HERE OUR FOOL GROPES FOR A SPIRIT AND CAN FIND ONLY DUST
Henry Fenn and Margaret Mueller sat naming their wedding day, while Grant
Adams walked home with his burden. Henry Fenn had been fighting through
a long winter, against the lust for liquor that was consuming his flesh.
At times it seemed to him that her presence as he fought his battle,
helped him; but there were phases of his fight, when she too fashioned
herself in his imagination as a temptress, and she seemed to blow upon
the coals that were searing his weak flesh.
At such times he was taciturn, and went about his day's work as one who
is busy at a serious task. He smiled his amiable smile, he played his
man's part in the world without whimpering, and fought on like a
gentleman. The night he met Grant and the child at the steps of the
house where Margaret lived, he had called to set the day for their
marriage. And that night she glowed before him and in his arms like a
very brand of a woman blown upon by some wind from another world. When
he left her his throat grew parched and dry and his lips quivered with a
desire for liquor that seemed to simmer in his vitals. But he set his
teeth, and ran to his room, and locked himself in, throwing the key out
of the window into the yard. He sat shivering and whimpering and
fighting, by turns conquering his devil, and panting under its weight,
but always with the figure and face of his beloved in his eyes,
sometimes beckoning him to fight on, sometimes coaxing him to yield and
stop the struggle. But as the day came in he fell asleep with one more
battle to his credit.
In Harvey for many years Henry Fenn's name was a byword; but the pitying
angels who have seen him fight in the days of his strength and
manhood--they looked at Henry Fenn, and touched reverent foreheads in
his high honor. Then why did they who know our hearts so well, let the
blow fall upon him, you ask. But there you trespass upon that old
question that the Doctor and Amos Adams have thrashed out so long. Has
man a free will, or has the illusion of time and space wound him up in
its predestined tangle, to act as he must and be what he is without
appeal or resistance, or even hope of a pardon?
Doctor Nesbit and Amos Adams were trying to solve the mystery of human
destiny at the gate of the Adams' home the day after the funeral. Amos
had his foot on the hub of the Doctor's buggy and was saying: "But
Doctor, can't you see that it isn't all material? Suppose that every
atom of the universe does affect every other atom, and that the
accumulated effect of past action holds the stars in their courses, and
that if we knew what all the past was we should be able to foretell the
future, because it would be mathematically calculable--what of it? That
does not prove your case, man! Can't you see that in free will another
element enters--the spiritual, if you please, that is not amenable to
atomic action past or present?" Amos smiled deprecatingly and added
sadly: "Got that last night from Schopenhauer." The Doctor, clearly
unawed by Schopenhauer, broke out: "Aye, there I have you, Amos. Isn't
the brain matter, and doesn't the brain secrete consciousness?"
"Does this buggy secrete distance, Jim? Go 'long with you, man." Before
the Doctor could reply, around the corner of the house, bringing little
Kenyon Adams in his best bib and tucker, came the lofty figure of Mrs.
Nesbit. With her came her daughter. Then up spoke Mrs. Bedelia
Satterthwaite Nesbit of the Maryland Satterthwaites, "Look here, Amos
Adams--I don't care what you say, I'm going to take this baby." There
was strong emphasis upon the "I'm," and she went on: "You can have him
every night, and Grant can take care of the child after supper when he
comes home from work. But every morning at eight I'm going to have this
baby." Further emphasis upon the first person. "I'm not going to see a
child turned over to a hired girl all day and me with a big house and no
baby and a daughter about to marry and leave me and a houseful of help,
if I needed it, which thank Heavens I don't." She put her lips together
sternly, and, "Not a word, Amos Adams," she said to Amos, who had not
opened his mouth. "Not another word. Kenyon will be home at six
o'clock."
She put the child into the Doctor's submissive arms--helped her daughter
into the buggy, and when she had climbed in herself, she glared
triumphantly over her glasses and above her Roman nose, as she said:
"Now, Amos--have some sense. Doctor,--go on." And in a moment the buggy
was spinning up the hill toward the town.
Thus it was that every day, rain or shine, until the day of her wedding,
Laura Nesbit drove her dog cart to the Adamses before the men went to
their work and took little Kenyon home with her and brought him back in
the evening. And always she took him from the arms of Grant--Grant,
red-headed, freckled, blue-eyed, who was hardening into manhood and
premature maturity so fast that he did not realize the change that it
made in his face. It grew set, but not hard, a woman's tenderness crept
into the features, and with that tenderness came at times a look of
petulant impatience. It was a sad face--a sadly fanatic face--yet one
that lighted with human feeling under a smile.
Little by little, meeting daily--often meeting morning and evening,
Grant and Laura established a homely, wholesome, comfortable relation.
One evening while Laura was waiting for Tom Van Dorn and Grant was
waiting for Kenyon she and Grant sitting upon the veranda steps of the
Nesbit home, looked into the serene, wide lawn that topped the hill
above the quiet town. They could look across the white and green of the
trees and houses, across the prosperous, solid, red roofs of the stone
and brick stores and offices on Market Street, into the black smudge of
smoke and the gray, unpainted, sprawling rows of ill-kept tenements
around the coal mines, that was South Harvey. They could see even then
the sky stains far down the Wahoo Valley, where the villages of Foley
and Magnus rose and duplicated the ugliness of South Harvey.
The drift of the conversation was personal. The thoughts of youth are
largely personal. The universe is measured by one's own thumb in the
twenties. "Funny, isn't it," said Grant, playing with a honeysuckle vine
that climbed the post beside him, "I guess I'm the only one of the old
crowd who is outlawed in overalls. There's Freddie Kollander and Nate
Perry and cousin Morty and little Joe Calvin, all up town counterjumping
or working in offices. The girls all getting married." He paused. "But
as far as that goes I'm making more money than any of the fellows!" He
paused again a moment and added as he gazed moodily into the pillars of
smoke rising above South Harvey, "Gee, but I'll miss you when you're
gone--"
The girl's silvery laugh greeted his words. "Now, Grant," she said,
"where do you think I'm going? Why, Tom and I will be only a block from
here--just over on Tenth Street in the Perry House."
Grant grinned as he shook his head. "You're lost and gone forever, just
the same, Miss Clementine. In about three years I'll probably be that
'red-headed boss carpenter in the mine----let me see, what's his name?'"
"Oh, Grant," scoffed the girl. She saw that his heart was sadder than
his face.
She took courage and said: "Grant, you never can know how often I think
of you--how much I want you to win everything worth while in this world,
how much I want you to be happy--how I believe in you and--and--bet on
you, Grant--bet on you!"
Grant did not answer her. Presently he looked up and over the broad
valley below them. The sun behind the house was touching the limestone
ledge far across the valley with golden rays. The smoke from South
Harvey on their right was lighted also. The youth looked into the smoke.
Then he turned his eyes back from the glowing smoke and spoke.
"This is how I look at it. I don't mean you're any different from any
one else. What I was trying to say was that I'm the only one of our old
crowd in the High School you know that used to have parties and go
together in the old days--I'm the only one that's wearing overalls, and
my way is down there"; he nodded his head toward the mines and smelters
and factories in the valley.
"Look at these hands," he said, solemnly spreading out his wide,
muscular hands on his knees; showing one bruised blue-black finger nail.
The hands were flinty and hairy and brown, but they looked effective
with an intelligence almost apart from the body which they served.
"I'm cut out for work. It's all right. That's my job, and I'm proud of
it so far as that goes. I could get a place clerking if I wanted to, and
be in the dancing crowd in six months, and be out to the Van Dorns for
dinner in a year." He paused and looked into the distant valley and
cried. "But I tell you--my job is down there. And I'm not going to quit
them. God knows they're getting the rough end of it. If you knew," his
voice raised slightly and a petulant indignation tempered it. "If you
knew the gouging and pocket picking and meanness that is done by the
people up town to the people down there in the smoke, you'd be one of
those howling red-mouthed anarchists you read about."
