As he and Lila walked up the hill, all the dreams that had swept across him out in the fields came to him. They sat on the south steps of the Nesbit house watching the spring that was trying to blossom in the pink and golden sunset. The girl was beginning to look at the world through new, strange eyes, and out on the hills that day the boy also had felt the thrill of a new heaven and a new earth.

Their talk was finite and far short of the vision of warm, radiant life-stuff flowing through the universe that had thrilled Kenyon in the hills. Out there, looking eastward over the prairies checked in brown earth, and green wheat, and old grass faded from russet to lavender, with the gray woods worming their way through the valleys, he had found voice and had crooned melodies that came out of the wind and sun, and satisfied his soul. Over and over he had repeated in various cadences the words:

"I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help."

And he had seemed to be forming a great heart-filling anthem. It was all on his tongue's tip, with the answering chorus coming from out of some vast mystery, "Behold, thou art fair, my love—behold, thou art fair—thou hast dove's eyes." There in the sunshine upon the prairie grass it was as real and vital a part of his soul's aspiration as though it had been reiterated in some glad symphony. But as he sat in the sunset trying to put into his voice the language that stirred his heart, he could only drum upon a box and look at the girl's blue eyes and her rosebud of a face and utter the copper coins of language for the golden yearning of his soul. She answered, thrilled by the radiance of his eyes:

"Isn't the young spring beautiful—don't you just love it, Kenyon? I do."

He rose and stood out in the sun on the lawn. The girl got up. She was abashed; and strangely self-conscious without reason, she began to pirouette down the walk and dance back to him, with her blue eyes fastened like a mystic sky-thread to his somber gaze. A thousand mute messages of youth twinkled across that thread. Their eyes smiled. The two stood together, and the youth kicked with his toes in the soft turf.

"Lila," he asked as he looked at the greening grass of spring, "what do you suppose they mean when they say, 'I will lift up mine eyes to the hills'? The line has been wiggling around in my head all morning as I walked over the prairie, that and another that I can't make much of, about, 'Behold, thou art fair, my love—behold, thou art fair.' Say, Lila," he burst out, "do you sometimes have things just pop into your head all fuzzy with—oh, well, say feeling good and you don't know why, and you are just too happy to eat? I do."

He paused and looked into her bright, unformed face with the fleeting cloud of sadness trailing its blind way across her heart.

"And say, Lila—why, this morning when I was out there all alone I just sang at the top of my voice, I felt so bang-up dandy—and—I tell you something—honest, I kept thinking of you all the time—you and the hills and a dove's eyes. It just tasted good way down in me—you ever feel that way?"

Again the girl danced her answer and sent the words she could not speak through her eyes and his to his innermost consciousness.

"But honest, Lila—don't you ever feel that way—kind of creepy with good feeling—tickledy and crawly, as though you'd swallowed a candy caterpillar and was letting it go down slow—slow, slow, to get every bit of it—say, honest, don't you? I do. It's just fine—out on the prairie all alone with big bursting thoughts bumping you all the time—gee!"

They were sitting on the steps when he finished and his heel was denting the sod. She was entranced by what she saw in his eyes.

"Of course, Kenyon," she answered finally. "Girls are—oh, different, I guess. I dream things like that, and sometimes mornings when I'm wiping dishes I think 'em—and drop dishes—and whoopee! But I don't know—girls are not so woozy and slazy inside them as boys. Kenyon, let me tell you something: Girls pretend to be and aren't—not half; and boys pretend they aren't and are—lots more."

She gazed up at him in an unblinking joy of adoration as shameless as the heart of a violet baring itself to the sun. Then she shut her eyes and the lad caught up his instrument and cried:

"Come on, Lila,—come in the house. I've got to play out something—something I found out on the prairie to-day about 'mine eyes unto the hills' and 'the eyes of the dove' and the woozy, fuzzy, happy, creepy thoughts of you all the time."

He was inside the door with the violin in his hands. As she closed the door he put his head down to the brown violin as if to hear it sing, and whispered slowly:

"Oh, Lila—listen—just hear this."

And then it came! "The Spring Sun," it is known popularly. But in the book of his collected music it appears as "Allegro in B." It is the throb of joy of young life asking the unanswerable question of God: what does it mean—this new, fair, wonderful world full of life and birth, and joy; charged with mystery, enveloped in strange, unsolved grandeur, like the cloud pictures that float and puzzle us and break and reform and paint all Heaven in their beauty and then resolve themselves into nothing. Many people think this is Kenyon Adams's most beautiful and poetic message. Certainly in the expression of the gayety and the weird, vague mysticism of youth and poignant joy he never reached that height again. Death is ignored; it is all life and the aspirations of life and the beckonings of life and the bantering of life and the deep, awful, inexorable call of life to youth. Other messages of Kenyon Adams are more profound, more comforting to the hearts and the minds of reasoning, questioning men. But this Allegro in B is the song of youth, of early youth, bidding childhood adieu and turning to life with shining countenance and burning heart.

When he had finished playing he was in tears, and the girl sitting before him was awestricken and rapt as she sat with upturned face with the miracle of song thrilling her soul. Let us leave them there in that first curious, unrealized signaling of soul to soul. And now let us go on into this story, and remember these children, as children still, who do not know that they have opened the great golden door into life!



CHAPTER XLI

HERE WE SEE GRANT ADAMS CONQUERING HIS THIRD AND LAST DEVIL

In the ebb and flow of life every generation sees its waves of altruism washing in. But in the ebb of altruism in America that followed the Civil War, Amos Adams's ship of dreams was left high and dry in the salt marsh. Finally a time came when the tide began to boom in. But in no substantial way did his newspaper feel the impulse of the current. The Tribune was an old hulk; it could not ride the tide. And its skipper, seedy, broken with the years, always too gentle for the world about him, even at his best, ever ready to stop work to read a book, Amos Adams, who had been a crank for a third of a century, remained a crank when much that he preached in earlier years was accepted by the multitude.

Amos Adams might have made the Harvey Tribune a financial success if he could have brought himself to follow John Kollander's advice. But Amos could not abide the presence much less the counsel of the professional patriot, with his insistent blue uniform and brass buttons. Under an elaborate pretense of independence, John Kollander was a limber-kneed time-server, always keen-eyed for the crumbs of Dives' table; odd jobs in receiverships, odd jobs in lawsuits for Daniel Sands—as, for instance, furnishing unexpected witnesses to prove improbable contentions—odd jobs in his church, odd jobs in his party organization, always carrying a per diem and expenses; odd jobs for the Commercial Club, where the pay was sure; odd jobs for Tom Van Dorn, spreading slander by innuendo where it would do the most good for Tom in his business; odd jobs for Tom and Dick and for Harry, but always for the immediate use and benefit of John Kollander, his heirs and assigns. But if Amos Adams ever thought of himself, it was by inadvertence. He managed, Heaven only knows how, to keep the Tribune going. Jasper bought back from the man who foreclosed the mortgage, his father's homestead. He rented it to his father for a dollar a year and ostentatiously gave the dollar to the Lord—so ostentatiously, indeed, that when Henry Fenn gayly referred to Amos, Grant and Jasper as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the town smiled at his impiety, but the holy Jasper boarded at the Hotel Sands, was made a partner at Wright & Perry's, and became a bank director at thirty. For Jasper was a Sands!

The day after Amos Adams and Tom Van Dorn had met in the Serenity of Books and Wallpaper at Brotherton's, Grant was in the Tribune office. "Grant," the father was getting down from his high stool to dump his type on the galley; "Grant, I had a tiff with Tom Van Dorn yesterday. Lord, Lord," cried the old man, as he bent over, straightening some type that his nervous hand had knocked down. "I wonder, Grant"—the father rose and put his hand on his back, as he stood looking into his son's face—"I wonder if all that we feel, all that we believe, all that we strive and live for—is a dream? Are we chasing shadows? Isn't it wiser to conform, to think of ourselves first and others afterward—to go with the current of life and not against it? Of course, my guides—"

"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 hell-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 hell-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 passing 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 coarse 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 circumstance, 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 accumulated 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 scholarship, 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 Saturday 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 passion. Personal triumph meant little to him—the cause everything. His heart was afire with a lust 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 passion 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 grass 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 butter and taxes argument, except as that sort of argument proves the justice of our cause and arouses love in the hearts of you middle-class 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 glassblower to me. I'd never seen him before. I said, 'Hello, comrade!' He grasped my hands with both hands and cried 'Comrade! So you know the password. 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 institutions—political institutions, 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 moonshine—this labor law we're working to establish. But Laura wants it, and God 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."

The day had passed in the elder's life when he could rise to the younger man's emotions. He looked curiously at Grant and said softly:

"Oh, to be young—to be young—to be young!" He rose, touched the strong arm beside him. "'And the young men shall see visions.' To be young—just to be young! But 'the old men shall dream dreams.' Well, Grant, they are unimportant—not entirely pleasant. We young men of the seventies had a great material vision. The dream of an empire here in the West. It has come true—increased one hundred fold. Yet it is not much of a dream."

He let the arm drop and began drumming on the truck as he concluded: "But it's all I have—all the dream I have now. 'All of which I saw, and part of which I was,' yet," he mused, "perhaps it will be used as a foundation upon which something real and beautiful will be builded."

Far away the headlight of their approaching train twinkled upon the prairie horizon. The two men watched it glow into fire and come upon them. And without resuming their talk, each went his own wide, weary way in the world as they lay in adjoining berths on the speeding train.

At the general election the Doctor's law was upheld by a majority of the votes in the State, but the Doctor himself was defeated for reelection to the State Senate in his own district. Grant Adams waited, intently and with fine faith, for this law to bring in the millennium. But the Doctor had no millennial faith.

He came down town the morning after his defeat, gay and unruffled. He went toddling into the stores and offices of Market Street, clicking his cane busily, thanking his friends and joking with his foes. But he chirruped to Henry Fenn and Kyle Perry whom he found in the Serenity at the close of the day: "Well, gentlemen, I've seen 'em all! I've taken my medicine like a little man; but I won't lick the spoon. I sha'n't go and see Dan and Tom. I'm willing to go as far as any man in the forgiving and forgetting business, but the Lord himself hasn't quit on them. Look at 'em. The devil's mortgage is recorded all over their faces and he's getting about ready to foreclose on old Dan! And every time Dan hears poor Morty cough, the devil collects his compound interest. Poor, dear, gay Morty—if he could only put up a fight!"

But he could not put up a fight and his temperature rose in the afternoon and he could not meet with his gymnasium class in South Harvey in the evening, but sent a trainer instead. So often weeks passed during which Laura Van Dorn did not see Morty and the daily boxes of flowers that came punctiliously with his cards to the kindergarten and to Violet Hogan's day nursery, were their only reminders of the sorry, lonely, footless struggle Morty was making.

It was inevitable that the lives of Violet Hogan and Laura Van Dorn in South Harvey should meet and merge. And when they met and merged, Violet Hogan found herself devoting but a few hours a day to her day nursery, while she worked six long, happy hours as a stenographer for Grant Adams in his office at the Vanderbilt House. For, after all, it was as a stenographer that she remembered herself in the grandeur and the glory of her past. So Henry Fenn and Laura Van Dorn carried on the work that Violet began, and for them souls and flowers and happiness bloomed over the Valley in the dark, unwholesome places which death had all but taken for his own.

It was that spring when Dr. Nesbit went to the capital and took his last fling at State politics. For two months he had deadlocked his party caucus in the election of a United States Senator with hardly more than a dozen legislative votes. And he was going out of his dictatorship in a golden glow of glory.

And this was the beginning of the golden age for Captain Morton. The Morton-Perry Axle Works were thriving. Three eight-hour shifts kept the little plant booming, and by agreement with the directors of the Independent mine, Nathan Perry spent five hours a day in the works. He and the Captain, and the youngest Miss Morton, who was keeping books, believed that it would go over the line from loss to profit before grass came. The Captain hovered about the plant like an earth-bound spirit day and night, interrupting the work of the men, disorganizing the system that Nathan had installed, and persuading himself that but for him the furnaces would go dead and the works shut down.

It was one beautiful day in late March, after the November election wherein the Doctor's law had won and the Doctor himself had lost, that Grant Adams was in Harvey figuring with Mr. Brotherton on supplies for his office. Captain Morton came tramping down the clouds before him as he swept into the Serenity and jabbed a spike through the wheels of commerce with the remark: "Well, George—what do you think of my regalia—eh?"

Mr. Brotherton and Grant looked up from their work. They beheld the Captain arrayed in a dazzling light gray spring suit—an exceedingly light gray suit, with a hat of the same color and gloves and shoe spats to match, with a red tie so red that it all but crackled. "First profits of the business. We got over the line yesterday noon, and I had a thousand to go on, and this morning I just went on this spree—what say?"

"Well, Cap, when Morty Sands sees you he will die of envy. You're certainly the lily of the Valley and the bright and morning star—the fairest of ten thousand to my soul! Grant," said Brotherton as he turned to his customer, "behold the plute!"

The Captain stood grinning in pride as the men looked him over.

"'Y gory, boys, you'd be surprised the way that Household Horse has hit the trade. Orders coming in from automobile makers, and last week we decided to give up making the little power saver and make the whole rear axle. We're going to call it the Morton-Perry Axle, and put in a big plant, and I was telling Ruthy this morning, I says, 'Ruth,' says I, 'if we make the axle business go, I'll just telephone down to Wright & Perry and have them send you out something nobby in husbands, and, 'y gory, a nice thousand-mile wedding trip and maybe your pa will go along for company—what say?'"

He was an odd figure in his clothes—for they were ready-made—made for the figure of youth, and although he had been in them but a few hours, the padding was bulging at the wrong places; and they were wrinkled where they should be tight. His bony old figure stuck out at the knees, and the shoulders and elbows, and the high collar would not fit his skinny neck. But he was happy, and fancied he looked like the pictures of college boys in the back of magazines. So he answered Mr. Brotherton's question about the opinion of the younger daughter as to the clothes by a profound wink.

"Scared—scared plumb stiff—what say? I caught Marthy nodding at Ruth and Ruthy looking hard at Marthy, and then both of 'em went to the kitchen to talk over calling up Emmy and putting out fly poison for the women that are lying in wait for their pa. Scared—why, scared's no name for it—what say?"

"Well, Captain," answered Mr. Brotherton, "you are certainly voluptuous enough in your new stage setting to have your picture on a cigar box as a Cuban beauty or a Spanish senorita."

The Captain was turning about, trying to see how the coat set in the back and at the same time watching the hang of the trousers. Evidently he was satisfied with it. For he said: "Well—guess I'll be going. I'll just mosey down to Mrs. Herdicker's to give Emmy and Marthy and Ruthy something to keep 'em from thinking of their real troubles—eh?" And with a flourish he was gone.

When Grant's order was filled, he said, "Violet will call for this, George; I have some other matters to attend to."

As he assembled the goods for the order, Mr. Brotherton called out, "Well, how is Violet, anyway?" Grant smiled. "Violet is doing well. She is blooming over again, and when she found herself before a typewriter—it really seemed to take the curve out of her back. Henry declares that the typewriter put ribbon in her hair. Laura Van Dorn, I believe, is responsible for Violet's shirt waists. Henry Fenn comes to the office twice a day, to make reports on the sewing business. But what he's really doing, George, is to let her smell his breath to prove that he's sober, and so she runs the two jobs at once. Have you seen Henry recently?"

"Well," replied Brotherton, "he was in a month or so ago to borrow ten to buy a coat—so that he could catch up with the trousers of that suit before they grew too old. He still buys his clothes that way."

Grant threw back his red head and grinned a grim, silent grin: "Well, that's funny. Didn't you know what is keeping him away?" Again Grant grinned. "The day he was here he came wagging down with that ten-dollar bill, but his conscience got the best of him for lavishing so much money on himself, so he slipped it to Violet and told her to buy her some new teeth—you know she's been ashamed to open her mouth now for years. Violet promised she would get the teeth in time for Easter. And pretty soon in walks Mrs. Maurice Stromsky—who scrubs in the Wright & Perry Building, whose baby died last summer and had to be buried in the Potter's field—she came in; and she and Violet got to talking about the baby—and Violet up and gave that ten to Mrs. Stromsky, to get the baby out of the Potter's field."

Mr. Brotherton laughed his great laugh. Grant went on:

"But that isn't all. The next day in walks Mrs. Maurice Stromsky, penitent as a dog, and I heard her squaring herself with Violet for giving that old saw-buck of yours to the Delaneys, whose second little girl had diphtheria and who had no money for antitoxin. I never saw your ten again, George," said Grant. "It seemed to be going down for the last time." He looked at Brotherton quizzically for a second and asked:

"So old Henry hasn't been around since—isn't that joyous? Well—anyway, he'll show up to-day or to-morrow, for he's got the new coat; he got it this morning. Jasper was telling me."

In an hour Grant, returning after his morning's errands, was standing by the puny little blaze that John Dexter had stirred out of the logs in the Serenity. The two were standing together. Mr. Brotherton, reading his Kansas City paper at his desk, called to them: "Well, I see Doc Jim's still holding his deadlock and they can't elect a United States Senator without him!"

A telegraph messenger boy came in, looked into the Serenity, and said, "Mr. Adams, I was looking for you."

Grant signed the boy's book, read the telegram, and stood dumbly gazing at the fire, as he held the sheet in his hand.

The fire popped and snapped and the little blaze grew stronger when a log dropped in two. A customer came in—picked up a magazine—called, "Charge it, please," then went out. The door slammed. Another customer came and went. Miss Calvin stepped back to Mr. Brotherton. The bell of the cash register tinkled. Then Grant Adams turned, looked at the minister absently for a moment, and handed him the sheet. It read:

"I have pledged in writing five more votes than are needed to make you the caucus nominee and give you a majority on the joint ballot to-night for United States Senator. Come up first train."

It was signed "James Nesbit." The preacher dropped his hand still holding the yellow sheet, and looked into the fire.

"Well?" asked Grant.

"You say," returned John Dexter, and added: "It would be a great opportunity—give you the greatest forum for your cause in Christendom—give you more power than any other labor advocate ever held in the world before."

He said all this tentatively and as one asking a question. Grant did not reply. He sat pounding his leg with his claw, abstractedly.

"You needn't be a mere theorist in the Senate. You could get labor laws enacted that would put forward the cause of labor. Grant, really, it looks as though this was your life's chance."

Grant reached for the telegram and read it again. The telegram fluttering in his hands dropped to the floor. He reached for it—picked it up, folded it on his claw carefully, and put it away. Then he turned to the preacher and said harshly:

"There's nothing in it. To begin: you say I'll have more power than any other labor leader in the world. I tell you, labor leaders don't need personal power. We don't need labor laws—that is, primarily. What we need is sentiment—a public love of the under dog that will make our present laws intolerable. It isn't power for me, it isn't clean politics for the State, it isn't labor laws that's my job. My job, dearly beloved," he hooked the minister's hand and tossed it gently, "my job, oh, thou of little faith," he cried, as a flaming torch of emotion seemed to brush his face and kindle the fanatic glow in his countenance while his voice lifted, "is to stay right down here in the Wahoo Valley, pile up money in the war chest, pile up class feeling among the men—comradeship—harness this love of the poor for the poor into an engine, and then some day slip the belt on that engine—turn on the juice and pull and pull and pull for some simple, elemental piece of justice that will show the world one phase of the truth about labor."

