HOW MORTY SANDS TURNED AWAY SADLY AND JUDGE VAN DORN UNCOVERED A SECRET
Grant Adams sat in his cell, with the jail smell of stone and iron and
damp in his nostrils. As he read the copy of Tolstoy's "The
Resurrection," which his cell-mate had left in his hurried departure the
night before, Grant moved unconsciously to get into the thin direct rays
of the only sunlight--the early morning sunlight, that fell into his
cage during the long summer day. The morning _Times_ lay on the
floor where Grant had dropped it after reading the account of what had
happened to his cell-mate when the police had turned him over to the Law
and Order League, at midnight. To be sure, the account made a great hero
of John Kollander and praised the patriotism of the mob that had
tortured the poor fellow. But the fact of his torture, the fact that he
had been tarred and feathered, and turned out naked on the golf links of
the country club, was heralded by the _Times_ as a warning to
others who came to Harvey to preach Socialism, and flaunt the red flag.
Grant felt that the jailer's kindness in giving him the morning paper so
early in the day, was probably inspired by a desire to frighten him
rather than to inform him of the night's events.
Gradually he felt the last warmth of the morning sun creep away and he
heard a new step beside the jailer's velvet footfall in the corridor,
and heard the jailer fumbling with his keys and heard him say: "That's
the Adams cell there in the corner," and an instant later Morty Sands
stood at the door, and the jailer let him in as Grant said:
"Well, Morty--come right in and make yourself at home."
He was not the dashing young blade who for thirty years had been the
Beau Brummel of George Brotherton's establishment; but a rather weazened
little man whose mind illumined a face that still clung to sportive
youth, while premature age was claiming his body.
He cleared his throat as he sat on the bunk, and after dropping Grant's
hand and glancing at the book title, said: "Great, isn't it? Where'd you
get it?"
"The brother they ran out last night. They came after him so suddenly
that he didn't have time to pack," answered Grant.
"Well, he didn't need it, Grant," replied Morty. "I just left him. I got
him last night after the mob finished with him, and took him home to our
garage, and worked with him all night fixing him up. Grant, it's hell.
The things they did to that fellow--unspeakable, and fiendish." Morty
cleared his throat again, paused to gather courage and went on. "And he
heard something that made him believe they were coming for you
to-night."
The edge of a smile touched the seamed face, and Grant replied:
"Well--maybe so. You never can tell. Besides old John Kollander, who are
the leaders of this Law and Order mob, Morty?"
"Well," replied the little man, "John Kollander is the responsible head,
but Kyle Perry is master of ceremonies--the stuttering, old coot; and
Ahab gives them the use of the police, and Joe Calvin backs up both of
them. However," sighed Morty, "the whole town is with them. It's stark
mad, Grant--Harvey has gone crazy. These tramps filling the jails and
eating up taxes--and the _Times_ throwing scares into the merchants
with the report that unless the strike is broken, the smelters and
glassworks and cement works will move from the district--it's awful! My
idea of hell, Grant, is a place where every man owns a little property
and thinks he is just about to lose it."
The young-old man was excited, and his eyes glistened, but his speech
brought on a fit of coughing. He lifted his face anxiously and began:
"Grant,--I'm with you in this fight." He paused for breath. "It's a
man's scrap, Grant--a man's fight as sure as you're born." Grant sprang
to his feet and threw back his head, as he began pacing the narrow cell.
As he threw out his arms, his claw clicked on the steel bars of the
cell, and Morty Sands felt the sudden contracting of the cell walls
about the men as Grant cried--
"That's what it is, Morty--it's a man's fight--a man's fight for men.
The industrial system to-day is rotting out manhood--and womanhood
too--rotting out humanity because capitalism makes unfair divisions of
the profits of industry, giving the workers a share that keeps them in a
man-rotting environment, and we're going to break up the system--the
whole infernal profit system--the blight of capitalism upon the world."
Grant brought down his hand on Morty's frail shoulder in a kind of
frenzy. "Oh, it's coming--the Democracy of Labor is coming in the earth,
bringing peace and hope--hope that is the 'last gift of the gods to
men'--Oh, it's coming! it's coming." His eyes were blazing and his voice
high pitched. He caught Morty's eyes and seemed to shut off all other
consciousness from him but that of the idea which obsessed him.
Morty Sands felt gratefully the spell of the strong mind upon him. Twice
he started to speak, and twice stopped. Then Grant said: "Out with it,
Morty--what's on your chest?"
"Well,--this thing," he tapped his throat, "is going to get me, Grant,
unless--well, it's a last hope; but I thought," he spoke in short,
hesitating phrases, then he started again. "Grant, Grant," he cried,
"you have it, this thing they call vitality. You are all vitality,
bodily, mentally, spiritually. Why have I been denied always, everything
that you have! Millions of good men and bad men and indifferent men are
overflowing with power, and I--I--why, why can't I--what shall I do to
get it? How can I feel and speak and live as you? Tell me." He gazed
into the strong, hard visage looking down upon him, and cried weakly:
"Grant--for God's sake, help me. Tell me--what shall I do to--Oh, I want
to live--I want to live, Grant, can't you help me!"
He stopped, exhausted. Grant looked at him keenly, and asked gently,
"Had another hemorrhage this morning--didn't you?"
Morty looked over his clothes to detect the stain of blood, and nodded.
"Oh, just a little one. Up all night working with Folsom, but it didn't
amount to anything."
Grant sat beside the broken man, and taking his white hand in his big,
paw-like hand:
"Morty--Morty--my dear, gentle friend; your trouble is not your body,
but your soul. You read these great books, and they fascinate your mind.
But they don't grip your soul; you see these brutal injustices, and they
cut your heart; but they don't reach your will." The strong hand felt
the fluttering pressure of the pale hand in its grasp. Morty looked
down, and seemed about to speak.
"Morty," Grant resumed, "it's your money--your soul-choking money.
You've never had a deep, vital, will-moving conviction in your life. You
haven't needed this money. Morty, Morty," he cried, "what you need is to
get out of your dry-rot of a life; let the Holy Ghost in your soul wake
up to the glory of serving. Face life barehanded, consecrate your
talents--you have enough--to this man's fight for men. Throw away your
miserable back-breaking money. Give it to the poor if you feel like it;
it won't help them particularly." He shook his head so vigorously that
his vigor seemed like anger, and hammered with his claw on the iron
bunk. "Money," he cried and repeated the word, "money not earned in
self-respect never helps any one. But to get rid of the damned stuff
will revive you; will give you a new interest in life--will change your
whole physical body, and then--if you live one hour in the big
soul-bursting joy of service you will live forever. But if you die--die
as you are, Morty--you'll die forever. Come." Grant reached out his arms
to Morty and fixed his luminous eyes upon his friend, "Come, come with
me," he pleaded. "That will cure your soul--and it doesn't matter about
your body."
Morty's face lighted, and he smiled sympathetically; but the light
faded. He dropped his gaze to the floor and sighed. Then he shook his
head sadly. "It won't work, Grant--it won't work. I'm not built that
way. It won't work."
His fine sensitive mouth trembled, and he drew a deep breath that ended
in a hard dry cough. Then he rose, held out his hand and said:
"Now you watch out, Grant--they'll get you yet. I tell you it's
awful--that's the exact word--the way hate has driven this town mad." He
shook the cage door, and the jailer came from around a corner, and
unlocked the door, and in a moment Morty was walking slowly away with
his eyes on the cold steel of the cell-room floor.
