"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 h.e.l.l 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:
"And then I looked at Grant"s big rough hands--bony and hairy, and Tom, they told me the whole story of his destiny; just as your soft, effective, gentle white hands prophesy our destiny. Oh, why--why--I am beginning to wonder why, Tom, why things must be so. Why do some of us have to do all the world"s rough, hard, soul-killing work, and others of us have lives that are beautiful, aspiring, glorious? How can we let such injustices be, and not try to undo them!"
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 G.o.d, 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!"
As he tripped down the hill from the Nesbit home that spring night, he wondered what Laura Nesbit meant when she spoke of Grant Adams, and his love for the motherless baby. The idea that this love bore any sort of resemblance to the love of educated, cultivated people as found in the love that Laura and her intended husband bore toward each other, puzzled the young lawyer. Being restless, he turned off his homeward route, and walked under the freshly leaved trees. Over and over again the foolish phrases and sentences from Laura Nesbit"s love making, many other nights in which she seemed to a.s.sume the unquestioned truth of the hypothesis of G.o.d, also puzzled him. Whatever his books had taught him, and whatever life had taught him, convinced him that G.o.d was a polite word for explaining one"s failure. Yet, here was a woman whose mind he had to respect, using the term as a proved theorem. He looked at the stars, wheeling about with the monstrous pulleys of gravitation and attraction, and the certain laws of motion. A moment later he looked southward in the sky to that flaming, raging, splotched patch where the blue and green and yellow flames from the smelters and the belching black smoke from the factories hid the low-hanging stars and marked the seething h.e.l.l of injustice and vice and want and woe that he knew was in South Harvey, and he held the glowing cigarette stub in his hand and laughed when he thought of G.o.d. "Free will," says "Mr. Left" in one of his rather hazy and unconvincing observations, "is of limited range. Man faces two b.u.t.tons. He must choose the material or the spiritual--and when he has chosen fate plays upon his choice the grotesque variation of human destiny. But when the cloth of life is finished, the pattern of the pa.s.sing events may be the same in either choice, riches or poverty, misery or power, only the color of the cloth differs; in one piece, however rich, the pattern is drab with despair, the other cloth sheens in happiness." Which Mr. Van Dorn in later life, reading the _Psychological Journal_, turned back to a second time, and threw aside with a casual and unappreciative, "Oh h.e.l.l," as his only comment.
CHAPTER XII
IN WHICH WE LEARN THAT LOVE IS THE LEVER THAT MOVES THE WORLD
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 phaeton, 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 ba.s.s 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.
To say that the Doctor was everywhere in Harvey is inexact. He was everywhere except on Quality Hill in Elm Street. There, from the big, bulging house with its towers and minarets and bow windows and lean-tos, ells and additions, the Doctor was barred. There was chaos, and the spirit that breathed on the face of the waters was the Harvey representative of the Maryland Satterthwaites, with her crimping pins bristling like miniature gun barrels, and with the look of command upon her face, giving orders in a firm, cool voice and then executing the orders herself before any one else could turn around. She could call the spirits from the vasty deep of the front hall or the back porch and they came, or she knew the reason why. With an imperial wave of her hand she sent her daughter off to some social wilderness of monkeys with all the female Satterthwaites and Van Dorns and Mrs. Senators and Miss Governors and Misses Congressmen, and with the offices of Mrs. John Dexter, Mrs.
Herd.i.c.ker, the ladies" hatter, and two Senegambian slaveys, Mrs. Nesbit brought order out of what at one o"clock seemed without form and void.
It was late in the afternoon, almost evening, though the sun still was high enough in the heavens to throw cloud shadows upon the hills across the valley when the Doctor stabled his mare and came edging into the house from the barn. He could hear the clamor of many voices; for the Maryland Satterthwaites had come home from the afternoon"s festivity. He slipped into his office-study, and as it was stuffy there he opened the side door that let out upon the veranda. He sat alone behind the vines, not wishing to be a part of the milling in the rooms. His heart was heavy. He blinked and sighed and looked across the valley, and crooned his old-fashioned tune while he tried to remember all of the life of the little girl who had come out of the mystery of birth into his life when Elm Street was a pair of furrows on a barren, wind-swept prairie hill; tried to remember how she had romped in girlhood under the wide sunshine in the prairie gra.s.s, how her little playhouse had sat where the new dining-room now stood, how her dolls used to litter the narrow porch that grew into the winding, serpentine veranda that belted the house, how she read his books, how she went about with him on his daily rounds, and how she had suddenly bloomed into a womanhood that made him feel shy and abashed in her presence. He wondered where it was upon the way that he had lost clasp of her hand: where did it drop from him? How did the little fingers that he used to hold so tightly, slip into another"s hand? Her life"s great decision had been made without consulting him; when did he lose her confidence? She had gone her way an independent soul--flown like a bird from the cage, he thought, and was going a way that he felt would be a way of pain, and probably sorrow, yet he could not stop her. All the experience of his life was worthless to her. All that he knew of men, all that he feared of her lover, were as chaff in the scales for her.
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 acc.u.mulation of fifty years of living." He fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. "Let me smoke, and maybe I can talk."
"Laura--girl--" He puffed bashfully in a pause, and began again: "There"s a lot of Indiana--real common Eendiany," he mocked, "about your father, and I just some way can"t talk under pressure." He caressed the girl"s hand and pulled at his pipe as one giving birth to a system of philosophy. Yet he was dumb as he sat before the warm glow of the pa.s.sing torch of life which was shining from his daughter"s face.
Finally he burst forth, piping impatience at his own embarra.s.sment.
"I tell you, daughter, it"s just naturally h.e.l.l 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. "G.o.d 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 spoke eagerly and clasped her arms tighter about the pudgy little figure. They stood quietly a moment, as the father looked earnestly, dog-wise, up into her face, as if trying by his very gaze to transmit his loving wisdom. Then, as he found voice: "No, Laura, probably you"ll need fifty years to understand; but look over on the hill across the valley at the moving cloud shadows. They are only shadows--not realities. They are just unrealities that prove the real--just trailing anchors of the sun!" He had pocketed his pipe and his hand came up from his pocket as he waved to the distant shadows and piped: "Trouble--heartaches--all the host of clouds that cover life--are only--only--" he let his voice drop gently as he sighed: "only anchors of the sun; Laura, they only prove--just prove--"
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."
At nine o"clock that night, the great foundry of a house, with its half a score of chimneys, marking its various epochs of growth, literally was stuffed with smilax, ferns, roses, orange blossoms, and daisy chains. In the mazes of these aisles of verdure, a labyrinth of Van Dorns and Satterthwaites and visiting statesmen with highly powdered womankind was packed securely. George Brotherton, who was born a drum major, wearing all of his glittering insignia of a long line of secret societies, moved as though the welding humanity were fluid. He had presided at too many funerals not to know the vast importance of keeping the bride"s kin from the groom"s kin, and when he saw that they were ushered into the wedding supper, in due form and order, it was with the fine abandon of a grand duke lording it over the populace. Senators, Supreme Court justices, proud Satterthwaites, haughty Van Dorns, Congressmen, governors, local gentry, were packed neatly but firmly in their proper boxes.
