In the Heart of a Fool

The formal announcement of the engagement of Laura Nesbit and Thomas Van Dorn came when Mrs. Nesbit began tearing out the old floors on the second story of the Nesbit home and replacing them with hardwood floors. Having the carpenters handy she added a round tower with which to impress the Schenectady Van Dorns with the importance of the Maryland Satterthwaites. In this architectural outburst the town read the news of the engagement. The town was so moved by the news that Mrs. Hilda Herdicker was able to sell to the young women of her millinery suzerainty sixty-three hats, which had been ordered “especially for Laura Nesbit,” at prices ranging from $2.00 to $57. Each hat was carefully, indeed furtively, brought from under the counter, or from the back room of the shop or from a box on a high shelf and secretly exhibited and sold with injunctions that the Nesbits must not be told what Mrs. Herdicker had done. One of these hats was in reach of Violet Mauling’s humble twenty dollars! Poor Violet was having a sad time in those days. No candy, no soda water, no ice cream, no flowers; no buggy rides, however clandestine, nor fervid glances–nothing but hard work was her unhappy lot and an occasional clash with Mr. Brotherton. Thus the morning after the newly elected Mayor had heard the formal announcement of the engagement, he hurried to the offices of Calvin & Van Dorn to congratulate his friend:

“Hello, Maudie,” said Mr. Brotherton. “Oh, it isn’t Maudie–well then, Trilby, tell Mr. Van Dorn the handsome gentleman has came.”

Hearing Brotherton’s noise Van Dorn appeared, to summon his guest to the private office.

Mr. Brotherton shook his friend’s hand, repeating over and over, “Well, say–” After the congratulatory ceremony was finished Mr. Brotherton cried, “You old scoundrel–I’d rather have your luck than a license to steal in a mint!” Then with an eye to business, he suggested: “I’ll just about open a box of ten centers down at my home of the letters and arts for you when the boys drop around!” He backed out of the room still shaking Mr. Van Dorn’s hand, and still roaring, “Well, say!” In the outer office he waved a gracious hand at Miss Mauling and cried, “Three sugars, please, Sadie–that will do for cream!” and went laughing his seismic laugh down the stairs.

That evening the cigar box stood on the counter in Brotherton’s store. It was wreathed in smilax like a votive offering and on a card back of the box Mr. Brotherton had written these pious words:

Seeing the box in the cloister and the brotherhood assembled upon the walnut bench Dr. Nesbit, who came in on a political errand, sniffed, and turned to Amos Adams. “Well, Amos,” piped the Doctor, “how’s Lincoln this evening?”

“’Y gory, Amos–that thing will get you yet–what say?” he asked, turning for confirmation to the Doctor.

Amos Adams smiled gently at the Captain, but addressed the Doctor eagerly, as one more capable of understanding matters occult: “And I’ll tell you another thing–Mr. Left is coming regularly now.”

“Mr. Left?” sniffed the Captain.

“Yes,” explained the editor carefully, “I was telling the Doctor last week that if I go into a dark room and blindfold myself and put a pencil in my left hand, a control who calls himself Mr. Left comes and writes messages from the Other Side.”

“Any more sense to ’em than your crazy planchette?” scoffed Captain Morton.

The editor closed his eyes in triumph. “Read our editorial this week on President Cleveland and the Money Power?” he asked. The Captain nodded. “Mr. Left got it without the scratch of a ’t’ or the dot of an ‘i’ from Samuel J. Tilden.” He opened his eyes to catch the astonishment of the listeners.

“Humph!” snorted the Doctor in his high, thin voice, “Old Tilden seems to have got terribly chummy with Karl Marx in the last two years.”

“Well, I didn’t write it, and Mary says it’s not even like my handwrite. And that reminds me, Doctor, I got to get her prescription filled again. That tonic you give her seems to be kind of wearing off. The baby you know–” he stopped a moment vaguely. “Someway she doesn’t seem strong.”

Only the Doctor caught Grant’s troubled look.

The group turned to the opening door and saw Henry Fenn, resplendent in a high silk hat and a conspicuously Sunday best suit, which advertised his condition, standing in the open door. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said slowly.

A look of common recognition of Fenn’s case passed around the group in the corner. Fenn saw the look as he came in. He was walking painfully straight. “I may,” he said, lapsing into the poetry that came welling from his memory and marked him for a drunken fool, “I may,” opening his ardent eyes and glancing affectionately about, “have been toying with ‘lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon’ and my feet may be ‘uncertain, coy and hard to please,’” he grinned with wide amiability, “but my head is clear as a bell.” His eyes flashed nervously about the shop, resting upon nothing, seeing everything. He spied Grant, “Hello, Red,” exclaimed Mr. Fenn, “glad to see you back again. ’M back again myself. Ye crags ’n’ peaks ’m with you once again.” As he nourished his silk hat he saw the consternation on Brotherton’s big, moon face. Walking behind the counter he clapped both hands down on Brotherton’s big shoulders. “Georgy, Georgy,” he repeated mournfully:

“Old story, Georgy. Fight–fight, fight, then just a little, just a very little surrender; not going to give in, but just a nip for old sake’s sake. Whoo-oo-oo-oo-p the skyrocket blazes and is gone, and then just another nip to cool the first and then a God damn big drink and–and–”

He laughed foolishly and leaned forward on the counter. As his arm touched the counter it brushed the smilax covered cigar box and sent the box and the cigars to the floor.

“Henry, you fool–you poor fool,” cried Brotherton; but his voice was not angry as he said: “If you must mess up your own affairs for Heaven’s sake have some respect for Tom’s!”

And sighing a deep sigh, and again waving his silk hat in a profound bow, he was gone. The group in the store saw him step lightly into a waiting hack, and drive away out of their reach. Brotherton stood at the door and watched the carriage turn off Market Street, then came back, shaking a sorrowful head. He looked up at the Doctor and said: “She’s bluffing–say, Doctor, you know her, what do you think?”

“Bluffing,” returned the Doctor absently, then added quickly: “Come now, George, get your voters’ list! It’s getting late!”

George Brotherton looked blankly at the group. In every face but the Doctor’s a genuine sorrow for their friend was marked. “Doc,” Brotherton began apologetically, “I guess I’ll just have to get you to let me off to-night!” He hesitated; then as he saw the company around him backing him up, “Why, Doc, the way I feel right now I don’t care if the whole county ticket is licked! I can’t work to-night, Doc–I just can’t!”

The Doctor’s face as he listened, changed. It was as though another soul had come upon the deck of his countenance. He answered softly in his piping voice, “No man could, George–after that!” Then turning to Grant the Doctor said gently, as one reminded of a forgotten purpose:

Looking at the floor, Grant answered slowly, “Well she rode down on her wheel on his first birthday–slipped in when we were all out but mother, and cried and went on about her poor child, mother said, and left him a pair of little knit slippers. And she wrote him a birthday card the second time, but we didn’t hear from her this time.” He paused. “She never looks at him on the street, and she’s just about quit speaking to me. But last winter, she came down and cried around one afternoon. Mother sent for her, I think.”

“Why!” asked the Doctor quickly.

“Well,” hesitated Grant, “it was when mother was first taken sick. I think father and mother thought maybe Maggie might see things different–well, about Kenyon.” He stopped.

“Maggie and you?” prompted the Doctor.

“Well, something like that, perhaps,” replied the boy.

The Doctor pushed back in his chair abruptly and cut in shrilly, “They still think you and Margaret should marry on account of Kenyon?” Grant nodded. “Do you want to marry her?” The Doctor leaned forward in his chair, watching the boy. The Doctor saw the flash of revulsion that spread over the youth’s face before Grant raised his head, and met the Doctor’s keen gaze and answered soberly, “I would if it was best.”

“Well,” the Doctor returned as if to himself. “I suppose so.” To the younger man, he said: “Grant, she wouldn’t marry you. She is after bigger game. As far as reforming Henry Fenn’s concerned, she’s bluffing. It doesn’t interest her any more than Kenyon’s lack of a mother.”

That night Margaret Müller sat on the porch, where Henry Fenn left her, considering her problem. Now this problem did not remotely concern the Adamses–nor even Kenyon Adams. Margaret Müller’s problem was centered in Henry Fenn, County Attorney of Greeley County; Henry Fenn, who had visited her gorgeously drunk; Henry Fenn on whose handsome shoulder she had enjoyed rather keenly shedding some virtuous tears in chiding him for his broken promise. Yet she knew that she would take him back. And she knew that he knew that he might come back. For she had moved far forward in the siege of Harvey. She was well within the walls of the beleaguered city, and was planning for the larger siege of life and destiny.

About all there is in life is one’s fundamental choice between the spiritual and the material. After that choice is made, the die of life is cast. Events play upon that choice their curious pattern, bringing such griefs and joys, such calamities and winnings as every life must have. For that choice makes character, and character makes happiness. Margaret Müller sitting there in the night long after the last step of Henry Fenn had died away, thought of her lover’s arms, remembered her lover’s lips, but clearer and more moving than these vain things, her mind showed her what his hands could bring her and if her soul waved a duty signal, for the salvation of Henry Fenn, she shut her eyes to the signal and hurried into the house.

Brotherton remembered her an hour later when, in the back part of the bookstore Henry Fenn sat, jaded, haggard, and with his dull face drawn with remorse,–a burned-out sky rocket. Brotherton was busy with his customers, but in a lull, and between sales as the trade passed in and out, they talked. Sometimes a customer coming in would interrupt them, but the talk went on as trade flowed by. It ran thus:

“Yes, George, but it’s my salvation. She’s the only anchor I have on earth.”

“But she didn’t hold you yesterday.”

“I know, but God, George, it was terrific, the way that thing grabbed me yesterday. But it’s all gone now.”

“I know, Henry, but it will come back–can’t you see what you’ll be doing to her?”

In Volume XXI of the “Psychological Society’s Publications,” page 374, will be found a part of the observations of “Mr. Left,” together with copious notes upon the Adams case by an eminent authority. The excerpt herewith printed is attributed by Mr. Left to Darwin or Huxley or perhaps one of the Brownings–it is unimportant to note just which one, for Mr. Left gleaned from a wide circle of intellects. The interesting thing is that about the time these love affairs we are considering were brewing, Mr. Left wrote: “If the natural selection of love is the triumph of evolution on this planet, if the free choice of youth and maiden, unhampered by class or nationality, or wealth, or age, or parental interference, or thought of material advantage, is the greatest step taken by life since it came mysteriously into this earth, how much of the importance of the natural selection of youth in love hangs upon full and free access to all the data necessary for choice.”

What irony was in the free choice of these lovers here in Harvey that day when Mr. Left wrote this. What did Henry Fenn know of the heart or the soul of the woman he adored? What did Laura Nesbit know of her lover and what did he know of her? They all four walked blindfolded. Free choice for them was as remote and impossible as it would have been if they had been auctioned into bondage.

The changing seasons moved from autumn to winter, from winter to spring. One gray, wet March day, Grant Adams stood by the counter asking Mr. Brotherton to send to the city for roses.

“White roses, a dozen white roses.” Mr. Brotherton turned his broad back as he wrote the order, and said gently: “They’ll be down on No. 11 to-night, Grant; I’ll send ’em right out.”

As Grant stood hesitating, ready to go, but dreading the street, Dr. Nesbit came in. He pressed the youth’s hand and did not speak. He bought his tobacco and stood cleaning his pipe. “Could your father sleep any after–when I left, Grant?” asked the Doctor.

The young man shook his head. “Mrs. Nesbit is out there, isn’t she?” the Doctor asked again.

“Yes,” replied the youth, “she and Laura came out before we had breakfast. And Mrs. Dexter is there.”

“Has any one else come?” asked the Doctor, looking up sharply from his pipe, and added, “I sent word to Margaret Müller.”

Grant shook his head and the Doctor left the shop. At the doorway he met Captain Morton, and seemed to be telling him the news, for the Captain’s face showed the sorrow and concern that he felt. He hurried in and took Grant’s hand and held it affectionately.

“Grant, your mother was with my wife her last night on earth; I wish I could help you, son. I’ll run right down to your father.”

When Grant went home, the silence of death hung over the little house, in spite of the bustling of Mrs. Nesbit. And Grant sat outside on a stone by his father under the gray sky.

In the house the prattle of the child with the women made the house seem pitifully lonesome. Jasper was expressing his sorrow by chopping wood down in the timber. Jasper was an odd sheep in the flock; he was a Sands after Daniel’s own heart. So Grant and his father sat together mourning in silence. Finally the father drew in a deep broken breath, and spoke with his eyes on the ground:

“‘These also died in the faith, without having received the promise!’” Then he lifted up his face and mourned, “Mary–Mary–” and again, “Oh, Mary, we need–” The child’s voice inside the house calling fretfully, “Mother! mother!” came to the two and brought a quick cramp to the older man’s throat and tears to his eyes. Finally, Amos found voice to say:

“I was thinking how we–you and I and Jasper need mother! But our need is as nothing compared with the baby’s. Poor–lonely little thing! I don’t know what to do for him, Grant.” He turned to his son helplessly.

Again the little voice was lifted, and Laura Nesbit could be heard hushing the child’s complaint. Not looking at his father, Grant spoke: “Dr. Nesbit said he had let Margaret know–”

The father shook his head and returned, “I presumed he would!” He looked into his son’s face and said: “Maggie doesn’t see things as we do, son. But, oh–what can we do! And the little fellow needs her–needs some one, who will love him and take care of him. Oh, Mary–Mary–” he cried from his bewildered heart. “Be with us, Mary, and show us what to do!”

At night Jasper went to his room above the kitchen and the father turned to his lonely bed. In the cold parlor Mary Adams lay. Grant sat in the kitchen by the stove, pressing to his face his mother’s apron, only three days before left hanging by her own hands on the kitchen door. He clung to this last touch of her fingers, through the long night, and as he sat there his heart filled with a blind, vague, rather impotent purpose to take his mother’s place with Kenyon. From time to time he rose to put wood in the stove, but always when he went back to his chair, and stroked the apron with his face, the baby seemed to be clinging to him. The thought of the little hands forever tugging at her apron racked him with sobs long after his tears were gone.

