In the Heart of a Fool

“Very well, then,” said Mr. Brotherton, “sit down a minute with me. Tell me, Laura–about children–are they worth it?”

She was a handsome woman, with youth still in her eyes and face, who sat beside George Brotherton, looking at the fire that March day. “George–good old friend,” she said gently, “there’s nothing else in the world so worth it as children.”

She hesitated before going so deeply into her soul, perhaps picking her verbal way. “George–no man ever degraded a woman more than I was degraded. Yet I brought Lila out of it, and I thank God for her, and I don’t mind the price–not now.” She turned to look at Mr. Brotherton inquiringly as she said: “But what I come in to talk to you about, George, was Grant. Have you noticed in the last few months–that growing–well–it’s more than enthusiasm, George; it’s a fanaticism. Since he has been working on the garden plan–Grant has been getting wilder and wilder in his talk about the Democracy of labor. Have you noticed it–or am I oversensitive?”

Brotherton, poking idly in the fire, did not answer at once. At length he said:

“Grant’s a zealot. He’s full of this prisms, prunes and peace idea, this sweetness and light revolution, this notion of hitching their hop-dreams to these three-acre plots, and preaching non-resistance. It’s coming a little fast for me, Laura–just a shade too many at times. But, on the other hand–there’s Nate Perry. He’s as cold-blooded a Yankee as ever swindled a father–and he’s helping with the scheme. He’s–”

“He has no faith in the Democracy of Labor. He hoots,” interrupted Laura. “What he’s doing is working for a more efficient lot of laboring men, so that when the time comes when the unions shall ask and get more definite control of the factories and mines, in the way of wage-setting, and price-making, they will bring some sense with their control. He’s merely looking after himself–in the last analysis; but Grant’s going mad. George, he actually believes that when this thing wins here in the Valley–the peaceful strike, the rise of labor, and the theory of non-resistance–he’s going over the world, and in a few years will have labor emancipated. Have you heard him–that is, recently?”

“Well, yes, a week or so ago,” answered Brotherton, “and he was going it at a pretty fair clip for a minute then. Well, say–I mean–what should we do?” he asked, drumming with the poker on the hearth. “Laura,” Brotherton ran his eyes from the poker until they met her frank, gray eyes, “Grant would listen to you before he would listen to any one else on earth or in Heaven–I’m sure of that.”

“Then what shall we do?” she asked. “We mustn’t let him wreck himself–and all these people? What ought I–”

A shadow fell across the door, and in another moment there stood in the opening of the alcove the tall, lean figure of Thomas Van Dorn.

When Laura was gone, Van Dorn, after more or less polite circumlocution, began to unfold a plan of Market Street to buy the Daily Times and bring Jared Thurston back to Harvey to run it in the interests of the property owners in the town and in the Valley. Incidentally he had come to warn George on behalf of Market Street that he was harboring Grant Adams, contrary to the judgment of Market Street. But George Brotherton’s heart was far from Market Street; it was out on the hill with Emma, his wife, and his mouth spoke from the place of his treasure.

“Tom–tell me, as between man and man, what do you think of children? You’re sort of in the outer room of the Blue Lodge of grandfatherdom, with Lila and Kenyon getting ready for the preacher, and you ought to know, Tom–honest, man, how about it?”

A wave of self-pity enveloped the Judge. His voice broke as he answered: “George, I haven’t any little girl–she never even has spoken to me about this affair that the whole town knows about. Oh, I haven’t any child at all.”

He looked a miserable moment at Brotherton, perhaps reviewing the years which they had lived and grown from youth to middle age together and growled: “Not a thing–not a damned thing in it–George, in all this forty years of fighting to keep ahead of the undertaker! Not a God damned thing!” And so he left the Sweet Serenity of Books and Wall Paper and went back to the treadmill of life, spitting ashes from his gray lips!

And then Daniel Sands toddled in to get the five-cent cigars which he had bought for a generation–one at a time every day, and Brotherton came to Daniel with his problem.

The old man, whose palsied head forever was denying something, as if he had the assessor always in his mind, shut his rheumy eyes and answered: “My children–bauch–” He all but spat upon their names. “Morty–moons around reading Socialist books, with a cold in his throat and dishwater in his brains. And the other, she’s married a dirty traitor and stands by him against her own flesh and blood. Ba-a-a-ch!” He showed his blue, old mouth, and cried:

“I married four women to give those children a home–and what thanks do I get? Ingrates–one a milk-sop–God, if he’d only be a Socialist and get out and throw dynamite; but he won’t; he won’t do a thing but sit around drooling about social justice when I want to eat my meals in peace. And he goes coughing all day and night, and grunting, and now he’s wearing a pointed beard–he says it’s for his throat, but I know–it’s because he thinks it’s romantic. And that Anne–why, she’s worse,” but he did not finish the sentence. His old head wagged violently. Evidently another assessor had suddenly pounced in upon his imagination. For he shuffled into the street.

Mr. Brotherton sat by the fire, leaning forward, with his fingers locked between his knees. The warning against Grant Adams that Tom Van Dorn had given him had impressed him. He knew Market Street was against Grant Adams. But he did not realize that Market Street’s attitude was only a reflex of the stir in the Valley. All Market streets over the earth feel more or less acutely changes which portend in the workshops, often before those changes come. We are indeed “members one of another,” and the very aspirations of those who dream of better things register in the latent fears of those who live on trade. We are so closely compact in our organization that a man may not even hope without crowding his neighbor. And in that little section of the great world which men knew as Market Street in Harvey, the surest evidence of the changing attitude of the men in the Valley toward their work, was found not in the crowds that gathered in Belgian Hall week after week to hear Grant Adams, not in the war-chest which was filling to overflowing, not in the gardens checkered upon the hillsides, but rather in the uneasiness of Market Street. The reactions were different in Market Street and in the Valley; but it was one vision rising in the same body, each part responding according to its own impulses. Of course Market Street has its side, and George Brotherton was not blind to it. Sitting by his fire that raw March day, he realized that Market Street was never a crusader, and why. He could see that the men from whom the storekeepers bought goods on ninety days’ time, 3 per cent. off for cash, were not crusaders. When a man turned up among them with a six-months’ crusade for an evanescent millennium, flickering just a few years ahead, the wholesalers of the city and the retailers of Market Street nervously began thumbing over their rapidly accumulating “bills payable” and began using crisp, scratchy language toward the crusader.

It made Brotherton pause when he thought how they might involve and envelop him–as a family man. For as he sat there, the man’s mind kept thinking of children. And his mind wandered to the thought of his wife and his home–and the little ones that might be. As his mind clicked back to Amos Adams, and to the strange family that would produce three boys as unlike as Grant and Jasper and Kenyon, he began to consider how far Kenyon had come for a youth in his twenties. And Brotherton realized that he might have had a child as old as Kenyon. Then Mr. Brotherton put his hands over his face and tried to stop the flying years.

A shadow fell, and Brotherton greeted Captain Morton, in a sunburst of mauve tailoring. The Captain pointed proudly to a necktie pin representing a horse jumping through a horseshoe, and cried: “What you think of it? Real diamond horseshoe nails–what say?”

“Now, Captain, sit down here,” said Mr. Brotherton. “You’ll do, Captain–you’ll do.” But the subject nearest the big man’s heart would not leave it. “Cap,” he said, “what about children–do they pay?”

“That’s just it,” put in the Captain. “That’s just what I said to Emmy this morning. I was out to see her after you left and stayed until Laura Van Dorn came and chased me off. Emmy’s mighty happy, George–mighty, mighty happy–eh? Her mother always was that way. I was the one that was scared.” George nodded assent. “But to-day–well, we just sat there and cried–she’s so happy about it–eh? Wimmin, George, ain’t scared a bit. I know ’em. I’ve been in their kitchins for thirty years, George, and let me tell you somepin funny,” continued the Captain. “Old Ahab Wright has taken to smoking in public to get the liberal vote! Let me tell you somepin else. They’ve decided to put the skids under Grant Adams and his gang down in the Valley, and the other day they ran into a snag. You know Calvin & Calvin are representing the owners since Tom’s got this life job, though he’s got all his money invested down there and still advises ’em. Well, anyway, they decided to put a barbed-wire trocha around all the mines and the factories. Well, four carloads of wire and posts shows up down in the Valley this week, and, ’y gory, man,–they can’t get a carpenter in town or down there to touch it. Grant’s got ’em sewed up. But Tom says he’ll fix ’em one of these days, if they get before him in his court–what say?”

“I suppose he will, Captain,” replied Mr. Brotherton, and took up his theme. “But getting back to the subject of children–I’ve been talking all morning about ’em to all kinds of folks, and I’ve decided the country’s for ’em. Children, Cap,” Mr. Brotherton rose, put on his coat and took the Captain’s arm, “children, Captain,” he repeated, as they reached the sidewalk and were starting for the street car, “children, I figure it out–children are the see-ment of civilization! Well, say–thus endeth the reading of the first lesson!”

As they stood in the corner transfer shed waiting for the car, Grant Adams came up. “Say, Grant,” called Brotherton, “what you goin’ to do about that barbed wire trocha?”

“Oh,” smiled Grant, “I’ve just about settled it. The boys will begin on it this afternoon. A lot of them were angry when they heard what the owners were up to, but I said, ‘Here: we’ve got justice on our side. We claim a partnership interest in all those mines and factories down there. We contend that we who labor there now are the legatees of all the labor that’s been killed and maimed and cheated by long hours and low wages down in the Valley for thirty years, and if we have a partnership right in those mines and factories, it’s our business to protect them.’ So I talked the boys into putting up the trocha. I tell you, George,” said Grant, and the tremor of emotion strained his voice as he spoke, “it won’t be long until we’ll have a partnership in that trocha, just as we’ll have an interest in every hammer and bolt, and ledge and vein in the Valley. It’s coming, and coming fast–the Democracy of Labor. I have faith, the men and women have faith–all over the Valley. We’ve found the right way–the way of peace. When labor has proved its efficiency–”

“Ah–you’re crazy, Grant,” snapped the Captain. “This class of people down here–these ignorant foreigners–why, they couldn’t run a peanut stand–eh?”

Dick Bowman and his son came up, and not knowing a discussion was in the wind, Dick shook hands around. And after the Captain had taken his uptown car, Grant stood apart, lost in thought, but Dick said: “Well, Benny, we got here in time for the car!” Then craning his long neck, the father laughed: “Ben, here’s a laboring man and his shift goes on at one–so he’s in a hurry, but we’ll make it.”

“Dick,” began Brotherton, looking at the thin shadow of a man who was hardly Brotherton’s elder by half a dozen years. “Dick, you’re a kind of expert father, you and Joe Calvin, and to-day Joe’s a granddaddy–tell me about the kiddies–are they worth it?”

Bowman threw his head back and craned his long neck. “Not for us–not for us poor–maybe for you people here,” said Bowman, who paused and counted on his fingers: “Eight born, three dead–that’s too many. Joe Calvin, he’s raised all his and they’re doing fairly well. That’s his girl in here–ain’t it?” Bowman sighed. “Her and my Jean played together back in their little days; before we moved to South Harvey.” He lowered his voice.

“George, mother hasn’t heard from Jean for going on two year, now. She went off with a fellow; told us she married him–she was just a child–but had been working around in the factories–and, well, I don’t say so, but I guess she just has got where she’s ashamed to write–maybe.”

His voice rose in anger as he cried: “Why didn’t she have a show, like this girl of Joe’s? He’s no better than I. And you know my wife–well, she’s no Mrs. Joe Calvin–she’s been as happy about ’em when they came as if they were princes of the blood.” He stopped.

“Then there’s Mugs–I dunno, George,–it seems like we tried with Mugs, but all them saloons and–well, the gambling and the women under his nose from the time he was ten years old–well, I can’t make him work. Little Jack is steady enough for a boy of twenty–he’s in the Company mines, and we’ve put Ben in this year. He is twelve–though, for Heaven’s sake, don’t go blabbing it; he’s supposed to be fourteen. And little Betty, she’s in school yet. I don’t know how she’ll turn out. No, George,” he went on, “children for us poor, children’s a mighty risky, uncertain crop. But,” he smiled reflectively, “I’m right here to tell you they’re lots of fun as little shavers–growing up. Why, George, you ought to hear Benny sing. Them Copinis of the Hot Dog found he had a voice, and they’ve taught him some dago songs.” Ben was a bright-faced boy of twelve–big for his age, with snappy, brown eyes and apples of cheeks and curly hair. He slipped away to look into a store window, leaving the two men alone. Mr. Brotherton was in a mellow mood. He put his great paw on the small man’s shoulder and said huskily:

“Say, Dick, honest, I’d rather have just one boy like that than the whole damn Valley–that’s right!”

The car came bowling up and the South Harvey people boarded it. Grant Adams rode down into the Valley with great dreams in his soul. He talked little to the Bowmans, but looked out of the window and saw the dawn of another day. It is the curse of dreamers that they believe that when they are convinced of a truth, they who have pursued it, who have suffered for it, who have been exalted by it, they have only to pass out their truth to the world to remake the universe. But the world is made over only when the common mind sees the truth, and the common heart feels it. So the history of reform is a history of disappointment. The reform works, of course. But in working it does only the one little trick it is intended to do, and the long chain of incidental blessings which should follow, which the reformers feel must inevitably follow, wait for other reformers to bring them into being. So there is always plenty of work for the social tinker, and no one man ever built a millennium. For God is ever jealous for our progeny, and leaves an unfinished job always on the work bench of the world.

Grant Adams believed that he had a mission to bring labor into its own. The coming of the Democracy of Labor was a real democracy to him–no mere shibboleth. And as he rode through the rows of wooden tenements, where he knew men and women were being crushed by the great industrial machine, he thought of the tents in the fields; of the women and children and of the old and the sick going out there to labor through the day to piece out the family wage and secure economic independence with wholesome, self-respecting work. It seemed to him that when he could bring the conditions that were starting in Harvey, to every great industrial center, one great job in the world would be done forever.

So he drummed his iron claw on the seat before him, put his hard hand upon his rough face, and smiled in the joy of his high faith.

Dick Bowman and his boy left Grant at the car. He waved his claw at little Ben when they parted, and sighed as he saw the little fellow scampering to shaft No. 3 of the Wahoo Fuel Company’s mines. There Grant lost sight of the child, and went to his work. In two hours he and Violet Hogan had cleaned off his desk. He had promised the Wahoo Fuel Company to see that the work of constructing the trocha was started that afternoon, and when Violet had telephoned to Mechanics’ Hall, Grant and a group of men went to the mines to begin on the trocha. They passed down the switch into the yards, and Grant heard a brakeman say:

“That Frisco car there has a broken brake–watch out for her.”

And a switchman reply:

“Yes–I know it. I tried to get the yardmaster not to send her down. But we’ll do what we can.”

The brakeman on the car signaled for the engineer to pull the other cars away, and leave the Frisco car at the top of a slight grade, to be shoved down by the men when another car was needed at the loading chute. Grant walked toward the loading chute, and a roar from the falling coal filled his ears. He saw little Ben under a car throwing back the coal falling from the faulty chute on to the ground.

Through the roar Grant heard a yell as from a man in terror. He looked back of him and saw the Frisco car coming down the grade as if shot from a monster catapult!

“The boy–the boy–!” he heard the man on the car shriek. He tried to clamber over the coal to the edge of the car, but before he could reach the side, the Frisco car had hit the loading car a terrific blow, sending it a car length down the track.

One horrible scream was all they heard from little Ben. Grant was at his side in a moment. There, stuck to the rail, were two little legs and an arm. Grant stooped, picked up the little body, pulled it loose from the tracks, and carried it, running, to the company hospital.

As Grant ran, tears fell in the little, coal-stained face, and made white splotches on the child’s cheeks.

CHAPTER XLV

IN WHICH LIDA BOWMAN CONSIDERS HER UNIVERSE AND TOM VAN DORN WINS ANOTHER VICTORY

For a long and weary night and a day of balancing doubt, and another dull night, little Ben Bowman lay limp and crumpled on his cot–a broken lump of clay hardly more than animate. Lida Bowman, his mother, all that time sat in the hall of the hospital outside the door of his room. The stream of sorrow that winds through a hospital passed before her unheeded. Her husband came, sat with her silently for a while, went, and came again, many times. But she did not go. In the morning of the second day as she stood peering through the door crack at the child she saw his little body move in a deep sigh, and saw his black eyes open for a second and close as he smiled. Dr. Nesbit, who stood beside her, grasped her hand and led her away.

“I think the worst is over, Lida,” he said, and held her hand as they walked down the hall. He sat with her in the waiting room, into which the earliest tide of visitors had not begun to flow, and promised her that if the child continued to rally from the shock, she might stand by his bed at noon. Then for the first time she wept. He stood by the window looking out at the great pillars of smoke that were smudging the dawn, at the smelter fumes that were staining the sky, at the hurrying crowd of men and women and children going into the mines, the mills, the shops, hurrying to work with the prod of fear ever in their backs–fear of the disgrace of want, fear of the shame of beggary, fear to hear some loved one ask for food or warmth or shelter and to have it not. When the great motherly body had ceased its paroxysms, he went to Mrs. Bowman and touched her shoulder.

“Lida,” he said, “it isn’t much–but I’m glad of one thing. My bill is on the statutes to give people who are hurt, as Ben was, their money from the company without going to law and dividing with the lawyers. It is on the books good and tight; referred to the people and approved by them and ground clear through the state supreme court and sustained. It isn’t much, Lida–Heaven knows that–but little Ben will get his money without haggling and that money will help to start him in life.”

She turned a tear-swollen face to him, but again her grief overcame her. He stood with one wrinkled hand upon her broad shoulder, and with the other patted her coarse hair. When she looked up at him, again he said gently: