IN WHICH WE SEE TWO TEMPLES AND THE CONTENTS THEREOF
It was an old complaint in Harvey that the Harvey _Tribune_ was too
much of a bulletin of the doings of the Adams family and their friends.
But when a man sets all the type on a paper, writes all the editorials
and gets all the news he may be pardoned if he takes first such news as
is near his hand. Thus in the May that followed events set down in the
last chapter we find in the _Tribune_ a few items of interest to
the readers of this narrative. We learn for instance that Captain Ezra
Morton who is introducing the Nonesuch Sewing Machine, paid his friends
in Prospect school district a visit; that Jasper Adams has been promoted
to superintendent of deliveries in Wright & Perry's store; that Kenyon
Adams entertained his friends in the Fifth Grade of the South Harvey
schools with a violin solo on the last day of school; that Grant Adams
had been made assistant to the secretary of the National Building Trades
Association in South Harvey; that Mr. George Brotherton with Miss Emma
Morton and Martha and Ruth had enjoyed a pleasant visit with the Adamses
Sunday afternoon and had resumed an enjoyable buggy ride after partaking
of a chicken dinner. In the editorial column were some reflections
evidently in Mr. Left's most lucid style and a closing paragraph
containing this: "Happiness and character," said the Peach Blow
Philosopher, "are inseparable: but how easy it is to be happy in a
great, beautiful house; or to be unhappy if it comes to that in a great,
beautiful house: Environment may influence character; but all the good
are not poor, nor all the rich bad. Therefore, the Peach Blow
Philosopher takes to the woods. He is willing to leave something to the
Lord Almighty and the continental congress. Selah!"
As Dr. Nesbit sat reading the items above set forth upon the broad new
veranda of the residence that he was so proud to call his home, he
smiled. It was late afternoon. He had done a hard day's work--some of it
among the sick, some of it among the needy--the needy in the Doctor's
bright lexicon being those who tried to persuade him that they needed
political offices. "I cheer up the sick, encourage the needy, pray for
'em both, and sometimes for their own good have to lie to 'em all," he
used to say in that day when the duties of his profession and the care
of his station as a ruling boss in politics were oppressing him. Dr.
Nesbit played politics as a game. But he played always to win.
"Old Linen Pants is a bland old scoundrel," declared Public Opinion,
about the corridors of the political hotel at the capital. "But he is as
ruthless as iron, as smooth as oil, and as bitter as poison when he sets
his head on a proposition. Buy?--he buys men in all the ways the devil
teaches them to sell--offices, power, honor, cash in hand, promises,
prestige--anything that a man wants, Old Linen Pants will trade for, and
then get that man. Humorous old devil, too," quoth Public Opinion.
"Laughs, quotes scripture, throws in a little Greek philosophy, and
knows all the new stories, but never forgets whose play it is, nor what
cards are out." Thus was he known to others.
But as he remained longer and longer in the game, as his fourth term as
state Senator began to lengthen, the game here and there began to lose
in his mouth something of its earlier savor. That afternoon as he sat on
the veranda overlooking the lawn shaded by the elm trees of his greatest
pride, Dr. Nesbit was discoursing to Mrs. Nesbit, who was sewing and
paid little heed to his animadversions; it was a soliloquy rather than a
conversation--a soliloquy accompanied by an obligate of general mental
disagreement from the wife of his bosom, who expressed herself in sniffs
and snorts and scornful staccato interjections as the soliloquy ran on.
Here are a few bars of it transcribed for beginners:
From the Doctor's solo: "Heigh-ho--ho hum--Two United States Senators,
one slightly damaged Governor, marked down, five congressmen and three
liars, one supreme court justice, also a liar, a working interest in a
second, and a slight equity in a third; organization of the Senate,
speaker of the house,--forty liars and thirty thieves--that's my
political assets, my dear."
"I wish you'd quit politics, Doctor, and attend to your practice," this
by way of accompaniment from Mrs. Nesbit. The Doctor was in a playful
and facetious mood that pleasant afternoon.
He leaned back in his chair, reached up in the air with outstretched
arms, clapped his hands three times, gayly, kicked his shoe-heels three
times at the end of his short little legs, smiled and proceeded:
"Liabilities of James Nesbit, dealer in public grief, licensed dispenser
of private joy, purveyor of Something Equally Good, item one, forty-nine
gentlemen who think they've been promised thirty-six jobs--but they are
mistaken, they have been told only that I'll do what I can for
them--which is true; item two, three hundred friends who want something
and may ask at any minute; item three, seventy-five men who will be or
have been primed up by the loathed opposition to demand jobs; item four,
Tom Van Dorn who is as sure as guns to think in about a year he has to
have a vindication, by running for another term; item five--"
"He can't have it," from Mrs. Nesbit, and then the piping voice went on:
"Item six, a big, husky fight in Greeley county for the maharaja of
Harvey and the adjoining provinces." A deep sigh rose from the Doctor,
then followed more clapping of hands and kicking of heels and some
slapping of suspenders, as the voices of Kenyon and Lila came into the
veranda from the lawn, and the Doctor cast up his accounts: "Let's see
now--naught's a naught and figure's a figure and carry six, and subtract
the profits and multiply the trouble and you have a busted community.
Correct," he piped, "Bedelia, my dear, observe a busted community. Your
affectionate lord and master, kind husband, indulgent father, good
citizen gone but not forgotten. How are the mighty fallen."
"Doctor," snapped Mrs. Nesbit, "don't be a fool; tell me, James, will
Tom Van Dorn want to run again?"
Making a basket with his hands for the back of his head the Doctor
answered slowly, "Ho-ho-ho! Oh, I don't know--I should say--yes. He'll
just about have to run--for a Vindication."
"Well, you'll not support him! I say you'll not support him," Mrs.
Nesbit decided, and the Doctor echoed blandly:
"Then I'll not support him. Where's Laura?" he asked gently.
"She went down to South Harvey to see about that kindergarten she's been
talking of. She seems almost cheerful about the way Kenyon is getting on
with his music. She says the child reads as well as she now and plays
everything on the violin that she can play on the piano. Doctor," added
Mrs. Nesbit meditatively, "now about those oriental rugs we were going
to put upstairs--don't you suppose we could take the money we were going
to put there and help Laura with that kindergarten? Perhaps she'd take a
real interest in life through those children down there." The wife
hesitated and asked, "Would you do it?"
The Doctor drummed his chair arm thoughtfully, then put his thumbs in
his suspenders. "Greater love than this hath no woman shown, my
dear--that she gives up oriental rugs for a kindergarten--by all means
give it to her."
"James, Lila still grieves for her father."
"Yes," answered the Doctor sadly, "and Henry Fenn was in the office this
morning begging me to give him something that would kill his thirst."
The doctor brought his hands down emphatically on his chair arms. "Duty,
Bedelia, is the realest obligation in the world. Here are Lila and Henry
Fenn. What a miserable lot of tommy rot about soul-mating Tom and this
Fenn woman conjured up to get away from their duty to child and husband.
They have swapped a place with the angels for a right to wallow with the
hogs; that's what all their fine talking amounts to." The Doctor's
shrill voice rose. "They don't fool me. They don't fool any one; they
don't even fool each other. I tell you, my dear," he chirped as he rose
from his chair, "I never saw one of those illicit love affairs in life
or heard of it in literature that was not just plain, old fashion,
downright, beastly selfishness. Duty is a greater thing in life than
what the romance peddlers call love."
The Doctor stood looking at his wife questioningly--waiting for some
approving response. She kept on sewing. "Oh you Satterthwaites with
hearts of marble," he cried as he patted the cast iron waves of her hair
and went chuckling into the house.