Grant's face was glowing with emotion. "I tell you, the day of the Kingdom is here—only it isn't a kingdom, it's Democracy—the great Democracy. It's coming. I must go out and meet it. In the dark down in the mines I saw the Holy Ghost rise into the lives of a score of men. And now I see the Holy Ghost coming into a great class. And I must go—go with neither purse nor script to meet it, to live for it, and maybe to die for it." He shook his head and cried vehemently:

"What a saphead I'd be if I fell to that bait!" He turned to the store and called to Miss Calvin. "Ave—is there a telegraph blank in the desk?"

Mr. Brotherton threw it, skidding, across the long counter. Grant fumbled in his vest for a pen, held the sheet firmly with his claw and wrote:

"You are kindness itself. But the place doesn't interest me. Moreover, no man should go to the Senate representing all of a State, whose job it is to preach class consciousness to a part of the State. Get a bigger man. I thank you, however, with all my heart."

Grant watched the preacher read the telegram. He read it twice, then he said: "Well—of course, that's right. That's right—I can see that. But I don't know—don't you think—I mean aren't you kind of—well, I can't just express it; but—"

"Well, don't try, then," returned Grant.

However, Doctor Nesbit, having something rather more than the ethics of the case at stake, was aided by his emotions in expressing himself. He made his views clear, and as Grant sat at his desk that afternoon, he read this in a telegram from the Doctor:

"Well, of all the damn fools!"

That was one view of the situation. There was this other. It may be found in one of those stated communications from perhaps Ruskin or Kingsley, which the Peach Blow Philosopher sometimes vouchsafed to the earth and it read:

"A great life may be lived by any one who is strong enough to fail for an ideal."

Still another view may be had by setting down what John Dexter said to his wife, and what she said to him. Said he, when he had recounted the renunciation of Grant Adams:

"There goes the third devil. First he conquered the temptation to marry and be comfortable; next he put fame behind him, and now he renounces power."

And she said: "It had never occurred to me to consider Laura Van Dorn, or national reputation, or a genuine chance for great usefulness as a devil. I'm not sure that I like your taste in devils."

To which answer may be made again by Mr. Left in a communication he received from George Meredith, who had recently passed over. It was verified by certain details as to the arrangement of the books on the little table in the little room in the little house on a little hill where he was wont to write, and it ran thus:

"Women, always star-hungry, ever uncompromising in their demand for rainbows, nibbling at the entre' and pushing aside the roast, though often adoring primitive men who gorge on it, but ever in the end rewarding abstinence and thus selecting a race of spiritually-minded men for mates, are after all the world's materialists."



CHAPTER XLII

A CHAPTER WHICH IS CONCERNED LARGELY WITH THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF "THE FULL STRENGTH OF THE COMPANY"

This story, first of all, and last of all, is a love story. The emotion called love and its twin desire hunger, are the two primal passions of life. From love have developed somewhat the great altruistic institutions of humanity—the family, the tribe, the State, the nation, and the varied social activities—religion, patriotism, philanthropy, brotherhood. While from hunger have developed war and trade and property and wealth. Often it happens in the growth of life that men have small choice in matters of living that are motived by hunger or its descendant concerns; for necessity narrows the choice. But in affairs of the heart, there comes wide latitudes of choice. It is reasonably just therefore to judge a man, a nation, a race, a civilization, an era, by its love affairs. So a book that would tell of life, that would paint the manners of men, and thus show their hearts, must be a love story. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," runs the proverb, and, mind you, it says heart—not head, not mind, but heart; as a man thinketh in his heart, in that part of his nature where reside his altruistic emotions—so is he.

It is the sham and shame of the autobiographies that flood and dishearten the world, that they are so uncandid in their relation of those emotional episodes in life—episodes which have to do with what we know for some curious reason as "the softer passions." Caesar's Gaelic wars, his bridges, his trouble with the impedimenta, his fights with the Helvetians—who cares for them? Who cares greatly for Napoleon's expedition against the Allies? Of what human interest is Grant's tale of the Wilderness fighting? But to know of Calpurnia, of her predecessors, and her heirs and assigns in Caesar's heart; to know the truth about Josephine and the crash in Napoleon's life that came with her heartbreak—if a crash did come, or if not, to know frankly what did come; to know how Grant got on with Julia Dent through poverty and riches, through sickness and in health, for better or for worse—with all the strain and stress and struggle that life puts upon the yoke that binds the commonplace man to the commonplace woman rising to eminence by some unimportant quirk of his genius reacting on the times—these indeed would be memoirs worth reading.

And whatever worth this story holds must come from its value as a love-story,—the narrative of how love rose or fell, grew or withered, bloomed and fruited, or rotted at the core in the lives of those men and women who move through the scenes painted upon this canvas. After all, who cares that Thomas Van Dorn waxed fat in the land, that he received academic degrees from great universities which his masters supported, that he told men to go and they went, to come and they came? These things are of no consequence. Men are doing such things every minute of every day in all the year.

But here sits Thomas Van Dorn, one summer afternoon, with a young broker from New York—one of those young brokers with not too nice a conscience, who laughs too easily at the wrong times. He and Thomas Van Dorn are upon the east veranda of the new Country Club building in Harvey—the pride of the town—and Thomas is squinting across the golf course at a landscape rolling away for miles like a sea, a landscape rich in homely wealth. The young New Yorker comes with letters to Judge Van Dorn from his employers in Broad Street, and as the two sip their long cool glasses, and betimes smoke their long black cigars, the former judge falls into one of those self-revealing philosophical moods that may be called the hypnoidal semi-conscious state of common sense. Said Van Dorn:

"Well, boy—what do you think of the greatest thing in the world?" And not waiting for an answer the older man continued as he held his cigar at arm's length and looked between his elevated feet at the landscape: "'Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.' Great old lover—Solomon. Rather out of the amateur class—with his thousand wives and concubines; perhaps a virtuous man withal, but hardly a fanatic on the subject; and when he said he was sick of love—probably somewhere in his fifties,—Solomon voiced a profound man's truth. Most of us are. Speaking generally of love, my boy, I am with Solomon. There is nothing in it."

The cigar in his finely curved mouth—the sensuous mouth of youth, that had pursed up dryly in middle age—was pointed upward. It stood out from a reddish lean face and moved when the muscles of the face worked viciously in response to some inward reflection of Tom Van Dorn.

