IN WHICH WE END AS WE BEGAN AND ALL LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER
The great strike in the Wahoo Valley now is only an episode in the
history of this struggle of labor for its rights. The episode is
receding year by year further and more dimly into the past and is one of
the long, half-forgotten skirmishes wherein labor is learning the truth
that only in so far as labor dares to lean on peace and efficiency can
labor move upward in the scale of life. The larger life with its wider
hope, requires the deeper fellowship of men. The winning or losing of
the strike in the Wahoo meant little in terms of winning or losing; but
because the men kept the peace, kept it to the very end, the strike
meant much in terms of progress. For what they gained was permanent;
based on their own strength, not on the weakness of those who would deny
them.
But the workers in the mines and mills of the Wahoo Valley, who have
gone to and from their gardens, planting and cultivating and harvesting
their crops for many changing seasons, hold the legend of the strong
man, maimed and scarred, who led them in that first struggle with
themselves, to hold themselves worthy of their dreams. In a hundred
little shacks in the gardens, and in dingy rooms in the tenements may be
found even to-day newspaper clippings pinned to the wall with his
picture on them, all curled up and yellow with years. Before a
wash-stand, above a bed or pasted over the kitchen stove, soiled and
begrimed, these clippings recall the story of the man who gave his life
to prove his creed. So the fellowship he brought into the world lives
on.
And the fellowship that came into the world as Grant Adams went out of
it, touched a wider circle than the group with whom he lived and
labored. The sad sincerity with which he worked proved to Market Street
that the man was consecrated to a noble purpose, and Market Street's
heart learned a lesson. Indeed the lives of that long procession of
working men who have given themselves so freely--where life was all they
had to give--for the freedom of their fellows from the bondage of the
times, the lives of these men have found their highest value in making
the Market Street eternal, realize its own shame. So Grant Adams lay
down in the company of his peers that Market Street might understand in
his death what his fellows really hoped for. He was a seed that is sown
and falls upon good ground. For Market Street after all is not a stony
place; seeds sown there bring forth great harvests. And while the
harvest of Grant Adams's life is not at hand; the millennium is not
here; the seed is quickening in the earth. And great things are moving
in the world.
* * * * *
Of course, there came a time in Harvey, even in the house of Nesbit,
when there was marrying and giving in marriage. It was on a winter's
night when the house inside the deep, dark Moorish verandas, celebrating
Mrs. Nesbit's last bout with the spirit of architecture, glowed with a
jewel of light.
And in due course they appeared, Rev. Dr. John Dexter leading the way,
followed by a thin, dark-skinned young man with eyes to match and a
rather slight, shortish girl, blond and pink with happy trimmings and
real pearls on her eyelashes. The children jabbered, and the women wept
and the men wiped their eyes, and it was altogether a gay occasion. Just
as the young people were ready to look the world squarely in the face,
George Brotherton, thinking he heard some one moving outside in the
deep, dark veranda, flicked on the porch light, and through the windows
he saw--and the merry company could not help seeing two faces--two wan,
unhappy faces, staring hungrily in at the bridal pair. They stood at
different corners of the house and did not seem to know of one another's
presence until the light revealed them. Only an instant did their faces
flash into the light, as John Dexter was reading from the Bible a part
of the service that he loved to put in, "and forbid them not, for of
such is the kingdom of Heaven." The faces vanished, there was a
scurrying across the cement floor of the veranda and two figures met on
the lawn in shame and anger.
But they in the house did not know of the meeting. For everybody was
kissing everybody else, and the peppermint candy in little Grant
Brotherton's mouth tasted on a score of lips in three minutes, and a
finger dab of candy on Jasper Adams's shirt front made the world akin.
After the guests had gone, three old men lingered by the smoldering
logs. "Well, now, Doc Jim," asked Amos, "why shouldn't I? Haven't I paid
taxes in Greeley County for nearly fifty years? Didn't I make the
campaign for that home in the nineties, when they called it the poor
house--most people call it that now. I only stay there when I am
lonesome and I go out in a taxi-cab at the county's expense like a
gentleman to his estate. And I guess it is my estate. I was talking to
Lincoln about it the other night, and he says he approves. Ruskin says I
am living my religion like a diamond in the rock."
To the Captain's protest he answered, "Oh, yes, I know that--but that
would be charity. My pencils and shoestrings and collar buttons and coat
hangers keep me in spending money. I couldn't take charity even from you
men. And Jasper's money," the gray poll wagged, and he cried, "Oh,
no--not Ahab Wright's and Kyle Perry's--not that money. Kenyon is
forever slipping me fifty. But I don't need it. John Dexter keeps a room
always ready for me, and I like it at the Dexters' almost as much as I
do at the county home. So I don't really need Kenyon's money, however
much joy he takes in giving it. And I raise the devil's own fuss to keep
him from doing it."
The Doctor puffed, and the Captain in his regal garments paraded the
long room, with his hands locked under his coattails.
"But, Amos," cried the Captain, "under the law, no man wearing that
button," and the Captain looked at the tri-color of the Loyal Legion,
proudly adorning the shiny coat, "no soldier under the law, has to go
out there. They've got to keep you here in town, and besides you're
entitled to a whopping lot of pension money for all these unclaimed
years."
The white old head shook and the pursed old lips smiled, as the thin
little voice replied, "Not yet, Ezra--not yet--I don't need the pension
yet. And as for the Home--it's not lonesome there. A lot of 'em are
bedfast and stricken and I get a certain amount of fun--chirping 'em up
on cloudy days. They like to hear from Emerson and John A. Logan, and
Sitting Bull and Huxley and their comrades. So I guess I'm being more or
less useful." He stroked his scraggy beard and looked at the fire. "And
then," he added, "she always seems nearer where there is sorrow. Grant,
too, is that way, though neither of 'em really has come."
The Captain finding that his money was ashes in his hands, and not
liking the thought and meditation of death, changed the subject, and
when the evening was old, Amos Adams called a taxi-cab, and at the
county's expense rode home.
At the end of a hard winter day, descending tardily into the early
spring, they missed him at the farm. No one knew whether he had gone to
visit the Dexters, as was his weekly wont, or whether he was staying
with Captain Morton in town, where he sometimes spent Saturday night
after the Grand Army meeting.
The next day the sun came out and melted the untimely snow banks. And
some country boys playing by a limestone ledge in a wide upland meadow
above the Wahoo, far from the smoke of town, came upon the body of an
old man. Beside him was strewn a meager peddler's kit. On his knees was
a tablet of paper; in his left hand was a pencil tightly gripped. On the
tablet in a fine, even hand were the words: "I am here, Amos," and his
old eyes, stark and wide, were drooped, perhaps to look at the tri-color
of the Loyal Legion that shone on his shrunken chest and told of a great
dream of a nation come true, or perhaps in the dead, stark eyes was
another vision in another world.
And so as in the beginning, there was blue sky and sunshine and prairie
grass at the end.