In the Heart of a Fool

Grant never remembered what he said by way of introduction as he stood staring at the crowd. It was a different crowd from audiences he knew. To Grant it was the market place; merchants, professional men; clerks, bankers,–well-dressed men, with pale, upturned faces stretched before him to the rear of the hall. It was all black and white, and as his soul cried “life and death” back of his conscious speech, the image came to him that all these pale, black-clad figures were in their shrouds, and that he was talking to the visible body of death–laid out stiffly before him.

What answer he made to Van Dorn does not matter. Grant Adams could not recall it when he had finished. But ever as he spoke through his being throbbed the electrical beat of the words, “I am the resurrection and the life.” And he was exultant in the consciousness that in the struggle of “life and death,” life would surely win. So he stood and spoke with a tongue of flame.

“If you have given all–and you have, we also have given all. But our all is more vitally our all–than yours; for it is our bodies, our food and clothing; our comfortable homes; our children’s education, our wives’ strength; our babies’ heritage; many of us have indeed given our sons’ integrity and our daughters’ virtue. All these we have put into the bargain with you. We have put them into the common hopper of this industrial life, and you have taken the grain and we the chaff. It is indeed a life and death struggle. And this happy family, this well-balanced industrial adjustment, this hell of labor run through your mills like grist, this is death; death is the name for all your wicked system, that shrinks and cringes before God’s ancient justice. ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ was not spoken across the veil that rises from the grave. It was spoken for men here in the flesh who shall soon come into a more abundant life. Life and death, life and death are struggling here this very hour, and you–you,” he leaned forward shaking his steel claw in their faces, “you and your greedy system of capital are the doomed; you are death’s embodiment.”

Then came the outburst. All over the house rose cries. Men jumped from their chairs and waved their arms. But Judge Van Dorn quieted them. He knew that to attack Grant Adams physically at that meeting would inflame the man’s followers in the Valley. So he pounded the gavel for quiet. To Adams he thundered, “Sit down, you villain!” Still the crowd hissed and jeered. A great six-footer in new blue overalls, whom Grant knew as one of the recent spies, one of the sluggers sent to the Valley, came crowding to the front of the room. But Judge Van Dorn nodded him back. When the Judge had stilled the tumult, he said in his sternest judicial manner, “Now, Adams–we have heard enough of you. Leave this district. Get out of this Valley. You have threatened us; we shall not protect you in life or limb. You are given two hours to leave the Valley, and after that you stay here at your own peril. If you try to hold your labor council, don’t ask us, whom you have scorned, to surround you with the protection of the society you would overthrow in bloodshed. Now, go–get out of here,” he cried, with all the fire and fury that an outraged respectability could muster. But Grant, turning, twisted his hook in the Judge’s coat, held him at arm’s length, and leaning toward the crowd, with the Judge all but dangling from his steel arm, cried: “I shall speak in South Harvey to-night. This is indeed a life and death struggle, and I shall preach the gospel of life. Life,” he cried with a trumpet voice, “life–the life of society, and its eternal resurrection out of the forces of life that flow from the everlasting divine spring!”

After the crowd had left the hall, Grant hurried toward the street leading to South Harvey. As he turned the corner, the man whom Grant had seen in the hall met him, the man whom Grant recognized as a puddler in one of the smelters. He came up, touched Grant on the shoulder and asked:

“Adams?” Grant nodded.

“Are you going down to South Harvey?”

Grant replied, “Yes, I’m going to hold a meeting there to-night.”

“Well, if you try,” said the man, pushing his face close to Grant’s, “you’ll get your head knocked off–that’s all. We don’t like your kind–understand?” Grant looked at the man, took his measure physically and returned:

“All right, there’ll be some one around to pick it up–maybe!”

The man walked away, but turned to say:

“Mind now–you show up in South Harvey, and we’ll fix you right!”

As Grant turned to board a South Harvey car, Judge Van Dorn caught his arm, and said:

“Wait a minute, the next car will do.”

The Judge’s wife was with him, and Grant was shocked to see how doll-like her face had become, how the lines of character had been smoothed out, the eyelids stained, the eyebrows penciled, the lips colored, until she had a bisque look that made him shudder. He had seen faces like hers, and fancied that he knew their story.

“I would like to speak with you just a minute. Come up to the office. Margaret, dearie,” said Van Dorn, “you wait for me at Brotherton’s.” In the office, Van Dorn squared himself before Grant and said:

“It’s no use, sir. You can’t hold a meeting there to-night–the thing’s set against you. I can’t stop them, but I know the rough element there will kill you if you try. You’ve done your best–why risk your head, man–for no purpose? You can’t make it–and it’s dangerous for you to try.”

Grant looked at Van Dorn. Then he asked:

“You represent the Harvey Fuel Company, Judge?”

“Yes,” replied the Judge with much pride of authority, “and we–”

Grant stopped him. “Judge,” he said, “if you blow your horn–I’ll ring my bell and–If I don’t hold my meeting to-night, your mines won’t open to-morrow morning.” The Judge rose and led the way to the door.

“Oh, well,” he sneered, “if you won’t take advice, there’s no need of wasting time on you.”

“No,” answered Grant, “only remember what I’ve said.”

When Grant alighted from the car in South Harvey, he found his puddler friend waiting for him. The two went into the Vanderbilt House, where Grant greeted Mrs. Williams, the landlady, as an old friend, and the puddler cried: “Say, lady–if you keep this man–we’ll burn your house.”

“Well, burn it–it wouldn’t be much loss,” retorted the landlady, who turned her back upon the puddler and said to Grant: “We’ve given you the front room upstairs, Grant, for the committee. It has the outside staircase. Your room is ready. You know the Local No. 10 boys from the Independent are all coming around this afternoon–as soon as they learn where the meeting is.”

The puddler walked away and Grant went out into the street; looked up at the wooden structure with the stairway rising from the sidewalk and splitting the house in two. Mounting the stairs, he found a narrow hall, leading down a long line of bedrooms. He realized that he must view his location as a general looks over a battlefield.

The closing of the public halls to Grant and his cause had not discouraged him. He knew that he still had the great free out-of-doors, and he had thought that an open air meeting would give the cause dramatic setting. He felt that to be barred from the halls of the Valley helped rather than hurt his meeting. The barring proved to the workers the righteousness of their demands. So Grant sallied forth to locate a vacant lot; he shot out of his room full of the force of his enthusiasm, but his force met another force as strong as his, and ruthless. God’s free out of doors, known and beloved of Grant from his boyhood, was preëmpted: What he found in his quest for a meeting place was a large red sign, “No trespassing,” upon the nearest vacant lot, and a special policeman parading back and forth in front of the lot on the sidewalk. He found a score of lots similarly placarded and patrolled. He sent men to Magnus and Foley scurrying like ants through the Valley, but no lot was available.

Up town in Harvey, the ants also were busy. The company was sending men over Market Street, picking out the few individuals who owned vacant lots, leasing them for the month and preparing to justify the placarding and patrolling that already had been done. One of the ants that went hurrying out of the Sands hill on this errand, was John Kollander, and after he had seen Wright & Perry and the few other merchants who owned South Harvey real estate, he encountered Captain Ezra Morton, who happened to have a vacant lot, given to the Captain in the first flush of the South Harvey boom, in return for some service to Daniel Sands. John Kollander explained his errand to the Captain, who nodded wisely, and stroked his goatee meditatively.

“I got to think it over,” he bawled, and walked away, leaving John Kollander puzzled and dismayed. But Captain Morton spent no time in academic debate. In half an hour he was in South Harvey, climbing the stairs of the Vanderbilt House, and knocking at Grant Adams’s door. Throwing open the door Grant found Captain Morton, standing to attention with a shotgun in his hands. The Captain marched in, turned a square corner to a chair, but slumped into it with a relieved sigh.

“Well, Grant–I heard your speech this morning to the Merchants’ Association. You’re crazy as a bed bug–eh? That’s what I told ’em all. And then they said to let you go to it–you couldn’t get a hall, and the company could keep you off the lots all over the Valley, and if you tried to speak on the streets they’d run you in–what say?” His old eyes snapped with some virility, and he lifted up his voice and cried:

“But ’y gory–is that the way to do a man, I says? No–why, that ain’t free speech! I remember when they done Garrison and Lovejoy and those old boys that way before the war. I fit, bled and died for that, Grant–eh? And I says to the girls this noon: ‘Girls–your pa’s got a lot in South Harvey, over there next to the Red Dog saloon, that he got way back when they were cheap, and now that the company’s got all their buildings up and don’t want to buy any lots–why, they’re cheaper still–what say?’

“And ’y gory, I says to the girls–‘If your ma was living I know what she’d say. She’d say, “You just go over there and tell that Adams boy that lot’s hisn, and if any one tries to molest him, you blow ’em to hell”–that’s what your ma’d say’–only words to that effect–eh? And so by the jumping John Rogers, Grant–here I am!”

He looked at the shotgun. “One load’s bird shot–real fine and soft, with a small charge of powder.” He put his hand to his mouth sheepishly and added apologetically, “I suppose I won’t need it,–but I just put the blamedest load of buck shot and powder in that right barrel you ever saw–what say?”

Grant said: “Well, Captain–this isn’t your fight. You don’t believe in what I’m talking about–you’ve proved your patriotism in a great war. Don’t get into this, Captain.”

“Grant Adams,” barked the Captain as if he were drilling his company, “I believe if you’re not a Socialist, you’re just as bad. But ’y gory, I fought for the right of free speech, and free meetings, and Socialist or no Socialist, that’s your right. I’m going to defend you on my own lot.” He rose again, straightened up in rheumatic pain, marched to the door, saluted, and said:

“I brought my supper along with me. It’s in my coat pocket. I’m going over to the lot and sit there till you come. I know this class of people down here. They ain’t worth hell room, Grant,” admonished the Captain earnestly. “But if I’m not there, the company will crowd their men in on that lot as sure as guns, when they know you are to meet there. And I’m going there to guard it till you come. Good day–sir.”

And with that he thumped limpingly down the narrow stairs, across the little landing, out of the door and into the street.

Grant stood at the top of the stairs and watched him out of sight. Then Grant pulled himself together, and went out to see the gathering members of the Labor Council in the hotel office and the men of Local No. 10 to announce the place of meeting. Later in the afternoon he met Nathan Perry. When he told Nathan of the meeting, the young man cried in his rasping Yankee voice:

“Good–you’re no piker. They said they had scared the filling out of you at the meeting this morning, and they’ve bragged they were going to beat you up this afternoon and kill you to-night. You look pretty husky–but watch out. They really are greatly excited.”

“Well,” replied Grant grimly, “I’ll be there to-night.”

“Nevertheless,” returned Nathan, snapping off his words as though he was cutting them with steel scissors, “Anne and I agreed to-day, that I must come to Mrs. Williams’s and take you to the meeting. They may get ugly after dark.”

Half an hour later on the street, Grant was passing his cousin Anne, wheeling Daniel Kyle Perry out to take the air. He checked his hurried step when he caught her smile and said, “Well, Anne, Nate told me that you wish to send him over to the meeting to-night, as my body guard. I don’t need a body guard, and you keep Nate at home.” He smiled down on his cousin and for a moment all of the emotional storm in his face was melted by the gentleness of that smile. “Anne,” he said–“what a brick you are!”

She laughed and gave him the full voltage of her joyous eyes and answered:

“Grant, I’d rather be the widow of a man who would stand by you and what you are doing, than to be the wife of a man who shrank from it.” She lowered her voice, “And Grant, here’s a curious thing: this second Mrs. Van Dorn called me up on the phone a little bit ago, and said she knew you and I were cousins and that you and Nate were such friends, but would I tell Nate to keep you away from any meeting to-night? She said she couldn’t tell me, but she had just learned some perfectly awful things they were going to do, and she didn’t want to see any trouble. Wasn’t that queer?”

Grant shook his head. “Well, what did you say?” he asked.

“Oh, I said that while they were doing such perfectly awful things to you, your friends wouldn’t be making lace doilies! And she rang off. What do you think of it?” she asked.

“Just throwing a scare into me–under orders,” responded the man and hurried on.

When Grant returned to the hotel at supper time, he found Mr. Brotherton sitting in a ramshackle rocking chair in the upstairs bedroom, waiting.

“I thought I’d come over and bring a couple of friends,” explained Mr. Brotherton, pointing to the corner, where two shotguns leaned against the wall.

“Why, man,” exclaimed Grant, “that’s good of you, but in all the time I’ve been in the work of organization, I’ve never carried a gun, nor had one around. I don’t want a gun, Mr. Brotherton.”

“I do,” returned the elder man, “and I’m here to say that moral force is a grand thing, but in these latitudes when you poke Betsy Jane under the nose of an erring comrade, he sees the truth with much more clearness than otherwise. I stick to the gun–and you can go in hard for moral suasion.

“Also,” he added, “I’ve just taken a survey of these premises, and told the missus to bring the supper up here. There may be an early curtain raiser on this entertainment, and if they are going to chase you out of town to-night, I want a good seat at the performance.” He grinned. “Nate Perry will join us in a little quiet social manslaughter. I called him up an hour ago, and he said he’d be here at six-thirty. I think he’s coming now.” In another minute the slim Yankee figure of Nathan was in the room. It was scarcely dusk outside. Mrs. Williams came up with a tray of food. As she set it down she said:

“There’s a crowd around at the Hot Dog, you can see them through the window.”

Nate and Grant looked. Mr. Brotherton went into the supper. “Crowd all right,” assented Nate. There was no mistaking the crowd and its intention. There were new men from the day shift at the smelter, imported by the company to oppose the unions. A thousand such men had been brought into the district within a few months.

“There’s another saloon across the road here,” said Mr. Brotherton, looking up from his food. “My understanding is that they’re going to make headquarters across the street in Dick’s Place. You know I got a pipe-line in on the enemy through the Calvin girl. She gets it at home, and her father gets it at the office. Our estimable natty little friend Joe will be down here–he says to keep the peace. That’s what he tells at home. I know what he’s coming for. Tom Van Dorn will sit in the back room of that saloon and no one will know he’s there, and Joseph will issue Tom’s orders. Lord,” cried Mr. Brotherton, waving a triangle of pie in his hand, “don’t I know ’em like a book.”

While he was talking the crowd slowly was swelling in front of the Hot Dog saloon. It was a drinking and noisy crowd. Men who appeared to be leaders were taking other men in to the bar, treating them, then bringing them out again, and talking excitedly to them. The crowd grew rapidly, and the noise multiplied. Another crowd was gathering–just a knot of men down the street by the Company’s store, in the opposite direction from the Hot Dog crowd. Grant and Nate noticed the second crowd at the same time. It was Local No. 10. Grant left the window and lighted the lamp. He wrote on a piece of paper, a few lines, handed it to Nathan, saying:

“Here, sign it with me.” It read:

“Boys–whatever you do, don’t start anything–of any kind–no matter what happens to us. We can take care of ourselves.”

Nathan Perry signed it, slipped down the stairs into the hall, and beckoned to his men at the Company’s store. The crowd at the Hot Dog saw him and yelled, but Evan Evans came running for the note and took it back. Little Tom Williams came up the stairs with Nathan, saying:

“Well–they’re getting ready for business. I brought a gun up to No. 3 this afternoon. I’m with Grant in this.”

The little landlord went into No. 3, appeared with a rifle, and came bobbing into the room.

Grant at the window could see the crowd marching from the Hot Dog to Dick’s Place, yelling and cursing as it went. The group in the bedroom over the street opened the street windows to see better and hear better. An incandescent over the door of the saloon lighted the narrow street. In front of the saloon and under the light the mob halted. The men in the room with Grant were at the windows watching. Suddenly–as by some prearranged order, four men with revolvers in their hands ran across the street towards the hotel. Brotherton, Williams and Perry ran to the head of the stairs, guns in hand. Grant followed them. There they stood when the door below was thrown open, and the four men below rushed across the small landing to the bottom of the stairs. It was dark in the upper hall, but a light from the street flooded the lower hall. The men below did not look up; they were on the stairs.

“Stop,” shouted Brotherton with his great voice.

That halted them. They looked up into darkness. They could see no faces–only four gun barrels. The men farthest up the stairs literally fell into the arms of those below. Then the four men below scrambled down the stairs as Mr. Brotherton roared:

“I’ll kill the first man who puts his foot on the bottom step again.”

With a cry of terror they rushed out. The crowd at the Company store hooted, and the mob before the saloon jeered. But the four men scurried across the street, and told the crowd what had happened. For a few minutes no move was made. Then Grant, who had left the hallway and was looking through the window, saw the little figure of Joseph Calvin moving officiously among the men. He went into the saloon, and came out again after a time. Then Grant cried to Brotherton at the head of the stairs:

“Watch out–they’re coming; more of them this time.” And half a dozen armed men rushed across the street and appeared at the door of the hallway.

“Stop,” yelled Brotherton–whose great voice itself sounded a terrifying alarm in the darkened hallway. The feet of two men were on the first steps of the stairs–they looked up and saw three gun barrels pointing down at them, and heard Brotherton call “one–two–three,” but before he could say “fire” the men fell back panic stricken and ran out of the place.

The crowd left the sidewalk and moved into the saloon, and the street was deserted for a time. Local No. 10 held its post down by the Company Store. It seemed like an age to the men at the head of the stairs. Yet Mr. Brotherton’s easy running fire of ribaldry never stopped. He was excited and language came from his throat without restraint.

Then Grant’s quick ear caught a sound that made him shudder. It was far away, a shrill high note; in a few seconds the note was repeated, and with it the animal cry one never mistakes who hears it–the cry of an angry mob. They could hear it roaring over the bridge upon the Wahoo and they knew it was the mob from Magnus, Plain Valley and Foley coming. On it came, with its high-keyed horror growing louder and louder. It turned into the street and came roaring and whining down to the meeting place at the saloon. It filled the street. Then appeared Mr. Calvin following a saloon porter, who was rolling a whiskey barrel from the saloon. The porter knocked in the head, and threw tin cups to the crowd.

“What do you think of that for a praying Christian?” snarled Mr. Brotherton. No one answered Mr. Brotherton, for the whiskey soon began to make the crowd noisy. But the leaders waited for the whiskey to make the crowd brave. The next moment, Van Dorn’s automobile–the old one, not the new one–came chugging up. Grant, at the window, looked out and turned deathly sick. For he saw the puddler who had bullied him during the day get out of the car, and in the puddler’s grasp was Kenyon–with white face, but not whimpering.

The men made way for the puddler, who hurried the boy into the saloon. Grant did not speak, but stood unnerved and horror-stricken staring at the saloon door which had swallowed up the boy.

“Well, for God–” cried Brotherton.

“A screen–they’re going to use the boy as a shield–the damn cowards!” rasped Nathan Perry.

The little Welshman moaned. And the three men stood staring at Grant whose eyes did not shift from the saloon door. He was rigid and his face, which trembled for a moment, set like molten bronze.

“If I surrender now, if they beat me here with anything less than my death, the whole work of years is gone–the long struggle of these men for their rights.” He spoke not to his companions, but through them to himself. “I can’t give up–not even for Kenyon,” he cried. “Tom–Tom,” Grant turned to the little Welshman. “You stood by and heard Dick Bowman order Mugs to hold the shovel over my face! Did he shrink? Well, this cause is the life and death struggle of all the Dicks in the Valley–not for just this week, but for always.”

Below the crowd was hushed. Joe Calvin had appeared and was giving orders in a low tone. The hulking figure of the puddler could be seen picking out his men; he had three set off in a squad. The men in the room could see the big beads of sweat stand out on Grant’s forehead. “Kenyon–Kenyon,” he cried in agony. Then George Brotherton let out his bellow, “Grant–look here–do you think I’m going to fire on–”

But the next minute the group at the window saw something that made even George Brotherton’s bull voice stop. Into the drab street below flashed something all red. It was the Van Dorn motor car, the new one. But the red of the car was subdued beside the scarlet of the woman in the back seat–a woman without hat or coat, holding something in her arms. The men at the window could not see what those saw in the street; but they could see Joe Calvin fall back; could see the consternation on his face, could see him waving his hands to the crowd to clear the way. And then those at the window above saw Margaret Van Dorn rise in the car and they heard her call, “Joe Calvin! Joe Calvin–” she screamed, “bring my husband out from behind that wine room door–quick–quick,” she shrieked, “quick, I say.”

The mob parted for her. The men at the hotel window could not see what she had in her arms. She made the driver wheel, drive to the opposite side of the street directly under the hotel window–directly in front of the besieged door. In another instant Van Dorn, ghastly with rage, came bare-headed out of the saloon. He ran across the street crying:

“You she devil, what do you–”

But he stopped without finishing his sentence. The men above looked down at what he was looking at and saw a child–Tom Van Dorn’s child, Lila, in the car.