And so as responsibility rose in him he stepped across the border from youth to manhood.

They made him dress in his Sunday best the next morning and he was still so close to that borderland of boyhood that he was standing about the yard near the gate, looking rather lost and awkward when the Nesbits drove up with Kenyon, whom they had taken for the night. When the others had gone into the house the Doctor asked:

“Did she come, Grant?”

The youth lifted his face to the Doctor and looked him squarely in the eye as man to man and answered sharply, “No.”

The Doctor cocked one eye reflectively and said slowly, “So–” and drove away.

“I am going to Margaret; she must help.”

It was dark when he came to town and walked up Congress Street with the little one snuggled in his arms. Just before he arrived at the house, the restless child had asked to walk, and they went hand in hand up the steps of the house where Margaret Müller lived. She was sitting alone on the veranda–clearly waiting for some one, and when she saw who was coming up the steps she rose and hurried to them, greeting them on the very threshold of the veranda. She was white and her bosom was fluttering as she asked in a tense whisper:

“What do you want–quick, what do you want?”

She stood before Grant, as if stopping his progress. The child’s plaintive cry, “Mother–Grant, I want mother!” not in grief, but in a great question, was the answer.

He looked into her staring, terror-stricken eyes until they drooped and for a moment he dominated her. But she came back from some outpost of her nature with reënforcements.

“Get out of here–get out of here. Don’t come here with your brat–get out,” she snarled in a whisper. The child went to her, plucked her skirts and cried, “Mother, mother.” Grant pointed to the baby and broke out: “Oh, Maggie–what’s to become of Kenyon?–what can I do! He’s only got you now. Oh, Maggie, won’t you come?” He saw fear flit across her face in a tense second before she answered. Then fear left and she crouched at him trembling, red-eyed, gaping, mouthed, the embodiment of determined hate; swiping the child’s little hands away from her, she snapped:

Without looking at her again, he caught up the toddling child, lifted it to his shoulder and walked down the steps. As they turned into the street they ran into Henry Fenn, who in his free choice of a mate was hurrying to one who he thought would give him a home–a home and children, many children to stand between him and his own insatiate devil. Henry greeted Grant:

“Why, boy–oh, yes, been to see Maggie? I wish she could help you, Grant.”

And from the veranda came a sweet, rich voice, crying:

“Yes, Henry–do you know where they can get a good nurse girl?”

Henry Fenn and Margaret Müller sat naming their wedding day, while Grant Adams walked home with his burden. Henry Fenn had been fighting through a long winter, against the lust for liquor that was consuming his flesh. At times it seemed to him that her presence as he fought his battle, helped him; but there were phases of his fight, when she too fashioned herself in his imagination as a temptress, and she seemed to blow upon the coals that were searing his weak flesh.

At such times he was taciturn, and went about his day’s work as one who is busy at a serious task. He smiled his amiable smile, he played his man’s part in the world without whimpering, and fought on like a gentleman. The night he met Grant and the child at the steps of the house where Margaret lived, he had called to set the day for their marriage. And that night she glowed before him and in his arms like a very brand of a woman blown upon by some wind from another world. When he left her his throat grew parched and dry and his lips quivered with a desire for liquor that seemed to simmer in his vitals. But he set his teeth, and ran to his room, and locked himself in, throwing the key out of the window into the yard. He sat shivering and whimpering and fighting, by turns conquering his devil, and panting under its weight, but always with the figure and face of his beloved in his eyes, sometimes beckoning him to fight on, sometimes coaxing him to yield and stop the struggle. But as the day came in he fell asleep with one more battle to his credit.

Doctor Nesbit and Amos Adams were trying to solve the mystery of human destiny at the gate of the Adams’ home the day after the funeral. Amos had his foot on the hub of the Doctor’s buggy and was saying: “But Doctor, can’t you see that it isn’t all material? Suppose that every atom of the universe does affect every other atom, and that the accumulated effect of past action holds the stars in their courses, and that if we knew what all the past was we should be able to foretell the future, because it would be mathematically calculable–what of it? That does not prove your case, man! Can’t you see that in free will another element enters–the spiritual, if you please, that is not amenable to atomic action past or present?” Amos smiled deprecatingly and added sadly: “Got that last night from Schopenhauer.” The Doctor, clearly unawed by Schopenhauer, broke out: “Aye, there I have you, Amos. Isn’t the brain matter, and doesn’t the brain secrete consciousness?”

She put the child into the Doctor’s submissive arms–helped her daughter into the buggy, and when she had climbed in herself, she glared triumphantly over her glasses and above her Roman nose, as she said: “Now, Amos–have some sense. Doctor,–go on.” And in a moment the buggy was spinning up the hill toward the town.

Thus it was that every day, rain or shine, until the day of her wedding, Laura Nesbit drove her dog cart to the Adamses before the men went to their work and took little Kenyon home with her and brought him back in the evening. And always she took him from the arms of Grant–Grant, red-headed, freckled, blue-eyed, who was hardening into manhood and premature maturity so fast that he did not realize the change that it made in his face. It grew set, but not hard, a woman’s tenderness crept into the features, and with that tenderness came at times a look of petulant impatience. It was a sad face–a sadly fanatic face–yet one that lighted with human feeling under a smile.

Little by little, meeting daily–often meeting morning and evening, Grant and Laura established a homely, wholesome, comfortable relation.

One evening while Laura was waiting for Tom Van Dorn and Grant was waiting for Kenyon she and Grant sitting upon the veranda steps of the Nesbit home, looked into the serene, wide lawn that topped the hill above the quiet town. They could look across the white and green of the trees and houses, across the prosperous, solid, red roofs of the stone and brick stores and offices on Market Street, into the black smudge of smoke and the gray, unpainted, sprawling rows of ill-kept tenements around the coal mines, that was South Harvey. They could see even then the sky stains far down the Wahoo Valley, where the villages of Foley and Magnus rose and duplicated the ugliness of South Harvey.

The girl’s silvery laugh greeted his words. “Now, Grant,” she said, “where do you think I’m going? Why, Tom and I will be only a block from here–just over on Tenth Street in the Perry House.”

Grant grinned as he shook his head. “You’re lost and gone forever, just the same, Miss Clementine. In about three years I’ll probably be that ‘red-headed boss carpenter in the mine─let me see, what’s his name?’”

“Oh, Grant,” scoffed the girl. She saw that his heart was sadder than his face.

She took courage and said: “Grant, you never can know how often I think of you–how much I want you to win everything worth while in this world, how much I want you to be happy–how I believe in you and–and–bet on you, Grant–bet on you!”

Grant did not answer her. Presently he looked up and over the broad valley below them. The sun behind the house was touching the limestone ledge far across the valley with golden rays. The smoke from South Harvey on their right was lighted also. The youth looked into the smoke. Then he turned his eyes back from the glowing smoke and spoke.

“This is how I look at it. I don’t mean you’re any different from any one else. What I was trying to say was that I’m the only one of our old crowd in the High School you know that used to have parties and go together in the old days–I’m the only one that’s wearing overalls, and my way is down there”; he nodded his head toward the mines and smelters and factories in the valley.

“I’m cut out for work. It’s all right. That’s my job, and I’m proud of it so far as that goes. I could get a place clerking if I wanted to, and be in the dancing crowd in six months, and be out to the Van Dorns for dinner in a year.” He paused and looked into the distant valley and cried. “But I tell you–my job is down there. And I’m not going to quit them. God knows they’re getting the rough end of it. If you knew,” his voice raised slightly and a petulant indignation tempered it. “If you knew the gouging and pocket picking and meanness that is done by the people up town to the people down there in the smoke, you’d be one of those howling red-mouthed anarchists you read about.”

The girl looked at him silently and at length asked: “For instance–what’s just one thing?”

“Well, for instance–in the mines where I work all the men come up grimy and greasy and vile. They have to wash. In Europe we roughnecks know that wash-houses are provided by the company, but here,” he cried excitedly, “the company doesn’t provide even a faucet; instead the men–father and son and maybe a boarder or two have to go home–into those little one and two roomed houses the company has built, and strip to the hide with the house full of children and wash. What if your girlhood had been used to seeing things like that–could you laugh as you laugh now?” He looked up at her savagely. “Oh, I know they’re ignorant foreigners and little better than animals and those things don’t hurt them–only if you had a little girl who had to be in and out of the single room of your home when the men came home to wash up–”

“But your people,” she urged. “What about them–your father and brothers?”

“Jap’s climbing out. Father’s too old to get in. And Kenyon–” he flinched, “I hope to God I’ll have the nerve to stay when the test on him comes.” He turned to the girl passionately: “But you–you–oh, you–I want you to know–” He did not finish the sentence, but rose and walked into the house and called: “Dad–Kenyon–come on, it’s getting late. Stars are coming out.”

Half an hour later Tom Van Dorn, in white flannels, with a red silk tie, and with a white hat and shoes, came striding across the lawn. His black silky mustache, his soft black hair, his olive skin, his shining black eyes, his alert emotional face, dark and swarthy, was heightened even in the twilight by the soft white clothes he wore.

“Hello, popper-in-law,” he cried. “Any room left on the veranda?”

“Come in, Thomas,” piped the older man. “The girls are doing the dishes, Bedelia and Laura, and we’ll just sit out two or three dances.”

