CHAPTER IX
WHEREIN HENRY FENN MAKES AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT
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.
“Well, you lucky old dog!” was Mr. Brotherton’s greeting. “Well, say–this is his honor, the Mayor, come up to collect your dog tax! Well, say!” As he walked into the office all the secret society pins and charms and signets–the Shriners’ charm, the Odd Fellows’ links, the Woodmen’s ax, the Elks’ tooth, the Masons’ square and compass, the Knights Templars’ arms, were glistening upon his wrinkled front like a mosaic of jewels!
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:
“In loving memory of the late Tom Van Dorn,
Recently engaged.
For here, kind friends, we all must lie;
Turn, Sinner, turn before ye die!
Take one.”
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?”
The editor looked up amiably at the pudgy, white-clad figure of the Doctor, and replied casually though earnestly, “Well, Doc Jim, I couldn’t seem to get Lincoln to-day. But I did have a nice chat with Beecher last night and he said: ‘Your friend, Dr. Nesbit, I observe, is a low church Congregationalist.’ And when I asked what he meant Beecher replied, ‘High church Congregationalists believe in New England; low church Congregationalists believe in God!’ Sounds like him–I could just see him twitching his lips and twinkling his eyes when it came!” Captain Morton looked suspiciously over his steel-bowed glasses to say testily:
“’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 Doctor snapped his watch, and looked at Brotherton. The Doctor was not the man to loaf long of an autumn evening before any election, and he turned to Amos and said: “All right, Amos–we’ll fix up something for Mary a little later. Now, George–get out that Fourth Ward voters’ list and let’s get to work!”
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!”
“Tom’s love affairs and mine,” sneered the maudlin man. “‘They grew in beauty side by side.’ But don’t you fool yourself,” and Fenn wagged a drunken head, “Tom’s devil isn’t, dead, she sleepeth, that’s what she does. The maiden is not dead she sleepeth, and some day she’ll wake up and then Tom’s love affair will be where my love affair is.” His eyes met the doctor’s. Fenn sighed and laughed fatuously and then he straightened up and said: “Mr. George Brotherton, most worshipful master, Senior Warden, Grand High Potentate, Keeper of the Records and Seals–hear me. I’m going out to No. 826 Congress Street to see the fairest of her sex–the fairest of her sex.” Then he smiled like the flash of a burning soul and continued:
“‘The cold, the changed, perchance the dead anew,
The mourned, the loved, the lost.’”
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:
“Come along with me, Grant.” They mounted the stairs to the Doctor’s office and when the door was closed the Doctor motioned Grant to a chair and piped sharply: “Grant, Kenyon is wearing your mother’s life out. I’ve just been down to see her. Look here, Grant, I want to know about Margaret? Does she ever come to see you folks–how does she treat Kenyon?”
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.”
The Doctor rose and Grant saw that the interview was over. The Doctor left the youth at the foot of the stairway and went out into the autumn night, where the stars could blink at all his wisdom. Though he, poor man, did not know that they were winking. For often men who know good women and love them well, are as unjust to weak women as men are who know only those women who are frail.
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.
She was one of God’s miracles of beauty the next day as she passed Grant Adams on the street, with his carpenter’s box on his arm, going from the mine shaft to do some work in the office of the attorney for the mines. She barely nodded to Grant, yet the radiance of her beauty made him turn his head to gaze at her. Doctor Nesbit did that, and Captain Morton, and Dick Bowman,–even John Kollander turned, putting up his ear trumpet as if to hear the glory of her presence; the whole street turned after her as though some high wind had blown human heads backward when she passed. They saw a lithe, exquisite animal figure, poised strongly on her feet, walking as in the very pride of sex, radiating charms consciously, but with all the grace of a flower in the breeze. Her bright eyes, her masses of dark hair, her dimpled face and neck, her lips that flamed with the joy of life, the enchantment of her whole body, was so complete a thing that morning, that she might well have told her story to the world. The little Doctor knew what her answer to Henry Fenn had been and always would be. He knew as well as though she had told him. In spite of himself, his heart melted a little and he had consciously to stop arguing with himself that she had done the wise thing; that to throw Henry over would only hasten an end, which her powerful personality might finally avert. But George Brotherton–when he saw the light in her eyes, was sad. In the core of him, because he loved his friend, he knew what had happened to that friend. He was sad–sad and resentful, vaguely and without reason, at the mien and bearing of Margaret Müller as she went to her work that morning.
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?”
Fenn, gray of face, with his straight, colorless hair, with his staring eyes, with his listless form, sat head in hands, gazing at the floor. He did not look up as he replied: “George, I just can’t give her up; I won’t give her up,” he cried. “I believe, after the depths of love she showed me in her soul last night, I’d take her, if I knew I was taking us both to hell. Just let me have a home, George,–and her and children–George, I know children would hold me–lots of children–I can make money. I’ve got money–all I need to marry on, and we’ll have a home and children and they will hold me–keep me up.”
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.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH MARY ADAMS TAKES A MUCH NEEDED REST
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.”
And the Captain left in the corner of the store the model of a patent coffee pot he was handling at the time and went away without his morning paper. Mr. Van Dorn came in, picked up his paper, snipped off the end of his cigar at the machine, lighted the cigar, considered his fine raiment a moment, adjusted his soft hat at a proper angle, pulled up his tie, and seeing the youth, said: “By George, young man, this is sad news I hear; give the good father my sympathy. Too bad.”
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!”
Grant rose, went into the house, bundled up Kenyon and between showers carried him and walked with him through the bleak woods of March, where the red bird’s joyous song only cut into his heart and made the young man press closer to him the little form that snuggled in his arms.
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.
It was nearly dusk when the Adamses came back from the cemetery to the empty house. But a bright fire was burning in the kitchen stove and the kettle was boiling and the odor of food cooking in the oven was in the air. Kenyon was moving fitfully about the front room. Mrs. Dexter was quietly setting the table. Amos Adams hung up his hat, took off his coat, and went to his rocker by the kitchen door; Jasper sat stiffly in the front room. Grant met Mrs. Dexter in the dining room, and she saw that the child had hold of the young man’s finger and she heard the baby calling, “Mother–mother! Grant, I want mother!” with a plaintive little cry, over and over again. Grant played with the child, showed the little fellow his toys and tried to stop the incessant call of “Mother–mother–where’s mother!” At last the boy’s eyes filled. He picked up the child, knocking his own new hat roughly to the floor. He drew up his chin, straightened his trembling jaw, batted his eyes so that the moisture left them and said to his father in a hard, low voice–a man’s voice:
“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:
“Get out of here!–leave! quick!” He stood stubbornly before her and only the child’s voice crying, “Grant, Grant, I want to go home to mother,” filled the silence. Finally she spoke again, cutting through the baby’s complaint. “I shall never, never, never take that child; I loathe him, and I hate you and I want both of you always to keep away from me.”
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?”