Mrs. Nesbit was aroused from her reverie by the rattle of the Adams
buggy. When it drew up to the curb Laura and Grant climbed out and came
up the walk. Laura wore a simple summer dress that brought out all the
exquisite coloring of her skin, and made her light hair shine in a kind
of haloed glory. It had been months since the mother had seen in her
daughter's face such a smile as the daughter gave to the man beside
her--red-faced, angular, hard muscled, in his dingy blue carpenter's
working clothes with his measuring rule and pencil sticking from his
apron pocket, and with his crippled arm tipped by its steel tool-holder.
"Grant is going to take that box of Lila's toys down to the
kindergarten, mother," she explained.
When they had disappeared up the stairs Mrs. Nesbit could hear them on
the floor above and soon the heavy feet of the man carrying a burden
were on the stairs and in another minute the young woman was saying:
"Leave them by the teacher's desk, Grant," and as he untied the horse,
she called, "Now you will get that door in to-night without fail--won't
you? I'll be down and we'll put in the south partition in the morning."
As she turned from the door she greeted her mother with a smile and
dropped wearily into a chair.
"Oh mother," she cried, "it's going to be so fine. Grant has the room
nearly finished and he's interesting the wives of the union men in South
Harvey and George Brotherton is going to give us every month all the
magazines and periodicals that are not returnable and George brought
down a lot of Christmas numbers of illustrated papers, and we're cutting
the bright pictures out and pinning them on the wall and George himself
worked with us all afternoon. George says he is going to make every one
of his lodges contribute monthly to the kindergarten--he belongs to
everything but the Ladies of the G. A. R.--" she smiled and her mother
smiled with her,--"and Grant says the unions are going to pay half of
the salary of the extra teacher. That makes it easier."
"Well, Laura, don't you think--"
But her daughter interrupted her. "Now, mother," she went on, "don't you
stop me till I'm done--for this is the best yet. Morty Sands came down
to-day to help--" Laura laughed a little at her mother's surprised
glance, "and Morty promised to give us $200 for the kindergarten just as
soon as he can worm it out of his father for expense money." She drew in
a deep, tired breath, "There," she sighed, "that's all."
Her own child came up and the mother caught the little girl and began
playing with her, tying her hair ribbon, smoothing out her skirts,
rubbing a dirt speck from her nose, and cuddling the little one
rapturously in her arms. When the two women were alone, Laura sat on the
veranda steps with her head resting upon her mother's knee. The mother
touched the soft hair and said: "Laura, you are very tired."
"Yes, mother," the daughter answered. "The mothers are so hungry for
help down there in South Harvey, and," she added a little drearily--"so
am I; so we are speaking a common language."
She nestled her head in the lap above her. "And I'm going to find
something worth doing--something fine and good."
She watched the lazy clouds, "You know I'm glad about Morty Sands. Grant
thinks Morty sincerely wants to amount to something real--to help and be
more than a money grubber! If the old spider would just let him out of
the web!" The mother stared at her daughter a second.
"Well, Laura, about the only money grubbing Morty seems to be doing is
grubbing money out of his father to maintain his race horse."
The daughter smiled and the mother went on with her work. "Mother, did
you know that little Ruth Morton is going to begin taking vocal lessons
this summer?" The mother shook her head. "Grant says Mr. Brotherton's
paying for it. He thinks she has a wonderful voice."
"Voice--" cut in Mrs. Nesbit, "why Laura, the child's only
fourteen--voice--!"
Laura answered, "Yes, mother, but you've never heard her sing; she has a
beautiful, deep, contralto voice, but the treble above 'C' is a trifle
squeaky, and Mr. Brotherton says he's 'going to have it oiled'; so she's
to 'take vocal' regularly."
On matters musical Mrs. Nesbit believed she had a right to know the
whole truth, so she asked: "Where does Mr. Brotherton come in, Laura?"
"Oh, mother, he's always been a kind of god-father to those girls. You
know as well as I that Emma's been playing with that funeral choir of
yours and Mr. Brotherton's all these years, only because he got her into
it, and Grant says he's kept Mrs. Herdicker from discharging Martha for
two years, just by sheer nerve. Of course Grant gets it from Mr.
Brotherton but Grant says Martha is so pretty she's such a trial to Mrs.
Herdicker! I like Martha, but, mother, she just thinks she should be
carried round on a chip because of her brown eyes and red hair and dear
little snubby nose. Grant says Mr. Brotherton is trying to get the money
someway to float the Captain's stock company and put his Household Horse
on the market. I think Mr. Brotherton is a fine man, mother--he's always
doing things to help people."
Mrs. Nesbit folded up her work, and began to rise. "George Brotherton,
Laura," said her mother as she stood at full length looking down upon
her child, "has a voice of an angel, and perhaps the heart of a god, but
he will eat onions and during the twenty years I've been singing with
him I've never known him to speak a correct sentence. Common,
Laura--common as dishwater."
As Laura Van Dorn talked the currents of life eddying about her were
reflected in what she said. But she could not know the spirit that was
moving the currents; for with a neighborly shyness those who were
gathering about her were careful to seem casual in their kindness, and
she could not know how deeply they were moved to help her. Kindergartens
were hardly in George Brotherton's line; yet he untied old bundles of
papers, ransacked his shop and brought a great heap of old posters and
picture papers to her. Captain Morton brought a beloved picture of his
army Colonel to adorn the room, and deaf John Kollander, who had a low
opinion of the ignorant foreigners and the riff-raff and scum of
society, which Laura was trying to help, wished none the less to help
her, and came down one day with a flag for the schoolroom and insisted
upon making a speech to the tots about patriotism. He made nothing clear
to them but he made it quite clear to himself that they were getting the
flag as a charity, which they little deserved, and never would return.
And to Laura he conveyed the impression that he considered her mission a
madness, but for her and the sorrow which she was fighting, he had
appreciative tenderness. He must have impressed his emotions upon his
wife for she came down and talked elaborately about starting a cooking
school in the building, and after planning it all out, went away and
forgot it. The respectable iron gray side-whiskers of Ahab Wright once
relieved the dingy school room, when Ahab looked in and the next day
Kyle Perry on behalf of the firm of Wright & Perry came trudging into
the kindergarten with a huge box which he said contained a
p-p-p-p-p-pat-a-p-p-p-pppat-pat--here he swallowed and started all
over and finally said p-p-patent, and then started out on a long
struggle with the word swing, but he never finished it, and until Laura
opened the box she thought Mr. Perry had brought her a soda fountain.
But Nathan Perry, his son, who came wandering down to the place one
afternoon with Anne Sands, put up the swing, and suggested a half dozen
practical devices for the teacher to save time and labor in her work,
while Anne Sands in her teens looked on as one who observes a major god
completing a bungling job of the angels on a newly contrived world.
Sometimes coming home from his day's work Amos Adams would drop in for a
chat with the tired teacher, and he refreshed her curiously with his
quiet manner and his unsure otherworldliness, and his tough, unyielding
optimism. He had no lectures for the children. He would watch them at
their games, try to play with them himself in a pathetic, old-fashioned
way, telling them fairy stories of an elder and a grimmer day than ours.
Sometimes Doctor Nesbit, coming for Laura in his buggy, would find Amos
in the school room, and they would fall to their everlasting debate upon
the reality of time and space with the Doctor enjoying hugely his
impious attempt to couch the terminology of abstract philosophy in his
Indiana vernacular.
Lida Bowman bringing her little brood sometimes would sit silently
watching the children, and look at Laura as if about to speak, but she
always went away with her mind unrelieved. Violet Hogan, who brought her
beruffled and bedizened eldest, made up for Mrs. Bowman's reticence.
Moreover Violet brought other mothers and there was much talk on the
topics of the day--talk that revealed to Laura Nesbit a whole philosophy
that was new to her--the helpfulness of the poor to the poor.
But if others brought to Laura Van Dorn material strength and spiritual
comfort in her enterprise, Grant Adams waved the wand of his steel claw
over the kindergarten and made it live. For he was a power in the Wahoo
Valley. Her friends knew that his word gave the kindergarten the
endorsement of every union there and thus brought to it mothers with
children and with problems as well as children, whom Laura Van Dorn
otherwise never could have reached. The unions made a small donation
monthly to the work which gave them the feeling of proprietorship in the
place and the mothers and children came in self-respect. But if Grant
gave life to the kindergarten, he got more than he gave. For the
restraining hand of Laura Van Dorn always was upon him, and his friends
in the Valley came to realize her friendship for them and their cause.
They knew that many a venture of Grant's Utopia would have been a wild
goose chase but for the wisdom of her counsel. And the two came to rely
upon each other unconsciously.
So in the ugly little building near Dooley's saloon in South Harvey the
two towns met and worked together; and all to heal a broken heart, a
bruised life. From out of the unexplored realm where our dreams are
blooming into the fruit of reality one evening came Mr. Left with this
message: "Whoever in the joy of service gives part of himself to the
vast sum of sacrificial giving that has remained unspent, since man
began to walk erect, is adding to humanity's heritage, is building an
unseen temple wherein mankind is sheltered from its own inhumanity. This
sum of sacrificial giving is the temple not made with hands!"
Now the foundations of that part of the temple not made with hands in
South Harvey, may be said to have been laid and the watertable set on
the day when Laura Van Dorn first laughed the bell-chime laugh of her
girlhood. And that day came well along in the summer. It was twilight
and the Doctor was sitting with his wife and daughter on their east
veranda when Morty Sands came flitting across the lawn like a striped
miller moth in a broad-banded outing suit. He waved gayly to the little
company in the veranda and came up the steps at two bounds, though he
was a man of thirty-eight and just the least bit weazened.
"Well," he said, with his greetings scarcely off his lips, "I came to
tell you I've sold the colt!"
The chorus repeated his announcement as a question.
"Yes, sold the colt," solemnly responded Morty. And then added, "Father
just wouldn't! I tried to get that two hundred in various ways--adding
it to my cigar bill; slipping it in on my bill for raiment at Wright &
Perry's, but father pinned Kyle down, and he stuttered out the truth. I
tried to get the horse-doctor to charge the two hundred into his bill
and when father uncovered that--I couldn't wait any longer so I've sold
the colt!"
"Well, Morty, what for in Heaven's name?" asked Laura. Morty began
fumbling in his pockets before he spoke. He did not smile, but as his
hand came out of an inside pocket, he said gently: "For two hundred and
seventeen dollars and a half! I fought an hour for that half dollar!" He
handed it to the Doctor, saying: "It's for the kindergarten. You keep it
for her, Doctor Jim!"
When Morty had gone Mrs. Nesbit said: "What queer blood that Sands blood
is, Doctor. There is Mary Sands's heart in that boy, and Daniel has bred
nothing into him. They must have been a queer breed a generation or two
back!"
The Doctor did not answer. He took the money which Morty had given to
him, handed it to Laura and said: "And now my dear, accept this token of
devotion from Sir Mortimer Sands, of the golden heart and wooden head!"
And then Laura laughed, not in derision, not in merriment even, but in
sheer joy that life could mean so much. And as she laughed the temple
not made with hands began to rise strong and beautiful in her heart and
in the hearts of all who touched her.
How they would have sneered at Laura Van Dorn's niche in the temple,
those practical folk who helped her because they loved her. How George
Brotherton would have laughed; with what suspicion John Kollander would
have viewed the kindergarten, if he had been told that it was part of a
temple. For he had no sort of an idea of letting the rag-tag and
bob-tail of South Harvey into a temple; he knew very well they deserved
no temple. They were shiftless and wicked. How Wright & Perry would have
sniffed at any one who would have called the dreary little shack, where
Laura Van Dorn held forth, a temple. For they all pretended to see only
the earthly dimensions of material things. But in their hearts they knew
the truth. It is the American way to mask the beauty of our nobler
selves, or real selves under a gibing deprecation. So we wear the veneer
of materialism, and beneath it we are intense idealists. And woe to him
who reckons to the contrary!
Perhaps the town's views on temples in general and Laura's temple in
particular, was summed up by Hildy Herdicker, Prop., when she read Mr.
Left's reflections in the _Tribune_. "Temples--eh?--temples not
made with hands--is it? Well, Miss Laura can get what comfort she can
out of her baby shop; but me? Every man to his trade as Kyle Perry said
when he tried to buy a dozen scissors and got a sewing machine--me?--I
get my heart balm selling hats, and if others gets theirs coddling
brats--'tis the good God's wisdom that makes us different and no
business of mine so long as they bring grist to the profit mill! The
trouble with their temples is that they don't pay taxes!"
So in the matter of putting up temples--particularly in the matter of
erecting temples not made with hands, the town worked blindly. But so
far as Laura Van Dorn was concerned, while she was working on her part
of the temple, she had the vision of youth still in her heart. Youth
indeed is that part of every soul that life has not tarnished, and if we
keep our faith, hold ourselves true and bow to no circumstance however
arrogant it may be, youth still will abide in our hearts through many
years. Now Laura, who was born Nesbit and became Van Dorn, was taking up
life with that large charity that comes to every unconquered soul. She
held her illusions, she believed in herself, and youth shone like a
beacon from her face and glowed in her body.
For Thomas Van Dorn, who had been her husband, she had trained herself
to hold no unkind thought. She even taught Lila--when the child asked
for him--to harbor no rancor toward him. So the child turned to her
father when they met, the natural face of a child; it was a sad little
face that he saw--though no one else ever saw it sad; but the child
smiled when she spoke and looked gently at him, in the hope that some
day he would come back to her.
Now it happened that on the night when Laura's laugh first echoed
through her temple another rising temple witnessed a ceremony entirely
befitting its use.
That night--late that night when a pale moon was climbing over the
valley below the town, Margaret and her lover stood alone in the great
unfinished house which they were building.
Through the uncurtained windows the moonlight was streaming, making
white splashes upon the floors. Across the plank pathways they wandered
locating the halls, the great living-room, the spacious dining-room, the
airy, comfortable bedrooms exposed to the south, the library, the
kitchen, and the ballroom on the third floor. It was to be a grand
house--this house of Van Dorn. And in their fancy the man and the woman
called it the temple of love erected as an altar to the love god whom
they worshiped. They peopled it with many a merry company. They saw the
rich and the great in the dining-room. They pictured in this vision
pleasure capering through the ball room. They enshrined wisdom and
contentment in the library. In the great living-room they installed
elegance and luxury, and hospitality beckoned with ostentatious pride
for the coming of such of the nobility as Harvey and its environs and
the surrounding state and Nation could produce. A grand, proud temple, a
rich, beautiful temple, a strong, masterful temple would be this temple
of love.
"And, dearest," said he--the master of the house, as he held her in his
arms at the foot of the stairway that swept down into the broad hall
like the ghost of some baronial grandeur, "dearest, what do we care what
they say! We have built it for ourselves--just for you, I want it--just
for you; not friends, not children, not any one but you. This is to be
our temple of love."
She kissed him, and whined wordless assent. Then she whispered: "Just
you--you, you, and if man, woman or child come to mar our joy or to
lessen our love, God pity the intruder." And like a flaming torch she
fluttered in his arms.
The summer breeze came caressingly through an unclosed window into the
temple. It seemed--the summer breeze which fell upon their cheeks--like
the benediction of some pagan god; their god of love perhaps. For the
grand house, the rich house, the beautiful, masterful temple of their
mad love was made for summer breezes.
But when the rain came, and the storms fell and beat upon that house,
they found that it was a house built upon sand. But while it stood and
even when it fell there was a temple, a real temple, a temple made with
hands--a temple that all Harvey and all the world could understand!