CHAPTER XXVII
IN WHICH WE SEE SOMETHING COME INTO THIS STORY OUTSIDE OF THE MATERIAL WORLD
“Life,” writes Mr. Left, using the pseudonym of the Peachblow philosopher, “disheartens us because we expect the wrong things of it. We expect material rewards for spiritual virtues, material punishments for spiritual transgressions; when even in the material world, material rewards and punishments do not always follow the acts which seem to require them. Yet the only sure thing in the world is that our spiritual lapses bring spiritual punishments, and our spiritual virtues have their spiritual rewards.”
Now these observations of Mr. Left might well be taken for the thesis of this story. Tom Van Dorn’s spiritual transgressions had no material punishments and the good that was in Grant Adams had no material reward. Yet the spiritual laws which they obeyed or violated were inexorable in their rewards and punishments.
Once there entered the life of Judge Van Dorn, from the outside, the play of purely spiritual forces, which looped him up and tripped him in another man’s game, and Tom, poor fellow, may have thought that it was a special Providence around with a warrant looking after him. Now this statement hangs on one “if,”–if you can call Nate Perry a man! “One generation passeth and another cometh on,” saith the Preacher. Perhaps it has occurred to the reader that the love affairs of this book are becoming exceedingly middle aged; some have only the dying glow of early reminiscence. But here comes one that is as young as spring flowers; that is–if Nate Perry is a man, and is entitled to a love affair at all. Let’s take a look at him: long legged, lean faced, keen eyed, razor bodied, just back from College where he has studied mining engineering. He is a pick and shovel miner in the Wahoo Fuel Company’s mine, getting the practical end of the business. For he is heir apparent of stuttering Kyle Perry, who has holdings in the mines. Young Nate’s voice rasps like the whine of a saw and he has no illusions about the stuff the world is made of. For him life is atoms flopping about in the ether in an entirely consistent and satisfactory manner. Things spiritual don’t bother him. And yet it was in working out a spiritual equation in Nate Perry’s life that Providence tipped over Tom Van Dorn, in his race for Judgeship.
And now let us put Mr. Brotherton on the stand:
“Showers,” exclaims Mr. Brotherton, “showers for Nate and Anne,–why, only yesterday I sent him and Grant Adams over to Mrs. Herdicker’s to borrow her pile-driver, and spanked him for canning a dog, and it hasn’t been more’n a week since I gave Anne a rattle when her father brought her down town the day after the funeral, as he was looking over Wright & Perry’s clerks for the fourth Mrs. Sands–and here’s showers! Well, say, isn’t time that blue streak! Showers! Say, I saw Tom Van Dorn’s little Lila in the store this morning–isn’t she the beauty–bluest eyes, and the sweetest, saddest, dearest little face–and say, man–I do believe Tom’s kind of figuring up what he missed along that line. He tried to talk to her this morning, but she looked at him with those blue eyes and shrank away. Doc Jim bought her a doll and a train of cars. That was just this morning, and well, say–I wouldn’t be surprised if when I come down and unlock the store to-morrow morning, some one will be telling me she’s having showers. Isn’t time that old hot-foot?”
“Showers–kitchen showers and linen showers, and silver showers for little Anne–little Anne with the wide, serious eyes, ‘the home of silent prayer’;–well, say, do you know who said that? It was Tennyson. Nice, tasty piece of goods–that man Tennyson. I’ve handled him in padded leather covers; fancy gilt cloth, plain boards, deckle-edges, wide margins, hand-made paper, and in thirty-nine cent paper–and he is a neat, nifty piece of goods in all of them–always easy to move and no come backs.” After this pean to the poet, Mr. Brotherton turned again to his meditations, “Little Anne–Why, it’s just last week or such a matter I wrapped up Mother Goose for her–just the other day she came in when they sent her off to school, and I gave her a diary–and now it’s showers–” He shook his great head, “Well, say–I’m getting on.”
And while Mr. Brotherton mused the fire burned–the fire of youth that glowed in the heart of Nathan Perry. When he wandered back from college no one in particular had noticed him. But Anne Sands was no one in particular. And as no one in particular was looking after Anne and her affairs, as a girl in her teens she had focused her heart upon the gangling youth, and there grew into life one of those matter-of-fact, unromantic love affairs that encompass the whole heart. For they are as commonplace as light and air and are equally vital. Because their course is smooth, such affairs seem shallow. But let unhappy circumstance break the even surface, and behold, from their depths comes all the beauty of a great force diverted, all the anguish of a great passion curbed and thwarted.
In this democratic age, when deep emotional experiences are not the privilege of the few, but the lot of many, heart break is almost commonplace. We do not notice it as it may have been noted in those chivalric days when only the few had the finer sensibilities that may make great mental suffering possible. So here in the commonplace town of Harvey, in their commonplace homes, amid their commonplace friends and relatives, two commonplace hearts were aching all unsuspected by a commonplace world. And it happened thus:
Anne Sands had opinions about the renomination and reëlection of Judge Van Dorn. For Judge Van Dorn’s divorce and remarriage had offended Anne Sands.
On the other hand, to Nathan Perry the aspirations of Judge Van Dorn meant nothing but the ambition of a politician in politics. So when Anne and he had fallen into the inevitable discussion of the Van Dorn case, as a part of an afternoon’s talk, indignation flashed upon indifference and the girl saw, or thought she saw such a defect in the character of her lover that, being what she was, she had to protest, and he being what he was–he was hurt to the heart. Both lovers spoke plainly. The thing sounded like a quarrel–their first; and coming from the Sands house into the summer afternoon, Nate Perry decided to go to Brotherton’s. He reflected as he walked that Mr. Brotherton’s remarks on “showers,” which had come to Anne and Nate, might possibly be premature. And the reflection was immensely disquieting.
A practical youth was Nathan Perry, with a mechanical instinct that gloried in adjustment. He loved to tinker and potter and patch things up. Now something was wrong with the gearing of his heart action. His theory was that Anne was for the moment crazy. He could see nothing to get excited about over the renomination and election of Judge Van Dorn. The men in the mine where the youth was working as a miner hated Van Dorn, the people seemed to distrust him as a man more or less, but if he controlled the nominating convention that ended it with Nathan Perry. The Judge’s family affairs were in no way related to the nomination, as the youth saw the case. Yet they were affecting the cams and cogs and pulleys of young Mr. Perry’s love affairs, and he felt the matter must be repaired, and put in running order. For he knew that love affair was the mainspring of his life. And the mechanic in him–the Yankee that talked in his rasping, high-keyed tenor voice, that shone from his thin, lean face, and cadaverous body, the Yankee in him, the dreaming, sentimental Yankee, half poet and half tinker, fell upon the problem with unbending will and open mind.
So it came to pass that there entered into the affairs of Judge Thomas Van Dorn, an element upon which he did not calculate. For he was dealing only with the material elements of a material universe!
When Nathan Perry came to Brotherton’s he sat down in the midst of a discussion of the Judgeship that began in rather etherial terms. For Doctor Nesbit was saying:
“Amos, I’ve got you cornered if you consider the visible universe. She works like a watch; she’s as predestined as a corn sheller. But let me tell you something–she isn’t all visible. There’s something back of matter–there’s another side to the shield. I know mighty well there’s a time when my medicine won’t help sick folks–and yet they get well. I’ve seen a great love flame up in a man’s heart or a woman’s heart or a child’s in a bed of torture, and when medicine wouldn’t take hold I’ve seen love burn through the wall between the worlds, and I have seen help come just as sure as you see the Harvey Hook and Ladder Company coming rattling down Market Street! Funny old world–funny old world–seventy rides around the sun–and then the fireworks.” After puffing away to revive his pipe he said: “I sort of got into this way of thinking recently going over this judgeship fight.” He smoked meditatively then broke out, “Lord, Lord, what an iron-clad, hog-tight, rock-ribbed, copper-riveted material proposition it is that Tom is putting up. He’s bound self-interest with self-interest everywhere. He and Joe Calvin have roped old man Sands in, and every material interest in this whole district is tied up in the Van Dorn candidacy. I’m a child in a cyclone in this fight. The self-interest of the county candidates, of all the deputies who hope two years from now to be county candidates, and all their friends, every straw boss at the shops, in the smelters, in the mines–and all the men who are near them and want to be straw bosses, every merchant who is caught in the old spider’s web with a ninety-day note; every street-car conductor, every employee of the light company, every man at the waterworks plant, every man at the gas plant, the telephone linemen–every human being that dances in the great woof of this little spider’s web feels the pull of devilish material power.”
Amos Adams threw back his grizzled head in a laugh that failed to vocalize. “Well, Jim, according to your account you’re liable to get burned and singed and disfigured until you’re as useless in politics as this old Amos Adams–the spook chaser!”
There was no bitterness in Amos Adams’s voice. “It’s all right, Jim–I have no complaint to make against life. Forty years ago Dan Sands got the first girl I ever loved. I went to war; he paid his bounty and married the girl. That was a long time ago. I often think of the girl–it’s no lack of faith to Mary. And I have the memory of the war–of that Day at Peach Tree Creek with all the wonderful exulting joy of that charge and what God gave me to do. This button,” he put his thumb under the Loyal Legion emblem in his warped coat lapel, “this button is more fragrant than any flower on earth to my heart. Dan Sands has had five wives; he missed the hardship of the war. He has a son by her. Jim,” said Amos Adams as he opened his eyes, “if you knew how it has cut into my heart year by year to see the beautiful soul that Hester Haley gave to Morty decay under the blight of his father–but you can’t.” He sighed. “Yet there is still her soul in him–gentle, kind, trying to do the right thing–but tied and hobbled by life with his father. Grant may be wrong, Doctor,” cried the father, raising his hand excitedly, “he may be crazy, and I know they laugh at him up town here–for a fool and the son of a fool; he certainly doesn’t know how he is going to do all the things he dreams of doing–but that is not the point. The important thing is that he is having his dream! For by the Eternal, Jim Nesbit, I’d rather feel that my boy was even a small part of the life force of his planet pushing forward–I’d rather be the father of that boy–I’d rather be old Amos Adams the spook chaser–than Dan Sands with his million. I’ve been happier, Jim, with the memory of my Mary than he with his five wives. I’d rather be on the point of the drill of life and mangled there, than to have my soul rot in greed.”
The Doctor puffed on his pipe. “Well, Amos,” he returned quietly, “I suppose if a man wants to get all messed up as one of the points of the drill of life, as you call it–it’s easy enough to find a place for the sacrifice. I admire Grant; but someway,” his falsetto broke out, “I have thought there was a little something in the bread-and-butter proposition.”
“A little, Doctor Jim–but not as much as you’d think!” answered Amos.
“Nevertheless in this fight here in Greeley County, I’m quietly lining up a few county delegates, and picking out a few trusty friends who will show up at the caucuses, and Grant has a handful of crazy Ikes that I am going to use in my business, and if we win it will be a practical proposition–my head against Tom’s.”
The Doctor rose. Amos Adams stopped him with “Don’t be too sure of that, Jim; I got a writing from Mr. Left last night and he says–”
“Hold on, Amos–hold on,” squeaked the Doctor’s falsetto; “until Mr. Left is registered in the Third Ward–we won’t bother with him until after the convention.”
The Doctor left the place smiling at Amos and glancing casually at young Mr. Perry. The dissertation had been a hard strain on the practical mind of young Mr. Perry, and while he was fumbling his way through the mazes of what he had heard, Amos Adams left the shop and another practical man very much after Nathan Perry’s own heart came in. Daniel Sands had no cosmic problems on his mind with which to befuddle young Perry. Daniel Sands was a seedy little old man of nearly three score years and ten; his dull, fishy eyes framed in red lids looked shiftily at one as though he was forever preoccupied in casting up sums in interest. His skin was splotched and dirty, a kind of scale seemed to be growing over it, and his long, thin nose stuck out of his shaggy, ill-kept whiskers like a sharp snout, attenuated by rooting in money. When he smiled, which was rarely, the false quality of his smile seemed expressed by his false teeth that were forever falling out of place when he loosed his facial muscles. He walked rather stealthily back to the desk where the proprietor of the shop was working; but he spoke loud enough for Nate Perry’s practical ear to comprehend the elder man’s mission.
“George, I’ve got to be out of town for the next ten days, and the county convention will meet when I’m gone.” He stopped, and cleared his throat. Mr. Brotherton knew what was coming. “I just called to say that we’re expecting you to do all you can for Tom.” He paused. Mr. Brotherton was about to reply when the old man smiled his false smile and added:
“Of course, we can’t afford to let our good Doctor’s family affairs interfere with business. And George,” he concluded, “just tell the boys to put Morty on in my place. And George, you kind of sit by Morty, and see that he gets his vote in right. Morty’s a good boy, George–but he someway doesn’t get interested in things as I like to see him. He’ll be all right if you’ll just fix his ballot in the convention and see that he votes it.” He blinked his dull, red eyes at the book seller and dropped his voice.
“I noticed your paper as I passed the note counter just now; some of it will be due while I’m gone; I’ll tell ’em to renew it if you want it.” He smiled again, and Mr. Brotherton answered, “Very well–I’ll see that Morty votes right, Mr. Sands,” and solemnly went back to his ledger. And thus the practical mind of Nathan Perry had its first practical lesson in practical politics–a lesson which soon afterwards produced highly practical results.
Up and down Market Street tiptoed Daniel Sands that day, tightening his web of business and politics. Busily he fluttered over the web, his water pipes, his gas pipes, his electric wires. The pathway to the trade of the miners and the men in the shops and smelters lay through his door. Material prosperity for every merchant and every clerk in Market Street lay in the paunch of the old spider, and he could spin it out or draw it in as he chose. It was not usual for him to appear on Market Street. Dr. Nesbit had always been his vicegerent. And often it had pleased the Doctor to pretend that he was seeking their aid as friends and getting it solely upon the high grounds of friendship.
