In the Heart of a Fool

She came out, sat down, looked steadily at him and began calmly: “Now, what is it you desire?”

She said “desiah,” and Grant grunted as she went on: “I’m shuah no good can come and only hahm, great suffering–and Heaven knows what wrong, by this–miserable plan. What good can it do?”

Her changed attitude surprised him. “Well, now, Maggie,” he returned, “since you want to talk it over sensibly, I’ll tell you how we feel–at least how I feel. The chief business of any proper marriage is children. This marriage between Kenyon and Lila–if it comes–should bring forth fruit. I claim Lila has a right to know that he has my blood and yours in him before she goes into a life partnership with him.”

“Oh, Grant, Grant,” cried Margaret passionately, “the sum of your hair-splitting is this: that you bring shame upon your child’s mother, and then cant like a Pharisee about its being for a good purpose. That’s the way with you–you–you–” She could not quite finish the sentence.

She sat breathing fast, waiting for strength to come to her from the fortifying little pill. Grant picked up his hat. “Well–I’ve told you. That’s what I came for.”

She caught his arm and cried, “Sit down–haven’t I a right to be heard? Hasn’t a mother any rights–”

“No,” cut in Grant, “not when she strangles her motherhood!”

“But how could I take my motherhood without disgracing my boy?” she asked.

He met her eyes. They were steady eyes, and were brightening. The man stared at her and answered: “When I brought him to you after mother died, a little, toddling, motherless boy, when I wanted you to come with us to mother him–and I didn’t want you, Maggie, any more than you wanted me, but I thought his right to a mother was greater than either of our rights to our choice of mates–then and there, you made your final choice.”

“What does God mean,” she whined, “by hounding me all my life for that one mistake!”

“Maggie–Maggie,” answered the man, sitting down as she sank into a chair, “it wasn’t the one mistake that has made you unhappy.”

“That’s twaddle,” she retorted, “sheer twaddle. Don’t I know how that child has been a cancer in my very heart–burning and gnawing and making me wretched? Don’t I know?”

“No, you don’t, Mag. If you want the truth,” replied Grant bluntly, “you looked upon the boy as a curse. He has threatened you every day of your life. The very love you think you have for him, which I don’t doubt for a minute, Mag, made you do a mad, foolish, infinitely cruel, spiteful thing–that night at the South Harvey riot. Perhaps you might care for Kenyon’s affection now, but you can’t have that even remotely. For all his interest in you is limited by the fact that you robbed Lila of her father. All your cancer and heart burnings, Mag, have been your own selfishness. Lord, woman–I know you.”

He turned his hard gaze upon her and she winced. But she clearly was enjoying the quarrel. It stimulated her taut nerves. The house behind her was empty. She felt free to brawl.

“And you? And you?” she jeered. “I suppose he’s made a saint of you.”

The man’s face softened, as he said simply, “I don’t claim to be a saint, Mag. But I owe Kenyon everything I am in the world–everything.”

“Well, it isn’t much of a debt,” she laughed.

“No,” he repeated, “it’s not much of a debt.” After a moment he added, “Doctor Nesbit has kept this secret all these years. Now it’s time to let these people know. You can see why, and the only reason I came to you–”

“You came to me, Grant,” she cried, “to tell me you were going to shame me before that–that–before her–that old, yellow-haired tabby, who goes around doing good! Ugh–”

Grant stared at her blankly a full, uncomprehensive minute. Finally Margaret went on: “And I suppose the next thing you long-nosed busybodies will do will be to get chicken hearted about Tom Van Dorn’s rights in the matter. Ah, you hypocrites!” she cried.

“Well, I don’t know,” answered Grant sternly; “if Lila should go to her father for advice–why shouldn’t he have all the facts?”

Margaret rose. Her bright, glassy eyes flashed. Anger colored her face. Her bosom rose and fell as she exclaimed: “But she’ll not go to him. Oh, he’s perfectly foolish about her. Every time a photographer in this town takes her picture, he snoops around and gets one. He has her picture in his watch, in which he thinks she looks like the Van Dorns. When he goes away he takes her picture in a leather frame and puts it on his table in the hotel–except when I’m around.” She laughed. “Ain’t it funny? Ain’t it funny,” she chattered hysterically, “him doddering the way he does about her, and her freezing the life out of him?” She shook with mirth, and went on: “Oh, the devil’s coming round for Tom Van Dorn’s soul–and all there is of it–all there is of it is the little green spot where he loves this brat. The rest’s all rotted out!”

She laughed foolishly. Then Grant said:

“Well, Mag–I must be going. I just thought it would be square to tell you before I go any further. About the other–the affair of Lila and her father is no concern of mine. That’s for Lila and her mother to settle. But you and I and Kenyon are bound together by the deepest tie in the world, Maggie. And I had to come to you.” She stared into his gnarled face, then shut her eyes, and in an instant wherein they were closed she lapsed into her favorite pose and disappeared behind her mask.

“Vurry kind of you, I’m shuah. Chahmed to have this little talk again.”

He gazed at the empty face, saw the drugged eyes, and the smirking mouth, and felt infinitely sad as a flash of her girlhood came back to his memory. “Well, good-by, Mag,” he said gently, and turned and went down the steps.

The messenger boy whom Grant Adams passed as he went down the walk to the street from the Van Dorn home, put a telegram into Mrs. Van Dorn’s lap. It was from Washington and read:

“Appointment as Federal Judge assured. Notify Sands. Have Calvin prepare article for Monday’s Times and other papers.”

She re-read it, held it in her hand for a time as she looked hungrily into the future.

While Grant Adams and Margaret were talking, the two old men on the porch, who once would have grappled with the problems of the great first cause, dropped into cackling reminiscences of the old days of the sixties and seventies when they were young men in their twenties and Harvey was an unbleached yellow pine stain on the prairie grass. So they forgot the flight of time, and forgot that indoors the music had stopped, and that two young voices were cooing behind the curtains. Upstairs, Laura Van Dorn and her mother, reading, tried with all their might and main to be oblivious to the fact that the music had stopped, and that certain suppressed laughs and gasps and long, silent gaps in the irregular conversation meant rather too obvious love-making for an affair which had not been formally recognized by the family. Yet the formality was all that was lacking. For if ever an affair of the heart was encouraged, was promoted, was greeted with everything but hurrahs and hosannas by the family of the lady thereunto appertaining, it was the love affair of Kenyon Adams and Lila Van Dorn.

The youth and the maiden below stairs were exceedingly happy. They went through the elaborate business of love-making, from the first touch of thrilling fingers to such passionately rapturous embraces as they might steal half watched and half tolerated, and the mounting joy in their hearts left no room for fear of the future. As they sat toying and frivoling behind the curtains of the wide living room in the Nesbit home, they saw Grant Adams’s big, awkward figure hurrying across the lawn. He walked with stooping shoulders and bowed head, and held his claw hand behind him in his flinty, red-haired hand.

“Where has he been?” asked Kenyon, as he peered through the open curtain, with his arm about the girl.

“I don’t know. The Mortons aren’t at home this afternoon; they all went out in the Captain’s big car,” answered the girl.

“Well,–I wonder–” mused the youth.

Lila snatched the window curtain, and closing it, whispered: “Quick–quick–we don’t care–quick–they may come in when he gets on the porch.”

Through a thin slit in the closed curtains they watched the gaunt figure climb the veranda steps and they heard the elders ask:

“Well?” and the younger man replied, “Nothing–nothing–” he repeated, “but heartbreak.”

Then he added as he walked to the half-open door, “Doctor–it seems to me that I should go to Laura now; to Laura and her mother.”

“Yes,” returned the Doctor, “I suppose that is the thing to do.”

Grant’s hand was on the door screen, and the Doctor’s eyes grew bright with emotion, as he called:

“You’re a trump, boy.”

The two old men looked at each other mutely and watched the door closing after him. Inside, Grant said: “Lila–ask your mother and grandmother if they can come to the Doctor’s little office–I want to speak to them.” After the girl had gone, Grant stood by Kenyon, with his arm about the young man, looking down at him tenderly. When he heard the women stirring above on the stairs, Grant patted Kenyon’s shoulder, while the man’s face twitched and the muscles of his hard jaw worked as though he were chewing a bitter cud.

The three, Grant and the mother and the mother’s mother, left the lovers in such awe as love may hold in the midst of its rapture, and when the office door had closed, and the women were seated, Grant Adams, who stood holding to a chair back, spoke:

“It’s about Kenyon. And I don’t know, perhaps I should have spoken sooner. But I must speak now.”

The two women gazed inquiringly at him with sympathetic faces. He was deeply embarrassed, and his embarrassment seemed to accentuate a kind of caste difference between them.

“Yes, Grant,” said Mrs. Nesbit, “of course, we know about Lila and Kenyon. Nothing in the world could please us more than to see them happy together.”

“I know, ma’am,” returned Grant, twirling his chair nervously. “That’s just the trouble. Maybe they can’t be happy together.”

“Why, Grant,” exclaimed Laura, “what’s to hinder?”

