A CHAPTER WHICH INTRODUCES SOME POSSIBLE GODS
When Grant Adams had told and retold his story to the reporters and had
eaten what Dr. Nesbit would let him eat, it was late in the afternoon.
He lay down to sleep with the sun still shining through the shutters in
his low-ceiled, west bed room. Through the night his father sat or slept
fitfully beside him and when the morning sun was high, and still the
young man slept on, the father guarded him, and would let no one enter
the house. At noon Grant rose and dressed. He saw the Dexters coming
down the road and he went to the door to welcome them. It seemed at
first that the stupor of sleep was not entirely out of his brain. He was
silent and had to be primed for details of his adventure. He sat down to
eat, but when his meal was half finished, there came bursting out of his
soul a flame of emotion, and he put down his food, turned half around
from the table, grasped the edges of the board with both hands and cried
as a fanatic who sees a vision:
"Oh, those men,--those men--those wonderful, beautiful souls of men I
saw!--those strong, fearless. Godlike men!--there in the mine, I mean.
Evan Davis, Dick Bowman, Pat McCann, Jamey McPherson, Casper Herdicker,
Chopini--all of them; yes, Dennis Hogan, drunk as he is sometimes, and
Ira Dooley, who's been in jail for hold-ups--I don't care which
one--those wonderful men, who risked their lives for others, and Casper
Herdicker and Chopini, who gave their lives there under the rock for me.
My God, my God!"
His voice thrilled with emotion, and his arms trembled as his hands
gripped the table. Those who heard him did not stop him, for they felt
that from some uncovered spring in his being a section of personality
was gushing forth that never had seen day. He turned quietly to the
wondering child, took him from his chair and hugged him closely to a
man's broad chest and stroked the boyish head as the man's blue eyes
filled with tears. Grant sat for a moment looking at the floor, then
roughed his red mane with his fingers and said slowly and more quietly,
but contentiously:
"I know what you don't know with all your religion, Mr. Dexter; I know
what the Holy Ghost is now. I have seen it. The Holy Ghost is that
divine spark in every human soul--however life has smudged it over by
circumstance--that rises and envelopes a human creature in a flame of
sacrificial love for his kind and makes him joy to die to save others.
That's the Holy Ghost--that's what is immortal."
He clenched his great hickory fist and hit the table and lifted his face
again, crying: "I saw Dennis Hogan walk up to Death smiling that Irish
smile. I saw him standing with a ton of loose dirt hanging over him
while he was digging me out! I saw Evan Davis--little, bow-legged Evan
Davis--go out into the smoke alone--alone, Mr. Dexter, and they say Evan
is a coward--he went out alone and brought back Casper Herdicker's limp
body hugged to his little Welsh breast like a gorilla's--and saved a
man. I saw Dick Bowman do more--when the dirt was dropping from the
slipping, working roof into my mouth and eyes, and might have come down
in a slide--I lay there and watched Dick working to save me and I heard
him order his son to hold a shovel over my face--his own boy." Grant
shuddered and drew the child closer to him, and looked at the group near
him with wet eyes. "Ira Dooley and Tom Williams and that little Italian
went on their bellies, half dead from the smoke, out into death and
brought home three men to safety, and would have died without batting an
eye--all three to save one lost man in that passage." He beat the table
again with his fist and cried wildly: "I tell you that's the Holy Ghost.
I know those men may sometimes trick the company if they can. I know Ira
Dooley spends lots of good money on 'the row'; I know Tom gambles off
everything he can get his hands on, and that the little Dago probably
would have stuck a knife in an enemy over a quarter. But that doesn't
count."
The young man's voice rose again. "That is circumstance; much of it is
surroundings, either of birth or of this damned place where we are
living. If they cheat the company, it is because the company dares them
to cheat and cheats them badly. If they steal, it is because they have
been taught to steal by the example of big, successful thieves. I've had
time to think it all out.
"Father--father!" cried Grant, as a new wave of emotion surged in from
the outer bourne of his soul, "you once said Dick Bowman sold out the
town and took money for voting for the Harvey Improvement bond steal.
But what if he did? That was merely circumstance. Dick is a little man
who has had to fight for money all his life--just enough money to feed
his hungry children. And here came an opportunity to get hold of--what
was it?--a hundred dollars--" Amos Adams nodded. "Well, then, a hundred
dollars, and it would buy so much, and leading citizens came and told
him it was all right--men we have educated with our taxes and our
surplus money in universities and colleges. And we haven't educated
Dick; we've just taught him to fight--to fight for money, and to think
money will do everything in God's beautiful world. So Dick took it. That
was the Dick that man and Harvey and America made, father, but I saw the
Dick that God made!" He stopped and cried out passionately, "And some
day, some day all the world must know this man--this great-souled,
common American--that God made!"
Grant's voice was low, but a thousand impulses struggled across his
features for voice and his eyes were infinitely sad as he gazed at the
curly, brown hair of the child in his arms playing with the buttons on
his coat.
The minister looked at his wife. She was wet-faced and a-tremble, and
had her hands over her eyes. Amos Adams's old, frank face was troubled.
The son turned upon him and cried:
"Father--you're right when you say character makes happiness. But what
do you call it--surroundings--where you live and how you live and what
you do for a living--environment! That's it, that's the
word--environment has lots and lots to do with character. Let the
company reduce its dividends by giving the men a chance at decent living
conditions, in decent houses and decent streets, and you'll have another
sort of attitude toward the company. Quit cheating them at the store,
and you'll have more honesty in the mines; quit sprinkling sour beer and
whiskey on the sawdust in front of the saloons to coax men in who have
an appetite, and you'll have less drinking--but, of course, Sands will
have less rents. Let the company obey the law--the company run by men
who are pointed out as examples, and there'll be less lawlessness among
the men when trouble comes. Why, Mr. Dexter, do you know as we sat down
there in the dark, we counted up five laws which the company broke, any
one of which would have prevented the fire, and would have saved ninety
lives. Trash in the passage leading to the main shaft delayed notifying
the men five minutes--that's against the law. Torches leaking in the
passageway where there should have been electric lights--that's against
the law. Boys--little ten-year-olds working down there--cheap, cheap!"
he cried, "and dumping that pine lumber under a dripping torch--that's
against the law. Having no fire drill, and rusty water plugs and hose
that doesn't reach--that's against the law. A pine partition in an
air-chute using it as a shaft--that's against the law. Yet when trouble
comes and these men burn and kill and plunder--we'll put the miners in
jail, and maybe hang them, for doing as they are taught a thousand times
a week by the company--risking life for their own gain!"
Grant Adams rose. He ran his great, strong, copper-freckled hands
through his fiery hair and stood with face transfigured, as the face of
one staring at some phantasm. "Oh, those men--they risked their
lives--Chopini and Casper Herdicker gave their lives for me. Father," he
cried, "I am bought with a price. These men risked all and gave all for
me. I am theirs. I have no other right to live except as I serve them."
He drew a deep breath; set his jaw and spoke with all the force he could
put into a quiet voice: "I am dedicated to men--to those great-souled,
brave, kind men whom God has sent here for man to dwarf and ruin. They
have bought me. I am theirs."
The minister put the question in their minds:
"What are you going to do, Grant?"
The fervor that had been dying down returned to Grant Adams's face.
"My job," he cried, "is so big I don't know where to take hold. But I'm
not going to bother to tell those men who sweat and stink and suffer
under the injustices of men, about the justice of God. I've got one
thing in me bigger'n a wolf--it's this: House them--feed them, clothe
them, work them--these working people--and pay them as you people of the
middle classes are housed and fed and paid and clad, and crime won't be
the recreation of poverty. And the Lord knows the work of the men who
toil with their hands is just as valuable to society as preaching and
trading and buying and selling and banking and editing and lawing and
doctoring, and insuring and school teaching."
He stood before the kitchen stove, a tall, awkward, bony,
wide-shouldered, loose-wired creature in the first raw stage of
full-blown manhood. The red muscles of his jaw worked as his emotions
rose in him. His hands were the hands of a fanatic--never still.
"I've been down into death and I've found something about life," he went
on. "Out of the world's gross earnings we're paying too much for
superintendence, and rent and machines, and not enough for labor.
There's got to be a new shake-up. And I'm going to help. I don't know
where nor how to begin, but some way I'll find a hold and I'm going to
take it."
He drew in a long breath, looked around and smiled rather a ragged, ugly
smile that showed his big teeth, all white and strong but uneven.
"Well, Grant," said Mrs. Dexter, "you have cut out a big job for
yourself." The young man nodded soberly.
"Well, we're going to organize 'em, the first thing. We talked that over
in the mine when we had nothing else to talk about--but God and our
babies."
In the silence that followed, Amos Adams said: "While you were down
there of course I had to do something. So after the paper was out, I got
to talking with Lincoln about things. He said you'd get out. Though,"
smiled the old man sheepishly and wagged his beard, "Darwin didn't think
you would. But anyway, they all agreed we should do something for the
widows."
"They have a subscription paper at George Brotherton's store--you know,
Grant," said Mr. Dexter.
"Well--we ought to put in something, father,--all we've got, don't you
think?"
"I tried and tried to get her last night to know how she felt about it,"
mused Amos. "I've borrowed all I can on the office--and it wouldn't sell
for its debts."
"You ought to keep your home, I think," put in Mrs. Dexter quickly, who
had her husband's approving nod.
"They told me," said the father, "that Mary didn't feel that way about
it. I couldn't get her. But that was the word she sent."
"Father," said Grant with the glow in his face that had died for a
minute, "let's take the chance. Let's check it up to God good and hard.
Let's sell the house and give it all to those who have lost more than
we. We can earn the rent, anyway."
Mrs. Dexter looked significantly at Kenyon.
"No, that shouldn't count, either," said Grant stubbornly. "Dick Bowman
didn't let his boy count when I needed help, and when hundreds of
orphaned boys and girls and widows need our help, we shouldn't hold back
for Kenyon."
"Grant," said the father when the visit was ended and the two were
alone, "they say your father has no sense--up town. Maybe I haven't. I
commune with these great minds; maybe they too are shadows. But they
come from outside of me." He ran his fingers through his graying beard
and smiled. "Mr. Left brings me things that are deeper and wiser than
the things I know--it seems to me. But they all bear one testimony,
Grant; they all tell me that it's the spiritual things and not the
material things in this world that count in the long run, and, Grant,
boy," the father reached for his son's strong hand, "I would rather have
seen the son that has come back to me from death, go back to death now,
if otherwise I never could have seen him. They told me your mother was
with you. And now I know some way she touched your heart out there in
the dark--O Grant, boy, while you spoke I saw her in your face--in your
face I saw her. Mary--Mary," cried the weeping old man, "when you sent
me back to the war you looked as he looked to-day, and talked so."
"Father," said Grant, "I don't know about your Mr. Left. He doesn't
interest me, as he does you, and as for the others--they may be true or
all a mockery, for anything I know. But," he exclaimed, "I've seen God
face to face and I can't rest until I've given all I
am--everything--everything to help those men!"
Then the three went out into the crisp January air--father and son and
little Kenyon bundled to the chin. They walked over the prairies under
the sunshine and talked together through the short winter afternoon. At
its close they were in the timber where the fallen leaves were beginning
to pack against the tree trunks and in the ravines. The child listened
as the wind played upon its harp, and the rhythm of the rising and
falling tide of harmony set his heart a-flutter, and he squeezed his
father's fingers with delight. A redbird flashing through the gray and
brown picture gave him joy, and when it sang far down the ravine where
the wind organ seemed to be, the child's eyes brimmed and he dropped
behind the elders a few paces to listen and be alone with his ecstasy.
And so in the fading day they walked home. The quail piped for the
child, and the prairie chicken pounded his drum, and in the prairie
grass the slanting sun painted upon the ripples across the distant,
rolling hills many pictures that filled the child's heart so full that
he was still, as one who is awed with a great vision. And it was a great
vision that filled his soul: the sunset with its splendors, the twilight
hovering in the brown woods, the prairie a-quiver with the caresses of
the wind, winter-birds throbbing life and ecstasy into the picture, and
above and around it all a great, warm, father's heart symbolizing the
loving kindness of the infinite to the child's heart.