In the Heart of a Fool

It is still an evening in May!

“Well, how is the missionary to South Harvey,” chirrups the Doctor as he mounts the steps, and sees his daughter, waiting for him on the veranda. She looks cool and fresh and beautiful. Her eyes and her skin glow with health and her face beams upon him out of a soul at peace.

“She’s all right,” returns the daughter, smiling. “How’s the khedive of Greeley county?”

As the Doctor mounts the steps she continues: “Sit down, father–I’ve something on my mind.” To her father’s inquiring face she replied, “It’s Lila. Her father has been after her again. She just came home crying as though her little heart would break. It’s so pitiful–she loves him; that is left over from her babyhood; but she is learning someway–perhaps from the children, perhaps from life–what he has done–and when he tries to attract her–she shrinks away from him.”

“And he knows why–he knows why, Laura.” The Doctor taps the floor softly with his cane. “It isn’t all gone–Tom’s heart, I mean. Somewhere deep in his consciousness he is hungering for affection–for respect–for understanding. You haven’t seen Tom’s eyes recently?” The daughter makes no reply. “I have,” he continues. “They’re burned out–kind of glassy–scummed over with the searing of the hell he carries in his heart–like the girls’ eyes down in the Row. For he is dying at the heart–burning out with everything he has asked for in his hands, yet turning to Lila!”

“Father,” she says with her eyes brimming, “I’m not angry with Tom–only sorry. He hasn’t hurt me–much–when it’s all figured out. I still have my faith–my faith in folks–and in God! Really to take away one’s faith is the only wrong one can do to another!”

The father says, “The chief wrong he did you was when he married you. It was nobody’s fault; I might have stopped it–but no man can be sure of those things. It was just one of the inevitable mistakes of youth, my dear, that come into our lives, one way or another. They fall upon the just and the unjust–without any reference to deserts.”

She nods her assent and they sit listening to the sounds of the closing day–to the vesper bell in the Valley, to the hum of the trolley bringing its homecomers up from the town; to the drone of the five o’clock whistles in South Harvey, to the rattle of homebound buggies. Twice the daughter starts to speak. The second time she stops the Doctor pipes up, “Let it come–out with it–tell your daddy if anything is on your mind.” She smiles up into his mobile face, to find only sympathy there. So she speaks, but she speaks hesitatingly.

“I believe that I am going to be happy–really and truly happy!” She does not smile but looks seriously at her father as she presses his hand and pats it. “I am finding my place–doing my work–creating something–not the home that I once hoped for–not the home that I would have now, but it is something good and worth while. It is self respect in me and self respect in those wives and mothers and children in South Harvey. All over the place I find its roots–the shrivelled parching roots of self-respect, and the aspiration that grows with self respect. Sometimes I see it in a geranium flowering in a tomato can, set in a window; oftentimes in a cheap lace curtain; occasionally in a struggling, stunted yellow rose bush in the hard-beaten earth of a dooryard; or in a second hand wheezy cabinet organ in some front bedroom–in a thousand little signs of aspiration, I find America asserting itself among these poor people, and as I cherish these things I find happiness asserting itself in my life. So it’s my job, my consecrated job in this earth–to water the geranium, to prune the rose, to mulch the roots of self-respect among these people, and I am happy, father, happier every day that I walk that way.”

She looks wistfully into her father’s face. “Father, you won’t quite understand me when I tell you that the tomato cans with their geraniums behind those gray lace curtains, that make Harvey people smile, are really not tomato cans at all. They are social dynamite bombs that one day will blow into splinters and rubbish the injustices, the cruel injustices of life that the poor suffer at the hands of their exploiters. The geranium is the flower, the spring flower of the divine discontent, which some day shall bear great and wonderful fruit.”

“Rather a swift pace you’re setting for a fat man, Laura,” pipes the Doctor, adding earnestly: “There you go talking like Grant Adams! Don’t let Grant Adams fool you, child: the end of the world isn’t here. Grant’s a good boy, Laura, and I like him; but he’s getting a kind of Millerite notion that we’re about to put on white robes and go straight up to glory, politically and socially and every which way, in a few years, and there’s nothing to it. Grant’s a good son, and a good brother, and a good friend and neighbor, but”–the Doctor pounds his chair arm vehemently, “there are bats, my dear, bats in his belfry just the same. Don’t get excited when you see Grant mount his haystack to jump into the crack o’ doom for the established order!”

The daughter smiles at him, but she answers:

“Perhaps Grant is touched–touched with the mad impatience of God’s fools, father. I don’t always follow Grant. He goes his way and I go mine. But I am sure of this, that the thing which will really start South Harvey, and all the South Harveys in the world out of their dirt and misery, and vice, is not our dreams for them, but their dreams for themselves. They must see the vision. They must aspire. They must feel the impulse to sacrifice greatly, to consecrate themselves deeply, to give and give and give of themselves that their children may know better things. And it is my work to arouse their dreams, to inspire their visions, to make them yearn for better living. I am trying to teach them to use and to love beautiful things, that they may be restless among ugly things. I think beauty only serves God as the handmaiden of discontent! And, father, way down deep in my heart–I know–I know surely that I must do this–that it is my reason for being–now that life has taken the greater joy of home from me. So,” she concludes solemnly; “these people whom I love, they need me, but father, God and you only know how I need them. I don’t know about Grant,–I mean why he is going his solitary way, but perhaps somewhere in his heart there is a wound! Perhaps all of God’s fools–those who live queer, unnormal self-forgetting lives, are the broken and rejected pieces of life’s masonry which the builder is using in his own wise way. As for the plan, it is not ours. Grant and I, broken spawl in the rising edifice, we and thousands like us, odd pieces that chink in yet hold the strain–we must be content to hold the load and know always–always know that after all the wall is rising! That is enough.”

And now we must put aside the pictures and get on with the story.

CHAPTER XXX

GRANT ADAMS PREACHING A MESSAGE OF LOVE RAISES THE VERY DEVIL IN HARVEY

The most dramatic agency in life is time–time that escapes the staged drama. The passing years, the ceaseless chiselling of continuous events upon a soul, the reaction of a creed upon the material routine of the days, the humdrum living through of life that brings to it its final color and form–these things shape us and guide us, make us what we are, and alas, the story and the stage may only mention them. It is all very fine to say that as the years of work and aspiration passed, Grant Adams’s channel of life grew narrower. But what does that tell? Does it tell of the slow, daily sculpturing upon his character of the three big, emotional episodes of his life? To be a father in boyhood, a father ashamed, yet in duty bound to love and cherish his child; to face death in youth horribly and escape only when other men’s courage save him; to react upon that experience in a great spiritual awakening that all but touched madness; and to face unspeakable pain and terror and possible death to justify one’s fanatic consecration. Then day by day to renounce ambition, to feel no desire for those deeper things of the heart that gather about a home and the joys of a home; to be atrophied where others are quick and to be supersensitive and highstrung where others are dull; these are facts of Grant Adams’s life, but the greater facts are hidden; for they pass under the slow and inexorably moving current of life. They are that part of the living through of life that may not be staged nor told.

But something of the living through is marked on the man. Here he stands toward the close of the century that bore him–a tall, spare, red-haired, flint-visaged, wire-knit man, prematurely middle-aging in late youth. Under his high white forehead are restless blue eyes–deep, clear, challenging, combative blue eyes, a big nose protrudes from under the eyes that marks a willful, uncompromising creature and a big strong mouth, not finely cut, but with thick, hard lips, often chapped, that cover large irregular teeth. The face is determined and dogged–almost brutal sometimes when at rest; but when a smile lights it, a charm and grace from another being illumines the solemn countenance and Grant Adams’s heart is revealed. The face is Puritan–all Adams, dour New England Adams, and the smile Irish–from the joyous life of Mary Sands.

We may only see the face: here and there on it is the mark of the sculptor’s tool: now and then a glare or a smile reveals what deep creases and gashes the winds of the passing years have made in the soul behind the mask. Here and there, as a rising strident voice in passionate exhortation lifts, we may hear the roar of the narrowing channel into which his life is rushed with augmented force as he hurries forward into his destiny. In that tumult, family, home, ambition, his very child itself that was his first deep wellspring of love, are slipping from him into the torrent. The flood washes about him; his one idea dominates him. He is restless under it–restless even with the employment of the hour. The unions, for which he has been working for more than half a decade, do not satisfy him. His aim is perfection and mortality irritates him, but does not discourage him. For even vanity is slipping from him in the erosion of the waters rushing down their narrowing groove.

But it is only his grim flint face we see; only his high strident, but often melodiously sympathetic voice we hear; only his wiry, lank body with its stump of a right arm that stands before us. The minutes–awful minutes some of them–the hours, painful wrestling hours, the days, doubt-ridden days, and the long monotonous story of the years, we may not know. For the living through of life still escapes us, and only life’s tableau of the moment is before us.

Now whatever gloss of gayety Dr. Nesbit might put upon his opinion of Grant Adams and his work in the world, it was evident that the Doctor’s opinion of that work was not high. But it was comparatively high; for Harvey’s opinion of Grant Adams and his work was abysmal in its depth. He was running his life on a different motor from the motor which moved Harvey; the town was moving after a centripetal force–every one was for himself, and the devil was entitled to the hindermost. Grant Adams was centrifugal; he was not considering himself particularly and was shamelessly taking heed of the hindermost which was the devil’s by right. And so men said in their hearts, if this man wins, there will be the devil to pay. For Grant was going about the district spreading discontent. He was calling attention to the violation of the laws in the mines; he was calling attention to the need of other laws to further protect the miners and smelter men. He was going about from town to town in the Valley building up the unions and urging the men to demand more wages, either in actual money or in shorter hours, improved labor conditions, and cheaper rent and better houses from the company which housed the families of the workers.

“Why,” he asked, “should labor bear the burden of industry and take its leavings?”

“Why,” he demanded, “should capital toil not nor spin and be clothed as Solomon in his glory?”

“Why,” he argued, “should the profits of toil be used to buy more tools for toil and not more comforts for toil?”

“Why, why–” he challenged Market Street, “is the partnership of society, not a partnership, but a conspiracy?”

Now Market Street had long been wrathful at that persistent Why.

But when it became known that John Dexter had invited Grant Adams to occupy the pulpit of the Congregational Church one Sunday evening to state his case, Market Street’s wrath choked it. For several years John Dexter had been preaching sermons that made the choir the only possible theme of conversation between him and Ahab Wright. John Dexter had been crucified a thousand times by the sordid greed of man in Harvey, and had cried out in the wilderness of his pulpit against it; but his cries fell upon deaf ears, or in dumb hearts.

The invitation to Grant to speak at John Dexter’s Sunday evening service was more of a challenge to Harvey than Harvey comprehended. But even if the town did not entirely realize the seriousness of the challenge, at least the minister found himself summoned by Market Street to a meeting to discuss the wisdom of his invitation. Whereupon John Dexter accepted the invitation and, girding up his loins, went as a strong man rejoicing to run a race.

To what a judgment seat they summoned John Dexter! First, up spake Commerce. “Dr. Dexter,” said Commerce–Commerce always referred to John Dexter as Doctor, though no Doctor was he and he knew it well, “Dr. Dexter, we feel that your encouragement–hum–uhm–well, your patronage of this man Adams, in his–well, shall we say incendiary–” a harsh word is incendiary, so Commerce stopped and touched its graying side whiskers reverently and patted its immaculate white necktie, and then went on: “–well perhaps indiscreet will do!” With Commerce indeed there is no vast difference between the indiscreet and the incendiary. “–indiscreet agitation against the–well–uhm–the way we have to conduct business, is–is regrettable,–at least regrettable!”

“Why?” interrupted John Dexter sharply, throwing Commerce sadly out of balance. But the Law, which is the palladium of our liberties, answered for Commerce in a slow snarling, “because he is preaching discontent.”

“But Mr. Calvin,” returned John Dexter quickly, “if any one would come to town preaching discontent to Wright & Perry, showing them how to make more money, to enlarge their profits, to rise among their fellow merchants–would you refuse to give him audience in a pulpit?” The Law did not deign to answer the preacher and then Industry took heart to say, pulling its military goatee vigorously, and clearing its dear old throat for a passage at arms: “’Y gory man, there’s always been a working class and they’ve always had to work like sixty and get the worst of it, I guess, and they always will–what say? You can’t improve on the way the world is made. And when she’s made, she’s made–what say? I tell you now, you’re wasting your time on that class of people.”

The antagonists looked into each other’s kindly eyes. Industry triumphing in its logic, the minister hunting in his heart for the soft answer that would refute the logic without hurting its author. “Captain,” he said, “there was once a wiser than we who went about preaching a new order, spreading discontent with injustice, whose very mother was of the lowest industrial class.”

“Yes–and you know what happened to Him,” sneered the Courts, which are the keystones of government in the structure of civilization. “And,” continued the Courts, in a grand and superior voice, “you can’t drag business into religion, sir. Religion is one thing and I respect it,”–titters from the listening angels, “–and business is another thing, and we think, sir, that you are trying to mix the insoluble, and as business men who have our own deep religious convictions–” inaudible guffaws from the angels, “–we feel the sacrilege of asking this blatherskite Adams to speak on any subject in so sacred a place as our consecrated pulpit, sir.” Hoarse hoots from the angels.

No soft benignity beamed in the preacher’s face as he turned to the Courts. “My pulpit, Judge,” answered John Dexter sternly, “first of all stands for the gospel of Justice between man and man. It will afford sanctuary for the thief and the Magdalene, but only the penitent thief and the weeping Magdalene!” And John Dexter brought down a resounding fist on the table before him. “I believe that the first duty of religion is to preach shame on the wicked, that they may quit their wickedness, and if,” John Dexter’s voice rose as he went on, “in the light of our widening intelligence we see that employers are organized wickedly to rob their workers of justice in one way or another, I stand with those who would make the thief disgorge for his own soul’s sake, incidentally, but chiefly that justice may come into an evil world and men may not mock the mercy and goodness of God by pointing at the evil men do unrebuked in His name, and under His servants’ noses. My pulpit is a free pulpit, sir. When it is not that, I shall leave it. And even though I do not agree sometimes with a man’s message, so long as my pulpit is free, any man who desires to cry stop thief, in the darkness of this world, may lift his voice there, and no man shall say him nay! Have you gentlemen anything further to offer?”

Commerce ceased rubbing its hands. Its alter ego, Business, was obviously getting ready to say something, but was only whistling for the station, and the crowd knew it would be a minute before his stuttering speech should arrive. Patriotism was leaning forward with its hands back of its ears, smiling pleasantly at what he did not understand, and Industry, who saw the strings in which his world was wrapped up for delivery, cut, and the world sprawled in confusion before him by the preacher’s defiance, was pulling his military goatee solemnly when Science toddled in, white-clad, pink-faced, smoking his short pipe and clicking his cane rather more snappily than usual. He saw that he had punctuated an embarrassed situation. Only Religion and Patriotism were smiling. Science brought his cane down with a whack and piped out:

“So you are going to muzzle John Dexter, are you–you witch-burning old pharisees. I heard of your meeting, and I just thought I’d come around to the bonfire! What are you trying to do here, anyway?”

At last Business which had been whistling for the station was ready to pull in; so it unloaded itself thus: “We are p-protesting, Doc, at th-th-th-th m-m-m-man Adams–this l-l-labor sk-sk-skate and s-s-socialist occupying J-J-John Dexter’s p-pulp-p-pit!”

Science looked at Business a grave moment, then burst out, “What are you all afraid of! Here you are, a lot of grown men with fat bank accounts sitting around in a blue funk because Grant Adams does a little more or less objectionable talking. I don’t agree with Grant much more than you do. But you’re a lot of old hens, cackling around here because Grant Adams invades the roost to air his views. Let him talk. Let ’em all talk. Talk is cheap; otherwise we wouldn’t have free speech.” He grinned cynically as he asked, “Haven’t you any faith in the Constitution of the fathers? They were smart enough to know that free speech was a safety valve; let ’em blow off. Then go down and organize and vote ’em afterwards according to the dictates of your own conscience. Politics is the antidote for free speech!” The Doctor glared at the Courts, smiled amiably at Business and winked conspicuously at Religion. Religion blushed at the blasphemy and as there seemed to be nothing further before the house the Doctor and John Dexter left the room.

But the honest indignation of Market Street that an agitator should appear in a pulpit–that an agitator for anything, should appear in any pulpit–waxed strong. For it was assumed that religion had nothing to do with social conduct; religion was solely a matter of individual salvation. Religion was a matter concerned entirely with getting to heaven oneself, and not at all a matter of getting others to heaven except as they took the narrow and individual path. The idea that environment affects character and that society through politics and social and economic institutions may change a man’s environments and thus affect the characters and the chances for Heaven of whole sections of the population, was an idea which had not been absorbed by Market Street in Harvey. So Market Street raged.

That evening when Grant Adams returned from work he received two significant notes. One was from John Dexter and ran:

“Dear Grant: Fearing that you may hear of the comment my invitation to you to speak in my pulpit is causing and fearing that you may either decide at the last minute not to come or that you will modify your remarks out of consideration for me, I write to say that while of course I may not agree with everything you advocate, yet my pulpit is a free pulpit and I cannot consent that you restrict its freedom in saying your full say as a man, any more than I could consent to have my own freedom restricted. Yours in the faith–J. D.”

The other note ran: “Father says to tell you to tone it down. I have delivered his message. I say here is your chance to get the truth where it is most needed, and even if for the most part it falls on stony ground–you still must sow it.–L. N. VD.”

Sunday evening saw a large congregation in the pews of the Rev. John Dexter’s church. In the front and middle portion of the church were the dwellers on the Hill, those whose lines fell in pleasant places. They were the “Haves” of the town,–conspicuous and highly respectable with rustle of silks and flutter of ribbons.

And back of these sat a score of men and women from South Harvey, the “Have-nots,” the dwellers in the dreary valley. There was Denny Hogan, late of the mines, but now of the smelter–with his curly hair plastered over his forehead, and with his wife, she that was Violet Mauling holding a two-year-old baby with sweaty, curly red hair to her breast asleep; there was Ira Dooley, also late of the mines, but now proprietor of a little game of chance over the Hot Dog Saloon; there was Pat McCann, a pit boss and proud of it, with Mrs. McCann–looking her eyes out at Mrs. Nesbit’s hat. There was John Jones, in his Sunday best, and Evan Hughes and Tom Williams, the wiry little Welsh miners who had faced death with Grant Adams five years before. They were with him that night at the church with all the pride in him that they could have if he were one of the real nobility, instead of a labor agitator with a little more than local reputation. And there were Dick and his boy Mugs and the silent Mrs. Bowman and Bennie her youngest and Mary the next to the youngest. And Mrs. Bowman in the South Harvey colony was a person of consequence, for she nodded to the Nesbits and the Mortons and to Laura and to Mrs. Calvin and to all the old settlers of Harvey–rather conspicuously. She had the gratification of noting that South Harvey saw the nobility nod back. With the South Harvey people came Amos Adams in his rough gray clothes and rough gray beard. Jasper Adams, in the highest possible collar, and in the gayest possible shell-pink necktie and under the extremest clothes that it might be possible for the superintendent of a Sunday School to wear, shared a hymnal, when the congregation rose to sing, with the youngest Miss Morton. There were those who thought the singing was merely a duet between young Mr. Adams and the youngest Miss Morton–so much feeling did they put into the music. Mr. Brotherton was so impressed, that he marked young Adams for a tryout at the next funeral where there was a bass voice needed, making the mental reservation that no one needed to look at the pimples of a boy who could sing like that.

When the congregation sat down after the first hymn John Dexter formally presented Grant Adams to the congregation. The young man rose, walked to the chancel rail and stood for a moment facing his audience without speaking. The congregation saw a tall, strong featured, uncouth man with large nose and a big mouth–clearly masculine and not finely chiselled. In these features there was something almost coarse and earthy; but in the man’s eyes and forehead, there lurked the haunting, fleeting shadow of the eternal feminine in his soul. His eyes were deep and blue and tender, and in repose always seemed about to smile, while his forehead, high and broad, topped by a shock of red hair, gave him a kind of intellectual charity that made his whole countenance shine with kindness. Yet his clothes belied the promise of his brow. They were ill-fitting, with an air of Sunday-bestness that gave him an incongruous scarecrow effect. It was easy to see why Market Street was beginning to call him that “Mad Adams.” As he lifted his glance from the floor, his eyes met Laura Van Dorn’s, then flitted away quickly, and the smile she should have had for her own, he gave to his audience. He began speaking with his arms behind him to hide the crippled arm which was tipped with a gloved iron claw. His voice was low and gentle, yet his hearers felt its strength in reserve.

“I suppose,” he began slowly, “every man has his job in the world, and I presume my job seems rather an unnecessary one to some of my friends, and I can hardly blame them. For the assumption of superiority that it may seem to require upon the whole must be distasteful to them. For as a professional apostle of discontent, urging men to cease the worship of things as they are, I am taking on myself a grave burden–that of leading those who come with me, into something better. In the end perhaps, you will not be proud of me. For my vision may be a delusion. Time may leave me naked to the cold truth of life, and I may awaken from my dreaming to reality. That is possible. But now I see my course; now I feel the deep call of a duty I cannot resist.” He was speaking softly and in hardly more than a conversational tone, with his hand at his side and his gloved claw behind him. He lifted his hand and spoke in a deeper tone.

“I have come to you–to those of you who lead sheltered lives of comfort, amid work and scenes you love, to tell you of your neighbors; to call to you in their name, and in the name of our common God for help. I have come from the poor–to tell you of their sorrows, to beg of you to come over into Macedonia and help us; for without you we are helpless. True–God knows how true–the poor outnumber you by ten to one. True, they have the power within them to rise, but their strength is as water in their hands. They need you. They need your neighborly love.”

As he spoke something within him, some power of his voice or of his presence played across the congregation like a wind. The wind which at first touched a few who bent forward to hear him, was moving every one. Faces gradually set in attention. He went on:

“How wonderful is this spirit of life that has come rolling in through the eons, rolling in from some vast illimitable sea of life that we call God. For ages and ages on this planet life could only give to new life the power to feed and propagate, could only pass on to new life the heritage of instinct; then another impulse of the outer sea washed in and there came a day when life could imitate, could learn a little, could pass on to new life some slight power of growth. And then came welling in from the unknown bourne another wave, and lo! life could reason, and God heard men whisper, Father, and deep called unto deep. Since then through the long centuries, through the gray ages, life slowly has been rising, slowly coming in from the hidden sea that laves the world. Millions and millions of men are doomed to know nothing of this life that gives us joy; millions are held bound in a social inheritance that keeps them struggling for food, over outworn paths, mere creatures of primal instinct, whose Godhood is taken from them at birth; by you–by you who get what you do not earn from those who earn what they do not get.”

He turned to the group near the rear of the room, looked at them and continued: