In the Heart of a Fool Part 53

What say?" Grant tried to get it to the Captain that Kenyon's real job in the world was composing music, and that sometimes he tired of cities and came down to Harvey to get the sunshine and prairie gra.s.s and the woods and the waters of his childhood into his soul. But the Captain waved the idea aside, "Nothing in the fiddling business, Grant--two dollars a day and find yourself, is all the best of 'em make," protested the Captain. "Let him do like I done--get at something sound and practical early in life and 'y gory, man--look at me. What say?"

Grant did not answer, but when the Captain veered around to the subject of his party, Grant promised to bring the whole Adams family. A moment later the Captain saw the Sands's motor car on the road before them, and said:

"Excuse me, Grant--here are the Sandses--I've got to invite them--Hi there, Dan'l, come alongside." While the Captain was inviting Daniel Sands, the Doctor's electric came purring up the hill to the club house driven by Laura Van Dorn. Grant was trotting ahead to join the other carpenters who were going to the street-car station, when Laura pa.s.sing, hailed him:

"Wait a minute, Grant, till I take this to father, and I'll go with you."

As Laura Van Dorn turned her car around the club house, she stopped it under the veranda overlooking the golf course and the rolling prairie furrowed by the slowly winding stream. The afternoon sun slanting upon the landscape brought out all its beauty--its gay greens, its somber, contrasting browns, and its splashing of color from the fruit trees across the valley that blushed pink and went white in the first unsure ecstasies of new life. Then she saw Kenyon and Lila slowly walking up the knoll to the road. The mother noted with quick instinct the way their hands jostled together as they walked. The look that flashed from their eyes when their hands touched--the look of proprietorship in each other--told Laura Van Dorn that her life's work with Lila was finished.

The daughter's day of choice had come; and whatever of honesty, whatever of sense, and sentiment, whatever of courage or conscience the mother had put into the daughter's heart and mind was ready for its lifelong test. Lila had embarked on her own journey; and motherhood was ended for Laura Van Dorn.

As she looked at the girl, the mother saw herself, but she was not embittered at the sad ending of her own journey along the road which her daughter was taking. For years she had accepted as the fortunes of war, what had come to her with her marriage, and because she had the daughter, the mother knew that she was gainer after all. For to realize motherhood even with one child, was to taste the best that life held. So her face reflected, as a cloud reflects the glory of the dawn, something of the radiance that shone in the two young faces before her; and in her faith she laid small stress upon the particular one beside her daughter.

Not his growing fame, not his probable good fortune, inspired her satisfaction. When she considered him at all as her daughter's lover, she only reflected on the fact that all she knew of Kenyon was honest and frank and kind. Then she dismissed him from her thoughts.

The mother standing on the hillock looking at the youth and maiden sauntering toward her, felt the serene reliance in the order of things that one has who knows that the worst life can do to a brave, wise, kind heart, is not bad. For she had felt the ruthless wrenches of the senseless wheels of fate upon her own flesh. Yet she had come from the wheels bruised, and in agony, but not broken, not beaten. Her peace of mind was not pa.s.sive. It amounted to a militant pride in the strength and beauty of the soul she had equipped for the voyage. Laura Van Dorn was sure of Lila and was happy. Her eyes filled with grateful tears as she looked down upon her daughter.

Her father, toddling ahead of Mrs. Nesbit a hundred paces, reached the car first. She nodded at the young people trudging up the slope. "Yes,"

said the Doctor, "we have been watching them for half an hour. Seems like the voice of the turtle is heard in the land."

The daughter alighted from the runabout, her father got in and waited for his wife. The three turned their backs on the approaching lovers and pretended not to see them. As Laura walked around the corner of the house, she found Grant waiting for her at the car station, and the two having missed the car that the other carpenters had taken, stood under the shed waiting.

"Well--Laura," he asked, "are you leaving the idle rich for the worthy poor?" She laughed and explained:

"The electric was for father and mother, and so long as I have to go down to my girls' cla.s.s in South Harvey this evening for their picnic, I'm going to ride in your car, if you don't mind?"

The street car came wailing down on them and when they had taken a rear seat on the trailer together, Grant began: "I'm glad you've come just now--just to-night. I've been anxious to see you. I've got some things to talk over--mighty big things--for me. In the first place--"

"In the first place and before I forget it, let me tell you the good news. A telegram has just come from the capital to father, saying that the State supreme court had upheld his labor bill--his and your bill that went through the referendum.

"'Referendum J.' probably was the judge who wrote the opinion," said Grant grimly. He took off his hat, and the cooling breeze of the late afternoon played with his hair, without fluttering the curly, wiry red poll, turning light yellow with the years. "Well, whoever influenced the court--I'm glad that's over. The men have been grumbling for a year and more because we couldn't get the benefits of the law. But their suits are pending--and now they ought to have their money."

As the car whined along through the prairie streets, Grant, who had started to speak twice, at last said abruptly, "I've got to cut loose."

He turned around so that his eyes could meet hers and went on: "Your father and George Brotherton and a lot of our people seem to think that we can patch things up--I mean this miserable profit system. They think by paying the workmen for accidents and with eight hours, a living wage, and all that sort of thing, we can work out the salvation of labor. I used to think that too; but it won't do, Laura--I've gone clean to the end of that road, and there's nothing in it. And I'm going to cut loose.

That's what I want to see you about. There's nothing in this step-at-a-time business. I'm for the revolution!"

She showed clearly that she was surprised, and he seemed to find some opposition in her countenance, for he hurried on: "The Kingdom--I mean the Democracy of labor--is at hand; the day is at its dawn. I want to throw my weight for the coming of the Democracy."

His voice was full of emotion as he cried:

"Laura--Laura, I know what you think; you want me to wait; you want me to help on the miserable patchwork job of repairing the profit system.

But I tell you--I'm for the revolution, and with all the love in my heart--I'm going to throw myself into it!"

No one sat in the seat before them, as they whirled through the lanes leading to town, and he rested his head in his hand and put his elbow on the forward seat.

"Well, what do you think of it?" he asked, looking anxiously into her troubled face. "I have been feeling strongly now for a month--waiting to see you--also waiting to be dead sure of myself. Now I am sure!" The mad light in his eye and the zealot's enthusiasm flaming in his battered face, made the woman pause a moment before she replied:

"Well," she smiled as she spoke, "don't you think you are rather rushing me off my feet? I've seen you coming up to it for some time--but I didn't know you were so far along with your conviction."

She paused and then: "Of course, Grant, the Socialists--I mean the revolutionary group--even the direct action people--have their proper place in the scheme of things--but, Grant--" she looked earnestly at him with an anxious face, "they are the scouts--the pioneers ahead of the main body of the troops! And, Grant," she spoke sadly, "that's a hard place--can't you find enough fighting back with the main body of the troops--back with the army?"

He beat the seat with his iron claw impatiently and cried: "No--no--I'm without baggage or equipment. I'm traveling light. I must go forward.

They need me there. I must go where the real danger is. I must go to point the way."

"But what is the way, Grant--what is it? You don't know--any more than we do--what is beyond the next decade's fight! What is the way you are going to point out so fine and gay--what is it?" she cried.

"I don't know," he answered doggedly. "I only know I must go. The scouts never know where they are going. Every great movement has its men who set out blindly, full of faith, full of courage, full of joy, happy to fail even in showing what is not the way--if they cannot find the path.

I must go," he cried pa.s.sionately, "with those who leave their homes to mark the trail--perhaps a guide forward, perhaps as a warning away--but still to serve. I'm going out to preach the revolution for I know that the day of the Democracy of labor is at hand! It is all but dawning."

She saw the exultation upon him that hallowed his seamed features and she could not speak. But when she got herself in hand she said calmly: "But, Grant--that's stuff and nonsense--there is no revolution. There can be no Democracy of labor, so long as labor is what it is. We all want to help labor--we know that it needs help. But there can be no Democracy of labor until labor finds itself; until it gets capacity for handling big affairs, until it sees more clearly what is true and what is false. Just now labor is awakening, is growing conscious--a little--but, Grant, come now, my good friend, listen, be sensible, get down to earth. Can't you see your fine pioneering and your grand scouting won't help--not now?"

"And can't you understand," he replied almost angrily, "that unless I or some one else who can talk to these people does go out and preach a definite ideal, a realizable hope--even though it may not be realized, even though it may not take definite shape--they will never wake up?

Can't you see, girl, that when labor is ready for the revolution--it won't need the revolution? Can't you see that unless we preach the revolution, they will never be ready for it? When the workers can stand together, can feel cla.s.s consciousness and strike altogether, can develop organizing capacity enough to organize, to run their own affairs--then the need for cla.s.s consciousness will pa.s.s, and the demand for the revolution will be over? Can't you see that I must go out blindly and cry discontent to these people?"

She smiled and shook her head and answered, "I don't know, Grant--I don't know."

They were coming into town, and every few blocks the car was taking on new pa.s.sengers. She spoke low and almost whispered when she answered:

"I only know that I believe in you--you are my faith; you are my social gospel." She paused, hesitated, flushed slightly, and said, "Where you go I shall go, and your people shall be my people! Only do--Oh, do consider this well before you take the final step."

"Laura, I must go," he returned stubbornly. "I am going to preach the revolution of love--the Democracy of labor founded on the theory that the Holy Ghost is in every heart--poor as well as rich--rich as well as poor. I'm not going to preach against the rich--but against the system that makes a few men rich without much regard to their talent, at the expense of all the rest, without much regard to their talents."

The woman looked at him as he turned his blue eyes upon her in a kind of delirium of conviction. He hurried on as their car rattled through the town:

"We must free master as well as slave. For while there is slavery--while the profit system exists--the mind of the slave and the mind of the master will be cursed with it. There can be no love, no justice between slave and master--only deceit and violence on each side, and I'm going out to preach the revolution--to call for the end to a system that keeps love out of the world."

"Well, then, Grant," said the woman as the car jangled its way down Market Street, "hurrah for the revolution."

She smiled up at him, and they rode without speaking until they reached South Harvey. He left her at the door of her kindergarten, and a group of young girls, waiting for her, surrounded her.

When he reached his office, he found Violet Hogan working at her desk.

"You'll find all your mail opened, and I've noted the things that have been attended to," she said, as she turned to him. "I'm due over to the girls' cla.s.s with Miss Laura--I'm helping her to-night with her picnic."

Grant nodded, and fell to his work. Violet went on:

"The letters for your signature are here on my desk. Money seems to be coming in. New local showing up down in Magnus--from the tile works."

She rose, put on her coat and hat, and said as she stood in the door, "To-morrow will be your day in--won't it?" He nodded at his work, and she called out, "Well,--bye, bye--I'll be in about noon."

Daylight faded and he turned on the electric above his desk and was going over his work, making notations on letters for Violet, when he heard a footstep on the stairs. He recognized the familiar step of Henry Fenn.

"Come in--come in, Henry," cried Grant.

Fenn appeared, saw Grant at his work, slipped into a chair, and said:

"Now go right on--don't mind me, young man." Fenn pulled a newspaper from his cheap neat coat, and sat reading it, under a light that he made for himself at Violet's desk. The light fell on his thin whitening hair--still coa.r.s.e, and close cropped. In his clean, washed-out face there was the faded glow of the man who had been the rising young attorney thirty years before. Grant knew that Fenn did not expect the work to stop, so he went on with it. "I'm going to supper about eight o'clock," said Grant, and asked: "Will that be all right?"

"Don't mind me," returned Fenn, and smiled with a dim reflection of the old incandescence of his youth.

Fenn's hands trembled a little, but his eyes were steady and his voice clear. His clothes were shabby but decent, and his whole appearance was that of one who is making it a point to keep up. When Grant had finished his correspondence, and was sealing up his letters, Fenn lent a hand and began: