WHEREIN WE FIND GRANT ADAMS CALLING UPON KENYON'S MOTHER, AND DARKNESS
FALLS UPON TWO LOVERS
Once in a while an item appeared in the Harvey _Tribune_ that might
have been found nowhere else, and for reasons. For instance, the issue
of the _Tribune_ that contained the account of the Captain's party
also contained this item, which Daniel Sands had kept out of every other
paper in town:
"Mortimer Sands, son of D. Sands of the Traders' Bank, has
returned from Arizona, where he has been seeking health. He is
hopeful of ultimate recovery."
Another item of interest appeared in the same issue of the paper. It
related that T. Van Dorn, former Judge of the District Court, is in
Washington, D. C., on legal business.
The Adams family item, which the paper never failed to contain, was
this:
"K. Adams will leave next week for New York, where his new
opera, 'Rachel,' will have its first appearance next autumn. He
will be missed in our midst."
And for a paper with no subscribers and no patronage, it is curious to
note that the _Tribune_ carried the news above mentioned to all of
Harvey, and all of Harvey discussed the news. Not that the town did not
know more or less of the facts as hereinabove related; but when a fact
is read in print it becomes something different from a fact. It becomes
a public matter, an episode in the history of the world.
In the same issue of the paper was a statement from Grant Adams that he
had decided to throw his life with the Socialists and with that group
known as the revolutionary Socialists. Grant was enough of a personage,
and the declaration was short enough and interesting enough, to give it
a place in the newspapers of the country for a day. In the State where
he lived, the statement created some comment--mostly adverse to Dr.
Nesbit, whose political association with Grant Adams had linked the
Doctor's name with Grant's. Being out of power, Dr. Nesbit felt these
flings. So it happened that when, the Sunday following the announcement,
Grant came with his father and Kenyon in the rattling old buggy up to
the Nesbit home on Elm Street, Amos Adams found a rollicking, frivolous,
mischievous host--but Grant Adams found a natty, testy, sardonic old
man, who made no secret of his ill-humor.
Kenyon found Lila, and the two with their music indoors made a
background for the talk on the veranda. Nathan Perry, who came up for a
pill or a powder for one of his flock, sat for a time on the veranda
steps. For all his frivoling with the elder Adams, Nathan could see by
the way the loose, wrinkled skin on the Doctor's face kept twitching
when Grant spoke, that the old man had something on his mind.
"Grant," cried the Doctor, in his excited treble, "do you realize what
an ornate, unnecessary, unmitigated conspicuous, and elaborate jack
you've made of yourself? Do you--young man? Well, you have. Your
revolution--your revolution!" shrilled the old man. "Damn sight of
revolution you'll kick up charging over the country with your water-tank
patriots--your--your box-car statesmen--now, won't you?"
"Here--Doctor,--come--be--"
But the Doctor would not let Grant talk. The chirrup of the shrill old
voice bore in upon the younger man's protest with, "Now, you let me say
my say. The world's moving along--moving pretty fast and generally to
one end, and that end is to put food in the bellies, clothes on the
back, and brains in the head of the working man. The whole trend of
legislation all over the world has gone that way. Hell's afire,
Grant--what more do you want? We've given you the inheritance tax and
the income tax and direct legislation to manipulate it, and, by Ned,
instead of staying with the game and helping us work these things out in
wise administration, you fly the coop, and go squawking over the country
with your revolution and leave me--damn it, Grant," piped the little,
high voice, sputtering with rage, "you leave me--with my linen pants on
a clothes-line four miles from home!"
Then slowly the little lines began to break in his loose skin. A faint
smile, then a grin and then a laugh, spread over the old face, and he
wiped his watering eyes as he shook his head mournfully.
Grant was gathering himself to reply when Nate Perry rasped in with his
high-keyed Yankee voice: "I guess that about covers my views, Grant--if
any one should ask you."
The crusader rose in Grant: "It's you men who have no sense," he cried.
"You think because I declare war on the profit system that I propose to
sail out and overturn it with a few bombs over night. Look here, men;
what I propose to do is to demonstrate right here in the Wahoo Valley,
where there are all sorts of laboring people, skilled, unskilled,
continuous, overpaid and underpaid, foreign and American--utterly
unlike, incoherent, racially and industrially--that they have in them
capacities for organizing; unused abilities, untried talents that will
make them worthy to take a higher place in the economic scale than they
now have. If I can amalgamate them, if I can weld them into a
consistent, coherent labor mass--the Irish, the Slav, the Jews, the
Italians, the Poles, the French, the Dutch, the Letts, and the
Mexicans--put to some purpose the love of the poor for the poor, so that
it will count industrially, you can't stop the revolution." He was
wagging his head, waving his stump of an arm and his face showed the
temperamental excitement that was in him.
"Go ahead, Grant," said Perry. "Play out all your line--show us your
game."
"Well, then--here's my game. For five years we've been collecting a
district strike fund--all our own, that doesn't belong to any other
organization or federation anywhere. It's ours here in the Wahoo. It's
independent of any state or national control. I've collected it. It's
been paid because these men here in the Valley have faith in me. We have
practically never spent a penny of it. There are about ten thousand
workers in the Valley--some, like the glassblowers, are the aristocracy
of labor; others, like the breaker boys, are at the bottom of the scale.
But we've kept wages up, kept conditions as high as they are anywhere in
the country--and we've done it without strikes. They have faith in me.
So we've assessed them according to their wages, and we have on hand,
with assessments and interest, over a third of a million dollars."
He looked at Perry, and nodded his head at the Doctor. "You fellows
think I'm a cream-puff reformer. I'm not. Now, then--I've talked it over
with our board--we are going to invest that money in land up and down
the Valley--put the women and children and old men on it--in
tents--during the growing season, and cultivate that land in three-acre
tracts intensively. Our Belgian glassblowers and smelter men have sent
for their gardeners to teach us. Now it's merely a question of getting
the land and doing the preliminary organization. We want to get as much
land as we can. Now, there's my game. With that kind of a layout we can
win any strike we call. And we can prove to the world that labor has the
cohesive cooperating faculty required to manage the factories--to take a
larger share of the income of industry, if you please. That's my
revolution, gentlemen. And it's going to begin right here in the Wahoo
Valley."
"Well," returned Nate Perry, "your revolution looks interesting. It's
got some new gears, at least."
"Go it while you're young," piped the Doctor. "In just about eighteen
months, you will be coming to me to go on your bond--to keep out of
jail. I've seen new-fangled revolutions peter out before."
"Just the same," replied Grant, "I've pinned my faith to these men and
women. They are now working in fear of poverty. Give them hope of better
things instead of fear and they will develop out of poverty, just as the
middle class came out under the same stimulus."
"I don't know anything about that," interrupted Perry, "but I do know
that I could take that money and put three thousand families to work on
the land in the Wahoo Valley and develop the best labor in the country."
He laughed, and Grant gazed, almost flared, so eager was his look, at
Perry for a moment, and said: "When the day of the democracy of labor
comes--and it will come and come soon--men like you will take
leadership."
There was more high talk, and Nathan Perry went home with his pill.
When he was gone, the music from indoors came to the three men. "That's
from his new opera, father," said Grant, as his attention was attracted
to the violin and piano.
"Good Lord," exclaimed the Doctor, "I've heard so much of that opera
that I caught myself prescribing a bar from the opening chorus for the
grip the other day!"
The two elder men looked at each other, and the Doctor said, "Well,
Amos--that's mostly why I asked you to come up to-day. It wasn't for the
society of your amateur revolutionist--you may be sure of that."
The Doctor tempered his words with a smile, but they had pricks, and
Grant winced. "I suppose we may as well consider Lila and Kenyon as
before the house?"
"Kenyon came to me last night," said Grant, "wanting to know whether he
should come to father first, or go to Dr. Nesbit, or--well, he wondered
if it would be necessary to talk with Lila's own father." All the
grimness in Grant's countenance melted as he spoke of Kenyon and the
battered features softened.
"And that is what I wish to talk about, Grant," said the Doctor gently.
"They don't know who Kenyon is--I mean, they don't know about his
parentage." Grant looked at the floor. Slowly as the old shame revived
in him, its flush rose from his neck to his face and met his tousled
hair. The two old men looked seriously at one another. The Doctor
emphasized the solemnity of the occasion by lighting a pipe.
"I don't know--I really don't know what is right here," he said finally.
"Is it fair to Laura to let her daughter marry the son of a woman who,
more than any other woman in the world, has wronged her? I'm sure Laura
cherishes no malice toward Kenyon's mother. Yet, of course," the Doctor
spoke deliberately and puffed between his words, "blood is blood. But I
don't know how much blood is blood, I mean how much of what we call
heredity in human beings is due to actual blood transmission of traits,
and how much is due to the development of traits by family environment.
I'm not sure, Amos, that this boy's bad blood has not been entirely
eliminated by the kindly, beautiful family environment he has had with
you and yours. There seems to be nothing of the Muellers in him, but his
face and his music--I take it his music is of German origin."
"I don't know--I don't know, Doctor," answered Amos. "I've tried to take
him apart, and put him together again, but I can't find where the parts
belong."
And so they droned on, those three wiseacres--two oldish gentlemen and a
middle-aged man, thinking they could change or check or dam the course
of true love. While inside at the piano on the tide of music that was
washing in from God only knows what bourne where words are useless and
passions speak the primitive language of souls, Lila and Kenyon were
solving all the problems set for them by their elders and betters. For
they lived in another world from those who established themselves in the
Providence business out on the veranda. And on this earth, even in the
same houses, and in the same families, there is no communication between
the worlds. With our powerful lenses of memory we men and women in our
forties gaze earnestly and long at the distant planets of youth,
wondering if they are really inhabited by real people--or mere animals,
perchance--if they have human institutions, reasonable aspirations or
finite intelligences. We take temperatures, make blood counts and record
blood pressure, reckon the heart-beats, and think we are wondrous wise.
But wig-wag as we may, signal with what mysterious wireless of
evanescent youth-fire we still hold in our blood, we get nothing but
vague hints, broken reminiscences, and a certain patchwork of our own
subconscious chop logic of middle age in return. There is no real
communication between the worlds. Youth remains another planet--even as
age and childhood are other planets.
Now, after the three wise men had considered the star glowing before
them, they decided thus:
"Well," quoth the Doctor, "it seems absolutely just that Lila should
know who her husband is, and that Laura should know whom her child is
marrying. So far as I am concerned, I know this Adams blood; I'll trust
it to breed out any taint; but I have no right to decide for Lila; I
have no right to say what Laura will do--though, Grant, I know in my
heart that she would rather have her child marry yours than to have
anything else come about that the world could hold for her. And yet--she
should know the truth."
Grant sat with his head bowed, and his eyes on the floor, while the
Doctor spoke. Without looking up, he said: "There's some one else to
consider, Doctor--there's Margaret--after all, it's her son; it's her
secret. It's--I don't know what her rights are--perhaps she's forfeited
them. But she is at least physically his mother."
The Doctor looked up with a troubled face. He ran his hand over the
place where his pompadour once used to rise, and where only a fuzz
responded to the stroke of his dry palm, and answered:
"Grant--through it all--through all the tragedy that she has brought
here, I've kept that secret for Margaret. And until she releases me, I
can never break my silence. A doctor--one of the right sort--never
could. Whatever you feel are her rights--you and she must settle. It
must be you, not I, to tell this story, even to my own flesh and blood,
Grant."
Grant rose and walked the long, straight stretch of the veranda. His
shoulders, pugnacious, aggressive, and defiant, swayed as he walked
heavily and he gazed at the floor as one in shame. Finally he whirled
toward the Doctor and said:
"I'm going to his mother. I'm going now. She may have mighty few rights
in this matter--she cast him off shamefully. But she has just one right
here--the right to know that I shall tell her secret to Laura, and I'm
going to talk to her before I tell Laura. Even if Margaret clamors
against what I think is right, I shall not stop. But I'm not going to
sneak her secret away without her knowing it. I suppose that's about the
extent of her rights in Kenyon: to know before I tell his wife who he
really is, so that Margaret will know who knows and who does not know
her relation to him. It seems to me that is about the justice of the
case." The Doctor puffed at his pipe, and nodded a slow assent.
"Now's as good a time as any," answered the Doctor, and added: "By the
way, Amos--I had a telegram from Washington this morning, saying that
Tom is to be made Federal judge in the new district. That's what he's
doing in Washington just now. He is one of those ostensible fellows,"
piped the Doctor. "Ostensibly he's there trying to help land another
man; but Tom's the Van Dorn candidate."
He smoked until his pipe revived and added, "Well, Tom can afford it;
he's got all the money he needs."
Grant, who heard the Doctor's news, did not seem to be disturbed by it.
His mind was occupied with more personal matters. He stood by a pillar,
looking off into the summer day.
"Well, I suppose," he looked at his clothes, brushed the dust from the
top of his shoes by rubbing them separately against the calves of his
legs, straightened his ready-made tie and felt of the buttons on his
vest, "I suppose," he repeated, "I may just as well go now as at any
other time," and he strode down the steps and made straight for the Van
Dorn home.
When he came to the Van Dorn house he saw Margaret sitting alone in the
deep shade of a vine-screened piazza. She wore a loose flowing purple
house garment, of a bizarre pattern which accented her physical charms.
But not until he had begun to mount the steps before her did he notice
that she was sound asleep in a gaping and disenchanting stupor. Yet his
footstep aroused her, and she started and gazed wildly at him:
"Why--why--you--why, Grant!"
"Yes, Margaret," he answered as he stood hat in hand on the top step
before her, ignoring her trembling and the terror in her eyes. "I've
come to have a talk with you--about Kenyon."
She looked about her, listened a second, shuddered, and said with
quivering facial muscles and shaky voice, "Yes--oh, yes--about
Kenyon--yes--Kenyon Adams. Yes, I know."
The eyes she turned on him were dull and her face was slumped, as though
the soul had gone from it. A tremor was visible in her hands, and the
color was gone from her drooping lips. She stared at him for a moment,
stupidly, then irritation came into her voice, as he sat unbidden in a
porch chair near her. "I didn't tell you to sit down."
"No." He turned his face and caught her eyes. "But I'll be comfortable
sitting down, and we've got more or less talking to do."
He could see that she was perturbed, and fear wrote itself all over her
face. But he did not know that she was vainly trying to get control of
herself. The power of the little brown pellets left her while she slept,
and she was uncertain of herself and timid. "I--I'm
sick--well--I--I--why, I can't talk to you now. Go 'way," she cried. "Go
'way, won't you, please--please go 'way, and come some other time."
"No--now's as good a time as any," he replied. "At any rate, I'll tell
you what's on my mind. Mag, now pay attention." He turned his face to
her. "The time has come when Lila Van Dorn and her mother must know who
Kenyon is."
She looked vacantly at him, then started and chattered,
"Wh-wh-wh-wha-what are you s-s-sas-saying--do you mean?"
She got up, closed the door into the house, and came tottering back and
stood by her chair, as the man answered:
"I mean, Maggie, exactly what I said. Kenyon wants to marry Lila. But I
think, and Doctor Nesbit thinks, that before it is settled, Lila and her
mother, and you might as well include Mrs. Nesbit, must know just who
their daughter is marrying--I mean what blood. Now do you get my idea?"
As he spoke, the woman, clutching at her chair back, tried to quiet her
fluttering hands. But she began panting and a sickly pallor overcame her
and she cried feebly: "Oh, you devil--you devil--will you never let me
alone?"
He answered, "Look here, Mag--what's the matter with you? I'm only
trying to play fair with you. I wouldn't tell 'em until you--"
"Ugh!" She shut her eyes. "Grant--wait a minute. I must get my medicine.
I'll be back." She turned to go. "Oh, wait a minute--I'll be back in
five minutes--I promise, honest to God, I'll be right back, Grant." She
was at the door. As she fumbled with the screen, he nodded his assent
and smiled grimly as he said, "All right, Maggie."
When he was alone, he looked about him, at the evidence of the Van Dorn
money in the temple of Love. The outdoor room was furnished with
luxuries he had never seen. He sniffed as though he smelled the money
that was evident everywhere. Beside Margaret's chair, where she had
dropped it when she went to sleep, was a book. It was a beautifully
bound copy of the Memoirs of some titled harlot of the old French court.
He was staring absent-mindedly at the floor where the book lay when she
came to the door.
She came out, sat down, looked steadily at him and began calmly: "Now,
what is it you desire?"
She said "desiah," and Grant grunted as she went on: "I'm shuah no good
can come and only hahm, great suffering--and Heaven knows what wrong, by
this--miserable plan. What good can it do?"
Her changed attitude surprised him. "Well, now, Maggie," he returned,
"since you want to talk it over sensibly, I'll tell you how we feel--at
least how I feel. The chief business of any proper marriage is children.
This marriage between Kenyon and Lila--if it comes--should bring forth
fruit. I claim Lila has a right to know that he has my blood and yours
in him before she goes into a life partnership with him."
"Oh, Grant, Grant," cried Margaret passionately, "the sum of your
hair-splitting is this: that you bring shame upon your child's mother,
and then cant like a Pharisee about its being for a good purpose. That's
the way with you--you--you--" She could not quite finish the sentence.
She sat breathing fast, waiting for strength to come to her from the
fortifying little pill. Grant picked up his hat. "Well--I've told you.
That's what I came for."
She caught his arm and cried, "Sit down--haven't I a right to be heard?
Hasn't a mother any rights--"
"No," cut in Grant, "not when she strangles her motherhood!"
"But how could I take my motherhood without disgracing my boy?" she
asked.
He met her eyes. They were steady eyes, and were brightening. The man
stared at her and answered: "When I brought him to you after mother
died, a little, toddling, motherless boy, when I wanted you to come with
us to mother him--and I didn't want you, Maggie, any more than you
wanted me, but I thought his right to a mother was greater than either
of our rights to our choice of mates--then and there, you made your
final choice."
"What does God mean," she whined, "by hounding me all my life for that
one mistake!"
"Maggie--Maggie," answered the man, sitting down as she sank into a
chair, "it wasn't the one mistake that has made you unhappy."
"That's twaddle," she retorted, "sheer twaddle. Don't I know how that
child has been a cancer in my very heart--burning and gnawing and making
me wretched? Don't I know?"
"No, you don't, Mag. If you want the truth," replied Grant bluntly, "you
looked upon the boy as a curse. He has threatened you every day of your
life. The very love you think you have for him, which I don't doubt for
a minute, Mag, made you do a mad, foolish, infinitely cruel, spiteful
thing--that night at the South Harvey riot. Perhaps you might care for
Kenyon's affection now, but you can't have that even remotely. For all
his interest in you is limited by the fact that you robbed Lila of her
father. All your cancer and heart burnings, Mag, have been your own
selfishness. Lord, woman--I know you."
He turned his hard gaze upon her and she winced. But she clearly was
enjoying the quarrel. It stimulated her taut nerves. The house behind
her was empty. She felt free to brawl.
"And you? And you?" she jeered. "I suppose he's made a saint of you."
The man's face softened, as he said simply, "I don't claim to be a
saint, Mag. But I owe Kenyon everything I am in the world--everything."
"Well, it isn't much of a debt," she laughed.
"No," he repeated, "it's not much of a debt." After a moment he added,
"Doctor Nesbit has kept this secret all these years. Now it's time to
let these people know. You can see why, and the only reason I came to
you--"
"You came to me, Grant," she cried, "to tell me you were going to shame
me before that--that--before her--that old, yellow-haired tabby, who
goes around doing good! Ugh--"
Grant stared at her blankly a full, uncomprehensive minute. Finally
Margaret went on: "And I suppose the next thing you long-nosed
busybodies will do will be to get chicken hearted about Tom Van Dorn's
rights in the matter. Ah, you hypocrites!" she cried.
"Well, I don't know," answered Grant sternly; "if Lila should go to her
father for advice--why shouldn't he have all the facts?"
Margaret rose. Her bright, glassy eyes flashed. Anger colored her face.
Her bosom rose and fell as she exclaimed: "But she'll not go to him. Oh,
he's perfectly foolish about her. Every time a photographer in this town
takes her picture, he snoops around and gets one. He has her picture in
his watch, in which he thinks she looks like the Van Dorns. When he goes
away he takes her picture in a leather frame and puts it on his table in
the hotel--except when I'm around." She laughed. "Ain't it funny? Ain't
it funny," she chattered hysterically, "him doddering the way he does
about her, and her freezing the life out of him?" She shook with mirth,
and went on: "Oh, the devil's coming round for Tom Van Dorn's soul--and
all there is of it--all there is of it is the little green spot where he
loves this brat. The rest's all rotted out!"
She laughed foolishly. Then Grant said:
"Well, Mag--I must be going. I just thought it would be square to tell
you before I go any further. About the other--the affair of Lila and her
father is no concern of mine. That's for Lila and her mother to settle.
But you and I and Kenyon are bound together by the deepest tie in the
world, Maggie. And I had to come to you." She stared into his gnarled
face, then shut her eyes, and in an instant wherein they were closed she
lapsed into her favorite pose and disappeared behind her mask.
"Vurry kind of you, I'm shuah. Chahmed to have this little talk again."
He gazed at the empty face, saw the drugged eyes, and the smirking
mouth, and felt infinitely sad as a flash of her girlhood came back to
his memory. "Well, good-by, Mag," he said gently, and turned and went
down the steps.
The messenger boy whom Grant Adams passed as he went down the walk to
the street from the Van Dorn home, put a telegram into Mrs. Van Dorn's
lap. It was from Washington and read:
"Appointment as Federal Judge assured. Notify Sands. Have Calvin
prepare article for Monday's _Times_ and other papers."
She re-read it, held it in her hand for a time as she looked hungrily
into the future.
While Grant Adams and Margaret were talking, the two old men on the
porch, who once would have grappled with the problems of the great first
cause, dropped into cackling reminiscences of the old days of the
sixties and seventies when they were young men in their twenties and
Harvey was an unbleached yellow pine stain on the prairie grass. So they
forgot the flight of time, and forgot that indoors the music had
stopped, and that two young voices were cooing behind the curtains.
Upstairs, Laura Van Dorn and her mother, reading, tried with all their
might and main to be oblivious to the fact that the music had stopped,
and that certain suppressed laughs and gasps and long, silent gaps in
the irregular conversation meant rather too obvious love-making for an
affair which had not been formally recognized by the family. Yet the
formality was all that was lacking. For if ever an affair of the heart
was encouraged, was promoted, was greeted with everything but hurrahs
and hosannas by the family of the lady thereunto appertaining, it was
the love affair of Kenyon Adams and Lila Van Dorn.
The youth and the maiden below stairs were exceedingly happy. They went
through the elaborate business of love-making, from the first touch of
thrilling fingers to such passionately rapturous embraces as they might
steal half watched and half tolerated, and the mounting joy in their
hearts left no room for fear of the future. As they sat toying and
frivoling behind the curtains of the wide living room in the Nesbit
home, they saw Grant Adams's big, awkward figure hurrying across the
lawn. He walked with stooping shoulders and bowed head, and held his
claw hand behind him in his flinty, red-haired hand.
"Where has he been?" asked Kenyon, as he peered through the open
curtain, with his arm about the girl.
"I don't know. The Mortons aren't at home this afternoon; they all went
out in the Captain's big car," answered the girl.
"Well,--I wonder--" mused the youth.
Lila snatched the window curtain, and closing it, whispered:
"Quick--quick--we don't care--quick--they may come in when he gets on
the porch."
Through a thin slit in the closed curtains they watched the gaunt figure
climb the veranda steps and they heard the elders ask:
"Well?" and the younger man replied, "Nothing--nothing--" he repeated,
"but heartbreak."
Then he added as he walked to the half-open door, "Doctor--it seems to
me that I should go to Laura now; to Laura and her mother."
"Yes," returned the Doctor, "I suppose that is the thing to do."
Grant's hand was on the door screen, and the Doctor's eyes grew bright
with emotion, as he called:
"You're a trump, boy."
The two old men looked at each other mutely and watched the door closing
after him. Inside, Grant said: "Lila--ask your mother and grandmother if
they can come to the Doctor's little office--I want to speak to them."
After the girl had gone, Grant stood by Kenyon, with his arm about the
young man, looking down at him tenderly. When he heard the women
stirring above on the stairs, Grant patted Kenyon's shoulder, while the
man's face twitched and the muscles of his hard jaw worked as though he
were chewing a bitter cud.
The three, Grant and the mother and the mother's mother, left the lovers
in such awe as love may hold in the midst of its rapture, and when the
office door had closed, and the women were seated, Grant Adams, who
stood holding to a chair back, spoke:
"It's about Kenyon. And I don't know, perhaps I should have spoken
sooner. But I must speak now."
The two women gazed inquiringly at him with sympathetic faces. He was
deeply embarrassed, and his embarrassment seemed to accentuate a kind of
caste difference between them.
"Yes, Grant," said Mrs. Nesbit, "of course, we know about Lila and
Kenyon. Nothing in the world could please us more than to see them happy
together."
"I know, ma'am," returned Grant, twirling his chair nervously. "That's
just the trouble. Maybe they can't be happy together."
"Why, Grant," exclaimed Laura, "what's to hinder?"
"Stuff!" sniffed Mrs. Nesbit.
He looked up then, and the two women could see that he flinched.
"Well,--I don't know how to say it, but you must know it." He stopped,
and they saw anguish in his face. "But I--Laura," he turned to the
younger woman and made a pitiful gesture with his whole hand, "do you
remember back when you were a girl away at school and I stopped writing
to you?"
"Yes, Grant," replied Laura, "so well--so well, and you never would
say--"
"Because I had no right to," he cut in, "it was not my secret--to
tell--then."
Mrs. Nesbit sat impatiently on her chair edge, as one waiting for a
foolish formality to pass. She looked at the clumsy, bulky figure of a
man in his ill-fitting Sunday clothes, and obviously was rather
irritated at his ill-timed interjection of his own childhood affair into
an entirely simple problem of true love running smoothly. But her
daughter, seeing the anguish in the man's twisted face, was stricken
with a terror in her heart. Laura knew that no light emotion had
grappled him, and when her mother said, "Well?" sharply, the daughter
rose and went to him, touching his hand gently that had been gripping
the chair-back. She said, "Yes, Grant, but why do you have to tell it
now?"
"Because," he answered passionately, "you should know, and Lila should
know and your mother should know. Your father and I and my father all
think so."
Mrs. Nesbit sat back further in her chair. Her face showed anxiety. She
looked at the two others and when Laura's eyes met her mother's, there
was a warning in the daughter's glance which kept her mother silent.
"Grant," said Laura, as she stood beside the gaunt figure, on which a
mantle of shame seemed to be falling, "there is nothing in the world
that should be hard for you to tell me--or mother."
"It isn't you," he returned, and then lifting his face and trying to
catch the elder woman's eyes, he said slowly:
"Mrs. Nesbit--I'm Kenyon's father."
He caught Laura's hand in his own, and held her from stepping back.
Laura did not speak. Mrs. Nesbit gazed blankly at the two and in the
silence the little mantel clock ticked into their consciousnesses.
Finally the elder woman, who had grown white as some old suspicion or
fatal recollection flashed through her mind, asked in an unsteady voice:
"And his mother?"
"His mother was Margaret Mueller, Mrs. Nesbit," answered the man.
Then anger glowed in the white face as Mrs. Nesbit rose and stepped
toward the downcast man. "Do you mean to tell me you--" She did not
finish, but began again, not noticing that the door behind her had let
in her husband: "Do you mean to say that you have let me go on all these
years nursing that--that, that--creature's child and--"
"Yes, my dear," said the Doctor, touching her arm, and taking her hand,
"I have." She turned on her husband her startled, hurt face and
exclaimed, "And you, Jim--you too--you too?"
"What else could I do in honor, my dear? And it has been for the best."
"No," she cried angrily; "no, see what you have brought to us, Jim--that
hussy's--her, why, her very--"
The years had told upon Doctor Nesbit. He could not rise to the struggle
as he could have risen a decade before. His hands were shaking and his
voice broke as he replied: "Yes, my dear--I know--I know. But while she
bore him, we have formed him." To her darkening face he repeated: "You
have formed him--and made him--you and the Adamses--with your love. And
love," his soft, high voice was tender as he concluded, "love purges
everything--doesn't it, Bedelia?"
"Yes, father,--love is enough. Oh, Grant, Grant--it doesn't matter--not
to me. Poor--poor Margaret, what she has lost--what she has lost!" said
the younger woman, as she stood close to Grant and looked deeply into
his anguished face. Mrs. Nesbit stood wet-eyed, and spent of her wrath,
looking at the three before her.
"O God--my God, forgive me--but I can't--Oh, Laura--Jim--I can't, I
can't, not that woman's--not her--her--" She stopped and cried
miserably, "You all know what he is, and whose he is." Again she stopped
and looked beseechingly around. "Oh, you won't let Lila--she wouldn't do
that--not take that woman's--that woman who disgraced Lila's
mother--Lila must not take her child--Oh, Jim, you won't let that--"
As she spoke Mrs. Nesbit sank to a sofa near the door, and turned her
face to the pillow. The three who watched her turned blank, inquiring
faces to one another.
"Perhaps," the Doctor began hesitatingly and impotently, "Lila should--"
"What does she know--what can a child of twenty know," answered the
grandmother from her pillow, "of the taint of that blood, of the devil
she will transmit? Why, Jim--Oh, Jim--Lila's not old enough to decide.
She mustn't--she mustn't--we mustn't let her." Mrs. Nesbit raised her
body and asked as one who grasps a shadow, "Won't you ask her to
wait--to wait until she can understand?"
A question passed from face to face among those who stood beside the
elder woman, and Dr. Nesbit answered it. Strength--the power that came
from a habit of forty years of dominating situations--came to him and he
stepped to his wife's side. The two stood together, facing the younger
pair. The Doctor spoke, not as an arbiter, but as an advocate:
"Laura, your mother has her right to be considered here. All three of
you; Kenyon himself, and you and Lila--she has reared. She has made you
all what you are. Her wishes must be regarded now." Mrs. Nesbit rose
while the Doctor was speaking. He took her hand as was his wont and
turned to her, saying: "Mother, how will this do: Let's do nothing now,
not to-day at any rate. You must all adjust yourselves to the facts that
reveal this new relation before you can make an honest decision. When we
have done that, let Laura and her mother tell Lila the truth, and let
each tell the child exactly how she feels; and then, if you can bring
yourself to it, leave it to her; if she will wait for a time until she
understands her grandmother's point of view--very well. If not--"
"If not, mother, Lila's decision must stand." This came from Laura, who
stepped over and kissed her mother's hand. The father looked tenderly at
his daughter and shook his head as he answered softly: "If not--no, I
shall stand with mother--she has her right--the realest right of all!"
And so it came to pass that the course of true love in the hearts of
Lila Van Dorn and Kenyon Adams had its first sharp turning. And all the
world was overclouded for two souls. But they were only two souls and
the world is full of light. And the light falls upon men and women
without much respect for class or station, for good deeds or bad deeds,
for the weak or for the strong, for saints or sinners. For know well,
truly beloved, that chance and circumstance fall out of the great
machine of life upon us, hodge podge and helter skelter; good is not
rewarded by prizes from the wheel of fortune nor bad punished by its
calamities. Only as our hearts react on life, do we get happiness or
misery, not from the events that follow the procession of the days.
Now for a moment let us peep through the clouds that lowered over the
young souls aforesaid. Clouds in youth are vastly black; but they are
never thick. And peering through those clouds, one may see the lovers,
groping in the umbrage. It does not matter much to us, and far less does
it matter to them how they have made their farewell meeting. It is night
and they are coming from Captain Morton's.
Hand in hand they skip across the lawn, and soon are hidden in the
veranda. They sit arm in arm, on a swinging porch chair, and have no
great need for words. "What is it--what is the reason?" asked the youth.
"Well, dear"--it is an adventure to say the word out loud after
whispering it for so many days--"dear," she repeated, and feels the
pressure of his arm as she speaks, "it's something about you!"
"But what?" he persisted.
"We don't know now," she returns. "And really what does it matter, only
we can't hurt grandma, and it won't be for long. It can't be for long,
and then--"
"We don't care now,--not to-night, do we?" She lifts her head from his
shoulder, and puts up her lips for the answer. It is all new--every
thrill of the new-found joy of one another's being is strange; every
touch of the hands, of cheeks, every pressure of arms--all are
gloriously beautiful.
Once in life may human beings know the joy these lovers knew that night.
The angels lend it once and then, if we are good, they let us keep it in
our memories always. If not, then God sends His infinite pity instead.