He drawled on, "Think of the time men fool away chasing calico. I've gone all the gaits, and I know what I'm talking about. Ladies and Judy O'Gradies, married and single, decent and indecent—it's all the same. I tell you, young man, there's nothing in it! Love," he laughed a little laugh: "Love—why, when I was in the business," he sniffed, "I never had any trouble loving any lady I desired, nor getting her if I loved her long enough and strong enough. When I was a young cub like you," Van Dorn waved his weed grandly toward the young broker, "I used to keep myself awake, cutting notches in my memory—naming over my conquests. But now I use it as a man does the sheep over the fence, to put me to sleep, and I haven't been able to pass my fortieth birthday in the list for two years, without snoozing. What a fool a man can make of himself over calico! The ladies, God bless 'em, have got old John Barleycorn beaten a mile, when it comes to playing hell with a man's life. Again speaking broadly, and allowing for certain exceptions, I should say—" he paused to give the judicial pomp of reflection to his utterances—"the bigger fool the woman is, the greater fool a man makes of himself for her. And all for what?"

His young guest interjected the word "Love?" in the pause. The Judge made a wry face and continued:

"Love? Love—why, man, you talk like a school girl. There is no love. Love and God are twin myths by which we explain the relation of our fates to our follies. The only thing about me that will live is the blood I transmit to my children! We live in posterity. As for love and all the mysteries of the temple—waugh—woof!" he shuddered.

He put back his cigar into the corner of his hard mouth. He was squinting cynically across the rolling golf course. What he saw there checked his talk. He opened his eyes to get a clearer view. His impression grew definite and unmistakable. There, half playing and half sporting, like young lambs upon the close-cropped turf, were Kenyon Adams and Lila Van Dorn! They were unconscious of all that their gay antics disclosed. They were happy, and were trying only to express happiness as they ran together after the ball, that flew in front of them like a mad butterfly. But in the sad lore of his bleak heart, the father read the meaning of their happiness. Youth in love was never innocent for him. Looking at Lila romping with her lover, he turned sick at heart. But he held himself in hand. Only the zigzag scar on his forehead flashing white in the pink of his brow betrayed the turmoil within him. He tried to keep his eyes off the golf course. A sharp dread that he might transmit himself in nature to posterity only through the base blood of the Adamses, struck him. He closed his eyes. But the wind brought to him the merriment of the young voices. A jealousy of Kenyon, and an anger at him, flared up in the father. So Tom Van Dorn drew down the corners of his mouth—and batted his furtive eyes, and put on his bony knee a mottled, nervous hand, with brown splotches at the wrist, coming up over the veined furrows that led to his tapering fingers, as he cried harshly in a tone that once had been soft and mellifluous, and still was deep and chesty: "Still me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love!"

He would have gone away from the torture that came, as he stared at the lovers, but his devil held him there. He was glad when a noise of saw and hammer at the lake drowned the voices on the lawn. His gladness lasted but a moment. For soon he saw the young people quit chasing their crazy butterfly of a golf ball, and wander half way up the hill from the lake, to sit in the snug shade of a wide-spreading, low-branched elm tree. Then the father was nervous, because he could not hear their voices. As he sat with the young broker, snarling at the anonymous phantoms of his past which were bedeviling him, a gray doubt kept brushing across his mind. He realized clearly that he had no legal right to question Lila's choice of companions. He understood that the law would not justify anything that he might do, or say, or think, concerning her and her fortunes. Yet there unmistakably was the Van Dorn set to her pretty head and a Van Dorn gesture in her gay hands that had come down from at least four generations in family tradition. And he had no right even to be offended when she would merge that Van Dorn blood with the miserable Adams heredity. His impotence in the situation baffled him, and angered him. The law was final to his mind; but it did not satisfy his wrathful questioning heart. For in his heart, he realized that denial was not escape from the responsibility he had renounced when he tripped down the steps of their home and left Lila pleading for him in her mother's arms. He bit his ragged cigar and cursed his God, while the young man with Tom Van Dorn thought, "Well, what a dour old Turk he is!"

The hammering and sawing, which drowned the voices of the young people under the tree, came from the new bathing pavilion near by. Grant Adams was working on a two days' job putting up the pavilion for the summer. He was out of Van Dorn's view, facing another angle of the long three-faced veranda. Grant saw Kenyon lying upon the turf, slim and graceful and with the beauty of youth radiating from him, and Grant wondered, as he worked, why his son should be there playing among the hills, while the sons of other men, making much more money than he—much more money indeed than many of the others who flitted over the green—should toil in the fumes of South Harvey and in the great industrial Valley through long hard hours of work, that sapped their heads and hearts by its monotony of motion, and lack of purpose. As he gazed at the lovers, their love did not stick in his consciousness—even if he realized it. Their presence under the elm tree at midday rose as a problem which deepened a furrow here and there in his seamed face and he hammered and sawed away with a will, working out in his muscles the satisfaction which his mind could not bring him.

As the two fathers from different vistas looked upon their children, Kenyon and Lila beneath the elm tree were shyly toying with vagrant dreams that trailed across their hearts. He was looking up at her and saying:

"Lila—who are we—you and I? I have been gazing at you three minutes while you were talking, and I see some one quite different from the you I knew before. Looking up at you, instead of down at you, is like transposing you. You are strangely new in this other key."

The girl did not try to respond in kind—with her lips at least. She began teasing the youth about his crinkly hair. Breaking a twig as she spoke, she threw it carelessly at his hair, and it stuck in the closely curled locks. She laughed gayly at him. Perhaps in some way rather subtly than suddenly, as by a ghostly messenger from afar, he may have been made aware of her beautiful body, of the exquisite lines of her figure, of the pink of her radiant skin, or the red of her girlish lips. For the consciousness of these things seemed to spend his soul in joy.

The blazing eyes of Tom Van Dorn, squinting down upon the couple under the tree, could see the grace that shone from a thousand reactions of their bodies and faces. He opened his mouth to voice something from the bitterness of his heart but did not speak. Instead he yawned and cried: "And so we rot and we rot and we rot."

Now it matters little what the lovers chattered about there under the elm tree, as they played with sticks and pebbles. It was what they would have said that counts—or perhaps what they should have said, if they had been able to voice their sense of the gift which the gods were bestowing. But they were dumb humans, who threw pebbles at each other's toes, though in the deep places of their souls, far below the surface waves of bashful patter, heart might have spoken to heart in passing thus:

"Oh, Lila, what is beauty? What is it in the soul, running out glad to meet beauty, whether of line, of tone, of color, of form, of motion, of harmony?"

And the answer might have been trumpeted back through the deep:

"Maybe beauty is the God that is everywhere and everything, releasing himself in matter. Perhaps for our eyes and ears and fingers, the immanent God had an equation, whose answer is locked in our souls that are also a part of God—created in his image. And when in curve or line, in sequence of notes or harmony, or in thrilling touch sense, the equation is stated in terms of radiation, God seeking our soul's answer, speaks to us."

But none of this trumpet call of souls reached the two fathers who were watching the lovers. For one man was too old in selfishness to understand, and the other had grown too old in bearing others' burdens to know what voices speak through the soul's trumpet, when love first comes into the heart. So the hammers hammered and the saws groaned in the pavilion, and a hard heart hammered and a soul groaned and a tongue babbled folly on the veranda. But under the elm tree, eyes met, and across space went the message that binds lives forever. She picked up a twig longer than most twigs about her, reached with it and touched his forehead furtively, stroked his crinkled hair, blushing at her boldness. His head sank to the earth, he put his face upon the grass, and for a second he found joy in the rush of tears. They heard voices, bringing the planet back to them; but voices far away. On the hill across the little valley they could see two earnest golfers, working along the sky-line.

The couple on the sky-line hurried along in the heat. The man mopped his face, and his brown, hairy arms, and his big sinewy neck. The woman, rather thin, but fresh and with the maidenly look of one who isn't entirely sure what that man will do next, kept well in the lead.

"Well, Emma—there's love's young dream all right." He stopped to puff, and waved at the couple by the tree. Then he hitched up his loose, baggy trousers, gave a jerk to his big flowing blue necktie, let fly at the ball and cried "Fore." When he came up to the ball again, he was red and winded. "Emma," he said, "let's go have something to eat at the house—my figure'll do for an emeritus bridegroom—won't it?" And thus they strolled over the fields and out of the game.

But on another hill, another couple in the midst of a flock of children attracted by one of Mr. Brotherton's smashing laughs, looked down and saw Lila and Kenyon. The quick eyes of love caught the meaning of the figures under the tree.

"Look, mamma—look," said Nathan Perry, pointing toward the tree.

"Oh, Nate," cried Anne, "—isn't it nice! Lila and Kenyon!"

"Well, mamma—are you happy?" asked Nathan, as he leaned against the tree beside her. She nodded and directed their glances to the children and said gently, "And they justify it—don't they?"

He looked at her for a moment, and said, "Yes, dear—I suppose that's what the Lord gave us love for. That is why love makes the world go around."

"And don't the people who don't have them miss it—my! Nate, if they only knew—if these bridge-playing, childless ones knew how dear they are—what joy they bring—just as children—not for anything else—do you suppose they would—"

"Oh, you can't tell," answered the young father. "Perhaps selfish people shouldn't have children; or perhaps it's the children that make us unselfish, and so keep us happy. Maybe it's one of those intricate psychical reactions, like a chemical change—I don't know! But I do know the kids are the best things in the world."

She put her hand in his and squeezed it. "You know, Nate, I was just thinking to-day as I put up the lunch—I'm a mighty lucky woman. I've had all these children and kept every one so far; I've had such joy in them—such joy, and we haven't had death. Even little Annie's long sickness, and everything—Oh, dear, Nate—but isn't she worth it—isn't she worth it?"

He kissed her hand and replied, "You know I'm so glad we went down to South Harvey to live, Anne. I can see—well, here's the way it is. Lots of families down there—families that didn't have any more to go on than we had then, started out, as we did. They had a raft of kids—" he laughed, "just as we did. But, mamma—they're dead—or worse, they're growing up underfed, and are hurrying into the works or the breaker bins. I tell you, Anne—here's the thing. Those fathers and mothers didn't have any more money than we had—but we did have more and better training than they had. You knew better than to feed our kids trash, you knew how to care for them—we knew how to spend our little, so that it would count. They didn't. We have ours, and they have doctors' and undertakers' bills. It isn't blood that counts so much—as the difference in bringing up. We're lovers because of our bringing up. Otherwise, we'd be fighting like cats and dogs, I'd be drinking, you'd be slommicking around in wrappers, and the kids would be on the streets."

The children playing on the gravel bank were having a gay time. The mother called to them to be careful of their clothes, and then replied:

"Nate, honestly I believe if I had two or three million dollars, and could give every girl in South Harvey a good education—teach her how to cook and keep house and care for babies before she is eighteen, that we could change the whole aspect of South Harvey in a generation. If I had just two or three million dollars to spend—I could fill that town just as full as Harvey of happy couples like us. Of course there'd be the other kind—some of them—just as there are the other kind in Harvey—people like the Van Dorns—but they would be the exception in South Harvey, as the Van Dorns are the exception in Harvey. And two or three million dollars would do it."

"Yes, mamma,—that's the hell of it—the very hell of it that grinds my gizzard—your father and my father and the others who haven't done a lick of the work—and who are entitled only to a decent interest and promoters' profits, have taken out twenty million dollars from South Harvey in dividends in the last thirty years—and this is the result. Hell for forty thousand people down there, and—you and I and a few dozen educated happy people are the fruit of it. Sometimes, Anne, I look at our little flock and look at you so beautiful, and think of our life so glorious, and wonder how a just God can permit it."

They looked at the waving acres of blue-grass, dotted with trees, at the creek winding its way through the cornfields, dark green and all but ready to tassle, then up at the clear sky, untainted with the smoke of Harvey.

Then they considered the years that lay back of them. "I think, Nate," she answered, "that to love really and truly one man or one woman makes one love all men and women. I feel that way even about the little fellow that's coming. I love him so, that even he makes me love everything. And so I can't just pray for him—I have to pray for all the mothers carrying babies and all the babies in the world. I think when love comes into the world it is immortal. We die, but the sum of love we live, we leave; it goes on; it grows. It is the way God gets into the world. Oh, Nate," she cried, "I want to live in the next world—personally—with you—to know the very you. I don't want the impersonal immortality—I want just you. But, dear—I—why, I'd give up even that if I could be sure that the love we live would never leave this earth. Think what the love of Christ did for the earth and He is still with us in spirit. And I know when we go away—when any lovers go away, the love they have lived will never leave this earth. It will live and joy—yes, and agonize too at the injustice of the world—live and be crucified over and over again, so long as injustice exists. Only as love grows in the world, and is hurt—is crucified—will wrongs be righted, will the world be saved."

He patted her hand for a minute.

"Kyle, Nate, Annie—come here, children," cried the father. After some repetition of the calling, they came trooping up, asking: "What is it?"

"Nothing at all," answered the father, "we just wanted to kiss you and feel and see if your wings were sprouting, so that we could break them off before you fly away," whereupon there was a hugging bee all around, and while every one was loving every one else, a golf ball flew by them, and a moment later the white-clad, unbent figure of Mrs. Bedelia Satterthwaite Nesbit appeared, bare-headed and bare-armed, and behind her trotted the devoted white figure of the Doctor, carrying two golf sticks.

"Chained to her chariot—to make a Roman holiday," piped the Doctor. "She's taking this exercise for my health."

"Well, James," replied his wife rather definitely, "I know you need it!"

"And that settles it," cried the little man shrilly, "say, Nate, if we men ever get the ballot, I'm going to take a stand for liberty."

"I'm with you, Doctor," replied the young man.

"Nate," he mocked in his comical falsetto, "as you grow older and get further and further from your mother's loving care, you'll find that there was some deep-seated natural reason why we men should lead the sheltered life and leave the hurly-burly of existence to the women."

From long habit, in such cases Mrs. Nesbit tried not to smile and, from long habit, failed. "Doctor Jim," she cried as he picked up her ball, and set it for her, "don't make a fool of yourself."

The little man patted the earth under the ball, and looked up and said as he took her hand, and obviously squeezed it for the spectators, as he rose.

"My dear—it's unnecessary. You have made one of me every happy minute for forty years," and smiling at the lovers and their children, he took the hand held out for him after she had sent the ball over the hill, and they went away as he chuckled over his shoulder and cheeped: "Into the twilight's purple rim—through all the world she followed him," and trotting behind her as she went striding into the sunset, they disappeared over the hill.

When they had disappeared Anne began thinking of her picnic. She and Nathan left the children at the lake, and walked to the club house for the baskets. On the veranda they met Captain Morton in white flannels with a gorgeous purple necktie and a panama hat of a price that made Anne gasp. He came bustling up to Anne and Nathan and said:

"Surprise party—I'm going to give the girls a little surprise party next week—next Tuesday, and I want you to come—what say? Out here—next Tuesday night—going to have all the old friends—every one that ever bought a window hanger, or a churn, or a sewing machine, or a Peerless cooker, or a Household Horse—but keep it quiet—surprise on the girls, eh?"

When they had accepted, the Captain lowered his voice and said mysteriously: "'Y gory—the old man's got some ginger in him yet—eh?" and bustled away with a card in his hands containing the names of the invited guests, checking the Perrys from the list as he went.

As Captain Morton rounded the corner of the veranda and came into the out-of-door dining room, he found Margaret Van Dorn, sitting at a table by a window with Ahab Wright—flowing white side whiskers and white necktie inviolate and pristine in their perfection. Ahab was clearly confused when the Captain sailed into the room. For there was a breeziness about the Captain's manner, and although Ahab respected the Captain's new wealth, still his years of poverty and the meanness of his former calling as a peddler of insignificant things, made Ahab Wright feel a certain squeamishness when he had to receive Captain Morton upon the term which, in Ahab's mind, a man of so much money should be received.

Mrs. Van Dorn was using her eyes on Ahab. Perhaps they cast the spell. She was leaning forward with her chin in her hands, with both elbows on the table, and Ahab Wright, of the proud, prosperous and highly respectable firm of Wright & Perry, was in much the mental and moral attitude of the bird when the cat creeps up to the tree-trunk. He was not unhappy; not terrorized—just curious and rather resistless, knowing that if danger ever came he could fly. And Mrs. Van Dorn, who had tired of the toys at hand, was adventuring rather aimlessly into the cold blue eyes of Ahab, to see what might be in them.

"For many years," she was saying, and pronounced it "yee-ahs," having remembered at the moment to soften her "r's," "I have been living on a highah plane wheyah one ignoahs the futuah and foahgets the pahst. On this plane one rises to his full capacity of soul strength, without the hampah of remoahs or the terror of a vindictive Providence."

She might as well have been reciting the alphabet backwards so far as Ahab understood or cared what she said. He was fascinated by her resemblance to a pink and white marshmallow—rather over-powdered. But she was still fortifying herself from that little black box in the farthest corner in the bottom drawer of her dresser—and fortifying herself with two brown pellets instead of one. So she ogled Ahab Wright by way of diversion, and sat in the recesses of her soul and wondered what she would say next.

The Captain pulling his panama off made a tremendous bow as Margaret was saying: "Those who grahsp the great Basic Truths in the Science of Being—" and just as the Captain was about to open his mouth to invite Ahab Wright to his party, plumb came the ghastly consciousness to him that the Van Dorns were not on his list. For the Van Dorns, however securely they were entrenched socially among the new people who had no part in the town's old quarrel with Tom, however the oil and gas and smelter people and the coal magnates may have received the Van Dorns—still they were under the social ban of the only social Harvey that Captain Morton knew. So as a man falling from a balloon gets his balance, the Captain gasped as he came up from his low bow and said:

"Madam, I says to myself just now as I looks over to that elm tree yonder," he pointed to the place where Kenyon and Lila were sitting, "soon we'll be having the fourth generation here in Harvey, and I says, that will interest Tom! An 'y gory, ma'am, as I saw you sitting here, I says as it was well in my mind, 'Here's Tom's lady love, and I'll just go over and pass my congratulations on to Tom through the apple of his eye, as you may say, and not bother him and the young man around the corner there in their boss trade, eh?' What say?" He was flushed and red, and he did not know exactly where to stop, but it was out—and after a few sparring sentences, he broke away from the clutch of his bungling intrusion and was gone. But as the Captain left the couple at the table, the spell was broken. Life had intruded, and Ahab rose hastily and went his way.

Margaret Van Dorn sat looking out at a dreary world. Even the lovers by the elm tree did not quicken her pulse. Scarcely more did they interest her than her vapid adventure with Ahab Wright. All romantic adventure, personal or vicarious, was as ashes on her lips. But emotion was not all dead in her. As she gazed at Lila and Kenyon, Margaret wondered if her husband could see the pair. Her first emotional reaction was a gloating sense that he would be boiling with humiliation and rage when he saw his child so obviously and publicly, even if unconsciously, adoring an Adams. So she exulted in the Van Dorn discomfiture. As her first spiteful impulse wore away, a sense of desolation overcame Margaret Van Dorn. Probably she had no regrets that she had abandoned Kenyon. For years she had nursed a daily horror that the door which hid her secret might swing open, but that horror was growing stale. She felt that the door was forever sealed by time. So in the midst of a world at its spring, a budding world, a world of young mating, a gay world going out on its vast yearly voyage to hunt new life in new joy, a quest for ever new yet old as God's first smile on a world unborn, this woman sat in a drab and dreary desolation. Even her spite withered as she sat playing with her tall glass. And as spite chilled, her loneliness grew.

She knew better than any one else in Harvey—better even than the Nesbits—what Kenyon Adams really promised in achievement and fame. They knew that he had some European recognition. Margaret in Europe had been amazed to see how far he was going. In New York and Boston, she knew what it meant to have her son's music on the best concert programs. Her realization of her loss increased her loneliness. But regret did not produce remorse. She was always and finally glad that the door was inexorably sealed upon her secret. She saw only her husband angered by her son's association with her husband's daughter, and when malice spent itself, she was weary and lonely and out of humor, and longed to retire to her fortification.

After Captain Morton had bowed himself away from Margaret Van Dorn, he stood at the other end of the veranda looking down toward the lake. The carpenters were quitting work for the day on the new bathing pavilion and he saw the tall figure of Grant Adams in the group. He hurried down the steps near by, and came bustling over to Grant.

"Just the man I want to see! I saw Jap chasing around the golf course with Ruthie and invited him, but he said your pa wasn't very spry and mightn't be uptown to-morrow, so you just tell him for me that you and he are to come to my party here next Tuesday night—surprise party for the girls—going to break something to them they don't know anything about—what say? Tell your pa that his old army friend is going to send his car—my new car—great, big, busting gray battleship for your pa—makes Tom's car look like an ash cart. Don't let your pa refuse. I want to bring you all up here to the party in that car in style—you and Amos and Jap and Kenyon! eh? Say, Grant—tell me—" he wagged his head at Kenyon and Lila still loitering by the tree. "What's Kenyon's idea in loafing around so much here in Harvey? He's old enough to go to work. 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 grass 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 passing, 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 passive. 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' class 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 passionately, "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 class consciousness and strike altogether, can develop organizing capacity enough to organize, to run their own affairs—then the need for class consciousness will pass, 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 passengers. 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' class 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 coarse, 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:

"Well, Grant, I'm in trouble—Oh, it's not that," he laughed as Grant looked quickly into the clean, alert old face. "That's not bothered me for—Oh, for two years now. But it's Violet—she wants me to marry her." He blurted it out as if it had been pent in, and was hard to hold.

"Why—well—what makes you—well, has she proposed, Henry?" asked the younger man.

"Naw—of course not," answered Fenn. "Boy, you don't know anything about women."

Fenn shook his head knowingly, and winked one eye slowly. "Children—she's set the children on me. You know, Grant—" he turned his smile on with what candlepower he could muster, "that's my other weakness—children. And they're the nicest children in the world. But I can't—I tell you, man, I can't," protested Mr. Fenn, as if he believed Grant in league with the woman to kidnap him.

"Well, then, don't," said Grant, rising and gathering up his mail.

"But how can I help it?" Fenn cried helplessly. "What can a man do? Those kids need a father. I need a family—I've always needed a family—but I don't want Violet—nor any one else." Grant towed him along to the restaurant, and they sat alone. After Grant had ordered his supper he asked, "Henry—why can't you marry Violet? She's a sensible, honest woman—she's got over her foolishness; what's wrong with her?"

"Why, of course, she is a good woman. If you'd see her chasing out nights—picking up girls, mothering 'em, loving 'em, working with 'em—she knows their language; she can talk to 'em so they get it. And I've known her time and again to get scent of a new girl over there at Bessie Wilson's and go after her and pull her out and start her right again. I tell you, Grant, Violet has her weaknesses—as to hair ribbons and shirtwaists and frills for the kids—but she's got a heart, Grant—a mighty big heart."

"Then why not marry her?" persisted Grant.

"That's just it," answered Fenn.

He looked hopelessly at Grant and finally said as he reached his hands across the table and grasped Grant's big flinty paw, "Grant—let me tell you something—it's Margaret. I'm a fool—a motley fool i' the forest, Grant, but I can't help it; I can't help it," he cried. "So long as she lives—she may need me. I don't trust that damn scoundrel, Grant. She may need me, and I stand ready to go to hell itself with her if I live a thousand years. It's not that I want her any more; but, Grant—maybe you know her; maybe you understand. She used to hate you for some reason, and maybe that will help you to know how I feel. But—I know I'm weak—God knows I'm putty in my soul. And I'm ashamed. But I mustn't get married. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be square to Violet, nor the kids, nor to any one. So long as Margaret is on this earth—it's my job to stand guard and wait till she needs me."

He turned a troubled, heartbroken face up to the younger man and concluded, "I know she despises me—that she loathes me. But I can't help it, Grant—and I came to you to kind of help me with Violet. It wouldn't be right to—well, to let this thing go on." He heaved a deep sigh, then he added as he fumbled with the red tablecloth, "What a fool a man is—Lord, what a fool!"

In the end, Grant had to agree to let Violet know, by some round about procedure devised by Mr. Fenn's legal mind, that he was not a marriageable person. At the same time, Grant had to agree not to frighten away the Hogan children.

The next morning as Grant and his father rode from their home into town, Grant told his father of the invitation to the Captain's party.

"If your mother could have lived just to see the Captain on his grand plutocratic spree, Grant—" said his father. He did not finish the sentence, but cracked the lines on the old mare's back and looked at the sky. He turned his white beard and gentle eyes upon his son and said, "There was a time last night, before you came in, when I thought I had her. Some one was greatly interested in you and some new project you have in mind. Emerson thinks well of it," said Amos, "though," he added, "Emerson thinks it won't amount to much—in practical immediate results. But I think, Grant, now of course, I can't be sure," the father rubbed his jaw and shook a meditative head, "it certainly did seem to me mother was there for a time. Something kept bothering Emerson—calling Grantie—the way she used to—all the time he was talking!"

The father let Grant out of the buggy at the Vanderbilt House in South Harvey, and the old mare and her driver jogged up town to the Tribune office. There he creaked out of the buggy and went to his work. It was nine o'clock before the Captain came capering in, and the two old codgers in their seventies went into the plot of the surprise party with the enthusiasm of boys.

After the Captain had explained the purpose of the surprise, Amos Adams sat with his hands on his knees and smiled. "Well—well, Ezry—I didn't realize it. Time certainly does fly. And it's all right," he added, "I'm glad you're going to do it. She certainly will approve it. And the girls—" the old man chuckled, "you surely will settle them for good and all."