444CHAPTER XL
HERE WE HAVE THE FELLOW AND THE GIRL BEGINNING TO PREPARE FOR THE LAST CHAPTER
A tall, spare, middle-aged person was Thomas Van Dorn in the latter years of the first decade of the twentieth century; tall and spare and tight-skinned. The youthful olive texture of the skin was worn off and had been replaced by a leathery finish–rather reddish brown in color. The slight squint of his eyes was due somewhat to the little puffs under them, and a suspicious, crafty air had grown into the full orbs, which once glowed with emotion, when the younger man mounted in his oratorical flights. His hands were gloved to match his exactly formal clothes, and his hat–a top-hat when Judge Van Dorn was in the East, and a sawed-off compromise with the local prejudice against top-hats when he was in Harvey–was always in the latest mode. Often the hat was made to match his clothes. He had become rigorous in his taste in neckties and only grays and blacks and browns adorned the almost monkish severity of his garb. Harsh, vertical lines had begun to appear at the sides of the sensuous mouth, and horizontal lines–perhaps of hurt pride and shame–were pressed into his wide, handsome forehead and the zigzag scar was set white in a reddening field.
All these things a photograph would show. But there was that about his carriage, about his mien, about the personality that emerged from all these things which the photograph would not show. For to the eyes of those who had known him in the flush of his youth, something–perhaps it was time, perhaps the burden of the years–seemed to be sapping him, seemed to be drying him out, fruitless, pod-laden, dry and listless, with a bleached soul, naked to the winds that blow across the world. The myriad criss-crosses of minute red veins that marked his cheek often were wet with water from 445the eyes that used to glow out of a very volcano of a personality behind them. But after many hours of charging up and down the earth in his great noisy motor, red rims began to form about the watery eyes and they peered furtively and savagely at the world, like wolves from a falling temple.
As he stood by the fire in Mr. Brotherton’s sanctuary, holding his Harper’s Weekly in his hand, and glancing idly over the new books carelessly arranged on the level of the eye upon the wide oak mantel, the Judge came to be conscious of the presence of Amos Adams on a settee near by.
“How do you do, sir?” The habit of speaking to every one persisted, but the suave manner was affected, and the voice was mechanical. The old man looked up from his book–one of Professor Hyslop’s volumes, and answered, “Why, hello, Tom–how are you?” and ducked back to his browsing.
“That son of yours doesn’t seem to have set the Wahoo afire with his unions in the last two or three years, does he?” said Van Dorn. He could not resist taking this poke at the old man, who replied without looking up:
“Probably not.”
Then fearing that he might have been curt the old man lifted his eyes from his book and looking kindly over his glasses continued: “The Wahoo isn’t ablaze, Tom, but you know as well as I that the wage scale has been raised twice in the mines, and once in the glass factory and once in the smelter in the past three years without strikes–and that’s what Grant is trying to do. More than that, every concern in the Valley now recognizes the union in conferring with the men about work conditions. That’s something–that’s worth all his time for three years or so, if he had done nothing else.”
“Well, what else has he done?” asked Van Dorn quickly.
“Well, Tom, for one thing the men are getting class conscious, and in a strike that will be a strong cement to make them stick.”