In the Heart of a Fool

by William Allen White

Five minutes later, Grant was standing in the front door of Brotherton’s store, gazing into Market Street. He saw Daniel Sands and Kyle Perry and Tom Van Dorn walking out of one store and into the next. He saw John Kollander in a new blue soldier uniform stalking through the street. He saw the merchants gathering in small, volatile groups that kept forming and re-forming, and he knew that Mr. Brotherton’s classic language was approximately correct 406when he said there was a hen on. Grant eyed the crowd that was hurrying past him to the meeting like a hungry hound watching a drove of chickens. Finally, when Grant saw that the last straggler was in the hall, he turned and stalked heavily to the Commercial Club rooms, yet he moved with the self-consciousness of one urged by a great purpose. His head was bent in reflection. His hand held his claw behind him, and his shoulders stooped. He knew his goal, but the way was hard and uncertain, and he realized the peril of a strategic misstep at the outset. Heavily he mounted the steps to the hall, entered, and took a seat in the rear. He sat with his head bowed and his gaze on the floor. He was aware that Judge Van Dorn was speaking; but what the Judge was saying did not interest Grant. His mind seemed aloof from the proceedings. Suddenly what he had prepared to say slipped out of his consciousness completely, as he heard the Judge declare, “We deem this, sir, a life and death struggle for our individual liberties; a life and death struggle for our social order; a life and death struggle for our continuance to exist as individuals.” There was a long repetition of the terms “life and death.” They appealed to some tin-pan rhythmic sense in the Judge’s oratorical mind. But the phrase struck fire in Grant Adams’s heart. Life and death, life and death, rang through his soul like a clamor of bells. “We have given our all,” bellowed the Judge, “to make this Valley an industrial hive, where labor may find employment–all of our savings, all of our heritage of Anglo-Saxon organizing skill, and we view this life and death struggle for its perpetuity–” But all Grant Adams heard of that sentence was “life and death,” as the great bell of his soul clanged its alarm. “We are a happy, industrial family,” intoned the Judge, the suave Judge, who was something more than owner; who was Authority without responsibility, who was the voice of the absentee master; the voice, it seemed to Grant, of an enchanted peacock squawking in the garden of a dream; the voice that cried: “and to him who would overthrow all this contentment, all this admirable adjustment of industrial equilibrium we offer the life and death alternative that is given to him who would violate a peaceful home.”

407But all that Grant Adams sensed of his doom in the Judge’s pronouncement was the combat of death with life. Life and death were meeting for their eternal struggle, and as the words resounded again and again in the Judge’s oratory, there rushed into Grant Adams’s mind the phrase, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and he knew that in the life and death struggle for progress, for justice, for a more abundant life on this planet, it would be finally life and not death that would win.

As he sat blindly glaring at the floor, there may have stolen into his being some ember from the strange flame burning about our earth, whose touch makes men mad with the madness that men have, who come from the wildernesses of life, from the lowly walks and waste places–the madness of those who feed on locusts and wild honey; who, like St. Francis and Savonarola, go forth on hopeless quests for the unattainable ideal, or like John Brown, who burn in the scorching flame all the wisdom of the schools and the courts, and for one glorious day shine forth with their burning lives a beacon by which the world is lighted to its own sad shame.

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 408it 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 409hook 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?”