The young man lolled in the hammock shaded by the vines. The elder smoked and reflected. Then slowly and by degrees, as men who are feeling their way to conversation, they began talking of local politics. They were going at a high rate when the talk turned to Henry Fenn. “Doing pretty well, Doctor,” put in the younger man. “Only broke over once in eighteen months–that’s the record for Henry. Shows what a woman can do for a man.” He looked up sympathetically, and caught the Doctor’s curious eyes.

Van Dorn fingered his mustache, and looked serious.

“Tom,” the elder man chirped, “you’re a handsome pup–a damn handsome, lovable pup. Sometimes.” He let his voice run whimsically into its mocking falsetto, “I almost catch myself getting fooled too.”

They laughed.

“Boy, the thing’s in your blood. Did you realize that you’ve got just as hard a fight as poor Henry Fenn? It’s all right now–for a while; but the time will come–we might just as well look this thing squarely in the face now, Tom–the time will come in a few years when the devil will build the same kind of a fire under you he is building under Henry Fenn–only it won’t be whisky; it will be the woman proposition. Damn it, boy,” cried the elder man squeakily, “it’s in your blood; you’ve let it grow in your very blood. I’ve known you ten years now, and I’ve seen it grow. Tom–when the time comes, can you stand up and fight like Henry Fenn–can you, Tom? And will you?” he cried with a piteous fierceness that stirred all the sympathy in the young man’s heart.

He rose to the height of the Doctor’s passion. Tears came into Van Dorn’s bright eyes. His breast expanded emotionally and he exclaimed: “I know what I am, oh, I know it. But for her–you and I together–you’ll help and we’ll stand together and fight it out for her.” The father looked at the mobile features of his companion, and sensed the thin plating of emotion under the vain voice. Whereupon the Doctor heaved a deep, troubled sigh.

“Heigh-ho, heigh-ho.” He put his arm upon the broad, handsome, young shoulder. “But you’ll try to be a good boy, won’t you–” he repeated. “Just try hard to be a good boy, Tom–that’s all any of us can do,” and turning away he whistled into the house and a girlish trill answered him.

After the Doctor had jogged down the hill behind his old horse making his evening professional visits, Mrs. Nesbit came out and made a show of sitting with the young people for a time. And not until she left did they go into those things that were near their hearts.

The man looked at her blankly. Then he put his arm tenderly about her and answered: “I don’t know about our souls–much–” He kissed her. “But I do know about you–your wonderful eyes–and your magic hair, and your soft cheek!” He left her in no doubt as to her lover’s mood.

Vaguely the girl felt unsatisfied with his words. Not that she doubted the truth of them; but as she drew back from him she said softly: “But if I were not beautiful, what then?”

“Ah, but you are–you are; in all the world there is not another like you for me.” In the rapture that followed, her soul grew in a wave of joy, yet she spoke shyly.

“Tom,” she said wistfully, “how can you fail to see it–this great, beautiful truth that makes me glad: That the miracle of our love proves God.”

He caressed her hands and pressed closer to her. “Call it what you will, little girl: God if it pleases you, I call it nature.”

“Oh, it’s bigger than that, Tom,” and she shook a stubborn Satterthwaite head, “and it makes me so happy and makes me so humble that I want to share it with all the world.” She laid an abashed cheek on his hands that were still fondling hers.

But young Mr. Van Dorn spoke up manfully, “Well, don’t you try sharing it. I want all of it, every bit of it.” He played with her hair, and relaxed in a languor of complete possession of her.

“I love only you–only you in all the world–your eyes thrill me; when your body is near I am mad with delight; when I touch you I am in heaven. When I close my eyes before the jury I see you and I put the bliss of my vision into my voice, and,” he clinched his hands, “all the devils of hell couldn’t win that jury away from me. You spur me to my best, put springs in every muscle, put power in my blood.”

“But, Tom, tell me this?” Still wistfully, she came close to him, and put her chin on her clasped hands that rested on his shoulder. “Love makes me want to be so good, so loyal, so brave, so kind–isn’t it that way with you? Isn’t love the miracle that brings the soul out into the world through the senses.” She did not wait for his answer. She clasped her hands tighter on his shoulder. “I feel that I’m literally stealing when I have a single thought that I do not bring to you. In every thrill of my heart about the humblest thing, I find joy in knowing that we shall enjoy it together. Let me tell you something. Grant Adams and his father were here to-day for dinner. Well, you know Grant is in a kind of obsession of love for that little motherless child Mrs. Adams left; Grant mothers him and fathers him and literally loves him to distraction. And Grant’s growing so manly, and so loyal and so strong in the love of that little boy–he doesn’t realize it; but I can see it in him. Oh, Tom, can you see it in me?”

