battle scarred, but his soul, strong and exultant, burst through his flesh and showed itself at many angles of his being. And a grim and militant thing it looked. The flinty features of the man, his coa.r.s.e mouth, his indomitable blue eyes, his red poll, waving like a banner above his challenging forehead, wrinkled and seamed and gashed with the troubles of harsh circ.u.mstance, his great animal jaw at the base of the spiritual tower of his countenance--all showed forth the warrior's soul, the warrior of the rebellion that is as old as time and as new as to-morrow.

Working with his hands for a bare livelihood, but sitting at his desk four or five days in the week and speaking at night, month after month, year after year, for nearly twenty years, without rest or change, had taken much of the bounce of youth from his body. He knew how the money from the acc.u.mulated dues was piling up in the Labor Union's war chest in the valley. He had proved what a trade solidarity in an industrial district could do for the men without strikes by its potential strength.

Black powder, which killed like the pestilence that stalketh in darkness, was gone. Electric lights had superseded torches in the runways of the mines. Bathhouses were found in all the shafts. In the smelters the long, killing hours were abandoned and a score of safety devices were introduced. But each gain for labor had come after a bitter struggle with the employers. So the whole history of the Wahoo Valley was written in the lines of his broken face.

The reformer with his iridescent dream of progress often hangs its realization upon a single phase of change. Thus when Grant Adams banished black powder from the district, he expected the whole phantasm of dawn to usher in the perfect day for the miners. When he secured electric lights in the runways and baths in the shaft house, he confidently expected large things to follow. While large things hesitated, he saw another need and hurried to it.

Thus it happened, that in the hurrying after a new need, Grant Adams had always remained in his own district, except for a brief season when he and Dr. Nesbit sallied forth in a State-wide campaign to defend the Doctor's law to compel employers to pay workmen for industrial accidents, as the employers replace broken machinery--a law which the Doctor had pushed through the Legislature and which was before the people for a referendum vote. When Grant went out of the Wahoo Valley district he attracted curious crowds, crowds that came to see the queer labor leader who won without strikes. And when the crowds came under Grant's spell, he convinced them. For he felt intensely. He believed that this law would right a whole train of incidental wrongs of labor.

So he threw himself into the fight with a crusader's ardor. Grant and the Doctor journeyed over the State through July and August; and in September the wily Doctor trapped Tom Van Dorn into a series of joint debates with Grant that advertised the cause widely and well. From these debates Grant Adams emerged a somebody in politics. For oratory, however polished, and scholarship, however plausible, cannot stand before the wrath of an indignant man in a righteous cause who can handle himself and suppress his wrath upon the platform.

As the week of the debate dragged on and as the pageant of it trailed clear across the State, with crowds hooting and cheering, Doctor Nesbit's cup of joy ran over. And when Van Dorn failed to appear for the Sat.u.r.day meeting at the capital, the Doctor's happiness mounted to glee.

That night, long after the midnight which ended the day's triumph, Grant and the Doctor were sitting on a baggage truck at a way station waiting for a belated train. Grant was in the full current of his pa.s.sion.

Personal triumph meant little to him--the cause everything. His heart was afire with a l.u.s.t to win. The Doctor kept looking at Grant with curious eyes--appraising eyes, indeed--from time to time as the younger man's interminable stream of talk of the Cause flowed on. But the Doctor had his pa.s.sion also. When it burst its bonds, he was saying: "Look here, you crazy man--take a reef in your canvas picture of jocund day upon the misty mountain tops--get down to gra.s.s roots." Grant turned an exalted face upon the Doctor in astonishment. The Doctor went on:

"Grant, I can give the concert all right--but, young man, you are selling the soap. That's a great argument you have been making this week, Grant."

"There wasn't much to my argument, Doctor," answered Grant, absently, "though it was a righteous cause. All I did was to make an appeal to the pocketbooks of Market Street all over the State, showing the merchants and farmers that the more the laboring man receives the more he will spend, and if he is paid for his accidents he will buy more prunes and calico; whereas, if he is not paid he will burden the taxes as a pauper.

Tom couldn't overcome that argument, but in the long run, our cause will not be won permanently and definitely by the bread and b.u.t.ter and taxes argument, except as that sort of argument proves the justice of our cause and arouses love in the hearts of you middle-cla.s.s people."

But Dr. Nesbit persisted with his figure. "Grant," he piped, "you certainly can sell soap. Why don't you sell some soap on your own hook?

Why don't you let me run you for something--Congress--governor, or something? We can win hands down."

Grant did not wait for the Doctor to finish, but cried in violent protest: "No, no, no--Doctor--no, I must not do that. I tell you, man, I must travel light and alone. I must go into life as naked as St.

Francis. The world is stirring as with a great spirit of change. The last night I was at home, up stepped a little Belgian gla.s.sblower to me.

I'd never seen him before. I said, 'h.e.l.lo, comrade!' He grasped my hands with both hands and cried 'Comrade! So you know the pa.s.sword. It has given me welcome and warmth and food in France, in England, in Australia, and now here. Everywhere the workers are comrades!'