“Stuff!” sniffed Mrs. Nesbit.

He looked up then, and the two women could see that he flinched.

“Well,–I don’t know how to say it, but you must know it.” He stopped, and they saw anguish in his face. “But I–Laura,” he turned to the younger woman and made a pitiful gesture with his whole hand, “do you remember back when you were a girl away at school and I stopped writing to you?”

“Yes, Grant,” replied Laura, “so well–so well, and you never would say–”

“Because I had no right to,” he cut in, “it was not my secret–to tell–then.”

Mrs. Nesbit sat impatiently on her chair edge, as one waiting for a foolish formality to pass. She looked at the clumsy, bulky figure of a man in his ill-fitting Sunday clothes, and obviously was rather irritated at his ill-timed interjection of his own childhood affair into an entirely simple problem of true love running smoothly. But her daughter, seeing the anguish in the man’s twisted face, was stricken with a terror in her heart. Laura knew that no light emotion had grappled him, and when her mother said, “Well?” sharply, the daughter rose and went to him, touching his hand gently that had been gripping the chair-back. She said, “Yes, Grant, but why do you have to tell it now?”

“Because,” he answered passionately, “you should know, and Lila should know and your mother should know. Your father and I and my father all think so.”

Mrs. Nesbit sat back further in her chair. Her face showed anxiety. She looked at the two others and when Laura’s eyes met her mother’s, there was a warning in the daughter’s glance which kept her mother silent.

“Grant,” said Laura, as she stood beside the gaunt figure, on which a mantle of shame seemed to be falling, “there is nothing in the world that should be hard for you to tell me–or mother.”

“It isn’t you,” he returned, and then lifting his face and trying to catch the elder woman’s eyes, he said slowly:

“Mrs. Nesbit–I’m Kenyon’s father.”

He caught Laura’s hand in his own, and held her from stepping back. Laura did not speak. Mrs. Nesbit gazed blankly at the two and in the silence the little mantel clock ticked into their consciousnesses. Finally the elder woman, who had grown white as some old suspicion or fatal recollection flashed through her mind, asked in an unsteady voice: “And his mother?”

“His mother was Margaret Müller, Mrs. Nesbit,” answered the man.

Then anger glowed in the white face as Mrs. Nesbit rose and stepped toward the downcast man. “Do you mean to tell me you–” She did not finish, but began again, not noticing that the door behind her had let in her husband: “Do you mean to say that you have let me go on all these years nursing that–that, that–creature’s child and–”

“Yes, my dear,” said the Doctor, touching her arm, and taking her hand, “I have.” She turned on her husband her startled, hurt face and exclaimed, “And you, Jim–you too–you too?”

“What else could I do in honor, my dear? And it has been for the best.”

“No,” she cried angrily; “no, see what you have brought to us, Jim–that hussy’s–her, why, her very–”

The years had told upon Doctor Nesbit. He could not rise to the struggle as he could have risen a decade before. His hands were shaking and his voice broke as he replied: “Yes, my dear–I know–I know. But while she bore him, we have formed him.” To her darkening face he repeated: “You have formed him–and made him–you and the Adamses–with your love. And love,” his soft, high voice was tender as he concluded, “love purges everything–doesn’t it, Bedelia?”

“Yes, father,–love is enough. Oh, Grant, Grant–it doesn’t matter–not to me. Poor–poor Margaret, what she has lost–what she has lost!” said the younger woman, as she stood close to Grant and looked deeply into his anguished face. Mrs. Nesbit stood wet-eyed, and spent of her wrath, looking at the three before her.

“O God–my God, forgive me–but I can’t–Oh, Laura–Jim–I can’t, I can’t, not that woman’s–not her–her–” She stopped and cried miserably, “You all know what he is, and whose he is.” Again she stopped and looked beseechingly around. “Oh, you won’t let Lila–she wouldn’t do that–not take that woman’s–that woman who disgraced Lila’s mother–Lila must not take her child–Oh, Jim, you won’t let that–”

As she spoke Mrs. Nesbit sank to a sofa near the door, and turned her face to the pillow. The three who watched her turned blank, inquiring faces to one another.

“Perhaps,” the Doctor began hesitatingly and impotently, “Lila should–”

“What does she know–what can a child of twenty know,” answered the grandmother from her pillow, “of the taint of that blood, of the devil she will transmit? Why, Jim–Oh, Jim–Lila’s not old enough to decide. She mustn’t–she mustn’t–we mustn’t let her.” Mrs. Nesbit raised her body and asked as one who grasps a shadow, “Won’t you ask her to wait–to wait until she can understand?”

A question passed from face to face among those who stood beside the elder woman, and Dr. Nesbit answered it. Strength–the power that came from a habit of forty years of dominating situations–came to him and he stepped to his wife’s side. The two stood together, facing the younger pair. The Doctor spoke, not as an arbiter, but as an advocate:

“Laura, your mother has her right to be considered here. All three of you; Kenyon himself, and you and Lila–she has reared. She has made you all what you are. Her wishes must be regarded now.” Mrs. Nesbit rose while the Doctor was speaking. He took her hand as was his wont and turned to her, saying: “Mother, how will this do: Let’s do nothing now, not to-day at any rate. You must all adjust yourselves to the facts that reveal this new relation before you can make an honest decision. When we have done that, let Laura and her mother tell Lila the truth, and let each tell the child exactly how she feels; and then, if you can bring yourself to it, leave it to her; if she will wait for a time until she understands her grandmother’s point of view–very well. If not–”

“If not, mother, Lila’s decision must stand.” This came from Laura, who stepped over and kissed her mother’s hand. The father looked tenderly at his daughter and shook his head as he answered softly: “If not–no, I shall stand with mother–she has her right–the realest right of all!”

And so it came to pass that the course of true love in the hearts of Lila Van Dorn and Kenyon Adams had its first sharp turning. And all the world was overclouded for two souls. But they were only two souls and the world is full of light. And the light falls upon men and women without much respect for class or station, for good deeds or bad deeds, for the weak or for the strong, for saints or sinners. For know well, truly beloved, that chance and circumstance fall out of the great machine of life upon us, hodge podge and helter skelter; good is not rewarded by prizes from the wheel of fortune nor bad punished by its calamities. Only as our hearts react on life, do we get happiness or misery, not from the events that follow the procession of the days.

Now for a moment let us peep through the clouds that lowered over the young souls aforesaid. Clouds in youth are vastly black; but they are never thick. And peering through those clouds, one may see the lovers, groping in the umbrage. It does not matter much to us, and far less does it matter to them how they have made their farewell meeting. It is night and they are coming from Captain Morton’s.

Hand in hand they skip across the lawn, and soon are hidden in the veranda. They sit arm in arm, on a swinging porch chair, and have no great need for words. “What is it–what is the reason?” asked the youth.

“Well, dear”–it is an adventure to say the word out loud after whispering it for so many days–“dear,” she repeated, and feels the pressure of his arm as she speaks, “it’s something about you!”

“But what?” he persisted.

“We don’t know now,” she returns. “And really what does it matter, only we can’t hurt grandma, and it won’t be for long. It can’t be for long, and then–”

“We don’t care now,–not to-night, do we?” She lifts her head from his shoulder, and puts up her lips for the answer. It is all new–every thrill of the new-found joy of one another’s being is strange; every touch of the hands, of cheeks, every pressure of arms–all are gloriously beautiful.

Once in life may human beings know the joy these lovers knew that night. The angels lend it once and then, if we are good, they let us keep it in our memories always. If not, then God sends His infinite pity instead.

CHAPTER XLIV

IN WHICH WE SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN, WITH GEORGE BROTHERTON, AND IN GENERAL CONSIDER THE HABITANTS OF THE KINGDOM

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 kind 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 to 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.”

“So young Joe Calvin’s a proud parent, is he? Boy, you say?”

“Boy,” chuckled the Doctor, “and old Joe’s out there having a nervous breakdown. They’ve had ten births in the Calvin family. I’ve attended all of ’em, and this is the first time old Joe’s ever been allowed in the house. To-day the old lady’s out there with a towel around her head, practically having that baby herself. The poor daughter-in-law hasn’t seen it. You’d think she was only invited in as a sort of paying guest. And old lady Calvin comes in every few minutes and delivers homilies on the joys of large families!”

The Doctor laughed until his blue old eyes watered, and he chirped when he had his laugh out: “How soon we forget! Which, I presume, is one of God’s semi-precious blessings!”

When the Doctor went out, Brotherton found the store deserted, except for Miss Calvin, who was in front. Brotherton carried a log to the fireplace, stirred up the fire, and when he had it blazing, found Laura Van Dorn standing beside him.

“Well, George,” she said, “I’ve just been stealing away from my children in the Valley for a little visit with Emma.”

“Very well, then,” said Mr. Brotherton, “sit down a minute with me. Tell me, Laura–about children–are they worth it?”

She was a handsome woman, with youth still in her eyes and face, who sat beside George Brotherton, looking at the fire that March day. “George–good old friend,” she said gently, “there’s nothing else in the world so worth it as children.”