Before her mood had changed she told him all that Grant Adams had said; and her voice broke when she retold the Italian’s story. Tears were in her eyes when she finished. And young Mr. Van Dorn was emotionally touched also, but not in sympathy with the story the girl was telling. She ended it:

In his face an indignation was rising which she could not comprehend. Finally he found words to say:

“So that’s what that Adams boy is putting in your head! Why do you want to bother with such nonsense?”

But the girl stopped him: “Tom, it’s not nonsense. They do work and dig and grind down there in a way which we up here know nothing about. It’s real–this–this miserable unfair way things are done in the world. O my dear, my dear, it’s because I love you so, it’s because I know now what love really is that it hurts to see–” He took her face in his hands caressingly, and tried to put an added tenderness into his voice that his affection might blunt the sharpness of his words.

“Well, it’s nonsense I tell you! Look here, Laura, if there is a God, he’s put those dagos and ignorant foreigners down there to work; just as he’s put the fish in the sea to be caught, and the beasts of the field to be eaten, and it’s none of my business to ask why! My job is myself–myself and you! I refuse to bear burdens for people. I love you with all the intensity of my nature–but it’s my nature–not human nature–not any common, socialized, diluted love; it’s individual and it’s forever between you and me! What do I care for the rest of the world! And if you love me as you will some day, you’ll love me so that they can’t set you off mooning about other people’s troubles. I tell you, Laura, I’m going to make you love me so you can’t think of anything day or night but me–and what I am to you! That’s my idea of love! It’s individual, intimate, restricted, qualified and absolutely personal–and some day you’ll see that!”

Mrs. Nesbit tried to put the Doctor into his Sunday blacks the day of her daughter’s wedding, but he would have none of them. He appeared on Market Street and went his rounds among the sick in his linen clothes with his Panama hat and his pleated white shirt. He did not propose to have the visiting princes, political and commercial, who had been summoned to honor the occasion, find him in his suzerainty without the insignia of his power. For it was “Old Linen Pants,” not Dr. James Nesbit, who was the boss of the northern district and a member of the State’s triumvirate. So the Doctor in the phaëton, drawn by his amiable, motherly, sorrel mare, the Doctor, white and resplendent in a suit that shimmered in the hot June sun, flaxed around town, from his office to the hotel, from the hotel to the bank, from the bank to South Harvey. As a part of the day’s work he did the honors of the town, soothed the woes of the weary, healed the sick, closed a dying man’s eyes, held a mother’s hands away from death as she brought life into the world, made a governor, paid his overdue note, got a laborer work, gave a lift to a fallen woman, made two casual purchases: a councilman and a new silk vest, with cash in hand; lent a drunkard’s wife the money for a sack of flour, showed three Maryland Satterthwaites where to fish for bass in the Wahoo, took four Schenectady Van Dorns out to lunch, and was everywhere at once doing everything, clicking his cane, whistling gently or humming a low, crooning tune, smiling for the most part, keeping his own counsel and exhibiting no more in his face of what was in his heart than the pink and dimpled back of a six-months’ baby.

The Doctor, the boss, the friend, the man, withdrew from his consciousness as he sat behind the vines and he became the impersonal, universal father, wondering at the mystery of life. As he sat musing, he heard a step behind him, and saw his daughter coming across the porch to greet him. “Father,” she said, “I have just this half hour that’s to be ours. I’ve planned for it all day. Mother has promised to keep every one away.”

The father’s jaw began to tremble and his cherubic face to wrinkle in an emotional pucker. He put the girl’s arm about his neck, and rubbed her hand upon his cheek. Then the father said softly:

“I never felt poor before until this minute.” The girl looked inquiringly at him and was about to protest. He stopped her: “Money wouldn’t do you much good–not all the money in the world.”

“Well, father, I don’t want money: we don’t need it,” said the girl. “Why, we have a beautiful home and Tom is making–”

“It’s not that, my dear–not that.” He played with her hand a moment longer. “I feel that I ought to give you something better than money; my–my–well, my view of life–what they call philosophy of life. It’s the accumulation of fifty years of living.” He fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. “Let me smoke, and maybe I can talk.”

“I tell you, daughter, it’s just naturally hell to be pore.” The girl saw his twitching mouth and the impotence of his swimming eyes; but before she could protest he checked her.

“Pore! Pore!” he repeated hopelessly. “Why, if we had a million, I would still be just common, ornery, doless pore folks–tongue-tied and helpless, and I couldn’t give you nothin–nothin!” he cried, “but just rubbish! Yet there are so many things I’d like to give you, Laura–so many, many things!” he repeated. “God Almighty’s put a terrible hog-tight inheritance tax on experience, girl!” He smiled a crooked, tearful little smile–looked up into her eyes in dog-like wistfulness as he continued: “I’d like to give you some of mine–some of the wisdom I’ve got one way and another–but, Lord, Lord,” he wailed, “I can’t. The divine inheritance tax bars me.” He patted her with one hand, holding his smoldering pipe in the other. Then he shrilled out in the impotence of his pain: “I just must give you this, Laura: Whatever comes and whatever goes–and lots of sad things will come and lots of sad things will go, too, for that matter–always remember this: Happiness is from the heart out–not from the world in! Do you understand, child–do you?”