When his visitor was gone, Grant Adams went back to his book. At the end
of an hour he went to the slit in his cell, which served as window, and
looked on a damp courtyard that gave him a narrow slice of Market Street
and the Federal court house in the distance. Men and women walking in
and out of the little stereoscopic view he had of the street, seemed to
the prisoner people in a play, or in another world. They were remote
from him. At the gestures they made, the gaits they fell into, the
errands they were going upon, the spring that obviously moved them, he
gazed as one who sees a dull pantomime. During the middle of the
morning, as he looked, he saw Judge Van Dorn's big, black motor car roll
up to the curb before the Federal court house and unload the spare,
dried-up, clothes-padded figure of the Judge, who flicked out of Grant's
eyeshot. A hundred other figures passed, and Ahab Wright, with his white
side-whiskers bristling testily, came bustling across the stereopticon
screen and turned to the court house and was gone. Young Joe Calvin,
dismounting from his white horse, came for a second into the picture,
and soon after the elder Calvin came trotting along beside Kyle Perry
with his heavy-footed gait, and the two turned as the Judge had
turned--evidently into the court house, where the Judge had his office.
Grant took up his book. After noon the jailer came with Henry Fenn, who,
as Adams' attorney, visited him daily. But the jailer stood by while the
lawyer talked to the prisoner through the bars. Henry Fenn wore a
troubled face and Grant saw at once that his friend was worried. So
Grant began:
"So you've heard my cell-mate's message--eh, Henry? Well, don't worry.
Tell the boys down in the Valley, whatever they do--to keep off Market
Street and out of Harvey to-night."
The listening jailer looked sharply at Fenn. It was apparent the jailer
expected Fenn to protest. But Fenn turned his radiant smile on the
jailer and said: "The smelter men say they could go through this steel
as if it was pasteboard in ten minutes--if you'd say the word." Fenn
grinned at the prisoner as he added: "If you want the boys, all the tin
soldiers and fake cops in the State can't stop them. But I've told them
to stay away--to stay in their fields, to keep the peace; that it is
your wish."
"Henry," replied Grant, "tell the boys this for me. We've won this fight
now. They can't build a fire, strike a pick, or turn a wheel if the boys
stick--and stick in peace. I'm satisfied that this story of what they
will do to me to-night, while I don't question the poor chap who sent
the word--is a plan to scare the boys into a riot to save me and thus to
break our peace strike."
He walked nervously up and down his cell, clicking the bars with his
claw as he passed the door. "Tell the boys this. Tell them to go to bed
to-night early; beware of false rumors, and at all hazards keep out of
Harvey. I'm absolutely safe. I'm not in the least afraid--and, Henry,
Henry," cried Grant, as he saw doubt and anxiety in his friend's face,
"what if it's true; what if they do come and get me? They can't hurt me.
They can only hurt themselves. Violence always reacts. Every blow I get
will help the boys--I know this--I tell you--"
"And I tell you, young man," interrupted Fenn, "that right now one dead
leader with a short arm is worth more to the employers than a ton of
moral force! And Laura and George and Nate and the Doctor and I have
been skirmishing around all day, and we have filed a petition for your
release on a habeas corpus in the Federal court--on the ground that your
imprisonment under martial law without a jury trial is
unconstitutional."
"In the Federal court before Van Dorn?" asked Grant, incredulously.
"Before Van Dorn. The State courts are paralyzed by young Joe Calvin's
militia!" returned Fenn, adding: "We filed our petition this morning.
So, whether you like it or not, you appear at three-thirty o'clock this
afternoon before Van Dorn."
Grant smiled and after a moment spoke: "Well, if I was as scared as you
people, I'd--look here. Henry, don't lose your nerve, man--they can't
hurt me. Nothing on this earth can hurt me, don't you see, man--why go
to Van Dorn?"
Fenn answered: "After all, Tom's a good lawyer in a life job and he
doesn't want to be responsible for a decision against you that will make
him a joke among lawyers all over the country when he is reversed by
appeal." Grant shook his dubious head.
"Well, it's worth trying," returned Fenn.
