Death and partings have come across that threshold during these three decades. Amos Adams has known anguish and has sat with grief many times, but nothing ever has cut him to the heart like the dead, hopeless woe in Mary’s voice as she prayed there in the bedroom with Grant that August night. A terrible half-hour came when Mary and Amos talked with Margaret. For over their shame at what their son had done, above their love for him, even beyond their high hope for him, rose their sense of duty to the child who was coming. For the child they spent the passion of their shame and love and hope as they pleaded with Margaret for a child’s right to a name. But she had hardened her heart. She shook her head and would not listen to their pleadings. Then they sent Grant to her. It is not easy to say which was more dreadful, the impudent smile which she turned to the parents as she shook her head at them, or the scornful laugh they heard when Grant sat with her. That was a long and weary night they spent and the sun rose in the morning under a cloud that never was lifted from their hearts.
In the six or seven sordid, awful weeks that followed before Kenyon was born, they turned for comfort and for help to Dr. Nesbit. They made his plan to save the child’s good name, their plan. Of course–the Adamses were selfish. They felt a blight was on their boy’s life. They could not understand that in Heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage; that when God sends a soul through the gates of earth it comes in joy even though we greet it in sorrow. Their gloom should have been lighted; part of its blackness was their own vain pride in Grant. Yet they were none the less tender with Margaret, and when she went down into the valley of the shadow, Mary went with her and stood and supported the girl in the journey.
When Doctor Nesbit was climbing into the buggy at the gate, Grant, standing by the hitching-post, said: “Doctor–sometime–when we are both older–I mean Laura–” He got no further. The Doctor looked at the boy’s ashen face, and knew the cost of the words he was speaking. He stopped, reached his hand out to Grant and touched his shoulder. “I think I know, Grant–some day I shall tell her.” He got into the buggy, looked at the lad a moment and said in his high, squeaky voice: “Well, Grant, boy, you understand after all it’s your burden–don’t you? Your mother has saved Margaret’s good name. But son–son, don’t you let the folks bear that burden.” He paused a moment further and sighed: “Well, good-by, kid–God help you, and make a man of you,” and so turning his cramping buggy, he drove away in the dusk.
Thus came Kenyon Adams, recorded in the family Bible as the third son of Mary and Amos Adams, into the wilderness of this world.
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH MARGARET MÜLLER DWELLS IN MARBLE HALLS AND HENRY FENN AND KENYON ADAMS WIN NOTABLE VICTORIES
The world into which Kenyon Adams came was a busy and noisy and ruthless world. The prairie grass was leaving Harvey when Grant Adams came, and the meadow lark left in the year that Jasper came. When Kenyon entered, even the blue sky that bent over it was threatened. For Dr. Nesbit returning from the Adamses the evening that Kenyon came to Harvey found around the well-drill at Jamey McPherson’s a great excited crowd. Men were elbowing each other and craning their necks, and wagging their heads as they looked at the core of the drill. For it contained unmistakably a long worm of coal. And that night saw rising over Harvey such dreams as made the angels sick; for the dreams were all of money, and its vain display and power. And when men rose after dreaming those dreams, they swept little Jamey McPherson away in short order. For he had not the high talents of the money maker. He had only persistence, industry and a hopeful spirit and a vague vision that he was discovering coal for the common good. So when Daniel Sands put his mind to bear upon the worm of coal that came wriggling up from the drilled hole on Jamey’s lot, the worm crawled away from Jamey and Jamey went to work in the shaft that Daniel sank on his vacant lot near the McPherson home. The coal smoke from Daniel Sands’s mines began to splotch the blue sky above the town, and Kenyon Adams missed the large leisure and joyous comraderie that Grant had seen; indeed the only leisurely person whom Kenyon saw in his life until he was–Heaven knows how old–was Rhoda Kollander. The hum and bustle of Harvey did not ruffle the calm waters of her soul. She of all the women in Harvey held to the early custom of the town of going out to spend the day.
