Part 38 (1/2)
”So while I was wrapping up 'Sappho' and ordering her a book with a t.i.tle that sounded like a college yell, she told me she was getting on a higher plane, and I bowed her out. Say, Hen--now wouldn't that jar you?--the Ex getting on a higher plane.”
Mr. Fenn grinned--a sodden grin with a four days' beard on it, and dirty teeth, and heavy eyes, then looked stupidly at the floor and sighed and said,
”George, did you know I've quit?” To Mr. Brotherton's kindly smile the other man replied:
”Yes, sir, sawed 'er right off short--St. Patrick's Day. I thought I'd ought to quit last Fourth of July--when I tried to eat a live pinwheel.
I thought I had gone far enough.” He lifted up his burned-out eyes in the faded smile that once shone like an arc light, and said:
”Man's a fool to get tangled up with liquor. George, when I get my board bill paid--I'm going to quit the auctioning line, and go back to law.
But my landlady's needing that money, and I'm a little behind--”
Mr. Brotherton made a motion for his pocket. ”No, I don't want a cent of your money, George,” Fenn expostulated. ”I was just telling you how things are. I knew you'd like to know.”
Mr. Brotherton came from behind the counter where he had been arranging his stock for the night, and grasped Henry Fenn's hand. ”Say, Henry--you're all right. You're a man--I've always said so. I tell you, Hen, I've been to lots of funerals in this town first and last as pall-bearer or choir singer--pretty nearly every one worth while, but say, I'm right here to tell you that I have never went to one I was sorrier over than yours, Henry--and I'm mighty glad to see you're coming to again.”
Henry Fenn smiled weakly and said: ”That's right, George--that's right.”
And Mr. Brotherton went on, ”I claim the lady give you the final push--not that she needed to push hard of course; but a little pulling might have held you.”
Mr. Fenn rose to leave and sighed again as he stood for a moment in the doorway--”Yes, George, perhaps so--poor Maggie--poor Maggie.”
Mr. Brotherton looked at the man a moment--saw his round hat with neither back nor front and only the wreck of a band around it, his tousled clothes, his shoes with the soles curling at the sides and the frowsy face, from which the man peered out a second and then slunk back again, and Mr. Brotherton took to his book shelf, scratched his head and indicated by his manner that life was too deep a problem for him.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
IN WHICH THE ANGELS SHAKE A FOOT FOR HENRY FENN
The business of life largely resolves itself into a preparation for the next generation. The torch of life moves steadily forward. For children primarily life has organized itself to satisfy decently and in order, the insatiate primal hungers that motive mankind. It was with a wisdom deeper than he understood that George Brotherton spoke one day, as he stood in his doorway and saw Judge Van Dorn hurrying across the street to speak to Lila. ”There,” roared Mr. Brotherton to Nathan Perry, ”well, say--there's the substance all right, man.” And then as the Judge turned wearily away with slinking shoulders to avoid meeting the eyes of his wife, plump, palpable, and always personable, who came around the corner, Mr. Brotherton, with a haw-haw of appreciation of his obvious irony, cried, ”And there's the shadow--I don't think.” But it was the substance and the shadow nevertheless, and possibly the Judge knew them as the considerations of his bargain with the devil. For always he was trying to regain the substance; to take Lila to his heart, where curiously there seemed some need of love, even in a heart which was consecrated in the very temple of love. Without realizing that he was modifying his habits of life, he began to drop in casually to see the children's Christmas exercises, and Thanksgiving programs, and Easter services at John Dexter's church. From the back seat where he always sat alone, he sometimes saw the wealth of affection that her mother lavished on Lila, patting her ribbons, smoothing her hair, straightening her dress, fondling her, correcting her, and watching the child with eyes so full of love that they did not refrain sometimes from smiling in kindly appreciation into the eager, burning, tired eyes of the Judge. The mother understood why he came to the exercises, and often she sent Lila to her father for a word. The town knew these things, and the Judge knew that the town knew, and even then he could not keep away. He had to carry the torch of life, whether he would or not, even though sometimes it must have scorched his proud, white hands. It was the only thing that burned with real fire in his heart.
With Laura Van Dorn the fact of her motherhood colored her whole life.
Never a baby was born among her poor neighbors in the valley that she did not thrill with a keen delight at its coming, and welcome it with some small material token of her joy. In the baby she lived over again her own first days of maternity. But it was no play motherhood that restored her soul and refilled her receptacle of faith day by day. The bodily, huggable presence of her daughter continually unfolding some new beauty kept her eager for the day's work to close in the Valley that she might go home to drop the vicarious happiness that she brought in her kindergarten for the real happiness of a home.
Often Grant Adams, hurrying by on his lonely way, paused to tell Laura of a needy family, or to bring a dirty, motherless child to her haven, or to ask her to go to some wayward girl, newly caught in the darker corners of the spider's web.
Doggedly day by day, little by little, he was bringing the workmen of the Valley to see his view of the truth. The owners were paying spies to spy upon him and he knew it, and the high places of his satisfaction came when, knowing a spy and marking him for a victim, Grant converted him to the union cause. With the booming of the big guns of prosperity in Harvey, he was a sort of undertone, a monotonous drum, throbbing through the valley a menace beneath it all. Once--indeed, twice, as he worked, he organized a demand for higher wages in two or three of the mines, and keeping himself in the background, yet cautiously managing the tactics of the demand, he won. He held Sunday meetings in such halls as the men could afford to hire and there he talked--talked the religion of democracy. As labor moved about in the world, and as the labor press of the country began to know of Grant, he acquired a certain fame as a speaker among labor leaders. And the curious situation he was creating gave him some reputation in other circles. He was good for an occasional story in a Kansas City or Chicago Sunday paper; and the _Star_ reporter, sent to do the feature story, told of a lonely, indomitable figure who was the idol of the laboring people of the Wahoo Valley; of his Sunday meetings; of his elaborate system of organization; of his peaceful demands for higher wages and better shop conditions; of his conversion of spies sent to hinder him, of his never-ceasing effort, unsupported by outside labor leaders, unvisited by the aristocracy of the labor world, yet always respecting it, to preach unionism as a faith rather than as a material means for material advancement.
Generally the reporters devoted a paragraph to the question--what manner of man is this?--and intimating more or less frankly that he was a man of one idea, or perhaps broadening the suggestion into a query whether or not a man who would work for years, scorning fame, scorning regular employment and promotion, neglecting opportunities to rise as a labor leader in his own world, was not just a little mad. So it happened that without seeking fame, fame came to him. All over the Missouri Valley, men knew that Grant Adams, a big, lumbering, red-polled, l.u.s.ty-lunged man with one arm burned off--and the story of the burning fixed the man always in the public heart--with a curious creed and a freak gift for expounding it, was doing unusual things with the labor situation in the Harvey district. And then one day a reporter came from Omaha who uncovered this bit of news in his Sunday feature story:
”Last week the Wahoo district was paralyzed by the announcement that Nathan Perry, the new superintendent of the Independent mines had raised his wage scale, and had acceded to every change in working conditions that the local labor organizations under Adams had asked. Moreover, he has unionized his mine and will recognize only union grievance committees in dealing with the men. The effect of such an announcement in a district where the avowed purpose of the mine operators is to run their own business as they please, may easily be imagined.
”Perry is a civil engineer from Boston Tech., a rich man's son, who married a rich man's daughter, and then cut loose from his father and father-in-law because of a political disagreement over the candidacy of the famous Judge Thomas Van Dorn for a judicial nomination a few years ago. Perry belongs to a new type in industry--rather newer than Adams's type. Perry is a keen eyed, boyish-looking young man who has no illusions about Adams's democracy of labor.
”'I am working out an engineering problem with men,' said Perry to a reporter to-day. 'What I want is coal in the cage. I figure that more wages will put more corn meal in a man's belly, more muscle on his back, more hustle in his legs, and more blood in his brain. And primarily I'm buying muscle and hustle and brains. If I can make the muscle and hustle and brains I buy, yield better dividends than the stuff my compet.i.tors buy, I'll hold my job. If not, I'll lose it. I am certainly working for my job.'
”Of course the town doesn't believe for a moment what Perry says. The town is divided. Part of the town thinks that Perry is an Adams convert and a fool, the other half of the town believes that the move is part of a conspiracy of certain eastern financial interests to get control of the Wahoo Valley properties by spreading dissension. Feeling is bitter and Adams and Perry are coming in for considerable abuse. D. Sands, the local industrial entrepreneur, has raised the black flag on his son-in-law, and an interesting time looms ahead.”
But often at night in Perry's home in South Harvey, where Morty Sands and Grant Adams loved to congregate, there were hot discussions on the labor question. For Nathan Perry was no convert of Grant Adams.