HERE WE SEE GRANT ADAMS CONQUERING HIS THIRD AND LAST DEVIL
In the ebb and flow of life every generation sees its waves of altruism
washing in. But in the ebb of altruism in America that followed the
Civil War, Amos Adams's ship of dreams was left high and dry in the salt
marsh. Finally a time came when the tide began to boom in. But in no
substantial way did his newspaper feel the impulse of the current. The
_Tribune_ was an old hulk; it could not ride the tide. And its
skipper, seedy, broken with the years, always too gentle for the world
about him, even at his best, ever ready to stop work to read a book,
Amos Adams, who had been a crank for a third of a century, remained a
crank when much that he preached in earlier years was accepted by the
multitude.
Amos Adams might have made the Harvey _Tribune_ a financial success
if he could have brought himself to follow John Kollander's advice. But
Amos could not abide the presence much less the counsel of the
professional patriot, with his insistent blue uniform and brass buttons.
Under an elaborate pretense of independence, John Kollander was a
limber-kneed time-server, always keen-eyed for the crumbs of Dives'
table; odd jobs in receiverships, odd jobs in lawsuits for Daniel
Sands--as, for instance, furnishing unexpected witnesses to prove
improbable contentions--odd jobs in his church, odd jobs in his party
organization, always carrying a per diem and expenses; odd jobs for the
Commercial Club, where the pay was sure; odd jobs for Tom Van Dorn,
spreading slander by innuendo where it would do the most good for Tom in
his business; odd jobs for Tom and Dick and for Harry, but always for
the immediate use and benefit of John Kollander, his heirs and assigns.
But if Amos Adams ever thought of himself, it was by inadvertence. He
managed, Heaven only knows how, to keep the _Tribune_ going. Jasper
bought back from the man who foreclosed the mortgage, his father's
homestead. He rented it to his father for a dollar a year and
ostentatiously gave the dollar to the Lord--so ostentatiously, indeed,
that when Henry Fenn gayly referred to Amos, Grant and Jasper as Father,
Son and Holy Ghost, the town smiled at his impiety, but the holy Jasper
boarded at the Hotel Sands, was made a partner at Wright & Perry's, and
became a bank director at thirty. For Jasper was a Sands!
The day after Amos Adams and Tom Van Dorn had met in the Serenity of
Books and Wallpaper at Brotherton's, Grant was in the _Tribune_
office. "Grant," the father was getting down from his high stool to dump
his type on the galley; "Grant, I had a tiff with Tom Van Dorn
yesterday. Lord, Lord," cried the old man, as he bent over,
straightening some type that his nervous hand had knocked down. "I
wonder, Grant"--the father rose and put his hand on his back, as he
stood looking into his son's face--"I wonder if all that we feel, all
that we believe, all that we strive and live for--is a dream? Are we
chasing shadows? Isn't it wiser to conform, to think of ourselves first
and others afterward--to go with the current of life and not against it?
Of course, my guides--"
"Father," cried Grant, "I saw Tom Van Dorn yesterday, too, in his big
new car--and I don't need your guides to tell me who is moving with the
current and who is buffeting it. Oh, father, that hell-scorched
face--don't talk to me about his faith and mine!" The old man remounted
his printer's stool for another half-hour's work before dusk deepened,
and smiled as he pulled his steel spectacles over his clear old eyes.
One would fancy that a man whose face was as seamed and scarred with
time and struggle as Grant Adams's face, would have said nothing of the
hell-scorched face of Tom Van Dorn. Yet for all its lines, youth still
shone from Grant Adams's countenance. His wide, candid blue eyes were
still boyish, and a soul so eager with hope that it sometimes blazed
into a mad intolerance, gazed into the world from behind them. Even his
arm and claw became an animate hand when Grant waved them as he talked;
and his wide, pugnacious shoulders, his shock of nonconforming red hair,
his towering body, and his solid workman's legs, firm as oak
beams,--all,--claw, arms, shoulders, trunk and legs,--translated into
human understanding the rebel soul of Grant Adams.
Yet the rebellion of Grant Adams's soul was no new thing to the world.
He was treading the rough road that lies under the feet of all those who
try to divert their lives from the hard and wicked morals of their
times. For the kingdoms of this earth are organized for those who devote
themselves chiefly, though of course not wholly, to the consideration of
self. The world is still vastly egoistic in its balance. And the
unbroken struggle of progress from Abel to yesterday's reformer, has
been, is, and shall be the battle with the spirit that chains us to the
selfish, accepted order of the passing day. So Grant Adams's face was
battle scarred, but his soul, strong and exultant, burst through his
flesh and showed itself at many angles of his being. And a grim and
militant thing it looked. The flinty features of the man, his coarse
mouth, his indomitable blue eyes, his red poll, waving like a banner
above his challenging forehead, wrinkled and seamed and gashed with the
troubles of harsh circumstance, his great animal jaw at the base of the
spiritual tower of his countenance--all showed forth the warrior's soul,
the warrior of the rebellion that is as old as time and as new as
to-morrow.
Working with his hands for a bare livelihood, but sitting at his desk
four or five days in the week and speaking at night, month after month,
year after year, for nearly twenty years, without rest or change, had
taken much of the bounce of youth from his body. He knew how the money
from the accumulated dues was piling up in the Labor Union's war chest
in the valley. He had proved what a trade solidarity in an industrial
district could do for the men without strikes by its potential strength.
Black powder, which killed like the pestilence that stalketh in
darkness, was gone. Electric lights had superseded torches in the
runways of the mines. Bathhouses were found in all the shafts. In the
smelters the long, killing hours were abandoned and a score of safety
devices were introduced. But each gain for labor had come after a bitter
struggle with the employers. So the whole history of the Wahoo Valley
was written in the lines of his broken face.
The reformer with his iridescent dream of progress often hangs its
realization upon a single phase of change. Thus when Grant Adams
banished black powder from the district, he expected the whole phantasm
of dawn to usher in the perfect day for the miners. When he secured
electric lights in the runways and baths in the shaft house, he
confidently expected large things to follow. While large things
hesitated, he saw another need and hurried to it.
Thus it happened, that in the hurrying after a new need, Grant Adams had
always remained in his own district, except for a brief season when he
and Dr. Nesbit sallied forth in a State-wide campaign to defend the
Doctor's law to compel employers to pay workmen for industrial
accidents, as the employers replace broken machinery--a law which the
Doctor had pushed through the Legislature and which was before the
people for a referendum vote. When Grant went out of the Wahoo Valley
district he attracted curious crowds, crowds that came to see the queer
labor leader who won without strikes. And when the crowds came under
Grant's spell, he convinced them. For he felt intensely. He believed
that this law would right a whole train of incidental wrongs of labor.
So he threw himself into the fight with a crusader's ardor. Grant and
the Doctor journeyed over the State through July and August; and in
September the wily Doctor trapped Tom Van Dorn into a series of joint
debates with Grant that advertised the cause widely and well. From these
debates Grant Adams emerged a somebody in politics. For oratory, however
polished, and scholarship, however plausible, cannot stand before the
wrath of an indignant man in a righteous cause who can handle himself
and suppress his wrath upon the platform.
As the week of the debate dragged on and as the pageant of it trailed
clear across the State, with crowds hooting and cheering, Doctor
Nesbit's cup of joy ran over. And when Van Dorn failed to appear for the
Saturday meeting at the capital, the Doctor's happiness mounted to glee.
That night, long after the midnight which ended the day's triumph, Grant
and the Doctor were sitting on a baggage truck at a way station waiting
for a belated train. Grant was in the full current of his passion.
Personal triumph meant little to him--the cause everything. His heart
was afire with a lust to win. The Doctor kept looking at Grant with
curious eyes--appraising eyes, indeed--from time to time as the younger
man's interminable stream of talk of the Cause flowed on. But the Doctor
had his passion also. When it burst its bonds, he was saying: "Look
here, you crazy man--take a reef in your canvas picture of jocund day
upon the misty mountain tops--get down to grass roots." Grant turned an
exalted face upon the Doctor in astonishment. The Doctor went on:
"Grant, I can give the concert all right--but, young man, you are
selling the soap. That's a great argument you have been making this
week, Grant."
"There wasn't much to my argument, Doctor," answered Grant, absently,
"though it was a righteous cause. All I did was to make an appeal to the
pocketbooks of Market Street all over the State, showing the merchants
and farmers that the more the laboring man receives the more he will
spend, and if he is paid for his accidents he will buy more prunes and
calico; whereas, if he is not paid he will burden the taxes as a pauper.
Tom couldn't overcome that argument, but in the long run, our cause will
not be won permanently and definitely by the bread and butter and taxes
argument, except as that sort of argument proves the justice of our
cause and arouses love in the hearts of you middle-class people."
But Dr. Nesbit persisted with his figure. "Grant," he piped, "you
certainly can sell soap. Why don't you sell some soap on your own hook?
Why don't you let me run you for something--Congress--governor, or
something? We can win hands down."
Grant did not wait for the Doctor to finish, but cried in violent
protest: "No, no, no--Doctor--no, I must not do that. I tell you, man, I
must travel light and alone. I must go into life as naked as St.
Francis. The world is stirring as with a great spirit of change. The
last night I was at home, up stepped a little Belgian glassblower to me.
I'd never seen him before. I said, 'Hello, comrade!' He grasped my hands
with both hands and cried 'Comrade! So you know the password. It has
given me welcome and warmth and food in France, in England, in
Australia, and now here. Everywhere the workers are comrades!'
Everywhere the workers are comrades. Do you know what that means,
Doctor?"
The Doctor did not answer. His seventy years, and his habit of thinking
in terms of votes and parties and factions, made him sigh.
"Doctor," cried Grant, "electing men to office won't help. But this law
we are fighting for--this law will help. Doctor, I'm pinning the faith
of a decade of struggle on this law."
The Doctor broke the silence that followed Grant's declaration, to say:
"Grant, I don't see it your way. I feel that life must crystallize its
progress in institutions--political institutions, before progress is
safe. But you must work out your own life, my boy. Incidentally," he
piped, "I believe you are wrong. But after this campaign is over, I'm
going up to the capital for one last fling at making a United States
Senator. I've only a dozen little white chips in the great game, five in
the upper house and seven in the lower house. But we may deadlock it,
and if we do,--you'll see thirty years drop off my head and witness the
rejuvenation of Old Linen Pants."
Grant began walking the platform again under the stars like an impatient
ghost. The Doctor rose and followed him.
"Grant, now let me tell you something. I am half inclined at times to
think it's all moonshine--this labor law we're working to establish. But
Laura wants it, and God knows, Grant, she has little enough in her life
down there in the Valley. And if this law makes her happy--it's the
least I can do for her. She hasn't had what she should have had out of
life, so I'm trying to make her second choice worth while. That's why
I'm on the soap wagon with you!" He would have laughed away this serious
mood, but he could not.
Grant stared at the Doctor for a moment before answering: "Why, of
course, Dr. Nesbit, I've always known that.
"But--I--Doctor--I am consecrated to the cause. It is my reason for
living."
The day had passed in the elder's life when he could rise to the younger
man's emotions. He looked curiously at Grant and said softly:
"Oh, to be young--to be young--to be young!" He rose, touched the strong
arm beside him. "'And the young men shall see visions.' To be
young--just to be young! But 'the old men shall dream dreams.' Well,
Grant, they are unimportant--not entirely pleasant. We young men of the
seventies had a great material vision. The dream of an empire here in
the West. It has come true--increased one hundred fold. Yet it is not
much of a dream."
He let the arm drop and began drumming on the truck as he concluded:
"But it's all I have--all the dream I have now. 'All of which I saw, and
part of which I was,' yet," he mused, "perhaps it will be used as a
foundation upon which something real and beautiful will be builded."
Far away the headlight of their approaching train twinkled upon the
prairie horizon. The two men watched it glow into fire and come upon
them. And without resuming their talk, each went his own wide, weary way
in the world as they lay in adjoining berths on the speeding train.
At the general election the Doctor's law was upheld by a majority of the
votes in the State, but the Doctor himself was defeated for reelection
to the State Senate in his own district. Grant Adams waited, intently
and with fine faith, for this law to bring in the millennium. But the
Doctor had no millennial faith.
He came down town the morning after his defeat, gay and unruffled. He
went toddling into the stores and offices of Market Street, clicking his
cane busily, thanking his friends and joking with his foes. But he
chirruped to Henry Fenn and Kyle Perry whom he found in the Serenity at
the close of the day: "Well, gentlemen, I've seen 'em all! I've taken my
medicine like a little man; but I won't lick the spoon. I sha'n't go and
see Dan and Tom. I'm willing to go as far as any man in the forgiving
and forgetting business, but the Lord himself hasn't quit on them. Look
at 'em. The devil's mortgage is recorded all over their faces and he's
getting about ready to foreclose on old Dan! And every time Dan hears
poor Morty cough, the devil collects his compound interest. Poor, dear,
gay Morty--if he could only put up a fight!"
But he could not put up a fight and his temperature rose in the
afternoon and he could not meet with his gymnasium class in South Harvey
in the evening, but sent a trainer instead. So often weeks passed during
which Laura Van Dorn did not see Morty and the daily boxes of flowers
that came punctiliously with his cards to the kindergarten and to Violet
Hogan's day nursery, were their only reminders of the sorry, lonely,
footless struggle Morty was making.
It was inevitable that the lives of Violet Hogan and Laura Van Dorn in
South Harvey should meet and merge. And when they met and merged, Violet
Hogan found herself devoting but a few hours a day to her day nursery,
while she worked six long, happy hours as a stenographer for Grant Adams
in his office at the Vanderbilt House. For, after all, it was as a
stenographer that she remembered herself in the grandeur and the glory
of her past. So Henry Fenn and Laura Van Dorn carried on the work that
Violet began, and for them souls and flowers and happiness bloomed over
the Valley in the dark, unwholesome places which death had all but taken
for his own.
It was that spring when Dr. Nesbit went to the capital and took his last
fling at State politics. For two months he had deadlocked his party
caucus in the election of a United States Senator with hardly more than
a dozen legislative votes. And he was going out of his dictatorship in a
golden glow of glory.
And this was the beginning of the golden age for Captain Morton. The
Morton-Perry Axle Works were thriving. Three eight-hour shifts kept the
little plant booming, and by agreement with the directors of the
Independent mine, Nathan Perry spent five hours a day in the works. He
and the Captain, and the youngest Miss Morton, who was keeping books,
believed that it would go over the line from loss to profit before grass
came. The Captain hovered about the plant like an earth-bound spirit day
and night, interrupting the work of the men, disorganizing the system
that Nathan had installed, and persuading himself that but for him the
furnaces would go dead and the works shut down.
It was one beautiful day in late March, after the November election
wherein the Doctor's law had won and the Doctor himself had lost, that
Grant Adams was in Harvey figuring with Mr. Brotherton on supplies for
his office. Captain Morton came tramping down the clouds before him as
he swept into the Serenity and jabbed a spike through the wheels of
commerce with the remark: "Well, George--what do you think of my
regalia--eh?"
Mr. Brotherton and Grant looked up from their work. They beheld the
Captain arrayed in a dazzling light gray spring suit--an exceedingly
light gray suit, with a hat of the same color and gloves and shoe spats
to match, with a red tie so red that it all but crackled. "First profits
of the business. We got over the line yesterday noon, and I had a
thousand to go on, and this morning I just went on this spree--what
say?"
"Well, Cap, when Morty Sands sees you he will die of envy. You're
certainly the lily of the Valley and the bright and morning star--the
fairest of ten thousand to my soul! Grant," said Brotherton as he turned
to his customer, "behold the plute!"
The Captain stood grinning in pride as the men looked him over.
"'Y gory, boys, you'd be surprised the way that Household Horse has hit
the trade. Orders coming in from automobile makers, and last week we
decided to give up making the little power saver and make the whole rear
axle. We're going to call it the Morton-Perry Axle, and put in a big
plant, and I was telling Ruthy this morning, I says, 'Ruth,' says I, 'if
we make the axle business go, I'll just telephone down to Wright & Perry
and have them send you out something nobby in husbands, and, 'y gory, a
nice thousand-mile wedding trip and maybe your pa will go along for
company--what say?'"
He was an odd figure in his clothes--for they were ready-made--made for
the figure of youth, and although he had been in them but a few hours,
the padding was bulging at the wrong places; and they were wrinkled
where they should be tight. His bony old figure stuck out at the knees,
and the shoulders and elbows, and the high collar would not fit his
skinny neck. But he was happy, and fancied he looked like the pictures
of college boys in the back of magazines. So he answered Mr.
Brotherton's question about the opinion of the younger daughter as to
the clothes by a profound wink.
"Scared--scared plumb stiff--what say? I caught Marthy nodding at Ruth
and Ruthy looking hard at Marthy, and then both of 'em went to the
kitchen to talk over calling up Emmy and putting out fly poison for the
women that are lying in wait for their pa. Scared--why, scared's no name
for it--what say?"
"Well, Captain," answered Mr. Brotherton, "you are certainly voluptuous
enough in your new stage setting to have your picture on a cigar box as
a Cuban beauty or a Spanish senorita."
The Captain was turning about, trying to see how the coat set in the
back and at the same time watching the hang of the trousers. Evidently
he was satisfied with it. For he said: "Well--guess I'll be going. I'll
just mosey down to Mrs. Herdicker's to give Emmy and Marthy and Ruthy
something to keep 'em from thinking of their real troubles--eh?" And
with a flourish he was gone.
When Grant's order was filled, he said, "Violet will call for this,
George; I have some other matters to attend to."
As he assembled the goods for the order, Mr. Brotherton called out,
"Well, how is Violet, anyway?" Grant smiled. "Violet is doing well. She
is blooming over again, and when she found herself before a
typewriter--it really seemed to take the curve out of her back. Henry
declares that the typewriter put ribbon in her hair. Laura Van Dorn, I
believe, is responsible for Violet's shirt waists. Henry Fenn comes to
the office twice a day, to make reports on the sewing business. But what
he's really doing, George, is to let her smell his breath to prove that
he's sober, and so she runs the two jobs at once. Have you seen Henry
recently?"
"Well," replied Brotherton, "he was in a month or so ago to borrow ten
to buy a coat--so that he could catch up with the trousers of that suit
before they grew too old. He still buys his clothes that way."
Grant threw back his red head and grinned a grim, silent grin: "Well,
that's funny. Didn't you know what is keeping him away?" Again Grant
grinned. "The day he was here he came wagging down with that ten-dollar
bill, but his conscience got the best of him for lavishing so much money
on himself, so he slipped it to Violet and told her to buy her some new
teeth--you know she's been ashamed to open her mouth now for years.
Violet promised she would get the teeth in time for Easter. And pretty
soon in walks Mrs. Maurice Stromsky--who scrubs in the Wright & Perry
Building, whose baby died last summer and had to be buried in the
Potter's field--she came in; and she and Violet got to talking about the
baby--and Violet up and gave that ten to Mrs. Stromsky, to get the baby
out of the Potter's field."
Mr. Brotherton laughed his great laugh. Grant went on:
"But that isn't all. The next day in walks Mrs. Maurice Stromsky,
penitent as a dog, and I heard her squaring herself with Violet for
giving that old saw-buck of yours to the Delaneys, whose second little
girl had diphtheria and who had no money for antitoxin. I never saw your
ten again, George," said Grant. "It seemed to be going down for the last
time." He looked at Brotherton quizzically for a second and asked:
"So old Henry hasn't been around since--isn't that joyous? Well--anyway,
he'll show up to-day or to-morrow, for he's got the new coat; he got it
this morning. Jasper was telling me."
In an hour Grant, returning after his morning's errands, was standing by
the puny little blaze that John Dexter had stirred out of the logs in
the Serenity. The two were standing together. Mr. Brotherton, reading
his Kansas City paper at his desk, called to them: "Well, I see Doc
Jim's still holding his deadlock and they can't elect a United States
Senator without him!"
A telegraph messenger boy came in, looked into the Serenity, and said,
"Mr. Adams, I was looking for you."
Grant signed the boy's book, read the telegram, and stood dumbly gazing
at the fire, as he held the sheet in his hand.
The fire popped and snapped and the little blaze grew stronger when a
log dropped in two. A customer came in--picked up a magazine--called,
"Charge it, please," then went out. The door slammed. Another customer
came and went. Miss Calvin stepped back to Mr. Brotherton. The bell of
the cash register tinkled. Then Grant Adams turned, looked at the
minister absently for a moment, and handed him the sheet. It read:
"I have pledged in writing five more votes than are needed to
make you the caucus nominee and give you a majority on the joint
ballot to-night for United States Senator. Come up first train."
It was signed "James Nesbit." The preacher dropped his hand still
holding the yellow sheet, and looked into the fire.
"Well?" asked Grant.
"You say," returned John Dexter, and added: "It would be a great
opportunity--give you the greatest forum for your cause in
Christendom--give you more power than any other labor advocate ever held
in the world before."
He said all this tentatively and as one asking a question. Grant did not
reply. He sat pounding his leg with his claw, abstractedly.
"You needn't be a mere theorist in the Senate. You could get labor laws
enacted that would put forward the cause of labor. Grant, really, it
looks as though this was your life's chance."
Grant reached for the telegram and read it again. The telegram
fluttering in his hands dropped to the floor. He reached for it--picked
it up, folded it on his claw carefully, and put it away. Then he turned
to the preacher and said harshly:
"There's nothing in it. To begin: you say I'll have more power than any
other labor leader in the world. I tell you, labor leaders don't need
personal power. We don't need labor laws--that is, primarily. What we
need is sentiment--a public love of the under dog that will make our
present laws intolerable. It isn't power for me, it isn't clean politics
for the State, it isn't labor laws that's my job. My job, dearly
beloved," he hooked the minister's hand and tossed it gently, "my job,
oh, thou of little faith," he cried, as a flaming torch of emotion
seemed to brush his face and kindle the fanatic glow in his countenance
while his voice lifted, "is to stay right down here in the Wahoo Valley,
pile up money in the war chest, pile up class feeling among the
men--comradeship--harness this love of the poor for the poor into an
engine, and then some day slip the belt on that engine--turn on the
juice and pull and pull and pull for some simple, elemental piece of
justice that will show the world one phase of the truth about labor."
Grant's face was glowing with emotion. "I tell you, the day of the
Kingdom is here--only it isn't a kingdom, it's Democracy--the great
Democracy. It's coming. I must go out and meet it. In the dark down in
the mines I saw the Holy Ghost rise into the lives of a score of men.
And now I see the Holy Ghost coming into a great class. And I must
go--go with neither purse nor script to meet it, to live for it, and
maybe to die for it." He shook his head and cried vehemently:
"What a saphead I'd be if I fell to that bait!" He turned to the store
and called to Miss Calvin. "Ave--is there a telegraph blank in the
desk?"
Mr. Brotherton threw it, skidding, across the long counter. Grant
fumbled in his vest for a pen, held the sheet firmly with his claw and
wrote:
"You are kindness itself. But the place doesn't interest me.
Moreover, no man should go to the Senate representing all of a
State, whose job it is to preach class consciousness to a part
of the State. Get a bigger man. I thank you, however, with all
my heart."
Grant watched the preacher read the telegram. He read it twice, then he
said: "Well--of course, that's right. That's right--I can see that. But
I don't know--don't you think--I mean aren't you kind of--well, I can't
just express it; but--"
"Well, don't try, then," returned Grant.
However, Doctor Nesbit, having something rather more than the ethics of
the case at stake, was aided by his emotions in expressing himself. He
made his views clear, and as Grant sat at his desk that afternoon, he
read this in a telegram from the Doctor:
"Well, of all the damn fools!"
That was one view of the situation. There was this other. It may be
found in one of those stated communications from perhaps Ruskin or
Kingsley, which the Peach Blow Philosopher sometimes vouchsafed to the
earth and it read:
"A great life may be lived by any one who is strong enough to fail for
an ideal."
Still another view may be had by setting down what John Dexter said to
his wife, and what she said to him. Said he, when he had recounted the
renunciation of Grant Adams:
"There goes the third devil. First he conquered the temptation to marry
and be comfortable; next he put fame behind him, and now he renounces
power."
And she said: "It had never occurred to me to consider Laura Van Dorn,
or national reputation, or a genuine chance for great usefulness as a
devil. I'm not sure that I like your taste in devils."
To which answer may be made again by Mr. Left in a communication he
received from George Meredith, who had recently passed over. It was
verified by certain details as to the arrangement of the books on the
little table in the little room in the little house on a little hill
where he was wont to write, and it ran thus:
"Women, always star-hungry, ever uncompromising in their demand
for rainbows, nibbling at the entre' and pushing aside the
roast, though often adoring primitive men who gorge on it, but
ever in the end rewarding abstinence and thus selecting a race
of spiritually-minded men for mates, are after all the world's
materialists."