Part 55 (1/2)
Now they have capered through these pages of this chapter--all of the people in this story in their love affairs. Hand in hand, they have come to the footlights, hand in hand they have walked before us. We have seen that love is a pa.s.sion with many sides. It varies with each soul. In youth, in maturity, in courts.h.i.+p, in marriage, in widowhood, in innocence, and in the wisdom of serpents, love reflects the soul it s.h.i.+nes on. For love is youth in the heart--youth that always beckons, that always shapes our visions. Love ever sheens and s.h.i.+mmers brightly from within us; but what it shows to the world--that is vastly different with each of us. For that is the shadow of his inmost being.
CHAPTER XLIII
WHEREIN WE FIND GRANT ADAMS CALLING UPON KENYON'S MOTHER, AND DARKNESS FALLS UPON TWO LOVERS
Once in a while an item appeared in the Harvey _Tribune_ that might have been found nowhere else, and for reasons. For instance, the issue of the _Tribune_ that contained the account of the Captain's party also contained this item, which Daniel Sands had kept out of every other paper in town:
”Mortimer Sands, son of D. Sands of the Traders' Bank, has returned from Arizona, where he has been seeking health. He is hopeful of ultimate recovery.”
Another item of interest appeared in the same issue of the paper. It related that T. Van Dorn, former Judge of the District Court, is in Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., on legal business.
The Adams family item, which the paper never failed to contain, was this:
”K. Adams will leave next week for New York, where his new opera, 'Rachel,' will have its first appearance next autumn. He will be missed in our midst.”
And for a paper with no subscribers and no patronage, it is curious to note that the _Tribune_ carried the news above mentioned to all of Harvey, and all of Harvey discussed the news. Not that the town did not know more or less of the facts as hereinabove related; but when a fact is read in print it becomes something different from a fact. It becomes a public matter, an episode in the history of the world.
In the same issue of the paper was a statement from Grant Adams that he had decided to throw his life with the Socialists and with that group known as the revolutionary Socialists. Grant was enough of a personage, and the declaration was short enough and interesting enough, to give it a place in the newspapers of the country for a day. In the State where he lived, the statement created some comment--mostly adverse to Dr.
Nesbit, whose political a.s.sociation with Grant Adams had linked the Doctor's name with Grant's. Being out of power, Dr. Nesbit felt these flings. So it happened that when, the Sunday following the announcement, Grant came with his father and Kenyon in the rattling old buggy up to the Nesbit home on Elm Street, Amos Adams found a rollicking, frivolous, mischievous host--but Grant Adams found a natty, testy, sardonic old man, who made no secret of his ill-humor.
Kenyon found Lila, and the two with their music indoors made a background for the talk on the veranda. Nathan Perry, who came up for a pill or a powder for one of his flock, sat for a time on the veranda steps. For all his frivoling with the elder Adams, Nathan could see by the way the loose, wrinkled skin on the Doctor's face kept twitching when Grant spoke, that the old man had something on his mind.
”Grant,” cried the Doctor, in his excited treble, ”do you realize what an ornate, unnecessary, unmitigated conspicuous, and elaborate jack you've made of yourself? Do you--young man? Well, you have. Your revolution--your revolution!” shrilled the old man. ”d.a.m.n sight of revolution you'll kick up charging over the country with your water-tank patriots--your--your box-car statesmen--now, won't you?”
”Here--Doctor,--come--be--”
But the Doctor would not let Grant talk. The chirrup of the shrill old voice bore in upon the younger man's protest with, ”Now, you let me say my say. The world's moving along--moving pretty fast and generally to one end, and that end is to put food in the bellies, clothes on the back, and brains in the head of the working man. The whole trend of legislation all over the world has gone that way. h.e.l.l's afire, Grant--what more do you want? We've given you the inheritance tax and the income tax and direct legislation to manipulate it, and, by Ned, instead of staying with the game and helping us work these things out in wise administration, you fly the coop, and go squawking over the country with your revolution and leave me--d.a.m.n it, Grant,” piped the little, high voice, sputtering with rage, ”you leave me--with my linen pants on a clothes-line four miles from home!”
Then slowly the little lines began to break in his loose skin. A faint smile, then a grin and then a laugh, spread over the old face, and he wiped his watering eyes as he shook his head mournfully.
Grant was gathering himself to reply when Nate Perry rasped in with his high-keyed Yankee voice: ”I guess that about covers my views, Grant--if any one should ask you.”
The crusader rose in Grant: ”It's you men who have no sense,” he cried.
”You think because I declare war on the profit system that I propose to sail out and overturn it with a few bombs over night. Look here, men; what I propose to do is to demonstrate right here in the Wahoo Valley, where there are all sorts of laboring people, skilled, unskilled, continuous, overpaid and underpaid, foreign and American--utterly unlike, incoherent, racially and industrially--that they have in them capacities for organizing; unused abilities, untried talents that will make them worthy to take a higher place in the economic scale than they now have. If I can amalgamate them, if I can weld them into a consistent, coherent labor ma.s.s--the Irish, the Slav, the Jews, the Italians, the Poles, the French, the Dutch, the Letts, and the Mexicans--put to some purpose the love of the poor for the poor, so that it will count industrially, you can't stop the revolution.” He was wagging his head, waving his stump of an arm and his face showed the temperamental excitement that was in him.
”Go ahead, Grant,” said Perry. ”Play out all your line--show us your game.”
”Well, then--here's my game. For five years we've been collecting a district strike fund--all our own, that doesn't belong to any other organization or federation anywhere. It's ours here in the Wahoo. It's independent of any state or national control. I've collected it. It's been paid because these men here in the Valley have faith in me. We have practically never spent a penny of it. There are about ten thousand workers in the Valley--some, like the gla.s.sblowers, are the aristocracy of labor; others, like the breaker boys, are at the bottom of the scale.
But we've kept wages up, kept conditions as high as they are anywhere in the country--and we've done it without strikes. They have faith in me.
So we've a.s.sessed them according to their wages, and we have on hand, with a.s.sessments and interest, over a third of a million dollars.”
He looked at Perry, and nodded his head at the Doctor. ”You fellows think I'm a cream-puff reformer. I'm not. Now, then--I've talked it over with our board--we are going to invest that money in land up and down the Valley--put the women and children and old men on it--in tents--during the growing season, and cultivate that land in three-acre tracts intensively. Our Belgian gla.s.sblowers and smelter men have sent for their gardeners to teach us. Now it's merely a question of getting the land and doing the preliminary organization. We want to get as much land as we can. Now, there's my game. With that kind of a layout we can win any strike we call. And we can prove to the world that labor has the cohesive cooperating faculty required to manage the factories--to take a larger share of the income of industry, if you please. That's my revolution, gentlemen. And it's going to begin right here in the Wahoo Valley.”
”Well,” returned Nate Perry, ”your revolution looks interesting. It's got some new gears, at least.”
”Go it while you're young,” piped the Doctor. ”In just about eighteen months, you will be coming to me to go on your bond--to keep out of jail. I've seen new-fangled revolutions peter out before.”
”Just the same,” replied Grant, ”I've pinned my faith to these men and women. They are now working in fear of poverty. Give them hope of better things instead of fear and they will develop out of poverty, just as the middle cla.s.s came out under the same stimulus.”