The girl looked at him silently and at length asked: "For
instance--what's just one thing?"
"Well, for instance--in the mines where I work all the men come up grimy
and greasy and vile. They have to wash. In Europe we roughnecks know
that wash-houses are provided by the company, but here," he cried
excitedly, "the company doesn't provide even a faucet; instead the
men--father and son and maybe a boarder or two have to go home--into
those little one and two roomed houses the company has built, and strip
to the hide with the house full of children and wash. What if your
girlhood had been used to seeing things like that--could you laugh as
you laugh now?" He looked up at her savagely. "Oh, I know they're
ignorant foreigners and little better than animals and those things
don't hurt them--only if you had a little girl who had to be in and out
of the single room of your home when the men came home to wash up--"
He broke off, and then began again, "Why, I was talking to a dago last
night at the shaft mouth going down to work on the graveyard shift and
he said that he came here believing he would find a free, beautiful
country in which his children could grow up self-respecting men and
women, and then he told me about his little girls living down there
where all the vice is scattered through the tenements, and--about this
washing up proposition, and now one of the girls is gone and they can't
find her." He threw out a despairing hand; "So I'm a roughneck,
Laura--I'm a jay, and I'm going to stay with them."
"But your people," she urged. "What about them--your father and
brothers?"
"Jap's climbing out. Father's too old to get in. And Kenyon--" he
flinched, "I hope to God I'll have the nerve to stay when the test on
him comes." He turned to the girl passionately: "But you--you--oh,
you--I want you to know--" He did not finish the sentence, but rose and
walked into the house and called: "Dad--Kenyon--come on, it's getting
late. Stars are coming out."
Half an hour later Tom Van Dorn, in white flannels, with a red silk tie,
and with a white hat and shoes, came striding across the lawn. His black
silky mustache, his soft black hair, his olive skin, his shining black
eyes, his alert emotional face, dark and swarthy, was heightened even in
the twilight by the soft white clothes he wore.
"Hello, popper-in-law," he cried. "Any room left on the veranda?"
"Come in, Thomas," piped the older man. "The girls are doing the dishes,
Bedelia and Laura, and we'll just sit out two or three dances."
The young man lolled in the hammock shaded by the vines. The elder
smoked and reflected. Then slowly and by degrees, as men who are feeling
their way to conversation, they began talking of local politics. They
were going at a high rate when the talk turned to Henry Fenn. "Doing
pretty well, Doctor," put in the younger man. "Only broke over once in
eighteen months--that's the record for Henry. Shows what a woman can do
for a man." He looked up sympathetically, and caught the Doctor's
curious eyes.
The Doctor puffed, cleaned out his pipe, absently put it away, then rose
and deliberately pulled his chair over to the hammock: "Tom--I'm a
generation older than you--nearly. I want to tell you something--" He
smiled. "Boy--you've got the devil's own fight ahead of you--did you
know it--I mean," he paused, "the--well, the woman proposition."
Van Dorn fingered his mustache, and looked serious.
"Tom," the elder man chirped, "you're a handsome pup--a damn handsome,
lovable pup. Sometimes." He let his voice run whimsically into its
mocking falsetto, "I almost catch myself getting fooled too."
They laughed.
"Boy, the thing's in your blood. Did you realize that you've got just as
hard a fight as poor Henry Fenn? It's all right now--for a while; but
the time will come--we might just as well look this thing squarely in
the face now, Tom--the time will come in a few years when the devil will
build the same kind of a fire under you he is building under Henry
Fenn--only it won't be whisky; it will be the woman proposition. Damn
it, boy," cried the elder man squeakily, "it's in your blood; you've let
it grow in your very blood. I've known you ten years now, and I've seen
it grow. Tom--when the time comes, can you stand up and fight like Henry
Fenn--can you, Tom? And will you?" he cried with a piteous fierceness
that stirred all the sympathy in the young man's heart.
He rose to the height of the Doctor's passion. Tears came into Van
Dorn's bright eyes. His breast expanded emotionally and he exclaimed: "I
know what I am, oh, I know it. But for her--you and I together--you'll
help and we'll stand together and fight it out for her." The father
looked at the mobile features of his companion, and sensed the thin
plating of emotion under the vain voice. Whereupon the Doctor heaved a
deep, troubled sigh.
"Heigh-ho, heigh-ho." He put his arm upon the broad, handsome, young
shoulder. "But you'll try to be a good boy, won't you--" he repeated.
"Just try hard to be a good boy, Tom--that's all any of us can do," and
turning away he whistled into the house and a girlish trill answered
him.
After the Doctor had jogged down the hill behind his old horse making
his evening professional visits, Mrs. Nesbit came out and made a show of
sitting with the young people for a time. And not until she left did
they go into those things that were near their hearts.
When Mrs. Nesbit left the veranda the young man moved over to the girl
and she asked: "Tom, I wonder--oh, so much and so often--about the soul
of us and the body of us--about the justice of things." She was speaking
out of the heart that Grant had touched to the quick with his outburst
about the poor. But Tom Van Dorn could not know what was moving within
her and if he had known, perhaps he would have had small sympathy with
her feeling. Then she said: "Oh, Tom, Tom, tell me--don't you suppose
that our souls pay for the bodies that we crush--I mean all of us--all
of us--every one in the world?"
The man looked at her blankly. Then he put his arm tenderly about her
and answered: "I don't know about our souls--much--" He kissed her. "But
I do know about you--your wonderful eyes--and your magic hair, and your
soft cheek!" He left her in no doubt as to her lover's mood.
Vaguely the girl felt unsatisfied with his words. Not that she doubted
the truth of them; but as she drew back from him she said softly: "But
if I were not beautiful, what then?"
"Ah, but you are--you are; in all the world there is not another like
you for me." In the rapture that followed, her soul grew in a wave of
joy, yet she spoke shyly.
"Tom," she said wistfully, "how can you fail to see it--this great,
beautiful truth that makes me glad: That the miracle of our love proves
God."
He caressed her hands and pressed closer to her. "Call it what you will,
little girl: God if it pleases you, I call it nature."
"Oh, it's bigger than that, Tom," and she shook a stubborn Satterthwaite
head, "and it makes me so happy and makes me so humble that I want to
share it with all the world." She laid an abashed cheek on his hands
that were still fondling hers.
But young Mr. Van Dorn spoke up manfully, "Well, don't you try sharing
it. I want all of it, every bit of it." He played with her hair, and
relaxed in a languor of complete possession of her.
"Doesn't love," she questioned, "lift you? Doesn't it make you love
every living thing?" she urged.
"I love only you--only you in all the world--your eyes thrill me; when
your body is near I am mad with delight; when I touch you I am in
heaven. When I close my eyes before the jury I see you and I put the
bliss of my vision into my voice, and," he clinched his hands, "all the
devils of hell couldn't win that jury away from me. You spur me to my
best, put springs in every muscle, put power in my blood."
"But, Tom, tell me this?" Still wistfully, she came close to him, and
put her chin on her clasped hands that rested on his shoulder. "Love
makes me want to be so good, so loyal, so brave, so kind--isn't it that
way with you? Isn't love the miracle that brings the soul out into the
world through the senses." She did not wait for his answer. She clasped
her hands tighter on his shoulder. "I feel that I'm literally stealing
when I have a single thought that I do not bring to you. In every thrill
of my heart about the humblest thing, I find joy in knowing that we
shall enjoy it together. Let me tell you something. Grant Adams and his
father were here to-day for dinner. Well, you know Grant is in a kind of
obsession of love for that little motherless child Mrs. Adams left;
Grant mothers him and fathers him and literally loves him to
distraction. And Grant's growing so manly, and so loyal and so strong in
the love of that little boy--he doesn't realize it; but I can see it in
him. Oh, Tom, can you see it in me?"
Before her mood had changed she told him all that Grant Adams had said;
and her voice broke when she retold the Italian's story. Tears were in
her eyes when she finished. And young Mr. Van Dorn was emotionally
touched also, but not in sympathy with the story the girl was telling.
She ended it:
"And then I looked at Grant's big rough hands--bony and hairy, and Tom,
they told me the whole story of his destiny; just as your soft,
effective, gentle white hands prophesy our destiny. Oh, why--why--I am
beginning to wonder why, Tom, why things must be so. Why do some of us
have to do all the world's rough, hard, soul-killing work, and others of
us have lives that are beautiful, aspiring, glorious? How can we let
such injustices be, and not try to undo them!"
In his face an indignation was rising which she could not comprehend.
Finally he found words to say:
"So that's what that Adams boy is putting in your head! Why do you want
to bother with such nonsense?"
But the girl stopped him: "Tom, it's not nonsense. They do work and dig
and grind down there in a way which we up here know nothing about. It's
real--this--this miserable unfair way things are done in the world. O my
dear, my dear, it's because I love you so, it's because I know now what
love really is that it hurts to see--" He took her face in his hands
caressingly, and tried to put an added tenderness into his voice that
his affection might blunt the sharpness of his words.
"Well, it's nonsense I tell you! Look here, Laura, if there is a God,
he's put those dagos and ignorant foreigners down there to work; just as
he's put the fish in the sea to be caught, and the beasts of the field
to be eaten, and it's none of my business to ask why! My job is
myself--myself and you! I refuse to bear burdens for people. I love you
with all the intensity of my nature--but it's my nature--not human
nature--not any common, socialized, diluted love; it's individual and
it's forever between you and me! What do I care for the rest of the
world! And if you love me as you will some day, you'll love me so that
they can't set you off mooning about other people's troubles. I tell
you, Laura, I'm going to make you love me so you can't think of anything
day or night but me--and what I am to you! That's my idea of love! It's
individual, intimate, restricted, qualified and absolutely personal--and
some day you'll see that!"
As he tripped down the hill from the Nesbit home that spring night, he
wondered what Laura Nesbit meant when she spoke of Grant Adams, and his
love for the motherless baby. The idea that this love bore any sort of
resemblance to the love of educated, cultivated people as found in the
love that Laura and her intended husband bore toward each other, puzzled
the young lawyer. Being restless, he turned off his homeward route, and
walked under the freshly leaved trees. Over and over again the foolish
phrases and sentences from Laura Nesbit's love making, many other nights
in which she seemed to assume the unquestioned truth of the hypothesis
of God, also puzzled him. Whatever his books had taught him, and
whatever life had taught him, convinced him that God was a polite word
for explaining one's failure. Yet, here was a woman whose mind he had to
respect, using the term as a proved theorem. He looked at the stars,
wheeling about with the monstrous pulleys of gravitation and attraction,
and the certain laws of motion. A moment later he looked southward in
the sky to that flaming, raging, splotched patch where the blue and
green and yellow flames from the smelters and the belching black smoke
from the factories hid the low-hanging stars and marked the seething
hell of injustice and vice and want and woe that he knew was in South
Harvey, and he held the glowing cigarette stub in his hand and laughed
when he thought of God. "Free will," says "Mr. Left" in one of his
rather hazy and unconvincing observations, "is of limited range. Man
faces two buttons. He must choose the material or the spiritual--and
when he has chosen fate plays upon his choice the grotesque variation of
human destiny. But when the cloth of life is finished, the pattern of
the passing events may be the same in either choice, riches or poverty,
misery or power, only the color of the cloth differs; in one piece,
however rich, the pattern is drab with despair, the other cloth sheens
in happiness." Which Mr. Van Dorn in later life, reading the
_Psychological Journal_, turned back to a second time, and threw
aside with a casual and unappreciative, "Oh hell," as his only comment.