Mr. Brotherton had been pacing the deck of his store like the captain of a pirate ship in a storm. Nothing in the store suited him; he found Miss Calvin’s high façade of hair too rococo for the attenuated lines of gray and lavender and heliotrope that had replaced the angular effects in red and black and green and brown of former years. He had asked her to tone it down to make it match the long-necked gray jars and soft copper vases that adorned the gray burlapped Serenity, and she had appeared with it slopping over her ears, “as per yours of even date!” And still he paced the deck.
He picked up Zola’s “Fecundité,” which he had taken from stock; tried to read it; put it down; sent for “Tom Sawyer”; got up, went after Dickens’s “Christmas Books,” and put them down; peeped into “Little Women,” and watched the trade, as Miss Calvin handled it, occasionally dropping his book for a customer; hunted for “The Three Bears,” which he found in large type with gorgeous pictures, read it, and decided that it was real literature.
Amos Adams came drifting in to borrow a book. He moved slowly, a sort of gray wraith almost discarnate and apart from things of the earth. Brotherton, looking at the old man, felt a candor one might have in addressing a state of mind. So the big voice spoke gently:
“Here, Mr. Adams,” called Brotherton. “Won’t you come back here and talk to me?” But the shopkeeper felt that he should put the elder man at his ease, so he added: “You’re a wise guy, as the Latin fathers used to say. Anyway, if Jasper ever gets to a point where he thinks marriage will pay six per cent. over and above losses, you may be a 516kind of step-uncle-in-law of mine. Tell me, Mr. Adams–what about children–do they pay? You know, I’ve always wanted children. But now–well, you see, I never thought but that people just kind of picked ’em off the bushes as you do huckleberries. I’m getting so that I can’t look at a great crowd of people without thinking of the loneliness, suffering and self-denial that it cost to bring all of them into the world. Good Lord, man, I don’t want lots of children–not now. And yet, children–children–why, if we could open a can and have ’em as we do most things, from sardines to grand opera, I’d like hundreds of them. Yet, I dunno,” Mr. Brotherton wagged a thoughtful head.
But Amos Adams rejoined: “Ah, yes, George, but when you think of what it means for two people to bring a child into the world–what the journey means–the slow, inexorable journey into the valley of the shadow means for them, close together; what tenderness springs up; what sacrifices come forth; what firm knitting of lives; what new kind of love is bred–you are inclined to think maybe Providence knew what it was about when it brought children into life by the cruel path.”
Mr. Brotherton nodded a sympathetic head.
“Let me tell you something, George,” continued Amos. “It’s through their hope of bettering the children that Grant has moved his people in the Valley out on the little garden plots. There they are–every warmish day thousands of mothers and children and old men, working their little plots of ground, trudging back to the tenements in the evening. The love of children is the one steady, unswerving passion in these lives, and Grant has nearly harnessed it, George. And it’s because Nate Perry has that love that he’s giving freely here for those poor folks a talent that would make him a millionaire, and is running his mines, and his big foundry with Cap Morton besides. It’s perfectly splendid to see the way a common fatherhood between him and the men is making a brotherhood. Why, man,” cried Amos, “it refreshes one’s faith like a tragedy.”
“Hello, Aunt Avey,” piped the cheery voice of the little old Doctor, as he came toddling through the front door. “It’s a boy–Joe Calvin the Third.” The Doctor came back 517to the desk where Amos was standing and took a chair, and as Amos drifted out of the store as impersonally as he came, the Doctor began to grin.
“We were just talking of children,” said Brotherton with studied casualness. “You know, Doctor,” Brotherton smiled abashed, “I’ve always thought I’d like lots of children. But now–”
“I see ’em come, and I see ’em go every day. I’m kind of getting used to death, George. But the miracle of birth grows stranger and stranger.”