he walked on, swaying slightly, down the street. “I shall get up and ask aloud ‘What have I got out of life?’ And there before them all I shall answer, ‘Nothing.’ I shall tell them the truth; that life has beaten me at every turning and used me for its own obscure purposes over and over; that everything I have loved has turned to ashes, and that every time I have stooped to pat a dog I have felt his teeth in my hand. And so at last they will learn the truth about one man’s heart.”
V
The meeting was at four, but it was nearly five when he dismounted from the sweltering train and walked toward the Civic Club hall. Numerous cars were parked along the surrounding streets, promising an unusually large crowd. He was surprised to find that even the rear of the hall was thronged with standing people, and that there were recurrent outbursts of applause at some speech which was being delivered upon the platform.
“Can you find me a seat near the rear?” he whispered to an attendant. “I’m going to speak later, but I don’t—I don’t want to go up on the platform just now.”
“Certainly, Mr. Jackson.”
The only vacant chair was half behind a pillar in a far corner of the hall, but he welcomed its privacy with relief; and settling himself, looked curiously around him. Yes, the gathering was large, and apparently enthusiastic. Catching a glimpse of a face here and there, he saw that he knew most of them, even by name; faces of men he had lived beside and worked with for twenty years. All the better. These were the ones he must reach now, as soon as that figure on the platform there ceased mouthing his hollow cheer.
His eyes swung back to the platform, and as there was another ripple of applause he leaned his face around the corner to see. Then he uttered a low exclamation—the speaker was Thomas MacDowell. They had not been asked to speak together in several years.
“I’ve had many enemies in my life,” boomed the loud voice over the hall, “and don’t think I’ve had a change of heart, now that I’m fifty and a little grey. I’ll go on making enemies to the end. This is just a little lull when I want to take off my armor and pay a tribute to an enemy—because that enemy happens to be the finest man I ever knew.”
John Jackson wondered what candidate or protégé of MacDowell’s was in question. It was typical of the man to seize any opportunity to make his own hay.
“Perhaps I wouldn’t have said what I’ve said,” went on the booming voice, “were he here today. But if all the young men in this city came up to me and asked me ‘What is being honorable?’ I’d answer them, ‘Go up to that man and look into his eyes.’ They’re not happy eyes. I’ve often sat and looked at him and wondered what went on back of them that made those eyes so sad. Perhaps the fine, simple hearts that spend their hours smoothing other people’s troubles never find time for happiness of their own. It’s like the man at the soda fountain who never makes an ice-cream soda for himself.”
There was a faint ripple of laughter here, but John Jackson saw wonderingly that a woman he knew just across the aisle was dabbing with a handkerchief at her eyes.
His curiosity increased.
“He’s gone away now,” said the man on the platform, bending his head and staring down for a minute at the floor; “gone away suddenly, I understand. He seemed a little strange when I saw him yesterday; perhaps he gave in at last under the strain of trying to do many things for many men. Perhaps this meeting we’re holding here comes a little too late now. But we’ll all feel better for having said our say about him.
“I’m almost through. A lot of you will think it’s funny that I feel this way about a man who, in fairness to him, I must call an enemy. But I’m going to say one thing more”—his voice rose defiantly—“and it’s a stranger thing still. Here, at fifty, there’s one honor I’d like to have more than any honor this city ever gave me, or ever had it in its power to give. I’d like to be able to stand up here before you and call John Jackson my friend.”
He turned away and a storm of applause rose like thunder through the hall. John Jackson half rose to his feet, and then sank back again in a stupefied way, shrinking behind the pillar. The applause continued until a young man arose on the platform and waved them silent.
“Mrs. Ralston,” he called, and sat down.
A woman rose from the line of chairs and came forward to the edge of the stage and began to speak in a quiet voice. She told a story about a man whom—so it seemed to John Jackson—he had known once, but whose actions, repeated here, seemed utterly unreal, like something that had happened in a dream. It appeared that every year many hundreds of babies in the city owed their lives to something this man had done five years before; he had put a mortgage upon his own house to assure the children’s hospital on the edge of town. It told how this had been kept secret at the man’s own request, because he wanted the city to take pride in the hospital as a community affair, when but for the man’s effort, made after the community attempt had failed, the hospital would never have existed at all.
Then Mrs. Ralston began to talk about the parks; how the town had baked for many years under the midland heat; and how this man, not a very rich man, had given up land and time and money for many months that a green line of shade might skirt the boulevards, and that the poor children could leave the streets and play in fresh grass in the center of town.
That was only the beginning, she said; and she went on to tell how, when any such plan tottered, or the public interest lagged, word was brought to John Jackson, and somehow he made it go and seemed to give it life out of his own body, until there was scarcely anything in this city that didn’t have a little of John Jackson’s heart in it, just as there were few people in this city that didn’t have a little of their hearts for John Jackson.
Mrs. Ralston’s speech stopped abruptly at this point. She had been crying a little for several moments, but there must have been many people there in the audience who understood what she meant—a mother or a child here and there who had been the recipients of some of that kindness—because the applause seemed to fill the whole room like an ocean, and echoed back and forth from wall to wall.
Only a few people recognized the short grizzled man who now got up from his chair in the rear of the platform, but when he began to speak silence settled gradually over the house.
“You didn’t hear my name,” he said in a voice which trembled a little, “and when they first planned this surprise meeting I wasn’t expected to speak at all. I’m John Jackson’s head clerk. Fowler’s my name, and when they decided they were going to hold the meeting, anyhow, even though John Jackson had gone away, I thought perhaps I’d like to say a few words”—those who were closest saw his hands clench tighter—“say a few words that I couldn’t say if John Jackson was here.
“I’ve been with him twenty years. That’s a long time. Neither of us had grey hair when I walked into his office one day just fired from somewhere and asked him for a job. Since then I can’t tell you, gentlemen, I can’t tell you what his—his presence on this earth has meant to me. When he told me yesterday, suddenly, that he was going away, I thought to myself that if he never came back I didn’t—I didn’t want to go on living. That man makes everything in the world seem all right. If you knew how we felt around the office——” He paused and shook his head wordlessly. “Why, there’s three of us there—the janitor and one of the other clerks and me—that have sons named after John Jackson. Yes, sir. Because none of us could think of anything better than for a boy to have that name or that example before him through life. But would we tell him? Not a chance. He wouldn’t even know what it was all about. Why”—he sank his voice
