OUR HERO RIDES TO HOUNDS WITH THE PRIMROSE HUNT
Going home from the Adamses that afternoon, John Dexter mused:
"Curious--very curious." Then he added: "Of course this phase will pass.
Probably it is gone now. But I am wondering how fundamental this state
of mind is, if it will not appear again--at some crisis later in life."
"His mother," said Mrs. Dexter, "was a strong, beautiful woman. She
builded deep and wide in that boy. And his father is a wise, earnest,
kindly man, even if he may be impractical. Why shouldn't Grant do all
that he dreams of doing?"
"Yes," returned the minister dryly. "But there is life--there are its
temptations. He is of the emotional type, and the wrong woman could bend
him away from any purpose that he may have now. Then, suppose he does
get past the first gate--the gate of his senses--there's the temptation
to be a fool about his talents if he has any--if this gift of tongues
we've seen to-day should stay with him--he may get the swelled head. And
then," he concluded sadly, "at the end is the greatest temptation of
all--the temptation that comes with power to get power for the sake of
power."
The next morning Amos Adams and Grant went in to Market Street to sell
their home. Grant seemed a stranger to that busy mart of trade: the week
of his absence had taken him so far from it. His eyes were caught by two
tall figures, a man and a woman, walking and talking as they crossed the
street--the man in a heavy, long, brown ulster, the woman in a flaring
red, outer garment. He recognized them as Margaret Fenn and Thomas Van
Dorn. They had met entirely by chance, and the meeting was one of
perhaps half a dozen chance meetings which they had enjoyed during the
winter, and these meetings were so entirely pleasurable that the man was
beginning rather vaguely to anticipate them--to hope for another meeting
after the last. Grant was in an exalted mood that morning, and the sight
of the two walking together struck him only as a symbol and epitome of
all that he was going into the world to fight--in the man intellect
without moral purpose, in the woman materialism, gross and carnal. The
Adamses went the rounds of the real estate dealers trying to sell their
home, and in following his vision Grant forgot the two tall figures in
the street.
But the two figures that had started Grant's reverie continued to
walk--perhaps a trifle slower than was the wont of either, down Market
Street. They walked slowly for two reasons: For her part, she wished to
make the most of a parade on Market Street with so grand a person as the
Judge of the District Court, and the town's most distinguished citizen;
and for his part, he dawdled because life was going slowly with him in
certain quarters: he felt the lack of adventure, and here--at least, she
was a stunning figure of a woman! "Yes," she said, "I heard about them.
Henry has just told me that Mr. Brotherton said the Adamses are going to
sell their home and give it to the miners' widows. Isn't it foolish?
It's all they've got in the world, too! Still, really nothing is strange
in that family. You know, I boarded with them one winter when I taught
the Prospect School. Henry says they want to do something for the
laboring people," she added naively.
As she spoke, the man's eyes wandered over her figure, across her face,
and were caught by her eyes that looked at him with something in them
entirely irrelevant to the subject that her lips were discussing. His
eyes caught up the suggestion of her eyes, and carried it a little
further, but he only said: "Yes--queer folks--trying to make a
whistle--"
"Out of a pig's tail," she laughed. But her eyes thought his eyes had
gone just a little too far, so they drooped, and changed the subject.
"Well, I don't know that I would say exactly a pig's tail," he returned,
bracketing his words with his most engaging smile, "but I should say out
of highly refractory material."
His eyes in the meantime pried up her eyelids and asked what was wrong
with that. And her eyes were coy about it, and would not answer
directly.
He went on speaking: "The whole labor trouble, it seems to me, lies in
this whistle trade. A smattering of education has made labor
dissatisfied. The laboring people are trying to get out of their place,
and as a result we have strikes and lawlessness and disrespect for
courts, and men going around and making trouble in industry by 'doing
something for labor.'"
"Yes," she replied, "that is very true."
But her eyes--her big, liquid, animal eyes were saying, "How handsome
you are--you man--you great, strong, masterful man with your brown
ulster and brown hat and brown tie, and silken, black mustache." To
which his eyes replied, "And you--you are superb, and such lips and such
teeth," while what he trusted to words was:
"Yes--I believe that the laborer in the mines, for instance, doesn't
care so much about what we would consider hardship. It's natural to him.
It would be hard for us, but he gets used to it! Now, the smelter men in
that heat and fumes--they don't seem to mind it. The agonizing is done
largely by these red-mouthed agitators who never did a lick of work in
their lives."
Their elbows touched for a moment as they walked. He drew away politely
and her eyes said:
"That's all right: I didn't mind that a bit." But her lips said: "That's
what I tell Mr. Fenn, and, anyway, the work's got to be done and
cultivated people can't do it. It's got to be done by the ignorant and
coarse and those kind of people."
His eyes flinched a little at "those kind" of people and she wondered
what was wrong. But it was only for a moment that they flinched. Then
they told her eyes how fine and desirable she looked, and she replied
eyewise with a droop such as the old wolf might have used in replying to
Red Riding Hood, "The better to eat you, my child." Then his voice
spoke; his soft, false, vain, mushy voice, and asked casually: "By the
way, speaking of Mr. Fenn--how is Henry? I don't see him much now since
he's quit the law and gone into real estate."
His eyes asked plainly: Is everything all right in that quarter? Perhaps
I might--
"Oh, I guess he's all right," and her eyes said: That's so kind of you,
indeed; perhaps you might--
But he went on: "You ought to get him out more--come over some night and
we'll make a hand at whist. Mrs. Van Dorn isn't much of a player, but
like all poor players, she enjoys it." And the eyes continued: But you
and I will have a fine time--now please come--soon--very soon.
"Yes, indeed--I don't play so well, but we'll come," and the eyes
answered: That is a fair promise, and I'll be so happy. Then they
flashed quickly: But Mrs. Van Dorn must arrange it. He replied: "I'll
tell Mrs. Van Dorn you like whist, and she and you can arrange the
evening."
Then they parted. He walked into the post office, and she walked on to
the Wright & Perry store. But instead of returning to his office, he
lounged into Mr. Brotherton's and sat on a bench in the Amen Corner,
biting a cigar, waiting for traffic to clear out. Then he said: "George,
how is Henry Fenn doing--really?"
His soft, brown hat was tipped over his eyes and his ulster, unbuttoned,
displayed his fine figure, and he was clearly proud of it. Brotherton
hesitated while he invoiced a row of books.
"Old trouble?" prompted Judge Van Dorn.
"Old trouble," echoed Mr. Brotherton--"about every three months since
he's been married; something terrible the last time. But say--there's a
man that's sorry afterwards, and what he doesn't buy for her after a
round with the joy-water isn't worth talking about. So far, he's been
able to square her that way--I take it. But say--that'll wear off, and
then--" Mr. Brotherton winked a large, mournful, devilish wink as one
who was hanging out a storm flag. Judge Van Dorn twirled his mustache,
patted his necktie, jostled his hat and smiled, waiting for further
details. Instead, he faced a question:
"Why did Henry quit the law for real estate, Judge--the old trouble?"
Judge Van Dorn echoed, and added: "Folks pretty generally know about it,
and they don't trust their law business in that kind of hands. Poor
Henry--poor devil," sighed the young Judge, and then said: "By the way,
George, send up a box of cigars--the kind old Henry likes best, to my
house. I'm going to have him and the missus over some evening."
Mr. Brotherton's large back was turned when the last phrase was uttered,
and Mr. Brotherton made a little significant face at his shelves, and
the thought occurred to Mr. Brotherton that Henry Fenn was not the only
man whom people pretty generally knew about. After some further talk
about Fenn and his affairs, Van Dorn primped a moment before the mirror
in the cigar cutter and started for the door.
"By the by, your honor, I forgot about the Mayor's miners' relief fund.
How is it now?" asked Van Dorn.
"Something past ten thousand here in the county."
"Any one beat my subscription?" asked Van Dorn.
Brotherton turned around and replied: "Yes--Amos Adams was in here five
minutes ago. He has mortgaged his place and so long as he and Grant
can't find kith or kin of Chopini, and Mrs. Herdicker would take
nothing--Amos has put $1,500 into the fund. Done it just now--him and
Grant."
The Judge took the paper, looked at the scrawl of the Adamses, and
scratching out his subscription, put two thousand where there had been
one thousand. He showed it to Brotherton, and added with a smile:
"Who'll call that--I wonder."
And wrapping his ulster about him and cocking his hat rakishly, he went
with some pride into the street. He was thirty-four years old and was
accounted as men go a handsome dog, with a figure just turning from the
litheness of youth into a slight rotundity of very early middle age. He
carried his shoulders well, walked with a firm, straight gait--perhaps a
little too much upon his toes for candor, but, with all, he was a
well-groomed animal and he knew it. So he passed Margaret Fenn again on
the street, lifted his hat, hunted for her eyes, gave them all the
voltage he had, and the smile that he shot at her was left over on his
face for half a block down the street. People passing him smiled back
and said to one another:
"What a fine, good-natured, big-hearted fellow Tom Van Dorn is!"
And Mr. Van Dorn, not oblivious to the impression he was making, smiled
and bowed and bowed and smiled, and hellowed Dick, and howareyoued
Hiram, and goodmorninged John, down the street, into his office. There
he found his former partner busy with a laudable plan of defending a
client. His client happened to be the Wahoo Fuel Company, which was
being assailed by the surviving relatives of something like one hundred
dead men. So Mr. Calvin was preparing to show that in entering the mine
they had assumed the ordinary risks of mining, and that the neglect of
their fellow servants was one of those ordinary risks. And as for the
boy ten years old being employed in the mines contrary to law, there
were some details of a trip to Austria for that boy and his parents,
that had to be arranged with the steamship company by wire that very
morning. The Judge sat reading the law, oblivious--judicially--to what
was going on, and Joseph Calvin fell to work with a will. But what the
young Judge, who could ignore Mr. Calvin's activities, could not help
taking judicial notice of in spite of his law books, were those eyes out
there on the street. They were indeed beautiful eyes and they said so
much, and yet left much to the imagination--and the imagination of Judge
Van Dorn was exceedingly nimble in those little matters, and in many
other matters besides. Indeed, so nimble was his imagination that if it
hadn't been for the fact that at Judge Van Dorn's own extra-judicial
suggestion, every lawyer in town, excepting Henry Fenn, who had retired
from the law practice, had been retained by the Company an hour after
the accident, no one knows how many holes might have been found in Mr.
Joseph Calvin's unaided brief.
As the young Judge sat poring over his law book, Captain Morton came in
and after the Captain's usual circumlocution he said:
"What I really wanted to know, Judge, was about a charter. I want to
start a company. So I says to myself, Judge Tom, he can just about start
me right. He'll get my company going--what say?" Answering the Judge's
question about the nature of the company, the Captain explained: "You
see, I had the agency for the Waverly bicycle here a while back, and I
got one of their wheels and was fooling with it like a fellow will on a
wet day--what say?" He smiled up at the Judge a self-deprecatory smile,
as if to ask him not to mind his foolishness but to listen to his story.
"And when I got the blame thing apart, she wouldn't go together--eh? So
I had to kind of give up the agency, and I took a churn that was filling
a long-felt want just then. Churns is always my specialty and I forgot
all about the bicycle--just like a fellow will--eh? But here a while
back I wanted to rig up a gearing for the churn and so I took down the
wreck of the old wheel, and dubbing around I worked out a ball-bearing
sprocket joint--say, man, she runs just like a feather. And now what I
want is a patent for the sprocket and a charter for the company to put
it on the market. Henry Fenn's going to the capital for me to fix up the
charter; and then whoopee--the old man's coming along, eh? When I get
that thing on the market, you watch out for me--what say?"
The eyes of Margaret Fenn danced around the Captain's sprocket. So the
Judge, thinking to get rid of the Captain and oblige the Fenns with one
stroke, sent the Captain away with twenty-five dollars to pay Henry Fenn
for getting the patent for the sprocket and securing the charter for the
company.
As the Captain left the office of the Judge he greeted Mrs. Van Dorn
with an elaborate bow.
And now enter Laura Van Dorn. And she is beautiful, too--with candid,
wide-open gray eyes. Maturity has hardly reached her, but through the
beauty of line and color, character is showing itself in every feature;
Satterthwaite and Nesbit, force and sentiment are struggling upon her
features for mastery. The January air has flushed her face and her
frank, honest eyes glow happily. But when one belongs to the ancient,
though scarcely Honorable Primrose Hunt, and rides forever to the hounds
down the path of dalliance, one's wife of four years is rather stale
sport. One does not pry up her eyelashes; they have been pried; nor does
one hold dialogues with her under the words of conventional speech. The
rules of the Hunt require one to look up at one's wife--chiefly to find
out what she is after and to wonder how long she will inflict herself.
And when one is hearing afar the cry of the pack, no true sportsman is
diverted from the chase by ruddy, wifely cheeks, and beaming, wifely
eyes, and an eager, wifely heart. So when Laura his wife came into the
office of the young Judge she found his heart out with the Primrose Hunt
and only his handsome figure and his judicial mind accessible to her.
"Oh, Tom," she cried, "have you heard about the Adamses?" The young
Judge looked up, smiled, adjusted his judicial mind, and answered
without emotion: "Rather foolish, don't you think?"
"Well, perhaps it's foolish, but you know it's splendid as well as I.
Giving up everything they had on earth to soften the horror in South
Harvey--I'm so proud of them!"
"Well," he replied, still keeping his chair, and letting his wife find a
chair for herself, "you might work up a little pride for your husband
while you're at it. I gave two thousand. They only gave fifteen
hundred."
"Well--you're a dear, too." She touched him with a caressing hand. "But
you could afford it. It means for you only the profits on one real
estate deal or one case of Joe Calvin's in the Federal Court, where you
can still divide the fees. But, Tom--the Adamses have given
themselves--all they have--themselves. It's a very inspiring thing; I
feel that it must affect men in this town to see that splendid faith."
"Laura," he answered testily, "why do you still keep up that foolish
enthusiasm for perfectly unreasonable things? There was no sense in the
Adamses giving that way. It was a foolish thing to do, when the old man
is practically on the town. His paper is a joke. Sooner or later we will
all have to make up this gift a dollar at a time and take care of him."
He turned to his law book. "Besides, if you come to that--it's money
that talks and if you want to get excited, get excited over my two
thousand. It will do more good than their fifteen hundred--at least five
hundred dollars more. And that's all there is to it."
Her face twitched with pain. Then from some depths of her soul she
hailed him impulsively:
"Tom, I don't believe that, and I don't believe you do, either--it isn't
the good the money does those who receive; it's the good it does the
giver. And the good it does the giver is measured by the amount of
sacrifice--the degree of himself that he puts into it--can't you
understand, Tom? I'd give my soul if you could understand."
"Well, I can't understand, Laura," impatiently; "that's your father's
sentimental side. Of all the fool things," the Judge slapped the book
sheet viciously, "that the old man has put into your head--sentiment is
one of the foolest. I tell you, Laura, money talks. There are ten
languages spoken in South Harvey, and money talks in all of them, and
one dollar does as much as another, and that's all there is to it."
She rose with a little sigh. "Well," she said gently, "we won't
quarrel." The wife looked intently at the husband, and in that flash of
time from beneath her consciousness came renewed strength. Something
primeval--the eternal uxorial upon which her whole life rested,
possessed her and she smiled, and touched her husband's thick, black
hair gently. For she felt that if the spiritual ties for the moment had
failed them, she must pick up some other tie. She was the nest builder
indomitable. If the golden thread should drop--there is the string--the
straw--the horse hair--the twig. So Laura Van Dorn picked up an appeal
to her husband's affections and continued her predestined work.
"Tom," she said, with her smile still on her face, "what I really and
truly wanted to tell you was about Lila." The mention of the child's
name brought quick light to the mother's face. "Lila--think of
it, Tom--Lila," the mother repeated with vast pride. "You must come right
out and see her. About an hour ago, she sat gazing at your picture on my
dresser, and suddenly without a word from me, she whispered 'Daddy,' and
then was as shy for a moment, then whispered it again, and then spoke it
out loud, and she is as proud as Punch, and keeps saying it over and
over! Tom--you must come out and hear it."
Perhaps it was a knotty point of law that held his mind, or perhaps it
was the old beat of the hoofs on the turf of the Primrose Hunt that
filled his ears, or the red coat of the fox that filled his eyes.
He smiled graciously and replied absently: "Well--Daddy--" And repeated
"Daddy--don't you think father is--" He caught the cloud flashing across
her face, and went on: "Oh, I suppose daddy is all right to begin with."
He picked up his law book and the woman drew nearer to him. She put her
hand over the page and coaxed:
"Come on, Tom--just for a little minute--come on out and see her. I know
she is waiting for you--I know she is just dying to show off to you--and
besides, the new rugs have come for the living-room, and I just couldn't
unpack them without you. It would seem so--old--old--old marriedy, and
we aren't going to be that." She laughed and tried to close the law
book.
Their eyes met and she thought for a moment that she was winning her
contest. But he put her hand aside gently and answered: "Now, Laura, I'm
busy, exceedingly busy. This mine accident is bound to come before me in
one form or another soon, and I must be ready for it, and it is a
serious matter. There will be all kinds of attacks upon the property."
"The property?" she asked, and he answered:
"Why, yes--legal attacks upon the mine--to bleed the owners, and I must
be ready to guard them against these assaults, and I just can't jump and
run every time Lila coos or you cut a string on a package. I'll be out
to-night and we'll hear Lila and look at the rugs." To the
disappointment upon her face he replied: "I tell you, Laura, sentiment
is going to wreck your life if you don't check it."
The man looked into his book without reading. He had come to dislike
these little scenes with his wife. He looked from his book out of the
window, into the snowy street. He remembered his morning walk. There was
no talk of souls in those eyes, no hint of higher things from those
lips, no covert taunt of superiority in that face.
Laura did not wince. But her eyes filled and her voice was husky as she
spoke: "Tom, I want your soul again--the one that used to speak to me in
the old days." She bent over him, and rubbed her cheek against his and
there she left him, still looking into the street.
That evening at sunset, Judge Van Dorn, with his ulster thrown back to
show his fine figure, walked in his character of town Prince homeward up
the avenue. His face was amiable; he was gracious to every one. He spoke
to rich and poor alike, as was his wont. As he turned into his home
yard, he waved at a little face in the window. In the house he was the
spirit of good nature itself. He was full of quips and pleasantries and
happy turns of speech. But Laura Van Dorn had learned deep in her heart
to fear that mood. She was ashamed of her wisdom--degraded by her doubt,
and she fought with it.
And yet a man and a woman do not live together as man and wife and
parents without learning much that does not come from speech and is not
put into formulated conviction. The signs were all for trouble, and in
the secret places of her heart she knew these signs.
She knew that this grand manner, this expansive mood, this keying up of
attentions to her were the beginnings of a sad and sordid story--a story
that she did not entirely understand; would not entirely translate, but
a story that sickened her very soul. To keep the table talk going, she
said: "Tom, it's wonderful the way Kenyon is taking to the violin. He
has a real gift, I believe."
"Yes," answered the husband absently, and then as one who would plunge
ahead, began: "By the by--why don't you have your father and mother and
some of the neighbors over to play cards some evening--and what's the
matter with the Fenns? Henry's kind of down on his luck, and I'll need
him in my next campaign, and I thought if we could have them over some
evening--well, what's the matter with to-morrow evening? They'd enjoy
it. You know Mrs. Fenn--I saw her down town this morning, and George
Brotherton says Henry's slipping back to his old ways. And I just
thought perhaps--"
But she knew as well as he what he "thought perhaps," and a cloud
trailed over her face.
When Thomas Van Dorn left his home that night, striding into the lights
of Market Street, his heart was hot with the glowing coals of an old
wrong revived. For to Judge Van Dorn, home had become a trap, and the
glorious eyes that had beamed upon him in the morning seemed beacons of
liberty.
As gradually those eyes became fixed in his consciousness, through days
and weeks and months, a mounting passion for Margaret Fenn kindled in
his heart. And slowly he went stone-blind mad. The whole of his world
was turned over. Every ambition, every hope, every desire he ever had
known was burned out before this passion that was too deep for desire.
Whatever lust was in his blood in those first months of his madness grew
pale. It seemed to the man who went stalking down the street past her
house night after night that the one great, unselfish passion of his
life was upon him, loosening the roots of his being, so that any
sacrifice he could make, whether of himself or of any one or anything
about him, would give him infinite joy. When he met Henry Fenn, Van Dorn
was always tempted and often yielded to the temptation to rush up to
Fenn with some foolish question that made the sad-eyed man stare and
wonder. But just to be that near to her for the moment pleased him.
There was no jealousy for Fenn in Van Dorn's heart; there was only a
dog-like infatuation that had swept him away from his reason and seated
a fatuous, chattering, impotent, lecherous ape where his intellect
should have been. And he knew he was a fool. He knew that he was stark
mad. Yet what he did not know was that this madness was a culmination,
not a pristine passion new born in his heart. For the maggot in his
brain had eaten out a rotten place wherein was the memory of many
women's yieldings, of many women's tears. One side of his brain worked
with rare cunning. He wound the evidence against the men in the mine,
taken at the coroner's hearing, through the labyrinth of the law, and
snared them tightly in it. That part of his brain clicked with automatic
precision. But sitting beside him was the ape, grinning, leering, ready
to rise and master him. So many a night when he was weary, he lay on the
couch beside his desk, and the ape came and howled him to a troubled
sleep.
But while Judge Van Dorn tried to fight his devil away with his law
book, down in South Harvey death still lingered. Death is no respecter
of persons, and often vaunts himself of his democracy. Yet it is a sham
democracy. In Harvey, when death taps on a door and enters the house, he
brings sorrow. But in South Harvey when he crosses a threshold he brings
sorrow and want. And what a vast difference lies between sorrow, and
sorrow with want. For sometimes the want that death brings is so keen
that it smothers sorrow, and the poor may not mourn without shame--shame
that they feel the self-interest in their sorrow. So when Death entered
a hundred homes in South Harvey that winter day at the beginning of the
new year, with him came hunger, with him came cold, with him came the
harlot's robe and the thief's mask, and the blight of ignorance, and the
denial of democratic opportunity to scores of children. With death that
day as he crossed the dreary, unpainted portals of the poor came horror
that overshadows grief among the poor and makes the boast of the
democracy of death a ruthless irony.