The girl smiled and petted him, but he saw that he hadn’t reached her consciousness. He puffed at a dead pipe a moment, then he cried as he beat his hands together in despair: “I suppose it’s no use. It’s no use. But you can at least remember these words, Laura, and some time the meaning will get to you. Always carry your happiness under your bonnet! It’s the only thing I can give you–out of all my store!”

The girl put her arm about him and pressed closely to him, and they rose, as she said: “Why, father–I understand. Of course I understand. Don’t you see I understand, father?”

She did not let him finish, but bent to kiss him and she could feel the shudder of a smothered sob rack him as she touched his cheek.

Then he smiled at her and chirped: “Just Eendiany–sis’. Just pore, dumb Eendiany! Hi, ho! Now run and be a good girl! And here’s a jim-crack your daddy got you!”

From his pocket he drew out a little package, and dangled a sparkling jewel in his hands. He saw a flash of pleasure on her face. But his heart was full, and he turned away his head as he handed the gift to her. Her eyes were upon the sparkling jewel, as he led her into the house, saying with a great sigh: “Come on, my dear–let’s go in.”

They made little talk as they rode. Their way led them through the street which is shaded and ashamed by day, and which glows and flaunts itself by night. Men and women, gambling, drinking, carousing, rioted through the street, in and out of doors that spilled puddles of yellow light on the board sidewalks and dirt streets; screaming laughter, hoarse calls, the stench of liquor, the muffled noises of gambling, sputter of electric lights and the flash of glimmering reflections from bar mirrors rasped their senses and kept the father and son silent as they rode. When they had passed into the slumbering tenements, the father spoke: “Well, son, here it is–the two kinds of playing, and here we have what they call the bad people playing. The Van Dorns and the Satterthwaites will tell you that vice is the recreation of the poor. And it’s more or less true.” The elder man scratched his beard and faced the stars: “It’s a devilish puzzle. Character makes happiness; I’ve got that down fine. But what makes character? Why is vice the recreation of the poor? Why do we recruit most of our bad boys and all of our wayward girls from those neighborhoods in every city where the poor live? Why does the clerk on $12 a week uptown crowd into Doctor Jim’s wedding party, and the glass blower at $4 a day down here crowd into ‘Big Em’s’ and ‘Joe’s Place’ and the ‘Crescent’? Is poverty caused by vice; or is vice a symptom of poverty? And why does the clerk’s wife move in ‘our best circles’ and the miner’s wife, with exactly the same money to spend, live in outer social darkness?”

The clang of an engine bell in the South Harvey railroad yards drowned the son’s answer. The two were crossing the track and turning the corner that led to the South Harvey station. The midnight train was about due. As the buggy came near the little gray box of a station a voice called, “Adams–Adams,” and a woman’s voice, “Oh, Grant.”

“Why,” exclaimed the father, “it’s the happy couple.” Grant stopped the horse and climbed out over the sleeping body of little Kenyon. “In a moment,” replied Grant. Then he came to a shadow under the station eaves and saw the young people hiding. “Adams, you can help us,” said Van Dorn. “We slipped off in the Doctor’s phaëton, to get away from the guying crowd and we have tried to get the house on the ’phone, and in some way they don’t answer. The horse is tied over by the lumber yard there. Will you take it home with you to-night, and deliver it to the Doctor in the morning–whatever–” But Grant cut in:

“Why, of course. Glad to have the chance.” He was awkward and ill at ease, and repeated, “Why, of course, anything.” But Van Dorn interjected: “You understand, I’ll pay for it–” Grant Adams stared at him. “Why–why–no–” stammered Grant in confusion, while Van Dorn thrust a five-dollar bill upon him. He tried to return it, but the bride and groom ran to the train, leaving the young man alone and hurt in his heart. The father from the buggy saw what had happened. In a few minutes they were leading the Doctor’s horse behind the Adams buggy. “I didn’t want their money,” exclaimed Grant, “I wanted their–their–”

“You wanted their friendship, Grant–that’s what you wanted,” said the father.

The father smiled. “Perhaps, on your wedding trip, Grant, your wife will agree with you too, son.”

As they rode home in silence, the young man asked himself over and over again, what lines divided the world into classes; why manual toil shuts off the toilers from those who serve the world otherwise. Youth is sensitive; often it is supersensitive, and Grant Adams saw or thought he saw in the little byplay of Tom Van Dorn the caste prod of society jabbing labor back into its place.