Part 71 (1/2)
”'Kyle,' he repeated, 'tried to yell at old John, but got so excited stuttering, he couldn't! I'm sure the fellows didn't intend--' he was getting weak; 'this,' he said.
”'Promise me and make--others; you won't tell. I know father--he won't.
They're not--it's--society. Just that,' he said. 'This was society!' He had to stop. I felt his hand squeeze. 'I'm--so--happy,' he said one word at a time, gripping my hand tighter and tighter till it ached.”
Brotherton put out his great hand, and looked at it impersonally, as one introducing a stranger for witness. Then Brotherton lifted his eyes to Laura's and took up his story:
”'That's hers,' he said; 'the letter,' and then 'my messages--happy.'”
The woman pressed her letter to her lips and looked at the white door.
She rose and, holding her letter to her bosom, closed her eyes and stood with a hand on the k.n.o.b. She dropped her hand and turned from the white door. The dawn was graying in the ugly street. But on the clouds the glow of sunrise blushed in promise. She walked slowly toward the street.
She gazed for a moment at the glorious sky of dawn.
When her eyes met her friend's, she cried:
”Give me your hand--that hand!”
She seized it, gazed hungrily at it a second, then kissed it pa.s.sionately. She looked back at the white door, and shook with sobs as she cried:
”Oh, you don't think he's there--there in the night--behind the door? We know--oh, we do know he's out here--out here in the dawn.”
CHAPTER LI
IN WHICH WE END AS WE BEGAN AND ALL LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER
The great strike in the Wahoo Valley now is only an episode in the history of this struggle of labor for its rights. The episode is receding year by year further and more dimly into the past and is one of the long, half-forgotten skirmishes wherein labor is learning the truth that only in so far as labor dares to lean on peace and efficiency can labor move upward in the scale of life. The larger life with its wider hope, requires the deeper fellows.h.i.+p of men. The winning or losing of the strike in the Wahoo meant little in terms of winning or losing; but because the men kept the peace, kept it to the very end, the strike meant much in terms of progress. For what they gained was permanent; based on their own strength, not on the weakness of those who would deny them.
But the workers in the mines and mills of the Wahoo Valley, who have gone to and from their gardens, planting and cultivating and harvesting their crops for many changing seasons, hold the legend of the strong man, maimed and scarred, who led them in that first struggle with themselves, to hold themselves worthy of their dreams. In a hundred little shacks in the gardens, and in dingy rooms in the tenements may be found even to-day newspaper clippings pinned to the wall with his picture on them, all curled up and yellow with years. Before a wash-stand, above a bed or pasted over the kitchen stove, soiled and begrimed, these clippings recall the story of the man who gave his life to prove his creed. So the fellows.h.i.+p he brought into the world lives on.
And the fellows.h.i.+p that came into the world as Grant Adams went out of it, touched a wider circle than the group with whom he lived and labored. The sad sincerity with which he worked proved to Market Street that the man was consecrated to a n.o.ble purpose, and Market Street's heart learned a lesson. Indeed the lives of that long procession of working men who have given themselves so freely--where life was all they had to give--for the freedom of their fellows from the bondage of the times, the lives of these men have found their highest value in making the Market Street eternal, realize its own shame. So Grant Adams lay down in the company of his peers that Market Street might understand in his death what his fellows really hoped for. He was a seed that is sown and falls upon good ground. For Market Street after all is not a stony place; seeds sown there bring forth great harvests. And while the harvest of Grant Adams's life is not at hand; the millennium is not here; the seed is quickening in the earth. And great things are moving in the world.
Of course, there came a time in Harvey, even in the house of Nesbit, when there was marrying and giving in marriage. It was on a winter's night when the house inside the deep, dark Moorish verandas, celebrating Mrs. Nesbit's last bout with the spirit of architecture, glowed with a jewel of light.
And in due course they appeared, Rev. Dr. John Dexter leading the way, followed by a thin, dark-skinned young man with eyes to match and a rather slight, shortish girl, blond and pink with happy tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and real pearls on her eyelashes. The children jabbered, and the women wept and the men wiped their eyes, and it was altogether a gay occasion. Just as the young people were ready to look the world squarely in the face, George Brotherton, thinking he heard some one moving outside in the deep, dark veranda, flicked on the porch light, and through the windows he saw--and the merry company could not help seeing two faces--two wan, unhappy faces, staring hungrily in at the bridal pair. They stood at different corners of the house and did not seem to know of one another's presence until the light revealed them. Only an instant did their faces flash into the light, as John Dexter was reading from the Bible a part of the service that he loved to put in, ”and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven.” The faces vanished, there was a scurrying across the cement floor of the veranda and two figures met on the lawn in shame and anger.
But they in the house did not know of the meeting. For everybody was kissing everybody else, and the peppermint candy in little Grant Brotherton's mouth tasted on a score of lips in three minutes, and a finger dab of candy on Jasper Adams's s.h.i.+rt front made the world akin.
After the guests had gone, three old men lingered by the smoldering logs. ”Well, now, Doc Jim,” asked Amos, ”why shouldn't I? Haven't I paid taxes in Greeley County for nearly fifty years? Didn't I make the campaign for that home in the nineties, when they called it the poor house--most people call it that now. I only stay there when I am lonesome and I go out in a taxi-cab at the county's expense like a gentleman to his estate. And I guess it is my estate. I was talking to Lincoln about it the other night, and he says he approves. Ruskin says I am living my religion like a diamond in the rock.”