“He has no faith in the Democracy of Labor. He hoots,” interrupted Laura. “What he’s doing is working for a more efficient lot of laboring men, so that when the time comes when the unions shall ask and get more definite control of the factories and mines, in the way of wage-setting, and price-making, they will bring some sense with their control. He’s merely looking after himself–in the last analysis; but Grant’s going mad. George, he actually believes that when this thing wins here in the Valley–the peaceful strike, the rise of labor, and the theory of non-resistance–he’s going over the world, and in a few years will have labor emancipated. Have you heard him–that is, recently?”
“Well, yes, a week or so ago,” answered Brotherton, “and he was going it at a pretty fair clip for a minute then. Well, say–I mean–what should we do?” he asked, drumming with the poker on the hearth. “Laura,” Brotherton 519ran his eyes from the poker until they met her frank, gray eyes, “Grant would listen to you before he would listen to any one else on earth or in Heaven–I’m sure of that.”
“Then what shall we do?” she asked. “We mustn’t let him wreck himself–and all these people? What ought I–”
A shadow fell across the door, and in another moment there stood in the opening of the alcove the tall, lean figure of Thomas Van Dorn.
When Laura was gone, Van Dorn, after more or less polite circumlocution, began to unfold a plan of Market Street to buy the Daily Times and bring Jared Thurston back to Harvey to run it in the interests of the property owners in the town and in the Valley. Incidentally he had come to warn George on behalf of Market Street that he was harboring Grant Adams, contrary to the judgment of Market Street. But George Brotherton’s heart was far from Market Street; it was out on the hill with Emma, his wife, and his mouth spoke from the place of his treasure.
“Tom–tell me, as between man and man, what do you think of children? You’re sort of in the outer room of the Blue Lodge of grandfatherdom, with Lila and Kenyon getting ready for the preacher, and you ought to know, Tom–honest, man, how about it?”
A wave of self-pity enveloped the Judge. His voice broke as he answered: “George, I haven’t any little girl–she never even has spoken to me about this affair that the whole town knows about. Oh, I haven’t any child at all.”
He looked a miserable moment at Brotherton, perhaps reviewing the years which they had lived and grown from youth to middle age together and growled: “Not a thing–not a damned thing in it–George, in all this forty years of fighting to keep ahead of the undertaker! Not a God damned thing!” And so he left the Sweet Serenity of Books and Wall Paper and went back to the treadmill of life, spitting ashes from his gray lips!
And then Daniel Sands toddled in to get the five-cent cigars which he had bought for a generation–one at a time every day, and Brotherton came to Daniel with his problem.
The old man, whose palsied head forever was denying 520something, as if he had the assessor always in his mind, shut his rheumy eyes and answered: “My children–bauch–” He all but spat upon their names. “Morty–moons around reading Socialist books, with a cold in his throat and dishwater in his brains. And the other, she’s married a dirty traitor and stands by him against her own flesh and blood. Ba-a-a-ch!” He showed his blue, old mouth, and cried: