IN WHICH WE LEARN THAT LOVE IS THE LEVER THAT MOVES THE WORLD
Mrs. Nesbit tried to put the Doctor into his Sunday blacks the day of
her daughter's wedding, but he would have none of them. He appeared on
Market Street and went his rounds among the sick in his linen clothes
with his Panama hat and his pleated white shirt. He did not propose to
have the visiting princes, political and commercial, who had been
summoned to honor the occasion, find him in his suzerainty without the
insignia of his power. For it was "Old Linen Pants," not Dr. James
Nesbit, who was the boss of the northern district and a member of the
State's triumvirate. So the Doctor in the phaeton, drawn by his amiable,
motherly, sorrel mare, the Doctor, white and resplendent in a suit that
shimmered in the hot June sun, flaxed around town, from his office to
the hotel, from the hotel to the bank, from the bank to South Harvey. As
a part of the day's work he did the honors of the town, soothed the woes
of the weary, healed the sick, closed a dying man's eyes, held a
mother's hands away from death as she brought life into the world, made
a governor, paid his overdue note, got a laborer work, gave a lift to a
fallen woman, made two casual purchases: a councilman and a new silk
vest, with cash in hand; lent a drunkard's wife the money for a sack of
flour, showed three Maryland Satterthwaites where to fish for bass in
the Wahoo, took four Schenectady Van Dorns out to lunch, and was
everywhere at once doing everything, clicking his cane, whistling gently
or humming a low, crooning tune, smiling for the most part, keeping his
own counsel and exhibiting no more in his face of what was in his heart
than the pink and dimpled back of a six-months' baby.
To say that the Doctor was everywhere in Harvey is inexact. He was
everywhere except on Quality Hill in Elm Street. There, from the big,
bulging house with its towers and minarets and bow windows and lean-tos,
ells and additions, the Doctor was barred. There was chaos, and the
spirit that breathed on the face of the waters was the Harvey
representative of the Maryland Satterthwaites, with her crimping pins
bristling like miniature gun barrels, and with the look of command upon
her face, giving orders in a firm, cool voice and then executing the
orders herself before any one else could turn around. She could call the
spirits from the vasty deep of the front hall or the back porch and they
came, or she knew the reason why. With an imperial wave of her hand she
sent her daughter off to some social wilderness of monkeys with all the
female Satterthwaites and Van Dorns and Mrs. Senators and Miss Governors
and Misses Congressmen, and with the offices of Mrs. John Dexter, Mrs.
Herdicker, the ladies' hatter, and two Senegambian slaveys, Mrs. Nesbit
brought order out of what at one o'clock seemed without form and void.
It was late in the afternoon, almost evening, though the sun still was
high enough in the heavens to throw cloud shadows upon the hills across
the valley when the Doctor stabled his mare and came edging into the
house from the barn. He could hear the clamor of many voices; for the
Maryland Satterthwaites had come home from the afternoon's festivity. He
slipped into his office-study, and as it was stuffy there he opened the
side door that let out upon the veranda. He sat alone behind the vines,
not wishing to be a part of the milling in the rooms. His heart was
heavy. He blinked and sighed and looked across the valley, and crooned
his old-fashioned tune while he tried to remember all of the life of the
little girl who had come out of the mystery of birth into his life when
Elm Street was a pair of furrows on a barren, wind-swept prairie hill;
tried to remember how she had romped in girlhood under the wide sunshine
in the prairie grass, how her little playhouse had sat where the new
dining-room now stood, how her dolls used to litter the narrow porch
that grew into the winding, serpentine veranda that belted the house,
how she read his books, how she went about with him on his daily rounds,
and how she had suddenly bloomed into a womanhood that made him feel shy
and abashed in her presence. He wondered where it was upon the way that
he had lost clasp of her hand: where did it drop from him? How did the
little fingers that he used to hold so tightly, slip into another's
hand? Her life's great decision had been made without consulting him;
when did he lose her confidence? She had gone her way an independent
soul--flown like a bird from the cage, he thought, and was going a way
that he felt would be a way of pain, and probably sorrow, yet he could
not stop her. All the experience of his life was worthless to her. All
that he knew of men, all that he feared of her lover, were as chaff in
the scales for her.
The Doctor, the boss, the friend, the man, withdrew from his
consciousness as he sat behind the vines and he became the impersonal,
universal father, wondering at the mystery of life. As he sat musing, he
heard a step behind him, and saw his daughter coming across the porch to
greet him. "Father," she said, "I have just this half hour that's to be
ours. I've planned for it all day. Mother has promised to keep every one
away."
The father's jaw began to tremble and his cherubic face to wrinkle in an
emotional pucker. He put the girl's arm about his neck, and rubbed her
hand upon his cheek. Then the father said softly:
"I never felt poor before until this minute." The girl looked
inquiringly at him and was about to protest. He stopped her: "Money
wouldn't do you much good--not all the money in the world."
"Well, father, I don't want money: we don't need it," said the girl.
"Why, we have a beautiful home and Tom is making--"
"It's not that, my dear--not that." He played with her hand a moment
longer. "I feel that I ought to give you something better than money;
my--my--well, my view of life--what they call philosophy of life. It's
the accumulation of fifty years of living." He fumbled in his pocket for
his pipe. "Let me smoke, and maybe I can talk."
"Laura--girl--" He puffed bashfully in a pause, and began again:
"There's a lot of Indiana--real common Eendiany," he mocked, "about your
father, and I just some way can't talk under pressure." He caressed the
girl's hand and pulled at his pipe as one giving birth to a system of
philosophy. Yet he was dumb as he sat before the warm glow of the
passing torch of life which was shining from his daughter's face.
Finally he burst forth, piping impatience at his own embarrassment.
"I tell you, daughter, it's just naturally hell to be pore." The girl
saw his twitching mouth and the impotence of his swimming eyes; but
before she could protest he checked her.
"Pore! Pore!" he repeated hopelessly. "Why, if we had a million, I would
still be just common, ornery, doless pore folks--tongue-tied and
helpless, and I couldn't give you nothin--nothin!" he cried, "but just
rubbish! Yet there are so many things I'd like to give you, Laura--so
many, many things!" he repeated. "God Almighty's put a terrible
hog-tight inheritance tax on experience, girl!" He smiled a crooked,
tearful little smile--looked up into her eyes in dog-like wistfulness as
he continued: "I'd like to give you some of mine--some of the wisdom
I've got one way and another--but, Lord, Lord," he wailed, "I can't. The
divine inheritance tax bars me." He patted her with one hand, holding
his smoldering pipe in the other. Then he shrilled out in the impotence
of his pain: "I just must give you this, Laura: Whatever comes and
whatever goes--and lots of sad things will come and lots of sad things
will go, too, for that matter--always remember this: Happiness is from
the heart out--not from the world in! Do you understand, child--do you?"
The girl smiled and petted him, but he saw that he hadn't reached her
consciousness. He puffed at a dead pipe a moment, then he cried as he
beat his hands together in despair: "I suppose it's no use. It's no use.
But you can at least remember these words, Laura, and some time the
meaning will get to you. Always carry your happiness under your bonnet!
It's the only thing I can give you--out of all my store!"
The girl put her arm about him and pressed closely to him, and they
rose, as she said: "Why, father--I understand. Of course I understand.
Don't you see I understand, father?"
She spoke eagerly and clasped her arms tighter about the pudgy little
figure. They stood quietly a moment, as the father looked earnestly,
dog-wise, up into her face, as if trying by his very gaze to transmit
his loving wisdom. Then, as he found voice: "No, Laura, probably you'll
need fifty years to understand; but look over on the hill across the
valley at the moving cloud shadows. They are only shadows--not
realities. They are just unrealities that prove the real--just trailing
anchors of the sun!" He had pocketed his pipe and his hand came up from
his pocket as he waved to the distant shadows and piped:
"Trouble--heartaches--all the host of clouds that cover life--are
only--only--" he let his voice drop gently as he sighed: "only anchors
of the sun; Laura, they only prove--just prove--"
She did not let him finish, but bent to kiss him and she could feel the
shudder of a smothered sob rack him as she touched his cheek.
Then he smiled at her and chirped: "Just Eendiany--sis'. Just pore, dumb
Eendiany! Hi, ho! Now run and be a good girl! And here's a jim-crack
your daddy got you!"
From his pocket he drew out a little package, and dangled a sparkling
jewel in his hands. He saw a flash of pleasure on her face. But his
heart was full, and he turned away his head as he handed the gift to
her. Her eyes were upon the sparkling jewel, as he led her into the
house, saying with a great sigh: "Come on, my dear--let's go in."
At nine o'clock that night, the great foundry of a house, with its half
a score of chimneys, marking its various epochs of growth, literally was
stuffed with smilax, ferns, roses, orange blossoms, and daisy chains. In
the mazes of these aisles of verdure, a labyrinth of Van Dorns and
Satterthwaites and visiting statesmen with highly powdered womankind was
packed securely. George Brotherton, who was born a drum major, wearing
all of his glittering insignia of a long line of secret societies, moved
as though the welding humanity were fluid. He had presided at too many
funerals not to know the vast importance of keeping the bride's kin from
the groom's kin, and when he saw that they were ushered into the wedding
supper, in due form and order, it was with the fine abandon of a grand
duke lording it over the populace. Senators, Supreme Court justices,
proud Satterthwaites, haughty Van Dorns, Congressmen, governors, local
gentry, were packed neatly but firmly in their proper boxes.
The old families of Harvey--Captain Morton and his little flock, the
Kollanders, Ahab Wright with his flaring side-whiskers, his white
necktie and his shadow of a wife; Joseph Calvin and his daughter in
pigtails, Mrs. Calvin having written Mrs. Nesbit that it seemed that she
just never did get to go anywhere and be anybody, having said as much
and more to Mr. Calvin with emphasis; Mrs. Brotherton, mother of George,
beaming with pride at her son's part; stuttering Kyle Perry and his
hatchet-faced son, the Adamses all starched for the occasion, Daniel
Sands, a widower pro tem. with a broadening interest in school teachers,
Mrs. Herdicker, the ladies' hatter, classifying the Satterthwaites and
the Van Dorns according to the millinery of their womenkind; Morty Sands
wearing the first white silk vest exhibited in Harvey and making violent
eyes at a daughter of the railroad aristocracy--either a general
manager's daughter or a general superintendent's, and for the life of
her Mrs. Nesbit couldn't say; for she had not the highest opinion in the
world of the railroad aristocracy, but took them, president, first,
second and third vice, general managers, ticket and passenger agents,
and superintendents, as a sort of social job-lot because they came in
private cars, and the Doctor desired them, to add to his trophies of the
occasion,--Henry Fenn, wearing soberly the suit in which he appeared
when he rode the skyrocket, and forming part of the bridal chorus,
stationed in the cigar-box of a sewing-room on the second floor to sing,
"Oh, Day So Dear," as the happy couple came down the stairs--the old
families of Harvey were all invited to the wedding. And the old and the
new and most of the intermediary families of no particular caste or
standing, came to the reception after the ceremony. But because she had
the best voice in town, Margaret Mueller sang "Oh, Promise Me," in a
remote bedroom--to give the effect of distant music, low and sweet, and
after that song was over, and after Henry Fenn's great pride had been
fairly sated, Margaret Mueller mingled with the guests and knew more of
the names and stations of the visiting nobility from the state house and
railroad offices than any other person present. And such is the
perversity of the male sex that there were more "by Georges," and more
"Look--look, looks," and more faint whistles, and more "Tch--tch tchs,"
and more nudging and pointing among the men when Margaret appeared than
when the bride herself, pink and white and beautiful, came down the
stairs. Even the eyes of the groom, as he stood beside the bride, tall,
youthful, strong, and handsome as a man may dare to be and earn an
honest living, even his eyes sometimes found themselves straying toward
the figure and face of the beautiful girl whom he had scarcely noticed
while she worked in the court house. But this may be said for the groom,
that when his eyes did wander, he pulled them back with an almost
irritated jerk, and seemed determined to keep them upon the girl by his
side.
As for the wedding ceremony itself--it was like all others. The women
looked exultant, and the men--the groom, the bride's father, the
groomsmen, and even Rev. John Dexter, had a sort of captured look and
went through the service as though they wished that marriages which are
made in Heaven were celebrated there also. But after the service was
actually accomplished, after the bride and groom had been properly
congratulated, after the multitude had been fed in serried ranks
according to social precedence, after the band on the lawn outside had
serenaded the happy couple, and after further interminable handshaking
and congratulations, from those outside, after the long line of invited
guests had filed past the imposing vista of pickle dishes, cutlery,
butter dishes and cake plates, reaching around the walls of three
bedrooms,--to say nothing of an elaborate wax representation of nesting
cupids bearing the card of the Belgian Society from the glass works and
sent, according to the card, to "Mlle. Lille'n'en Pense"; after the
carriage, bedecked and bedizened with rice and shoes and ribbons, that
was supposed to bear away the bride and groom, had gone amid the
shouting and the tumult of the populace, and after the phaeton and the
sorrel mare had actually taken the bride and groom from the barn to the
railway station, after the fiddle and the bassoon and the horn and the
tinkling cymbal at Morty Sands's dance had frayed and torn the sleep of
those pale souls who would sleep on such a night in Harvey, Grant Adams
and his father, leaving Jasper to trip whatever fantastic toes he might
have, in the opera house, drove down the hill through the glare of the
furnaces, the creaking of the oil derricks and the smell of the straw
paper mill through the heart of South Harvey.
They made little talk as they rode. Their way led them through the
street which is shaded and ashamed by day, and which glows and flaunts
itself by night. Men and women, gambling, drinking, carousing, rioted
through the street, in and out of doors that spilled puddles of yellow
light on the board sidewalks and dirt streets; screaming laughter,
hoarse calls, the stench of liquor, the muffled noises of gambling,
sputter of electric lights and the flash of glimmering reflections from
bar mirrors rasped their senses and kept the father and son silent as
they rode. When they had passed into the slumbering tenements, the
father spoke: "Well, son, here it is--the two kinds of playing, and here
we have what they call the bad people playing. The Van Dorns and the
Satterthwaites will tell you that vice is the recreation of the poor.
And it's more or less true." The elder man scratched his beard and faced
the stars: "It's a devilish puzzle. Character makes happiness; I've got
that down fine. But what makes character? Why is vice the recreation of
the poor? Why do we recruit most of our bad boys and all of our wayward
girls from those neighborhoods in every city where the poor live? Why
does the clerk on $12 a week uptown crowd into Doctor Jim's wedding
party, and the glass blower at $4 a day down here crowd into 'Big Em's'
and 'Joe's Place' and the 'Crescent'? Is poverty caused by vice; or is
vice a symptom of poverty? And why does the clerk's wife move in 'our
best circles' and the miner's wife, with exactly the same money to
spend, live in outer social darkness?"
"I've asked myself that question lots of times," exclaimed the youth. "I
can't make it work out on any theory. But I tell you, father," the son
clinched the hand that was free from the lines, and shook it, "it's
wrong--some way, somehow, it's wrong, way down at the bottom of
things--I don't know how nor why--but as sure as I live, I'll try to
find out."
The clang of an engine bell in the South Harvey railroad yards drowned
the son's answer. The two were crossing the track and turning the corner
that led to the South Harvey station. The midnight train was about due.
As the buggy came near the little gray box of a station a voice called,
"Adams--Adams," and a woman's voice, "Oh, Grant."
"Why," exclaimed the father, "it's the happy couple." Grant stopped the
horse and climbed out over the sleeping body of little Kenyon. "In a
moment," replied Grant. Then he came to a shadow under the station eaves
and saw the young people hiding. "Adams, you can help us," said Van
Dorn. "We slipped off in the Doctor's phaeton, to get away from the
guying crowd and we have tried to get the house on the 'phone, and in
some way they don't answer. The horse is tied over by the lumber yard
there. Will you take it home with you to-night, and deliver it to the
Doctor in the morning--whatever--" But Grant cut in:
"Why, of course. Glad to have the chance." He was awkward and ill at
ease, and repeated, "Why, of course, anything." But Van Dorn
interjected: "You understand, I'll pay for it--" Grant Adams stared at
him. "Why--why--no--" stammered Grant in confusion, while Van Dorn
thrust a five-dollar bill upon him. He tried to return it, but the bride
and groom ran to the train, leaving the young man alone and hurt in his
heart. The father from the buggy saw what had happened. In a few minutes
they were leading the Doctor's horse behind the Adams buggy. "I didn't
want their money," exclaimed Grant, "I wanted their--their--"
"You wanted their friendship, Grant--that's what you wanted," said the
father.
"And he wanted a hired man," cried Grant. "Just a hired man, and
she--why, didn't she understand? She knew I would have carried the old
horse on my back clear to town, if she'd let me, just to hear her laugh
once. Father," the son's voice was bitter as he spoke, "why didn't she
understand----why did she side with him?"
The father smiled. "Perhaps, on your wedding trip, Grant, your wife will
agree with you too, son."
As they rode home in silence, the young man asked himself over and over
again, what lines divided the world into classes; why manual toil shuts
off the toilers from those who serve the world otherwise. Youth is
sensitive; often it is supersensitive, and Grant Adams saw or thought he
saw in the little byplay of Tom Van Dorn the caste prod of society
jabbing labor back into its place.
"Tom," said the bride as they watched Grant Adams unhitch the horse by
the lumber yard, "why did you force that money on Grant----he would have
much preferred to have your hand when he said good-by."
"He's not my kind of folks, Laura," replied Van Dorn. "I know you like
him. But that five will do him lots more good than my shaking his hand,
and if that youth wasn't as proud as Lucifer he'd rather have five
dollars than any man's hand. I would----if it comes to that."
"But, Tom," answered the girl, "that wasn't pride, that was
self-respect."
"Well, my dear," he squeezed her gloved hand and in the darkness put his
arm about her, "let's not worry about him. All I know is that I wanted
to square it with him for taking care of the horse and five dollars
won't hurt his self-respect. And," said the bridegroom as he pressed the
bride very close to his heart, "what is it to us? We have each other, so
what do we care----what is all the world to us?"
As the midnight train whistled out of South Harvey Grant Adams sitting
on a bedside was fondly unbuttoning a small body from its clothes, ready
to hear a sleepy child's voice say its evening prayers. In his heart
there flamed the love for the child that was beckoning him into love for
every sentient thing. And as Laura Van Dorn, bride of Thomas of that
name, heard the whistle, her being was flooded with a love high and
marvelous, washing in from the infinite love that moves the universe and
carrying her soul in aspiring thrills of joy out to ride upon the
mysterious currents that we know are not of ourselves, and so have
called divine.
In the morning, in the early gray of morning, when Grant Adams rose to
make the fire for breakfast, he found his father, sitting by the kitchen
table, half clad as he had risen from a restless bed. Scrawled sheets of
white paper lay around him on the floor and the table. He said sadly:
"She can't come, Grant--she can't come. I dreamed of her last night; it
was all so real--just as she was when we were young, and I thought--I
was sure she was near." He sighed as he leaned back in his chair. "But
they've looked for her--all of them have looked for her. She knows I'm
calling--but she can't come." The father fumbled the papers, rubbed his
gray beard, and shut his fine eyes as he shook his head, and whispered:
"What holds her--what keeps her? They all come but her."
"What's this, father?" asked Grant, as a page closely written in a fine
hand fluttered to the floor.
"Oh, nothing--much--just Mr. Left bringing me some message from Victor
Hugo. It isn't much."
But the Eminent Authority who put it into the Proceedings of the
Psychological Society laid more store by it than he did by the scraps
and incoherent bits of jargon which pictured the old man's lonely grief.
They are not preserved for us, but in the Proceedings, on page 1125, we
have this from Mr. Left:
"The vice of the poor is crass and palpable. It carries a quick and
deadly corrective poison. But the vices of the well-to-do are none the
less deadly. To dine in comfort and know your brother is starving; to
sleep in peace and know that he is wronged and oppressed by laws that we
sanction, to gather one's family in contentment around a hearth, while
the poor dwell in a habitat of vice that kills their souls, to live
without bleeding hearts for the wrong on this earth--that is the vice of
the well-to-do. And so it shall come to pass that when the day of
reckoning appears it shall be a day of wrath. For when God gives the
poor the strength to rise (and they are waxing stronger every hour),
they will meet not a brother's hand but a glutton's--the hard, dead hand
of a hard, dead soul. Then will the vicious poor and the vicious
well-to-do, each crippled by his own vices, the blind leading the blind,
fall to in a merciless conflict, mad and meaningless, born of a sad,
unnecessary hate that shall terrorize the earth, unless God sends us
another miracle of love like Christ or some vast chastening scourge of
war, to turn aside the fateful blow."