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!