Part 15 (1/2)
Adams whirled around. His big jaw muscles worked in knots before he spoke; his blue eyes were set and raging. But he looked at the floor an instant before crying:
”You go to h.e.l.l!” And an instant later, the lank figure had left the room, slamming the door after him. Grant heard the telephone bell ringing, and heard the girl's voice answering it, then he went to the doctor's office. As he was writing the words ”At Home” on the slate on the door, he could hear Miss Mauling at the telephone.
”Yes,” and again, ”Yes,” and then, ”Is there any message,” and finally she giggled, ”All right, I'll call him.” Then Grant stalked down the stairs. The receiver was hanging down. The Doctor at the other end of the wire could hear a man and a woman laughing. Van Dorn stepped to the instrument and said: ”Yes, Doctor.”
Then, ”What--well, you don't say!”
And still again, ”Yes, he was just here this minute; shall I call him back?” And before hanging up the receiver, he said, ”Why, of course, I'll come right out.”
The Judge-elect turned gracefully around, smiling complacently: ”Well, Violet--it's your bet. It's a girl!”
The court stenographer poked a teasing forefinger at him and whittled it with another in glee. Then, as if remembering something, she asked: ”How's your wife?”
Van Dorn's face was blank for an instant. ”By George--that's so. I forgot to ask.” He started to pick up the telephone receiver, but checked himself. He pulled his broad-brimmed hat over his eyes, and started for the door, waving merrily and rubbing his chin with his flower.
”Ta ta,” he called as he saw the last of her flas.h.i.+ng smile through the closing door.
And thus into a world where only the fittest survive that day came Lila Van Dorn,--the child of a mother's love.
CHAPTER XV
WHEREIN WE WELCOME IN A NEW YEAR AND CONSIDER A SERIOUS QUESTION
The journey around the sun is a long and tumultuous one. Many of us jolt off the earth as we ride, others of us are turned over and thrown into strange and absurd positions, and a few of us sit tight and edge along, a little further toward the soft seats. But as we whirl by the stations, returning ever and again to the days that are precious in our lives, to the seasons that give us greatest joy, we measure our gains, on the long journey, in terms of what we love. ”A little over a year ago to-night, my dear,” chirruped Dr. Nesbit, pulling a gray hair from his temple where hairs of any kind were becoming scarce enough. ”A year, a month, and a week and a day ago to-night the town and the Harvey bra.s.s band came out here and they tramped up the blue gra.s.s so that it won't get back in a dozen years.
”Well,” he mused, as the fire burned, ”I got 'em all their jobs, I got two or three good medical laws pa.s.sed, and I hope I have made some people happy.”
”Yes, my dear,” answered his wife. ”In that year little Lila has come into short dresses, and Kenyon Adams has learned to play on the piano, and is taking up the violin.”
”How time has flown since election a year ago,” said Captain Morton to his a.s.sembled family as they sat around the base burner smoldering in the dining-room. ”And I've put the patent window fastener into forty houses and sold Henry Fenn the burglar alarm to go with his.” And the eldest Miss Morton spoke up and said:
”My good land, I hope we'll have a new princ.i.p.al by this time next year.
Another year under that man will kill me--pa, I do wish you'd run for the school board.”
And the handsome Miss Morton added, ”My goodness, Emma Morton, if I didn't have anything to do but draw forty dollars every month for yanking a lot of little kids around and teaching them the multiplication tables, I wouldn't say much. Why, we've come through algebra into geometry and half way through Cicero, while you've been fussing with that old princ.i.p.al--and Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker's got a new trimmer, and we girls down at the shop have to put up with her didoes. Talk of trouble, gee!”
”Martha, you make me weary,” said the youngest Miss Morton, eating an apple. ”If you'd had scarlet fever and measles the same year, and your old dress just turned and your same old hat, you'd have something to talk about.”
”Well,” remarked His Honor the Mayor to Henry Fenn and Morty Sands as they sat in the Amen Corner New Year's eve, looking at the backs of a shelf of late books and viewing several shelves of standard sets with highly gilded backs, ”it's more'n a year since election--and well, say--I've got all my election bets paid now and am out of debt again, and the book store's gradually coming along. By next year this time I expect to put four more shelves of copyrighted books in and cut down the paper backs to a stack on the counter. But old Lady Nicotine is still the patron of the fine arts--say, if it wasn't for the 'baccy little Georgie would be so far behind with his rent that he would knock off a year and start over.”
Young Mr. Sands rolled a cigarette and lighted it and said: ”It's a whole year--and Pop's gone a long time without a wife; it'll be two years next March since the last one went over the hill who was brought out to make a home for little Morty, and I saw Dad peeking out of the hack window as we were standing waiting for the hea.r.s.e, and wondered which one of the old girls present he'd pick on. But,” mused Morty, ”I guess it's Anne's eyes. Every time he edges around to the subject of our need of a mother, Anne turns her eyes on him and he changes the subject.” Morty laughed quietly and added: ”When Anne gets out of her 'teens she'll put father in a monastery!”
”Honeymoon's kind of waning--eh, Henry?” asked Judge Van Dorn, who dropped in for a magazine and heard the conversation about the pa.s.sing of the year. He added: ”I see you've been coming down here pretty regularly for three or four months!” Henry looked up sadly and shook his head. ”You can't break the habit of a dozen years. And I got to coming here back in the days when George ran a pool and billiard hall, and I suppose I'll come until I die, and then George will bring his wheezy old quartette around and sing over me, and probably act as pall-bearer too--if he doesn't read the burial service of the lodge in addition.”
”Well, a year's a year,” said the suave Judge Van Dorn. ”A year ago you boys were smoking on me as the new judge of this judicial district. All hail Thane of Cawdor--” He smiled his princely smile, taking every one in with his frank, bold eyes, and waved himself into the bl.u.s.tery night.
There he met Mr. Calvin, who, owing to a turn matters had taken at home, was just beginning another long period of exile from the hearthstone. He walked the night like a ghost, silent and grim. His thin little neck, furrowed behind by the sunken road between his arteries, was adorned by two tufts of straggling hair, and as his overcoat collar was rolled and wrinkled, he had an appearance of extreme neglect and dejection. ”Did you realize that it's over a year since election?” said Van Dorn. ”We might as well begin looking out for next year, Joe,” he added, ”if you've got nothing better to do. I wish you'd go down the row to-night and see the boys and tell them I want to talk to them in the next ten days or so; a man never can be too early in these things; and say--if you happen in the Company store down there and see Violet Mauling, slip her a ten and charge it to me on the books; I wonder how she's doing--I haven't heard of her for three months. Nice girl, Violet.”
And Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker hadn't heard of Miss Mauling for some time, and sitting in her little office back of the millinery store, sorting over her old bills, she came to a bill badly dog-eared with Miss Mauling's name on it. The bill called for something like $75 and the last payment on it had been made nearly half a year ago. So she looked at that bill and added ten dollars to Mrs. Van Dorn's bill for the last hat she bought, and did what she could to resign herself to the injustices of a cruel world. But it had been a good year for Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker. New wells in new districts had come gus.h.i.+ng gas and oil into Harvey in great geysers and the work on the new smelter was progressing, and the men in the mines had been kept steadily at work; for Harvey coal was the best in the Missouri Valley. So the ladies who are no better than they should be and the ladies who are much better than they should be, and the ladies who will stand for a turned ribbon, and a revived feather, and are just about what they may be expected to be, all came in and spent their money like the princesses that they were. And Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker figured in going over her stock just which hat she could sell to Mrs.
Nesbit as a model hat from the Paris exhibit at the World's Fair, and which one she could put on Mrs. Fenn as a New York sample, and as she built her castles the loss of the $75 to Miss Mauling had its compensating returns, and she smiled and thought that just a year ago she had offered that same World's Fair Model to the wife of the newly elected State Senator and she must put on a new bunch of flowers and bend down the brim.
The Dexters were sitting by the stove in the living-room with Amos Adams; they had come down to the lonely little home to prepare a good dinner for the men. ”A year ago to-day,” said the minister to the group as he put down the newspaper, ”Kenyon got his new fiddle.”