The old families of Harvey--Captain Morton and his little flock, the Kollanders, Ahab Wright with his flaring side-whiskers, his white necktie and his shadow of a wife; Joseph Calvin and his daughter in pigtails, Mrs. Calvin having written Mrs. Nesbit that it seemed that she just never did get to go anywhere and be anybody, having said as much and more to Mr. Calvin with emphasis; Mrs. Brotherton, mother of George, beaming with pride at her son"s part; stuttering Kyle Perry and his hatchet-faced son, the Adamses all starched for the occasion, Daniel Sands, a widower pro tem. with a broadening interest in school teachers, Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker, the ladies" hatter, cla.s.sifying the Satterthwaites and the Van Dorns according to the millinery of their womenkind; Morty Sands wearing the first white silk vest exhibited in Harvey and making violent eyes at a daughter of the railroad aristocracy--either a general manager"s daughter or a general superintendent"s, and for the life of her Mrs. Nesbit couldn"t say; for she had not the highest opinion in the world of the railroad aristocracy, but took them, president, first, second and third vice, general managers, ticket and pa.s.senger agents, and superintendents, as a sort of social job-lot because they came in private cars, and the Doctor desired them, to add to his trophies of the occasion,--Henry Fenn, wearing soberly the suit in which he appeared when he rode the skyrocket, and forming part of the bridal chorus, stationed in the cigar-box of a sewing-room on the second floor to sing, "Oh, Day So Dear," as the happy couple came down the stairs--the old families of Harvey were all invited to the wedding. And the old and the new and most of the intermediary families of no particular caste or standing, came to the reception after the ceremony. But because she had the best voice in town, Margaret Muller sang "Oh, Promise Me," in a remote bedroom--to give the effect of distant music, low and sweet, and after that song was over, and after Henry Fenn"s great pride had been fairly sated, Margaret Muller mingled with the guests and knew more of the names and stations of the visiting n.o.bility from the state house and railroad offices than any other person present. And such is the perversity of the male s.e.x that there were more "by Georges," and more "Look--look, looks," and more faint whistles, and more "Tch--tch tchs,"
and more nudging and pointing among the men when Margaret appeared than when the bride herself, pink and white and beautiful, came down the stairs. Even the eyes of the groom, as he stood beside the bride, tall, youthful, strong, and handsome as a man may dare to be and earn an honest living, even his eyes sometimes found themselves straying toward the figure and face of the beautiful girl whom he had scarcely noticed while she worked in the court house. But this may be said for the groom, that when his eyes did wander, he pulled them back with an almost irritated jerk, and seemed determined to keep them upon the girl by his side.
As for the wedding ceremony itself--it was like all others. The women looked exultant, and the men--the groom, the bride"s father, the groomsmen, and even Rev. John Dexter, had a sort of captured look and went through the service as though they wished that marriages which are made in Heaven were celebrated there also. But after the service was actually accomplished, after the bride and groom had been properly congratulated, after the mult.i.tude had been fed in serried ranks according to social precedence, after the band on the lawn outside had serenaded the happy couple, and after further interminable handshaking and congratulations, from those outside, after the long line of invited guests had filed past the imposing vista of pickle dishes, cutlery, b.u.t.ter dishes and cake plates, reaching around the walls of three bedrooms,--to say nothing of an elaborate wax representation of nesting cupids bearing the card of the Belgian Society from the gla.s.s works and sent, according to the card, to "Mlle. Lille"n"en Pense"; after the carriage, bedecked and bedizened with rice and shoes and ribbons, that was supposed to bear away the bride and groom, had gone amid the shouting and the tumult of the populace, and after the phaeton and the sorrel mare had actually taken the bride and groom from the barn to the railway station, after the fiddle and the ba.s.soon and the horn and the tinkling cymbal at Morty Sands"s dance had frayed and torn the sleep of those pale souls who would sleep on such a night in Harvey, Grant Adams and his father, leaving Jasper to trip whatever fantastic toes he might have, in the opera house, drove down the hill through the glare of the furnaces, the creaking of the oil derricks and the smell of the straw paper mill through the heart of South Harvey.
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, hoa.r.s.e calls, the stench of liquor, the m.u.f.fled 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s 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?"
"I"ve asked myself that question lots of times," exclaimed the youth. "I can"t make it work out on any theory. But I tell you, father," the son clinched the hand that was free from the lines, and shook it, "it"s wrong--some way, somehow, it"s wrong, way down at the bottom of things--I don"t know how nor why--but as sure as I live, I"ll try to find out."
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 phaeton, 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.
"And he wanted a hired man," cried Grant. "Just a hired man, and she--why, didn"t she understand? She knew I would have carried the old horse on my back clear to town, if she"d let me, just to hear her laugh once. Father," the son"s voice was bitter as he spoke, "why didn"t she understand----why did she side with him?"
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 cla.s.ses; 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.
"Tom," said the bride as they watched Grant Adams unhitch the horse by the lumber yard, "why did you force that money on Grant----he would have much preferred to have your hand when he said good-by."
"He"s not my kind of folks, Laura," replied Van Dorn. "I know you like him. But that five will do him lots more good than my shaking his hand, and if that youth wasn"t as proud as Lucifer he"d rather have five dollars than any man"s hand. I would----if it comes to that."