But as the Doctor stood by his office window that day and saw the old spider dancing up and down the web, Dr. Nesbit knew the truth–and the truth was wormwood in his mouth–that he had been only an errand boy between greed in the bank and self-interest in the stores. In a flash, a merciless, cynical flash, he looked into his life in the capital, and there he saw with sickening distinctness that with all his power as a boss, with his control over Senators and Governors and courts and legislatures, he was still the errand boy–that he reigned as boss only because he could be trusted by those who controlled the great aggregations of capital in the state–the railroads, the insurance companies, the brewers, the public service corporations. In the street below walked a flashy youth who went in and out of the saloons in obvious pride of being. His complacent smile, his evident glory in himself, made Dr. Nesbit turn away and shut his eyes in shame. He had loathed the youth as a person unspeakable. Yet the youth also was a messenger–the errand boy of vice in South Harvey who doubtless thought himself a person of great power and consequence. And the difference between an errand boy of greed and the errand boy of vice was not sufficient to revive the Doctor’s spirits. So the Doctor, sadly sobered, left the window. The gay enthusiasm of the diver plunging for the pearl was gone from the depressed little white clad figure. He was finding his pearl a burden rather than a joy.
That evening Morty Sands, resplendent in purple and fine linen–the purple being a gorgeous necktie, and the fine linen a most sumptuous tailor-made shirt waist above a pair of white broadcloth trousers and silk hose, and under a fifty dollar Panama hat, tripped into the Brotherton store for his weekly armload of reading and tobacco.
“Morty,” said Mr. Brotherton, after the young man had picked out the latest word in literature and nicotine, “your father was in here to-day with instructions for me to chaperone you through the county convention Saturday,–you’ll be on the delegation.”
The young man blinked good naturedly. “I haven’t got the intellect to go through with it, George.”
“Oh, yes, you have, Morty,” returned Mr. Brotherton, expansively. “The Governor wants me to be sure you vote for Van Dorn–that’s about all there is in the convention. Old Linen Pants is to name the delegates to the State and congressional conventions–they’re trying to let the old man down easy–not to beat him out of his State and congressional leadership.”
The young man thought for a moment then smiled up into the big moon-face of Brotherton–“All right, Georgie, I suppose I’ll have to cast my unfettered vote for Van Dorn, though as a sporting proposition my sympathies are with the other side.”
“Well, say–you orter ’a’ heard a talk I heard Doc Nesbit give this afternoon. That old sinner will be shouting on the mourner’s bench soon–if he doesn’t check up.”
Morty looked up from his magazine to say: “George–it’s Laura. A man couldn’t go with her through all she’s gone through without being more of a man for it. When I took a turn in the mining business last spring I found that the people down in South Harvey just naturally love her to death. They’ll do more or less for Grant Adams. He’s getting the men organized and they look up to him in a way. But they get right down on their marrow bones and love Laura.”
Morty smiled reflectively: “I kind of got the habit myself once–and I seem someway never to have got over it–much! But, she won’t even look my way. She takes my money–for her kindergarten. But that is all. She won’t let me take her home in my trap, nor let me buy her lunch–why she pays more attention to Grant Adams with his steel claw than to my strong right arm! About all she lets me do is distribute flower seeds. George,” he concluded ruefully, “I’ve toted around enough touch-me-nots and coxcomb seeds this spring for that girl to paint South Harvey ringed, streaked and striped.”
There the conversation switched to Captain Morton’s stock company, and the endeavor to get the Household Horse on the market. The young man listened and smiled, was interested, as George Brotherton intended he should be. But Morty went out saying that he had no money but his allowance–which was six months overdrawn–and there the matter rested.
In a few days, a free people arose and nominated their delegates to the Greeley County convention and the night before the event excitement in Harvey was intense. There could be no doubt as to the state of public sentiment. It was against Tom Van Dorn. But on the other hand, no one seriously expected to defeat him. For every one knew that he controlled the organization–even against the boss. Yet vaguely the people hoped that their institutions would in some way fail those who controlled, and would thus register public sentiment. But the night the delegates were elected, it seemed apparent that Van Dorn had won. Yet both sides claimed the victory. And among others of the free people elected to the Convention to cast a free vote for Judge Van Dorn, was Nathan Perry. He was put on the delegation to look after his father’s interests. Van Dorn was a practical man, Kyle Perry was a practical man and they knew Nate Perry was a practical youth. But while Tom Van Dorn slept upon the assurance of victory, Nate Perry was perturbed.