“So that Margaret’s gone,” she was saying to Mary Adams sometime during a morning in the spring after Kenyon was born. “Law me–I wouldn’t have a boarder. I tell John, the sanctity of the home is invaded by boarders these days; and her going out to the dances in town the way she does, I sh’d think you’d be glad to be alone again, and to have your own little flock to do for. And so Grant’s going to be a carpenter–well, well! He didn’t take to the printing trade, did he? My, my!” she sighed, and folded her hands above her apron–the apron which she always put on after a meal, as if to help with the dishes, but which she never soiled or wrinkled–“I tell John I’m so thankful our little Fred has such a nice place. He waits table there at the Palace, and gets all his meals–such nice food, and can go to school too, and you wouldn’t believe it if I’d tell you all the nice men he meets–drummers and everything, and he’s getting such good manners. I tell John there’s nothing like the kind of folks a boy is with in his teens to make him. And he sees Tom Van Dorn every day nearly and sometimes gets a dime for serving him, and now, honest, Mary, you wouldn’t believe it, but Freddie says the help around the hotel say that Mauling girl at the cigar stand thinks Tom’s going to marry her, but law me–he’s aiming higher than the Maulings. The old man is going to die–did you know it? They came for John to sit up with him last night. John’s an Odd Fellow, you know. But speaking of that Margaret, you know she’s a friend of Violet’s and slips into the cigar stand sometimes and Violet introduces Margaret to some nice drummers. And I heard John say that when Margaret gets this term of school taught here, the Spring Township people have made Doc Jim get her a job in the court house–register of deeds office. But I tell John–law me, you men are the worst gossips! Talk about women!”
Little Kenyon in his crib was restless, and Mary Adams was clattering the dishes, so between the two evils, Mrs. Kollander picked up the child, and rocked him and patted him and then went on: “I was over and spent the day with the Sandses the other day. Poor woman, she’s real puny. Ann’s such a pretty child and Mrs. Sands says that Morty’s not goin’ back to college again. And she says he just moons around Laura Nesbit. Seems like the boy’s got no sense. Why, Laura’s just a child–she’s Grant’s age, isn’t she–not more than eighteen or nineteen, and Morty must be nearly twenty-three. My–how they have sprung up. I tell John–why, I’ll be thirty-six right soon now, and here I’ve worked and slaved my youth away and I’ll be an old woman before we know it.” She laughed good naturedly and rocked the fretting child. “Law me, Mary Adams, I sh’d think you’d want Grant to stay with George Brotherton there in the cigar stand, instead of carpentering. Such elegant people he can meet there, and such refined influences since Mr. Brotherton’s put in books and newspapers, and he could work in the printing office and deliver the Kansas City and St. Louis and Chicago dailies for Mr. Brotherton, and do so much better than he can carpentering. I tell John, if we can just keep our boy among nice people until he’s twenty-five, he’ll stay with ’em. Now look at Lide Bowman. Mary Adams, we know she was a smart woman until she married Dick and now just see her–living down there with the shanty trash and all those ignorant foreigners, and she’s growing like ’em. She’s lost two of her babies, and that seems to be weighing on her mind, and I can’t persuade her to pick up and move out of there. It’s like being in another world. And Mary Adams–let me tell you–Casper Herdicker has gone into the mine. Yes, sir, he closed his shop and is going to work in the mine, because he can make three dollars a day. But law me! you’ll not see Hildy Herdicker moving down there. She’ll keep her millinery store and live with the white folks.”
The dishes were put away, and in the long afternoon Mary Adams sat sewing as Rhoda Kollander rambled on. For the third time Rhoda came back to comment upon the fact that Grant Adams had quit working in the printing office–a genteel trade, and had stopped delivering papers for Mr. Brotherton’s newspaper stand–a rather high vocation, and was degrading himself by learning the carpenter’s trade, when Mary Adams cut into the current of the stream of talk.
“Well, my dear, it was this way. There are two reasons why Grant is learning the carpenter’s trade. In the first place, the boy has some sort of a passion to cast his lot among the poor. He feels they are neglected and–well, he has a sort of a fierce streak in him to fight for the under dog, and–”
“Well, law me, Mary–don’t I know that? Hasn’t Freddie told me time and again how Grant used to fight for Freddie when he was a little boy and the big boys plagued him. Grant whipped the whole school for teasing a little half-witted boy once–did you know that?” Mary Adams shook her head. “Well, he did, and–well now, isn’t that nice. I can see just how he feels!” And she could. Never lived a more sympathetic soul than Rhoda. And as she rocked she said: “Of course, if that’s the reason–law me, Mary, you never can tell how these children are going to turn out. Why, I tell John–”
“And the other reason is, Rhoda, that he is earning two dollars a day as a carpenter’s helper, and since Kenyon came we seem to be miserably hard pushed for money.” Mary Adams stopped and then went on as one carefully choosing her words: “And since Margaret has gone to board over at the other side of the school district, and we don’t have her board money–why of course–”
“Why of course,” echoed Mrs. Kollander, “of course. I tell John he’s been in a county office now twenty years, drawing all the way from a thousand to three thousand a year–and what have we got to show for it? I scrimp and pinch and save, and John does too–but law me–it seems like the way times are–” Amos Adams, standing at the door, heard her and cut in:
“I was talking the other night with George Washington about the times, and they’re coming around all right.” The man fumbled his sandy beard, closed his eyes as if to remember something and went on: “Let’s see, he wrote: ‘Peas and potatoes preserve the people,’ and the next day, everything in the market dropped but peas and potatoes.” He nodded a wise head. “They think that planchette is nonsense, but how do they account for coincidences like that! And now tell me some news for the
Tribune
.” The two sat talking well into the twilight and when Rhoda pulled up her chair to the supper table, the editor’s notebook was full.
Grant appeared, an ox-shouldered, red-haired, bass-voiced boy with ham-like hands; Jasper came in from school full of the town’s adventure into coal and the industries, and his chatter trickled into the powerful but slowly spoken insistence of Mrs. Kollander’s talk and was lost and swept finally into silence. After supper Grant retired to a book from the Sea-side Library, borrowed of Mr. Brotherton from stock–“Sesame and Lilies” was its title. Jasper plunged into his bookkeeping studies and by the wood stove in the sitting-room Rhoda Kollander held her levee until bedtime sent her home.
During the noon hour the next day in Mr. Brotherton’s cigar store and news stand, the walnut bench was filled that he had just installed for the comfort of his customers. At one end, was Grant Adams who had hurried up from the mines to buy a paperbound copy of Carlyle’s “French Revolution”; next to him sat deaf John Kollander smoking his noon cigar, and beside Kollander sat stuttering Kyle Perry, thriftily sponging his morning Kansas City
Times
over Dr. Nesbit’s shoulder. The absent brother always was on the griddle at Mr. Brotherton’s amen corner, and the burnt offering of the moment was Henry Fenn. He had just broken over a protracted drouth–one of a year and a half–and the group was shaking sad heads over the county attorney’s downfall. The doctor was saying, “It’s a disease, just as the ‘ladies, God bless ’em’ will become a disease with Tom Van Dorn if he doesn’t stop pretty soon–a nervous disease and sooner or later they will both go down. Poor Henry–Bedelia and I noticed him at the charity ball last night; he was–”
“A trifle polite–a wee bit too punctilious for these latitudes,” laughed Brotherton from behind the counter.
“I was going to say decorative–what Mrs. Nesbit calls ornate–kind of rococco in manner,” squeaked the doctor, and sighed. “And yet I can see he’s still fighting his devil–still trying to keep from going clear under.”
“It’s a sh-sh-sh-a-ame that ma-a-an should have th-that kind of a d-d-d-devil in him–is-isis-n’t it?” said Kyle Perry, and John Kollander, who had been smoking in peace, blurted out, “What else can be expected under a Democratic administration? Of course, they’ll return the rebel flags. They’ll pension the rebel soldiers next!” He looked around for approval, and the smiles of the group would have lured him further but Tom Van Dorn came swinging through the door with his princely manner, and the Doctor rose to go. He motioned George Brotherton to the rear of the room and said gently:
“George–old man Mauling died an hour ago; John Dexter and I were there at the last. And John sent word for me to have you get your choir out–so I’ll notify Mrs. Nesbit. Dexter said he was a lodge member with you–what lodge, George?”