Everywhere the workers are comrades. Do you know what that means, Doctor?"

The Doctor did not answer. His seventy years, and his habit of thinking in terms of votes and parties and factions, made him sigh.

"Doctor," cried Grant, "electing men to office won't help. But this law we are fighting for--this law will help. Doctor, I'm pinning the faith of a decade of struggle on this law."

The Doctor broke the silence that followed Grant's declaration, to say: "Grant, I don't see it your way. I feel that life must crystallize its progress in inst.i.tutions--political inst.i.tutions, before progress is safe. But you must work out your own life, my boy. Incidentally," he piped, "I believe you are wrong. But after this campaign is over, I'm going up to the capital for one last fling at making a United States Senator. I've only a dozen little white chips in the great game, five in the upper house and seven in the lower house. But we may deadlock it, and if we do,--you'll see thirty years drop off my head and witness the rejuvenation of Old Linen Pants."

Grant began walking the platform again under the stars like an impatient ghost. The Doctor rose and followed him.

"Grant, now let me tell you something. I am half inclined at times to think it's all moonshine--this labor law we're working to establish. But Laura wants it, and G.o.d knows, Grant, she has little enough in her life down there in the Valley. And if this law makes her happy--it's the least I can do for her. She hasn't had what she should have had out of life, so I'm trying to make her second choice worth while. That's why I'm on the soap wagon with you!" He would have laughed away this serious mood, but he could not.

Grant stared at the Doctor for a moment before answering: "Why, of course, Dr. Nesbit, I've always known that.

"But--I--Doctor--I am consecrated to the cause. It is my reason for living."

The day had pa.s.sed in the elder's life when he could rise to the younger man's emotions. He looked curiously at Grant and said softly:

"Oh, to be young--to be young--to be young!" He rose, touched the strong arm beside him. "'And the young men shall see visions.' To be young--just to be young! But 'the old men shall dream dreams.' Well, Grant, they are unimportant--not entirely pleasant. We young men of the seventies had a great material vision. The dream of an empire here in the West. It has come true--increased one hundred fold. Yet it is not much of a dream."

He let the arm drop and began drumming on the truck as he concluded: "But it's all I have--all the dream I have now. 'All of which I saw, and part of which I was,' yet," he mused, "perhaps it will be used as a foundation upon which something real and beautiful will be builded."

Far away the headlight of their approaching train twinkled upon the prairie horizon. The two men watched it glow into fire and come upon them. And without resuming their talk, each went his own wide, weary way in the world as they lay in adjoining berths on the speeding train.

At the general election the Doctor's law was upheld by a majority of the votes in the State, but the Doctor himself was defeated for reelection to the State Senate in his own district. Grant Adams waited, intently and with fine faith, for this law to bring in the millennium. But the Doctor had no millennial faith.

He came down town the morning after his defeat, gay and unruffled. He went toddling into the stores and offices of Market Street, clicking his cane busily, thanking his friends and joking with his foes. But he chirruped to Henry Fenn and Kyle Perry whom he found in the Serenity at the close of the day: "Well, gentlemen, I've seen 'em all! I've taken my medicine like a little man; but I won't lick the spoon. I sha'n't go and see Dan and Tom. I'm willing to go as far as any man in the forgiving and forgetting business, but the Lord himself hasn't quit on them. Look at 'em. The devil's mortgage is recorded all over their faces and he's getting about ready to foreclose on old Dan! And every time Dan hears poor Morty cough, the devil collects his compound interest. Poor, dear, gay Morty--if he could only put up a fight!"

But he could not put up a fight and his temperature rose in the afternoon and he could not meet with his gymnasium cla.s.s in South Harvey in the evening, but sent a trainer instead. So often weeks pa.s.sed during which Laura Van Dorn did not see Morty and the daily boxes of flowers that came punctiliously with his cards to the kindergarten and to Violet Hogan's day nursery, were their only reminders of the sorry, lonely, footless struggle Morty was making.

It was inevitable that the lives of Violet Hogan and Laura Van Dorn in South Harvey should meet and merge. And when they met and merged, Violet Hogan found herself devoting but a few hours a day to her day nursery, while she worked six long, happy hours as a stenographer for Grant Adams in his office at the Vanderbilt House. For, after all, it was as a stenographer that she remembered herself in the grandeur and the glory of her past. So Henry Fenn and Laura Van Dorn carried on the work that Violet began, and for them souls and flowers and happiness bloomed over the Valley in the dark, unwholesome places which death had all but taken for his own.

It was that spring when Dr. Nesbit went to the capital and took his last fling at State politics. For two months he had deadlocked his party caucus in the election of a United States Senator with hardly more than a dozen legislative votes. And he was going out of his dictatorship in a golden glow of glory.

And this was the beginning of the golden age for Captain Morton. The Morton-Perry Axle Works were thriving. Three eight-hour shifts kept the little plant booming, and by agreement with the directors of the Independent mine, Nathan Perry spent five hours a day in the works. He and the Captain, and the youngest Miss Morton, who was keeping books, believed that it would go over the line from loss to profit before gra.s.s came. The Captain hovered about the plant like an earth-bound spirit day and night, interrupting the work of the men, disorganizing the system that Nathan had installed, and persuading himself that but for him the furnaces would go dead and the works shut down.

