The elder stroked his ragged beard meditatively. Finally he said: “George–did you ever hear our Kenyon play?”
The big man nodded and went on with his work. “Well, sir,” the elder reflected: “Now, it’s queer about Kenyon. He’s getting to be a wonder. I don’t know–it all puzzles me.” He rose, put back the book on its shelf. “Sometimes I believe I’m a fool–and sometimes things like this bother me. They say they are training Kenyon–on the other side! Of course he just has what music Laura and Mrs. Nesbit could give him; yet the other day, he got hold of a piano score of Schubert’s Symphony in B flat and while he can’t play it, he just sits and cries over it–it means so much to the little fellow.”
The gray head wagged and the clear, old, blue eyes looked out through the steel-rimmed glasses and he sighed: “He is going ahead, making up the most wonderful music–it seems to me, and writing it down when he can’t play it–writing the whole score for it–and they tell me–” he explained deprecatingly, “my friends on the other side, that the child will make a name for himself.” He paused and asked: “George–you’re a hardheaded man–what do you think of it? You don’t think I’m crazy, do you, George?”
The younger man glanced up, caught the clear, kindly eye of Amos Adams looking questioningly down.
“Dad,” said Mr. Brotherton, hammering his fat fist on the desk, “‘there’s more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio’–well say, man–that’s Shakespeare. We sell more Shakespeares than all the other poets combined. Fine business, this Shakespeare. And when a man holds the lead in the trade as this Shakespeare has done ever since I went into the Red Line poets back in the eighties–I’m pretty nearly going to stay by him. And when he says, ‘Don’t be too damn sure you know it all–’ or words to that effect–and holds the trade saying 285it–well, say, man–your spook friends are all right with me, only say,” Mr. Brotherton shuddered, “I’d die if one came gliding up to me and asked for a chew of my eating tobacco–the way they do with you!”
“Well,” smiled Amos Adams, “much obliged to you, George–I just wanted your ideas. Laura Van Dorn has sent Kenyon’s last piece back to Boston to see if by any chance he couldn’t unconsciously have taken it from something or some one. She says it’s wonderful–but, of course,” the old man scratched his chin, “Laura and Bedelia Nesbit are just as likely to be fooled in music as I am with my controls.” Then the subject drifted into politics–the local politics of the town, the Van Dorn-Nesbit contest.
And at the end of their discussion Amos rubbed his bony, lean, hard, old hands, and looked away through the books and the brick wall and the whole row of buildings before him into the future and smiled. “I wonder–I wonder if the country ever will come to see the economic and social and political meaning of this politics that we have now–this politics that the poor man gets through a beer keg the night before election, and that the rich man buys with his ‘barl.’”
He shook his head. “You’ll see it–you and Grant–but it will be long after my time.” Amos lifted up his old face and cried: “I know there is another day coming–a better day. For this one is unworthy of us. We are better than this–at heart! We have in us the blood of the fathers, and their high visions too. And they did not put their lives into this nation for this–for this cruel tangle of injustice that we show the world to-day. Some day–some day,” Amos Adams lifted up his face and cried: “I don’t know! May be my guides are wrong but my own heart tells me that some day we shall cease feeding with the swine and return to the house of our father! For we are of royal blood, George–of royal blood!”
“Why, hello, Morty,” cut in Mr. Brotherton. “Come right in and listen to the seer–genuine Hebrew prophet here–got a familiar spirit, and says Babylon is falling.”
“Well, Uncle Amos,” said Morty Sands, “let her fall!” Old Amos smiled and after Morty had turned the talk from falling Babylon to Laura Van Dorn’s kindergarten, Amos 286being reminded by Laura of Kenyon and his music, unfolded his theory of the occult source of the child’s musical talent, and invited George and Morty to church to hear Kenyon play.