“Odd Fellow,” returned the big man, then asked, “Pall-bearer?”
“Yes,” returned the Doctor. “There’s no one else much but the lodge in his case. You will sing him to sleep with your choir and tuck him in as pall-bearer as you’ve been doing for the dead folks ever since you came to town.” The Doctor turned to go, “Meet to-night at the house for choir practice, I suppose?”
Brotherton nodded, and turned to take a bill from Tom Van Dorn, who had pocketed a handful of cigars and a number of papers.
“We were just talking about Henry, Tom,” remarked Mr. Brotherton, as he handed back the change.
“He’s b-back-sl-slidden,” prompted Perry.
“Oh, well–it’s all right. Henry has his weaknesses–we all have our failings. But drunk or sober he danced a dozen times last night with that pretty school teacher from Prospect Township.” Grant looked up from his book, as Van Dorn continued, “Gorgeous creature–” he shut his eyes and added: “Don’t pity Henry when he can get a woman like that to favor him!”
As John Kollander thundered back some irrelevant comment on the moment’s politics, Van Dorn led Brotherton to the further end of the counter and lowering his voice said:
“You know that Mauling girl at the Palace cigar counter?”
As Brotherton nodded, Van Dorn, dropping his voice to a whisper, said: “Her father’s dead–poor child–she’s been spending her money–she hasn’t a cent. I know; I have been talking to her more or less for a year or so. Which one of your lodges does the old man belong to, George?”
When the big man said: “Odd Fellows,” Van Dorn reached into an inner coat pocket, brought out some bills and slipping them to Brotherton, so that the group on the bench in the corner could not see, Van Dorn mumbled:
“Tell her folks this came from the lodge–poor little creature, she’s their sole support.”
As Van Dorn lighted his cigar at the alcohol burner Henry Fenn turned into the store. Fenn stood among them and smiled his electric smile, that illumined his lean, drawn face and said, “Here,” a pause, then, “I am,” another pause, and a more searching smile, “I am again!”
Mr. Brotherton looked up from the magazine counter where he was sorting out
Centurys
, and
Harpers
and
Scribners
from a pile: “Say–” he roared at the newcomer, “Well–say, Henry–this won’t do. Come–take a brace; pull yourself together. We are all for you.”
“Yes,” answered Fenn, smiling out of some incandescence in his heart, “that’s just it: You’re all for me. The boys over at Riley’s saloon are all for me. Mother–God bless her, down at the house is for me so strong that she never flinches or falters. I can get every vote in the delegation, but my own!”
“Oh, Henry, why these tears?” sneered Van Dorn. “We’ve all got to have our fun.”
“I presume, Tom,” snapped Fenn, “that you’ve got your little affairs of the heart so that you can take ’em or let ’em alone!” But to the group in the amen corner, Fenn lifted up his head in shame. He looked like a whipped dog. One by one the crowd disappeared, all but Grant, who was bending over his book, and deaf John Kollander.
Fenn and Brotherton went back to Brotherton’s desk and Fenn asked, “Did I–George, was it pretty bad last night? God she–she–that Müller girl–what a wonderful woman she is. George, do you suppose–” Fenn caught Grant’s eyes wandering toward them. The name of Margaret Müller had reached his ears. But Fenn went on, lowering his voice: “I honestly believe she could, if any one could.” Fenn put his lean, tapering hand upon Brotherton’s broad fat paw, and smiled a quaint, appreciative smile, frank and gentle. It was one of those smiles that carried agreement with what had been said, and with everything that might be said. Brotherton took up the hallelujah chorus for Margaret with: “Fine girl–bright, keen–well say, did you know she’s buying the books here of me for the chautauqua course and is trying for a degree–something in her head besides hairpins–well, say!”
He stopped in the middle of the sentence, and brought down his great hand on his knee. “Well, say–observe me the prize idiot! Get the blue ribbon and pin it on your Uncle George. Look here at me overlooking the main bet. Well, say, Henry–here are the specifications of one large juicy plan. Funeral to-morrow–old man Mauling; obliging party to die. Uncle George and the angel choir to officiate with Uncle George doubling in brass as pall-bearer. The new Mrs. Sands, our bell-voiced contralto, is sick: also obliging party to be sick. Need new contralto: Müller girl has voice like morning star, or stars, as the case may be.” Fenn flashed on his electric smile, and rose, looking a question.
“That’s the idea, Henry, that finally wormed its way into my master mind,” cried Brotherton, laughing his big laugh. “That’s what I said before I spoke. You are to drive into Prospect Township this evening–Hey, Grant,” called Brotherton to the boy on the bench in the Amen corner, “Does that pretty school ma’am board with you people?” And when Grant shook his head, Brotherton went on: “Yes–she’s moved across the district I remember now. Well, anyway, Henry, you’re to drive into Prospect Township this evening and produce one large, luscious brunette contralto for choir practice at General Nesbit’s piano at eight o’clock sharp.” He stood facing Fenn whose eyes were glowing. The lurking devil seemed to slink away from him. Brotherton, seeing the change, again burst into his laugh and bringing Fenn to the front of the store roared: “Well, say–Hennery–are there any flies on your Uncle George’s scheme?”
Grant began buttoning his coat. Fenn, free for the moment of his devil, was happy, and Brotherton looked at the two and cried, “Now get out of here–the both of you: you’re spiling trade. And say,” called Brotherton to Fenn, “bring her up to the Palace Hotel for supper, and we’ll fill her full of rich food, so’s she can sing–well, say!”
That evening going home Grant met Margaret and Fenn at a turn of the road, and before they noticed him, he saw a familiar look in her eyes as she gazed at the man, saw how closely they were sitting in the buggy, saw a score of little things that sent the blood to his face and he strode on past them without speaking. That night he slipped into the room where the baby lay playing with his toes, and there, standing over the little fellow, the youth’s eyes filled with tears and for the first time he felt the horror of the baby lifting from him. He did not touch the child, but tiptoed from the room ashamed to be seen.
To Margaret Müller, the baby’s mother, that night opened a new world. To begin with, it marked her entrance through the portals of the Palace Hotel as a guest. She had sometimes flitted into the office with its loose, tiled floors and shabby, onyx splendor to speak to Miss Mauling of the news stand; then she came as a fugitive and saw things only furtively. But this night Margaret walked in through the “Ladies Entrance,” sat calmly in the parlor, while Mr. Fenn wrote her name upon the register, and after some delirious moments of grand conversation with Mr. Fenn in the gilded hall of pleasure with its chenille draperies and its apoplectic furniture all puffed to the bursting point, she had walked with Mr. Fenn through the imposing halls of the wonderful edifice, like a rescued princess in a fairy tale, to the dining room, there to meet Mr. Brotherton, and the eldest Miss Morton, who recently had been playing the cabinet organ at funerals to guide Mr. Brotherton’s choir. Now the eldest Miss Morton was not antique, being only a scant fifteen in short dresses and pig tails. But at the urgent request of Mr. Brotherton, and “to fill out the table, and to take the wrinkles out of her apron by a square meal at the Palace,” as Mr. Brotherton explained to the Captain, she had been primped and curled and scared by her sisters and her father, and sent along with Mr. Brotherton–possibly in his great ulster pocket, and she sat breathing irregularly and looking steadily into her lap in great awe and trepidation.
Margaret Müller, in the dining-room whose fame had spread to the outposts of Spring township and to the fastnesses of Prospect, behaved with scarcely less constraint than the eldest Miss Morton. She gazed at the beamed ceiling, the high wainscoting, the stenciled walls, the frescoes upon the panels, framed by the beams, the wide sideboard, the glittering glass and the plated silver service, and if her eyes had not been so beautiful they would have betrayed her wonder and admiration. As it was, they showed an ecstasy of delight that made them shine and when Henry Fenn saw them he looked at Mr. Brotherton, and Mr. Brotherton looked at Mr. Fenn, and the moon in Mr. Brotherton’s face beamed a lively approval. Moreover the cigar salesman from Leavenworth and a hardware drummer from St. Louis and a dry-goods salesman from Chicago and a travelling auditor for the Midland saw Margaret’s eyes and they too looked at one another and gave their unqualified approval. In other years–in later years–when she was at Bertolini’s Grand Palace in Naples or in some of the other Grand Palaces of other effete and luxurious capitals of Europe, Margaret used to think of that first meal at the Palace house in Harvey and wonder what in the world really did become of the dozen fried oysters that she so innocently ordered. She could see them looming up, a great pyramid of brown batter, garnished with cress, and she knew that she had blundered. But she did not see the wink that Mr. Brotherton gave Mr. Fenn nor the glare that Mr. Fenn gave Mr. Brotherton; so she faced it out and whether she ate them or left them, she never could recall.
But it was a glorious occasion in spite of the fried oysters. What though the tiles of the floor of the Palace were cracked; what though the curtains sagged, and the furniture was shabby, and the walls were faded and dingy; what though the great beams in the dining-room were dirty and the carpets in the halls bedraggled, and the onyx gapping in great cracks upon the warped walls of the office; what though the paint had faded and the varnish cracked all over the house! To Margaret Müller and also to the eldest Miss Morton, who only managed to breathe below her locket when they were under the stars, it was a dream of marble halls, and the frowsy Freddie Kollander and the other waiter who brought in the food on thick, cracked oblong dishes were vassals and serfs by their sides.
When they started up Sixth Avenue, the eldest Miss Morton was trying to think of everything that had happened to tell the younger Misses Morton, Martha and Ruth–what they ate and what Miss Müller wore, and what Freddie Kollander who waited on them, and also went to high school, did when he saw her, and how Mr. Fenn acted when Miss Müller got the big platter of oysters, and what olives tasted like and if anything had been cooked in the Peerless Cooker that father had just sold Mr. Paxton and in general why the spirit of mortal should be proud.
But Miss Müller entertained no such thoughts. She was treading upon the air of some elysium, and she took and held Mr. Fenn’s arm with an unnecessary tightness and began humming the tune that told of the girl who dreamed she dwelt in marble halls; and then, as they left the thick of the town and were walking along the board sidewalks that lead to Elm Crest on Elm Street, they all fell to singing that tune; and as one good tune deserved another, and as they were going to practice the funeral music that evening, they sang other tunes of a highly secular nature that need not be enumerated here. And as Miss Müller had a substantial dinner folded snugly within her, and the ambition of her life was looming but a few blocks ahead of her, she walked closer to Mr. Fenn, county attorney in and for Greeley county, than was really necessary. So when Mr. Brotherton walked alongside with the eldest Miss Morton stumbling intermittently over the edge of the sidewalk and walking in the dry weeds beside it, Miss Müller put some feeling into her singing voice and they struck what Mr. Brotherton was pleased to call a barbershop chord, and held it to his delight. And the frosty air rang with their voices, and the rich tremulous voice of the young woman thrilled with passion too deep for words. So deep was it that it might have stirred the hovering soul of the dead whose dirges they were to sing and brought back to him the time when he too had thrilled with youth and its inexpressible joy.
Up the hill they go, arm in arm, with fondling voices uttering the unutterable. And now they turn into a long, broad avenue of elms, of high, plumey elms trimmed and tended, mulched and cultivated for nearly twenty years, the apple of one man’s eye; great elms set in blue grass, branching only at the tops, elms that stand in a grove around an irregular house, elms that shade a broad stone walk leading up to a wide, hospitable door. The young people ring. There is a stirring in the house, Margaret Müller’s heart is a-flutter–and the eldest Miss Morton wonders whether Laura or the hired girl will open the door, and in a moment