It was one beautiful day in late March, after the November election wherein the Doctor's law had won and the Doctor himself had lost, that Grant Adams was in Harvey figuring with Mr. Brotherton on supplies for his office. Captain Morton came tramping down the clouds before him as he swept into the Serenity and jabbed a spike through the wheels of commerce with the remark: "Well, George--what do you think of my regalia--eh?"

Mr. Brotherton and Grant looked up from their work. They beheld the Captain arrayed in a dazzling light gray spring suit--an exceedingly light gray suit, with a hat of the same color and gloves and shoe spats to match, with a red tie so red that it all but crackled. "First profits of the business. We got over the line yesterday noon, and I had a thousand to go on, and this morning I just went on this spree--what say?"

"Well, Cap, when Morty Sands sees you he will die of envy. You're certainly the lily of the Valley and the bright and morning star--the fairest of ten thousand to my soul! Grant," said Brotherton as he turned to his customer, "behold the plute!"

The Captain stood grinning in pride as the men looked him over.

"'Y gory, boys, you'd be surprised the way that Household Horse has. .h.i.t the trade. Orders coming in from automobile makers, and last week we decided to give up making the little power saver and make the whole rear axle. We're going to call it the Morton-Perry Axle, and put in a big plant, and I was telling Ruthy this morning, I says, 'Ruth,' says I, 'if we make the axle business go, I'll just telephone down to Wright & Perry and have them send you out something n.o.bby in husbands, and, 'y gory, a nice thousand-mile wedding trip and maybe your pa will go along for company--what say?'"

He was an odd figure in his clothes--for they were ready-made--made for the figure of youth, and although he had been in them but a few hours, the padding was bulging at the wrong places; and they were wrinkled where they should be tight. His bony old figure stuck out at the knees, and the shoulders and elbows, and the high collar would not fit his skinny neck. But he was happy, and fancied he looked like the pictures of college boys in the back of magazines. So he answered Mr.

Brotherton's question about the opinion of the younger daughter as to the clothes by a profound wink.

"Scared--scared plumb stiff--what say? I caught Marthy nodding at Ruth and Ruthy looking hard at Marthy, and then both of 'em went to the kitchen to talk over calling up Emmy and putting out fly poison for the women that are lying in wait for their pa. Scared--why, scared's no name for it--what say?"

"Well, Captain," answered Mr. Brotherton, "you are certainly voluptuous enough in your new stage setting to have your picture on a cigar box as a Cuban beauty or a Spanish senorita."

The Captain was turning about, trying to see how the coat set in the back and at the same time watching the hang of the trousers. Evidently he was satisfied with it. For he said: "Well--guess I'll be going. I'll just mosey down to Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker's to give Emmy and Marthy and Ruthy something to keep 'em from thinking of their real troubles--eh?" And with a flourish he was gone.

When Grant's order was filled, he said, "Violet will call for this, George; I have some other matters to attend to."

As he a.s.sembled the goods for the order, Mr. Brotherton called out, "Well, how is Violet, anyway?" Grant smiled. "Violet is doing well. She is blooming over again, and when she found herself before a typewriter--it really seemed to take the curve out of her back. Henry declares that the typewriter put ribbon in her hair. Laura Van Dorn, I believe, is responsible for Violet's shirt waists. Henry Fenn comes to the office twice a day, to make reports on the sewing business. But what he's really doing, George, is to let her smell his breath to prove that he's sober, and so she runs the two jobs at once. Have you seen Henry recently?"

"Well," replied Brotherton, "he was in a month or so ago to borrow ten to buy a coat--so that he could catch up with the trousers of that suit before they grew too old. He still buys his clothes that way."

Grant threw back his red head and grinned a grim, silent grin: "Well, that's funny. Didn't you know what is keeping him away?" Again Grant grinned. "The day he was here he came wagging down with that ten-dollar bill, but his conscience got the best of him for lavishing so much money on himself, so he slipped it to Violet and told her to buy her some new teeth--you know she's been ashamed to open her mouth now for years.

Violet promised she would get the teeth in time for Easter. And pretty soon in walks Mrs. Maurice Stromsky--who scrubs in the Wright & Perry Building, whose baby died last summer and had to be buried in the Potter's field--she came in; and she and Violet got to talking about the baby--and Violet up and gave that ten to Mrs. Stromsky, to get the baby out of the Potter's field."

Mr. Brotherton laughed his great laugh. Grant went on:

"But that isn't all. The next day in walks Mrs. Maurice Stromsky, penitent as a dog, and I heard her squaring herself with Violet for giving that old saw-buck of yours to the Delaneys, whose second little girl had diphtheria and who had no money for ant.i.toxin. I never saw your ten again, George," said Grant. "It seemed to be going down for the last time." He looked at Brotherton quizzically for a second and asked: