Mr. Brotherton came from behind the counter where he had been arranging his stock for the night, and grasped Henry Fenn's hand. "Say, Henry—you're all right. You're a man—I've always said so. I tell you, Hen, I've been to lots of funerals in this town first and last as pall-bearer or choir singer—pretty nearly every one worth while, but say, I'm right here to tell you that I have never went to one I was sorrier over than yours, Henry—and I'm mighty glad to see you're coming to again."

Henry Fenn smiled weakly and said: "That's right, George—that's right."

And Mr. Brotherton went on, "I claim the lady give you the final push—not that she needed to push hard of course; but a little pulling might have held you."

Mr. Fenn rose to leave and sighed again as he stood for a moment in the doorway—"Yes, George, perhaps so—poor Maggie—poor Maggie."

Mr. Brotherton looked at the man a moment—saw his round hat with neither back nor front and only the wreck of a band around it, his tousled clothes, his shoes with the soles curling at the sides and the frowsy face, from which the man peered out a second and then slunk back again, and Mr. Brotherton took to his book shelf, scratched his head and indicated by his manner that life was too deep a problem for him.



CHAPTER XXXIII

IN WHICH THE ANGELS SHAKE A FOOT FOR HENRY FENN

The business of life largely resolves itself into a preparation for the next generation. The torch of life moves steadily forward. For children primarily life has organized itself to satisfy decently and in order, the insatiate primal hungers that motive mankind. It was with a wisdom deeper than he understood that George Brotherton spoke one day, as he stood in his doorway and saw Judge Van Dorn hurrying across the street to speak to Lila. "There," roared Mr. Brotherton to Nathan Perry, "well, say—there's the substance all right, man." And then as the Judge turned wearily away with slinking shoulders to avoid meeting the eyes of his wife, plump, palpable, and always personable, who came around the corner, Mr. Brotherton, with a haw-haw of appreciation of his obvious irony, cried, "And there's the shadow—I don't think." But it was the substance and the shadow nevertheless, and possibly the Judge knew them as the considerations of his bargain with the devil. For always he was trying to regain the substance; to take Lila to his heart, where curiously there seemed some need of love, even in a heart which was consecrated in the very temple of love. Without realizing that he was modifying his habits of life, he began to drop in casually to see the children's Christmas exercises, and Thanksgiving programs, and Easter services at John Dexter's church. From the back seat where he always sat alone, he sometimes saw the wealth of affection that her mother lavished on Lila, patting her ribbons, smoothing her hair, straightening her dress, fondling her, correcting her, and watching the child with eyes so full of love that they did not refrain sometimes from smiling in kindly appreciation into the eager, burning, tired eyes of the Judge. The mother understood why he came to the exercises, and often she sent Lila to her father for a word. The town knew these things, and the Judge knew that the town knew, and even then he could not keep away. He had to carry the torch of life, whether he would or not, even though sometimes it must have scorched his proud, white hands. It was the only thing that burned with real fire in his heart.

With Laura Van Dorn the fact of her motherhood colored her whole life. Never a baby was born among her poor neighbors in the valley that she did not thrill with a keen delight at its coming, and welcome it with some small material token of her joy. In the baby she lived over again her own first days of maternity. But it was no play motherhood that restored her soul and refilled her receptacle of faith day by day. The bodily, huggable presence of her daughter continually unfolding some new beauty kept her eager for the day's work to close in the Valley that she might go home to drop the vicarious happiness that she brought in her kindergarten for the real happiness of a home.

Often Grant Adams, hurrying by on his lonely way, paused to tell Laura of a needy family, or to bring a dirty, motherless child to her haven, or to ask her to go to some wayward girl, newly caught in the darker corners of the spider's web.

Doggedly day by day, little by little, he was bringing the workmen of the Valley to see his view of the truth. The owners were paying spies to spy upon him and he knew it, and the high places of his satisfaction came when, knowing a spy and marking him for a victim, Grant converted him to the union cause. With the booming of the big guns of prosperity in Harvey, he was a sort of undertone, a monotonous drum, throbbing through the valley a menace beneath it all. Once—indeed, twice, as he worked, he organized a demand for higher wages in two or three of the mines, and keeping himself in the background, yet cautiously managing the tactics of the demand, he won. He held Sunday meetings in such halls as the men could afford to hire and there he talked—talked the religion of democracy. As labor moved about in the world, and as the labor press of the country began to know of Grant, he acquired a certain fame as a speaker among labor leaders. And the curious situation he was creating gave him some reputation in other circles. He was good for an occasional story in a Kansas City or Chicago Sunday paper; and the Star reporter, sent to do the feature story, told of a lonely, indomitable figure who was the idol of the laboring people of the Wahoo Valley; of his Sunday meetings; of his elaborate system of organization; of his peaceful demands for higher wages and better shop conditions; of his conversion of spies sent to hinder him, of his never-ceasing effort, unsupported by outside labor leaders, unvisited by the aristocracy of the labor world, yet always respecting it, to preach unionism as a faith rather than as a material means for material advancement.

Generally the reporters devoted a paragraph to the question—what manner of man is this?—and intimating more or less frankly that he was a man of one idea, or perhaps broadening the suggestion into a query whether or not a man who would work for years, scorning fame, scorning regular employment and promotion, neglecting opportunities to rise as a labor leader in his own world, was not just a little mad. So it happened that without seeking fame, fame came to him. All over the Missouri Valley, men knew that Grant Adams, a big, lumbering, red-polled, lusty-lunged man with one arm burned off—and the story of the burning fixed the man always in the public heart—with a curious creed and a freak gift for expounding it, was doing unusual things with the labor situation in the Harvey district. And then one day a reporter came from Omaha who uncovered this bit of news in his Sunday feature story:

"Last week the Wahoo district was paralyzed by the announcement that Nathan Perry, the new superintendent of the Independent mines had raised his wage scale, and had acceded to every change in working conditions that the local labor organizations under Adams had asked. Moreover, he has unionized his mine and will recognize only union grievance committees in dealing with the men. The effect of such an announcement in a district where the avowed purpose of the mine operators is to run their own business as they please, may easily be imagined.

"Perry is a civil engineer from Boston Tech., a rich man's son, who married a rich man's daughter, and then cut loose from his father and father-in-law because of a political disagreement over the candidacy of the famous Judge Thomas Van Dorn for a judicial nomination a few years ago. Perry belongs to a new type in industry—rather newer than Adams's type. Perry is a keen eyed, boyish-looking young man who has no illusions about Adams's democracy of labor.

"'I am working out an engineering problem with men,' said Perry to a reporter to-day. 'What I want is coal in the cage. I figure that more wages will put more corn meal in a man's belly, more muscle on his back, more hustle in his legs, and more blood in his brain. And primarily I'm buying muscle and hustle and brains. If I can make the muscle and hustle and brains I buy, yield better dividends than the stuff my competitors buy, I'll hold my job. If not, I'll lose it. I am certainly working for my job.'

"Of course the town doesn't believe for a moment what Perry says. The town is divided. Part of the town thinks that Perry is an Adams convert and a fool, the other half of the town believes that the move is part of a conspiracy of certain eastern financial interests to get control of the Wahoo Valley properties by spreading dissension. Feeling is bitter and Adams and Perry are coming in for considerable abuse. D. Sands, the local industrial entrepreneur, has raised the black flag on his son-in-law, and an interesting time looms ahead."

But often at night in Perry's home in South Harvey, where Morty Sands and Grant Adams loved to congregate, there were hot discussions on the labor question. For Nathan Perry was no convert of Grant Adams.

As the men wrangled, many an hour sat Anne Perry singing the nest song as she made little things for the lower bureau drawer. Sometimes in the evening, Morty would sit by the kitchen stove, sadly torn in heart, between the two debaters, seeing the justice of Grant's side as an ethical question, but admiring the businesslike way in which Nathan waved aside ethical considerations, damned Grant for a crazy man, and proclaimed the gospel of efficiency.

Often Grant walked home from these discussions with his heart hot and rebellious. He saw life only in its spiritual aspect and the logic of Nathan Perry angered him with its conclusiveness.

Often as he walked Kenyon was upon his heart and he wondered if Margaret missed the boy; or if the small fame that the boy was making with his music had touched her vanity with a sense of loss. He wondered if she ever wished to help the child. The whole town knew that the Nesbits were sending Kenyon to Boston to study music, and that Amos Adams and Grant could contribute little to the child's support. Grant wondered, considering the relations between the Van Dorns and Nesbits, whether sometimes Margaret did not feel a twinge of irritation or regret at the course of things.

He could not know that even as he walked through the November night, Margaret Van Dorn, was sitting in her room holding in her hand a tiny watch, a watch to delight a little girl's heart. On the inside of the back of the watch was engraved:

"To Lila from her Father, for Her 10th birthday."

And opposite the inscription in the watch was pasted the photograph of the unhappy face of the donor. Margaret sat gazing at the trinket and wondering vaguely what would delight a little boy's heart as a watch would warm the heart of a little girl. It was not a sense of loss, not regret, certainly not remorse that moved her heart as she sat alone holding the trinket—discovered on her husband's dresser; it was a weak and footless longing, and a sense of personal wrong that rose against her husband. He had something which she had not. He could give jeweled watches, and she—

But if she only could have read life aright she would have pitied him that he could give only jeweled watches, only paper images of a dissatisfied face, only material things, the token of a material philosophy—all that he knew and all that he had, to the one thing in the world that he really could love. And as for Margaret, his wife, who lived his life and his philosophy, she, too, had nothing with which to satisfy the dull, empty feeling in her heart when she thought of Kenyon, save to make peace with it in hard metal and stupid stones. Thus does what we think crust over our souls and make us what we are.

Grant Adams, plodding homeward that night, turned from the thought of Margaret to the thought of Kenyon with a wave of joy, counting the days and weeks and the months until the boy should return for the summer. At home Grant sat down before the kitchen table and began a long talk that kept him until midnight. He had undertaken to organize all the unions of the place into a central labor council; the miners, the smeltermen, the teamsters, the cement factory workers, the workers in the building trades. It was an experimental plan, under the auspices of the national union officers. Only a man like Grant Adams, with something more than a local reputation as a leader, would have been intrusted with the work. And so, after his day's toil for bread, he sat at his kitchen table, elaborately working his dream into reality.

That season the devil, if there is a devil who seeks to swerve us from what we deem our noblest purposes, came to Grant Adams disguised in an offer of a considerable sum of money to Grant for a year's work in the lecture field. The letter bearing the offer explained that by going out and preaching the cause of labor to the people, Grant would be doing his cause more good than by staying in Harvey and fighting alone. The thought came to him that the wider field of work would give him greater personal fame, to be used ultimately for a wider influence. All one long day as he worked with hammer and saw at his trade, Grant turned the matter over in his mind. He could see himself in a larger canvas, working a greater good. Perhaps some fleeting unformed idea came to him of a home and a normal life as other men live; for at noon, without consciously connecting her with his dream, he took his problem to Laura Van Dorn at her kindergarten. That afternoon he decided to accept the offer, and put much of his reason for acceptance upon Kenyon and the boy's needs. That night he penned a letter of acceptance to the lecture bureau and went to bed, disturbed and unsatisfied. Before he slept he turned and twisted, and finally threshed himself to sleep. It was a light fragmentary sleep, that moves in and out of some strange hypnoidal state where the lower consciousness and the normal consciousness wrestle for the control of reason. Then after a long period of half-waking dreams, toward morning, Grant sank into a profound sleep. In that sleep his soul, released from all that is material, rose and took command of his will.

When Grant awoke, it was still black night. For a few seconds he did not know where he was—nor even who he was, nor what. He was a mere consciousness. The first glimmer of identity that came to him came with a roaring "No," that repeated itself over and over, "No—no," cried the voice of his soul—"you are no mere word spinner; you are a fighter; you are pledged, body and soul; you are bought with a price—no, no, no."

And then he knew where he was and he knew surely and without doubt or quaver of faith that he must not give up his place in the fight. When he thought of Kenyon living on the bounty of the Nesbits, he thought also of Dick Bowman, ordering his own son under the sliding earth to hold the shovel over Grant's face in the mine.

So Grant Adams bent his shoulders to this familiar burden. In the early morning, before his father and Jasper were up, the gaunt, ungainly figure hurried with his letter of refusal to the South Harvey Station and put the letter on the seven-ten train for Chicago.

That evening, sitting on their front porch, the Dexters talked over Grant's decision. "Well," said John Dexter, looking up into the mild November sky, and seeing the brown gray smudge of the smelter there, "so Grant has sidled by another devil in his road. We have seen that women won't stop him; it's plain that money nor fame won't stop him, though they clearly tore his coat tails. I imagine from what Laura says he must have decided once to accept."

"Yes," answered his wife, "but it does seem to me, if my old father needed care as his does, and my brother had to accept charity, I'd give that particular devil my whole coat and see if I couldn't make a bargain with him for a little money, at some small cost."

"Mother Eve—Mother Eve," smiled the minister, "you women are so practical—we men are the real idealists—the only dreamers who stand by our dreams in this wicked, weary world."

He leaned back in his chair. "There is still one more big black devil waiting for Grant: Power—the love of power which is the lust of usefulness—power may catch Grant after he has escaped from women and money and fame. Vanity—vanity, saith the preacher—Heaven help Grant in the final struggle with the big, black devil of vanity."

Yet, after all, vanity has in it the seed of a saving grace that has lifted humanity over many pitfalls in the world. For vanity is only self-respect multiplied; and when that goes—when men and women lose their right to lift their faces to God, they have fallen upon bad times indeed. It was even so good a man as John Dexter himself, who tried to put self-respect into the soul of Violet Hogan, and was mocked for it.

"What do they care for me?" she cried, as he sat talking to her in her miserable home one chill November day. "Why should I pay any attention to them? Once I chummed with Mag Mueller, before she married Henry Fenn, and I was as good as she was then—and am now for that matter. She knew what I was, and I knew what she was going to be—we made no bones of it. We hunted in pairs—as women like to. And I know Mag Mueller. So why should I keep up for her?"

The woman laughed and showed her hollow mouth and all the wrinkles of her broken face, that the paint hid at night. "And as for Tom Van Dorn—I was a decent girl before I met him, Mr. Dexter—and why in God's name should I try to keep up for him?"

She shuddered and would have sobbed but he stopped her with: "Well, Violet—wife and I have always been your friends; we are now. The church will help you."

"Oh, the church—the church," she laughed. "It can't help me. Fancy me in church—with all the wives looking sideways at all the husbands to see that they didn't look too long at me. The church is for those who haven't been caught! God knows if there is a place for any one who has been caught—and I've been caught and caught and caught." She cried. "Only the children don't know—not yet, though little Tom—he's the oldest, he came to me and asked me yesterday why the other children yelled when I went out. Oh, hell—" she moaned, "what's the use—what's the use—what's the use!" and fell to sobbing with her head upon her arms resting upon the bare, dirty table.

It was rather a difficult question for John Dexter. Only one other minister in the world ever answered it successfully, and He brought public opinion down on Him. The Rev. John Dexter rose, and stood looking at the shattered thing that once had been a graceful, beautiful human body enclosing an aspiring soul. He saw what society had done to break and twist the body; what society had neglected to do in the youth of the soul—to guide and environ it right—he saw what poverty had done and what South Harvey had done to cheat her of her womanhood even when she had tried to rise and sin no more; he remembered how the court-made law had cheated her of her rightful patrimony and cast her into the streets to spread the social cancer of her trade; and he had no answer. If he could have put vanity into her heart—the vanity which he feared for Grant Adams, he would have been glad. But her vanity was the vanity of motherhood; for herself she had spent it all. So he left her without answering her question. Money was all he could give her and money seemed to him a kind of curse. Yet he gave it and gave all he had.

When she saw that he was gone, Violet fell upon the tumbled, unmade bed and cried with all the vehemence of her unrestrained, shallow nature. For she was sick and weary and hungry. She had given her last dollar to a policeman the night before to keep from arrest. The oldest boy had gone to school without breakfast. The little children were playing in the street—they had begged food at the neighbors' and she had no heart to stop them. At noon when little Tom came in he found his mother sitting before a number of paper sacks upon the table waiting for him. Then the family ate out of the sacks the cold meal she had bought at the grocery store with John Dexter's money.

That night Violet shivered out into the cold over her usual route. She was walking through the railroad yards in Magnus when suddenly she came upon a man who dropped stealthily out of a dead engine. He carried something shining and tried to slip it under his coat when he saw her. She knew he was stealing brass, but she did not care; she called as they passed through the light from an arc lamp:

"Hello, sweetheart—where you going?"

The man looked up ashamed, and she turned a brazen, painted face at him and tried to smile without opening her lips.

Their eyes met, and the man caught her by the arm and cried:

"God, Violet—is this you—have you—" She cut him off with:

"Henry Fenn—why—Henry—"

The brass fell at his feet. He did not pick it up. They stood between the box cars in speechless astonishment. It was the man who found voice.

"Violet—Violet," he cried. "This is hell. I'm a thief and you—"

"Say it—say it—don't spare me," she cried. "That's what I am, Henry. It's all right about me, but how about you, how about you, Henry? This is no place for you! Why, you," she exclaimed—"why, you are—"

"I'm a drunken thief stealing brass couplings to get another drink, Violet."

He picked up the brass and threw it up into the engine, still clutching her arm so that she could not run away.

"But, girl—" he cried, "you've got to quit this—this is no way for you to live."

She looked at him to see what was in his mind. She broke away, and scrambled into the engine cab and put the brass where it could not fall out.

"You don't want that brass falling out, and them tracing you down here and jugging you—you fool," she panted as she climbed to the ground.

"Lookee here, Henry Fenn," she cried, "you're too good a man for this. You've had a dirty deal. I knew it when she married you—the snake; I know it—I've always known it."

The woman's voice was shrill with emotion. Fenn saw that she was verging on the hysterical, and took her arm and led her down the dark alley between the cars. The man's heart was touched—partly by the wreck he saw, and partly by her words. They brought back the days when he and she had seen their visions. The liquor had left his head, and he was a tremble. He felt her cold, hard hand, and took it in his own dirty, shaken hand to warm it.

"How are you living?" he asked.

"This way," she replied. "I got my children—they've got to live someway. I can't leave them day times and see 'em run wild on the streets—the little girls need me."

She looked up into his face as they hurried past an arc lamp, and she saw tears there.

"Oh, you got a dirty deal, Henry—how could she do it?" cried the woman.

He did not answer and they walked up a dingy street. A car came howling by.

"Got car fare," he asked. She nodded.

"Well, I haven't," he said, "but I'm going with you."

They boarded the car. They were the only passengers. They sat down, and he said, under the roar of the wheels:

"Violet—it's a shame—a damn shame, and I'm not going to stand for it. This a Market Street car?" he asked the conductor who passed down the aisle for their fares. The woman paid. When the conductor was gone, Henry continued:

"Three kids and a mother robbed by a Judge who knew better—just to stand in with the kept attorneys of the bar association. He could have knocked the shenanigan, that killed Hogan, galley west, if he'd wanted to, and no Supreme Court would have dared to set it aside. But no—the kept lawyers at the Capital, and all the Capitals have a mutual admiration society, and Tom has always belonged. So he turns you and all like you on the street, and Violet, before God I'm going to try to help you."

She looked at the slick, greasy, torn stiff hat, and the dirty, shiny clothes that years ago had been his Sunday best, and the shaggy face and the sallow, unwashed skin; and she remembered the man who was.

The car passed into South Harvey. She started to rise. "No," he said, stopping her, "you come on with me."

"Where are we going?" she asked. He did not answer. She sat down. Finally the car turned into Market Street. They got off at the bank corner. The man took hold of the woman's arm, and led her to the alley. She drew back.

He said: "Are you afraid of me—now, Violet?" They slinked down the alley and seeing a light in the back room of a store, Fenn stopped and went up to peer in.

"Come on," he said. "He's in."

Fenn tapped on the barred window and whistled three notes. A voice inside cried, "All right, Henry—soon's I get this column added up."

The woman shrank back, but Fenn held her arm. Then the door opened, and the moon face of Mr. Brotherton appeared in a flood of light. He saw the woman, without recognizing her, and laughed:

"Are we going to have a party? Come right in, Marianna—here's the moated Grange, all right, all right."

As they entered, he tried to see her face, but she dropped her head. Fenn asked, "Why, George—don't you know her? It's Violet—Violet Mauling—who married Denny Hogan who was killed last winter."

George Brotherton looked at the painted face, saw the bald attempt at coquetry in her dress, and as she lifted her glazed, dead eyes, he knew her story instantly.

For she wore the old, old mask of her old, old trade.

"You poor, poor girl," he said gently. Then continued, "Lord—but this is tough."

He saw the miserable creature beside him and would have smiled, but he could not. Fenn began,

"George, I just got tired of coming around here every night after closing for my quarter or half dollar; so for two or three weeks I've been stealing. She caught me at it; caught me stripping a dead engine down in the yards by the round house."

"Yes," she cried, lifting a poor painted face, "Mr. Brotherton—but you know how I happened to be down there. He caught me as much as I caught him! And I'm the worst—Oh, God, when they get like me—that's the end!"

The three stood silently together. Finally Brotherton spoke: "Well," he drew a long breath, "well, they don't need any hell for you two—do they?" Then he added, "You poor, poor sheep that have gone astray. I don't know how to help you."

"Well, George—that's just it," replied Fenn. "No one can help us. But by God's help, George, I can help her! There's that much go left in me yet! Don't you think so, George?" he asked anxiously. "I can help her."

The weak, trembling face of the man moved George Brotherton almost to tears. Violet's instinct saw that Brotherton could not speak and she cried:

"George—I tell Henry he's had a dirty deal, too—Oh, such a dirty deal. I know he's a man—he never cast off a girl—like I was cast off—you know how. Henry's a man, George—a real man, and oh, if I could help him—if I could help him get up again. He's had such a dirty deal."

Brotherton saw her mouth in all its ugliness, and saw as he looked how tears were streaking the bedaubed face. She was repulsive beyond words, yet as she tried to hold back her tears, George Brotherton thought she was beautiful.

Fenn found his voice. "Now, here, George—it's like this: I don't want any woman; I've washed most of that monkey business out of me with whisky—it's not in me any more. And I know she's had enough of men. And I've brought her here—we've come here to tell you that part is straight—decent—square. I wanted you to know that—and Violet would, too—wouldn't you, Violet?" She nodded.

"Now, then, George—I'm her man! Do you understand—her man. I'm going to see that she doesn't have to go on the streets. Why, when she was a girl I used to beau her around, and if she isn't ashamed of a drunken thief—then in Christ's name, I'm going to help her."

He smiled out of his leaden eyes the ghost of his glittering, old, self-deprecatory smile. The woman remembered it, and bent over and kissed his dirty hand. She rose, and put her fingers gently upon his head, and sobbed:

"Oh, God, forgive me and make me worthy of this!"

There was an awkward pause. When the woman had controlled herself Fenn said: "What I want is to keep right on sleeping in the basement here—until I can get ahead enough to pay for my room. I'm not going to make any scandal for Violet, here. But we both feel better to talk it out with you."

They started for the back door. The front of the store was dark. Brotherton saw the man hesitate, and look down the alley to see if any one was in sight.

"Henry," said Brotherton, "here's a dollar. You might just as well begin fighting it out to-night. You go to the basement. I'll take Violet home."

The woman would have protested, but the big man said gently: "No, Violet—you were Denny Hogan's wife. He was my friend. You are Henry's ward—he is my friend. Let's go out the front way, Violet."

When they were gone, and the lights were out in the office of the bookstore, Henry Fenn slipped through the alley, went to the nearest saloon, walked in, stood looking at the whiskey sparkling brown and devilishly in the thick-bottomed cut glasses, saw the beer foaming upon the mahogany board, breathed it all in deeply, felt of the hard silver dollar in his pocket, shook as one in a palsy, set his teeth and while the tears came into his eyes stood and silently counted one hundred and another hundred; grinning foolishly when the loafers joked with him, and finally shuffled weakly out into the night, and ran to his cellar. And if Mr. Left's theory of angels is correct, then all the angels in heaven had their harps in their hands waving them for Henry, and cheering for joy!



CHAPTER XXXIV

A SHORT CHAPTER, YET IN IT WE EXAMINE ONE CANVAS HEAVEN, ONE REAL HEAVEN, AND TWO SNUG LITTLE HELLS

"The idea of hell," wrote the Peach Blow Philosopher in the Harvey Tribune, "is the logical sequence of the belief that material punishments must follow spiritual offenses. For the wicked go unscathed of material punishments in this naughty world. And so the idea of Heaven is a logical sequence of the idea that only spiritual rewards come to men for spiritual services. Not that Heaven is needed to balance the accounts of good men after death—not at all. Good men get all that is coming to them here—whether it is a crucifixion or a crown—that makes no difference; crowns and crosses are mere material counters. They do not win or lose the game—nor even justly mark its loss or winning.

"The reason why Heaven is needed in the scheme of a neighborly man," said the Peach Blow Philosopher as he stood at his gate and reviewed the procession of pilgrims through the wilderness, "is this: The man who leads a decent life, is building a great soul. Obviously, this world is not the natural final habitat of great souls; for they occur here sporadically—though perhaps more and more frequently every trip around the sun. But Heaven is needed in any scheme of general decency for decency's sake, so that the decent soul for whose primary development the earth was hung in the sky, may have a place to find further usefulness, and a far more exceeding glory than may be enjoyed in this material dwelling place. So as we grow better and kinder in this world, hell sloughs off and Heaven is more real."