At three o'clock Joseph Calvin, representing the employers, notified
Henry Fenn that Judge Van Dorn had been called out of town unexpectedly
and would not be able to hear the Adams' petition at the appointed time.
That was all. No other time was set. But at half-past five George
Brotherton saw a messenger boy going about, summoning men to a meeting.
Then Brotherton found that the Law and Order League was sending for its
members to meet in the Federal courtroom at half-past eight. He learned
also that Judge Van Dorn would return on the eight o'clock train and
expected to hear the Adams' petition that night. So Brotherton knew the
object of the meeting. In ten minutes Doctor Nesbit, Henry Fenn and
Nathan Perry were in the Brotherton store.
"It means," said Fenn, "that the mob is going after Grant to-night and
that Tom knows it."
"Why?" asked the thin, sharp voice of Nathan Perry.
"Otherwise he would have let the case go over until morning."
"Why?" again cut in Perry.
"Because for the mob to attack a man praying for release under habeas
corpus in a federal court might mean contempt of court that the federal
government might investigate. So Tom's going to wash his hands of the
matter before the mob acts to-night."
"Why?" again Perry demanded.
"Well," continued Fenn, "every day they wait means accumulated victory
for the strikers. So after Tom refuses to release Grant, the mob will
take him."
"Well, say--let's go to the Valley with this story. We can get five
thousand men here by eight o'clock," cried Brotherton.
"And precipitate a riot, George," put in the Doctor softly, "which is
one of the things they desire. In the riot the murder of Grant could be
easily handled and I don't believe they will do more than try to scare
him otherwise."
"Why?" again queried Nathan Perry, towering thin and nervous above the
seated council.
"Well," piped the Doctor, with his chin on his cane, "he's too big a
figure nationally for murder--"
"Well, then--what do you propose, gentlemen?" asked Perry who, being the
youngest man in the council, was impatient.
Fenn rose, his back to the ornamental logs piled decoratively in the
fireplace, and answered:
"To sound the clarion means riot and bloodshed--and failure for the
cause."
"To let things drift," put in Brotherton, "puts Grant in danger."
"Of what?" asked the Doctor.
"Well, of indignities unspeakable and cruel torture," returned
Brotherton.
"I'm sure that's all, George. But can't we--we four stop that?" said
Fenn. "Can't we stand off the mob? A mob's a coward."
"It's the least we can do," said Perry.
"And all you can do, Nate," added the Doctor, with the weariness of age
in his voice and in his counsel.
But when the group separated and the Doctor purred up the hill in his
electric, his heart was sore within him and he spoke to the wife of his
bosom of the burden that was on his heart. Then, after a dinner scarcely
tasted, the Doctor hurried down town to meet with the men at
Brotherton's.
As Mrs. Nesbit saw the electric dip under the hill, her first impulse
was to call up her daughter on the telephone, who was at Foley that
evening. For be it remembered Mrs. Nesbit in the days of her prime was
dubbed "the General" by George Brotherton, and when she saw the care and
hovering fear in the pink, old face of the man she loved, she was not
the woman to sit and rock. She had to act and, because she feared she
would be stopped, she did not pick up the telephone receiver. She went
to the library, where Kenyon Adams with his broken leg in splints was
sitting while Lila read to him. She stood looking at the lovers for a
moment.
"Children," she said, "Grant Adams is in great danger. We must help
him."
To their startled questions, she answered: "He is asking your father,
Lila, to release him from the prison to-night. If he is not released, a
mob will take Grant as they took that poor fool last night and--" She
stopped, turned toward them a perturbed and fear-wrinkled face. Then she
said quickly: "I don't know that I owe Grant Adams anything but--you
children do--" She did not complete her sentence, but burst out: "I
don't care for Tom Van Dorn's court, his grand folderol and mummery of
the law. He's going to send a man to death to-night because his masters
demand it. And we must stop it--you and Lila and I, Kenyon."
Kenyon reached out, tried to rise and failed, but grasped her strong,
effective hand, as he cried: "What can we do--what can I do?"
She went into the Doctor's office and brought out two old crutches.
"Take these," she said, "then I'll help you down the porch steps--and
you go to your mother! That's what you can do. Maybe she can stop
him--she has done a number of other worse things with him."
She literally lifted the tottering youth down the veranda steps and a
few moments later his crutches were rattling upon the stone steps that
rose in front of the proud house of Van Dorn. Margaret had seen him
coming and met him before he rang the bell.
She looked the dreadful wonder in her mind and as he took her hand to
steady himself, he spoke while she was helping him to sit.
"You are my mother," he said simply. "I know it now." He felt her hand
tighten on his arm. She bent over him and with finger on lips,
whispered: "Hush, hush, the maid is in there--what is it, Kenyon?"
"I want you to save Grant."
She still stood over him, looking at him with her glazed eyes shot with
the evidence of a strong emotion.
"Kenyon, Kenyon--my boy--my son!" she whispered, then said greedily:
"Let me say it again--my son!" She whispered the word "son" for a
moment, stooping over him, touching his forehead gently with her
fingers. Then she cried under her breath: "What about that
man--your--Grant? What have I to do with him?"
He reached for her hands beseechingly and said: "We are asking your
husband, the Judge, to let him out of jail to-night, for if the Judge
doesn't release Grant--they are going to mob him and maybe kill him! Oh,
won't you save him? You can. I know you can. The Judge will let him out
if you demand it."
"My son, my son!" the woman answered as she looked vacantly at him. "You
are my son, my very own, aren't you?"
She stooped to look into his eyes and cried: "Oh, you're mine"--her
trembling fingers ran over his face. "My eyes, my hair. You have my
voice--O God--why haven't they found it out?" Then she began whispering
over again the words, "My son."
A clock chimed the half-hour. It checked her. "He'll be back in half an
hour," she said, rising; then--"So they're going to mob Grant, are they?
And he sent you here asking me for mercy!"
Kenyon shook his head in protest and cried: "No, no, no. He doesn't even
know--"
She looked at the young man and became convinced that he was telling the
truth; but she was sure that Laura Van Dorn had sent him. It was her
habit of mind to see the ulterior motive. So the passion of motherhood
flaring up after years of suppression quickly died down. It could not
dominate her in her late forties, even for the time, nor even with the
power which held her during the night of the riot in South Harvey, when
she was in her thirties. The passion of motherhood with Margaret Van
Dorn was largely a memory, but hate was a lively and material emotion.
She fondled her son in the simulation of a passion that she did not
feel--and when in his eagerness he tried vainly to tie her to a promise
to help his father, she would only reply:
"Kenyon, oh, my son, my beautiful son--you know I'd give my life for
you--"
The son looked into the dead, brassy eyes of his mother, saw her
drooping mouth, with the brown lips that had not been stained that day;
observed the slumping muscles of her over-massaged face, and felt with a
shudder the caress of her fingers--and he knew in his heart that she was
deceiving him. A moment after she had spoken the automobile going to the
station for the Judge backed out of the garage and turned into the
street.
"You must go now," she cried, clinging to him. "Oh, son--son--my only
son--come to me, come to your mother sometimes for her love. He is
coming now in a few minutes on the eight o'clock train. You must not let
him see you here."
She helped Kenyon to rise. He stumbled across the floor to the steps and
she helped him gently down to the lawn. She stood play-acting for him a
moment in whisper and pantomime, then she turned and hurried indoors and
met the inquisitive maid servant with:
"Just that Kenyon Adams--the musician--awfully dear boy, but he wanted
me to interfere with the Judge for that worthless brother, Grant. The
Nesbits sent him. You know the Nesbit woman is crazy about that
anarchist. Oh, Nadine, did Chalmers see Kenyon? You know Chalmers just
blabs everything to the Judge."
Nadine indicated that Chalmers had recognized Kenyon as he crawled up
the veranda steps and Mrs. Van Dorn replied: "Very well, I'll be ready
for him." And half an hour later, when the Judge drove up, his wife met
him as he was putting his valise in his room:
"Dahling," she said as she closed the door, "that Kenyon Adams was over
here, appealing to me for his brother, Grant."
"Well?" asked the Judge contemptuously.
"You have him where we want him now, dahling," she answered. "If you
refuse him his freedom, the mob will get him. And oh, oh, oh," she cried
passionately, "I hope they'll hang him, hang him, higher'n Haman. That
will take the tuck out of the old Nesbit cat and that other, his--his
sweetheart, to have her daughter marrying the brother of a man who was
hanged! That'll bring them down."
A flash across the Judge's face told the woman where her emotion was
leading her. It angered her.
"So that holds you, does it? That binds the hands of the Judge, does it?
This wonderful daughter, who snubs him on the street--she mustn't marry
the brother of a man who was hanged!" Margaret laughed, and the Judged
glowered in rage until the scar stood white upon his purple brow.
"Dahling," she leered, "remember our little discussion of Kenyon Adams's
parentage that night! Maybe our dear little girl is going to marry the
son, the son," she repeated wickedly, "of a man who was hanged!"
He stepped toward her crying: "For God's sake, quit! Quit!"
"Oh, I hope he'll hang. I hope he'll hang and you've got to hang him!
You've got to hang him!" she mocked exultingly.
The man turned in rage. He feared the powerful, physical creature before
him. He had never dared to strike her. He wormed past her and ran
slinking down the hall and out of the door--out from the temple of love,
which he had builded--somewhat upon sand perhaps, but still the temple
of love. A rather sad place it was, withal, in which to rest the weary
bones of the hunter home from the hills, after a lifelong ride to hounds
in the primrose hunt.
He stood for a moment upon the steps of the veranda, while his heart
pumped the bile of hate through him; and suddenly hearing a soft
footfall, he turned his head quickly, and saw Lila--his daughter. As he
turned toward her in the twilight it struck him like a blow in the face
that she in some way symbolized all that he had always longed for--his
unattainable ideal; for she seemed young--immortally young, and sweet.
The grace of maidenhood shone from her and she turned an eager but
infinitely wistful face up to his, and for a second the picture of the
slim, white-clad figure, enveloping and radiating the gentle eagerness
of a beautiful soul, came to him like the disturbing memory of some
vague, lost dream and confused him. While she spoke he groped back to
the moment blindly and heard her say:
"Oh, you will help me now, this once, this once when I beg it; you will
help me?" As she spoke she clutched his arm. Her voice dropped to a
whisper. "Father, don't let them murder him--don't, oh, please,
father--for me, won't you save him for me--won't you let him out of jail
now?"
"Lila, child," the Judge held out his hand unsteadily, "it's not what I
want to do; it's the law that I must follow. Why, I can't do--"
"If Mr. Ahab Wright was in jail as Grant is and the workmen had the
State government, what would the law say?" she answered. Then she
gripped his hands and cried: "Oh, father, father, have mercy, have
mercy! We love him so and it will kill Kenyon. Grant has been like a
father to Kenyon; he has been--"
"Tell me this, Lila," the Judge stopped her; he held her hands in his
cold, hard palms. "Who is Kenyon--who is his father--do you know?"
"Yes, I know," the daughter replied quietly.
"Tell me, then. I ought to know," he demanded.
"There is just one right by which you can ask," she began. "But if you
refuse me this--by what other right can you ask? Oh, daddy, daddy," she
sobbed. "In my dreams I call you that. Did you ever hear that name,
daddy, daddy--I want you--for my sake, to save this man, daddy."
The Judge heard the words that for years had sounded in his heart. They
cut deep into his being. But they found no quick.
