Part 50 (1/2)
”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 scholars.h.i.+p, 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 moons.h.i.+ne--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.”