There is more of this dissertation—if the reader cares to pursue it, and it may be found in the files of the Harvey Tribune. It also appears as a footnote to an article by an eminent authority on Abnormal Psychology in a report on Mr. Left, Vol. XXXII, p. 2126, of the Report of the Psychological Association. The remarks of the Peach Blow Philosopher credited in the Report of the Proceedings above noted, to Mr. Left, appeared in the Harvey Tribune Jan. 14, 1903. They may have been called forth by an editorial in the Harvey Times of January 9 of that same year. So as that editorial has a proper place in this narrative, it may be set down here at the outset of this chapter. The article from the Times is headed: "A Successful Career" and it follows:

"To-day Judge Thomas Van Dorn retires from ten years of faithful service as district judge of this district. He was appointed by the Governor and has been twice elected to this position by the people, and feeling that the honor should go to some other county in the district, the Judge was not a candidate for a third nomination or election. During the ten years of his service he has grown steadily in legal and intellectual attainments. He has been president of the state bar association, delegate from that body to the National Bar Association, member of several important committees in that organization, and now is at the head of that branch of the National Bar Association organized to secure a more strict interpretation of the Federal Constitution, as a bulwark of commercial liberty. Judge Van Dorn also has been selected as a member of a subcommittee to draft a new state constitution to be submitted to the legislature by the state bar association. So much for the recognition of his legal ability.

"As an orator he has won similar and enviable fame. His speech at the dedication of the state monument at Vicksburg will be a classic in American oratory for years. At the Marquette Club Banquet in Chicago last month his oration was reprinted in New York and Boston with flattering comment. Recently he has been engaged—though his term of service has just ended—in every important criminal action now pending west of the Mississippi. As a jury lawyer he has no equal in all the West.

"But while this practice is highly interesting, and in a sense remunerative, the Judge feels that the criminal practice makes too much of a drain upon his mind and body, and while he will defend certain great lumber operators and will appear for the defense in the famous Yarborrough murder case, and is considering accepting an almost unbelievably large retainer in the Skelton divorce case with its ramifications leading into at least three criminal prosecutions, and four suits to change or perfect certain land titles, yet this kind of practice is distasteful to the Judge, and he will probably confine himself after this year to what is known as corporation practice. He has been retained as general counsel for all the industrial interests in the Wahoo Valley. The mine operators, the smelter owners, the cement manufacturers, the glass factories have seen in Judge Van Dorn a man in whom they all may safely trust their interests—amicably settling all differences between themselves in his office, and presenting for the Wahoo Valley an unbroken front in all future disputes—industrial or otherwise. This arrangement has been perfected by our giant of finance, Hon. Daniel Sands of the Traders' State Bank, who is, as every one knows, heavily interested in every concern in the Valley—excepting the Independent Coal Company, which by the way has preferred to remain outside of the united commercial union, and do business under its own flag—however dark that flag may be.

"This new career of Judge Van Dorn will be highly gratifying to his friends—and who is there who is not his friend?

"Courteous, knightly, impetuous, gallant Tom Van Dorn? What a career he has builded for himself in Harvey and the West.

"Scorning his enemies with the quiet contempt of the intellectual gladiator that he is, Tom Van Dorn has risen in this community as no other man young or old since its founding. His spacious home is the temple of hospitality; his magnificent talent is given freely, often to the poor and needy to whom his money flows in a generous stream whenever the call comes. His shrewd investment of his savings in the Valley have made him rich; his beautiful wife and his widening circle of friends have made him happy—his fine, active brain has made him great.

"The Times extends to the Judge upon his retirement from the bench the congratulations of an admiring community, and best wishes for future success."

Now perhaps it was not this article that inspired the Peach Blow Philosopher. It may have been another item in the same paper hidden away in the want column.

"Wanted—All the sewing and mending, quilt patching, sheet making, or other plain sewing that the good women of Harvey have to give out. I know certain worthy women with families, who need this work. Also wood-sawing orders promptly filled by competent men out of work. I will bring work and the workers together. H. Fenn, care Brotherton Book & Stationery Co., 1127 Market Street."

Or if it was not that item, perhaps it was this one from the South Harvey Derrick of January 7, that called forth the Peach Blow Philosopher's remarks on Heaven:

"Mrs. Violet Hogan and family have rented the rooms adjoining Mrs. Van Dorn's kindergarten. Mrs. Hogan has made arrangements to provide ladies of South Harvey and the Valley in general with plain sewing by the piece. A day nursery for children has been fitted up by our genial George Brotherton, former mayor of Harvey, where mothers sewing may leave their children in an adjoining room."

Now the Heaven of the Peach Blow Philosopher is not gained at one bound. Even the painted, canvas Heaven of Thomas Van Dorn cost him something—to be exact, $100, which he took in "stock" of the Times company—which always had stock for sale, issued by a Price & Chanler Gordon job press whenever it was required. And the negotiations for the Judge's painted Heaven made by his partner, Mr. Joseph Calvin, of the renewed and reunited firm of Van Dorn & Calvin, were not without their painful moments. As, for instance, when the editor of the Times complained bitterly at having it agreed that he would have to mention in the article the Judge's "beautiful wife," specifically and in terms, the editor was for raising the price to $150, by reason of the laughing stock it would make of the paper, but compromised upon the promise of legal notices from the firm amounting to $100 within the following six months. Also there was a hitch in the negotiations hereinbefore mentioned when the Times was required to refer to the National Bar Association meeting at all. For it was notorious that the Judge's flourishing signature with "and wife" had been photographed upon the register of a New York Hotel when he attended that meeting, whereas every one knew that Mrs. Van Dorn was in Europe that summer, and the photograph of the Judge's beautifully flourishing signature aforesaid was one of the things that persuaded the Judge to enter the active practice and leave the shades and solitudes of the bench for more strenuous affairs. To allude to the Judge's wife, and to mention the National Bar Association in the same article, struck the editor of the Times as so inauspicious that it required considerable persuasion on the part of the diplomatic Mr. Calvin, to arrange the matter.

So the Judge's Heaven bellied on its canvas, full of vain east wind, and fooled no one—not even the Judge, least of all his beautiful wife, who, knowing of the Bar Association incident, laughed a ribald laugh. Moreover, having abandoned mental healing for the Episcopalian faith and having killed her mental healing dog with caramels and finding surcease in a white poodle, she gave herself over to a riot of earth thoughts—together with language thereunto appertaining of so plain a texture that the Judge all but limped in his strut for several hours.

But when the strut did come back, and the mocking echoes of the strident tones of "his beautiful wife" were stilled by several rounds of Scotch whisky at the Club, the Judge went forth into the town, waving his hands right and left, bowing punctiliously to women, and spending an hour in police court getting out of trouble some of his gambler friends who had supported him in politics.

He told every one that it was good to be off the bench and to be "plain Tom Van Dorn" again, and he shook hands up and down Market Street. And as "plain Tom Van Dorn" he sat down in the shop of the Paris Millinery Company, Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., and talked to the amiable Prop. for half an hour—casting sly glances at the handsome Miss Morton, who got behind him and made faces over his back for Mrs. Herdicker's edification.

But as Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., made it a point—and kept it—never to talk against the cash drawer, "plain Tom Van Dorn" didn't learn the truth from her. So he pranced up and down before his scenic representation of Heaven in the Times, and did not know that the whole town knew that his stage Heaven was the masque for as hot and cozy a little hell as any respectable gentleman of middle years could endure.

However clear he made it to the public, that he and Mrs. Van Dorn were passionately fond of each other; however evident he intended it to be that he was more than satisfied with the bargain that he had made when he took her, and put away his first wife; however strongly he played the card of the gallant husband and "dearied" her, and however she smirked at him and "dawlinged" him in public when the town was looking, every one knew the truth.

"We may," says the Peach Blow Philosopher in one of his dissertations on the Illusion of Time, "counterfeit everything in this world—but sincerity." So Judge Thomas Van Dorn—"plain Tom Van Dorn," went along Market Street, and through the world, handing out his leaden gratuities. But people felt how greasy they were, how heavy they were, how soft they were; and threw them aside, and sneered.

As for the Heaven which the Peach Blow Philosopher may have found for Henry Fenn and Violet Hogan, it was a different affair, but of slow and uncertain growth. Henry Fenn went into the sewer gang the day after he found Violet in the railroad yards, and for two weeks he worked ten hours a day with the negroes and Mexicans in the ditch. It took him a month to get enough money ahead to pay for a room. Leaving the sewer gang, he was made timekeeper on a small paving contract. But every day he sent through the mails to Violet enough to pay her rent and feed the children—a little sum, but all he could spare. He did not see her. He did not write to her. He only knew that the money he was making was keeping her out of the night, so he bent to his work with a will.

And at night,—it was not easy for Violet to stay in the house. She needed a thousand little things—or thought she did. And there was the old track and the easy money. But she knew what the pittance that came from Henry Fenn meant to him, so in pride and in shame one night she turned back home when she had slipped clear to the corner of the street with her paint on. When she got home she threw herself upon the bed and wept like a child in anguish. But the next night she did not even touch the rouge pot, and avoided it as though it were a poison. Her idea was the sewing room. She wrote it all out, in her stylish, angular hand to Mr. Brotherton, told him what it would cost, and how she believed she could make expenses for herself and help a number of other women who, like her, were tempted to go the wrong road. She even sent him five spoons—the last relic of the old Mauling decency, five silver spoons dented with the tooth marks of the Mauling children, five spoons done up in pink tissue that she had always told little Ouida Hogan should come to her some day—she sent those spoons to Mr. Brotherton to sell to make the start toward the sewing room.

But Mr. Brotherton took the spoons to Mr. Ira Dooley's home of the fine arts and crafts, and then and there, mounting a lookout stand, addressed the crowd through the smoke in simple but effective language, showing the spoons, telling the boys at the gaming tables that they all knew Denny Hogan's wife and how about her; that she wanted to get in right; that the spoons were sent to him to sell to the highest and best bidder for cash in hand. He also said that chips would count at the market price, and lo! he got a hat full of rattly red and white and blue chips and jingly silver dollars and a wad of whispering five-dollar bills big enough to cork a cannon. He went back to Harvey, spoons and all, considering deeply certain statements that Grant Adams had made about the presence of the holy ghost in every human heart.

As for the bright particular Heaven of Mr. Fenn, as hereinbefore possibly hinted at by the Peach Blow Philosopher, these are its specifications:

Item One. Job as storekeeper at the railroad roundhouse, from which by specific order of the master mechanic two hours a day are granted to Mr. Fenn, to take his hat in his hand and go marching over the town, knocking at doors and soliciting sewing for women, and wood-sawing or yard or furnace work for men; but

Item Two. Being a generous man, Mr. Fenn is up before eight for an hour of his work, and stays at it until seven, and thereby gets in two or three extra hours on the job, and feels

Item Three. That he is doing something worth while;

Item Four. Upon the first of the month he has nothing;

Item Five. Balancing his books at the last of the month he has nothing,

Item Six. And having no debt he is happy. But speaking of debt, there is

Item Seven. In Mr. Fenn's room a collection of receipts:

(a) One from the Midland Railroad Company for brass as per statement rendered.

(b) One from the Harvey Transfer Co. for one box of cutlery marked Wright & Perry, and

(c) One—the hardest receipt of all to get—from Martha Morton for six chickens as per account rendered. These receipts hang on a spindle in the little room. Under the spindle is

Item Eight. A bottle of whisky—full but uncorked. He is in his room but little. Sometimes he comes in late at night, and does not light the lamp to avoid seeing the bottle, but plunges into bed, and covers up his head in fear and trembling. On the day when the Peach Blow Philosopher printed his view on Heaven, Mr. Fenn, by way of personal adornment, had purchased of Wright & Perry

Item Nine. One new coat. He hoped and so indicated to the firm, to be able to afford a vest in the spring and perhaps trousers by summer, and because of the cutlery transaction above mentioned, the firm indicated

Item Ten. That Mr. Fenn's credit was good for the whole suit. But Mr. Fenn waved a proud hand and said he had

Item Eleven. No desire to become involved in the devious ways of high finance, and took only the coat.

But, nevertheless, no small part of his Heaven lies in the serene knowledge that the whole suit is waiting for him, carefully put aside by the head of the house until Mr. Fenn cares to call for it. That is perhaps a material Heaven but it is a part of Mr. Fenn's Heaven, and as he goes about from door to door soliciting for sewing, the knowledge that if he should cease or falter four women might be on the street the next night, keeps him happy, and not even when he was county attorney or in the real estate business nor writing insurance, nor disporting himself as an auctioneer was Mr. Fenn ever in his own mind a person of so much use and consequence. So his Heaven needs no east wind to belly it out. Mr. Fenn's Heaven is full and fat and prosperous—even on two meals a day and in a three-dollar-a-month room.

And now that we may balance up the Heaven account in these books, we should come to some conclusion as to what Heaven is. Let us call it, for the sake of our hypothesis, the most work one can do for the least self-interest, and let it go at that and get on with the story. For this story has to do with large and real affairs. It must not dally here with the sordid affairs of a lady who certainly was no better than she should be and of a gentleman who was as the hereinbefore mentioned receipts will show, much worse than he might have been.



CHAPTER XXXV

THE ODD SPIDER BEGINS TO DIVIDE HIS FLIES WITH OTHERS AND GEORGE BROTHERTON IS PUZZLED TWICE IN ONE NIGHT

Now it was in the year of these minor conquests when Henry Fenn and Violet Hogan were enjoying their little Heavens that great things began to stir in Harvey and the Wahoo Valley. In May a young gentleman in a high hat and a suit of exquisite gray twill cut with a long frock coat, appeared at the Hotel Sands—and took the bridal suite on the second floor. He brought letters to the Traders' Bank and from the Bank took letters to the smelters, and with a notebook in hand the young man in exquisite gray twill went about for three or four days smiling affably, and asking many questions. Then he left and in due course—that is to say, in a fortnight—Mr. Sands called the managing officials of all the smelters into his back room and read them a letter from a New York firm offering to trade stock in a holding company, taking over smelters of the class and kind in the Wahoo Valley for the stocks and bonds of the Harvey Smelters Company. The letterhead was so awe-inspiring and the proposition was so convincing by reason of the terror inherent in the letterhead that the smelters went into the holding company, and thereafter the managing officials who had been men of power and consequence in Harvey became clerks. About the same time the coal properties went the same way, and the cement concerns saw their finish as individual competing concerns. The glass factories were also gobbled up. So when the Fourth of July came and the youngest Miss Morton, under great protest, but at her father's stern command, wrapped an American flag about her—and sang the "Star Spangled Banner" to the Veterans of Persifer F. Smith Post of the G.A.R. in Sands'

Park, the land of the free and the home of the brave in Harvey was somewhat abridged.

Daniel Sands felt the abridgement more than any one else. For a generation he had been a spider, weaving his own web for his own nest. All his webs and filaments and wires and pipes and cables went out and brought back things for him to dispose of. He was the center of the universe for himself and for Harvey. He was the beginning and the end. His bank was the first and the last word in business and in politics in that great valley. What he spun was his; what he drew into the web was his. When he invited the fly into his parlor, it was for the delectation of the spider, not to be passed on to some other larger web and fatter spider. But that day as he sat, a withered, yellow-skinned, red-eyed, rattle-toothed, old man with a palsied head that never stopped wagging, as he sat under his skull cap, blinking out at a fat, little world that always had been his prey, Daniel Sands felt that he had ceased to be an end, and had become a means.

His bank, his mines, his smelters, even his municipal utilities, all were slipping from under his control. He could feel the pull of the rope from the outside around his own foot. He could feel that he was not a generator of power. He was merely a pumping station, gathering up all the fat of the little land that once was his, and passing it out in pipes that ran he knew not where, to go to some one else—he knew not whom. True, his commissions came back, and his dividends came back, and they were rich and sweet, and worth while. But—he was shocked when he found courage to ask it—if they did not come back, what could he do? He was part of a great web—a little filament in one obscure corner, and he was spinning a fabric whose faintest plan he could not conceive.

This angered him, and the spider spat in vain rage. The power he loved was gone; he was the mere shell of a spider; he was dead. Some man might come into the bank to-morrow and take even the semblance of his power from him. They might, indeed, shut up every mill, close every mine, lock every factory, douse the fire in every smelter in the Wahoo Valley, and the man who believed he had opened the mills, dug the mines, builded the factories and lighted the smelter fires with all but his own hands, could only rage and fume, or be polite and pretend it was his desire.

The town that he believed that he had made out of sunshine and prairie grass, for all he could do, might be condemned as a bat roost, and the wires and cables, that ran from his desk all over the Wahoo Valley, might grow rusty and jangle in the prairie winds, while the pipes rotted under the sunflowers and he could only make a wry face. Spiders must have some instinctive constructive imagination to build their marvelous webs; surely this old spider had an imagination that in Elizabeth's day would have made him more than a minor poet. Yet in the beginning of the Twentieth Century he felt himself a bound prisoner in his decaying web. So he showed his blue mouth, and red eyelids in fury, and was silent lest even his shadow should find how impotent a thing he was.

But he knew that one man knew. "How about your politics down here?" asked the affable young man in exquisite gray twill, when he closed the gas-works deal. And Dan'l Sands said that until recently he and Dr. Nesbit had been cronies, but that some way the Doctor had been getting high notions, and hadn't been around the bank lately. The young man in the exquisite gray twill asked a few questions, catalogued the Doctor, and then said:

"This man Van Dorn, it appears, is local attorney for all the mines and smelters—he hasn't the reform bug, has he?"

The old spider grinned and shook his head.

"All right," said the polite young man in the exquisite gray twill, as he picked up his gray, high hat, and flicked a speck of dust from his exquisite gray frock coat, "I'll take matters of politics up with him."

So the spider knew that the servant had been put over the master, and again he opened his mouth in malice, but spoke no word.

And thus it was that Judge Thomas Van Dorn formed a strong New York connection that stood him in stead in after years. For the web that the old spider of Market Street had been weaving all these years, was at its strongest but a rope of sand compared with the steel links of the chain that was wrapped about the town, with one end in the Judge's hand, but with the chain reaching out into some distant, mysterious hawser that moved it with a power of which even the Judge knew little or nothing.

So he was profoundly impressed, and accordingly proud, and added half an inch to the high-knee action of his strut. He felt himself a part of the world of affairs—and he was indeed a part. He was one of a thousand men who, whether they knew it or not, had been bought, body and soul—though the soul was thrown in for good measure in the Judge's case—to serve the great, greedy spider of organized capital at whatever cost of public welfare or of private faith. He was indeed a man of affairs—was Thomas Van Dorn—a part of a vast business and political cabal, that knew no party and no creed but dividends and still more dividends, impersonal, automatic, soulless—the materialization of the spirit of commerce.

And strangely enough, just as Tom Van Dorn worshiped the power that bought him, so the old spider, peering through the broken, rotting meshes of what was once his web, felt the power to which it was fastened, felt the power that moved him as a mere pawn in a game whose direction he did not conceive; and Dan'l Sands, in spite of his silent rage, worshiped the power like a groveling idolater.

But the worm never lacks for a bud; that also is a part of God's plan. Thus, while the forces of egoism, the powers of capital, were concentrating in a vast organization of socialized individualism, the other forces and powers of society which were pointing toward a socialized altruism, were forming also. There was the man in the exquisite gray twill, harnessing Judge Van Dorn and Market Street to his will; and there was Grant Adams in faded overalls, harnessing labor to other wheels that were grinding another grist. Slowly but persistently had Grant Adams been forming his Amalgamation of the Unions of the valley. Slowly and awkwardly his unwieldy machinery was creaking its way round. In spite of handicaps of opposing interests among the men of different unions, his Wahoo Valley Labor Council was shaping itself into an effective machine. If the shares of stock in the mills and the mines and the smelters all ran their dividends through one great hopper, so the units of labor in the Valley were connected with a common source of direction. God does not plant the organizing spirit in the world for one group; it is the common heritage of the time. So the sinister power of organized capital loomed before Market Street with its terrible threat of extinction for the town if the town displeased organized capital; so also rose in the town a dread feeling of uneasiness that labor also had power. The personification of that power was Grant Adams. And when the young man in exquisite gray twill had become only a memory, Tom Van Dorn squarely faced Grant Adams. Market Street was behind the Judge. The Valley was back of Grant. For a time there was a truce, but it was not peace. The truce was a time of waiting; waiting and arming for battle.

During the year of the truce, Nathan Perry was busy. Nathan Perry saw the power that was organizing about him and the Independent mine among the employers in the district, and intuitively he felt the resistlessness of the power. But he did not shrink. He advised his owners to join the combination as a business proposition. But his advice was a dead fly fed to the old spider's senile vanity. For Daniel Sands had been able to dictate as a part of his acceptance of the proposition, this one concession: That the Independent mine be kept out of the agreement. Nathan Perry suspected this. But most of his owners were game men, and they decided not even to apply for admission to the organization. They found that the young man's management of the mine was paying well; that the labor problem was working satisfactorily; that the safety devices, while expensive, produced a feeling of good-will among the men that was worth more even in dividends than the interest on the money.

But after he had warned his employers of the wrath to come, Nathan Perry did not spend much time in unavailing regret at their decision. He was, upon the whole, glad they had made it. And having a serious problem in philology to work out—namely, to discover whether Esperanto, Chinese or Dutch is the natural language of man, through study of the conversational tendencies of Daniel Kyle Perry, the young superintendent of the Independent mine gave serious thought to that problem.

Then, of course, there was that other problem that bothered Nathan Perry, and being an engineer with a degree of B. S., it annoyed him to discover that the problem wouldn't come out straight. Briefly and popularly stated, it is this: If you have a boiler capacity of 200 pounds per square inch and love a girl 200 pounds to the square inch, and then the Doctor in his black bag brings one fat, sweaty, wrinkled baby, and you see the girl in a new and sweeter light than ever before, see her in a thousand ways rising above her former stature to a wonderful womanhood beyond even your dreams—how are you going to get more capacity out of that boiler without breaking it, when the load calls for four hundred pounds? Now these problems puzzled the young man, living at that time in his eight-room house with a bath, and he sat up nights to work them. And some times there were two heads at work on the sums, and once in a while three heads, but the third head talked a various language, whose mild and healing sympathy stole the puzzle from the problem and began chewing on it before they were aware. So Nathan put the troubles of the mine on the hook whereon he hung his coat at night, and if he felt uneasy at the trend of the day's events, his uneasiness did not come to him at home. He had heard it whispered about—once by the men and once in a directors' meeting—that the clash with Grant Adams was about to come. If Nathan had any serious wish in relation to the future, it was the ardent hope that the clash would come and come soon.

For the toll of death in the Wahoo Valley was cruel and inexorable. The mines, the factories, the railroads, the smelters, all were death traps, and the maimed, blind and helpless were cast out of the great industrial hopper like chaff. Every little neighborhood had its cripple. From the mines came the blind—whose sight was taken from them by cheap powder; from the railroad yards came the maimed—the handless, armless, legless men who, in their daily tasks had been crushed by inferior car couplings; the smelters sent out their sick, whom the fumes had poisoned, and sometimes there would come out a charred trunk that had gone into the great molten vats a man. The factories took hands and forearms, and sometimes when an accident of unusual horror occurred in the Valley, it would seem like a place of mourning. The burden of all this bloodshed and death was upon the laborers. And more than that,—the burden of the widows and orphans also was upon labor. Capital charged off the broken machinery, the damaged buildings, the worn-out equipment to profit and loss with an easy conscience, while the broken men all over the Valley, the damaged laborers, the worn-out workers, who were thrown to the scrap heap in maturity, were charged to labor. And labor paid this bill, chiefly because capital was too greedy to provide safe machinery, or sanitary shops, or adequate tools!

Nathan Perry, first miner, then pit-boss and finally superintendent, and always member of Local Miners' Union No. 10, knew what the men were vaguely beginning to see and think. When some man who had been to court to collect damages for a killed or crippled friend, some man who had heard the Judge talk of the assumed risk of labor, some man who had heard lawyers split hairs to cheat working men of what common sense and common justice said was theirs, when some such man cried out in hatred and agony against society, Nathan Perry tried to counsel patience, tried to curb the malice. But in his heart Nathan Perry knew that if he had suffered the wrongs that such a man suffered, he too would be full of wrath and class hatred.

Sometimes, of course, men rose from the pit. Foremen became managers, managers became superintendents, superintendents became owners, owners became rich, and society replied—"Look, it is easy for a man to rise." Once at lunch time, sitting in the shaft house, Nathan Perry with his hands in his dinner bucket said something of the kind, when Tom Williams, the little Welsh miner, who was a disciple and friend of Grant Adams, cried:

"Yes—that's true. It is easy for a man to rise. It was easy for a slave to escape from the South—comparatively easy. But is it easy for the class to rise? Was it easy for the slaves to be free? That is the problem—the problem of lifting a whole class—as your class has been lifted, young fellow, in the last century. Why, over in Wales a century ago, a mere tradesman's son like you—was—was nobody. The middle classes had nothing—that is, nothing much. They have risen. They rule the world now. This century must see the rise of the laboring class; not here and there as a man who gets out of our class and then sneers at us, and pretends he was with us by accident—but we must rise as a class, boy—don't you see?"

And so, working in the mine, with the men, Nathan Perry completed his education. He learned—had it ground into him by the hard master of daily toil—that while bread and butter is an individual problem that no laborer may neglect except at his peril, the larger problems of the conditions under which men labor—their hours of service, their factory surroundings, their shop rights to work, their relation to accidents and to the common diseases peculiar to any trade—those are not individual problems. They are class problems and must be solved—in so far as labor can solve them alone, not by individual struggle but by class struggle. So Nathan Perry came up out of the mines a believer in the union, and the closed shop. He felt that those who would make the class problem an individual problem, were only retarding the day of settlement, only hindering progress.

Rumor said that the truce in the Wahoo Valley was near an end. Nathan Perry did not shrink from it. But Market Street was uneasy. It seemed to be watching an approaching cyclone. When men knew that the owners were ready to stop the organization of unions, the cloud of unrest seemed to hover over them. But the clouds dissolved in rumor. Then they gathered again, and it was said that Grant Adams was to be gagged, his Sunday meetings abolished or that he was to be banished from the Valley. Again the clouds dissolved. Nothing happened. But the cloud was forever on the horizon, and Market Street was afraid. For Market Street—as a street—was chiefly interested in selling goods. It had, of course, vague yearnings for social justice—yearnings about as distinct as the desire to know if the moon was inhabited. But as a street, Market Street was with Mrs. Herdicker—it never talked against the cash drawer. Market Street, the world over, is interested in things as they are. The statuo quo is God and laissez faire is its profit! So Market Street murmured, and buzzed—and then Market Street also organized to worship the god of things as they are.

But Mr. Brotherton of the Brotherton Book & Stationery Company held aloof from the Merchants' Protective Association. Mr. Brotherton at odd times, at first by way of diversion, and then as a matter of education for his growing business, had been glancing at the contents of his wares. Particularly had he been interested in the magazines. Moreover, he was talking. And because it helped him to sell goods to talk about them, he kept on talking.

About this time he affected flowing negligee bow ties, and let his thin, light hair go fluffy and he wrapped rather casually it seemed, about his elephantine bulk, a variety of loose, baggy garb, which looked like a circus tent. But he was a born salesman—was Mr. Brotherton. He plastered literature over Harvey in carload lots.

One day while Mr. Brotherton was wrapping up "Little Women" and a "Little Colonel" book and "Children of the Abbey" that Dr. Nesbit was buying for Lila Van Dorn, the Doctor piped, "Well, George, they say you're getting to be a regular anarchist—the way you're talking about conditions in the Valley?"

"Not for a minute," answered Mr. Brotherton. "Why, man, all I said was that if the old spider kept making the men use that cheap powder that blows their eyes out and their hands off, and their legs off, they ought to unionize and strike. And if it was my job to handle that powder I'd tie the old devil on a blast and blow him into hamburger." Mr. Brotherton's rising emotions reddened his forehead under his thin hair, and pulled at his wind. He shook a weary head and leaned on a show case. "But I say, stand by the boys. Maybe it will make a year of bad times or maybe two; but what of that? It'll make better times in the end."

"All right, George—go in. I glory in your spunk!" chirped the Doctor as he put Lila's package under his arm. "Let me tell you something," he added, "I've got a bill I'm going to push in the next legislature that will knock a hole in that doctrine of the assumed risk of labor, you can drive a horse through. It makes the owners pay for the accidents of a trade, instead of hiding behind that theory, that a man assumes those risks when he takes a job."

The Doctor put his head to one side, cocked one eye and cried: "How would that go?"

"Now you're shoutin', Doc. Bust a machine, and the company pays for it. Bust a man, the man pays for it or his wife and children or his friends or the county. That's not fair. A man's as much of a part of the cost of production as a machine!"

The Doctor toddled out, clicking his cane and whistling a merry tune and left Mr. Brotherton enjoying his maiden meditations upon the injustices of this world. In the midst of his meditations he found that he had been listening for five minutes to Captain Morton. The Captain was expounding some passing dream about his Household Horse. Apparently the motor car, which was multiplying rapidly in Harvey, had impressed him. He was telling Mr. Brotherton that his Household Horse, if harnessed to the motor car, would save much of the power wasted by the chains. He was dreaming of the distant day when motor cars would be used in sufficient numbers to make it profitable for the Captain to equip them with his power saving device.

But Mr. Brotherton cut into the Captain's musings with: "You tell the girls to wash the cat for I'm coming out to-night."

"Girls?—huh—girls?" replied the Captain as he looked over his spectacles at Mr. Brotherton. "'Y gory, man, what's the matter with me—eh? I'm staying out there on Elm Street yet—what say?" And he went out smiling.

When the Captain entered the house, he found Emma getting supper, Martha setting the table and Ruth, with a candy box before her at the piano, going over her everlasting "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahs" from "C to C" as Emma called it.

Emma took her father's hat, put it away and said: "Well, father—what's the news?"

"Well," replied the Captain, with some show of deliberation, "a friend of mine down town told me to tell you girls to wash the cat for he'll be along here about eight o'clock."

"Mr. Brotherton," scoffed Ruth. "It's up to you two," she cried gayly in the midst of her eternal journey from "C" to "C." "He never wears his Odd Fellows' pin unless he's been singing at an Odd Fellows' funeral, so that lets me out to-night."

"Well," sighed Emma, "I don't know that I want him even if he has on his Shriner's pin. I just believe I'll go to bed. The way I feel to-night I'm so sick of children I believe I wouldn't marry the best man on earth."

"Oh, well, of course, Emma," suggested the handsome Miss Morton, "if you feel that way about it why, I—"

"Now Martha—" cried the elder sister, "can't you let me alone and get out of here? I tell you, the superintendent and the principal and the janitor and the dratted Calvin kid all broke loose to-day and I'm liable to run out doors and begin to jump and down in the street and scream if you start on me."

But after supper the three Misses Morton went upstairs, and did what they could to wipe away the cares of a long and weary day. They put on their second best dresses—all but Emma, who put on her best, saying she had nothing else that wasn't full of chalk and worry. At seven forty-five, they had the parlor illuminated. As for the pictures and bric-a-brac—to-wit, a hammered brass flower pot near the grate, and sitting on an onyx stand a picture of Richard Harding Davis, the contribution of the eldest Miss Morton's callow youth, also a brass smoking set on a mission table, the contribution of the youngest Miss Morton from her first choir money—as for the pictures and bric-a-brac, they were dusted until they glistened, and the trap was all set, waiting for the prey.

They heard the gate click and the youngest Miss Morton said quickly: "Well, if he's an Odd Fellow, I guess I'll take him. But," she sighed, "I'll bet a cooky he's an Elk and Martha gets him."

The Captain went to the door and brought in the victim to as sweet and demure a trio of surprised young women and as patient a cat, as ever sat beside a rat hole. After he had greeted the girls—it was Ruth who took his coat, and Martha his hat, but Emma who held his hand a second the longest, after she spied the Shriner's pin—Mr. Brotherton picked up the cat.

"Well, Epaminondas," he puffed as he stroked the animal and put it to his cheek, "did they take his dear little kitties away from him—the horrid things."

This was Mr. Brotherton's standard joke. Ruth said she never felt the meeting was really opened until he had teased them about Epaminondas' pretended kittens.

For the first hour the talk ranged with obvious punctility over a variety of subjects—but never once did Mr. Brotherton approach the subject of politics, which would hold the Captain for a night session. Instead, Mr. Brotherton spun literary tales from the shop. Then the Captain broke in and enlivened the company with a description of Tom Van Dorn's new automobile, and went into such details as to cams and cogs and levers and other mechanical fittings that every one yawned and the cat stretched himself, and the Captain incidentally told the company that he had got Van Dorn's permission to try the Household Horse on the old machine before it went in on the trade.

Then Ruth rose. "Why, Ruth, dear," said Emma sweetly, "where are you going?"

"Just to get a drink, dear," replied Ruth.

But it took her all night to finish drinking and she did not return. Martha rose, began straightening up the littered music on the piano, and being near the door, slipped out. By this time the Captain was doing most of the talking. Chiefly, he was telling what he thought the sprocket needed to make it work upon an automobile. At the hall door of the dining room two heads appeared, and though the door creaked about the time the clock struck the half hour, Mr. Brotherton did not see the heads. They were behind him, and four arms began making signs at the Captain. He looked at them, puzzled and anxious for a minute or two. They were peremptorily beckoning him out. Finally, it came to him, and he said to the girls: "Oh, yes—all right." This broke at the wrong time into something Mr. Brotherton was saying. He looked up astonished and the Captain, abashed, smiled and after shuffling his feet, backed up to the base burner and hummed the tune about the land that was fairer than day. Emma and Mr. Brotherton began talking. Presently, the Captain picked up the spitting cat by the scruff of the neck and held him a moment under his chin. "Well, Emmy," he cut in, interrupting her story of how Miss Carhart had told the principal if "he ever told of her engagement before school was out in June, she'd just die," with:

"I suppose there'll be plenty of potatoes for the hash?"

And not waiting for answer, he marched to the kitchen with the cat, and in due time, they heard the "Sweet Bye and Bye" going up the back stairs, and then the thump, thump of the Captain's shoes on the floor above them.

The eldest Miss Morton, in her best silk dress, with her mother's cameo brooch at her throat, and with the full, maidenly ripeness of twenty-nine years upon her brow, with her hair demurely parted on said brow, where there was the faintest hint of a wrinkle coming—which Miss Morton attributed to a person she called "the dratted Calvin kid,"—the eldest Miss Morton, hair, cameo, silk dress, wrinkle, the dratted Calvin kid and all, did or did not look like a siren, according to the point of view of the spectator. If he was seeking the voluptuous curves of the early spring of youth—no: but if he was seeking those quieter and more restful lines that follow a maiden with a true and tender heart, who is a good cook and who sweeps under the sofa, yes.

Mr. Brotherton did not know exactly what he desired. He had been coming to the Morton home on various errands since the girls were little tots. He had seen Emma in her first millinery store hat. He had bought Martha her first sled; he had got Ruth her last doll. But he shook his head. He liked them all. And then, as though to puzzle him more, he had noticed that for two or three years, he had never got more than two consecutive evenings with any of them—or with all of them. The mystery of their conduct baffled him. He sometimes wondered indignantly why they worked him in shifts? Sometimes he had Ruth twice; sometimes Emma and Martha in succession—sometimes Martha twice. He like them all. But he could not understand what system they followed in disposing of him. So as he sat and toyed with his Shriner's pin and listened to the tales of a tepid schoolmistress' romance that Emma told, he wondered if after all—for a man of his tastes, she wasn't really the flower of the flock.

"You know, George," she was old enough for that, and at rare times when they were alone she called him George, "I'm working up a kind of sorrow for Judge Van Dorn—or pity or something. When I taught little Lila he was always sending her candy and little trinkets. Now Lila is in the grade above me, and do you know the Judge has taken to walking by the schoolhouse at recess, just to see her, and walking along at noon and at night to get a word with her. He has put up a swing and a teeter-totter board on the girls' playgrounds. This morning I saw him standing, gazing after her, and he was as sad a figure as I ever saw. He caught me looking at him and smiled and said:

"'Fine girl, Emma,' and walked away."

"Lord, Emma," said Mr. Brotherton, as he brought his big, baseball hands down on his fat knees. "I don't blame him. Don't you just think children are about the nicest things in this world?"

Emma was silent. She had expressed other sentiments too recently. Still she smiled. And he went on:

"Oh, wow!—they're mighty fine to have around."

But Mr. Brotherton was restless after that, and when the clock was striking ten he was in the hall. He left as he had gone for a dozen years. And the young woman stood watching him through the glass of the door, a big, strong, handsome man—who strode down the walk with clicking heels of pride, and she turned away sadly and hurried upstairs.

"Martha," she asked, as she took down her hair, "was it ordained in the beginning of the world that all school teachers would have to take widowers?"

And without hearing the answer, she put out the light.

Mr. Brotherton, stalking—not altogether unconsciously down the walk, turned into the street and as he went down the hill, he was aware that a boy was overtaking him. He let the boy catch up with him. "Oh, Mr. Brotherton," cried the boy, "I've been looking for you!"

"Well, here I am; what's the trouble?"

"Grant sent me," returned the boy, "to ask you if he could see you at eight o'clock to-morrow morning at the store?"

Brotherton looked the boy over and exclaimed:

"Grant?" and then, "Oh—why, Kenyon, I didn't know you. You are certainly that human bean-stalk, son. Let's take a look at you. Well, say—" Mr. Brotherton stopped and backed up and paused for dramatic effect. Then he exploded: "Say, boy, if I had you in an olive wood frame, I could get $2.75 or $3.00 for you as Narcissus or a boy Adonis! You surely are the angel child!"

The boy's great black eyes shone up at the man with something wistful and dream-like in them that only his large, sensitive mouth seemed to comprehend. For the rest of the child's face was boy—boy in early adolescence. The boy answered simply:

"Grant said to tell you that he expects the break to-morrow and is anxious to see you."

Mr. Brotherton looked at the boy again—the eyes haunted the man—he could not place them, yet they were familiar to him.

"Where you been, kid?" he asked. "I thought you were in Boston, studying."

"It's vacation, sir," answered Kenyon.

Brotherton pulled the lad up under the next corner electric lamp and again gazed at him. Then Mr. Brotherton remembered where he had seen the eyes. The second Mrs. Van Dorn had them. This bothered the man.

The eyes of the boy that flashed so brightly into Mr. Brotherton's eyes, certainly puzzled him and startled him. But not so much as the news the boy carried. For then Mr. Brotherton knew that Market Street would be buzzing in the morning and that the cyclone clouds that were lowering, soon would break into storm.



CHAPTER XXXVI

A LONG CHAPTER BUT A BUSY ONE, IN WHICH KENYON ADAMS AND HIS MOTHER HAVE A STRANGE MEETING, AND LILA VAN DORN TAKES A NIGHT RIDE

The next morning at eight o'clock, Grant Adams came hurrying into Brotherton's store. As he strode down the long store room, Brotherton thought that Grant in his street clothes looked less of a person than Grant in his overalls. But the big man rose like a frisky mountain in earthquake and called:

"Hello there, Danton—going to shake down the furnace fires of revolution this morning, I understand."

Grant stared at Brotherton. Solemnly he said, as he stood an awkward moment before sitting. "Well, Mr. Brotherton, the time has come, when I must fight. To-day is the day!"

"Yes," replied Brotherton, "I heard a few minutes ago that they were going to run you out of the district to-day. The meeting in the Commercial Club rooms is being called now."

"Yes," said Grant, "and I've been asked to appear before them."

"I guess they are going to try and bluff you out, Grant," said Brotherton.

"I got wind of it last night," said Grant, "when they nailed up the last hall in the Valley against me. One after another of the public halls has been closed to me during the past year. But to-day is to be our first public rally of the delegates of the Wahoo Valley Trades Council. We have rented office rooms in the second floor of the Vanderbilt House in South Harvey, and are coming out openly as an established labor organization, ready for business in the Valley, and we are going to have a big meeting—somewhere—I don't know where now, but somewhere—" his face turned grim and a fanatic flame lighted his eyes as he spoke. "Somewhere the delegates of the Council will meet to-night, and I shall talk to them—or—"

"Soh, boss—soh, boss—don't get excited," counseled Mr. Brotherton. "They'll blow off a little steam in the meeting this morning, and then you go on about your business."

"But you don't know what I know, George Brotherton," protested Grant as he leaned forward. "I have converted enough spies—oh, no—not counting the spies who were converted merely to scare me—but enough real spies to know that they mean business!" He stopped, and sitting back in his chair again, he said grimly, "And so do I—I shall talk to the men to-night, or—"

"All right, son; you'll talk or 'the boy, oh, where was he?' I'll tell you what," cried Mr. Brotherton; "you'll fool around with the buzz saw till you'll get killed. Now, look here, Grant—I'm for your revolution, and six buckets of blood. But you can't afford to lose 'em! You're dead right about the chains of slavery and all that sort of thing, but don't get too excited about it. You live down there alone with your father and he is talking to spooks, and you're talking to yourself; and you've got a kind of ingrown idea of this thing. Give the Lord a little time, and he'll work out this pizen in our social system. I'll help you, and maybe before long Doc'll see the light and help you; but now you need a regulator. You ought to have a wife and about six children to hook you up to the ordinary course of nature! And see here, Grant," Mr. Brotherton dropped a weighty hand on Grant's shoulder, "if you don't be careful you'll furnish the ingredients of a public funeral, and where will your revolution be then—and the boys in the Valley and your father and Kenyon?"

While Brotherton was speaking, Grant sat with an impassive face. But when Kenyon's name was uttered he looked up quickly and answered:

"That is why I am here this morning; it's about Kenyon. George Brotherton, that boy is more than life to me." The fanatic light was gone from Grant's eyes, and the soft glow in them revealed a man that George Brotherton had not seen in years. "Mr. Brotherton," continued Grant, "father is getting too old to do much for Kenyon. The Nesbits have borne practically all the expense of educating him. But the Doctor won't always be here." Again he hesitated. Then he went ahead as if he had decided for the last time. "George Brotherton, if I should be snuffed out, I want you to look after Kenyon—if ever he needs it. You have no one, and—" Grant leaned forward and grasped Brotherton's great hands and cried, "George Brotherton, if you knew the gold in that boy's heart, and what he can do with a violin, and how his soul is unfolding under the spell of his music. He's so dumb and tongue-tied and unformed now; and yet—"

"Well—say!" It came out of Mr. Brotherton with a crash like a falling tree, "Grant—well, say! Through sickness and health, for better or for worse, till death do us part—if that will satisfy you." He put his big paw over and grabbed Grant's steel hook and jerked him to his feet. "You've sure sold Kenyon into bondage. When I saw him last night—honest to God, man—I thought I'd run into a picture roaming around out of stock without a frame! Him and me together can do Ariel and Prospero without a scratch of make-up." Grant beamed, but when Brotherton exclaimed as an afterthought, "Say, man, what about that boy's eyes?" Grant's features mantled and the old grim look overcast his face, as Brotherton went on: "Why, them eyes would make a madonna's look like fried eggs! Where did he get 'em—they're not Sands and they're not Adams. He must take back to some Peri that blew into Massachusetts from an enchanted isle." Brotherton saw that he was annoying Grant in some way. Often he realized that his language was not producing the desired effect; so he veered about and said gently, "You're not in any danger, Grant; but so long as I'm wearing clothes that button up the front—don't worry about Kenyon, I'll look after him."