"Well, daughter," he answered, "as a father--as a father who will help
you all he can--I ask, then, who is Kenyon Adams's father?"
"Grant," answered the girl simply.
"Then you are going to marry an illegitimate--"
"I shall marry a noble, pure-souled man, father."
"But, Lila--Lila," he rasped, "who is his mother?"
Then she shrank away from him. She shook her head sadly, and withdrew
her hands from his forcibly as she cried:
"O father--father--daddy, have you no heart--no heart at all?" She
looked beseechingly up into his face and before he could reply, she
seemed to decide upon some further plea. "Father, it is sacred--very
sacred to me, a beautiful memory that I carry of you, when I think of
the word 'Daddy.' I have never, never, not even to mother, nor to Kenyon
spoken of it. But I see you young, and straight and tall and very
handsome. You have on light gray clothes and a red flower on your coat,
and I am in your arms hugging you, and then you put me down, and I stand
crying 'Daddy, daddy,' after you, when you are called away somewhere.
Oh, then--then, oh, I know that then--I don't know where you went nor
anything, but then, then when I snuggled up to you, surely you would
have heard me if I had asked you what I am asking now."
The daughter paused, but the father did not answer at once. He looked
away from her across the years. In the silence Lila was aware that in
the doorway back of her father, Margaret Van Dorn stood listening. Her
husband did not know that she was there.
"Lila," he began, "you have told me that Kenyon's father is Grant Adams,
why do you shield his mother?"
The daughter stood looking intently into the brazen eyes of her father,
trying to find some way into his heart. "Father, Grant Adams is before
your court. He is the father of the man whom I shall marry. You have a
right to know all there is to know about Grant Adams." She shook her
head decisively. "But Kenyon's mother, that has nothing to do with what
I am asking you!" She paused, then cried passionately: "Kenyon's
mother--oh, father, that's some poor woman's secret, which has no
bearing on this case. If you had any right on earth to know, I should
tell you; but you have no right."
"Now, Lila," answered her father petulantly--"look here--why do you get
entangled with those Adamses? They are a low lot. Girl, a Van Dorn has
no business stooping to marry an Adams. Miserable mongrel blood is that
Adams blood child. Why the Van Dorns--" but Lila's pleading, wistful
voice went on:
"In all my life, father, I have asked you only this one thing, and this
is just, you know how just it is--that you keep my future husband's
father from a cruel, shameful death. And--now--" her voice was
quivering, near the breaking point, and she cried: "And now, now you
bring in blood and family. What are they in an hour like this! Oh,
father--father, would my daddy--the fine, strong, loving daddy of my
dreams do this? Would he--would he--oh, daddy--daddy--daddy!" she cried,
beseechingly.
Perhaps he could see in her face the consciousness that some one was
behind him, for he turned and saw his wife standing in the doorway. As
he saw her, there rose in him the familiar devil she always aroused,
which in the first years wore the mask of love, but dropped that mask
for the sneer of hate. It was the devil's own voice that spoke, quietly,
suavely, and with a hardness that chilled his daughter's heart. "Lila,
perhaps the secret of Kenyon's mother is no affair of mine, but neither
is Grant Adams's fate after I turn him back to the jailer, an affair of
mine. But you make Grant's affair mine; well, then--I make this secret
an affair of mine. If you want me to release Grant Adams--well, then, I
insist." The gray features of his wife stopped him; but he smiled and
waved his hand grandly at the miserable woman, as he went on: "You see
my wife has bragged to me once or twice that she knows who Kenyon's
mother is, Lila, and now--"
The daughter put her hands to her face and turned away, sick with the
horror of the scene. Her heart revolted against the vile intrigue her
father was proposing. She turned and faced him, clasping her hands in
her anguish, lifted her burning face for a moment and stared piteously
at him, as she sobbed: "O dear, dear God--is this my father?" and
shaking with shame and horror she turned away.